what, in fact, was I doing here?

"[W]hat, in fact, was I doing here?—why was I so strangely attracted and enticed by the life of this man who despised me and my kind (and deliberately so or with his eyes wide open, as he liked to put it)?—why had I come here under cover of darkness, walking along these empty and godforsaken streets like a thief?—why, when visiting his museum near the Kuznechny Market or other places connected with him, had I kept somehow to the side or trailed behind, as if I had turned up there by accident and none of it really interested me?"

~~ from Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin