1866
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
translated by Constance Garnett
CHAPTER_ONE
PART ONE
Chapter One
-
ON AN exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out
of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as
though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase.
His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was
more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with
garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every
time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which
invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a
sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He
was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary;
but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable
condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely
absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded
meeting, not only his landlady, but any one at all. He was crushed
by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to
weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical
importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady
could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs,
to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering
demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains
for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie- no, rather than that, he would
creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became
acutely aware of his fears.
"I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these
trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm... yes, all is in a man's
hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It
would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking
a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am
talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps
it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter
this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack
the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is
that serious? It is not serious at all. It's simply a fantasy to amuse
myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything."
The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle
and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that
special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get
out of town in summer- all worked painfully upon the young man's
already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the
pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the
town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a
working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An
expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the
young man's refined face. He was, by the way, exceptionally
handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built, with
beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep
thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of
mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not
caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something,
from the habit of talking to himself, to which he had just
confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas
were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days
he had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness
would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that
quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress
would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market,
the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of
the trading and working class population crowded in these streets
and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be
seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused
surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in
the young man's heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of
youth, he minded his rags least of all in the street. It was a
different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former
fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And
yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being taken
somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly
shouted at him as he drove past: "Hey there, German hatter" bawling at
the top of his voice and pointing at him- the young man stopped
suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round
hat from Zimmerman's, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all
torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly
fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to
terror had overtaken him.
"I knew it," he muttered in confusion, "I thought so! That's the
worst of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail
might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks
absurd and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a
cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody
wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be
remembered.... What matters is that people would remember it, and that
would give them a clue. For this business one should be as little
conspicuous as possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why,
it's just such trifles that always ruin everything...."
He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from
the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He
had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time
he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself
by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had
begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues
in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had
involuntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to
be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was
positively going now for a "rehearsal" of his project, and at every
step his excitement grew more and more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge
house which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other
into the street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was
inhabited by working people of all kinds- tailors, locksmiths,
cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could,
petty clerks, &c. There was a continual coming and going through the
two gates and in the two courtyards of the house. Three or four
door-keepers were employed on the building. The young man was very
glad to meet none of them, and at once slipped unnoticed through the
door on the right, and up the staircase. It was a back staircase, dark
and narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and knew his way, and
he liked all these surroundings: in such darkness even the most
inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
"If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to
pass that I were really going to do it?" he could not help asking
himself as he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred
by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He
knew that the flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil
service, and his family. This German was moving out then, and so the
fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the old
woman. "That's a good thing anyway," he thought to himself, as he rang
the bell of the old woman's flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as
though it were made of tin and not of copper. The little flats in such
houses always have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the
note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of
something and to bring it clearly before him.... He started, his
nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the
door was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with
evident distrust through the crack, and nothing could be seen but
her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But, seeing a number of
people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide.
The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned off
from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence and
looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old
woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose. Her
colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil, and
she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck, which looked
like a hen's leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag, and, in
spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur
cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every
instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather
peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.
"Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago," the young man
made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be
more polite.
"I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,"
the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his
face.
"And here... I am again on the same errand," Raskolnikov
continued, a little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman's
mistrust. "Perhaps she is always like that though, only I did not
notice it the other time," he thought with an uneasy feeling.
The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one
side, and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her
visitor pass in front of her:
"Step in, my good sir."
The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper
on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was
brightly lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.
"So the sun will shine like this then too!" flashed as it were by
chance through Raskolnikov's mind, and with a rapid glance he
scanned everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice
and remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the
room. The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a
sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa,
a dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,
chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow
frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands- that
was all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon.
Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly
polished; everything shone.
"Lizaveta's work," thought the young man. There was not a speck of
dust to be seen in the whole flat.
"It's in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such
cleanliness," Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance
at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in
which stood the old woman's bed and chest of drawers and into which he
had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.
"What do you want?" the old woman said severely, coming into the
room and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him
straight in the face.
"I've brought something to pawn here," and he drew out of his pocket
an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was
engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.
"But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day
before yesterday."
"I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little."
"But that's for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to
sell your pledge at once."
"How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?"
"You come with such trifles, my good sir, it's scarcely worth
anything. I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could
buy it quite new at a jeweler's for a rouble and a half."
"Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father's.
I shall be getting some money soon."
"A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!"
"A rouble and a half!" cried the young man.
"Please yourself"- and the old woman handed him back the watch.
The young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of
going away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was
nowhere else he could go, and that he had had another object also in
coming.
"Hand it over," he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared
behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing
alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking.
He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers.
"It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the
keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring....
And there's one key there, three times as big as all the others,
with deep notches; that can't be the key of the chest of drawers...
then there must be some other chest or strong-box... that's worth
knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that... but how
degrading it all is."
The old woman came back.
"Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take
fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But
for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks
on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks
altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the
watch. Here it is."
"What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!"
"Just so."
The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at
the old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was
still something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself
quite know what.
"I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona
Ivanovna- a valuable thing- silver- a cigarette box, as soon as I
get it back from a friend..." he broke off in confusion.
"Well, we will talk about it then, sir."
"Good-bye- are you always at home alone, your sister is not here
with you?" He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into
the passage.
"What business is she of yours, my good sir?"
"Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick....
Good-day, Alyona Ivanovna."
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became
more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped
short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some
thought. When he was in the street he cried out, "Oh, God, how
loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it's
nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an
atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is
capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome,
loathsome!- and for a whole month I've been...." But no words, no
exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of intense
repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he
was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and
had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to do with
himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the
pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and
jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he was in
the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing
close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement
to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out at the door,
and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps.
Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once.
Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt
giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink
of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to the want of
food. He sat down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner;
ordered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once
he felt easier; and his thoughts became clear.
"All that's nonsense," he said hopefully, "and there is nothing in
it all to worry about! It's simply physical derangement. Just a
glass of beer, a piece of dry bread- and in one moment the brain is
stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how
utterly petty it all is!"
But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking
cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden:
and he gazed round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But
even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of
mind was also not normal.
There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two
drunken men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about
five men and a girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time.
Their departure left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons
still in the tavern were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk,
but not extremely so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion,
a huge, stout man with a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat.
He was very drunk: and had dropped asleep on the bench; every now
and then, he began as though in his sleep, cracking his fingers,
with his arms wide apart and the upper part of his body bounding about
on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to
recall some such lines as these:
-
"His wife a year he fondly loved
His wife a- a year he- fondly loved."
-
Or suddenly waking up again:
-
"Walking along the crowded row
He met the one he used to know."
-
But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with
positive hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was
another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired
government clerk. He was sitting apart, now and then sipping from
his pot and looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in
some agitation.
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
RASKOLNIKOV was not used to crowds, and, as we said before, he
avoided society of every sort, more especially of late. But now all at
once he felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to
be taking place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for
company. He was so weary after a whole month of concentrated
wretchedness and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest, if only for
a moment, in some other world, whatever it might be; and, in spite
of the filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad now to stay in
the tavern.
The master of the establishment was in another room, but he
frequently came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, tarred
boots with red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the
rest of his person. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black
satin waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared
with oil like an iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about
fourteen, and there was another boy somewhat younger who handed
whatever was wanted. On the counter lay some sliced cucumber, some
pieces of dried black bread, and some fish, chopped up small, all
smelling very bad. It was insufferably close, and so heavy with the
fumes of spirits that five minutes in such an atmosphere might well
make a man drunk.
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the
first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on
Raskolnikov by the person sitting a little distance from him, who
looked like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this
impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked
repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was
staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into
conversation. At the other persons in the room, including the
tavern-keeper, the clerk looked as though he were used to their
company, and weary of it, showing a shade of condescending contempt
for them as persons of station and culture inferior to his own, with
whom it would be useless for him to converse. He was a man over fifty,
bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly built. His face,
bloated from continual drinking, was of a yellow, even greenish,
tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish eyes gleamed
like little chinks. But there was something very strange in him; there
was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling- perhaps there
were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a
gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an old and
hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing
except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this
last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front covered with
spots and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk,
he wore no beard, nor moustache, but had been so long unshaven that
his chin looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there was something
respectable and like an official about his manner too. But he was
restless; he ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head
drop into his hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the
stained and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov,
and said loudly and resolutely:
"May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite
conversation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command
respect, my experience admonishes me that you are a man of education
and not accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when
in conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular
counsellor in rank. Marmeladov- such is my name; titular counsellor. I
make bold to inquire- have you been in the service?"
"No, I am studying," answered the young man, somewhat surprised at
the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly
addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling
for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt
immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any
stranger who approached or attempted to approach him.
"A student then, or formerly a student," cried the clerk. "Just what
I thought! I'm a man of experience, immense experience, sir," and he
tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. "You've been
a student or have attended some learned institution!... But allow
me...." He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat
down beside the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk,
but spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread
of his sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Raskolnikov
as greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month.
"Honoured sir," he began almost with solemnity, "poverty is not a
vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a
virtue, and that that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary
is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of
soul, but in beggary- never- no one. For beggary a man is not chased
out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as
to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch
as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence
the pot-house! Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my
wife a beating, and my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you
understand? Allow me to ask you another question out of simple
curiosity: have you ever spent a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?"
"No, I have not happened to," answered Raskolnikov. "What do you
mean?"
"Well, I've just come from one and it's the fifth night I've slept
so...." He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay were
in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It seemed
quite probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last five
days. His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red,
with black nails.
His conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest.
The boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down
from the upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the "funny
fellow" and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with
dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had
most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the
habit of frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all
sorts in the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some
drunkards, and especially in those who are looked after sharply and
kept in order at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try
to justify themselves and even if possible obtain consideration.
"Funny fellow!" pronounced the innkeeper. "And why don't you work,
why aren't you at your duty, if you are in the service?"
"Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir," Marmeladov went on,
addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as though it had been
he who put that question to him. "Why am I not at my duty? Does not my
heart ache to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr.
Lebeziatnikov beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn't
I suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you... hm...
well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?"
"Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?"
"Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that
you will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with
positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary
citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you
why should he? For he knows of course that I shan't pay it back.
From compassion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern
ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by
science itself, and that that's what is done now in England, where
there is political economy. Why, I ask you, should he give it to me?
And yet though I know beforehand that he won't, I set off to him
and..."
"Why do you go?" put in Raskolnikov.
"Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man
must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely
must go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow
ticket, then I had to go... (for my daughter has a yellow
passport)," he added in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness
at the young man. "No matter, sir, no matter!" he went on hurriedly
and with apparent composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed
and even the innkeeper smiled- "No matter, I am not confounded by
the wagging of their heads; for every one knows everything about it
already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not
with contempt, but with humility. So be it! So be it! 'Behold the
man!' Excuse me, young man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly
and more distinctly; not can you but dare you, looking upon me, assert
that I am not a pig?"
The young man did not answer a word.
"Well," the orator began again stolidly and with even increased
dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. "Well,
so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a
beast, but Katerina Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education
and an officer's daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she
is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education.
And yet... oh, if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir,
you know every man ought to have at least one place where people
feel for him! But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is
unjust.... And yet, although I realise that when she pulls my hair she
only does it out of pity- for I repeat without being ashamed, she
pulls my hair, young man," he declared with redoubled dignity, hearing
the sniggering again- "but, my God, if she would but once.... But
no, no! It's all in vain and it's no use talking! No use talking!
For more than once, my wish did come true and more than once she has
felt for me but... such is my fate and I am a beast by nature!"
"Rather!" assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov struck his fist
resolutely on the table.
"Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her
very stockings for drink? Not her shoes- that would be more or less in
the order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold
for drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long
ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she
caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too.
We have three little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from
morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the
children, for she's been used to cleanliness from a child. But her
chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it!
Do you suppose I don't feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel
it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in
drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!" And as though
in despair he laid his head down on the table.
"Young man," he went on, raising his head again, "in your face I
seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and
that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the
story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before
these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am
looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was
educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and
on leaving she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other
personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a
certificate of merit. The medal... well, the medal of course was sold-
long ago, hm... but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and
not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most
continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell
some one or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are
gone. I don't condemn her for it, I don't blame her, for the one thing
left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and
ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She
scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat,
but won't allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That's why
she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov's rudeness to her, and so
when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the
hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I
married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She
married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away
with him from her father's house. She was exceedingly fond of her
husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he
died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him
back, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day
she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am
glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think
of herself as having once been happy.... And she was left at his death
with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened
to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless poverty that,
although I have seen many ups and downs of all sort, I don't feel
equal to describing it even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And
she was proud, too, excessively proud.... And then, honoured sir,
and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of
fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could
not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of
her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and
distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she
did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For
she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you understand
what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you
don't understand yet.... And for a whole year, I performed my duties
conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this" (he tapped the
jug with his finger), "for I have feelings. But even so, I could not
please her; and then I lost my place too, and that through no fault of
mine but through changes in the office; and then I did touch it!... It
will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last
after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent
capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a
situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand?
This time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had
come out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna
Lippevechsel's; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I
could not say. There are a lot of people living there besides
ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And
meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what my
daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother whilst she was
growing up, I won't speak of. For, though Katerina Ivanovna is full of
generous feelings, she is a spirited lady, irritable and
short-tempered.... Yes. But it's no use going over that! Sonia, as you
may well fancy, has had no education. I did make an effort four
years ago to give her a course of geography and universal history, but
as I was not very well up in those subjects myself and we had no
suitable books, and what books we had... hm, any way we have not
even those now, so all our instruction came to an end. We stopped at
Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained years of maturity, she has
read other books of romantic tendency and of late she had read with
great interest a book she got through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes'
Physiology- do you know it?- and even recounted extracts from it to
us: and that's the whole of her education. And now may I venture to
address you, honoured sir, on my own account with a private
question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor girl can earn much by
honest work? Not fifteen farthings a day can she earn, if she is
respectable and has no special talent and that without putting her
work down for an instant! And what's more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the
civil counsellor- have you heard of him?- has not to this day paid her
for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her roughly
away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that the shirt collars
were not made like the pattern and were put in askew. And there are
the little ones hungry.... And Katerina Ivanovna walking up and down
and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed red, as they always are
in that disease: 'Here you live with us,' says she, 'you eat and drink
and are kept warm and you do nothing to help.' And much she gets to
eat and drink when there is not a crust for the little ones for
three days! I was lying at the time... well, what of it! I was lying
drunk and I heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle creature with a
soft little voice... fair hair and such a pale, thin little face). She
said: 'Katerina Ivanovna, am I really to do a thing like that?' And
Darya Frantsovna, a woman of evil character and very well known to the
police, had two or three times tried to get at her through the
landlady. 'And why not?' said Katerina Ivanovna with a jeer, 'you
are something mighty precious to be so careful of!' But don't blame
her, don't blame her, honoured sir, don't blame her! She was not
herself when she spoke, but driven to distraction by her illness and
the crying of the hungry children; and it was said more to wound her
than anything else.... For that's Katerina Ivanovna's character, and
when children cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them at
once. At six o'clock I saw Sonia get up, put on her kerchief and her
cape, and go out of the room and about nine o'clock she came back. She
walked straight up to Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on
the table before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not
even look at her, she simply picked up our big green drap de dames
shawl (we have a shawl, made of drap de dames), put it over her head
and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the wall; only her
little shoulders and her body kept shuddering.... And I went on
lying there, just as before.... And then I saw, young man, I saw
Katerina Ivanovna, in the same silence go up to Sonia's little bed;
she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia's feet, and would
not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other's arms...
together, together... yes... and I... lay drunk."
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then
he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.
"Since then, sir," he went on after a brief pause- "Since then,
owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by
evil-intentioned persons- in all which Darya Frantsovna took a leading
part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect-
since then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a
yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with
us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though
she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov
too... hm.... All the trouble between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on
Sonia's account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and
then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: 'how,' said he, 'can a
highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like
that?' And Katerina Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for
her... and so that's how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now,
mostly after dark; she comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all
she can.... She has a room at the Kapernaumovs, the tailors, she
lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and
all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife,
too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has
her own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very poor people and all
with cleft palates... yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my
rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency
Ivan Afanasyevitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyevitch, do you know
him? No? Well, then, it's a man of God you don't know. He is wax...
wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!... His eyes were
dim when he heard my story. 'Marmeladov, once already you have
deceived my expectations... I'll take you once more on my own
responsibility'- that's what he said, 'remember,' he said, 'and now
you can go.' I kissed the dust at his feet- in thought only, for in
reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a
man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and
when I announced that I'd been taken back into the service and
should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was...!"
Marmeladov stopped again in violent excitement. At that moment a
whole party of revellers already drunk came in from the street, and
the sounds of a hired concertina and the cracked piping voice of a
child of seven singing "The Hamlet" were heard in the entry. The
room was filled with noise. The tavern-keeper and the boys were busy
with the new-comers. Marmeladov paying no attention to the new
arrivals continued his story. He appeared by now to be extremely weak,
but as he became more and more drunk, he became more and more
talkative. The recollection of his recent success in getting the
situation seemed to revive him, and was positively reflected in a sort
of radiance on his face. Raskolnikov listened attentively.
"That was five weeks ago, sir. Yes.... As soon as Katerina
Ivanovna and Sonia heard of it, mercy on us, it was as though I
stepped into the kingdom of Heaven. It used to be: you can lie like
a beast, nothing but abuse. Now they were walking on tiptoe, hushing
the children. 'Semyon Zaharovitch is tired with his work at the
office, he is resting, shh!' They made me coffee before I went to work
and boiled cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you
hear that? And how they managed to get together the money for a decent
outfit- eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can't guess. Boots, cotton
shirt-fronts- most magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in splendid
style, for eleven roubles and a half. The first morning I came back
from the office I found Katerina Ivanovna had cooked two courses for
dinner- soup and salt meat with horse radish- which we had never
dreamed of till then. She had not any dresses... none at all, but
she got herself up as though she were going on a visit; and not that
she'd anything to do it with, she smartened herself up with nothing at
all, she'd done her hair nicely, put on a clean collar of some sort,
cuffs, and there she was, quite a different person, she was younger
and better looking. Sonia, my little darling, had only helped with
money 'for the time,' she said, 'it won't do for me to come and see
you too often. After dark maybe when no one can see.' Do you hear,
do you hear? I lay down for a nap after dinner and what do you
think: though Katerina Ivanovna had quarrelled to the last degree with
our landlady Amalia Fyodorovna only a week before, she could not
resist then asking her in to coffee. For two hours they were
sitting, whispering together. 'Semyon Zaharovitch is in the service
again, now, and receiving a salary,' says she, 'and he went himself to
his excellency and his excellency himself came out to him, made all
the others wait and led Semyon Zaharovitch by the hand before
everybody into his study.' Do you hear, do you hear? 'To be sure,'
says he, 'Semyon Zaharovitch, remembering your past services,' says
he, 'and in spite of your propensity to that foolish weakness, since
you promise now and since moreover we've got on badly without you,'
(do you hear, do you hear;) 'and so,' says he, 'I rely now on your
word as a gentleman.' And all that, let me tell you, she has simply
made up for herself, and not simply out of wantonness, for the sake of
bragging; no, she believes it all herself, she amuses herself with her
own fancies, upon my word she does! And I don't blame her for it,
no, I don't blame her!... Six days ago when I brought her my first
earnings in full- twenty-three roubles forty copecks altogether- she
called me her poppet: 'poppet,' said she, 'my little poppet.' And when
we were by ourselves, you understand? You would not think me a beauty,
you would not think much of me as a husband, would you?... Well, she
pinched my cheek 'my little poppet,' said she."
Marmeladov broke off, tried to smile, but suddenly his chin began to
twitch. He controlled himself however. The tavern, the degraded
appearance of the man, the five nights in the hay barge, and the pot
of spirits, and yet this poignant love for his wife and children
bewildered his listener. Raskolnikov listened intently but with a sick
sensation. He felt vexed that he had come here.
"Honoured sir, honoured sir," cried Marmeladov recovering himself-
"Oh, sir, perhaps all this seems a laughing matter to you, as it
does to others, and perhaps I am only worrying you with the
stupidity of all the trivial details of my home life, but it is not
a laughing matter to me. For I can feel it all.... And the whole of
that heavenly day of my life and the whole of that evening I passed in
fleeting dreams of how I would arrange it all, and how I would dress
all the children, and how I should give her rest, and how I should
rescue my own daughter from dishonour and restore her to the bosom
of her family.... And a great deal more.... Quite excusable, sir.
Well, then, sir (Marmeladov suddenly gave a sort of start, raised
his head and gazed intently at his listener) well, on the very next
day after all those dreams, that is to say, exactly five days ago,
in the evening, by a cunning trick, like a thief in the night, I stole
from Katerina Ivanovna the key of her box, took out what was left of
my earnings, how much it was I have forgotten, and now look at me, all
of you! It's the fifth day since I left home, and they are looking for
me there and it's the end of my employment, and my uniform is lying in
a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I exchanged it for the garments I
have on... and it's the end of everything!"
Marmeladov struck his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth,
closed his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow on the table. But
a minute later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed
slyness and affectation of bravado, he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed
and said:
"This morning I went to see Sonia, I went to ask her for a
pick-me-up! He-he-he!"
"You don't say she gave it to you?" cried one of the new-comers;
he shouted the words and went off into a guffaw.
"This very quart was bought with her money," Marmeladov declared,
addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov. "Thirty copecks she
gave me with her own hands, her last, all she had, as I saw.... She
said nothing, she only looked at me without a word.... Not on earth,
but up yonder... they grieve over men, they weep, but they don't blame
them, they don't blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more when
they don't blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now,
eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she's got to keep up her
appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness,
you know? Do you understand? And there's pomatum, too, you see, she
must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty
ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you
understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means?
And here I, her own father, here I took thirty copecks of that money
for a drink! And I am drinking it! And I have already drunk it!
Come, who will have pity on a man like me, eh? Are you sorry for me,
sir, or not? Tell me, sir, are you sorry or not? He-he-he!"
He would have filled his glass, but there was no drink left. The pot
was empty.
"What are you to be pitied for?" shouted the tavern-keeper who was
again near them.
Shouts of laughter and even oaths followed. The laughter and the
oaths came from those who were listening and also from those who had
heard nothing but were simply looking at the figure of the
discharged government clerk.
"To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?" Marmeladov suddenly
declaimed, standing up with his arm outstretched, as though he had
been only waiting for that question.
"Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there's nothing to pity me
for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied!
Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And then I will go of
myself to be crucified, for it's not merry-making I seek but tears and
tribulation!... Do you suppose, you that sell, that this pint of yours
has been sweet to me? It was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it,
tears and tribulation, and have found it, and I have tasted it; but He
will pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men
and all things, He is the One. He too is the judge. He will come in
that day and He will ask: 'Where is the daughter who gave herself
for her cross, consumptive step-mother and for the little children
of another? Where is the daughter who had pity upon the filthy
drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness?' And He
will say, 'Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once.... I have
forgiven thee once.... Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for
thou hast loved much....' And he will forgive my Sonia, He will
forgive, I know it... I felt it in my heart when I was with her just
now! And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil,
the wise and the meek.... And when He has done with all of them,
then He will summon us. 'You too come forth,' He will say, 'Come forth
ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of
shame!' And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand
before him. And He will say unto us, 'Ye are swine, made in the
Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!' And the
wise ones and those of understanding will say, 'Oh Lord, why dost Thou
receive these men?' And He will say, 'This is why I receive them, oh
ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that
not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.' And He will
hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him... and we
shall weep... and we shall understand all things! Then we shall
understand all!... and all will understand, Katerina Ivanovna
even... she will understand.... Lord, Thy kingdom come!" And he sank
down on the bench exhausted, and helpless, looking at no one,
apparently oblivious of his surroundings and plunged in deep
thought. His words had created a certain impression; there was a
moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were heard again.
"That's his notion!"
"Talked himself silly!"
"A fine clerk he is!"
And so on, and so on.
"Let us go, sir," said Marmeladov all at once, raising his head
and addressing Raskolnikov- "come along with me... Kozel's house,
looking into the yard. I'm going to Katerina Ivanovna- time I did."
Raskolnikov had for some time been wanting to go and he had meant to
help him. Marmeladov was much unsteadier on his legs than in his
speech and leaned heavily on the young man. They had two or three
hundred paces to go. The drunken man was more and more overcome by
dismay and confusion as they drew nearer the house.
"It's not Katerina Ivanovna I am afraid of now," he muttered in
agitation- "and that she will begin pulling my hair. What does my hair
matter! Bother my hair! That's what I say! Indeed it will be better if
she does begin pulling it, that's not what I am afraid of... it's
her eyes I am afraid of... yes, her eyes... the red on her cheeks,
too, frightens me... and her breathing too.... Have you noticed how
people in that disease breathe... when they are excited? I am
frightened of the children's crying, too.... For if Sonia has not
taken them food... I don't know what's happened! I don't know! But
blows I am not afraid of.... Know, sir, that such blows are not a pain
to me, but even an enjoyment. In fact I can't get on without it....
It's better so. Let her strike me, it relieves her heart... it's
better so... There is the house. The house of Kozel, the cabinet
maker... a German, well-to-do. Lead the way!"
They went in from the yard and up to the fourth storey. The
staircase got darker and darker as they went up. It was nearly
eleven o'clock and although in summer in Petersburg there is no real
night, yet it was quite dark at the top of the stairs.
A grimy little door at the very top of the stairs stood ajar. A very
poor-looking room about ten paces long was lighted up by a candle-end;
the whole of it was visible from the entrance. It was all in disorder,
littered up with rags of all sorts, especially children's garments.
Across the furthest corner was stretched a ragged sheet. Behind it
probably was the bed. There was nothing in the room except two
chairs and a sofa covered with American leather, full of holes, before
which stood an old deal kitchen-table, unpainted and uncovered. At the
edge of the table stood a smoldering tallow-candle in an iron
candlestick. It appeared that the family had a room to themselves, not
part of a room, but their room was practically a passage. The door
leading to the other rooms, or rather cupboards, into which Amalia
Lippevechsel's flat was divided stood half open, and there was
shouting, uproar and laughter within. People seemed to be playing
cards and drinking tea there. Words of the most unceremonious kind
flew out from time to time.
Raskolnikov recognised Katerina Ivanovna at once. She was a rather
tall, slim and graceful woman, terribly emaciated, with magnificent
dark brown hair and with a hectic flush in her cheeks. She was
pacing up and down in her little room, pressing her hands against
her chest; her lips were parched and her breathing came in nervous
broken gasps. Her eyes glittered as in fever and looked about with a
harsh immovable stare. And that consumptive and excited face with
the last flickering light of the candle-end playing upon it made a
sickening impression. She seemed to Raskolnikov about thirty years old
and was certainly a strange wife for Marmeladov.... She had not
heard them and did not notice them coming in. She seemed to be lost in
thought, hearing and seeing nothing. The room was close, but she had
not opened the window; a stench rose from the staircase, but the
door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner rooms clouds of
tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not close the
door. The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled up
on the floor with her head on the sofa. A boy a year older stood
crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a
beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin,
wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse
flung over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her
knees. Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother's neck.
She was trying to comfort him, whispering something to him, and
doing all she could to keep him from whimpering again. At the same
time her large dark eyes, which looked larger still from the
thinness of her frightened face, were watching her mother with
alarm. Marmeladov did not enter the door, but dropped on his knees
in the very doorway, pushing Raskolnikov in front of him. The woman
seeing a stranger stopped indifferently facing him, coming to
herself for a moment and apparently wondering what he had come for.
But evidently she decided that he was going into the next room, as
he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no further notice
of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it and uttered a
sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the doorway.
"Ah!" she cried out in a frenzy, "he has come back! The criminal!
the monster!... And where is the money? What's in your pocket, show
me! And your clothes are all different! Where are your clothes?
Where is the money! speak!"
And she fell to searching him. Marmeladov submissively and
obediently held up both arms to facilitate the search. Not a
farthing was there.
"Where's the money?" she cried- "Mercy on us, can he have drunk it
all? There were twelve silver roubles left in the chest!" and in a
fury she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room.
Marmeladov seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees.
"And this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a
positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir," he called out, shaken to and
fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead.
The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in
the corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed
to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl
was shaking like a leaf.
"He's drunk it! he's drunk it all," the poor woman screamed in
despair- "and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!"- and
wringing her hands she pointed to the children. "Oh, accursed life!
And you, are you not ashamed?"- she pounced all at once upon
Raskolnikov- "from the tavern! Have been drinking with him? You have
been drinking with him, too! Go away!"
The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The
inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering
in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads
wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could
be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of
unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were
particularly diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair,
shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into
the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard: this came from
Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her way amongst them and trying to
restore order after her own fashion and for the hundredth time to
frighten the poor woman by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear out
of the room next day. As he went out, Raskolnikov had time to put
his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had received
in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to lay them unnoticed
on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed his mind and would
have gone back.
"What a stupid thing I've done," he thought to himself, "they have
Sonia and I want it myself." But reflecting that it would be
impossible to take it back now and that in any case he would not
have taken it, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back
to his lodging. "Sonia wants pomatum too," he said as he walked
along the street, and he laughed malignantly- "such smartness costs
money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia herself will be bankrupt to-day, for
there is always a risk, hunting big game... digging for gold... then
they would all be without a crust to-morrow except for my money.
Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they've dug there! And they're making
the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They've wept over
it and grown used to it. Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!"
He sank into thought.
"And what if I am wrong," he cried suddenly after a moment's
thought. "What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I
mean, the whole race of mankind- then all the rest is prejudice,
simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it's all as it
should be."
CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
HE WAKED up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had
not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and
looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about
six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its
dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched
that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and
felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling.
The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old
chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a
few manuscripts and books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed
that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost
the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was
once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Raskolnikov
as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was, without undressing,
without sheets, wrapped in his old student's overcoat, with his head
on one little pillow, under which he heaped up all the linen he had,
clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of
the sofa.
It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but
to Raskolnikov in his present state of mind this was positively
agreeable. He had got completely away from every one, like a
tortoise in its shell, and even the sight of the servant girl who
had to wait upon him and looked sometimes into his room made him
writhe with nervous irritation. He was in the condition that overtakes
some monomaniacs entirely concentrated upon one thing. His landlady
had for the last fortnight given up sending him in meals, and he had
not yet thought of expostulating with her, though he went without
his dinner. Nastasya, the cook and only servant, was rather pleased at
the lodger's mood and had entirely given up sweeping and doing his
room, only once a week or so she would stray into his room with a
broom. She waked him up that day.
"Get up, why are you asleep!" she called to him. "It's past nine,
I have brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think
you're fairly starving?"
Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognized Nastasya.
"From the landlady, eh?" he asked, slowly and with a sickly face
sitting up on the sofa.
"From the landlady, indeed!"
She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea
and laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it.
"Here, Nastasya, take it please," he said, fumbling in his pocket
(for he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers-
"run and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest,
at the pork-butcher's."
"The loaf I'll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn't you rather
have some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It's capital soup,
yesterday's. I saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late.
It's fine soup."
When the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Nastasya
sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a
country peasant-woman and a very talkative one.
"Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to the police about you,"
she said.
He scowled.
"To the police? What does she want?"
"You don't pay her money and you won't turn out of the room.
That's what she wants, to be sure."
"The devil, that's the last straw," he muttered, grinding his teeth,
"no, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool," he added
aloud. "I'll go and talk to her to-day."
"Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so
clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it?
One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it
you do nothing now?"
"I am doing..." Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly.
"What are you doing?"
"Work..."
"What sort of work?"
"I am thinking," he answered seriously after a pause.
Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to
laughter and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly,
quivering and shaking all over till she felt ill.
"And have you made much money by your thinking?" she managed to
articulate at last.
"One can't go out to give lessons without boots. And I'm sick of
it."
"Don't quarrel with your bread and butter."
"They pay so little for lessons. What's the use of a few coppers?"
he answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought.
"And you want to get a fortune all at once?"
He looked at her strangely.
"Yes, I want a fortune," he answered firmly, after a brief pause.
"Don't be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you
the loaf or not?"
"As you please."
"Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out."
"A letter? for me! from whom?"
"I can't say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for
it. Will you pay me back?"
"Then bring it to me, for God's sake, bring it," cried Raskolnikov
greatly excited- "good God!"
A minute later the letter was brought him. That was it: from his
mother, from the province of R___. He turned pale when he took it.
It was a long while since he had received a letter, but another
feeling also suddenly stabbed his heart.
"Nastasya, leave me alone, for goodness' sake; here are your three
copecks, but for goodness' sake, make haste and go!"
The letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want to open it
in her presence; he wanted to be left alone with this letter. When
Nastasya had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it;
then he gazed intently at the address, the small, sloping handwriting,
so dear and familiar, of the mother who had once taught him to read
and write. He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last
he opened it; it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two ounces,
two large sheets of note paper were covered with very small
handwriting.
"My dear Rodya," wrote his mother- "it's two months since I last had
a talk with you by letter which has distressed me and even kept me
awake at night, thinking. But I am sure you will not blame me for my
inevitable silence. You know how I love you; you are all we have to
look to, Dounia and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay.
What a grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the
university some months ago, for want of means to keep yourself and
that you had lost your lessons and your other work! How could I help
you out of my hundred and twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen
roubles I sent you four months ago I borrowed, as you know, on
security of my pension, from Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant
of this town. He is a kind-hearted man and was a friend of your
father's too. But having given him the right to receive the pension, I
had to wait till the debt was paid off and that is only just done,
so that I've been unable to send you anything all this time. But
now, thank God, I believe I shall be able to send you something more
and in fact we may congratulate ourselves on our good fortune now,
of which I hasten to inform you. In the first place, would you have
guessed, dear Rodya, that your sister has been living with me for
the last six weeks and we shall not be separated in the future.
Thank God, her sufferings are over, but I will tell you everything
in order, so that you may know just how everything has happened and
all that we have hitherto concealed from you. When you wrote to me two
months ago that you had heard that Dounia had a great deal to put up
with in the Svidrigrailovs' house, when you wrote that and asked me to
tell you all about it- what could I write in answer to you? If I had
written the whole truth to you, I dare say you would have thrown up
everything and have come to us, even if you had to walk all the way,
for I know your character and your feelings, and you would not let
your sister be insulted. I was in despair myself, but what could I do?
And, besides, I did not know the whole truth myself then. What made it
all so difficult was that Dounia received a hundred roubles in advance
when she took the place as governess in their family, on condition
of part of her salary being deducted every month, and so it was
impossible to throw up the situation without repaying the debt. This
sum (now I can explain it all to you, my precious Rodya) she took
chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles, which you needed so
terribly then and which you received from us last year. We deceived
you then, writing that this money came from Dounia's savings, but that
was not so, and now I tell you all about it, because, thank God,
things have suddenly changed for the better, and that you may know how
Dounia loves you and what a heart she has. At first indeed Mr.
Svidrigailov treated her very rudely and used to make disrespectful
and jeering remarks at table.... But I don't want to go into all those
painful details, so as not to worry you for nothing when it is now all
over. In short, in spite of the kind and generous behaviour of Marfa
Petrovna, Mr. Svidrigailov's wife, and all the rest of the
household, Dounia had a very hard time, especially when Mr.
Svidrigailov, relapsing into his old regimental habits, was under
the influence of Bacchus. And how do you think it was all explained
later on? Would you believe that the crazy fellow had conceived a
passion for Dounia from the beginning, but had concealed it under a
show of rudeness and contempt. Possibly he was ashamed and horrified
himself at his own flighty hopes, considering his years and his
being the father of a family; and that made him angry with Dounia. And
possibly, too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behaviour to hide the
truth from others. But at last he lost all control and had the face to
make Dounia an open and shameful proposal, promising her all sorts
of inducements and offering, besides, to throw up everything and
take her to another estate of his, or even abroad. You can imagine all
she went through! To leave her situation at once was impossible not
only on account of the money debt, but also to spare the feelings of
Marfa Petrovna, whose suspicions would have been aroused; and then
Dounia would have been the cause of a rupture in the family. And it
would have meant a terrible scandal for Dounia too; that would have
been inevitable. There were various other reasons owing to which
Dounia could not hope to escape from that awful house for another
six weeks. You know Dounia, of course; you know how clever she is
and what a strong will she has. Dounia can endure a great deal and
even in the most difficult cases she has the fortitude to maintain her
firmness. She did not even write to me about everything for fear of
upsetting me, although we were constantly in communication. It all
ended very unexpectedly. Marfa Petrovna accidentally overheard her
husband imploring Dounia in the garden, and, putting quite a wrong
interpretation on the position, threw the blame upon her, believing
her to be the cause of it all. An awful scene took place between
them on the spot in the garden; Marfa Petrovna went so far as to
strike Dounia, refused to hear anything and was shouting at her for
a whole hour and then gave orders that Dounia should be packed off
at once to me in a plain peasant's cart, into which they flung all her
things, her linen and her clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it
up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain came on, too, and
Dounia, insulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an
open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think now what
answer could I have sent to the letter I received from you two
months ago and what could I have written? I was in despair; I dared
not write to you the truth because you would have been very unhappy,
mortified and indignant, and yet what could you do? You could only
perhaps ruin yourself, and, besides, Dounia would not allow it; and
fill up my letter with trifles when my heart was so full of sorrow,
I could not. For a whole month the town was full of gossip about
this scandal, and it came to such a pass that Dounia and I dared not
even go to church on account of the contemptuous looks, whispers,
and even remarks made aloud about us. All our acquaintances avoided
us, nobody even bowed to us in the street, and I learnt that some
shopmen and clerks were intending to insult us in a shameful way,
smearing the gates of our house with pitch, so that the landlord began
to tell us we must leave. All this was set going by Marfa Petrovna who
managed to slander Dounia and throw dirt at her in every family. She
knows every one in the neighbourhood, and that month she was
continually coming into the town, and as she is rather talkative and
fond of gossiping about her family affairs and particularly of
complaining to all and each of her husband- which is not at all right-
so in a short time she had spread her story not only in the town,
but over the whole surrounding district. It made me ill, but Dounia
bore it better than I did, and if only you could have seen how she
endured it all and tried to comfort me and cheer me up! She is an
angel! But by God's mercy, our sufferings were cut short: Mr.
Svidrigailov returned to his senses and repented and, probably feeling
sorry for Dounia, he laid before Marfa Petrovna a complete and
unmistakable proof of Dounia's innocence, in the form of a letter
Dounia had been forced to write and give to him, before Marfa Petrovna
came upon them in the garden. This letter, which remained in Mr.
Svidrigailov's hands after her departure, she had written to refuse
personal explanations and secret interviews, for which he was
entreating her. In that letter she reproached him with great heat
and indignation for the baseness of his behaviour in regard to Marfa
Petrovna, reminding him that he was the father and head of a family
and telling him how infamous it was of him to torment and make unhappy
a defenceless girl, unhappy enough already. Indeed, dear Rodya, the
letter was so nobly and touchingly written that I sobbed when I read
it and to this day I cannot read it without tears. Moreover, the
evidence of the servants, too, cleared Dounia's reputation; they had
seen and known a great deal more than Mr. Svidrigailov had himself
supposed- as indeed is always the case with servants. Marfa Petrovna
was completely taken aback, and 'again crushed' as she said herself to
us, but she was completely convinced of Dounia's innocence. The very
next day, being Sunday, she went straight to the Cathedral, knelt down
and prayed with tears to Our Lady to give her strength to bear this
new trial and to do her duty. Then she came straight from the
Cathedral to us, told us the whole story, wept bitterly and, fully
penitent, she embraced Dounia and besought her to forgive her. The
same morning without any delay, she went round to all the houses in
the town and everywhere, shedding tears, she asserted in the most
flattering terms Dounia's innocence and the nobility of her feelings
and her behavior. What was more, she showed and read to every one
the letter in Dounia's own handwriting to Mr. Svidrigailov and even
allowed them to take copies of it- which I must say I think was
superfluous. In this way she was busy for several days in driving
about the whole town, because some people had taken offence through
precedence having been given to others. And therefore they had to take
turns, so that in every house she was expected before she arrived, and
every one knew that on such and such a day Marfa Petrovna would be
reading the letter in such and such a place and people assembled for
every reading of it, even many who had heard it several times
already both in their own houses and in other people's. In my
opinion a great deal, a very great deal of all this was unnecessary;
but that's Marfa Petrovna's character. Anyway she succeeded in
completely re-establishing Dounia's reputation and the whole
ignominy of this affair rested as an indelible disgrace upon her
husband, as the only person to blame, so that I really began to feel
sorry for him; it was really treating the crazy fellow too harshly.
Dounia was at once asked to give lessons in several families, but
she refused. All of a sudden every one began to treat her with
marked respect and all this did much to bring about the event by
which, one may say, our whole fortunes are now transformed. You must
know, dear Rodya, that Dounia has a suitor and that she has already
consented to marry him. I hasten to tell you all about the matter, and
though it has been arranged without asking your consent, I think you
will not be aggrieved with me or with your sister on that account, for
you will see that we could not wait and put off our decision till we
heard from you. And you could not have judged all the facts without
being on the spot. This was how it happened. He is already of the rank
of a counsellor, Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin, and is distantly related
to Marfa Petrovna, who has been very active in bringing the match
about. It began with his expressing through her his desire to make our
acquaintance. He was properly received, drank coffee with us and the
very next day he sent us a letter in which he very courteously made an
offer and begged for a speedy and decided answer. He is a very busy
man and is in a great hurry to get to Petersburg, so that every moment
is precious to him. At first, of course, we were greatly surprised, as
it had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and talked
it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do man, to be depended upon, he
has two posts in the government and has already made his fortune. It
is true that he is forty-five years old, but he is of a fairly
prepossessing appearance and might still be thought attractive by
women, and he is altogether a very respectable and presentable man,
only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited. But possibly
that may only be the impression he makes at first sight. And beware,
dear Rodya, when he comes to Petersburg, as he shortly will do, beware
of judging him too hastily and severely, as your way is, if there is
anything you do not like in him at first sight. I give you this
warning, although I feel sure that he will make a favourable
impression upon you. Moreover, in order to understand any man one must
be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken
ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards.
And Pyotr Petrovitch, judging by many indications, is a thoroughly
estimable man. At his first visit, indeed, he told us that he was a
practical man, but still he shares, as he expressed it, many of the
convictions 'of our most rising generation' and he is an opponent of
all prejudices. He said a good deal more, for he seems a little
conceited and likes to be listened to, but this is scarcely a vice. I,
of course, understood very little of it, but Dounia explained to me
that, though he is not a man of great education, he is clever and
seems to be good-natured. You know your sister's character, Rodya. She
is a resolute, sensible, patient and generous girl, but she has a
passionate heart, as I know very well. Of course, there is no great
love either on his side, or on hers, but Dounia is a clever girl and
has the heart of an angel, and will make it her duty to make her
husband happy who on his side will make her happiness his care. Of
that we have no good reason to doubt, though it must be admitted the
matter has been arranged in great haste. Besides he is a man of
great prudence and he will see, to be sure, of himself, that his own
happiness will be the more secure, the happier Dounia is with him. And
as for some defects of character, for some habits and even certain
differences of opinion- which indeed are inevitable even in the
happiest marriages- Dounia has said that, as regards all that, she
relies on herself, that there is nothing to be uneasy about, and
that she is ready to put up with a great deal, if only their future
relationship can be an honourable and straightforward one. He struck
me, for instance, at first, as rather abrupt, but that may well come
from his being an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how it is. For
instance, at his second visit, after he had received Dounia's consent,
in the course of conversation, he declared that before making Dounia's
acquaintance, he had made up his mind to marry a girl of good
reputation, without dowry and, above all, one who had experienced
poverty, because, as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted to
his wife, but that it is better for a wife to look upon her husband as
her benefactor. I must add that he expressed it more nicely and
politely than I have done, for I have forgotten his actual phrases and
only remember the meaning. And, besides, it was obviously not said
of design, but slipped out in the heat of conversation, so that he
tried afterwards to correct himself and smooth it over, but all the
same it did strike me as somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to
Dounia. But Dounia was vexed, and answered that 'words are not deeds,'
and that, of course, is perfectly true. Dounia did not sleep all night
before she made up her mind, and, thinking that I was asleep, she
got out of bed and was walking up and down the room all night; at last
she knelt down before the ikon and prayed long and fervently and in
the morning she told me that she had decided.
"I have mentioned already that Pyotr Petrovitch is just setting
off for Petersburg, where he has a great deal of business, and he
wants to open a legal bureau. He has been occupied for many years in
conducting civil and commercial litigation, and only the other day
he won an important case. He has to be in Petersburg because he has an
important case before the Senate. So, Rodya dear, he may be of the
greatest use to you, in every way indeed, and Dounia and I have agreed
that from this very day you could definitely enter upon your career
and might consider that your future is marked out and assured for you.
Oh, if only this comes to pass! This would be such a benefit that we
could only look upon it as a providential blessing. Dounia is dreaming
of nothing else. We have even ventured already to drop a few words
on the subject to Pyotr Petrovitch. He was cautious in his answer, and
said that, of course, as he could not get on without a secretary, it
would be better to be paying a salary to a relation than to a
stranger, if only the former were fitted for the duties (as though
there could be doubt of your being fitted!) but then he expressed
doubts whether your studies at the university would leave you time for
work at his office. The matter dropped for the time, but Dounia is
thinking of nothing else now. She has been in a sort of fever for
the last few days, and has already made a regular plan for your
becoming in the end an associate and even a partner in Pyotr
Petrovitch's business, which might well be, seeing that you are a
student of law. I am in complete agreement with her, Rodya, and
share all her plans and hopes, and think there is every probability of
realising them. And in spite of Pyotr Petrovitch's evasiveness, very
natural at present, (since he does not know you) Dounia is firmly
persuaded that she will gain everything by her good influence over her
future husband; this she is reckoning upon. Of course we are careful
not to talk of any of these more remote plans to Pyotr Petrovitch,
especially of your becoming his partner. He is a practical man and
might take this very coldly, it might all seem to him simply a
day-dream. Nor has either Dounia or I breathed a word to him of the
great hopes we have of his helping us to pay for your university
studies; we have not spoken of it in the first place, because it
will come to pass of itself, later on, and he will no doubt without
wasting words offer to do it of himself, (as though he could refuse
Dounia that) the more readily since you may by your own efforts become
his right hand in the office, and receive this assistance not as a
charity, but as a salary earned by your own work. Dounia wants to
arrange it all like this and I quite agree with her. And we have not
spoken of our plans for another reason, that is, because I
particularly wanted you to feel on an equal footing when you first
meet him. When Dounia spoke to him with enthusiasm about you, he
answered that one could never judge of a man without seeing him close,
for oneself, and that he looked forward to forming his own opinion
when he makes your acquaintance. Do you know, my precious Rodya, I
think that perhaps for some reasons (nothing to do with Pyotr
Petrovitch though, simply for my own personal, perhaps old-womanish,
fancies) I should do better to go on living by myself, apart, than
with them, after the wedding. I am convinced that he will be
generous and delicate enough to invite me and to urge me to remain
with my daughter for the future, and if he has said nothing about it
hitherto, it is simply because it has been taken for granted; but I
shall refuse. I have noticed more than once in my life that husbands
don't quite get on with their mothers-in-law, and I don't want to be
the least bit in any one's way, and for my own sake, too, would rather
be quite independent, so long as I have a crust of bread of my own,
and such children as you and Dounia. If possible, I would settle
somewhere near you, for the most joyful piece of news, dear Rodya, I
have kept for the end of my letter: know then, my dear boy, that we
may, perhaps, be all together in a very short time and may embrace one
another again after a separation of almost three years! It is
settled for certain that Dounia and I are to set off for Petersburg,
exactly when I don't know, but very, very soon, possibly in a week. It
all depends on Pyotr Petrovitch who will let us know when he has had
time to look round him in Petersburg. To suit his own arrangements
he is anxious to have the ceremony as soon as possible, even before
the fast of Our Lady, if it could be managed, or if that is too soon
to be ready, immediately after. Oh, with what happiness I shall
press you to my heart! Dounia is all excitement at the joyful
thought of seeing you, she said one day in joke that she would be
ready to marry Pyotr Petrovitch for that alone. She is an angel! She
is not writing anything to you now, and has only told me to write that
she has so much, so much to tell you that she is not going to take
up her pen now, for a few lines would tell you nothing, and it would
only mean upsetting herself; she bids me send you her love and
innumerable kisses. But although we shall be meeting so soon,
perhaps I shall send you as much money as I can in a day or two. Now
that every one has heard that Dounia is to marry Pyotr Petrovitch,
my credit has suddenly improved and I know that Afanasy Ivanovitch
will trust me now even to seventy-five roubles on the security of my
pension, so that perhaps I shall be able to send you twenty-five or
even thirty roubles. I would send you more, but I am uneasy about
our travelling expenses; for though Pyotr Petrovitch has been so
kind as to undertake part of the expenses of the journey, that is to
say, he has taken upon himself the conveyance of our bags and big
trunk (which will be conveyed through some acquaintances of his), we
must reckon upon some expenses on our arrival in Petersburg, where
we can't be left without a halfpenny, at least for the first few days.
But we have calculated it all, Dounia and I, to the last penny, and we
see that the journey will not cost very much. It is only ninety versts
from us to the railway and we have come to an agreement with a
driver we know, so as to be in readiness; and from there Dounia and
I can travel quite comfortably third class. So that I may very
likely be able to send to you not twenty-five, but thirty roubles. But
enough; I have covered two sheets already and there is no space left
for more; our whole history, but so many events have happened! And
now, my precious Rodya, I embrace you and send you a mother's blessing
till we meet. Love Dounia your sister, Rodya; love her as she loves
you and understand that she loves you beyond everything, more than
herself. She is an angel and you, Rodya, you are everything to us- our
one hope, our one consolation. If only you are happy, we shall be
happy. Do you still say your prayers, Rodya, and believe in the
mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that
you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is
abroad to-day! If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in
your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your
prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye,
till we meet then- I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many kisses.
"Yours till death
"PULCHERIA RASKOLNIKOV."
-
Almost from the first, while he read the letter, Raskolnikov's
face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was pale
and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile was on his
lips. He laid his head down on his threadbare dirty pillow and
pondered, pondered a long time. His heart was beating violently, and
his brain was in a turmoil. At last he felt cramped and stifled in the
little yellow room that was like a cupboard or a box. His eyes and his
mind craved for space. He took up his hat and went out, this time
without dread of meeting any one; he had forgotten his dread. He
turned in the direction of the Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along
Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though hastening on some business, but he
walked, as his habit was, without noticing his way, muttering and even
speaking aloud to himself, to the astonishment of the passers-by. Many
of them took him to be drunk.
CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
HIS MOTHER'S letter had been a torture to him, but as regards the
chief fact in it, he had felt not one moment's hesitation, even whilst
he was reading the letter. The essential question was settled, and
irrevocably settled, in his mind: "Never such a marriage while I am
alive and Mr. Luzhin be damned;" "The thing is perfectly clear," he
muttered to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph
of his decision. "No, mother, no, Dounia, you won't deceive me! and
then they apologise for not asking my advice and for taking the
decision without me! I dare say! They imagine it is arranged now and
can't be broken off; but we will see whether it can or not! A
magnificent excuse: 'Pyotr Petrovitch is such a busy man that even his
wedding has to be in post-haste, almost by express.' No, Dounia, I see
it all and I know what you want to say to me; and I know too what
you were thinking about, when you walked up and down all night, and
what your prayers were like before the Holy Mother of Kazan who stands
in mother's bedroom. Bitter is the ascent to Golgotha.... Hm... so
it is finally settled; you have determined to marry a sensible
business man, Avdotya Romanovna, one who has a fortune (has already
made his fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive) a man who
holds two government posts and who shares the ideas of our most rising
generation, as mother writes, and who seems to be kind, as Dounia
herself observes. That seems beats everything! And that very Dounia
for that very 'seems' is marrying him! Splendid! splendid!
"...But I should like to know why mother has written to me about
'our most rising generation'? Simply as a descriptive touch, or with
the idea of prepossessing me in favour of Mr. Luzhin? Oh, the
cunning of them! I should like to know one thing more: how far they
were open with one another that day and night and all this time since?
Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the
same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to
speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it. Most likely it was
partly like that, from mother's letter it's evident: he struck her
as rude a little, and mother in her simplicity took her observations
to Dounia. And she was sure to be vexed and 'answered her angrily.'
I should think so! Who would not be angered when it was quite clear
without any naive questions and when it was understood that it was
useless to discuss it. And why does she write to me, 'love Dounia,
Rodya, and she loves you more than herself'? Has she a secret
conscience-prick at sacrificing her daughter to her son? 'You are
our one comfort, you are everything to us.' Oh, mother!"
His bitterness grew more and more intense, and if he had happened to
meet Mr. Luzhin at the moment, he might have murdered him.
"Hm... yes, that's true," he continued, pursuing the whirling
ideas that chased each other in his brain, "it is true that 'it
needs time and care to get to know a man,' but there is no mistake
about Mr. Luzhin. The chief thing is he is 'a man of business and
seems kind,' that was something, wasn't it, to send the bags and big
box for them! A kind man, no doubt after that! But his bride and her
mother are to drive in a peasant's cart covered with sacking (I
know, I have been driven in it). No matter! It is only ninety versts
and then they can 'travel very comfortably, third class,' for a
thousand versts! Quite right, too. One must cut one's coat according
to one's cloth, but what about you, Mr. Luzhin? She is your
bride.... And you must be aware that her mother has to raise money
on her pension for the journey. To be sure it's a matter of
business, a partnership for mutual benefit, with equal shares and
expenses;- food and drink provided, but pay for your tobacco. The
business man has got the better of them, too. The luggage will cost
less than their fares and very likely go for nothing. How is it that
they don't both see all that, or is it that they don't want to see?
And they are pleased, pleased! And to think that this is only the
first blossoming, and that the real fruits are to come! But what
really matters is not the stinginess, is not the meanness, but the
tone of the whole thing. For that will be the tone after marriage,
it's a foretaste of it. And mother too, why should she be so lavish?
What will she have by the time she gets to Petersburg? Three silver
roubles or two 'paper ones' as she says.... that old woman... hm. What
does she expect to live upon in Petersburg afterwards? She has her
reasons already for guessing that she could not live with Dounia after
the marriage, even for the first few months. The good man has no doubt
let slip something on that subject also, though mother would deny
it: 'I shall refuse,' says she. On whom is she reckoning then? Is
she counting on what is left of her hundred and twenty roubles of
pension when Afanasy Ivanovitch's debt is paid? She knits woollen
shawls and embroiders cuffs, ruining her old eyes. And all her
shawls don't add more than twenty roubles a year to her hundred and
twenty, I know that. So she is building all her hopes all the time
on Mr. Luzhin's generosity; 'he will offer it of himself, he will
press it on me.' You may wait a long time for that! That's how it
always is with these Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last
moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last moment, they
hope for the best and will see nothing wrong, and although they have
an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won't face the
truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them
shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they
deck out in false colours puts a fool's cap on them with his own
hands. I should like to know whether Mr. Luzhin has any orders of
merit; I bet he has the Anna in his buttonhole and that he puts it
on when he goes to dine with contractors or merchants. He will be sure
to have it for his wedding, too! Enough of him, confound him!
"Well,... mother I don't wonder at, it's like her, God bless her,
but how could Dounia? Dounia, darling, as though I did not know you!
You were nearly twenty when I saw you last: I understood you then.
Mother writes that 'Dounia can put up with a great deal.' I know
that very well. I knew that two years and a half ago, and for the last
two and a half years I have been thinking about it, thinking of just
that, that 'Dounia can put up with a great deal.' If she could put
up with Mr. Svidrigailov and all the rest of it, she certainly can put
up with a great deal. And now mother and she have taken it into
their heads that she can put up with Mr. Luzhin, who propounds the
theory of the superiority of wives raised from destitution and owing
everything to their husband's bounty- who propounds it, too, almost at
the first interview. Granted that he 'let it slip,' though he is a
sensible man, (yet maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant to
make himself clear as soon as possible) but Dounia, Dounia? She
understands the man, of course, but she will have to live with the
man. Why! she'd live on black bread and water, she would not sell
her soul, she would not barter her moral freedom for comfort; she
would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein, much less Mr. Luzhin's
money. No, Dounia was not that sort when I knew her and... she is
still the same, of course! Yes, there's no denying, the
Svidrigailovs are a bitter pill! It's a bitter thing to spend one's
life a governess in the provinces for two hundred roubles, but I
know she would rather be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with a
German master, than degrade her soul, and her moral dignity, by
binding herself for ever to a man whom she does not respect and with
whom she has nothing in common- for her own advantage. And if Mr.
Luzhin had been of unalloyed gold, or one huge diamond, she would
never have consented to become his legal concubine. Why is she
consenting then? What's the point of it? What's the answer? It's clear
enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not
sell herself, but for some one else she is doing it! For one she
loves, for one she adores, she will sell herself! That's what it all
amounts to; for her brother, for her mother, she will sell herself!
She will sell everything! In such cases, we 'overcome our moral
feeling if necessary,' freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are
brought into the market. Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be
happy! More than that, we become casuists, we learn to be Jesuitical
and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade
ourselves that it is one's duty for a good object. That's just like
us, it's as clear as daylight. It's clear that Rodion Romanovitch
Raskolnikov is the central figure in the business, and no one else.
Oh, yes, she can ensure his happiness, keep him in the university,
make him a partner in the office, make his whole future secure;
perhaps he may even be a rich man later on, prosperous, respected, and
may even end his life a famous man! But my mother? It's all Rodya,
precious Rodya, her first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice
such a daughter! Oh, loving, over-partial hearts! Why, for his sake we
would not shrink even from Sonia's fate. Sonia, Sonia Marmeladov,
the eternal victim so long as the world lasts. Have you taken the
measure of your sacrifice, both of you? Is it right? Can you bear
it? Is it any use? Is there sense in it? And let me tell you,
Dounia, Sonia's life is no worse than life with Mr. Luzhin. 'There can
be no question of love' mother writes. And what if there can be no
respect either, if on the contrary there is aversion, contempt,
repulsion, what then? So you will have to 'keep up your appearance,'
too. Is that not so? Do you understand what that smartness means? Do
you understand that the Luzhin smartness is just the same thing as
Sonia's and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case,
Dounia, it's a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Sonia it's
simply a question of starvation. It has to be paid for, it has to be
paid for, Dounia, this smartness. And what if it's more than you can
bear afterwards, if you regret it? The bitterness, the misery, the
curses, the tears hidden from all the world, for you are not a Marfa
Petrovna. And how will your mother feel then? Even now she is
uneasy, she is worried, but then, when she sees it all clearly? And I?
Yes, indeed, what have you taken me for? I won't have your
sacrifice, Dounia, I won't have it, mother! It shall not be, so long
as I am alive, it shall not, it shall not! I won't accept it!"
He suddenly paused in his reflection and stood still.
"It shall not be? But what are you going to do to prevent it? You'll
forbid it? And what right have you? What can you promise them on your
side to give you such a right? Your whole life, your whole future, you
will devote to them when you have finished your studies and obtained a
post? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that's all words, but
now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And what
are you doing now? You are living upon them. They borrow on their
hundred roubles pension. They borrow from the Svidrigailovs. How are
you going to save them from Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovitch
Vahrushin, oh, future millionaire Zeus who would arrange their lives
for them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be
blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn
to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may
have become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during
those ten years? Can you fancy?"
So he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and
finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were
not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches.
It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart.
Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had
waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it
had taken the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question,
which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an
answer. Now his mother's letter had burst on him like a thunderclap.
It was clear that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself
over unsolved questions, but that he must do something, do it at once,
and do it quickly. Anyway he must decide on something, or else...
"Or throw up life altogether!" he cried suddenly, in a frenzy-
"accept one's lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle
everything in oneself, giving up all claim to activity, life and
love!"
"Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you
have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov's question came
suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn..."
He gave a sudden start; another thought, that he had had
yesterday, slipped back into his mind. But he did not start at the
thought recurring to him, for he knew, he had felt beforehand, that it
must come back, he was expecting it; besides it was not only
yesterday's thought. The difference was that a month ago, yesterday
even, the thought was a mere dream: but now... now it appeared not a
dream at all, it had taken a new menacing and quite unfamiliar
shape, and he suddenly became aware of this himself.... He felt a
hammering in his head, and there was a darkness before his eyes.
He looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted
to sit down and was looking for a seat; he was walking along the K____
Boulevard. There was a seat about a hundred paces in front of him.
He walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a
little adventure which absorbed all his attention. Looking for the
seat, he had noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of
him, but at first he took no more notice of her than of other
objects that crossed his path. It had happened to him many times going
home not to notice the road by which he was going, and he was
accustomed to walk like that. But there was at first sight something
so strange about the woman in front of him, that gradually his
attention was riveted upon her, at first reluctantly and, as it
were, resentfully, and then more and more intently. He felt a sudden
desire to find out what it was that was so strange about the woman. In
the first place, she appeared to be a girl quite young, and she was
walking in the great heat bareheaded and with no parasol or gloves,
waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had on a dress of some
light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not properly hooked
up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the waist: a great
piece was rent and hanging loose. A little kerchief was flung about
her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. The girl was walking
unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side. She
drew Raskolnikov's whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at
the seat, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the
corner; she let her head sink on the back of the seat and closed her
eyes, apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he saw
at once that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking
sight. He could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before
him the face of a quite young, fair-haired girl- sixteen, perhaps
not more than fifteen years old, pretty little face, but flushed and
heavy looking and, as it were, swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know
what she was doing; she crossed one leg over the other, lifting it
indecorously, and showed every sign of being unconscious that she
was in the street.
Raskolnikov did not sit down, but he felt unwilling to leave her,
and stood facing her in perplexity. This boulevard was never much
frequented; and now, at two o'clock, in the stifling heat, it was
quite deserted. And yet on the further side of the boulevard, about
fifteen paces away, a gentleman was standing on the edge of the
pavement, he, too, would apparently have liked to approach the girl
with some object of his own. He, too, had probably seen her in the
distance and had followed her, but found Raskolnikov in his way. He
looked angrily at him, though he tried to escape his notice, and stood
impatiently biding his time, till the unwelcome man in rags should
have moved away. His intentions were unmistakable. The gentleman was a
plump, thickly-set man, about thirty, fashionably dressed, with a high
colour, red lips and moustaches. Raskolnikov felt furious; he had a
sudden longing to insult this fat dandy in some way. He left the
girl for a moment and walked towards the gentleman.
"Hey! You Svidrigailov! What do you want here?" he shouted,
clenching his fists and laughing, spluttering with rage.
"What do you mean?" the gentleman asked sternly, scowling in haughty
astonishment.
"Get away, that's what I mean."
"How dare you, you low fellow!"
He raised his cane. Raskolnikov rushed at him with his fists,
without reflecting that the stout gentleman was a match for two men
like himself. But at that instant some one seized him from behind, and
a police constable stood between them.
"That's enough, gentlemen, no fighting, please, in a public place.
What do you want? Who are you?" he asked Raskolnikov sternly, noticing
his rags.
Raskolnikov looked at him intently. He had a straight-forward,
sensible, soldierly face, with grey moustaches and whiskers.
"You are just the man I want," Raskolnikov cried, catching at his
arm. "I am a student, Raskolnikov.... You may as well know that
too," he added, addressing the gentleman, "come along, I have
something to show you."
And taking the policeman by the hand he drew him towards the seat.
"Look here, hopelessly drunk, and she has just come down the
boulevard. There is no telling who and what she is, she does not
look like a professional. It's more likely she has been given drink
and deceived somewhere... for the first time... you understand? and
they've put her out into the street like that. Look at the way her
dress is torn, and the way it has been put on: she has been dressed by
somebody, she has not dressed herself, and dressed by unpractised
hands, by a man's hands; that's evident. And now look there: I don't
know that dandy with whom I was going to fight, I see him for the
first time, but, he, too has seen her on the road, just now, drunk,
not knowing what she is doing, and now he is very eager to get hold of
her, to get her away somewhere while she is in this state... that's
certain, believe me, I am not wrong. I saw him myself watching her and
following her, but I prevented him, and he is just waiting for me to
go away. Now he has walked away a little, and is standing still,
pretending to make a cigarette.... Think how can we keep her out of
his hands, and how are we to get her home?"
The policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout gentleman was easy to
understand, he turned to consider the girl. The policeman bent over to
examine her more closely, and his face worked with genuine compassion.
"Ah, what a pity!" he said, shaking his head- "why, she is quite a
child! She has been deceived, you can see that at once. Listen, lady,"
he began addressing her, "where do you live?" The girl opened her
weary and sleepy-looking eyes, gazed blankly at the speaker and
waved her hand.
"Here," said Raskolnikov feeling in his pocket and finding twenty
copecks, "here, call a cab and tell him to drive her to her address.
The only thing is to find out her address!"
"Missy, missy!" the policeman began again, taking the money. "I'll
fetch you a cab and take you home myself. Where shall I take you,
eh? Where do you live?"
"Go away! They won't let me alone," the girl muttered, and once more
waved her hand.
"Ach, ach, how shocking! It's shameful, missy, it's a shame!" He
shook his head again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant.
"It's a difficult job," the policeman said to Raskolnikov, and as he
did so, he looked him up and down in a rapid glance. He. too, must
have seemed a strange figure to him: dressed in rags and handing him
money!
"Did you meet her far from here?" he asked him.
"I tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here,
in the boulevard. She only just reached the seat and sank down on it."
"Ah, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, God
have mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She
has been deceived, that's a sure thing. See how her dress has been
torn too.... Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely as not
she belongs to gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe.... There are many like
that nowadays. She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady," and
he bent over her once more.
Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that, "looking like
ladies and refined" with pretensions to gentility and smartness....
"The chief thing is," Raskolnikov persisted, "to keep her out of
this scoundrel's hands! Why should he outrage her! It's as clear as
day what he is after; ah, the brute, he is not moving off!"
Raskolnikov spoke aloud and pointed to him. The gentleman heard him,
and seemed about to fly into a rage again, but thought better of it,
and confined himself to a contemptuous look. He then walked slowly
another ten paces away and again halted.
"Keep her out of his hands we can," said the constable thoughtfully,
"if only she'd tell us where to take her, but as it is.... Missy, hey,
missy!" he bent over her once more.
She opened her eyes fully all of a sudden, looked at him intently,
as though realising something, got up from the seat and walked away in
the direction from which she had come. "Oh shameful wretches, they
won't let me alone!" she said, waving her hand again. She walked
quickly, though staggering as before. The dandy followed her, but
along another avenue, keeping his eye on her.
"Don't be anxious, I won't let him have her," the policeman said
resolutely, and he set off after them.
"Ah, the vice one sees nowadays!" he repeated aloud, sighing.
At that moment something seemed to sting Raskolnikov; in an
instant a complete revulsion of feeling came over him.
"Hey, here!" he shouted after the policeman.
The latter turned round.
"Let them be! What is it to do with you? Let her go! Let him amuse
himself." He pointed at the dandy, "What is it to do with you?"
The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed.
Raskolnikov laughed.
"Well!" ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he
walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a
madman or something even worse.
"He has carried off my twenty copecks," Raskolnikov murmured angrily
when he was left alone. "Well, let him take as much from the other
fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did
I want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help?
Let them devour each other alive- what is to me? How did I dare to
give him twenty copecks? Were they mine?"
In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down
on the deserted seat. His thought strayed aimlessly.... He found it
hard to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget
himself altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and
begin life anew....
"Poor girl!" he said, looking at the empty corner where she had sat-
"She will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find
out.... She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating
and then maybe, turn her out of doors.... And even if she does not,
the Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be
slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the
hospital directly (that's always the luck of those girls with
respectable mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then... again the
hospital... drink... the taverns... and more hospital, in two or three
years- a wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen.... Have not
I seen cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why,
they've all come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That's
as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us,
must every year go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the
rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What
splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory....
Once you've said 'percentage,' there's nothing more to worry about. If
we had any other word... maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But
what if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another one if not
that one?
"But where am I going?" he thought suddenly. "Strange, I came out
for something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out.... I was
going to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin. That's what it was...
now I remember. What for, though? And what put the idea of going to
Razumihin into my head just now? That's curious."
He wondered at himself. Razumihin was one of his old comrades at the
university. It was remarkable that Raskolnikov had hardly any
friends at the university; he kept aloof from every one, went to see
no one, and did not welcome any one who came to see him, and indeed
every one soon gave him up. He took no part in the students'
gatherings, amusements or conversations. He worked with great
intensity without sparing himself, and he was respected for this,
but no one liked him. He was very poor, and there was a sort of
haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping
something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down
upon them all as children, as though he were superior in
development, knowledge and convictions, as though their beliefs and
interests were beneath him.
With Razumihin he had got on, or, at least, he was more unreserved
and communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any
other terms with Razumihin. He was an exceptionally good-humoured
and candid youth, good-natured to the point of simplicity, though both
depth and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of
his comrades understood this, and all were fond of him. He was
extremely intelligent, though he was certainly rather a simpleton at
times. He was of striking appearance- tall, thin, blackhaired and
always badly shaved. He was sometimes uproarious and was reputed to be
of great physical strength. One night, when out in a festive
company, he had with one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his back.
There was no limit to his drinking powers, but he could abstain from
drink altogether; he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but he
could do without pranks altogether. Another thing striking about
Razumihin, no failure distressed him, and it seemed as though no
unfavourable circumstances could crush him. He could lodge anywhere,
and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and kept
himself entirely on what he could earn by work of one sort or another.
He knew of no end of resources by which to earn money. He spent one
whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to declare that he
liked it better, because one slept more soundly in the cold. For the
present he, too, had been obliged to give up the university, but it
was only for a time, and he was working with all his might to save
enough to return to his studies again. Raskolnikov had not been to see
him for the last four months, and Razumihin did not even know his
address. About two months before, they had met in the street, but
Raskolnikov had turned away and even crossed to the other side that he
might not be observed. And though Razumihin noticed him, he passed him
by, as he did not want to annoy him.
CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
"OF COURSE, I've been meaning lately to go to Razumihin's to ask for
work, to ask him to get me lessons or something..." Raskolnikov
thought, "but what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me
lessons, suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any
farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself tidy
enough to give lessons... hm... Well and what then? What shall I do
with the few coppers I earn? That's not what I want now. It's really
absurd for me to go to Razumihin...."
The question why he was now going to Razumihin agitated him even
more than he was himself aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some
sinister significance in this apparently ordinary action.
"Could I have expected to set it all straight and to find a way
out by means of Razumihin alone?" he asked himself in perplexity.
He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long
musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a
fantastic thought came into his head.
"Hm... to Razumihin's," he said all at once, calmly, as though he
had reached a final determination. "I shall go to Razumihin's of
course, but... not now. I shall go to him... on the next day after It,
when It will be over and everything will begin afresh...."
And suddenly he realised what he was thinking.
"After It," he shouted, jumping up from the seat, "but is It
really going to happen? Is it possible it really will happen?" He left
the seat, and went off almost at a run; he meant to turn back,
homewards, but the thought of going home suddenly filled him with
intense loathing; in that hole, in that awful little cupboard of
his, all this had for a month past been growing up in him; and he
walked on at random.
His nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel
shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he
began almost unconsciously, from some inner craving, to stare at all
the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract
his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept dropping every
moment into brooding. When with a start he lifted his head again and
looked around, he forgot at once what he had just been thinking
about and even where he was going. In this way he walked right
across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came out on to the Lesser Neva, crossed
the bridge and turned towards the islands. The greenness and freshness
were at first restful to his weary eyes after the dust of the town and
the huge houses that hemmed him in and weighed upon him. Here there
were no taverns, no stifling closeness, no stench. But soon these
new pleasant sensations passed into morbid irritability. Sometimes
he stood still before a brightly painted summer villa standing among
green foliage, he gazed through the fence, he saw in the distance
smartly dressed women on the verandahs and balconies, and children
running in the gardens. The flowers especially caught his attention;
he gazed at them longer than at anything. He was met, too, by
luxurious carriages and by men and women on horseback; he watched them
with curious eyes and forgot about them before they had vanished
from his sight. Once he stood still and counted his money; he found he
had thirty copecks. "Twenty to the policeman, three to Nastasya for
the letter, so I must have given forty-seven or fifty to the
Marmeladovs yesterday," he thought, reckoning it up for some unknown
reason, but he soon forgot with what object he had taken the money out
of his pocket. He recalled it on passing an eating-house or tavern,
and felt that he was hungry.... Going into the tavern he drank a glass
of vodka and ate a pie of some sort. He finished eating it as he
walked away. It was a long while since he had taken vodka and it had
an effect upon him at once, though he only drank a wine-glassful.
His legs felt suddenly heavy and a great drowsiness came upon him.
He turned homewards, but reaching Petrovsky Ostrov he stopped
completely exhausted, turned off the road into the bushes, sank down
upon the grass and instantly fell asleep.
In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular
actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times
monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture
are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly,
but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist
like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the
waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and
make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous
system.
Raskolnikov had a fearful dream. He dreamt he was back in his
childhood in the little town of his birth. He was a child about
seven years old, walking into the country with his father on the
evening of a holiday. It was a grey and heavy day, the country was
exactly as he remembered it; indeed he recalled it far more vividly in
his dream than he had done in memory. The little town stood on a level
flat as bare as the hand, not even a willow near it; only in the far
distance, a copse lay, a dark blur on the very edge of the horizon.
A few paces beyond the last market garden stood a tavern, a big
tavern, which had always aroused in him a feeling of aversion, even of
fear, when he walked by it with his father. There was always a crowd
there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and
often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging
about the tavern. He used to cling close to his father, trembling
all over when he met them. Near the tavern the road became a dusty
track, the dust of which was always black. It was a winding road,
and about a hundred paces further on, it turned to the right to the
graveyard. In the middle of the graveyard stood a stone church with
a green cupola where he used to go to mass two or three times a year
with his father and mother, when a service was held in memory of his
grandmother, who had long been dead, and whom he had never seen. On
these occasions they used to take on a white dish tied up in a table
napkin a special sort of rice pudding with raisins stuck in it in
the shape of a cross. He loved that church, the old-fashioned,
unadorned ikons and the old priest with the shaking head. Near his
grandmother's grave, which was marked by a stone, was the little grave
of his younger brother who had died at six months old. He did not
remember him at all, but he had been told about his little brother,
and whenever he visited the graveyard he used religiously and
reverently to cross himself and to bow down and kiss the little grave.
And now he dreamt that he was walking with his father past the
tavern on the way to the graveyard; he was holding his father's hand
and looking with dread at the tavern. A peculiar circumstance
attracted his attention: there seemed to be some kind of festivity
going on, there were crowds of gaily dressed townspeople, peasant
women, their husbands, and riff-raff of all sorts, all singing and all
more or less drunk. Near the entrance of the tavern stood a cart,
but a strange cart. It was one of those big carts usually drawn by
heavy cart-horses and laden with casks of wine or other heavy goods.
He always liked looking at those great cart-horses, with their long
manes, thick legs, and slow even pace, drawing along a perfect
mountain with no appearance of effort, as though it were easier
going with a load than without it. But now, strange to say, in the
shafts of such a cart he saw a thin little sorrel beast, one of
those peasants' nags which he had often seen straining their utmost
under a heavy load of wood or hay, especially when the wheels were
stuck in the mud or in a rut. And the peasants would be at them so
cruelly, sometimes even about the nose and eyes and he felt so
sorry, so sorry for them that he almost cried, and his mother always
used to take him away from the window. All of a sudden there was a
great uproar of shouting, singing and the balalaika, and from the
tavern a number of big and very drunken peasants came out, wearing red
and blue shirts and coats thrown over their shoulders.
"Get in, get in!" shouted one of them, a young thick-necked
peasant with a fleshy face red as a carrot. "I'll take you all, get
in!"
But at once there was an outbreak of laughter and exclamations in
the crowd.
"Take us all with a beast like that!"
"Why, Mikolka, are you crazy to put a nag like that in such a cart?"
"And this mare is twenty if she is a day, mates!"
"Get in, I'll take you all," Mikolka shouted again, leaping first
into the cart, seizing the reins and standing straight up in front.
"The bay has gone with Marvey," he shouted from the cart- "and this
brute, mates, is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill
her. She's just eating her head off. Get in, I tell you! I'll make her
gallop! She'll gallop!" and he picked up the whip, preparing himself
with relish to flog the little mare.
"Get in! Come along!" The crowd laughed. "D'you hear, she'll
gallop!"
"Gallop indeed! She has not had a gallop in her for the last ten
years!"
"She'll jog along!"
"Don't you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!"
"All right! Give it to her!"
They all clambered into Mikolka's cart, laughing and making jokes.
Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a
fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed in red cotton, in a
pointed, beaded headdress and thick leather shoes; she was cracking
nuts and laughing. The crowd round them was laughing too and indeed,
how could they help laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all the
cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were
just getting whips ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of "now," the
mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely
move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking
from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like
hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but
Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he
supposed she really could gallop.
"Let me get in, too, mates," shouted a young man in the crowd
whose appetite was aroused.
"Get in, all get in," cried Mikolka, "she will draw you all. I'll
beat her to death!" And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare, beside
himself with fury.
"Father, father," he cried, "father, what are they doing? Father,
they are beating the poor horse!"
"Come along, come along!" said his father. "They are drunken and
foolish, they are in fun; come away, don't look!" and he tried to draw
him away, but he tore himself away from his hand, and, beside
himself with horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was in a bad
way. She was gasping, standing still, then tugging again and almost
falling.
"Beat her to death," cried Mikolka, "it's come to that. I'll do
for her!"
"What are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?" shouted an old
man in the crowd.
"Did any one ever see the like? A wretched nag like that pulling
such a cartload," said another.
"You'll kill her," shouted the third.
"Don't meddle! It's my property. I'll do what I choose. Get in, more
of you! Get in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop!..."
All at once laughter broke into a roar and covered everything: the
mare, roused by the shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even the
old man could not help smiling. To think of a wretched little beast
like that trying to kick!
Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to
beat her about the ribs. One ran each side.
"Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes," cried Mikolka.
"Give us a song, mates," shouted some one in the cart and every
one in the cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and
whistling. The woman went on cracking nuts and laughing.
...He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being
whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt
choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut
with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his
hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with
the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman
seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore
himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the
last gasp, but began kicking once more.
"I'll teach you to kick," Mikolka shouted ferociously. He threw down
the whip, bent forward and picked up from the bottom of the cart a
long, thick shaft, he took hold of one end with both hands and with an
effort brandished it over the mare.
"He'll crush her," was shouted round him. "He'll kill her!"
"It's my property," shouted Mikolka and brought the shaft down
with a swinging blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud.
"Thrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?" shouted voices in
the crowd.
And Mikolka swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second
time on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches,
but lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged
first on one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart.
But the six whips were attacking her in all directions, and the
shaft was raised again and fell upon her a third time, then a
fourth, with heavy measured blows. Mikolka was in a fury that he could
not kill her at one blow.
"She's a tough one," was shouted in the crowd.
"She'll fall in a minute, mates, there will soon be an end of
her," said an admiring spectator in the crowd.
"Fetch an axe to her! Finish her off," shouted a third.
"I'll show you! Stand off," Mikolka screamed frantically; he threw
down the shaft, stooped down in the cart and picked up an iron
crowbar. "Look out," he shouted, and with all his might he dealt a
stunning blow at the poor mare. The blow fell; the mare staggered,
sank back, tried to pull, but the bar fell again with a swinging
blow on her back and she fell on the ground like a log.
"Finish her off," shouted Mikolka and he leapt beside himself, out
of the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink, seized
anything they could come across- whips, sticks, poles, and ran to
the dying mare. Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing random
blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long
breath and died.
"You butchered her," some one shouted in the crowd.
"Why wouldn't she gallop then?"
"My property!" shouted Mikolka, with bloodshot eyes, brandishing the
bar in his hands. He stood as though regretting that he had nothing
more to beat.
"No mistake about it, you are not a Christian," many voices were
shouting in the crowd.
But the poor boy, beside himself, made his way screaming through the
crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and
kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the lips.... Then he jumped up
and flew in a frenzy with his little fists out at Mikolka. At that
instant his father who had been running after him, snatched him up and
carried him out of the crowd.
"Come along, come! Let us go home," he said to him.
"Father! Why did they... kill... the poor horse!" he sobbed, but his
voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest.
"They are drunk.... They are brutal... it's not our business!"
said his father. He put his arms round his father but he felt
choked, choked. He tried to draw a breath, to cry out- and woke up.
He waked up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with
perspiration, and stood up in terror.
"Thank God, that was only a dream," he said, sitting down under a
tree and drawing deep breaths. "But what is it? Is it some fever
coming on? Such a hideous dream!"
He felt utterly broken; darkness and confusion were in his soul.
He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands.
"Good God!" he cried, "can it be, can it be, that I shall really
take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull
open... that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the lock,
steal and tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood... with the
axe.... Good God, can it be?"
He was shaking like a leaf as he said this.
"But why am I going on like this?" he continued, sitting up again,
as it were in profound amazement. "I knew that I could never bring
myself to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now?
Yesterday, yesterday, when I went to make that... experiment,
yesterday I realised completely that I could never bear to do it....
Why am I going over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came
down the stairs yesterday, I said myself that it was base,
loathsome, vile, vile... the very thought of it made me feel sick
and filled me with horror.
"No, I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Granted, granted that there
is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded
this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway
I couldn't bring myself to it! I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it!
Why, why then am I still...?"
He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at
finding himself in this place, and went towards the bridge. He was
pale, his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every limb, but he seemed
suddenly to breathe more easily. He felt he had cast off that
fearful burden that had so long been weighing upon him, and all at
once there was a sense of relief and peace in his soul. "Lord," he
prayed, "show me my path- I renounce that accursed... dream of mine."
Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the
glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness
he was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that
had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken.
Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that
obsession!
Later on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him
during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was
superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which though in
itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the
predestined turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and
explain to himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when it
would have been more convenient for him to go home by the shortest and
most direct way, he had returned by the Hay Market where he had no
need to go. It was obviously and quite unnecessarily out of his way,
though not much so. It is true that it happened to him dozens of times
to return home without noticing what streets he passed through. But
why, he was always asking himself, why had such an important, such a
decisive and at the same time such an absolutely chance meeting
happened in the Hay Market (where he had moreover no reason to go)
at the very hour, the very minute of his life when he was just in
the very mood and in the very circumstances in which that meeting
was able to exert the gravest and most decisive influence on his whole
destiny? As though it had been lying in wait for him on purpose!
It was about nine o'clock when he crossed the Hay Market. At the
tables and the barrows, at the booths and the shops, all the market
people were closing their establishments or clearing away and
packing up their wares and, like their customers, were going home.
Ragpickers and costermongers of all kinds were crowding round the
taverns in the dirty and stinking courtyards of the Hay Market.
Raskolnikov particularly liked this place and the neighbouring alleys,
when he wandered aimlessly in the streets. Here his rags did not
attract contemptuous attention, and one could walk about in any attire
without scandalising people. At the corner of an alley a huckster
and his wife had two tables set out with tapes, thread, cotton
handkerchiefs, &c. They, too, had got up to go home, but were
lingering in conversation with a friend, who had just come up to them.
This friend was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or, as every one called her,
Lizaveta, the younger sister of the old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna,
whom Raskolnikov had visited the previous day to pawn his watch and
make his experiment.... He already knew all about Lizaveta and she
knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about thirty-five,
tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost idiotic. She was a complete
slave and went in fear and trembling of her sister, who made her
work day and night, and even beat her. She was standing with a
bundle before the huckster and his wife, listening earnestly and
doubtfully. They were talking of something with special warmth. The
moment Raskolnikov caught sight of her, he was overcome by a strange
sensation as it were of intense astonishment, though there was nothing
astonishing about this meeting.
"You could make up your mind for yourself, Lizaveta Ivanovna," the
huckster was saying aloud. "Come round tomorrow about seven. They will
be here too."
"To-morrow?" said Lizaveta slowly and thoughtfully, as though unable
to make up her mind.
"Upon my word, what a fright you are in of Alyona Ivanovna," gabbled
the huckster's wife, a lively little woman. "I look at you, you are
like some little babe. And she is not your own sister either-
nothing but a stepsister and what a hand she keeps over you!"
"But this time don't say a word to Alyona Ivanovna," her husband
interrupted; "that's my advice, but come round to us without asking.
It will be worth your while. Later on your sister herself may have a
notion."
"Am I to come?"
"About seven o'clock to-morrow. And they will be here. You will be
able to decide for yourself."
"And we'll have a cup of tea," added his wife.
"All right, I'll come," said Lizaveta, still pondering, and she
began slowly moving away.
Raskolnikov had just passed and heard no more. He passed softly,
unnoticed, trying not to miss a word. His first amazement was followed
by a thrill of horror, like a shiver running down his spine. He had
learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day
at seven o'clock Lizaveta, the old woman's sister and only
companion, would be away from home and that therefore at seven o'clock
precisely the old woman would be left alone.
He was only a few steps from his lodging. He went in like a man
condemned to death. He thought of nothing and was incapable of
thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no
more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and
irrevocably decided.
Certainly, if he had to wait whole years for a suitable opportunity,
he could not reckon on a more certain step towards the success of
the plan than that which had just presented itself. In any case, it
would have been difficult to find out beforehand and with certainty,
with greater exactness and less risk, and without dangerous
inquiries and investigations, that next day at a certain time an old
woman, on whose life an attempt was contemplated, would be at home and
entirely alone.
CHAPTER_SIX
Chapter Six
-
LATER on Raskolnikov happened to find out why the huckster and his
wife had invited Lizaveta. It was a very ordinary matter and there was
nothing exceptional about it. A family who had come to the town and
been reduced to poverty were selling their household goods and
clothes, all women's things. As the things would have fetched little
in the market, they were looking for a dealer. This was Lizaveta's
business. She undertook such jobs and was frequently employed, as
she was very honest and always fixed a fair price and stuck to it. She
spoke as a rule little and, as we have said already, she was very
submissive and timid.
But Raskolnikov had become superstitious of late. The traces of
superstition remained in him long after, and were almost ineradicable.
And in all this he was always afterwards disposed to see something
strange and mysterious, as it were the presence of some peculiar
influences and coincidences. In the previous winter a student he
knew called Pokorev, who had left for Harkov, had chanced in
conversation to give him the address of Alyona Ivanovna, the old
pawnbroker, in case he might want to pawn anything. For a long while
he did not go to her, for he had lessons and managed to get along
somehow. Six weeks ago he had remembered the address; he had two
articles that could be pawned: his father's old silver watch and a
little gold ring with three red stones, a present from his sister at
parting. He decided to take the ring. When he found the old woman he
had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance,
though he knew nothing special about her. He got two roubles from
her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way home. He
asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange idea was
pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much
absorbed him.
Almost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student,
whom he did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer.
They had played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at
once he heard the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Alyona
Ivanovna and give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to
Raskolnikov; he had just come from her and here at once he heard her
name. Of course it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very
extraordinary impression, and here some one seemed to be speaking
expressly for him; the student began telling his friend various
details about Alyona Ivanovna.
"She is first rate," he said. "You can always get money from her.
She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a
time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our
fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy...."
And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if
you were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how
she gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even
seven percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on,
saying that she had a sister Lizaveta, whom the wretched little
creature was continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like
a small child, though Lizaveta was at least six feet high.
"There's a phenomenon for you," cried the student and he laughed.
They began talking about Lizaveta. The student spoke about her
with a peculiar relish and was continually laughing and the officer
listened with great interest and asked him to send Lizaveta to do some
mending for him. Raskolnikov did not miss a word and learned
everything about her. Lizaveta was younger than the old woman and
was her half-sister, being the child of a different mother. She was
thirty-five. She worked day and night for her sister, and besides
doing the cooking and the washing, she did sewing and worked as a
charwoman and gave her sister all she earned. She did not dare to
accept an order or job of any kind without her sister's permission.
The old woman had already made her will, and Lizaveta knew of it,
and by this will she would not get a farthing; nothing but the
movables, chairs and so on; all the money was left to a monastery in
the province of N___, that prayers might be said for her in
perpetuity. Lizaveta was of lower rank than her sister, unmarried
and awfully uncouth in appearance, remarkably tall with long feet that
looked as if they were bent outwards. She always wore battered
goatskin shoes, and was clean in her person. What the student
expressed most surprise and amusement about was the fact that Lizaveta
was continually with child.
"But you say she is hideous?" observed the officer.
"Yes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like a soldier dressed up,
but you know she is not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured
face and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof of it is that lots of
people are attracted by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature,
ready to put up with anything, always willing, willing to do anything.
And her smile is really very sweet."
"You seem to find her attractive yourself," laughed the officer.
"From her queerness. No, I'll tell you what. I could kill that
damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without
the faintest conscience-prick," the student added with warmth. The
officer laughed again while Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it was!
"Listen, I want to ask you a serious question," the student said
hotly. "I was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a
stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman,
not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what
she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any
case. You understand? You understand?"
"Yes, yes, I understand," answered the officer, watching his excited
companion attentively.
"Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away
for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand
good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman's money which
will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be
set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from
ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals- and all with her money. Kill
her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the
service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would
not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one
life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death,
and a hundred lives in exchange- it's simple arithmetic! Besides, what
value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in
the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black
beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is
wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Lizaveta's
finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated."
"Of course she does not deserve to live," remarked the officer, "but
there it is, it's nature."
"Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and,
but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for
that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of
duty, conscience- I don't want to say anything against duty and
conscience;- but the point is what do we mean by them. Stay, I have
another question to ask you. Listen!"
"No, you stay, I'll ask you a question. Listen!"
"Well?"
"You are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you
kill the old woman yourself?"
"Of course not! I was only arguing the justice of it.... It's
nothing to do with me...."
"But I think, if you would not do it yourself, there's no justice
about it.... Let us have another game."
Raskolnikov was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary
youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in
different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to
hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his
own brain was just conceiving... the very same ideas? And why, just at
the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the
old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This
coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a
tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as
though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding
hint....
-
On returning from the Hay Market he flung himself on the sofa and
sat for a whole hour without stirring. Meanwhile it got dark; he had
no candle and, indeed, it did not occur to him to light up. He could
never recollect whether he had been thinking about anything at that
time. At last he was conscious of his former fever and shivering,
and he realised with relief that he could lie down on the sofa. Soon
heavy, leaden sleep came over him, as it were crushing him.
He slept an extraordinarily long time and without dreaming.
Nastasya, coming into his room at ten o'clock the next morning, had
difficulty in rousing him. She brought him in tea and bread. The tea
was again the second brew and again in her own tea-pot.
"My goodness, how he sleeps!" she cried indignantly. "And he is
always asleep."
He got up with an effort. His head ached, he stood up, took a turn
in his garret and sank back on the sofa again.
"Going to sleep again," cried Nastasya. "Are you ill, eh?"
He made no reply.
"Do you want some tea?"
"Afterwards," he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and
turning to the wall.
Nastasya stood over him.
"Perhaps he really is ill," she said, turned and went out. She
came in again at two o'clock with soup. He was lying as before. The
tea stood untouched. Nastasya felt positively offended and began
wrathfully rousing him.
"Why are you lying like a log?" she shouted, looking at him with
repulsion.
He got up, and sat down again, but said nothing and stared at the
floor.
"Are you ill or not?" asked Nastasya and again received no answer.
"You'd better go out and get a breath of air," she said after a pause.
"Will you eat it or not?"
"Afterwards," he said weakly. "You can go."
And he motioned her out.
She remained a little longer, looked at him with compassion and went
out.
A few minutes afterwards, he raised his eyes and looked for a long
while at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took up a spoon
and began to eat.
He ate a little, three or four spoonfuls, without appetite as it
were mechanically. His head ached less. After his meal he stretched
himself on the sofa again, but now he could not sleep; he lay
without stirring, with his face in the pillow. He was haunted by
daydreams and such strange daydreams; in one, that kept recurring,
he fancied that he was in Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The
caravan was resting, the camels were peacefully lying down; the
palms stood all around in a complete circle; all the party were at
dinner. But he was drinking water from a spring which flowed
gurgling close by. And it was so cool, it was wonderful, wonderful,
blue, cold water running among the parti-coloured stones and over
the clean sand which glistened here and there like gold.... Suddenly
he heard a clock strike. He started, roused himself, raised his
head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was, suddenly
jumped up wide awake as though some one had pulled him off the sofa.
He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily opened it and began
listening on the staircase. His heart beat terribly. But all was quiet
on the stairs as if every one was asleep.... It seemed to him
strange and monstrous that he could have slept in such forgetfulness
from the previous day and had done nothing, had prepared nothing
yet.... And meanwhile perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness
and stupefaction were followed by an extraordinary, feverish, as it
were, distracted, haste. But the preparations to be made were few.
He concentrated all his energies on thinking of everything and
forgetting nothing; and his heart kept beating and thumping so that he
could hardly breathe. First he had to make a noose and sew it into his
overcoat- a work of a moment. He rummaged under his pillow and
picked out amongst the linen stuffed away under it, a worn out, old
unwashed shirt. From its rags he tore a long strip, a couple of inches
wide and about sixteen inches long. He folded this strip in two,
took off his wide, strong summer overcoat of some stout cotton
material (his only outer garment) and began sewing the two ends of the
rag on the inside, under the left armhole. His hands shook as he
sewed, but he did it successfully so that nothing showed outside
when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread he had got
ready long before and they lay on his table in a piece of paper. As
for the noose, it was a very ingenious device of his own; the noose
was intended for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the axe
through the street in his hands. And if hidden under his coat he would
still have had to support it with his hand, which would have been
noticeable. Now he had only to put the head of the axe in the noose,
and it would hang quietly under his arm on the inside. Putting his
hand in his coat pocket, he could hold the end of the handle all the
way, so that it did not swing; and as the coat was very full, a
regular sack in fact, it could not be seen from outside that he was
holding something with the hand that was in the pocket. This noose,
too, he had designed a fortnight before.
When he had finished with this, he thrust his hand into a little
opening between his sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner and
drew out the pledge, which he had got ready long before and hidden
there. This pledge was, however, only a smoothly planed piece of
wood the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case. He picked up
this piece of wood in one of his wanderings in a courtyard where there
was some sort of a workshop. Afterwards he had added to the wood a
thin smooth piece of iron, which he had also picked up at the same
time in the street. Putting the iron which was a little the smaller on
the piece of wood, he fastened them very firmly, crossing and
re-crossing the thread round them; then wrapped them carefully and
daintily in clean white paper and tied up the parcel so that it
would be very difficult to untie it. This was in order to divert the
attention of the old woman for a time, while she was trying to undo
the knot, and so to gain a moment. The iron strip was added to give
weight, so that the woman might not guess the first minute that the
"thing" was made of wood. All this had been stored by him beforehand
under the sofa. He had only just got the pledge out when he heard some
one suddenly about in the yard.
"It struck six long ago."
"Long ago! My God!"
He rushed to the door, listened, caught up his hat and began to
descend his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. He had
still the most important thing to do- to steal the axe from the
kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long
ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on
the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved
finally on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity in
regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they
had one strange characteristic: the more final they were, the more
hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. In
spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single
instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans.
And, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least
point could have been considered and finally settled, and no
uncertainty of any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have
renounced it all as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But
a whole mass of unsettled points and uncertainties remained. As for
getting the axe, that trifling business cost him no anxiety, for
nothing could be easier. Nastasya was continually out of the house,
especially in the evenings; she would run in to the neighbours or to a
shop, and always left the door ajar. It was the one thing the landlady
was always scolding her about. And so when the time came, he would
only have to go quietly into the kitchen and to take the axe, and an
hour later (when everything was over) go in and put it back again. But
these were doubtful points. Supposing he returned an hour later to put
it back, and Nastasya had come back and was on the spot. He would of
course have to go by and wait till she went out again. But supposing
she were in the meantime to miss the axe, look for it, make an outcry-
that would mean suspicion or at least grounds for suspicion.
But those were all trifles which he had not even begun to
consider, and indeed he had no time. He was thinking of the chief
point, and put off trifling details, until he could believe in it all.
But that seemed utterly unattainable. So it seemed to himself at
least. He could not imagine, for instance, that he would sometime
leave off thinking, get up and simply go there.... Even his late
experiment (i.e. his visit with the object of a final survey of the
place) was simply an attempt at an experiment, far from being the real
thing, as though one should say "come, let us go and try it- why dream
about it!"- and at once he had broken down and had run away cursing,
in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the
moral question, that his analysis was complete; his casuistry had
become keen as a razor, and he could not find rational objections in
himself. But in the last resort he simply ceased to believe in
himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought arguments in all directions,
fumbling for them, as though some one were forcing and drawing him
to it.
At first- long before indeed- he had been much occupied with one
question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily
detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He
had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in
his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material
impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself.
Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning
power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant
when prudence and caution are most essential. It was his conviction
that this eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man
like a disease, developed gradually and reached its highest point just
before the perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at
the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after,
according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other
disease. The question whether the disease gives rise to the crime,
or whether the crime from its own peculiar nature is always
accompanied by something of the nature of disease, he did not yet feel
able to decide.
When he reached these conclusions, he decided that in his own case
there could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will
would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for
the simple reason that his design was "not a crime...." We will omit
all the process by means of which he arrived at this last
conclusion; we have run too far ahead already.... We may add only that
the practical, purely material difficulties of the affair occupied a
secondary position in his mind. "One has but to keep all one's will
power and reason to deal with them, and they will all be overcome at
the time when once one has familiarised oneself with the minutest
details of the business...." But this preparation had never been
begun. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and
when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently, as it
were accidentally and unexpectedly.
One trifling circumstance upset his calculations, before he had even
left the staircase. When he reached the landlady's kitchen, the door
of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously in to see whether,
in Nastasya's absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not,
whether the door to her own room was closed, so that she might not
peep out when he went in for the axe. But what was his amazement
when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not only at home in the
kitchen, but was occupied there, taking linen out of a basket and
hanging it on a line. Seeing him, she left off hanging the clothes,
turned to him and stared at him all the time he was passing. He turned
away his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed nothing. But it
was the end of everything; he had not the axe! He was overwhelmed.
"What made me think," he reflected, as he went under the gateway,
"what made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that
moment! Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?"
He was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself
in his anger.... A dull animal rage boiled within him.
He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go for
a walk for appearance sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even
more revolting. "And what a chance I have lost for ever!" he muttered,
standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter's little
dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the porter's
room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to
the right caught his eye.... He looked about him- nobody. He
approached the room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a
faint voice called the porter. "Yes, not at home! Somewhere near
though, in the yard, for the door is wide open." He dashed to the
axe (it was an axe) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it
lay between two chunks of wood; at once before going out, he made it
fast in the noose, he thrust both hands into his pockets and went
out of the room; no one had noticed him! "When reason fails, the devil
helps!" he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits
extraordinarily.
He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid
awakening suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to
escape looking at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable
as possible. Suddenly he thought of his hat. "Good heavens! I had
the money the day before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear
instead!" A curse rose from the bottom of his soul.
Glancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock
on the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste
and at the same time to go someway round, so as to approach the
house from the other side....
When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had
sometimes thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not
very much afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even
occupied by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he
passed the Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the
building of great fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the
atmosphere in all the squares. By degrees he passed to the
conviction that if the summer garden were extended to the field of
Mars, and perhaps joined to the garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it
would be a splendid thing and a great benefit to the town. Then he was
interested by the question why in all great towns men are not simply
driven by necessity, but in some peculiar way inclined to live in
those parts of the town where there are no gardens nor fountains;
where there is most dirt and smell and all sorts of nastiness. Then
his own walks through the Hay Market came back to his mind, and for
a moment he waked up to reality. "What nonsense!" he thought,
"better think of nothing at all!"
"So probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object
that meets them on the way," flashed through his mind, but simply
flashed, like lightning; he made haste to dismiss this thought.... And
by now he was near; here was the house, here was the gate. Suddenly
a clock somewhere struck once. "What! can it be half-past seven?
Impossible, it must be fast!"
Luckily for him, everything went well again at the gates. At that
very moment, as though expressly for his benefit, a huge waggon of hay
had just driven in at the gate, completely screening him as he
passed under the gateway, and the waggon had scarcely had time to
drive through into the yard, before he had slipped in a flash to the
right. On the other side of the waggon he could hear shouting and
quarrelling; but no one noticed him and no one met him. Many windows
looking into that huge quadrangular yard were open at that moment, but
he did not raise his head- he had not the strength to. The staircase
leading to the old woman's room was close by, just on the right of the
gateway. He was already on the stairs....
Drawing a breath, pressing his hand against his throbbing heart, and
once more feeling for the axe and setting it straight, he began softly
and cautiously ascending the stairs, listening every minute. But the
stairs, too, were quite deserted; all the doors were shut; he met no
one. One flat indeed on the first floor was wide open and painters
were at work in it, but they did not glance at him. He stood still,
thought a minute and went on. "Of course it would be better if they
had not been here, but... it's two storeys above them."
And there was the fourth storey, here was the door, here was the
flat opposite, the empty one. The flat underneath the old woman's
was apparently empty also; the visiting card nailed on the door had
been torn off- they had gone away!... He was out of breath. For one
instant the thought floated through his mind "Shall I go back?" But he
made no answer and began listening at the old woman's door, a dead
silence. Then he listened again on the staircase, listened long and
intently... then looked about him for the last time, pulled himself
together, drew himself up, and once more tried the axe in the noose.
"Am I very pale?" he wondered. "Am I not evidently agitated? She is
mistrustful.... Had I better wait a little longer... till my heart
leaves off thumping?"
But his heart did not leave off. On the contrary, as though to spite
him, it throbbed more and more violently. He could stand it no longer,
he slowly put out his hand to the bell and rang. Half a minute later
he rang again, more loudly.
No answer. To go on ringing was useless and out of place. The old
woman was, of course, at home, but she was suspicious and alone. He
had some knowledge of her habits... and once more he put his ear to
the door. Either his senses were peculiarly keen (which it is
difficult to suppose), or the sound was really very distinct.
Anyway, he suddenly heard something like the cautious touch of a
hand on the lock and the rustle of a skirt at the very door. Some
one was standing stealthily close to the lock and just as he was doing
on the outside was secretly listening within, and seemed to have her
ear to the door.... He moved a little on purpose and muttered
something aloud that he might not have the appearance of hiding,
then rang a third time, but quietly, soberly and without impatience,
Recalling it afterwards, that moment stood out in his mind vividly,
distinctly, forever; he could not make out how he had had such
cunning, for his mind was as it were clouded at moments and he was
almost unconscious of his body.... An instant later he heard the latch
unfastened.
CHAPTER_SEVEN
Chapter Seven
-
THE DOOR was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp
and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then
Raskolnikov lost his head and nearly made a great mistake.
Fearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone,
and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he
took hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old woman
from attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the
door back, but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged
her out with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in
the doorway not allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her.
She stepped back in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable
to speak and stared with open eyes at him.
"Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna," he began, trying to speak easily,
but his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. "I have
come... I have brought something... but we'd better come in... to
the light...."
And leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old
woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed.
"Good heavens! What it is? Who is it? What do you want?"
"Why, Alyona Ivanovna, you know me... Raskolnikov... here, I brought
you the pledge I promised the other day..." and he held out the
pledge.
The old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared
in the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously
and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a
sneer in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He
felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so
frightened that if she were to look like that and not say a word for
another half minute, he thought he would have run away from her.
"Why do you look at me as though you did not know me?" he said
suddenly, also with malice. "Take it if you like, if not I'll go
elsewhere, I am in a hurry."
He had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said
of itself. The old woman recovered herself, and her visitor's resolute
tone evidently restored her confidence.
"But why, my good sir, all of a minute.... What is it?" she asked,
looking at the pledge.
"The silver cigarette case; I spoke of it last time, you know."
She held out her hand.
"But how pale you are, to be sure... and your hands are trembling
too? Have you been bathing, or what?"
"Fever," he answered abruptly. "You can't help getting pale... if
you've nothing to eat," he added, with difficulty articulating the
words.
His strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like
the truth; the old woman took the pledge.
"What is it?" she asked once more, scanning Raskolnikov intently,
and weighing the pledge in her hand.
"A thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it."
"It does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!"
Trying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light
(all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left
him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He
unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not
yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand
under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every
moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let
the axe slip and fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.
"But what has he tied it up like this for?" the old woman cried with
vexation and moved towards him.
He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung
it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without
effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her
head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he
had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.
The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair,
streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a
rat's tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the
nape of her neck. As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top
of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all
of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she
still held "the pledge." Then he dealt her another and another blow
with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from
an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall,
and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be
starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were
drawn and contorted convulsively.
He laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in
her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)- the same right hand
pocket from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in
full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness,
but his hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he
had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not
to get smeared with blood.... He pulled out the keys at once, they
were all, as before, in one bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into
the bedroom with them. It was a very small room with a whole shrine of
holy images. Against the other wall stood a big bed, very clean and
covered with a silk patchwork wadded quilt. Against a third wall was a
chest of drawers. Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit the
keys into the chest, so soon as he heard their jingling, a
convulsive shudder passed over him. He suddenly felt tempted again
to give it all up and go away. But that was only for an instant; it
was too late to go back. He positively smiled at himself, when
suddenly another terrifying idea occurred to his mind. He suddenly
fancied that the old woman might be still alive and might recover
her senses. Leaving the keys in the chest, he ran back to the body,
snatched up the axe and lifted it once more over the old woman, but
did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending
down and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the
skull was broken and even battered in on one side. He was about to
feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand and indeed it was
evident without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect pool of blood. All
at once he noticed a string on her neck; he tugged at it, but the
string was strong and did not snap and besides, it was soaked with
blood. He tried to pull it out from the front of the dress, but
something held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience he
raised the axe again to cut the string from above on the body, but did
not dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hand and the axe in the
blood, after two minutes' hurried effort, he cut the string and took
it off without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken- it
was a purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and
one of copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a
small greasy chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The
purse was stuffed very full; Raskolnikov thrust it in his pocket
without looking at it, flung the crosses on the old woman's body and
rushed back into the bedroom, this time taking the axe with him.
He was in terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying
them again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the
locks. It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he
kept making mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not
the right one and would not fit, still he tried to put it in. Suddenly
he remembered and realised that the big key with the deep notches,
which was hanging there with the small keys could not possibly
belong to the chest of drawers (on his last visit this had struck
him), but to some strong box, and that everything perhaps was hidden
in that box. He left the chest of drawers, and at once felt under
the bedstead, knowing that old women usually keep boxes under their
beds. And so it was; there was a good-sized box under the bed, at
least a yard in length, with an arched lid covered with red leather
and studded with steel nails. The notched key fitted at once and
unlocked it. At the top, under a white sheet, was a coat of red
brocade lined with hareskin; under it was a silk dress, then a shawl
and it seemed as though there was nothing below but clothes. The first
thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained hands on the red brocade.
"It's red, and on red blood will be less noticeable," the thought
passed through his mind; then he suddenly came to himself. "Good
God, am I going out of my senses?" he thought with terror.
But no sooner did he touch the clothes than a gold watch slipped
from under the fur coat. He made haste to turn them all over. There
turned out to be various articles made of gold among the
clothes-probably all pledges, unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed-
bracelets, chains, ear-rings, pins and such things. Some were in
cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, carefully and exactly
folded, and tied round with tape. Without any delay, he began
filling up the pockets of his trousers and overcoat without
examining or undoing the parcels and cases; but he had not time to
take many....
He suddenly heard steps in the room where the old woman lay. He
stopped short and was still as death. But all was quiet, so it must
have been his fancy. All at once he heard distinctly a faint cry, as
though some one had uttered a low broken moan. Then again dead silence
for a minute or two. He sat squatting on his heels by the box and
waited holding his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized the axe and
ran out of the bedroom.
In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta with a big bundle in her
arms. She was gazing in stupefaction at her murdered sister, white
as a sheet and seeming not to have the strength to cry out. Seeing him
run out of the bedroom, she began faintly quivering all over, like a
leaf, a shudder ran down her face; she lifted her hand, opened her
mouth, but still did not scream. She began slowly backing away from
him into the corner, staring intently, persistently at him, but
still uttered no sound, as though she could not get breath to
scream. He rushed at her with the axe; her mouth twitched piteously,
as one sees babies' mouths, when they begin to be frightened, stare
intently at what frightens them and are on the point of screaming. And
this hapless Lizaveta was so simple and had been so thoroughly crushed
and scared that she did not even raise a hand to guard her face,
though that was the most necessary and natural action at the moment,
for the axe was raised over her face. She only put up her empty left
hand, but not to her face, slowly holding it out before her as
though motioning him away. The axe fell with the sharp edge just on
the skull and split at one blow all the top of the head. She fell
heavily at once. Raskolnikov completely lost his head, snatched up her
bundle, dropped it again and ran into the entry.
Fear gained more and more mastery over him, especially after this
second, quite unexpected murder. He longed to run away from the
place as fast as possible. And if at that moment he had been capable
of seeing and reasoning more correctly, if he had been able to realise
all the difficulties of his position, the hopelessness, the
hideousness and the absurdity of it, if he could have understood how
many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to
commit, to get out of that place and to make his way home, it is
very possible that he would have flung up everything, and would have
gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and
loathing of what he had done. The feeling of loathing especially
surged up within him and grew stronger every minute. He would not
now have gone to the box or even into the room for anything in the
world.
But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess had begun by degrees to
take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather,
forgot what was of importance, and caught at trifles. Glancing,
however, into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on
a bench, he bethought him of washing his hands and the axe. His
hands were sticky with blood. He dropped the axe with the blade in the
water, snatched a piece of soap that lay in a broken saucer on the
window, and began washing his hands in the bucket. When they were
clean, he took out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time,
about three minutes, washing the wood where there were spots of
blood rubbing them with soap. Then he wiped it all with some linen
that was hanging to dry on a line in the kitchen and then he was a
long while attentively examining the axe at the window. There was no
trace left on it, only the wood was still damp. He carefully hung
the axe in the noose under his coat. Then as far as was possible, in
the dim light in the kitchen, he looked over his overcoat, his
trousers and his boots. At the first glance there seemed to be nothing
but stains on the boots. He wetted the rag and rubbed the boots. But
he knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there might be something
quite noticeable that he was overlooking. He stood in the middle of
the room, lost in thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind-
the idea that he was mad and that at that moment he was incapable of
reasoning, of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing
something utterly different from what he was now doing. "Good God!" he
muttered "I must fly, fly," and he rushed into the entry. But here a
shock of terror awaited him such as he had never known before.
He stood and gazed and could not believe his eyes: the door, the
outer door from the stairs, at which he had not long before waited and
rung, was standing unfastened and at least six inches open. No lock,
no bolt, all the time, all that time! The old woman had not shut it
after him perhaps as a precaution. But, good God! Why, he had seen
Lizaveta afterwards! And how could he, how could he have failed to
reflect that she must have come in somehow! She could not have come
through the wall!
He dashed to the door and fastened the latch.
"But no, the wrong thing again. I must get away, get away...."
He unfastened the latch, opened the door and began listening on
the staircase.
He listened a long time. Somewhere far away, it might be in the
gateway, two voices were loudly and shrilly shouting, quarrelling
and scolding. "What are they about?" He waited patiently. At last
all was still, as though suddenly cut off; they had separated. He
was meaning to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was
noisily opened and some one began going downstairs humming a tune.
"How is it they all make such a noise!" flashed through his mind. Once
more he closed the door and waited. At last all was still, not a
soul stirring. He was just taking a step towards the stairs when he
heard fresh footsteps.
The steps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs,
but he remembered quite clearly and distinctly that from the first
sound he began for some reason to suspect that this was some one
coming there, to the fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were the
sounds somehow peculiar, significant? The steps were heavy, even and
unhurried. Now he had passed the first floor, now he was mounting
higher, it was growing more and more distinct! He could hear his heavy
breathing. And now the third storey had been reached. Coming here! And
it seemed to him all at once that he was turned to stone, that it
was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will
be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one's arms.
At last when the unknown was mounting to the fourth floor, he
suddenly started, and succeeded in slipping neatly and quickly back
into the flat and closing the door behind him. Then he took the hook
and softly, noiselessly, fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him.
When he had done this, he crouched holding his breath, by the door.
The unknown visitor was by now also at the door. They were now
standing opposite one another, as he had just before been standing
with the old woman, when the door divided them and he was listening.
The visitor panted several times. "He must be a big, fat man,"
thought Raskolnikov, squeezing the axe in his hand. It seemed like a
dream indeed. The visitor took hold of the bell and rang loudly.
As soon as the tin bell tinkled, Raskolnikov seemed to be aware of
something moving in the room. For some seconds he listened quite
seriously. The unknown rang again, waited and suddenly tugged
violently and impatiently at the handle of the door. Raskolnikov gazed
in horror at the hook shaking in its fastening, and in blank terror
expected every minute that the fastening would be pulled out. It
certainly did seem possible, so violently was he shaking it. He was
tempted to hold the fastening, but he might be aware of it. A
giddiness came over him again. "I shall fall down!" flashed through
his mind, but the unknown began to speak and he recovered himself at
once.
"What's up? Are they asleep or murdered? D-damn them!" he bawled
in a thick voice, "Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna,
hey, my beauty! open the door! Oh, damn them! Are they asleep or
what?"
And again, enraged, he tugged with all his might a dozen times at
the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate
acquaintance.
At this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the
stairs. Some one else was approaching. Raskolnikov had not heard
them at first.
"You don't say there's no one at home," the new-comer cried in a
cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still
went on pulling the bell. "Good evening, Koch."
"From his voice he must be quite young," thought Raskolnikov.
"Who the devil can tell? I've almost broken the lock," answered
Koch. "But how do you come to know me?
"Why! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at
billiards at Gambrinus'."
"Oh!"
"So they are not at home? That's queer? It's awfully stupid
though. Where could the old woman have gone? I've come on business."
"Yes; and I have business with her, too."
"Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Aie-aie! And I was hoping
to get some money!" cried the young man.
"We must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time
for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It's out
of my way. And where the devil she can have got to, I can't make
out. She sits here from year's end to year's end, the old hag; her
legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!"
"Hadn't we better ask the porter?"
"What?"
"Where she's gone and when she'll be back."
"Hm.... Damn it all!... We might ask.... But you know she never does
go anywhere."
And he once more tugged at the door-handle.
"Damn it all. There's nothing to be done, we must go!"
"Stay!" cried the young man suddenly. "Do you see how the door
shakes if you pull it?"
"Well?"
"That shows it's not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear
how the hook clanks?"
"Well?"
"Why, don't you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If
they were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside
with the key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how
the hook is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at
home, don't you see. So there they are sitting inside and don't open
the door!"
"Well! And so they must be!" cried Koch, astonished. "What are
they about in there!" And he began furiously shaking the door.
"Stay!" cried the young man again. "Don't pull at it! There must
be something wrong..... Here, you've been ringing and pulling at the
door and still they don't open! So either they've both fainted or..."
"What?"
"I tell you what. Let's go fetch the porter, let him wake them up."
"All right."
Both were going down.
"Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter."
"What for?"
"Well, you'd better."
"All right."
"I'm studying the law you see! It's evident, e-vi-dent there's
something wrong here!" the young man cried hotly, and he ran
downstairs.
Koch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one
tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began
touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure
once more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and
panting he bent down and began looking at the keyhole; but the key was
in the lock on the inside and so nothing could be seen.
Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of
delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come
in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several
times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them
through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to
jeer at them, while they could not open the door! "Only make haste!"
was the thought that flashed through his mind.
"But what the devil is he about?..." Time was passing, one minute,
and another- no one came. Koch began to be restless.
"What the devil?" he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting
his sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping his heavy
boots on the stairs. The steps died away.
"Good heavens! What am I to do?"
Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door- there was no
sound. Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing
the door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.
He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice
below- where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going
back to the flat.
"Hey there! Catch the brute!"
Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell
than ran down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.
"Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!"
The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all
was still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast
began noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them.
He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. "They!"
Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling "come
what must!" If they stopped him- all was lost; if they let him pass-
all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they
were only a flight from him- and suddenly deliverance! A few steps
from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide
open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at
work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was
they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only
just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken
pot with paint and brushes. In one instant he had whisked in at the
open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time;
they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on
up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on
tiptoe and ran down the stairs.
No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly
through the gateway and turned to the left in the street.
He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the
flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the
door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the
bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and
completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had
succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They
would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they
were going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much,
though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. "Should
he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown
street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a
cab? Hopeless, hopeless!"
At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than
alive. Here he was half way to safety, and here understood it; it
was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was
lost in it like a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so
weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in
drops, his neck was all wet. "My word, he has been going it!" some one
shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank.
He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he
went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to
the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so
being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though
he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as
to get home from quite a different direction.
He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his
house! he was already on the staircase before he recollected the
axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back
and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of
course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not
to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody's yard.
But it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter's room was
closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter
was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection
that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had
asked him "What do you want?" he would perhaps have simply handed
him the axe. But again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in
putting the axe back under the bench, and even covering it with the
chunk of wood as before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on
the way to his room; the landlady's door was shut. When he was in
his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was- he did not
sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If any one had come into his
room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and
shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not
catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his
efforts....
CHAPTER_ONE
PART TWO
Chapter One
-
SO HE lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up,
and at such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but
it did not occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was
beginning to get light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his
recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the
street, sounds which he heard every night, indeed, under his window
after two o'clock. They woke him up now.
"Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns," he thought,
"it's past two o'clock," and at once he leaped up, as though some
one had pulled him from the sofa.
"What! Past two o'clock!"
He sat down on the sofa- and instantly recollected everything! All
at once, in one flash, he recollected everything.
For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill
came over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long
before in his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering,
so that his teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He
opened the door and began listening; everything in the house was
asleep. With amazement he gazed at himself and everything in the
room around him, wondering how he could have come in the night
before without fastening the door, and have flung himself on the
sofa without undressing, without even taking his hat off. It had
fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow.
"If any one had come in, what would he have thought? That I'm
drunk but..."
He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began
hurriedly looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes;
were there no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering
with cold, he began taking off everything and looking over again. He
turned everything over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting
himself, went through his search three times.
But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where
some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge
of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the
frayed threads. There seemed to be nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken
out of the old woman's box were still in his pockets! He had not
thought till then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not
even thought of them while he was examining his clothes! What next?
Instantly he rushed to take them out, and fling them on the table.
When he had pulled out everything, and turned the pocket inside out to
be sure there was nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the
corner. The paper had come off the bottom of the wall and hung there
in tatters. He began stuffing all the things into the hole under the
paper: "They're in! All out of sight, and the purse too!" he thought
gleefully, getting up and gazing blankly at the hole which bulged
out more than ever. Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror; "My
God!" he whispered in despair: "what's the matter with me? Is that
hidden? Is that the way to hide things?"
He had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had only
thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place.
"But now, now, what am I glad of?" he thought, "Is that hiding
things? My reason's deserting me- simply!"
He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once shaken by
another unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a chair
beside him his old student's winter coat, which was still warm
though almost in rags, covered himself up with it and once more sank
into drowsiness and delirium. He lost consciousness.
Not more than five minutes had passed when he jumped up a second
time, and at once pounced in a frenzy on his clothes again.
"How could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes, yes; I have
not taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing like
that! Such a piece of evidence!"
He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and threw the
bits among his linen under the pillow.
"Pieces of torn linen couldn't rouse suspicion, whatever happened; I
think not, I think not, any way!" he repeated, standing in the
middle of the room, and with painful concentration he fell to gazing
about him again, at the floor and everywhere, trying to make sure he
had not forgotten anything. The conviction, that all his faculties,
even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him,
began to be an insufferable torture.
"Surely it isn't beginning already! Surely it isn't my punishment
coming upon me? It is!"
The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually lying on
the floor in the middle of the room, where any one coming in would see
them!
"What is the matter with me!" he cried again, like one distraught.
Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes
were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many
stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because
his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces... his reason was
clouded.... Suddenly he remembered that there had been blood on the
purse too. "Ah! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I
put the wet purse in my pocket!"
In a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes!- there were
traces, stains on the lining of the pocket!
"So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some
sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself," he thought
triumphantly, with a deep sigh of relief: "It's simply the weakness of
fever, a moment's delirium," and he tore the whole lining out of the
left pocket of his trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on
his left boot; on the sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied
there were traces! He flung off his boots: "traces indeed! The tip
of the sock was soaked with blood"; he must have unwarily stepped into
that pool.... "But what am I to do with this now? Where am I to put
the sock and rags and pocket?"
He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of
the room.
"In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn
them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No,
better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it
away," he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, "and at once, this
minute, without lingering..."
But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy
shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him.
And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the
impulse to "go off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all
away, so that it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once!"
Several times he tried to rise from the sofa but could not.
He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his
door.
"Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!" shouted
Nastasya, banging with her fist on the door. "For whole days
together he's snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell
you. It's past ten."
"Maybe he's not at home," said a man's voice.
"Ha! that's the porter's voice.... What does he want?"
He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a
positive pain.
"Then who can have latched the door?" retorted Nastasya.
"He's taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing!
Open, you stupid, wake up!"
"What do they want? Why the porter? All's discovered. Resist or
open? Come what may!..."
He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.
His room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving
the bed. Yes; the porter and Nastasya were standing there.
Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant
and desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey
folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.
"A notice from the office," he announced, as he gave him the paper.
"From what office?"
"A summons to the police office, of course. You know which office."
"To the police?... What for?..."
"How can I tell? You're sent for, so you go."
The man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and
turned to go away.
"He's downright ill!" observed Nastasya, not taking her eyes off
him. The porter turned his head for a moment. "He's been in a fever
since yesterday," she added.
Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in his hands,
without opening it. "Don't you get up then," Nastasya went on
compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet down from the
sofa. "You're ill, and so don't go; there's no such hurry. What have
you got there?"
He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from
his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been
asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he
remembered that half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this
tightly in his hand and so fallen asleep again.
"Look at the rags he's collected and sleeps with them, as though
he has got hold of a treasure..."
And Nastasya went off into her hysterical giggle.
Instantly he thrust them all under his great coat and fixed his eyes
intently upon her. Far as he was from being capable of rational
reflection at that moment, he felt that no one would behave like
that with a person who was going to be arrested. "But... the police?"
"You'd better have some tea! Yes? I'll bring it, there's some left."
"No... I'm going; I'll go at once," he muttered, getting on to his
feet.
"Why, you'll never get downstairs!"
"Yes, I'll go."
"As you please."
She followed the porter out.
At once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and the rags.
"There are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with dirt,
and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had no suspicion
could distinguish anything. Nastasya from a distance could not have
noticed, thank God!" Then with a tremor he broke the seal of the
notice and began reading; he was a long while reading, before he
understood. It was an ordinary summons from the district police
station to appear that day at half past nine at the office of the
district superintendent.
"But when has such a thing happened? I never have anything to do
with the police! And why just to-day?" he thought in agonising
bewilderment. "Good God, only get it over soon!"
He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into
laughter- not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
He began, hurriedly dressing. "If I'm lost, I am lost, I don't care!
Shall I put the sock on?" he suddenly wondered, "it will get dustier
still and the traces will be gone."
But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in
loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no
other socks, he picked it up and put it on again- and again he
laughed.
"That's all conventional, that's all relative, merely a way of
looking at it," he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface
of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, "there, I've got it on!
I have finished by getting it on!"
But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.
"No, it's too much for me..." he thought. His legs shook. "From
fear," he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever. "It's a trick!
They want to decoy me there and confound me over everything," he
mused, as he went out on to the stairs- "the worst of it is I'm almost
light-headed... I may blurt out something stupid..."
On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the things
just as they were in the hole in the wall, "and very likely, it's on
purpose to search when I'm out," he thought, and stopped short. But he
was possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery, if one may
so call it, that with a wave of his hand he went on. "Only to get it
over!"
In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain
had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks, and mortar, again the
stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the
Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in
his eyes, so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his
head going round- as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out
into the street on a bright sunny day.
When he reached the turning into the street, in an agony of
trepidation he looked down it... at the house... and at once averted
his eyes.
"If they question me, perhaps I'll simply tell," he thought, as he
drew near the police station.
The police station was about a quarter of a mile off. It had
lately been moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a new house.
He had been once for a moment in the old office but long ago.
Turning in at the gateway, he saw on the right a flight of stairs
which a peasant was mounting with a book in his hand. "A house-porter,
no doubt; so then, the office is here," and he began ascending the
stairs on the chance. He did not want to ask questions of any one.
"I'll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything..." he
thought, as he reached the fourth floor.
The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty water. The
kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and stood open almost
the whole day. So there was a fearful smell and heat. The staircase
was crowded with porters going up and down with their books under
their arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The
door of the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting
within. There, too, the heat was stifling and there was a sickening
smell of fresh paint and stale oil from the newly decorated rooms.
After waiting a little, he decided to move forward into the next
room. All the rooms were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience
drew him on and on. No one paid attention to him. In the second room
some clerks sat writing, dressed hardly better than he was, and rather
a queer-looking set. He went up to one of them.
"What is it?"
He showed the notice he had received.
"You are a student?" the man asked, glancing at the notice.
"Yes, formerly a student."
The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest interest. He
was a particularly unkempt person with the look of a fixed idea in his
eye.
"There would be no getting anything out of him, because he has no
interest in anything," thought Raskolnikov.
"Go in there to the head clerk," said the clerk, pointing towards
the furthest room.
He went into that room- the fourth in order; it was a small room and
packed full of people, rather better dressed than in the outer
rooms. Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning,
sat at the table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his
dictation. The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red,
blotchy face, excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom
as big as a saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for
something. Raskolnikov thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The
latter glanced at it, said: "Wait a minute," and went on attending
to the lady in mourning.
He breathed more freely. "It can't be that!"
By degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging himself
to have courage and be calm.
"Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray
myself! Hm... it's a pity there's no air here," he added, "it's
stifling.... It makes one's head dizzier than ever... and one's mind
too..."
He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was afraid of
losing his self-control; he tried to catch at something and fix his
mind on it, something quite irrelevant, but he could not succeed in
this at all. Yet the head clerk greatly interested him, he kept hoping
to see through him and guess something from his face.
He was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a dark mobile
face that looked older than his years. He was fashionably dressed
and foppish, with his hair parted in the middle, well combed and
pomaded, and wore a number of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a
gold chain on his waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to
a foreigner who was in the room, and said them fairly correctly.
"Luise Ivanovna, you can sit down," he said casually to the
gaily-dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as though not
venturing to sit down, though there was a chair beside her.
"Ich danke," said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk
she sank into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with white
lace floated about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost
half the room. She smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed
at filling half the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though
her smile was impudent as well as cringing, it betrayed evident
uneasiness.
The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once, with
some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar
swing of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the
table and sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped
from her seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of
ecstasy; but the officer took not the smallest notice of her, and
she did not venture to sit down again in his presence. He was the
assistant superintendent. He had a reddish moustache that stood out
horizontally on each side of his face, and extremely small features,
expressive of nothing much except a certain insolence. He looked
askance and rather indignantly at Raskolnikov; he was so very badly
dressed, and in spite of his humiliating position, his bearing was
by no means in keeping with his clothes. Raskolnikov had unwarily
fixed a very long and direct look on him, so that he felt positively
affronted.
"What do you want?" he shouted, apparently astonished that such a
ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.
"I was summoned... by a notice..." Raskolnikov faltered.
"For the recovery of money due, from the student," the head clerk
interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. "Here!" and
he flung Raskolnikov a document and pointed out the place. "Read
that!"
"Money? What money?" thought Raskolnikov, "but... then... it's
certainly not that."
And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable
relief. A load was lifted from his back.
"And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?" shouted
the assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and
more aggrieved. "You are told to come at nine, and now it's twelve!"
"The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago,"
Raskolnikov answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he,
too, grew suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. "And it's
enough that I have come here ill with fever."
"Kindly refrain from shouting!"
"I'm not shouting, I'm speaking very quietly, it's you who are
shouting at me. I'm a student, and allow no one to shout at me."
The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first
minute he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his
seat.
"Be silent! You are in a government office. Don't be impudent, sir!"
"You're in a government office, too," cried Raskolnikov, "and you're
smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect
to all of us."
He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.
The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant
superintendent was obviously disconcerted.
"That's not your business!" he shouted at last with unnatural
loudness. "Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him.
Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don't
pay your debts! You're a fine bird!"
But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at
the paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a
second time, and still did not understand.
"What is this?" he asked the head clerk.
"It is for the recovery of money on an I.O.U., a writ. You must
either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written
declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking
not to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal
your property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and
proceed against you according to the law."
"But I... am not in debt to any one!"
"That's not our business. Here, an I.O.U. for a hundred and
fifteen roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been
brought us for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor
Zarnitsyn, nine months ago, and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to
one Mr. Tchebarov. We therefore summon you hereupon."
"But she is my landlady!"
"And what if she is your landlady?"
The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of
compassion, and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a
novice under fire for the first time- as though he would say: "Well,
how do you feel now?" But what did he care now for an I.O.U., for a
writ of recovery! Was that worth worrying about now, was it worth
attention even! He stood, he read, he listened, he answered, he even
asked questions himself, but all mechanically. The triumphant sense of
security, of deliverance from overwhelming danger, that was what
filled his whole soul that moment without thought for the future,
without analysis, without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and
without questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely
instinctive joy. But at that very moment something like a thunderstorm
took place in the office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken
by Raskolnikov's disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to
keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate smart lady,
who had been gazing at him ever since he came in with an exceedingly
silly smile.
"You shameful hussy!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.
(The lady in mourning had left the office.) "What was going on at your
house last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you're a scandal to the
whole street. Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of
correction? Why, I have warned you ten times over that I would not let
you off the eleventh! And here you are again, again, you... you...!"
The paper fell out of Raskolnikov's hands, and he looked wildly at
the smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw
what it meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the
scandal. He listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and
laugh... all his nerves were on edge.
"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but
stopped short, for he knew from experience that the enraged
assistant could not be stopped except by force.
As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the
storm. But strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms
of abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive
the smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily,
and curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of
putting in her word; and at last she found it.
"There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain,"
she pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian
confidently, though with a strong German accent, "and no sort of
scandal, and his honour came drunk, and it's the whole truth I am
telling, Mr. Captain, and I am not to blame.... Mine is an
honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr.
Captain, and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he
came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he
lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and
that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz broke the
piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took
up a bottle and began hitting every one with it. And then I called the
porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the eye; and he
hit Henriette in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the cheek.
And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and I
screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in the
window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of
squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon
him! And Karl pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is
true, Mr. Captain, he tore sein Rock. And then he shouted that man
muss pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr.
Captain, five roubles for sein Rock. And he is an ungentlemanly
visitor and caused all the scandal. 'I will show you up,' he said,
'for I can write to all the papers about you.'"
"Then he was an author?"
"Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an
honourable house...."
"Now then! Enough! I have told you already..."
"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk repeated significantly.
The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly
shook his head.
"... So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna, and I tell
it you for the last time," the assistant went on. "If there is a
scandal in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself
in the lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a
literary man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an
'honourable house'? A nice set, these authors!"
And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. "There was a
scandal the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his
dinner and would not pay; 'I'll write a satire on you,' says he. And
there was another of them on a steamer last week used the most
disgraceful language to the respectable family of a civil
councillor, his wife and daughter. And there was one of them turned
out of a confectioner's shop the other day. They are like that,
authors, literary men, students, town-criers... Pfoo! You get along! I
shall look in upon you myself one day. Then you had better be careful!
Do you hear?"
With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell to curtsying in all
directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door,
she stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh,
open face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the
superintendent of the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise
Ivanovna made haste to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing
little steps, she fluttered out of the office.
"Again thunder and lightning- a hurricane!" said Nikodim Fomitch
to Ilya Petrovitch in a civil and friendly tone. "You are aroused
again, you are fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!"
"Well, what then!" Ilya Petrovitch drawled with gentlemanly
nonchalance; and he walked with some papers to another table, with a
jaunty swing of his shoulders at each step. "Here, if you will
kindly look: an author, or a student, has been one at least, does
not pay his debts, has given an I.O.U., won't clear out of his room,
and complaints are constantly being lodged against him, and here he
has been pleased to make a protest against my smoking in his presence!
He behaves like a cad himself, and just look at him, please. Here's
the gentleman, and very attractive he is!"
"Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like
powder, you can't bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at
something and went too far yourself," continued Nikodim Fomitch,
turning affably to Raskolnikov. "But you were wrong there; he is a
capital fellow, I assure you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot,
fires up, boils over, and no stopping him! And then it's all over! And
at the bottom he's a heart of gold! His nickname in the regiment was
the Explosive Lieutenant...."
"And what a regiment it was, too," cried Ilya Petrovitch, much
gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.
Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally
pleasant to them all. "Excuse me, Captain," he began easily,
suddenly addressing Nikodim Fomitch, "will you enter into my
position.... I am ready to ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered.
I am a poor student, sick and shattered (shattered was the word he
used) by poverty. I am not studying, because I cannot keep myself now,
but I shall get money.... I have a mother and sister in the province
of X. They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a
good-hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost my
lessons, and not paying her for the last four months, that she does
not even send up my dinner... and I don't understand this I.O.U. at
all. She is asking me to pay her on this I.O.U. How am I to pay her?
Judge for yourselves!..."
"But that is not our business, you know," the head clerk was
observing.
"Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain..."
Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying
his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter
persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be
contemptuously oblivious of him. "Allow me to explain that I have been
living with her for nearly three years and at first... at first... for
why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry
her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a
girl... indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her... a
youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean to say, that my landlady
gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of... I was very
heedless..."
"Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we've no time to
waste," Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph;
but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it
exceedingly difficult to speak.
"But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all
happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is
unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained
lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present
quarters, she said to me... and in a friendly way... that she had
complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I.O.U. for
one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said
if only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked,
and that she would never, never- those were her own words- make use of
that I.O.U. till I could pay of myself... and now, when I have lost my
lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What
am I to say to that?"
"All these affecting details are no business of ours." Ilya
Petrovitch interrupted rudely. "You must give a written undertaking
but as for your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have
nothing to do with that."
"Come now... you are harsh," muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting
down at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little
ashamed.
"Write!" said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.
"Write what?" the latter asked, gruffly.
"I will dictate to you."
Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually
and contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly
felt completely indifferent to any one's opinion, and this revulsion
took place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a
little, he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked
to them like that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And
where had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been
filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest
to him, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty
was his heart. A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude
and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul. It was not the
meanness of his sentimental effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor
the meanness of the latter's triumph over him that had caused this
sudden revulsion in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now with his
own baseness, with all these petty vanities, officers, German women,
debts, police offices? If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that
moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly have heard the
sentence to the end. Something was happening to him entirely new,
sudden and unknown. It was not that he understood, but he felt clearly
with all the intensity of sensation that he could never more appeal to
these people in the police office with sentimental effusion like his
recent outburst, or with anything whatever; and that if they had
been his own brothers and sisters and not police officers, it would
have been utterly out of the question to appeal to them in any
circumstance of life. He had never experienced such a strange and
awful sensation. And what was most agonising- it was more a
sensation than a conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most
agonising of all the sensations he had known in his life.
The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration,
that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date,
that he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on.
"But you can't write, you can hardly hold the pen," observed the
head clerk, looking with curiosity at Raskolnikov. "Are you ill?"
"Yes, I am giddy. Go on!"
"That's all. Sign it."
The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others.
Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going
away, he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his
hands. He felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A
strange idea suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up
to Nikodim Fomitch, and tell him everything that had happened
yesterday, and then to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the
things in the hole in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he
got up from his seat to carry it out. "Hadn't I better think a
minute?" flashed through his mind. "No, better cast off the burden
without thinking." But all at once he stood still, rooted to the spot.
Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly with Ilya Petrovitch, and the
words reached him:
"It's impossible, they'll both be released. To begin with, the whole
story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if
it had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a
blind? No, that would be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the
student, was seen at the gate by both the porters and a woman as he
went in. He was walking with three friends, who left him only at the
gate, and he asked the porters to direct him, in the presence of the
friends. Now, would he have asked his way if he had been going with
such an object? As for Koch, he spent half an hour at the
silversmith's below, before he went up to the old woman and he left
him at exactly a quarter to eight. Now just consider..."
"But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state
themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three
minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the
door was unfastened."
"That's just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted
himself in; and they'd have caught him for a certainty if Koch had not
been an ass and gone to look for the porter too. He must have seized
the interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch keeps
crossing himself and saying: "If I had been there, he would have
jumped out and killed me with his axe.' He is going to have a
thanksgiving service- ha, ha!"
"And no one saw the murderer?"
"They might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah's Ark,"
said the head clerk, who was listening.
"It's clear, quite clear," Nikodim Fomitch repeated warmly.
"No, it is anything but clear," Ilya Petrovitch maintained.
Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he
did not reach it....
When he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a
chair, supported by some one on the right side, while some one else
was standing on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow
water, and Nikodim Fomitch standing before him, looking intently at
him. He got up from the chair.
"What's this? Are you ill?" Nikodim Fomitch asked, rather sharply.
"He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing," said the head
clerk, settling back in his place, and taking up his work again.
"Have you been ill long?" cried Ilya Petrovitch from his place,
where he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come
to look at the sick man when he fainted, but retired at once when he
recovered.
"Since yesterday," muttered Raskolnikov in reply.
"Did you go out yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Though you were ill?"
"Yes."
"At what time?"
"About seven."
"And where did you go, my I ask?"
"Along the street."
"Short and clear."
Raskolnikov, white as a handkerchief, had answered sharply, jerkily,
without dropping his black feverish eyes before Ilya Petrovitch's
stare.
"He can scarcely stand upright. And you..." Nikodim Fomitch was
beginning.
"No matter," Ilya Petrovitch pronounced rather peculiarly.
Nikodim Fomitch would have made some further protest, but glancing
at the head clerk who was looking very hard at him, he did not
speak. There was a sudden silence. It was strange.
"Very well, then," concluded Ilya Petrovitch, "we will not detain
you."
Raskolnikov went out. He caught the sound of eager conversation on
his departure, and above the rest rose the questioning voice of
Nikodim Fomitch. In the street, his faintness passed off completely.
"A search- there will be a search at once," he repeated to
himself, hurrying home. "The brutes! they suspect."
His former terror mastered him completely again.
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
"AND WHAT if there has been a search already? What if I find them in
my room?"
But here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one had peeped
in. Even Nastasya had not touched it. But heavens! how could he have
left all those things in the hole?
He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the paper, pulled
the things out and lined his pockets with them. There were eight
articles in all: two little boxes with ear-rings or something of the
sort, he hardly looked to see; then four small leather cases. There
was a chain, too, merely wrapped in newspaper and something else in
newspaper, that looked like a decoration.... He put them all in the
different pockets of his overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his
trousers, trying to conceal them as much as possible. He took the
purse, too. Then he went out of his room, leaving the door open. He
walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt shattered, he had
his senses about him. He was afraid of pursuit, he was afraid that
in another half-hour, another quarter of an hour perhaps, instructions
would be issued for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all
traces before then. He must clear everything up while he still had
some strength, some reasoning power left him.... Where was he to go?
That had long been settled: "Fling them into the canal, and all
traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end." So he had
decided in the night of his delirium when several times he had had the
impulse to get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all.
But to get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He
wandered along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or
more and looked several times at the steps running down to the
water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts
stood at the steps' edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or
boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover
he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would
look suspicious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw
something into the water. And what if the boxes were to float
instead of sinking? And of course they would. Even as it was, every
one he met seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to
do but to watch him. "Why is it, or can it be my fancy?" he thought.
At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to
the Neva. There were not so many people there, he would be less
observed, and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it
was further off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a
good half-hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous part without
thinking of it before. And that half-hour he had lost over an
irrational plan, simply because he had thought of it in delirium! He
had become extremely absent and forgetful and he was aware of it. He
certainly must make haste.
He walked towards the Neva along V___ Prospect, but on the way
another idea struck him. "Why to the Neva? Would it not be better to
go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the
things in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the
spot perhaps?" And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the
idea seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there.
For coming out of V___ Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left
a passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right
hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched
far into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with
it for twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the
left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of
different sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a
low, smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from
behind the hoarding. It was probably a carriage builder's or
carpenter's shed; the whole place from the entrance was black with
coal dust. Here would be the place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing
any one in the yard, he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a
sink, such as is often put in yards where there are many workmen or
cabdrivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk
the time-honoured witticism, "Standing here strictly forbidden."
This was all the better, for there would be nothing suspicious about
his going in. "Here I could throw it all in a heap and get away!"
Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he
noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a
big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the
wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that
part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless some one came
in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was
need of haste.
He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both
hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone
was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his
pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not
filled up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it
back, so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a
very little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it
at the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed.
Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense,
almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the
police office. "I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of
looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever
since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if
it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!" And he
laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous
noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the
square. But when he reached the K___ Boulevard where two days before
he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other
ideas crept into his mind. He felt all at once that it would be
loathsome to pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had
sat and pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that
whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: "Damn
him!"
He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas
now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that
there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing
that point- and for the first time, indeed, during the last two
months.
"Damn it all!" he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury.
"If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how
stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I
fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What
do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at
all! It is not that at all!"
Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple
question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.
"If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if
I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even
glance into the purse and don't know what I had there, for which I
have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this
base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw
into the water the purse together with all the things which I had
not seen either... how's that?"
Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before,
and it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the
night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be,
as though it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known
it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even
yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling
the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes, so it was.
"It is because I am very ill," he decided grimly at last, "I have
been worrying and fretting myself, and I don't know what I am
doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I
have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not
worry.... But what if I don't get well at all? Good God, how sick I am
of it all!"
He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some
distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new
overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him
every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for
everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred.
All who met him were loathsome to him- he loathed their faces, their
movements, their gestures. If any one had addressed him, he felt
that he might have spat at him or bitten him....
He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Neva,
near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. "Why, he lives here, in that
house," he thought, "why, I have not come to Razumihin of my own
accord! Here it's the same thing over again.... Very interesting to
know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by
chance? Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go
and see him the day after; well, and so I will! Besides I really
cannot go further now."
He went up to Razumihin's room on the fifth floor.
The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the
moment, and he opened the door himself. It was four months since
they had seen each other. Razumihin was sitting in a ragged
dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and
unwashed. His face showed surprise.
"Is it you?" he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after
a brief pause, he whistled. "As hard up as all that! Why, brother,
you've cut me out!" he added, looking at Raskolnikov's rags. "Come sit
down, you are tired, I'll be bound."
And when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was in
even worse condition than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his
visitor was ill.
"Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?" He began feeling his
pulse. Raskolnikov pulled away his hand.
"Never mind," he said, "I have come for this; I have no
lessons.... I wanted... but I don't want lessons...."
"But I say! You are delirious, you know!" Razumihin observed,
watching him carefully.
"No, I am not."
Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to
Razumihin's, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend
face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of
all disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with any one in
the wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage
at himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin's threshold.
"Good-bye," he said abruptly, and walked to the door.
"Stop, stop! You queer fish."
"I don't want to," said the other, again pulling away his hand.
"Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this
is... almost insulting! I won't let you go like that."
"Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could
help... to begin... because you are kinder than any one- clever, I
mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear?
Nothing at all... no one's services... no one's sympathy. I am by
myself... alone. Come, that's enough. Leave me alone."
"Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for
all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don't care about
that, but there's a bookseller, Heruvimov- and he takes the place of a
lesson. I would not exchange him for five lessons. He's doing
publishing of a kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a
circulation they have! The very titles are worth the money! You always
maintained that I was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater
fools than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that
he has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here
are two signatures of the German text- in my opinion, the crudest
charlatanism; it discusses the question, 'Is woman a human being?'
And, of course, triumphantly proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to
bring out this work as a contribution to the woman question; I am
translating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures into
six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long and bring it
out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six roubles the
signature, it works out to fifteen roubles for the job, and I've had
six already in advance. When we have finished this, we are going to
begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest
scandals out of the second part of Les Confessions we have marked
for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind
of Radishchev. You may be sure I don't contradict him, hang him! Well,
would you like to do the second signature of 'Is woman a human being?'
If you would, take the German and pens and paper- all those are
provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in
advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your
share. And when you have finished the signature there will be
another three roubles for you. And please don't think I am doing you a
service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you
could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I
am sometimes utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go
along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it's bound to be
a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it's sometimes for
the worse. Will you take it?"
Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took the three
roubles and without a word went out. Razumihin gazed after him in
astonishment. But when Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned
back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin's again and laying on the
table the German article and the three roubles, went out again,
still without uttering a word.
"Are you raving, or what?" Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at
last. "What farce is this? You'll drive me crazy too... what did you
come to see me for, damn you?"
"I don't want... translation," muttered Raskolnikov from the stairs.
"Then what the devil do you want?" shouted Razumihin from above.
Raskolnikov continued descending the staircase in silence.
"Hey, there! Where are you living?"
No answer.
"Well, confound you then!"
But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the
Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an
unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three
times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having
almost fallen under his horses' hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that
he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been
walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily
clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.
"Serves him right!"
"A pickpocket I dare say."
"Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on
purpose; and you have to answer for him."
"It's a regular profession, that's what it is."
But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and
bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he
suddenly felt some one thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was
an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl,
probably her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.
"Take it, my good man, in Christ's name."
He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks.
From his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a
beggar asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty
copecks he doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry
for him.
He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces,
and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was
without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare
in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best
from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the
sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly
distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot
about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now
completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the
distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was
attending the university, he had hundreds of times- generally on his
way home- stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent
spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious
emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous
picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at
his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put
off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old
doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere
chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and
grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before,
as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be
interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested
him... so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it
wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that
seemed to him now- all his old past, his old thoughts, his old
problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and
himself and all, all.... He felt as though he were flying upwards, and
everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious
movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money
in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a
sweep his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home.
It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from every one and from
everything that moment.
Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have
been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not
remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay
down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into
oblivion....
It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what
a scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding,
tears, blows and curses he had never heard.
He could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In
terror he sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting,
wailing and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense
amazement he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling,
shrieking and wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he
could not make out what she was talking about; she was beseeching,
no doubt, not to be beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on
the stairs. The voice of her assailant was so horrible from spite
and rage that it was almost a croak; but he, too, was saying
something, and just as quickly and indistinctly, hurrying and
spluttering. All at once Raskolnikov trembled; he recognized the
voice- it was the voice of Ilya Petrovitch. Ilya Petrovitch here and
beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against
the steps- that's clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the
cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could
hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the
staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging.
"But why, why, and how could it be?" he repeated, thinking seriously
that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they
would come to him then next, "for no doubt... it's all about that...
about yesterday.... Good God!" He would have fastened his door with
the latch, but he could not lift his hand... besides, it would be
useless. Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed
him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten
minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and
groaning; Ilya Petrovitch was still uttering threats and curses....
But at last he, too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be
heard. "Can he have gone away? Good Lord!" Yes, and now the landlady
is going too, still weeping and moaning... and then her door
slammed.... Now the crowd was going from the stairs to their rooms,
exclaiming, disputing, calling to one another, raising their voices to
a shout, dropping them to a whisper. There must have been numbers of
them- almost all the inmates of the block. "But, good God, how could
it be! And why, why had he come here!"
Raskolnikov sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes.
He lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation
of infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a
bright light flashed into his room. Nastasya came in with a candle and
a plate of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was
not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out
what she had brought- bread, salt, a plate, a spoon.
"You've eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You've been
trudging about all day, and you're shaking with fever."
"Nastasya... what were they beating the landlady for?"
She looked intently at him.
"Who beat the landlady?"
"Just now... half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovitch, the
assistant-superintendent, on the stairs.... Why was he ill-treating
her like that, and... why was he here?"
Nastasya scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny
lasted a long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching
eyes.
"Nastasya, why don't you speak?" he said timidly at last in a weak
voice.
"It's the blood," she answered at last softly, as though speaking to
herself.
"Blood? What blood?" he muttered, growing white and turning
towards the wall.
Nastasya still looked at him without speaking.
"Nobody has been beating the landlady," she declared at last in a
firm, resolute voice.
He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.
"I heard it myself.... I was not asleep... I was sitting up," he
said still more timidly. "I listened a long while. The
assistant-superintendent came.... Every one ran out on to the stairs
from all the flats."
"No one has been here. That's the blood crying in your ears. When
there's no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying
things.... Will you eat something?"
He made no answer. Nastasya still stood over him, watching him.
"Give me something to drink... Nastasya."
She went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of
water. He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and
spilling some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.
CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
HE WAS not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill;
he was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half
conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it
seemed as though there were a number of people round him; they
wanted to take him away somewhere, there was a great deal of
squabbling and discussing about him. Then he would be alone in the
room; they had all gone away afraid of him, and only now and then
opened the door a crack to look at him; they threatened him, plotted
something together, laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered Nastasya
often at his bedside; he distinguished another person, too, whom he
seemed to know very well, though he could not remember who he was, and
this fretted him, even made him cry. Sometimes he fancied he had
been lying there a month; at other times it all seemed part of the
same day. But of that- of that he had no recollection, and yet every
minute he felt that he had forgotten something he ought to remember.
He worried and tormented himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into
a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror. Then he struggled to
get up, would have run away, but some one always prevented him by
force, and he sank back into impotence and forgetfulness. At last he
returned to complete consciousness.
It happened at ten o'clock in the morning. On fine days the sun
shone into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the
right wall and the corner near the door. Nastasya was standing
beside him with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking
at him very inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing
a full, short-waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The
landlady was peeping in at the half-opened door. Raskolnikov sat up.
"Who is this, Nastasya?" he asked, pointing to the young man.
"I say, he's himself again!" she said.
"He is himself," echoed the man.
Concluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed
the door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations
or discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking,
fat and buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness
and laziness, and absurdly bashful.
"Who... are you?" he went on, addressing the man. But at that moment
the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so tall,
Razumihin came in.
"What a cabin it is!" he cried. "I am always knocking my head. You
call this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I've just heard
the news from Pashenka."
"He has just come to," said Nastasya.
"Just come to," echoed the man again, with a smile.
"And who are you?" Razumihin asked, suddenly addressing him. "My
name is Vrazumihin, at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always
called, but Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman; and he is my
friend. And who are you?"
"I am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Shelopaev,
and I've come on business."
"Please sit down." Razumihin seated himself on the other side of the
table. "It's a good thing you've come to, brother," he went on to
Raskolnikov. "For the last four days you have scarcely eaten or
drunk anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought
Zossimov to see you twice. You remember Zossimov? He examined you
carefully and said at once it was nothing serious- something seemed to
have gone to your head. Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad
feeding, he says you have not had enough beer and radish, but it's
nothing much, it will pass and you will be all right. Zossimov is a
first-rate fellow! He is making quite a name. Come, I won't keep you,"
he said, addressing the man again. "Will you explain what you want?
You must know, Rodya, this is the second time they have sent from
the office; but it was another man last time, and I talked to him. Who
was it came before?"
"That was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please,
sir. That was Alexey Semyonovitch; he is in our office, too."
"He was more intelligent than you, don't you think so?"
"Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am."
"Quite so; go on."
"At your mamma's request, through Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of
whom I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent
to you from our office," the man began, addressing Raskolnikov. "If
you are in an intelligible condition, I've thirty-five roubles to
remit to you, as Semyon Semyonovitch has received from Afanasy
Ivanovitch at your mamma's request instructions to that effect, as
on previous occasions. Do you know him, sir?"
"Yes, I remember... Vahrushin," Raskolnikov said dreamily.
"You hear, he knows Vahrushin," cried Razumihin. "He is in 'an
intelligible condition'! And I see you are an intelligent man too.
Well, it's always pleasant to hear words of wisdom."
"That's the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy Ivanovitch. And at the
request of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in
the same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and
sent instructions to Semyon Semyonovitch some days since to hand you
thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come."
"That 'hoping for better to come' is the best thing you've said,
though 'your mamma' is not bad either. Come then, what do you say?
Is he fully conscious, eh?"
"That's all right. If only he can sign this little paper."
"He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?"
"Yes, here's the book."
"Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I'll hold you. Take the pen and
scribble 'Raskolnikov' for him. For just now, brother, money is
sweeter to us than treacle."
"I don't want it," said Raskolnikov, pushing away the pen.
"Not want it?"
"I won't sign it."
"How the devil can you do without signing it?"
"I don't want... the money."
"Don't want the money! Come, brother, that's nonsense, I bear
witness. Don't trouble, please, it's only that he is on his travels
again. But that's pretty common with him at all times though.... You
are a man of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more
simply, take his hand and he will sign it. Here."
"But I can come another time."
"No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment....
Now, Rodya, don't keep your visitor, you see he is waiting," and he
made ready to hold Raskolnikov's hand in earnest.
"Stop, I'll do it alone," said the latter, taking the pen and
signing his name.
The messenger took out the money and went away.
"Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?"
"Yes," answered Raskolnikov.
"Is there any soup?"
"Some of yesterday's," answered Nastasya, who was still standing
there.
"With potatoes and rice in it?"
"Yes."
"I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea."
"Very well."
Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound astonishment and a
dull, unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see
what would happen. "I believe I am not wandering. I believe it's
reality," he thought.
In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with the soup, and
announced that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she
brought two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef,
and so on. The table was set as it had not been for a long time. The
cloth was clean.
"It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya Pavlovna were to send
us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them."
"Well, you are a cool hand," muttered Nastasya, and she departed
to carry out his orders.
Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile
Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put
his left arm round Raskolnikov's head, although he was able to sit up,
and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it
that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm.
Raskolnikov swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a
third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin
suddenly stopped, and said that he must ask Zossimov whether he
ought to have more.
Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.
"And will you have tea?"
"Yes."
"Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture
on without the faculty. But here is the beer!" He moved back to his
chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as
though he had not touched food for three days.
"I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this here every day now," he
mumbled with his mouth full of beef, "and it's all Pashenka, your dear
little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me.
I don't ask for it, but, of course, I don't object. And here's
Nastasya with the tea. She is a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won't
you have some beer?"
"Get along with your nonsense!"
"A cup of tea, then?"
"A cup of tea, maybe."
"Pour it out. Stay, I'll pour it out myself. Sit down."
He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa
again. As before, he put his left arm round the sick man's head,
raised him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each
spoonful steadily and earnestly, as though this process was the
principal and most effective means towards his friend's recovery.
Raskolnikov said nothing and made no resistance, though he felt
quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa without support and could
not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have
walked about. But from some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived
the idea of hiding his strength and lying low for a time, pretending
if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and
meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not
overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of
tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away
capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real
pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed
that, too, and took note of it.
"Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some
raspberry tea," said Razumihin, going back to his chair and
attacking his soup and beer again.
"And where is she to get raspberries for you?" asked Nastasya,
balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea
through a lump of sugar.
"She'll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Rodya, all sorts of
things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you
decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt
so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work
that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This
lodging of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it,
indeed, because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I
could only remember it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov's house. I
kept trying to find that Harlamov's house, and afterwards it turned
out that it was not Harlamov's, but Buch's. How one muddles up sound
sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the
address bureau next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked
you up! Your name is down there."
"My name!"
"I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find
while I was there. Well, it's a long story. But as soon as I did
land on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs- all, all,
brother, I know everything; Nastasya here will tell you. I made the
acquaintance of Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and the
house-porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the head clerk
in the police office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka;
Nastasya here knows...."
"He's got round her," Nastasya murmured, smiling slyly.
"Why don't you put the sugar in your tea, Nastasya Nikiforovna?"
"You are a one!" Nastasya cried suddenly, going off into a giggle.
"I am not Nikiforovna, but Petrovna," she added suddenly, recovering
from her mirth.
"I'll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story
short, I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all
malignant influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I
had not expected, brother, to find her so... prepossessing. Eh, what
do you think?"
Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon
him, full of alarm.
"And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,"
Razumihin went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.
"Ah, the sly dog!" Nastasya shrieked again. This conversation
afforded her unspeakable delight.
"It's a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way
at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so
to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her
character later.... How could you let things come to such a pass
that she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I.O.U.? You must
have been mad to sign an I.O.U. And that promise of marriage when
her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive?... I know all about it!
But I see that's a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But,
talking of foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly
so foolish as you would think at first sight?"
"No," mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away, but feeling that it was
better to keep up the conversation.
"She isn't, is she?" cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out
of him. "But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially,
essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a
loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is
thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I
judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of
view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of
algebra or what not! I don't understand it! Well, that's all nonsense.
Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons
and your clothes, and that through the young lady's death she has no
need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as
you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she
planned to get rid of you. And she's been cherishing that design a
long time, but was sorry to lose the I.O.U. for you assured her
yourself that your mother would pay."
"It was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost a
beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,"
Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.
"Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that
point Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never
have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too
retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first
thing he puts the question, 'Is there any hope of realising the
I.O.U.?' Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save
her Rodya with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has
to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for
his sake. That's what he was building upon.... Why do you start? I
know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy- it's not
for nothing that you were so open with Pashenka when you were her
prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend.... But I
tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a
business man 'listens and goes on eating' you up. Well, then she
gave the I.O.U. by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without
hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all
this I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that
time harmony reigned between me and Pashenka, and I insisted on
stopping the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went
security for you, brother. Do you understand? We called Tchebarov,
flung him ten roubles and got the I.O.U. back from him, and here I
have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts your word now.
Here, take it, you see I have torn it."
Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov looked at him and
turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a
twinge.
"I see, brother," he said a moment later, "that I have been
playing the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my
chatter, and I believe I have only made you cross."
"Was it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?" Raskolnikov
asked, after a moment's pause without turning his head.
"Yes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought
Zametov one day."
"Zametov? The head clerk? What for?" Raskolnikov turned round
quickly and fixed his eyes on Razumihin.
"What's the matter with you?... What are you upset about? He
wanted to make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about
you.... How could I have found out so much except from him? He is a
capital fellow, brother, first-rate... in his own way, of course.
Now we are friends- see each other almost every day. I have moved into
this part, you know. I have only just moved. I've been with him to
Luise Ivanovna once or twice.... Do you remember Luise, Luise
Ivanovna?
"Did I say anything in delirium?"
"I should think so! You were beside yourself."
"What did I rave about?"
"What next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about....
Well, brother, now I must not lose time. To work." He got up from
the table and took up his cap.
"What did I rave about?"
"How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret?
Don't worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you
said a lot about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and
about Krestovsky Island, and some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya
Petrovitch, the assistant superintendent. And another thing that was
of special interest to you was your own sock. You whined, 'Give me
my sock.' Zametov hunted all about your room for your socks, and
with his own scented, ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And
only then were you comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you
held the wretched thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It
is most likely somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you
asked so piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find
out what sort of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to
business! Here are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and
shall give you an account of them in an hour or two. I will let
Zossimov know at the same time, though he ought to have been here long
ago, for it is nearly twelve. And you, Nastasya, look in pretty
often while I am away, to see whether he wants a drink or anything
else. And I will tell Pashenka what is wanted myself. Good-bye!"
"He calls her Pashenka! Ah, he's a deep one!" said Nastasya as he
went out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could
not resist running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear
what he would say to the landlady. She was evidently quite
fascinated by Razumihin.
No sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the
bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, switching
impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to
work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.
"Good God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not?
What if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am
laid up, and then they will come in and tell me that it's been
discovered long ago and that they have only... What am I to do now?
That's what I've forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all
at once, I remembered a minute ago."
He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable
bewilderment about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened;
but that was not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling
something, he rushed to the corner where there was a hole under the
paper, began examining it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled- but
that was not it. He went to the stove, opened it and began rummaging
in the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers and the rags cut off
his pocket were lying there just as he had thrown them. No one had
looked, then! Then he remembered, the sock about which Razumihin had
just been telling him. Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the
quilt, but it was so covered with dust and grime that Zametov could
not have seen anything on it.
"Bah, Zametov! The police office! And why am I sent for to the
police office? Where's the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was
then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now... now I have been ill.
But what did Zametov come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?" he
muttered, helplessly sitting on the sofa again. "What does it mean? Am
I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I
remember, I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must
escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I've no boots.
They've taken them away! They've hidden them! I understand! Ah, here
is my coat- they passed that over! And here is money on the table,
thank God! And here's the I.O.U.... I'll take the money and go and
take another lodging. They won't find me!... Yes, but the address
bureau? They'll find me, Razumihin will find me. Better escape
altogether... far away... to America, and let them do their worst! And
take the I.O.U.... it would be of use there.... What else shall I
take? They think I am ill! They don't know that I can walk,
ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it! If
only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch
there- policemen! What's this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a
bottle, cold!"
He snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer,
and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his
breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a
faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and
pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew
more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came
upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head in the pillow,
wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had
replaced the old, ragged great-coat, sighed softly and sank into a
deep, sound, refreshing sleep.
He woke up, hearing some one come in. He opened his eyes and saw
Razumihin standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or
not. Raskolnikov sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as
though trying to recall something.
"Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Nastasya, bring in the
parcel!" Razumihin shouted down the stairs. "You shall have the
account directly."
"What time is it?" asked Raskolnikov, looking round uneasily.
"Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it's almost evening, it will be
six o'clock directly. You have slept more than six hours."
"Good heaven! Have I?"
"And why not? It will do you good. What's the hurry? A tryst, is it?
We've all time before us. I've been waiting for the last three hours
for you; I've been up twice and found you asleep. I've called on
Zossimov twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn
up. And I've been out on my own business, too. You know I've been
moving to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me
now. But that's no matter, to business. Give me the parcel,
Nastasya. We will open it directly. And how do you feel now, brother?"
"I am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin, have you been here long?"
"I tell you I've been waiting for the last three hours."
"No, before."
"How do you mean?"
"How long have you been coming here?"
"Why I told you all about it this morning. Don't you remember?"
Raskolnikov pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He
could not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.
"Hm!" said the latter, "he has forgotten. I fancied then that you
were not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You
really look much better. First rate! Well, to business. Look here,
my dear boy."
He began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him.
"Believe me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For
we must make a man of you. Let's begin from the top. Do you see this
cap?" he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good, though cheap,
and ordinary cap. "Let me try it on."
"Presently, afterwards," said Raskolnikov, waving it of pettishly.
"Come, Rodya, my boy, don't oppose it, afterwards will be too
late; and I shan't sleep all night, for I bought it by guess,
without measure. Just right!" he cried triumphantly, fitting it on,
"just your size! A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress
and a recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine,
is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into
any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People
think he does it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he
is ashamed of his bird's nest; he is such a bashful fellow! Look,
Nastasya, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"- he
took from the corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some
unknown reason, he called a Palmerston- "or this jewel! Guess the
price, Rodya, what do you suppose I paid for it, Nastasya!" he said,
turning to her, seeing that Raskolnikov did not speak.
"Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say," answered Nastasya.
"Twenty copecks, silly!" he cried, offended. "Why, nowadays you
would cost more than that- eighty copecks! And that only because it
has been worn. And it's bought on condition that when's it's worn out,
they will give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let
us pass to the United States of America, as they called them at
school. I assure you I am proud of these breeches," and he exhibited
to Raskolnikov a pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen
material. "No holes, no spots, and quite respectable, although a
little worn; and a waistcoat to match, quite in the fashion. And its
being worn really is an improvement, it's softer, smoother.... You
see, Rodya, to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the
world is always to keep to the seasons; if you don't insist on
having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse! and
it's the same with this purchase. It's summer now, so I've been buying
summer things- warmer materials will be wanted for autumn, so you will
have to throw these away in any case... especially as they will be
done for by then from their own lack of coherence if not your higher
standard of luxury. Come, price them! What do you say? Two roubles
twenty-five copecks! And remember the conditions: if you wear these
out, you will have another suit for nothing! They only do business
on that system at Fedyaev's; if you've bought a thing once, you are
satisfied for life, for you will never go there again of your own free
will. Now for the boots. What do you say? You see that they are a
bit worn, but they'll last a couple of months, for it's foreign work
and foreign leather; the secretary of the English Embassy sold them
last week- he had only worn them six days, but he was very short of
cash. Price- a rouble and a half. A bargain?"
"But perhaps they won't fit," observed Nastasya.
"Not fit? Just look!" and he pulled out of his pocket
Raskolnikov's old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. "I did
not go empty-handed- they took the size from this monster. We all
did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that.
Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable
front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles
twenty-five copecks the suit- together three roubles five copecks- a
rouble and a half for the boots- for, you see, they are very good- and
that makes four roubles fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the
underclothes- they were bought in the lot- which makes exactly nine
roubles fifty-five copecks. Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will
you take it? And so, Rodya, you are set up with a complete new
rig-out, for your overcoat will serve, and even has a style of its
own. That comes from getting one's clothes from Sharmer's! As for your
socks and other things, I leave them to you; we've twenty-five roubles
left. And as for Pashenka and paying for your lodging, don't you
worry. I tell you she'll trust you for anything. And now, brother, let
me change your linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness
with your shirt."
"Let me be! I don't want to!" Raskolnikov waved him off. He had
listened with disgust to Razumihin's efforts to be playful about his
purchases.
"Come, brother, don't tell me I've been trudging around for
nothing," Razumihin insisted. "Nastasya, don't be bashful, but help
me- that's it," and in spite of Raskolnikov's resistance he changed
his linen. The latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two
said nothing.
"It will be long before I get rid of them," he thought. "What
money was all that bought with?" he asked at last, gazing at the wall.
"Money? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Vahrushin,
your mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?"
"I remember now," said Raskolnikov after a long, sullen silence.
Razumihin looked at him, frowning and uneasy.
The door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed
familiar to Raskolnikov came in.
"Zossimov! At last!" cried Razumihin, delighted.
CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
ZOSSIMOV WAS a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless,
clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and
a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a
light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and
everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and able, his
linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he
was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time
studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his
self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his
acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at his work.
"I've been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he's come to
himself," cried Razumihin.
"I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?" said Zossimov to
Raskolnikov, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of
the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could.
"He is still depressed," Razumihin went on. "We've just changed
his linen and he almost cried."
"That's very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish
it.... His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?"
"I am well, I am perfectly well!" Raskolnikov declared positively
and irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with
glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned
to the wall. Zossimov watched him intently.
"Very good.... Going on all right," he said lazily. "Has he eaten
anything?"
They told him, and asked what he might have.
"He may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms and cucumbers, of
course, you must not give him; he'd better not have meat either,
and... but no need to tell you that!" Razumihin and he looked at
each other. "No more medicine or anything. I'll look at him again
to-morrow. Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind..."
"To-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk," said Razumihin. "We
are going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de Crystal."
"I would not disturb him to-morrow at all, but I don't know... a
little, maybe... but we'll see."
"Ach, what a nuisance! I've got a house-warming party tonight;
it's only a step from here. Couldn't he come? He could lie on the
sofa. You are coming?" Razumihin said to Zossimov. "Don't forget,
you promised."
"All right, only rather later. What are you going to do?"
"Oh, nothing- tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie... just
our friends."
"And who?"
"All neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle,
and he is new too- he only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see to
some business of his. We meet once in five years."
"What is he?"
"He's been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets
a little pension. He is sixty-five- not worth talking about.... But
I am fond of him. Porfiry Petrovitch, the head of the Investigation
Department here... But you know him."
"Is he a relation of yours, too?"
"A very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you
quarrelled once, won't you come then?"
"I don't care a damn for him."
"So much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a
government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zametov."
"Do tell me, please, what you or he"- Zossimov nodded at
Raskolnikov- "can have in common with this Zametov?"
"Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by
principles, as it were by springs; you won't venture to turn round
on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that's the only
principle I go upon, Zametov is a delightful person."
"Though he does take bribes."
"Well, he does! and what of it? I don't care if he does take
bribes," Razumihin cried with unnatural irritability. "I don't
praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own
way! But if one looks at men in all ways- are there many good ones
left? Why, I am sure I shouldn't be worth a baked onion myself...
perhaps with you thrown in."
"That's too little; I'd give two for you."
"And I wouldn't give more than one for you. No more of your jokes!
Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw
him not repel him. You'll never improve a man by repelling him,
especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you
progressive dullards! You don't understand. You harm yourselves
running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have
something in common."
"I should like to know what."
"Why, it's all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of a
mess! Though indeed there's nothing to fear now. The matter is
absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam."
"A painter?"
"Why, haven't I told you about it? I only told you the beginning
then about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter
is mixed up in it..."
"Oh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in
it... partly... for one reason.... I read about it in the papers,
too...."
"Lizaveta was murdered, too," Nastasya blurted out, suddenly
addressing Raskolnikov. She remained in the room all the time,
standing by the door listening.
"Lizaveta," murmured Raskolnikov hardly audibly.
"Lizaveta, who sold old clothes. Didn't you know her? She used to
come here. She mended a shirt for you, too."
Raskolnikov turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he
picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began
examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the
petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as
lifeless as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to
move, but stared obstinately at the flower.
"But what about the painter?" Zossimov interrupted Nastasya's
chatter with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent.
"Why, he was accused of the murder," Razumihin went on hotly.
"Was there evidence against him then?"
"Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that's what we
have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Koch
and Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly it's all done, it makes
one sick, though it's not one's business! Pestryakov may be coming
to-night.... By the way, Rodya, you've heard about the business
already; it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted
at the police office while they were talking about it."
Zossimov looked curiously at Raskolnikov. He did not stir.
"But I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!"
Zossimov observed.
"Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway," shouted Razumihin,
bringing his fist down on the table. "What's the most offensive is not
their lying- one can always forgive lying- lying is a delightful
thing, for it leads to truth- what is offensive is that they lie and
worship their own lying.... I respect Porfiry, but... What threw
them out at first? The door was locked, and when they came back with
the porter it was open. So it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were
the murderers- that was their logic!"
"But don't excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could
not help that.... And, by the way, I've met that man Koch. He used
to buy unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?"
"Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a
profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me
angry? It's their sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this
case might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from
the psychological data alone how to get on the track of the real
man. 'We have facts,' they say. But facts are not everything- at least
half the business lies in how you interpret them!"
"Can you interpret them, then?"
"Anyway, one can't hold one's tongue when one has a feeling, a
tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do you know
the details of the case?"
"I am waiting to hear about the painter."
"Oh, yes! Well, here's the story. Early on the third day after the
murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov- though they
accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff-
an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a
dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a
jeweller's case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long
rigamarole. 'The day before yesterday, just after eight o'clock'- mark
the day and the hour!- 'a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had
been in to see me already that day, brought me this box of gold
ear-rings and stones, and asked me to give him two roubles for them.
When I asked him where he got them, he said that he picked them up
in the street. I did not ask him anything more.' I am telling you
Dushkin's story. 'I gave him a note'- a rouble that is- 'for I thought
if he did not pawn it with me he would with another. It would all come
to the same thing- he'd spend it on drink, so the thing had better
be with me. The further you hide it the quicker you will find it,
and if anything turns up, if I hear any rumours, I'll take it to the
police.' Of course, that's all taradiddle; he lies like a horse, for I
know this Dushkin, he is a pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen
goods, and he did not cheat Nikolay out of a thirty-rouble trinket
in order to give it to the police. He was simply afraid. But no
matter, to return to Dushkin's story. 'I've known this peasant,
Nikolay Dementyev, from a child; he comes from the same province and
district of Zaraisk, we are both Ryazan men. And though Nikolay is not
a drunkard, he drinks, and I knew he had a job in that house, painting
work with Dmitri, who comes from the same village, too. As soon as
he got the rouble he changed it, had a couple of glasses, took his
change and went out. But I did not see Dmitri with him then. And the
next day I heard that some one had murdered Alyona Ivanovna and her
sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna, with an axe. I knew them, and I felt
suspicious about the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered
woman lent money on pledges. I went to the house, and began to make
careful inquiries without saying a word to any one. First of all I
asked, "Is Nikolay here?" Dmitri told me that Nikolay had gone off
on the spree; he had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed in the
house about ten minutes, and went out again. Dmitri didn't see him
again and is finishing the job alone. And their job is on the same
staircase as the murder, on the second floor. When I heard all that
I did not say a word to any one'- that's Dushkin's tale- 'but I
found out what I could about the murder, and went home feeling as
suspicious as ever. And at eight o'clock this morning'- that was the
third day, you understand- 'I saw Nikolay coming in, not sober, though
not so very drunk- he could understand what was said to him. He sat
down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one stranger in
the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two boys. "Have you
seen Dmitri?" said I. "No, I haven't," said he. "And you've not been
here either?" "Not since the day before yesterday," said he. "And
where did you sleep last night?" "In Peski, with the Kolomensky
men." "And where did you get those ear-rings?" I asked. "I found
them in the street," and the way he said it was a bit queer; he did
not look at me. "Did you hear what happened that very evening, at that
very hour, on that same staircase?" said I. "No," said he, "I had
not heard," and all the while he was listening, his eyes were
staring out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I told him
all about it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted to
keep him. "Wait a bit, Nikolay," said I, "won't you have a drink?" And
I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the
bar; but he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run.
I have not seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end- it was his
doing, as clear as could be...."
"I should think so," said Zossimov.
"Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay;
they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was
arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the
day before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of
the town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and
asked for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards
the woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw
in the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam,
stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose.
The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. 'So that's what you
are up to!' 'Take me,' he says, 'to such-and-such a police officer;
I'll confess everything.' Well, they took him to that police
station- that is here- with a suitable escort. So they asked him
this and that, how old he is, 'twenty-two,' and so on. At the
question, 'When you were working with Dmitri, didn't you see any one
on the staircase at such-and-such a time?'- answer: 'To be sure
folks may have gone up and down, but I did not notice them.' 'And
didn't you hear anything, any noise, and so on?' 'We heard nothing
special.' 'And did you hear, Nikolay, that on the same day Widow
So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?' 'I never knew a
thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch
the day before yesterday.' 'And where did you find the ear-rings?'
'I found them on the pavement. "Why didn't you go to work with
Dmitri the other day?' 'Because I was drinking.' 'And where were you
drinking?' 'Oh, in such-and-such a place.' 'Why did you run away
from Dushkin's?' 'Because I was awfully frightened.' 'What were you
frightened of?' 'That I should be accused.' 'How could you be
frightened, if you felt free from guilt?' Now, Zossimov, you may not
believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know
it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to
that?"
"Well, anyway, there's the evidence."
"I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that
question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed
and squeezed him and he confessed: 'I did not find it in the street,
but in the flat where I was painting with Dmitri.' 'And how was that?'
'Why, Dmitri and I were painting there all day, and we were just
getting ready to go, and Dmitri took a brush and painted my face,
and he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my
hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the
porter and some gentlemen- and how many gentlemen were there I don't
remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too,
and the porter's wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a
gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too,
for Dmitri and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Dmitri's hair
and knocked him down and began beating him. And Dmitri, too, caught me
by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper,
but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Dmitri escaped and ran into
the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went
back to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting
them together, expecting Dmitri to come, and there in the passage,
in the corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying
there wrapped up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little
hooks, undid them, and in the box were the ear-rings....'"
"Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?"
Raskolnikov cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at
Razumihin, and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.
"Yes... why? What's the matter? What's wrong?" Razumihin, too, got
up from his seat.
"Nothing," Raskolnikov answered faintly, turning to the wall. All
were silent for a while.
"He must have waked from a dream," Razumihin said at last, looking
inquiringly at Zossimov. The latter slightly shook his head.
"Well, go on," said Zossimov. "What next?"
"What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Dmitri and
everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got
a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street,
and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the
murder: 'I knew nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before
yesterday.' 'And why didn't you come to the police till now?' 'I was
frightened.' 'And why did you try to hang yourself?' 'From anxiety.'
'What anxiety?' 'That I should be accused of it.' Well, that's the
whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?"
"Why, there's no supposing. There's a clue, such as it is, a fact.
You wouldn't have your painter set free?"
"Now they've simply taken him for the murderer. They haven't a
shadow of doubt."
"That's nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You
must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the
old woman's box have come into Nikolay's hands, they must have come
there somehow. That's a good deal in such a case."
"How did they get there? How did they get there?" cried Razumihin.
"How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more
opportunity than any one else for studying human nature- how can you
fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don't you see
at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the
holy truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us- he
stepped on the box and picked it up."
"The holy truth! But didn't he own himself that he told a lie at
first?"
"Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and
Pestryakov and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and
the woman who was sitting in the porter's lodge and the man Kryukov,
who had just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the
entry with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree
that Nikolay had Dmitri on the ground, was lying on him beating him,
while Dmitri hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right
across the way, blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all
sides while they 'like children' (the very words of the witnesses)
were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with
the funniest faces, and, chasing one another like children, they ran
into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm,
you understand, warm when they found them! If they, or Nikolay
alone, had murdered them and broken open the boxes, or simply taken
part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one question: do their
state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish scuffling at the
gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They'd
just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies
were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that
people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they
rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention.
And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!"
"Of course it is strange! It's impossible, indeed, but..."
"No, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings' being found in
Nikolay's hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes
an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him- although
the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does
not tell seriously against him- one must take into consideration the
facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that
cannot be denied. And do you suppose, from the character of our
legal system, that they will accept, or that they are in a position to
accept, this fact- resting simply on a psychological impossibility- as
irrefutable and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence
for the prosecution? No, they won't accept it, they certainly won't,
because they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself,
'which he could not have done if he hadn't felt guilty.' That's the
point, that's what excites me, you must understand!"
"Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what
proof is there that the box came from the old woman?"
"That's been proved," said Razumihin with apparent reluctance,
frowning. "Koch recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the
owner, who proved conclusively that it was his."
"That's bad. Now another point. Did any one see Nikolay at the
time that Koch and Pestryakov were going upstairs at first, and is
there no evidence about that?"
"Nobody did see him," Razumihin answered with vexation. "That's
the worst of it. Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them on their
way upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth
much. They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be
work going on in it, but they took no special notice and could not
remember whether there actually were men at work in it."
"Hm!... So the only evidence for the defence is that they were
beating one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong
presumption, but... How do you explain the facts yourself?"
"How do I explain them? What is there to explain? It's clear. At any
rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and
the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those
ear-rings. The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and
Pestryakov knocked at the door. Koch, like an ass, did not stay at the
door; so the murderer popped out and ran down, too, for he had no
other way of escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in
the flat when Nikolay and Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped
there while the porter and others were going upstairs, waited till
they were out of hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the
very minute when Dmitri and Nikolay ran out into the street and
there was no one in the entry; possibly he was seen, but not
noticed. There are lots of people going in and out. He must have
dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket when he stood behind the door,
and did not notice he dropped them, because he had other things to
think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that he did stand
there.... That's how I explain it."
"Too clever! No, my boy, you're too clever. That beats everything."
"But, why, why?"
"Why, because everything fits too well... it's too melodramatic."
"A-ach!" Razumihin was exclaiming, but at that moment the door
opened and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present.
CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
THIS WAS a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly
appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by
stopping short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and
undisguised astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of
place he had come to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being
alarmed and almost affronted, he scanned Raskolnikov's low and
narrow "cabin." With the same amazement he stared at Raskolnikov,
who lay undressed, dishevelled, unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa,
looking fixedly at him. Then with the same deliberation he scrutinised
the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked
him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A
constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might
be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from
certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this
"cabin" by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened
somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising every
syllable of his question, addressed Zossimov:
"Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student, or formerly a student?"
Zossimov made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not
Razumihin anticipated him.
"Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?"
This familiar "what do you want" seemed to cut the ground from the
feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but
checked himself in time and turned to Zossimov again.
"This is Raskolnikov," mumbled Zossimov, nodding towards him. Then
he gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible.
Then he lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a
huge gold watch in a round hunter's case, opened it, looked at it
and as slowly and lazily proceeded to put it back.
Raskolnikov himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing
persistently, though 'without understanding, at the stranger. Now that
his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it
was extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just
undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But
the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his
wonder, then suspicion and even alarm. When Zossimov said "This is
Raskolnikov" he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an
almost defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated:
"Yes, I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?"
The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively:
"Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin. I believe I have reason to hope that my
name is not wholly unknown to you?"
But Raskolnikov, who had expected something quite different, gazed
blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the
name of Pyotr Petrovitch for the first time.
"Is it possible that you can up to the present have received no
information?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.
In reply Raskolnikov sank languidly back on the pillow, put his
hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay
came into Luzhin's face. Zossimov and Razumihin stared at him more
inquisitively than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of
embarrassment.
"I had presumed and calculated," he faltered, "that a letter
posted more than ten days, if not a fortnight ago..."
"I say, why are you standing in the doorway?" Razumihin
interrupted suddenly. "If you've something to say, sit down.
Nastasya and you are so crowded. Nastasya, make room. Here's a
chair, thread your way in!"
He moved his chair back from the table, made a little space
between the table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped
position for the visitor to "thread his way in." The minute was so
chosen that it was impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed
his way through, hurrying and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat
down, looking suspiciously at Razumihin.
"No need to be nervous," the latter blurted out. "Rodya has been ill
for the last five days and delirious for three, but now he is
recovering and has got an appetite. This is his doctor, who has just
had a look at him. I am a comrade of Rodya's, like him, formerly a
student, and now I am nursing him; so don't you take any notice of us,
but go on with your business."
"Thank you. But shall I not disturb the invalid by my presence and
conversation?" Pyotr Petrovitch asked of Zossimov.
"N-no," mumbled Zossimov; "you may amuse him." He yawned again.
"He has been conscious a long time, since the morning," went on
Razumihin, whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected
good-nature that Pyotr Petrovitch began to be more cheerful, partly,
perhaps, because this shabby and impudent person had introduced
himself as a student.
"Your mamma," began Luzhin.
"Hm!" Razumihin cleared his throat loudly. Luzhin looked at him
inquiringly.
"That's all right, go on."
Luzhin shrugged his shoulders.
"Your mamma had commenced a letter to you while I was sojourning
in her neighbourhood. On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few
days to elapse before coming to see you, in order that I might be
fully assured that you were in full possession of the tidings; but
now, to my astonishment..."
"I know, I know!" Raskolnikov cried suddenly with impatient
vexation. "So you are the fiance? I know, and that's enough!"
There was no doubt about Pyotr Petrovitch's being offended this
time, but he said nothing. He made a violent effort to understand what
it all meant. There was a moment's silence.
Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned a little towards him when he
answered, began suddenly staring at him again with marked curiosity,
as though he had not had a good look at him yet, or as though
something new had struck him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to
stare at him. There certainly was something peculiar in Pyotr
Petrovitch's whole appearance, something which seemed to justify the
title of "fiance" so unceremoniously applied to him. In the first
place, it was evident, far too much so indeed, that Pyotr Petrovitch
had made eager use of his few days in the capital to get himself up
and rig himself out in expectation of his betrothed- a perfectly
innocent and permissible proceeding, indeed. Even his own, perhaps too
complacent, consciousness of the agreeable improvement in his
appearance might have been forgiven in such circumstances, seeing that
Pyotr Petrovitch had taken up the role of fiance. All his clothes were
fresh from the tailor's and were all right, except for being too new
and too distinctly appropriate. Even the stylish new round hat had the
same significance. Pyotr Petrovitch treated it too respectfully and
held it too carefully in his hands. The exquisite pair of lavender
gloves, real Louvain, told the same tale, if only from the fact of his
not wearing them, but carrying them in his hand for show. Light and
youthful colours predominated in Pyotr Petrovitch's attire. He wore
a charming summer jacket of a fawn shade, light thin trousers, a
waistcoat of the same, new and fine linen, a cravat of the lightest
cambric with pink stripes on it, and the best of it was, this all
suited Pyotr Petrovitch. His very fresh and even handsome face
looked younger than his forty-five years at all times. His dark,
mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable setting on both sides,
growing thickly about his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair,
touched here and there with grey, though it had been combed and curled
at a hairdresser's, did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled
hair usually does, by inevitably suggesting a German on his
wedding-day. If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in
his rather good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to
quite other causes. After scanning Mr. Luzhin unceremoniously,
Raskolnikov smiled malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared
at the ceiling as before.
But Mr. Luzhin hardened his heart and seemed to determine to take no
notice of their oddities.
"I feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation," he
began, again breaking the silence with an effort. "If I had been aware
of your illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business
is. I have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to
mention other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am
expecting your mamma and sister any minute."
Raskolnikov made a movement and seemed about to speak; his face
showed some excitement. Pyotr Petrovitch paused, waited, but as
nothing followed, he went on:
"...Any minute. I have found a lodging for them on their arrival."
"Where?" asked Raskolnikov weakly.
"Very near here, in Bakaleyev's house."
"That's in Voskresensky," put in Razumihin. "There are two storeys
of rooms, let by a merchant called Yushin; I've been there."
"Yes, rooms..."
"A disgusting place- filthy, stinking and, what's more, of
doubtful character. Things have happened there, and there are all
sorts of queer people living there. And I went there about a
scandalous business. It's cheap, though..."
"I could not, of course, find out so much about it, for I am a
stranger in Petersburg myself," Pyotr Petrovitch replied huffily.
"However, the two rooms are exceedingly clean, and as it is for so
short a time... I have already taken a permanent, that is, our
future flat," he said, addressing Raskolnikov, "and I am having it
done up. And meanwhile I am myself cramped for room in a lodging
with my friend Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, in the flat of
Madame Lippevechsel; it was he who told me of Bakaleyev's house,
too...."
"Lebeziatnikov?" said Raskolnikov slowly, as if recalling something.
"Yes, Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, a clerk in the Ministry. Do
you know him?"
"Yes... no," Raskolnikov answered.
"Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his
guardian.... A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet
young people: one learns new things from them." Luzhin looked round
hopefully at them all.
"How do you mean?" asked Razumihin.
"In the most serious and essential matters," Pyotr Petrovitch
replied, as though delighted at the question. "You see, it's ten years
since I visited Petersburg. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have
reached us in the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must
be in Petersburg. And it's my notion that you observe and learn most
by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted..."
"At what?"
"Your question is a wide one. I may be mistaken, but I fancy I
find clearer views, more, so to say, criticism, more practicality..."
"That's true," Zossimov let drop.
"Nonsense! There's no practicality." Razumihin flew at him.
"Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from
heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced
from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting," he
said to Pyotr Petrovitch, "and desire for good exists, though it's
in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are
crowds of brigands. Anyway, there's no practicality. Practicality goes
well shod."
"I don't agree with you," Pyotr Petrovitch replied, with evident
enjoyment. "Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes,
but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of
enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment. If
little has been done, the time has been but short; of means I will not
speak. It's my personal view, if you care to know, that something
has been accomplished already. New valuable ideas, new valuable
works are circulating in the place of our old dreamy and romantic
authors. Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudice
have been rooted up and turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have
cut ourselves off irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking,
is a great thing..."
"He's learnt it by heart to show off Raskolnikov pronounced
suddenly.
"What?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, not catching his words; but he
received no reply.
"That's all true," Zossimov hastened to interpose.
"Isn't it so?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at
Zossimov. "You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumihin with a
shade of triumph and superciliousness- he almost added "young man"-
"that there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name
of science and economic truth..."
"A commonplace."
"No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told,
'love thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on,
perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half
to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a
Russian proverb has it, 'catch several hares and you won't catch one.'
Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything
in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your
own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth
adds that the better private affairs are organised in society- the
more whole coats, so to say- the firmer are its foundations and the
better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring
wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring so to
speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour's getting
a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal
liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is
simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being
hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want
very little wit to perceive it..."
"Excuse me, I've very little wit myself," Razumihin cut in
sharply, "and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an
object, but I've grown so sick during the last three years of this
chattering to amuse oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces,
always the same, that, by Jove, I blush even when other people talk
like that. You are in a hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements;
and I don't blame you, that's quite pardonable. I only wanted to
find out what sort of man you are, for so many unscrupulous people
have got hold of the progressive cause of late and have so distorted
in their own interests everything they touched, that the whole cause
has been dragged in the mire. That's enough!"
"Excuse me, sir," said Luzhin, affronted, and speaking with
excessive dignity. "Do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I
too..."
"Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that's enough,"
Razumihin concluded, and he turned abruptly to Zossimov to continue
their previous conversation.
Pyotr Petrovitch had the good sense to accept the disavowal. He made
up his mind to take leave in another minute or two.
"I trust our acquaintance," he said, addressing Raskolnikov, "may,
upon your recovery and in view of the circumstances of which you are
aware, become closer.... Above all, I hope for your return to
health..."
Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr Petrovitch began
getting up from his chair.
"One of her customers must have killed her," Zossimov declared
positively.
"Not a doubt of it," replied Razumihin. "Porfiry doesn't give his
opinion, but is examining all who have left pledges with her there."
"Examining them?" Raskolnikov asked aloud.
"Yes. What then?"
"Nothing."
"How does he get hold of them?" asked Zossimov.
"Koch has given the names of some of them, other names are on the
wrappers of the pledges and some have come forward of themselves."
"It must have been a cunning and practised ruffian! The boldness
of it! The coolness!"
"That's just what it wasn't!" interposed Razumihin. "That's what
throws you all off the scent. But I maintain that he is not cunning,
nor practised, and probably this was his first crime! The
supposition that it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal
doesn't work. Suppose him to have been inexperienced, and it's clear
that it was only a chance that saved him- and chance may do
anything. Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps! And how did he
set to work? He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing
his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman's trunk, her rags-
and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the
top drawer of the chest! He did not know how to rob; he could only
murder. It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost
his head. And he got off more by luck than good counsel!"
"You are talking of the murder of the old pawnbroker, I believe?"
Pyotr Petrovitch put in, addressing Zossimov. He was standing, hat and
gloves in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a
few more intellectual phrases. He was evidently anxious to make a
favourable impression and his vanity overcame his prudence.
"Yes. You've heard of it?"
"Oh, yes, being in the neighbourhood."
"Do you know the details?"
"I can't say that; but another circumstance interests me in the
case- the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that
crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes
during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and
arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in
the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one
place one hears of a student's robbing the mail on the high road; in
another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in
Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured who used to forge
lottery tickets, and one of the ringleaders was a lecturer in
universal history; then our secretary abroad was murdered from some
obscure motive of gain.... And if this old woman, the pawnbroker,
has been murdered by some one of a higher class in society- for
peasants don't pawn gold trinkets- how are we to explain this
demoralisation of the civilised part of our society?"
"There are many economic changes," put in Zossimov.
"How are we to explain it?" Razumihin caught him up. "It might be
explained by our inveterate unpracticality."
"How do you mean?"
"What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why
he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another,
so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact
words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without
waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything
ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for
us. Then the great hour struck,* and every man showed himself in his
true colours."
-
* The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 is meant.- TRANSLATOR'S
NOTE.
-
"But morality? And so to speak, principles..."
"But why do you worry about it?" Raskolnikov interposed suddenly.
"It's in accordance with your theory!"
"In accordance with my theory?"
"Why, carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now,
and it follows that people may be killed..."
"Upon my word!" cried Luzhin.
"No, that's not so," put in Zossimov.
Raskolnikov lay with a white face and twitching upper lip, breathing
painfully.
"There's a measure in all things," Luzhin went on superciliously.
"Economic ideas are not an incitement to murder, and one has but to
suppose..."
"And is it true," Raskolnikov interposed once more suddenly, again
in a voice quivering with fury and delight in insulting him, "is it
true that you told your fiancee... within an hour of her acceptance,
that what pleased you most... was that she was a beggar... because
it was better to raise a wife from poverty, so that you may have
complete control over her, and reproach her with your being her
benefactor?"
"Upon my word," Luzhin cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson
with confusion, "to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow
me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather
let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth,
and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your
mamma... She seemed to me in other things, with all her excellent
qualities, of a somewhat highflown and romantic way of thinking....
But I was a thousand miles from supposing that she would misunderstand
and misrepresent things in so fanciful a way.... And indeed...
indeed..."
"I tell you what," cried Raskolnikov, raising himself on his
pillow and fixing his piercing, glittering eyes upon him, "I tell
you what."
"What?" Luzhin stood still, waiting with a defiant and offended
face. Silence lasted for some seconds.
"Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my
mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!"
"What's the matter with you?" cried Razumihin.
"So that's how it is?" Luzhin turned pale and bit his lip. "Let me
tell you, sir," he began deliberately, doing his utmost to restrain
himself but breathing hard, "at the first moment I saw you you were
ill-disposed to me, but I remained here on purpose to find out more. I
could forgive a great deal in a sick man and a connection, but
you... never after this..."
"I am not ill," cried Raskolnikov.
"So much the worse..."
"Go to hell!"
But Luzhin was already leaving without finishing his speech,
squeezing between the table and the chair; Razumihin got up this
time to let him pass. Without glancing at any one, and not even
nodding to Zossimov, who had for some time been making signs to him to
let the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his hat to the level of
his shoulders to avoid crushing it as he stooped to go out of the
door. And even the curve of his spine was expressive of the horrible
insult he had received.
"How could you- how could you!" Razumihin said, shaking his head
in perplexity.
"Let me alone- let me alone all of you!" Raskolnikov cried in a
frenzy. "Will you ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid of
you! I am not afraid of any one, any one now! Get away from me! I want
to be alone, alone, alone!"
"Come along," said Zossimov, nodding to Razumihin.
"But we can't leave him like this!"
"Come along," Zossimov repeated insistently, and he went out.
Razumihin thought a minute and ran to overtake him.
"It might be worse not to obey him," said Zossimov on the stairs.
"He mustn't be irritated."
"What's the matter with him?"
"If only he could get some favourable shock, that's what would do
it! At first he was better.... You know he has got something on his
mind! Some fixed idea weighing on him.... I am very much afraid so; he
must have!"
"Perhaps it's that gentleman, Pyotr Petrovitch. From his
conversation I gather he is going to marry his sister, and that he had
received a letter about it just before his illness...."
"Yes, confound the man! he may have upset the case altogether. But
have you noticed, he takes no interest in anything, he does not
respond to anything except one point on which he seems excited- that's
the murder?"
"Yes, yes," Razumihin agreed, "I noticed that, too. He is
interested, frightened. It gave him a shock on the day he was ill in
the police office; he fainted."
"Tell me more about that this evening and I'll tell you something
afterwards. He interests me very much! In half an hour I'll go and see
him again.... There'll be no inflammation though."
"Thanks! And I'll wait with Pashenka meantime and will keep watch on
him through Nastasya...."
Raskolnikov, left alone, looked with impatience and misery at
Nastasya, but she still lingered.
"Won't you have some tea now?" she asked.
"Later! I am sleepy! Leave me."
He turned abruptly to the wall; Nastasya went out.
CHAPTER_SIX
Chapter Six
-
BUT AS SOON as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid
the parcel which Razumihin had brought in that evening and had tied up
again and began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to
have become perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor
of the panic fear that had haunted him of late. It was the first
moment of a strange sudden calm. His movements were precise and
definite; a firm purpose was evident in them. "To-day, to-day," he
muttered to himself. He understood that he was still weak, but his
intense spiritual concentration gave him strength and self-confidence.
He hoped, moreover, that he would not fall down in the street. When he
had dressed in entirely new clothes, he looked at the money lying on
the table, and after a moment's thought put it in his pocket. It was
twenty-five roubles. He took also all the copper change from the ten
roubles spent by Razumihin on the clothes. Then he softly unlatched
the door, went out, slipped downstairs and glanced in at the open
kitchen door. Nastasya was standing with her back to him, blowing up
the landlady's samovar. She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed of
his going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the street.
It was nearly eight o'clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling
as before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His
head felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in
his feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not
know and did not think where he was going, he had one thought only
"that all this must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that
he would not return home without it, because he would not go on living
like that." How, with what to make an end? He had not an idea about
it, he did not even want to think of it. He drove away thought;
thought tortured him. All he knew, all he felt was that everything
must be changed "one way or another," he repeated with desperate and
immovable self-confidence and determination.
From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay
Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in
the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very
sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood
on the pavement in front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline,
a mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very
old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and
coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from
the shop. Raskolnikov joined two or three listeners, took out a five
copeck piece and put it in the girl's hand. She broke off abruptly
on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder "Come
on," and both moved on to the next shop.
"Do you like street music?" said Raskolnikov, addressing a
middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him,
startled and wondering.
"I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and
his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject- "I like
it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings- they must be damp- when all
the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet
snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind- you know what I
mean? and the street lamps shine through it..."
"I don't know.... Excuse me..." muttered the stranger, frightened by
the question and Raskolnikov's strange manner, and he crossed over
to the other side of the street.
Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay
Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Lizaveta;
but they were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked
round and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping
before a corn chandler's shop.
"Isn't there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?"
"All sorts of people keep booths here," answered the young man,
glancing superciliously at Raskolnikov.
"What's his name?"
"What he was christened."
"Aren't you a Zaraisky man, too? Which province?"
The young man looked at Raskolnikov again.
"It's not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously
forgive me, your excellency!"
"Is that a tavern at the top there?"
"Yes, it's an eating-house and there's a billiard-room and you'll
find princesses there too.... La-la!"
Raskolnikov crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense
crowd of peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it,
looking at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter
into conversation with people. But the peasants took no notice of him;
they were all shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a
little and took a turning to the right in the direction of V.
He had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle,
leading from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often
felt drawn to wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that
he might feel more so.
Now he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a
great block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and
eating-houses; women were continually running in and out,
bare-headed and in their indoor clothes. Here and there they
gathered in groups, on the pavement, especially about the entrances to
various festive establishments in the lower storeys. From one of these
a loud din, sounds of singing, the tinkling of a guitar and shouts
of merriment, floated into the street. A crowd of women were thronging
round the door; some were sitting on the steps, others on the
pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken soldier, smoking a
cigarette, was walking near them in the road, swearing; he seemed to
be trying to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten where. One
beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead drunk was lying
right across the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of women, who
were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore cotton
dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some not
more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.
He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and
uproar in the saloon below.... Some one could be heard within
dancing frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of
the guitar and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He
listened intently, gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance
and peeping inquisitively in from the pavement.
-
"Oh, my handsome soldier
Don't beat me for nothing,"
-
trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great
desire to make out what he was singing, as though everything
depended on that.
"Shall I go in?" he thought. "They are laughing. From drink. Shall I
get drunk?"
"Won't you come in?" one of the women asked him. Her voice was still
musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not
repulsive- the only one of the group.
"Why, she's pretty," he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.
She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.
"You're very nice looking yourself," she said.
"Isn't he thin though!" observed another woman in a deep bass. "Have
you just come out of a hospital?"
"They're all generals' daughters, it seems, but they have all snub
noses," interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face,
wearing a loose coat. "See how jolly they are."
"Go along with you!"
"I'll go, sweetie!"
And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.
"I say, sir," the girl shouted after him.
"What is it?"
She hesitated.
"I'll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman,
but now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there's a nice
young man!"
Raskolnikov gave her what came first- fifteen copecks.
"Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!"
"What's your name?"
"Ask for Duclida."
"Well, that's too much," one of the women observed, shaking her head
at Duclida. "I don't know how you can ask like that. I believe I
should drop with shame...."
Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked
wench of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She
made her criticism quietly and earnestly. "Where is it," thought
Raskolnikov. "Where is it I've read that some one condemned to death
says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on
some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand,
and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting
tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of
space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live
so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever
it may be!... How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile
creature!... And vile is he who calls him vile for that," he added a
moment later.
He went into another street. "Bah, the Palais de Crystal!
Razumihin was just talking of the Palais de Crystal. But what on earth
was it I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... Zossimov said he'd read it in
the papers. Have you the papers?" he asked, going into a very spacious
and positively clean restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which
were however rather empty. Two or three people were drinking tea,
and in a room further away were sitting four men drinking champagne.
Raskolnikov fancied that Zametov was one of them, but he could not
be sure at that distance. "What if it is!" he thought.
"Will you have vodka?" asked the waiter.
"Give me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last
five days and I'll give you something."
"Yes, sir, here's to-day's. No vodka?"
The old newspapers and the tea were brought. Raskolnikov sat down
and began to look through them.
"Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a
staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire
in Peski... a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another fire in the
Petersburg quarter... and another fire in the Petersburg quarter...
Ah, here it is!" He found at last what he was seeking and began to
read it. The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and
began eagerly seeking later additions in the following numbers. His
hands shook with nervous impatience as he turned the sheets.
Suddenly some one sat down beside him at his table. He looked up, it
was the head clerk Zametov, looking just the same, with the rings on
his fingers and the watch-chain, with the curly, black hair, parted
and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat, rather shabby coat and doubtful
linen. He was in a good humour, at least he was smiling very gaily and
good-humouredly. His dark face was rather flushed from the champagne
he had drunk.
"What, you here?" he began in surprise, speaking as though he'd
known him all his life. "Why, Razumihin told me only yesterday you
were unconscious. How strange! And do you know I've been to see you?"
Raskolnikov knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers
and turned to Zametov. There was a smile on his lips, and a new
shade of irritable impatience was apparent in that smile.
"I know you have," he answered. "I've heard it. You looked for my
sock.... And you know Razumihin has lost his heart to you? He says
you've been with him to Luise Ivanovna's, you know the woman you tried
to befriend, for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he
would not understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to
understand- it was quite clear, wasn't it?"
"What a hot head he is!"
"The explosive one?"
"No, your friend Razumihin."
"You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov; entrance free to the
most agreeable places. Who's been pouring champagne into you just
now?"
"We've just been... having a drink together.... You talk about
pouring it into me!"
"By way of a fee! You profit by everything!" Raskolnikov laughed,
"it's all right, my dear boy," he added, slapping Zametov on the
shoulder. "I am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for
sport, as that workman of yours said when he was scuffling with
Dmitri, in the case of the old woman...."
"How do you know about it?"
"Perhaps I know more about it than you do."
"How strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You
oughtn't to have come out."
"Oh, do I seem strange to you?"
"Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?"
"Yes."
"There's a lot about the fires."
"No, I am not reading about the fires." Here he looked
mysteriously at Zametov; his lips were twisted again in a mocking
smile. "No, I am not reading about the fires," he went on, winking
at Zametov. "But confess now, my dear fellow, you're awfully anxious
to know what I am reading about?"
"I am not in the least. Mayn't I ask a question? Why do you keep
on... ?"
"Listen, you are a man of culture and education?"
"I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium," said Zametov with
some dignity.
"Sixth class! Ah, my cocksparrow! With your parting and your
rings- you are a gentleman of fortune. Foo, what a charming boy!" Here
Raskolnikov broke into a nervous laugh right in Zametov's face. The
latter drew back, more amazed than offended.
"Foo, how strange you are!" Zametov repeated very seriously. "I
can't help thinking you are still delirious."
"I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cocksparrow! So I am strange?
You find me curious, do you?"
"Yes, curious."
"Shall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking
for? See what a lot of papers I've made them bring me. Suspicious,
eh?"
"Well, what is it?"
"You prick up your ears?"
"How do you mean- prick up my ears?"
"I'll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to
you... no, better 'I confess'... No, that's not right either; 'I
make a deposition and you take it.' I depose that I was reading,
that I was looking and searching...." he screwed up his eyes and
paused. "I was searching- and came here on purpose to do it- for
news of the murder of the old pawnbroker woman," he articulated at
last, almost in a whisper, bringing his face exceedingly close to
the face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him steadily, without moving or
drawing his face away. What struck Zametov afterwards as the strangest
part of it all was that silence followed for exactly a minute, and
that they gazed at one another all the while.
"What if you have been reading about it?" he cried at last,
perplexed and impatient. "That's no business of mine! What of it?"
"The same old woman," Raskolnikov went on in the same whisper, not
heeding Zametov's explanation, "about whom you were talking in the
police office, you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand
now?"
"What do you mean? Understand... what?" Zametov brought out,
almost alarmed.
Raskolnikov's set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and
he suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as
though utterly unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he
recalled with extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the
recent past, that moment when he stood with the axe behind the door,
while the latch trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and
he had a sudden desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put
out his tongue at them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
"You are either mad, or..." began Zametov, and he broke off, as
though stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
"Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!"
"Nothing," said Zametov, getting angry, "it's all nonsense!"
Both were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Raskolnikov
became suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the
table and leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely
forgotten Zametov. The silence lasted for some time.
"Why don't you drink your tea? It's getting cold," said Zametov.
"What! Tea? Oh, yes..." Raskolnikov sipped the glass, put a morsel
of bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to
remember everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment
his face resumed its original mocking expression. He went on
drinking tea.
"There have been a great many of these crimes lately," said Zametov.
"Only the other day I read in the Moscow News that a whole gang of
false coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society.
They used to forge tickets!"
"Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,"
Raskolnikov answered calmly. "So you consider them criminals?" he
added smiling.
"Of course they are criminals."
"They? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a
hundred people meeting for such an object- what an idea! Three would
be too many, and then they want to have more faith in one other than
in themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all
collapses. Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the
notes- what a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us
suppose that these simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and
what follows for the rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the
others for the rest of his life! Better hang oneself at once! And they
did not know how to change the notes either; the man who changed the
notes took five thousand roubles, and his hands trembled. He counted
the first four thousand, but did not count the fifth thousand- he
was in such a hurry to get the money into his pocket and run away.
Of course he roused suspicion. And the whole thing came to a crash
through one fool! Is it possible?"
"That his hands trembled?" observed Zametov, "yes, that's quite
possible. That I feel quite sure is possible. Sometimes one can't
stand things."
"Can't stand that?"
"Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn't. For the sake of a
hundred roubles to face such a terrible experience! To go with false
notes into a bank where it's their business to spot that sort of
thing! No, I should not have the face to do it. Would you?"
Raskolnikov had an intense desire again "to put his tongue out."
Shivers kept running down his spine.
"I should do it quite differently," Raskolnikov began. "This is
how I would change the notes: I'd count the first thousand three or
four times backwards and forwards, look at every note and then I'd set
to the second thousand; I'd count that half way through and then
hold some fifty rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it
to the light again- to see whether it was a good one? 'I am afraid,' I
would say. 'A relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other
day through a false note,' and then I'd tell them the whole story. And
after I began counting the third, 'no, excuse me,' I would say, 'I
fancy I made a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand,
I am not sure.' And so I would give up the third thousand and go
back to the second and so on to the end. And when I had finished,
I'd pick out one from the fifth and one from the second thousand and
take them again to the light and ask again 'change them, please,'
and put the clerk into such a stew that he would not know how to get
rid of me. When I'd finished and had gone out, I'd come back, 'No,
excuse me,' and ask for some explanation. That's how I'd do it."
"Foo, what terrible things you say!" said Zametov, laughing. "But
all that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you'd make a
slip. I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always
reckon on himself, much less you and I. To take an example near
home- that old woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to
have been a desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight,
was saved by a miracle- but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed
in robbing the place, he' couldn't stand it. That was clear from
the..."
Raskolnikov seemed offended.
"Clear? Why don't you catch him then?" he cried, maliciously
gibing at Zametov.
"Well, they will catch him."
"Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You've a tough job! A
great point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he
had no money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that
any child can mislead you."
"The fact is they always do that, though," answered Zametov. "A
man will commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at
once he goes drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money,
they are not all as cunning as you are. You wouldn't go to a tavern,
of course?"
Raskolnikov frowned and looked steadily at Zametov.
"You seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should
behave in that case, too?" he asked with displeasure.
"I should like to," Zametov answered firmly and seriously.
Somewhat too much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks.
"Very much?"
"Very much!"
"All right then. This is how I should behave," Raskolnikov began,
again bringing his face close to Zametov's, again staring at him and
speaking in a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered.
"This is what I should have done. I should have taken the money and
jewels, I should have walked out of there and have gone straight to
some deserted place with fences round it and scarcely any one to be
seen, some kitchen garden or place of that sort. I should have
looked out beforehand some stone weighing a hundredweight or more
which had been lying in the corner from the time the house was
built. I would lift that stone- there would be sure to be a hollow
under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that hole. Then
I'd roll the stone back so that it would look as before, would press
it down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two, three
maybe, I would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There'd
be no trace."
"You are a madman," said Zametov, and for some reason he too spoke
in a whisper, and moved away from Raskolnikov, whose eyes were
glittering. He had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was
twitching and quivering. He bent down as close as possible to Zametov,
and his lips began to move without uttering a word. This lasted for
half a minute; he knew what he was doing, but could not restrain
himself. The terrible word trembled on his lips, like the latch on
that door; in another moment it will break out, in another moment he
will let it go, he will speak out.
"And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?" he
said suddenly and- realised what he had done.
Zametov looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His
face wore a contorted smile.
"But is it possible?" he brought out faintly. Raskolnikov looked
wrathfully at him.
"Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?"
"Not a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now," Zametov cried
hastily.
"I've caught my cocksparrow! So you did believe it before, if now
you believe less than ever?"
"Not at all," cried Zametov, obviously embarrassed. "Have you been
frightening me so as to lead up to this?"
"You don't believe it then? What were you talking about behind my
back when I went out of the police office? And why did the Explosive
Lieutenant question me after I fainted? Hey, there," he shouted to the
waiter, getting up and taking his cap, "how much?"
"Thirty copecks," the latter replied, running up.
"And there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!" he
held out his shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it. "Red notes
and blue, twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did
my new clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck. You've
cross-examined my landlady, I'll be bound.... Well, that's enough!
Assez cause! Till we meet again!"
He went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical
sensation, in which there was an element of insufferable rapture.
Yet he was gloomy and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after
a fit. His fatigue increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating
sensation stimulated and revived his energies at once, but his
strength failed as quickly when the stimulus was removed.
Zametov, left alone, sat for a long time in the same place,
plunged in thought. Raskolnikov had unwittingly worked a revolution in
his brain on a certain point and had made up his mind for him
conclusively.
"Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead," he decided.
Raskolnikov had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he
stumbled against Razumihin on the steps. They did not see each other
till they almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood
looking each other up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded,
then anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in his eyes.
"So here you are!" he shouted at the top of his voice- "you ran away
from your bed! And here I've been looking for you under the sofa! We
went up to the garret. I almost beat Nastasya on your account. And
here he is after all. Rodya! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the
whole truth! Confess! Do you hear?"
"It means that I'm sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,"
Raskolnikov answered calmly.
"Alone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as
a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been
doing in the Palais de Crystal? Own up at once!"
"Let me go!" said Raskolnikov and tried to pass him. This was too
much for Razumihin; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.
"Let you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I'll
do with you directly? I'll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle,
carry you home under my arm and lock you up!"
"Listen, Razumihin," Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm-
"can't you see that I don't want your benevolence? A strange desire
you have to shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels
them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of
my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die. Didn't I tell you plainly
enough to-day that you were torturing me, that I was... sick of you!
You seem to want to torture people! I assure you that all that is
seriously hindering my recovery, because it's continually irritating
me. You saw Zossimov went away just now to avoid irritating me. You
leave me alone too, for goodness' sake! What right have you, indeed,
to keep me by force? Don't you see that I am in possession of all my
faculties now? How, can I persuade you not to persecute me with your
kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for
God's sake, let me be! Let me be, let me be!"
He began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he
was about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy,
as he had been with Luzhin.
Razumihin stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop.
"Well, go to hell then," he said gently and thoughtfully. "Stay," he
roared, as Raskolnikov was about to move. "Listen to me. Let me tell
you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you've
any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you
are plagiarists even in that! There isn't a sign of independent life
in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you've lymph in your
veins instead of blood. I don't believe in any one of you! In any
circumstances the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human
being! Stop!" he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that
Raskolnikov was again making a movement- "hear me out! You know I'm
having a house-warming this evening, I dare say they've arrived by
now, but I left my uncle there- I just ran in- to receive the
guests. And if you weren't a fool, a common fool, a perfect fool, if
you were an original instead of a translation... you see, Rodya, I
recognise you're a clever fellow, but you're a fool!- and if you
weren't a fool you'd come round to me this evening instead of
wearing out your boots in the street! Since you have gone out, there's
no help for it! I'd give you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one...
a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie on the sofa- any way you
would be with us.... Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?"
"No."
"R-rubbish!" Razumihin shouted, out of patience. "How do you know?
You can't answer for yourself! You don't know anything about it....
Thousands of times I've fought tooth and nail with people and run back
to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So
remember, Potchinkov's house on the third storey...."
"Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you'd let anybody beat you from
sheer benevolence."
"Beat? Whom? Me? I'd twist his nose off at the mere idea!
Potchinkov's house, 47, Babushkin's flat...."
"I shall not come, Razumihin." Raskolnikov turned and walked away.
"I bet you will," Razumihin shouted after him. "I refuse to know you
if you don't! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?"
"Yes."
"Did you see him?"
"Yes."
"Talked to him?"
"Yes."
"What about? Confound you, don't tell me then. Potchinkov's house,
47, Babushkin's flat, remember!"
Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street.
Razumihin looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his
hand he went into the house but stopped short of the stairs.
"Confound it," he went on almost aloud. "He talked sensibly but
yet... I am a fool! As if madmen didn't talk sensibly! And this was
just what Zossimov seemed afraid of." He struck his finger on his
forehead. "What if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown
himself.... Ach, what a blunder! I can't." And he ran back to overtake
Raskolnikov, but there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned
with rapid steps to the Palais de Crystal to question Zametov.
Raskolnikov walked straight to X__ Bridge, stood in the middle,
and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On
parting with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could
scarcely reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in
the street. Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the
last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in
the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left
bank, flashing as though on fire in the last rays of the setting
sun, at the darkening water of the canal, and the water seemed to
catch his attention. At last red circles flashed before his eyes,
the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal banks, the
carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started, saved
again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He became
aware of some one standing on the right side of him; he looked and saw
a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow,
wasted face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him,
but obviously she saw nothing and recognized no one. Suddenly she
leaned her right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the
railing, then her left and threw herself into the canal. The filthy
water parted and swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an
instant later the drowning woman floated to the surface, moving slowly
with the current, her head and legs in the water, her skirt inflated
like a balloon over her back.
"A woman drowning! A woman drowning!" shouted dozens of voices;
people ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge
people crowded about Raskolnikov, pressing up behind him.
"Mercy on it! it's our Afrosinya!" a woman cried tearfully close by.
"Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!"
"A boat, a boat" was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need
of a boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off
his great coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to
reach her; she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he
caught hold of her clothes with his right hand and with his left
seized a pole which a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman
was pulled out at once. They laid her on the granite pavement of the
embankment. She soon recovered consciousness, raised her head, sat
up and began sneezing and coughing, stupidly wiping her wet dress with
her hands. She said nothing.
"She's drunk herself out of her senses," the same woman's voice
wailed at her side. "Out of her senses. The other day she tried to
hang herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my
little girl to look after her- and here she's in trouble again! A
neighbour, gentleman neighbour, we live close by, the second house
from the end, see yonder...."
The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman,
some one mentioned the police station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a
strange sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted.
"No, that's loathsome... water... it's not good enough," he muttered
to himself. "Nothing will come of it," he added, "no use to wait. What
about the police office...? And why isn't Zametov at the police
office? The police office is open till ten o'clock...." He turned
his back to the railing and looked about him.
"Very well then!" he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and
walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow
and empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed,
there was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out
"to make an end of it all." Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
"Well, it's a way out of it," he thought, walking slowly and
listlessly along the canal bank. "Anyway I'll make an end, for I
want to.... But is it a way out? What does it matter! There'll be
the square yard of space- ha! But what an end! Is it really the end?
Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could
find somewhere to sit or lie down soon! What I am most ashamed of is
its being so stupid. But I don't care about that either! What
idiotic ideas come into one's head."
To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take
the second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at
the first turning he stopped and, after a minute's thought, turned
into a side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly
without any object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He
walked, looking at the ground; suddenly some one seemed to whisper
in his ear; he lifted his head and saw that he was standing at the
very gate of the house. He had not passed it, he had not been near
it since that evening. An overwhelming unaccountable prompting drew
him on. He went into the house, passed through the gateway, then
into the first entrance on the right, and began mounting the
familiar staircase to the fourth storey. The narrow, steep staircase
was very dark. He stopped at each landing and looked round him with
curiosity; on the first landing the framework of the window had been
taken out. "That wasn't so then," he thought. Here was the flat on the
second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been working. "It's shut up
and the door newly painted. So it's to let." Then the third storey and
the fourth. "Here!" He was perplexed to find the door of the flat wide
open. There were men there, he could hear voices; he had not
expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last stairs and
went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were workmen
in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he would find
everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the same
places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed
strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window sill.
There were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger
than the other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper
covered with lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one.
Raskolnikov for some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked
at the new paper with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it
all so changed. The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and
now they were hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go
home. They took no notice of Raskolnikov's coming in; they were
talking. Raskolnikov folded his arms and listened.
"She comes to me in the morning," said the elder to the younger,
"very early, all dressed up. 'Why are you preening and prinking?' says
I. 'I am ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!' That's a
way of going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!"
"And what is a fashion book?" the younger one asked. He obviously
regarded the other as an authority.
"A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the
tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how to
dress, the male sex as well as the female. They're pictures. The
gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies'
fluffles, they're beyond anything you can fancy."
"There's nothing you can't find in Petersburg," the younger cried
enthusiastically, "except father and mother, there's everything!"
"Except them, there's everything to be found, my boy," the elder
declared sententiously.
Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other room where the strong
box, the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to
him very tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the
paper in the corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He
looked at it and went to the window. The elder workman looked at him
askance.
"What do you want?" he asked suddenly.
Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into the passage and pulled
the bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second
and a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and
agonisingly fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more
and more vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more
and more satisfaction.
"Well, what do you want? Who are you?" the workman shouted, going
out to him. Raskolnikov went inside again.
"I want to take a flat," he said. "I am looking round."
"It's not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to
come up with the porter."
"The floors have been washed, will they be painted?" Raskolnikov
went on. "Is there no blood?"
"What blood?"
"Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a
perfect pool there."
"But who are you?" the workman cried, uneasy.
"Who am I?"
"Yes."
"You want to know? Come to the police station, I'll tell you."
The workmen looked at him in amazement.
"It's time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We
must lock up," said the elder workman.
"Very well, come along," said Raskolnikov indifferently, and going
out first, he went slowly downstairs. "Hey, porter," he cried in the
gateway.
At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the
passers-by; the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and
a few others. Raskolnikov went straight up to them.
"What do you want?" asked one of the porters.
"Have you been to the police office?"
"I've just been there. What do you want?"
"Is it open?"
"Of course."
"Is the assistant there?"
"He was there for a time. What do you want?"
Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.
"He's been to look at the flat," said the elder workman, coming
forward.
"Which flat?"
"Where we are at work. 'Why have you washed away the blood?' says
he. 'There has been a murder here,' says he, 'and I've come to take
it.' And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. 'Come to
the police station,' says he. 'I'll tell you everything there.' He
wouldn't leave us."
The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning and perplexed.
"Who are you?" he shouted as impressively as he could.
"I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly a student, I live
in Shil's house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he
knows me." Raskolnikov said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not
turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street.
"Why have you been to the flat?"
"To look at it."
"What is there to look at?"
"Take him straight to the police station," the man in the long
coat jerked in abruptly.
Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the
same slow, lazy tone:
"Come along."
"Yes, take him," the man went on more confidently. "Why was he going
into that, what's in his mind, eh?"
"He's not drunk, but God knows what's the matter with him," muttered
the workman.
"But what do you want?" the porter shouted again, beginning to get
angry in earnest- "Why are you hanging about?"
"You funk the police station then?" said Raskolnikov jeeringly.
"How funk it? Why are you hanging about?"
"He's a rogue!" shouted the peasant woman.
"Why waste time talking to him?" cried the other porter, a huge
peasant in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. "Get along!
He is a rogue and no mistake. Get along!"
And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he flung him into the
street. He lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the
spectators in silence and walked away.
"Strange man!" observed the workman.
"There are strange folks about nowadays," said the woman.
"You should have taken him to the police station all the same," said
the man in the long coat.
"Better have nothing to do with him," decided the big porter. "A
regular rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take
him up, you won't get rid of him.... We know the sort!"
"Shall I go there or not?" thought Raskolnikov, standing in the
middle of the thoroughfare at the cross roads, and he looked about
him, as though expecting from some one a decisive word. But no sound
came, all was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead
to him, to him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two
hundred yards away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard
talk and shouts. In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A
light gleamed in the middle of the street. "What is it?" Raskolnikov
turned to the right and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at
everything and smiled coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully
made up his mind to go to the police station and knew that it would
all soon be over.
CHAPTER_SEVEN
Chapter Seven
-
AN ELEGANT carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of
spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got
off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the
bridle... A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing
in front. One of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on
something lying close to the wheels. Every one was talking,
shouting, exclaiming; the coachman seemed at a loss and kept
repeating:
"What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!"
Raskolnikov pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at
last in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground
a man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered
with blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood
was flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated
and disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.
"Merciful heaven!" wailed the coachman, "what more could I do? If
I'd been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going
quietly, not in a hurry. Every one could see I was going along just
like everybody else. A drunken man can't walk straight, we all
know.... I saw him crossing the street, staggering and almost falling.
I shouted again and a second and a third time, then I held the
horses in, but he fell straight under their feet! Either he did it
on purpose or he was very tipsy.... The horses are young and ready
to take fright... they started, he screamed... that made them worse.
That's how it happened!"
"That's just how it was," a voice in the crowd confirmed.
"He shouted, that's true, he shouted three times," another voice
declared.
"Three times it was, we all heard it," shouted a third.
But the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was
evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person
who was awaiting it somewhere; the police, of course, were in no
little anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do
was to take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No
one knew his name.
Meanwhile Raskolnikov had squeezed in and stooped closer over him.
The lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man's face. He
recognised him.
"I know him! I know him!" he shouted, pushing to the front. "It's
a government clerk retired from the service, Marmeladov. He lives
close by in Kozel's house.... Make haste for a doctor! I will pay,
see." He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the
policeman. He was in violent agitation.
The police were glad that they had found out who the man was.
Raskolnikov gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if
it had been his father, he besought the police to carry the
unconscious Marmeladov to his lodging at once.
"Just here, three houses away," he said eagerly, "the house
belongs to Kozel, a rich German. He was going home, no doubt drunk.
I know him, he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children,
he has one daughter.... It will take time to take him to the hospital,
and there is sure to be a doctor in the house. I'll pay, I'll pay!
At least he will be looked after at home... they will help him at
once. But he'll die before you get him to the hospital." He managed to
slip something unseen into the policeman's hand. But the thing was
straightforward and legitimate, and in any case help was closer
here. They raised the injured man; people volunteered to help.
Kozel's house was thirty yards away. Raskolnikov walked behind,
carefully holding Marmeladov's head and showing the way.
"This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn
round! I'll pay, I'll make it worth your while," he muttered.
Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at every free
moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and
back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to
herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever
to her eldest girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who, though there was
much she did not understand, understood very well that her mother
needed her, and so always watched her with her big clever eyes and
strove her utmost to appear to understand. This time Polenka was
undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day and was
going to bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt, which
had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a
chair, with a silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out
straight before him- heels together and toes turned out.
He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister,
sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes, just
as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to
bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at
the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open
to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which
floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of
coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to
have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her
face was brighter than ever.
"You wouldn't believe, you can't imagine, Polenka," she said,
walking about the room, "what a happy luxurious life we had in my
papa's house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring
you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from
being a governor; so that every one who came to see him said, 'We look
upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our governor!' When I... when..."
she coughed violently, "oh, cursed life," she cried, clearing her
throat and pressing her hands to her breast, "when I... when at the
last ball... at the marshal's... Princess Bezzemelny saw me- who
gave me the blessing when your father and I were married, Polenka- she
asked at once 'Isn't that the pretty girl who donced the shawl dance
at the breaking up?' (You must mend that tear, you must take your
needle and darn it as I showed you, or to-morrow- cough, cough, cough-
he will make the hole bigger," she articulated with effort.) "Prince
Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had just come from Petersburg then...
he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day;
but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart
had long been another's. That other was your father, Polya; papa was
fearfully angry.... Is the water ready? Give me the shirt, and the
stockings! Lida," said she to the youngest one, "you must manage
without your chemise to-night... and lay your stockings out with it...
I'll wash them together.... How is it that drunken vagabond doesn't
come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dishclout, he
has torn it to rags! I'd do it all together, so as not to have to work
two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again!
What's this?" she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men
who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. "What is it? What
are they bringing? Mercy on us!"
"Where are we to put him?" asked the policeman, looking round when
Marmeladov, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in.
"On the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,"
Raskolnikov showed him.
"Run over in the road! Drunk!" some one shouted in the passage.
Katerina Ivanovna stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The
children were terrified. Little Lida screamed, rushed to Polenka and
clutched at her, trembling all over.
Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov flew to Katerina Ivanovna.
"For God's sake be calm, don't be frightened!" he said, speaking
quickly, "he was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage,
don't be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here...
I've been here already, you remember? He will come to; I'll pay!"
"He's done it this time!" Katerina Ivanovna cried despairingly and
she rushed to her husband.
Raskolnikov noticed at once that she was not one of those women
who swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man's head a
pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining
him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling
lips and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her.
Raskolnikov meanwhile induced some one to run for a doctor. There
was a doctor, it appeared, next door but one.
"I've sent for a doctor," he kept assuring Katerina Ivanovna, "don't
be uneasy, I'll pay. Haven't you water?... and give me a napkin or a
towel, anything, as quick as you can.... He is injured, but not
killed, believe me.... We shall see what the doctor says!"
Katerina Ivanovna ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the
corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in
readiness for washing her children's and husband's linen that night.
This washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna at night at least twice a
week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they
were practically without change of linen, and Katerina Ivanovna
could not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house,
she preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her
strength when the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on
a line and dry by the morning. She took up the basin of water at
Raskolnikov's request, but almost fell down with her burden. But the
latter had already succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and begun
washing the blood off Marmeladov's face.
Katerina Ivanovna stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her
hands to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Raskolnikov
began to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the
injured man brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation.
"Polenka," cried Katerina Ivanovna, "run to Sonia, make haste. If
you don't find her at home, leave word that her father has been run
over and that she is to come here at once... when she comes in. Run,
Polenka! there, put on the shawl."
"Run your fastest!" cried the little boy on the chair suddenly,
after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round
eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.
Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn't
have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained
for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the
stairs. Almost all Madame Lippevechsel's lodgers had streamed in
from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together
in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Katerina
Ivanovna flew into a fury.
"You might let him die in peace, at least," she shouted at the
crowd, "is it a spectacle for you to gape at? With cigarettes! (Cough,
cough, cough!) You might as well keep your hats on.... And there is
one in his hat!... Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!"
Her cough choked her- but her reproaches were not without result.
They evidently stood in some awe of Katerina Ivanovna. The lodgers,
one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange
inner feeling of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of
a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim,
from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest
sympathy and compassion.
Voices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and
saying that they'd no business to make a disturbance here.
"No business to die!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she was rushing
to the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came
face to face with Madame Lippevechsel who had only just heard of the
accident and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly
quarrelsome and irresponsible German.
"Ah, my God!" she cried, clasping her hands, "your husband drunken
horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!"
"Amalia Ludwigovna, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,"
Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with
the landlady that she might "remember her place" and even now could
not deny herself this satisfaction). "Amalia Ludwigovna..."
"I have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna
may not dare; I am Amalia Ivanovna."
"You are not Amalia Ivanovna, but Amalia Ludwigovna, and as I am not
one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who's
laughing behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of 'they
are at it again' was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always
call you Amalia Ludwigovna, though I fail to understand why you
dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to
Semyon Zaharovitch; he is dying. I beg you to close that door at
once and to admit no one. Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you
the Governor-General, himself, shall be informed of your conduct
to-morrow. The prince knew me as a girl; he remembers Semyon
Zaharovitch well and has often been a benefactor to him. Every one
knows that Semyon Zaharovitch had many friends and protectors, whom he
abandoned himself from an honourable pride, knowing his unhappy
weakness, but now (she pointed to Raskolnikov) a generous young man
has come to our assistance, who has wealth and connections and whom
Semyon Zaharovitch has known from a child. You may rest assured,
Amalia Ludwigovna..."
All this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and
quicker, but a cough suddenly cut short Katerina Ivanovna's eloquence.
At that instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a
groan; she ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without
recognition or understanding gazed at Raskolnikov who was bending over
him. He drew deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners
of his mouth and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not
recognising Raskolnikov, he began looking round uneasily. Katerina
Ivanovna looked at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled
from her eyes.
"My God! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding," she said
in despair. "We must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Semyon
Zaharovitch, if you can," she cried to him.
Marmeladov recognised her.
"A priest," he articulated huskily.
Katerina Ivanovna walked to the window, laid her head against the
window frame and exclaimed in despair:
"Oh, cursed life!"
"A priest," the dying man said again after a moment's silence.
"They've gone for him," Katerina Ivanovna shouted to him, he
obeyed her shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for
her; she returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier
but not for long.
Soon his eyes rested on little Lida, his favourite, who was
shaking in the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him
with her wondering childish eyes.
"A-ah," he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something.
"What now?" cried Katerina Ivanovna.
"Barefoot, barefoot!" he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the
child's bare feet.
"Be silent," Katerina Ivanovna cried irritably, "you know why she is
barefooted."
"Thank God, the doctor," exclaimed Raskolnikov, relieved.
The doctor came in, a precise little old man, a German, looking
about him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse,
carefully felt his head and with the help of Katerina Ivanovna he
unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man's chest.
It was gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side
were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large,
sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise- a cruel kick from the horse's
hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in
the wheel and turned round with it for thirty yards on the road.
"It's wonderful that he has recovered consciousness," the doctor
whispered softly to Raskolnikov.
"What do you think of him?" he asked.
"He will die immediately."
"Is there really no hope?"
"Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp.... His head is badly
injured, too... Him... I could bleed him if you like, but... it
would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten
minutes."
"Better bleed him then."
"If you like.... But I warn you it will be perfectly useless."
At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage
parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the
doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the
time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging
glances with him. Raskolnikov begged the doctor to remain a little
while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained.
All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man
probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken
sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the
chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children
kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the
boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand
rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching
the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial
satisfaction. Katerina Ivanovna bit her lips and held back her
tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy's shirt,
and managed to cover the girl's bare shoulders with a kerchief,
which she took from the chest without rising from her knees or ceasing
to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened
inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all
the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not
venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the
scene.
At that moment Polenka forced her way through the crowd at the door.
She came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief,
looked for her mother, went up to her and said, "She's coming, I met
her in the street." Her mother made her kneel beside her.
Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd,
and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want,
rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all
of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp,
unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in
the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of
everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so
unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense
crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured
shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at
night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring
flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat was a pale,
frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror.
Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty,
with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the
priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some
words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a
step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.
The service was over. Katerina Ivanovna went up to her husband
again. The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of
admonition and consolation to Katerina Ivanovna on leaving.
"What am I to do with these?" she interrupted sharply and irritably,
pointing to the little ones.
"God is merciful; look to the Most High for succour," the priest
began.
"Ach! He is merciful, but not to us."
"That's a sin, a sin, madam," observed the priest, shaking his head.
"And isn't that a sin?" cried Katerina Ivanovna, pointing to the
dying man.
"Perhaps those who have involuntarily caused the accident will agree
to compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings."
"You don't understand!" cried Katerina Ivanovna angrily waving her
hand. "And why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and
threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in
nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He
robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink!
And thank God he's dying! One less to keep!"
"You must forgive in the hour of death, that's a sin, madam, such
feelings are a great sin."
Katerina Ivanovna was busy with the dying man; she was giving him
water, wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow
straight, and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the
priest. Now she flew at him almost in a frenzy.
"Ah, father! That's words and only words! Forgive! If he'd not
been run over, he'd have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt
dirty and in rags and he'd have fallen asleep like a log, and I should
have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and
the children's and then drying them by the window and as soon as it
was daylight I should have been darning them. That's how I spend my
nights!... What's the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven
as it is!"
A terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her
handkerchief to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her
other hand to her aching chest. The handkerchief was covered with
blood. The priest bowed his head and said nothing.
Marmeladov was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the
face of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again. He kept
trying to say something to her; he began moving his tongue with
difficulty and articulating indistinctly, but Katerina Ivanovna,
understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, called
peremptorily to him:
"Be silent! No need! I know what you want to say!" And the sick
man was silent, but at the same instant his wandering eyes strayed
to the doorway and he saw Sonia.
Till then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow
in a corner.
"Who's that? Who's that?" he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice,
in agitation, turning his eyes in horror towards the door where his
daughter was standing, and trying to sit up.
"Lie down! Lie do-own!" cried Katerina Ivanovna.
With unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on
his elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter,
as though not recognising her. He had never seen her before in such
attire. Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her
humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye
to her dying father. His face showed intense suffering.
"Sonia! Daughter! Forgive!" he cried, and he tried to hold out his
hand to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face
downwards on the floor. They rushed to pick him up, they put him on
the sofa; but he was dying. Sonia with a faint cry ran up, embraced
him and remained so without moving. He died in her arms.
"He's got what he wanted," Katerina Ivanovna cried, seeing her
husband's dead body. "Well, what's to be done now? How am I to bury
him! What can I give them to-morrow to eat?"
Raskolnikov went up to Katerina Ivanovna.
"Katerina Ivanovna," he began, "last week your husband told me all
his life and circumstances.... Believe me, he spoke of you with
passionate reverence. From that evening, when I learnt how devoted
he was to you all and how he loved and respected you especially,
Katerina Ivanovna, in spite of his unfortunate weakness, from that
evening we became friends.... Allow me now... to do something... to
repay my debt to my dead friend. Here are twenty roubles I think-
and if that can be of any assistance to you, then... I... in short,
I will come again, I will be sure to come again... I shall, perhaps,
come again to-morrow.... Good-bye!"
And he went quickly out of the room, squeezing his way through the
crowd to the stairs. But in the crowd he suddenly jostled against
Nikodim Fomitch, who had heard of the accident and had come to give
instructions in person. They had not met since the scene at the police
station, but Nikodim Fomitch knew him instantly.
"Ah, is that you?" he asked him.
"He's dead," answered Raskolnikov. "The doctor and the priest have
been, all as it should have been. Don't worry the poor woman too much,
she is in consumption as it is. Try and cheer her up, if possible...
you are a kind-hearted man, I know..." he added with a smile,
looking straight in his face.
"But you are spattered with blood," observed Nikodim Fomitch,
noticing in the lamplight some fresh stains on Raskolnikov's
waistcoat.
"Yes... I'm covered with blood," Raskolnikov said with a peculiar
air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs.
He walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious
of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelming sensation of life and
strength that surged up suddenly within him. This sensation might be
compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been
pardoned. Halfway down the staircase he was overtaken by the priest on
his way home; Raskolnikov let him pass, exchanging a silent greeting
with him. He was just descending the last steps when he heard rapid
footsteps behind him. Some one overtook him; it was Polenka. She was
running after him, calling "Wait! wait!"
He turned round. She was at the bottom of the staircase and
stopped short a step above him. A dim light came in from the yard.
Raskolnikov could distinguish the child's thin but pretty little face,
looking at him with a bright childish smile. She had run after him
with a message which she was evidently glad to give.
"Tell me, what is your name?... and where do you live?" she said
hurriedly in a breathless voice.
He laid both hands on her shoulders and looked at her with a sort of
rapture. It was such a joy to him to look at her, he could not have
said why.
"Who sent you?"
"Sister Sonia sent me," answered the girl, smiling still more
brightly.
"I knew it was sister Sonia sent you."
"Mamma sent me, too... when sister Sonia was sending me, mamma
came up, too, and said 'Run fast, Polenka.'"
"Do you love sister Sonia?"
"I love her more than any one," Polenka answered with a peculiar
earnestness, and her smile became graver.
"And will you love me?"
By way of answer he saw the little girl's face approaching him,
her full lips naively held out to kiss him. Suddenly her arms as
thin as sticks held him tightly, her head rested on his shoulder and
the little girl wept softly, pressing her face against him.
"I am sorry for father," she said a moment later, raising her
tear-stained face and brushing away the tears with her hands. "It's
nothing but misfortunes now," she added suddenly with that
peculiarly sedate air which children try hard to assume when they want
to speak like grown-up people.
"Did your father love you?"
"He loved Lida most," she went on very seriously without a smile,
exactly like grown-up people, "he loved her because she is little
and because she is ill, too. And he always used to bring her presents.
But he taught us to read and me grammar and scripture, too," she added
with dignity. "And mother never used to say anything, but we knew that
she liked it and father knew it, too. And mother wants to teach me
French, for it's time my education began."
"And do you know your prayers?"
"Of course, we do! We knew them long ago. I say my prayers to myself
as I am a big girl now, but Kolya and Lida say them aloud with mother.
First they repeat the 'Ave Maria' and then another prayer: 'Lord,
forgive and bless Sister Sonia,' and then another, 'Lord, forgive
and bless our second father.' For our elder father is dead and this is
another one, but we do pray for the other as well."
"Polenka, my name is Rodion. Pray sometimes for me, too. 'And Thy
servant Rodion,' nothing more."
"I'll pray for you all the rest of my life," the little girl
declared hotly, and suddenly smiling again she rushed at him and
hugged him warmly once more.
Raskolnikov told her his name and address and promised to be sure to
come next day. The child went away quite enchanted with him. It was
past ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he was
standing on the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in.
"Enough," he pronounced resolutely and triumphantly. "I've done with
fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! haven't I lived
just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of
Heaven to her- and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the
reign of reason and light... and of will, and of strength... and now
we will see! We will try our strength!" he added defiantly, as
though challenging some power of darkness. "And I was ready to consent
to live in a square of space!
"I am very weak at this moment, but... I believe my illness is all
over. I knew it would be over when I went out. By the way,
Potchinkov's house is only a few steps away. I certainly must go to
Razumihin even if it were not close by... let him win his bet! Let
us give him some satisfaction, too- no matter! Strength, strength is
what one wants, you can get nothing without it, and strength must be
won by strength- that's what they don't know," he added proudly and
self-confidently and he walked with flagging footsteps from the
bridge. Pride and self-confidence grew continually stronger in him; he
was becoming a different man every moment. What was it had happened to
work this revolution in him? He did not know himself; like a man
catching at a straw, he suddenly felt that he, too, 'could live,
that there was still life for him, that his life had not died with the
old woman.' Perhaps he was in too great a hurry with his conclusion,
but he did not think of that.
"But I did ask her to remember 'Thy servant Rodion' in her prayers,"
the idea struck him. "Well, that was... in case of emergency," he
added and laughed himself at his boyish sally. He was in the best of
spirits.
He easily found Razumihin; the new lodger was already known at
Potchinkov's and the porter at once showed him the way. Half-way
upstairs he could hear the noise and animated conversation of a big
gathering of people. The door was wide open on the stairs; he could
hear exclamations and discussion. Razumihin's room was fairly large;
the company consisted of fifteen people. Raskolnikov stopped in the
entry, where two of the landlady's servants were busy behind a
screen with two samovars, bottles, plates and dishes of pie and
savouries, brought up from the landlady's kitchen. Raskolnikov sent in
for Razumihin. He ran out delighted. At the first glance it was
apparent that he had had a great deal to drink and, though no amount
of liquor made Razumihin quite drunk, this time he was perceptibly
affected by it.
"Listen," Raskolnikov hastened to say, "I've only just come to
tell you you've won your bet and that no one really knows what may not
happen to him. I can't come in; I am so weak that I shall fall down
directly. And so good evening and good-bye! Come and see me
to-morrow."
"Do you know what? I'll see you home. If you say you're weak
yourself, you must..."
"And your visitors? Who is the curly-headed one who has just
peeped out?"
"He? Goodness only knows! Some friend of uncle's I expect, or
perhaps he has come without being invited... I'll leave uncle with
them, he is an invaluable person, pity I can't introduce you to him
now. But confound them all now! They won't notice me, and I need a
little fresh air, for you've come just in the nick of time- another
two minutes and I should have come to blows! They are talking such a
lot of wild stuff... you simply can't imagine what men will say!
Though why shouldn't you imagine? Don't we talk nonsense ourselves?
And let them... that's the way to learn not to!... Wait a minute, I'll
fetch Zossimov."
Zossimov pounced upon Raskolnikov almost greedily; he showed a
special interest in him; soon his face brightened.
"You must go to bed at once," he pronounced, examining the patient
as far as he could, "and take something for the night. Will you take
it? I got it ready some time ago... a powder."
"Two, if you like," answered Raskolnikov. The powder was taken at
once.
"It's a good thing you are taking him home," observed Zossimov to
Razumihin- "we shall see how he is to-morrow, to-day he's not at all
amiss- a considerable change since the afternoon. Live and learn..."
"Do you know what Zossimov whispered to me when we were coming out?"
Razumihin blurted out, as soon as they were in the street. "I won't
tell you everything, brother, because they are such fools. Zossimov
told me to talk freely to you on the way and get you to talk freely to
me, and afterwards I am to tell him about it, for he's got a notion in
his head that you are... mad or close on it. Only fancy! In the
first place, you've three times the brains he has; in the second, if
you are not mad, you needn't care a hang that he has got such a wild
idea; and thirdly, that piece of beef whose specialty is surgery has
gone mad on mental diseases, and what's brought him to this conclusion
about you was your conversation to-day with Zametov."
"Zametov told you all about it?"
"Yes, and he did well. Now I understand what it all means and so
does Zametov.... Well, the fact is, Rodya... the point is... I am a
little drunk now.... But that's... no matter... the point is that this
idea... you understand? was just being hatched in their brains...
you understand? That is, no one ventured to say it aloud, because
the idea is too absurd and especially since the arrest of that
painter, that bubble's burst and gone for ever. But why are they
such fools? I gave Zametov a bit of a thrashing at the time- that's
between ourselves, brother; please don't let out a hint that you
know of it; I've noticed he is a ticklish subject; it was at Luise
Ivanovna's. But to-day, to-day it's all cleared up. That Ilya
Petrovitch is at the bottom of it! He took advantage of your
fainting at the police station, but he is ashamed of it himself now; I
know that..."
Raskolnikov listened greedily. Razumihin was drunk enough to talk
too freely.
"I fainted then because it was so close and the smell of paint,"
said Raskolnikov.
"No need to explain that! And it wasn't the paint only: the fever
had been coming on for a month; Zossimov testifies to that! But how
crushed that boy is now, you wouldn't believe! 'I am not worth his
little finger,' he says. Yours, he means. He has good feelings at
times, brother. But the lesson, the lesson you gave him to-day in
the Palais de Crystal, that was too good for anything! You
frightened him at first, you know, he nearly went into convulsions!
You almost convinced him again of the truth of all that hideous
nonsense, and then you suddenly- put out your tongue at him: 'There
now, what do you make of it?' It was perfect! He is crushed,
annihilated now! It was masterly, by Jove, it's what they deserve! Ah,
that I wasn't there! He was hoping to see you awfully. Porfiry, too,
wants to make your acquaintance..."
"Ah!... he too... but why did they put me down as mad?"
"Oh, not mad. I must have said too much, brother.... What struck
him, you see, was that only that subject seemed to interest you; now
it's clear why it did interest you; knowing all the
circumstances.... and how that irritated you and worked in with your
illness... I am a little drunk, brother, only, confound him, he has
some idea of his own... I tell you, he's mad on mental diseases. But
don't you mind him..."
For half a minute both were silent.
"Listen, Razumihin," began Raskolnikov, "I want to tell you plainly:
I've just been at a death-bed, a clerk who died... I gave them all
my money... and besides I've just been kissed by some one who, if I
had killed any one, would just the same... in fact I saw some one else
there... with a flame-coloured feather... but I am talking nonsense; I
am very weak, support me... we shall be at the stairs directly..."
"What's the matter? What's the matter with you?" Razumihin asked
anxiously.
"I am a little giddy, but that's not the point, I am so sad, so
sad... like a woman. Look, what's that? Look, look!"
"What is it?"
"Don't you see? A light in my room, you see? Through the crack..."
They were already at the foot of the last flight of stairs, at the
level of the landlady's door, and they could, as a fact, see from
below that there was a light in Raskolnikov's garret.
"Queer! Nastasya, perhaps," observed Razumihin.
"She is never in my room at this time and she must be in bed long
ago, but... I don't care! Good-bye!"
"What do you mean? I am coming with you, we'll come in together!"
"I know we are going in together, but I want to shake hands here and
say good-bye to you here. So give me your hand, good-bye!"
"What's the matter with you, Rodya?"
"Nothing... come along... you shall be witness."
They began mounting the stairs, and the idea struck Razumihin that
perhaps Zossimov might be right after all. "Ah, I've upset him with my
chatter!" he muttered to himself.
When they reached the door they heard voices in the room.
"What is it?" cried Razumihin. Raskolnikov was the first to open the
door; he flung it wide and stood still in the doorway, dumbfounded.
His mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been
waiting an hour and a half for him. Why had he never expected, never
thought of them, though the news that they had started, were on
their way and would arrive immediately, had been repeated to him
only that day? They had spent that hour and a half plying Nastasya
with questions. She was standing before them and had told them
everything by now. They were beside themselves with alarm when they
heard of his "running away" to-day, ill and, as they understood from
her story, delirious! "Good Heavens, what had become of him?" Both had
been weeping, both had been in anguish for that hour and a half.
A cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Raskolnikov's entrance. Both
rushed to him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable
sensation struck him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to
embrace them, he could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their
arms, kissed him, laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell
to the ground, fainting.
Anxiety, cries of horror, moans... Razumihin who was standing in the
doorway flew into the room, seized the sick man in his strong arms and
in a moment had him on the sofa.
"It's nothing, nothing!" he cried to the mother and sister- "it's
only a faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much
better, that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to
himself, he is all right again!"
And seizing Dounia by the arm so that he almost dislocated it, he
made her bend down to see that "he is all right again." The mother and
sister looked on him with emotion and gratitude, as their
Providence. They had heard already from Nastasya all that had been
done for their Rodya during his illness, by this "very competent young
man," as Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov called him that evening in
conversation with Dounia.
CHAPTER_ONE
PART THREE
Chapter One
-
RASKOLNIKOV got up, and sat down on the sofa. He waved his hand
weakly to Razumihin to cut short the flow of warm and incoherent
consolations he was addressing to his mother and sister, took them
both by the hand and for a minute or two gazed from one to the other
without speaking. His mother was alarmed by his expression. It
revealed an emotion agonisingly poignant, and at the same time
something immovable, almost insane. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to
cry.
Avdotya Romanovna was pale; her hand trembled in her brother's.
"Go home... with him," he said in a broken voice, pointing to
Razumihin, "good-bye till to-morrow; to-morrow everything... Is it
long since you arrived?"
"This evening, Rodya," answered Pulcheria Alexandrovna, "the train
was awfully late. But, Rodya, nothing would induce me to leave you
now! I will spend the night here, near you..."
"Don't torture me!" he said with a gesture of irritation.
"I will stay with him," cried Razumihin, "I won't leave him for a
moment. Bother all my visitors! Let them rage to their hearts'
content! My uncle is presiding there."
"How, how can I thank you!" Pulcheria Alexandrovna was beginning,
once more pressing Razumihin's hands, but Raskolnikov interrupted
her again.
"I can't have it! I can't have it!" he repeated irritably, "don't
worry me! Enough, go away... I can't stand it!"
"Come, mamma, come out of the room at least for a minute," Dounia
whispered in dismay; "we are distressing him, that's evident."
"Mayn't I look at him after three years?" wept Pulcheria
Alexandrovna.
"Stay," he stopped them again, "you keep interrupting me, and my
ideas get muddled.... Have you seen Luzhin?"
"No, Rodya, but he knows already of our arrival. We have heard,
Rodya, that Pyotr Petrovitch was so kind as to visit you today,"
Pulcheria Alexandrovna added somewhat timidly.
"Yes... he was so kind... Dounia, I promised Luzhin I'd throw him
downstairs and told him to go to hell...."
"Rodya, what are you saying! Surely, you don't mean to tell us..."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna began in alarm, but she stopped, looking at
Dounia.
Avdotya Romanovna was looking attentively at her brother, waiting
for what would come next. Both of them had heard of the quarrel from
Nastasya, so far as she had succeeded in understanding and reporting
it, and were in painful perplexity and suspense.
"Dounia," Raskolnikov continued with an effort, "I don't want that
marriage, so at the first opportunity to-morrow you must refuse
Luzhin, so that we may never hear his name again."
"Good Heavens!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"Brother, think what you are saying!" Avdotya Romanovna began
impetuously, but immediately checked herself. "You are not fit to talk
now, perhaps; you are tired," she added gently.
"You think I am delirious? No... You are marrying Luzhin for my
sake. But I won't accept the sacrifice. And so write a letter before
to-morrow, to refuse him... Let me read it in the morning and that
will be the end of it!"
"That I can't do!" the girl cried, offended, "what right have
you..."
"Dounia, you are hasty, too, be quiet, to-morrow... Don't you
see..." the mother interposed in dismay. "Better come away!"
"He is raving," Razumihin cried tipsily, "or how would he dare!
To-morrow all this nonsense will be over... to-day he certainly did
drive him away. That was so. And Luzhin got angry, too... He made
speeches here, wanted to show off his learning and he went out
crest-fallen...."
"Then it's true?" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"Good-bye till to-morrow, brother," said Dounia compassionately-
"let us go, mother... Good-bye, Rodya."
"Do you hear, sister," he repeated after them, making a last effort,
"I am not delirious; this marriage is- an infamy. Let me act like a
scoundrel, but you mustn't... one is enough... and though I am a
scoundrel, I wouldn't own such a sister. It's me or Luzhin! Go
now...."
"But you're out of your mind! Despot!" roared Razumihin; but
Raskolnikov did not and perhaps could not answer. He lay down on the
sofa, and turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Avdotya Romanovna
looked with interest at Razumihin; her black eyes flashed; Razumihin
positively started at her glance.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna stood overwhelmed.
"Nothing would induce me to go," she whispered in despair to
Razumihin. "I will stay somewhere here... escort Dounia home."
"You'll spoil everything," Razumihin answered in the same whisper,
losing patience- "come out on to the stairs, anyway. Nastasya, show
a light! I assure you," he went on in a half whisper on the stairs-
"that he was almost beating the doctor and me this afternoon! Do you
understand? The doctor himself! Even he gave way and left him, so as
not to irritate him. I remained downstairs on guard, but he dressed at
once and slipped off. And he will slip off again if you irritate
him, at this time of night, and will do himself some mischief...."
"What are you saying?"
"And Avdotya Romanovna can't possibly be left in those lodgings
without you. Just think where you are staying! That blackguard Pyotr
Petrovitch couldn't find you better lodgings... But you know I've
had a little to drink, and that's what makes me... swear; don't mind
it...."
"But I'll go to the landlady here," Pulcheria Alexandrovna insisted,
"Ill beseech her to find some corner for Dounia and me for the
night. I can't leave him like that, I cannot!"
This conversation took place on the landing just before the
landlady's door. Nastasya lighted them from a step below. Razumihin
was in extraordinary excitement. Half an hour earlier, while he was
bringing Raskolnikov home, he had indeed talked too freely, but he was
aware of it himself, and his head was clear in spite of the vast
quantities he had imbibed. Now he was in a state bordering on ecstasy,
and all that he had drunk seemed to fly to his head with redoubled
effect. He stood with the two ladies, seizing both by their hands,
persuading them, and giving them reasons with astonishing plainness of
speech, and at almost every word he uttered, probably to emphasize his
arguments, he squeezed their hands painfully as in a vise. He stared
at Avdotya Romanovna without the least regard for good manners. They
sometimes pulled their hands out of his huge bony paws, but far from
noticing what was the matter, he drew them all the closer to him. If
they'd told him to jump head foremost from the staircase, he would
have done it without thought or hesitation in their service. Though
Pulcheria Alexandrovna felt that the young man was really too
eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety over her Rodya
she looked on his presence as providential and was unwilling to notice
all his peculiarities. But though Avdotya Romanovna shared her
anxiety, and was not of timorous disposition, she could not see the
glowing light in his eyes without wonder and almost alarm. It was only
the unbounded confidence inspired by Nastasya's account of her
brother's queer friend, which prevented her from trying to run away
from him, and to persuade her mother to do the same. She realised,
too, that even running away was perhaps impossible now. Ten minutes
later, however, she was considerably reassured; it was
characteristic of Razumihin that he showed his true nature at once,
whatever mood he might be in, so that people quickly saw the sort of
man they had to deal with.
"You can't go to the landlady, that's perfect nonsense!" he cried.
"If you stay, though you are his mother, you'll drive him to a frenzy,
and then goodness knows what will happen! Listen, I'll tell you what
I'll do: Nastasya will stay with him now, and I'll conduct you both
home, you can't be in the streets alone; Petersburg is an awful
place in that way... But no matter! Then I'll run straight back here
and a quarter of an hour later, on my word of honour, I'll bring you
news how he is, whether he is asleep, and all that. Then, listen! Then
I'll run home in a twinkling- I've a lot of friends there, all
drunk- I'll fetch Zossimov- that's the doctor who is looking after
him, he is there, too, but he is not drunk; he is not drunk, he is
never drunk! I'll drag him to Rodya, and then to you, so that you'll
get two reports in the hour- from the doctor, you understand, from the
doctor himself, that's a very different thing from my account of
him! If there's anything wrong, I swear I'll bring you here myself,
but, if it's all right, you go to bed. And I'll spend the night
here, in the passage, he won't hear me, and I'll tell Zossimov to
sleep at the landlady's, to be at hand. Which is better for him: you
or the doctor? So come home then! But the landlady is out of the
question; it's all right for me, but it's out of the question for you:
she wouldn't take you, for she's... for she's a fool... She'd be
jealous on my account of Avdotya Romanovna and of you, too, if you
want to know... of Avdotya Romanovna certainly. She is an
absolutely, absolutely unaccountable character! But I am a fool,
too!... No matter! Come along! Do you trust me? Come, do you trust
me or not?"
"Let us go, mother," said Avdotya Romanovna, "he will certainly do
what he has promised. He has saved Rodya already, and if the doctor
really will consent to spend the night here, what could be better?"
"You see, you... you... understand me, because you are an angel!"
Razumihin cried in ecstasy, "let us go! Nastasya! Fly upstairs and sit
with him with a light; I'll come in a quarter of an hour."
Though Pulcheria Alexandrovna was not perfectly convinced, she
made no further resistance. Razumihin gave an arm to each and drew
them down the stairs. He still made her uneasy, as though he was
competent and good-natured, was he capable of carrying out his
promise? He seemed in such a condition....
"Ah, I see you think I am in such a condition!" Razumihin broke in
upon her thoughts, guessing them, as he strolled along the pavement
with huge steps, so that the two ladies could hardly keep up with him,
a fact he did not observe, however. "Nonsense! That is... I am drunk
like a fool, but that's not it; I am not drunk from wine. It's
seeing you has turned my head... But don't mind me! Don't take any
notice: I am talking nonsense, I am not worthy of you... I am
utterly unworthy of you! The minute I've taken you home, I'll pour a
couple of pailfuls of water over my head in the gutter here, and
then I shall be all right... If only you knew how I love you both!
Don't laugh, and don't be angry! You may be angry with any one, but
not with me! I am his friend, and therefore I am your friend, too, I
want to be... I had a presentiment... Last year there was a
moment... though it wasn't a presentiment really, for you seem to have
fallen from heaven. And I expect I shan't sleep all night...
Zossimov was afraid a little time ago that he would go mad... that's
why he mustn't be irritated."
"What do you say?" cried the mother.
"Did the doctor really say that?" asked Avdotya Romanovna, alarmed.
"Yes, but it's not so, not a bit of it. He gave him some medicine, a
powder, I saw it, and then your coming here.... Ah! It would have been
better if you had come to-morrow. It's a good thing we went away.
And in an hour Zossimov himself will report to you about everything.
He is not drunk! And I shan't be drunk... And what made me get so
tight? Because they got me into an argument, damn them! I've sworn
never to argue! They talk such trash! I almost came to blows! I've
left my uncle to preside. Would you believe, they insist on complete
absence of individualism and that's just what they relish! Not to be
themselves, to be as unlike themselves as they can. That's what they
regard as the highest point of progress. If only their nonsense were
their own, but as it is..."
"Listen!" Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but it only
added fuel to the flames.
"What do you think?" shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, "you think
I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to
talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through
error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach
any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred
and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even
make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own
nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is
better than to go right in some one else's. In the first case you
are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't
escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And
what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention,
ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything,
everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at
school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are
used to! Am I right, am I right?" cried Razumihin, pressing and
shaking the two ladies' hands.
"Oh, mercy, I do not know," cried poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"Yes, yes... though I don't agree with you in everything," added
Avdotya Romanovna earnestly and at once uttered a cry, for he squeezed
her hand so painfully.
"Yes, you say yes... well after that you... you..." he cried in a
transport, "you are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and
perfection. Give me your hand... you give me yours, too! I want to
kiss your hands here at once, on my knees..." and he fell on his knees
on the pavement, fortunately at that time deserted.
"Leave off, I entreat you, what are you doing?" Pulcheria
Alexandrovna cried, greatly distressed.
"Get up, get up!" said Dounia laughing, though she, too, was upset.
"Not for anything till you let me kiss your hands! That's it!
Enough! I get up and we'll go on! I am a luckless fool, I am
unworthy of you and drunk... and I am ashamed.... I am not worthy to
love you, but to do homage to you is the duty of every man who is
not a perfect beast! And I've done homage.... Here are your
lodgings, and for that alone Rodya was right in driving your Pyotr
Petrovitch away.... How dare he! how dare he put you in such lodgings!
It's a scandal! Do you know the sort of people they take in here?
And you his betrothed! You are his betrothed? Yes, well, then, I'll
tell you, your fiance is a scoundrel."
"Excuse me, Mr. Razumihin, you are forgetting..." Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was beginning.
"Yes, yes, you are right, I did forget myself, I am ashamed of
it," Razumihin made haste to apologise. "But... but you can't be angry
with me for speaking so! For I speak sincerely and not because...
hm, hm! That would be disgraceful; in fact not because I'm in... hm!
Well, anyway I won't say why, I daren't.... But we all saw to-day when
he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his
hair curled at the barber's, not because he was in such a hurry to
show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a
skin-flint and a buffoon. That's evident. Do you think him clever? No,
he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do
you see, ladies?" he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their
rooms, "though all my friends there are drunk, yet they are all
honest, and though we do talk a lot of trash, and I do, too, yet we
shall talk our way to the truth at last, for we are on the right path,
while Pyotr Petrovitch... is not on the right path. Though I've been
calling them all sorts of names just now, I do respect them all...
though I don't respect Zametov, I like him, for he is a puppy, and
that bullock Zossimov, because he is an honest man and knows his work.
But enough, it's all said and forgiven. Is it forgiven? Well, then,
let's go on. I know this corridor, I've been here, there was a scandal
here at Number 3.... Where are you here? Which number? eight? Well,
lock yourselves in for the night, then. Don't let anybody in. In a
quarter of an hour I'll come back with news, and half an hour later
I'll bring Zossimov, you'll see! Good-bye, I'll run."
"Good heavens, Dounia, what is going to happen?" said Pulcheria
Alexandrovna, addressing her daughter with anxiety and dismay.
"Don't worry yourself, mother," said Dounia, taking off her hat
and cape. "God has sent this gentleman to our aid, though he has
come from a drinking party. We can depend on him, I assure you. And
all that he has done for Rodya...."
"Ah. Dounia, goodness knows whether he will come! How could I
bring myself to leave Rodya?... And how different, how different I had
fancied our meeting! How sullen he was, as though not pleased to see
us...."
Tears came into her eyes.
"No, it's not that, mother. You didn't see, you were crying all
the time. He is quite unhinged by serious illness- that's the reason."
"Ah, that illness! What will happen, what will happen? And how he
talked to you, Dounia!" said the mother, looking timidly at her
daughter, trying to read her thoughts and, already half consoled by
Dounia's standing up for her brother, which meant that she had already
forgiven him. "I am sure he will think better of it to-morrow," she
added, probing her further.
"And I am sure that he will say the same to-morrow... about that,"
Avdotya Romanovna said finally. And, of course, there was no going
beyond that, for this was a point which Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
afraid to discuss. Dounia went up and kissed her mother. The latter
warmly embraced her without speaking. Then she sat down to wait
anxiously for Razumihin's return, timidly watching her daughter who
walked up and down the room with her arms folded, lost in thought.
This walking up and down when she was thinking was a habit of
Avdotya Romanovna's and the mother was always afraid to break in on
her daughter's mood at such moments.
Razumihin, of course, was ridiculous in his sudden drunken
infatuation for Avdotya Romanovna. Yet apart from his eccentric
condition, many people would have thought it justified if they had
seen Avdotya Romanovna, especially at that moment when she was walking
to and fro with folded arms, pensive and melancholy. Avdotya Romanovna
was remarkably good looking; she was tall, strikingly
well-proportioned, strong and self-reliant- the latter quality was
apparent in every gesture, though it did not in the least detract from
the grace and softness of her movements. In face she resembled her
brother, but she might be described as really beautiful. Her hair
was dark brown, a little lighter than her brother's; there was a proud
light in her almost black eyes and yet at times a look of
extraordinary kindness. She was pale, but it was a healthy pallor; her
face was radiant with freshness and vigour. Her mouth was rather
small; the full red lower lip projected a little as did her chin; it
was the only irregularity in her beautiful face, but it gave it a
peculiarly individual and almost haughty expression. Her face was
always more serious and thoughtful than gay; but how well smiles,
how well youthful, lighthearted, irresponsible, laughter suited her
face! It was natural enough that a warm, open, simple-hearted,
honest giant like Razumihin, who had never seen any one like her and
was not quite sober at the time, should lose his head immediately.
Besides, as chance would have it, he saw Dounia for the first time
transfigured by her love for her brother and her joy at meeting him.
Afterwards he saw her lower lip quiver with indignation at her
brother's insolent, cruel and ungrateful words- and his fate was
sealed.
He had spoken the truth, moreover, when he blurted out in his
drunken talk on the stairs that Praskovya Pavlovna, Raskolnikov's
eccentric landlady, would be jealous of Pulcheria Alexandrovna as well
as of Avdotya Romanovna on his account. Although Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her
former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which
is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit,
sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may
add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of
retaining beauty to old age. Her hair had begun to grow grey and thin,
there had long been little crow's foot wrinkles round her eyes, her
cheeks were hollow and sunken from anxiety and grief, and yet it was a
handsome face. She was Dounia over again, twenty years older, but
without the projecting underlip. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was emotional,
but not sentimental, timid and yielding, but only to a certain
point. She could give way and accept a great deal even of what was
contrary to her convictions, but there was a certain barrier fixed
by honesty, principle and the deepest convictions which nothing
would induce her to cross.
Exactly twenty minutes after Razumihin's departure, there came two
subdued but hurried knocks at the door: he had come back.
"I won't come in, I haven't time," he hastened to say when the
door was opened. "He sleeps like a top, soundly, quietly, and God
grant he may sleep ten hours. Nastasya's with him; I told her not to
leave till I came. Now I am fetching Zossimov, he will report to you
and then you'd better turn in; I can see you are too tired to do
anything...."
And he ran off down the corridor.
"What a very competent and... devoted young man!" cried Pulcheria
Alexandrovna exceedingly delighted.
"He seems a splendid person!" Avdotya Romanovna replied with some
warmth, resuming her walk up and down the room.
It was nearly an hour later when they heard footsteps in the
corridor and another knock at the door. Both women waited this time
completely relying on Razumihin's promise; he actually had succeeded
in bringing Zossimov. Zossimov had agreed at once to desert the
drinking party to go to Raskolnikov's, but he came reluctantly and
with the greatest suspicion to see the ladies, mistrusting Razumihin
in his exhilarated condition. But his vanity was at once reassured and
flattered; he saw that they were really expecting him as an oracle. He
stayed just ten minutes and succeeded in completely convincing and
comforting Pulcheria Alexandrovna. He spoke with marked sympathy,
but with the reserve and extreme seriousness of a young doctor at an
important consultation. He did not utter a word on any other subject
and did not display the slightest desire to enter into more personal
relations with the two ladies. Remarking at his first entrance the
dazzling beauty of Avdotya Romanovna, he endeavoured not to notice her
at all during his visit and addressed himself solely to Pulcheria
Alexandrovna. All this gave him extraordinary inward satisfaction.
He declared that he thought the invalid at this moment going on very
satisfactorily. According to his observations the patient's illness
was due partly to his unfortunate material surroundings during the
last few months, but it had partly also a moral origin, "was so to
speak the product of several material and moral influences, anxieties,
apprehensions, troubles, certain ideas... and so on." Noticing
stealthily that Avdotya Romanovna was following his words with close
attention, Zossimov allowed himself to enlarge on this theme. On
Pulcheria Alexandrovna's anxiously and timidly inquiring as to "some
suspicion of insanity," he replied with a composed and candid smile
that his words had been exaggerated; that certainly the patient had
some fixed idea, something approaching a monomania- he, Zossimov,
was now particularly studying this interesting branch of medicine- but
that it must be recollected that until to-day the patient had been
in delirium and... and that no doubt the presence of his family
would have a favourable effect on his recovery and distract his
mind, "if only all fresh shocks can be avoided," he added
significantly. Then he got up, took leave with an impressive and
affable bow, while blessings, warm gratitude, and entreaties were
showered upon him, and Avdotya Romanovna spontaneously offered her
hand to him. He went out exceedingly pleased with his visit and
still more so with himself.
"We'll talk to-morrow; go to bed at once!" Razumihin said in
conclusion, following Zossimov out. "I'll be with you to-morrow
morning as early as possible with my report."
"That's a fetching little girl, Avdotya Romanovna," remarked
Zossimov, almost licking his lips as they both came out into the
street.
"Fetching? You said fetching?" roared Razumihin and he flew at
Zossimov and seized him by the throat. "If you ever dare... Do you
understand? Do you understand?" he shouted, shaking him by the
collar and squeezing him against the wall. "Do you hear?"
"Let me go, you drunken devil," said Zossimov, struggling and when
he had let him go, he stared at him and went off into a sudden guffaw.
Razumihin stood facing him in gloomy and earnest reflection.
"Of course, I am an ass," he observed, sombre as a storm cloud, "but
still... you are another."
"No, brother, not at all such another. I am not dreaming of any
folly."
They walked along in silence and only when they were close to
Raskolnikov's lodgings, Razumihin broke the silence in considerable
anxiety.
"Listen," he said, "you're a first-rate fellow, but among your other
failings, you're a loose fish, that, I know, and a dirty one, too. You
are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you're getting
fat and lazy and can't deny yourself anything- and I call that dirty
because it leads on straight into the dirt. You've let yourself get so
slack that I don't know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted
doctor. You- a doctor- sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to
your patients! In another three or four years you won't get up for
your patients... But hang it all, that's not the point!... You are
going to spend to-night in the landlady's flat here. (Hard work I've
had to persuade her!) And I'll be in the kitchen. So here's a chance
for you to get to know her better.... It's not as you think! There's
not a trace of anything of the sort, brother...!"
"But I don't think!"
"Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage
virtue... and yet she's sighing and melting like wax, simply
melting! Save me from her, by all that's unholy! She's most
prepossessing... I'll repay you, I'll do anything...."
Zossimov laughed more violently than ever.
"Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?"
"It won't be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to
her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You're a doctor, too; try
curing her of something. I swear you won't regret it. She has a piano,
and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian
one: 'I shed hot tears.' She likes the genuine article- and well, it
all began with that song; Now you're a regular performer, a maitre,
a Rubinstein.... I assure you, you won't regret it!"
"But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise
of marriage, perhaps?"
"Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is
not that sort at all.... Tchebarov tried that...."
"Well, then, drop her!"
"But I can't drop her like that!"
"Why can't you?"
"Well, I can't, that's all about it! There's an element of
attraction here, brother."
"Then why have you fascinated her?"
"I haven't fascinated her; perhaps, I was fascinated myself in my
folly. But she won't care a straw whether it's you or I, so long as
somebody sits beside her, sighing.... I can't explain the position,
brother... look here, you are good at mathematics, and working at it
now... begin teaching her the integral calculus; upon my soul, I'm not
joking. I'm in earnest, it'll be just the same to her. She will gaze
at you and sigh for a whole year together. I talked to her once for
two days at a time about the Prussian House of Lords (for one must
talk of something)- she just sighed and perspired! And you mustn't
talk of love- she's bashful to hysterics- but just let her see you
can't tear yourself away- that's enough. It's fearfully comfortable;
you're quite at home, you can read, sit, lie about, write. You may
even venture on a kiss, if you're careful."
"But what do I want with her?"
"Ach, I can't make you understand! You see, you are made for each
other! I have often been reminded of you!... You'll come to it in
the end! So does it matter whether it's sooner or later? There's the
featherbed element here, brother,- ach! and not only that! There's
an attraction here- here you have the end of the world, an
anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes
that are the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of
savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs and warm
shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on- as snug as though you were dead,
and yet you're alive- the advantages of both at once! Well, hang it,
brother, what stuff I'm talking, it's bedtime! Listen. I sometimes
wake up at night; so I'll go in and look at him. But there's no
need, it's all right. Don't you worry yourself, yet if you like, you
might just look in once, too. But if you notice anything, delirium
or fever- wake me at once. But there can't be...."
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
RAZUMIHIN waked up next morning at eight o'clock, troubled and
serious. He found himself confronted with many new and unlooked-for
perplexities. He had never expected that he would ever wake up feeling
like that. He remembered every detail of the previous day and he
knew that a perfectly novel experience had befallen him, that he had
received an impression unlike anything he had known before. At the
same time he recognised clearly that the dream which had fired his
imagination was hopelessly unattainable- so unattainable that he
felt positively ashamed of it, and he hastened to pass to the other
more practical cares and difficulties bequeathed him by that "thrice
accursed yesterday."
The most awful recollection of the previous day was the way he had
shown himself "base and mean," not only because he had been drunk, but
because he had taken advantage of the young girl's position to abuse
her fiance in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual
relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself.
And what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded
manner? Who had asked for his opinion! Was it thinkable that such a
creature as Avdotya Romanovna would be marrying an unworthy man for
money? So there must be something in him. The lodgings? But after
all how could he know the character of the lodgings? He was furnishing
a flat... Foo, how despicable it all was! And what justification was
it that he was drunk? Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading! In
wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, "that is, all the
uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart!" And would such a dream
ever be permissible to him, Razumihin? What was he beside such a girl-
he, the drunken noisy braggart of last night? "Was it possible to
imagine so absurd and cynical a juxtaposition?" Razumihin blushed
desperately at the very idea and suddenly the recollection forced
itself vividly upon him of how he had said last night on the stairs
that the landlady would be jealous of Avdotya Romanovna... that was
simply intolerable. He brought his fist down heavily on the kitchen
stove, hurt his hand and sent one of the bricks flying.
"Of course," he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of
self-abasement, "of course, all these infamies can never be wiped
out or smoothed over... and so it's useless even to think of it, and I
must go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too.... and
not ask forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is lost now!"
And yet as he dressed he examined his attire more carefully than
usual. He hadn't another suit- if he had had, perhaps he wouldn't have
put it on. "I would have made a point of not putting it on." But in
any case he could not remain a cynic and a dirty sloven; he had no
right to offend the feelings of others, especially when they were in
need of his assistance and asking him to see them. He brushed his
clothes carefully. His linen was always decent; in that respect he was
especially clean.
He washed that morning scrupulously- he got some soap from Nastasya-
he washed his hair, his neck and especially his hands. When it came to
the question whether to shave his stubby chin or not (Praskovya
Pavlovna had capital razors that had been left by her late husband),
the question was angrily answered in the negative. "Let it stay as
it is! What if they think that I shaved on purpose to...? They
certainly would think so! Not on any account!"
"And... the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the
manners of a pothouse; and... and even admitting that he knew he had
some of the essentials of a gentleman... what was there in that to
be proud of? Every one ought to be a gentleman and more than that...
and all the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things...
not exactly dishonest, and yet.... and what thoughts he sometimes had;
hm... and to set all that beside Avdotya Romanovna! Confound it! So be
it! Well, he'd make a point then of being dirty, greasy, pothouse in
his manners and he wouldn't care! He'd be worse!"
He was engaged in such monologues when Zossimov, who had spent the
night in Praskovya Pavlovna's parlour, came in.
He was going home and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first.
Razumihin informed him that Raskolnikov was sleeping like a
dormouse. Zossimov gave orders that they shouldn't wake him and
promised to see him again about eleven.
"If he is still at home," he added. "Damn it all! If one can't
control one's patients, how is one to cure them! Do you know whether
he will go to them, or whether they are coming here?"
"They are coming, I think," said Razumihin, understanding the object
of the question, "and they will discuss their family affairs, no
doubt. I'll be off. You, as the doctor, have more right to be here
than I."
"But I am not a father confessor; I shall come and go away; I've
plenty to do besides looking after them."
"One thing worries me," interposed Razumihin, frowning. "On the
way home I talked a lot of drunken nonsense to him... all sort of
things... and amongst them that you were afraid that he... might
become insane."
"You told the ladies so, too."
"I know it was stupid! You may beat me if you like! Did you think so
seriously?"
"That's nonsense, I tell you, how could I think it seriously! You,
yourself, described him as a monomaniac when you fetched me to
him... and we added fuel to the fire yesterday, you did, that is, with
your story about the painter; it was a nice conversation, when he was,
perhaps, mad on that very point! If only I'd known what happened
then at the police station and that some wretch... had insulted him
with this suspicion! Hm... I would not have allowed that
conversation yesterday. These monomaniacs will make a mountain out
of a molehill... and see their fancies as solid realities.... As far
as I remember, it was Zametov's story that cleared up half the mystery
to my mind. Why, I know one case in which a hypochondriac, a man of
forty, cut the throat of a little boy of eight, because he couldn't
endure the jokes he made every day at table! And in this case his
rags, the insolent police officer, the fever and this suspicion! All
that working upon a man half frantic with hypochondria, and with his
morbid exceptional vanity! That may well have been the
starting-point of illness. Well, bother it all!... And, by the way,
that Zametov certainly is a nice fellow, but hm... he shouldn't have
told all that last night. He is an awful chatterbox!"
"But whom did he tell it to? You and me?"
"And Porfiry."
"What does that matter?"
"And, by the way, have you any influence on them, his mother and
sister? Tell them to be more careful with him to-day...."
"They'll get on all right!" Razumihin answered reluctantly.
"Why is he so set against this Luzhin? A man with money and she
doesn't seem to dislike him... and they haven't a farthing I
suppose? eh?"
"But what business is it of yours?" Razumihin cried with
annoyance. "How can I tell whether they've a farthing? Ask them
yourself and perhaps you'll find out...."
"Foo, what an ass you are sometimes! Last night's wine has not
gone off yet.... Good-bye; thank your Praskovya Pavlovna from me for
my night's lodging. She locked herself in, made no reply to my bonjour
through the door; she was up at seven o'clock, the samovar was taken
in to her from the kitchen. I was not vouchsafed a personal
interview...."
At nine o'clock precisely Razumihin reached the lodgings at
Bakaleyev's house. Both ladies were waiting for him with nervous
impatience. They had risen at seven o'clock or earlier. He entered
looking as black as night, bowed awkwardly and was at once furious
with himself for it. He had reckoned without his host: Pulcheria
Alexandrovna fairly rushed at him, seized him by both hands and was
almost kissing them. He glanced timidly at Avdotya Romanovna, but
her proud countenance wore at that moment an expression of such
gratitude and friendliness, such complete and unlooked-for respect (in
place of the sneering looks and ill-disguised contempt he had
expected), that it threw him into greater confusion than if he had
been met with abuse. Fortunately there was a subject for conversation,
and he made haste to snatch at it.
Hearing that everything was going well and that Rodya had not yet
waked, Pulcheria Alexandrovna declared that she was glad to hear it,
because "she had something which it was very, very necessary to talk
over beforehand." Then followed an inquiry about breakfast and an
invitation to have it with them; they had waited to have it with
him. Avdotya Romanovna rang the bell: it was answered by a ragged
dirty waiter, and they asked him to bring tea which was served at
last, but in such a dirty and disorderly way, that the ladies were
ashamed. Razumihin vigorously attacked the lodgings, but,
remembering Luzhin, stopped in embarrassment and was greatly
relieved by Pulcheria Alexandrovna's questions, which showered in a
continual stream upon him.
He talked for three quarters of an hour, being constantly
interrupted by their questions, and succeeded in describing to them
all the most important facts he knew of the last year of Raskolnikov's
life, concluding with a circumstantial account of his illness. He
omitted, however, many things, which were better omitted, including
the scene at the police station with all its consequences. They
listened eagerly to his story, and, when he thought he had finished
and satisfied his listeners, he found that they considered he had
hardly begun.
"Tell me, tell me! What do you think...? Excuse me, I still don't
know your name!" Pulcheria Alexandrovna put in hastily.
"Dmitri Prokofitch."
"I should like very, very much to know, Dmitri Prokofitch... how
he looks... on things in general now, that is, how can I explain, what
are his likes and dislikes? Is he always so irritable? Tell me, if you
can, what are his hopes and so to say his dreams? Under what
influences is he now? In a word, I should like..."
"Ah, mother, how can he answer all that at once?" observed Dounia.
"Good heavens, I had not expected to find him in the least like
this, Dmitri Prokofitch!"
"Naturally," answered Razumihin. "I have no mother, but my uncle
comes every year and almost every time he can scarcely recognise me,
even in appearance, though he is a clever man; and your three years'
separation means a great deal. What am I to tell you? I have known
Rodion for a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty,
and of late- and perhaps for a long time before- he has been
suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He
does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing
than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all
morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous; it's as though he
were alternating between two characters. Sometimes he is fearfully
reserved! He says he is so busy that everything is a hindrance, and
yet he lies in bed doing nothing. He doesn't jeer at things, not
because he hasn't the wit, but as though he hadn't time to waste on
such trifles. He never listens to what is said to him. He is never
interested in what interests other people at any given moment. He
thinks very highly of himself and perhaps he is right. Well, what
more? I think your arrival will have a most beneficial influence
upon him."
"God grant it may," cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, distressed by
Razumihin's account of her Rodya.
And Razumihin ventured to look more boldly at Avdotya Romanovna at
last. He glanced at her often while he was talking, but only for a
moment and looked away again at once. Avdotya Romanovna sat at the
table, listening attentively, then got up again and began walking to
and fro with her arms folded and her lips compressed, occasionally
putting in a question, without stopping her walk. She had the same
habit of not listening to what was said. She was wearing a dress of
thin dark stuff and she had a white transparent scarf round her
neck. Razumihin soon detected signs of extreme poverty in their
belongings. Had Avdotya Romanovna been dressed like a queen, he felt
that he would not be afraid of her, but perhaps just because she was
poorly dressed and that he noticed all the misery of her surroundings,
his heart was filled with dread and he began to be afraid of every
word he uttered, every gesture he made, which was very trying for a
man who already felt diffident.
"You've told us a great deal that is interesting about my
brother's character... and have told it impartially. I am glad. I
thought that you were too uncritically devoted to him," observed
Avdotya Romanovna with a smile. "I think you are right that he needs a
woman's care," she added thoughtfully.
"I didn't say so; but I daresay you are right, only..."
"What?"
"He loves no one and perhaps he never will," Razumihin declared
decisively.
"You mean he is not capable of love?"
"Do you know, Avdotya Romanovna, you are awfully like your
brother, in everything, indeed!" he blurted out suddenly to his own
surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of
her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with
confusion. Avdotya Romanovna couldn't help laughing when she looked at
him.
"You may both be mistaken about Rodya," Pulcheria Alexandrovna
remarked, slightly piqued. "I am not talking of our present
difficulty, Dounia. What Pyotr Petrovitch writes in this letter and
what you and I have supposed may be mistaken, but you can't imagine,
Dmitri Prokofitch, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never
could depend on what he would do when he was only fifteen. And I am
sure that he might do something now that nobody else would think of
doing... Well, for instance, do you know how a year and a half ago
he astounded me and gave me a shock that nearly killed me, when he had
the idea of marrying that girl- what was her name- his landlady's
daughter?"
"Did you hear about that affair?" asked Avdotya Romanovna.
"Do you suppose-" Pulcheria Alexandrovna continued warmly. "Do you
suppose that my tears, my entreaties, my illness, my possible death
from grief, our poverty would have made him pause? No, he would calmly
have disregarded all obstacles. And yet it isn't that he doesn't
love us!"
"He has never spoken a word of that affair to me," Razumihin
answered cautiously. "But I did hear something from Praskovya Pavlovna
herself, though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard
certainly was rather strange."
"And what did you hear?" both the ladies asked at once.
"Well, nothing very special. I only learned that the marriage, which
only failed to take place through the girl's death, was not at all
to Praskovya Pavlovna's liking. They say, too, the girl was not at all
pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly... and such an invalid...
and queer. But she seems to have had some good qualities. She must
have had some good qualities or it's quite inexplicable.... She had no
money either and he wouldn't have considered her money.... But it's
always difficult to judge in such matters."
"I am sure she was a good girl," Avdotya Romanovna observed briefly.
"God forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death. Though I don't know
which of them would have caused most misery to the other- he to her or
she to him," Pulcheria Alexandrovna concluded. Then she began
tentatively questioning him about the scene on the previous day with
Luzhin, hesitating and continually glancing at Dounia, obviously to
the latter's annoyance. This incident more than all the rest evidently
caused her uneasiness, even consternation. Razumihin described it in
detail again, but this time he added his own conclusions: he openly
blamed Raskolnikov for intentionally insulting Pyotr Petrovitch, not
seeking to excuse him on the score of his illness.
"He had planned it before his illness," he added.
"I think so, too," Pulcheria Alexandrovna agreed with a dejected
air. But she was very much surprised at hearing Razumihin express
himself so carefully and even with a certain respect about Pyotr
Petrovitch. Avdotya Romanovna, too, was struck by it.
"So this is your opinion of Pyotr Petrovitch?" Pulcheria
Alexandrovna could not resist asking.
"I can have no other opinion of your daughter's future husband,"
Razumihin answered firmly and with warmth, "and I don't say it
simply from vulgar politeness, but because... simply because Avdotya
Romanovna has of her own free will deigned to accept this man. If I
spoke so rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly
drunk and... mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head
completely... and this morning I am ashamed of it."
He crimsoned and ceased speaking. Avdotya Romanovna flushed, but did
not break the silence. She had not uttered a word from the moment they
began to speak of Luzhin.
Without her support Pulcheria Alexandrovna obviously did not know
what to do. At last, faltering and continually glancing at her
daughter, she confessed that she was exceedingly worried by one
circumstance.
"You see, Dmitri Prokofitch," she began. "I'll be perfectly open
with Dmitri Prokofitch, Dounia?"
"Of course, mother," said Avdotya Romanovna emphatically.
"This is what it is," she began in haste, as though the permission
to speak of her trouble lifted a weight off her mind. "Very early this
morning we got a note from Pyotr Petrovitch in reply to our letter
announcing our arrival. He promised to meet us at the station, you
know; instead of that he sent a servant to bring us the address of
these lodgings and to show us the way; and he sent a message that he
would be here himself this morning. But this morning this note came
from him. You'd better read it yourself; there is one point in it
which worries me very much... you will soon see what that is, and...
tell me your candid opinion, Dmitri Prokofitch! You know Rodya's
character better than any one and no one can advise us better than you
can. Dounia, I must tell you, made her decision at once, but I still
don't feel sure how to act and I... I've been waiting for your
opinion."
Razumihin opened the note which was dated the previous evening and
read as follows:
-
"DEAR MADAM, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, I have the honour to inform you
that owing to unforeseen obstacles I was rendered unable to meet you
at the railway station; I sent a very competent person with the same
object in view. I likewise shall be deprived of the honour of an
interview with you to-morrow morning by business in the Senate that
does not admit of delay, and also that I may not intrude on your
family circle while you are meeting your son, and Avdotya Romanovna
her brother. I shall have the honour of visiting you and paying you my
respects at your lodgings not later than to-morrow evening at eight
o'clock precisely, and herewith I venture to present my earnest and, I
may add, imperative request that Rodion Romanovitch may not be present
at our interview- as he offered me a gross and unprecedented affront
on the occasion of my visit to him in his illness yesterday, and,
moreover, since I desire from you personally an indispensable and
circumstantial explanation upon a certain point, in regard to which
I wish to learn your own interpretation. I have the honour to inform
you, in anticipation, that if, in spite of my request, I meet Rodion
Romanovitch, I shall be compelled to withdraw immediately and then you
have only yourself to blame. I write on the assumption that Rodion
Romanovitch who appeared so ill at my visit, suddenly recovered two
hours later and so, being able to leave the house, may visit you also.
I was confirmed in that belief by the testimony of my own eyes in
the lodging of a drunken man who was run over and has since died, to
whose daughter, a young woman of notorious behaviour, he gave
twenty-five roubles on the pretext of the funeral, which gravely
surprised me knowing what pains you were at to raise that sum.
Herewith expressing my special respect to your estimable daughter,
Avdotya Romanovna, I beg you to accept the respectful homage of
"Your humble servant,
"P. LUZHIN."
-
"What am I to do now, Dmitri Prokofitch?" began Pulcheria
Alexandrovna, almost weeping. "How can I ask Rodya not to come?
Yesterday he insisted so earnestly on our refusing Pyotr Petrovitch
and now we are ordered not to receive Rodya! He will come on purpose
if he knows, and... what will happen then?"
"Act on Avdotya Romanovna's decision," Razumihin answered calmly
at once.
"Oh, dear me! She says... goodness knows what she says, she
doesn't explain her object! She says that it would be best, at
least, not that it would be best, but that it's absolutely necessary
that Rodya should make a point of being here at eight o'clock and that
they must meet.... I didn't want even to show him the letter, but to
prevent him from coming by some stratagem with your help... because he
is so irritable.... Besides I don't understand about that drunkard who
died and that daughter, and how he could have given the daughter all
the money... which..."
"Which cost you such sacrifice, mother," put in Avdotya Romanovna.
"He was not himself yesterday," Razumihin said thoughtfully, "if you
only knew what he was up to in a restaurant yesterday, though there
was sense in it too.... Hm! He did say something, as we were going
home yesterday evening, about a dead man and a girl, but I didn't
understand a word.... But last night, I myself..."
"The best thing, mother, will be for us to go to him ourselves and
there I assure you we shall see at once what's to be done. Besides,
it's getting late- good heavens, it's past ten," she cried looking
at a splendid gold enamelled watch which hung round her neck on a thin
Venetian chain, and looked entirely out of keeping with the rest of
her dress. "A present from her fiance," thought Razumihin.
"We must start, Dounia, we must start," her mother cried in a
flutter. "He will be thinking we are still angry after yesterday, from
our coming so late. Merciful heavens!"
While she said this she was hurriedly putting on her hat and mantle;
Dounia, too, put on her things. Her gloves, as Razumihin noticed, were
not merely shabby but had holes in them, and yet this evident
poverty gave the two ladies an air of special dignity, which is always
found in people who know how to wear poor clothes. Razumihin looked
reverently at Dounia and felt proud of escorting her. "The queen who
mended her stockings in prison," he thought, "must have looked then
every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets
and levees."
"My God," exclaimed Pulcheria Alexandrovna, "little did I think that
I should ever fear seeing my son, my darling, darling Rodya! I am
afraid, Dmitri Prokofitch," she added, glancing at him timidly.
"Don't be afraid, mother," said Dounia, kissing her, "better have
faith in him."
"Oh, dear, I have faith in him, but I haven't slept all night,"
exclaimed the poor woman.
They came out into the street.
"Do you know, Dounia, when I dozed a little this morning I dreamed
of Marfa Petrovna... she was all in white... she came up to me, took
my hand, and shook her head at me, but so sternly as though she were
blaming me.... Is that a good omen? Oh, dear me! You don't know,
Dmitri Prokofitch, that Marfa Petrovna's dead!"
"No, I didn't know; who is Marfa Petrovna?"
"She died suddenly; and only fancy..."
"Afterwards, mamma," put in Dounia. "He doesn't know who Marfa
Petrovna is."
"Ah, you don't know? And I was thinking that you knew all about
us. Forgive me, Dmitri Prokofitch, I don't know what I am thinking
about these last few days. I look upon you really as a providence
for us, and so I took it for granted that you knew all about us. I
look on you as a relation.... Don't be angry with me for saying so.
Dear me, what's the matter with your right hand? Have you knocked it?"
"Yes, I bruised it," muttered Razumihin overjoyed.
"I sometimes speak too much from the heart, so that Dounia finds
fault with me.... But, dear me, what a cupboard he lives in! I
wonder whether he is awake? Does this woman, his landlady, consider it
a room? Listen, you say he does not like to show his feelings, so
perhaps I shall annoy him with my... weaknesses? Do advise me,
Dmitri Prokofitch, how am I to treat him? I feel quite distracted, you
know."
"Don't question him too much about anything if you see him frown!
don't ask him too much about his health; he doesn't like that."
"Ah, Dmitri Prokofitch, how hard it is to be a mother! But here
are the stairs.... What an awful staircase!"
"Mother, you are quite pale, don't distress yourself, darling," said
Dounia caressing her, then with flashing eyes she added: "He ought
to be happy at seeing you, and you are tormenting yourself so."
"Wait, I'll peep in and see whether he has waked up."
The ladies slowly followed Razumihin, who went on before, and when
they reached the landlady's door on the fourth storey, they noticed
that her door was a tiny crack open and that two keen black eyes
were watching them from the darkness within. When their eyes met,
the door was suddenly shut with such a slam that Pulcheria
Alexandrovna almost cried out.
CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
"HE IS well, quite well!" Zossimov cried cheerfully as they entered.
He had come in ten minutes earlier and was sitting in the same place
as before, on the sofa. Raskolnikov was sitting in the opposite
corner, fully dressed and carefully washed and combed, as he had not
been for some time past. The room was immediately crowded, yet
Nastasya managed to follow the visitors in and stayed to listen.
Raskolnikov really was almost well, as compared with his condition
the day before, but he was still pale, listless, and sombre. He looked
like a wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical
suffering. His brows were knitted, his lips compressed, his eyes
feverish. He spoke little and reluctantly, as though performing a
duty, and there was a restlessness in his movements.
He only wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to
complete the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken
arm. The pale, sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and
sister entered, but this only gave it a look of more intense
suffering, in place of its listless dejection. The light soon died
away, but the look of suffering remained, and Zossimov, watching and
studying his patient with all the zest of a young doctor beginning
to practise, noticed in him no joy at the arrival of his mother and
sister, but a sort of bitter, hidden determination to bear another
hour or two of inevitable torture. He saw later that almost every word
of the following conversation seemed to touch on some sore place and
irritate it. But at the same time he marvelled at the power of
controlling himself and hiding his feelings in a patient who the
previous day had, like a monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy at the
slightest word.
"Yes, I see myself now that I am almost well," said Raskolnikov,
giving his mother and sister a kiss of welcome which made Pulcheria
Alexandrovna radiant at once. "And I don't say this as I did
yesterday," he said addressing Razumihin, with a friendly pressure
of his hand.
"Yes, indeed, I am quite surprised at him to-day," began Zossimov,
much delighted at the ladies' entrance, for he had not succeeded in
keeping up a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. "In
another three or four days, if he goes on like this, he will be just
as before, that is, as he was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even
three. This has been coming on for a long while.... eh? Confess,
now, that it has been perhaps your own fault?" he added, with a
tentative smile, as though still afraid of irritating him.
"It is very possible," answered Raskolnikov coldly.
"I should say, too," continued Zossimov with zest, "that your
complete recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to
you, I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid
the elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce
your morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will
go from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don't know, but
they must be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have
observed yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your
derangement coincides with your leaving the university. You must not
be left without occupation, and so, work and a definite aim set before
you might, I fancy, be very beneficial."
"Yes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and
return to the university: and then everything will go smoothly...."
Zossimov, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect
before the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at
his patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted
an instant, however. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began at once thanking
Zossimov, especially for his visit to their lodging the previous
night.
"What! he saw you last night?" Raskolnikov asked, as though
startled. "Then you have not slept either after your journey."
"Ach, Rodya, that was only till two o'clock. Dounia and I never go
to bed before two at home."
"I don't know how to thank him either," Raskolnikov went on suddenly
frowning and looking down. "Setting aside the question of payment-
forgive me for referring to it (he turned to Zossimov)- I really don't
know what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I
simply don't understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed,
because I don't understand it. I tell you so candidly."
"Don't be irritated." Zossimov forced himself to laugh. "Assume that
you are my first patient- well- we fellows just beginning to
practise love our first patients as if they were our children, and
some almost fall in love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in
patients."
"I say nothing about him," added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumihin,
"though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble."
"What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood
to-day, are you?" shouted Razumihin.
If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was
no trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the
opposite. But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and
uneasily watching her brother.
"As for you, mother, I don't dare to speak," he went on, as though
repeating a lesson learned by heart. "It is only to-day that I have
been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here
yesterday, waiting for me to come back."
When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his
sister, smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of
real unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed
his hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had
addressed her since their dispute the previous day. The mother's
face lighted up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this
conclusive unspoken reconciliation. "Yes, that is what I love him
for," Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a
vigorous turn in his chair. "He has these movements."
"And how well he does it all," the mother was thinking to herself.
"What generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he
put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister- simply by
holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like
that.... And what fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!...
He is even better looking than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a
suit- how terribly he's dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in
Afanasy Ivanitch's shop, is better dressed! I could rush at him and
hug him... weep over him- but I am afraid.... Oh, dear, he's so
strange! He's talking kindly, but I'm afraid! Why, what am I afraid
of?..."
"Oh, Rodya, you wouldn't believe," she began suddenly, in haste to
answer his words to her, "how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now
that it's all over and done with and we are quite happy again- I can
tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace
you and that woman- ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya!... She
told us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run
away from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the
streets. You can't imagine how we felt! I couldn't help thinking of
the tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father's-
you can't remember him, Rodya- who ran out in the same way in a high
fever and fell into the well in the courtyard and they couldn't pull
him out till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on
the point of rushing to find Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help....
Because we were alone, utterly alone," she said plaintively and
stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat
dangerous to speak of Pyotr Petrovitch, although "we are quite happy
again."
"Yes, yes.... Of course it's very annoying...." Raskolnikov muttered
in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that
Dounia gazed at him in perplexity.
"What else was it I wanted to say," he went on trying to
recollect. "Oh, yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don't think
that I didn't mean to come and see you to-day and was waiting for
you to come first."
"What are you saying, Rodya?" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She,
too, was surprised.
"Is he answering us as a duty?" Dounia wondered. "Is he being
reconciled and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a
rite or repeating a lesson?"
"I've only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed
owing to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Nastasya... to
wash out the blood... I've only just dressed."
"Blood! What blood?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.
"Oh, nothing- don't be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about
yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run
over... a clerk..."
"Delirious? But you remember everything!" Razumihin interrupted.
"That's true," Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. "I
remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet- why I did
that and went there and said that, I can't clearly explain now."
"A familiar phenomenon," interposed Zossimov, "actions are sometimes
performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of
the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions-
it's like a dream."
"Perhaps it's a good thing really that he should think me almost a
madman," thought Raskolnikov.
"Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too," observed
Dounia, looking uneasily at Zossimov.
"There is some truth in your observation," the latter replied. "In
that sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with
the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we
must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among
dozens- perhaps hundreds of thousands- hardly one is to be met with."
At the word "madman," carelessly dropped by Zossimov in his
chatter on his favourite subject, every one frowned.
Raskolnikov sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought
with a strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on
something.
"Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!"
Razumihin cried hastily.
"What?" Raskolnikov seemed to wake up. "Oh... I got spattered with
blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an
unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave
away all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She's a
widow now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children,
starving... nothing in the house... there's a daughter, too... perhaps
you'd have given it yourself if you'd seen them. But I had no right to
do it I admit, especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself.
To help others one must have the right to do it, or else Crevez,
chiens, si vous n'etes pas contents." He laughed, "That's right, isn't
it, Dounia?"
"No, it's not," answered Dounia firmly.
"Bah! you, too, have ideals," he muttered, looking at her almost
with hatred, and smiling sarcastically. "I ought to have considered
that.... Well, that's praiseworthy, and it's better for you... and
if you reach a line you won't overstep, you will be unhappy... and
if you overstep it, maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all
that's nonsense," he added irritably, vexed at being carried away.
"I only meant to say that I beg your forgiveness, mother," he
concluded, shortly and abruptly.
"That's enough, Rodya, I am sure that everything you do is very
good," said his mother, delighted.
"Don't be too sure," he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile.
A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this
conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in
the forgiveness, and all were feeling it.
"It is as though they were afraid of me," Raskolnikov was thinking
to himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent.
"Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much," flashed
through his mind.
"Do you know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna is dead," Pulcheria Alexandrovna
suddenly blurted out.
"What Marfa Petrovna?"
"Oh, mercy on us- Marfa Petrovna Svidrigailov. I wrote you so much
about her."
"A-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she's dead! Oh, really?" he roused
himself suddenly, as if waking up. "What did she die of?"
"Only imagine, quite suddenly," Pulcheria Alexandrovna answered
hurriedly, encouraged by his curiosity. "On the very day I was sending
you that letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have
been the cause of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully."
"Why, were they on such bad terms?" he asked, addressing his sister.
"Not at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very
patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their
married life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases.
All of a sudden he seems to have lost patience."
"Then he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for
seven years? You seem to be defending him, Dounia?"
"No, no, he's an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!"
Dounia answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and
sinking into thought.
"That had happened in the morning," Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on
hurriedly. "And directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be
harnessed to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always
used to drive to the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I
am told...."
"After the beating?"
"That was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as
not to be late in starting, she went to the bathhouse.... You see, she
was undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring
there, and she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no
sooner had she got into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!"
"I should think so," said Zossimov.
"And did he beat her badly?"
"What does that matter!" put in Dounia.
"H'm! But I don't know why you want to tell us such gossip, mother,"
said Raskolnikov irritably, as it were in spite of himself.
"Ah, my dear, I don't know what to talk about," broke from Pulcheria
Alexandrovna.
"Why, are you all afraid of me?" he asked, with a constrained smile.
"That's certainly true," said Dounia, looking directly and sternly
at her brother. "Mother was crossing herself with terror as she came
up the stairs."
His face worked, as though in convulsion.
"Ach, what are you saying, Dounia! Don't be angry, please, Rodya....
Why did you say that, Dounia?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna began,
overwhelmed- "You see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the
train, how we should meet, how we should talk over everything
together.... And I was so happy, I did not notice the journey! But
what am I saying? I am happy now.... You should not, Dounia.... I am
happy now- simply in seeing you, Rodya...."
"Hush, mother," he muttered in confusion, not looking at her, but
pressing her hand. "We shall have time to speak freely of everything!"
As he said this, he was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion and
turned pale. Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed
with deadly chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and
perceptible to him that he had just told a fearful lie- that he
would never now be able to speak freely of everything- that he would
never again be able to speak of anything to any one. The anguish of
this thought was such that for a moment he almost forgot himself. He
got up from his seat, and not looking at any one walked towards the
door.
"What are you about?" cried Razumihin, clutching him by the arm.
He sat down again, and began looking about him, in silence. They
were all looking at him in perplexity.
"But what are you all so dull for?" he shouted, suddenly and quite
unexpectedly. "Do say something! What's the use of sitting like
this? Come, do speak. Let us talk.... We meet together and sit in
silence.... Come, anything!"
"Thank God; I was afraid the same thing as yesterday was beginning
again," said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself.
"What is the matter, Rodya?" asked Avdotya Romanovna, distrustfully.
"Oh, nothing! I remembered something," he answered, and suddenly
laughed.
"Well, if you remembered something; that's all right!... I was
beginning to think..." muttered Zossimov, getting up from the sofa.
"It is time for me to be off. I will look in again perhaps... if I
can..." He made his bows, and went out.
"What an excellent man!" observed Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"Yes, excellent, splendid, well-educated, intelligent,"
Raskolnikov began, suddenly speaking with surprising rapidity, and a
liveliness he had not shown till then. "I can't remember where I met
him before my illness.... I believe I have met him somewhere-... And
this is a good man, too," he nodded at Razumihin. "Do you like him,
Dounia?" he asked her; and suddenly, for some unknown reason, laughed.
"Very much," answered Dounia.
"Foo- what a pig you are," Razumihin protested, blushing in terrible
confusion, and he got up from his chair. Pulcheria Alexandrovna smiled
faintly, but Raskolnikov laughed aloud.
"Where are you off to?"
"I must go."
"You need not at all. Stay. Zossimov has gone, so you must. Don't
go. What's the time? Is it twelve o'clock? What a pretty watch you
have got, Dounia. But why are you all silent again? I do all the
talking."
"It was a present from Marfa Petrovna," answered Dounia.
"And a very expensive one!" added Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"A-ah! What a big one! Hardly like a lady's."
"I like that sort," said Dounia.
"So it is not a present from her fiance," thought Razumihin, and was
unreasonably delighted.
"I thought it was Luzhin's present," observed Raskolnikov.
"No, he has not made Dounia any presents yet."
"A-ah! And do you remember, mother, I was in love and wanted to
get married?" he said suddenly, looking at his mother, who was
disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and the way he spoke of
it.
"Oh, yes, my dear."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna exchanged glances with Dounia and Razumihin.
"H'm, yes. What shall I tell you? I don't remember much indeed.
She was such a sickly girl," he went on, growing dreamy and looking
down again. "Quite an invalid. She was fond of giving alms to the
poor, and was always dreaming of a nunnery, and once she burst into
tears when she began talking to me about it. Yes, yes, I remember. I
remember very well. She was an ugly little thing. I really don't
know what drew me to her then- I think it was because she was always
ill. If she had been lame or hunchback, I believe I should have
liked her better still," he smiled dreamily. "Yes, it was a sort of
spring delirium."
"No, it was not only spring delirium," said Dounia, with warm
feeling.
He fixed a strained intent look on his sister, but did not hear or
did not understand her words. Then, completely lost in thought, he got
up, went up to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place and
sat down.
"You love her even now?" said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, touched.
"Her? Now? Oh, yes.... You ask about her? No... that's all now as it
were, in another world... and so long ago. And indeed everything
happening here seems somehow far away." He looked attentively at them.
"You now... I seem to be looking at you from a thousand miles
away... but, goodness knows why we are talking of that! And what's the
use of asking about it," he added with annoyance, and biting his
nails, he fell into dreamy silence again.
"What a wretched lodging you have, Rodya! It's like a tomb," said
Pulcheria Alexandrovna, suddenly breaking the oppressive silence. "I
am sure it's quite half through your lodging you have become so
melancholy."
"My lodging," he answered, listlessly. "Yes, the lodging had a great
deal to do with it.... I thought that, too.... If only you knew,
though, what a strange thing you said just now, mother," he said,
laughing strangely.
A little more, and their companionship, this mother and this sister,
with him after three years' absence, this intimate tone of
conversation, in face of the utter impossibility of really speaking
about anything, would have been beyond his power of endurance. But
there was one urgent matter which must be settled one way or the other
that day- so he had decided when he woke. Now he was glad to
remember it, as a means of escape.
"Listen, Dounia," he began, gravely and drily, "of course I beg your
pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to tell you again that
I do not withdraw from my chief point. It is me or Luzhin. If I am a
scoundrel, you must not be. One is enough. If you marry Luzhin, I
cease at once to look on you as a sister."
"Rodya, Rodya! It is the same as yesterday again," Pulcheria
Alexandrovna cried, mournfully. "And why do you call yourself a
scoundrel? I can't bear it. You said the same yesterday."
"Brother," Dounia answered firmly and with the same dryness. "In all
this there is a mistake on your part. I thought it over at night,
and found out the mistake. It is all because you seem to fancy I am
sacrificing myself to some one and for some one. That is not the
case at all. I am simply marrying for my own sake, because things
are hard for me. Though, of course, I shall be glad if I succeed in
being useful to my family. But that is not the chief motive for my
decision...."
"She is lying," he thought to himself, biting his nails
vindictively. "Proud creature! She won't admit she wants to do it
out of charity! Too haughty! Oh, base characters! They even love as
though they hate.... Oh, how I... hate them all!"
"In fact," continued Dounia, "I am marrying Pyotr Petrovitch because
of two evils I choose the less. I intend to do honestly all he expects
of me, so I am not deceiving him.... Why did you smile just now?" She,
too, flushed, and there was a gleam of anger in her eyes.
"All?" he asked, with a malignant grin.
"Within certain limits. Both the manner and form of Pyotr
Petrovitch's courtship showed me at once what he wanted. He may, of
course, think too well of himself, but I hope he esteems me, too....
Why are you laughing again?"
"And why are you blushing again? You are lying, sister. You are
intentionally lying, simply from feminine obstinacy, simply to hold
your own against me.... You cannot respect Luzhin. I have seen him and
talked with him. So you are selling yourself for money, and so in
any case you are acting basely, and I am glad at least that you can
blush for it."
"It is not true. I am not lying," cried Dounia, losing her
composure. "I would not marry him if I were not convinced that he
esteems me and thinks highly of me. I would not marry him if I were
not firmly convinced that I can respect him. Fortunately, I can have
convincing proof of it this very day... and such a marriage is not a
vileness, as you say! And even if you were right, if I really had
determined on a vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak
to me like that? Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you
have not either? It is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin any one, it
is only myself.... I am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me
like that? Why are you so pale? Rodya, darling, what's the matter?"
"Good heavens! You have made him faint," cried Pulcheria
Alexandrovna.
"No, no, nonsense! It's nothing. A little giddiness- not fainting.
You have fainting on the brain. H'm, yes, what was I saying? Oh,
yes. In what way will you get convincing proof to-day that you can
respect him, and that he... esteems you, as you said. I think you said
to-day?"
"Mother, show Rodya Pyotr Petrovitch's letter," said Dounia.
With trembling hands, Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave him the letter. He
took it with great interest, but, before opening it, he suddenly
looked with a sort of wonder at Dounia.
"It is strange," he said, slowly, as though struck by a new idea.
"What am I making such a fuss for? What is it all about? Marry whom
you like!"
He said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked for
some time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the letter at
last, still with the same look of strange wonder on his face. Then,
slowly and attentively, he began reading, and read it through twice.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna showed marked anxiety, and all indeed
expected something particular.
"What surprises me," he began, after a short pause, handing the
letter to his mother, but not addressing any one in particular, "is
that he is a business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is
pretentious indeed, and yet he writes such an uneducated letter."
They all started. They had expected something quite different.
"But they all write like that, you know," Razumihin observed,
abruptly.
"Have you read it?"
"Yes."
"We showed him, Rodya. We... consulted him just now," Pulcheria
Alexandrovna began, embarrassed.
"That's just the jargon of the courts," Razumihin put in. "Legal
documents are written like that to this day."
"Legal? Yes, it's just legal- business language- not so very
uneducated, and not quite educated- business language!"
"Pyotr Petrovitch makes no secret of the fact that he had a cheap
education, he is proud indeed of having made his own way," Avdotya
Romanovna observed, somewhat offended by her brother's tone.
"Well, if he's proud of it, he has reason, I don't deny it. You seem
to be offended, sister, at my making only such a frivolous criticism
on the letter, and to think that I speak of such trifling matters on
purpose to annoy you. It is quite the contrary, an observation apropos
of the style occurred to me that is by no means irrelevant as things
stand. There is one expression, 'blame yourselves' put in very
significantly and plainly, and there is besides a threat that he
will go away at once if I am present. That threat to go away is
equivalent to a threat to abandon you both if you are disobedient, and
to abandon you now after summoning you to Petersburg. Well, what do
you think? Can one resent such an expression from Luzhin, as we should
if he (he pointed to Razumihin) had written it, or Zossimov, or one of
us?"
"N-no," answered Dounia, with more animation. "I saw clearly that it
was too naively expressed, and that perhaps he simply has no skill
in writing... that is a true criticism, brother. I did not expect,
indeed..."
"It is expressed in legal style, and sounds coarser than perhaps
he intended. But I must disillusion you a little. There is one
expression in the letter, one slander about me, and rather a
contemptible one. I gave the money last night to the widow, a woman in
consumption, crushed with trouble, and not 'on the pretext of the
funeral,' but simply to pay for the funeral, and not to the
daughter- a young woman, as he writes, of notorious behaviour (whom
I saw last night for the first time in my life)- but to the widow.
In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander me and to raise
dissension between us. It is expressed again in legal jargon, that
is to say, with a too obvious display of the aim, and with a very
naive eagerness. He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly,
intelligence is not enough. It all shows the man and... I don't
think he has a great esteem for you. I tell you this simply to warn
you, because I sincerely wish for your good..."
Dounia did not reply. Her resolution had been taken. She was only
awaiting the evening.
"Then what is your decision, Rodya?" asked Pulcheria Alexandrovna,
who was more uneasy than ever at the sudden, new businesslike tone
of his talk.
"What decision?"
"You see Pyotr Petrovitch writes that you are not to be with us this
evening, and that he will go away if you come. So will you... come?"
"That, of course, is not for me to decide, but for you first, if you
are not offended by such a request; and secondly, by Dounia, if she,
too, is not offended. I will do what you think best," he added drily.
"Dounia has already decided, and I fully agree with her,"
Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to declare.
"I decided to ask you, Rodya, to urge you not to fail to be with
us at this interview," said Dounia. "Will you come?"
"Yes."
"I will ask you, too, to be with us at eight o'clock," she said,
addressing Razumihin. "Mother, I am inviting him, too."
"Quite right, Dounia. Well, since you have decided," added Pulcheria
Alexandrovna, "so be it. I shall feel easier myself. I do not like
concealment and deception. Better let us have the whole truth....
Pyotr Petrovitch may be angry or not, now!"
CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
AT THAT moment the door was softly opened, and a young girl walked
into the room, looking timidly about her. Every one turned towards her
with surprise and curiosity. At first sight, Raskolnikov did not
recognise her. It was Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladov. He had seen her
yesterday for the first time, but at such a moment, in such
surroundings and in such a dress, that his memory retained a very
different image of her. Now she was a modestly and poorly-dressed
young girl, very young, indeed almost like a child, with a modest
and refined manner, with a candid but somewhat frightened-looking
face. She was wearing a very plain indoor dress, and had on a shabby
old-fashioned hat, but she still carried a parasol. Unexpectedly
finding the room full of people, she was not so much embarrassed as
completely overwhelmed with shyness, like a little child. She was even
about to retreat. "Oh.... it's you!" said Raskolnikov, extremely
astonished, and he, too, was confused. He at once recollected that his
mother and sister knew through Luzhin's letter of "some young woman of
notorious behaviour." He had only just been protesting against
Luzhin's calumny and declaring that he had seen the girl last night
for the first time, and suddenly she had walked in. He remembered,
too, that he had not protested against the expression "of notorious
behaviour." All this passed vaguely and fleetingly through his
brain, but looking at her more intently, he saw that the humiliated
creature was so humiliated that he felt suddenly sorry for her. When
she made a movement to retreat in terror, it sent a pang to his heart.
"I did not expect you," he said, hurriedly, with a look that made
her stop. "Please sit down. You come, no doubt, from Katerina
Ivanovna. Allow me- not there. Sit here...."
At Sonia's entrance, Razumihin, who had been sitting on one of
Raskolnikov's three chairs, close to the door, got up to allow her
to enter. Raskolnikov had at first shown her the place on the sofa
where Zossimov had been sitting, but feeling that the sofa which
served him as a bed, was too familiar a place, he hurriedly motioned
her to Razumihin's chair.
"You sit here," he said to Razumihin, putting him on the sofa.
Sonia sat down, almost shaking with terror, and looked timidly at
the two ladies. It was evidently almost inconceivable to herself
that she could sit down beside them. At the thought of it, she was
so frightened that she hurriedly got up again, and in utter
confusion addressed Raskolnikov.
"I... I... have come for one minute. Forgive me for disturbing you,"
she began falteringly. "I come from Katerina Ivanovna, and she had
no one to send. Katerina Ivanovna told me to beg you... to be at the
service... in the morning... at Mitrofanievsky... and then... to us...
to her... to do her the honour... she told me to beg you..." Sonia
stammered and ceased speaking.
"I will try, certainly, most certainly," answered Raskolnikov. He,
too, stood up, and he, too, faltered and could not finish his
sentence. "Please sit down," he said, suddenly. "I want to talk to
you. You are perhaps in a hurry, but please, be so kind, spare me
two minutes," and he drew up a chair for her.
Sonia sat down again, and again timidly she took a hurried,
frightened look at the two ladies, and dropped her eyes. Raskolnikov's
pale face flushed, a shudder passed over him, his eyes glowed.
"Mother," he said, firmly and insistently, "this is Sofya Semyonovna
Marmeladov, the daughter of that unfortunate Mr. Marmeladov, who was
run over yesterday before my eyes, and of whom I was just telling
you."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna glanced at Sonia, and slightly screwed up her
eyes. In spite of her embarrassment before Rodya's urgent and
challenging look, she could not deny herself that satisfaction. Dounia
gazed gravely and intently into the poor girl's face, and
scrutinised her with perplexity. Sonia, hearing herself introduced,
tried to raise her eyes again, but was more embarrassed than ever.
"I wanted to ask you," said Raskolnikov, hastily, "how things were
arranged yesterday. You were not worried by the police, for instance?"
"No, that was all right... it was too evident, the cause of death...
they did not worry us... only the lodgers are angry."
"Why?"
"At the body's remaining so long. You see it is hot now. So that,
to-day, they will carry it to the cemetery, into the chapel, until
to-morrow. At first Katerina Ivanovna was unwilling, but now she
sees herself that it's necessary..."
"To-day, then?"
"She begs you to do us the honour to be in the church to-morrow
for the service, and then to be present at the funeral lunch."
"She is giving a funeral lunch?"
"Yes... just a little.... She told me to thank you very much for
helping us yesterday. But for you, we should have had nothing for
the funeral."
All at once her lips and chin began trembling, but, with an
effort, she controlled herself, looking down again.
During the conversation, Raskolnikov watched her carefully. She
had a thin, very thin, pale little face, rather irregular and angular,
with a sharp little nose and chin. She could not have been called
pretty, but her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up,
there was such a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that
one could not help being attracted. Her face, and her whole figure
indeed, had another peculiar characteristic. In spite of her
eighteen years, she looked almost a little girl- almost a child. And
in some of her gestures, this childishness seemed almost absurd.
"But has Katerina Ivanovna been able to manage with such small
means? Does she even mean to have a funeral lunch?" Raskolnikov asked,
persistently keeping up the conversation.
"The coffin will be plain, of course... and everything will be
plain, so it won't cost much. Katerina Ivanovna and I have reckoned it
all out, so that there will be enough left... and Katerina Ivanovna
was very anxious it should be so. You know one can't... it's a comfort
to her... she is like that, you know...."
"I understand, I understand... of course... why do you look at my
room like that? My mother has just said it is like a tomb."
"You gave us everything yesterday," Sonia said suddenly, in reply,
in a loud rapid whisper; and again she looked down in confusion. Her
lips and chin were trembling once more. She had been struck at once by
Raskolnikov's poor surroundings, and now these words broke out
spontaneously. A silence followed. There was a light in Dounia's eyes,
and even Pulcheria Alexandrovna looked kindly at Sonia.
"Rodya," she said, getting up, "we shall have dinner together, of
course. Come, Dounia.... And you, Rodya, had better go for a little
walk, and then rest and lie down before you come to see us.... I am
afraid we have exhausted you...."
"Yes, yes, I'll come," he answered, getting up fussily. "But I
have something to see to."
"But surely you will have dinner together?" cried Razumihin, looking
in surprise at Raskolnikov. "What do you mean?"
"Yes, yes, I am coming... of course, of course! And you stay a
minute. You do not want him just now, do you, mother? Or perhaps I
am taking him from you?"
"Oh, no, no. And will you, Dmitri Prokofitch, do us the favour of
dining with us?"
"Please do," added Dounia.
Razumihin bowed, positively radiant. For one moment, they were all
strangely embarrassed.
"Good-bye, Rodya, that is till we meet. I do not like saying
good-bye. Good-bye, Nastasya. Ah, I have said good-bye again."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna meant to greet Sonia, too; but it somehow
failed to come off, and she went in a flutter out of the room.
But Avdotya Romanovna seemed to await her turn, and following her
mother out, gave Sonia an attentive, courteous bow. Sonia, in
confusion, gave a hurried, frightened curtsy. There was a look of
poignant discomfort in her face, as though Avdotya Romanovna's
courtesy and attention were oppressive and painful to her.
"Dounia, good-bye," called Raskolnikov, in the passage. "Give me
your hand."
"Why, I did give it to you. Have you forgotten?" said Dounia,
turning warmly and awkwardly to him.
"Never mind, give it to me again." And he squeezed her fingers
warmly.
Dounia smiled, flushed, pulled her hand away, and went off quite
happy.
"Come, that's capital," he said to Sonia, going back and looking
brightly at her. "God give peace to the dead, the living have still to
live. That is right, isn't it?"
Sonia looked surprised at the sudden brightness of his face. He
looked at her for some moments in silence. The whole history of the
dead father floated before his memory in those moments....
-
"Heavens, Dounia," Pulcheria Alexandrovna began, as soon as they
were in the street, "I really feel relieved myself at coming away-
more at ease. How little did I think yesterday in the train that I
could ever be glad of that."
"I tell you again, mother, he is still very ill. Don't you see it?
Perhaps worrying about us upset him. We must be patient, and much,
much can be forgiven."
"Well, you were not very patient!" Pulcheria Alexandrovna caught her
up, hotly and jealously. "Do you know, Dounia, I was looking at you
two. You are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in
soul. You are both melancholy, both morose and hot tempered, both
haughty and both generous.... Surely he can't be an egoist, Dounia.
Eh? When I think of what is in store for us this evening, my heart
sinks!"
"Don't be uneasy, mother. What must be, will be."
"Dounia, only think what a position we are in! What if Pyotr
Petrovitch breaks it off?" poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna blurted out,
incautiously.
"He won't be worth much if he does," answered Dounia, sharply and
contemptuously.
"We did well to come away," Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly broke
in. "He was in a hurry about some business or other. If he gets out
and has a breath of air... it is fearfully close in his room.... But
where is one to get a breath of air here. The very streets here feel
like shut-up rooms. Good heavens! what a town!... stay... this side...
they will crush you- carrying something. Why, it is a piano they
have got, I declare... how they push... I am very much afraid of
that young woman, too."
"What young woman, mother?
"Why, that Sofya Semyonovna, who was there just now."
"Why?"
"I have a presentiment, Dounia. Well, you may believe it or not, but
as soon as she came in, that very minute, I felt that she was the
chief cause of the trouble...."
"Nothing of the sort!" cried Dounia, in vexation. "What nonsense,
with your presentiments, mother! He only made her acquaintance the
evening before, and he did not know her when she came in."
"Well, you will see.... She worries me; but you will see, you will
see! I was so frightened. She was gazing at me with those eyes. I
could scarcely sit still in my chair when he began introducing her, do
you remember? It seems so strange, but Pyotr Petrovitch writes like
that about her, and he introduces her to us- to you! So he must
think a great deal of her."
"People will write anything. We were talked about and written about,
too. Have you forgotten? I am sure that she is a good girl, and that
it is all nonsense."
"God grant it may be!"
"And Pyotr Petrovitch is a contemptible slanderer," Dounia snapped
out, suddenly.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna was crushed; the conversation was not
resumed.
-
"I will tell you what I want with you," said Raskolnikov, drawing
Razumihin to the window.
"Then I will tell Katerina Ivanovna that you are coming," Sonia said
hurriedly, preparing to depart.
"One minute, Sofya Semyonovna. We have no secrets. You are not in
our way. I want to have another word or two with you. Listen!" he
turned suddenly to Razumihin again. "You know that... what's his
name... Porfiry Petrovitch?"
"I should think so! He is a relation. Why?" added the latter, with
interest.
"Is not he managing that case... you know about that murder?...
You were speaking about it yesterday."
"Yes... well?" Razumihin's eyes opened wide.
"He was inquiring for people who had pawned things, and I have
some pledges there, too- trifles- a ring my sister gave me as a
keepsake when I left home, and my father's silver watch- they are only
worth five or six roubles altogether... but I value them. So what am I
to do now? I do not want to lose the things, especially the watch. I
was quaking just now, for fear mother would ask to look at it, when we
spoke of Dounia's watch. It is the only thing of father's left us. She
would be ill if it were lost. You know what women are. So tell me what
to do. I know I ought to have given notice at the police station,
but would it not be better to go straight to Porfiry? Eh? What do
you think? The matter might be settled more quickly. You see mother
may ask for it before dinner."
"Certainly not to the police station. Certainly to Porfiry,"
Razumihin shouted in extraordinary excitement. "Well, how glad I am.
Let us go at once. It is a couple of steps. We shall be sure to find
him."
"Very well, let us go."
"And he will be very, very glad to make your acquaintance. I have
often talked to him of you at different times. I was speaking of you
yesterday. Let us go. So you knew the old woman? So that's it! It is
all turning out splendidly.... Oh, yes, Sofya Ivanovna..."
"Sofya Semyonovna," corrected Raskolnikov. "Sofya Semyonovna, this
is my friend Razumihin, and he is a good man."
"If you have to go now," Sonia was beginning, not looking at
Razumihin at all, and still more embarrassed.
"Let us go," decided Raskolnikov. "I will come to you to-day,
Sofya Semyonovna. Only tell me where you live."
He was not exactly ill at ease, but seemed hurried, and avoided
her eyes. Sonia gave her address, and flushed as she did so. They
all went out together.
"Don't you lock up?" asked Razumihin, following him on to the
stairs.
"Never," answered Raskolnikov. "I have been meaning to buy a lock
for these two years. People are happy who have no need of locks," he
said, laughing, to Sonia. They stood still in the gateway.
"Do you go to the right, Sofya Semyonovna? How did you find me, by
the way?" he added, as though he wanted to say something quite
different. He wanted to look at her soft clear eyes, but this was
not easy.
"Why, you gave your address to Polenka yesterday."
"Polenka? Oh, yes; Polenka, that is the little girl. She is your
sister? Did I give her the address?"
"Why, had you forgotten?"
"No, I remember."
"I had heard my father speak of you... only I did not know your
name, and he did not know it. And now I came... and as I had learnt
your name, I asked to-day, 'Where does Mr. Raskolnikov live?' I did
not know you had only a room too.... Good-bye, I will tell Katerina
Ivanovna."
She was extremely glad to escape at last; she went away looking
down, hurrying to get out of sight as soon as possible, to walk the
twenty steps to the turning on the right and to be at last alone,
and then moving rapidly along, looking at no one, noticing nothing, to
think, to remember, to meditate on every word, every detail. Never,
never had she felt anything like this. Dimly and unconsciously a whole
new world was opening before her. She remembered suddenly that
Raskolnikov meant to come to her that day, perhaps at once!
"Only not to-day, please, not to-day!" she kept muttering with a
sinking heart, as though entreating some one, like a frightened child.
"Mercy! to me... to that room... he will see... oh, dear!"
She was not capable at that instant of noticing an unknown gentleman
who was watching her and following at her heels. He had accompanied
her from the gateway. At the moment when Razumihin, Raskolnikov, and
she stood still at parting on the pavement, this gentleman, who was
just passing, started on hearing Sonia's words: "and I asked where Mr.
Raskolnikov lived?" He turned a rapid but attentive look upon all
three, especially upon Raskolnikov, to whom Sonia was speaking; then
looked back and noted the house. All this was done in an instant as he
passed, and trying not to betray his interest, he walked on more
slowly as though waiting for something. He was waiting for Sonia; he
saw that they were parting, and that Sonia was going home.
"Home? Where? I've seen that face somewhere," he thought. "I must
find out."
At the turning he crossed over, looked round, and saw Sonia coming
the same way, noticing nothing. She turned the corner. He followed her
on the other side. After about fifty paces he crossed over again,
overtook her and kept two or three yards behind her.
He was a man about fifty, rather tall and thickly set, with broad
high shoulders which made him look as though he stooped a little. He
wore good and fashionable clothes, and looked like a gentleman of
position. He carried a handsome cane, which he tapped on the
pavement at each step; his gloves were spotless. He had a broad,
rather pleasant face with high cheek-bones and a fresh colour, not
often seen in Petersburg. His flaxen hair was still abundant, and only
touched here and there with grey, and his thick square beard was
even lighter than his hair. His eyes were blue and had a cold and
thoughtful look; his lips were crimson. He was a remarkedly
well-preserved man and looked much younger than his years.
When Sonia came out on the canal bank, they were the only two
persons on the pavement. He observed her dreaminess and preoccupation.
On reaching the house where she lodged, Sonia turned in at the gate;
he followed her, seeming rather surprised. In the courtyard she turned
to the right corner. "Bah!" muttered the unknown gentleman, and
mounted the stairs behind her. Only then Sonia noticed him. She
reached the third storey, turned down the passage, and rang at No.
9. On the door was inscribed in chalk, "Kapernaumov, Tailor." "Bah!"
the stranger repeated again, wondering at the strange coincidence, and
he rang next door, at No. 8. The doors were two or three yards apart.
"You lodge at Kapernaumov's," he said, looking at Sonia and
laughing. "He altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. I am staying close
here at Madame Resslich's. How odd!" Sonia looked at him attentively.
"We are neighbours," he went on gaily. "I only came to town the
day before yesterday. Good-bye for the present."
Sonia made no reply; the door opened and she slipped in. She felt
for some reason ashamed and uneasy.
On the way to Porfiry's, Razumihin was obviously excited.
"That's capital, brother," he repeated several times, "and I am
glad! I am glad!"
"What are you glad about?" Raskolnikov thought to himself.
"I didn't know that you pledged things at the old woman's, too.
And... was it long ago? I mean, was it long since you were there?"
"What a simple-hearted fool he is!"
"When was it?" Raskolnikov stopped still to recollect. "Two or three
days before her death it must have been. But I am not going to
redeem the things now," he put in with a sort of hurried and
conspicuous solicitude about the things. "I've not more than a
silver rouble left... after last night's accursed delirium!"
He laid special emphasis on the delirium.
"Yes, yes," Razumihin hastened to agree- with what was not clear.
"Then that's why you... were struck... partly... you know in your
delirium you were continually mentioning some rings or chains! Yes,
yes... that's clear, it's all clear now."
"Hullo! How that idea must have got about among them. Here this
man will go to the stake for me, and I find him delighted at having it
cleared up why I spoke of rings in my delirium! What a hold the idea
must have on all of them!"
"Shall we find him?" he asked suddenly.
"Oh, yes," Razumihin answered quickly. "He is a nice fellow you will
see, brother. Rather clumsy, that is to say, he is a man of polished
manners, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. He is an
intelligent fellow, very much so indeed, but he has his own range of
ideas.... He is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to
impose on people, or rather to make fun of them. His is the old,
circumstantial method.... But he understands his work...
thoroughly.... Last year he cleared up a case of murder in which the
police had hardly a clue. He is very, very anxious to make your
acquaintance."
"On what grounds is he so anxious?"
"Oh, it's not exactly... you see, since you've been ill I happen
to have mentioned you several times.... So, when he heard about you...
about your being a law student and not able to finish your studies, he
said, 'What a pity!' And so I concluded... from everything together,
not only that; yesterday, Zametov... you know, Rodya, I talked some
nonsense on the way home to you yesterday, when I was drunk... I am
afraid, brother, of your exaggerating it, you see."
"What? That they think I am a madman? Maybe they are right," he said
with a constrained smile.
"Yes, yes.... That is, pooh, no!... But all that I said (and there
was something else too) it was all nonsense, drunken nonsense."
"But why are you apologizing? I am so sick of it all!" Raskolnikov
cried with exaggerated irritability. It was partly assumed, however.
"I know, I know, I understand. Believe me, I understand. One's
ashamed to speak of it."
"If you are ashamed, then don't speak of it."
Both were silent. Razumihin was more than ecstatic and Raskolnikov
perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Razumihin
had just said about Porfiry.
"I shall have to pull a long face with him too," he thought, with
a beating heart, and he turned white, "and do it naturally, too. But
the most natural thing would be to do nothing at all. Carefully do
nothing at all! No, carefully would not be natural again.... Oh, well,
we shall see how it turns out.... We shall see... directly. Is it a
good thing to go or not? The butterfly flies to the light. My heart is
beating, that's what's bad!"
"In this grey house," said Razumihin.
"The most important thing, does Porfiry know that I was at the old
hag's flat yesterday... and asked about the blood? I must find that
out instantly, as soon as I go in, find out from his face;
otherwise... I'll find out, if it's my ruin."
"I say, brother," he said suddenly, addressing Razumihin, with a sly
smile, "I have been noticing all day that you seem to be curiously
excited. Isn't it so?"
"Excited? Not a bit of it," said Razumihin, stung to the quick.
"Yes, brother, I assure you it's noticeable. Why, you sat on your
chair in a way you never do sit, on the edge somehow, and you seemed
to be writhing all the time. You kept jumping up for nothing. One
moment you were angry, and the next your face looked like a sweetmeat.
You even blushed; especially when you were invited to dinner, you
blushed awfully."
"Nothing of the sort, nonsense! What do you mean?"
"But why are you wriggling out of it, like a schoolboy? By Jove,
there he's blushing again."
"What a pig you are!"
"But why are you so shamefaced about it? Romeo! Stay, I'll tell of
you to-day. Ha-ha-ha! I'll make mother laugh, and some one else,
too..."
"Listen, listen, listen, this is serious.... What next, you
fiend!" Razumihin was utterly overwhelmed, turning cold with horror.
"What will you tell them? Come, brother... foo, what a pig you are!"
"You are like a summer rose. And if only you knew how it suits
you; a Romeo over six foot high! And how you've washed to-day- you
cleaned your nails, I declare. Eh? That's something unheard of! Why, I
do believe you've got pomaturn on your hair! Bend down."
"Pig!"
Raskolnikov laughed as though he could not restrain himself. So
laughing, they entered Porfiry Petrovitch's flat. This is what
Raskolnikov wanted: from within they could be heard laughing as they
came in, still guffawing in the passage.
"Not a word here or I'll... brain you!" Razumihin whispered
furiously, seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder.
CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
RASKOLNIKOV was already entering the room. He came in looking as
though he had the utmost difficulty not to burst out laughing again.
Behind him Razumihin strode in gawky and awkward, shamefaced and red
as a peony, with an utterly crestfallen and ferocious expression.
His face and whole figure really were ridiculous at that moment and
amply justified Raskolnikov's laughter. Raskolnikov, not waiting for
an introduction, bowed to Porfiry Petrovitch, who stood in the
middle of the room looking inquiringly at them. He held out his hand
and shook hands, still apparently making desperate efforts to subdue
his mirth and utter a few words to introduce himself. But he had no
sooner succeeded in assuming a serious air and muttering something
when he suddenly glanced again as though accidentally at Razumihin,
and could no longer control himself: his stifled laughter broke out
the more irresistibly the more he tried to restrain it. The
extraordinary ferocity with which Razumihin received this
"spontaneous" mirth gave the whole scene the appearance of most
genuine fun and naturalness. Razumihin strengthened this impression as
though on purpose.
"Fool! You fiend," he roared, waving his arm which at once struck
a little round table with an empty tea-glass on it. Everything was
sent flying and crashing.
"But why break chairs, gentlemen? You know it's a loss to the
Crown," Porfiry Petrovitch quoted gaily.
Raskolnikov was still laughing, with his hand in Porfiry
Petrovitch's, but anxious not to overdo it, awaited the right moment
to put a natural end to it. Razumihin, completely put to confusion
by upsetting the table and smashing the glass, gazed gloomily at the
fragments, cursed and turned sharply to the window where he stood
looking out with his back to the company with a fiercely scowling
countenance, seeing nothing. Porfiry Petrovitch laughed and was
ready to go on laughing, but obviously looked for explanations.
Zametov had been sitting in the corner, but he rose at the visitors'
entrance and was standing in expectation with a smile on his lips,
though he looked with surprise and even it seemed incredulity at the
whole scene and at Raskolnikov with a certain embarrassment. Zametov's
unexpected presence struck Raskolnikov unpleasantly.
"I've got to think of that," he thought. "Excuse me, please," he
began, affecting extreme embarrassment. "Raskolnikov."
"Not at all, very pleasant to see you... and how pleasantly you've
come in.... Why, won't he even say good-morning?" Porfiry Petrovitch
nodded at Razumihin.
"Upon my honour I don't know why he is in such a rage with me. I
only told him as we came along that he was like Romeo... and proved
it. And that was all, I think!"
"Pig!" ejaculated Razumihin, without turning round.
"There must have been very grave grounds for it, if he is so furious
at the word," Porfiry laughed.
"Oh, you sharp lawyer!... Damn you all!" snapped Razumihin, and
suddenly bursting out laughing himself, he went up to Porfiry with a
more cheerful face as though nothing had happened. "That'll do! We are
all fools. To come to business. This is my friend Rodion Romanovitch
Raskolnikov; in the first place he has heard of you and wants to
make your acquaintance, and secondly, he has a little matter of
business with you. Bah! Zametov, what brought you here? Have you met
before? Have you known each other long?"
"What does this mean?" thought Raskolnikov uneasily.
Zametov seemed taken aback, but not very much so.
"Why, it was at your rooms we met yesterday," he said easily.
"Then I have been spared the trouble. All last week he was begging
me to introduce him to you. Porfiry and you have sniffed each other
out without me. Where is your tobacco?"
Porfiry Petrovitch was wearing a dressing-gown, very clean linen,
and trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty,
short, stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his hair
cut short and had a large round head, particularly prominent at the
back. His soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a sickly
yellowish colour, but had a vigorous and rather ironical expression.
It would have been good-natured, except for a look in the eyes,
which shone with a watery, mawkish light under almost white,
blinking eyelashes. The expression of those eyes was strangely out
of keeping with his somewhat womanish figure, and gave it something
far more serious than could be guessed at first sight.
As soon as Porfiry Petrovitch heard that his visitor had a little
matter of business with him, he begged him to sit down on the sofa and
sat down himself on the other end, waiting for him to explain his
business, with that careful and over-serious attention which is at
once oppressive and embarrassing, especially to a stranger, and
especially if what you are discussing is in your opinion of far too
little importance for such exceptional solemnity. But in brief and
coherent phrases Raskolnikov explained his business clearly and
exactly, and was so well satisfied with himself that he even succeeded
in taking a good look at Porfiry. Porfiry Petrovitch did not once take
his eyes off him. Razumihin, sitting opposite at the same table,
listened warmly and impatiently, looking from one to the other every
moment with rather excessive interest.
"Fool," Raskolnikov swore to himself.
"You have to give information to the police," Porfiry replied,
with a most businesslike air, "that having learnt of this incident,
that is of the murder, you beg to inform the lawyer in charge of the
case that such and such things belong to you, and that you desire to
redeem them... or... but they will write to you."
"That's just the point, that at the present moment," Raskolnikov
tried his utmost to feign embarrassment, "I am not quite in funds...
and even this trifling sum is beyond me... I only wanted, you see, for
the present to declare that the things are mine, and that when I
have money...."
"That's no matter," answered Porfiry Petrovitch, receiving his
explanation of his pecuniary position coldly, "but you can, if you
prefer, write straight to me, to say, that having been informed of the
matter, and claiming such and such as your property, you beg..."
"On an ordinary sheet of paper?" Raskolnikov interrupted eagerly,
again interested in the financial side of the question.
"Oh, the most ordinary," and suddenly Porfiry Petrovitch looked with
obvious irony at him, screwing up his eyes and as it were winking at
him. But perhaps it was Raskolnikov's fancy, for it all lasted but a
moment. There was certainly something of the sort, Raskolnikov could
have sworn he winked at him, goodness knows why.
"He knows," flashed through his mind like lightning.
"Forgive my troubling you about such trifles," he went on, a
little disconcerted, "the things are only worth five roubles, but I
prize them particularly for the sake of those from whom they came to
me, and I must confess that I was alarmed when I heard..."
"That's why you were so much struck when I mentioned to Zossimov
that Porfiry was inquiring for every one who had pledges!" Razumihin
put in with obvious intention.
This was really unbearable. Raskolnikov could not help glancing at
him with a flash of vindictive anger in his black eyes, but
immediately recollected himself.
"You seem to be jeering at me, brother?" he said to him, with a
well-feigned irritability. "I dare say I do seem to you absurdly
anxious about such trash; but you mustn't think me selfish or grasping
for that, and these two things may be anything but trash in my eyes. I
told you just now that the silver watch, though it's not worth a cent,
is the only thing left us of my father's. You may laugh at me, but
my mother is here," he turned suddenly to Porfiry, "and if she
knew," he turned again hurriedly to Razumihin, carefully making his
voice tremble, "that the watch was lost, she would be in despair!
You know what women are!"
"Not a bit of it! I didn't mean that at all! Quite the contrary!"
shouted Razumihin distressed.
"Was it right? Was it natural? Did I overdo it?" Raskolnikov asked
himself in a tremor. "Why did I say that about women?"
"Oh, your mother is with you?" Porfiry Petrovitch inquired.
"Yes."
"When did she come?"
"Last night."
Porfiry paused as though reflecting.
"Your things would not in any case be lost," he went on calmly and
coldly. "I have been expecting you here for some time."
And as though that was a matter of no importance, he carefully
offered the ash-tray to Razumihin, who was ruthlessly scattering
cigarette ash over the carpet. Raskolnikov shuddered, but Porfiry
did not seem to be looking at him, and was still concerned with
Razumihin's cigarette.
"What? Expecting him? Why, did you know that he had pledges
there?" cried Razumihin.
Porfiry Petrovitch addressed himself to Raskolnikov.
"Your things, the ring and the watch, were wrapped up together,
and on the paper your name was legibly written in pencil, together
with the date on which you left them with her..."
"How observant you are!" Raskolnikov smiled awkwardly, doing his
very utmost to look him straight in the face, but he failed, and
suddenly added:
"I say that because I suppose there were a great many pledges...
that it must be difficult to remember them all.... But you remember
them all so clearly, and... and..."
"Stupid! Feeble!" he thought. "Why did I add that?"
"But we know all who had pledges, and you are the only one who
hasn't come forward," Porfiry answered with hardly perceptible irony.
"I haven't been quite well."
"I heard that too. I heard, indeed, that you were in great
distress about something. You look pale still."
"I am not pale at all.... No, I am quite well," Raskolnikov
snapped out rudely and angrily, completely changing his tone. His
anger was mounting, he could not repress it. "And in my anger I
shall betray myself," flashed through his mind again. "Why are they
torturing me?"
"Not quite well!" Razumihin caught him up. "What next! He was
unconscious and delirious all yesterday. Would you believe, Porfiry,
as soon as our backs were turned, he dressed, though he could hardly
stand, and gave us the slip and went off on a spree somewhere till
midnight, delirious all the time! Would you believe it!
Extraordinary!"
"Really delirious? You don't say so!" Porfiry shook his head in a
womanish way.
"Nonsense! Don't you believe it! But you don't believe it anyway,"
Raskolnikov let slip in his anger. But Porfiry Petrovitch did not seem
to catch those strange words.
"But how could you have gone out if you hadn't been delirious?"
Razumihin got hot suddenly. "What did you go out for? What was the
object of it? And why on the sly? Were you in your senses when you did
it? Now that all danger is over I can speak plainly."
"I was awfully sick of them yesterday." Raskolnikov addressed
Porfiry suddenly with a smile of insolent defiance, "I ran away from
them to take lodgings where they wouldn't find me, and took a lot of
money with me. Mr. Zametov there saw it. I say, Mr. Zametov, was I
sensible or delirious yesterday; settle our dispute."
He could have strangled Zametov at that moment, so hated were his
expression and his silence to him.
"In my opinion you talked sensibly and even artfully, but you were
extremely irritable," Zametov pronounced dryly.
"And Nikodim Fomitch was telling me to-day," put in Porfiry
Petrovitch, "that he met you very late last night in the lodging of
a man who had been run over."
"And there," said Razumihin, "weren't you mad then? You gave your
last penny to the widow for the funeral. If you wanted to help, give
fifteen or twenty even, but keep three roubles for yourself at
least, but he flung away all the twenty-five at once!"
"Maybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So
that's why I was liberal yesterday.... Mr. Zametov knows I've found
a treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour
with such trivialities," he said turning to Porfiry Petrovitch, with
trembling lips. "We are boring you, aren't we?"
"Oh no, quite the contrary, quite the contrary! If only you knew how
you interest me! It's interesting to look on and listen... and I am
really glad you have come forward at last."
"But you might give us some tea! My throat's dry," cried Razumihin.
"Capital idea! Perhaps we will all keep you company. Wouldn't you
like... something more essential before tea?"
"Get along with you!"
Porfiry Petrovitch went out to order tea.
Raskolnikov's thoughts were in a whirl. He was in terrible
exasperation.
"The worst of it is they don't disguise it; they don't care to stand
on ceremony! And how if you didn't know me at all, did you come to
talk to Nikodim Fomitch about me? So they didn't care to hide that
they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my
face." He was shaking with rage. "Come, strike me openly, don't play
with me like a cat with a mouse. It's hardly civil, Porfiry
Petrovitch, but perhaps I won't allow it! I shall get up and throw the
whole truth in your ugly faces, and you'll see how I despise you."
He could hardly breathe. "And what if it's only my fancy? What if I am
mistaken, and through inexperience I get angry and don't keep up my
nasty part? Perhaps it's all unintentional. All their phrases are
the usual ones, but there is something about them.... It all might
be said, but there is something. Why did he say bluntly, 'With her'?
Why did Zametov add that I spoke artfully? Why do they speak in that
tone? Yes, the tone.... Razumihin is sitting here, why does he see
nothing? That innocent blockhead never does see anything! Feverish
again! Did Porfiry wink at me just now? Of course it's nonsense!
What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they
teasing me? Either it's ill fancy or they know! Even Zametov is
rude.... Is Zametov rude? Zametov has changed his mind. I foresaw he
would change his mind! He is at home here, while it's my first
visit. Porfiry does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back
to him. They're as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt
they were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the
flat? If only they'd make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a
flat he let it pass.... I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be
of use afterwards.... Delirious, indeed... ha-ha-ha! He knows all
about last night! He didn't know of my mother's arrival! The hag had
written the date on in pencil! You are wrong, you won't catch me!
There are no facts... it's all supposition! You produce facts! The
flat even isn't a fact but delirium. I know what to say to them.... Do
they know about the flat? I won't go without finding out. What did I
come for? But my being angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable
I am! Perhaps that's right; to play the invalid.... He is feeling
me. He will try to catch me. Why did I come?"
All this flashed like lightning through his mind.
Porfiry Petrovitch returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial.
"Your party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather.... And I am
out of sorts altogether," he began in quite a different tone, laughing
to Razumihin.
"Was it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting
point. Who got the best of it?"
"Oh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions,
floated off into space."
"Only fancy, Rodya, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is
such a thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off."
"What is there strange? It's an everyday social question,"
Raskolnikov answered casually.
"The question wasn't put quite like that," observed Porfiry.
"Not quite, that's true," Razumihin agreed at once, getting warm and
hurried as usual. "Listen, Rodion, and tell us your opinion, I want to
hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to
help me. I told them you were coming.... It began with the socialist
doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the
abnormality of the social organization and nothing more, and nothing
more; no other causes admitted!..."
"You are wrong there," cried Porfiry Petrovitch; he was noticeably
animated and kept laughing as he looked at Razumihin which made him
more excited than ever.
"Nothing is admitted," Razumihin interrupted with heat.
"I am not wrong. I'll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them
is 'the influence of environment,' and nothing else. Their favourite
phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally
organized, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing
to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant.
Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it's not
supposed to exist! They don't recognise that humanity, developing by a
historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but
they believe that a social system that has come out of some
mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and
make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living
process! That's why they instinctively dislike history, 'nothing but
ugliness and stupidity in it,' and they explain it all as stupidity!
That's why they so dislike the living process of life; they don't want
a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won't obey the
rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is
retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be
made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile
and won't revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything
to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a
phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature
is not ready for the phalanstery- it wants life, it hasn't completed
its vital process, it's too soon for the graveyard! You can't skip
over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there
are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of
comfort! That's the easiest solution of the problem! It's
seductively clear and you musn't think about it. That's the great
thing, you mustn't think! The whole secret of life in two pages of
print!"
"Now he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do!" laughed
Porfiry. "Can you imagine," he turned to Raskolnikov, "six people
holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a
preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a
great deal in crime; I can assure you of that."
"Oh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a
child of ten; was it environment drove him to it?"
"Well, strictly speaking, it did," Porfiry observed with
noteworthy gravity; "a crime of that nature may be very well
ascribed to the influence of environment."
Razumihin was almost in a frenzy. "Oh, if you like," he roared.
"I'll prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed
to the Church of Ivan the Great's being two hundred and fifty feet
high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even
with a Liberal tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it?"
"Done! Let's hear, please, how he will prove it!"
"He is always humbugging, confound him," cried Razumihin, jumping up
and gesticulating. "What's the use of talking to you! He does all that
on purpose; you don't know him, Rodion! He took their side
yesterday, simply to make fools of them. And the things he said
yesterday! And they were delighted! He can keep it up for a
fortnight together. Last year he persuaded us that he was going into a
monastery: he stuck to it for two months. Not long ago he took it into
his head to declare he was going to get married, that he had
everything ready for the wedding. He ordered new clothes indeed. We
all began to congratulate him. There was no bride, nothing, all pure
fantasy!"
"Ah, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes
in fact that made me think of taking you in."
"Are you such a good dissembler?" Raskolnikov asked carelessly.
"You wouldn't have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in,
too. Ha-ha-ha! No, I'll tell you the truth. All these questions
about crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of
yours which interested me at the time. 'On Crime'... or something of
the sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago
in the Periodical Review."
"My article? In the Periodical Review?" Raskolnikov asked in
astonishment. "I certainly did write an article upon a book six months
ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the Weekly Review."
"But it came out in the Periodical."
"And the Weekly Review ceased to exist, so that's why it wasn't
printed at the time."
"That's true; but when it ceased to exist, the Weekly Review was
amalgamated with the Periodical, and so your article appeared two
months ago in the latter. Didn't you know?"
Raskolnikov had not known.
"Why, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a
strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know
nothing of matters that concern you directly. It's a fact, I assure
you."
"Bravo, Rodya! I knew nothing about it either!" cried Razumihin.
"I'll run to-day to the reading-room and ask for the number. Two
months ago? What was the date? It doesn't matter though, I will find
it. Think of not telling us!"
"How did you find out that the article was mine? It's only signed
with an initial."
"I only learnt it by chance, the other day. Through the editor; I
know him.... I was very much interested."
"It analysed, if I remember, the psychology of a criminal before and
after the crime."
"Yes, and you maintained that the perpetration of a crime is
always accompanied by illness. Very, very original, but... it was
not that part of your article that interested me so much, but an
idea at the end of the article which I regret to say you merely
suggested without working it out clearly. There is, if you
recollect, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can... that
is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit
breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them."
Raskolnikov smiled at the exaggerated and intentional distortion
of his idea.
"What? What do you mean? A right to crime? But not because of the
influence of environment?" Razumihin inquired with some alarm even.
"No, not exactly because of it," answered Porfiry. "In his article
all men are divided into 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary.' Ordinary
men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law,
because, don't you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men
have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way,
just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not
mistaken?"
"What do you mean? That can't be right?" Razumihin muttered in
bewilderment.
Raskolnikov smiled again. He saw the point at once, and knew where
they wanted to drive him. He decided to take up the challenge.
"That wasn't quite my contention," he began simply and modestly.
"Yet I admit that you have stated it almost correctly; perhaps, if you
like, perfectly so." (It almost gave him pleasure to admit this.) "The
only difference is that I don't contend that extraordinary people
are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In
fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply
hinted that an 'extraordinary' man has the right... that is not an
official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience
to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for
the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit
to the whole of humanity). You say that my article isn't definite; I
am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right in
thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the discoveries
of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by
sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men,
Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty
bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of
making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not
follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and
left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I
maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of
men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all
without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new
law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their
ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short
at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed- often of innocent persons
fighting bravely in defence of ancient law- were of use to their
cause. It's remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these
benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage.
In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of
the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must
from their very nature be criminals- more or less, of course.
Otherwise it's hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to
remain in the common rut is what they can't submit to, from their very
nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to
it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The
same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for
my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge
that it's somewhat arbitrary, but I don't insist upon exact numbers. I
only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a
law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to
say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have
the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There are, of course,
innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both
categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally
speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they
live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is
their duty to be controlled, because that's their vocation, and
there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all
transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction
according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course
relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways
the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such
a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade
through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his
conscience, a sanction for wading through blood- that depends on the
idea and its dimensions, note that. It's only in that sense I speak of
their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the
legal question). There's no need for such anxiety, however; the masses
will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them
(more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative
vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the
next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is
always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The
first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world
and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In
fact, all have equal rights with me- and vive la guerre eternelle-
till the New Jerusalem, of course!"
"Then you believe in the New Jerusalem, do you?"
"I do," Raskolnikov answered firmly; as he said these words and
during the whole preceding tirade he kept his eyes on one spot on
the carpet.
"And... and do you believe in God? Excuse my curiosity."
"I do," repeated Raskolnikov, raising his eyes to Porfiry.
"And... do you believe in Lazarus' rising from the dead?"
"I... I do. Why do you ask all this?"
"You believe it literally?"
"Literally."
"You don't say so.... I asked from curiosity. Excuse me. But let
us go back to the question; they are not always executed. Some, on the
contrary..."
"Triumph in their lifetime? Oh, yes, some attain their ends in
this life, and then..."
"They begin executing other people?"
"If it's necessary; indeed, for the most part they do. Your remark
is very witty."
"Thank you. But tell me this: how do you distinguish those
extraordinary people from the ordinary ones? Are there signs at
their birth? I feel there ought to be more exactitude, more external
definition. Excuse the natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding
citizen, but couldn't they adopt a special uniform, for instance,
couldn't they wear something, be branded in some way? For you know
if confusion arises and a member of one category imagines that he
belongs to the other, begins to 'eliminate obstacles,' as you so
happily expressed it, then..."
"Oh, that very often happens! That remark is wittier than the
other."
"Thank you."
"No reason to; but take note that the mistake can only arise in
the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps
unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to
obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature,
sometimes vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves
advanced people, 'destroyers,' and to push themselves into the 'new
movement,' and this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really new people
are very often unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries
of grovelling tendencies. But I don't think there is any
considerable danger here, and you really need not be uneasy for they
never go very far. Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes
for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their
place, but no more; in fact, even this isn't necessary as they
castigate themselves, for they are very conscientious: some perform
this service for one another and others chastise themselves with their
own hands.... They will impose various public acts of penitence upon
themselves with a beautiful and edifying effect; in fact you've
nothing to be uneasy about.... It's a law of nature."
"Well, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score;
but there's another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there
many people who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary
people? I am ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must
admit it's alarming if there are a great many of them, eh?"
"Oh, you needn't worry about that either," Raskolnikov went on in
the same tone. "People with new ideas, people with the faintest
capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number,
extraordinarily so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the
appearance of all these grades and sub-divisions of men must follow
with unfailing regularity some law of nature. That law, of course,
is unknown at present, but I am convinced that it exists, and one
day may become known. The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and
only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process,
by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world
at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of
independence. One in ten thousand perhaps- I speak roughly,
approximately- is born with some independence, and with still
greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius is
one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear
on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have not
peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there
certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of
chance."
"Why, are you both joking?" Razumihin cried at last. "There you sit,
making fun of one another. Are you serious, Rodya?"
Raskolnikov raised his pale and almost mournful face and made no
reply. And the unconcealed, persistent, nervous, and discourteous
sarcasm of Porfiry seemed strange to Razumihin beside that quiet and
mournful face.
"Well, brother, if you are really serious... You are right, of
course, in saying that it's not new, that it's like what we've read
and heard a thousand times already; but what is really original in all
this, and is exclusively your own, to my horror, is that you
sanction bloodshed in the name of conscience, and, excuse my saying
so, with such fanaticism.... That, I take it, is the point of your
article. But that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind...
more terrible than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed...."
"You are quite right, it is more terrible," Porfiry agreed.
"Yes, you must have exaggerated! There is some mistake, I shall read
it. You can't think that! I shall read it."
"All that is not in the article, there's only a hint of it," said
Raskolnikov.
"Yes, yes." Porfiry couldn't sit still. "Your attitude to crime is
pretty clear to me now, but... excuse me for my impertinence (I am
really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you've
removed my anxiety as to the two grades' getting mixed, but... there
are various practical possibilities that make me uneasy! What if
some man or youth imagines that he is a Lycurgus or Mahomet- a
future one of course- and suppose he begins to remove all
obstacles.... He has some great enterprise before him and needs
money for it... and tries to get it... do you see?"
Zametov gave a sudden guffaw in his corner. Raskolnikov did not even
raise his eyes to him.
"I must admit," he went on calmly, "that such cases certainly must
arise. The vain and foolish are particularly apt to fall into that
snare; young people especially."
"Yes, you see. Well then?"
"What then?" Raskolnikov smiled in reply; "that's not my fault. So
it is and so it always will be. He said just now (he nodded at
Razumihin) that I sanction bloodshed. Society is too well protected by
prisons, banishment, criminal investigators, penal servitude.
There's no need to be uneasy. You have but to catch the thief."
"And what if we do catch him?"
"Then he gets what he deserves."
"You are certainly logical. But what of his conscience?"
"Why do you care about that?"
"Simply from humanity."
"If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be
his punishment- as well as the prison."
"But the real geniuses," asked Razumihin frowning, "those who have
the right to murder? Oughtn't they to suffer at all even for the blood
they've shed?"
"Why the word ought? It's not a matter of permission or prohibition.
He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are
always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The
really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth," he added
dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation.
He raised his eyes, looked earnestly at them all, smiled, and took
his cap. He was too quiet by comparison with his manner at his
entrance, and he felt this. Every one got up.
"Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like," Porfiry
Petrovitch began again, "but I can't resist. Allow me one little
question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little
notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it."
"Very good, tell me your little notion," Raskolnikov stood
waiting, pale and grave before him.
"Well, you see... I really don't know how to express it properly....
It's a playful, psychological idea.... When you were writing your
article, surely you couldn't have helped, he-he, fancying
yourself... just a little, an 'extraordinary' man, uttering a new word
in your sense.... That's so, isn't it?"
"Quite possibly," Raskolnikov answered contemptuously.
Razumihin made a movement.
"And, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly
difficulties and hardship or for some service to humanity- to overstep
obstacles?... For instance, to rob and murder?"
And again he winked with his left eye, and laughed noiselessly
just as before.
"If I did I certainly should not tell you," Raskolnikov answered
with defiant and haughty contempt.
"No, I was only interested on account of your article, from a
literary point of view..."
"Foo, how obvious and insolent that is," Raskolnikov thought with
repulsion.
"Allow me to observe," he answered dryly, "that I don't consider
myself a Mahomet or a Napoleon, nor any personage of that kind, and
not being one of them I cannot tell you how I should act."
"Oh, come, don't we all think ourselves Napoleons now in Russia?"
Porfiry Petrovitch said with alarming familiarity.
Something peculiar betrayed itself in the very intonation of his
voice.
"Perhaps it was one of these future Napoleons who did for Alyona
Ivanovna last week?" Zametov blurted out from the corner.
Raskolnikov did not speak, but looked firmly and intently at
Porfiry. Razumihin was scowling gloomily. He seemed before this to
be noticing something. He looked angrily around. There was a minute of
gloomy silence. Raskolnikov turned to go.
"Are you going already?" Porfiry said amiably, holding out his
hand with excessive politeness. "Very, very glad of your acquaintance.
As for your request, have no uneasiness, write just as I told you, or,
better still, come to me there yourself in a day or two...
to-morrow, indeed. I shall be there at eleven o'clock for certain.
We'll arrange it all; we'll have a talk. As one of the last to be
there, you might perhaps be able to tell us something," he added
with a most good-natured expression.
"You want to cross-examine me officially in due form?" Raskolnikov
asked sharply.
"Oh, why? That's not necessary for the present. You misunderstand
me. I lose no opportunity, you see, and... I've talked with all who
had pledges.... I obtained evidence from some of them, and you are the
last.... Yes, by the way," he cried, seemingly suddenly delighted,
"I just remember, what was I thinking of?" he turned to Razumihin,
"you were talking my ears off about that Nikolay... of course, I know,
I know very well," he turned to Raskolnikov, "that the fellow is
innocent, but what is one to do? We had to trouble Dmitri too.... This
is the point, this is all: when you went up the stairs it was past
seven, wasn't it?"
"Yes," answered Raskolnikov, with an unpleasant sensation at the
very moment he spoke that he need not have said it.
"Then when you went upstairs between seven and eight, didn't you see
in a flat that stood open on a second storey, do you remember, two
workmen or at least one of them? They were painting there, didn't
you notice them? It's very, very important for them."
"Painters? No, I didn't see them," Raskolnikov answered slowly, as
though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking
every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly
as possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. "No, I
didn't see them, and I don't think I noticed a flat like that open....
But on the fourth storey" (he had mastered the trap now and was
triumphant) "I remember now that some one was moving out of the flat
opposite Alyona Ivanovna's.... I remember... I remember it clearly.
Some porters were carrying out a sofa and they squeezed me against the
wall. But painters... no, I don't remember that there were any
painters, and I don't think that there was a flat open anywhere, no,
there wasn't."
"What do you mean?" Razumihin shouted suddenly, as though he had
reflected and realised. "Why, it was on the day of the murder the
painters were at work, and he was there three days before? What are
you asking?"
"Foo! I have muddled it!" Porfiry slapped himself on the forehead.
"Deuce take it! This business is turning my brain!" he addressed
Raskolnikov somewhat apologetically. "It would be such a great thing
for us to find out whether any one had seen them between seven and
eight at the flat, so I fancied you could perhaps have told us
something.... I quite muddled it."
"Then you should be more careful," Razumihin observed grimly.
The last words were uttered in the passage. Porfiry Petrovitch saw
them to the door with excessive politeness.
They went out into the street gloomy and sullen, and for some
steps they did not say a word. Raskolnikov drew a deep breath.
CHAPTER_SIX
Chapter Six
-
"I DON'T BELIEVE it, I can't believe it!" repeated Razumihin, trying
in perplexity to refute Raskolnikov's arguments.
They were by now approaching Bakaleyev's lodgings, where Pulcheria
Alexandrovna and Dounia had been expecting them a long while.
Razumihin kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused
and excited by the very fact that they were for the first time
speaking openly about it.
"Don't believe it, then!" answered Raskolnikov, with a cold,
careless smile. "You were noticing nothing as usual, but I was
weighing every word."
"You are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words... h'm...
certainly, I agree, Porfiry's tone was rather strange, and still
more that wretch Zametov!... You are right, there was something
about him- but why? Why?"
"He has changed his mind since last night."
"Quite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would
do their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch
you afterwards.... But it was all impudent and careless."
"If they had had facts- I mean, real facts- or at least grounds
for suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their
game, in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search
long ago besides). But they have no facts, not one. It is all
mirage- all ambiguous. Simply a floating idea. So they try to throw me
out by impudence. And perhaps, he was irritated at having no facts,
and blurted it out in his vexation- or perhaps he has some plan...
he seems an intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by
pretending to know. They have a psychology of their own, brother.
But it is loathsome explaining it all. Stop!"
"And it's insulting, insulting! I understand you. But... since we
have spoken openly now (and it is an excellent thing that we have at
last- I am glad) I will own now frankly that I noticed it in them long
ago, this idea. Of course the merest hint only- an insinuation- but
why an insinuation even? How dare they? What foundation have they?
If only you knew how furious I have been. Think only! Simply because a
poor student, unhinged by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a
severe delirious illness (note that), suspicious, vain, proud, who has
not seen a soul to speak to for six months, in rags and in boots
without soles, has to face some wretched policemen and put up with
their insolence; and the unexpected debt thrust under his nose, the
I.O.U. presented by Tchebarov, the new paint, thirty degrees Reaumur
and a stifling atmosphere, a crowd of people, the talk about the
murder of a person where he had been just before, and all that on an
empty stomach- he might well have a fainting fit! And that, that is
what they found it all on! Damn them! I understand how annoying it is,
but in your place, Rodya, I would laugh at them, or better still, spit
in their ugly faces, and spit a dozen times in all directions. I'd hit
out in all directions, neatly too, and so I'd put an end to it. Damn
them! Don't be downhearted. It's a shame!"
"He really has put it well, though," Raskolnikov thought.
"Damn them? But the cross-examination again, to-morrow?" he said
with bitterness. "Must I really enter into explanations with them? I
feel vexed as it is that I condescended to speak to Zametov
yesterday in the restaurant...."
"Damn it! I will go myself to Porfiry. I will squeeze it out of him,
as one of the family: he must let me know the ins and outs of it
all! And as for Zametov..."
"At last he sees through him!" thought Raskolnikov.
"Stay!" cried Razumihin, seizing him by the shoulder again. "Stay!
you were wrong. I have thought it out. You are wrong! How was that a
trap? You say that the question about the workmen was a trap. But if
you had done that, could you have said you had seen them painting
the flat... and the workmen? On the contrary, you would have seen
nothing, even if you had seen it. Who would own it against himself?"
"If I had done that thing, I should certainly have said that I had
seen the workmen and the flat." Raskolnikov answered, with
reluctance and obvious disgust.
"But why speak against yourself?"
"Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny
everything flatly at examinations. If a man is ever so little
developed and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the
external facts that can't be avoided, but will seek other explanations
of them, will introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will
give them another significance and put them in another light.
Porfiry might well reckon that I should be sure to answer so, and
say I had seen them to give an air of truth, and then make some
explanation."
"But he would have told you at once, that the workmen could not have
been there two days before, and that therefore you must have been
there on the day of the murder at eight o'clock. And so he would
have caught you over a detail."
"Yes, that is what he was reckoning on, that I should not have
time to reflect, and should be in a hurry to make the most likely
answer, and so would forget that the workmen could not have been there
two days before."
"But how could you forget it?"
"Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people
are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he
suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning
a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not
such a fool as you think...."
"He is a knave then, if that is so!"
Raskolnikov could not help laughing. But at the very moment, he
was struck by the strangeness of his own frankness, and the
eagerness with which he had made this explanation, though he had
kept up all the preceding conversation with gloomy repulsion,
obviously with a motive, from necessity.
"I am getting a relish for certain aspects!" he thought to
himself. But almost at the same instant, he became suddenly uneasy, as
though an unexpected and alarming idea had occurred to him. His
uneasiness kept on increasing. They had just reached the entrance to
Bakaleyev's.
"Go in alone!" said Raskolnikov suddenly. "I will be back directly."
"Where are you going? Why, we are just here."
"I can't help it.... I will come in half an hour. Tell them."
"Say what you like, I will come with you."
"You, too, want to torture me!" he screamed, with such bitter
irritation, such despair in his eyes that Razumihin's hands dropped.
He stood for some time on the steps, looking gloomily at Raskolnikov
striding rapidly away in the direction of his lodging. At last,
gritting his teeth and clenching his fist, he swore he would squeeze
Porfiry like a lemon that very day, and went up the stairs to reassure
Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who was by now alarmed at their long absence.
When Raskolnikov got home, his hair was soaked with sweat and he was
breathing heavily. He went rapidly up the stairs, walked into his
unlocked room and at once fastened the latch. Then in senseless terror
he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put
the thing; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the
hole, in every crack and fold of the paper. Finding nothing, he got up
and drew a deep breath. As he was reaching the steps of Bakaleyev's,
he suddenly fancied that something, a chain, a stud or even a bit of
paper in which they had been wrapped with the old woman's
handwriting on it, might somehow have slipped out and been lost in
some crack, and then might suddenly turn up as unexpected,
conclusive evidence against him.
He stood as though lost in thought, and a strange, humiliated,
half senseless smile strayed on his lips. He took his cap at last
and went quietly out of the room. His ideas were all tangled. He
went dreamily through the gateway.
"Here he is himself," shouted a loud voice.
He raised his head.
The porter was standing at the door of his little room and was
pointing him out to a short man who looked like an artisan, wearing
a long coat and a waistcoat, and looking at a distance remarkably like
a woman. He stooped, and his head in a greasy cap hung forward. From
his wrinkled flabby face he looked over fifty; his little eyes were
lost in fat and they looked out grimly, sternly and discontentedly.
"What is it?" Raskolnikov asked, going up to the porter.
The man stole a look at him from under his brows and he looked at
him attentively, deliberately; then he turned slowly and went out of
the gate into the street without saying a word.
"What is it?" cried Raskolnikov.
"Why, he there was asking whether a student lived here, mentioned
your name and whom you lodged with. I saw you coming and pointed you
out and he went away. It's funny."
The porter too seemed rather puzzled, but not much so, and after
wondering for a moment he turned and went back to his room.
Raskolnikov ran after the stranger, and at once caught sight of
him walking along the other side of the street with the same even,
deliberate step with his eyes fixed on the ground, as though in
meditation. He soon overtook him, but for some time walked behind him.
At last, moving on to a level with him, he looked at his face. The man
noticed him at once, looked at him quickly, but dropped his eyes
again; and so they walked for a minute side by side without uttering a
word.
"You were inquiring for me... of the porter?" Raskolnikov said at
last, but in a curiously quiet voice.
The man made no answer; he didn't even look at him. Again they
were both silent.
"Why do you... come and ask for me... and say nothing.... What's the
meaning of it?"
Raskolnikov's voice broke and he seemed unable to articulate the
words clearly.
The man raised his eyes this time and turned a gloomy sinister
look at Raskolnikov.
"Murderer!" he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct
voice.
Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak,
a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand
still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were
set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in
silence.
The man did not look at him.
"What do you mean... what is.... Who is a murderer?" muttered
Raskolnikov hardly audibly.
"You are a murderer," the man answered still more articulately and
emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked
straight into Raskolnikov's pale face and stricken eyes.
They had just reached the crossroads. The man turned to the left
without looking behind him. Raskolnikov remained standing, gazing
after him. He saw him turn round fifty paces away and look back at him
still standing there. Raskolnikov could not see clearly, but he
fancied that he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and
triumph.
With slow faltering steps, with shaking knees, Raskolnikov made
his way back to his little garret, feeling chilled all over. He took
off his cap and put it on the table, and for ten minutes he stood
without moving. Then he sank exhausted on the sofa and with a weak
moan of pain he stretched himself on it. So he lay for half an hour.
He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts,
some images without order or coherence floated before his mind-
faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once,
whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the
billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards,
the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a
back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with
egg shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The
images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them
he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while
there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming,
sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still
persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.
He heard the hurried footsteps of Razumihin; he closed his eyes
and pretended to be asleep. Razumihin opened the door and stood for
some time in the doorway as though hesitating, then he stepped
softly into the room and went cautiously to the sofa. Raskolnikov
heard Nastasya's whisper:
"Don't disturb him! Let him sleep. He can have his dinner later."
"Quite so," answered Razumihin. Both withdrew carefully and closed
the door. Another half-hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes,
turned on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head.
"Who is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was
he, what did he see? He has seen it all, that's clear. Where was he
then? And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the
earth? And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm..." continued
Raskolnikov, turning cold and shivering, "and the jewel case Nikolay
found behind the door- was that possible? A clue? You miss an
infinitesimal line and you can build it into a pyramid of evidence!
A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible?" He felt with sudden
loathing how weak, how physically weak he had become. "I ought to have
known it," he thought with a bitter smile. "And how dared I, knowing
myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood! I
ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did know!" he whispered
in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some thought.
"No, those men are not made so. The real Master to whom all is
permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in
Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off
with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death,
and so all is permitted. No, such people it seems are not of flesh but
of bronze!"
One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the
pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with
a red trunk under her bed- it's a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovitch
to digest! How can they digest it! It's too inartistic. "A Napoleon
creep under an old woman's bed! Ugh, how loathsome!"
At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish
excitement. "The old woman is of no consequence," he thought, hotly
and incoherently. "The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not
what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry
to overstep.... I didn't kill a human being, but a principle! I killed
the principle, but I didn't overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was
only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn't even capable of that...
Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They
are industrious, commercial people; 'the happiness of all' is their
case. No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it
again; I don't want to wait for 'the happiness of all.' I want to live
myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn't pass by my
mother starving, keeping my trouble in my pocket while I waited for
the 'happiness of all.' I am putting my little brick into the
happiness of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you
let me slip? I only live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an aesthetic
louse and nothing more," he added suddenly, laughing like a madman.
"Yes, I am certainly a louse," he went on, clutching at the idea,
gloating over it and playing with it with vindictive pleasure. "In the
first place, because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because
for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence,
calling it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I
undertake it, but with a grand and noble object- ha-ha! Thirdly,
because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing,
measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most
useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed for
the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone to a
monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I am
utterly a louse," he added, grinding his teeth, "is that I am
perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt
beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can
anything be compared with the horror of that! The vulgarity! The
abjectness! I understand the 'prophet' with his sabre, on his steed:
Allah commands and 'trembling' creation must obey! The 'prophet' is
right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and
blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It's
for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, for
that's not for you!... I shall never, never forgive the old woman!"
His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his
eyes were fixed on the ceiling.
"Mother, sister- how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I
hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can't bear them near
me.... I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember.... To
embrace her and think if she only knew... shall I tell her then?
That's just what I might do.... She must be the same as I am," he
added, straining himself to think, as it were struggling with
delirium. "Ah, how I hate the old woman now! I feel I should kill
her again if she came to life! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come
in?... It's strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her, as
though I hadn't killed her! Lizaveta! Sonia! Poor gentle things,
with gentle eyes.... Dear women! Why don't they weep? Why don't they
moan? They give up everything... their eyes are soft and gentle....
Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!"
He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn't
remember how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight
had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but
there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of
people in the street; workmen and business people were making their
way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of
mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful
and anxious; he was distinctly aware of having come out with a
purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he
had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man standing on the
other side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over to him,
but at once the man turned and walked away with his head hanging, as
though he had made no sign to him. "Stay, did he really beckon?"
Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried to overtake him. When he was within
ten paces he recognised him and was frightened; it was the same man
with stooping shoulders in the long coat. Raskolnikov followed him
at a distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning; the
man still did not look round. "Does he know I am following him?"
thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the gateway of a big house.
Raskolnikov hastened to the gate and looked in to see whether he would
look round and sign to him. In the courtyard the man did turn round
and again seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at once followed him
into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone up the first
staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He heard slow measured
steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely familiar. He
reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone through the
panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he reached the
second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were at work...
but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps of the man
above had died away. "So he must have stopped or hidden somewhere." He
reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a stillness
that was dreadful.... But he went on. The sound of his own footsteps
scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding
in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he hesitated
and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as though
everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlour which
was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the
chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the
frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows. "It's
the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery," thought
Raskolnikov. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more
silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, till it was
painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary
sharp crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A
fly flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz.
At that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the
little cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. "Why is
that cloak here?" he thought, "it wasn't there before...." He went
up to it quietly and felt that there was some one hiding behind it. He
cautiously moved the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the
corner, the old woman bent double so that he couldn't see her face;
but it was she. He stood over her. "She is afraid," he thought. He
stealthily took the axe from the noose and struck her one blow, then
another on the skull. But strange to say she did not stir, as though
she were made of wood. He was frightened, bent down nearer and tried
to look at her; but she, too, bent her head lower. He bent right
down to the ground and peeped up into her face from below, he peeped
and turned cold with horror: the old woman was sitting and laughing,
shaking with noiseless laughter, doing her utmost that he should not
hear it. Suddenly he fancied that the door from the bedroom was opened
a little and that there was laughter and whispering within. He was
overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the old woman on the head
with all his force, but at every blow of the axe the laughter and
whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old woman was simply
shaking with mirth. He was rushing away, but the passage was full of
people, the doors of the flats stood open and on the landing, on the
stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of heads, all
looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation. Something
gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they would not
move.... He tried to scream and woke up.
He drew a deep breath- but his dream seemed strangely to persist:
his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in
the doorway watching him intently.
Raskolnikov had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed
them again. He lay on his back without stirring.
"Is it still a dream?" he wondered and again raised his eyelids
hardly perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still
watching him.
He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door
after him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his
eyes on Raskolnikov and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the
sofa; he put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on
his cane and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was
prepared to wait indefinitely. As far as Raskolnikov could make out
from his stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a
full, fair, almost whitish beard.
Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk.
There was complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the
stairs. Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane.
It was unbearable at last. Raskolnikov suddenly got up and sat on
the sofa.
"Come, tell me what you want."
"I knew you were not asleep, but only pretending," the stranger
answered oddly, laughing calmly. "Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigailov,
allow me to introduce myself...."
CHAPTER_ONE
PART FOUR
Chapter One
-
"CAN this be still a dream?" Raskolnikov thought once more.
He looked carefully and suspiciously at the unexpected visitor.
"Svidrigailov! What nonsense! It can't be!" he said at last aloud in
bewilderment.
His visitor did not seem at all surprised at this exclamation.
"I've come to you for two reasons. In the first place, I wanted to
make your personal acquaintance, as I have already heard a great
deal about you that is interesting and flattering; secondly, I cherish
the hope that you may not refuse to assist me in a matter directly
concerning the welfare of your sister, Avdotya Romanovna. For
without your support she might not let me come near her now, for she
is prejudiced against me, but with your assistance I reckon on..."
"You reckon wrongly," interrupted Raskolnikov.
"They only arrived yesterday, may I ask you?"
Raskolnikov made no reply.
"It was yesterday, I know. I only arrived myself the day before.
Well, let me tell you this, Rodion Romanovitch, I don't consider it
necessary to justify myself, but kindly tell me what was there
particularly criminal on my part in all this business, speaking
without prejudice, with common sense?"
Raskolnikov continued to look at him in silence.
"That in my own house I persecuted a defenceless girl and
'insulted her with my infamous proposals'- is that it? (I am
anticipating you.) But you've only to assume that I, too, am a man
et nihil humanum... in a word, that I am capable of being attracted
and falling in love (which does not depend on our will), then
everything can be explained in the most natural manner. The question
is, am I a monster, or am I myself a victim? And what if I am a
victim? In proposing to the object of my passion to elope with me to
America or Switzerland, I may have cherished the deepest respect for
her, and may have thought that I was promoting our mutual happiness!
Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why, probably, I was doing
more harm to myself than any one!"
"But that's not the point," Raskolnikov interrupted with disgust.
"It's simply that whether you are right or wrong, we dislike you. We
don't want to have anything to do with you. We show you the door. Go
out!"
Svidrigailov broke into a sudden laugh.
"But you're... but there's no getting round you," he said,
laughing in the frankest way. "I hoped to get round you, but you
took up the right line at once!"
"But you are trying to get round me still!"
"What of it? What of it?" cried Svidrigailov, laughing openly.
"But this is what the French call bonne guerre, and the most
innocent form of deception!... But still you have interrupted me;
one way or another, I repeat again: there would never have been any
unpleasantness except for what happened in the garden. Marfa
Petrovna..."
"You have got rid of Marfa Petrovna, too, so they say?"
Raskolnikov interrupted rudely.
"Oh, you've heard that, too, then? You'd be sure to, though....
But as for your question, I really don't know what to say, though my
own conscience is quite at rest on that score. Don't suppose that I am
in any apprehension about it. All was regular and in order; the
medical inquiry diagnosed apoplexy due to bathing immediately after
a heavy dinner and a bottle of wine, and indeed it could have proved
nothing else. But I'll tell you what I have been thinking to myself of
late, on my way here in the train, especially: didn't I contribute
to all that... calamity, morally, in a way, by irritation or something
of the sort. But I came to the conclusion that that, too, was quite
out of the question."
Raskolnikov laughed.
"I wonder you trouble yourself about it!"
"But what are you laughing at? Only consider, I struck her just
twice with a switch- there were no marks even... don't regard me as
a cynic, please; I am perfectly aware how atrocious it was of me and
all that; but I know for certain, too, that Marfa Petrovna was very
likely pleased at my, so to say, warmth. The story of your sister
had been wrung out to the last drop; for the last three days Marfa
Petrovna had been forced to sit at home; she had nothing to show
herself with in the town. Besides, she had bored them so with that
letter (you heard about her reading the letter). And all of a sudden
those two switches fell from heaven! Her first act was to order the
carriage to be got out.... Not to speak of the fact that there are
cases when women are very, very glad to be insulted in spite of all
their show of indignation. There are instances of it with every one;
human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to be insulted, have you
noticed that? But it's particularly so with women. One might even
say it's their only amusement."
At one time Raskolnikov thought of getting up and walking out and so
finishing the interview. But some curiosity and even a sort of
prudence made him linger for a moment.
"You are fond of fighting?" he asked carelessly.
"No, not very," Svidrigailov answered, calmly. "And Marfa Petrovna
and I scarcely ever fought. We lived very harmoniously, and she was
always pleased with me. I only used the whip twice in all our seven
years (not counting a third occasion of a very ambiguous character).
The first time, two months after our marriage, immediately after we
arrived in the country, and the last time was that of which we are
speaking. Did you suppose I was such a monster, such a reactionary,
such a slave driver? Ha, ha! By the way, do you remember, Rodion
Romanovitch, how a few years ago, in those days of beneficent
publicity, a nobleman, I've forgotten his name, was put to shame
everywhere, in all the papers, for having thrashed a German woman in
the railway train. You remember? It was in those days, that very
year I believe, the 'disgraceful action of the Age' took place (you
know, 'The Egyptian Nights,' that public reading, you remember? The
dark eyes, you know! Ah, the golden days of our youth, where are
they?). Well, as for the gentleman who thrashed the German, I feel
no sympathy with him, because after all what need is there for
sympathy? But I must say that there are sometimes such provoking
'Germans' that I don't believe there is a progressive who could
quite answer for himself. No one looked at the subject from that point
of view then, but that's the truly humane point of view, I assure
you."
After saying this, Svidrigailov broke into a sudden laugh again.
Raskolnikov saw clearly that this was a man with a firm purpose in his
mind and able to keep it to himself.
"I expect you've not talked to any one for some days?" he asked.
"Scarcely any one. I suppose you are wondering at my being such an
adaptable man?"
"No, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man."
"Because I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is
that it? But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered," he
replied, with a surprising expression of simplicity. "You know,
there's hardly anything I take interest in," he went on, as it were
dreamily, "especially now, I've nothing to do.... You are quite at
liberty to imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive,
particularly as I told you I want to see your sister about
something. But I'll confess frankly, I am very much bored. The last
three days especially, so I am delighted to see you.... Don't be
angry, Rodion Romanovitch, but you seem to be somehow awfully
strange yourself. Say what you like, there's something wrong with you,
and now, too... not this very minute, I mean, but now, generally....
Well, well, I won't, I won't, don't scowl! I am not such a bear, you
know, as you think."
Raskolnikov looked gloomily at him.
"You are not a bear, perhaps, at all," he said. "I fancy indeed that
you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on
occasion to behave like one."
"I am not particularly interested in any one's opinion,"
Svidrigailov answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness,
"and therefore why not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a
convenient cloak for our climate... and especially if one has a
natural propensity that way," he added, laughing again.
"But I've heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say,
'not without connections.' What can you want with me, then, unless
you've some special object?"
"That's true that I have friends here," Svidrigailov admitted, not
replying to the chief point. "I've met some already. I've been
lounging about for the last three days, and I've seen them, or they've
seen me. That's a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not
a poor man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn't affected me; my
property consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue
has not fallen off; but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of
them long ago. I've been here three days and have called on no one....
What a town it is! How has it come into existence among us, tell me
that? A town of officials and students of all sorts. Yes, there's a
great deal I didn't notice when I was here eight years ago, kicking up
my heels.... My only hope now is in anatomy, by Jove, it is!"
"Anatomy?"
"But as for these clubs, Dussauts, parades, or progress, indeed, may
be- well, all that can go on without me," he went on, again without
noticing the question. "Besides, who wants to be a card-sharper?"
"Why, have you been a card-sharper then?"
"How could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the
best society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of
breeding, you know, poets, men of property. And indeed as a rule in
our Russian society, the best manners are found among those who've
been thrashed, have you noticed that? I've deteriorated in the
country. But I did get into prison for debt, through a low Greek who
came from Nezhin. Then Marfa Petrovna turned up; she bargained with
him and bought me off for thirty thousand silver pieces (I owed
seventy thousand). We were united in lawful wedlock and she bore me
off into the country like a treasure. You know she was five years
older than I. She was very fond of me. For seven years I never left
the country. And, take note, that all my life she held a document over
me, the I.O.U. for thirty thousand roubles, so if I were to elect to
be restive about anything I should be trapped at once! And she would
have done it! Women find nothing incompatible in that."
"If it hadn't been for that, would you have given her the slip?"
"I don't know what to say. It was scarcely the document restrained
me. I didn't want to go anywhere else. Marfa Petrovna herself
invited me to go abroad, seeing I was bored, but I've been abroad
before, and always felt sick there. For no reason, but the sunrise,
the bay of Naples, the sea- you look at them and it makes you sad.
What's most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it's better at
home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses
oneself. I should have gone perhaps on an expedition to the North
Pole, because j'ai le vin mauvais and hate drinking, and there's
nothing left but wine. I have tried it. But, I say, I've been told
Berg is going up in a great balloon next Sunday from the Yusupov
Garden and will take up passengers at a fee. Is it true?"
"Why, would you go up?"
"I... No, oh, no," muttered Svidrigailov really seeming to be deep
in thought.
"What does he mean? Is he in earnest?" Raskolnikov wondered.
"No, the document didn't restrain me," Svidrigailov went on,
meditatively. "It was my own doing, not leaving the country, and
nearly a year ago Marfa Petrovna gave me back the document on my
name day and made me a present of a considerable sum of money, too.
She had a fortune, you know. 'You see how I trust you, Arkady
Ivanovitch'- that was actually her expression. You don't believe she
used it? But do you know I managed the estate quite decently, they
know me in the neighbourhood. I ordered books, too. Marfa Petrovna
at first approved, but afterwards she was afraid of my over-studying."
"You seem to be missing Marfa Petrovna very much?"
"Missing her? Perhaps. Really, perhaps I am. And, by the way, do you
believe in ghosts?"
"What ghosts?"
"Why, ordinary ghosts."
"Do you believe in them?"
"Perhaps not, pour vous plaire.... I wouldn't say no exactly."
"Do you see them, then?"
Svidrigailov looked at him rather oddly.
"Marfa Petrovna is pleased to visit me," he said, twisting his mouth
into a strange smile.
"How do you mean 'she is pleased to visit you'?"
"She has been three times. I saw her first on the very day of the
funeral, an hour after she was buried. It was the day before I left to
come here. The second time was the day before yesterday, at
daybreak, on the journey at the station of Malaya Vishera, and the
third time was two hours ago in the room where I am staying. I was
alone."
"Were you awake?"
"Quite awake. I was wide awake every time. She comes, speaks to me
for a minute and goes out at the door- always at the door. I can
almost hear her."
"What made me think that something of the sort must be happening
to you?" Raskolnikov said suddenly.
At the same moment he was surprised at having said it. He was much
excited.
"What! Did you think so?" Svidrigailov asked in astonishment. "Did
you really? Didn't I say that there was something in common between
us, eh?"
"You never said so!" Raskolnikov cried sharply and with heat.
"Didn't I?"
"No!"
"I thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes
shut, pretending, I said to myself at once 'here's the man.'"
"What do you mean by 'the man?' What are you talking about?" cried
Raskolnikov.
"What do I mean? I really don't know...." Svidrigailov muttered
ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled.
For a minute they were silent. They stared in each other's faces.
"That's all nonsense!" Raskolnikov shouted with vexation. "What does
she say when she comes to you?"
"She! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and-
man is a strange creature- it makes me angry. The first time she
came in (I was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral
ceremony, the lunch afterwards. At last I was left alone in my
study. I lighted a cigar and began to think), she came in at the door.
'You've been so busy to-day, Arkady Ivanovitch, you have forgotten
to wind the dining room clock,' she said. All those seven years I've
wound that clock every week, and if I forgot it she would always
remind me. The next day I set off on my way here. I got out at the
station at daybreak; I'd been asleep, tired out, with my eyes half
open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there was suddenly
Marfa Petrovna sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her hands.
'Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Arkady Ivanovitch?' She
was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for
not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell
rang. I was sitting to-day, feeling very heavy after a miserable
dinner from a cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden Marfa
Petrovna again. She came in very smart in a new green silk dress
with a long train. 'Good day, Arkady Ivanovitch! How do you like my
dress? Aniska can't make like this.' (Aniska was a dressmaker in the
country, one of our former serf girls who had been trained in
Moscow, a pretty wench.) She stood turning round before me. I looked
at the dress, and then I looked carefully, very carefully, at her
face. 'I wonder you trouble to come to me about such trifles, Marfa
Petrovna.' 'Good gracious, you won't let one disturb you about
anything!' To tease her I said, 'I want to get married, Marfa
Petrovna.' 'That's just like you, Arkady Ivanovitch; it does you
very little credit to come looking for a bride when you've hardly
buried your wife. And if you could make a good choice, at least, but I
know it won't be for your happiness or hers, you will only be a
laughing-stock to all good people.' Then she went out and her train
seemed to rustle. Isn't it nonsense, eh?"
"But perhaps you are telling lies?" Raskolnikov put in.
"I rarely lie," answered Svidrigailov thoughtfully, apparently not
noticing the rudeness of the question.
"And in the past, have you ever seen ghosts before?"
"Y-yes, I have seen them, but only once in my life, six years ago. I
had a serf, Filka; just after his burial I called out forgetting
'Filka, my pipe!' He came in and went to the cupboard where my pipes
were. I sat still and thought 'he is doing it out of revenge,' because
we had a violent quarrel just before his death. 'How dare you come
in with a hole in your elbow,' I said. 'Go away, you scamp!' He turned
and went out, and never came again. I didn't tell Marfa Petrovna at
the time. I wanted to have a service sung for him, but I was ashamed."
"You should go to a doctor."
"I know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don't
know what's wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I
didn't ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether
you believe that they exist."
"No, I won't believe it!" Raskolnikov cried, with positive anger.
"What do people generally say?" muttered Svidrigailov, as though
speaking to himself, looking aside and bowing his head: "They say,
'You are ill, so what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.' But
that's not strictly logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the
sick, but that only proves that they are unable to appear except to
the sick, not that they don't exist."
"Nothing of the sort," Raskolnikov insisted irritably.
"No? You don't think so?" Svidrigailov went on, looking at him
deliberately. "But what do you say to this argument (help me with it):
ghosts are as it were shreds and fragments of other worlds, the
beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see
them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the
sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as
soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the
organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another
world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one's
contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he
steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you
believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too."
"I don't believe in a future life," said Raskolnikov.
Svidrigailov sat lost in thought.
"And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that
sort," he said suddenly.
"He is a madman," thought Raskolnikov.
"We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception,
something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that,
what if it's one little room, like a bathhouse in the country, black
and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is? I
sometimes fancy it like that."
"Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than
that?" Raskolnikov cried, with a feeling of anguish.
"Juster? And how can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you
know it's what I would certainly have made it," answered Svidrigailov,
with a vague smile.
This horrible answer sent a cold chill through Raskolnikov.
Svidrigailov raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began
laughing.
"Only think," he cried, "half an hour ago we had never seen each
other, we regarded each other as enemies; there is a matter
unsettled between us; we've thrown it aside, and away we've gone
into the abstract! Wasn't I right in saying that we were birds of a
feather?"
"Kindly allow me," Raskolnikov went on irritably, "to ask you to
explain why you have honoured me with your visit... and... and I am in
a hurry, I have no time to waste. I want to go out."
"By all means, by all means. Your sister, Avdotya Romanovna, is
going to be married to Mr. Luzhin, Pyotr Petrovitch?"
"Can you refrain from any question about my sister and from
mentioning her name? I can't understand how you dare utter her name in
my presence, if you really are Svidrigailov."
"Why, but I've come here to speak about her; how can I avoid
mentioning her?"
"Very good, speak, but make haste."
"I am sure that you must have formed your own opinion of this Mr.
Luzhin, who is a connection of mine through my wife, if you have
only seen him for half an hour, or heard any facts about him. He is no
match for Avdotya Romanovna. I believe Avdotya Romanovna is
sacrificing herself generously and imprudently for the sake of...
for the sake of her family. I fancied from all I had heard of you that
you would be very glad if the match could be broken off without the
sacrifice of worldly advantages. Now I know you personally, I am
convinced of it."
"All this is very naive... excuse me, I should have said impudent on
your part," said Raskolnikov.
"You mean to say that I am seeking my own ends. Don't be uneasy,
Rodion Romanovitch, if I were working for my own advantage, I would
not have spoken out so directly. I am not quite a fool. I will confess
something psychologically curious about that: just now, defending my
love for Avdotya Romanovna, I said I was myself the victim. Well,
let me tell you that I've no feeling of love now, not the slightest,
so that I wonder myself indeed, for I really did feel something..."
"Through idleness and depravity," Raskolnikov put in.
"I certainly am idle and depraved, but your sister has such
qualities that even I could not help being impressed by them. But
that's all nonsense, as I see myself now."
"Have you seen that long?"
"I began to be aware of it before, but was only perfectly sure of it
the day before yesterday, almost at the moment I arrived in
Petersburg. I still fancied in Moscow, though, that I was coming to
try to get Avdotya Romanovna's hand and to cut out Mr. Luzhin."
"Excuse me for interrupting you; kindly be brief, and come to the
object of your visit. I am in a hurry, I want to go out..."
"With the greatest pleasure. On arriving here and determining on a
certain... journey, I should like to make some necessary preliminary
arrangements. I left my children with an aunt; they are well
provided for; and they have no need of me personally. And a nice
father I should make, too! I have taken nothing but what Marfa
Petrovna gave me a year ago. That's enough for me. Excuse me, I am
just coming to the point. Before the journey which may come off, I
want to settle Mr. Luzhin, too. It's not that I detest him so much,
but it was through him I quarrelled with Marfa Petrovna when I learned
that she had dished up this marriage. I want now to see Avdotya
Romanovna through your mediation, and if you like in your presence, to
explain to her that in the first place she will never gain anything
but harm from Mr. Luzhin. Then begging her pardon for all past
unpleasantness, to make her a present of ten thousand roubles and so
assist the rupture with Mr. Luzhin, a rupture to which I believe she
is herself not disinclined, if she could see the way to it."
"You are certainly mad," cried Raskolnikov not so much angered as
astonished. "How dare you talk like that!"
"I knew you would scream at me; but in the first place, though I
am not rich, this ten thousand roubles is perfectly free; I have
absolutely no need for it. If Avdotya Romanovna does not accept it,
I shall waste it in some more foolish way. That's the first thing.
Secondly, my conscience is perfectly easy; I make the offer with no
ulterior motive. You may not believe it, but in the end Avdotya
Romanovna and you will know. The point is, that I did actually cause
your sister, whom I greatly respect, some trouble and
unpleasantness, and so, sincerely regretting it, I want- not to
compensate, not to repay her for the unpleasantness, but simply to
do something to her advantage, to show that I am not, after all,
privileged to do nothing but harm. If there were a millionth
fraction of self interest in my offer, I should not have made it so
openly; and I should not have offered her ten thousand only, when five
weeks ago I offered her more, Besides, I may, perhaps, very soon marry
a young lady, and that alone ought to prevent suspicion of any
design on Avdotya Romanovna. In conclusion, let me say that in
marrying Mr. Luzhin, she is taking money just the same, only from
another man. Don't be angry, Rodion Romanovitch, think it over
coolly and quietly."
Svidrigailov himself was exceedingly cool and quiet as he was saying
this.
"I beg you to say no more," said Raskolnikov. "In any case this is
unpardonable impertinence."
"Not in the least. Then a man may do nothing but harm to his
neighbour in this world, and is prevented from doing the tiniest bit
of good by trivial conventional formalities. That's absurd. If I died,
for instance, and left that sum to your sister in my will, surely
she wouldn't refuse it?"
"Very likely she would."
"Oh, no, indeed. However, if you refuse it, so be it, though ten
thousand roubles is a capital thing to have on occasion. In any case I
beg you to repeat what I have said to Avdotya Romanovna."
"No, I won't."
"In that case, Rodion Romanovitch, I shall be obliged to try and see
her myself and worry her by doing so."
"And if I do tell her, will you not try to see her?"
"I don't know really what to say. I should like very much to see her
once more."
"Don't hope for it."
"I'm sorry. But you don't know me. Perhaps we may become better
friends."
"You think we may become friends?"
"And why not?" Svidrigailov said, smiling. He stood up and took
his hat. "I didn't quite intend to disturb you and I came here without
reckoning on it... though I was very much struck by your face this
morning."
"Where did you see me this morning?" Raskolnikov asked uneasily.
"I saw you by chance.... I kept fancying there is something about
you like me.... But don't be uneasy. I am not intrusive; I used to get
on all right with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Svirbey, a
great personage who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write
about Raphael's Madonna in Madam Prilukov's album, and I never left
Marfa Petrovna's side for seven years, and I used to stay the night at
Viazemsky's house in the Hay Market in the old days, and I may go up
in a balloon with Berg, perhaps."
"Oh, all right. Are you starting soon on your travels, may I ask?"
"What travels?"
"Why, on that 'journey'; you spoke of it yourself."
"A journey? Oh, yes. I did speak of a journey. Well, that's a wide
subject.... if only you knew what you are asking," he added, and
gave a sudden, loud, short laugh. "Perhaps I'll get married instead of
the journey. They're making a match for me."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"How have you had time for that?"
"But I am very anxious to see Avdotya Romanovna once. I earnestly
beg it. Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes, I have forgotten
something. Tell your sister, Rodion Romanovitch, that Marfa Petrovna
remembered her in her will and left her three thousand rubles.
That's absolutely certain. Marfa Petrovna arranged it a week before
her death, and it was done in my presence. Avdotya Romanovna will be
able to receive the money in two or three weeks."
"Are you telling the truth?"
"Yes, tell her. Well, your servant. I am staying very near you."
As he went out, Svidrigailov ran up against Razumihin in the
doorway.
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
IT WAS nearly eight o'clock. The two young men hurried to
Bakaleyev's, to arrive before Luzhin.
"Why, who was that?" asked Razumihin, as soon as they were in the
street.
"It was Svidrigailov, that landowner in whose house my sister was
insulted when she was their governess. Through his persecuting her
with his attentions, she was turned out by his wife, Marfa Petrovna.
This Marfa Petrovna begged Dounia's forgiveness afterwards, and
she's just died suddenly. It was of her we were talking this
morning. I don't know why I'm afraid of that man. He came here at once
after his wife's funeral. He is very strange, and is determined on
doing something.... We must guard Dounia from him... that's what I
wanted to tell you, do you hear?"
"Guard her! What can he do to harm Avdotya Romanovna? Thank you,
Rodya, for speaking to me like that.... We will, we will guard her.
Where does he live?"
"I don't know."
"Why didn't you ask? What a pity! I'll find out, though."
"Did you see him?" asked Raskolnikov after a pause.
"Yes, I noticed him, I noticed him well."
"You did really see him? You saw him clearly?" Raskolnikov insisted.
"Yes, I remember him perfectly, I should know him in a thousand; I
have a good memory for faces."
They were silent again.
"Hm!... that's all right," muttered Raskolnikov. "Do you know, I
fancied... I keep thinking that it may have been an hallucination."
"What do you mean? I don't understand you."
"Well, you all say," Raskolnikov went on, twisting his mouth into
a smile, "that I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am
mad, and have only seen a phantom."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, who can tell? Perhaps I am really mad, and perhaps
everything that happened all these days may be only imagination."
"Ach, Rodya, you have been upset again!... But what did he say, what
did he come for?"
Raskolnikov did not answer. Razumihin thought a minute.
"Now let me tell you my story," he began, "I came to you, you were
asleep. Then we had dinner and then I went to Porfiry's, Zametov was
still with him. I tried to begin, but it was no use. I couldn't
speak in the right way. They don't seem to understand and can't
understand, but are not a bit ashamed. I drew Porfiry to the window,
and began talking to him, but it was still no use. He looked away
and I looked away. At last I shook my fist in his ugly face, and
told him as a cousin I'd brain him. He merely looked at me, I cursed
and came away. That was all. It was very stupid. To Zametov I didn't
say a word. But, you see, I thought I'd made a mess of it, but as I
went downstairs a brilliant idea struck me: why should we trouble?
Of course if you were in any danger or anything, but why need you
care? You needn't care a hang for them. We shall have a laugh at
them afterwards, and if I were in your place I'd mystify them more
than ever. How ashamed they'll be afterwards! Hang them! We can thrash
them afterwards, but let's laugh at them now!"
"To be sure," answered Raskolnikov. "But what will you say
to-morrow?" he thought to himself. Strange to say, till that moment it
had never occurred to him to wonder what Razumihin would think when he
knew. As he thought it, Raskolnikov looked at him. Razumihin's account
of his visit to Porfiry had very little interest for him, so much
had come and gone since then.
In the corridor they came upon Luzhin; he had arrived punctually
at eight, and was looking for the number, so that all three went in
together without greeting or looking at one another. The young men
walked in first, while Pyotr Petrovitch, for good manners, lingered
a little in the passage, taking off his coat. Pulcheria Alexandrovna
came forward at once to greet him in the doorway, Dounia was welcoming
her brother. Pyotr Petrovitch walked in and quite amiably, though with
redoubled dignity, bowed to the ladies. He looked, however, as
though he were a little put out and could not yet recover himself.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who seemed also a little embarrassed, hastened
to make them all sit down at the round table where a samovar was
boiling. Dounia and Luzhin were facing one another on opposite sides
of the table. Razumihin and Raskolnikov were facing Pulcheria
Alexandrovna, Razumihin was next to Luzhin and Raskolnikov was
beside his sister.
A moment's silence followed. Pyotr Petrovitch deliberately drew
out a cambric handkerchief reeking of scent and blew his nose with
an air of a benevolent man who felt himself slighted, and was firmly
resolved to insist on an explanation. In the passage the idea had
occurred to him to keep on his overcoat and walk away, and so give the
two ladies a sharp and emphatic lesson and make them feel the
gravity of the position. But he could not bring himself to do this.
Besides, he could not endure uncertainty and he wanted an explanation:
if his request had been so openly disobeyed, there was something
behind it, and in that case it was better to find it out beforehand;
it rested with him to punish them and there would always be time for
that.
"I trust you had a favourable journey," he inquired officially of
Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"Oh, very, Pyotr Petrovitch."
"I am gratified to hear it. And Avdotya Romanovna is not over
fatigued either?"
"I am young and strong, I don't get tired, but it was a great strain
for mother," answered Dounia.
"That's unavoidable; our national railways are of terrible length.
'Mother Russia,' as they say, is a vast country.... In spite of all my
desire to do so, I was unable to meet you yesterday. But I trust all
passed off without inconvenience?"
"Oh, no, Pyotr Petrovitch, it was all terribly disheartening,"
Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to declare with peculiar intonation,
"and if Dmitri Prokofitch had not been sent us, I really believe by
God Himself, we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Dmitri
Prokofitch Razumihin," she added, introducing him to Luzhin.
"I had the pleasure... yesterday," muttered Pyotr Petrovitch with
a hostile glance sidelong at Razumihin; then he scowled and was
silent.
Pyotr Petrovitch belonged to that class of persons, on the surface
very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but
who, directly they are crossed in anything, are completely
disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and
lively men of society. Again all was silent; Raskolnikov was
obstinately mute, Avdotya Romanovna was unwilling to open the
conversation too soon. Razumihin had nothing to say, so Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was anxious again.
"Marfa Petrovna is dead, have you heard?" she began having
recourse to her leading item of conversation.
"To be sure, I heard so. I was immediately informed, and I have come
to make you acquainted with the fact that Arkady Ivanovitch
Svidrigailov set off in haste for Petersburg immediately after his
wife's funeral. So at least I have excellent authority for believing."
"To Petersburg? here?" Dounia asked in alarm and looked at her
mother.
"Yes, indeed, and doubtless not without some design, having in
view the rapidity of his departure, and all the circumstances
preceding it."
"Good heavens! won't he leave Dounia in peace even here?" cried
Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
"I imagine that neither you nor Avdotya Romanovna have any grounds
for uneasiness, unless, of course, you are yourselves desirous of
getting into communication with him. For my part I am on my guard, and
am now discovering where he is lodging."
"Oh, Pyotr Petrovitch, you would not believe what a fright you
have given me," Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on. "I've only seen him
twice, but I thought him terrible, terrible! I am convinced that he
was the cause of Marfa Petrovna's death."
"It's impossible to be certain about that. I have precise
information. I do not dispute that he may have contributed to
accelerate the course of events by the moral influence, so to say,
of the affront; but as to the general conduct and moral
characteristics of that personage, I am in agreement with you. I do
not know whether he is well off now, and precisely what Marfa Petrovna
left him; this will be known to me within a very short period; but
no doubt here in Petersburg, if he has any pecuniary resources, he
will relapse at once into his old ways. He is the most depraved, and
abjectly vicious specimen of that class of men. I have considerable
reason to believe that Marfa Petrovna, who was so unfortunate as to
fall in love with him and to pay his debts eight years ago, was of
service to him also in another way. Solely by her exertions and
sacrifices, a criminal charge, involving an element of fantastic and
homicidal brutality for which he might well have been sentenced to
Siberia, was hushed up. That's the sort of man he is, if you care to
know."
"Good heavens!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Raskolnikov listened
attentively.
"Are you speaking the truth when you say that you have good evidence
of this?" Dounia asked sternly and emphatically.
"I only repeat what I was told in secret by Marfa Petrovna. I must
observe that from the legal point of view the case was far from clear.
There was, and I believe still is, living here a woman called
Resslich, a foreigner, who lent small sums of money at interest, and
did other commissions, and with this woman Svidrigailov had for a long
while close and mysterious relations. She had a relation, a niece I
believe, living with her, a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or
perhaps not more than fourteen. Resslich hated this girl, and
grudged her every crust; she used to beat her mercilessly. One day the
girl was found hanging in the garret. At the inquest the verdict was
suicide. After the usual proceedings the matter ended, but, later
on, information was given that the child had been... cruelly
outraged by Svidrigailov. It is true, this was not clearly
established, the information was given by another German woman of
loose character whose word could not be trusted; no statement was
actually made to the police, thanks to Marfa Petrovna's money and
exertions; it did not get beyond gossip. And yet the story is a very
significant one. You heard, no doubt, Avdotya Romanovna, when you were
with them the story of the servant Philip who died of ill treatment he
received six years ago, before the abolition of serfdom."
"I heard on the contrary that this Philip hanged himself."
"Quite so, but what drove him, or rather perhaps disposed him, to
suicide, was the systematic persecution and severity of Mr.
Svidrigailov."
"I don't know that," answered Dounia, dryly. "I only heard a queer
story that Philip was a sort of hypochondriac, a sort of domestic
philosopher, the servants used to say, 'he read himself silly,' and
that he hanged himself partly on account of Mr. Svidrigailov's mockery
of him and not his blows. When I was there he behaved well to the
servants, and they were actually fond of him, though they certainly
did blame him for Philip's death."
"I perceive, Avdotya Romanovna, that you seem disposed to
undertake his defence all of a sudden," Luzhin observed, twisting
his lips into an ambiguous smile, "there's no doubt that he is an
astute man, and insinuating where ladies are concerned, of which Marfa
Petrovna, who has died so strangely, is a terrible instance. My only
desire has been to be of service to you and your mother with my
advice, in view of the renewed efforts which may certainly be
anticipated from him. For my part it's my firm conviction, that he
will end in a debtor's prison again. Marfa Petrovna had not the
slightest intention of settling anything substantial on him, having
regard for his children's interests, and, if she left him anything, it
would only be the merest sufficiency, something insignificant and
ephemeral, which would not last a year for a man of his habits."
"Pyotr Petrovitch, I beg you," said Dounia, "say no more of Mr.
Svidrigailov. It makes me miserable."
"He has just been to see me," said Raskolnikov, breaking his silence
for the first time.
There were exclamations from all, and they all turned to him. Even
Pyotr Petrovitch was roused.
"An hour and a half ago, he came in when I was asleep, waked me, and
introduced himself," Raskolnikov continued. "He was fairly cheerful
and at ease, and quite hopes that we shall become friends. He is
particularly anxious by the way, Dounia, for an interview with you, at
which he asked me to assist. He has a proposition to make to you,
and he told me about it. He told me, too, that a week before her death
Marfa Petrovna left you three thousand roubles in her will, Dounia,
and that you can receive the money very shortly."
"Thank God!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself. "Pray
for her soul, Dounia!"
"It's a fact!" broke from Luzhin.
"Tell us, what more?" Dounia urged Raskolnikov.
"Then he said that he wasn't rich and all the estate was left to his
children who are now with an aunt, then that he was staying
somewhere not far from me, but where, I don't know, I didn't ask...."
"But what, what does he want to propose to Dounia?" cried
Pulcheria Alexandrovna in a fright. "Did he tell you?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"I'll tell you afterwards."
Raskolnikov ceased speaking and turned his attention to his tea.
Pyotr Petrovitch looked at his watch.
"I am compelled to keep a business engagement, and so I shall not be
in your way," he added with an air of some pique and he began
getting up.
"Don't go, Pyotr Petrovitch," said Dounia, "you intended to spend
the evening. Besides, you wrote yourself that you wanted to have an
explanation with mother."
"Precisely so, Avdotya Romanovna," Pyotr Petrovitch answered
impressively, sitting down again, but still holding his hat. "I
certainly desired an explanation with you and your honoured mother
upon a very important point indeed. But as your brother cannot speak
openly in my presence to some proposals of Mr. Svidrigailov, I, too,
do not desire and am not able to speak openly... in the presence of
others... of certain matters of the greatest gravity. Moreover, my
most weighty and urgent request has been disregarded...."
Assuming an aggrieved air, Luzhin relapsed into dignified silence.
"Your request that my brother should not be present at our meeting
was disregarded solely at my instance," said Dounia. "You wrote that
you had been insulted by my brother; I think that this must be
explained at once, and you must be reconciled. And if Rodya really has
insulted you, then he should and will apologise."
Pyotr Petrovitch took a stronger line.
"There are insults, Avdotya Romanovna, which no good-will can make
us forget. There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to
overstep; and when it has been overstepped, there is no return."
"That wasn't what I was speaking of exactly, Pyotr Petrovitch,"
Dounia interrupted with some impatience. "Please understand that our
whole future depends now on whether all this is explained and set
right as soon as possible. I tell you frankly at the start that I
cannot look at it in any other light, and if you have the least regard
for me, all this business must be ended to-day, however hard that
may be. I repeat that if my brother is to blame he will ask your
forgiveness."
"I am surprised at your putting the question like that," said
Luzhin, getting more and more irritated. "Esteeming, and so to say,
adoring you, I may at the same time, very well indeed, be able to
dislike some member of your family. Though I lay claim to the
happiness of your hand, I cannot accept duties incompatible with..."
"Ah, don't be so ready to take offence, Pyotr Petrovitch," Dounia
interrupted with feeling, "and be the sensible and generous man I have
always considered, and wish to consider, you to be. I've given you a
great promise, I am your betrothed. Trust me in this matter and,
believe me, I shall be capable of judging impartially. My assuming the
part of judge is as much a surprise for my brother as for you. When
I insisted on his coming to our interview to-day after your letter,
I told him nothing of what I meant to do. Understand that, if you
are not reconciled, I must choose between you- it must be either you
or he. That is how the question rests on your side and on his. I don't
want to be mistaken in my choice, and I must not be. For your sake I
must break off with my brother, for my brother's sake I must break off
with you. I can find out for certain now whether he is a brother to
me, and I want to know it; and of you, whether I am dear to you,
whether you esteem me, whether you are the husband for me."
"Avdotya Romanovna," Luzhin declared huffily, "your words are of too
much consequence to me; I will say more, they are offensive in view of
the position I have the honour to occupy in relation to you. To say
nothing of your strange and offensive setting me on a level with an
impertinent boy, you admit the possibility of breaking your promise to
me. You say 'you or he,' showing thereby of how little consequence I
am in your eyes... I cannot let this pass considering the relationship
and... the obligations existing between us."
"What!" cried Dounia, flushing. "I set your interest beside all that
has hitherto been most precious in my life, what has made up the whole
of my life, and here you are offended at my making too little
account of you."
Raskolnikov smiled sarcastically, Razumihin fidgeted, but Pyotr
Petrovitch did not accept the reproof; on the contrary, at every
word he became more persistent and irritable, as though he relished
it.
"Love for the future partner of your life, for your husband, ought
to outweigh your love for your brother," he pronounced
sententiously, "and in any case I cannot be put on the same
level.... Although I said so emphatically that I would not speak
openly in your brother's presence, nevertheless, I intend now to ask
your honoured mother for a necessary explanation on a point of great
importance closely affecting my dignity. Your son," he turned to
Pulcheria Alexandrovna, "yesterday in the presence of Mr. Razsudkin
(or... I think that's it? excuse me I have forgotten your surname," he
bowed politely to Razumihin) "insulted me by misrepresenting the
idea I expressed to you in a private conversation, drinking coffee,
that is, that marriage with a poor girl who has had experience of
trouble is more advantageous from the conjugal point of view than with
one who has lived in luxury, since it is more profitable for the moral
character. Your son intentionally exaggerated the significance of my
words and made them ridiculous, accusing me of malicious intentions,
and, as far as I could see, relied upon your correspondence with
him. I shall consider myself happy, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, if it is
possible for you to convince me of an opposite conclusion, and thereby
considerately reassure me. Kindly let me know in what terms
precisely you repeated my words in your letter to Rodion Romanovitch."
"I don't remember," faltered Pulcheria Alexandrovna. "I repeated
them as I understood them. I don't know how Rodya repeated them to
you, perhaps he exaggerated."
"He could not have exaggerated them, except at your instigation."
"Pyotr Petrovitch," Pulcheria Alexandrovna declared with dignity,
"the proof that Dounia and I did not take your words in a very bad
sense is the fact that we are here."
"Good, mother," said Dounia approvingly.
"Then this is my fault again," said Luzhin, aggrieved.
"Well, Pyotr Petrovitch, you keep blaming Rodion, but you yourself
have just written what was false about him," Pulcheria Alexandrovna
added, gaining courage.
"I don't remember writing anything false."
"You wrote," Raskolnikov said sharply, not turning to Luzhin,
"that I gave money yesterday not to the widow of the man who was
killed, as was the fact, but to his daughter (whom I had never seen
till yesterday). You wrote this to make dissension between me and my
family, and for that object added coarse expressions about the conduct
of a girl whom you don't know. All that is mean slander."
"Excuse me, sir," said Luzhin, quivering with fury. "I enlarged upon
your qualities and conduct in my letter solely in response to your
sister's and mother's inquiries how I found you and what impression
you made on me. As for what you've alluded to in my letter, be so good
as to point out one word of falsehood, show, that is, that you
didn't throw away your money, and that there are not worthless persons
in that family, however unfortunate."
"To my thinking, you with all your virtues are not worth the
little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones."
"Would you go so far then as to let her associate with your mother
and sister?"
"I have done so already, if you care to know. I made her sit down
to-day with mother and Dounia."
"Rodya!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Dounia crimsoned, Razumihin
knitted his brows. Luzhin smiled with lofty sarcasm.
"You may see for yourself, Avdotya Romanovna," he said, "whether
it is possible for us to agree. I hope now that this question is at an
end, once and for all. I will withdraw, that I may not hinder the
pleasures of family intimacy, and the discussion of secrets." He got
up from his chair and took his hat. "But in withdrawing, I venture
to request that for the future I may be spared similar meetings,
and, so to say, compromises. I appeal particularly to you, honoured
Pulcheria Alexandrovna, on this subject, the more as my letter was
addressed to you and to no one else."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna was a little offended.
"You seem to think we are completely under your authority, Pyotr
Petrovitch. Dounia has told you the reason your desire was
disregarded, she had the best intentions. And indeed you write as
though you were laying commands upon me. Are we to consider every
desire of yours as a command? Let me tell you on the contrary that you
ought to show particular delicacy and consideration for us now,
because we have thrown up everything, and have come here relying on
you, and so we are in any case in a sense in your hands."
"That is not quite true, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, especially at the
present moment, when the news has come of Marfa Petrovna's legacy,
which seems indeed very apropos, judging from the new tone you take to
me," he added sarcastically.
"Judging from that remark, we may certainly presume that you were
reckoning on our helplessness," Dounia observed irritably.
"But now in any case I cannot reckon on it, and I particularly
desire not to hinder your discussion of the secret proposals of Arkady
Ivanovitch Svidrigailov, which he has entrusted to your brother and
which have, I perceive, a great and possibly a very agreeable interest
for you."
"Good heavens!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
Razumihin could not sit still on his chair.
"Aren't you ashamed now, sister?" asked Raskolnikov.
"I am ashamed, Rodya," said Dounia. "Pyotr Petrovitch, go away," she
turned to him, white with anger.
Pyotr Petrovitch had apparently not at all expected such a
conclusion. He had too much confidence in himself, in his power and in
the helplessness of his victims. He could not believe it even now.
He turned pale, and his lips quivered.
"Avdotyo Romanovna, if I go out of this door now, after such a
dismissal, then, you may reckon on it, I will never come back.
Consider what you are doing. My word is not to be shaken."
"What insolence!" cried Dounia, springing up from her seat. "I don't
want you to come back again."
"What! So that's how it stands!" cried Luzhin, utterly unable to the
last moment to believe in the rupture and so completely thrown out
of his reckoning now. "So that's how it stands! But do you know,
Avdotya Romanovna, that I might protest?"
"What right have you to speak to her like that?" Pulcheria
Alexandrovna intervened hotly. "And what can you protest about? What
rights have you? Am I to give my Dounia to a man like you? Go away,
leave us altogether! We are to blame for having agreed to a wrong
action, and I above all...."
"But you have bound me, Pulcheria Alexandrovna," Luzhin stormed in a
frenzy, "by your promise, and now you deny it and... besides... I have
been led on account of that into expenses...."
This last complaint was so characteristic of Pyotr Petrovitch,
that Raskolnikov, pale with anger and with the effort of restraining
it, could not help breaking into laughter. But Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was furious.
"Expenses? What expenses? Are you speaking of our trunk? But the
conductor brought it for nothing for you. Mercy on us, we have bound
you! What are you thinking about, Pyotr Petrovitch, it was you bound
us, hand and foot, not we!"
"Enough, mother, no more please," Avdotya Romanovna implored. "Pyotr
Petrovitch, do be kind and go!"
"I am going, but one last word," he said, quite unable to control
himself. "Your mamma seems to have entirely forgotten that I made up
my mind to take you, so to speak, after the gossip of the town had
spread all over the district in regard to your reputation.
Disregarding public opinion for your sake and reinstating your
reputation, I certainly might very well reckon on a fitting return,
and might indeed look for gratitude on your part. And my eyes have
only now been opened! I see myself that I may have acted very, very
recklessly in disregarding the universal verdict...."
"Does the fellow want his head smashed?" cried Razumihin, jumping
up.
"You are a mean and spiteful man!" cried Dounia.
"Not a word! Not a movement!" cried Raskolnikov, holding Razumihin
back; then going close up to Luzhin, "Kindly leave the room!" he
said quietly and distinctly, "and not a word more or..."
Pyotr Petrovitch gazed at him for some seconds with a pale face that
worked with anger, then he turned, went out, and rarely has any man
carried away in his heart such vindictive hatred as he felt against
Raskolnikov. Him, and him alone, he blamed for everything. It is
noteworthy that as he went downstairs he still imagined that his
case was perhaps not utterly lost, and that, so far as the ladies were
concerned, all might "very well indeed" be set right again.
CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
THE FACT was that up to the last moment he had never expected such
an ending; he had been overbearing to the last degree, never
dreaming that two destitute and defenceless women could escape from
his control. This conviction was strengthened by his vanity and
conceit, a conceit to the point of fatuity. Pyotr Petrovitch, who
had made his way up from insignificance, was morbidly given to
self-admiration, had the highest opinion of his intelligence and
capacities, and sometimes even gloated in solitude over his image in
the glass. But what he loved and valued above all was the money he had
amassed by his labour, and by all sorts of devices: that money made
him the equal of all who had been his superiors.
When he had bitterly reminded Dounia that he had decided to take her
in spite of evil report, Pyotr Petrovitch had spoken with perfect
sincerity and had, indeed, felt genuinely indignant at such "black
ingratitude." And yet, when he made Dounia his offer, he was fully
aware of the groundlessness of all the gossip. The story had been
everywhere contradicted by Marfa Petrovna, and was by then disbelieved
by all the townspeople, who were warm in Dounia'a defence. And he
would not have denied that he knew all that at the time. Yet he
still thought highly of his own resolution in lifting Dounia to his
level and regarded it as something heroic. In speaking of it to
Dounia, he had let out the secret feeling he cherished and admired,
and he could not understand that others should fail to admire it
too. He had called on Raskolnikov with the feelings of a benefactor
who is about to reap the fruits of his good deeds and to hear
agreeable flattery. And as he went downstairs now, he considered
himself most undeservedly injured and unrecognised.
Dounia was simply essential to him; to do without her was
unthinkable. For many years he had voluptuous dreams of marriage,
but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish,
in profound secret, over the image of a girl- virtuous, poor (she must
be poor), very young, very pretty, of good birth and education, very
timid, one who had suffered much, and was completely humbled before
him, one who would all her life look on him as her saviour, worship
him, admire him and only him. How many scenes, how many amorous
episodes he had imagined on this seductive and playful theme, when his
work was over! And, behold, the dream of so many years was all but
realised; the beauty and education of Avdotya Romanovna had
impressed him; her helpless position had been a great allurement; in
her he had found even more than he dreamed of. Here was a girl of
pride, character, virtue, of education and breeding superior to his
own (he felt that), and this creature would be slavishly grateful
all her life for his heroic condescension, and would humble herself in
the dust before him, and he would have absolute, unbounded power
over her!... Not long before, he had, too, after long reflection and
hesitation, made an important change in his career and was now
entering on a wider circle of business. With this change his cherished
dreams of rising into a higher class of society seemed likely to be
realised.... He was, in fact, determined to try his fortune in
Petersburg. He knew that women could do a very great deal. The
fascination of a charming, virtuous, highly educated woman might
make his way easier, might do wonders in attracting people to him,
throwing an aureole round him, and now everything was in ruins! This
sudden horrible rupture affected him like a clap of thunder; it was
like a hideous joke, an absurdity. He had only been a tiny bit
masterful, had not even time to speak out, had simply made a joke,
been carried away- and it had ended so seriously. And, of course, too,
he did love Dounia in his own way; he already possessed her in his
dreams- and all at once! No! The next day, the very next day, it
must all be set right, smoothed over, settled. Above all he must crush
that conceited milksop who was the cause of it all. With a sick
feeling he could not help recalling Razumihin too, but, he soon
reassured himself on that score; as though a fellow like that could be
put on a level with him! The man he really dreaded in earnest was
Svidrigailov.... He had, in short, a great deal to attend to....
-
"No, I, I am more to blame than any one!" said Dounia, kissing and
embracing her mother. "I was tempted by his money, but on my honour,
brother, I had no idea he was such a base man. If I had seen through
him before, nothing would have tempted me! Don't blame me, brother!"
"God has delivered us! God has delivered us!" Pulcheria Alexandrovna
muttered, but half consciously, as though scarcely able to realise
what had happened.
They were all relieved, and in five minutes they were laughing. Only
now and then Dounia turned white and frowned, remembering what had
passed. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was surprised to find that she, too,
was glad: she had only that morning thought rupture with Luzhin a
terrible misfortune. Razumihin was delighted. He did not yet dare to
express his joy fully, but he was in a fever of excitement as though a
ton-weight had fallen off his heart. Now he had the right to devote
his life to them, to serve them.... Anything might happen now! But
he felt afraid to think of further possibilities and dared not let his
imagination range. But Raskolnikov sat still in the same place, almost
sullen and indifferent. Though he had been the most insistent on
getting rid of Luzhin, he seemed now the least concerned at what had
happened. Dounia could not help thinking that he was still angry
with her, and Pulcheria Alexandrovna watched him timidly.
"What did Svidrigailov say to you?" said Dounia, approaching him.
"Yes, yes!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.
Raskolnikov raised his head.
"He wants to make you a present of ten thousand roubles and he
desires to see you once in my presence."
"See her! On no account!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. "And how
dare he offer her money!"
Then Raskolnikov repeated (rather drily) his conversation with
Svidrigailov, omitting his account of the ghostly visitations of Marfa
Petrovna, wishing to avoid all unnecessary talk.
"What answer did you give him?" asked Dounia.
"At first I said I would not take any message to you. Then he said
that he would do his utmost to obtain an interview with you without my
help. He assured me that his passion for you was a passing
infatuation, now he has no feeling for you. He doesn't want you to
marry Luzhin.... His talk was altogether rather muddled."
"How do you explain him to yourself, Rodya? How did he strike you?"
"I must confess I don't quite understand him. He offers you ten
thousand, and yet says he is not well off. He says he is going away,
and in ten minutes he forgets he has said it. Then he says is he going
to be married and has already fixed on the girl.... No doubt he has
a motive, and probably a bad one. But it's odd that he should be so
clumsy about it if he had any designs against you.... Of course, I
refused this money on your account, once for all. Altogether, I
thought him very strange.... One might almost think he was mad. But
I may be mistaken; that may only be the part he assumes. The death
of Marfa Petrovna seems to have made a great impression on him."
"God rest her soul," exclaimed Pulcheria Alexandrovna. "I shall
always, always pray for her! Where should we be now, Dounia, without
this three thousand! It's as though it had fallen from heaven! Why,
Rodya, this morning we had only three roubles in our pocket and Dounia
and I were just planning to pawn her watch, so as to avoid borrowing
from that man until he offered help."
Dounia seemed strangely impressed by Svidrigailov's offer. She still
stood meditating.
"He has got some terrible plan," she said in a half whisper to
herself, almost shuddering.
Raskolnikov noticed this disproportionate terror.
"I fancy I shall have to see him more than once again," he said to
Dounia.
"We will watch him! I will track him out!" cried Razumihin,
vigorously. "I won't lose sight of him. Rodya has given me leave. He
said to me himself just now. 'Take care of my sister.' Will you give
me leave, too, Avdotya Romanovna?"
Dounia smiled and held out her hand, but the look of anxiety did not
leave her face. Pulcheria Alexandrovna gazed at her timidly, but the
three thousand roubles had obviously a soothing effect on her.
A quarter of an hour later, they were all engaged in a lively
conversation. Even Raskolnikov listened attentively for some time,
though he did not talk. Razumihin was the speaker.
"And why, why should you go away?" he flowed on ecstatically. "And
what are you to do in a little town? The great thing is, you are all
here together and you need one another- you do need one another,
believe me. For a time, anyway.... Take me into partnership and I
assure you we'll plan a capital enterprise. Listen! I'll explain it
all in detail to you, the whole project! It all flashed into my head
this morning, before anything had happened... I tell you what; I
have an uncle, I must introduce him to you (a most accommodating and
respectable old man). This uncle has got a capital of a thousand
roubles, and he lives on his pension and has no need of that money.
For the last two years he has been bothering me to borrow it from
him and pay him six per cent. interest. I know what that means; he
simply wants to help me. Last year I had no need of it, but this
year I resolved to borrow it as soon as he arrived. Then you lend me
another thousand of your three and we have enough for a start, so
we'll go into partnership, and what are we going to do?"
Then Razumihin began to unfold his project, and he explained at
length that almost all our publishers and booksellers know nothing
at all of what they are selling, and for that reason they are
usually bad publishers, and that any decent publications pay as a rule
and give a profit, sometimes a considerable one. Razumihin had,
indeed, been dreaming of setting up as a publisher. For the last two
years he had been working in publishers' offices, and knew three
European languages well, though he had told Raskolnikov six days
before that he was "schwach" in German with an object of persuading
him to take half his translation and half the payment for it. He had
told a lie, then, and Raskolnikov knew he was lying.
"Why, why should we let our chance slip when we have one of the
chief means of success- money of our own!" cried Razumihin warmly. "Of
course there will be a lot of work, but we will work, you, Avdotya
Romanovna, I, Rodion.... You get a splendid profit on some books
nowadays! And the great point of the business is that we shall know
just what wants translating, and we shall be translating,
publishing, learning all at once. I can be of use because I have
experience. For nearly two years I've been scuttling about among the
publishers, and now I know every detail of their business. You need
not be a saint to make pots, believe me! And why, why should we let
our chance slip! Why, I know- and I kept the secret- two or three
books which one might get a hundred roubles simply for thinking of
translating and publishing. Indeed, and I would not take five
hundred for the very idea of one of them. And what do you think? If
I were to tell a publisher, I dare say he'd hesitate- they are such
blockheads! And as for the business side, printing, paper, selling,
you trust to me, I know my way about. We'll begin in a small way and
go on to a large. In any case it will get us our living and we shall
get back our capital."
Dounia's eyes shone.
"I like what you are saying, Dmitri Prokofitch!" she said.
"I know nothing about it, of course," put in Pulcheria Alexandrovna,
"it may be a good idea, but again God knows. It's new and untried.
Of course, we must remain here at least for a time." She looked at
Rodya.
"What do you think, brother?" said Dounia.
"I think he's got a very good idea," he answered. "Of course, it's
too soon to dream of a publishing firm, but we certainly might bring
out five or six books and be sure of success. I know of one book
myself which would be sure to go well. And as for his being able to
manage it, there's no doubt about that either. He knows the
business.... But we can talk it over later...."
"Hurrah!" cried Razumihin. "Now, stay, there's a flat here in this
house, belonging to the same owner. It's a special flat apart, not
communicating with these lodgings. It's furnished, rent moderate,
three rooms. Suppose you take them to begin with. I'll pawn your watch
to-morrow and bring you the money, and everything can be arranged
then. You can all three live together, and Rodya will be with you. But
where are you off to, Rodya?"
"What, Rodya, you are going already?" Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked
in dismay.
"At such a minute?" cried Razumihin.
Dounia looked at her brother with incredulous wonder. He held his
cap in his hand, he was preparing to leave them.
"One would think you were burying me or saying good-bye for ever,"
he said somewhat oddly. He attempted to smile, but it did not turn out
a smile. "But who knows, perhaps it is the last time we shall see each
other..." he let slip accidentally. It was what he was thinking, and
it somehow was uttered aloud.
"What is the matter with you?" cried his mother.
"Where are you going, Rodya?" asked Dounia rather strangely.
"Oh, I'm quite obliged to..." he answered vaguely, as though
hesitating what he would say. But there was a look of sharp
determination in his white face.
"I meant to say... as I was coming here... I meant to tell you,
mother, and you, Dounia, that it would be better for us to part for
a time. I feel ill, I am not at peace.... I will come afterwards, I
will come of myself... when it's possible, I remember you and love
you.... Leave me, leave me alone. I decided this even before... I'm
absolutely resolved on it. Whatever may come to me, whether I come
to ruin or not, I want to be alone. Forget me altogether, it's better.
Don't inquire about me. When I can, I'll come of myself or... I'll
send for you. Perhaps it will all come back, but now if you love me,
give me up... else I shall begin to hate you, I feel it.... Good-bye!"
"Good God!" cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Both his mother and his
sister were terribly alarmed. Razumihin was also.
"Rodya, Rodya, be reconciled with us! Let us be as before!" cried
his poor mother.
He turned slowly to the door and slowly went out of the room. Dounia
overtook him.
"Brother, what are you doing to mother?" she whispered, her eyes
flashing with indignation.
He looked dully at her.
"No matter, I shall come.... I'm coming," he muttered in an
undertone, as though not fully conscious of what he was saying, and he
went out of the room.
"Wicked, heartless egoist!" cried Dounia.
"He is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don't you see it?
You're heartless after that!" Razumihin whispered in her ear,
squeezing her hand tightly. "I shall be back directly," he shouted
to the horror-stricken mother, and he ran out of the room.
Raskolnikov was waiting for him at the end of the passage.
"I knew you would run after me," he said. "Go back to them- be
with them... be with them to-morrow and always.... I... perhaps I
shall come... if I can. Good-bye."
And without holding out his hand he walked away.
"But where are you going? What are you doing? What's the matter with
you? How can you go on like this?" Razumihin muttered, at his wits'
end.
Raskolnikov stopped once more.
"Once for all, never ask me about anything. I have nothing to tell
you. Don't come to see me. Maybe I'll come here.... Leave me, but
don't leave them. Do you understand me?"
It was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a
minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumihin
remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and
intent eyes grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his
soul, into his consciousness. Suddenly Razumihin started. Something
strange, as it were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint as
it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on
both sides.... Razumihin turned pale.
"Do you understand now?" said Raskolnikov, his face twitching
nervously. "Go back, go to them," he said suddenly, and turning
quickly, he went out of the house.
I will not attempt to describe how Razumihin went back to the
ladies, how he soothed them, how he protested that Rodya needed rest
in his illness, protested that Rodya was sure to come, that he would
come every day, that he was very, very much upset, that he must not be
irritated, that he, Razumihin, would watch over him, would get him a
doctor, the best doctor, a consultation.... In fact from that
evening Razumihin took his place with them as a son and a brother.
CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
RASKOLNIKOV WENT straight to the house on the canal bank where Sonia
lived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the porter
and obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts of
Kapernaumov, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyard
the entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to the
second floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the whole
second storey over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness,
uncertain where to turn for Kapernaumov's door, a door opened three
paces from him; he mechanically took hold of it.
"Who is there?" a woman's voice asked uneasily.
"It's I... come to see you," answered Raskolnikov and he walked into
the tiny entry.
On a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.
"It's you! Good heavens!" cried Sonia weakly and she stood rooted to
the spot.
"Which is your room? This way?" and Raskolnikov, trying not to
look at her, hastened in.
A minute later Sonia, too, came in with the candle, set down the
candlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before him
inexpressibly agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpected
visit. The colour rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came into
her eyes... She felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Raskolnikov
turned away quickly and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned the
room in a rapid glance.
It was a large but exceeding low-pitched room, the only one let by
the Kapernaumovs, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall on
the left. In the opposite side on the right hand wall was another
door, always kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed a
separate lodging. Sonia's room looked like a barn; it was a very
irregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall
with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that
one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in
it without very strong light. The other corner was
disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the big
room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead, beside it, nearest
the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a blue cloth stood
against the same wall, close to the door into the other flat. Two
rush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite wall near the
acute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers looking, as it
were, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the room. The
yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. It
must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was every
sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.
Sonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively and
unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last to
tremble with terror, as though she was standing before her judge and
the arbiter of her destinies.
"I am late.... eleven, isn't it?" he asked, still not lifting his
eyes.
"Yes," muttered Sonia, "oh, yes, it is," she added, hastily, as
though in that lay her means of escape. "My landlady's clock has
just struck... I heard it myself...."
"I've come to you for the last time," Raskolnikov went on
gloomily, although this was the first time. "I may perhaps not see you
again..."
"Are you... going away?"
"I don't know... to-morrow...."
"Then you are not coming to Katerina Ivanovna to-morrow?" Sonia's
voice shook.
"I don't know. I shall know to-morrow morning.... Never mind that:
I've come to say one word...."
He raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he
was sitting down while she was all the while standing before him.
"Why are you standing? Sit down," he said in a changed voice, gentle
and friendly.
She sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her.
"How thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead
hand."
He took her hand. Sonia smiled faintly.
"I have always been like that," she said.
"Even when you lived at home?"
"Yes."
"Of course, you were," he added abruptly and the expression of his
face and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly.
He looked round him once more.
"You rent this room from the Kapernaumovs?"
"Yes...."
"They live there, through that door?"
"Yes.... They have another room like this."
"All in one room?"
"Yes."
"I should be afraid in your room at night," he observed gloomily.
"They are very good people, very kind," answered Sonia, who still
seemed bewildered, "and all the furniture, everything... everything is
theirs. And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to
see me."
"They all stammer, don't they?"
"Yes.... He stammers and he's lame. And his wife, too.... It's not
exactly that she stammers, but she can't speak plainly. She is a
very kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven
children... and it's only the eldest one that stammers and the
others are simply ill... but they don't stammer.... But where did
you hear about them?" she added with some surprise.
"Your father told me, then. He told me all about you.... And how you
went out at six o'clock and came back at nine and how Katerina
Ivanovna knelt down by your bed."
Sonia was confused.
"I fancied I saw him to-day," she whispered hesitatingly.
"Whom?"
"Father. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about
ten o'clock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just
like him. I wanted to go to Katerina Ivanovna...."
"You were walking in the streets?"
"Yes," Sonia whispered abruptly, again overcome with confusion and
looking down.
"Katerina Ivanovna used to beat you, I daresay?"
"Oh no, what are you saying? No!" Sonia looked at him almost with
dismay.
"You love her, then?"
"Love her? Of course!" said Sonia with plaintive emphasis, and she
clasped her hands in distress. "Ah, you don't.... If you only knew!
You see, she is quite like a child.... Her mind is quite unhinged, you
see... from sorrow. And how clever she used to be... how generous...
how kind! Ah, you don't understand, you don't understand!"
Sonia said this as though in despair, wringing her hands in
excitement and distress. Her pale cheeks flushed, there was a look
of anguish in her eyes. It was clear that she was stirred to the
very depths, that she was longing to speak, to champion, to express
something. A sort of insatiable compassion, if one may so express
it, was reflected in every feature of her face.
"Beat me! how can you? Good heavens, beat me! And if she did beat
me, what then? What of it? You know nothing, nothing about it....
She is so unhappy... ah, how unhappy! And ill.... She is seeking
righteousness, she is pure. She has such faith that there must be
righteousness everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to
torture her, she wouldn't do wrong. She doesn't see that it's
impossible for people to be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a
child, like a child. She is good!"
"And what will happen to you?"
Sonia looked at him inquiringly.
"They are left on your hands, you see. They were all on your hands
before, though.... And your father came to you to beg for drink. Well,
how will it be now?"
"I don't know," Sonia articulated mournfully.
"Will they stay there?"
"I don't know.... They are in debt for the lodging, but the
landlady, I hear, said to-day that she wanted to get rid of them,
and Katerina Ivanovna says that she won't stay another minute."
"How is it she is so bold? She relies upon you?"
"Oh, no, don't talk like that.... We are one, we live like one."
Sonia was agitated again and even angry, as though a canary or some
other little bird were to be angry. "And what could she do? What, what
could she do?" she persisted, getting hot and excited. "And how she
cried to-day! Her mind is unhinged, haven't you noticed it? At one
minute she is worrying like a child that everything should be right
to-morrow, the lunch and all that.... Then she is wringing her
hands, spitting blood, weeping, and all at once she will begin
knocking her head against the wall, in despair. Then she will be
comforted again. She builds all her hopes on you; she says that you
will help her now and that she will borrow a little money somewhere
and go to her native town with me and set up a boarding school for the
daughters of gentlemen and take me to superintend it, and we will
begin a new splendid life. And she kisses and hugs me, comforts me,
and you know she has such faith, such faith in her fancies! One
can't contradict her. And all the day long she has been washing,
cleaning, mending. She dragged the wash tub into the room with her
feeble hands and sank on the bed, gasping for breath. We went this
morning to the shops to buy shoes for Polenka and Lida for theirs
are quite worn out. Only the money we'd reckoned wasn't enough, not
nearly enough. And she picked out such dear little boots, for she
has taste, you don't know. And there in the shop she burst out
crying before the shopmen because she hadn't enough.... Ah, it was sad
to see her...."
"Well, after that I can understand your living like this,"
Raskolnikov said with a bitter smile.
"And aren't you sorry for them? Aren't you sorry?" Sonia flew at him
again. "Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you'd
seen nothing of it, and if you'd seen everything, oh dear! And how
often, how often I've brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I!
Only a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I've done it!
Ah, I've been wretched at the thought of it all day!"
Sonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.
"You were cruel?"
"Yes, I- I. I went to see them," she went on, weeping, "and father
said, 'read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here's a
book.' He had a book he had got from Andrey Semyonovitch
Lebeziatnikov, he lives there, he always used to get hold of such
funny books. And I said, 'I can't stay,' as I didn't want to read, and
I'd gone in chiefly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars.
Lizaveta, the pedlar, sold me some collars and cuffs cheap, pretty,
new, embroidered ones. Katerina Ivanovna liked them very much; she put
them on and looked at herself in the glass and was delighted with
them. 'Make me a present of them, Sonia,' she said, 'please do.'
'Please do,' she said, she wanted them so much. And when could she
wear them? They just reminded her of her old happy days. She looked at
herself in the glass, admired herself, and she has no clothes at
all, no things of her own, hasn't had all these years! And she never
asks any one for anything; she is proud, she'd sooner give away
everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I was
sorry to give them. 'What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna?' I
said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She
gave me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing
her. And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the
collars, but for my refusing, I saw that. Ah, if only I could bring it
all back, change it, take back those words! Ah, if I... but it's
nothing to you!"
"Did you know Lizaveta, the pedlar?"
"Yes.... Did you know her?" Sonia asked with some surprise.
"Katerina Ivanovna is in consumption, rapid consumption; she will
soon die," said Raskolnikov after a pause, without answering her
question.
"Oh, no, no, no!"
And Sonia unconsciously clutched both his hands, as though imploring
that she should not.
"But it will be better if she does die."
"No, not better, not at all better!" Sonia unconsciously repeated in
dismay.
"And the children? What can you do except take them to live with
you?"
"Oh, I don't know," cried Sonia, almost in despair, and she put
her hands to her head.
It was evident that that idea had very often occurred to her
before and he had only roused it again.
"And, what, if even now, while Katerina Ivanovna is alive, you get
ill and are taken to the hospital, what will happen then?" he
persisted pitilessly.
"How can you? That cannot be!"
And Sonia's face worked with awful terror.
"Cannot be?" Raskolnikov went on with a harsh smile. "You are not
insured against it, are you? What will happen to them then? They
will be in the street, all of them, she will cough and beg and knock
her head against some wall, as she did to-day, and the children will
cry.... Then she will fall down, be taken to the police station and to
the hospital, she will die, and the children..."
"Oh, no.... God will not let it be!" broke at last from Sonia's
overburdened bosom.
She listened, looking imploringly at him, clasping her hands in dumb
entreaty, as though it all depended upon him.
Raskolnikov got up and began to walk about the room. A minute
passed. Sonia was standing with her hands and her head hanging in
terrible dejection.
"And can't you save? Put by for a rainy day?" he asked, stopping
suddenly before her.
"No," whispered Sonia.
"Of course not. Have you tried?" he added almost ironically.
"Yes."
"And it didn't come off! Of course not! No need to ask."
And again he paced the room. Another minute passed.
"You don't get money every day?"
Sonia was more confused than ever and colour rushed into her face
again.
"No," she whispered with a painful effort.
"It will be the same with Polenka, no doubt," he said suddenly.
"No, no! It can't be, no!" Sonia cried aloud in desperation, as
though she had been stabbed. "God would not allow anything so awful!"
"He lets others come to it."
"No, no! God will protect her, God!" she repeated beside herself.
"But, perhaps, there is no God at all," Raskolnikov answered with
a sort of malignance, laughed and looked at her.
Sonia's face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked
at him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could
not speak and broke into bitter, bitter sobs, hiding her face in her
hands.
"You say Katerina Ivanovna's mind is unhinged; your own mind is
unhinged," he said after a brief silence.
Five minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence,
not looking at her. At last he went up to her; his eyes glittered.
He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her
tearful face. His eyes were hard, feverish and piercing, his lips were
twitching. All at once he bent down quickly and dropping to the
ground, kissed her foot. Sonia drew back from him as from a madman.
And certainly he looked like a madman.
"What are you doing to me?" she muttered, turning pale, and a sudden
anguish clutched at her heart.
He stood up at once.
"I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of
humanity," he said wildly and walked away to the window. "Listen,"
he added, turning to her a minute later. "I said just now to an
insolent man that he was not worth your little finger... and that I
did my sister honour making her sit beside you."
"Ach, you said that to them! And in her presence?" cried Sonia,
frightened. "Sit down with me! An honour! Why, I'm...
dishonourable.... Ah, why did you say that?"
"It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of
you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great
sinner, that's true," he added almost solemnly, "and your worst sin is
that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn't
that fearful? Isn't it fearful that you are living in this filth which
you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you've only
to open your eyes) that you are not helping any one by it, not
saving any one from anything! Tell me," he went on almost in a frenzy,
"how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with
other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better, a thousand times
better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!"
"But what would become of them?" Sonia asked faintly, gazing at
him with eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.
Raskolnikov looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face;
so she must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and
earnestly she had thought out in her despair how to end it and so
earnestly, that now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had
not even noticed the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his
reproaches and his peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of
course, not noticed either, and that, too, was clear to him.) But he
saw how monstrously the thought of her disgraceful, shameful
position was torturing her and had long tortured her. "What, what," he
thought, "could hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?"
Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children and
that pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna, knocking her head against
the wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.
But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character
and the amount of education she had after all received, she could
not in any case remain so. He was still confronted by the question how
could she have remained so long in that position without going out
of her mind, since she could not bring herself to jump into the water?
Of course he knew that Sonia's position was an exceptional case,
though unhappily not unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that
very exceptionalness, her tinge of education, her previous life might,
one would have thought, have killed her at the first step on that
revolting path. What held her up- surely not depravity? All that
infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of
real depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that. He saw
through her as she stood before him....
"There are three ways before her," he thought, "the canal, the
madhouse, or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind
and turns the heart to stone."
The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was
young, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help
believing that the last end was the most likely.
"But can that be true?" he cried to himself. "Can that creature
who has still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously
drawn at last into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process
already have begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it
till now, because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No,
no, that cannot be!" he cried, as Sonia had just before. "No, what has
kept her from the canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the
children.... And if she has not gone out of her mind... but who says
she has not gone out of her mind? Is she in her senses? Can one
talk, can one reason as she does? How can she sit on the edge of the
abyss of loathsomeness into which she is slipping and refuse to listen
when she is told of danger? Does she expect a miracle? No doubt she
does. Doesn't that all mean madness?"
He stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation
indeed better than any other. He began looking more intently at her.
"So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?" he asked her.
Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.
"What should I be without God?" she whispered rapidly, forcibly,
glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.
"Ah, so that is it!" he thought.
"And what does God do for you?" he asked, probing her further.
Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her
weak chest kept heaving with emotion.
"Be silent! Don't ask! You don't deserve!" she cried suddenly,
looking sternly and wrathfully at him.
"That's it, that's it," he repeated to himself.
"He does everything," she whispered quickly, looking down again.
"That's the way out! That's the explanation," he decided,
scrutinising her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost
morbid feeling. He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little
face, those soft blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such
stern energy, that little body still shaking with indignation and
anger- and it all seemed to him more and more strange, almost
impossible. "She is a religious maniac!" he repeated to himself.
There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it
every time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked
at it. It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was
bound in leather, old and worn.
"Where did you get that?" he called to her across the room.
She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the
table.
"It was brought me," she answered, as it were unwillingly, not
looking at him.
"Who brought it?"
"Lizaveta, I asked her for it."
"Lizaveta! strange!" he thought.
Everything about Sonia seemed to him stranger and more wonderful
every moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over
the pages.
"Where is the story of Lazarus?" he asked suddenly.
Sonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was
standing sideways to the table.
"Where is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia."
She stole a glance at him.
"You are not looking in the right place.... It's in the fourth
gospel," she whispered sternly, without looking at him.
"Find it and read it to me," he said. He sat down with his elbow
on the table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly,
prepared to listen.
"In three weeks' time they'll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be
there if I am not in a worse place," he muttered to himself.
Sonia heard Raskolnikov's request distrustfully and moved
hesitatingly to the table. She took the book however.
"Haven't you read it?" she asked, looking up at him across the
table.
Her voice became sterner and sterner.
"Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!"
"And haven't you heard it in church?"
"I... haven't been. Do you often go?"
"N-no," whispered Sonia.
Raskolnikov smiled.
"I understand.... And you won't go to your father's funeral
to-morrow?"
"Yes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem
service."
"For whom?"
"For Lizaveta. She was killed with an axe."
His nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round.
"Were you friends with Lizaveta?"
"Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she
couldn't.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see God."
The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was
something new again: the mysterious meetings with Lizaveta and both of
them- religious maniacs.
"I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It's infectious!"
"Read!" he cried irritably and insistently.
Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared
to read to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the "unhappy
lunatic."
"What for? You don't believe?..." she whispered softly and as it
were breathlessly.
"Read! I want you to," he persisted. "You used to read to Lizaveta."
Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking,
her voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out
the first syllable.
"Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany..." she
forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice
broke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.
Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to
him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he
insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it
was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own. He understood
that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had
kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with
an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in
the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches.
But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although
it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting
desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read
now whatever might come of it!... He read this in her eyes, he could
see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the
spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St.
John. She went on to the nineteenth verse:
"And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them
concerning their brother.
Then Martha as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming went and
met Him: but Mary sat still in the house.
Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died.
But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will
give it Thee...."
Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice
would quiver and break again.
"Jesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.
Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection, at the last day.
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live.
And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
Believest thou this?
She saith unto Him,"
(And drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as
though she were making a public confession of faith.)
"Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which
should come into the world."
She stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself
went on reading. Raskolnikov sat without moving, his elbows on the
table and his eyes turned away. She read to the thirty-second verse.
"Then when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell
down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping
which came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled,
And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and
see.
Jesus wept.
Then said the Jews, behold how He loved him!
And some of them said, could not this Man which opened the eyes of
the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?"
Raskolnikov turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known
it! She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it.
She was getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling
of immense triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell;
triumph and joy gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but
she knew what she was reading by heart. At the last verse "Could not
this Man which opened the eyes of the blind..." dropping her voice she
passionately reproduced the doubt, the reproach and censure of the
blind disbelieving Jews, who in another moment would fall at His
feet as though struck by thunder, sobbing and believing.... "And he,
he- too, is blinded and unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will
believe, yes, yes! At once, now," was what she was dreaming, and she
was quivering with happy anticipation.
"Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It
was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.
Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that
was dead, saith unto Him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath
been dead four days."
She laid emphasis on the word four.
"Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest
believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was
laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that
Thou hast heard Me.
And I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people
which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent
Me.
And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus,
come forth.
And he that was dead came forth."
(She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she
were seeing it before her eyes.)
"Bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about
with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him go.
Then many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things
which Jesus did believed on Him."
She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair
quickly.
"That is all about the raising of Lazarus," she whispered severely
and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to
raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end
was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in
the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so
strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more
passed.
"I came to speak of something," Raskolnikov said aloud, frowning. He
got up and went to Sonia. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His
face was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage
determination in it.
"I have abandoned my family to-day," he said, "my mother and sister.
I am not going to see them. I've broken with them completely."
"What for?" asked Sonia amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother
and sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse.
She heard his news almost with horror.
"I have only you now," he added. "Let us go together.... I've come
to you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!"
His eyes glittered "as though he were mad," Sonia thought, in her
turn.
"Go where?" she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.
"How do I know? I only know it's the same road, I know that and
nothing more. It's the same goal!"
She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he
was terribly, infinitely unhappy.
"No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have
understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you."
"I don't understand," whispered Sonia.
"You'll understand later. Haven't you done the same? You, too,
have transgressed... have had the strength to transgress. You have
laid hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life... your own (it's
all the same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding,
but you'll end in the Hay Market.... But you won't be able to stand
it, and if you remain alone you'll go out of your mind like me. You
are like a mad creature already. So we must go together on the same
road! Let us go!"
"What for? What's all this for?" said Sonia, strangely and violently
agitated by his words.
"What for? Because you can't remain like this, that's why! You
must look things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a
child and cry that God won't allow it. What will happen, if you should
really be taken to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in
consumption, she'll soon die, and the children? Do you mean to tell me
Polenka won't come to grief? Haven't you seen children here at the
street corners sent out by their mothers to beg? I've found out
where those mothers live and in what surroundings. Children can't
remain children there! At seven the child is vicious and a thief.
Yet children, you know, are the image of Christ: 'theirs is the
kingdom of Heaven.' He bade us honour and love them, they are the
humanity of the future...."
"What's to be done, what's to be done?" repeated Sonia, weeping
hysterically and wringing her hands.
"What's to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all,
that's all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don't
understand? You'll understand later.... Freedom and power, and above
all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the antheap!... That's
the goal, remember that! That's my farewell message. Perhaps it's
the last time I shall speak to you. If I don't come to-morrow,
you'll hear of it all, and then remember these words. And some day
later on, in years to come, you'll understand perhaps what they meant.
If I come to-morrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta.... Good-bye."
Sonia started with terror.
"Why, do you know who killed her?" she asked, chilled with horror,
looking wildly at him.
"I know and will tell... you, only you. I have chosen you out. I'm
not coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I
chose you out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you
and when Lizaveta was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don't shake
hands. To-morrow!"
He went out. Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself
was like one insane and felt it. Her head was going round.
"Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did
those words mean? It's awful!" But at the same time the idea did not
enter her head, not for a moment! "Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!...
He has abandoned his mother and sister.... What for? What has
happened? And what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He
had kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly)
that he could not live without her.... Oh, merciful heavens!"
Sonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up
from time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into
feverish sleep and dreamt of Polenka, Katerina Ivanovna and
Lizaveta, of reading the gospel and him... him with pale face, with
burning eyes... kissing her feet, weeping.
On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia's
room from Madame Resslich's flat, was a room which long stood empty. A
card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over
the canal advertising it to let. Sonia had long been accustomed to the
room's being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidrigailov had
been standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When
Raskolnikov went out he stood still, thought a moment, went on
tiptoe to his own room which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair
and noiselessly carried it to the door that led to Sonia's room. The
conversation had struck him as interesting and remarkable, and he
had greatly enjoyed it- so much so that he brought a chair that he
might not in the future, to-morrow, for instance, have to endure the
inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but might listen in comfort.
CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
WHEN NEXT morning at eleven o'clock punctually Raskolnikov went into
the department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his
name in to Porfiry Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept
waiting so long: it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned.
He had expected that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the
waiting-room, and people, who apparently had nothing to do with him,
were continually passing to and fro before him. In the next room which
looked like an office, several clerks were sitting writing and
obviously they had no notion who or what Raskolnikov might be. He
looked uneasily and suspiciously about him to see whether there was
not some guard, some mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his
escape. But there was nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of
clerks absorbed in petty details, then other people, no one seemed
to have any concern with him. He might go where he liked for them. The
conviction grew stronger in him that if that enigmatic man of
yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the earth, had seen
everything, they would not have let him stand and wait like that.
And would they have waited till he elected to appear at eleven? Either
the man had not yet given information, or... or simply he knew
nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?) and
so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom
exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This
conjecture had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of
all his alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing
for a fresh conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling- and
he felt a rush of indignation at the thought that he was trembling
with fear at facing that hateful Porfiry Petrovitch. What he dreaded
above all was meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense,
unmitigated hatred and was afraid his hatred might betray him. His
indignation was such that he ceased trembling at once; he made ready
to go in with a cold and arrogant bearing and vowed to himself to keep
as silent as possible, to watch and listen and for once at least to
control his overstrained nerves. At that moment he was summoned to
Porfiry Petrovitch.
He found Porfiry Petrovitch alone in his study. His study was a room
neither large nor small, furnished with a large writing-table, that
stood before a sofa, upholstered in checked material, a bureau, a
bookcase in the corner and several chairs- all government furniture,
of polished yellow wood. In the further wall there was a closed
door, beyond it there were, no doubt, other rooms. On Raskolnikov's
entrance Porfiry Petrovitch had at once closed the door by which he
had come in and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an
apparently genial and good-tempered air, and it was only after a few
minutes that Raskolnikov saw signs of a certain awkwardness in him, as
though he had been thrown out of his reckoning or caught in
something very secret.
"Ah, my dear fellow! Here you are... in our domain"... began
Porfiry, holding out both hands to him. "Come, sit down, old man... or
perhaps you don't like to be called 'my dear fellow' and 'old
man!'-tout court? Please don't think it too familiar.... Here, on
the sofa."
Raskolnikov sat down, keeping his eyes fixed on him. "In our
domain," the apologies for familiarity, the French phrase tout
court, were all characteristic signs.
"He held out both hands to me, but he did not give me one- he drew
it back in time," struck him suspiciously. Both were watching each
other, but when their eyes met, quick as lightning they looked away.
"I brought you this paper... about the watch. Here it is. Is it
all right or shall I copy it again?"
"What? A paper? Yes, yes, don't be uneasy, it's all right,"
Porfiry Petrovitch said as though in haste, and after he had said it
he took the paper and looked at it. "Yes, it's all right. Nothing more
is needed," he declared with the same rapidity and he laid the paper
on the table.
A minute later when he was talking of something else he took it from
the table and put it on his bureau.
"I believe you said yesterday you would like to question me...
formally... about my acquaintance with the murdered woman?"
Raskolnikov was beginning again. "Why did I put in 'I believe'" passed
through his mind in a flash. "Why am I so uneasy at having put in that
'I believe'?" came in a second flash. And he suddenly felt that his
uneasiness at the mere contact with Porfiry, at the first words, at
the first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions, and
that this was fearfully dangerous. His nerves were quivering, his
emotion was increasing. "It's bad, it's bad! I shall say too much
again."
"Yes, yes, yes! There's no hurry, there's no hurry," muttered
Porfiry Petrovitch, moving to and fro about the table without any
apparent aim, as it were making dashes towards the window, the
bureau and the table, at one moment avoiding Raskolnikov's
suspicious glance, then again standing still and looking him
straight in the face.
His fat round little figure looked very strange, like a ball rolling
from one side to the other and rebounding back.
"We've plenty of time. Do you smoke? have you your own? Here, a
cigarette!" he went on, offering his visitor a cigarette. "You know
I am receiving you here, but my own quarters are through there, you
know, my government quarters. But I am living outside for the time,
I had to have some repairs done here. It's almost finished now....
Government quarters, you know, are a capital thing. Eh, what do you
think?"
"Yes, a capital thing," answered Raskolnikov, looking at him
almost ironically.
"A capital thing, a capital thing," repeated Porfiry Petrovitch,
as though he had just thought of something quite different. "Yes, a
capital thing," he almost shouted at last, suddenly staring at
Raskolnikov and stopping short two steps from him.
This stupid repetition was too incongruous in its ineptitude with
the serious, brooding and enigmatic glance he turned upon his visitor.
But this stirred Raskolnikov's spleen more than ever and he could
not resist an ironical and rather incautious challenge.
"Tell me, please," he asked suddenly, looking almost insolently at
him and taking a kind of pleasure in his own insolence. "I believe
it's a sort of legal rule, a sort of legal tradition- for all
investigating lawyers- to begin their attack from afar, with a
trivial, or at least an irrelevant subject, so as to encourage, or
rather, to divert the man they are cross-examining, to disarm his
caution and then all at once to give him an unexpected knockdown
blow with some fatal question. Isn't that so? It's a sacred tradition,
mentioned, I fancy, in all the manuals of the art?"
"Yes, yes.... Why, do you imagine that was why I spoke about
government quarters... eh?"
And as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch screwed up his eyes and
winked; a good-humoured, crafty look passed over his face. The
wrinkles on his forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his
features broadened and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged
laugh, shaking all over and looking Raskolnikov straight in the
face. The latter forced himself to laugh, too, but when Porfiry,
seeing that he was laughing, broke into such a guffaw that he turned
almost crimson, Raskolnikov's repulsion overcame all precaution; he
left off laughing, scowled and stared with hatred at Porfiry,
keeping his eyes fixed on him while his intentionally prolonged
laughter lasted. There was lack of precaution on both sides,
however, for Porfiry Petrovitch seemed to be laughing in his visitor's
face and to be very little disturbed at the annoyance with which the
visitor received it. The latter fact was very significant in
Raskolnikov's eyes: he saw that Porfiry Petrovitch had not been
embarrassed just before either, but that he, Raskolnikov, had
perhaps fallen into a trap; that there must be something, some
motive here unknown to him; that, perhaps, everything was in readiness
and in another moment would break upon him...
He went straight to the point at once, rose from his seat and took
his cap.
"Porfiry Petrovitch," he began resolutely, though with
considerable irritation, "yesterday you expressed a desire that I
should come to you for some inquiries (he laid special stress on the
word 'inquiries'). I have come and, if you have anything to ask me,
ask it, and if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time to
spare.... I have to be at the funeral of that man who was run over, of
whom you... know also," he added, feeling angry at once at having made
this addition and more irritated at his anger, "I am sick of it all,
do you hear, and have long been. It's partly what made me ill. In
short," he shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was
still more out of place, "in short, kindly examine me or let me go, at
once. And if you must examine me, do so in the proper form! I will not
allow you to do so otherwise, and so meanwhile, good-bye, as we have
evidently nothing to keep us now."
"Good heavens! What do you mean? What shall I question you about?"
cackled Porfiry Petrovitch with a change of tone, instantly leaving
off laughing. "Please don't disturb yourself," he began fidgeting from
place to place and fussily making Raskolnikov sit down. "There's no
hurry, there's no hurry, it's all nonsense. Oh, no, I'm very glad
you've come to see me at last... I look upon you simply as a
visitor. And as for my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Rodion
Romanovitch. Rodion Romanovitch? That is your name?... It's my nerves,
you tickled me so with your witty observation; I assure you, sometimes
I shake with laughter like an India-rubber ball for half an hour at
a time.... I'm often afraid of an attack of paralysis. Do sit down.
Please do, or I shall think you are angry..."
Raskolnikov did not speak; he listened, watching him, still frowning
angrily. He did sit down, but still held his cap.
"I must tell you one thing about myself, my dear Rodion
Romanovitch," Porfiry Petrovitch continued, moving about the room
and again avoiding his visitor's eyes. "You see, I'm a bachelor, a man
of no consequence and not used to society; besides, I have nothing
before me, I'm set, I'm running to seed and... and have you noticed,
Rodion Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever
men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and
me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for
conversation- they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel
awkward. Every one has subjects of conversation, ladies for
instance... people in high society always have their subjects of
conversation, c'est de rigueur, but people of the middle sort like us,
thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is
the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or
whether it is we are so honest we don't want to deceive one another, I
don't know. What do you think? Do put down your cap, it looks as if
you were just going, it makes me uncomfortable... I am so
delighted..."
Raskolnikov put down his cap and continued listening in silence with
a serious frowning face to the vague and empty chatter of Porfiry
Petrovitch. "Does he really want to distract my attention with his
silly babble?"
"I can't offer you coffee here; but why not spend five minutes
with a friend," Porfiry pattered on, "and you know all these
official duties... please don't mind my running up and down, excuse
it, my dear fellow, I am very much afraid of offending you, but
exercise is absolutely indispensable for me. I'm always sitting and so
glad to be moving about for five minutes... I suffer from my sedentary
life... I always intend to join a gymnasium; they say that officials
of all ranks, even Privy Councillors may be seen skipping gaily there;
there you have it, modern science... yes, yes.... But as for my duties
here, inquiries and all such formalities... you mentioned inquiries
yourself just now... I assure you these interrogations are sometimes
more embarrassing for the interrogator than for the interrogated....
You made the observation yourself just now very aptly and wittily.
(Raskolnikov had made no observation of the kind.) One gets into a
muddle! A regular muddle! One keeps harping on the same note, like a
drum! There is to be a reform and we shall be called by a different
name, at least, he-he-he! And as for our legal tradition, as you so
wittily called it, I thoroughly agree with you. Every prisoner on
trial, even the rudest peasant knows, that they begin by disarming him
with irrelevant questions (as you so happily put it) and then deal him
a knock-down blow, he-he-he!- your felicitous compacts son, he-he!
So you really imagined that I meant by government quarters... he-he!
You are an ironical person. Come. I won't go on! Ah, by the way,
yes! One word leads to another. You spoke of formality just now,
apropos of the inquiry, you know. But what's the use of formality?
In many cases it's nonsense. Sometimes one has a friendly chat and
gets a good deal more out of it. One can always fall back on
formality, allow me to assure you. And after all, what does it
amount to? An examining lawyer cannot be bounded by formality at every
step. The work of investigation is, so to speak, a free art in its own
way, he-he-he!"
Porfiry Petrovitch took breath a moment. He had simply babbled on
uttering empty phrases, letting slip a few enigmatic words and again
reverting to incoherence. He was almost running about the room, moving
his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking at the ground, with
his right hand behind his back, while with his left making
gesticulations that were extraordinarily incongruous with his words.
Raskolnikov suddenly noticed that as he ran about the room he seemed
twice to stop for a moment near the door, as though he were listening.
"Is he expecting anything?"
"You are certainly quite right about it," Porfiry began gaily,
looking with extraordinary simplicity at Raskolnikov (which startled
him and instantly put him on his guard), "certainly quite right in
laughing so wittily at our legal forms, he-he! Some of these elaborate
psychological methods are exceedingly ridiculous and perhaps
useless, if one adheres too closely to the forms. Yes... I am
talking of forms again. Well, if I recognise, or more strictly
speaking, if I suspect some one or other to be a criminal in any
case entrusted to me... you're reading for the law, of course,
Rodion Romanovitch?"
"Yes, I was..."
"Well, then it is a precedent for you for the future- though don't
suppose I should venture to instruct you after the articles you
publish about crime! No, I simply make bold to state it by way of
fact, if I took this man or that for a criminal, why, I ask, should
I worry him prematurely, even though I had evidence against him? In
one case I may be bound, for instance, to arrest a man at once, but
another may be in quite a different position, you know, so why
shouldn't I let him walk about the town a bit, he-he-he! But I see you
don't quite understand, so I'll give you a clearer example. If I put
him in prison too soon, I may very likely give him, so to speak, moral
support, he-he! You're laughing?"
Raskolnikov had no idea of laughing. He was sitting with
compressed lips, his feverish eyes fixed on Porfiry Petrovitch's.
"Yes that is the case, with some types especially, for men are so
different. You say evidence. Well, there may be evidence. But
evidence, you know, can generally be taken two ways. I am an examining
lawyer and a weak man, I confess it. I should like to make a proof, so
to say, mathematically clear, I should like to make a chain of
evidence such as twice two are four, it ought to be a direct,
irrefutable proof! And if I shut him up too soon- even though I
might be convinced he was the man, I should very likely be depriving
myself of the means of getting further evidence against him. And
how? By giving him, so to speak, a definite position, I shall put
him out of suspense and set his mind at rest, so that he will
retreat into his shell. They say that at Sevastopol, soon after
Alma, the clever people were in a terrible fright that the enemy would
attack openly and take Sevastopol at once. But when they saw that
the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted, I am told
and reassured, for the thing would drag on for two months at least.
You're laughing, you don't believe me again? Of course, you're
right, too. You're right, you're right. These are an special cases,
I admit. But you must observe this, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, the
general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are
intended, for which they are calculated and laid down in books, does
not exist at all, for the reason that every case, every crime for
instance, so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a
thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any that's gone
before. Very comic cases of that sort sometimes occur. If I leave
one man quite alone, if I don't touch him and don't worry him, but let
him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and
am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and
terror, he'll be bound to lose his head. He'll come of himself, or
maybe do something which will make it as plain as twice two are
four- it's delightful. It may be so with a simple peasant, but with
one of our sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it's
a dead certainty. For, my dear fellow, it's a very important matter to
know on what side a man is cultivated. And then there are nerves,
there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they are all sick,
nervous and irritable!... And then how they all suffer from spleen!
That I assure you is a regular gold mine for us. And it's no anxiety
to me, his running about the town free! Let him, let him walk about
for a bit! I know well enough that I've caught him and that he won't
escape me. Where could he escape to, he-he? Abroad, perhaps? A Pole
will escape abroad, but not here, especially as I am watching and have
taken measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country perhaps?
But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants. A
modern cultivated man would prefer prison to living with such
strangers as our peasants. He-he! But that's all nonsense, and on
the surface. It's not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is
psychologically unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression!
Through a law of nature he can't escape me if he had anywhere to go.
Have you seen a butterfly round a candle? That's how he will keep
circling and circling round me. Freedom will lose its attractions.
He'll begin to brood, hell weave a tangle round himself, he'll worry
himself to death! What's more he will provide me with a mathematical
proof- if I only give him long enough interval.... And he'll keep
circling round me, getting nearer and nearer and then- flop! He'll fly
straight into my mouth and I'll swallow him, and that will be very
amusing, he-he-he! You don't believe me?"
Raskolnikov made no reply; he sat pale and motionless, still
gazing with the same intensity into Porfiry's face.
"It's a lesson," he thought, turning cold. "This is beyond the cat
playing with a mouse, like yesterday. He can't be showing off his
power with no motive... prompting me; he is far too clever for that...
he must have another object. What is it? It's all nonsense, my friend,
you are pretending, to scare me! You've no proofs and the man I saw
had no real existence. You simply want to make me lose my head, to
work me up beforehand and so to crush me. But you are wrong, you won't
do it! But why give me such a hint? Is he reckoning on my shattered
nerves? No, my friend, you are wrong, you won't do it even though
you have some trap for me... let us see what you have in store for
me."
And he braced himself to face a terrible and unknown ordeal. At
times he longed to fall on Porfiry and strangle him. This anger was
what he dreaded from the beginning. He felt that his parched lips were
flecked with foam, his heart was throbbing. But he was still
determined not to speak till the right moment. He realised that this
was the best policy in his position, because instead of saying too
much he would be irritating his enemy by his silence and provoking him
into speaking too freely. Anyhow, this was what he hoped for.
"No, I see you don't believe me, you think I am playing a harmless
joke on you," Porfiry began again, getting more and more lively,
chuckling at every instant and again pacing round the room. "And, to
be sure, you're right: God has given me a figure that can awaken
none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you
and I repeat it, excuse an old man, my dear Rodion Romanovitch, you
are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so you put
intellect above everything, like all young people. Playful wit and
abstract arguments fascinate you and that's for all the world like the
old Austrian Hofkriegsrath, as far as I can judge of military
matters that is: on paper they'd beaten Napoleon and taken him
prisoner, and there in their study they worked it all out in the
cleverest fashion, but look you, General Mack surrendered with all his
army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Rodion Romanovitch, you are laughing
at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military history! But
I can't help it, it's my weakness. I am fond of military science.
And I'm ever so fond of reading all military histories. I've certainly
missed my proper career. I ought to have been in the army, upon my
word I ought. I shouldn't have been a Napoleon, but I might have
been a major, he-he-he! Well, I'll tell you the whole truth, my dear
fellow, about this special case, I mean: actual fact and a man's
temperament, my dear sir, are weighty matters and it's astonishing how
they sometimes deceive the sharpest calculation! I- listen to an old
man- am speaking seriously, Rodion Romanovitch (as he said this
Porfiry Petrovitch who was scarcely five and thirty actually seemed to
have grown old; even his voice changed and he seemed to shrink
together) moreover, I'm a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What
do you say? I fancy I really am: I tell you these things for nothing
and don't even expect a reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit in
my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of
nature and a consolation of life, and what tricks it can play! So that
it sometimes is hard for a poor examining lawyer to know where he
is, especially when he's liable to be carried away by his own fancy,
too, for you know he is a man after all. But the poor fellow is
saved by the criminal's temperament, worse luck for him! But young
people carried away by their own wit don't think of that 'when they
overstep all obstacles' as you wittily and cleverly expressed it
yesterday. He will lie- that is, the man who is a special case, the
incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion; you might
think he would triumph and enjoy the fruits of his wit, but at the
most interesting, the most flagrant moment he will faint. Of course
there may be illness and a stuffy room as well, but anyway! Anyway
he's given us the idea! He lied incomparably, but he didn't reckon
on his temperament. That's what betrays him! Another time he will be
carried away by his playful wit into making fun of the man who
suspects him, he will turn pale as it were on purpose to mislead,
but his paleness will be too natural, too much like the real thing,
again he has given us an idea! Though his questioner may be deceived
at first, he will think differently next day if he is not a fool, and,
of course, it is like that at every step! He puts himself forward
where he is not wanted, speaks continually when he ought to keep
silent, brings in all sorts of allegorical allusions, he-he! Comes and
asks why didn't you take me long ago, he-he-he! And that can happen,
you know, with the cleverest man, the psychologist, the literary
man. The temperament reflects everything like a mirror! Gaze into it
and admire what you see! But why are you so pale, Rodion
Romanovitch? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?"
"Oh, don't trouble, please," cried Raskolnikov and he suddenly broke
into a laugh. "Please don't trouble."
Porfiry stood facing him, paused a moment and suddenly he too
laughed. Raskolnikov got up from the sofa, abruptly checking his
hysterical laughter.
"Porfiry Petrovitch," he began, speaking loudly and distinctly,
though his legs trembled and he could scarcely stand. "I see clearly
at last that you actually suspect me of murdering that old woman and
her sister Lizaveta. Let me tell you for my part that I am sick of
this. If you find that you have a right to prosecute me legally, to
arrest me, then prosecute me, arrest me. But I will not let myself
be jeered at to my face and worried..."
His lips trembled, his eyes glowed with fury and he could not
restrain his voice.
"I won't allow it!" he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table.
"Do you hear that, Porfiry Petrovitch? I won't allow it."
"Good heavens! What does it mean?" cried Porfiry Petrovitch,
apparently quite frightened. "Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow, what
is the matter with you?"
"I won't allow it," Raskolnikov shouted again.
"Hush, my dear man! They'll hear and come in. Just think, what could
we say to them?" Porfiry Petrovitch whispered in horror, bringing
his face close to Raskolnikov's.
"I won't allow it, I won't allow it," Raskolnikov repeated
mechanically, but he too spoke in a sudden whisper.
Porfiry turned quickly and ran to open the window.
"Some fresh air! And you must have some water, my dear fellow.
You're ill!" and he was running to the door to call for some when he
found a decanter of water in the corner. "Come, drink a little," he
whispered, rushing up to him with the decanter. "It will be sure to do
you good."
Porfiry Petrovitch's alarm and sympathy were so natural that
Raskolnikov was silent and began looking at him with wild curiosity.
He did not take the water, however.
"Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow, you'll drive yourself out of
your mind, I assure you, ach, ach! Have some water, do drink a
little."
He forced him to take the glass. Raskolnikov raised it
mechanically to his lips, but set it on the table again with disgust.
"Yes, you've had a little attack! You'll bring back your illness
again, my dear fellow," Porfiry Petrovitch cackled with friendly
sympathy, though he still looked rather disconcerted. "Good heavens,
you must take more care of yourself! Dmitri Prokofitch was here,
came to see me yesterday- I know, I know, I've a nasty, ironical
temper, but what they made of it!... Good heavens, he came yesterday
after you'd been. We dined and he talked and talked away, and I
could only throw up my hands in despair! Did he come from you? But
do sit down, for mercy's sake, sit down!"
"No, not from me, but I knew he went to you and why he went,"
Raskolnikov answered sharply.
"You knew?"
"I knew. What of it?"
"Why this, Rodion Romanovitch, that I know more than that about you;
I know about everything. I know how you went to take a flat at night
when it was dark and how you rang the bell and asked about the
blood, so that the workmen and the porter did not know what to make of
it. Yes, I understand your state of mind at that time... but you'll
drive yourself mad like that, upon my word! You'll lose your head!
You're full of generous indignation at the wrongs you've received,
first from destiny, and then from the police officers, and so you rush
from one thing to another to force them to speak out and make an end
of it all, because you are sick of all this suspicion and foolishness.
That's so, isn't it? I have guessed how you feel, haven't I? Only in
that way you'll lose your head and Razumihin's, too; he's too good a
man for such a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is
good and your illness is infectious for him... I'll tell you about
it when you are more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness' sake.
Please rest, you look shocking, do sit down."
Raskolnikov sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In
amazement he listened with strained attention to Porfiry Petrovitch
who still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly
solicitude. But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a
strange inclination to believe. Porfiry's unexpected words about the
flat had utterly overwhelmed him. "How can it be, he knows about the
flat then," he thought suddenly, "and he tells it me himself!"
"Yes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar,
a case of morbid psychology," Porfiry went on quickly. "A man
confessed to murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular
hallucination; he brought forward facts, he imposed upon every one and
why? He had been partly, but only partly, unintentionally the cause of
a murder and when he knew that he had given the murderers the
opportunity, he sank into dejection, it got on his mind and turned his
brain, he began imagining things and he persuaded himself that he
was the murderer. But at last the High Court of Appeals went into it
and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under proper care. Thanks to
the Court of Appeals! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear fellow, you may
drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse to work upon your
nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about blood! I've
studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man is
sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the
same with bell-ringing.... It's all illness, Rodion Romanovitch! You
have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an
experienced doctor, what's the good of that fat fellow? You are
lightheaded! You were delirious when you did all this!"
For a moment Raskolnikov felt everything going round.
"Is it possible, is it possible," flashed through his mind, "that he
is still lying? He can't be, he can't be." He rejected that idea,
feeling to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that
fury might drive him mad.
"I was not delirious. I knew what I was doing," he cried,
straining every faculty to penetrate Porfiry's game, "I was quite
myself, do you hear?"
"Yes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not
delirious, you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all
you can tell me! A-ach!... Listen, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow.
If you were actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this
damnable business, would you insist that you were not delirious but in
full possession of your faculties? And so emphatically and
persistently? Would it be possible? Quite impossible, to my
thinking. If you had anything on your conscience, you certainly
ought to insist that you were delirious. That's so, isn't it?"
There was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Raskolnikov drew back
on the sofa as Porfiry bent over him and stared in silent perplexity
at him.
"Another thing about Razumihin- you certainly ought to have said
that he came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But
you don't conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your
instigation."
Raskolnikov had not done so. A chill went down his back.
"You keep telling lies," he said slowly and weakly, twisting his
lips into a sickly smile, "you are trying again to show that you
know all my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand," he
said, conscious himself that he was not weighing his words as he
ought. "You want to frighten me... or you are simply laughing at
me..."
He still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light
of intense hatred in his eyes.
"You keep lying," he said. "You know perfectly well that the best
policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as
possible... to conceal as little as possible. I don't believe you!"
"What a wily person you are!" Porfiry tittered, "there's no catching
you; you've a perfect monomania. So you don't believe me? But still
you do believe me, you believe a quarter; I'll soon make you believe
the whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely
wish you good."
Raskolnikov's lips trembled.
"Yes, I do," went on Porfiry, touching Raskolnikov's arm genially,
"you must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister
are here now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them
and you do nothing but frighten them..."
"What has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is
it of yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?"
"Good heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don't
notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From
Razumihin, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday.
No, you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit,
your suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To
return to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have
betrayed a precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact
worth having), and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the
slightest suspicion of you, should I have acted like that? No, I
should first have disarmed your suspicions and not let you see I
knew of that fact, should have diverted your attention and suddenly
have dealt you a knock-down blow (your expression) saying: 'And what
were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or nearly eleven at the murdered
woman's flat and why did you ring the bell and why did you ask about
blood? And why did you invite the porters to go with you to the police
station, to the lieutenant?' That's how I ought to have acted if I had
a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your evidence in
due form, searched your lodging and perhaps have arrested you,
too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have not done that!
But you can't look at it normally and you see nothing, I say again."
Raskolnikov started so that Porfiry Petrovitch could not fail to
perceive it.
"You are lying all the while," he cried, "I don't know your
object, but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and
I cannot be mistaken!"
"I am lying?" Porfiry repeated, apparently incensed, but
preserving a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in
the least concerned at Raskolnikov's opinion of him. "I am lying...
but how did I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting
you and giving you every means for your defence; illness, I said,
delirium, injury, melancholy and the police officers and all the
rest of it? Ah! He-he-he! Though, indeed, all those psychological
means of defence are not very reliable and cut both ways: illness,
delirium, I don't remember- that's all right, but why, my good sir, in
your illness and in your delirium were you haunted by just those
delusions and not by any others? There may have been others, eh?
He-he-he!"
Raskolnikov looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.
"Briefly," he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in
so doing pushing Porfiry back a little, "briefly, I want to know, do
you acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me,
Porfiry Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!"
"What a business I'm having with you!" cried Porfiry with a
perfectly good-humoured, sly and composed face. "And why do you want
to know, why do you want to know so much, since they haven't begun
to worry you? Why, you are like a child asking for matches! And why
are you so uneasy? Why do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!"
"I repeat," Raskolnikov cried furiously, "that I can't put up with
it!"
"With what? Uncertainty?" interrupted Porfiry.
"Don't jeer at me! I won't have it! I tell you I won't have it. I
can't and I won't, do you hear, do you hear?" he shouted, bringing his
fist down on the table again.
"Hush! Hush! They'll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of
yourself. I am not joking," Porfiry whispered, but this time there was
not the look of old womanish good-nature and alarm in his face. Now he
was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all
mystification.
But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, bewildered,
suddenly fell into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed
the command to speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of
fury.
"I will not allow myself to be tortured," he whispered, instantly
recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and
driven to even greater fury by the thought. "Arrest me, search me, but
kindly act in due form and don't play with me! Don't dare!"
"Don't worry about the form," Porfiry interrupted with the same
sly smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Raskolnikov. "I
invited you to see me quite in a friendly way."
"I don't want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And,
here, I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to
arrest me?"
He took up his cap and went to the door.
"And won't you see my little surprise?" chuckled Porfiry, again
taking him by the arm and stopping him at the door.
He seemed to become more playful and good-humoured which maddened
Raskolnikov.
"What surprise?" he asked, standing still and looking at Porfiry
in alarm.
"My little surprise, it's sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!
(He pointed to the locked door.) I locked him in that he should not
escape."
"What is it? Where? What?..."
Raskolnikov walked to the door and would have opened it, but it
was locked.
"It's locked, here is the key!"
And he brought a key out of his pocket.
"You are lying," roared Raskolnikov without restraint, "you lie, you
damned punchinello!" and he rushed at Porfiry who retreated to the
other door, not at all alarmed.
"I understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray
myself to you..."
"Why, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Rodion
Romanovitch. You are in a passion. Don't shout, I shall call the
clerks."
"You are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to
work me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your
object! Produce your facts! I understand it all. You've no evidence,
you have only wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zametov's! You knew
my character, you wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down
with priests and deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are
you waiting for? Where are they? Produce them?"
"Why deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And
to do so would not be acting in form as you say, you don't know the
business, my dear fellow.... And there's no escaping form, as you
see," Porfiry muttered, listening at the door through which a noise
could be heard.
"Ah, they're coming," cried Raskolnikov. "You've sent for them!
You expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your
witnesses, what you like!... I am ready!"
But at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so
unexpected that neither Raskolnikov nor Porfiry Petrovitch could
have looked for such a conclusion to their interview.
CHAPTER_SIX
Chapter Six
-
WHEN HE remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Raskolnikov saw
it.
The noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was
opened a little.
"What is it?" cried Porfiry Petrovitch, annoyed. "Why, I gave
orders..."
For an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there
were several persons at the door, and that they were apparently
pushing somebody back.
"What is it?" Porfiry Petrovitch repeated, uneasily.
"The prisoner Nikolay has been brought," some one answered.
"He is not wanted! Take him away! Let him wait! What's he doing
here? How irregular!" cried Porfiry, rushing to the door.
"But he..." began the same voice, and suddenly ceased.
Two seconds, not more, were spent in actual struggle, then some
one gave a violent shove, and then a man, very pale, strode into the
room.
This man's appearance was at first sight very strange. He stared
straight before him, as though seeing nothing. There was a
determined gleam in his eyes; at the same time there was a deathly
pallor in his face, as though he were being led to the scaffold. His
white lips were faintly twitching.
He was dressed like a workman and was of medium height, very
young, slim, his hair cut in round crop, with thin spare features. The
man whom he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded
in seizing him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Nikolay pulled
his arm away.
Several persons crowded inquisitively into the doorway. Some of them
tried to get in. All this took place almost instantaneously.
"Go away, it's too soon! Wait till you are sent for!... Why have you
brought him so soon?" Porfiry Petrovitch muttered, extremely
annoyed, and as it were thrown out of his reckoning.
But Nikolay suddenly knelt down.
"What's the matter?" cried Porfiry, surprised.
"I am guilty! Mine is the sin! I am the murderer," Nikolay
articulated suddenly, rather breathless, but speaking fairly loudly.
For ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck
dumb; even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the
door, and stood immovable.
"What is it?" cried Porfiry Petrovitch, recovering from his
momentary stupefaction.
"I am the murderer," repeated Nikolay, after a brief pause.
"What... you... what... whom did you kill?" Porfiry Petrovitch was
obviously bewildered.
Nikolay again was silent for a moment.
"Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta Ivanovna, I... killed...
with an axe. Darkness came over me," he added suddenly, and was
again silent.
He still remained on his knees. Porfiry Petrovitch stood for some
moments as though meditating, but suddenly roused himself and waved
back the uninvited spectators. They instantly vanished and closed
the door. Then he looked towards Raskolnikov, who was standing in
the corner, staring wildly at Nikolay, and moved towards him, but
stopped short, looked from Nikolay to Raskolnikov and then again at
Nikolay, and seeming unable to restrain himself darted at the latter.
"You're in too great a hurry," he shouted at him, almost angrily. "I
didn't ask you what came over you.... Speak, did you kill them?"
"I am the murderer.... I want to give evidence," Nikolay pronounced.
"Ach! What did you kill them with?"
"An axe. I had it ready."
"Ach, he is in a hurry! Alone?"
Nikolay did not understand the question.
"Did you do it alone?"
"Yes, alone. And Mitka is not guilty and had no share in it."
"Don't be in a hurry about Mitka! A-ach! How was it you ran
downstairs like that at the time? The porters met you both!"
"It was to put them off the scent... I ran after Mitka," Nikolay
replied hurriedly, as though he had prepared the answer.
"I knew it!" cried Porfiry, with vexation. "It's not his own tale he
is telling," he muttered as though to himself, and suddenly his eyes
rested on Raskolnikov again.
He was apparently so taken up with Nikolay that for a moment he
had forgotten Raskolnikov. He was a little taken aback.
"My dear Rodion Romanovitch, excuse me!" he flew up to him, "this
won't do; I'm afraid you must go... it's no good your staying... I
will... you see, what a surprise!... Good-bye!"
And taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door.
"I suppose you didn't expect it?" said Raskolnikov who, though he
had not yet fully grasped the situation, had regained his courage.
"You did not expect it either, my friend. See how your hand is
trembling! He-he!"
"You're trembling, too, Porfiry Petrovitch!"
"Yes, I am; I didn't expect it."
They were already at the door; Porfiry was impatient for Raskolnikov
to be gone.
"And your little surprise, aren't you going to show it to me?"
Raskolnikov said, sarcastically.
"Why, his teeth are chattering as he asks, he-he! You are an
ironical person! Come, till we meet!"
"I believe we can say good-bye!"
"That's in God's hands," muttered Porfiry, with an unnatural smile.
As he walked through the office, Raskolnikov noticed that many
people were looking at him. Among them he saw the two porters from the
house, whom he had invited that night to the police station. They
stood there waiting. But he was no sooner on the stairs than he
heard the voice of Porfiry Petrovitch behind him. Turning round, he
saw the latter running after him, out of breath.
"One word, Rodion Romanovitch; as to all the rest, it's in God's
hands, but as a matter of form there are some questions I shall have
to ask you... so we shall meet again, shan't we?"
And Porfiry stood still, facing him with a smile.
"Shan't we?" he added again.
He seemed to want to say something more, but could not speak out.
"You must forgive me, Porfiry Petrovitch, for what has just
passed... I lost my temper," began Raskolnikov, who had so far
regained his courage that he felt irresistibly inclined to display his
coolness.
"Don't mention it, don't mention it," Porfiry replied, almost
gleefully. "I myself, too... I have a wicked temper, I admit it! But
we shall meet again. If it's God's will, we may see a great deal of
one another."
"And will get to know each other through and through?" added
Raskolnikov.
"Yes; know each other through and through," assented Porfiry
Petrovitch, and he screwed up his eyes, looking earnestly at
Raskolnikov. "Now you're going to a birthday party?"
"To a funeral."
"Of course, the funeral! Take care of yourself, and get well."
"I don't know what to wish you," said Raskolnikov, who had begun
to descend the stairs, but looked back again. "I should like to wish
you success, but your office is such a comical one."
"Why comical?" Porfiry Petrovitch had turned to go, but he seemed to
prick up his ears at this.
"Why, how you must have been torturing and harassing that poor
Nikolay psychologically, after your fashion, till he confessed! You
must have been at him day and night, proving to him that he was the
murderer, and now that he has confessed, you'll begin vivisecting
him again. 'You are lying,' you'll say. 'You are not the murderer! You
can't be! It's not your own tale you are telling!' You must admit it's
a comical business!"
"He-he-he! You noticed then that I said to Nikolay just now that
it was not his own tale he was telling?"
"How could I help noticing it!"
"He-he! You are quick-witted. You notice everything! You've really a
playful mind! And you always fasten on the comic side... he-he! They
say that was the marked characteristic of Gogol, among the writers."
"Yes, of Gogol."
"Yes, of Gogol.... I shall look forward to meeting you."
"So shall I."
Raskolnikov walked straight home. He was so muddled and bewildered
that on getting home he sat for a quarter of an hour on the sofa,
trying to collect his thoughts. He did not attempt to think about
Nikolay; he was stupefied; he felt that his confession was something
inexplicable, amazing- something beyond his understanding. But
Nikolay's confession was an actual fact. The consequences of this fact
were clear to him at once, its falsehood could not fail to be
discovered, and then they would be after him again. Till then, at
least, he was free and must do something for himself, for the danger
was imminent.
But how imminent? His position gradually became clear to him.
Remembering, sketchily, the main outlines of his recent scene with
Porfiry, he could not help shuddering again with horror. Of course, he
did not yet know all Porfiry's aims, he could not see into all his
calculations. But he had already partly shown his hand, and no one
knew better than Raskolnikov how terrible Porfiry's "lead" had been
for him. A little more and he might have given himself away
completely, circumstantially. Knowing his nervous temperament and from
the first glance seeing through him, Porfiry, though playing a bold
game, was bound to win. There's no denying that Raskolnikov had
compromised himself seriously, but no facts had come to light as
yet; there was nothing positive. But was he taking a true view of
the position? Wasn't he mistaken? What had Porfiry been trying to
get at? Had he really some surprise prepared for him? And what was it?
Had he really been expecting something or not? How would they have
parted if it had not been for the unexpected appearance of Nikolay?
Porfiry had shown almost all his cards- of course, he had risked
something in showing them- and if he had really had anything up his
sleeve (Raskolnikov reflected), he would have shown that, too. What
was that "surprise"? Was it a joke? Had it meant anything? Could it
have concealed anything like a fact, a piece of positive evidence? His
yesterday's visitor? What had become of him? Where was he to-day? If
Porfiry really had any evidence, it must be connected with him....
He sat on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face
hidden in his hands. He was still shivering nervously. At last he
got up, took his cap, thought a minute, and went to the door.
He had a sort of presentiment that for to-day, at least, he might
consider himself out of danger. He had a sudden sense almost of joy;
he wanted to make haste to Katerina Ivanovna's. He would be too late
for the funeral, of course, but he would be in time for the memorial
dinner, and there at once he would see Sonia.
He stood still, thought a moment, and a suffering smile came for a
moment on to his lips.
"To-day! To-day," he repeated to himself. "Yes, to-day! So it must
be...."
But as he was about to open the door, it began opening of itself. He
started and moved back. The door opened gently and slowly, and there
suddenly appeared a figure- yesterday's visitor from underground.
The man stood in the doorway, looked at Raskolnikov without
speaking, and took a step forward into the room. He was exactly the
same as yesterday; the same figure, the same dress, but there was a
great change in his face; he looked dejected and sighed deeply. If
he had only put his hand up to his cheek and leaned his head on one
side he would have looked exactly like a peasant woman.
"What do you want?" asked Raskolnikov, numb with terror. The man was
still silent, but suddenly he bowed down almost to the ground,
touching it with his finger.
"What is it?" cried Raskolnikov.
"I have sinned," the man articulated softly.
"By evil thoughts."
They looked at one another.
"I was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the
porters go to the police station and asked about the blood, I was
vexed that they let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed
that I lost my sleep. And remembering the address we came here
yesterday and asked for you...."
"Who came?" Raskolnikov interrupted, instantly beginning to
recollect.
"I did, I've wronged you."
"Then you came from that house?"
"I was standing at the gate with them... don't you remember? We have
carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare
hides, we take work home... most of all I was vexed...."
And the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway
came clearly before Raskolnikov's mind; he recollected that there
had been several people there besides the porters, women among them.
He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the
police station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and
even now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned
round and made him some answer....
So this was the solution of yesterday's horror. The most awful
thought was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for
himself on account of such a trivial circumstance. So this man could
tell nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So
Porfiry, too, had nothing but that delirium, no facts but this
psychology which cuts both ways, nothing positive. So if no more facts
come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then... then what
can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest him?
And Porfiry then had only just heard about the flat and had not
known about it before.
"Was it you who told Porfiry... that I'd been there?" he cried,
struck by a sudden idea.
"What Porfiry?"
"The head of the detective department?"
"Yes. The porters did not go there, but I went."
"To-day?"
"I got there two minutes before you. And I heard, I heard it all,
how he worried you."
"Where? What? When?"
"Why, in the next room. I was sitting there all the time."
CHAPTER_ONE
PART FIVE
Chapter One
-
THE MORNING that followed the fateful interview with Dounia and
her mother brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch.
Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to
accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day
before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had
been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr
Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that
he had jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and
looking at his noble, clear-skinned countenance which had grown
fattish of late, Pyotr Petrovitch for an instant was positively
comforted in the conviction that he would find another bride and,
perhaps, even a better one. But coming back to the sense of his
present position, he turned aside and spat vigorously, which excited a
sarcastic smile in Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, the young friend
with whom he was staying. That smile Pyotr Petrovitch noticed, and
at once set it down against his young friend's account. He had set
down a good many points against him of late. His anger was redoubled
when he reflected that he ought not to have told Andrey Semyonovitch
about the result of yesterday's interview. That was the second mistake
he had made in temper, through impulsiveness and irritability....
Moreover, all that morning one unpleasantness followed another. He
even found a hitch awaiting him in his legal case in the Senate. He
was particularly irritated by the owner of the flat which had been
taken in view of his approaching marriage and was being redecorated at
his own expense; the owner, a rich German tradesman, would not
entertain the idea of breaking the contract which had just been signed
and insisted on the full forfeit money, though Pyotr Petrovitch
would be giving him back the flat practically redecorated. In the same
way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the
instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the
flat.
"Am I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?" Pyotr
Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a
gleam of desperate hope. "Can all that be really so irrevocably
over? Is it no use to make another effort?" The thought of Dounia sent
a voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that
moment, and if it had been possible to slay Raskolnikov instantly by
wishing it, Pyotr Petrovitch would promptly have uttered the wish.
"It was my mistake, too, not to have given them money," he
thought, as he returned dejectedly to Lebeziatnikov's room, "and why
on earth was I such a Jew? It was false economy! I meant to keep
them without a penny so that they should turn to me as their
providence, and look at them! Foo! If I'd spent some fifteen hundred
roubles on them for the trousseau and presents, on knick-knacks,
dressing-cases, jewellery, materials, and all that sort of trash
from Knopp's and the English shop, my position would have been
better and... stronger! They could not have refused me so easily! They
are the sort of people that would feel bound to return money and
presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to do it!
And their consciences would prick them: how can we dismiss a man who
has hitherto been so generous and delicate?.... H'm! I've made a
blunder."
And grinding his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovitch called himself a
fool- but not aloud, of course.
He returned home, twice as irritated and angry as before. The
preparations for the funeral dinner at Katerina Ivanovna's excited his
curiosity as he passed. He had heard about it the day before; he
fancied, indeed, that he had been invited, but absorbed in his own
cares he had paid no attention. Inquiring of Madame Lippevechsel who
was busy laying the table while Katerina Ivanovna was away at the
cemetery, he heard that the entertainment was to be a great affair,
that all the lodgers had been invited, among them some who had not
known the dead man, that even Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov was
invited in spite of his previous quarrel with Katerina Ivanovna,
that he, Pyotr Petrovitch, was not only invited, but was eagerly
expected as he was the most important of the lodgers. Amalia
Ivanovna herself had been invited with great ceremony in spite of
the recent unpleasantness, and so she was very busy with
preparations and was taking a positive pleasure in them; she was
moreover dressed up to the nines, all in new black silk, and she was
proud of it. All this suggested an idea to Pyotr Petrovitch and he
went into his room, or rather Lebeziatnikov's, somewhat thoughtful. He
had learnt that Raskolnikov was to be one of the guests.
Andrey Semyonovitch had been at home all the morning. The attitude
of Pyotr Petrovitch to this gentleman was strange, though perhaps
natural. Pyotr Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he
came to stay with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid
of him. He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in
Petersburg simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his
chief object. He had heard of Andrey Semyonovitch, who had once been
his ward, as a leading young progressive who was taking an important
part in certain interesting circles, the doings of which were a legend
in the provinces. It had impressed Pyotr Petrovitch. These powerful
omniscient circles who despised every one and showed every one up
had long inspired in him a peculiar but quite vague alarm. He had not,
of course, been able to form even an approximate notion of what they
meant. He, like every one, had heard that there were, especially in
Petersburg, progressives of some sort, nihilists and so on, and,
like many people, he exaggerated and distorted the significance of
those words to an absurd degree. What for many years past he had
feared more than anything was being shown up and this was the chief
ground for his continual uneasiness at the thought of transferring his
business to Petersburg. He was afraid of this as little children are
sometimes panic-stricken. Some years before, when he was just entering
on his own career, he had come upon two cases in which rather
important personages in the province, patrons of his, had been cruelly
shown up. One instance had ended in great scandal for the person
attacked and the other had very nearly ended in serious trouble. For
this reason Pyotr Petrovitch intended to go into the subject as soon
as he reached Petersburg and, if necessary, to anticipate
contingencies by seeking the favour of "our younger generation." He
relied on Andrey Semyonovitch for this and before his visit to
Raskolnikov he had succeeded in picking up some current phrases. He
soon discovered that Andrey Semyonovitch was a commonplace
simpleton, but that by no means reassured Pyotr Petrovitch. Even if he
had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it
would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas,
the systems with which Andrey Semyonovitch pestered him had no
interest for him. He had his own object- he simply wanted to find
out at once what was happening here. Had these people any power or
not? Had he anything to fear from them? Would they expose any
enterprise of his? And what precisely was now the object of their
attacks? Could he somehow make up to them and get round them if they
really were powerful? Was this the thing to do or not? Couldn't he
gain something through them? In fact hundreds of questions presented
themselves.
Andrey Semyonovitch was an anaemic, scrofulous little man, with
strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He
was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He
was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely
conceited in speech which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his
little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia
Ivanovna, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly for his
lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch really was rather stupid; he attached
himself to the cause of progress and "our younger generation" from
enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of
dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated
coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to
vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however
sincerely.
Though Lebeziatnikov was so good-natured, he, too, was beginning
to dislike Pyotr Petrovitch. This happened on both sides
unconsciously. However simple Andrey Semyonovitch might be, he began
to see that Pyotr Petrovitch was duping him and secretly despising
him, and that "he was not the right sort of man." He had tried
expounding to him the system of Fourier and the Darwinian theory,
but of late Pyotr Petrovitch began to listen too sarcastically and
even to be rude. The fact was he had begun instinctively to guess that
Lebeziatnikov was not merely a commonplace simpleton, but, perhaps,
a liar, too, and that he had no connections of any consequence even in
his own circle, but had simply picked things up third-hand; and that
very likely he did not even know much about his own work of
propaganda, for he was in too great a muddle. A fine person he would
be to show any one up! It must be noted, by the way, that Pyotr
Petrovitch had during those ten days eagerly accepted the strangest
praise from Andrey Semyonovitch; he had not protested, for instance,
when Andrey Semyonovitch belauded him for being ready to contribute to
the establishment of the new "commune," or to abstain from christening
his future children, or to acquiesce if Dounia were to take a lover
a month after marriage, and so on. Pyotr Petrovitch so enjoyed hearing
his own praises that he did not disdain even such virtues when they
were attributed to him.
Pyotr Petrovitch had had occasion that morning to realise some
five per cent. bonds and now he sat down to the table and counted over
bundles of notes. Andrey Semyonovitch who hardly ever had any money
walked about the room pretending to himself to look at all those
bank notes with indifference and even contempt. Nothing would have
convinced Pyotr Petrovitch that Andrey Semyonovitch could really
look on the money unmoved, and the latter, on his side, kept
thinking bitterly that Pyotr Petrovitch was capable of entertaining
such an idea about him and was, perhaps, glad of the opportunity of
teasing his young friend by reminding him of his inferiority and the
great difference between them.
He found him incredibly inattentive and irritable, though he, Andrey
Semyonovitch, began enlarging on his favourite subject, the foundation
of a new special "commune." The brief remarks that dropped from
Pyotr Petrovitch between the clicking of the beads on the reckoning
frame betrayed unmistakable and discourteous irony. But the "humane"
Andrey Semyonovitch ascribed Pyotr Petrovitch's ill-humour to his
recent breach with Dounia and he was burning with impatience to
discourse on that theme. He had something progressive to say on the
subject which might console his worthy friend and "could not fail"
to promote his development.
"There is some sort of festivity being prepared at that... at the
widow's, isn't there?" Pyotr Petrovitch asked suddenly, interrupting
Andrey Semyonovitch at the most interesting passage.
"Why, don't you know? Why, I was telling you last night what I think
about all such ceremonies. And she invited you too, I heard. You
were talking to her yesterday..."
"I should never have expected that beggarly fool would have spent on
this feast all the money she got from that other fool, Raskolnikov.
I was surprised just now as I came through at the preparations
there, the wines! Several people are invited. It's beyond everything!"
continued Pyotr Petrovitch, who seemed to have some object in pursuing
the conversation. "What? You say I am asked too? When was that? I
don't remember. But I shan't go. Why should I? I only said a word to
her in passing yesterday of the possibility of her obtaining a
year's salary as a destitute widow of a government clerk. I suppose
she has invited me on that account, hasn't she? He-he-he!"
"I don't intend to go either," said Lebeziatnikov.
"I should think not, after giving her a thrashing! You might well
hesitate, he-he!"
"Who thrashed? Whom?" cried Lebeziatnikov, flustered and blushing.
"Why, you thrashed Katerina Ivanovna a month ago. I heard so
yesterday... so that's what your convictions amount to... and the
woman question, too, wasn't quite sound, he-he-he!" and Pyotr
Petrovitch, as though comforted, went back to clicking his beads.
"It's all slander and nonsense!" cried Lebeziatnikov, who was always
afraid of allusions to the subject. "It was not like that at all, it
was quite different. You've heard it wrong; it's a libel. I was simply
defending myself. She rushed at me first with her nails, she pulled
out all my whiskers.... It's permissable for any one I should hope
to defend himself and I never allow any one to use violence to me on
principle, for it's an act of despotism. What was I to do? I simply
pushed her back."
"He-he-he!" Luzhin went on laughing maliciously.
"You keep on like that because you are out of humour yourself....
But that's nonsense and it has nothing, nothing whatever to do with
the woman question! You don't understand; I used to think, indeed,
that if women are equal to men in all respects even in strength (as is
maintained now) there ought to be equality in that, too. Of course,
I reflected afterwards that such a question ought not really to arise,
for there ought not to be fighting and in the future society, fighting
is unthinkable... and that it would be a queer thing to seek for
equality in fighting. I am not so stupid... though, of course, there
is fighting... there won't be later, but at present there is...
confound it! How muddled one gets with you! It's not on that account
that I am not going. I am not going on principle, not to take part
in the revolting convention of memorial dinners, that's why! Though,
of course, one might go to laugh at it.... I am sorry there won't be
any priests at it. I should certainly go if there were."
"Then you would sit down at another man's table and insult it and
those who invited you. Eh?"
"Certainly not insult, but protest. I should do it with a good
object. I might indirectly assist the cause of enlightenment and
propaganda. It's a duty of every man to work for enlightenment and
propaganda and the more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a
seed, an idea.... And something might grow up from that seed. How
should I be insulting them? They might be offended at first, but
afterwards they'd see I'd done them a service. You know, Terebyeva
(who is in the community now) was blamed because when she left her
family and... devoted... herself, she wrote to her father and mother
that she wouldn't go on living conventionally and was entering on a
free marriage and it was said that that was too harsh, that she
might have spared them and have written more kindly. I think that's
all nonsense and there's no need of softness, on the contrary,
what's wanted is protest. Varents had been married seven years, she
abandoned her two children, she told her husband straight out in a
letter: 'I have realised that I cannot be happy with you. I can
never forgive you that you have deceived me by concealing from me that
there is another organisation of society by means of the
communities. I have only lately learned it from a great-hearted man to
whom I have given myself and with whom I am establishing a
community. I speak plainly because I consider it dishonest to
deceive you. Do as you think best. Do not hope to get me back, you are
too late. I hope you will be happy.' That's how letters like that
ought to be written!"
"Is that Terebyeva the one you said had made a third free marriage?"
"No, it's only the second, really! But what if it were the fourth,
what if it were the fifteenth, that's all nonsense! And if ever I
regretted the death of my father and mother, it is now, and I
sometimes think if my parents were living what a protest I would
have aimed at them! I would have done something on purpose... I
would have shown them! I would have astonished them! I am really sorry
there is no one!"
"To surprise! He-he! Well, be that as you will," Pyotr Petrovitch
interrupted, "but tell me this; do you know the dead man's daughter,
the delicate-looking little thing? It's true what they say about
her, isn't it?"
"What of it? I think, that is, it is my own personal conviction,
that this is the normal condition of women. Why not? I mean,
distinguons. In our present society, it is not altogether normal,
because it is compulsory, but in the future society, it will be
perfectly normal, because it will be voluntary. Even as it is, she was
quite right: she was suffering and that was her asset, so to speak,
her capital which she had a perfect right to dispose of. Of course, in
the future society, there will be no need of assets, but her part will
have another significance, rational and in harmony with her
environment. As to Sofya Semyonovna personally, I regard her action as
a vigorous protest against the organization of society, and I
respect her deeply for it; I rejoice indeed when I look at her!"
"I was told that you got her turned out of these lodgings."
Lebeziatnikov was enraged.
"That's another slander," he yelled. "It was not so at all! That was
all Katerina Ivanovna's invention, for she did not understand! And I
never made love to Sofya Semyonovna! I was simply developing her,
entirely disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest.... All I
wanted was her protest and Sofya Semyonovna could not have remained
here anyway!"
"Have you asked her to join your community?"
"You keep on laughing and very inappropriately, allow me to tell
you. You don't understand! There is no such role in a community. The
community is established that there should be no such roles. In a
community, such a role is essentially transformed and what is stupid
here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural
becomes perfectly natural in the community. It all depends on the
environment. It's all the environment and man himself is nothing.
And I am on good terms with Sofya Semyonovna to this day, which is a
proof that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying
now to attract her to the community, but on quite, quite a different
footing. What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a
community of our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have
gone further in our convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I'm
still developing Sofya Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful
character!"
"And you take advantage of her fine character, eh? He-he!"
"No, no! Oh, no! On the contrary."
"Oh, on the contrary! He-he-he! A queer thing to say!"
"Believe me! Why should I disguise it? In fact, I feel it strange
myself how timid, chaste and modern she is with me!"
"And you, of course, are developing her... he-he! trying to prove to
her that all that modesty is nonsense?"
"Not at all, not at all! How coarsely, how stupidly- excuse me
saying so- you misunderstand the word development! Good heavens,
how... crude you still are! We are striving for the freedom of women
and you have only one idea in your head.... Setting aside the
general question of chastity and feminine modesty as useless in
themselves and indeed prejudices, I fully accept her chastity with me,
because that's for her to decide. Of course if she were to tell me
herself that she wanted me, I should think myself very lucky,
because I like the girl very much; but as it is, no one has ever
treated her more courteously than I, with more respect for her
dignity... I wait in hopes, that's all!"
"You had much better make her a present of something. I bet you
never thought of that."
"You don't understand, as I've told you already! Of course, she is
in such a position, but it's another question. Quite another question!
You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider
deserving of contempt, you refuse to take a humane view of a fellow
creature. You don't know what a character she is! I am only sorry that
of late she has quite given up reading and borrowing books. I used
to lend them to her. I am sorry, too, that with all the energy and
resolution in protesting- which she has already shown once- she has
little self-reliance, little, so to say, independence, so as to
break free from certain prejudices and certain foolish ideas. Yet
she thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about
kissing of hands, that is, that it's an insult to a woman for a man to
kiss her hand, because it's a sign of inequality. We had a debate
about it and I described it to her. She listened attentively to an
account of the workmen's associations in France, too. Now I am
explaining the question of coming into the room in the future
society."
"And what's that, pray?"
"We had a debate lately on the question: Has a member of the
community the right to enter another member's room, whether man or
woman at any time... and we decided that he has!"
"It might be at an inconvenient moment, he-he!"
Lebeziatnikov was really angry.
"You are always thinking of something unpleasant," he cried with
aversion. "Tfoo! How vexed I am that when I was expounding our system,
I referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It's
always a stumbling-block to people like you, they turn into ridicule
before they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Tfoo!
I've often maintained that that question should not be approached by a
novice till he has a firm faith in the system. And tell me, please,
what do you find so shameful even in cesspools? I should be the
first to be ready to clean out any cesspool you like. And it's not a
question of self-sacrifice, it's simply work, honourable, useful
work which is as good as any other and much better than the work of
a Raphael and a Pushkin, because it is more useful."
"And more honourable, more honourable, he-he-he!"
"What do you mean by 'more honourable'? I don't understand such
expressions to describe human activity. 'More honourable,' 'nobler'-
all those are old-fashioned prejudices which I reject. Everything
which is of use to mankind is honourable. I only understand one
word: useful! You can snigger as much as you like, but that's so!"
Pyotr Petrovitch laughed heartily. He had finished counting the
money and was putting it away. But some of the notes he left on the
table. The "cesspool question" had already been a subject of dispute
between them. What was absurd was that it made Lebeziatnikov really
angry, while it amused Luzhin and at that moment he particularly
wanted to anger his young friend.
"It's your ill-luck yesterday that makes you so ill-humoured and
annoying," blurted out Lebeziatnikov, who in spite of his
"independence" and his "protests" did not venture to oppose Pyotr
Petrovitch and still behaved to him with some of the respect
habitual in earlier years.
"You'd better tell me this," Pyotr Petrovitch interrupted with
haughty displeasure, "can you... or rather are you really friendly
enough with that young person to ask her to step in here for a minute?
I think they've all come back from the cemetery... I hear the sound of
steps... I want to see her, that young person."
"What for?" Lebeziatnikov asked with surprise.
"Oh, I want to. I am leaving here to-day or to-morrow and
therefore I wanted to speak to her about... However, you may be
present during the interview. It's better you should be, indeed. For
there's no knowing what you might imagine."
"I shan't imagine anything. I only asked and, if you've anything
to say to her, nothing is easier than to call her in. I'll go directly
and you may be sure I won't be in your way."
Five minutes later Lebeziatnikov came in with Sonia. She came in
very much surprised and overcome with shyness as usual. She was always
shy in such circumstances and was always afraid of new people, she had
been as a child and was even more so now.... Pyotr Petrovitch met
her "politely and affably," but with a certain shade of bantering
familiarity which in his opinion was suitable for a man of his
respectability and weight in dealing with a creature so young and so
interesting as she. He hastened to "reassure" her and made her sit
down facing him at the table. Sonia sat down, looked about her- at
Lebeziatnikov, at the notes lying on the table and then again at Pyotr
Petrovitch and her eyes remained riveted on him. Lebeziatnikov was
moving to the door. Pyotr Petrovitch signed to Sonia to remain
seated and stopped Lebeziatnikov.
"Is Raskolnikov in there? Has he come?" he asked him in a whisper.
"Raskolnikov? Yes. Why? Yes, he is there. I saw him just come in....
Why?"
"Well, I particularly beg you to remain here with us and not to
leave me alone with this... young woman. I only want a few words
with her, but God knows what they may make of it. I shouldn't like
Raskolnikov to repeat anything.... You understand what I mean?"
"I understand!" Lebeziatnikov saw the point. "Yes, you are right....
Of course, I am convinced personally that you have no reason to be
uneasy, but... still, you are right. Certainly I'll stay. I'll stand
here at the window and not be in your way... I think you are
right..."
Pyotr Petrovitch returned to the sofa, sat down opposite Sonia,
looked attentively at her and assumed an extremely dignified, even
severe expression, as much as to say, "don't you make any mistake,
madam." Sonia was overwhelmed with embarrassment.
"In the first place, Sofya Semyonovna, will you make my excuses to
your respected mamma.... That's right, isn't it? Katerina Ivanovna
stands in the place of a mother to you?" Pyotr Petrovitch began with
great dignity, though affably.
It was evident that his intentions were friendly.
"Quite so, yes; the place of a mother," Sonia answered, timidly
and hurriedly.
"Then will you make my apologies to her? Through inevitable
circumstances I am forced to be absent and shall not be at the
dinner in spite of your mamma's kind invitation."
"Yes... I'll tell her... at once."
And Sonia hastily jumped up from her seat.
"Wait, that's not all," Pyotr Petrovitch detained her, smiling at
her simplicity and ignorance of good manners, "and you know me little,
my dear Sofya Semyonovna, if you suppose I would have ventured to
trouble a person like you for a matter of so little consequence
affecting myself only. I have another object."
Sonia sat down hurriedly. Her eyes rested again for an instant on
the grey and rainbow-coloured notes that remained on the table, but
she quickly looked away and fixed her eyes on Pyotr Petrovitch. She
felt it horribly indecorous, especially for her, to look at another
person's money. She stared at the gold eyeglass which Pyotr Petrovitch
held in his left hand and at the massive and extremely handsome ring
with a yellow stone on his middle finger. But suddenly she looked away
and, not knowing where to turn, ended by staring Pyotr Petrovitch
again straight in the face. After a pause of still greater dignity
he continued.
"I chanced yesterday in passing to exchange a couple of words with
Katerina Ivanovna, poor woman. That was sufficient to enable me to
ascertain that she is in a position- preternatural, if one may so
express it."
"Yes... preternatural..." Sonia hurriedly assented.
"Or it would be simpler and more comprehensible to say, ill."
"Yes, simpler and more comprehen... yes, ill."
"Quite so. So then from a feeling of humanity and so to speak
compassion, I should be glad to be of service to her in any way,
foreseeing her unfortunate position. I believe the whole of this
poverty-stricken family depends now entirely on you?"
"Allow me to ask," Sonia rose to her feet, "did you say something to
her yesterday of the possibility of a pension? Because she told me you
had undertaken to get her one. Was that true?"
"Not in the slightest, and indeed it's an absurdity! I merely hinted
at her obtaining temporary assistance as the widow of an official
who had died in the service- if only she has patronage... but
apparently your late parent had not served his full term and had not
indeed been in the service at all of late. In fact, if there could
be any hope, it would be very ephemeral, because there would be no
claim for assistance in that case, far from it.... And she is dreaming
of a pension already, he-he-he!... A go-ahead lady!"
"Yes, she is. For she is credulous and good-hearted, and she
believes everything from the goodness of her heart and... and... and
she is like that... yes... You must excuse her," said Sonia, and again
she got up to go.
"But you haven't heard what I have to say."
"No, I haven't heard," muttered Sonia.
"Then sit down." She was terribly confused; she sat down again a
third time.
"Seeing her position with her unfortunate little ones, I should be
glad, as I have said before, so far as lies in my power, to be of
service, that is, so far as is in my power, not more. One might for
instance get up a subscription for her, or a lottery, something of the
sort, such as is always arranged in such cases by friends or even
outsiders desirous of assisting people. It was of that I intended to
speak to you; it might be done."
"Yes, yes... God will repay you for it," faltered Sonia, gazing
intently at Pyotr Petrovitch.
"It might be, but we will talk of it later. We might begin it
to-day, we will talk it over this evening and lay the foundation so to
speak. Come to me at seven o'clock. Mr. Lebeziatnikov, I hope, will
assist us. But there is one circumstance of which I ought to warn
you beforehand and for which I venture to trouble you, Sofya
Semyonovna, to come here. In my opinion money cannot be, indeed it's
unsafe to put it into Katerina Ivanovna's own hands. The dinner to-day
is a proof of that. Though she has not, so to speak, a crust of
bread for to-morrow and... well, boots or shoes, or anything; she
has bought to-day Jamaica rum, and even, I believe, Madeira and... and
coffee. I saw it as I passed through. To-morrow it will all fall
upon you again, they won't have a crust of bread. It's absurd, really,
and so, to my thinking, a subscription ought to be raised so that
the unhappy widow should not know of the money, but only you, for
instance. Am I right?"
"I don't know... this is only to-day, once in her life.... She was
so anxious to do honour, to celebrate the memory.... And she is very
sensible... but just as you think and I shall be very, very... they
will all be... and God will reward... and the orphans..."
Sonia burst into tears.
"Very well, then, keep it in mind; and now will you accept for the
benefit of your relation the small sum that I am able to spare, from
me personally. I am very anxious that my name should not be
mentioned in connection with it. Here... having so to speak
anxieties of my own, I cannot do more..."
And Pyotr Petrovitch held out to Sonia a ten-rouble note carefully
unfolded. Sonia took it, flushed crimson, jumped up, muttered
something and began taking leave. Pyotr Petrovitch accompanied her
ceremoniously to the door. She got out of the room at last, agitated
and distressed, and returned to Katerina Ivanovna, overwhelmed with
confusion.
All this time Lebeziatnikov had stood at the window or walked
about the room, anxious not to interrupt the conversation; when
Sonia had gone he walked up to Pyotr Petrovitch and solemnly held
out his hand.
"I heard and saw everything," he said, laying stress on the last
verb. "That is honourable, I mean to say, it's humane! You wanted to
avoid gratitude, I saw! And although I cannot, I confess, in principle
sympathise with private charity, for it not only fails to eradicate
the evil but even promotes it, yet I must admit that I saw your action
with pleasure- yes, yes, I like it."
"That's all nonsense," muttered Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat
disconcerted, looking carefully at Lebeziatnikov.
"No, it's not nonsense! A man who has suffered distress and
annoyance as you did yesterday and who yet can sympathise with the
misery of others, such a man... even though he is making a social
mistake- is still deserving of respect! I did not expect it indeed
of you, Pyotr Petrovitch, especially as according to your ideas... oh,
what a drawback your ideas are to you! How distressed you are for
instance by your ill luck yesterday," cried the simple-hearted
Lebeziatnikov, who felt a return of affection for Pyotr Petrovitch.
"And, what do you want with marriage, with legal marriage, my dear,
noble Pyotr Petrovitch? Why do you cling to this legality of marriage?
Well, you may beat me if you like, but I am glad, positively glad it
hasn't come off, that you are free, that you are not quite lost for
humanity.... you see, I've spoken my mind!"
"Because I don't want in your free marriage to be made a fool of and
to bring up another man's children, that's why I want legal marriage,"
Luzhin replied in order to make some answer.
He seemed preoccupied by something.
"Children? You referred to children," Lebeziatnikov started off like
a warhorse at the trumpet call. "Children are a social question and
a question of first importance, I agree; but the question of
children has another solution. Some refuse to have children
altogether, because they suggest the institution of the family.
We'll speak of children later, but now as to the question of honour, I
confess that's my weak point. That horrid, military, Pushkin
expression is unthinkable in the dictionary of the future. What does
it mean indeed? It's nonsense, there will be no deception in a free
marriage! That is only the natural consequence of a legal marriage, so
to say, its corrective, a protest. So that indeed it's not
humiliating... and if I ever, to suppose an absurdity, were to be
legally married, I should be positively glad of it. I should say to my
wife: 'My dear, hitherto I have loved you, now I respect you, for
you've shown you can protest!' You laugh! That's because you are of
incapable of getting away from prejudices. Confound it all! I
understand now where the unpleasantness is of being deceived in a
legal marriage, but it's simply a despicable consequence of a
despicable position in which both are humiliated. When the deception
is open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it's
unthinkable. Your wife will only prove how she respects you by
considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging
yourself on her for her new husband. Damn it all! I sometimes dream if
I were to be married, foo! I mean if I were to marry, legally or
not, it's just the same, I should present my wife with a lover if
she had not found one for herself. 'My dear,' I should say, 'I love
you, but even more than that I desire you to respect me. See!' Am I
not right?"
Pyotr Petrovitch sniggered as he listened, but without much
merriment. He hardly heard it indeed. He was preoccupied with
something else and even Lebeziatnikov at last noticed it. Pyotr
Petrovitch seemed excited and rubbed his hands. Lebeziatnikov
remembered all this and reflected upon it afterwards.
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
IT WOULD be difficult to explain exactly what could have
originated the idea of that senseless dinner in Katerina Ivanovna's
disordered brain. Nearly ten of the twenty roubles, given by
Raskolnikov for Marmeladov's funeral, were wasted upon it. Possibly
Katerina Ivanovna felt obliged to honour the memory of the deceased
"suitably," that all the lodgers, and still more Amalia Ivanovna,
might know "that he was in no way their inferior, and perhaps very
much their superior," and that no one had the right "to turn up his
nose at him." Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar "poor
man's pride," which compels many poor people to spend their last
savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do
"like other people," and not to "be looked down upon." It is very
probable, too, that Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at
the moment when she seemed to be abandoned by every one, to show those
"wretched contemptible lodgers" that she knew "how to do things, how
to entertain" and that she had been brought up "in a genteel, she
might almost say aristocratic colonel's family" and had not been meant
for sweeping floors and washing the children's rags at night. Even the
poorest and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to
these paroxysms of pride and vanity which take the form of an
irresistible nervous craving. And Katerina Ivanovna was not
broken-spirited; she might have been killed by circumstance, but her
spirit could not have been broken, that is, she could not have been
intimidated, her will could not be crushed. Moreover Sonia had said
with good reason that her mind was unhinged. She could not be said
to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that her
mind might well be overstrained. The later stages of consumption are
apt, doctors tell us, to affect the intellect.
There was no great variety of wines, nor was there Madeira; but wine
there was. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon wine, all of the poorest
quality but in sufficient quantity. Besides the traditional rice and
honey, there were three or four dishes, one of which consisted of
pancakes, all prepared in Amalia Ivanovna's kitchen. Two samovars were
boiling, that tea and punch might be offered after dinner. Katerina
Ivanovna had herself seen to purchasing the provisions, with the
help of one of the lodgers, an unfortunate little Pole who had somehow
been stranded at Madame Lippevechsel's. He promptly put himself at
Katerina Ivanovna's disposal and had been all that morning and all the
day before running about as fast as his legs could carry him, and very
anxious that every one should be aware of it. For every trifle he
ran to Katerina Ivanovna, even hunting her out at the bazaar, at every
instant called her "Pani." She was heartily sick of him before the
end, though she had declared at first that she could not have got on
without this "serviceable and magnanimous man." It was one of Katerina
Ivanovna's characteristics to paint every one she met in the most
glowing colours. Her praises were so exaggerated as sometimes to be
embarrassing; she would invent various circumstances to the credit
of her new acquaintance and quite genuinely believe in their
reality. Then all of a sudden she would be disillusioned and would
rudely and contemptuously repulse the person she had only a few
hours before been literally adoring. She was naturally of a gay,
lively and peace-loving disposition, but from continual failures and
misfortunes she had come to desire so keenly that all should live in
peace and joy and should not dare to break the peace, that the
slightest jar, the smallest disaster reduced her almost to frenzy, and
she would pass in an instant from the brightest hopes and fancies to
cursing her fate and raving, and knocking her head against the wall.
Amalia Ivanovna, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance
in Katerina Ivanovna's eyes and was treated by her with
extraordinary respect, probably only because Amalia Ivanovna had
thrown herself heart and soul into the preparations. She had
undertaken to lay the table, to provide the linen, crockery, &c.,
and to cook the dishes in her kitchen, and Katerina Ivanovna had
left it all in her hands and gone herself to the cemetery.
Everything had been well done. Even the tablecloth was nearly clean;
the crockery, knives, forks and glasses were, of course, of all shapes
and patterns, lent by different lodgers, but the table was properly
laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Ivanovna, feeling she had done
her work well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new
mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some pride. This
pride, though justifiable, displeased Katerina Ivanovna for some
reason: "as though the table could not have been laid except by Amalia
Ivanovna!" She disliked the cap with new ribbons, too. "Could she be
stuck up, the stupid German, because she was mistress of the house,
and had consented as a favour to help her poor lodgers! As a favour!
Fancy that! Katerina Ivanovna's father who had been a colonel and
almost a governor had sometimes had the table set for forty persons,
and then any one like Amalia Ivanovna, or rather Ludwigovna, would not
have been allowed into the kitchen."
Katerina Ivanovna, however, put off expressing her feelings for
the time and contented herself with treating her coldly, though she
decided inwardly that she would certainly have to put Amalia
Ivanovna down and set her in her proper place, for goodness only
knew what she was fancying herself. Katerina Ivanovna was irritated
too by the fact that hardly any of the lodgers invited had come to the
funeral, except the Pole who had just managed to run into the
cemetery, while to the memorial dinner the poorest and most
insignificant of them had turned up, the wretched creatures, many of
them not quite sober. The older and more respectable of them all, as
if by common consent, stayed away. Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin, for
instance, who might be said to be the most respectable of all the
lodgers, did not appear, though Katerina Ivanovna had the evening
before told all the world, that is Amalia Ivanovna, Polenka, Sonia and
the Pole, that he was the most generous, noble-hearted man with a
large property and vast connections, who had been a friend of her
first husband's, and a guest in her father's house, and that he had
promised to use all his influence to secure her a considerable
pension. It must be noted that when Katerina Ivanovna exalted any
one's connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior motive,
quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of adding to the
consequence of the person praised. Probably "taking his cue" from
Luzhin, "that contemptible wretch Lebeziatnikov had not turned up
either. What did he fancy himself? He was only asked out of kindness
and because he was sharing the same room with Pyotr Petrovitch and was
a friend of his, so that it would have been awkward not to invite
him."
Among those who failed to appear were "the genteel lady and her
old-maidish daughter," who had only been lodgers in the house for
the last fortnight, but had several times complained of the noise
and uproar in Katerina Ivanovna's room, especially when Marmeladov had
come back drunk. Katerina Ivanovna heard this from Amalia Ivanovna
who, quarrelling with Katerina Ivanovna, and threatening to turn the
whole family out of doors, had shouted at her that they "were not
worth the foot" of the honourable lodgers whom they were disturbing.
Katerina Ivanovna determined now to invite this lady and her daughter,
"whose foot she was not worth," and who had turned away haughtily when
she casually met them, so that they might know that "she was more
noble in her thoughts and feelings and did not harbour malice," and
might see that she was not accustomed to her way of living. She had
proposed to make this clear to them at dinner with allusions to her
late father's governorship, and also at the same time to hint that
it was exceedingly stupid of them to turn away on meeting her. The fat
colonel-major (he was really a discharged officer of low rank) was
also absent, but it appeared that he had been "not himself" for the
last two days. The party consisted of the Pole, a wretched looking
clerk with a spotty face and a greasy coat, who had not a word to
say for himself, and smelt abominably, a deaf and almost blind old man
who had once been in the post office and who had been from
immemorial ages maintained by some one at Amalia Ivanovna's.
A retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was
drunk, had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy- was
without a waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the
table without even greeting Katerina Ivanovna. Finally one person
having no suit appeared in his dressing gown, but this was too much,
and the efforts of Amalia Ivanovna and the Pole succeeded in
removing him. The Pole brought with him, however, two other Poles
who did not live at Amalia Ivanovna's and whom no one had seen here
before. All this irritated Katerina Ivanovna intensely. "For whom
had they made all these preparations then?" To make room for the
visitors the children had not even been laid for at the table; but the
two little ones were sitting on a bench in the furthest corner with
their dinner laid on a box, while Polenka as a big girl had to look
after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like well-bred
children's.
Katerina Ivanovna, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests
with increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of
them with special severity, and loftily invited them to take their
seats. Rushing to the conclusion that Amalia Ivanovna must be
responsible for those who were absent, she began treating her with
extreme nonchalance, which the latter promptly observed and
resented. Such a beginning was no good omen for the end. All were
seated at last.
Raskolnikov came in almost at the moment of their return from the
cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly delighted to see him, in the
first place, because he was the one "educated visitor, and, as every
one knew, was in two years to take a professorship in the university,"
and secondly because he immediately and respectfully apologised for
having been unable to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon
him, and made him sit on her left hand (Amalia Ivanovna was on her
right). In spite of her continual anxiety that the dishes should be
passed round correctly and that every one should taste them, in
spite of the agonising cough which interrupted her every minute and
seemed to have grown worse during the last few days she hastened to
pour out in a half whisper to Raskolnikov all her suppressed
feelings and her just indignation at the failure of the dinner,
interspersing her remarks with lively and uncontrollable laughter at
the expense of her visitors and especially of her landlady.
"It's all that cuckoo's fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!"
Katerina Ivanovna nodded towards the landlady. "Look at her, she's
making round eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can't
understand. Pfoo, the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does
she put on that cap for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that
she wants every one to consider that she is patronising me and doing
me an honour by being here? I asked her like a sensible woman to
invite people, especially those who knew my late husband, and look
at the set of fools she has brought! The sweeps! Look at that one with
the spotty face. And those wretched Poles, ha-ha-ha!
(Cough-cough-cough.) Not one of them has ever poked his nose in
here, I've never set eyes on them. What have they come here for, I ask
you? There they sit in a row. Hey, Pan!" she cried suddenly to one
of them, "have you tasted the pancakes? Take some more! Have some
beer! Won't you have some vodka? Look, he's jumped up and is making
his bows, they must be quite starved, poor things. Never mind, let
them eat! They don't make a noise, anyway, though I'm really afraid
for our landlady's silver spoons... Amalia Ivanovna!" she addressed
her suddenly, almost aloud, "if your spoons should happen to be
stolen, I won't be responsible, I warn you! Ha-ha-ha!" She laughed
turning to Raskolnikov, and again nodding towards the landlady, in
high glee at her sally. "She didn't understand, she didn't
understand again! Look how she sits with her mouth open! An owl, a
real owl! An owl in new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!"
Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing
that lasted five minutes. Drops of perspiration stood out on her
forehead and her handkerchief was stained with blood. She showed
Raskolnikov the blood in silence, and as soon as she could get her
breath began whispering to him again with extreme animation and a
hectic flush on her cheeks.
"Do you know, I gave her the most delicate instructions, so to
speak, for inviting that lady and her daughter, you understand of whom
I am speaking? It needed the utmost delicacy, the greatest nicety, but
she has managed things so that that fool, that conceited baggage, that
provincial nonentity, simply because she is the widow of a major,
and has come to try and get a pension and to fray out her skirts in
the government offices, because at fifty she paints her face
(everybody knows it)... a creature like that did not think fit to
come, and has not even answered the invitation, which the most
ordinary good manners required! I can't understand why Pyotr
Petrovitch has not come! But where's Sonia? Where has she gone? Ah,
there she is at last! what is it, Sonia, where have you been? It's odd
that even at your father's funeral you should be so unpunctual. Rodion
Romanovitch, make room for her beside you. That's your place, Sonia...
take what you like. Have some of the cold entree with jelly, that's
the best. They'll bring the pancakes directly. Have they given the
children some? Polenka, have you got everything?
(Cough-cough-cough.) That's all right. Be a good girl, Lida, and,
Kolya, don't fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman.
What are you saying, Sonia?"
Sonia hastened to give her Pyotr Petrovitch's apologies, trying to
speak loud enough for every one to hear and carefully choosing the
most respectful phrases which she attributed to Pyotr Petrovitch.
She added that Pyotr Petrovitch had particularly told her to say that,
as soon as he possibly could, he would come immediately to discuss
business alone with her and to consider what could be done for her,
&c., &c.
Sonia knew that this would comfort Katerina Ivanovna, would
flatter her and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Raskolnikov;
she made him a hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the
rest of the time she seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to
him. She seemed absent-minded, though she kept looking at Katerina
Ivanovna, trying to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna
had been able to get mourning; Sonia was wearing dark brown, and
Katerina Ivanovna had on her only dress, a dark striped cotton one.
The message from Pyotr Petrovitch was very successful. Listening
to Sonia with dignity, Katerina Ivanovna inquired with equal dignity
how Pyotr Petrovitch was, then at once whispered almost aloud to
Raskolnikov that it certainly would have been strange for a man of
Pyotr Petrovitch's position and standing to find himself in such
"extraordinary company," in spite of his devotion to her family and
his old friendship with her father.
"That's why I am so grateful to you, Rodion Romanovitch, that you
have not disdained my hospitality, even in such surroundings," she
added almost aloud. "But I am sure that it was only your special
affection for my poor husband that has made you keep your promise."
Then once more with pride and dignity she scanned her visitors,
and suddenly inquired aloud across the table of the deaf man:
"wouldn't he have some more meat, and had he been given some wine?"
The old man made no answer and for a long while could not understand
what he was asked, though his neighbours amused themselves by poking
and shaking him. He simply gazed about him with his mouth open,
which only increased the general mirth.
"What an imbecile! Look, look! Why was he brought? But as to Pyotr
Petrovitch, I always had confidence in him," Katerina Ivanovna
continued, "and, of course, he is not like..." with an extremely stern
face she addressed Amalia Ivanovna so sharply and loudly that the
latter was quite disconcerted, "not like your dressed up
draggletails whom my father would not have taken as cooks into his
kitchen, and my late husband would have done them honour if he had
invited them in the goodness of his heart."
"Yes, he was fond of drink, he was fond of it, he did drink!"
cried the commissariat clerk, gulping down his twelfth glass of vodka.
"My late husband certainly had that weakness, and every one knows
it," Katerina Ivanovna attacked him at once, "but he was a kind and
honourable man, who loved and respected his family. The worst of it
was his good nature made him trust all sorts of disreputable people,
and he drank with fellows who were not worth the sole of his shoe.
Would you believe it, Rodion Romanovitch, they found a gingerbread
cock in his pocket; he was dead drunk, but he did not forget the
children!"
"A cock? Did you say a cock?" shouted the commissariat clerk.
Katerina Ivanovna did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in
thought.
"No doubt you think, like every one, that I was too severe with
him," she went on, addressing Raskolnikov. "But that's not so! He
respected me, he respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man!
And how sorry I was for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and
look at me, I used to feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind
to him and then would think to myself: 'be kind to him and he will
drink again,' it was only by severity that you could keep him within
bounds."
"Yes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often," roared the
commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka.
"Some fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as
having their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!"
Katerina Ivanovna snapped at him.
The flush on her cheeks grew more and more marked, her chest heaved.
In another minute she would have been ready to make a scene. Many of
the visitors were sniggering, evidently delighted. They began poking
the commissariat clerk and whispering something to him. They were
evidently trying to egg him on.
"Allow me to ask what are you alluding to," began the clerk, "that
is to say, whose... about whom... did you say just now... But I
don't care! That's nonsense! Widow! I forgive you.... Pass!"
And he took another drink of vodka.
Raskolnikov sat in silence, listening with disgust. He only ate from
politeness, just tasting the food that Katerina Ivanovna was
continually putting on his plate, to avoid hurting her feelings. He
watched Sonia intently. But Sonia became more and more anxious and
distressed; she, too, foresaw that the dinner would not end peaceably,
and saw with terror Katerina Ivanovna's growing irritation. She knew
that she, Sonia, was the chief reason for the 'genteel' ladies'
contemptuous treatment of Katerina Ivanovna's invitation. She had
heard from Amalia Ivanovna that the mother was positively offended
at the invitation and had asked the question: "how could she let her
daughter sit down beside that young person?" Sonia had a feeling
that Katerina Ivanovna had already heard this and an insult to Sonia
meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than an insult to herself, her
children, or her father, Sonia knew that Katerina Ivanovna would not
be satisfied now, "till she had shown those draggletails that they
were both..." To make matters worse some one passed Sonia, from the
other end of the table, a plate with two hearts pierced with an arrow,
cut out of black bread. Katerina Ivanovna flushed crimson and at
once said aloud across the table that the man who sent it was "a
drunken ass!"
Amalia Ivanovna was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time
deeply wounded by Katerina Ivanovna's haughtiness, and to restore
the good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she
began, apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of
hers "Karl from the chemist's," who was driving one night in a cab,
and that "the cabman wanted him to kill, and Karl very much begged him
not to kill, and wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from
fear pierced his heart." Though Katerina Ivanovna smiled, she observed
at once that Amalia Ivanovna ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian;
the latter was still more offended, and she retorted that her "Vater
aus Berlin was a very important man, and always went with his hands in
pockets." Katerina Ivanovna could not restrain herself and laughed
so much that Amalia Ivanovna lost patience and could scarcely
control herself.
"Listen to the owl!" Katerina Ivanovna whispered at once, her
good-humour almost restored, "she meant to say he kept his hands in
his pockets, but she said he put his hands in people's pockets.
(Cough-cough.) And have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that all
these Petersburg foreigners, the Germans especially, are all
stupider than we! Can you fancy any one of us telling how 'Karl from
the chemist's pierced his heart from fear' and that the idiot
instead of punishing the cabman, 'clasped his hands and wept, and much
begged.' Ah, the fool! And you know she fancies it's very touching and
does not suspect how stupid she is! To my thinking that drunken
commissariat clerk is a great deal cleverer, anyway one can see that
he has addled his brains with drink, but you know, these foreigners
are always so well behaved and serious.... Look how she sits
glaring! She is angry, ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.)"
Regaining her good-humour, Katerina Ivanovna began at once telling
Raskolnikov that when she had obtained her pension, she intended to
open a school for the daughters of gentlemen in her native town
T___. This was the first time she had spoken to him of the project,
and she launched out into the most alluring details. It suddenly
appeared that Katerina Ivanovna had in her hands the very
certificate of honour of which Marmeladov had spoken to Raskolnikov in
the tavern, when he told him that Katerina Ivanovna, his wife, had
danced the shawl dance before the governor and other great
personages on leaving school. This certificate of honour was obviously
intended now to prove Katerina Ivanovna's right to open a
boarding-school; but she had armed herself with it chiefly with the
object of overwhelming "those two stuck-up draggletails" if they
came to the dinner, and proving incontestably that Katerina Ivanovna
was of the most noble, "she might even say aristocratic family, a
colonel's daughter and was far superior to certain adventuresses who
have been so much to the fore of late." The certificate of honour
immediately passed into the hands of the drunken guests, and
Katerina Ivanovna did not try to retain it, for it actually
contained the statement en toutes lettres, that her father was of
the rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so that she
really was almost the daughter of a colonel.
Warming up, Katerina Ivanovna proceeded to enlarge on the peaceful
and happy life they would lead in T___, on the gymnasium teachers whom
she would engage to give lessons in her boarding-school, one a most
respectable old Frenchman, one Mangot, who had taught Katerina
Ivanovna herself in old days and was still living in T___, and would
no doubt teach in her school on moderate terms. Next she spoke of
Sonia who would go with her to T___ and help her in all her plans.
At this some one at the further end of the table gave a sudden guffaw.
Though Katerina Ivanovna tried to appear to be disdainfully
unaware of it, she raised her voice and began at once speaking with
conviction of Sonia's undoubted ability to assist her, of "her
gentleness, patience, devotion, generosity and good education,"
tapping Sonia on the cheek and kissing her warmly twice. Sonia flushed
crimson, and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly burst into tears,
immediately observing that she was "nervous and silly, that she was
too much upset, that it was time to finish, and as the dinner was
over, it was time to hand round the tea."
At that moment, Amalia Ivanovna, deeply aggrieved at taking no
part in the conversation, and not being listened to, made one last
effort, and with secret misgivings ventured on an exceedingly deep and
weighty observation, that "in the future boarding-school she would
have to pay particular attention to die Wasche, and that there
certainly must be a good Dame to look after the linen, and secondly
that the young ladies must not novels at night read."
Katerina Ivanovna, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well
as heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Amalia Ivanovna,
saying "she knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it
was the business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a
high-class boarding-school to look after die Wasche, and as for
novel reading, that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be
silent." Amalia Ivanovna fired up and getting angry observed that
she only "meant her good," and that "she had meant her very good," and
that "it was long since she had paid her Gold for the lodgings."
Katerina Ivanovna at once "set her down," saying that it was a lie
to say she wished her good, because only yesterday when her dead
husband was lying on the table, she had worried her about the
lodgings. To this Amalia Ivanovna very appropriately observed that she
had invited those ladies, but "those ladies had not come, because
those ladies are ladies and cannot come to a lady who is not a
lady." Katerina Ivanovna at once pointed out to her, that as she was a
slut she could not judge what made one really a lady. Amalia
Ivanovna at once declared that her "Vater aus Berlin was a very,
very important man, and both hands in pockets went, and always used to
say: poof! poof!" and she leapt up from the table to represent her
father, sticking her hands in her pockets, puffing her cheeks, and
uttering vague sounds resembling "poof! poof!" amid loud laughter from
all the lodgers, who purposely encouraged Amalia Ivanovna, hoping
for a fight.
But this was too much for Katerina Ivanovna, and she at once
declared, so that all could hear, that Amalia Ivanovna probably
never had a father, but was simply a drunken Petersburg Finn, and
had certainly once been a cook and probably something worse. Amalia
Ivanovna turned as red as a lobster and squealed that perhaps Katerina
Ivanovna never had a father, "but she had a vater aus Berlin and
that he wore a long coat and always said poof-poof-poof!"
Katerina Ivanovna observed contemptuously that all knew what her
family was and that on that very certificate of honour it was stated
in print that her father was a colonel, while Amalia Ivanovna's
father- if she really had one- was probably some Finnish milkman,
but that probably she never had a father at all, since it was still
uncertain whether her name was Amalia Ivanovna or Amalia Ludwigovna.
At this Amalia Ivanovna, lashed to fury, struck the table with her
fist, and shrieked that she was Amalia Ivanovna, and not Ludwigovna,
"that her Vater was named Johann and that he was a burgomeister, and
that Katerina Ivanovna's Vater was quite never a burgomeister."
Katerina Ivanovna rose from her chair, and with a stern and apparently
calm voice (though she was pale and her chest was heaving) observed
that "if she dared for one moment to set her contemptible wretch of
a father on a level with her papa, she, Katerina Ivanovna, would
tear her cap off her head and trample it under foot." Amalia
Ivanovna ran about the room, shouting at the top of her voice, that
she was mistress of the house and that Katerina Ivanovna should
leave the lodgings that minute; then she rushed for some reason to
collect the silver spoons from the table. There was a great outcry and
uproar, the children began crying. Sonia ran to restrain Katerina
Ivanovna, but when Amalia Ivanovna shouted something about "the yellow
ticket," Katerina Ivanovna pushed Sonia away, and rushed at the
landlady to carry out her threat.
At that minute the door opened, and Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin appeared
on the threshold. He stood scanning the party with severe and vigilant
eyes. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to him.
CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
"PYOTR PETROVITCH," she cried, "protect me... you at least! Make
this foolish woman understand that she can't behave like this to a
lady in misfortune... that there is a law for such things.... I'll
go to the governor-general himself.... She shall answer for it....
Remembering my father's hospitality protect these orphans."
"Allow me, madam.... Allow me." Pyotr Petrovitch waved her off.
"Your papa, as you are well aware, I had not the honour of knowing"
(some one laughed aloud) "and I do not intend to take part in your
everlasting squabbles with Amalia Ivanovna.... I have come here to
speak of my own affairs... and I want to have a word with your
stepdaughter, Sofya... Ivanovna, I think it is? Allow me to pass."
Pyotr Petrovitch, edging by her, went to the opposite corner where
Sonia was.
Katerina Ivanovna remained standing where she was, as though
thunderstruck. She could not understand how Pyotr Petrovitch could
deny having enjoyed her father's hospitility. Though she had
invented it herself, she believed in it firmly by this time. She was
struck too by the businesslike, dry and even contemptuously menacing
tone of Pyotr Petrovitch. All the clamour gradually died away at his
entrance. Not only was this "serious business man" strikingly
incongruous with the rest of the party, but it was evident, too,
that he had come upon some matter of consequence, that some
exceptional cause must have brought him and that therefore something
was going to happen. Raskolnikov, standing beside Sonia, moved aside
to let him pass; Pyotr Petrovitch did not seem to notice him. A minute
later Lebeziatnikov, too, appeared in the doorway; he did not come in,
but stood still, listening with marked interest, almost wonder, and
seemed for a time perplexed.
"Excuse me for possibly interrupting you, but it's a matter of
some importance," Pyotr Petrovitch observed, addressing the company
generally. "I am glad indeed to find other persons present. Amalia
Ivanovna, I humbly beg you as mistress of the house to pay careful
attention to what I have to say to Sofya Ivanovna. Sofya Ivanovna," he
went on, addressing Sonia, who was very much surprised and already
alarmed, "immediately after your visit I found that a hundred-rouble
note was missing from my table, in the room of my friend Mr.
Lebeziatnikov. If in any way whatever you know and will tell us
where it is now, I assure you on my word of honour and call all
present to witness that the matter shall end there. In the opposite
case I shall be compelled to have recourse to very serious measures
and then... you must blame yourself."
Complete silence reigned in the room. Even the crying children
were still. Sonia stood deadly pale, staring at Luzhin and unable to
say a word. She seemed not to understand. Some seconds passed.
"Well, how is it to be then?" asked Luzhin, looking intently at her.
"I don't know.... I know nothing about it," Sonia articulated
faintly at last.
"No, you know nothing?" Luzhin repeated and again he paused for some
seconds. "Think a moment, mademoiselle," he began severely, but still,
as it were, admonishing her. "Reflect, I am prepared to give you
time for consideration. Kindly observe this: if I were not so entirely
convinced I should not, you may be sure, with my experience venture to
accuse you so directly. Seeing that for such direct accusation
before witnesses, if false or even mistaken, I should myself in a
certain sense be made responsible, I am aware of that. This morning
I changed for my own purposes several five per cent. securities for
the sum of approximately three thousand roubles. The account is
noted down in my pocket-book. On my return home I proceeded to count
the money,- as Mr. Lebeziatnikov will bear witness- and after counting
two thousand three hundred roubles I put the rest in my pocket-book in
my coat pocket. About five hundred roubles remained on the table and
among them three notes of a hundred roubles each. At that moment you
entered (at my invitation)- and all the time you were present you were
exceedingly embarrassed; so that three times you jumped up in the
middle of the conversation and tried to make off. Mr. Lebeziatnikov
can bear witness to this. You yourself, mademoiselle, probably will
not refuse to confirm my statement that I invited you through Mr.
Lebeziatnikov, solely in order to discuss with you the hopeless and
destitute position of your relative, Katerina Ivanovna (whose dinner I
was unable to attend), and the advisability of getting up something of
the nature of a subscription, lottery or the like, for her benefit.
You thanked me and even shed tears. I describe all this as it took
place, primarily to recall it to your mind and secondly to show you
that not the slightest detail has escaped my recollection. Then I took
a ten-rouble note from the table and handed it to you by way of
first instalment on my part for the benefit of your relative. Mr.
Lebeziatnikov saw all this. Then I accompanied you to the door,- you
being still in the same state of embarrassment- after which, being
left alone with Mr. Lebeziatnikov I talked to him for ten minutes,-
then Mr. Lebeziatnikov went out and I returned to the table with the
money lying on it, intending to count it and to put it aside, as I
proposed doing before. To my surprise one hundred-rouble note had
disappeared. Kindly consider the position. Mr. Lebeziatnikov I
cannot suspect. I am ashamed to allude to such a supposition. I cannot
have made a mistake in my reckoning, for the minute before your
entrance I had finished my accounts and found the total correct. You
will admit that recollecting your embarrassment, your eagerness to get
away and the fact that you kept your hands for some time on the table,
and taking into consideration your social position and the habits
associated with it, I was, so to say, with horror and positively
against my will, compelled to entertain a suspicion- a cruel, but
justifiable suspicion! I will add further and repeat that in spite
of my positive conviction, I realise that I run a certain risk in
making this accusation, but as you see, I could not let it pass. I
have taken action and I will tell you why: solely, madam, solely,
owing to your black ingratitude! Why! I invite you for the benefit
of your destitute relative, I present you with my donation of ten
roubles and you, on the spot, repay me for all that with such an
action. It is too bad! You need a lesson. Reflect! Moreover, like a
true friend I beg you- and you could have no better friend at this
moment- think what you are doing, otherwise I shall be immovable!
Well, what do you say?"
"I have taken nothing," Sonia whispered in terror, "you gave me
ten roubles, here it is, take it."
Sonia pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, untied a corner
of it, took out the ten rouble note and gave it to Luzhin.
"And the hundred roubles you do not confess to taking?" he
insisted reproachfully, not taking the note.
Sonia looked about her. All were looking at her with such awful,
stern, ironical, hostile eyes. She looked at Raskolnikov... he stood
against the wall, with his arms crossed, looking at her with glowing
eyes.
"Good God!" broke from Sonia.
"Amalia Ivanovna, we shall have to send word to the police and
therefore I humbly beg you meanwhile to send for the house porter,"
Luzhin said softly and even kindly.
"Gott der barmherzige! I knew she was the thief," cried Amalia
Ivanovna, throwing up her hands.
"You knew it?" Luzhin caught her up, "then I suppose you had some
reason before this for thinking so. I beg you, worthy Amalia Ivanovna,
to remember your words which have been uttered before witnesses."
There was a buzz of loud conversation on all sides. All were in
movement.
"What!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, suddenly realising the position,
and she rushed at Luzhin. "What! You accuse her of stealing? Sonia?
Ah, the wretches, the wretches!"
And running to Sonia she flung her wasted arms round her and held
her as in a vise.
"Sonia! how dared you take ten roubles from him? Foolish girl!
Give it to me! Give me the ten roubles at once- here!
And snatching the note from Sonia, Katerina Ivanovna crumpled it
up and flung it straight into Luzhin's face. It hit him in the eye and
fell on the ground. Amalia Ivanovna hastened to pick it up. Pyotr
Petrovitch lost his temper.
"Hold that mad woman!" he shouted.
At that moment several other persons, besides Lebeziatnikov,
appeared in the doorway, among them the two ladies.
"What! Mad? Am I mad? Idiot!" shrieked Katerina Ivanovna. "You are
an idiot yourself, pettifogging lawyer, base man! Sonia, Sonia take
his money! Sonia a thief! Why, she'd give away her last penny!" and
Katerina Ivanovna broke into hysterical laughter. "Did you ever see
such an idiot?" she turned from side to side. "And you too?" she
suddenly saw the landlady, "and you too, sausage eater, you declare
that she is a thief, you trashy Prussian hen's leg in a crinoline! She
hasn't been out of this room: she came straight from you, you
wretch, and sat down beside me, every one saw her. She sat here, by
Rodion Romanovitch. Search her! Since she's not left the room, the
money would have to be on her! Search her, search her! But if you
don't find it, then excuse me, my dear fellow, you'll answer for it!
I'll go to our Sovereign, to our Sovereign, to our gracious Tsar
himself, and throw myself at his feet, to-day, this minute! I am alone
in the world! They would let me in! Do you think they wouldn't? You're
wrong, I will get in! I will get in! You reckoned on her meekness! You
relied upon that! But I am not so submissive, let me tell you!
You've gone too far yourself. Search her, search her!"
And Katerina Ivanovna in a frenzy shook Luzhin and dragged him
towards Sonia.
"I am ready, I'll be responsible... but calm yourself, madam, calm
yourself. I see that you are not so submissive!... Well, well, but
as to that..." Luzhin muttered, "that ought to be before the police...
though indeed there are witnesses enough as it is.... I am ready....
But in any case it's difficult for a man... on account of her
sex.... But with the help of Amalia Ivanovna... though, of course,
it's not the way to do things.... How is it to be done?"
"As you will! Let any one who likes search her!" cried Katerina
Ivanovna. "Sonia, turn out your pockets! See. Look, monster, the
pocket is empty, here was her handkerchief! Here is the other
pocket, look! D'you see, d'you see?"
And Katerina Ivanovna turned- or rather snatched- both pockets
inside out. But from the right pocket a piece of paper flew out and
describing a parabola in the air fell at Luzhin's feet. Every one
saw it, several cried out. Pyotr Petrovitch stooped down, picked up
the paper in two fingers, lifted it where all could see it and
opened it. It was a hundred-rouble note folded in eight. Pyotr
Petrovitch held up the note showing it to every one.
"Thief! Out of my lodging. Police, police!" yelled Amalia
Ivanovna. "They must to Siberia be sent! Away!"
Exclamations arose on all sides. Raskolnikov was silent, keeping his
eyes fixed on Sonia, except for an occasional rapid glance at
Luzhin. Sonia stood still, as though unconscious. She was hardly
able to feel surprise. Suddenly the colour rushed to her cheeks; she
uttered a cry and hid her face in her hands.
"No, it wasn't I! I didn't take it! I know nothing about it," she
cried with a heartrending wail, and she ran to Katerina Ivanovna,
who clasped her tightly in her arms, as though she would shelter her
from all the world.
"Sonia! Sonia! I don't believe it! You see, I don't believe it!" she
cried in the face of the obvious fact, swaying her to and fro in her
arms like a baby, kissing her face continually, then snatching at
her hands and kissing them, too. "You took it! How stupid these people
are! Oh dear! You are fools, fools," she cried, addressing the whole
room, "you don't know, you don't know what a heart she has, what a
girl she is! She take it, she? She'd sell her last rag, she'd go
barefoot to help you if you needed it, that's what she is! She has the
yellow passport because my children were starving, she sold herself
for us! Ah, husband, husband! Do you see? Do you see? What a
memorial dinner for you! Merciful heavens! Defend her, why are you all
standing still? Rodion Romanovitch, why don't you stand up for her? Do
you believe it, too? You are not worth her little finger, all of you
together! Good God! Defend her now, at least!"
The wail of the poor, consumptive, helpless woman seemed to
produce a great effect on her audience. The agonised, wasted,
consumptive face, the parched blood-stained lips, the hoarse voice,
the tears unrestrained as a child's, the trustful, childish and yet
despairing prayer for help were so piteous that every one seemed to
feel for her. Pyotr Petrovitch at any rate was at once moved to
compassion.
"Madam, madam, this incident does not reflect upon you!" he cried
impressively, "no one would take upon himself to accuse you of being
an instigator or even an accomplice in it, especially as you have
proved her guilt by turning out her pockets, showing that you had no
previous idea of it. I am most ready, most ready to show compassion,
if poverty, so to speak, drove Sofya Semyonovna to it, but why did you
refuse to confess, mademoiselle? Were you afraid of the disgrace?
The first step? You lost your head, perhaps? One can quite
understand it.... But how could you have lowered yourself to such an
action? Gentlemen," he addressed the whole company, "gentlemen!
Compassionate and so to say commiserating these people, I am ready
to overlook it even now in spite of the personal insult lavished
upon me! And may this disgrace be a lesson to you for the future,"
he said, addressing Sonia, "and I will carry the matter no further.
Enough!"
Pyotr Petrovitch stole a glance at Raskolnikov. Their eyes met,
and the fire in Raskolnikov's seemed ready to reduce him to ashes.
Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna apparently heard nothing. She was
kissing and hugging Sonia like a madwoman. The children, too, were
embracing Sonia on all sides, and Polenka,- though she did not fully
understand what was wrong,- was drowned in tears and shaking with
sobs, as she hid her pretty little face, swollen with weeping, on
Sonia's shoulder.
"How vile!" a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway.
Pyotr Petrovitch looked round quickly.
"What vileness!" Lebeziatnikov repeated, staring him straight in the
face.
Pyotr Petrovitch gave a positive start- all noticed it and
recalled it afterwards. Lebeziatnikov strode into the room.
"And you dared to call me as witness?" he said, going up to Pyotr
Petrovitch.
"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" muttered Luzhin.
"I mean that you... are a slanderer, that's what my words mean!"
Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his shortsighted
eyes.
He was extremely angry. Raskolnikov gazed intently at him, as though
seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Pyotr
Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.
"If you mean that for me,..." he began, stammering. "But what's
the matter with you? Are you out of your mind?"
"I'm in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard
everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own
even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I
can't understand."
"Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical
riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!"
"You may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never
touch vodka, for it's against my convictions. Would you believe it,
he, he himself, with his own hands gave Sofya Semyonovna that
hundred-rouble note- I saw it, I was a witness, I'll take my oath!
He did it, he!" repeated Lebeziatnikov, addressing all.
"Are you crazy, milksop?" squealed Luzhin. "She is herself before
you,- she herself here declared just now before every one that I
gave her only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?"
"I saw it, I saw it," Lebeziatnikov repeated, "and although it is
against my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath
you like before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket.
Only like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were
saying good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one
hand, with the other, the left, you slipped the note into her
pocket. I saw it, I saw it!"
Luzhin turned pale.
"What lies!" he cried impudently, "why, how could you, standing by
the window, see the note! You fancied it with your shortsighted
eyes. You are raving!"
"No, I didn't fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I
saw it all. And though it certainly would be hard to distinguish a
note from the window,- that's true- I knew for certain that it was a
hundred-rouble note, because, when you were going to give Sofya
Semyonovna ten roubles, you took up from the table a hundred-rouble
note (I saw it because I was standing near then, and an idea struck me
at once, so that I did not forget you had it in your hand). You folded
it and kept it in your hand all the time. I didn't think of it again
until, when you were getting up, you changed it from your right hand
to your left and nearly dropped it! I noticed it because the same idea
struck me again, that you meant to do her a kindness without my
seeing. You can fancy how I watched you and I saw how you succeeded in
slipping it into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it, I'll take my oath."
Lebeziatnikov was almost breathless. Exclamations arose on all hands
chiefly expressive of wonder, but some were menacing in tone. They all
crowded round Pyotr Petrovitch. Katerina Ivanovna flew to
Lebeziatnikov.
"I was mistaken in you! Protect her! You are the only one to take
her part! She is an orphan. God has sent you!"
Katerina Ivanovna, hardly knowing what she was doing, sank on her
knees before him.
"A pack of nonsense!" yelled Luzhin, roused to fury, "it's all
nonsense you've been talking! 'An idea struck you, you didn't think,
you noticed'- what does it amount to? So I gave it to her on the sly
on purpose? What for? With what object? What have I to do with
this...?"
"What for? That's what I can't understand, but that what I am
telling you is the fact, that's certain! So far from my being
mistaken, you infamous, criminal man, I remember how, on account of
it, a question occurred to me at once, just when I was thanking you
and pressing your hand. What made you put it secretly in her pocket?
Why you did it secretly, I mean? Could it be simply to conceal it from
me, knowing that my convictions are opposed to yours and that I do not
approve of private benevolence, which effects no radical cure? Well, I
decided that you really were ashamed of giving such a large sum before
me. Perhaps, too, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, when she
finds a whole hundred-rouble note in her pocket. (For I know some
benevolent people are very fond of decking out their charitable
actions in that way.) Then the idea struck me, too, that you wanted to
test her, to see whether, when she found it, she would come to thank
you. Then, too, that you wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the
saying is, your right hand should not know... something of that
sort, in fact. I thought of so many possibilities that I put off
considering it, but still thought it indelicate to show you I knew
your secret. But another idea struck me again that Sofya Semyonovna
might easily lose the money before she noticed it, that was why I
decided to come in here to call her out of the room and to tell her
that you put a hundred roubles in her pocket. But on my way I went
first to Madame Kobilatnikov's to take them the 'General Treatise on
the Positive Method' and especially to recommend Piderit's article
(and also Wagner's); then I come on here and what a state of things
I find! Now could I, could I, have all these ideas and reflections, if
I had not seen you put the hundred-rouble note in her pocket?"
When Lebeziatnikov finished his long-winded harangue with the
logical deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration
streamed from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself
correctly in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was
quite exhausted, almost emaciated after this heroic exploit. But his
speech produced a powerful effect. He had spoken with such
vehemence, with such conviction that every one obviously believed him.
Pyotr Petrovitch felt that things were going badly with him.
"What is it to do with me if silly ideas did occur to you?" he
shouted, "that's no evidence. You may have dreamt it, that's all!
And I tell you, you are lying, sir. You are lying and slandering
from some spite against me, simply from pique, because I did not agree
with your freethinking, godless, social propositions!"
But this retort did not benefit Pyotr Petrovitch. Murmurs of
disapproval were heard on all sides.
"Ah, that's your line now, is it!" cried Lebeziatnikov, "that's
nonsense! Call the police and I'll take my oath! There's only one
thing I can't understand: what made him risk such a contemptible
action. Oh, pitiful, despicable man!"
"I can explain why he risked such an action, and if necessary, I,
too, will swear to it," Raskolnikov said at last in a firm voice,
and he stepped forward.
He appeared to be firm and composed. Every one felt clearly, from
the very look of him that he really knew about it and that the mystery
would be solved.
"Now I can explain it all to myself," said Raskolnikov, addressing
Lebeziatnikov. "From the very beginning of the business, I suspected
that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it. I
began to suspect it from some special circumstances known to me
only, which I will explain at once to every one: they account for
everything. Your valuable evidence has finally made everything clear
to me. I beg all, all to listen. This gentleman (he pointed to Luzhin)
was recently engaged to be married to a young lady- my sister, Avdotya
Romanovna Raskolnikov. But coming to Petersburg he quarrelled with me,
the day before yesterday, at our first meeting and I drove him out
of my room- I have two witnesses to prove it. He is a very spiteful
man.... The day before yesterday I did not know that he was staying
here, in your room, and that consequently on the very day we
quarrelled- the day before yesterday- he saw me give Katerina Ivanovna
some money for the funeral, as a friend of the late Mr. Marmeladov. He
at once wrote a note to my mother and informed her that I had given
away all my money, not to Katerina Ivanovna, but to Sofya
Semyonovna, and referred in a most contemptible way to the...
character of Sofya Semyonovna, that is, hinted at the character of
my attitude to Sofya Semyonovna. All this you understand was with
the object of dividing me from my mother and sister, by insinuating
that I was squandering on unworthy objects the money which they had
sent me and which was all they had. Yesterday evening, before my
mother and sister and in his presence, I declared that I had given the
money to Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral and not to Sofya Semyonovna
and that I had no acquaintance with Sofya Semyonovna and had never
seen her before, indeed. At the same time I added that he, Pyotr
Petrovitch Luzhin, with all his virtues was not worth Sofya
Semyonovna's little finger, though he spoke so ill of her. To his
question- would I let Sofya Semyonovna sit down beside my sister, I
answered that I had already done so that day. Irritated that my mother
and sister were unwilling to quarrel with me at his insinuations, he
gradually began being unpardonably rude to them. A final rupture
took place and he was turned out of the house. All this happened
yesterday evening. Now I beg your special attention: consider: if he
had now succeeded in proving that Sofya Semyonovna was a thief, he
would have shown to my mother and sister that he was almost right in
his suspicions, that he had reason to be angry at my putting my sister
on a level with Sofya Semyonovna, that, in attacking me, he was
protecting and preserving the honour of my sister, his betrothed. In
fact he might even, through all this, have been able to estrange me
from my family, and no doubt he hoped to be restored to favour with
them; to say nothing of revenging himself on me personally, for he has
grounds for supposing that the honour and happiness of Sofya
Semyonovna are very precious to me. That was what he was working
for! That's how I understand it. That's the whole reason for it and
there can be no other!"
It was like this, or somewhat like this, that Raskolnikov wound up
his speech which was followed very attentively, though often
interrupted by exclamations from his audience. But in spite of
interruptions he spoke clearly, calmly, exactly, firmly. His
decisive voice, his tone of conviction and his stern face made a great
impression on every one.
"Yes, yes, that's it," Lebeziatnikov assented gleefully, "that
must be it, for he asked me, as soon as Sofya Semyonovna came into our
room, whether you were here, whether I had seen you among Katerina
Ivanovna's guests. He called me aside to the window and asked me in
secret. It was essential for him that you should be here! That's it,
that's it!"
Luzhin smiled contemptuously and did not speak. But he was very
pale. He seemed to be deliberating on some means of escape. Perhaps he
would have been glad to give up everything and get away, but at the
moment this was scarcely possible. It would have implied admitting the
truth of the accusations brought against him. Moreover, the company,
which had already been excited by drink, was now too much stirred to
allow it. The commissariat clerk, though indeed he had not grasped the
whole position, was shouting louder than any one and was making some
suggestions very unpleasant to Luzhin. But not all those present
were drunk; lodgers came in from all the rooms. The three Poles were
tremendously excited and were continually shouting at him: "The Pan is
a lajdak!" and muttering threats in Polish. Sonia had been listening
with strained attention, though she too seemed unable to grasp it all;
she seemed as though she had just returned to consciousness. She did
not take her eyes off Raskolnikov, feeling that all her safety lay
in him. Katerina Ivanovna breathed hard and painfully and seemed
fearfully exhausted. Amalia Ivanovna stood looking more stupid than
any one, with her mouth wide open, unable to make out what had
happened. She only saw that Pyotr Petrovitch had somehow come to
grief.
Raskolnikov was attempting to speak again, but they did not let him.
Every one was crowding round Luzhin with threats and shouts of
abuse. But Pyotr Petrovitch was not intimidated. Seeing that his
accusation of Sonia had completely failed, he had recourse to
insolence:
"Allow me, gentlemen, allow me! Don't squeeze, let me pass!" he
said, making his way through the crowd. "And no threats if you please!
I assure you it will be useless, you will gain nothing by it. On the
contrary, you'll have to answer, gentlemen, for violently
obstructing the course of justice. The thief has been more than
unmasked, and I shall prosecute. Our judges are not so blind and...
not so drunk, and will not believe the testimony of two notorious
infidels, agitators, and atheists, who accuse me from motives of
personal revenge which they are foolish enough to admit.... Yes, allow
me to pass!"
"Don't let me find a trace of you in my room! Kindly leave at
once, and everything is at an end between us! When I think of the
trouble I've been taking, the way I've been expounding... all this
fortnight!"
"I told you myself to-day that I was going, when you tried to keep
me; now I will simply add that you are a fool. I advise you to see a
doctor for your brains and your short sight. Let me pass, gentlemen!"
He forced his way through. But the commissariat clerk was
unwilling to let him off so easily: he picked up a glass from the
table, brandished it in the air and flung it at Pyotr Petrovitch;
but the glass flew straight at Amalia Ivanovna. She screamed, and
the clerk, overbalancing, fell heavily under the table. Pyotr
Petrovitch made his way to his room and half an hour later had left
the house. Sonia, timid by nature, had felt before that day that she
could be ill-treated more easily than any one, and that she could be
wronged with impunity. Yet till that moment she had fancied that she
might escape misfortune by care, gentleness and submissiveness
before every one. Her disappointment was too great. She could, of
course, bear with patience and almost without murmur anything, even
this. But for the first minute she felt it too bitter. In spite of her
triumph and her justification- when her first terror and
stupefaction had passed and she could understand it all clearly- the
feeling of her helplessness and of the wrong done to her made her
heart throb with anguish and she was overcome with hysterical weeping.
At last, unable to bear any more, she rushed out of the room and ran
home, almost immediately after Luzhin's departure. When amidst loud
laughter the glass flew at Amalia Ivanovna, it was more than the
landlady could endure. With a shriek she rushed like a fury at
Katerina Ivanovna, considering her to blame for everything.
"Out of my lodgings! At once! Quick march!"
And with these words she began snatching up everything she could lay
her hands on that belonged to Katerina Ivanovna, and throwing it on
the floor, Katerina Ivanovna, pale, almost fainting, and gasping for
breath, jumped up from the bed where she had sunk in exhaustion and
darted at Amalia Ivanovna. But the battle was too unequal: the
landlady waved her away like a feather.
"What! As though that godless calumny was not enough- this vile
creature attacks me! What! On the day of my husband's funeral I am
turned out of my lodgings! After eating my bread and salt she turns me
into the street, with my orphans! Where am I to go?" wailed the poor
woman, sobbing and gasping. "Good God!" she cried with flashing
eyes, "is there no justice upon earth? Whom should you protect if
not us orphans? We shall see! There is law and justice on earth, there
is, I will find it! Wait a bit, godless creature! Polenka, stay with
the children, I'll come back. Wait for me, if you have to wait in
the street. We will see whether there is justice on earth!"
And throwing over her head that green shawl which Marmeladov had
mentioned to Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna squeezed her way through
the disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room,
and, wailing and tearful, she ran into the street- with a vague
intention of going at once somewhere to find justice. Polenka with the
two little ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the
corner of the room, where she waited trembling for her mother to
come back. Amalia Ivanovna raged about the room, shrieking,
lamenting and throwing everything she came across on the floor. The
lodgers talked incoherently, some commented to the best of their
ability on what had happened, others quarreled and swore at one
another, while others struck up a song....
"Now it's time for me to go," thought Raskolnikov. "Well, Sofya
Semyonovna, we shall see what you'll say now!"
And he set off in the direction of Sonia's lodgings.
CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
RASKOLNIKOV had been a vigorous and active champion of Sonia against
Luzhin, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his own
heart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sort
of relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personal
feeling which impelled him to defend Sonia. He was agitated too,
especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching
interview with Sonia: he had to tell her who had killed Lizaveta. He
knew the terrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were,
brushed away the thought of it. So when he cried as he left Katerina
Ivanovna's, "Well, Sofya Semyonovna, we shall see what you'll say
now!" he was still superficially excited, still vigorous and defiant
from his triumph over Luzhin. But, strange to say, by the time he
reached Sonia's lodging, he felt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood
still in hesitation at the door, asking himself the strange
question: "Must I tell her who killed Lizaveta?" It was a strange
question because he felt at the very time not only that he could not
help telling her, but also that he could not put off the telling. He
did not yet know why it must be so, he only felt it, and the agonising
sense of his impotence before the inevitable almost crushed him. To
cut short his hesitation and suffering, he quickly opened the door and
looked at Sonia from the doorway. She was sitting with her elbows on
the table and her face in her hands, but seeing Raskolnikov she got up
at once and came to meet him as though she were expecting him.
"What would have become of me but for you!" she said quickly,
meeting him in the middle of the room.
Evidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had
been waiting for.
Raskolnikov went to the table and sat down on the chair from which
she had only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as
she had done the day before.
"Well, Sonia?" he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, "it
was all due to 'your social position and the habits associated with
it.' Did you understand that just now?"
Her face showed her distress.
"Only don't talk to me as you did yesterday," she interrupted him.
"Please don't begin it. There is misery enough without that."
She made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach.
"I was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? I
wanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would
come."
He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was turning them out of their
lodging and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere "to seek
justice."
"My God!" cried Sonia, "let's go at once...."
And she snatched up her cape.
"It's everlastingly the same thing!" said Raskolnikov, irritably.
"You've no thought except for them! Stay a little with me."
"But... Katerina Ivanovna?"
"You won't lose Katerina Ivanovna, you may be sure, she'll come to
you herself since she has run out," he added peevishly. "If she
doesn't find you here, you'll be blamed for it...."
Sonia sat down in painful suspense. Raskolnikov was silent, gazing
at the floor and deliberating.
"This time Luzhin did not want to prosecute you," he began, not
looking at Sonia, "but if he had wanted to, if it had suited his
plans, he would have sent you to prison if it had not been for
Lebeziatnikov and me. Ah?"
"Yes," she assented in a faint voice. "Yes," she repeated,
preoccupied and distressed.
"But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an
accident Lebeziatnikov's turning up."
Sonia was silent.
"And if you'd gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I said
yesterday?"
Again she did not answer. He waited.
"I thought you would cry out again 'don't speak of it, leave
off.'" Raskolnikov gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. "What,
silence again?" he asked a minute later. "We must talk about
something, you know. It would be interesting for me to know how you
would decide a certain 'problem' as Lebeziatnikov would say." (He
was beginning to lose the thread.) "No, really, I am serious. Imagine,
Sonia, that you had known all Luzhin's intentions beforehand. Known,
that is, for a fact, that they would be the ruin of Katerina
Ivanovna and the children and yourself thrown in- since you don't
count yourself for anything- Polenka too... for she'll go the same
way. Well, if suddenly it all depended on your decision whether he
or they should go on living, that is whether Luzhin should go on
living and doing wicked things, or Katerina Ivanovna should die? How
would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?"
Sonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in this
hesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a
roundabout way.
"I felt that you were going to ask some question like that," she
said, looking inquisitively at him.
"I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?"
"Why do you ask about what could not happen?" said Sonia
reluctantly.
"Then it would be better for Luzhin to go on living and doing wicked
things? You haven't dared to decide even that!"
"But I can't know the Divine Providence.... And why do you ask
what can't be answered? What's the use of such foolish questions?
How could it happen that it should depend on my decision- who has made
me a judge to decide who is to live and who is not to live?"
"Oh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no
doing anything," Raskolnikov grumbled morosely.
"You'd better say straight out what you want!" Sonia cried in
distress. "You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come
simply to torture me?"
She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked
at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.
"Of course you're right, Sonia," he said softly at last. He was
suddenly changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless
defiance was gone. Even his voice was suddenly weak. "I told you
yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the
first thing I've said is to ask forgiveness.... I said that about
Luzhin and Providence for my own sake. I was asking forgiveness,
Sonia...."
He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete
in his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.
And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter
hatred for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and
frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently
at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him;
there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not
the real feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It
only meant that that minute had come.
He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he
turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and without
uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.
His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had
stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that "he
must not lose another minute."
"What's the matter?" asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.
He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way
he had intended to "tell" and he did not understand what was happening
to him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him
and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and
sank. It was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His
lips worked, helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of
terror passed through Sonia's heart.
"What's the matter?" she repeated, drawing a little away from him.
"Nothing, Sonia, don't be frightened.... It's nonsense. It really is
nonsense, if you think of it," he muttered, like a man in delirium.
"Why have I come to torture you?" he added suddenly, looking at her.
"Why, really? I keep asking myself that question, Sonia...."
He had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an
hour before, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he
said and feeling a continual tremor all over.
"Oh, how you are suffering!" she muttered in distress, looking
intently at him.
"It's all nonsense.... Listen, Sonia." He suddenly smiled, a pale
helpless smile for two seconds. "You remember what I meant to tell you
yesterday?"
Sonia waited uneasily.
"I said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for
ever, but that if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed
Lizaveta."
She began trembling all over.
"Well, here I've come to tell you."
"Then you really meant it yesterday?" she whispered with difficulty.
"How do you know?" she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining her
reason.
Sonia's face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully.
"I know."
She paused a minute.
"Have they found him?" she asked timidly.
"No."
"Then how do you know about it?" she asked again, hardly audibly and
again after a minute's pause.
He turned to her and looked very intently at her.
"Guess," he said, with the same distorted helpless smile.
A shudder passed over her.
"But you... why do you frighten me like this?" she said, smiling
like a child.
"I must be a great friend of his... since I know," Raskolnikov
went on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his
eyes away. "He... did not mean to kill that Lizaveta... he... killed
her accidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone
and he went there... and then Lizaveta came in... he killed her too."
Another awful moment passed. Both still gazed at one another.
"You can't guess, then?" he asked suddenly, feeling as though he
were flinging himself down from a steeple.
"N-no..." whispered Sonia.
"Take a good look."
As soon as he had said this again, the same familiar sensation froze
his heart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her
face the face of Lizaveta. He remembered clearly the expression in
Lizaveta's face, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped
back to the wall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her
face, looking as little children do when they begin to be frightened
of something, looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them,
shrinking back and holding out their little hands on the point of
crying. Almost the same thing happened now to Sonia. With the same
helplessness and the same terror, she looked at him for a while and,
suddenly putting out her left hand, pressed her fingers faintly
against his breast and slowly began to get up from the bed, moving
further from him and keeping her eyes fixed even more immovably on
him. Her terror infected him. The same fear showed itself on his face.
In the same way he stared at her and almost with the same childish
smile.
"Have you guessed?" he whispered at last.
"Good God!" broke in an awful wail from her bosom.
She sank helplessly on the bed with her face in the pillows, but a
moment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his hands
and, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into his
face again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look she
tried to look into him and catch some last hope. But there was no
hope; there was no doubt remaining; it was all true! Later on, indeed,
when she recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why
she had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said,
for instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort- and yet
now, as soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had
really foreseen this very thing.
"Stop, Sonia, enough! don't torture me," he begged her miserably.
It was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling
her, but this is how it happened.
She jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing
her hands, walked into the middle of the room; but, quickly went
back and sat down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching
his. All of a sudden she started as though she had been stabbed,
uttered a cry and fell on her knees before him, she did not know why.
"What have you done- what have you done to yourself!" she said in
despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her
arms round him, and held him tight.
Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile.
"You are a strange girl, Sonia- you kiss me and hug me when I tell
you about that.... You don't think what you are doing."
"There is no one- no one in the whole world now so unhappy as
you!" she cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she
suddenly broke into violent hysterical weeping.
A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it
at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his
eyes and hung on his eyelashes.
"Then you won't leave me, Sonia?" he said, looking at her almost
with hope.
"No, no, never, nowhere!" cried Sonia. "I will follow you, I will
follow you everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why
didn't I know you before! Why didn't you come before? Oh, dear!"
"Here I have come."
"Yes, now! What's to be done now!... Together, together!" she
repeated as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. "I'll
follow you to Siberia!"
He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came
to his lips.
"Perhaps I don't want to go to Siberia yet, Sonia," he said.
Sonia looked at him quickly.
Again after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy
man the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed
tone she seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him
bewildered. She knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had
been. Now all these questions rushed at once into her mind. And
again she could not believe it: "He, he is a murderer! Could it be
true?"
"What's the meaning of it? Where am I?" she said in complete
bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. "How could
you, you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?...
What does it mean?"
"Oh, well- to plunder. Leave off, Sonia," he answered wearily,
almost with vexation.
Sonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:
"You were hungry! It was... to help your mother? Yes?"
"No, Sonia, no," he muttered, turning away and hanging his head.
"I was not so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother,
but... that's not the real thing either.... Don't torture me, Sonia."
Sonia clasped her hands.
"Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could
believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet rob
and murder! Ah," she cried suddenly, "that money you gave Katerina
Ivanovna... that money.... Can that money..."
"No, Sonia," he broke in hurriedly, "that money was not it. Don't
worry yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was
ill, the day I gave it to you.... Razumihin saw it... he received it
for me.... That money was mine- my own."
Sonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to
comprehend.
"And that money.... I don't even know really whether there was any
money," he added softly, as though reflecting. "I took a purse off her
neck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of
something... but I didn't look in it; I suppose I hadn't time....
And the things- chains and trinkets- I buried under a stone with the
purse next morning in a yard off the V__ Prospect. They are all
there now....."
Sonia strained every nerve to listen.
"Then why... why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?"
she asked quickly, catching at a straw.
"I don't know.... I haven't yet decided whether to take that money
or not," he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a
start, he gave a brief ironical smile. "Ach, what silly stuff I am
talking, eh?"
The thought flashed through Sonia's mind, wasn't he mad? But she
dismissed it at once. "No, it was something else." She could make
nothing of it, nothing.
"Do you know, Sonia," he said suddenly with conviction, "let me tell
you: if I'd simply killed because I was hungry," laying stress on
every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, "I should
be happy now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you,"
he cried a moment later with a sort of despair, "what would it
matter to you if I were to confess that I did wrong! What do you
gain by such a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonia, was it for that I've
come to you to-day?"
Again Sonia tried to say something, but did not speak.
"I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have
left."
"Go where?" asked Sonia timidly.
"Not to steal and not to murder, don't be anxious," he smiled
bitterly. "We are so different.... And you know, Sonia, it's only now,
only this moment that I understand where I asked you to go with me
yesterday! Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked
you for one thing, I came to you for one thing- not to leave me. You
won't leave me, Sonia?"
She squeezed his hand.
"And why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?" he cried a
minute later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. "Here
you expect an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and
waiting for it, I see that. But what can I tell you? You won't
understand and will only suffer misery... on my account! Well, you are
crying and embracing me again. Why do you do it? Because I couldn't
bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too,
and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?"
"But aren't you suffering, too?" cried Sonia.
Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again
for an instant softened it.
"Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a
great deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn't
have come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never
mind! That's not the point. I must speak now, but I don't know how
to begin."
He paused and sank into thought.
"Ach, we are so different," he cried again, "we are not alike. And
why, why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that."
"No, no, it was a good thing you came," cried Sonia. "It's better
I should know, far better!"
He looked at her with anguish.
"What if it were really that?" he said, as though reaching a
conclusion. "Yes, that's what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon,
that is why I killed her.... Do you understand now?"
"N-no," Sonia whispered naively and timidly. "Only speak, speak, I
shall understand, I shall understand in myself!" she kept begging him.
"You'll understand? Very well, we shall see!" He paused and was
for some time lost in meditation.
"It was like this: I asked myself one day this question- what if
Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he
had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin
his career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental
things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker,
who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his
career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to
that, if there had been no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang
at its being so far from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I
must tell you that I worried myself fearfully over that 'question'
so that I was awfully ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden,
somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it
would not even have struck him that it was not monumental... that he
would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and
that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a
minute without thinking about it! Well, I too... left off thinking
about it... murdered her, following his example. And that's exactly
how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes, Sonia, the funniest thing of
all is that perhaps that's just how it was."
Sonia did not think it at all funny.
"You had better tell me straight out... without examples," she
begged, still more timidly and scarcely audibly.
He turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands.
"You are right again, Sonia. Of course that's all nonsense, it's
almost all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has
scarcely anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was
condemned to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on
me. I was a student, but I couldn't keep myself at the university
and was forced for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on
like that, in ten or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be
some sort of teacher or clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles" (he
repeated it as though it were a lesson) "and by that time my mother
would be worn out with grief and anxiety and I could not succeed in
keeping her in comfort while my sister... well, my sister might well
have fared worse! And it's a hard thing to pass everything by all
one's life, to turn one's back upon everything, to forget one's mother
and decorously accept the insults inflicted on one's sister. Why
should one? When one has buried them to burden oneself with others-
wife and children- and to leave them again without a farthing? So I
resolved to gain possession of the old woman's money and to use it for
my first years without worrying my mother, to keep myself at the
university and for a little while after leaving it- and to do this all
on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up a completely new
career and enter upon a new life of independence.... Well... that's
all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did wrong.... Well,
that's enough."
He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head
sink.
"Oh, that's not it, that's not it," Sonia cried in distress. "How
could one... no, that's not right, not right."
"You see yourself that it's not right. But I've spoken truly, it's
the truth."
"As though that could be the truth! Good God!"
"I've only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful
creature."
"A human being- a louse!"
"I too know it wasn't a louse," he answered, looking strangely at
her. "But I am talking nonsense, Sonia," he added. "I've been
talking nonsense a long time.... That's not it, you are right there.
There were quite, quite other causes for it! I haven't talked to
anyone for so long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now."
His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an
uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be
seen through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too
was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow
comprehensible, but yet... "But how, how! Good God!" And she wrung her
hands in despair.
"No, Sonia, that's not it," he began again suddenly, raising his
head, as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it
were roused him- "that's not it! Better... imagine- yes, it's
certainly better- imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base,
vindictive and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let's
have it all out at once! They've talked of madness already, I
noticed.) I told you just now I could not keep myself at the
university. But do you know that perhaps I might have done? My
mother would have sent me what I needed for the fees and I could
have earned enough for clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons
had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I turned sulky
and wouldn't. (Yes, sulkiness, that's the right word for it!) I sat in
my room like a spider. You've been in my den, you've seen it.... And
do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul
and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn't go out
of it! I wouldn't on purpose! I didn't go out for days together, and I
wouldn't work, I wouldn't even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If
Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn't, I went all
day without; I wouldn't ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I
had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn't earn money for candles.
I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an
inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and
thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time,
strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to
fancy that... No, that's not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see
I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are
stupid- and I know they are- yet I won't be wiser? Then I saw,
Sonia, that if one waits for every one to get wiser it will take too
long.... Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass,
that men won't change and that nobody can alter it and that it's not
worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that's so. That's the law of
their nature, Sonia,... that's so!... And I know now, Sonia, that
whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone
who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most
things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will
be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always
be. A man must be blind not to see it!"
Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer
cared whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of
him; he was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too
long without talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed
had become his faith and code.
"I divined then, Sonia," he went on eagerly, "that power is only
vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only
one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first
time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever
thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it
is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the
daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I...
I wanted to have the daring... and I killed her. I only wanted to have
the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!"
"Oh hush, hush," cried Sonia, clasping her hands. "You turned away
from God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!"
"Then Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this
became clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?"
"Hush, don't laugh, blasphemer! You don't understand, you don't
understand! Oh God! He won't understand!"
"Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil
leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!" he repeated with gloomy insistence. "I
know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it
all over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I've argued it all
over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how
sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to
forget it and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And
you don't suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went
into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you
mustn't suppose that I didn't know, for instance, that if I began to
question myself whether I had the right to gain power- I certainly
hadn't the right- or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a
louse it proved that it wasn't so for me, though it might be for a man
who would go straight to his goal without asking questions.... If I
worried myself all those days, wondering whether Napoleon would have
done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had
to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed
to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for
my own sake, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to
myself. It wasn't to help my mother I did the murder- that's nonsense-
I didn't do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a
benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for
myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others,
or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking
the life out of men, I couldn't have cared at that moment.... And it
was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much
the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all now....
Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I
wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on.
I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like
everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not,
whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling
creature or whether I have the right..."
"To kill? Have the right to kill?" Sonia clasped her hands.
"Ach, Sonia!" he cried irritably and seemed about to make some
retort, but was contemptuously silent. "Don't interrupt me, Sonia. I
want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has
shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I
am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here
I've come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse,
should I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman's
I only went to try.... You may be sure of that!"
"And you murdered her!"
"But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go
to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I
went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I
crushed myself once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that
killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me
be!" he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, "let me be!"
He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands
as in a vise.
"What suffering!" A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
"Well, what am I to do now?" he asked, suddenly raising his head and
looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.
"What are you to do?" she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had
been full of tears suddenly began to shine. "Stand up!" (She seized
him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) "Go
at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first
kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the
world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!' Then God will
send you life again. Will you go, will you go?" she asked him,
trembling all over, snatching his two hands, squeezing them tight in
hers and gazing at him with eyes full of fire.
He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
"You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?" he asked gloomily.
"Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that's what you must do."
"No! I am not going to them, Sonia!"
"But how will you go on living? What will you live for?" cried
Sonia, "how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your
mother? (Oh, what will become of them now!) But what am I saying?
You have abandoned your mother and your sister already. He has
abandoned them already! Oh, God!" she cried, "why, he knows it all
himself. How, how can he live by himself! What will become of you
now?"
"Don't be a child, Sonia," he said softly. "What wrong have I done
them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That's
only a phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on
it as a virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not
going to them. And what should I say to them- that I murdered her, but
did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?" he added
with a bitter smile. "Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a
fool for not getting it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn't understand
and they don't deserve to understand. Why should I go to them? I
won't. Don't be a child, Sonia...."
"It will be too much for you to bear, too much!" she repeated,
holding out her hands in despairing supplication.
"Perhaps I've been unfair to myself," he observed gloomily,
pondering, "perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I've been
in too great a hurry to condemn myself. I'll make another fight for
it."
A haughty smile appeared on his lips.
"What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!"
"I shall get used to it," he said grimly and thoughtfully. "Listen,"
he began a minute later, "stop crying, it's time to talk of the facts:
I've come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track...."
"Ach!" Sonia cried in terror.
"Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Siberia and now
you are frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I
shall make a struggle for it and they won't do anything to me. They've
no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was
lost; but to-day things are going better. All the facts they know
can be explained two ways, that's to say I can turn their
accusations to my credit, do you understand? And I shall, for I've
learnt my lesson. But they will certainly arrest me. If it had not
been for something that happened, they would have done so to-day for
certain; perhaps even now they will arrest me to-day.... But that's no
matter, Sonia; they'll let me out again... for there isn't any real
proof against me, and there won't be, I give you my word for it. And
they can't convict a man on what they have against me. Enough.... I
only tell you that you may know.... I will try to manage somehow to
put it to my mother and sister so that they won't be frightened.... My
sister's future is secure, however, now, I believe... and my
mother's must be too.... Well, that's all. Be careful, though. Will
you come and see me in prison when I am there?"
"Oh, I will, I will."
They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they
had been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He
looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange
to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes,
it was a strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had
felt that all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at
least part of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned
towards him, he suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier
than before.
"Sonia," he said, "you'd better not come and see me when I am in
prison."
Sonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.
"Have you a cross on you?" she asked, as though suddenly thinking of
it.
He did not at first understand the question.
"No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have
another, a copper one that belonged to Lizaveta. I changed with
Lizaveta: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I
will wear Lizaveta's now and give you this. Take it... it's mine! It's
mine, you know," she begged him. "We will go to suffer together, and
together we will bear our cross!"
"Give it me," said Raskolnikov.
He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back
the hand he held out for the cross.
"Not now, Sonia. Better later," he added to comfort her.
"Yes, yes, better," she repeated with conviction, "when you go to
meet your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I'll put
it on you, we will pray and go together."
At that moment some one knocked three times at the door.
"Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?" they heard in a very familiar and
polite voice.
Sonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr.
Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.
CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
LEBEZIATNIKOV looked perturbed.
"I've come to you, Sofya Semyonovna," he began. "Excuse me... I
thought I should find you," he said, addressing Raskolnikov
suddenly, "that is, I didn't mean anything... of that sort... But I
just thought... Katerina Ivanovna has gone out of her mind," he
blurted out suddenly, turning from Raskolnikov to Sonia.
Sonia screamed.
"At least it seems so. But... we don't know what to do, you see! She
came back- she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps
beaten.... So it seems at least,... She had run to your father's
former chief, she didn't find him at home: he was dining at some other
general's.... Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other
general's, and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get
the chief to see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You
can imagine what happened. She was turned out, of course; but,
according to her own story, she abused him and threw something at him.
One may well believe it.... How it is she wasn't taken up, I can't
understand! Now she is telling every one, including Amalia Ivanovna;
but it's difficult to understand her, she is screaming and flinging
herself about.... Oh yes, she shouts that since every one has
abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street
with a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she
too, and collect money, and will go every day under the general's
window... 'to let every one see well-born children, whose father was
an official, begging in the street.' She keeps beating the children
and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida to sing 'My Village,'
the boy to dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing up all the clothes,
and making them little caps like actors; she means to carry a tin
basin and make it tinkle, instead of music.... She won't listen to
anything.... Imagine the state of things! It's beyond anything!"
Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him
almost breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the
room, putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her
and Lebeziatnikov came after him.
"She has certainly gone mad!" he said to Raskolnikov, as they went
out into the street. "I didn't want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I
said 'it seemed like it,' but there isn't a doubt of it. They say that
in consumption, the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it's a
pity I know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she
wouldn't listen."
"Did you talk to her about the tubercles?"
"Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn't have
understood! But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically
that he has nothing to cry about, he'll stop crying. That's clear.
Is it your conviction that he won't?"
"Life would be too easy if it were so," answered Raskolnikov.
"Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for
Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they
have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of
curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there,
a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility
of such treatment. His idea was that there's nothing really wrong with
the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to
say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of
things. He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you
believe it, they say he was successful? But as he made use of
douches too, how far success was due to that treatment remains
uncertain.... So it seems at least."
Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he
lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate.
Lebeziatnikov woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on.
Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the
middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and
tattered paper, at the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud
continuous knocking; some one seemed to be hammering... He went to the
window, rose on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time
with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could
not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open
windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums.
Linen was hung out of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He
turned away and sat down on the sofa.
Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now
that he had made her more miserable.
"Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to
poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!"
"I will remain alone," he said resolutely, "and she shall not come
to the prison!"
Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was
a strange thought.
"Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia," he thought suddenly.
He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts
surging through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia
came in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the
doorway, just as he had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down
in the same place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked
silently and almost vacantly at her.
"Don't be angry, brother; I've only come for one minute," said
Dounia.
Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and
soft. He saw that she too had come to him with love.
"Brother, now I know all, all. Dmitri Prokofitch has explained and
told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a
stupid and contemptible suspicion.... Dmitri Prokofitch told me that
there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with
such horror. I don't think so, and I fully understand how indignant
you must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect
on you. That's what I am afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off
from us, I don't judge you, I don't venture to judge you, and
forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I had
so great a trouble, should keep away from every one. I shall tell
mother nothing of this, but I shall talk about you continually and
shall tell her from you that you will come very soon. Don't worry
about her; I will set her mind at rest; but don't you try her too
much- come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now
I have come simply to say" (Dounia began to get up) "that if you
should need me or should need... all my life or anything... call me,
and I'll come. Good-bye!"
She turned abruptly and went towards the door.
"Dounia!" Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. "That
Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow."
Dounia flushed slightly.
"Well?" she asked, waiting a moment.
"He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love....
Good-bye, Dounia."
Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.
"But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that
you... give me such a parting message?"
"Never mind.... Good-bye."
He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked
at him uneasily, and went out troubled.
No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one)
when he had longed to take her in his arms and say good-bye to her,
and even to tell her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.
"Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced
her, and will feel that I stole her kiss."
"And would she stand that test?" he went on a few minutes later to
himself. "No, she wouldn't; girls like that can't stand things! They
never do."
And he thought of Sonia.
There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was
fading. He took up his cap and went out.
He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was.
But all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but
affect him. And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just
because this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and
in possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could
not last long.
He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery
had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant,
nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of
eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this
cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of
space." Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him
more heavily.
"With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the
sunset or something, one can't help doing something stupid! You'll
go to Dounia, as well as to Sonia," he muttered bitterly.
He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up
to him.
"Only fancy, I've been to your room looking for you. Only fancy,
she's carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya
Semyonovna and I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a
frying-pan and making the children dance. The children are crying.
They keep stopping at the cross roads and in front of shops; there's a
crowd of fools running after them. Come along!"
"And Sonia?" Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after
Lebeziatnikov.
"Simply frantic. That is, it's not Sofya Semyonovna's frantic, but
Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova's frantic too. But
Katerina Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite
mad. They'll be taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that
will have.... They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far
from Sofya Semyonovna's, quite close."
On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the
one where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting
principally of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina
Ivanovna could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a
strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina
Ivanovna in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw
hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic. She was
exhausted and breathless. Her wasted consumptive face looked more
suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the sunshine a
consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did
not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She
rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before
the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them
why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by their not
understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the
crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look,
she immediately appealed to him to see what these children "from a
genteel, one may say aristocratic, house" had been brought to. If
she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once
at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed,
others shook their heads, but every one felt curious at the sight of
the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan of which
Lebeziatnikov had spoken was not there, at least Raskolnikov did not
see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began
clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolya dance and
Polenka sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the
second note with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair
and even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and
terror of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had been made to dress the
children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban
made of something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no
costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a
night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with a broken
piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina Ivanovna's
grandmother's and had been preserved as a family possession. Polenka
was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her
mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her
mother's condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly
frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed Katerina
Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina
Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.
"Leave off, Sonia, leave off," she shouted, speaking fast, panting
and coughing. "You don't know what you ask; you are like a child! I've
told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German.
Let every one, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the
streets, though their father was an honourable man who served all
his life in truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the
service." (Katerina Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic
story and thoroughly believed it.) "Let that wretch of a general see
it! And you are silly, Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We
have worried you enough, I won't go on so! Ah, Rodion Romanovitch,
is that you?" she cried, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing up to him.
"Explain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be
done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and every one will see at
once that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved
family reduced to beggary. And that general will lose his post, you'll
see! We shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar
drives by, I'll fall on my knees, put the children before me, show
them to him, and say 'Defend us, father.' He is the father of the
fatherless, he is merciful, he'll protect us, you'll see, and that
wretch of a general.... Lida, tenez vous droite! Kolya, you'll dance
again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid
of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Rodion Romanovitch?
If you only knew how stupid they are! What's one to do with such
children?"
And she, almost crying herself- which did not stop her
uninterrupted, rapid flow of talk- pointed to the crying children.
Raskolnikov tried to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to
work on her vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about
the streets like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become
the principal of a boarding-school.
"A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air," cried Katerina
Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. "No, Rodion Romanovitch, that
dream is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know,
Rodion Romanovitch, I threw an inkspot at him- it happened to be
standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name.
I wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh the scoundrels,
the scoundrels! But enough of them, now I'll provide for the
children myself, I won't bow down to anybody! She has had to bear
enough for us!" she pointed to Sonia. "Polenka, how much have you got?
Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us
nothing, only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what
is that blockhead laughing at?" (She pointed to a man in the crowd.)
"It's all because Kolya here is so stupid; I have such a bother with
him. What do you want, Polenka? Tell me in French, parlez moi
francais. Why, I've taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are
you to show that you are of good family, well brought-up children, and
not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren't going to have a
Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel song....
Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we...
you see, we are standing here, Rodion Romanovitch, to find something
to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to.... For, as you
can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it over
and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky,
where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be
noticed at once. Lida knows 'My Village' only, nothing but 'My
Village,' and every one sings that. We must sing something far more
genteel.... Well, have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you'd
help your mother! My memory's quite gone, or I should have thought
of something. We really can't sing 'An Hussar.' Ah, let us sing in
French, 'Cinq sous,' I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And
as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children of
good family, and that will be much more touching.... You might sing
'Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre,' for that's quite a child's song and
is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses.
-
Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre
Ne sait quand reviendra...
-
she began singing. "But no, better sing 'Cinq sous.' Now, Kolya,
your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the
other way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!
-
Cinq sous, cinq sous
Pour monter notre menage.
-
(Cough-cough-cough!) Set your dress straight, Polenka, it's
slipped down on your shoulders," she observed, panting from
coughing. "Now it's particularly necessary to behave nicely and
genteelly, that all may see that you are well-born children. I said at
the time that the bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths.
It was your fault, Sonia, with your advice to make it shorter, and now
you see the child is quite deformed by it.... Why, you're all crying
again! What's the matter, stupids? Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste,
make haste! Oh, what an unbearable child!
-
Cinq sous, cinq sous.
-
A policeman again! What do you want?"
A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at
that moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat- a
solid-looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck
(which delighted Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the
policeman)- approached and without a word handed her a green
three-rouble note. His face wore a look of genuine sympathy.
Katerina Ivanovna took it and gave him a polite, even ceremonious,
bow.
"I thank you, honoured sir," she began loftily. "The causes that
have induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous
and honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in
distress). You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family- I
might even say of aristocratic connections- and that wretch of a
general sat eating grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. 'Your
excellency,' I said, 'protect the orphans, for you knew my late
husband, Semyon Zaharovitch, and on the very day of his death the
basest of scoundrels slandered his only daughter.'... That policeman
again! Protect me," she cried to the official. "Why is that
policeman edging up to me? We have only just run away from one of
them. What do you want, fool?"
"It's forbidden in the streets. You mustn't make a disturbance."
"It's you're making a disturbance. It's just the same as if I were
grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?"
"You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven't got one,
and in that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?"
"What, a license?" wailed Katerina Ivanovna. "I buried my husband
to-day. What need of a license?"
"Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself," began the official. "Come
along; I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd.
You are ill."
"Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don't know," screamed Katerina
Ivanovna. "We are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is
she? She is crying too! What's the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida,
where are you going?" she cried suddenly in alarm. "Oh, silly
children! Kolya, Lida, where are they off to?..."
Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their
mother's mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran
off at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away
somewhere. Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them.
She was a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and
panting for breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.
"Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
children!... Polenka! catch them.... It's for your sakes I..."
She stumbled as she ran and fell down.
"She's cut herself, she's bleeding! Oh, dear!" cried Sonia,
bending over her.
All ran up and crowded round. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
policeman who muttered, "Bother!" with a gesture of impatience,
feeling that the job was going to be a troublesome one.
"Pass on! Pass on!" he said to the crowd that pressed forward.
"She's dying," some one shouted.
"She's gone out of her mind," said another.
"Lord have mercy upon us," said a woman, crossing herself. "Have
they caught the little girl and the boy? They're being brought back,
the elder one's got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!"
When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she
had not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the
blood that stained the pavement red was from her chest.
"I've seen that before," muttered the official to Raskolnikov and
Lebeziatnikov; "that's consumption; the blood flows and chokes the
patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long
ago... nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What's to be done
though? She is dying."
"This way, this way, to my room!" Sonia implored. "I live here!...
See, that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste," she
turned from one to the other. "Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!"
Thanks to the official's efforts, this plan was adopted, the
policeman even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried
to Sonia's room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood
was still flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself.
Raskolnikov, Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into
the room and were followed by the policeman, who first drove back
the crowd which followed to the very door. Polenka came in holding
Kolya and Lida, who were trembling and weeping. Several persons came
in too from the Kapernaumovs' room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed
man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like
a brush, his wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression,
and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among
these, Svidrigailov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked
at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not
having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of.
The official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too
late now for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for.
Kapernaumov ran himself.
Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding
ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating
eyes at Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her
brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her
up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.
"Where are the children?" she said in a faint voice. "You've brought
them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!"
Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her
eyes, looking about her.
"So that's how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your
room."
She looked at her with a face of suffering.
"We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here!
Well, here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you,
I've had enough! The ball is over. (Cough!) Lay me down, let me die in
peace."
They laid her back on the pillow.
"What, the priest? I don't want him. You haven't got a rouble to
spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows
how I have suffered.... And if He won't forgive me, I don't care!"
She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
turned her eyes from side to side, recognised every one for a
minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse
and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.
"I said to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each
word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,
make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, be a
graceful child!
-
Du hast Diamanten und Perlen
-
What next? That's the thing to sing.
-
Du hast die schonsten Augen
Madchen, was willst du mehr?
-
"What an idea! Was willst du mehr. What things the fool invents! Ah,
yes!
-
In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.
-
"Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those
days! Oh that's the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I've
forgotten. Remind me! How was it?"
She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a
horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at
every word, with a look of growing terror.
"In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead
in my breast!..."
"Your excellency!" she wailed suddenly with a heartrending scream
and a flood of tears, "protect the orphans! You have been their
father's guest... one may say aristocratic...." She started, regaining
consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
recognised Sonia.
"Sonia, Sonia!" she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
surprised to find her there. "Sonia darling, are you here, too?"
They lifted her up again.
"Enough! It's over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am
broken!" she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell
heavily back on the pillow.
She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last
long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open,
her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.
Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained
motionless with her head pressed to the dead woman's wasted bosom.
Polenka threw herself at her mother's feet, kissing them and weeping
violently. Though Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened,
they had a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their
hands on each other's little shoulders, stared straight at one another
and both at once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were
both still in their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap
with the ostrich feather.
And how did "the certificate of merit" come to be on the bed
beside Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow: Raskolnikov
saw it.
He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.
"She is dead," he said.
"Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you," said
Svidrigailov, coming up to them.
Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.
Svidrigailov drew Raskolnikov further away.
"I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You
know it's a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to
spare. I will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good
orphan asylum, and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to
each on coming of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety
about them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a
good girl, isn't she? So tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I
am spending her ten thousand."
"What is your motive for such benevolence?" asked Raskolnikov.
"Ah! you sceptical person!" laughed Svidrigailov. "I told you I
had no need of that money. Won't you admit that it's simply done
from humanity? She wasn't 'a louse,' you know" (he pointed to the
corner where the dead woman lay), "was she, like some old pawnbroker
woman? Come, you'll agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked
things or is she to die? And if I didn't help them, Polenka would go
the same way."
He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping
his eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing
his own phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked
wildly at Svidrigailov.
"How do you know?" he whispered, hardly able to breathe.
"Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich's, the other side of the wall.
Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and
devoted friend of mine. I am a neighbour."
"You?"
"Yes," continued Svidrigailov, shaking with laughter. "I assure
you on my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me
enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it.
Well, here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I
am. You'll see that you can get on with me!"
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_ONE
PART SIX
Chapter One
-
A STRANGE period began for Raskolnikov: it was as though a fog had
fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which
there was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed
that his mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so,
with intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he
had been mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to
the date of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece
his recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself
from what other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had
explained events as due to circumstances which existed only in his
imagination. At times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness,
amounting sometimes to panic. But he remembered, too, moments,
hours, perhaps whole days, of complete apathy, which came upon him
as a reaction from his previous terror and might be compared with
the abnormal insensibility, sometimes seen in the dying. He seemed
to be trying in that latter stage to escape from a full and clear
understanding of his position. Certain essential facts which
required immediate consideration were particularly irksome to him. How
glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the neglect of
which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable ruin.
He was particularly worried about Svidrigailov, he might be said
to be permanently thinking of Svidrigailov. From the time of
Svidrigailov's too menacing and unmistakable words in Sonia's room
at the moment of Katerina Ivanovna's death, the normal working of
his mind seemed to break down. But although this new fact caused him
extreme uneasiness, Raskolnikov was in no hurry for an explanation
of it. At times, finding himself in a solitary and remote part of
the town, in some wretched eating-house, sitting alone lost in
thought, hardly knowing how he had come there, he suddenly thought
of Svidrigailov. He recognised suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that
he ought at once to come to an understanding with that man and to make
what terms he could. Walking outside the city gates one day, he
positively fancied that they had fixed a meeting there, that he was
waiting for Svidrigailov. Another time he woke up before daybreak
lying on the ground under some bushes and could not at first
understand how he had come there.
But during the two or three days after Katerina Ivanovna's death, he
had two or three times met Svidrigailov at Sonia's lodging, where he
had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made
no reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly
agreed not to speak of it for a time.
Katerina Ivanovna's body was still lying in the coffin, Svidrigailov
was busy making arrangements for the funeral. Sonia too was very busy.
At their last meeting Svidrigailov informed Raskolnikov that he had
made an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Katerina
Ivanovna's children; that he had, through certain connections,
succeeded in getting hold of certain personages by whose help the
three orphans could be at once placed in very suitable institutions;
that the money he had settled on them had been of great assistance, as
it is much easier to place orphans with some property than destitute
ones. He said something too about Sonia and promised to come himself
in a day or two to see Raskolnikov, mentioning that "he would like
to consult with him, that there were things they must talk over...."
This conversation took place in the passage on the stairs.
Svidrigailov looked intently at Raskolnikov and suddenly, after a
brief pause, dropping his voice, asked: "But how is it, Rodion
Romanovitch; you don't seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you
don't seem to understand. Cheer up! We'll talk things over; I am
only sorry, I've so much to do of my own business and other
people's. Ah, Rodion Romanovitch," he added suddenly, "what all men
need is fresh air, fresh air... more than anything!"
He moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who were
coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By
Svidrigailov's orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidrigailov
went his way. Raskolnikov stood still a moment, thought, and
followed the priest into Sonia's room. He stood at the door. They
began quietly, slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his
childhood the thought of death and the presence of death had something
oppressive and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had
heard the requiem service. And there was something else here as
well, too awful and disturbing. He looked at the children: they were
all kneeling by the coffin; Polenka was weeping. Behind them Sonia
prayed, softly, and, as it were, timidly weeping.
"These last two days she hasn't said a word to me, she hasn't
glanced at me," Raskolnikov thought suddenly. The sunlight was
bright in the room; the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, "Give
rest, oh Lord...." Raskolnikov stayed all through the service. As he
blessed them and took his leave, the priest looked round strangely.
After the service, Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his
hands and let her head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly
gesture bewildered Raskolnikov. It seemed strange to him that there
was no trace of repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her
hand. It was the furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he
interpreted it.
Sonia said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He
felt very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some
solitude, he would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend
his whole life there. But although he had almost always been by
himself of late, he had never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he
walked out of the town on to the high road, once he had even reached a
little wood, but the lonelier the place was, the more he seemed to
be aware of an uneasy presence near him. It did not frighten him,
but greatly annoyed him, so that he made haste to return to the
town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter restaurants and taverns, to
walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt easier and even more
solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour listening to songs in a
tavern and he remembered that he positively enjoyed it. But at last he
had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again, as though his
conscience smote him. "Here I sit listening to singing, is that what I
ought to be doing?" he thought. Yet he felt at once that that was
not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something requiring
immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly
understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. "No, better
the struggle again! Better Porfiry again... or Svidrigailov.... Better
some challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!" he thought. He went
out of the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of
Dounia and his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That
night he woke up before morning among some bushes in Krestovsky
Island, trembling all over with fever; he walked home, and it was
early morning when he arrived. After some hours' sleep the fever
left him, but he woke up late, two o'clock in the afternoon.
He remembered that Katerina Ivanovna's funeral had been fixed for
that day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Nastasya brought
him some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness.
His head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last
three days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of
panic.
The door opened and Razumihin came in.
"Ah, he's eating, then he's not ill," said Razumihin. He took a
chair and sat down at the table opposite Raskolnikov.
He was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with
evident annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked
as though he had some special fixed determination.
"Listen," he began resolutely. "As far as I am concerned, you may
all go to hell, but from what I see, it's clear to me that I can't
make head or tail of it; please don't think I've come to ask you
questions. I don't want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your
secrets, I dare say I shouldn't stay to listen, I should go away
cursing. I have only come to find out once for all whether it's a fact
that you are mad? There is a conviction in the air that you are mad or
very nearly so. I admit I've been disposed to that opinion myself,
judging from your stupid, repulsive and quite inexplicable actions,
and from your recent behavior to your mother and sister. Only a
monster or a madman could treat them as you have; so you must be mad."
"When did you see them last?"
"Just now. Haven't you seen them since then? What have you been
doing with yourself? Tell me, please. I've been to you three times
already. Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had
made up her mind to come to you; Avdotya Romanovna tried to prevent
her; she wouldn't hear a word. 'If he is ill, if his mind is giving
way, who can look after him like his mother?' she said. We all came
here together, we couldn't let her come alone all the way. We kept
begging her to be calm. We came in, you weren't here; she sat down,
and stayed ten minutes, while we stood waiting in silence. She got
up and said: 'If he's gone out, that is, if he is well, and has
forgotten his mother, it's humiliating and unseemly for his mother
to stand at his door begging for kindness.' She returned home and took
to her bed; now she is in a fever. 'I see,' she said, 'that he has
time for his girl.' She means by your girl Sofya Semyonovna, your
betrothed or your mistress, I don't know. I went at once to Sofya
Semyonovna's, for I wanted to know what was going on. I looked
round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and Sofya Semyonovna
trying on them mourning dresses. No sign of you. I apologised, came
away, and reported to Avdotya Romanovna. So that's all nonsense and
you haven't got a girl; the most likely thing is that you are mad. But
here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you'd not had a bite
for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but though
you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I'd swear!
Above all, you are not mad. So you may go to hell, all of you, for
there's some mystery, some secret about it, and I don't intend to
worry my brains over your secrets. So I've simply come to swear at
you," he finished, getting up, "to relieve my mind. And I know what to
do now."
"What do you mean to do now?"
"What business is it of yours what I mean to do?"
"You are going in for a drinking bout."
"How... how did you know?"
"Why, it's pretty plain."
Razumihin paused for a minute.
"You always have been a very rational person and you've never been
mad, never," he observed suddenly with warmth. "You're right: I
shall drink. Good-bye!"
And he moved to go out.
"I was talking with my sister- the day before yesterday I think it
was- about you, Razumihin."
"About me! But... where can you have seen her the day before
yesterday?" Razumihin stopped short and even turned a little pale.
One could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently.
"She came here by herself, sat there and talked to me."
"She did!"
"Yes."
"What did you say to her... I mean, about me?"
"I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I
didn't tell her you love her, because she knows that herself."
"She knows that herself?"
"Well, it's pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened
to me, you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give
them into your keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite
well how you love her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I
know that she too may love you and perhaps does love you already.
Now decide for yourself, as you know best, whether you need go in
for a drinking bout or not."
"Rodya! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to
go? Of course, if it's all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall
find out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous
nonsense and that you've made it all up. Anyway you are a capital
fellow, a capital fellow!"...
"That was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that
was a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave
it to time, don't worry about it. You'll know it all in time when it
must be. Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh
air, fresh air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out
what he meant by that."
Razumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent
conclusion.
"He's a political conspirator! He must be. And he's on the eve of
some desperate step, that's certain. It can only be that! And... and
Dounia knows," he thought suddenly.
"So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you," he said, weighing each
syllable, "and you're going to see a man who says we need more air,
and so of course that letter... that too must have something to do
with it," he concluded to himself.
"What letter?"
"She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much- very much
indeed. Too much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to.
Then... then she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part...
then she began warmly thanking me for something; then she went to
her room and locked herself in."
"She got a letter?" Raskolnikov asked thoughtfully.
"Yes, and you didn't know? hm..."
They were both silent.
"Good-bye, Rodion. There was a time, brother, when I... Never
mind, good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must
be off too. I am not going to drink. There's no need now.... That's
all stuff!"
He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him,
he suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:
"Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Porfiry's,
that old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has
confessed and given the proofs. It's one of those very workmen, the
painter, only fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you
believe it, all that scene of fighting and laughing with his companion
on the stairs while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he
got up on purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of
mind of the young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it's his own
explanation, he has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about
it! Well, he's simply a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in
disarming the suspicions of the lawyers- so there's nothing much to
wonder at, I suppose! Of course people like that are always
possible. And the fact that he couldn't keep up the character, but
confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But what a fool I was! I
was frantic on their side!"
"Tell me please from whom did you hear that, and why does it
interest you so?" Raskolnikov asked with unmistakable agitation.
"What next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from
Porfiry, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it."
"From Porfiry?"
"From Porfiry."
"What... what did he say?" Raskolnikov asked in dismay.
"He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after
his fashion."
"He explained it? Explained it himself?"
"Yes, yes; good-bye. I'll tell you all about it another time, but
now I'm busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter,
another time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made
me drunk without wine. I am drunk, Rodya! Good-bye, I'm going. I'll
come again very soon."
He went out.
"He's a political conspirator, there's not a doubt about it,"
Razumihin decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. "And he's
drawn his sister in; that's quite, quite in keeping with Avdotya
Romanovna's character. There are interviews between them!... She
hinted at it too... So many of her words.... and hints... bear that
meaning! And how else can all this tangle be explained? Hm! And I
was almost thinking... Good heavens, what I thought! Yes, I took leave
of my senses and I wronged him! It was his doing, under the lamp in
the corridor that day. Pfoo! What a crude, nasty, vile idea on my
part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing.... And how clear it all is
now! His illness then, all his strange actions... before this, in
the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy.... But what's
the meaning now of that letter? There's something in that, too,
perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!"
He thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart
throbbed, and he suddenly broke into a run.
As soon as Razumihin went out, Raskolnikov got up, turned to the
window, walked into one corner and then into another, as though
forgetting the smallness of his room, and sat down again on the
sofa. He felt, so to speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of
escape had come.
"Yes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too
cramping, the burden had been too agonising. A lethargy had come
upon him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at
Porfiry's he had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape.
After Nikolay's confession, on that very day had come the scene with
Sonia; his behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike
anything he could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler,
instantly and fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia,
he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a
thing on his mind!
"And Svidrigailov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but
somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to
come with Svidrigailov. Svidrigailov, too, might be a means of escape;
but Porfiry was a different matter.
"And so Porfiry himself had explained it to Razumihin, had explained
it psychologically. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology
again! Porfiry? But to think that Porfiry should for one moment
believe that Nikolay was guilty, after what had passed between them
before Nikolay's appearance, after that tete-a-tete interview, which
could have only one explanation? (During those days Raskolnikov had
often recalled passages in that scene with Porfiry; he could not
bear to let his mind rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed
between them, they had exchanged such glances, things had been said in
such a tone and had reached such a pass, that Nikolay, whom Porfiry
had seen through at the first word, at the first gesture, could not
have shaken his conviction.
"And to think that even Razumihin had begun to suspect! The scene in
the corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had
rushed to Porfiry.... But what had induced the latter to receive him
like that? What had been his object in putting Razumihin off with
Nikolay? He must have some plan; there was some design, but what was
it? It was true that a long time had passed since that morning- too
long a time- and no sight nor sound of Porfiry. Well, that was a bad
sign...."
Raskolnikov took his cap and went out of the room, still
pondering. It was the first time for a long while that he had felt
clear in his mind, at least. "I must settle Svidrigailov," he thought,
"and as soon as possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to
come to him of my own accord." And at that moment there was such a
rush of hate in his weary heart that he might have killed either of
those two- Porfiry or Svidrigailov. At least he felt that he would
be capable of doing it later, if not now.
"We shall see, we shall see," he repeated to himself.
But no sooner had he opened the door than he stumbled upon Porfiry
himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Raskolnikov was
dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say,
he was not very much astonished at seeing Porfiry and scarcely
afraid of him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly,
on his guard. "Perhaps this will mean the end? But how could Porfiry
have approached so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard
nothing? Could he have been listening at the door?"
"You didn't expect a visitor, Rodion Romanovitch," Porfiry
explained, laughing. "I've been meaning to look in a long time; I
was passing by and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you
going out? I won't keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette."
"Sit down, Porfiry Petrovitch, sit down." Raskolnikov gave his
visitor a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he
would have marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it.
The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man
will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a
brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no
fear.
Raskolnikov seated himself directly facing Porfiry, and looked at
him without flinching. Porfiry screwed up his eyes and began
lighting a cigarette.
"Speak, speak," seemed as though it would burst from Raskolnikov's
heart. "Come, why don't you speak?"
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
"AH THESE cigarettes!" Porfiry Petrovitch ejaculated at last, having
lighted one. "They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I
can't give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and
a difficulty in breathing. You know I am a coward, I went lately to
Dr. B__n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He
positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: 'Tobacco's bad for
you,' he said, 'your lungs are affected.' But how am I to give it
up? What is there to take its place? I don't drink, that's the
mischief, he-he-he, that I don't. Everything is relative, Rodion
Romanovitch, everything is relative!"
"Why, he's playing his professional tricks again," Raskolnikov
thought with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview
suddenly came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that
had come upon him then.
"I came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you
didn't know?" Porfiry Petrovitch went on, looking round the room. "I
came into this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day,
and I thought I'd return your call. I walked in as your door was
wide open, I looked round, waited and went out without leaving my name
with your servant. Don't you lock your door?"
Raskolnikov's face grew more and more gloomy. Porfiry seemed to
guess his state of mind.
"I've come to have it out with you, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear
fellow! I owe you an explanation and must give it to you," he
continued with a slight smile, just patting Raskolnikov's knee.
But almost at the same instant a serious and careworn look came into
his face; to his surprise Raskolnikov saw a touch of sadness in it. He
had never seen and never suspected such an expression in his face.
"A strange scene passed between us last time we met, Rodion
Romanovitch. Our first interview, too, was a strange one; but
then... and one thing after another! This is the point: I have perhaps
acted unfairly to you; I feel it. Do you remember how we parted?
Your nerves were unhinged and your knees were shaking and so were
mine. And, you know, our behaviour was unseemly, even ungentlemanly.
And yet we are gentlemen, above all, in any case, gentlemen; that must
be understood. Do you remember what we came to?... it was quite
indecorous."
"What is he up to, what does he take me for?" Raskolnikov asked
himself in amazement, raising his head and looking with open eyes on
Porfiry.
"I've decided openness is better between us," Porfiry Petrovitch
went on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though
unwilling to disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his
former wiles. "Yes, such suspicions and such scenes cannot continue
for long. Nikolay put a stop to it, or I don't know what we might
not have come to. That damned workman was sitting at the time in the
next room- can you realise that? You know that, of course; and I am
aware that he came to you afterwards. But what you supposed then was
not true: I had not sent for any one, I had made no kind of
arrangements. You ask why I hadn't? What shall I say to you: it had
all come upon me so suddenly. I had scarcely sent for the porters (you
noticed them as you went out, I dare say). An idea flashed upon me;
I was firmly convinced at the time, you see, Rodion Romanovitch. Come,
I thought- even if I let one thing slip for a time, I shall get hold
of something else- I shan't lose what I want, anyway. You are
nervously irritable, Rodion Romanovitch, by temperament; it's out of
proportion with other qualities of your heart and character, which I
flatter myself I have to some extent divined. Of course I did
reflect even then that it does not always happen that a man gets up
and blurts out his whole story. It does happen sometimes, if you
make a man lose all patience, though even then it's rare. I was
capable of realising that. If I only had a fact, I thought, the
least little fact to go upon, something I could lay hold of, something
tangible, not merely psychological. For if a man is guilty, you must
be able to get something substantial out of him; one may reckon upon
most surprising results indeed. I was reckoning on your temperament,
Rodion Romanovitch, on your temperament above all things! I had
great hopes of you at that time."
"But what are you driving at now?" Raskolnikov muttered at last,
asking the question without thinking.
"What is he talking about?" he wondered distractedly, "does he
really take me to be innocent?"
"What am I driving at? I've come to explain myself, I consider it my
duty, so to speak. I want to make clear to you how the whole business,
the whole misunderstanding arose. I've caused you a great deal of
suffering, Rodion Romanovitch. I am not a monster. I understand what
it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud,
imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment!
I regard you in any case as a man of noble character and not without
elements of magnanimity, though I don't agree with all your
convictions. I wanted to tell you this first, frankly and quite
sincerely, for above all I don't want to deceive you. When I made your
acquaintance, I felt attracted by you. Perhaps you will laugh at my
saying so. You have a right to. I know you disliked me from the
first and indeed you've no reason to like me. You may think what you
like, but I desire now to do all I can to efface that impression and
to show that I am a man of heart and conscience. I speak sincerely."
Porfiry Petrovitch made a dignified pause. Raskolnikov felt a rush
of renewed alarm. The thought that Porfiry believed him to be innocent
began to make him uneasy.
"It's scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail," Porfiry
Petrovitch went on. "Indeed I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with
there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came
to me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My
suspicions were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as
easily not have happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no
need to go into that either. Those rumours and that accident led to
one idea in my mind. I admit it openly- for one may as well make a
clean breast of it- I was the first to pitch on you. The old woman's
notes on the pledges and the rest of it- that all came to nothing.
Yours was one of a hundred. I happened, too, to hear of the scene at
the office, from a man who described it capitally, unconsciously
reproducing the scene with great vividness. It was just one thing
after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow! How could I avoid
being brought to certain ideas? From a hundred rabbits you can't
make a horse, a hundred suspicions don't make a proof, as the
English proverb says, but that's only from the rational point of view-
you can't help being partial, for after all a lawyer is only human.
I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you remember, on
your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the time, but
that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Rodion Romanovitch, you are
ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest and...
had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt
the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived
on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed
enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is
dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a
literary amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of
the heat of youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the
mist. Your article is absurd and fantastic, but there's a
transparent sincerity, a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring
of despair in it. It's a gloomy article, but that's what's fine in it.
I read your article and put it aside, thinking as I did so 'that man
won't go the common way.' Well, I ask you, after that as a
preliminary, how could I help being carried away by what followed? Oh,
dear, I am not saying anything, I am not making any statement now. I
simply noted it at the time. What is there in it? I reflected. There's
nothing in it, that is really nothing and perhaps absolutely
nothing. And it's not at all the thing for the prosecutor to let
himself be carried away by notions: here I have Nikolay on my hands
with actual evidence against him- you may think what you like of it,
but it's evidence. He brings in his psychology, too; one has to
consider him, too, for it's a matter of life and death. Why am I
explaining this to you? That you may understand, and not blame my
malicious behaviour on that occasion. It was not malicious, I assure
you, he-he! Do you suppose I didn't come to search your room at the
time? I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in
bed, not officially, not in my own person, but I was here. Your room
was searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but umsonst! I
thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and
quickly, too; if he's guilty, he's sure to come. Another man
wouldn't but he will. And you remember how Mr. Razumihin began
discussing the subject with you? We arranged that to excite you, so we
purposely spread rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and
Razumihin is not a man to restrain his indignation. Mr. Zametov was
tremendously struck by your anger and your open daring. Think of
blurting out in a restaurant 'I killed her.' It was too daring, too
reckless. I thought so myself, if he is guilty he will be a formidable
opponent. That was what I thought at the time. I was expecting you.
But you simply bowled Zametov over and... well, you see, it all lies
in this- that this damnable psychology can be taken two ways! Well,
I kept expecting you, and so it was, you came! My heart was fairly
throbbing. Ach!
"Now, why need you have come? Your laughter, too, as you came in, do
you remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn't expected
you so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter.
You see what influence a mood has! Mr. Razumihin then- ah, that stone,
that stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it
somewhere in a kitchen garden. It was in a kitchen garden, you told
Zametov and afterwards you repeated that in my office? And when we
began picking your article to pieces, how you explained it! One
could take every word of yours in two senses, as though there were
another meaning hidden.
"So in this way, Rodion Romanovitch, I reached the furthest limit,
and knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself
what I was about. After all, I said, you can take it all in another
sense if you like, and it's more natural so, indeed. I couldn't help
admitting it was more natural. I was bothered! 'No, I'd better get
hold of some little fact' I said. So when I heard of the bell-ringing,
I held my breath and was all in a tremor. 'Here is my little fact,'
thought I, and I didn't think it over, I simply wouldn't. I would have
given a thousand roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own
eyes, when you walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he
had called you murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask
him a question all the way. And then what about your trembling, what
about your bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium?
"And so, Rodion Romanovitch, can you wonder that I played such
pranks on you? And what made you come at that very minute? Some one
seemed to have sent you, by Jove! And if Nikolay had not parted
us... and do you remember Nikolay at the time? Do you remember him
clearly? It was a thunderbolt, a regular thunderbolt! And how I met
him! I didn't believe in the thunderbolt, not for a minute. You
could see it for yourself; and how could I? Even afterwards, when
you had gone and he began making very, very plausible answers on
certain points, so that I was surprised at him myself, even then I
didn't believe his story! You see what it is to be as firm as a
rock! No, thought I, morgen fruh. What has Nikolay got to do with it!"
"Razumihin told me just now that you think Nikolay guilty and had
yourself assured him of it...."
His voice failed him, and he broke off. He had been listening in
indescribable agitation, as this man who had seen through and
through him went back upon himself. He was afraid of believing it
and did not believe it. In those still ambiguous words he kept eagerly
looking for something more definite and conclusive.
"Mr. Razumihin!" cried Porfiry Petrovitch, seeming glad of a
question from Raskolnikov, who had till then, been silent.
"He-he-he! But I had to put Mr. Razumihin off; two is company, three
is none. Mr. Razumihin is not the right man, besides he is an
outsider. He came running to me with a pale face.... But never mind
him, why bring him in! To return to Nikolay, would you like to know
what sort of a type he is, how I understand him, that is? To begin
with, he is still a child and not exactly a coward, but something by
way of an artist. Really, don't laugh at my describing him so. He is
innocent and responsive to influence. He has a heart, and is a
fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells stories, they say,
so that people come from other villages to hear him. He attends school
too, and laughs till he cries if you hold up a finger to him; he
will drink himself senseless- not as a regular vice, but at times,
when people treat him, like a child. And he stole, too, then,
without knowing it himself, for 'How can it be stealing, if one
picks it up?' And do you know he is an Old Believer, or rather a
dissenter? There have been Wanderers* in his family, and he was for
two years in his village under the spiritual guidance of a certain
elder. I learnt all this from Nikolay and from his fellow villagers.
And what's more, he wanted to run into the wilderness! He was full
of fervour, prayed at night, read the old books, 'the true' ones,
and read himself crazy.
-
* A religious sect.- TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.
-
"Petersburg had a great effect upon him, especially the women and
the wine. He responds to everything and he forgot the elder and all
that. I learnt that an artist here took a fancy to him, and used to go
and see him, and now this business came upon him.
"Well, he was frightened, he tried to hang himself! He ran away! How
can one get over the idea the people have of Russian legal
proceedings! The very word 'trial' frightens some of them. Whose fault
is it? We shall see what the new juries will do. God grant they do
good! Well, in prison, it seems, he remembered the venerable elder,
the Bible, too, made its appearance again. Do you know, Rodion
Romanovitch, the force of the word 'suffering' among some of these
people! It's not a question of suffering for some one's benefit, but
simply, 'one must suffer.' If they suffer at the hands of the
authorities, so much the better. In my time there was a very meek
and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison always reading
his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself crazy, and so
crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he seized a
brick and flung it at the governor, though he had done him no harm.
And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side on purpose,
for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to a prisoner
who assaults an officer with a weapon. So 'he took his suffering.'
"So I suspect now that Nikolay wants to take his suffering or
something of the sort. I know it for certain from facts, indeed.
Only he doesn't know that I know. What, you don't admit that there are
such fantastic people among the peasants? Lots of them. The elder
now has begun influencing him, especially since he tried to hang
himself. But he'll come and tell me all himself. You think he'll
hold out? Wait a bit, he'll take his words back. I am waiting from
hour to hour for him to come and abjure his evidence. I have come to
like that Nikolay and am studying him in detail. And what do you
think? He-he! He answered me very plausibly on some points, he
obviously had collected some evidence and prepared himself cleverly.
But on other points he is simply at sea, knows nothing and doesn't
even suspect that he doesn't know!
"No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn't come in! This is a
fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day
when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that
blood 'renews,' when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we
have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see
resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he
resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower
and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door
after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the
murder and couldn't take the money, and what he did manage to snatch
up he hid under a stone. It wasn't enough for him to suffer agony
behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no,
he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the
bell-ringing, he wanted to feel the cold shiver over again.... Well,
that we grant, was through illness, but consider this: he is a
murderer, but looks upon himself as an honest man, despises others,
poses as injured innocence. No, that's not the work of a Nikolay, my
dear Rodion Romanovitch!"
All that had been said before had sounded so like a recantation that
these words were too great a shock. Raskolnikov shuddered as though he
had been stabbed.
"Then... who then... is the murderer?" he asked in a breathless
voice, unable to restrain himself.
Porfiry Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were
amazed at the question.
"Who is the murderer?" he repeated, as though unable to believe
his ears. "Why you, Rodion Romanovitch! You are the murderer," he
added almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction.
Raskolnikov leapt from the sofa, stood up for a few seconds and
sat down again without uttering a word. His face twitched
convulsively.
"Your lip is twitching just as it did before," Porfiry Petrovitch
observed almost sympathetically. "You've been misunderstanding me, I
think, Rodion Romanovitch," he added after a brief pause, "that's
why you are so surprised. I came on purpose to tell you everything and
deal openly with you."
"It was not I murdered her," Raskolnikov whispered like a frightened
child caught in the act.
"No, it was you, you Rodion Romanovitch, and no one else," Porfiry
whispered sternly, with conviction.
They were both silent and the silence lasted strangely long, about
ten minutes. Raskolnikov put his elbow on the table and passed his
fingers through his hair. Porfiry Petrovitch sat quietly waiting.
Suddenly Raskolnikov looked scornfully at Porfiry.
"You are at your old tricks again, Porfiry Petrovitch! Your old
method again. I wonder you don't get sick of it!"
"Oh, stop that, what does that matter now? It would be a different
matter if there were witnesses present, but we are whispering alone.
You see yourself that I have not come to chase and capture you like
a hare. Whether you confess it or not is nothing to me now; for
myself, I am convinced without it."
"If so, what did you come for?" Raskolnikov asked irritably. "I
ask you the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why
don't you take me to prison?"
"Oh, that's your question! I will answer you, point for point. In
the first place, to arrest you so directly is not to my interest."
"How so? If you are convinced you ought...."
"Ach, what if I am convinced? That's only my dream for the time. Why
should I put you in safety? You know that's it, since you ask me to do
it. If I confront you with that workman for instance and you say to
him 'were you drunk or not? Who saw me with you? I simply took you
to be drunk, and you were drunk, too.' Well, what could I answer,
especially as your story is a more likely one than his, for there's
nothing but psychology to support his evidence- that's almost unseemly
with his ugly mug, while you hit the mark exactly, for the rascal is
an inveterate drunkard and notoriously so. And I have myself
admitted candidly several times already that that psychology can be
taken in two ways and that the second way is stronger and looks far
more probable, and that apart from that I have as yet nothing
against you. And though I shall put you in prison and indeed have
come- quite contrary to etiquette- to inform you of it beforehand, yet
I tell you frankly, also contrary to etiquette, that it won't be to my
advantage. Well, secondly, I've come to you because..."
"Yes, yes, secondly?" Raskolnikov was listening breathless.
"Because, as I told you just now, I consider I owe you an
explanation. I don't want you to look upon me as a monster, as I
have a genuine liking for you, you may believe me or not. And in the
third place I've come to you with a direct and open proposition-
that you should surrender and confess. It will be infinitely more to
your advantage and to my advantage too, for my task will be done.
Well, is this open on my part or not?"
Raskolnikov thought a minute.
"Listen, Porfiry Petrovitch. You said just now you have nothing but
psychology to go on, yet now you've gone on mathematics. Well, what if
you are mistaken yourself, now?"
"No, Rodion Romanovitch, I am not mistaken. I have a little fact
even then, providence sent it me."
"What little fact?"
"I won't tell you what, Rodion Romanovitch. And in any case, I
haven't the right to put it off any longer, I must arrest you. So
think it over: it makes no difference to me now and so I speak only
for your sake. Believe me, it will be better, Rodion Romanovitch."
Raskolnikov smiled malignantly.
"That's not simply ridiculous, it's positively shameless. Why,
even if I were guilty, which I don't admit, what reason should I
have to confess, when you tell me yourself that I shall be in
greater safety in prison?"
"Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, don't put too much faith in words,
perhaps prison will not be altogether a restful place. That's only
theory and my theory, and what authority am I for you? Perhaps, too,
even now I am hiding something from you? I can't lay bare
everything, he-he! And how can you ask what advantage? Don't you
know how it would lessen your sentence? You would be confessing at a
moment when another man has taken the crime on himself and so has
muddled the whole case. Consider that! I swear before God that I
will so arrange that your confession shall come as a complete
surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these psychological
points, of an suspicion against you, so that your crime will appear to
have been something like an aberration, for in truth it was an
aberration. I am an honest man, Rodion Romanovitch, and will keep my
word."
Raskolnikov maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink
dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his
smile was sad and gentle.
"No!" he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up
appearances with Porfiry, "it's not worth it, I don't care about
lessening the sentence!"
"That's just what I was afraid of!" Porfiry cried warmly and, as
it seemed, involuntarily. "That's just what I feared, that you
wouldn't care about the mitigation of sentence."
Raskolnikov looked sadly and expressively at him.
"Ah, don't disdain life!" Porfiry went on. "You have a great deal of
it still before you. How can you say you don't want a mitigation of
sentence? You are an impatient fellow!"
"A great deal of what lies before me?"
"Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it?
Seek and ye shall find. This may be God's means for bringing you to
Him. And it's not for ever, the bondage...."
"The time will be shortened," laughed Raskolnikov.
"Why, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that
you are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But
anyway you shouldn't be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing."
"Ach, hang it!" Raskolnikov whispered with loathing and contempt, as
though he did not want to speak aloud.
He got up again as though he meant to go away, but sat down again in
evident despair.
"Hang it, if you like! You've lost faith and you think that I am
grossly flattering you; but how long has your life been? How much do
you understand? You made up a theory and then were ashamed that it
broke down and turned out to be not at all original! It turned out
something base, that's true, but you are not hopelessly base. By no
means so base! At least you didn't deceive yourself for long, you went
straight to the furthest point at one bound. How do I regard you? I
regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their
torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found
faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change
of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is
right in wanting to suffer. I know you don't believe in it- but
don't be over-wise; fling yourself straight into life, without
deliberation; don't be afraid- the flood will bear you to the bank and
set you safe on your feet again. What bank? How can I tell? I only
believe that you have long life before you. I know that you take all
my words now for a set speech prepared beforehand, but maybe you
will remember them after. They may be of use some time. That's why I
speak. It's as well that you only killed the old woman. If you'd
invented another theory you might perhaps have done something a
thousand times more hideous. You ought to thank God, perhaps. How do
you know? Perhaps God is saving you for something. But keep a good
heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great expiation before
you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since you have taken
such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice in it. You
must fulfil the demands of justice. I know that you don't believe
it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down
in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!"
Raskolnikov positively started.
"But who are you? what prophet are you? From the height of what
majestic calm do you proclaim these words of wisdom?"
"Who am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that's all. A man
perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my
day is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for
you. Though who knows, maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke
and come to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass
into another class of men? It's not comfort you regret, with your
heart! What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It's
not time, but yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all
will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun. Why are you
smiling again? At my being such a Schiller? I bet you're imagining
that I am trying to get round you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am,
he-he-he! Perhaps you'd better not believe my word, perhaps you'd
better never believe it altogether,- I'm made that way, I confess
it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself, I think, how far I
am a base sort of man and how far I am honest."
"When do you mean to arrest me?"
"Well, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over,
my dear fellow, and pray to God. It's more in your interest, believe
me."
"And what if I run away?" asked Raskolnikov with a strange smile.
"No, you won't run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable
dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man's thought, for
you've only to show him the end of your little finger and he'll be
ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you've
ceased to believe in your theory already, what will you run away with?
And what would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for
you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite
position, an atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would
you have? If you ran away, you'd come back to yourself. You can't
get on without us. And if I put you in prison,- say you've been
there a month, or two, or three- remember my word, you'll confess of
yourself and perhaps to your own surprise. You won't know an hour
beforehand that you are coming with a confession. I am convinced
that you will decide, 'to take your suffering.' You don't believe my
words now, but you'll come to it of yourself. For suffering, Rodion
Romanovitch, is a great thing. Never mind my having grown fat, I
know all the same. Don't laugh at it, there's an idea in suffering,
Nokolay is right. No, you won't run away, Rodion Romanovitch."
Raskolnikov got up and took his cap. Porfiry Petrovitch also rose.
"Are you going for a walk? The evening will be fine, if only we
don't have a storm. Though it would be a good thing to freshen the
air."
He too took his cap.
"Porfiry Petrovitch, please don't take up the notion that I have
confessed to you to-day," Raskolnikov pronounced with sullen
insistence. "You're a strange man and I have listened to you from
simple curiosity. But I have admitted nothing, remember that!"
"Oh, I know that, I'll remember. Look at him, he's trembling!
Don't be uneasy, my dear fellow, have it your own way. Walk about a
bit, you won't be able to walk too far. If anything happens, I have
one request to make of you," he added, dropping his voice. "It's an
awkward one, but important. If anything were to happen (though
indeed I don't believe in it and think you quite incapable of it), yet
in case you were taken during these forty or fifty hours with the
notion of putting an end to the business in some other way, in some
fantastic fashion- laying hands on yourself- (it's an absurd
proposition, but you must forgive me for it) do leave a brief but
precise note, only two lines and mention the stone. It will be more
generous. Come, till we meet! Good thoughts and sound decisions to
you!"
Porfiry went out, stooping and avoiding looking at Raskolnikov.
The latter went to the window and waited with irritable impatience
till he calculated that Porfiry had reached the street and moved away.
Then he too went hurriedly out of the room.
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_THREE
Chapter Three
-
HE HURRIED to Svidrigailov's. What he had to hope from that man he
did not know. But that man had some hidden power over him. Having once
recognised this, he could not rest, and now the time had come.
On the way, one question particularly worried him: had
Svidrigailov been to Porfiry's?
As far as he could judge, he would swear to it, that he had not.
He pondered again and again, went over Porfiry's visit; no, he
hadn't been, of course he hadn't.
But if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the
present he fancied he couldn't. Why? He could not have explained,
but if he could, he would not have wasted much thought over it at
the moment. It all worried him and at the same time he could not
attend to it. Strange to say, none would have believed it perhaps, but
he only felt a faint vague anxiety about his immediate future.
Another, much more important anxiety tormented him- it concerned
himself, but in a different, more vital way. Moreover, he was
conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was working better
that morning than it had done of late.
And was it worth while, after all that had happened, to contend with
these new trivial difficulties? Was it worth while, for instance, to
manoeuvre that Svidrigailov should not go to Porfiry's? Was it worth
while to investigate, to ascertain the facts, to waste time over any
one like Svidrigailov?
Oh how sick he was of it all!
And yet he was hastening to Svidrigailov; could he be expecting
something new from him, information, or means of escape? Men will
catch at straws! Was it destiny or some instinct bringing them
together? Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; perhaps it was not
Svidrigailov but some other whom he needed, and Svidrigailov had
simply presented himself by chance. Sonia? But what should he go to
Sonia for now? To beg her tears again? He was afraid of Sonia, too.
Sonia stood before him as an irrevocable sentence. He must go his
own way or hers. At that moment especially he did not feel equal to
seeing her. No, would it not be better to try Svidrigailov? And he
could not help inwardly owning that he had long felt that he must
see him for some reason.
But what could they have in common? Their very evil-doing could
not be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant,
evidently depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly
malignant. Such stories were told about him. It is true he was
befriending Katerina Ivanovna's children, but who could tell with what
motive and what it meant? The man always had some design, some
project.
There was another thought which had been continually hovering of
late about Raskolnikov's mind, and causing him great uneasiness. It
was so painful that he made distinct efforts to get rid of it. He
sometimes thought that Svidrigailov was dogging his footsteps.
Svidrigailov had found out his secret and had had designs on Dounia.
What if he had them still? Wasn't it practically certain that he
had? And what if, having learnt his secret and so having gained
power over him, he were to use it as a weapon against Dounia?
This idea sometimes even tormented his dreams, but it had never
presented itself so vividly to him as on his way to Svidrigailov.
The very thought moved him to gloomy rage. To begin with, this would
transform everything, even his own position; he would have at once
to confess his secret to Dounia. Would he have to give himself up
perhaps to prevent Dounia from taking some rash step? The letter? This
morning Dounia had received a letter. From whom could she get
letters in Petersburg? Luzhin, perhaps? It's true Razumihin was
there to protect her, but Razumihin knew nothing of the position.
Perhaps it was his duty to tell Razumihin? He thought of it with
repugnance.
In any case he must see Svidrigailov as soon as possible, he decided
finally. Thank God, the details of the interview were of little
consequence, if only he could get at the root of the matter; but if
Svidrigailov were capable... if he were intriguing against Dounia,-
then...
Raskolnikov was so exhausted by what he had passed through that
month that he could only decide such questions in one way; "then I
shall kill him," he thought in cold despair.
A sudden anguish oppressed his heart, he stood still in the middle
of the street and began looking about to see where he was and which
way he was going. He found himself in X. Prospect, thirty or forty
paces from the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second
storey of the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the
windows were wide open; judging from the figures moving at the
windows, the rooms were full to overflowing. There were sounds of
singing, of clarionet and violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He
could hear women shrieking. He was about to turn back wondering why he
had come to the X. Prospect, when suddenly at one of the end windows
he saw Svidrigailov, sitting at a tea-table right in the open window
with a pipe in his mouth, Raskolnikov was dreadfully taken aback,
almost terrified. Svidrigailov was silently watching and
scrutinising him and, what struck Raskolnikov at once, seemed to be
meaning to get up and slip away unobserved. Raskolnikov at once
pretended not to have seen him, but to be looking absentmindedly away,
while he watched him out of the corner of his eye. His heart was
beating violently. Yet, it was evident that Svidrigailov did not
want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on the
point of concealing himself, but as he got up and moved back his
chair, he seemed to have become suddenly aware that Raskolnikov had
seen him, and was watching him. What had passed between them was
much the same as what happened at their first meeting in Raskolnikov's
room. A sly smile came into Svidrigailov's face and grew broader and
broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At
last Svidrigailov broke into a loud laugh.
"Well, well, come in if you want me; I am here!" he shouted from the
window.
Raskolnikov went up into the tavern. He found Svidrigailov in a tiny
back room, adjoining the saloon in which merchants, clerks and numbers
of people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables to
the desperate bawling of a chorus of singers. The click of billiard
balls could be heard in the distance. On the table before Svidrigailov
stood an open bottle, and a glass half full of champagne. In the
room he found also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking
red-cheeked girl of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a
Tyrolese hat with ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room,
she was singing some servants' hall song in a rather husky
contralto, to the accompaniment of the organ.
"Come, that's enough," Svidrigailov stopped her at Raskolnikov's
entrance. The girl at once broke off and stood waiting respectfully.
She had sung her guttural rhymes, too, with a serious and respectful
expression in her face.
"Hey, Philip, a glass!" shouted Svidrigailov.
"I won't drink anything," said Raskolnikov.
"As you like, I didn't mean it for you. Drink, Katia! I don't want
anything more to-day, you can go." He poured her out a full glass, and
laid down a yellow note.
Katia drank off her glass of wine, as women do, without putting it
down, in twenty gulps, took the note and kissed Svidrigailov's hand,
which he allowed quite seriously. She went out of the room and the boy
trailed after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the
street. Svidrigailov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything
about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the
waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious.
The door leading to the saloon had a lock on it. Svidrigailov was at
home in this room and perhaps spent whole days in it. The tavern was
dirty and wretched, not even second rate.
"I was going to see you and looking for you," Raskolnikov began,
"but I don't know what made me turn from the Hay Market into the X.
Prospect just now. I never take this turning. I turn to the right from
the Hay Market. And this isn't the way to you. I simply turned and
here you are. It is strange!"
"Why don't you say at once 'it's a miracle?'"
"Because it may be only chance."
"Oh, that's the way with all you folk," laughed Svidrigailov. "You
won't admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you
say that it may be only chance. And what cowards they all are here,
about having an opinion of their own, you can't fancy, Rodion
Romanovitch. I don't mean you, you have an opinion of your own and are
not afraid to have it. That's how it was you attracted my curiosity."
"Nothing else?"
"Well, that's enough, you know," Svidrigailov was obviously
exhilarated, but only slightly so, he had not had more than half a
glass of wine.
"I fancy you came to see me before you knew that I was capable of
having what you call an opinion of my own," observed Raskolnikov.
"Oh, well, it was a different matter. Every one has his own plans.
And apropos of the miracle let me tell you that I think you have
been asleep for the last two or three days. I told you of this
tavern myself, there is no miracle in your coming straight here. I
explained the way myself, told you where it was, and the hours you
could find me here. Do you remember?"
"I don't remember," answered Raskolnikov with surprise.
"I believe you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped
mechanically on your memory. You turned this way mechanically and
yet precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware
of it. When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You
give yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch. And another thing,
I'm convinced there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to
themselves as they walk. This is a town of crazy people. If only we
had scientific men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make
most valuable investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There
are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer
influences on the soul of man as in Petersburg. The mere influences of
climate mean so much. And it's the administrative centre of all Russia
and its character must be reflected on the whole country. But that
is neither here nor there now. The point is that I have several
times watched you. You walk out of your house- holding your head high-
twenty paces from home you let it sink, and fold your hands behind
your back. You look and evidently see nothing before nor beside you.
At last you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, and
sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at last stand still in
the middle of the road. That's not at all the thing. Some one may be
watching you besides me, and it won't do you any good. It's nothing
really to do with me and I can't cure you, but, of course, you
understand me."
"Do you know that I am being followed?" asked Raskolnikov, looking
inquisitively at him.
"No, I know nothing about it," said Svidrigailov, seeming surprised.
"Well, then, let us leave me alone," Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.
"Very good, let us leave you alone."
"You had better tell me, if you come here to drink, and directed
me twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to get away
just now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it."
"He-he! And why was it you lay on your sofa with closed eyes and
pretended to be asleep, though you were wide awake while I stood in
your doorway? I saw it."
"I may have had... reasons. You know that yourself."
"And I may have had my reasons, though you don't know them."
Raskolnikov dropped his right elbow on the table, leaned his chin in
the fingers of his right hand, and stared intently at Svidrigailov.
For a full minute he scrutinised his face, which had impressed him
before. It was a strange face, like a mask; white and red, with bright
red lips, with a flaxen beard, and still thick flaxen hair. His eyes
were somehow too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and
fixed. There was something awfully unpleasant in that handsome face,
which looked so wonderfully young for his age. Svidrigailov was
smartly dressed in light summer clothes and was particularly dainty in
his linen. He wore a huge ring with a precious stone in it.
"Have I got to bother myself about you too now?" said Raskolnikov
suddenly, coming with nervous impatience straight to the point.
"Even though perhaps you are the most dangerous man if you care to
injure me, I don't want to put myself out any more. I will show you at
once that I don't prize myself as you probably think I do. I've come
to tell you at once that if you keep to your former intentions with
regard to my sister and if you think to derive any benefit in that
direction from what has been discovered of late, I will kill you
before you get me locked up. You can reckon on my word. You know
that I can keep it. And in the second place if you want to tell me
anything- for I keep fancying all this time that you have something to
tell me- make haste and tell it, for time is precious and very
likely it will soon be too late."
"Why in such haste?" asked Svidrigailov, looking at him curiously.
"Every one has his plans," Raskolnikov answered gloomily and
impatiently.
"You urged me yourself to frankness just now, and at the first
question you refuse to answer," Svidrigailov observed with a smile.
"You keep fancying that I have aims of my own and so you look at me
with suspicion. Of course it's perfectly natural in your position. But
though I should like to be friends with you, I shan't trouble myself
to convince you of the contrary. The game isn't worth the candle and I
wasn't intending to talk to you about anything special."
"What did you want me, for, then? It was you who came hanging
about me."
"Why, simply as an interesting subject for observation. I liked
the fantastic nature of your position- that's what it was! Besides you
are the brother of a person who greatly interested me, and from that
person I had in the past heard a very great deal about you, from which
I gathered that you had a great influence over her; isn't that enough?
Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is rather complex, and
is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to
me not only for a definite object, but for the sake of hearing
something new. Isn't that so? Isn't that so?" persisted Svidrigailov
with a sly smile. "Well, can't you fancy then that I, too, on my way
here in the train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something
new, and on my making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we
are!"
"What profit could you make?"
"How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend
all my time and it's my enjoyment, that's to say it's no great
enjoyment, but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now- you saw
her?... If only I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see
I can eat this."
He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a
terrible looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.
"Have you dined, by the way? I've had something and want nothing
more. I don't drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I
never touch anything, and not more than a glass of that all the
evening, and even that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it
just now to wind myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and
you see me in a peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just
now like a schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I
believe," he pulled out his watch, "I can spend an hour with you. It's
half-past four now. If only I'd been something, a landowner, a father,
a cavalry officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no
specialty, and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you
would tell me something new."
"But what are you, and why have you come here?"
"What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the
cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa
Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!"
"You are a gambler, I believe?"
"No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper- not a gambler."
"You have been a card-sharper then?"
"Yes, I've been a card-sharper too."
"Didn't you get thrashed sometimes?"
"It did happen. Why?"
"Why, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been
lively."
"I won't contradict you and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I
confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women."
"As soon as you buried Marfa Petrovna?"
"Quite so," Svidrigailov smiled with engaging candour. "What of
it? You seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about
women?"
"You ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?"
"Vice! Oh, that's what you are after! But I'll answer you in
order, first about women in general; you know I am fond of talking.
Tell me, what should I restrain myself for? Why should I give up
women, since I have a passion for them? It's an occupation, anyway."
"So you hope for nothing here but vice?"
"Oh, very well, for vice then. You insist on its being vice. But
anyway I like a direct question. In this vice at least there is
something permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on
fantasy, something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember,
for ever setting one on fire and maybe, not to be quickly
extinguished, even with years. You'll agree it's an occupation of a
sort."
"That's nothing to rejoice at, it's a disease and a dangerous one."
"Oh, that's what you think, is it? I agree, that it is a disease
like everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one
must exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in
one way or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to
be moderate and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to
do? If I hadn't this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to
admit that a decent man ought to put up with being bored, but yet..."
"And could you shoot yourself?"
"Oh, come!" Svidrigailov parried with disgust. "Please don't speak
of it," he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had
shown in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. "I
admit it's an unpardonable weakness, but I can't help it. I am
afraid of death and I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that
I am to a certain extent a mystic?"
"Ah, the apparitions of Marfa Petrovna! Do they still go on visiting
you?"
"Oh, don't talk of them; there have been no more in Petersburg,
confound them!" he cried with an air of irritation. "Let's rather talk
of that... though... H'm! I have not much time, and can't stay long
with you, it's a pity! I should have found plenty to tell you."
"What's your engagement, a woman?"
"Yes, a woman, a casual incident.... No, that's not what I want to
talk of."
"And the hideousness, the filthiness of all your surroundings,
doesn't that affect you? Have you lost the strength to stop yourself?"
"And do you pretend to strength, too? He-he-he! You surprised me
just now, Rodion Romanovitch, though I knew beforehand it would be so.
You preach to me about vice and aesthetics! You- a Schiller, you- an
idealist! Of course that's all as it should be and it would be
surprising if it were not so, yet it is strange in reality.... Ah,
what a pity I have no time, for you're a most interesting type! And
by-the-way, are you fond of Schiller? I am awfully fond of him."
"But what a braggart you are," Raskolnikov said with some disgust.
"Upon my word, I am not," answered Svidrigailov laughing.
"However, I won't dispute it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if
it hurts no one? I spent seven years in the country with Marfa
Petrovna, so now when I come across an intelligent person like you-
intelligent and highly interesting- I am simply glad to talk and
besides, I've drunk that half-glass of champagne and it's gone to my
head a little. And besides, there's a certain fact that has wound me
up tremendously, but about that I... will keep quiet. Where are you
off to?" he asked in alarm.
Raskolnikov had begun getting up. He felt oppressed and stifled and,
as it were, ill at ease at having come here. He felt convinced that
Svidrigailov was the most worthless scoundrel on the face of the
earth.
"A-ach! Sit down, stay a little!" Svidrigailov begged. "Let them
bring you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won't talk nonsense,
about myself, I mean. I'll tell you something. If you like I'll tell
you how a woman tried 'to save' me, as you would call it? It will be
an answer to your first question indeed, for the woman was your
sister. May I tell you? It will help to spend the time."
"Tell me, but I trust that you..."
"Oh, don't be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow like
me, Avdotya Romanovna can only excite the deepest respect."
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_FOUR
Chapter Four
-
"YOU know perhaps- yes, I told you myself," began Svidrigailov,
"that I was in the debtors' prison here, for an immense sum, and had
not any expectation of being able to pay it. There's no need to go
into particulars of how Marfa Petrovna bought me out; do you know to
what a point of insanity a woman can sometimes love? She was an honest
woman, and very sensible, although completely uneducated. Would you
believe that this honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of
hysterics and reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of
contract with me which she kept throughout our married life? She was
considerably older than I, and besides, she always kept a clove or
something in her mouth. There was so much swinishness in my soul and
honesty too, of a sort, as to tell her straight out that I couldn't be
absolutely faithful to her. This confession drove her to frenzy, but
yet she seems in a way to have liked my brutal frankness. She
thought it showed I was unwilling to deceive her if I warned her
like this beforehand and for a jealous woman, you know, that's the
first consideration. After many tears an unwritten contract was
drawn up between us: first, that I would never leave Marfa Petrovna
and would always be her husband; secondly, that I would never absent
myself without her permission; thirdly, that I would never set up a
permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa Petrovna
gave me a free hand with the maid servants, but only with her secret
knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman of
our class; sixthly, in case I- which God forbid- should be visited
by a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to Marfa Petrovna.
On this last score, however, Marfa Petrovna was fairly at ease. She
was a sensible woman and so she could not help looking upon me as a
dissolute profligate incapable of real love. But a sensible woman
and a jealous woman are two very different things, and that's where
the trouble came in. But to judge some people impartially we must
renounce certain preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to
the ordinary people about us. I have reason to have faith in your
judgment rather than in any one's. Perhaps you have already heard a
great deal that was ridiculous and absurd about Marfa Petrovna. She
certainly had some very ridiculous ways, but I tell you frankly that I
feel really sorry for the innumerable woes of which I was the cause.
Well, and that's enough, I think, by way of a decorous oraison funebre
for the most tender wife of a most tender husband. When we quarrelled,
I usually held my tongue and did not irritate her and that gentlemanly
conduct rarely failed to attain its object, it influenced her, it
pleased her, indeed. These were times when she was positively proud of
me. But your sister she couldn't put up with, anyway. And however
she came to risk taking such a beautiful creature into her house as
a governess! My explanation is that Marfa Petrovna was an ardent and
impressionable woman and simply fell in love herself- literally fell
in love- with your sister. Well, little wonder- look at Avdotya
Romanovna! I saw the danger at the first glance and what do you think,
I resolved not to look at her even. But Avdotya Romanovna herself made
the first step, would you believe it? Would you believe it too that
Marfa Petrovna was positively angry with me at first for my persistent
silence about your sister, for my careless reception of her
continual adoring praises of Avdotya Romanovna. I don't know what it
was she wanted! Well, of course, Marfa Petrovna told Avdotya Romanovna
every detail about me. She had the unfortunate habit of telling
literally every one all our family secrets and continually complaining
of me; how could she fail to confide in such a delightful new
friend? I expect they talked of nothing else but me and no doubt
Avdotya Romanovna heard all those dark mysterious rumours that were
current about me.... I don't mind betting that you too have heard
something of the sort already?"
"I have. Luzhin charged you with having caused the death of a child.
Is that true?"
"Don't refer to those vulgar tales, I beg," said Svidrigailov with
disgust and annoyance. "If you insist on wanting to know about all
that idiocy, I will tell you one day, but now..."
"I was told too about some footman of yours in the country whom
you treated badly."
"I beg you to drop the subject," Svidrigailov interrupted again with
obvious impatience.
"Was that the footman who came to you after death to fill your
pipe?... you told me about it yourself," Raskolnikov felt more and
more irritated.
Svidrigailov looked at him attentively and Raskolnikov fancied he
caught a flash of spiteful mockery in that look. But Svidrigailov
restrained himself and answered very civilly.
"Yes, it was. I see that you, too, are extremely interested and
shall feel it my duty to satisfy your curiosity at the first
opportunity. Upon my soul! I see that I really might pass for a
romantic figure with some people. Judge how grateful I must be to
Marfa Petrovna for having repeated to Avdotya Romanovna such
mysterious and interesting gossip about me. I dare not guess what
impression it made on her, but in any case it worked in my
interests. With all Avdotya Romanovna's natural aversion and in
spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect- she did at least
feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a girl's heart
is moved to pity, it's more dangerous than anything. She is bound to
want to 'save him,' to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and
draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and
usefulness,- well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at
once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made
ready. I think you are frowning, Rodion Romanovitch? There's no
need. As you know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I
am drinking!) Do you know, I always, from the very beginning,
regretted that it wasn't your sister's fate to be born in the second
or third century A.D., as the daughter of a reigning prince or some
governor or proconsul in Asia Minor. She would undoubtedly have been
one of those who would endure martyrdom and would have smiled when
they branded her bosom with hot pincers. And she would have gone to it
of herself. And in the fourth or fifth century she would have walked
away into the Egyptian desert and would have stayed there thirty years
living on roots and ecstasies and visions. She is simply thirsting
to face some torture for some one, and if she can't get her torture,
she'll throw herself out of a window. I've heard something of a Mr.
Razumihin- he's said to be a sensible fellow; his surname suggests it,
indeed. He's probably a divinity student. Well, he'd better look after
your sister! I believe I understand her, and I am proud of it. But
at the beginning of an acquaintance, as you know, one is apt to be
more heedless and stupid. One doesn't see clearly. Hang it all, why is
she so handsome? It's not my fault. In fact, it began on my side
with a most irresistible physical desire. Avdotya Romanovna is awfully
chaste, incredibly and phenomenally so. Take note, I tell you this
about your sister as a fact. She is almost morbidly chaste, in spite
of her broad intelligence, and it will stand in her way. There
happened to be a girl in the house then, Parasha, a. black-eyed wench,
whom I had never seen before- she had just come from another
village- very pretty, but incredibly stupid: she burst into tears,
wailed so that she could be heard all over the place and caused
scandal. One day after dinner Avdotya Romanovna followed me into an
avenue in the garden and with flashing eyes insisted on my leaving
poor Parasha alone. It was almost our first conversation by ourselves.
I, of course, was only too pleased to obey her wishes, tried to appear
disconcerted, embarrassed, in fact played my part not badly. Then came
interviews, mysterious conversations, exhortations, entreaties,
supplications, even tears- would you believe it, even tears? Think
what the passion for propaganda will bring some girls to! I, of
course, threw it all on my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting
for light, and finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the
subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It's
the well-known resource- flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than
speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there's the
hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a
discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is
false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without
satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a
satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be
sure to seem true. That's so for all stages of development and classes
of society. A vestal virgin might be seduced by flattery. I can
never remember without laughter how I once seduced a lady who was
devoted to her husband, her children, and her principles. What fun
it was and how little trouble! And the lady really had principles,
of her own, anyway. All my tactics lay in simply being utterly
annihilated and prostrate before her purity. I flattered her
shamelessly, and as soon as I succeeded in getting a pressure of the
hand, even a glance from her, I would reproach myself for having
snatched it by force, and would declare that she had resisted, so that
I could never have gained anything but for my being so unprincipled. I
maintained that she was so innocent that she could not foresee my
treachery, and yielded to me unconsciously, unawares, and so on. In
fact, I triumphed, while my lady remained firmly convinced that she
was innocent, chaste, and faithful to all her duties and obligations
and had succumbed quite by accident. And how angry she was with me
when I explained to her at last that it was my sincere conviction that
she was just as eager as I. Poor Marfa Petrovna was awfully weak on
the side of flattery, and if I had only cared to, I might have had all
her property settled on me during her lifetime. (I am drinking an
awful lot of wine now and talking too much.) I hope you won't be angry
if I mention now that I was beginning to produce the same effect on
Avdotya Romanovna. But I was stupid and impatient and spoiled it
all. Avdotya Romanovna had several times- and one time in
particular- been greatly displeased by the expression of my eyes,
would you believe it? There was sometimes a light in them which
frightened her and grew stronger and stronger and more unguarded
till it was hateful to her. No need to go into detail, but we
parted. There I acted stupidly again. I fell to jeering in the
coarsest way at all such propaganda and efforts to convert me; Parasha
came on to the scene again, and not she alone; in fact there was a
tremendous to-do. Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, if you could only see how
your sister's eyes can flash sometimes! Never mind my being drunk at
this moment and having had a whole glass of wine. I am speaking the
truth. I assure you that this glance has haunted my dreams; the very
rustle of her dress was more than I could stand at last. I really
began to think that I might become epileptic. I could never have
believed that I could be moved to such a frenzy. It was essential,
indeed, to be reconciled, but by then it was impossible. And imagine
what I did then! To what a pitch of stupidity a man can be brought
by frenzy! Never undertake anything in a frenzy, Rodion Romanovitch. I
reflected that Avdotya Romanovna was after all a beggar (ach, excuse
me, that's not the word... but does it matter if it expresses the
meaning?), that she lived by her work, that she had her mother and,
you to keep (ach, hang it, you are frowning again), and I resolved
to offer her all my money- thirty thousand roubles I could have
realised then- if she would run away with me here, to Petersburg. Of
course I should have vowed eternal love, rapture, and so on. Do you
know, I was so wild about her at that time that if she had told me
to poison Marfa Petrovna or to cut her throat and to marry herself, it
would have been done at once! But it ended in the catastrophe of which
you know already. You can fancy how frantic I was when I heard that
Marfa Petrovna had got hold of that scoundrelly attorney, Luzhin,
and had almost made a match between them- which would really have been
just the same thing as I was proposing. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? I
notice that you've begun to be very attentive... you interesting young
man...."
Svidrigailov struck the table with his fist impatiently. He was
flushed. Raskolnikov saw clearly that the glass or glass and a half of
champagne that he had sipped almost unconsciously was affecting him-
and he resolved to take advantage of the opportunity. He felt very
suspicious of Svidrigailov.
"Well, after what you have said, I am fully convinced that you
have come to Petersburg with designs on my sister," he said directly
to Svidrigailov, in order to irritate him further.
"Oh, nonsense," said Svidrigailov, seeming to rouse himself. "Why, I
told you... besides your sister can't endure me."
"Yes, I am certain that she can't, but that's not the point."
"Are you so sure that she can't?" Svidrigailov screwed up his eyes
and smiled mockingly. "You are right, she doesn't love me, but you can
never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and
mistress. There's always a little corner which remains a secret to the
world and is only known to those two. Will you answer for it that
Avdotya Romanovna regarded me with aversion?"
"From some words you've dropped, I notice that you still have
designs- and of course evil ones- on Dounia and mean to carry them out
promptly."
"What, have I dropped words like that?" Svidrigailov asked in
naive dismay, taking not the slightest notice of the epithet
bestowed on his designs.
"Why, you are dropping them even now. Why are you so frightened?
What are you so afraid of now?"
"Me- afraid? Afraid of you? You have rather to be afraid of me, cher
ami. But what nonsense.... I've drunk too much though, I see that. I
was almost saying too much again. Damn the wine! Hi! there, water!"
He snatched up the champagne bottle and flung it without ceremony
out of the window. Philip brought the water.
"That's all nonsense!" said Svidrigailov, wetting a towel and
putting it to his head. "But I can answer you in one word and
annihilate all your suspicions. Do you know that I am going to get
married?"
"You told me so before."
"Did I? I've forgotten. But I couldn't have told you so for
certain for I had not even seen my betrothed; I only meant to. But now
I really have a betrothed and it's a settled thing, and if it
weren't that I have business that can't be put off, I would have taken
you to see them at once, for I should like to ask your advice. Ach,
hang it, only ten minutes left! See, look at the watch. But I must
tell you, for it's an interesting story, my marriage, in its own
way. Where are you off to? Going again?"
"No, I'm not going away now."
"Not at all? We shall see. I'll take you there, I'll show you my
betrothed, only not now. For you'll soon have to be off. You have to
go to the right and I to the left. Do you know that Madame Resslich,
the woman I am lodging with now, eh? I know what you're thinking, that
she's the woman whose girl they say drowned herself in the winter.
Come, are you listening? She arranged it all for me. You're bored, she
said, you want something to fill up your time. For, you know, I am a
gloomy, depressed person. Do you think I'm light-hearted? No, I'm
gloomy. I do no harm, but sit in a corner without speaking a word
for three days at a time. And that Resslich is a sly hussy, I tell
you. I know what she has got in her mind; she thinks I shall get
sick of it, abandon my wife and depart, and she'll get hold of her and
make a profit out of her- in our class, of course, or higher. She told
me the father was a broken-down retired official, who has been sitting
in a chair for the last three years with his legs paralysed. The
mamma, she said, was a sensible woman. There is a son serving in the
provinces, but he doesn't help; there is a daughter, who is married,
but she doesn't visit them. And they've two little nephews on their
hands, as though their own children were not enough, and they've taken
from school their youngest daughter, a girl who'll be sixteen in
another month, so that then she can be married. She was for me. We
went there. How funny it was! I present myself- a landowner, a
widower, of a well-known name, with connections, with a fortune.
What if I am fifty and she is not sixteen? Who thinks of that? But
it's fascinating, isn't it? It is fascinating, ha-ha! You should
have seen how I talked to the papa and mamma. It was worth paying to
have seen me at that moment. She comes in, curtseys, you can fancy,
still in a short frock- an unopened bud! Flushing like a sunset- she
had been told, no doubt. I don't know how you feel about female faces,
but to my mind these sixteen years, these childish eyes, shyness and
tears of bashfulness are better than beauty; and she is a perfect
little picture, too. Fair hair in little curls, like a lamb's, full
little rosy lips, tiny feet, a charmer!... Well, we made friends. I
told them I was in a hurry owing to domestic circumstances, and the
next day, that is the day before yesterday, we were betrothed. When
I go now I take her on my knee at once and keep her there.... Well,
she flushes like a sunset and I kiss her every minute. Her mamma of
course impresses on her that this is her husband and that this must be
so. It's simply delicious! The present betrothed condition is
perhaps better than marriage. Here you have what is called la nature
et la verite, ha-ha! I've talked to her twice, she is far from a fool.
Sometimes she steals a look at me that positively scorches me. Her
face is like Raphael's Madonna. You know, the Sistine Madonna's face
has something fantastic in it, the face of mournful religious ecstasy.
Haven't you noticed it? Well, she's something in that line. The day
after we'd been betrothed, I bought her presents to the value of
fifteen hundred roubles- a set of diamonds and another of pearls and a
silver dressing-case as large as this, with all sorts of things in it,
so that even my Madonna's face glowed. I sat her on my knee,
yesterday, and I suppose rather too unceremoniously- she flushed
crimson and the tears started, but she didn't want to show it. We were
left alone, she suddenly flung herself on my neck (for the first
time of her own accord), put her little arms round me, kissed me,
and vowed that she would be an obedient, faithful, and good wife,
would make me happy, would devote all her life, every minute of her
life, would sacrifice everything, everything, and that all she asks in
return is my respect, and that she wants 'nothing, nothing more from
me, no presents.' You'll admit that to hear such a confession,
alone, from an angel of sixteen in a muslin frock, with little
curls, with a flush of maiden shyness in her cheeks and tears of
enthusiasm in her eyes is rather fascinating! Isn't it fascinating?
It's worth paying for, isn't it? Well... listen, we'll go to see my
betrothed, only not just now!"
"The fact is this monstrous difference in age and development
excites your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?"
"Why, of course. Every one thinks of himself, and he lives most
gaily who knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so
keen about virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful
man. Ha-ha-ha!"
"But you have provided for the children of Katerina Ivanovna.
Though... though you had your own reasons.... I understand it all
now."
"I am always fond of children, very fond of them," laughed
Svidrigailov. "I can tell you one curious instance of it. The first
day I came here I visited various haunts, after seven years I simply
rushed at them. You probably notice that I am not in a hurry to
renew acquaintance with my old friends. I shall do without them as
long as I can. Do you know, when I was with Marfa Petrovna in the
country, I was haunted by the thought of these places where any one
who knows his way about can find a great deal. Yes, upon my soul!
The peasants have vodka, the educated young people, shut out from
activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams and visions and are
crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are amassing money,
and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From the first hour
the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be in a frightful
den- I like my dens dirty- it was a dance, so called, and there was
a cancan such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you have
progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, nicely
dressed, dancing with a specialist in that line, with another one
vis-a-vis. Her mother was sitting on a chair by the wall. You can't
fancy what a cancan that was! The girl was ashamed, blushed, at last
felt insulted, and began to cry. Her partner seized her and began
whirling her round and performing before her; every one laughed and- I
like your public, even the cancan public- they laughed and shouted,
'Serves her right- serves her right! Shouldn't bring children!'
Well, it's not my business whether that consoling reflection was
logical or not. I at once fixed on my plan, sat down by the mother,
and began by saying that I too was a stranger and that people here
were ill-bred and that they couldn't distinguish decent folks and
treat them with respect, gave her to understand that I had plenty of
money, offered to take them home in my carriage. I took them home
and got to know them. They were lodging in a miserable little hole and
had only just arrived from the country. She told me that she and her
daughter could only regard my acquaintance as an honour. I found out
that they had nothing of their own and had come to town upon some
legal business. I proffered my services and money. I learnt that
they had gone to the dancing saloon by mistake, believing that it
was a genuine dancing class. I offered to assist in the young girl's
education in French and dancing. My offer was accepted with enthusiasm
as an honour- and we are still friendly.... If you like, we'll go
and see them, only not just now."
"Stop! Enough of your vile, nasty anecdotes, depraved vile,
sensual man!"
"Schiller, you are a regular Schiller! O la vertu va-t-elle se
nicher? But you know I shall tell you these things on purpose, for the
pleasure of hearing your outcries!"
"I dare say. I can see I am ridiculous myself," muttered Raskolnikov
angrily.
Svidrigailov laughed heartily; finally he called Philip, paid his
bill, and began getting up.
"I say, but I am drunk, assez cause," he said. "It's been a
pleasure."
"I should rather think it must be a pleasure!" cried Raskolnikov,
getting up. "No doubt it is a pleasure for a worn-out profligate to
describe such adventures with a monstrous project of the same sort
in his mind- especially under such circumstances and to such a man
as me.... It's stimulating!"
"Well, if you come to that," Svidrigailov answered, scrutinising
Raskolnikov with some surprise, "if you come to that, you are a
thorough cynic yourself. You've plenty to make you so, anyway. You can
understand a great deal... and you can do a great deal too. But
enough. I sincerely regret not having had more talk with you, but I
shan't lose sight of you.... Only wait a bit."
Svidrigailov walked out of the restaurant. Raskolnikov walked out
after him. Svidrigailov was not however very drunk, the wine had
affected him for a moment, but it was passing off every minute. He was
preoccupied with something of importance and was frowning. He was
apparently excited and uneasy in anticipation of something. His manner
to Raskolnikov had changed during the last few minutes, and he was
ruder and more sneering every moment. Raskolnikov noticed all this,
and he too was uneasy. He became very suspicious of Svidrigailov and
resolved to follow him.
They came out on to the pavement.
"You go to the right, and I to the left, or if you like, the other
way. Only adieu, mon plaisir, may we meet again."
And he walked to the right towards the Hay Market.
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_FIVE
Chapter Five
-
RASKOLNIKOV walked after him.
"What's this?" cried Svidrigailov turning round, "I thought I
said..."
"It means that I am not going to lose sight of you now."
"What?"
Both stood still and gazed at one another, as though measuring their
strength.
"From all your half tipsy stories," Raskolnikov observed harshly, "I
am positive that you have not given up your designs on my sister,
but are pursuing them more actively than ever. I have learnt that my
sister received a letter this morning. You have hardly been able to
sit still all this time.... You may have unearthed a wife on the
way, but that means nothing. I should like to make certain myself."
Raskolnikov could hardly have said himself what he wanted and of
what he wished to make certain.
"Upon my word! I'll call the police!"
"Call away!"
Again they stood for a minute facing each other. At last
Svidrigailov's face changed. Having satisfied himself that Raskolnikov
was not frightened at his threat, he assumed a mirthful and friendly
air.
"What a fellow! I purposely refrained from referring to your affair,
though I am devoured by curiosity. It's a fantastic affair. I've put
it off till another time, but you're enough to rouse the dead....
Well, let us go, only I warn you beforehand I am only going home for a
moment, to get some money; then I shall lock up the flat, take a cab
and go to spend the evening at the Islands. Now, now are you going
to follow me?"
"I'm coming to your lodgings, not to see you but Sofya Semyonovna,
to say I'm sorry not to have been at the funeral."
"That's as you like, but Sofya Semyonovna is not at home. She has
taken the three children to an old lady of high rank, the patroness of
some orphan asylums, whom I used to know years ago. I charmed the
old lady by depositing a sum of money with her to provide for the
three children of Katerina Ivanovna and subscribing to the institution
as well. I told her too the story of Sofya Semyonovna in full
detail, suppressing nothing. It produced an indescribable effect on
her. That's why Sofya Semyonovna has been invited to call to-day at
the X. Hotel where the lady is staying for the time."
"No matter, I'll come all the same."
"As you like, it's nothing to me, but I won't come with you; here we
are at home. By the way, I am convinced that you regard me with
suspicion just because I have shown such delicacy and have not so
far troubled you with questions... you understand? It struck you as
extraordinary; I don't mind betting it's that. Well, it teaches one to
show delicacy!"
"And to listen at doors!"
"Ah, that's it, is it?" laughed Svidrigailov. "Yes, I should have
been surprised if you had let that pass after all that has happened.
Ha-ha! Though I did understand something of the pranks you had been up
to and were telling Sofya Semyonovna about, what was the meaning of
it? Perhaps I am quite behind the times and can't understand. For
goodness' sake, explain it, my dear boy. Expound the latest theories!"
"You couldn't have heard anything. You're making it all up!"
"But I'm not talking about that (though I did hear something). No,
I'm talking of the way you keep sighing and groaning now. The Schiller
in you is in revolt every moment, and now you tell me not to listen at
doors. If that's how you feel, go and inform the police that you had
this mischance; you made a little mistake in your theory. But if you
are convinced that one mustn't listen at doors, but one may murder old
women at one's pleasure, you'd better be off to America and make
haste. Run, young man! There may still be time. I'm speaking
sincerely. Haven't you the money? I'll give you the fare."
"I'm not thinking of that at all," Raskolnikov interrupted with
disgust.
"I understand (but don't put yourself out, don't discuss it if you
don't want to). I understand the questions you are worrying over-
moral ones, aren't they? Duties of citizen and man? Lay them all
aside. They are nothing to you now, ha-ha! You'll say you are still
a man and a citizen. If so you ought not to have got into this coil.
It's no use taking up a job you are not fit for. Well, you'd better
shoot yourself, or don't you want to?"
"You seem trying to enrage me, to make me leave you."
"What a queer fellow! But here we are. Welcome to the staircase. You
see, that's the way to Sofya Semyonovna. Look, there is no one at
home. Don't you believe me? Ask Kapernaumov. She leaves the key with
him. Here is Madame de Kapernaumov herself. Hey, what? She is rather
deaf. Has she gone out? Where? Did you hear? She is not in and won't
be till late in the evening probably. Well, come to my room; you
wanted to come and see me, didn't you? Here we are. Madame
Resslich's not at home. She is a woman who is always busy, an
excellent woman I assure you.... She might have been of use to you
if you had been a little more sensible. Now, see! I take this five per
cent. bond out of the bureau- see what a lot I've got of them still-
this one will be turned into cash to-day. I mustn't waste any more
time. The bureau is locked, the flat is locked, and here we are
again on the stairs. Shall we take a cab? I'm going to the Islands.
Would you like a lift? I'll take this carriage. Ah, you refuse? You
are tired of it! Come for a drive! I believe it will come on to
rain. Never mind, we'll put down the hood...."
Svidrigailov was already in the carriage. Raskolnikov decided that
his suspicions were at least for that moment unjust. Without answering
a word he turned and walked back towards the Hay Market. If he had
only turned round on his way he might have seen Svidrigailov get out
not a hundred paces off, dismiss the cab and walk along the
pavement. But he had turned the corner and could see nothing.
Intense disgust drew him away from Svidrigailov.
"To think that I could for one instant have looked for help from
that coarse brute, that depraved sensualist and blackguard!" he cried.
Raskolnikov's judgment was uttered too lightly and hastily: there
was something about Svidrigailov which gave him a certain original,
even a mysterious character. As concerned his sister, Raskolnikov
was convinced that Svidrigailov would not leave her in peace. But it
was too tiresome and unbearable to go on thinking and thinking about
this.
When he was alone, he had not gone twenty paces before he sank, as
usual, into deep thought. On the bridge he stood by the railing and
began gazing at the water. And his sister was standing close by him.
He met her at the entrance to the bridge, but passed by without
seeing her. Dounia had never met him like this in the street before
and was struck with dismay. She stood still and did not know whether
to call to him or not. Suddenly she saw Svidrigailov coming quickly
from the direction of the Hay Market.
He seemed to be approaching cautiously. He did not go on to the
bridge, but stood aside on the pavement, doing all he could to avoid
Raskolnikov's seeing him. He had observed Dounia for some time and had
been making signs to her. She fancied he was signalling to beg her not
to speak to her brother, but to come to him.
That was what Dounia did. She stole by her brother and went up to
Svidrigailov.
"Let us make haste away," Svidrigailov whispered to her, "I don't
want Rodion Romanovitch to know of our meeting. I must tell you I've
been sitting with him in the restaurant close by, where he looked me
up and I had great difficulty in getting rid of him. He has somehow
heard of my letter to you and suspects something. It wasn't you who
told him, of course, but if not you, who then?"
"Well, we've turned the corner now," Dounia interrupted, "and my
brother won't see us. I have to tell you that I am going no further
with you. Speak to me here. You can tell it all in the street."
"In the first place, I can't say it in the street; secondly, you
must hear Sofya Semyonovna too; and, thirdly, I will show you some
papers.... Oh well, if you won't agree to come with me, I shall refuse
to give any explanation and go away at once. But I beg you not to
forget that a very curious secret of your beloved brother's is
entirely in my keeping."
Dounia stood still, hesitating, and looked at Svidrigailov with
searching eyes.
"What are you afraid of?" he observed quietly. "The town is not
the country. And even in the country you did me more harm than I did
you."
"Have you prepared Sofya Semyonovna?"
"No, I have not said a word to her and am not quite certain
whether she is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her
stepmother to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For
the time I don't want to speak to any one about it and I half regret
having spoken to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal
in a thing like this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it.
That's the porter of our house- he knows me very well; you see, he's
bowing; he sees I'm coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed
your face already and you will be glad of that if you are afraid of me
and suspicious. Excuse my putting things so coarsely. I haven't a flat
to myself; Sofya Semyonovna's room is next to mine- she lodges in
the next flat. The whole floor is let out in lodgings. Why are you
frightened like a child? Am I really so terrible?"
Svidrigailov's lips were twisted in a condescending smile; but he
was in no smiling mood. His heart was throbbing and he could
scarcely breathe. He spoke rather loud to cover his growing
excitement. But Dounia did not notice this peculiar excitement, she
was so irritated by his remark that she was frightened of him like a
child and that he was so terrible to her.
"Though I know that you are not a man... of honour, I am not in
the least afraid of you. Lead the way," she said with apparent
composure, but her face was very pale.
Svidrigailov stopped at Sonia's room.
"Allow me to inquire whether she is at home.... She is not. How
unfortunate! But I know she may come quite soon. If she's gone out, it
can only be to see a lady about the orphans. Their mother is
dead.... I've been meddling and making arrangements for them. If Sofya
Semyonovna does not come back in ten minutes, I will send her to
you, to-day if you like. This is my flat. These are my two rooms.
Madame Resslich, my landlady, has the next room. Now, look this way. I
will show you my chief piece of evidence: this door from my bedroom
leads into two perfectly empty rooms, which are to let. Here they
are... You must look into them with some attention."
Svidrigailov occupied two fairly large furnished rooms. Dounia was
looking about her mistrustfully, but saw nothing special in the
furniture or position of the rooms. Yet there was something to
observe, for instance, that Svidrigailov's flat was exactly between
two sets of almost uninhabited apartments. His rooms were not
entered directly from the passage, but through the landlady's two
almost empty rooms. Unlocking a door leading out of his bedroom,
Svidrigailov showed Dounia the two empty rooms that were to let.
Dounia stopped in the doorway, not knowing what she was called to look
upon, but Svidrigailov hastened to explain.
"Look here, at this second large room. Notice that door, it's
locked. By the door stands a chair, the only one in the two rooms. I
brought it from my rooms so as to listen more conveniently. Just the
other side of the door is Sofya Semyonovna's table; she sat there
talking to Rodion Romanovitch. And I sat here listening on two
successive evenings, for two hours each time- and of course I was able
to learn something, what do you think?"
"You listened?"
"Yes, I did. Now come back to my room; we can't sit down here."
He brought Avdotya Romanovna back into his sitting-room and
offered her a chair. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, at
least seven feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his
eyes which had once frightened Dounia so much. She shuddered and
once more looked about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary
gesture; she evidently did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But
the secluded position of Svidrigailov's lodging had suddenly struck
her. She wanted to ask whether his landlady at least were at home, but
pride kept her from asking. Moreover, she had another trouble in her
heart incomparably greater than fear for herself. She was in great
distress.
"Here is your letter," she said, laying it on the table. "Can it
be true what you write? You hint at a crime committed, you say, by
my brother. You hint at it too clearly; you daren't deny it now. I
must tell you that I'd heard of this stupid story before you wrote and
don't believe a word of it. It's a disgusting and ridiculous
suspicion. I know the story and why and how it was invented. You can
have no proofs. You promised to prove it. Speak! But let me warn you
that I don't believe you! I don't believe you!"
Dounia said this, speaking hurriedly, and for an instant the
colour rushed to her face.
"If you didn't believe it, how could you risk coming alone to my
rooms? Why have you come? Simply from curiosity?"
"Don't torment me. Speak, speak!"
"There's no denying that you are a brave girl. Upon my word, I
thought you would have asked Mr. Razumihin to escort you here. But
he was not with you nor anywhere near. I was on the look-out. It's
spirited of you, it proves you wanted to spare Rodion Romanovitch. But
everything is divine in you.... About your brother, what am I to say
to you? You've just seen him yourself. What did you think of him?"
"Surely that's not the only thing you are building on?"
"No, not on that, but on his own words. He came here on two
successive evenings to see Sofya Semyonovna. I've shown you where they
sat. He made a full confession to her. He is a murderer. He killed
an old woman, a pawnbroker, with whom he had pawned things himself. He
killed her sister too, a pedlar woman called Lizaveta, who happened to
come in while he was murdering her sister. He killed them with an
axe he brought with him. He murdered them to rob them and he did rob
them. He took money and various things.... He told all this, word
for word, to Sofya Semyonovna, the only person who knows his secret.
But she has had no share by word or deed in the murder; she was as
horrified at it as you are now. Don't be anxious, she won't betray
him."
"It cannot be," muttered Dounia, with white lips. She gasped for
breath. "It cannot be. There was not the slightest cause, no sort of
ground.... It's a lie, a lie!"
"He robbed her, that was the cause, he took money and things. It's
true that by his own admission he made no use of the money or
things, but hid them under a stone, where they are now. But that was
because he dared not make use of them."
"But how could he steal, rob? How could he dream of it?" cried
Dounia, and she jumped up from the chair. "Why, you know him, and
you've seen him, can he be a thief?"
She seemed to be imploring Svidrigailov; she had entirely
forgotten her fear.
"There are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities,
Avdotya Romanovna. A thief steals and knows he is a scoundrel, but
I've heard of a gentleman who broke open the mail. Who knows, very
likely he thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing! Of course I should
not have believed it myself if I'd been told of it as you have, but
I believe my own ears. He explained all the causes of it to Sofya
Semyonovna too, but she did not believe her ears at first, yet she
believed her own eyes at last."
"What... were the causes?"
"It's a long story, Avdotya Romanovna. Here's... how shall I tell
you?- A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance
consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim
is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It's
galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride
to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his
whole career, his whole future would be differently shaped and yet not
to have that three thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from
hunger, from lodging in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the
charm of his social position and his sister's and mother's position
too. Above all, vanity, pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may
have good qualities too.... I am not blaming him, please don't think
it; besides, it's not my business. A special little theory came in
too- a theory of a sort- dividing mankind, you see, into material
and superior persons, that is persons to whom the law does not apply
owing to their superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the
material, that is. It's all right as a theory, une theorie comme une
autre. Napoleon attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him
was that a great many men of genius have not hesitated at
wrongdoing, but have overstepped the law without thinking about it. He
seems to have fancied that he was a genius too- that is, he was
convinced of it for a time. He has suffered a great deal and is
still suffering from the idea that he could make a theory, but was
incapable of boldly overstepping the law, and so he is not a man of
genius. And that's humiliating for a young man of any pride, in our
day especially...."
"But remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?"
"Ah, Avdotya Romanovna, everything is in a muddle now; not that it
was ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their
ideas, Avdotya Romanovna, broad like their land and exceedingly
disposed to the fantastic, the chaotic. But it's a misfortune to be
broad without a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk
we had together on this subject, sitting in the evenings on the
terrace after supper? Why, you used to reproach me with breadth! Who
knows, perhaps we were talking at the very time when he was lying here
thinking over his plan. There are no sacred traditions amongst us,
especially in the educated class, Avdotya Romanovna. At the best
some one will make them up somehow for himself out of books or from
some old chronicle. But those are for the most part the learned and
all old fogeys, so that it would be almost ill-bred in a man of
society. You know my opinions in general, though. I never blame any
one. I do nothing at all, I persevere in that. But we've talked of
this more than once before. I was so happy indeed as to interest you
in my opinions.... You are very pale, Avdotya Romanovna."
"I know his theory. I read that article of his about men to whom all
is permitted. Razumihin brought it to me."
"Mr. Razumihin? Your brother's article? In a magazine? Is there such
an article? I didn't know. It must be interesting. But where are you
going, Avdotya Romanovna?"
"I want to see Sofya Semyonovna," Dounia articulated faintly. "How
do I go to her? She has come in, perhaps. I must see her at once.
Perhaps she..."
Avdotya Romanovna could not finish. Her breath literally failed her.
"Sofya Semyonovna will not be back till night, at least I believe
not. She was to have been back at once, but if not, then she will
not be in till quite late."
"Ah, then you are lying! I see... you were lying... lying all the
time.... I don't believe you! I don't believe you!" cried Dounia,
completely losing her head.
Almost fainting, she sank on to a chair which Svidrigailov made
haste to give her.
"Avdotya Romanovna, what is it? Control yourself! Here is some
water. Drink a little...."
He sprinkled some water over her. Dounia shuddered and came to
herself.
"It has acted violently," Svidrigailov muttered to himself,
frowning. "Avdotya Romanovna, calm yourself! Believe me, he has
friends. We will save him. Would you like me to take him abroad? I
have money, I can get a ticket in three days. And as for the murder,
he will do all sorts of good deeds yet, to atone for it. Calm
yourself. He may become a great man yet. Well, how are you? How do you
feel?"
"Cruel man! To be able to jeer at it! Let me go..."
"Where are you going?"
"To him. Where is he? Do you know? Why is this door locked? We
came in at that door and now it is locked. When did you manage to lock
it?"
"We couldn't be shouting all over the flat on such a subject. I am
far from jeering; it's simply that I'm sick of talking like this.
But how can you go in such a state? Do you want to betray him? You
will drive him to fury, and he will give himself up. Let me tell
you, he is already being watched; they are already on his track. You
will simply be giving him away. Wait a little: I saw him and was
talking to him just now. He can still be saved. Wait a bit, sit
down; let us think it over together. I asked you to come in order to
discuss it alone with you and to consider it thoroughly. But do sit
down!"
"How can you save him? Can he really be saved?"
Dounia sat down. Svidrigailov sat down beside her.
"It all depends on you, on you, on you alone," he begin with glowing
eyes, almost in a whisper and hardly able to utter the words for
emotion.
Dounia drew back from him in alarm. He too was trembling all over.
"You... one word from you, and he is saved. I.... I'll save him. I
have money and friends. I'll send him away at once. I'll get a
passport, two passports, one for him and one for me. I have friends...
capable people.... If you like, I'll take a passport for you... for
your mother.... What do you want with Razumihin? I love you too....
I love you beyond everything.... Let me kiss the hem of your dress,
let me, let me.... The very rustle of it is too much for me. Tell
me, 'do that,' and I'll do it. I'll do everything. I will do the
impossible. What you believe, I will believe. I'll do anything-
anything! Don't, don't look at me like that. Do you know that you
are killing me?..."
He was almost beginning to rave.... Something seemed suddenly to
go to his head. Dounia jumped up and rushed to the door.
"Open it! Open it!" she called, shaking the door. "Open it! Is there
no one there?"
Svidrigailov got up and came to himself. His still trembling lips
slowly broke into an angry mocking smile.
"There is no one at home," he said quietly and emphatically. "The
landlady has gone out, and it's waste of time to shout like that.
You are only exciting yourself uselessly."
"Where is the key? Open the door at once, at once, base man!"
"I have lost the key and cannot find it."
"This is an outrage," cried Dounia, turning pale as death. She
rushed to the furthest corner, where she made haste to barricade
herself with a little table.
She did not scream, but she fixed her eyes on her tormentor and
watched every movement he made.
Svidrigailov remained standing at the other end of the room facing
her. He was positively composed, at least in appearance, but his
face was pale as before. The mocking smile did not leave his face.
"You spoke of outrage just now, Avdotya Romanovna. In that case
you may be sure I've taken measures. Sofya Semyonovna is not at
home. The Kapernaumovs are far away- there are five locked rooms
between. I am at least twice as strong as you are and I have nothing
to fear, besides. For you could not complain afterwards. You surely
would not be willing actually to betray your brother? Besides, no
one would believe you. How should a girl have come alone to visit a
solitary man in his lodgings? So that even if you do sacrifice your
brother, you could prove nothing. It is very difficult to prove an
assault, Avdotya Romanovna."
"Scoundrel!" whispered Dounia indignantly.
"As you like, but observe I was only speaking by way of a general
proposition. It's my personal conviction that you are perfectly right-
violence is hateful. I only spoke to show you that you need have no
remorse even if... you were willing to save your brother of your own
accord, as I suggest to you. You would be simply submitting to
circumstances, to violence, in fact, if we must use that word. Think
about it. Your brother's and your mother's fate are in your hands. I
will be your slave... all my life... I will wait here."
Svidrigailov sat down on the sofa about eight steps from Dounia. She
had not the slightest doubt now of his unbending determination.
Besides, she knew him. Suddenly she pulled out of her pocket a
revolver, cocked it and laid it in her hand on the table. Svidrigailov
jumped up.
"Aha! So that's it, is it?" he cried, surprised but smiling
maliciously. "Well, that completely alters the aspect of affairs.
You've made things wonderfully easier for me, Avdotya Romanovna. But
where did you get the revolver? Was it Mr. Razumihin? Why, it's my
revolver, an old friend! And how I've hunted for it! The shooting
lessons I've given you in the country have not been thrown away."
"It's not your revolver, it belonged to Marfa Petrovna, whom you
killed, wretch! There was nothing of yours in her house. I took it
when I began to suspect what you were capable of. If you dare to
advance one step, I swear I'll kill you." She was frantic.
"But your brother? I ask from curiosity," said Svidrigailov, still
standing where he was.
"Inform, if you want to! Don't stir! Don't come nearer! I'll
shoot! You poisoned your wife, I know; you are a murderer yourself!"
She held the revolver ready.
"Are you so positive I poisoned Marfa Petrovna?"
"You did! You hinted it yourself! you talked to me of poison.... I
know you went to get it... you had it in readiness.... It was your
doing.... It must have been your doing.... Scoundrel!"
"Even if that were true, it would have been for your sake... you
would have been the cause."
"You are lying! I hated you always, always...."
"Oho, Avdotya Romanovna! You seem to have forgotten how you softened
to me in the heat of propaganda. I saw it in your eyes. Do you
remember that moonlight night, when the nightingale was singing?"
"That's a lie," there was a flash of fury in Dounia's eyes,
"that's a lie and a libel!"
"A lie? Well, if you like, it's a lie. I made it up. Women ought not
to be reminded of such things," he smiled. "I know you will shoot, you
pretty wild creature. Well, shoot away!"
Dounia raised the revolver, and deadly pale, gazed at him, measuring
the distance and awaiting the first movement on his part. Her lower
lip was white and quivering and her big black eyes flashed like
fire. He had never seen her so handsome. The fire glowing in her
eyes at the moment she raised the revolver seemed to kindle him and
there was a pang of anguish in his heart. He took a step forward and a
shot rang out. The bullet grazed his hair and flew into the wall
behind. He stood still and laughed softly.
"The wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What's
this? Blood?" he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood,
which flowed in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed
to have just grazed the skin.
Dounia lowered the revolver and looked at Svidrigailov not so much
in terror as in a sort of wild amazement. She seemed not to understand
what she was doing and what was going on.
"Well, you missed! Fire again, I'll wait," said Svidrigailov softly,
still smiling, but gloomily. "If you go on like that, I shall have
time to seize you before you cock again."
Dounia started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it.
"Let me be," she cried in despair. "I swear I'll shoot again. I...
I'll kill you."
"Well... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you
don't... then." His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Dounia
shot again: it missed fire.
"You haven't loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge
there. Get it ready, I'll wait."
He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her
with wild determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set
eyes. Dounia saw that he would sooner die than let her go. "And...
now, of course she would kill him, at two paces!" Suddenly she flung
away the revolver.
"She's dropped it!" said Svidrigailov with surprise, and he drew a
deep breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart- perhaps
not only the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at
that moment. It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and
more bitter, which he could not himself have defined.
He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did
not resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant
eyes. He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able
to utter a sound.
"Let me go," Dounia implored. Svidrigailov shuddered. Her voice
now was quite different.
"Then you don't love me?" he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.
"And... and you can't? Never?" he whispered in despair.
"Never!"
There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of
Svidrigailov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly he
withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it.
Another moment passed.
"Here's the key."
He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the
table behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.
"Take it! Make haste!"
He looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up to the
table to take the key.
"Make haste! Make haste!" repeated Svidrigailov, still without
turning or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the
tone of that "make haste."
Dounia understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door,
unlocked it quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside
herself, she ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X.
Bridge.
Svidrigailov remained three minutes standing at the window. At
last he slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his
forehead. A strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak
smile, a smile of despair. The blood, which was already getting dry,
smeared his hand. He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and
washed his temple. The revolver which Dounia had flung away lay near
the door and suddenly caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it.
It was a little pocket three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned
construction. There were still two charges and one capsule left in it.
It could be fired again. He thought a little, put the revolver in
his pocket, took his hat and went out.
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_SIX
Chapter Six
-
HE SPENT that evening till ten o'clock, going from one low haunt
to another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a
certain "villain and tyrant"
-
"began kissing Katia."
-
Svidrigailov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers
and the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to
these clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to
the left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a
pleasure garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky
three-year-old pine tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a
"Vauxhall," which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was
served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round
it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken, but exceedingly
depressed German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the
public. The clerks quarreled with some other clerks and a fight seemed
imminent. Svidrigailov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened
to them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that
there was no possibility of understanding them. The only fact that
seemed certain was that one of them had stolen something and had
even succeeded in selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share
the spoil with his companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen
object was a teaspoon belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the
affair began to seem troublesome. Svidrigailov paid for the spoon, got
up, and walked out of the garden. It was about six o'clock. He had not
drunk a drop of wine all this time and had ordered tea more for the
sake of appearances than anything.
It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came
over the sky about ten o'clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the
rain came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat
on the earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every
minute and each flash lasted while one could count five.
Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the
bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers.
Then, putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his
clothes, but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder
and the rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the
room without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at
home.
She was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her.
She was giving them tea. She received Svidrigailov in respectful
silence, looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children
all ran away at once in indescribable terror.
Svidrigailov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside
him. She timidly prepared to listen.
"I may be going to America, Sofya Semyonovna," said Svidrigailov,
"and as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to
make some arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what
she said to you, you need not tell me." (Sonia made a movement and
blushed.) "Those people have their own way of doing things. As to your
sisters and your brother, they are really provided for and the money
assigned to them I've put into safe keeping and have received
acknowledgments. You had better take charge of the receipts, in case
anything happens. Here, take them! Well, now that's settled. Here
are three 5 per cent. bonds to the value of three thousand roubles.
Take those for yourself, entirely for yourself, and let that be
strictly between ourselves, so that no one knows of it, whatever you
hear. You will need the money, for to go on living in the old way,
Sofya Semyonovna, is bad, and besides there is no need for it now."
"I am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my
stepmother," said Sonia hurriedly, "and if I've said so little...
please don't consider..."
"That's enough! that's enough!"
"But as for the money, Arkady Ivanovitch, I am very grateful to you,
but I don't need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don't
think me ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money...."
"It's for you, for you, Sofya Semyonovna, and please don't waste
words over it. I haven't time for it. You will want it. Rodion
Romanovitch has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia."
(Sonia looked wildly at him, and started.) "Don't be uneasy, I know
all about it from himself and I am not a gossip; I won't tell any one.
It was good advice when you told him to give himself up and confess.
It would be much better for him. Well, if it turns out to be
Siberia, he will go and you will follow him. That's so, isn't it?
And if so, you'll need money. You'll need it for him, do you
understand? Giving it to you is the same as my giving it to him.
Besides, you promised Amalia Ivanovna to pay what's owing. I heard
you. How can you undertake such obligations so heedlessly, Sofya
Semyonovna? It was Katerina Ivanovna's debt and not yours, so you
ought not to have taken any notice of the German woman. You can't
get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned about
me- to-morrow or the day after you will be asked- don't say anything
about my coming to see you now and don't show the money to any one
or say a word about it. Well, now good-bye." (He got up.) "My
greetings to Rodion Romanovitch. By the way, you'd better put the
money for the present in Mr. Razumihin's keeping. You know Mr.
Razumihin? Of course you do. He's not a bad fellow. Take it to him
to-morrow or... when the time comes. And till then, hide it
carefully."
Sonia too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at
Svidrigailov. She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the
first moments she did not dare and did not know how to begin.
"How can you... how can you be going now, in such rain?"
"Why, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha!
Good-bye, Sofya Semyonovna, my dear! Live and live long, you will be
of use to others. By the way... tell Mr. Razumihin I send my greetings
to him. Tell him Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigailov sends his greetings.
Be sure to."
He went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague
apprehension.
It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past
eleven, he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The
rain still persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the
little flat where the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third
Street in Vassilyevsky Island. He knocked some time before he was
admitted, and his visit at first caused great perturbation; but
Svidrigailov could be very fascinating when he liked, so that the
first, and indeed very intelligent surmise of the sensible parents
that Svidrigailov had probably had so much to drink that he did not
know what he was doing vanished immediately. The decrepit father was
wheeled in to see Svidrigailov by the tender and sensible mother,
who as usual began the conversation with various irrelevant questions.
She never asked a direct question, but began by smiling and rubbing
her hands and then, if she were obliged to ascertain something- for
instance, when Svidrigailov would like to have the wedding- she
would begin by interested and almost eager questions about Paris and
the court life there, and only by degrees brought the conversation
round to Third Street. On other occasions this had of course been very
impressive, but this time Arkady Ivanovitch seemed particularly
impatient, and insisted on seeing his betrothed at once, though he had
been informed to begin with that she had already gone to bed. The girl
of course appeared.
Svidrigailov informed her at once that he was obliged by very
important affairs to leave Petersburg for a time, and therefore
brought her fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a
present from him, as he had long been intending to make her this
trifling present before their wedding. The logical connection of the
present with his immediate departure and the absolute necessity of
visiting them for that purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not
made clear. But it all went off very well; even the inevitable
ejaculations of wonder and regret, the inevitable questions were
extraordinarily few and restrained. On the other hand, the gratitude
expressed was most glowing and was reinforced by tears from the most
sensible of mothers. Svidrigailov got up, laughed, kissed his
betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon come back, and
noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a sort of
earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though he felt
sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be
immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of
mothers. He went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary
excitement, but the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half
whisper, settled some of the most important of their doubts,
concluding that Svidrigailov was a great man, a man of great affairs
and connections and of great wealth- there was no knowing what he
had in his mind. He would start off on a journey and give away money
just as the fancy took him, so that there was nothing surprising about
it. Of course it was strange that he was wet through, but
Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric, and all these
people of high society didn't think of what was said of them and
didn't stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he came like that on
purpose to show that he was not afraid of any one. Above all, not a
word should be said about it, for God knows what might come of it, and
the money must be locked up, and it was most fortunate that Fedosya,
the cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be
said to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so on and so on. They sat
up whispering till two o'clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier,
amazed and rather sorrowful.
Svidrigailov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on
the way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a
roaring wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the
black waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest,
even inquiry. But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he
turned and went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless
street for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once
stumbling in the dark on the wooden pavement, but continually
looking for something on the right side of the street. He had
noticed passing through this street lately that there was a hotel
somewhere towards the end, built of wood, but fairly large. and its
name he remembered was something like Adrianople. He was not mistaken:
the hotel was so conspicuous in that God-forsaken place that he
could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long, blackened
wooden building, and in spite of the late hour there were lights in
the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked a ragged
fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter, scanning
Svidrigailov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a close
and tiny room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under the
stairs. There was no other, all were occupied. The ragged fellow
looked inquiringly.
"Is there tea?" asked Svidrigailov.
"Yes, sir."
"What else is there?"
"Veal, vodka, savouries."
"Bring me tea and veal."
"And you want nothing else?" he asked with apparent surprise.
"Nothing, nothing."
The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.
"It must be a nice place," thought Svidrigailov. "How was it I
didn't know it? I expect I look as if I came from a cafe chantant
and have had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to
know who stayed here."
He lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It
was a room so low-pitched that Svidrigailov could not only just
stand up in it; it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty,
and the plain stained chair and table almost filled it up. The walls
looked as though they were made of planks, covered with shabby
paper, so torn and dusty that the pattern was indistinguishable,
though the general colour- yellow- could still be made out. One of the
walls was cut short by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an
attic, but just under the stairs.
Svidrigailov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank
into thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose
to a shout in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had
not ceased from the moment he entered the room. He listened: some
one was upbraiding and almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only
one voice.
Svidrigailov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he
saw light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped
through. The room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two
occupants. One of them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed
face, was standing in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with
his legs wide apart to preserve his balance, and smiting himself on
the breast. He reproached the other with being a beggar, with having
no standing whatever. He declared that he had taken the other out of
the gutter and he could turn him out when he liked, and that only
the finger of Providence sees it all. The object of his reproaches was
sitting in a chair, and had the air of a man who wants dreadfully to
sneeze, but can't. He sometimes turned sheepish and befogged eyes on
the speaker, but obviously had not the slightest idea what he was
talking about and scarcely heard it. A candle was burning down on
the table; there were wine glasses, a nearly empty bottle of vodka,
bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs of stale tea. After
gazing attentively at this, Svidrigailov turned away indifferently and
sat down on the bed.
The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist
asking him again whether he didn't want anything more, and again
receiving a negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigailov made
haste to drink a glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat
anything. He began to feel feverish. He took off his coat and,
wrapping himself in the blanket, lay down on the bed. He was
annoyed. "It would have been better to be well for the occasion," he
thought with a smile. The room was close, the candle burnt dimly,
the wind was roaring outside, he heard a mouse scratching in the
corner and the room smelt of mice and of leather. He lay in a sort
of reverie: one thought followed another. He felt a longing to fix his
imagination on something. "It must be a garden under the window," he
thought. "There's a sound of trees. How I dislike the sound of trees
on a stormy night, in the dark! They give one a horrid feeling." He
remembered how he had disliked it when he passed Petrovsky Park just
now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little Neva and he
felt cold again as he had when standing there. "I never have liked
water," he thought, "even in a landscape," and he suddenly smiled
again at a strange idea: "Surely now all these questions of taste
and comfort ought not to matter, but I've become more particular, like
an animal that picks out a special place... for such an occasion. I
ought to have gone into the Petrovsky Park! I suppose it seemed
dark, cold, ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant sensations!... By
the way, why haven't I put out the candle?" he blew it out. "They've
gone to bed next door," he thought, not seeing the light at the crack.
"Well, now, Marfa Petrovna, now is the time for you to turn up; it's
dark, and the very time and place for you. But now you won't come!"
He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design
on Dounia, he had recommended Raskolnikov to trust her to
Razumihin's keeping. "I suppose I really did say it, as Raskolnikov
guessed, to tease myself. But what a rogue that Raskolnikov is! He's
gone through a good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when
he's got over his nonsense. But now he's too eager for life. These
young men are contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let
him please himself, it's nothing to do with me."
He could not get to sleep. By degrees Dounia's image rose before
him, and a shudder ran over him. "No, I must give up all that now," he
thought, rousing himself. "I must think of something else. It's
queer and funny. I never had a great hatred for any one, I never
particularly desired to revenge myself even, and that's a bad sign,
a bad sign, a bad sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never
lost my temper- that's a bad sign too. And the promises I made her
just now, too- Damnation! But- who knows?- perhaps she would have made
a new man of me somehow...."
He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dounia's
image rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the
first time, she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly
at him, so that he might have seized her twice over and she would
not have lifted a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her.
He recalled how at that instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he
had felt a pang at his heart...
"Aie! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!"
He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly
something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes.
He started. "Ugh! hang it! I believe it's a mouse," he thought,
"that's the veal I left on the table." He felt fearfully disinclined
to pull off the blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something
unpleasant ran over his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and
lighted the candle. Shaking with feverish chill he bent down to
examine the bed: there was nothing. He shook the blanket and
suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He tried to catch it, but
the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without leaving the bed, slipped
between his fingers, ran over his hand and suddenly darted under the
pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one instant felt something
leap on his chest and dart over his body and down his back under his
shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.
The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the
blanket as before. The wind was howling under the window. "How
disgusting," he thought with annoyance.
He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the
window. "It's better not to sleep at all," he decided. There was a
cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew
the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of
anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after
another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end
passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or
the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window
and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the
fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a
charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday-
Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste
overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the
house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of
roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated
with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows
nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over
their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move
away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large,
high drawing-room and again everywhere- at the windows, the doors on
to the balcony, and on the balcony itself- were flowers. The floors
were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a
fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping
under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered
with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with
white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers
surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white
muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as
though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there
was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile
of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on
her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful
appeal. Svidrigailov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no
burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had
drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken.
And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had
appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity
with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair,
unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet
while the wind howled....
Svidrigailov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the
window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously
into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered
with his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have
been something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There,
too, probably there were tea tables and singing in the daytime. Now
drops of rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it
was dark as in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark
blurs of objects. Svidrigailov, bending down with elbows on the
window-sill, gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a
cannon, followed by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the
night. "Ah, the signal! The river is overflowing," he thought. "By
morning it will be swirling down the street in the lower parts,
flooding the basements and cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and
men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to
their upper storeys. What time is it now?" And he had hardly thought
it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away
hurriedly, struck three.
"Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I'll go out at once
straight to the park. I'll choose a great bush there drenched with
rain, so that as soon as one's shoulder touches it, millions of
drops drip on one's head."
He moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on
his waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the
candle, into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be
asleep somewhere in the midst of candle ends and all sorts of rubbish,
to pay him for the room and leave the hotel. "It's the best minute;
I couldn't choose a better."
He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without
finding any one and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a
dark corner between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of
a strange object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the
candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old,
shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking
house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidrigailov, but looked
at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then
she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time,
but are beginning to be comforted. The child's face was pale and
tired, she was numb with cold. "How can she have come here? She must
have hidden here and not slept all night." He began questioning her.
The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby
language, something about "mammy" and that "mammy would beat her," and
about some cup that she had "bwoken." The child chattered on without
stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a
neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service
of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken
a cup of her mother's and was so frightened that she had run away
the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in
the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard
and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the
darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took
her in his arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and
began undressing her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless
feet were as wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night.
When he had undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and
wrapped her in the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at
once. Then he sank into dreary musing again.
"What folly to trouble myself," he decided suddenly with an
oppressive feeling of annoyance. "What idiocy!" In vexation he took up
the candle to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make
haste to go away. "Damn the child!" he thought as he opened the
door, but he turned again to see whether the child was asleep. He
raised the blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she
had got warm under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed.
But strange to say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the
rosy cheeks of childhood. "It's a flush of fever," thought
Svidrigailov. It was like the flush from drinking, as though she had
been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were hot and
glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long black
eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a sly
crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little
girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips
parted in a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she
were trying to control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now
it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless,
provocative in that quite unchildish face; it was depravity, it was
the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot. Now
both eyes opened wide; they turned a glowing, shameless glance upon
him; they laughed, invited him.... There was something infinitely
hideous and shocking in that laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness
in the face of a child. "What, at five years old?" Svidrigailov
muttered in genuine horror. "What does it mean?" And now she turned to
him, her little face all aglow, holding out her arms.... "Accursed
child!" Svidrigailov cried, raising his hand to strike her, but at
that moment he woke up.
He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had
not been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.
"I've had nightmare all night!" He got up angrily, feeling utterly
shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he
could see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He
got up, put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the
revolver in his pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a
notebook out of his pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the
title page wrote a few lines in large letters. Reading them over, he
sank into thought with his elbows on the table. The revolver and the
notebook lay beside him. Some flies woke up and settled on the
untouched veal, which was still on the table. He stared at them and at
last with his free right hand began trying to catch one. He tried till
he was tired, but could not catch it. At last, realising that he was
engaged in this interesting pursuit, he started, got up and walked
resolutely out of the room. A minute later he was in the street.
A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigailov walked along the
slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was
picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night,
Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and
bushes and at last the bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the
houses, trying to think of something else. There was not a cabman or a
passer-by in the street. The bright yellow, wooden, little houses
looked dirty and dejected with their closed shutters. The cold and
damp penetrated his whole body and he began to shiver. From time to
time he came across shop signs and read each carefully. At last he
reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone
house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between
its legs. A man in a great coat lay face downwards; dead drunk, across
the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower stood up on
the left. "Bah!" he shouted, "here is a place. Why should it be
Petrovsky? It will be in the presence of an official witness
anyway...."
He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street
where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed
gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning
against them, wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles
helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at
Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish
dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race
without exception. They both, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at
each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck
Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps
from him, staring and not saying a word.
"What do you want here?" he said, without moving or changing his
position.
"Nothing, brother, good morning," answered Svidrigailov.
"This isn't the place."
"I am going to foreign parts, brother."
"To foreign parts?"
"To America."
"America."
Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised
his eyebrows.
"I say, this is not the place for such jokes!"
"Why shouldn't it be the place?"
"Because it isn't."
"Well, brother, I don't mind that. It's a good place. When you are
asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America."
He put the revolver to his right temple.
"You can't do it here, it's not the place," cried Achilles,
rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_SEVEN
Chapter Seven
-
THE SAME day, about seven o'clock in the evening, Raskolnikov was on
his way to his mother's and sister's lodging- the lodging in
Bakaleyev's house which Razumihin had found for them. The stairs
went up from the street. Raskolnikov walked with lagging steps, as
though still hesitating whether to go or not. But nothing would have
turned him back: his decision was taken.
"Besides, it doesn't matter, they still know nothing," he thought,
"and they are used to thinking of me as eccentric."
He was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked
with a night's rain. His face was almost distorted from fatigue,
exposure, the inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours.
He had spent all the previous night alone, God knows where. But anyway
he had reached a decision.
He knocked at the door which was opened by his mother. Dounia was
not at home. Even the servant happened to be out. At first Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him
by the hand and drew him into the room.
"Here you are!" she began, faltering with joy. "Don't be angry
with me, Rodya, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am
laughing not crying. Did you think I was crying? No, I am delighted,
but I've got into such a stupid habit of shedding tears. I've been
like that ever since your father's death. I cry for anything. Sit
down, dear boy, you must be tired; I see you are. Ah, how muddy you
are."
"I was in the rain yesterday, mother...." Raskolnikov began.
"No, no," Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly interrupted, "you thought
I was going to cross-question you in the womanish way I used to; don't
be anxious, I understand, I understand it all: now I've learned the
ways here an truly I see for myself that they are better. I've made up
my mind once for all: how could I understand your plans and expect you
to give an account of them? God knows what concerns and plans you
may have, or what ideas you are hatching; so it's not for me to keep
nudging your elbow, asking you what you are thinking about. But, my
goodness! why am I running to and fro as though I were crazy...? I
am reading your article in the magazine for the third time, Rodya.
Dmitri Prokofitch brought it to me. Directly I saw it I cried out to
myself, there, foolish one, I thought, that's what he is busy about;
that's the solution of the mystery! Learned people are always like
that. He may have some new ideas in his head just now; he is
thinking them over and I worry him and upset him. I read it, my
dear, and of course there was a great deal I did not understand; but
that's only natural- how should I?"
"Show me, mother."
Raskolnikov took the magazine and glanced at his article.
Incongruous as it was with his mood and his circumstances, he felt
that strange and bitter sweet sensation that every author
experiences the first time he sees himself in print; besides, he was
only twenty-three. It lasted only a moment. After reading a few
lines he frowned and his heart throbbed with anguish. He recalled
all the inward conflict of the preceding months. He flung the
article on the table with disgust and anger.
"But, however foolish I may be, Rodya, I can see for myself that you
will very soon be one of the leading- if not the leading man- in the
world of Russian thought. And they dared to think you were mad! You
don't know, but they really thought that. Ah, the despicable
creatures, how could they understand genius! And Dounia, Dounia was
all but believing it- what do you say to that! Your father sent
twice to magazines- the first time poems (I've got the manuscript
and will show you) and the second time a whole novel (I begged him
to let me copy it out) and how we prayed that they should be taken-
they weren't! I was breaking my heart, Rodya, six or seven days ago
over your food and your clothes and the way you are living. But now
I see again how foolish I was, for you can attain any position you
like by your intellect and talent. No doubt you don't care about
that for the present and you are occupied with much more important
matters...."
"Dounia's not at home, mother?"
"No, Rodya. I often don't see her; she leaves me alone. Dmitri
Prokofitch comes to see me, it's so good of him, and he always talks
about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don't say that
Dounia is very wanting in consideration. I am not complaining. She has
her ways and I have mine; she seems to have got some secrets of late
and I never have any secrets from you two. Of course, I am sure that
Dounia has far too much sense, and besides she loves you and me... but
I don't know what it will all lead to. You've made me so happy by
coming now, Rodya, but she has missed you by going out; when she comes
in I'll tell her: your brother came in while you were out. Where
have you been all this time? You mustn't spoil me, Rodya, you know;
come when you can, but if you can't, it doesn't matter, I can wait.
I shall know, anyway, that you are fond of me, that will be enough for
me. I shall read what you write, I shall hear about you from every
one, and sometimes you'll come yourself to see me. What could be
better? Here you've come now to comfort your mother, I see that."
Here Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.
"Here I am again! Don't mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I
sitting here?" she cried, jumping up. "There is coffee and I don't
offer you any. Ah, that's the selfishness of old age. I'll get it at
once!"
"Mother, don't trouble, I am going at once. I haven't come for that.
Please listen to me."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna went up to him timidly.
"Mother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever
you are told about me, will you always love me as you do now?" he
asked suddenly from the fulness of his heart, as though not thinking
of his words and not weighing them.
"Rodya, Rodya, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a
question? Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I
shouldn't believe any one, I should refuse to listen."
"I've come to assure you that I've always loved you and I am glad
that we are alone, even glad Dounia is out," he went on with the
same impulse. "I have come to tell you that though you will be
unhappy, you must believe that your son loves you now more than
himself, and that all you thought about me, that I was cruel and
didn't care about you, was all a mistake. I shall never cease to
love you.... Well, that's enough: I thought I must do this and begin
with this...."
Pulcheria Alexandrovna embraced him in silence, pressing him to
her bosom and weeping gently.
"I don't know what is wrong with you, Rodya," she said at last.
"I've been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and
now I see that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that's
why you are miserable. I've foreseen it a long time, Rodya. Forgive me
for speaking about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at
nights. Your sister lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking
of nothing but you. I caught something, but I couldn't make it out.
I felt all the morning as though I were going to be hanged, waiting
for something, expecting something, and now it has come! Rodya, Rodya,
where are you going? You are going away somewhere?"
"Yes."
"That's what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need
me. And Dounia, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly- and Sofya
Semyonovna may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look
upon her as a daughter even... Dmitri Prokofitch will help us to go
together. But... where... are you going?"
"Good-bye, mother."
"What, to-day?" she cried, as though losing him for ever.
"I can't stay, I must go now...."
"And can't I come with you?"
"No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will
reach Him."
"Let me bless you and sign you with the cross. That's right,
that's right. Oh, God, what are we doing?"
Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that
he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful
months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed
her feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did
not question him this time. For some days she had realised that
something awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible
minute had come for him.
"Rodya, my darling, my first born," she said sobbing, "now you are
just as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me
and kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you
comforted us simply by being with us and when I buried your father,
how often we wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if
I've been crying lately, it's that my mother's heart had a
foreboding of trouble. The first time I saw you, that evening you
remember, as soon as we arrived here, I guessed simply from your eyes.
My heart sank at once, and to-day when I opened the door and looked at
you, I thought the fatal hour had come. Rodya, Rodya, you are not
going away to-day?"
"No!"
"You'll come again?"
"Yes... I'll come."
"Rodya, don't be angry, I don't dare to question you. I know I
mustn't. Only say two words to me- is it far where you are going?"
"Very far."
"What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?"
"What God sends... only pray for me." Raskolnikov went to the
door, but she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her
face worked with terror.
"Enough, mother," said Raskolnikov, deeply regretting that he had
come.
"Not for ever, it's not yet for ever? You'll come, you'll come
to-morrow?"
"I will, I will, good-bye." He tore himself away at last.
It was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the
morning. Raskolnikov went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to
finish all before sunset. He did not want to meet any one till then.
Going up the stairs he noticed that Nastasya rushed from the samovar
to watch him intently. "Can any one have come to see me?" he wondered.
He had a disgusted vision of Porfiry. But opening his door he saw
Dounia. She was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked
as though she had been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the
doorway. She rose from the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her
eyes fixed upon him, betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from
those eyes alone he saw at once that she knew.
"Am I to come in or go away?" he asked uncertainly.
"I've been all day with Sofya Semyonovna. We were both waiting for
you. We thought that you would be sure to come there."
Raskolnikov went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair.
"I feel weak, Dounia, I am very tired; and I should have liked at
this moment to be able to control myself."
He glanced at her mistrustfully.
"Where were you all night?"
"I don't remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my
mind once for all, and several times I walked by the Neva, I
remember that I wanted to end it all there, but... I couldn't make
up my mind," he whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again.
"Thank God! That was just what we were afraid of, Sofya Semyonovna
and I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!"
Raskolnikov smiled bitterly.
"I haven't faith, but I have just been weeping in mother's arms; I
haven't faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don't
know how it is, Dounia, I don't understand it."
"Have you been at mother's? Have you told her?" cried Dounia,
horror-stricken. "Surely you haven't done that?"
"No, I didn't tell her... in words; but she understood a great deal.
She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it
already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don't know why I
did go. I am a contemptible person, Dounia."
"A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren't
you?"
"Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought
of drowning myself, Dounia, but as I looked into the water, I
thought that if I had considered myself strong till now I'd better not
be afraid of disgrace," he said, hurrying on. "It's pride, Dounia."
"Pride, Rodya."
There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be
glad to think that he was still proud.
"You don't think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?" he
asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.
"Oh, Rodya, hush!" cried Dounia bitterly. Silence lasted for two
minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at
the other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he
got up.
"It's late, it's time to go! I am going at once to give myself up.
But I don't know why I am going to give myself up."
Big tears fell down her cheeks.
"You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?"
"You doubted it?"
She threw her arms round him.
"Aren't you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering!"
she cried, holding him close and kissing him.
"Crime? What crime?" he cried in sudden fury. "That I killed a
vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!...
Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out
of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not
thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all
sides? 'A crime! a crime!' Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my
cowardice, now that I have decided to face this superfluous
disgrace. It's simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me
that I have decided to, perhaps too for my advantage, as that...
Porfiry... suggested!"
"Brother, brother, what are you saying! Why, you have shed blood!"
cried Dounia in despair.
"Which all men shed," he put in almost frantically, "which flows and
has always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for
which men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards
benefactors of mankind. Look into it more carefully and understand it!
I too wanted to do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands
of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not
stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so
stupid as it seems now that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid
when it fails.) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into
an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means,
and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits
immeasurable in comparison.... But I... I couldn't carry out even
the first step, because I am contemptible, that's what's the matter!
And yet I won't look at it as you do. If I had succeeded I should have
been crowned with glory, but now I'm trapped."
"But that's not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying."
"Ah, it's not picturesque, not aesthetically attractive! I fail to
understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more
honourable. The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
I've never, never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am
further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime. I've never,
never been stronger and more convinced than now."
The colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he
uttered his last explanation, he happened to meet Dounia's eyes and he
saw such anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt
that he had any way made these two poor women miserable, that he was
any way the cause...
"Dounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be
forgiven if I am guilty). Good-bye! We won't dispute. It's time,
high time to go. Don't follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else
to go.... But you go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to!
It's my last request of you. Don't leave her at all; I left her in a
state of anxiety, that she is not fit to bear; she will die or go
out of her mind. Be with her! Razumihin will be with you. I've been
talking to him.... Don't cry about me: I'll try to be honest and manly
all my life, even if I am a murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make
a name. I won't disgrace you, you will see; I'll still show.... Now
good-bye for the present," he concluded hurriedly, noticing again a
strange expression in Dounia's eyes at his last words and promises.
"Why are you crying? Don't cry, don't cry: we are not parting for
ever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I'd forgotten!"
He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took
from between the pages a little water-colour portrait on ivory. It was
the portrait of his landlady's daughter, who had died of fever, that
strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at
the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and
gave it to Dounia.
"I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her," he said
thoughtfully. "To her heart I confided much of what has since been so
hideously realised. Don't be uneasy," he returned to Dounia, "she was
as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The
great point is that everything now is going to be different, is going
to be broken in two," he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection.
"Everything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it
myself? They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What's the object
of these senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are
for, when I am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old
man after twenty years' penal servitude? And what shall I have to
live for then? Why am I consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was
contemptible when I stood looking at the Neva at daybreak to-day!"
At last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she loved
him. She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round
to look at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too
turned and for the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was
looking at him, he motioned her away with impatience and even
vexation, and turned the corner abruptly.
"I am wicked, I see that," he thought to himself, feeling ashamed
a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. "But why are they so
fond of me if I don't deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no
one loved me and I too had never loved any one! Nothing of all this
would have happened. But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty
years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and
whimper at every word that I am a criminal. Yes, that's it, that's it,
that's what they are sending me there for, that's what they want. Look
at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a
scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But
try to get me off and they'd be wild with righteous indignation. Oh,
how I hate them all!"
He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he
could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately- humbled by
conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years
of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And
why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he
knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he
had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but
still he went.
PART_SIX|CHAPTER_EIGHT
Chapter Eight
-
WHEN HE went into Sonia's room, it was already getting dark. All day
Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been
waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering
Svidrigailov's words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the
conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became.
Dounia gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her
brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Sonia, first with
his confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed
it; she would go with him wherever fate might send him. Dounia did not
ask, but she knew it was so. She looked at Sonia almost with reverence
and at first almost embarrassed her by it. Sonia was almost on the
point of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to
look at Dounia. Dounia's gracious image when she had bowed to her so
attentively and respectfully at their first meeting in Raskolnikov's
room had remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her
life.
Dounia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her
brother's room to await him there; she kept thinking that he would
come there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the
dread of his committing suicide, and Dounia too feared it. But they
had spent the day trying to persuade each other that that could not
be, and both were less anxious while they were together. As soon as
they parted, each thought of nothing else. Sonia remembered how
Svidrigailov had said to her the day before that Raskolnikov had two
alternatives- Siberia or... Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and
his lack of faith.
"Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of
death to make him live?" she thought at last in despair.
Meanwhile the sun was setting. Sonia was standing in dejection,
looking intently out of the window, but from it she could see
nothing but the unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last
when she began to feel sure of his death- he walked into the room.
She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she
turned pale.
"Yes," said Raskolnikov, smiling. "I have come for your cross,
Sonia. It was you told me to go to the cross roads; why is it you
are frightened now it's come to that?"
Sonia gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a
cold shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone
and the words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though
to avoid meeting her eyes.
"You see, Sonia, I've decided that it will be better so. There is
one fact.... But it's a long story and there's no need to discuss
it. But do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid
brutish faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their
stupid questions, which I shall have to answer- they'll point their
fingers at me.... Tfoo! You know I am not going to Porfiry, I am
sick of him. I'd rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how
I shall surprise him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be
cooler; I've become too irritable of late. You know I was nearly
shaking my fist at my sister just now, because she turned to take a
last look at me. It's a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming
to! Well, where are the crosses?"
He seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay
still or concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to
gallop after one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled
slightly.
Without a word Sonia took out of the drawer two crosses, one of
cypress wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over
herself and over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck.
"It's the symbol of my taking up the cross," he laughed. "As
though I had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the
peasant one; the copper one, that is Lizaveta's- you will wear
yourself, show me! So she had it on... at that moment? I remember
two things like these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw
them back on the old woman's neck. Those would be appropriate now,
really, those are what I ought to put on now.... But I am talking
nonsense and forgetting what matters; I'm somehow forgetful.... You
see I have come to warn you, Sonia, so that you might know... that's
all- that's all I came for. But I thought I had more to say. You
wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I am going to prison and you'll
have your wish. Well, what are you crying for? You too? Don't. Leave
off! Oh, how I hate it all!"
But his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her.
"Why is she grieving too?" he thought to himself. "What am I to her?
Why does she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or
Dounia? She'll be my nurse."
"Cross yourself, say at least one prayer," Sonia begged in a timid
broken voice.
"Oh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Sonia,
sincerely...."
But he wanted to say something quite different.
He crossed himself several times. Sonia took up her shawl and put it
over her head. It was the green drap de dames shawl of which
Marmeladov had spoken, "the family shawl." Raskolnikov thought of that
looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he
was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He
was frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that
Sonia meant to go with him.
"What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I'll go
alone," he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he
moved towards the door. "What's the use of going in procession!" he
muttered going out.
Sonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even
said good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and
rebellious doubt surged in his heart.
"Was it right, was it right, all this?" he thought again as he
went down the stairs. "Couldn't he stop and retract it all... and
not go?"
But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn't ask
himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that
he had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the
middle of the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had
shouted at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same
instant, another thought dawned upon him, as though it had been
lying in wait to strike him then.
"Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her- on
business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I
was going; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove
her away just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I've
sunk! No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how
her heart ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to
delay me, some friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself,
to dream of what I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch,
contemptible!"
He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go.
But on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along
it went to the Hay Market.
He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every
object and could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped
away. "In another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison
van over this bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should
like to remember this!" slipped into his mind. "Look at this sign! How
shall I read those letters then? It's written here 'Campany,' that's a
thing to remember, that letter a, and to look at it again in a
month- how shall I look at it then? What shall I be feeling and
thinking then?... How trivial it all must be, what I am fretting about
now! Of course it must all be interesting... in its way...
(Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am becoming a baby, I am
showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo, how people shove! that
fat man- a German he must be- who pushed against me, does he know whom
he pushed? There's a peasant woman with a baby, begging. It's
curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might give her
something, for the incongruity of it. Here's a five copeck piece
left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here... take it, my
good woman!"
"God bless you," the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.
He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to
be in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would
have given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that
he would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk
and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down.
There was a ring round him. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the
crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave
a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not
see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not
remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the
square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and
mind.
He suddenly recalled Sonia's words, "Go to the cross roads, bow down
to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and
say aloud to the whole world, 'I am a murderer.'" He trembled,
remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that
time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him
that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed,
complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a
single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him.
Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his
eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....
He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the
earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got
up and bowed down a second time.
"He's boozed," a youth near him observed.
There was a roar of laughter.
"He's going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his
children and his country. He's bowing down to all the world and
kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement," added a
workman who was a little drunk.
"Quite a young man, too!" observed a third.
"And a gentleman," some one observed soberly.
"There's no knowing who's a gentleman and who isn't nowadays."
These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words,
"I am a murderer," which were perhaps on the point of dropping from
his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and
without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police
office. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not
surprise him; he had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed
down in the Hay Market, he saw standing fifty paces from him on the
left Sonia. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden
shanties in the market-place. She had followed him then on his painful
way! Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew once for all that
Sonia was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the
earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart... but he
was just reaching the fatal place.
He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the
third storey. "I shall be some time going up," he thought. He felt
as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had
plenty of time left for consideration.
Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral
stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and
the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been
here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but
still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to
collect himself, so as to enter like a man. "But why? what for?" he
wondered, reflecting. "If I must drink the cup what difference does it
make? The more revolting the better." He imagined for an instant the
figure of the "explosive lieutenant," Ilya Petrovitch. Was he actually
going to him? Couldn't he go to some one else? To Nikodim Fomitch?
Couldn't he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch's lodgings?
At least then it would be done privately.... No, no! To the "explosive
lieutenant"! If he must drink it, drink it off at once.
Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office.
There were very few people in it this time- only a house porter and
a peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his
screen. Raskolnikov walked into the next room. "Perhaps I still need
not speak," passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing
a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner
another clerk was seating himself. Zametov was not there, nor, of
course, Nikodim Fomitch.
"No one in?" Raskolnikov asked, addressing the person at the bureau.
"Whom do you want?"
"A-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent
the Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I've
forgotten! At your service!" a familiar voice cried suddenly.
Raskolnikov shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He
had just come in from the third room. "It is the hand of fate,"
thought Raskolnikov. "Why is he here?"
"You've come to see us? What about?" cried Ilya Petrovitch. He was
obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle
exhilarated. "If it's on business you are rather early.* It's only a
chance that I am here... however I'll do what I can. I must admit,
I... what is it, what is it? Excuse me...."
-
* Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after sunset,
and that the last time Raskolnikov visited the police office at two in
the afternoon, he was reproached for coming too late.
-
"Raskolnikov."
"Of course, Raskolnikov. You didn't imagine I'd forgotten? Don't
think I am like that... Rodion Ro--Ro--Rodionovitch, that's it,
isn't it?"
"Rodion Romanovitch."
"Yes, yes, of course, Rodion Romanovitch! I was just getting at
it. I made many inquiries about you. I assure you I've been
genuinely grieved since that... since I behaved like that... it was
explained to me afterwards that you were a literary man... and a
learned one too... and so to say the first steps... Mercy on us!
What literary or scientific man does not begin by some originality of
conduct! My wife and I have the greatest respect for literature, in my
wife it's a genuine passion! Literature and art! If only a man is a
gentleman, all the rest can be gained by talents, learning, good
sense, genius. As for a hat- well, what does a hat matter? I can buy a
hat as easily as I can a bun; but what's under the hat, what the hat
covers, I can't buy that! I was even meaning to come and apologise
to you, but thought maybe you'd... But I am forgetting to ask you,
is there anything you want really? I hear your family have come?"
"Yes, my mother and sister."
"I've even had the honour and happiness of meeting your sister- a
highly cultivated and charming person. I confess I was sorry I got
so hot with you. There it is! But as for my looking suspiciously at
your fainting fit,- that affair has been cleared up splendidly!
Bigotry and fanaticism! I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are
changing your lodging on account of your family's arriving?"
"No, I only looked in... I came to ask... I thought that I should
find Zametov here."
"Oh, yes! Of course, you've made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zametov
is not here. Yes, we've lost Zametov. He's not been here since
yesterday... he quarrelled with every one on leaving... in the
rudest way. He is a feather-headed youngster, that's all; one might
have expected something from him, but there, you know what they are,
our brilliant young men. He wanted to go in for some examination,
but it's only to talk and boast about it, it will go no further than
that. Of course it's a very different matter with you or Mr. Razumihin
there, your friend. Your career is an intellectual one and you won't
be deterred by failure. For you, one may say, all the attractions of
life nihil est- you are an ascetic, a monk, a hermit!... A book, a pen
behind your ear, a learned research- that's where your spirit soars! I
am the same way myself.... Have you read Livingstone's Travels?"
"No."
"Oh, I have. There are a great many Nihilists about nowadays, you
know, and indeed it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are
they? I ask you. But we thought... you are not a Nihilist of course?
Answer me openly, openly!"
"N-no..."
"Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself!
Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say
friendship is quite another? No, you're wrong! It's not friendship,
but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of
love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound
to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about
Zametov. Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of
bad reputation, over a glass of champagne... that's all your Zametov
is good for! While I'm perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and
lofty feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am
married and have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen,
but who is he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by
education... Then these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily
numerous."
Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya
Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a
stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He
looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.
"I mean those crop-headed wenches," the talkative Ilya Petrovitch
continued. "Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very
satisfactory one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I
fall ill, am I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you
say? Ha-ha!" Ilya Petrovitch laughed, quite pleased with his own
wit. "It's an immoderate zeal for education, but once you're educated,
that's enough. Why abuse it? Why insult honourable people, as that
scoundrel Zametov does? Why did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these
suicides, too, how common they are, you can't fancy! People spend
their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old
people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come
to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of that gentleman
who shot himself?"
"Svidrigailov," some one answered from the other room with drowsy
listlessness.
Raskolnikov started.
"Svidrigailov! Svidrigailov has shot himself!" he cried.
"What, do you know Svidrigailov?"
"Yes... I knew him.... He hadn't been here long."
"Yes, that's so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless
habits and all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking
way.... He left in his notebook a few words; that he dies in full
possession of his faculties and that no one is to blame for his death.
He had money, they say. How did you come to know him?"
"I... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family."
"Bah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You
had no suspicion?"
"I saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing."
Raskolnikov felt as though something had fallen on him and was
stifling him.
"You've turned pale again. It's so stuffy here..."
"Yes, I must go," muttered Raskolnikov. "Excuse my troubling
you...."
"Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It's a pleasure to see you
and I am glad to say so."
Ilya Petrovitch held out his hand.
"I only wanted... I came to see Zametov."
"I understand, I understand, and it's a pleasure to see you."
"I... am very glad... good-bye," Raskolnikov smiled.
He went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did
not know what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting
himself with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter
pushed past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog
in the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung
a rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard.
There, not far from the entrance, stood Sonia, pale and
horror-stricken. She looked wildly at him. He stood still before
her. There was a look of poignant agony, of despair, in her face.
She clasped her hands. His lips worked in an ugly, meaningless
smile. He stood still a minute, grinned and went back to the police
office.
Ilya Petrovitch had sat down and was rummaging among some papers.
Before him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs.
"Hulloa! Back again! have you left something behind? What's the
matter?"
Raskolnikov, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer.
He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say
something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible.
"You are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!"
Raskolnikov dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the
face of Ilya Petrovitch which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both
looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought.
"It was I..." began Raskolnikov.
"Drink some water."
Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and
brokenly, but distinctly said:
"It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta
with an axe and robbed them."
Ilya Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides.
Raskolnikov repeated his statement.
CHAPTER_ONE
EPILOGUE
Chapter One
-
SIBERIA. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one
of the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a
fortress, in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the
second-class convict Rodion Raskolnikov has been confined for nine
months. Almost a year and a half has passed since his crime.
There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal
adhered exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not
confuse nor misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own
interest, nor omit the smallest detail. He explained every incident of
the murder, the secret of the pledge (the piece of wood with a strip
of metal) which was found in the murdered woman's hand. He described
minutely how he had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as
the chest and its contents; he explained the mystery of Lizaveta's
murder; described how Koch and, after him, the student knocked, and
repeated all they had said to one another; how he afterwards had run
downstairs and heard Nikolay and Dmitri shouting; how he had hidden in
the empty flat and afterwards gone home. He ended by indicating the
stone in the yard off the Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse
and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly
clear. The lawyers and the judges were very much struck, among other
things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets and the purse
under a stone, without making use of them, and that, what was more, he
did not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how many
there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not
even know how much was in it seemed incredible. There turned out to be
in the purse three hundred and seventeen roubles and sixty copecks.
From being so long under the stone, some of the most valuable notes
lying uppermost had suffered from the damp. They were a long while
trying to discover why the accused man should tell a lie about this,
when about everything else he had made a truthful and
straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers more versed in
psychology admitted that it was possible he had really not looked into
the purse, and so didn't know what was in it when he hid it under
the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime
could only have been committed through temporary mental derangement,
through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain. This
fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary insanity,
so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover Raskolnikov's
hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by Dr.
Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant.
All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not
quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another
element in the case.
To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the
criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive
question as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery,
he answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause
was his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his
desire to provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three
thousand roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the
murder through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover
by privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess,
he answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was
almost coarse....
The sentence however was more merciful than could have been
expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify
himself, but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All
the strange and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into
consideration. There could be no doubt of the abnormal and
poverty-stricken condition of the criminal at the time. The fact
that he had made no use of what he had stolen was put down partly to
the effect of remorse, partly to his abnormal mental condition at
the time of the crime. Incidentally the murder of Lizaveta served
indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man commits two murders and
forgets that the door is open! Finally, the confession, at the very
moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by the false evidence
given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism, and when,
moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no
suspicions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word)- all this did
much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the
prisoner's favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow
discovered and proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university
he had helped a poor consumptive fellow student and had spent his last
penny on supporting him for six months, and when this student died,
leaving a decrepit old father whom he had maintained almost from his
thirteenth year, Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and
paid for his funeral when he died. Raskolnikov's landlady bore
witness, too, that when they had lived in another house at Five
Corners, Raskolnikov had rescued two little children from a house on
fire and was burnt in doing so. This was investigated and fairly
well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts made an impression in
his favour.
And in the end the criminal was in consideration of extenuating
circumstances condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a
term of eight years only.
At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov's mother fell ill.
Dounia and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg
during the trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from
Petersburg, so as to be able to follow every step of the trial and
at the same time to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna's illness was a strange nervous one and was
accompanied by a partial derangement of her intellect.
When Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she
had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening
Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother's
questions about Raskolnikov add made up a complete story for her
mother's benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of
Russia on a business commission, which would bring him in the end
money and reputation.
But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never
asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On
the contrary, she had her own version of her son's sudden departure;
she told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her,
hinting that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and
that Rodya had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary
for him to be in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt
that it would be brilliant when certain sinister influences could be
removed. She assured Razumihin that her son would be one day a great
statesman, that his article and brilliant literary talent proved it.
This article she was continually reading, she even read it aloud,
almost took it to bed with her, but scarcely asked where Rodya was,
though the subject was obviously avoided by the others, which might
have been enough to awaken her suspicions.
They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexandrovna's
strange silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance,
complain of getting no letters from him, though in previous years
she had only lived on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodya. This
was the cause of great uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to
her that her mother suspected that there was something terrible in her
son's fate and was afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something
still more awful. In any case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother
was not in full possession of her faculties.
It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave
such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her
without mentioning where Rodya was, and on receiving unsatisfactory
and suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and
this mood lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was
hard to deceive her and came to the conclusion that it was better to
be absolutely silent on certain points; but it became more and more
evident that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia
remembered her brother's telling her that her mother had overheard her
talking in her sleep on the night after her interview with
Svidrigailov and before the fatal day of the confession: had not she
made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of
gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of
hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost
incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his future.... Her fancies
were sometimes very strange. They humoured her, pretended to agree
with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending), but she still
went on talking.
Five months after Raskolnikov's confession, he was sentenced.
Razumihin and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible.
At last the moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother
that the separation should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same.
Razumihin, in his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the
foundations at least of a secure livelihood during the next three or
four years, and saving up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a
country rich in every natural resource and in need of workers,
active men and capital. There they would settle in the town where
Rodya was and all together would begin a new life. They all wept at
parting.
Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a
great deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He
worried so much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard
about his mother's illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was
particularly reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to
her by Svidrigailov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to
follow the party of convicts in which he was despatched to Siberia.
Not a word passed between Raskolnikov and her on the subject, but both
knew it would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely
at his sister's and Razumihin's fervent anticipations of their happy
future together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that
their mother's illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at
last set off.
Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and
sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and Zossimov were invited
however. During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute
determination. Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans
and indeed she could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare
strength of will. Among other things he began attending university
lectures again in order to take his degree. They were continually
making plans for the future; both counted on settling in Siberia
within five years at least. Till then they rested their hopes on
Sonia.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to
Dounia's marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became
even more melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin
told her how Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his
decrepit father and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in
rescuing two little children from a fire. These two pieces of news
excited Pulcheria Alexandrovna's disordered imagination almost to
ecstasy. She was continually talking about them, even entering into
conversation with strangers in the street, though Dounia always
accompanied her. In public conveyances and shops, wherever she could
capture a listener, she would begin the discourse about her son, his
article, how he had helped the student, how he had been burnt at the
fire, and so on! Dounia did not know how to restrain her. Apart from
the danger of her morbid excitement, there was the risk of some
one's recalling Raskolnikov's name and speaking of the recent trial.
Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the address of the mother of the
two children her son had saved and insisted on going to see her.
At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would
sometimes begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly
delirious. One morning she declared that by her reckoning Rodya
ought soon to be home, that she remembered when he said good-bye to
her he said that they must expect him back in nine months. She began
to prepare for his coming, began to do up her room for him, to clean
the furniture, to wash and put up new hangings and so on. Dounia was
anxious, but said nothing and helped her to arrange the room. After
a fatiguing day spent in continual fancies, in joyful day dreams and
tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was taken ill in the night and by
morning she was feverish and delirious. It was brain fever. She died
within a fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which showed
that she knew a great deal more about her son's terrible fate than
they had supposed.
For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother's death,
though a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he
reached Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote
every month to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing
regularity. At first they found Sonia's letters dry and
unsatisfactory, but later on they came to the conclusion that the
letters could not be better, for from these letters they received a
complete picture of their unfortunate brother's life. Sonia's
letters were full of the most matter of fact detail, the simplest
and clearest description of all Raskolnikov's surroundings as a
convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the
future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to
interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts-
that is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he
asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her and so
on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The
picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great
clearness and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing
was given but facts.
But Dounia and husband could get little comfort out of the news,
especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not
ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave
him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and
that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at
last of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem
greatly affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them
that, although he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were,
shut himself off from every one- he took a very direct and simple view
of his new life; that he understood his position, expected nothing
better for the time, had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in
his position) and scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his
surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that
his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking or
seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except
on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been
glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every
day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else, declaring
that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further
that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she had not
seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were
crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with
a rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But
that he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design,
but simply from inattention and indifference.
Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her
visits, had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to
talk and rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a
habit and almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively
distressed when she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She
used to see him on holidays at the prison gates or in the
guard-room, to which he was brought for a few minutes to see her. On
working days she would go to see him at work either at the workshops
or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the banks of the Irtish.
About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some
acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was
scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an
indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that
the authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his
task was lightened and so on.
At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm
and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from every
one, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent
for days at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter
Sonia wrote that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the
convict ward of the hospital.
CHAPTER_TWO
Chapter Two
-
HE WAS ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life,
not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched
clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and
hardships! he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he
could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was
the food to him- the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In
the past as a student he had often not had even that. His clothes were
warm and suited to his manner of life. He did not even feel the
fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat?
Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be
ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom
he tortured because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But it
was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of: his pride
had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him ill.
Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself! He
could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged
himself severely, and his exasperated conscience found no particularly
terrible fault in his past, except a simple blunder which might happen
to any one. He was ashamed just because he, Raskolnikov, had so
hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through some decree of blind
fate, and must humble himself and submit to "the idiocy" of a
sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.
Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a
continual sacrifice leading to nothing- that was all that lay before
him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years
he would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had
he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he
strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand
times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope,
even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him;
he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength
of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was
permissible than to others.
And if only fate would have sent him repentance- burning
repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep,
that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or
drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would
at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime.
At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as
he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison.
But now in prison, in freedom, he thought over and criticised all
his actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so
grotesque as they had seemed at the fatal time.
"In what way," he asked himself, "was my theory stupider than others
that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has
only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and
uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem
so... strange. Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you
halt half-way!"
"Why does my action strike them as so horrible?" he said to himself.
"Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience
is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter
of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the
letter of the law... and that's enough. Of course, in that case many
of the benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves
instead of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first
steps. But those men succeeded and so they were right, and I didn't,
and so I had no right to have taken that step."
It was only in that that he recognized his criminality, only in
the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.
He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself?
Why had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was
the desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had
not Svidrigailov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?
In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand
that, at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he
had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself
and his convictions. He didn't understand that that consciousness
might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and
of his future resurrection.
He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he
could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at
his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and
prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in
prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of
them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much
for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden
away in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years
before, and longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart,
dreaming of the green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush?
As he went on he saw still more inexplicable examples.
In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and
did not want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was
loathsome and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was
much that surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to
notice much that he had not suspected before. What surprised him
most of all was the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him
and all the rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked
at them and they at him with distrust and hostility. He felt and
knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would never have admitted
till then that those reasons were so deep and strong. There were
some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They simply
looked down upon all the rest as ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov
could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men
were in many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some
Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two
seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked
and avoided by every one; they even began to hate him at last,- why,
he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised and
laughed at his crime.
"You're a gentleman," they used to say. "You shouldn't hack about
with an axe; that's not a gentleman's work."
The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with
his gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel
broke out one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a
fury.
"You're an infidel! You don't believe in God," they shouted. "You
ought to be killed."
He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they
wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the
prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy. Raskolnikov awaited him
calmly and silently; his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not
flinch. The guard succeeded in intervening between him and his
assailant, or there would have been bloodshed.
There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so
fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met
them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet
everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow him,
knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no
particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents
of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between
them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their
relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their
instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives
and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited
Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they
all took off their hats to her. "Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you
are our dear, good little mother," coarse branded criminals said to
that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and
every one was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait
and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for
being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most
for. They even came to her for help in their illnesses.
He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter.
When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was
feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned
to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the
depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen.
Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these
microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them
became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered
themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the
truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions,
their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible.
Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection.
All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that
he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat
himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know
how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what
good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed
each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in
armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would
begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers
would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring
each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns;
men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was
summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned,
because every one proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and
they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups,
agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on
something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused
one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations
and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The
plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be
saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined
to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but
no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their
voices.
Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory
so miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so
long. The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright
spring days; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the
sentinel paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him
twice during his illness; each time she had to obtain permission,
and it was difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard,
especially in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look
up at the windows of the ward.
One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep.
On waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia
in the distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for
some one. Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He
shuddered and moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come,
nor the day after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At
last he was discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the
convicts that Sofya Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to
go out.
He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt
that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious
about her, Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was
much better, that she had a slight cold and that she would soon,
very soon come and see him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully
as he read it.
Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six
o'clock, he went off to work on the river bank, where they used to
pound alabaster and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed.
There were only three of them sent. One of the convicts went with
the guard to the fortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the
wood ready and laying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed
on to the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began
gazing at the wide deserted river. From the high bank a broad
landscape opened before him, the sound of singing floated faintly
audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine,
he could just see, like black specks, the nomads' tents. There there
was freedom, there other men were living, utterly unlike those here;
there time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of
Abraham and his flocks had not passed. Raskolnikov sat gazing, his
thoughts passed into day-dreams, into contemplation; he thought of
nothing, but a vague restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly
he found Sonia beside him; she had come up noiselessly and sat down at
his side. It was still quite early; the morning chill was still
keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face
still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave
him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with her usual
timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to him and
sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel it.
He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed
to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit.
Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But
now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and
dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, no
one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.
How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to
seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms
round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and
she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the
same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came
into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond
everything and that at last the moment had come....
They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They
were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with
the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They
were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of
life for the heart of the other.
They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years
to wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness
before them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in
all his being, while she- she only lived in his life.
On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,
Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even
fancied that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked
at him differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they
answered him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it
was bound to be so. Wasn't everything now bound to be changed?
He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented
her and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little
face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew
with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And
what were all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his
crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first
rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no
concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that
evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was
simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and
something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up
mechanically. The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which
she had read the raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid
that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the gospel
and pester him with books. But to his great surprise she had not
once approached the subject and had not even offered him the
Testament. He had asked her for it himself not long before his illness
and she brought him the book without a word. Till now he had not
opened it.
He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind:
"Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at
least...."
She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was
taken ill again. But she was so happy- and so unexpectedly happy- that
she was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, only seven
years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were
both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven
days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for
nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost
him great striving, great suffering.
But that is the beginning of a new story- the story of the gradual
renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his
passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new
unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our
present story is ended.
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THE END
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