THE MURDER I COMMITTED—it wasn’t simply the strike of a dagger, at night, on the fifth of October, in a brightly lit living room. The murder I committed is a phenomenon of duration, akin more to slow poisoning than a flashing blade. I dare to hope that the vast, gloomy remorse into which my life has since vanished will in no way sway the decision of the court.
I assume that you’re sufficiently familiar with the superficial details of my past. Birth year, school, university, career—none of this is very important. It would be much wiser, I think, to ask a person not merely the common-place question, When were you born? but the question, When and how did you first fall into sin? And to this question, I, Vasilii Pozdnyshev, would respond in the following way: I was just shy of sixteen. I still had not known any woman but was already debauched by the nasty whispered jokes and boasts of my peers. Then a student I knew, my brother’s friend, took me to that place—the place that’s so splendidly called the “house of tolerance.” I recall neither the name nor the face of the woman who taught me to make love. But I recall that in this fall there was something special and touching—I felt sad, so sad—and this sense of something irreparable, irreversible, is one I have experienced only twice in my life: when I looked upon that prostitute getting dressed, and many years later, when I looked upon
