Crime and Punishment
by
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Part 4 out of 12
"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 /fiancé/? 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 "fiancé" 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 rôle of fiancé. 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
upon 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,
not 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 trunks, 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 someone
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 impracticality."
"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 /fiancée/ . . . 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 high-flown 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 anyone, 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 anyone, anyone 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 VI
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 Zaraïsky 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. . . . someone 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 someone 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 Cristal! Razumihin
was just talking of the Palais de Cristal. 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 someone 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 cock-sparrow! 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 cock-sparrow! 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 another 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, looking 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 anyone 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 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 cock-sparrow! 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 causé!/
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 Cristal? 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, 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 anyone 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 Cristal 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 someone 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
recognised 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, a neighbour, we live close by, the second house
from the end, see yonder. . . ."
The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone
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 someone 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 tones:
"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 someone 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 VII
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. Everyone 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. Everyone 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 everyone 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 danced 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 dish-
clout, 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!" someone 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 someone 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 began
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. Everyone
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 . . . Hm . . . 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. Someone 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 anyone," 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 naïvely 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 conclusions, 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 . . ."
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