Throughout, he is aware of the door open a crack, and the child watching. His pleasure is acute; it communicates itself to the girl; never before have they experienced such dark sweetness.

When he takes the girl home afterwards, he leaves the bed unmade so that the child, exploring, can familiarize herself with the smells of love.

Every Wednesday afternoon from then on, for the rest of the summer, he brings the girl to his room, always the same girl. Each time, when they depart, the apartment seems to be empty; each time, he knows, the child has crept in, has watched or listened, is now hiding somewhere.

'Do mat again,' the girl will whisper.

'Do what?'

'That!' she whispers, flushed with desire.

'First say the words,' he says, and makes her say them. 'Louder,' he says. Saying the words excites the girl unbearably.

He remembers Svidrigailov: 'Women like to be humiliated.'

He thinks of all of this as creating a taste in the child, as one creates a taste for unnatural foods, oysters or sweetbreads.

He asks himself why he does it. The answer he gives himself is: History is coming to an end; the old account-books will soon be thrown in the fire; in this dead time between old and new, all things are permitted. He does not believe his answer particularly, does not disbelieve it. It serves.

Or he says to himself: It is the fault of the Petersburg summer – these long, hot, stuffy afternoons with flies buzzing against the windowpanes, these evenings thick with the hum of mosquitoes. Let me last through the summer, and through the winter too; then when spring comes I will go away to Switzerland, to the mountains, and become a different person.

He takes his meals with his landlady and her daughter. One Wednesday evening, pretending high spirits, he leans across the table and ruffles the child's hair. She draws away. He realizes he has not washed his hands, and she has picked up the after-smell of lovemaking. Colouring, covered in confusion, she bends over her plate, will not meet his eye.

He writes all of this in a clear, careful script, crossing out not a word. In the act of writing he experiences, today, an exceptional sensual pleasure – in the feel of the pen, snug in the crook of his thumb, but even more in the feel of his hand being tugged back lightly from its course across the page by the strict, unvarying shape of the letters, the discipline of the alphabet.

Anya, Anna Snitkina, was his secretary before she was his wife. He hired her to bring his manuscripts into order, then married her. A fairy-girl of a kind, called in to spin the tangle of his writing into a single golden thread. If he writes so clearly today, it is because he is no longer writing for her eyes. He is writing for himself. He is writing for eternity. He is writing for the dead.

Yet at the same time that he sits here so calmly, he is a man caught in a whirlwind. Torrents of paper, fragments of an old life torn loose by the roar of the upward spiral, fly all about him. High above the earth he is borne, buffeted by currents, before the grip of the wind slackens and for a moment, before he starts to fall, he is allowed utter stillness and clarity, the world opening below him like a map of itself.

Letters from the whirlwind. Scattered leaves, which he gathers up; a scattered body, which he reassembles.

There is a tap at the door: Matryona, in her nightdress, for an instant looking startlingly like her mother. 'Can I come in?' she says in a husky voice.

'Is your throat still sore?'

'Mm.'

She sits down on the bed. Even at this distance he can hear how troubled her breathing is.

Why is she here? Does she want to make peace? Is she too being worn down?

'Pavel used to sit like that when he was writing,' she says. 'I thought you were Pavel when I came in.'

'I am in the middle of something,' he says. 'Do you mind if I go on?'

She sits quietly behind him and watches while he writes. The air in the room is electric: even the dust-motes seem to be suspended.

'Do you like your name?' he says quietly, after a while.

'My own name?'

'Yes. Matryona.'

'No, I hate it. My father chose it. I don't know why I have to have it. It was my grandmother's name. She died before I was born.'

'I have another name for you. Dusha.' He writes the name at the head of the page, shows it to her. 'Do you like it?'

She does not answer.

'What really happened to Pavel?' he says. 'Do you know?'

'I think… I think he gave himself up.'

'Gave himself up for what?'

'For the future. So that he could be one of the martyrs.'

'Martyrs? What is a martyr?'

She hesitates. 'Someone who gives himself up. For the future.'

'Was that Finnish girl a martyr too?'

She nods.

He wonders whether Pavel had grown used to speaking in formulas too, by the end. For the first time it occurs to him that Pavel might be better dead. Now that he has thought the thought, he faces it squarely, not disowning it.

A war: the old against the young, the young against the old.

'You must go now,' he says. 'I have work to do.'

He heads the next page the child, and writes:

One day a letter arrives for him, his name and address written out in slow, neat block letters. The child takes it from the concierge and leaves it propped against the mirror in his room.

'That letter – do you want to know who sent it?' he remarks casually when he and she are next alone together. And he tells her the story of Maria Lebyatkin, of how Maria disgraced her brother Captain Lebyatkin and became the laughing-stock of Tver by claiming that an admirer, whose identity she coyly refused to disclose, was asking for her hand.

'Is the letter from Maria?' asks the child.

'Wait and you will hear.'

'But why did they laugh at her? Why shouldn't someone want to marry her?'

'Because Maria was simple, and simple people should not marry for fear they will bear simple children, and the simple children will then have simple children themselves, and so forth, till the whole land is full of simple people. Like an epidemic'

'An epidemic?'

'Yes. Do you want me to go on? It all happened last summer while I was visiting my aunt. I heard the story of Maria and her phantom admirer and decided to do something about it. First of all I had a white suit made, so that I would look gallant enough for the part.'

'This suit?'

'Yes, this suit. By the time it was ready, everyone knew what was up – in Tver news travels fast. I put on the suit and with a bunch of flowers went calling on the Lebyatkins. The captain was mystified, but his sister wasn't. She had never lost her faith. From then on I called every day. Once I took her for a walk in the forest, just the two of us. That was the day before I set off for Petersburg.'

'So were you her admirer all the time?'

'No, that's not how it was. The admirer was just a dream she had. Simple people can't tell the difference between dreams and the real thing. They believe in dreams. She thought I was the dream. Because I behaved, you know, like a dream.'

'And will you go back and see her?'

'I don't think so. In fact, certainly not. And if she comes looking for me, you must be sure not to let her in. Say I have changed lodgings. Say you don't know my address. Or give her a false address. Make one up. You'll recognize her at once. She is tall and bony and her teeth stick out, and she smiles all the time. In fact she's a kind of witch.'

'Is that what she says in the letter – that she is coming here?'

'Yes.'

'But why -?'

'Why did I do it? For a joke. Summer in the country is so boring – you have no idea how boring.'

It takes him no more than ten minutes to write the scene, with not a word blotted. In a final version it would have to be fuller, but for present purposes this is enough. He gets up, leaving the two pages open on the table.