17th January
Blizzard today, so no consultation. During the hours of abstention I read a textbook of psychiatry and it appalled me. I am done for; there’s no hope.
During abstinence I am terrified by the slightest sound and I find people detestable. I am afraid of them. In the euphoric phase I love everyone, although I prefer solitudeOutward appearance: thin, pale with a waxen pallor.
I took a bath and afterwards weighed myself on the hospital scales. Last year I weighed 148 lbs (67 kgs); now I weigh 120 lbs (54 kgs). I had a fright as I watched the needle on the dial, but the shock soon passed.
My forearms and thighs are a mass of unhealed abscesses. I don’t know how to prepare sterile solutions, besides which I have injected myself with an unsterilised syringe on about three occasions when I was in a great hurry to go out on my rounds.
This can’t be allowed to go on.18th January
I had the following hallucination:
I was sitting in front of a blank, dark window expecting some kind of pale figures to appear. The suspense was intolerable. Yet there was nothing there except the blind. I fetched some gauze from the hospital and draped it over the window. I was unable to think of a rational excuse for my action.
Hell, why should I have to find a pretext for every single thing I do? What I am living is not a normal existence, but torture.
Do I express my thoughts lucidly?
I think I do.
What is my life? An absurdity.3rd February
So now I am poised at the top of a slope. It is icy, slippery and as endlessly long as the hill down which Kaj’s sledge ran in Hans Andersen’s fairy tale. This is my last ride down this slope, and I know what is waiting for me at the bottom. Oh Anna, terrible grief will soon be your reward for having loved me …11th February
I have decided to appeal to Bomgard. Why to him? Because he is not a psychiatrist; because he’s young and we were friends at university. He is healthy and tough yet kind-hearted, if I have gauged his character right. Perhaps he will be reli…sympathetic. He will think of some solution. He can take me to Moscow if he wants to. I can’t go to him. My sick leave has been approved. I am not going to work in the hospital, but am lying in bed.
I swore at the feldsher. He just laughed…It doesn’t matter. He had come to report to me, and offered to sound my respiration and heartbeat.
I refused to let him. Must I go on finding excuses for refusing? I am sick of inventing pretexts.
The note has been sent off to Bomgard.
People! Won’t anyone help me?
I am lapsing into outbursts of self-pity. If anybody were to read this they would find it maudlin and insincere. But no one will read it.
Before writing to Bomgard, all my memories came back to me. I had a particular recollection of a Moscow railway station in November, when I was running away from the clinic. What an appalling evening that was. I had gone to a lavatory in the station to inject my stolen morphine. It was a nightmare. People were banging on the door, shouting and swearing at me for spending too long in there, my hands were shaking and the doorhandle was rattling so violently that I thought the door would burst open at any moment.
This was when I started to develop abscesses.
I wept the night that I remembered that incident.
12th Night
I wept again. Why does this disgusting weakness come over me at night?13th February 1918. Dawn, Gorelovo
I can congratulate myself: I have not had an injection for fourteen hours! Fourteen! An unbelievable number. Murky yellowish light of dawn. Soon I shall be quite cured.
On mature reflection I don’t need Bomgard, or anyone else for that matter. It would be shameful to prolong my life a minute more. Certainly not a life like mine. The remedy is right beside me. Why didn’t I think of it before?
Well, let’s get it over with. I owe nothing to anyone. I have destroyed only myself. And Anna. What else can I do?
Time will heal all, as Amneris sang. It’s easy and simple enough for her.
This notebook is for Bomgard. That’s all …
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