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By Root 1002 0

him with overwhelming force. He wasn’t ready yet, there were a thousand things to be done first, and his brain flares and sparkles with all that remained to be done. He still hasn’t paid his hotel bill, he’d forgotten about it; heavens, yes, it was just an oversight, and he would put it right again! Oh, he must be spared overnight—mercy, an hour’s mercy, a little more than an hour! Great God, there was also a letter he had forgotten to write, another letter, a couple of lines to a man in Finland; it concerned his sister, her whole estate! ... So conscious was he in the midst of his desperation, and with such marvelous intensity was his brain working, that he even thought of his newspaper subscriptions. O-o-h, he hadn’t canceled his subscriptions either, the papers would be arriving continually; they would never stop, filling up his room from floor to ceiling. What should he do? And now he was practically half dead!

He tears up the heather with both hands, turns over on his stomach and tries to bring up the poison by sticking his finger down his throat, but to no avail. No, he didn’t want to die, not tonight, not tomorrow either; he would never want to die, he wanted to live, yes, to still see the sun for an eternity. He would simply refuse to keep this bit of poison down, he had to get it up before it killed him—up, up, come hell or high water!

Frantic with terror he jumps to his feet and begins to stagger about the woods looking for water. He calls “Water! Water!” so that it echoes far away. He raves on for several minutes, running around in all directions, bumping into trees, doing high jumps over juniper patches and groaning loudly. He doesn’t find any water. Finally he stumbles and falls on his face, his hands scrabble the heather-covered ground as he falls, and he feels a slight pain in one cheek. He tries to move, to rise, but the fall has dazed him and he sinks back again; he feels more and more faint and doesn’t rise.

Well, so be it, there was no getting out of it! Oh good Lord, then he would have to die after all! If he’d had the strength to find water somewhere, perhaps he would’ve been saved! Oh, what a bad end he would come to, regardless how sweet he’d once imagined it. He was going to die of poison under the open sky! But why wasn’t he stiff already? He could still move his fingers and raise his eyelids; strange how it dragged on and on!

He feels his face, it’s cold and bathed in sweat. Having fallen forward, with his head turned downhill, he just lies there, making no fuss about it. Every limb of his body is still quivering; he has a cut on one cheek and calmly lets it bleed. How it dragged on and on! He lies there patiently, waiting. Again he hears the church bell strike the hour, it strikes three. He starts: could he have had the poison in him for a whole hour without being dead? He raises himself on his elbow and looks at his watch; yes, it was three o’clock. What a long time it was taking!

Well, if he must, maybe he had better die now, despite everything! And suddenly, as he came to think of Dagny, how he would sing for her every Sunday morning and do her many kindnesses, he felt resigned to his fate and got tears in his eyes. Mawkishly, to the accompaniment of prayers and silent tears, he began to focus his thoughts on all the things he would do for Dagny. Oh, how he would protect her, keeping all evil away from her! Perhaps he would be able to fly to her and be near her already tomorrow—good God, if only he could do it by tomorrow and have her wake up truly radiant! It was mean of him not to want to die a moment ago, when he could make her happy that way; in fact, he regretted it and asked her forgiveness. He couldn’t understand what he had been thinking of. But now she could depend on him, he yearned to come sailing into her room and stand before her bed. In a few hours, maybe within the hour, he would be there, oh yes, he would be there. And he would surely get an angel of the Lord to do it for him if he couldn’t do it himself; he would promise him lots of nice things in return. He would say: