Page 340 has been posted. For those new to this thread: I am writing an existential novel about a man named Rodion Reppetnikov who murders his rest day. The novel examines the psychological aftermath. It is 340 pages so far. I do not know when it will end. Here is the opening, for newcomers, and then the latest excerpt.
On an extraordinarily hot evening early in July, a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged and walked slowly, as if in hesitation, toward the gym.
He was not going to the gym. He was going past the gym. He was going to the calendar on his wall, the one where Sunday was circled in red — REST DAY — and he was going to cross it out. He was going to murder it.
He had been thinking about this for weeks. Not the way a normal person thinks about skipping a rest day — not casually, not with the idle "maybe I'll just do a light session" of an enthusiast. No. Rodion Reppetnikov had thought about it the way a philosopher thinks about the nature of existence: systematically, obsessively, with the full weight of his considerable and troubled intellect.
Could he do it? That was the question. Not physically — physically it was trivial, one needed only to go to the gym on the day one was not supposed to go to the gym — but morally. Was he the kind of man who could murder his rest day and live with the consequences?
He crossed out Sunday.
He went to the gym.
And immediately, standing in the doorway of the gym on a Sunday, he knew that something had changed in him that could not be unchanged.
"I murdered it," Rodion said. He said it to Sonya Pumpovna, who sat across from him in the small apartment that smelled of chalk and old protein powder. "I murdered my rest day."
"I know," said Sonya. She had always known. You could see it in him — the way he trained seven days a week, the way his eyes had the particular haunted quality of a man who has not rested since July, the way his muscles trembled not from exertion but from something deeper, something moral.
"Does it haunt you?" she asked.
"Every day," said Rodion. "Every day I go to the gym and I think: I am here because I killed the day I was supposed to not be here. Every pump I achieve is built on the foundation of that murder. Every gain is a gain purchased with the death of rest."
"And yet you continue."
"And yet I continue," he said. "That is the pumishment."
Sonya looked at him for a long time. Outside, St. Pumpsburg continued its indifferent existence. The Neva flowed. People rested. Rodion Reppetnikov did not rest. He had not rested since July. He would not rest again. This was his sentence and he had passed it on himself, which made it the most inescapable sentence of all.
Page 341 will be posted when it is written. The novel continues. Rodion continues. He does not rest.