AST. Some other man was murdered twenty years ago. The murderer said that it was you.
SASHA. Ah, he said that it was me, did he?
SASHA. Can you not guess? Adámek murdered no one.
AST. He murdered no one? But he was condemned.
AST. Never condemned? Then what became of him?
SASHA. He died.... Do you not understand? It was I who killed Adámek.
SASHA. We had quarreled. We were alone in a solitary place. I killed him and stood looking down at him with the knife in my hand dripping scarlet in the snow, frightened at the sudden silence and what I had done. And while I thought I was alone, I turned and saw the police-officer with his revolver leveled at my head. Then amid the confusion and black horror that seized on me, a bright thought shot across my mind. Adámek had no relatives, no friends; he was an outcast. Stained with his flowing blood, I exchanged names with him; that's the old heroic custom of blood-brotherhood, you know. I named myself Adámek; I named my victim Sasha. Ingenious, wasn't it? I had romantic ideas in those days. Adámek has been cursed for a murderer, and my memory has been honored. Alexander Petróvitch has been a hero; my mother has wept for me. I have seen her in the graveyard lamenting on my tomb; I have read my name on the cross. I hardly know whether to laugh or to cry. Evidently she loves me still.
SASHA. Do I love her? No. There is no question of that. She is part of a life that was ended too long ago. I have only myself to think of now. What should I gain by loving her? Understand, I am an outlaw, an escaped convict; a word can send me back to the mines. I must hide myself, the patrols are everywhere.... Even here I am not safe. [_Locks the street door._]
AST. Why have you returned? Why have you spoilt what you began so well? Having resolved twenty years ago to vanish like a dead man....
SASHA. Ah! if they had killed me then I would have died willingly. But after twenty years remorse goes, pity goes, everything goes; entombed in the mines, but still alive.... I was worn out. I could bear it no longer. Others were escaping, I escaped with them.
AST. This will break her heart. She has made an angel of you. The lamp is always burning....
SASHA [_going to the eikon corner with a glass of vodka in his hand_]. Aha! Alexander Nevski, my patron saint. I drink to you, my friend: but I cannot congratulate you on your work. As a guardian angel you have been something of a failure. And what is this? [_taking a photograph_]. Myself! Who would have known this for my portrait? Look at the angel child, with the soft cheeks and the pretty curly hair. How innocent and good I looked! [_bringing it down_]. And even then I was deceiving my mother. She never understood that a young man must live, he must live. We are animals first; we have instincts that need something warmer, something livelier, than the tame dull round of home. [_He throws down the photograph; Fomá replaces it._] And even now I have no intention of dying. Yet how am I to live? I cannot work; the mines have sucked out all my strength. Has my mother any money?