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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Title: Crime and Punishment

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Release Date: March 28, 2006 [EBook #2554]
Last Updated: October 27, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRIME AND PUNISHMENT ***




Produced by John Bickers; and Dagny





CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

By Fyodor Dostoevsky



Translated By Constance Garnett




TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the English reader to
understand his work.

Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were very hard-working
and deeply religious people, but so poor that they lived with their five
children in only two rooms. The father and mother spent their evenings
in reading aloud to their children, generally from books of a serious
character.

Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came out third in the
final examination of the Petersburg school of Engineering. There he had
already begun his first work, “Poor Folk.”

This story was published by the poet Nekrassov in his review and
was received with acclamations. The shy, unknown youth found himself
instantly something of a celebrity. A brilliant and successful career
seemed to open before him, but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849 he
was arrested.

Though neither by temperament nor conviction a revolutionist, Dostoevsky
was one of a little group of young men who met together to read Fourier
and Proudhon. He was accused of “taking part in conversations against
the censorship, of reading a letter from Byelinsky to Gogol, and of
knowing of the intention to set up a printing press.” Under Nicholas
I. (that “stern and just man,” as Maurice Baring calls him) this was
enough, and he was condemned to death. After eight months’ imprisonment
he was with twenty-one others taken out to the Semyonovsky Square to
be shot. Writing to his brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: “They snapped
words over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts worn by
persons condemned to death. Thereupon we were bound in threes to stakes,
to suffer execution. Being the third in the row, I concluded I had only
a few minutes of life before me. I thought of you and your dear ones and
I contrived to kiss Plestcheiev and Dourov, who were next to me, and to
bid them farewell. Suddenly the troops beat a tattoo, we were unbound,
brought back upon the scaffold, and informed that his Majesty had spared
us our lives.” The sentence was commuted to hard labour.

One of the prisoners, Grigoryev, went mad as soon as he was untied, and
never regained his sanity.

The intense suffering of this experience left a lasting stamp on
Dostoevsky’s mind. Though his religious temper led him in the end to
accept every suffering with resignation and to regard it as a blessing
in his own case, he constantly recurs to the subject in his writings.
He describes the awful agony of the condemned man and insists on the
cruelty of inflicting such torture. Then followed four years of penal
servitude, spent in the company of common criminals in Siberia, where
he began the “Dead House,” and some years of service in a disciplinary
battalion.

He had shown signs of some obscure nervous disease before his arrest
and this now developed into violent attacks of epilepsy, from which he
suffered for the rest of his life. The fits occurred three or four times
a year and were more frequent in periods of great strain. In 1859 he was
allowed to return to Russia. He started a journal--“Vremya,” which was
forbidden by the Censorship through a misunderstanding. In 1864 he lost
his first wife and his brother Mihail. He was in terrible poverty, yet
he took upon himself the payment of his brother’s debts. He started
another journal--“The Epoch,” which within a few months was also
prohibited. He was weighed down by debt, his brother’s family was
dependent on him, he was forced to write at heart-breaking speed, and is
said never to have corrected his work. The later years of his life were
much softened by the tenderness and devotion of his second wife.

In June 1880 he made his famous speech at the unveiling of the
monument to Pushkin in Moscow and he was received with extraordinary
demonstrations of love and honour.

A few months later Dostoevsky died. He was followed to the grave by a
vast multitude of mourners, who “gave the hapless man the funeral of a
king.” He is still probably the most widely read writer in Russia.

In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks to explain the feeling
inspired by Dostoevsky: “He was one of ourselves, a man of our blood and
our bone, but one who has suffered and has seen so much more deeply than
we have his insight impresses us as wisdom... that wisdom of the heart
which we seek that we may learn from it how to live. All his other
gifts came to him from nature, this he won for himself and through it he
became great.”





CRIME AND PUNISHMENT




PART I



CHAPTER I

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of
the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though
in hesitation, towards K. bridge.

He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His
garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more
like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret,
dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time
he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which
invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a
sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was
hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.

This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but
for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition,
verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in
himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not
only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the
anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had
given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all
desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror
for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her
trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats
and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to
lie--no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and
slip out unseen.

This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely
aware of his fears.

“I want to attempt a thing _like that_ and am frightened by these
trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in a man’s
hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would
be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new
step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking
too much. It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is
that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this
last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the
Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of _that_? Is
_that_ serious? It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse
myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.”

The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle
and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that
special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out
of town in summer--all worked painfully upon the young man’s already
overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which
are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men
whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed
the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest
disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man’s refined face. He was,
by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim,
well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank
into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness
of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring
to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the
habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these
moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a
tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted
food.

He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would
have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter
of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have
created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number
of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading
and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the
heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets
that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was
such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart, that,
in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least
of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with
acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked
meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown
reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy
dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past: “Hey there, German
hatter” bawling at the top of his voice and pointing at him--the young
man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall
round hat from Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all
torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly
fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror
had overtaken him.

“I knew it,” he muttered in confusion, “I thought so! That’s the worst
of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might
spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd
and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any
sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such
a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What
matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them
a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as
possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such
trifles that always ruin everything....”

He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate
of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted
them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no
faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous
but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon
them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at
his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard
this “hideous” dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he
still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a
“rehearsal” of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more
and more violent.

With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house
which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the
street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by
working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of
sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.
There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the
two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on
the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and
at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the
staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar
with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings:
in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.

“If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that
I were really going to do it?” he could not help asking himself as he
reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters
who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the
flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and his
family. This German was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this
staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman. “That’s a good
thing anyway,” he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old
woman’s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of
tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells
that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now
its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring it
clearly before him.... He started, his nerves were terribly overstrained
by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old
woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and
nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness.
But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and
opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which
was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing
him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive,
withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp
little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared
with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck,
which looked like a hen’s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag,
and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy
fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every
instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar
expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.

“Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young man made
haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more
polite.

“I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,” the
old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.

“And here... I am again on the same errand,” Raskolnikov continued, a
little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust. “Perhaps
she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other
time,” he thought with an uneasy feeling.

The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side,
and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass
in front of her:

“Step in, my good sir.”

The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on
the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly
lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.

“So the sun will shine like this _then_ too!” flashed as it were by
chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned
everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and
remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The
furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with
a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a
dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,
chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow
frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands--that was
all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything
was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished;
everything shone.

“Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust
to be seen in the whole flat.

“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such
cleanliness,” Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance
at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in
which stood the old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and into which he
had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.

“What do you want?” the old woman said severely, coming into the room
and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in
the face.

“I’ve brought something to pawn here,” and he drew out of his pocket
an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a
globe; the chain was of steel.

“But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day
before yesterday.”

“I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.”

“But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell
your pledge at once.”

“How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?”

“You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely worth anything.
I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it
quite new at a jeweler’s for a rouble and a half.”

“Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father’s. I
shall be getting some money soon.”

“A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!”

“A rouble and a half!” cried the young man.

“Please yourself”--and the old woman handed him back the watch. The
young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going
away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere
else he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming.

“Hand it over,” he said roughly.

The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind
the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in
the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear
her unlocking the chest of drawers.

“It must be the top drawer,” he reflected. “So she carries the keys in
a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring.... And there’s
one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches;
that can’t be the key of the chest of drawers... then there must be some
other chest or strong-box... that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always
have keys like that... but how degrading it all is.”

The old woman came back.

“Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take
fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But
for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks
on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks
altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the
watch. Here it is.”

“What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!”

“Just so.”

The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the
old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still
something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know
what.

“I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona
Ivanovna--a valuable thing--silver--a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it
back from a friend...” he broke off in confusion.

“Well, we will talk about it then, sir.”

“Good-bye--are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with
you?” He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the
passage.

“What business is she of yours, my good sir?”

“Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick.... Good-day,
Alyona Ivanovna.”

Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more
and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two
or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was
in the street he cried out, “Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and
can I, can I possibly.... No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added
resolutely. “And how could such an atrocious thing come into my head?
What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all,
disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!--and for a whole month I’ve been....”
 But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling
of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart
while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a
pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to
do with himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the
pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling
against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next
street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern
which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement.
At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and
supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to
think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had
never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a
burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his
sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky little
table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank
off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his thoughts became
clear.

“All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it
all to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of
beer, a piece of dry bread--and in one moment the brain is stronger,
the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all
is!”

But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful
as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed
round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that
moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also
not normal.

There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken
men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and
a girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure
left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern
were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so,
sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with
a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had
dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he began as though in
his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper
part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some
meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:

   “His wife a year he fondly loved
    His wife a--a year he--fondly loved.”

Or suddenly waking up again:

   “Walking along the crowded row
    He met the one he used to know.”

But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with
positive hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was
another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government
clerk. He was sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and
looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in some agitation.



CHAPTER II

Raskolnikov was not used to crowds, and, as we said before, he avoided
society of every sort, more especially of late. But now all at once he
felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to be taking
place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He
was so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness and gloomy
excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a moment, in some other
world, whatever it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the
surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern.

The master of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently
came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, tarred boots with
red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the rest of his
person. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat,
with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like an
iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen, and there was
another boy somewhat younger who handed whatever was wanted. On the
counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and
some fish, chopped up small, all smelling very bad. It was insufferably
close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits that five minutes in such
an atmosphere might well make a man drunk.

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the
first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on
Raskolnikov by the person sitting a little distance from him, who looked
like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this impression
afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly
at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was staring
persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. At
the other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper, the clerk
looked as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing
a shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of station and
culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to
converse. He was a man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height,
and stoutly built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of
a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen
reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very
strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense
feeling--perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the
same time there was a gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an
old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing
except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this
last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots
and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk, he wore
no beard, nor moustache, but had been so long unshaven that his chin
looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there was something respectable
and like an official about his manner too. But he was restless; he
ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head drop into his
hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the stained and sticky
table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov, and said loudly and
resolutely:

“May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation?
Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my
experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not
accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in
conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular
counsellor in rank. Marmeladov--such is my name; titular counsellor. I
make bold to inquire--have you been in the service?”

“No, I am studying,” answered the young man, somewhat surprised at
the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly
addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for
company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his
habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached
or attempted to approach him.

“A student then, or formerly a student,” cried the clerk. “Just what
I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense experience, sir,” and he
tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. “You’ve been a
student or have attended some learned institution!... But allow me....”
 He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside
the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk, but spoke
fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread of his
sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Raskolnikov as
greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month.

“Honoured sir,” he began almost with solemnity, “poverty is not a vice,
that’s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue,
and that that’s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a
vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but
in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human
society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as
humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary
I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house!
Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my wife a beating, and
my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me
to ask you another question out of simple curiosity: have you ever spent
a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?”

“No, I have not happened to,” answered Raskolnikov. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s the fifth night I’ve slept
so....” He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay were in
fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It seemed quite
probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last five days.
His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red, with black
nails.

His conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest. The
boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down from the
upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the “funny fellow”
 and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with dignity.
Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had most
likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the habit of
frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all sorts in
the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some drunkards, and
especially in those who are looked after sharply and kept in order
at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try to justify
themselves and even if possible obtain consideration.

“Funny fellow!” pronounced the innkeeper. “And why don’t you work, why
aren’t you at your duty, if you are in the service?”

“Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,” Marmeladov went on, addressing
himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as though it had been he who put
that question to him. “Why am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache
to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr. Lebeziatnikov
beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn’t I suffer?
Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you... hm... well, to
petition hopelessly for a loan?”

“Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?”

“Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you
will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with positive
certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will
on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he?
For he knows of course that I shan’t pay it back. From compassion? But
Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day
that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that’s
what is done now in England, where there is political economy. Why, I
ask you, should he give it to me? And yet though I know beforehand that
he won’t, I set off to him and...”

“Why do you go?” put in Raskolnikov.

“Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must
have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must
go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket,
then I had to go... (for my daughter has a yellow passport),” he added
in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at the young man.
“No matter, sir, no matter!” he went on hurriedly and with apparent
composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed and even the
innkeeper smiled--“No matter, I am not confounded by the wagging of
their heads; for everyone knows everything about it already, and all
that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt, but
with humility. So be it! So be it! ‘Behold the man!’ Excuse me, young
man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not
_can_ you but _dare_ you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a pig?”

The young man did not answer a word.

“Well,” the orator began again stolidly and with even increased dignity,
after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. “Well, so be
it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a beast, but
Katerina Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education and an officer’s
daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a
noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet... oh,
if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man
ought to have at least one place where people feel for him! But Katerina
Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust.... And yet, although
I realise that when she pulls my hair she only does it out of pity--for
I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young man,” he
declared with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again--“but, my
God, if she would but once.... But no, no! It’s all in vain and it’s no
use talking! No use talking! For more than once, my wish did come true
and more than once she has felt for me but... such is my fate and I am a
beast by nature!”

“Rather!” assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov struck his fist
resolutely on the table.

“Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very
stockings for drink? Not her shoes--that would be more or less in the
order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink!
Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own
property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this
winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three
little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till
night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she’s
been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is weak and she has
a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don’t feel it?
And the more I drink the more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try
to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer
twice as much!” And as though in despair he laid his head down on the
table.


She turned abruptly and went towards the door.

“Dounia!” Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. “That Razumihin,
Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.”

Dounia flushed slightly.

“Well?” she asked, waiting a moment.

“He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love....
Good-bye, Dounia.”

Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.

“But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that
you... give me such a parting message?”

“Never mind.... Good-bye.”

He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at
him uneasily, and went out troubled.

No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one)
when he had longed to take her in his arms and _say good-bye_ to her,
and even _to tell_ her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.

“Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and
will feel that I stole her kiss.”

“And would _she_ stand that test?” he went on a few minutes later to
himself. “No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They
never do.”

And he thought of Sonia.

There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was
fading. He took up his cap and went out.

He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all
this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And
if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this
continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession
of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had
begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute
about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it;
it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a
foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening
this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.

“With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or
something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dounia,
as well as to Sonia,” he muttered bitterly.

He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to
him.

“Only fancy, I’ve been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she’s
carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna and
I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making
the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the
cross-roads and in front of shops; there’s a crowd of fools running
after them. Come along!”

“And Sonia?” Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.

“Simply frantic. That is, it’s not Sofya Semyonovna’s frantic, but
Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova’s frantic too. But Katerina
Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They’ll be
taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have....
They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofya
Semyonovna’s, quite close.”

On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one
where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally
of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could
be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle
likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress
with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way
on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her
wasted consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out
of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home.
But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew
more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed
them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began
explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by
their not understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the
crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she
immediately appealed to him to see what these children “from a genteel,
one may say aristocratic, house” had been brought to. If she heard
laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers
and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their
heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the
frightened children. The frying-pan of which Lebeziatnikov had spoken
was not there, at least Raskolnikov did not see it. But instead of
rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began clapping her wasted hands,
when she made Lida and Kolya dance and Polenka sing. She too joined in
the singing, but broke down at the second note with a fearful cough,
which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most
furious was the weeping and terror of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had
been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The
boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk.
There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap,
or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with
a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina
Ivanovna’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family possession.
Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her
mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her
mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly
frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed Katerina
Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina
Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.

“Leave off, Sonia, leave off,” she shouted, speaking fast, panting and
coughing. “You don’t know what you ask; you are like a child! I’ve
told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let
everyone, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets,
though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in
truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service.” (Katerina
Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly
believed it.) “Let that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly,
Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I
won’t go on so! Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, is that you?” she cried, seeing
Raskolnikov and rushing up to him. “Explain to this silly girl, please,
that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their
living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are
an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And that general
will lose his post, you’ll see! We shall perform under his windows every
day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll fall on my knees, put the children
before me, show them to him, and say ‘Defend us father.’ He is the
father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll
see, and that wretch of a general.... Lida, _tenez vous droite_! Kolya,
you’ll dance again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What
are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Rodion
Romanovitch? If you only knew how stupid they are! What’s one to do with
such children?”

And she, almost crying herself--which did not stop her uninterrupted,
rapid flow of talk--pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried
to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity,
that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like
an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a
boarding-school.

“A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,” cried Katerina
Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. “No, Rodion Romanovitch, that
dream is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know,
Rodion Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him--it happened to be standing
in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my
name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels!
But enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t
bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!” she pointed
to Sonia. “Polenka, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two
farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after
us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing
at?” (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) “It’s all because Kolya here
is so stupid; I have such a bother with him. What do you want, Polenka?
Tell me in French, _parlez-moi français_. Why, I’ve taught you, you know
some phrases. Else how are you to show that you are of good family, well
brought-up children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t
going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel
song.... Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out,
but we... you see, we are standing here, Rodion Romanovitch, to find
something to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to.... For,
as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it
over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky,
where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed
at once. Lida knows ‘My Village’ only, nothing but ‘My Village,’ and
everyone sings that. We must sing something far more genteel.... Well,
have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you’d help your mother!
My memory’s quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really
can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’ Ah, let us sing in French, ‘Cinq sous,’ I have
taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will
see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much
more touching.... You might sing ‘Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre,’
for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the
aristocratic houses.

“_Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre Ne sait quand reviendra_...”
 she began singing. “But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’ Now, Kolya, your
hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other
way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!

“_Cinq sous, cinq sous Pour monter notre menage_.”

(Cough-cough-cough!) “Set your dress straight, Polenka, it’s slipped
down on your shoulders,” she observed, panting from coughing. “Now it’s
particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may
see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice
should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Sonia,
with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite
deformed by it.... Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter,
stupids? Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an
unbearable child!

“Cinq sous, cinq sous.

“A policeman again! What do you want?”

A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that
moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat--a solid-looking
official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which delighted
Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the policeman)--approached and
without a word handed her a green three-rouble note. His face wore
a look of genuine sympathy. Katerina Ivanovna took it and gave him a
polite, even ceremonious, bow.

“I thank you, honoured sir,” she began loftily. “The causes that have
induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous and
honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress).
You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family--I might even say of
aristocratic connections--and that wretch of a general sat eating
grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. ‘Your excellency,’ I said,
‘protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Semyon Zaharovitch,
and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his
only daughter.’... That policeman again! Protect me,” she cried to the
official. “Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run
away from one of them. What do you want, fool?”

“It’s forbidden in the streets. You mustn’t make a disturbance.”

“It’s you’re making a disturbance. It’s just the same as if I were
grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?”

“You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven’t got one, and in
that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?”

“What, a license?” wailed Katerina Ivanovna. “I buried my husband
to-day. What need of a license?”

“Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself,” began the official. “Come along;
I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are
ill.”

“Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don’t know,” screamed Katerina
Ivanovna. “We are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is she?
She is crying too! What’s the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida, where
are you going?” she cried suddenly in alarm. “Oh, silly children! Kolya,
Lida, where are they off to?...”

Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their
mother’s mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off
at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere.
Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them. She was
a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for
breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.

“Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
children!... Polenka! catch them.... It’s for your sakes I...”

She stumbled as she ran and fell down.

“She’s cut herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, dear!” cried Sonia, bending over
her.

All ran up and crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
policeman who muttered, “Bother!” with a gesture of impatience, feeling
that the job was going to be a troublesome one.

“Pass on! Pass on!” he said to the crowd that pressed forward.

“She’s dying,” someone shouted.

“She’s gone out of her mind,” said another.

“Lord have mercy upon us,” said a woman, crossing herself. “Have they
caught the little girl and the boy? They’re being brought back, the
elder one’s got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!”

When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she had
not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood
that stained the pavement red was from her chest.

“I’ve seen that before,” muttered the official to Raskolnikov and
Lebeziatnikov; “that’s consumption; the blood flows and chokes the
patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago...
nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What’s to be done though?
She is dying.”

“This way, this way, to my room!” Sonia implored. “I live here!... See,
that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste,” she turned
from one to the other. “Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!”

Thanks to the official’s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman
even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia’s
room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still
flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Raskolnikov,
Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were
followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed
to the very door. Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who
were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the
Kapernaumovs’ room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange
appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his
wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several
open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these,
Svidrigaïlov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him
with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having
noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The
official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now
for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran
himself.

Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased
for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at
Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with
a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the
bed, supporting her on both sides.

“Where are the children?” she said in a faint voice. “You’ve brought
them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!”

Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes,
looking about her.

“So that’s how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room.”

She looked at her with a face of suffering.

“We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,
here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I’ve had
enough! The ball is over.” (Cough!) “Lay me down, let me die in peace.”

They laid her back on the pillow.

“What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a rouble to spare.
I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have
suffered.... And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,
turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute,
but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and
difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.

“I said to him, your excellency,” she ejaculated, gasping after each
word. “That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,
make haste! _Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!_ Tap with your heels, be a
graceful child!

“_Du hast Diamanten und Perlen_

“What next? That’s the thing to sing.

“_Du hast die schönsten Augen Mädchen, was willst du mehr?_

“What an idea! _Was willst du mehr?_ What things the fool invents! Ah,
yes!

“In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.

“Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your
father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those
days! Oh that’s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I’ve
forgotten. Remind me! How was it?”

She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly
hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word,
with a look of growing terror.

“In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in
my breast!...”

“Your excellency!” she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and
a flood of tears, “protect the orphans! You have been their father’s
guest... one may say aristocratic....” She started, regaining
consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once
recognised Sonia.

“Sonia, Sonia!” she articulated softly and caressingly, as though
surprised to find her there. “Sonia darling, are you here, too?”

They lifted her up again.

“Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!”
 she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the
pillow.

She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long.
Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg
moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.

Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless
with her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted bosom. Polenka threw
herself at her mother’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though
Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling
that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other’s
little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened
their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy
dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.

And how did “the certificate of merit” come to be on the bed beside
Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.

He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.

“She is dead,” he said.

“Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you,” said Svidrigaïlov,
coming up to them.

Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.
Svidrigaïlov drew Raskolnikov further away.

“I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know
it’s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I
will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphan asylum,
and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming
of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about them. And I
will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn’t she? So
tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.”

“What is your motive for such benevolence?” asked Raskolnikov.

“Ah! you sceptical person!” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “I told you I had no
need of that money. Won’t you admit that it’s simply done from humanity?
She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know” (he pointed to the corner where the
dead woman lay), “was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll
agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to
die? And if I didn’t help them, Polenka would go the same way.”

He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his
eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing his own
phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at
Svidrigaïlov.

“How do you know?” he whispered, hardly able to breathe.

“Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich’s, the other side of the wall.
Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted
friend of mine. I am a neighbour.”

“You?”

“Yes,” continued Svidrigaïlov, shaking with laughter. “I assure you
on my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me
enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well,
here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll
see that you can get on with me!”




PART VI



CHAPTER I

A strange period began for Raskolnikov: it was as though a fog had
fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which there
was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed that his
mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so, with
intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he had been
mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to the date
of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece his
recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself from what
other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had explained
events as due to circumstances which existed only in his imagination. At
times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness, amounting sometimes
to panic. But he remembered, too, moments, hours, perhaps whole days,
of complete apathy, which came upon him as a reaction from his previous
terror and might be compared with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes
seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape
from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential
facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome
to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the
neglect of which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable
ruin.

He was particularly worried about Svidrigaïlov, he might be said to be
permanently thinking of Svidrigaïlov. From the time of Svidrigaïlov’s
too menacing and unmistakable words in Sonia’s room at the moment of
Katerina Ivanovna’s death, the normal working of his mind seemed to
break down. But although this new fact caused him extreme uneasiness,
Raskolnikov was in no hurry for an explanation of it. At times, finding
himself in a solitary and remote part of the town, in some wretched
eating-house, sitting alone lost in thought, hardly knowing how he had
come there, he suddenly thought of Svidrigaïlov. He recognised
suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that he ought at once to come to an
understanding with that man and to make what terms he could. Walking
outside the city gates one day, he positively fancied that they had
fixed a meeting there, that he was waiting for Svidrigaïlov. Another
time he woke up before daybreak lying on the ground under some bushes
and could not at first understand how he had come there.

But during the two or three days after Katerina Ivanovna’s death, he
had two or three times met Svidrigaïlov at Sonia’s lodging, where he
had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made no
reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not
to speak of it for a time.

Katerina Ivanovna’s body was still lying in the coffin, Svidrigaïlov was
busy making arrangements for the funeral. Sonia too was very busy. At
their last meeting Svidrigaïlov informed Raskolnikov that he had made
an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Katerina Ivanovna’s
children; that he had, through certain connections, succeeded in getting
hold of certain personages by whose help the three orphans could be at
once placed in very suitable institutions; that the money he had settled
on them had been of great assistance, as it is much easier to place
orphans with some property than destitute ones. He said something
too about Sonia and promised to come himself in a day or two to see
Raskolnikov, mentioning that “he would like to consult with him, that
there were things they must talk over....”

This conversation took place in the passage on the stairs. Svidrigaïlov
looked intently at Raskolnikov and suddenly, after a brief pause,
dropping his voice, asked: “But how is it, Rodion Romanovitch; you
don’t seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you don’t seem to
understand. Cheer up! We’ll talk things over; I am only sorry, I’ve
so much to do of my own business and other people’s. Ah, Rodion
Romanovitch,” he added suddenly, “what all men need is fresh air, fresh
air... more than anything!”

He moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who
were coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By
Svidrigaïlov’s orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidrigaïlov
went his way. Raskolnikov stood still a moment, thought, and followed
the priest into Sonia’s room. He stood at the door. They began quietly,
slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his childhood the
thought of death and the presence of death had something oppressive
and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had heard the requiem
service. And there was something else here as well, too awful and
disturbing. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the
coffin; Polenka was weeping. Behind them Sonia prayed, softly and, as it
were, timidly weeping.

“These last two days she hasn’t said a word to me, she hasn’t glanced at
me,” Raskolnikov thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room;
the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, “Give rest, oh Lord....”
 Raskolnikov stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and
took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service,
Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her
head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered
Raskolnikov. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of
repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the
furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it.

Sonia said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He felt
very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he
would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life
there. But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had
never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he walked out of the town on to
the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier
the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near
him. It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he
made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter
restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt
easier and even more solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour
listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively
enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again,
as though his conscience smote him. “Here I sit listening to singing,
is that what I ought to be doing?” he thought. Yet he felt at once
that that was not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something
requiring immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly
understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. “No, better the
struggle again! Better Porfiry again... or Svidrigaïlov.... Better some
challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!” he thought. He went out of
the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of Dounia and
his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That night he woke
up before morning among some bushes in Krestovsky Island, trembling
all over with fever; he walked home, and it was early morning when he
arrived. After some hours’ sleep the fever left him, but he woke up
late, two o’clock in the afternoon.

He remembered that Katerina Ivanovna’s funeral had been fixed for that
day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Nastasya brought him
some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness. His
head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last three
days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of panic.

The door opened and Razumihin came in.

“Ah, he’s eating, then he’s not ill,” said Razumihin. He took a chair
and sat down at the table opposite Raskolnikov.

He was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with evident
annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked as though
he had some special fixed determination.

“Listen,” he began resolutely. “As far as I am concerned, you may all go
to hell, but from what I see, it’s clear to me that I can’t make head or
tail of it; please don’t think I’ve come to ask you questions. I don’t
want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say
I shouldn’t stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come
to find out once for all whether it’s a fact that you are mad? There is
a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit
I’ve been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid,
repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior
to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them
as you have; so you must be mad.”

“When did you see them last?”

“Just now. Haven’t you seen them since then? What have you been doing
with yourself? Tell me, please. I’ve been to you three times already.
Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had made up
her mind to come to you; Avdotya Romanovna tried to prevent her; she
wouldn’t hear a word. ‘If he is ill, if his mind is giving way, who can
look after him like his mother?’ she said. We all came here together, we
couldn’t let her come alone all the way. We kept begging her to be calm.
We came in, you weren’t here; she sat down, and stayed ten minutes,
while we stood waiting in silence. She got up and said: ‘If he’s
gone out, that is, if he is well, and has forgotten his mother, it’s
humiliating and unseemly for his mother to stand at his door begging for
kindness.’ She returned home and took to her bed; now she is in a fever.
‘I see,’ she said, ‘that he has time for _his girl_.’ She means by _your
girl_ Sofya Semyonovna, your betrothed or your mistress, I don’t know. I
went at once to Sofya Semyonovna’s, for I wanted to know what was going
on. I looked round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and
Sofya Semyonovna trying them on mourning dresses. No sign of you. I
apologised, came away, and reported to Avdotya Romanovna. So that’s all
nonsense and you haven’t got a girl; the most likely thing is that you
are mad. But here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you’d not had
a bite for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but
though you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I’d
swear! Above all, you are not mad! So you may go to hell, all of you,
for there’s some mystery, some secret about it, and I don’t intend to
worry my brains over your secrets. So I’ve simply come to swear at you,”
 he finished, getting up, “to relieve my mind. And I know what to do
now.”

“What do you mean to do now?”

“What business is it of yours what I mean to do?”

“You are going in for a drinking bout.”

“How... how did you know?”

“Why, it’s pretty plain.”

Razumihin paused for a minute.

“You always have been a very rational person and you’ve never been mad,
never,” he observed suddenly with warmth. “You’re right: I shall drink.
Good-bye!”

And he moved to go out.

“I was talking with my sister--the day before yesterday, I think it
was--about you, Razumihin.”

“About me! But... where can you have seen her the day before yesterday?”
 Razumihin stopped short and even turned a little pale.

One could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently.

“She came here by herself, sat there and talked to me.”

“She did!”

“Yes.”

“What did you say to her... I mean, about me?”

“I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn’t
tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.”

“She knows that herself?”

“Well, it’s pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me,
you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your
keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite well how you love
her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too
may love you and perhaps does love you already. Now decide for yourself,
as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not.”

“Rodya! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go?
Of course, if it’s all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall find
out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense
and that you’ve made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a
capital fellow!...”

“That was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that was
a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to
time, don’t worry about it. You’ll know it all in time when it must be.
Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh
air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant
by that.”

Razumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent
conclusion.

“He’s a political conspirator! He must be. And he’s on the eve of some
desperate step, that’s certain. It can only be that! And... and Dounia
knows,” he thought suddenly.

“So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you,” he said, weighing each
syllable, “and you’re going to see a man who says we need more air, and
so of course that letter... that too must have something to do with it,”
 he concluded to himself.

“What letter?”

“She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much--very much indeed. Too
much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then... then
she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part... then she began
warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked
herself in.”

“She got a letter?” Raskolnikov asked thoughtfully.

“Yes, and you didn’t know? hm...”

They were both silent.

“Good-bye, Rodion. There was a time, brother, when I.... Never mind,
good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must be off
too. I am not going to drink. There’s no need now.... That’s all stuff!”

He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he
suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:

“Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Porfiry’s, that
old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed
and given the proofs. It’s one of those very workmen, the painter, only
fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all
that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs
while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on
purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the
young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it’s his own explanation, he
has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he’s simply
a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of
the lawyers--so there’s nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course
people like that are always possible. And the fact that he couldn’t keep
up the character, but confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But
what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!”

“Tell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest
you so?” Raskolnikov asked with unmistakable agitation.

“What next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from
Porfiry, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it.”

“From Porfiry?”

“From Porfiry.”

“What... what did he say?” Raskolnikov asked in dismay.

“He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his
fashion.”

“He explained it? Explained it himself?”

“Yes, yes; good-bye. I’ll tell you all about it another time, but now
I’m busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter, another
time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk
without wine. I am drunk, Rodya! Good-bye, I’m going. I’ll come again
very soon.”

He went out.

“He’s a political conspirator, there’s not a doubt about it,” Razumihin
decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. “And he’s drawn his sister
in; that’s quite, quite in keeping with Avdotya Romanovna’s character.
There are interviews between them!... She hinted at it too... So many of
her words.... and hints... bear that meaning! And how else can all this
tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking... Good heavens,
what I thought! Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was
his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Pfoo! What a crude,
nasty, vile idea on my part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing.... And
how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions...
before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy....
But what’s the meaning now of that letter? There’s something in that,
too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!”

He thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed,
and he suddenly broke into a run.

As soon as Razumihin went out, Raskolnikov got up, turned to the window,
walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the
smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to
speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of escape had come.

“Yes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too
cramping, the burden had been too agonising. A lethargy had come upon
him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at Porfiry’s he
had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Nikolay’s
confession, on that very day had come the scene with Sonia; his
behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he
could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and
fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia, he had agreed
in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his
mind!

“And Svidrigaïlov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but
somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come
with Svidrigaïlov. Svidrigaïlov, too, might be a means of escape; but
Porfiry was a different matter.

“And so Porfiry himself had explained it to Razumihin, had explained it
_psychologically_. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology again!
Porfiry? But to think that Porfiry should for one moment believe that
Nikolay was guilty, after what had passed between them before Nikolay’s
appearance, after that tête-à-tête interview, which could have only
_one_ explanation? (During those days Raskolnikov had often recalled
passages in that scene with Porfiry; he could not bear to let his mind
rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed between them, they
had exchanged such glances, things had been said in such a tone and had
reached such a pass, that Nikolay, whom Porfiry had seen through at the
first word, at the first gesture, could not have shaken his conviction.

“And to think that even Razumihin had begun to suspect! The scene in the
corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had rushed to
Porfiry.... But what had induced the latter to receive him like that?
What had been his object in putting Razumihin off with Nikolay? He must
have some plan; there was some design, but what was it? It was true that
a long time had passed since that morning--too long a time--and no sight
nor sound of Porfiry. Well, that was a bad sign....”

Raskolnikov took his cap and went out of the room, still pondering. It
was the first time for a long while that he had felt clear in his mind,
at least. “I must settle Svidrigaïlov,” he thought, “and as soon as
possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to come to him of my own
accord.” And at that moment there was such a rush of hate in his
weary heart that he might have killed either of those two--Porfiry or
Svidrigaïlov. At least he felt that he would be capable of doing it
later, if not now.

“We shall see, we shall see,” he repeated to himself.

But no sooner had he opened the door than he stumbled upon Porfiry
himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Raskolnikov was
dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say, he
was not very much astonished at seeing Porfiry and scarcely afraid of
him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly, on his guard.
“Perhaps this will mean the end? But how could Porfiry have approached
so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard nothing? Could he have been
listening at the door?”

“You didn’t expect a visitor, Rodion Romanovitch,” Porfiry explained,
laughing. “I’ve been meaning to look in a long time; I was passing by
and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you going out? I won’t
keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette.”

“Sit down, Porfiry Petrovitch, sit down.” Raskolnikov gave his visitor
a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he would have
marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it.

The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man
will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand,
yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.

Raskolnikov seated himself directly facing Porfiry, and looked at him
without flinching. Porfiry screwed up his eyes and began lighting a
cigarette.

“Speak, speak,” seemed as though it would burst from Raskolnikov’s
heart. “Come, why don’t you speak?”



CHAPTER II

“Ah these cigarettes!” Porfiry Petrovitch ejaculated at last, having
lighted one. “They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I
can’t give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and
a difficulty in breathing. You know I am a coward, I went lately to
Dr. B----n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He
positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: ‘Tobacco’s bad for
you,’ he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’ But how am I to give it up?
What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the mischief,
he-he-he, that I don’t. Everything is relative, Rodion Romanovitch,
everything is relative!”

“Why, he’s playing his professional tricks again,” Raskolnikov thought
with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview suddenly
came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that had come upon
him then.

“I came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you didn’t
know?” Porfiry Petrovitch went on, looking round the room. “I came into
this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day, and I thought
I’d return your call. I walked in as your door was wide open, I looked
round, waited and went out without leaving my name with your servant.
Don’t you lock your door?”

Raskolnikov’s face grew more and more gloomy. Porfiry seemed to guess
his state of mind.

“I’ve come to have it out with you, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow!
I owe you an explanation and must give it to you,” he continued with a
slight smile, just patting Raskolnikov’s knee.

But almost at the same instant a serious and careworn look came into his
face; to his surprise Raskolnikov saw a touch of sadness in it. He had
never seen and never suspected such an expression in his face.

“A strange scene passed between us last time we met, Rodion Romanovitch.
Our first interview, too, was a strange one; but then... and one thing
after another! This is the point: I have perhaps acted unfairly to you;
I feel it. Do you remember how we parted? Your nerves were unhinged and
your knees were shaking and so were mine. And, you know, our behaviour
was unseemly, even ungentlemanly. And yet we are gentlemen, above all,
in any case, gentlemen; that must be understood. Do you remember what we
came to?... and it was quite indecorous.”

“What is he up to, what does he take me for?” Raskolnikov asked himself
in amazement, raising his head and looking with open eyes on Porfiry.

“I’ve decided openness is better between us,” Porfiry Petrovitch went
on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though unwilling to
disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his former wiles.
“Yes, such suspicions and such scenes cannot continue for long. Nikolay
put a stop to it, or I don’t know what we might not have come to. That
damned workman was sitting at the time in the next room--can you realise
that? You know that, of course; and I am aware that he came to you
afterwards. But what you supposed then was not true: I had not sent for
anyone, I had made no kind of arrangements. You ask why I hadn’t? What
shall I say to you? it had all come upon me so suddenly. I had scarcely
sent for the porters (you noticed them as you went out, I dare say).
An idea flashed upon me; I was firmly convinced at the time, you see,
Rodion Romanovitch. Come, I thought--even if I let one thing slip for
a time, I shall get hold of something else--I shan’t lose what I want,
anyway. You are nervously irritable, Rodion Romanovitch, by temperament;
it’s out of proportion with other qualities of your heart and character,
which I flatter myself I have to some extent divined. Of course I did
reflect even then that it does not always happen that a man gets up and
blurts out his whole story. It does happen sometimes, if you make a
man lose all patience, though even then it’s rare. I was capable of
realising that. If I only had a fact, I thought, the least little fact
to go upon, something I could lay hold of, something tangible, not
merely psychological. For if a man is guilty, you must be able to get
something substantial out of him; one may reckon upon most surprising
results indeed. I was reckoning on your temperament, Rodion Romanovitch,
on your temperament above all things! I had great hopes of you at that
time.”

“But what are you driving at now?” Raskolnikov muttered at last, asking
the question without thinking.

“What is he talking about?” he wondered distractedly, “does he really
take me to be innocent?”

“What am I driving at? I’ve come to explain myself, I consider it my
duty, so to speak. I want to make clear to you how the whole business,
the whole misunderstanding arose. I’ve caused you a great deal of
suffering, Rodion Romanovitch. I am not a monster. I understand what
it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud,
imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment!
I regard you in any case as a man of noble character and not without
elements of magnanimity, though I don’t agree with all your convictions.
I wanted to tell you this first, frankly and quite sincerely, for above
all I don’t want to deceive you. When I made your acquaintance, I felt
attracted by you. Perhaps you will laugh at my saying so. You have a
right to. I know you disliked me from the first and indeed you’ve no
reason to like me. You may think what you like, but I desire now to do
all I can to efface that impression and to show that I am a man of heart
and conscience. I speak sincerely.”

Porfiry Petrovitch made a dignified pause. Raskolnikov felt a rush of
renewed alarm. The thought that Porfiry believed him to be innocent
began to make him uneasy.

“It’s scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail,” Porfiry
Petrovitch went on. “Indeed, I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with
there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came to
me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My suspicions
were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as easily not have
happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into that
either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in my mind. I
admit it openly--for one may as well make a clean breast of it--I was
the first to pitch on you. The old woman’s notes on the pledges and
the rest of it--that all came to nothing. Yours was one of a hundred.
I happened, too, to hear of the scene at the office, from a man who
described it capitally, unconsciously reproducing the scene with great
vividness. It was just one thing after another, Rodion Romanovitch, my
dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From a
hundred rabbits you can’t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don’t make
a proof, as the English proverb says, but that’s only from the rational
point of view--you can’t help being partial, for after all a lawyer
is only human. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you
remember, on your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the
time, but that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Rodion Romanovitch,
you are ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest
and... had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt
the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived
on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed
enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is
dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary
amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of the heat of
youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your
article is absurd and fantastic, but there’s a transparent sincerity,
a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It’s a
gloomy article, but that’s what’s fine in it. I read your article and
put it aside, thinking as I did so ‘that man won’t go the common way.’
Well, I ask you, after that as a preliminary, how could I help being
carried away by what followed? Oh, dear, I am not saying anything, I
am not making any statement now. I simply noted it at the time. What is
there in it? I reflected. There’s nothing in it, that is really nothing
and perhaps absolutely nothing. And it’s not at all the thing for
the prosecutor to let himself be carried away by notions: here I have
Nikolay on my hands with actual evidence against him--you may think what
you like of it, but it’s evidence. He brings in his psychology, too; one
has to consider him, too, for it’s a matter of life and death. Why am
I explaining this to you? That you may understand, and not blame my
malicious behaviour on that occasion. It was not malicious, I assure
you, he-he! Do you suppose I didn’t come to search your room at the
time? I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in bed,
not officially, not in my own person, but I was here. Your room was
searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but _umsonst_! I
thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and
quickly, too; if he’s guilty, he’s sure to come. Another man wouldn’t,
but he will. And you remember how Mr. Razumihin began discussing the
subject with you? We arranged that to excite you, so we purposely spread
rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and Razumihin is not a
man to restrain his indignation. Mr. Zametov was tremendously struck by
your anger and your open daring. Think of blurting out in a restaurant
‘I killed her.’ It was too daring, too reckless. I thought so myself, if
he is guilty he will be a formidable opponent. That was what I thought
at the time. I was expecting you. But you simply bowled Zametov over
and... well, you see, it all lies in this--that this damnable psychology
can be taken two ways! Well, I kept expecting you, and so it was, you
came! My heart was fairly throbbing. Ach!

“Now, why need you have come? Your laughter, too, as you came in, do you
remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn’t expected you
so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter. You
see what influence a mood has! Mr. Razumihin then--ah, that stone, that
stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it somewhere
in a kitchen garden. It was in a kitchen garden, you told Zametov and
afterwards you repeated that in my office? And when we began picking
your article to pieces, how you explained it! One could take every word
of yours in two senses, as though there were another meaning hidden.

“So in this way, Rodion Romanovitch, I reached the furthest limit, and
knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself what
I was about. After all, I said, you can take it all in another sense if
you like, and it’s more natural so, indeed. I couldn’t help admitting
it was more natural. I was bothered! ‘No, I’d better get hold of some
little fact’ I said. So when I heard of the bell-ringing, I held my
breath and was all in a tremor. ‘Here is my little fact,’ thought I, and
I didn’t think it over, I simply wouldn’t. I would have given a thousand
roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own eyes, when you
walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he had called you
murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask him a question
all the way. And then what about your trembling, what about your
bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium?

“And so, Rodion Romanovitch, can you wonder that I played such pranks on
you? And what made you come at that very minute? Someone seemed to
have sent you, by Jove! And if Nikolay had not parted us... and do you
remember Nikolay at the time? Do you remember him clearly? It was a
thunderbolt, a regular thunderbolt! And how I met him! I didn’t believe
in the thunderbolt, not for a minute. You could see it for yourself;
and how could I? Even afterwards, when you had gone and he began making
very, very plausible answers on certain points, so that I was surprised
at him myself, even then I didn’t believe his story! You see what it is
to be as firm as a rock! No, thought I, _Morgenfrüh_. What has Nikolay
got to do with it!”

“Razumihin told me just now that you think Nikolay guilty and had
yourself assured him of it....”

His voice failed him, and he broke off. He had been listening in
indescribable agitation, as this man who had seen through and through
him, went back upon himself. He was afraid of believing it and did not
believe it. In those still ambiguous words he kept eagerly looking for
something more definite and conclusive.

“Mr. Razumihin!” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, seeming glad of a question
from Raskolnikov, who had till then been silent. “He-he-he! But I had to
put Mr. Razumihin off; two is company, three is none. Mr. Razumihin is
not the right man, besides he is an outsider. He came running to me
with a pale face.... But never mind him, why bring him in? To return
to Nikolay, would you like to know what sort of a type he is, how I
understand him, that is? To begin with, he is still a child and not
exactly a coward, but something by way of an artist. Really, don’t laugh
at my describing him so. He is innocent and responsive to influence. He
has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells
stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him.
He attends school too, and laughs till he cries if you hold up a finger
to him; he will drink himself senseless--not as a regular vice, but at
times, when people treat him, like a child. And he stole, too, then,
without knowing it himself, for ‘How can it be stealing, if one picks it
up?’ And do you know he is an Old Believer, or rather a dissenter? There
have been Wanderers[*] in his family, and he was for two years in his
village under the spiritual guidance of a certain elder. I learnt all
this from Nikolay and from his fellow villagers. And what’s more, he
wanted to run into the wilderness! He was full of fervour, prayed at
night, read the old books, ‘the true’ ones, and read himself crazy.

     [*] A religious sect.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

“Petersburg had a great effect upon him, especially the women and the
wine. He responds to everything and he forgot the elder and all that. I
learnt that an artist here took a fancy to him, and used to go and see
him, and now this business came upon him.

“Well, he was frightened, he tried to hang himself! He ran away! How can
one get over the idea the people have of Russian legal proceedings? The
very word ‘trial’ frightens some of them. Whose fault is it? We shall
see what the new juries will do. God grant they do good! Well, in
prison, it seems, he remembered the venerable elder; the Bible, too,
made its appearance again. Do you know, Rodion Romanovitch, the force of
the word ‘suffering’ among some of these people! It’s not a question of
suffering for someone’s benefit, but simply, ‘one must suffer.’ If they
suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better. In my time
there was a very meek and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison
always reading his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself
crazy, and so crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he
seized a brick and flung it at the governor; though he had done him
no harm. And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side
on purpose, for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to
a prisoner who assaults an officer with a weapon. So ‘he took his
suffering.’

“So I suspect now that Nikolay wants to take his suffering or something
of the sort. I know it for certain from facts, indeed. Only he doesn’t
know that I know. What, you don’t admit that there are such fantastic
people among the peasants? Lots of them. The elder now has begun
influencing him, especially since he tried to hang himself. But he’ll
come and tell me all himself. You think he’ll hold out? Wait a bit,
he’ll take his words back. I am waiting from hour to hour for him to
come and abjure his evidence. I have come to like that Nikolay and am
studying him in detail. And what do you think? He-he! He answered me
very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence
and prepared himself cleverly. But on other points he is simply at sea,
knows nothing and doesn’t even suspect that he doesn’t know!

“No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn’t come in! This is a fantastic,
gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart
of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood ‘renews,’ when
comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a
heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage,
but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over
a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the
crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for
a theory. He committed the murder and couldn’t take the money, and what
he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn’t enough for
him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and
rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to
recall the bell-ringing, he wanted to feel the cold shiver over again....
Well, that we grant, was through illness, but consider this: he is
a murderer, but looks upon himself as an honest man, despises others,
poses as injured innocence. No, that’s not the work of a Nikolay, my
dear Rodion Romanovitch!”

All that had been said before had sounded so like a recantation that
these words were too great a shock. Raskolnikov shuddered as though he
had been stabbed.

“Then... who then... is the murderer?” he asked in a breathless voice,
unable to restrain himself.

Porfiry Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at
the question.

“Who is the murderer?” he repeated, as though unable to believe his
ears. “Why, _you_, Rodion Romanovitch! You are the murderer,” he added,
almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction.

Raskolnikov leapt from the sofa, stood up for a few seconds and sat down
again without uttering a word. His face twitched convulsively.

“Your lip is twitching just as it did before,” Porfiry Petrovitch
observed almost sympathetically. “You’ve been misunderstanding me, I
think, Rodion Romanovitch,” he added after a brief pause, “that’s why
you are so surprised. I came on purpose to tell you everything and deal
openly with you.”

“It was not I murdered her,” Raskolnikov whispered like a frightened
child caught in the act.

“No, it was you, you Rodion Romanovitch, and no one else,” Porfiry
whispered sternly, with conviction.

They were both silent and the silence lasted strangely long, about ten
minutes. Raskolnikov put his elbow on the table and passed his fingers
through his hair. Porfiry Petrovitch sat quietly waiting. Suddenly
Raskolnikov looked scornfully at Porfiry.

“You are at your old tricks again, Porfiry Petrovitch! Your old method
again. I wonder you don’t get sick of it!”

“Oh, stop that, what does that matter now? It would be a different
matter if there were witnesses present, but we are whispering alone. You
see yourself that I have not come to chase and capture you like a hare.
Whether you confess it or not is nothing to me now; for myself, I am
convinced without it.”

“If so, what did you come for?” Raskolnikov asked irritably. “I ask you
the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don’t you take
me to prison?”

“Oh, that’s your question! I will answer you, point for point. In the
first place, to arrest you so directly is not to my interest.”

“How so? If you are convinced you ought....”

“Ach, what if I am convinced? That’s only my dream for the time. Why
should I put you in safety? You know that’s it, since you ask me to do
it. If I confront you with that workman for instance and you say to him
‘were you drunk or not? Who saw me with you? I simply took you to be
drunk, and you were drunk, too.’ Well, what could I answer, especially
as your story is a more likely one than his? for there’s nothing but
psychology to support his evidence--that’s almost unseemly with his ugly
mug, while you hit the mark exactly, for the rascal is an inveterate
drunkard and notoriously so. And I have myself admitted candidly several
times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the
second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from
that I have as yet nothing against you. And though I shall put you in
prison and indeed have come--quite contrary to etiquette--to inform you
of it beforehand, yet I tell you frankly, also contrary to etiquette,
that it won’t be to my advantage. Well, secondly, I’ve come to you
because...”

“Yes, yes, secondly?” Raskolnikov was listening breathless.

“Because, as I told you just now, I consider I owe you an explanation. I
don’t want you to look upon me as a monster, as I have a genuine liking
for you, you may believe me or not. And in the third place I’ve come to
you with a direct and open proposition--that you should surrender
and confess. It will be infinitely more to your advantage and to my
advantage too, for my task will be done. Well, is this open on my part
or not?”

Raskolnikov thought a minute.

“Listen, Porfiry Petrovitch. You said just now you have nothing but
psychology to go on, yet now you’ve gone on mathematics. Well, what if
you are mistaken yourself, now?”

“No, Rodion Romanovitch, I am not mistaken. I have a little fact even
then, Providence sent it me.”

“What little fact?”

“I won’t tell you what, Rodion Romanovitch. And in any case, I haven’t
the right to put it off any longer, I must arrest you. So think it over:
it makes no difference to me _now_ and so I speak only for your sake.
Believe me, it will be better, Rodion Romanovitch.”

Raskolnikov smiled malignantly.

“That’s not simply ridiculous, it’s positively shameless. Why, even if I
were guilty, which I don’t admit, what reason should I have to confess,
when you tell me yourself that I shall be in greater safety in prison?”

“Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, don’t put too much faith in words, perhaps
prison will not be altogether a restful place. That’s only theory and
my theory, and what authority am I for you? Perhaps, too, even now I am
hiding something from you? I can’t lay bare everything, he-he! And how
can you ask what advantage? Don’t you know how it would lessen your
sentence? You would be confessing at a moment when another man has taken
the crime on himself and so has muddled the whole case. Consider that! I
swear before God that I will so arrange that your confession shall
come as a complete surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these
psychological points, of a suspicion against you, so that your crime
will appear to have been something like an aberration, for in truth it
was an aberration. I am an honest man, Rodion Romanovitch, and will keep
my word.”

Raskolnikov maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink
dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his
smile was sad and gentle.

“No!” he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up appearances
with Porfiry, “it’s not worth it, I don’t care about lessening the
sentence!”

“That’s just what I was afraid of!” Porfiry cried warmly and, as it
seemed, involuntarily. “That’s just what I feared, that you wouldn’t
care about the mitigation of sentence.”

Raskolnikov looked sadly and expressively at him.

“Ah, don’t disdain life!” Porfiry went on. “You have a great deal of
it still before you. How can you say you don’t want a mitigation of
sentence? You are an impatient fellow!”

“A great deal of what lies before me?”

“Of life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek
and ye shall find. This may be God’s means for bringing you to Him. And
it’s not for ever, the bondage....”

“The time will be shortened,” laughed Raskolnikov.

“Why, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that you
are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But anyway
_you_ shouldn’t be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing.”

“Ach, hang it!” Raskolnikov whispered with loathing and contempt, as
though he did not want to speak aloud.

He got up again as though he meant to go away, but sat down again in
evident despair.

“Hang it, if you like! You’ve lost faith and you think that I am
grossly flattering you; but how long has your life been? How much do
you understand? You made up a theory and then were ashamed that it broke
down and turned out to be not at all original! It turned out something
base, that’s true, but you are not hopelessly base. By no means so base!
At least you didn’t deceive yourself for long, you went straight to the
furthest point at one bound. How do I regard you? I regard you as one
of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts
their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and
you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too,
is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is right in wanting to suffer.
I know you don’t believe in it--but don’t be over-wise; fling yourself
straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid--the flood
will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What
bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before
you. I know that you take all my words now for a set speech prepared
beforehand, but maybe you will remember them after. They may be of use
some time. That’s why I speak. It’s as well that you only killed the
old woman. If you’d invented another theory you might perhaps have
done something a thousand times more hideous. You ought to thank God,
perhaps. How do you know? Perhaps God is saving you for something.
But keep a good heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great
expiation before you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since
you have taken such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice
in it. You must fulfil the demands of justice. I know that you don’t
believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it
down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!”

Raskolnikov positively started.

“But who are you? what prophet are you? From the height of what majestic
calm do you proclaim these words of wisdom?”

“Who am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that’s all. A man
perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day
is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you.
Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come
to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another
class of men? It’s not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of
it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It’s not time, but
yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The
sun has before all to be the sun. Why are you smiling again? At my being
such a Schiller? I bet you’re imagining that I am trying to get round
you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he! Perhaps you’d better not
believe my word, perhaps you’d better never believe it altogether--I’m
made that way, I confess it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself,
I think, how far I am a base sort of man and how far I am honest.”

“When do you mean to arrest me?”

“Well, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over, my
dear fellow, and pray to God. It’s more in your interest, believe me.”

“And what if I run away?” asked Raskolnikov with a strange smile.

“No, you won’t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable
dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man’s thought, for
you’ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he’ll be ready
to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you’ve ceased to
believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what
would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and
what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an
atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If
you ran away, you’d come back to yourself. _You can’t get on without
us._ And if I put you in prison--say you’ve been there a month, or two,
or three--remember my word, you’ll confess of yourself and perhaps to
your own surprise. You won’t know an hour beforehand that you are coming
with a confession. I am convinced that you will decide, ‘to take your
suffering.’ You don’t believe my words now, but you’ll come to it of
yourself. For suffering, Rodion Romanovitch, is a great thing. Never
mind my having grown fat, I know all the same. Don’t laugh at it,
there’s an idea in suffering, Nikolay is right. No, you won’t run away,
Rodion Romanovitch.”

Raskolnikov got up and took his cap. Porfiry Petrovitch also rose.

“Are you going for a walk? The evening will be fine, if only we don’t
have a storm. Though it would be a good thing to freshen the air.”

He, too, took his cap.

“Porfiry Petrovitch, please don’t take up the notion that I have
confessed to you to-day,” Raskolnikov pronounced with sullen insistence.
“You’re a strange man and I have listened to you from simple curiosity.
But I have admitted nothing, remember that!”

“Oh, I know that, I’ll remember. Look at him, he’s trembling! Don’t
be uneasy, my dear fellow, have it your own way. Walk about a bit, you
won’t be able to walk too far. If anything happens, I have one request
to make of you,” he added, dropping his voice. “It’s an awkward one, but
important. If anything were to happen (though indeed I don’t believe
in it and think you quite incapable of it), yet in case you were taken
during these forty or fifty hours with the notion of putting an end to
the business in some other way, in some fantastic fashion--laying hands
on yourself--(it’s an absurd proposition, but you must forgive me for
it) do leave a brief but precise note, only two lines, and mention the
stone. It will be more generous. Come, till we meet! Good thoughts and
sound decisions to you!”

Porfiry went out, stooping and avoiding looking at Raskolnikov. The
latter went to the window and waited with irritable impatience till he
calculated that Porfiry had reached the street and moved away. Then he
too went hurriedly out of the room.



CHAPTER III

He hurried to Svidrigaïlov’s. What he had to hope from that man he
did not know. But that man had some hidden power over him. Having once
recognised this, he could not rest, and now the time had come.

On the way, one question particularly worried him: had Svidrigaïlov been
to Porfiry’s?

As far as he could judge, he would swear to it, that he had not. He
pondered again and again, went over Porfiry’s visit; no, he hadn’t been,
of course he hadn’t.

But if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the present he
fancied he couldn’t. Why? He could not have explained, but if he could,
he would not have wasted much thought over it at the moment. It all
worried him and at the same time he could not attend to it. Strange to
say, none would have believed it perhaps, but he only felt a faint vague
anxiety about his immediate future. Another, much more important anxiety
tormented him--it concerned himself, but in a different, more vital way.
Moreover, he was conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was
working better that morning than it had done of late.

And was it worth while, after all that had happened, to contend with
these new trivial difficulties? Was it worth while, for instance, to
manoeuvre that Svidrigaïlov should not go to Porfiry’s? Was it worth
while to investigate, to ascertain the facts, to waste time over anyone
like Svidrigaïlov?

Oh, how sick he was of it all!

And yet he was hastening to Svidrigaïlov; could he be expecting
something _new_ from him, information, or means of escape? Men will
catch at straws! Was it destiny or some instinct bringing them together?
Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; perhaps it was not Svidrigaïlov
but some other whom he needed, and Svidrigaïlov had simply presented
himself by chance. Sonia? But what should he go to Sonia for now? To beg
her tears again? He was afraid of Sonia, too. Sonia stood before him as
an irrevocable sentence. He must go his own way or hers. At that moment
especially he did not feel equal to seeing her. No, would it not be
better to try Svidrigaïlov? And he could not help inwardly owning that
he had long felt that he must see him for some reason.

But what could they have in common? Their very evil-doing could not
be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently
depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant. Such
stories were told about him. It is true he was befriending Katerina
Ivanovna’s children, but who could tell with what motive and what it
meant? The man always had some design, some project.

There was another thought which had been continually hovering of late
about Raskolnikov’s mind, and causing him great uneasiness. It was so
painful that he made distinct efforts to get rid of it. He sometimes
thought that Svidrigaïlov was dogging his footsteps. Svidrigaïlov had
found out his secret and had had designs on Dounia. What if he had them
still? Wasn’t it practically certain that he had? And what if, having
learnt his secret and so having gained power over him, he were to use it
as a weapon against Dounia?

This idea sometimes even tormented his dreams, but it had never
presented itself so vividly to him as on his way to Svidrigaïlov.
The very thought moved him to gloomy rage. To begin with, this would
transform everything, even his own position; he would have at once to
confess his secret to Dounia. Would he have to give himself up perhaps
to prevent Dounia from taking some rash step? The letter? This morning
Dounia had received a letter. From whom could she get letters in
Petersburg? Luzhin, perhaps? It’s true Razumihin was there to protect
her, but Razumihin knew nothing of the position. Perhaps it was his duty
to tell Razumihin? He thought of it with repugnance.

In any case he must see Svidrigaïlov as soon as possible, he decided
finally. Thank God, the details of the interview were of little
consequence, if only he could get at the root of the matter; but
if Svidrigaïlov were capable... if he were intriguing against
Dounia--then...

Raskolnikov was so exhausted by what he had passed through that month
that he could only decide such questions in one way; “then I shall kill
him,” he thought in cold despair.

A sudden anguish oppressed his heart, he stood still in the middle of
the street and began looking about to see where he was and which way he
was going. He found himself in X. Prospect, thirty or forty paces from
the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second storey of
the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the windows were wide
open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were
full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and
violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking.
He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect,
when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidrigaïlov, sitting
at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth.
Raskolnikov was dreadfully taken aback, almost terrified. Svidrigaïlov
was silently watching and scrutinising him and, what struck Raskolnikov
at once, seemed to be meaning to get up and slip away unobserved.
Raskolnikov at once pretended not to have seen him, but to be looking
absent-mindedly away, while he watched him out of the corner of his eye.
His heart was beating violently. Yet, it was evident that Svidrigaïlov
did not want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on
the point of concealing himself, but as he got up and moved back his
chair, he seemed to have become suddenly aware that Raskolnikov had seen
him, and was watching him. What had passed between them was much the
same as what happened at their first meeting in Raskolnikov’s room. A
sly smile came into Svidrigaïlov’s face and grew broader and
broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At last
Svidrigaïlov broke into a loud laugh.

“Well, well, come in if you want me; I am here!” he shouted from the
window.

Raskolnikov went up into the tavern. He found Svidrigaïlov in a tiny
back room, adjoining the saloon in which merchants, clerks and numbers
of people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables to the
desperate bawling of a chorus of singers. The click of billiard balls
could be heard in the distance. On the table before Svidrigaïlov stood
an open bottle and a glass half full of champagne. In the room he found
also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl
of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a Tyrolese hat with
ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room, she was singing some
servants’ hall song in a rather husky contralto, to the accompaniment of
the organ.

“Come, that’s enough,” Svidrigaïlov stopped her at Raskolnikov’s
entrance. The girl at once broke off and stood waiting respectfully.
She had sung her guttural rhymes, too, with a serious and respectful
expression in her face.

“Hey, Philip, a glass!” shouted Svidrigaïlov.

“I won’t drink anything,” said Raskolnikov.

“As you like, I didn’t mean it for you. Drink, Katia! I don’t want
anything more to-day, you can go.” He poured her out a full glass, and
laid down a yellow note.

Katia drank off her glass of wine, as women do, without putting it down,
in twenty gulps, took the note and kissed Svidrigaïlov’s hand, which he
allowed quite seriously. She went out of the room and the boy trailed
after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street.
Svidrigaïlov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him
was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip,
was by now an old friend and very obsequious.

The door leading to the saloon had a lock on it. Svidrigaïlov was at
home in this room and perhaps spent whole days in it. The tavern was
dirty and wretched, not even second-rate.

“I was going to see you and looking for you,” Raskolnikov began, “but
I don’t know what made me turn from the Hay Market into the X. Prospect
just now. I never take this turning. I turn to the right from the Hay
Market. And this isn’t the way to you. I simply turned and here you are.
It is strange!”

“Why don’t you say at once ‘it’s a miracle’?”

“Because it may be only chance.”

“Oh, that’s the way with all you folk,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “You won’t
admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you say
that it may be only chance. And what cowards they all are here, about
having an opinion of their own, you can’t fancy, Rodion Romanovitch. I
don’t mean you, you have an opinion of your own and are not afraid to
have it. That’s how it was you attracted my curiosity.”

“Nothing else?”

“Well, that’s enough, you know,” Svidrigaïlov was obviously exhilarated,
but only slightly so, he had not had more than half a glass of wine.

“I fancy you came to see me before you knew that I was capable of having
what you call an opinion of my own,” observed Raskolnikov.

“Oh, well, it was a different matter. Everyone has his own plans. And
apropos of the miracle let me tell you that I think you have been asleep
for the last two or three days. I told you of this tavern myself, there
is no miracle in your coming straight here. I explained the way myself,
told you where it was, and the hours you could find me here. Do you
remember?”

“I don’t remember,” answered Raskolnikov with surprise.

“I believe you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped
mechanically on your memory. You turned this way mechanically and yet
precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware of
it. When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You give
yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch. And another thing, I’m
convinced there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves
as they walk. This is a town of crazy people. If only we had scientific
men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable
investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There are few places
where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul
of man as in Petersburg. The mere influences of climate mean so much.
And it’s the administrative centre of all Russia and its character must
be reflected on the whole country. But that is neither here nor there
now. The point is that I have several times watched you. You walk out
of your house--holding your head high--twenty paces from home you let it
sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see
nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and
talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at
last stand still in the middle of the road. That’s not at all the thing.
Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won’t do you any good.
It’s nothing really to do with me and I can’t cure you, but, of course,
you understand me.”

“Do you know that I am being followed?” asked Raskolnikov, looking
inquisitively at him.

“No, I know nothing about it,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming surprised.

“Well, then, let us leave me alone,” Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.

“Very good, let us leave you alone.”

“You had better tell me, if you come here to drink, and directed me
twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to get away just
now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it.”

“He-he! And why was it you lay on your sofa with closed eyes and
pretended to be asleep, though you were wide awake while I stood in your
doorway? I saw it.”

“I may have had... reasons. You know that yourself.”

“And I may have had my reasons, though you don’t know them.”

Raskolnikov dropped his right elbow on the table, leaned his chin in the
fingers of his right hand, and stared intently at Svidrigaïlov. For a
full minute he scrutinised his face, which had impressed him before. It
was a strange face, like a mask; white and red, with bright red lips,
with a flaxen beard, and still thick flaxen hair. His eyes were somehow
too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and fixed. There was
something awfully unpleasant in that handsome face, which looked so
wonderfully young for his age. Svidrigaïlov was smartly dressed in light
summer clothes and was particularly dainty in his linen. He wore a huge
ring with a precious stone in it.

“Have I got to bother myself about you, too, now?” said Raskolnikov
suddenly, coming with nervous impatience straight to the point. “Even
though perhaps you are the most dangerous man if you care to injure me,
I don’t want to put myself out any more. I will show you at once that I
don’t prize myself as you probably think I do. I’ve come to tell you at
once that if you keep to your former intentions with regard to my sister
and if you think to derive any benefit in that direction from what has
been discovered of late, I will kill you before you get me locked up.
You can reckon on my word. You know that I can keep it. And in the
second place if you want to tell me anything--for I keep fancying all
this time that you have something to tell me--make haste and tell it,
for time is precious and very likely it will soon be too late.”

“Why in such haste?” asked Svidrigaïlov, looking at him curiously.

“Everyone has his plans,” Raskolnikov answered gloomily and impatiently.

“You urged me yourself to frankness just now, and at the first question
you refuse to answer,” Svidrigaïlov observed with a smile. “You
keep fancying that I have aims of my own and so you look at me with
suspicion. Of course it’s perfectly natural in your position. But
though I should like to be friends with you, I shan’t trouble myself
to convince you of the contrary. The game isn’t worth the candle and I
wasn’t intending to talk to you about anything special.”

“What did you want me, for, then? It was you who came hanging about me.”

“Why, simply as an interesting subject for observation. I liked the
fantastic nature of your position--that’s what it was! Besides you are
the brother of a person who greatly interested me, and from that person
I had in the past heard a very great deal about you, from which I
gathered that you had a great influence over her; isn’t that enough?
Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is rather complex, and
is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to me
not only for a definite object, but for the sake of hearing something
new. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?” persisted Svidrigaïlov with a sly
smile. “Well, can’t you fancy then that I, too, on my way here in the
train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something new, and on my
making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!”

“What profit could you make?”

“How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all
my time and it’s my enjoyment, that’s to say it’s no great enjoyment,
but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now--you saw her?... If only
I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this.”

He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a
terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.

“Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had something and want nothing more.
I don’t drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch
anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even
that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind
myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a
peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a
schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe,” he
pulled out his watch, “I can spend an hour with you. It’s half-past
four now. If only I’d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry
officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty,
and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me
something new.”

“But what are you, and why have you come here?”

“What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the
cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa
Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!”

“You are a gambler, I believe?”

“No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper--not a gambler.”

“You have been a card-sharper then?”

“Yes, I’ve been a card-sharper too.”

“Didn’t you get thrashed sometimes?”

“It did happen. Why?”

“Why, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been
lively.”

“I won’t contradict you, and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I
confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women.”

“As soon as you buried Marfa Petrovna?”

“Quite so,” Svidrigaïlov smiled with engaging candour. “What of it? You
seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about women?”

“You ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?”

“Vice! Oh, that’s what you are after! But I’ll answer you in order,
first about women in general; you know I am fond of talking. Tell me,
what should I restrain myself for? Why should I give up women, since I
have a passion for them? It’s an occupation, anyway.”

“So you hope for nothing here but vice?”

“Oh, very well, for vice then. You insist on its being vice. But anyway
I like a direct question. In this vice at least there is something
permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on fantasy,
something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever
setting one on fire and, maybe, not to be quickly extinguished, even
with years. You’ll agree it’s an occupation of a sort.”

“That’s nothing to rejoice at, it’s a disease and a dangerous one.”

“Oh, that’s what you think, is it! I agree, that it is a disease like
everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one must
exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in one way
or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate
and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn’t
this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to admit that a decent
man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...”

“And could you shoot yourself?”

“Oh, come!” Svidrigaïlov parried with disgust. “Please don’t speak of
it,” he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had shown
in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. “I admit it’s
an unpardonable weakness, but I can’t help it. I am afraid of death and
I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a certain extent
a mystic?”

“Ah, the apparitions of Marfa Petrovna! Do they still go on visiting
you?”

“Oh, don’t talk of them; there have been no more in Petersburg, confound
them!” he cried with an air of irritation. “Let’s rather talk of that...
though... H’m! I have not much time, and can’t stay long with you,
it’s a pity! I should have found plenty to tell you.”

“What’s your engagement, a woman?”

“Yes, a woman, a casual incident.... No, that’s not what I want to talk
of.”

“And the hideousness, the filthiness of all your surroundings, doesn’t
that affect you? Have you lost the strength to stop yourself?”

“And do you pretend to strength, too? He-he-he! You surprised me just
now, Rodion Romanovitch, though I knew beforehand it would be so.
You preach to me about vice and æsthetics! You--a Schiller, you--an
idealist! Of course that’s all as it should be and it would be
surprising if it were not so, yet it is strange in reality.... Ah,
what a pity I have no time, for you’re a most interesting type! And,
by-the-way, are you fond of Schiller? I am awfully fond of him.”

“But what a braggart you are,” Raskolnikov said with some disgust.

“Upon my word, I am not,” answered Svidrigaïlov laughing. “However, I
won’t dispute it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if it hurts no
one? I spent seven years in the country with Marfa Petrovna, so now when
I come across an intelligent person like you--intelligent and highly
interesting--I am simply glad to talk and, besides, I’ve drunk that
half-glass of champagne and it’s gone to my head a little. And besides,
there’s a certain fact that has wound me up tremendously, but about that
I... will keep quiet. Where are you off to?” he asked in alarm.

Raskolnikov had begun getting up. He felt oppressed and stifled and,
as it were, ill at ease at having come here. He felt convinced that
Svidrigaïlov was the most worthless scoundrel on the face of the earth.

“A-ach! Sit down, stay a little!” Svidrigaïlov begged. “Let them bring
you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won’t talk nonsense, about
myself, I mean. I’ll tell you something. If you like I’ll tell you how a
woman tried ‘to save’ me, as you would call it? It will be an answer to
your first question indeed, for the woman was your sister. May I tell
you? It will help to spend the time.”

“Tell me, but I trust that you...”

“Oh, don’t be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow like me,
Avdotya Romanovna can only excite the deepest respect.”



CHAPTER IV

“You know perhaps--yes, I told you myself,” began Svidrigaïlov, “that
I was in the debtors’ prison here, for an immense sum, and had not
any expectation of being able to pay it. There’s no need to go into
particulars how Marfa Petrovna bought me out; do you know to what a
point of insanity a woman can sometimes love? She was an honest woman,
and very sensible, although completely uneducated. Would you believe
that this honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of hysterics and
reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of contract with me which
she kept throughout our married life? She was considerably older than
I, and besides, she always kept a clove or something in her mouth. There
was so much swinishness in my soul and honesty too, of a sort, as to
tell her straight out that I couldn’t be absolutely faithful to her.
This confession drove her to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have
liked my brutal frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to
deceive her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous
woman, you know, that’s the first consideration. After many tears an
unwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I would never
leave Marfa Petrovna and would always be her husband; secondly, that I
would never absent myself without her permission; thirdly, that I would
never set up a permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa
Petrovna gave me a free hand with the maidservants, but only with her
secret knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman of
our class; sixthly, in case I--which God forbid--should be visited by
a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to Marfa Petrovna. On
this last score, however, Marfa Petrovna was fairly at ease. She was a
sensible woman and so she could not help looking upon me as a dissolute
profligate incapable of real love. But a sensible woman and a jealous
woman are two very different things, and that’s where the trouble
came in. But to judge some people impartially we must renounce certain
preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to the ordinary people
about us. I have reason to have faith in your judgment rather than
in anyone’s. Perhaps you have already heard a great deal that was
ridiculous and absurd about Marfa Petrovna. She certainly had some very
ridiculous ways, but I tell you frankly that I feel really sorry for the
innumerable woes of which I was the cause. Well, and that’s enough, I
think, by way of a decorous _oraison funèbre_ for the most tender wife
of a most tender husband. When we quarrelled, I usually held my tongue
and did not irritate her and that gentlemanly conduct rarely failed to
attain its object, it influenced her, it pleased her, indeed. These were
times when she was positively proud of me. But your sister she couldn’t
put up with, anyway. And however she came to risk taking such a
beautiful creature into her house as a governess. My explanation is that
Marfa Petrovna was an ardent and impressionable woman and simply fell
in love herself--literally fell in love--with your sister. Well, little
wonder--look at Avdotya Romanovna! I saw the danger at the first glance
and what do you think, I resolved not to look at her even. But Avdotya
Romanovna herself made the first step, would you believe it? Would you
believe it too that Marfa Petrovna was positively angry with me at first
for my persistent silence about your sister, for my careless reception
of her continual adoring praises of Avdotya Romanovna. I don’t know
what it was she wanted! Well, of course, Marfa Petrovna told Avdotya
Romanovna every detail about me. She had the unfortunate habit of
telling literally everyone all our family secrets and continually
complaining of me; how could she fail to confide in such a delightful
new friend? I expect they talked of nothing else but me and no doubt
Avdotya Romanovna heard all those dark mysterious rumours that were
current about me.... I don’t mind betting that you too have heard
something of the sort already?”

“I have. Luzhin charged you with having caused the death of a child. Is
that true?”

“Don’t refer to those vulgar tales, I beg,” said Svidrigaïlov with
disgust and annoyance. “If you insist on wanting to know about all that
idiocy, I will tell you one day, but now...”

“I was told too about some footman of yours in the country whom you
treated badly.”

“I beg you to drop the subject,” Svidrigaïlov interrupted again with
obvious impatience.

“Was that the footman who came to you after death to fill your pipe?...
you told me about it yourself.” Raskolnikov felt more and more
irritated.

Svidrigaïlov looked at him attentively and Raskolnikov fancied he caught
a flash of spiteful mockery in that look. But Svidrigaïlov restrained
himself and answered very civilly:

“Yes, it was. I see that you, too, are extremely interested and shall
feel it my duty to satisfy your curiosity at the first opportunity. Upon
my soul! I see that I really might pass for a romantic figure with
some people. Judge how grateful I must be to Marfa Petrovna for having
repeated to Avdotya Romanovna such mysterious and interesting gossip
about me. I dare not guess what impression it made on her, but in any
case it worked in my interests. With all Avdotya Romanovna’s natural
aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect--she
did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a
girl’s heart is moved to _pity_, it’s more dangerous than anything. She
is bound to want to ‘save him,’ to bring him to his senses, and lift
him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and
usefulness--well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once
that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready.
I think you are frowning, Rodion Romanovitch? There’s no need. As you
know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!)
Do you know, I always, from the very beginning, regretted that it wasn’t
your sister’s fate to be born in the second or third century A.D., as
the daughter of a reigning prince or some governor or pro-consul in Asia
Minor. She would undoubtedly have been one of those who would endure
martyrdom and would have smiled when they branded her bosom with hot
pincers. And she would have gone to it of herself. And in the fourth or
fifth century she would have walked away into the Egyptian desert and
would have stayed there thirty years living on roots and ecstasies and
visions. She is simply thirsting to face some torture for someone, and
if she can’t get her torture, she’ll throw herself out of a window. I’ve
heard something of a Mr. Razumihin--he’s said to be a sensible fellow;
his surname suggests it, indeed. He’s probably a divinity student. Well,
he’d better look after your sister! I believe I understand her, and I am
proud of it. But at the beginning of an acquaintance, as you know, one
is apt to be more heedless and stupid. One doesn’t see clearly. Hang it
all, why is she so handsome? It’s not my fault. In fact, it began on
my side with a most irresistible physical desire. Avdotya Romanovna is
awfully chaste, incredibly and phenomenally so. Take note, I tell you
this about your sister as a fact. She is almost morbidly chaste, in
spite of her broad intelligence, and it will stand in her way. There
happened to be a girl in the house then, Parasha, a black-eyed
wench, whom I had never seen before--she had just come from another
village--very pretty, but incredibly stupid: she burst into tears,
wailed so that she could be heard all over the place and caused scandal.
One day after dinner Avdotya Romanovna followed me into an avenue in
the garden and with flashing eyes _insisted_ on my leaving poor Parasha
alone. It was almost our first conversation by ourselves. I, of course,
was only too pleased to obey her wishes, tried to appear disconcerted,
embarrassed, in fact played my part not badly. Then came interviews,
mysterious conversations, exhortations, entreaties, supplications, even
tears--would you believe it, even tears? Think what the passion for
propaganda will bring some girls to! I, of course, threw it all on
my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally
resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the
female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It’s the well-known
resource--flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the
truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part
of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that
leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it
is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be
a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the
flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all
stages of development and classes of society. A vestal virgin might be
seduced by flattery. I can never remember without laughter how I once
seduced a lady who was devoted to her husband, her children, and her
principles. What fun it was and how little trouble! And the lady really
had principles--of her own, anyway. All my tactics lay in simply being
utterly annihilated and prostrate before her purity. I flattered her
shamelessly, and as soon as I succeeded in getting a pressure of
the hand, even a glance from her, I would reproach myself for having
snatched it by force, and would declare that she had resisted, so that
I could never have gained anything but for my being so unprincipled.
I maintained that she was so innocent that she could not foresee my
treachery, and yielded to me unconsciously, unawares, and so on. In
fact, I triumphed, while my lady remained firmly convinced that she was
innocent, chaste, and faithful to all her duties and obligations and
had succumbed quite by accident. And how angry she was with me when I
explained to her at last that it was my sincere conviction that she was
just as eager as I. Poor Marfa Petrovna was awfully weak on the side of
flattery, and if I had only cared to, I might have had all her property
settled on me during her lifetime. (I am drinking an awful lot of wine
now and talking too much.) I hope you won’t be angry if I mention now
that I was beginning to produce the same effect on Avdotya Romanovna.
But I was stupid and impatient and spoiled it all. Avdotya Romanovna had
several times--and one time in particular--been greatly displeased by
the expression of my eyes, would you believe it? There was sometimes a
light in them which frightened her and grew stronger and stronger and
more unguarded till it was hateful to her. No need to go into detail,
but we parted. There I acted stupidly again. I fell to jeering in the
coarsest way at all such propaganda and efforts to convert me; Parasha
came on to the scene again, and not she alone; in fact there was a
tremendous to-do. Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, if you could only see how your
sister’s eyes can flash sometimes! Never mind my being drunk at this
moment and having had a whole glass of wine. I am speaking the truth.
I assure you that this glance has haunted my dreams; the very rustle of
her dress was more than I could stand at last. I really began to think
that I might become epileptic. I could never have believed that I could
be moved to such a frenzy. It was essential, indeed, to be reconciled,
but by then it was impossible. And imagine what I did then! To what
a pitch of stupidity a man can be brought by frenzy! Never undertake
anything in a frenzy, Rodion Romanovitch. I reflected that Avdotya
Romanovna was after all a beggar (ach, excuse me, that’s not the word...
but does it matter if it expresses the meaning?), that she lived by
her work, that she had her mother and you to keep (ach, hang it, you
are frowning again), and I resolved to offer her all my money--thirty
thousand roubles I could have realised then--if she would run away with
me here, to Petersburg. Of course I should have vowed eternal love,
rapture, and so on. Do you know, I was so wild about her at that time
that if she had told me to poison Marfa Petrovna or to cut her throat
and to marry herself, it would have been done at once! But it ended in
the catastrophe of which you know already. You can fancy how frantic I
was when I heard that Marfa Petrovna had got hold of that scoundrelly
attorney, Luzhin, and had almost made a match between them--which would
really have been just the same thing as I was proposing. Wouldn’t it?
Wouldn’t it? I notice that you’ve begun to be very attentive... you
interesting young man....”

Svidrigaïlov struck the table with his fist impatiently. He was flushed.
Raskolnikov saw clearly that the glass or glass and a half of champagne
that he had sipped almost unconsciously was affecting him--and he
resolved to take advantage of the opportunity. He felt very suspicious
of Svidrigaïlov.

“Well, after what you have said, I am fully convinced that you have
come to Petersburg with designs on my sister,” he said directly to
Svidrigaïlov, in order to irritate him further.

“Oh, nonsense,” said Svidrigaïlov, seeming to rouse himself. “Why, I
told you... besides your sister can’t endure me.”

“Yes, I am certain that she can’t, but that’s not the point.”

“Are you so sure that she can’t?” Svidrigaïlov screwed up his eyes and
smiled mockingly. “You are right, she doesn’t love me, but you can
never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and
mistress. There’s always a little corner which remains a secret to
the world and is only known to those two. Will you answer for it that
Avdotya Romanovna regarded me with aversion?”

“From some words you’ve dropped, I notice that you still have
designs--and of course evil ones--on Dounia and mean to carry them out
promptly.”

“What, have I dropped words like that?” Svidrigaïlov asked in naïve
dismay, taking not the slightest notice of the epithet bestowed on his
designs.

“Why, you are dropping them even now. Why are you so frightened? What
are you so afraid of now?”

“Me--afraid? Afraid of you? You have rather to be afraid of me, _cher
ami_. But what nonsense.... I’ve drunk too much though, I see that. I
was almost saying too much again. Damn the wine! Hi! there, water!”

He snatched up the champagne bottle and flung it without ceremony out of
the window. Philip brought the water.

“That’s all nonsense!” said Svidrigaïlov, wetting a towel and putting it
to his head. “But I can answer you in one word and annihilate all your
suspicions. Do you know that I am going to get married?”

“You told me so before.”

“Did I? I’ve forgotten. But I couldn’t have told you so for certain for
I had not even seen my betrothed; I only meant to. But now I really
have a betrothed and it’s a settled thing, and if it weren’t that I have
business that can’t be put off, I would have taken you to see them
at once, for I should like to ask your advice. Ach, hang it, only ten
minutes left! See, look at the watch. But I must tell you, for it’s an
interesting story, my marriage, in its own way. Where are you off to?
Going again?”

“No, I’m not going away now.”

“Not at all? We shall see. I’ll take you there, I’ll show you my
betrothed, only not now. For you’ll soon have to be off. You have to go
to the right and I to the left. Do you know that Madame Resslich, the
woman I am lodging with now, eh? I know what you’re thinking, that she’s
the woman whose girl they say drowned herself in the winter. Come, are
you listening? She arranged it all for me. You’re bored, she said,
you want something to fill up your time. For, you know, I am a gloomy,
depressed person. Do you think I’m light-hearted? No, I’m gloomy. I do
no harm, but sit in a corner without speaking a word for three days at a
time. And that Resslich is a sly hussy, I tell you. I know what she has
got in her mind; she thinks I shall get sick of it, abandon my wife and
depart, and she’ll get hold of her and make a profit out of her--in our
class, of course, or higher. She told me the father was a broken-down
retired official, who has been sitting in a chair for the last three
years with his legs paralysed. The mamma, she said, was a sensible
woman. There is a son serving in the provinces, but he doesn’t help;
there is a daughter, who is married, but she doesn’t visit them. And
they’ve two little nephews on their hands, as though their own children
were not enough, and they’ve taken from school their youngest daughter,
a girl who’ll be sixteen in another month, so that then she can be
married. She was for me. We went there. How funny it was! I present
myself--a landowner, a widower, of a well-known name, with connections,
with a fortune. What if I am fifty and she is not sixteen? Who thinks
of that? But it’s fascinating, isn’t it? It is fascinating, ha-ha! You
should have seen how I talked to the papa and mamma. It was worth paying
to have seen me at that moment. She comes in, curtseys, you can fancy,
still in a short frock--an unopened bud! Flushing like a sunset--she had
been told, no doubt. I don’t know how you feel about female faces, but
to my mind these sixteen years, these childish eyes, shyness and tears
of bashfulness are better than beauty; and she is a perfect little
picture, too. Fair hair in little curls, like a lamb’s, full little rosy
lips, tiny feet, a charmer!... Well, we made friends. I told them I was
in a hurry owing to domestic circumstances, and the next day, that is
the day before yesterday, we were betrothed. When I go now I take her on
my knee at once and keep her there.... Well, she flushes like a sunset
and I kiss her every minute. Her mamma of course impresses on her that
this is her husband and that this must be so. It’s simply delicious! The
present betrothed condition is perhaps better than marriage. Here you
have what is called _la nature et la vérité_, ha-ha! I’ve talked to her
twice, she is far from a fool. Sometimes she steals a look at me that
positively scorches me. Her face is like Raphael’s Madonna. You know,
the Sistine Madonna’s face has something fantastic in it, the face
of mournful religious ecstasy. Haven’t you noticed it? Well, she’s
something in that line. The day after we’d been betrothed, I bought her
presents to the value of fifteen hundred roubles--a set of diamonds and
another of pearls and a silver dressing-case as large as this, with all
sorts of things in it, so that even my Madonna’s face glowed. I sat her
on my knee, yesterday, and I suppose rather too unceremoniously--she
flushed crimson and the tears started, but she didn’t want to show it.
We were left alone, she suddenly flung herself on my neck (for the first
time of her own accord), put her little arms round me, kissed me, and
vowed that she would be an obedient, faithful, and good wife, would make
me happy, would devote all her life, every minute of her life, would
sacrifice everything, everything, and that all she asks in return is
my _respect_, and that she wants ‘nothing, nothing more from me, no
presents.’ You’ll admit that to hear such a confession, alone, from an
angel of sixteen in a muslin frock, with little curls, with a flush
of maiden shyness in her cheeks and tears of enthusiasm in her eyes is
rather fascinating! Isn’t it fascinating? It’s worth paying for, isn’t
it? Well... listen, we’ll go to see my betrothed, only not just now!”

“The fact is this monstrous difference in age and development excites
your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?”

“Why, of course. Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who
knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about
virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!”

“But you have provided for the children of Katerina Ivanovna. Though...
though you had your own reasons.... I understand it all now.”

“I am always fond of children, very fond of them,” laughed Svidrigaïlov.
“I can tell you one curious instance of it. The first day I came here I
visited various haunts, after seven years I simply rushed at them. You
probably notice that I am not in a hurry to renew acquaintance with my
old friends. I shall do without them as long as I can. Do you know, when
I was with Marfa Petrovna in the country, I was haunted by the thought
of these places where anyone who knows his way about can find a great
deal. Yes, upon my soul! The peasants have vodka, the educated young
people, shut out from activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams
and visions and are crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are
amassing money, and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From
the first hour the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be
in a frightful den--I like my dens dirty--it was a dance, so called, and
there was a _cancan_ such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you
have progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, nicely
dressed, dancing with a specialist in that line, with another one
_vis-à-vis_. Her mother was sitting on a chair by the wall. You can’t
fancy what a _cancan_ that was! The girl was ashamed, blushed, at
last felt insulted, and began to cry. Her partner seized her and began
whirling her round and performing before her; everyone laughed and--I
like your public, even the _cancan_ public--they laughed and shouted,
‘Serves her right--serves her right! Shouldn’t bring children!’ Well,
it’s not my business whether that consoling reflection was logical or
not. I at once fixed on my plan, sat down by the mother, and began by
saying that I too was a stranger and that people here were ill-bred and
that they couldn’t distinguish decent folks and treat them with respect,
gave her to understand that I had plenty of money, offered to take them
home in my carriage. I took them home and got to know them. They were
lodging in a miserable little hole and had only just arrived from the
country. She told me that she and her daughter could only regard my
acquaintance as an honour. I found out that they had nothing of their
own and had come to town upon some legal business. I proffered my
services and money. I learnt that they had gone to the dancing saloon
by mistake, believing that it was a genuine dancing class. I offered to
assist in the young girl’s education in French and dancing. My offer was
accepted with enthusiasm as an honour--and we are still friendly.... If
you like, we’ll go and see them, only not just now.”

“Stop! Enough of your vile, nasty anecdotes, depraved vile, sensual
man!”

“Schiller, you are a regular Schiller! _O la vertu va-t-elle se nicher?_
But you know I shall tell you these things on purpose, for the pleasure
of hearing your outcries!”

“I dare say. I can see I am ridiculous myself,” muttered Raskolnikov
angrily.

Svidrigaïlov laughed heartily; finally he called Philip, paid his bill,
and began getting up.

“I say, but I am drunk, _assez causé_,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“I should rather think it must be a pleasure!” cried Raskolnikov,
getting up. “No doubt it is a pleasure for a worn-out profligate to
describe such adventures with a monstrous project of the same sort in
his mind--especially under such circumstances and to such a man as
me.... It’s stimulating!”

“Well, if you come to that,” Svidrigaïlov answered, scrutinising
Raskolnikov with some surprise, “if you come to that, you are a thorough
cynic yourself. You’ve plenty to make you so, anyway. You can understand
a great deal... and you can do a great deal too. But enough. I sincerely
regret not having had more talk with you, but I shan’t lose sight of
you.... Only wait a bit.”

Svidrigaïlov walked out of the restaurant. Raskolnikov walked out after
him. Svidrigaïlov was not however very drunk, the wine had affected him
for a moment, but it was passing off every minute. He was preoccupied
with something of importance and was frowning. He was apparently excited
and uneasy in anticipation of something. His manner to Raskolnikov had
changed during the last few minutes, and he was ruder and more sneering
every moment. Raskolnikov noticed all this, and he too was uneasy. He
became very suspicious of Svidrigaïlov and resolved to follow him.

They came out on to the pavement.

“You go to the right, and I to the left, or if you like, the other way.
Only _adieu, mon plaisir_, may we meet again.”

And he walked to the right towards the Hay Market.



CHAPTER V

Raskolnikov walked after him.

“What’s this?” cried Svidrigaïlov turning round, “I thought I said...”

“It means that I am not going to lose sight of you now.”

“What?”

Both stood still and gazed at one another, as though measuring their
strength.

“From all your half tipsy stories,” Raskolnikov observed harshly, “I am
_positive_ that you have not given up your designs on my sister, but
are pursuing them more actively than ever. I have learnt that my sister
received a letter this morning. You have hardly been able to sit still
all this time.... You may have unearthed a wife on the way, but that
means nothing. I should like to make certain myself.”

Raskolnikov could hardly have said himself what he wanted and of what he
wished to make certain.

“Upon my word! I’ll call the police!”

“Call away!”

Again they stood for a minute facing each other. At last Svidrigaïlov’s
face changed. Having satisfied himself that Raskolnikov was not
frightened at his threat, he assumed a mirthful and friendly air.

“What a fellow! I purposely refrained from referring to your affair,
though I am devoured by curiosity. It’s a fantastic affair. I’ve put it
off till another time, but you’re enough to rouse the dead.... Well, let
us go, only I warn you beforehand I am only going home for a moment,
to get some money; then I shall lock up the flat, take a cab and go to
spend the evening at the Islands. Now, now are you going to follow me?”

“I’m coming to your lodgings, not to see you but Sofya Semyonovna, to
say I’m sorry not to have been at the funeral.”

“That’s as you like, but Sofya Semyonovna is not at home. She has taken
the three children to an old lady of high rank, the patroness of some
orphan asylums, whom I used to know years ago. I charmed the old lady by
depositing a sum of money with her to provide for the three children of
Katerina Ivanovna and subscribing to the institution as well. I told her
too the story of Sofya Semyonovna in full detail, suppressing nothing.
It produced an indescribable effect on her. That’s why Sofya Semyonovna
has been invited to call to-day at the X. Hotel where the lady is
staying for the time.”

“No matter, I’ll come all the same.”

“As you like, it’s nothing to me, but I won’t come with you; here we are
at home. By the way, I am convinced that you regard me with suspicion
just because I have shown such delicacy and have not so far troubled
you with questions... you understand? It struck you as extraordinary; I
don’t mind betting it’s that. Well, it teaches one to show delicacy!”

“And to listen at doors!”

“Ah, that’s it, is it?” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “Yes, I should have been
surprised if you had let that pass after all that has happened. Ha-ha!
Though I did understand something of the pranks you had been up to and
were telling Sofya Semyonovna about, what was the meaning of it? Perhaps
I am quite behind the times and can’t understand. For goodness’ sake,
explain it, my dear boy. Expound the latest theories!”

“You couldn’t have heard anything. You’re making it all up!”

“But I’m not talking about that (though I did hear something). No, I’m
talking of the way you keep sighing and groaning now. The Schiller in
you is in revolt every moment, and now you tell me not to listen at
doors. If that’s how you feel, go and inform the police that you had
this mischance: you made a little mistake in your theory. But if you are
convinced that one mustn’t listen at doors, but one may murder old women
at one’s pleasure, you’d better be off to America and make haste. Run,
young man! There may still be time. I’m speaking sincerely. Haven’t you
the money? I’ll give you the fare.”

“I’m not thinking of that at all,” Raskolnikov interrupted with disgust.

“I understand (but don’t put yourself out, don’t discuss it if you don’t
want to). I understand the questions you are worrying over--moral ones,
aren’t they? Duties of citizen and man? Lay them all aside. They are
nothing to you now, ha-ha! You’ll say you are still a man and a citizen.
If so you ought not to have got into this coil. It’s no use taking up a
job you are not fit for. Well, you’d better shoot yourself, or don’t you
want to?”

“You seem trying to enrage me, to make me leave you.”

“What a queer fellow! But here we are. Welcome to the staircase. You
see, that’s the way to Sofya Semyonovna. Look, there is no one at home.
Don’t you believe me? Ask Kapernaumov. She leaves the key with him. Here
is Madame de Kapernaumov herself. Hey, what? She is rather deaf. Has she
gone out? Where? Did you hear? She is not in and won’t be till late in
the evening probably. Well, come to my room; you wanted to come and see
me, didn’t you? Here we are. Madame Resslich’s not at home. She is a
woman who is always busy, an excellent woman I assure you.... She might
have been of use to you if you had been a little more sensible. Now,
see! I take this five-per-cent bond out of the bureau--see what a lot
I’ve got of them still--this one will be turned into cash to-day. I
mustn’t waste any more time. The bureau is locked, the flat is locked,
and here we are again on the stairs. Shall we take a cab? I’m going to
the Islands. Would you like a lift? I’ll take this carriage. Ah, you
refuse? You are tired of it! Come for a drive! I believe it will come on
to rain. Never mind, we’ll put down the hood....”

Svidrigaïlov was already in the carriage. Raskolnikov decided that his
suspicions were at least for that moment unjust. Without answering a
word he turned and walked back towards the Hay Market. If he had only
turned round on his way he might have seen Svidrigaïlov get out not a
hundred paces off, dismiss the cab and walk along the pavement. But he
had turned the corner and could see nothing. Intense disgust drew him
away from Svidrigaïlov.

“To think that I could for one instant have looked for help from that
coarse brute, that depraved sensualist and blackguard!” he cried.

Raskolnikov’s judgment was uttered too lightly and hastily: there was
something about Svidrigaïlov which gave him a certain original, even a
mysterious character. As concerned his sister, Raskolnikov was convinced
that Svidrigaïlov would not leave her in peace. But it was too tiresome
and unbearable to go on thinking and thinking about this.

When he was alone, he had not gone twenty paces before he sank, as
usual, into deep thought. On the bridge he stood by the railing and
began gazing at the water. And his sister was standing close by him.

He met her at the entrance to the bridge, but passed by without seeing
her. Dounia had never met him like this in the street before and was
struck with dismay. She stood still and did not know whether to call
to him or not. Suddenly she saw Svidrigaïlov coming quickly from the
direction of the Hay Market.

He seemed to be approaching cautiously. He did not go on to the
bridge, but stood aside on the pavement, doing all he could to avoid
Raskolnikov’s seeing him. He had observed Dounia for some time and had
been making signs to her. She fancied he was signalling to beg her not
to speak to her brother, but to come to him.

That was what Dounia did. She stole by her brother and went up to
Svidrigaïlov.

“Let us make haste away,” Svidrigaïlov whispered to her, “I don’t want
Rodion Romanovitch to know of our meeting. I must tell you I’ve been
sitting with him in the restaurant close by, where he looked me up and
I had great difficulty in getting rid of him. He has somehow heard of
my letter to you and suspects something. It wasn’t you who told him, of
course, but if not you, who then?”

“Well, we’ve turned the corner now,” Dounia interrupted, “and my brother
won’t see us. I have to tell you that I am going no further with you.
Speak to me here. You can tell it all in the street.”

“In the first place, I can’t say it in the street; secondly, you must
hear Sofya Semyonovna too; and, thirdly, I will show you some papers....
Oh well, if you won’t agree to come with me, I shall refuse to give
any explanation and go away at once. But I beg you not to forget that
a very curious secret of your beloved brother’s is entirely in my
keeping.”

Dounia stood still, hesitating, and looked at Svidrigaïlov with
searching eyes.

“What are you afraid of?” he observed quietly. “The town is not the
country. And even in the country you did me more harm than I did you.”

“Have you prepared Sofya Semyonovna?”

“No, I have not said a word to her and am not quite certain whether she
is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her stepmother
to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For the time I
don’t want to speak to anyone about it and I half regret having spoken
to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal in a thing like
this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it. That’s the porter
of our house--he knows me very well; you see, he’s bowing; he sees I’m
coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed your face already and you
will be glad of that if you are afraid of me and suspicious. Excuse
my putting things so coarsely. I haven’t a flat to myself; Sofya
Semyonovna’s room is next to mine--she lodges in the next flat. The
whole floor is let out in lodgings. Why are you frightened like a child?
Am I really so terrible?”

Svidrigaïlov’s lips were twisted in a condescending smile; but he was in
no smiling mood. His heart was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe.
He spoke rather loud to cover his growing excitement. But Dounia did not
notice this peculiar excitement, she was so irritated by his remark that
she was frightened of him like a child and that he was so terrible to
her.

“Though I know that you are not a man... of honour, I am not in the
least afraid of you. Lead the way,” she said with apparent composure,
but her face was very pale.

Svidrigaïlov stopped at Sonia’s room.

“Allow me to inquire whether she is at home.... She is not. How
unfortunate! But I know she may come quite soon. If she’s gone out, it
can only be to see a lady about the orphans. Their mother is dead....
I’ve been meddling and making arrangements for them. If Sofya Semyonovna
does not come back in ten minutes, I will send her to you, to-day if
you like. This is my flat. These are my two rooms. Madame Resslich,
my landlady, has the next room. Now, look this way. I will show you
my chief piece of evidence: this door from my bedroom leads into two
perfectly empty rooms, which are to let. Here they are... You must look
into them with some attention.”

Svidrigaïlov occupied two fairly large furnished rooms. Dounia was
looking about her mistrustfully, but saw nothing special in the
furniture or position of the rooms. Yet there was something to observe,
for instance, that Svidrigaïlov’s flat was exactly between two sets of
almost uninhabited apartments. His rooms were not entered directly
from the passage, but through the landlady’s two almost empty rooms.
Unlocking a door leading out of his bedroom, Svidrigaïlov showed Dounia
the two empty rooms that were to let. Dounia stopped in the doorway, not
knowing what she was called to look upon, but Svidrigaïlov hastened to
explain.

“Look here, at this second large room. Notice that door, it’s locked.
By the door stands a chair, the only one in the two rooms. I brought it
from my rooms so as to listen more conveniently. Just the other side of
the door is Sofya Semyonovna’s table; she sat there talking to Rodion
Romanovitch. And I sat here listening on two successive evenings, for
two hours each time--and of course I was able to learn something, what
do you think?”

“You listened?”

“Yes, I did. Now come back to my room; we can’t sit down here.”

He brought Avdotya Romanovna back into his sitting-room and offered her
a chair. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, at least seven
feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his eyes which
had once frightened Dounia so much. She shuddered and once more looked
about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary gesture; she evidently
did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But the secluded position of
Svidrigaïlov’s lodging had suddenly struck her. She wanted to ask
whether his landlady at least were at home, but pride kept her from
asking. Moreover, she had another trouble in her heart incomparably
greater than fear for herself. She was in great distress.

“Here is your letter,” she said, laying it on the table. “Can it be true
what you write? You hint at a crime committed, you say, by my brother.
You hint at it too clearly; you daren’t deny it now. I must tell you
that I’d heard of this stupid story before you wrote and don’t believe a
word of it. It’s a disgusting and ridiculous suspicion. I know the story
and why and how it was invented. You can have no proofs. You promised to
prove it. Speak! But let me warn you that I don’t believe you! I don’t
believe you!”

Dounia said this, speaking hurriedly, and for an instant the colour
rushed to her face.

“If you didn’t believe it, how could you risk coming alone to my rooms?
Why have you come? Simply from curiosity?”

“Don’t torment me. Speak, speak!”

“There’s no denying that you are a brave girl. Upon my word, I thought
you would have asked Mr. Razumihin to escort you here. But he was not
with you nor anywhere near. I was on the look-out. It’s spirited of
you, it proves you wanted to spare Rodion Romanovitch. But everything
is divine in you.... About your brother, what am I to say to you? You’ve
just seen him yourself. What did you think of him?”

“Surely that’s not the only thing you are building on?”

“No, not on that, but on his own words. He came here on two successive
evenings to see Sofya Semyonovna. I’ve shown you where they sat. He made
a full confession to her. He is a murderer. He killed an old woman, a
pawnbroker, with whom he had pawned things himself. He killed her sister
too, a pedlar woman called Lizaveta, who happened to come in while he
was murdering her sister. He killed them with an axe he brought with
him. He murdered them to rob them and he did rob them. He took money and
various things.... He told all this, word for word, to Sofya Semyonovna,
the only person who knows his secret. But she has had no share by word
or deed in the murder; she was as horrified at it as you are now. Don’t
be anxious, she won’t betray him.”

“It cannot be,” muttered Dounia, with white lips. She gasped for breath.
“It cannot be. There was not the slightest cause, no sort of ground....
It’s a lie, a lie!”

“He robbed her, that was the cause, he took money and things. It’s true
that by his own admission he made no use of the money or things, but hid
them under a stone, where they are now. But that was because he dared
not make use of them.”

“But how could he steal, rob? How could he dream of it?” cried Dounia,
and she jumped up from the chair. “Why, you know him, and you’ve seen
him, can he be a thief?”

She seemed to be imploring Svidrigaïlov; she had entirely forgotten her
fear.

“There are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities,
Avdotya Romanovna. A thief steals and knows he is a scoundrel, but I’ve
heard of a gentleman who broke open the mail. Who knows, very likely he
thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing! Of course I should not have
believed it myself if I’d been told of it as you have, but I believe my
own ears. He explained all the causes of it to Sofya Semyonovna too, but
she did not believe her ears at first, yet she believed her own eyes at
last.”

“What... were the causes?”

“It’s a long story, Avdotya Romanovna. Here’s... how shall I tell
you?--A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider
that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a
solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It’s galling too, of
course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if
he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his
whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three
thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging
in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the charm of his social
position and his sister’s and mother’s position too. Above all, vanity,
pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities
too.... I am not blaming him, please don’t think it; besides, it’s not
my business. A special little theory came in too--a theory of a
sort--dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons,
that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their
superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that
is. It’s all right as a theory, _une théorie comme une autre_. Napoleon
attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a
great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have
overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied
that he was a genius too--that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He
has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he
could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law,
and so he is not a man of genius. And that’s humiliating for a young man
of any pride, in our day especially....”

“But remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?”

“Ah, Avdotya Romanovna, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was
ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas,
Avdotya Romanovna, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to
the fantastic, the chaotic. But it’s a misfortune to be broad without
a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on
this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why,
you used to reproach me with breadth! Who knows, perhaps we were talking
at the very time when he was lying here thinking over his plan. There
are no sacred traditions amongst us, especially in the educated class,
Avdotya Romanovna. At the best someone will make them up somehow for
himself out of books or from some old chronicle. But those are for the
most part the learned and all old fogeys, so that it would be almost
ill-bred in a man of society. You know my opinions in general, though. I
never blame anyone. I do nothing at all, I persevere in that. But
we’ve talked of this more than once before. I was so happy indeed as to
interest you in my opinions.... You are very pale, Avdotya Romanovna.”

“I know his theory. I read that article of his about men to whom all is
permitted. Razumihin brought it to me.”

“Mr. Razumihin? Your brother’s article? In a magazine? Is there such an
article? I didn’t know. It must be interesting. But where are you going,
Avdotya Romanovna?”

“I want to see Sofya Semyonovna,” Dounia articulated faintly. “How do I
go to her? She has come in, perhaps. I must see her at once. Perhaps
she...”

Avdotya Romanovna could not finish. Her breath literally failed her.

“Sofya Semyonovna will not be back till night, at least I believe not.
She was to have been back at once, but if not, then she will not be in
till quite late.”

“Ah, then you are lying! I see... you were lying... lying all the
time.... I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you!” cried Dounia,
completely losing her head.

Almost fainting, she sank on to a chair which Svidrigaïlov made haste to
give her.

“Avdotya Romanovna, what is it? Control yourself! Here is some water.
Drink a little....”

He sprinkled some water over her. Dounia shuddered and came to herself.

“It has acted violently,” Svidrigaïlov muttered to himself, frowning.
“Avdotya Romanovna, calm yourself! Believe me, he has friends. We will
save him. Would you like me to take him abroad? I have money, I can get
a ticket in three days. And as for the murder, he will do all sorts of
good deeds yet, to atone for it. Calm yourself. He may become a great
man yet. Well, how are you? How do you feel?”

“Cruel man! To be able to jeer at it! Let me go...”

“Where are you going?”

“To him. Where is he? Do you know? Why is this door locked? We came in
at that door and now it is locked. When did you manage to lock it?”

“We couldn’t be shouting all over the flat on such a subject. I am far
from jeering; it’s simply that I’m sick of talking like this. But how
can you go in such a state? Do you want to betray him? You will drive
him to fury, and he will give himself up. Let me tell you, he is already
being watched; they are already on his track. You will simply be giving
him away. Wait a little: I saw him and was talking to him just now. He
can still be saved. Wait a bit, sit down; let us think it over together.
I asked you to come in order to discuss it alone with you and to
consider it thoroughly. But do sit down!”

“How can you save him? Can he really be saved?”

Dounia sat down. Svidrigaïlov sat down beside her.

“It all depends on you, on you, on you alone,” he began with glowing
eyes, almost in a whisper and hardly able to utter the words for
emotion.

Dounia drew back from him in alarm. He too was trembling all over.

“You... one word from you, and he is saved. I... I’ll save him. I have
money and friends. I’ll send him away at once. I’ll get a passport,
two passports, one for him and one for me. I have friends... capable
people.... If you like, I’ll take a passport for you... for your
mother.... What do you want with Razumihin? I love you too.... I love
you beyond everything.... Let me kiss the hem of your dress, let me, let
me.... The very rustle of it is too much for me. Tell me, ‘do that,’
and I’ll do it. I’ll do everything. I will do the impossible. What you
believe, I will believe. I’ll do anything--anything! Don’t, don’t look
at me like that. Do you know that you are killing me?...”

He was almost beginning to rave.... Something seemed suddenly to go to
his head. Dounia jumped up and rushed to the door.

“Open it! Open it!” she called, shaking the door. “Open it! Is there no
one there?”

Svidrigaïlov got up and came to himself. His still trembling lips slowly
broke into an angry mocking smile.

“There is no one at home,” he said quietly and emphatically. “The
landlady has gone out, and it’s waste of time to shout like that. You
are only exciting yourself uselessly.”

“Where is the key? Open the door at once, at once, base man!”

“I have lost the key and cannot find it.”

“This is an outrage,” cried Dounia, turning pale as death. She rushed
to the furthest corner, where she made haste to barricade herself with a
little table.

She did not scream, but she fixed her eyes on her tormentor and watched
every movement he made.

Svidrigaïlov remained standing at the other end of the room facing her.
He was positively composed, at least in appearance, but his face was
pale as before. The mocking smile did not leave his face.

“You spoke of outrage just now, Avdotya Romanovna. In that case you
may be sure I’ve taken measures. Sofya Semyonovna is not at home. The
Kapernaumovs are far away--there are five locked rooms between. I am at
least twice as strong as you are and I have nothing to fear, besides.
For you could not complain afterwards. You surely would not be willing
actually to betray your brother? Besides, no one would believe you. How
should a girl have come alone to visit a solitary man in his lodgings?
So that even if you do sacrifice your brother, you could prove nothing.
It is very difficult to prove an assault, Avdotya Romanovna.”

“Scoundrel!” whispered Dounia indignantly.

“As you like, but observe I was only speaking by way of a general
proposition. It’s my personal conviction that you are perfectly
right--violence is hateful. I only spoke to show you that you need have
no remorse even if... you were willing to save your brother of your
own accord, as I suggest to you. You would be simply submitting to
circumstances, to violence, in fact, if we must use that word. Think
about it. Your brother’s and your mother’s fate are in your hands. I
will be your slave... all my life... I will wait here.”

Svidrigaïlov sat down on the sofa about eight steps from Dounia. She had
not the slightest doubt now of his unbending determination. Besides, she
knew him. Suddenly she pulled out of her pocket a revolver, cocked it
and laid it in her hand on the table. Svidrigaïlov jumped up.

“Aha! So that’s it, is it?” he cried, surprised but smiling maliciously.
“Well, that completely alters the aspect of affairs. You’ve made things
wonderfully easier for me, Avdotya Romanovna. But where did you get the
revolver? Was it Mr. Razumihin? Why, it’s my revolver, an old friend!
And how I’ve hunted for it! The shooting lessons I’ve given you in the
country have not been thrown away.”

“It’s not your revolver, it belonged to Marfa Petrovna, whom you killed,
wretch! There was nothing of yours in her house. I took it when I began
to suspect what you were capable of. If you dare to advance one step, I
swear I’ll kill you.” She was frantic.

“But your brother? I ask from curiosity,” said Svidrigaïlov, still
standing where he was.

“Inform, if you want to! Don’t stir! Don’t come nearer! I’ll shoot! You
poisoned your wife, I know; you are a murderer yourself!” She held the
revolver ready.

“Are you so positive I poisoned Marfa Petrovna?”

“You did! You hinted it yourself; you talked to me of poison.... I know
you went to get it... you had it in readiness.... It was your doing....
It must have been your doing.... Scoundrel!”

“Even if that were true, it would have been for your sake... you would
have been the cause.”

“You are lying! I hated you always, always....”

“Oho, Avdotya Romanovna! You seem to have forgotten how you softened
to me in the heat of propaganda. I saw it in your eyes. Do you remember
that moonlight night, when the nightingale was singing?”

“That’s a lie,” there was a flash of fury in Dounia’s eyes, “that’s a
lie and a libel!”

“A lie? Well, if you like, it’s a lie. I made it up. Women ought not
to be reminded of such things,” he smiled. “I know you will shoot, you
pretty wild creature. Well, shoot away!”

Dounia raised the revolver, and deadly pale, gazed at him, measuring the
distance and awaiting the first movement on his part. Her lower lip was
white and quivering and her big black eyes flashed like fire. He had
never seen her so handsome. The fire glowing in her eyes at the moment
she raised the revolver seemed to kindle him and there was a pang of
anguish in his heart. He took a step forward and a shot rang out. The
bullet grazed his hair and flew into the wall behind. He stood still and
laughed softly.

“The wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What’s this?
Blood?” he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood, which flowed
in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed to have just
grazed the skin.

Dounia lowered the revolver and looked at Svidrigaïlov not so much in
terror as in a sort of wild amazement. She seemed not to understand what
she was doing and what was going on.

“Well, you missed! Fire again, I’ll wait,” said Svidrigaïlov softly,
still smiling, but gloomily. “If you go on like that, I shall have time
to seize you before you cock again.”

Dounia started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it.

“Let me be,” she cried in despair. “I swear I’ll shoot again. I... I’ll
kill you.”

“Well... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you don’t...
then.” His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Dounia shot
again: it missed fire.

“You haven’t loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge
there. Get it ready, I’ll wait.”

He stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her with wild
determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set eyes. Dounia
saw that he would sooner die than let her go. “And... now, of course she
would kill him, at two paces!” Suddenly she flung away the revolver.

“She’s dropped it!” said Svidrigaïlov with surprise, and he drew a deep
breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart--perhaps not only
the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at that moment.
It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and more bitter,
which he could not himself have defined.

He went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not
resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes.
He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to
utter a sound.

“Let me go,” Dounia implored. Svidrigaïlov shuddered. Her voice now was
quite different.

“Then you don’t love me?” he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.

“And... and you can’t? Never?” he whispered in despair.

“Never!”

There followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of
Svidrigaïlov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly
he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it.
Another moment passed.

“Here’s the key.”

He took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the table
behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.

“Take it! Make haste!”

He looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up to the table to
take the key.

“Make haste! Make haste!” repeated Svidrigaïlov, still without turning
or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the tone of that
“make haste.”

Dounia understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door, unlocked it
quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside herself, she
ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X. Bridge.

Svidrigaïlov remained three minutes standing at the window. At last he
slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his forehead. A
strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of
despair. The blood, which was already getting dry, smeared his hand.
He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and washed his temple.
The revolver which Dounia had flung away lay near the door and suddenly
caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a little pocket
three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned construction. There were still
two charges and one capsule left in it. It could be fired again. He
thought a little, put the revolver in his pocket, took his hat and went
out.



CHAPTER VI

He spent that evening till ten o’clock going from one low haunt to
another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a certain

“villain and tyrant,”

“began kissing Katia.”

Svidrigaïlov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and
the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these
clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the
left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure
garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky
three-year-old pine-tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a
“Vauxhall,” which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was
served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it.
A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly depressed
German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The
clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent.
Svidrigaïlov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for
a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that there was no
possibility of understanding them. The only fact that seemed certain was
that one of them had stolen something and had even succeeded in
selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share the spoil with his
companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen object was a teaspoon
belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the affair began to seem
troublesome. Svidrigaïlov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of
the garden. It was about six o’clock. He had not drunk a drop of wine
all this time and had ordered tea more for the sake of appearances than
anything.

It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over
the sky about ten o’clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain
came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat on the
earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and each
flash lasted while one could count five.

Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the
bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then,
putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes,
but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the
rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room
without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at home.

She was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her. She
was giving them tea. She received Svidrigaïlov in respectful silence,
looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away at
once in indescribable terror.

Svidrigaïlov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside him.
She timidly prepared to listen.

“I may be going to America, Sofya Semyonovna,” said Svidrigaïlov, “and
as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make some
arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what she said to
you, you need not tell me.” (Sonia made a movement and blushed.) “Those
people have their own way of doing things. As to your sisters and your
brother, they are really provided for and the money assigned to them
I’ve put into safe keeping and have received acknowledgments. You had
better take charge of the receipts, in case anything happens. Here, take
them! Well now, that’s settled. Here are three 5-per-cent bonds to the
value of three thousand roubles. Take those for yourself, entirely for
yourself, and let that be strictly between ourselves, so that no one
knows of it, whatever you hear. You will need the money, for to go on
living in the old way, Sofya Semyonovna, is bad, and besides there is no
need for it now.”

“I am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my
stepmother,” said Sonia hurriedly, “and if I’ve said so little... please
don’t consider...”

“That’s enough! that’s enough!”

“But as for the money, Arkady Ivanovitch, I am very grateful to you,
but I don’t need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don’t think me
ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money....”

“It’s for you, for you, Sofya Semyonovna, and please don’t waste words
over it. I haven’t time for it. You will want it. Rodion Romanovitch
has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia.” (Sonia looked
wildly at him, and started.) “Don’t be uneasy, I know all about it from
himself and I am not a gossip; I won’t tell anyone. It was good advice
when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be much
better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Siberia, he will go and
you will follow him. That’s so, isn’t it? And if so, you’ll need money.
You’ll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is the same
as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Amalia Ivanovna to pay
what’s owing. I heard you. How can you undertake such obligations so
heedlessly, Sofya Semyonovna? It was Katerina Ivanovna’s debt and not
yours, so you ought not to have taken any notice of the German woman.
You can’t get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned
about me--to-morrow or the day after you will be asked--don’t say
anything about my coming to see you now and don’t show the money to
anyone or say a word about it. Well, now good-bye.” (He got up.) “My
greetings to Rodion Romanovitch. By the way, you’d better put the money
for the present in Mr. Razumihin’s keeping. You know Mr. Razumihin? Of
course you do. He’s not a bad fellow. Take it to him to-morrow or...
when the time comes. And till then, hide it carefully.”

Sonia too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at Svidrigaïlov.
She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the first moments she
did not dare and did not know how to begin.

“How can you... how can you be going now, in such rain?”

“Why, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha! Good-bye,
Sofya Semyonovna, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use to
others. By the way... tell Mr. Razumihin I send my greetings to him.
Tell him Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov sends his greetings. Be sure
to.”

He went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague
apprehension.

It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past eleven,
he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain still
persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little flat where
the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third Street in Vassilyevsky
Island. He knocked some time before he was admitted, and his visit
at first caused great perturbation; but Svidrigaïlov could be
very fascinating when he liked, so that the first, and indeed very
intelligent surmise of the sensible parents that Svidrigaïlov had
probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing
vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see
Svidrigaïlov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the
conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a direct
question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then, if she
were obliged to ascertain something--for instance, when Svidrigaïlov
would like to have the wedding--she would begin by interested and
almost eager questions about Paris and the court life there, and only
by degrees brought the conversation round to Third Street. On other
occasions this had of course been very impressive, but this time Arkady
Ivanovitch seemed particularly impatient, and insisted on seeing his
betrothed at once, though he had been informed, to begin with, that she
had already gone to bed. The girl of course appeared.

Svidrigaïlov informed her at once that he was obliged by very important
affairs to leave Petersburg for a time, and therefore brought her
fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a present from
him, as he had long been intending to make her this trifling present
before their wedding. The logical connection of the present with his
immediate departure and the absolute necessity of visiting them for that
purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not made clear. But it all went
off very well; even the inevitable ejaculations of wonder and regret,
the inevitable questions were extraordinarily few and restrained. On the
other hand, the gratitude expressed was most glowing and was reinforced
by tears from the most sensible of mothers. Svidrigaïlov got up,
laughed, kissed his betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon
come back, and noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a
sort of earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though
he felt sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be
immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers. He
went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement, but
the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some of
the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidrigaïlov was
a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great
wealth--there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start
off on a journey and give away money just as the fancy took him, so that
there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange that he
was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric,
and all these people of high society didn’t think of what was said of
them and didn’t stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he came like that
on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone. Above all, not a
word should be said about it, for God knows what might come of it, and
the money must be locked up, and it was most fortunate that Fedosya, the
cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be said
to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so on and so on. They sat up
whispering till two o’clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier,
amazed and rather sorrowful.

Svidrigaïlov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on the
way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring
wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black
waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest, even inquiry.
But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he turned and
went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless street for a long
time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling in the dark on the
wooden pavement, but continually looking for something on the right side
of the street. He had noticed passing through this street lately that
there was a hotel somewhere towards the end, built of wood, but fairly
large, and its name he remembered was something like Adrianople. He was
not mistaken: the hotel was so conspicuous in that God-forsaken place
that he could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long,
blackened wooden building, and in spite of the late hour there were
lights in the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked
a ragged fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter,
scanning Svidrigaïlov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a
close and tiny room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under
the stairs. There was no other, all were occupied. The ragged fellow
looked inquiringly.

“Is there tea?” asked Svidrigaïlov.

“Yes, sir.”

“What else is there?”

“Veal, vodka, savouries.”

“Bring me tea and veal.”

“And you want nothing else?” he asked with apparent surprise.

“Nothing, nothing.”

The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.

“It must be a nice place,” thought Svidrigaïlov. “How was it I didn’t
know it? I expect I look as if I came from a café chantant and have
had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who stayed
here?”

He lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was a
room so low-pitched that Svidrigaïlov could only just stand up in it;
it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain-stained
chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as though they
were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn and dusty
that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general
colour--yellow--could still be made out. One of the walls was cut short
by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic but just under
the stairs.

Svidrigaïlov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into
thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a shout
in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not ceased from
the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was upbraiding and
almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice.

Svidrigaïlov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw
light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The
room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of
them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing
in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart to
preserve his balance, and smiting himself on the breast. He reproached
the other with being a beggar, with having no standing whatever. He
declared that he had taken the other out of the gutter and he could turn
him out when he liked, and that only the finger of Providence sees it
all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a chair, and had the
air of a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but can’t. He sometimes
turned sheepish and befogged eyes on the speaker, but obviously had not
the slightest idea what he was talking about and scarcely heard it. A
candle was burning down on the table; there were wine-glasses, a nearly
empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs
of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this, Svidrigaïlov turned away
indifferently and sat down on the bed.

The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking
him again whether he didn’t want anything more, and again receiving a
negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigaïlov made haste to drink a
glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began
to feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the
blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. “It would have been better
to be well for the occasion,” he thought with a smile. The room was
close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he heard
a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and of
leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another. He
felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. “It must be a garden
under the window,” he thought. “There’s a sound of trees. How I dislike
the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give one a
horrid feeling.” He remembered how he had disliked it when he passed
Petrovsky Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little
Neva and he felt cold again as he had when standing there. “I never have
liked water,” he thought, “even in a landscape,” and he suddenly smiled
again at a strange idea: “Surely now all these questions of taste and
comfort ought not to matter, but I’ve become more particular, like an
animal that picks out a special place... for such an occasion. I ought
to have gone into the Petrovsky Park! I suppose it seemed dark, cold,
ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant sensations!... By the way, why
haven’t I put out the candle?” he blew it out. “They’ve gone to bed next
door,” he thought, not seeing the light at the crack. “Well, now, Marfa
Petrovna, now is the time for you to turn up; it’s dark, and the very
time and place for you. But now you won’t come!”

He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design on
Dounia, he had recommended Raskolnikov to trust her to Razumihin’s
keeping. “I suppose I really did say it, as Raskolnikov guessed, to
tease myself. But what a rogue that Raskolnikov is! He’s gone through a
good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he’s got over
his nonsense. But now he’s _too_ eager for life. These young men
are contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let him please
himself, it’s nothing to do with me.”

He could not get to sleep. By degrees Dounia’s image rose before him,
and a shudder ran over him. “No, I must give up all that now,” he
thought, rousing himself. “I must think of something else. It’s queer
and funny. I never had a great hatred for anyone, I never particularly
desired to avenge myself even, and that’s a bad sign, a bad sign, a bad
sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper--that’s
a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too--Damnation!
But--who knows?--perhaps she would have made a new man of me
somehow....”

He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dounia’s image
rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time,
she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so that
he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted a hand
to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how at that
instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang at his
heart...

“Aïe! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!”

He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly
something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He
started. “Ugh! hang it! I believe it’s a mouse,” he thought, “that’s the
veal I left on the table.” He felt fearfully disinclined to pull off the
blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something unpleasant ran over
his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking
with feverish chill he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing.
He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet.
He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without
leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and
suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one
instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down
his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.

The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket
as before. The wind was howling under the window. “How disgusting,” he
thought with annoyance.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the
window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold
damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the
blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of
anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another,
incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his
mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or
the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees
roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling
on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright,
warm, almost hot day, a holiday--Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country
cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with
flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was
surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with
rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed
particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant
narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was
reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came
into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere--at the windows,
the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself--were flowers.
The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows
were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were
chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table
covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was
covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of
flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a
white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as
though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was
a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of
her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her
pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal.
Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle
beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself.
She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed
herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish
soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn
from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on
a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled....

Svidrigaïlov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the
window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously
into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered with
his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have been
something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There, too,
probably there were tea-tables and singing in the daytime. Now drops of
rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was dark as
in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark blurs of
objects. Svidrigaïlov, bending down with elbows on the window-sill,
gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a cannon, followed
by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the night. “Ah, the
signal! The river is overflowing,” he thought. “By morning it will be
swirling down the street in the lower parts, flooding the basements and
cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain
and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper storeys. What time is
it now?” And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on
the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three.

“Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I’ll go out at once
straight to the park. I’ll choose a great bush there drenched with rain,
so that as soon as one’s shoulder touches it, millions of drops drip on
one’s head.”

He moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on his
waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle,
into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep
somewhere in the midst of candle-ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay
him for the room and leave the hotel. “It’s the best minute; I couldn’t
choose a better.”

He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding
anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner
between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object
which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little
girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her
clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of
Svidrigaïlov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big
black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been
crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child’s face
was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. “How can she have come here?
She must have hidden here and not slept all night.” He began questioning
her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby
language, something about “mammy” and that “mammy would beat her,” and
about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without
stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a
neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service
of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken
a cup of her mother’s and was so frightened that she had run away the
evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the
rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and
spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness
and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took her in his
arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and began undressing
her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless feet were as
wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night. When he had
undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and wrapped her in
the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at once. Then he
sank into dreary musing again.

“What folly to trouble myself,” he decided suddenly with an oppressive
feeling of annoyance. “What idiocy!” In vexation he took up the candle
to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make haste to go away.
“Damn the child!” he thought as he opened the door, but he turned again
to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the blanket carefully.
The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket,
and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed
brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. “It’s a flush
of fever,” thought Svidrigaïlov. It was like the flush from drinking, as
though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were
hot and glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long
black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a
sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little
girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in
a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to
control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin,
a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite
unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the
shameless face of a French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they
turned a glowing, shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited
him.... There was something infinitely hideous and shocking in that
laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. “What,
at five years old?” Svidrigaïlov muttered in genuine horror. “What does
it mean?” And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding
out her arms.... “Accursed child!” Svidrigaïlov cried, raising his hand
to strike her, but at that moment he woke up.

He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had not
been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.

“I’ve had nightmare all night!” He got up angrily, feeling utterly
shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he could
see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He got up,
put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the revolver in his
pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a notebook out of his
pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the title page wrote a few
lines in large letters. Reading them over, he sank into thought with his
elbows on the table. The revolver and the notebook lay beside him. Some
flies woke up and settled on the untouched veal, which was still on
the table. He stared at them and at last with his free right hand began
trying to catch one. He tried till he was tired, but could not catch it.
At last, realising that he was engaged in this interesting pursuit, he
started, got up and walked resolutely out of the room. A minute later he
was in the street.

A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigaïlov walked along the
slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing
the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island,
the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the
bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the houses, trying to think
of something else. There was not a cabman or a passer-by in the street.
The bright yellow, wooden, little houses looked dirty and dejected with
their closed shutters. The cold and damp penetrated his whole body and
he began to shiver. From time to time he came across shop signs and read
each carefully. At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and
came to a big stone house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with
its tail between its legs. A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead
drunk, across the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower
stood up on the left. “Bah!” he shouted, “here is a place. Why should
it be Petrovsky? It will be in the presence of an official witness
anyway....”

He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where
there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of
the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them,
wrapped in a grey soldier’s coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his
head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigaïlov. His
face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly
printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both,
Svidrigaïlov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes
without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man
not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a
word.

“What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his
position.

“Nothing, brother, good morning,” answered Svidrigaïlov.

“This isn’t the place.”

“I am going to foreign parts, brother.”

“To foreign parts?”

“To America.”

“America.”

Svidrigaïlov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his
eyebrows.

“I say, this is not the place for such jokes!”

“Why shouldn’t it be the place?”

“Because it isn’t.”

“Well, brother, I don’t mind that. It’s a good place. When you are
asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”

He put the revolver to his right temple.

“You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Achilles, rousing
himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.

Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.



CHAPTER VII

The same day, about seven o’clock in the evening, Raskolnikov was on
his way to his mother’s and sister’s lodging--the lodging in Bakaleyev’s
house which Razumihin had found for them. The stairs went up from
the street. Raskolnikov walked with lagging steps, as though still
hesitating whether to go or not. But nothing would have turned him back:
his decision was taken.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter, they still know nothing,” he thought, “and
they are used to thinking of me as eccentric.”

He was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked with a
night’s rain. His face was almost distorted from fatigue, exposure, the
inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours. He had spent all
the previous night alone, God knows where. But anyway he had reached a
decision.

He knocked at the door which was opened by his mother. Dounia was not
at home. Even the servant happened to be out. At first Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him by
the hand and drew him into the room.

“Here you are!” she began, faltering with joy. “Don’t be angry with
me, Rodya, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not
crying. Did you think I was crying? No, I am delighted, but I’ve got
into such a stupid habit of shedding tears. I’ve been like that ever
since your father’s death. I cry for anything. Sit down, dear boy, you
must be tired; I see you are. Ah, how muddy you are.”

“I was in the rain yesterday, mother....” Raskolnikov began.

“No, no,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurriedly interrupted, “you thought I
was going to cross-question you in the womanish way I used to; don’t be
anxious, I understand, I understand it all: now I’ve learned the ways
here and truly I see for myself that they are better. I’ve made up my
mind once for all: how could I understand your plans and expect you to
give an account of them? God knows what concerns and plans you may have,
or what ideas you are hatching; so it’s not for me to keep nudging your
elbow, asking you what you are thinking about? But, my goodness! why
am I running to and fro as though I were crazy...? I am reading your
article in the magazine for the third time, Rodya. Dmitri Prokofitch
brought it to me. Directly I saw it I cried out to myself: ‘There,
foolish one,’ I thought, ‘that’s what he is busy about; that’s the
solution of the mystery! Learned people are always like that. He may
have some new ideas in his head just now; he is thinking them over and I
worry him and upset him.’ I read it, my dear, and of course there was a
great deal I did not understand; but that’s only natural--how should I?”

“Show me, mother.”

Raskolnikov took the magazine and glanced at his article. Incongruous
as it was with his mood and his circumstances, he felt that strange and
bitter sweet sensation that every author experiences the first time he
sees himself in print; besides, he was only twenty-three. It lasted only
a moment. After reading a few lines he frowned and his heart throbbed
with anguish. He recalled all the inward conflict of the preceding
months. He flung the article on the table with disgust and anger.

“But, however foolish I may be, Rodya, I can see for myself that you
will very soon be one of the leading--if not the leading man--in the
world of Russian thought. And they dared to think you were mad! You
don’t know, but they really thought that. Ah, the despicable creatures,
how could they understand genius! And Dounia, Dounia was all but
believing it--what do you say to that? Your father sent twice to
magazines--the first time poems (I’ve got the manuscript and will show
you) and the second time a whole novel (I begged him to let me copy it
out) and how we prayed that they should be taken--they weren’t! I was
breaking my heart, Rodya, six or seven days ago over your food and your
clothes and the way you are living. But now I see again how foolish
I was, for you can attain any position you like by your intellect and
talent. No doubt you don’t care about that for the present and you are
occupied with much more important matters....”

“Dounia’s not at home, mother?”

“No, Rodya. I often don’t see her; she leaves me alone. Dmitri
Prokofitch comes to see me, it’s so good of him, and he always talks
about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don’t say that
Dounia is very wanting in consideration. I am not complaining. She has
her ways and I have mine; she seems to have got some secrets of late and
I never have any secrets from you two. Of course, I am sure that Dounia
has far too much sense, and besides she loves you and me... but I don’t
know what it will all lead to. You’ve made me so happy by coming now,
Rodya, but she has missed you by going out; when she comes in I’ll tell
her: ‘Your brother came in while you were out. Where have you been all
this time?’ You mustn’t spoil me, Rodya, you know; come when you can,
but if you can’t, it doesn’t matter, I can wait. I shall know, anyway,
that you are fond of me, that will be enough for me. I shall read what
you write, I shall hear about you from everyone, and sometimes you’ll
come yourself to see me. What could be better? Here you’ve come now to
comfort your mother, I see that.”

Here Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

“Here I am again! Don’t mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I
sitting here?” she cried, jumping up. “There is coffee and I don’t offer
you any. Ah, that’s the selfishness of old age. I’ll get it at once!”

“Mother, don’t trouble, I am going at once. I haven’t come for that.
Please listen to me.”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna went up to him timidly.

“Mother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you are
told about me, will you always love me as you do now?” he asked suddenly
from the fullness of his heart, as though not thinking of his words and
not weighing them.

“Rodya, Rodya, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a question?
Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I shouldn’t believe
anyone, I should refuse to listen.”

“I’ve come to assure you that I’ve always loved you and I am glad
that we are alone, even glad Dounia is out,” he went on with the same
impulse. “I have come to tell you that though you will be unhappy, you
must believe that your son loves you now more than himself, and that all
you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn’t care about you, was
all a mistake. I shall never cease to love you.... Well, that’s enough:
I thought I must do this and begin with this....”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna embraced him in silence, pressing him to her
bosom and weeping gently.

“I don’t know what is wrong with you, Rodya,” she said at last. “I’ve
been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and now I see
that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that’s why you are
miserable. I’ve foreseen it a long time, Rodya. Forgive me for speaking
about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at nights. Your sister
lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking of nothing but you. I
caught something, but I couldn’t make it out. I felt all the morning
as though I were going to be hanged, waiting for something, expecting
something, and now it has come! Rodya, Rodya, where are you going? You
are going away somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need
me. And Dounia, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly--and Sofya
Semyonovna may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look upon
her as a daughter even... Dmitri Prokofitch will help us to go together.
But... where... are you going?”

“Good-bye, mother.”

“What, to-day?” she cried, as though losing him for ever.

“I can’t stay, I must go now....”

“And can’t I come with you?”

“No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will
reach Him.”

“Let me bless you and sign you with the cross. That’s right, that’s
right. Oh, God, what are we doing?”

Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that
he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful
months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed her
feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did not
question him this time. For some days she had realised that something
awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible minute had
come for him.

“Rodya, my darling, my first born,” she said sobbing, “now you are just
as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me and
kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us
simply by being with us and when I buried your father, how often we
wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if I’ve been crying
lately, it’s that my mother’s heart had a foreboding of trouble. The
first time I saw you, that evening, you remember, as soon as we arrived
here, I guessed simply from your eyes. My heart sank at once, and to-day
when I opened the door and looked at you, I thought the fatal hour had
come. Rodya, Rodya, you are not going away to-day?”

“No!”

“You’ll come again?”

“Yes... I’ll come.”

“Rodya, don’t be angry, I don’t dare to question you. I know I mustn’t.
Only say two words to me--is it far where you are going?”

“Very far.”

“What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?”

“What God sends... only pray for me.” Raskolnikov went to the door, but
she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her face worked
with terror.

“Enough, mother,” said Raskolnikov, deeply regretting that he had come.

“Not for ever, it’s not yet for ever? You’ll come, you’ll come
to-morrow?”

“I will, I will, good-bye.” He tore himself away at last.

It was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the morning.
Raskolnikov went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to finish all
before sunset. He did not want to meet anyone till then. Going up the
stairs he noticed that Nastasya rushed from the samovar to watch him
intently. “Can anyone have come to see me?” he wondered. He had a
disgusted vision of Porfiry. But opening his door he saw Dounia. She
was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked as though she had
been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the doorway. She rose from
the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her eyes, fixed upon him,
betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from those eyes alone he saw at
once that she knew.

“Am I to come in or go away?” he asked uncertainly.

“I’ve been all day with Sofya Semyonovna. We were both waiting for you.
We thought that you would be sure to come there.”

Raskolnikov went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair.

“I feel weak, Dounia, I am very tired; and I should have liked at this
moment to be able to control myself.”

He glanced at her mistrustfully.

“Where were you all night?”

“I don’t remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind
once for all, and several times I walked by the Neva, I remember that
I wanted to end it all there, but... I couldn’t make up my mind,” he
whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again.

“Thank God! That was just what we were afraid of, Sofya Semyonovna and
I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!”

Raskolnikov smiled bitterly.

“I haven’t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother’s arms; I
haven’t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don’t know
how it is, Dounia, I don’t understand it.”

“Have you been at mother’s? Have you told her?” cried Dounia,
horror-stricken. “Surely you haven’t done that?”

“No, I didn’t tell her... in words; but she understood a great deal.
She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it
already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don’t know why I did
go. I am a contemptible person, Dounia.”

“A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren’t
you?”

“Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of
drowning myself, Dounia, but as I looked into the water, I thought that
if I had considered myself strong till now I’d better not be afraid of
disgrace,” he said, hurrying on. “It’s pride, Dounia.”

“Pride, Rodya.”

There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad
to think that he was still proud.

“You don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he
asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.

“Oh, Rodya, hush!” cried Dounia bitterly. Silence lasted for two
minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at the
other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he got
up.

“It’s late, it’s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I
don’t know why I am going to give myself up.”

Big tears fell down her cheeks.

“You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?”

“You doubted it?”

She threw her arms round him.

“Aren’t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?” she
cried, holding him close and kissing him.

“Crime? What crime?” he cried in sudden fury. “That I killed a vile
noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!... Killing
her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor
people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking
of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? ‘A
crime! a crime!’ Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice,
now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It’s simply
because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to,
perhaps too for my advantage, as that... Porfiry... suggested!”

“Brother, brother, what are you saying? Why, you have shed blood?” cried
Dounia in despair.

“Which all men shed,” he put in almost frantically, “which flows and has
always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which
men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards benefactors of
mankind. Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to
do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds
to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply
clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now
that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.) By that
stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to
take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have
been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.... But I...
I couldn’t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible,
that’s what’s the matter! And yet I won’t look at it as you do. If I had
succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I’m trapped.”

“But that’s not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying?”

“Ah, it’s not picturesque, not æsthetically attractive! I fail to
understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable.
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I’ve never,
never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever
from seeing that what I did was a crime. I’ve never, never been stronger
and more convinced than now.”

The colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he uttered
his last explanation, he happened to meet Dounia’s eyes and he saw such
anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he
had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway,
the cause...

“Dounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven
if I am guilty). Good-bye! We won’t dispute. It’s time, high time to go.
Don’t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go.... But you
go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It’s my last request
of you. Don’t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that
she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with
her! Razumihin will be with you. I’ve been talking to him.... Don’t cry
about me: I’ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a
murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won’t disgrace you,
you will see; I’ll still show.... Now good-bye for the present,” he
concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Dounia’s
eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying? Don’t cry,
don’t cry: we are not parting for ever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I’d
forgotten!”

He went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took
from between the pages a little water-colour portrait on ivory. It was
the portrait of his landlady’s daughter, who had died of fever, that
strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the
delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave
it to Dounia.

“I used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,” he said
thoughtfully. “To her heart I confided much of what has since been so
hideously realised. Don’t be uneasy,” he returned to Dounia, “she was
as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great
point is that everything now is going to be different, is going to
be broken in two,” he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection.
“Everything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself?
They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What’s the object of these
senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are for, when I
am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty
years’ penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then? Why am I
consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was contemptible when I stood
looking at the Neva at daybreak to-day!”

At last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she loved him.
She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round to look
at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too turned and for
the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him,
he motioned her away with impatience and even vexation, and turned the
corner abruptly.

“I am wicked, I see that,” he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a
moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. “But why are they so fond
of me if I don’t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved
me and I too had never loved anyone! _Nothing of all this would have
happened._ But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so
meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word
that I am a criminal? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are
sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and
fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at
heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be
wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!”

He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could
be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately--humbled by conviction.
And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual
bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should
he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be
so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that
question since the previous evening, but still he went.



CHAPTER VIII

When he went into Sonia’s room, it was already getting dark. All day
Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been
waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering
Svidrigaïlov’s words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the
conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became.
Dounia gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her
brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Sonia, first with his
confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it;
she would go with him wherever fate might send him. Dounia did not ask,
but she knew it was so. She looked at Sonia almost with reverence and
at first almost embarrassed her by it. Sonia was almost on the point
of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to look at
Dounia. Dounia’s gracious image when she had bowed to her so attentively
and respectfully at their first meeting in Raskolnikov’s room had
remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her life.

Dounia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her
brother’s room to await him there; she kept thinking that he would come
there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the dread
of his committing suicide, and Dounia too feared it. But they had spent
the day trying to persuade each other that that could not be, and both
were less anxious while they were together. As soon as they parted, each
thought of nothing else. Sonia remembered how Svidrigaïlov had said to
her the day before that Raskolnikov had two alternatives--Siberia or...
Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and his lack of faith.

“Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to
make him live?” she thought at last in despair.

Meanwhile the sun was setting. Sonia was standing in dejection, looking
intently out of the window, but from it she could see nothing but the
unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last when she began to
feel sure of his death--he walked into the room.

She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned
pale.

“Yes,” said Raskolnikov, smiling. “I have come for your cross, Sonia. It
was you told me to go to the cross-roads; why is it you are frightened
now it’s come to that?”

Sonia gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold
shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone and the
words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though to avoid
meeting her eyes.

“You see, Sonia, I’ve decided that it will be better so. There is one
fact.... But it’s a long story and there’s no need to discuss it. But
do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid brutish
faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their stupid
questions, which I shall have to answer--they’ll point their fingers at
me.... Tfoo! You know I am not going to Porfiry, I am sick of him. I’d
rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how I shall surprise
him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be cooler; I’ve become
too irritable of late. You know I was nearly shaking my fist at my
sister just now, because she turned to take a last look at me. It’s
a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming to! Well, where are the
crosses?”

He seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay still or
concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to gallop after
one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled slightly.

Without a word Sonia took out of the drawer two crosses, one of cypress
wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over herself and
over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck.

“It’s the symbol of my taking up the cross,” he laughed. “As though I
had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the peasant
one; the copper one, that is Lizaveta’s--you will wear yourself, show
me! So she had it on... at that moment? I remember two things like
these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw them back on the old
woman’s neck. Those would be appropriate now, really, those are what I
ought to put on now.... But I am talking nonsense and forgetting what
matters; I’m somehow forgetful.... You see I have come to warn you,
Sonia, so that you might know... that’s all--that’s all I came for. But
I thought I had more to say. You wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I
am going to prison and you’ll have your wish. Well, what are you crying
for? You too? Don’t. Leave off! Oh, how I hate it all!”

But his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her. “Why
is she grieving too?” he thought to himself. “What am I to her? Why does
she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or Dounia? She’ll
be my nurse.”

“Cross yourself, say at least one prayer,” Sonia begged in a timid
broken voice.

“Oh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Sonia, sincerely....”

But he wanted to say something quite different.

He crossed himself several times. Sonia took up her shawl and put
it over her head. It was the green _drap de dames_ shawl of which
Marmeladov had spoken, “the family shawl.” Raskolnikov thought of that
looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he
was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He was
frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that Sonia
meant to go with him.

“What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I’ll go
alone,” he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he moved
towards the door. “What’s the use of going in procession?” he muttered
going out.

Sonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said
good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and rebellious doubt
surged in his heart.

“Was it right, was it right, all this?” he thought again as he went down
the stairs. “Couldn’t he stop and retract it all... and not go?”

But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn’t ask
himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he
had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the middle of
the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had shouted
at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another
thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike
him then.

“Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her--on
business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I was
_going_; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away
just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I’ve sunk! No,
I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart
ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some
friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what
I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!”

He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But
on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it
went to the Hay Market.

He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and
could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. “In
another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison van over this
bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember
this!” slipped into his mind. “Look at this sign! How shall I read those
letters then? It’s written here ‘Campany,’ that’s a thing to remember,
that letter _a_, and to look at it again in a month--how shall I look
at it then? What shall I be feeling and thinking then?... How trivial
it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be
interesting... in its way... (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am
becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how
people shove! that fat man--a German he must be--who pushed against
me, does he know whom he pushed? There’s a peasant woman with a baby,
begging. It’s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might
give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here’s a five copeck
piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here... take it, my
good woman!”

“God bless you,” the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.

He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to be
in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have
given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he
would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and
disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There
was a ring round him. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd,
stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short
jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him,
though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he
was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly
came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.

He suddenly recalled Sonia’s words, “Go to the cross-roads, bow down to
the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say
aloud to the whole world, ‘I am a murderer.’” He trembled, remembering
that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially
of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively
clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came
over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and
spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the
tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....

He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and
kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed
down a second time.

“He’s boozed,” a youth near him observed.

There was a roar of laughter.

“He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children
and his country. He’s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great
city of St. Petersburg and its pavement,” added a workman who was a
little drunk.

“Quite a young man, too!” observed a third.

“And a gentleman,” someone observed soberly.

“There’s no knowing who’s a gentleman and who isn’t nowadays.”

These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, “I am
a murderer,” which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips,
died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking
round, he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a
glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt
that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he
saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding
from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She had
followed him then on his painful way! Raskolnikov at that moment felt
and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow
him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his
heart... but he was just reaching the fatal place.

He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third
storey. “I shall be some time going up,” he thought. He felt as though
the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time
left for consideration.

Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral
stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and
the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been
here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but
still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to
collect himself, so as to enter _like a man_. “But why? what for?” he
wondered, reflecting. “If I must drink the cup what difference does it
make? The more revolting the better.” He imagined for an instant the
figure of the “explosive lieutenant,” Ilya Petrovitch. Was he actually
going to him? Couldn’t he go to someone else? To Nikodim Fomitch?
Couldn’t he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch’s lodgings?
At least then it would be done privately.... No, no! To the “explosive
lieutenant”! If he must drink it, drink it off at once.

Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office.
There were very few people in it this time--only a house porter and a
peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen.
Raskolnikov walked into the next room. “Perhaps I still need not speak,”
 passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was
settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner another clerk was
seating himself. Zametov was not there, nor, of course, Nikodim Fomitch.

“No one in?” Raskolnikov asked, addressing the person at the bureau.

“Whom do you want?”

“A-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the
Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I’ve forgotten! ‘At
your service!’” a familiar voice cried suddenly.

Raskolnikov shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He
had just come in from the third room. “It is the hand of fate,” thought
Raskolnikov. “Why is he here?”

“You’ve come to see us? What about?” cried Ilya Petrovitch. He
was obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle
exhilarated. “If it’s on business you are rather early.[*] It’s only a
chance that I am here... however I’ll do what I can. I must admit, I...
what is it, what is it? Excuse me....”

     [*] Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after
     sunset, and that the last time Raskolnikov visited the
     police office at two in the afternoon he was reproached for
     coming too late.--TRANSLATOR.

“Raskolnikov.”

“Of course, Raskolnikov. You didn’t imagine I’d forgotten? Don’t think I
am like that... Rodion Ro--Ro--Rodionovitch, that’s it, isn’t it?”

“Rodion Romanovitch.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Rodion Romanovitch! I was just getting at it. I
made many inquiries about you. I assure you I’ve been genuinely grieved
since that... since I behaved like that... it was explained to me
afterwards that you were a literary man... and a learned one too... and
so to say the first steps... Mercy on us! What literary or scientific
man does not begin by some originality of conduct! My wife and I have
the greatest respect for literature, in my wife it’s a genuine passion!
Literature and art! If only a man is a gentleman, all the rest can be
gained by talents, learning, good sense, genius. As for a hat--well,
what does a hat matter? I can buy a hat as easily as I can a bun; but
what’s under the hat, what the hat covers, I can’t buy that! I was even
meaning to come and apologise to you, but thought maybe you’d... But I
am forgetting to ask you, is there anything you want really? I hear your
family have come?”

“Yes, my mother and sister.”

“I’ve even had the honour and happiness of meeting your sister--a highly
cultivated and charming person. I confess I was sorry I got so hot with
you. There it is! But as for my looking suspiciously at your fainting
fit--that affair has been cleared up splendidly! Bigotry and fanaticism!
I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are changing your lodging on
account of your family’s arriving?”

“No, I only looked in... I came to ask... I thought that I should find
Zametov here.”

“Oh, yes! Of course, you’ve made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zametov is
not here. Yes, we’ve lost Zametov. He’s not been here since yesterday...
he quarrelled with everyone on leaving... in the rudest way. He is a
feather-headed youngster, that’s all; one might have expected something
from him, but there, you know what they are, our brilliant young men.
He wanted to go in for some examination, but it’s only to talk and
boast about it, it will go no further than that. Of course it’s a very
different matter with you or Mr. Razumihin there, your friend. Your
career is an intellectual one and you won’t be deterred by failure. For
you, one may say, all the attractions of life _nihil est_--you are an
ascetic, a monk, a hermit!... A book, a pen behind your ear, a learned
research--that’s where your spirit soars! I am the same way myself....
Have you read Livingstone’s Travels?”

“No.”

“Oh, I have. There are a great many Nihilists about nowadays, you know,
and indeed it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are they? I
ask you. But we thought... you are not a Nihilist of course? Answer me
openly, openly!”

“N-no...”

“Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself!
Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say
_friendship_ is quite another? No, you’re wrong! It’s not friendship,
but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of
love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound
to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about Zametov.
Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad
reputation, over a glass of champagne... that’s all your Zametov is good
for! While I’m perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty
feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and
have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is
he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education... Then
these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous.”

Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya
Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a
stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He
looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.

“I mean those crop-headed wenches,” the talkative Ilya Petrovitch
continued. “Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory
one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I fall ill, am
I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ha-ha!” Ilya
Petrovitch laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. “It’s an immoderate
zeal for education, but once you’re educated, that’s enough. Why abuse
it? Why insult honourable people, as that scoundrel Zametov does? Why
did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common
they are, you can’t fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill
themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard
about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what
was the name of that gentleman who shot himself?”

“Svidrigaïlov,” someone answered from the other room with drowsy
listlessness.

Raskolnikov started.

“Svidrigaïlov! Svidrigaïlov has shot himself!” he cried.

“What, do you know Svidrigaïlov?”

“Yes... I knew him.... He hadn’t been here long.”

“Yes, that’s so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and
all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking way.... He left
in his notebook a few words: that he dies in full possession of his
faculties and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they
say. How did you come to know him?”

“I... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family.”

“Bah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had
no suspicion?”

“I saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing.”

Raskolnikov felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling
him.

“You’ve turned pale again. It’s so stuffy here...”

“Yes, I must go,” muttered Raskolnikov. “Excuse my troubling you....”

“Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It’s a pleasure to see you and I
am glad to say so.”

Ilya Petrovitch held out his hand.

“I only wanted... I came to see Zametov.”

“I understand, I understand, and it’s a pleasure to see you.”

“I... am very glad... good-bye,” Raskolnikov smiled.

He went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know
what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself
with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed
past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in
the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung a
rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard.
There, not far from the entrance, stood Sonia, pale and horror-stricken.
She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of
poignant agony, of despair, in her face. She clasped her hands. His lips
worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned
and went back to the police office.

Ilya Petrovitch had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before
him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs.

“Hulloa! Back again! have you left something behind? What’s the matter?”

Raskolnikov, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer.
He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say
something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible.

“You are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!”

Raskolnikov dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the
face of Ilya Petrovitch, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both
looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought.

“It was I...” began Raskolnikov.

“Drink some water.”

Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly,
but distinctly said:

“_It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with
an axe and robbed them._”

Ilya Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides.

Raskolnikov repeated his statement.



EPILOGUE

I

Siberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of
the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress,
in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class
convict Rodion Raskolnikov has been confined for nine months. Almost a
year and a half has passed since his crime.

There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered
exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor
misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit
the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the
secret of _the pledge_ (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which
was found in the murdered woman’s hand. He described minutely how he
had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its
contents; he explained the mystery of Lizaveta’s murder; described how
Koch and, after him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said
to one another; how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolay
and Dmitri shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards
gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the
Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found.
The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the
judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he
had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making
use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the
trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had
never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed
incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hundred and
seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being so long under the stone,
some of the most valuable notes lying uppermost had suffered from the
damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man
should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made
a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers
more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really
not looked into the purse, and so didn’t know what was in it when he
hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that
the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental
derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of
gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary
insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover
Raskolnikov’s hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by
Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant.
All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not
quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another
element in the case.

To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the
criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question
as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he
answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was
his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to
provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand
roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder
through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by
privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he
answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost
coarse....

The sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected,
perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself,
but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange
and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration.
There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition
of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he
had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his
abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the
murder of Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man
commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the
confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by
the false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism,
and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no
suspicions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word)--all this did
much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the prisoner’s
favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow discovered and
proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university he had helped a poor
consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting
him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit
old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth year,
Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral
when he died. Raskolnikov’s landlady bore witness, too, that when they
had lived in another house at Five Corners, Raskolnikov had rescued two
little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was
investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts
made an impression in his favour.

And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating
circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a
term of eight years only.

At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov’s mother fell ill. Dounia
and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during the
trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so
as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time
to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s
illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial
derangement of her intellect.

When Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she
had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening
Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother’s
questions about Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her
mother’s benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia
on a business commission, which would bring him in the end money and
reputation.

But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never
asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the
contrary, she had her own version of her son’s sudden departure; she
told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting
that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Rodya
had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be
in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be
brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured
Razumihin that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his
article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was
continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to bed
with her, but scarcely asked where Rodya was, though the subject was
obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken
her suspicions.

They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexandrovna’s strange
silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of
getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived
on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodya. This was the cause of
great uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother
suspected that there was something terrible in her son’s fate and was
afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any
case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of
her faculties.

It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave
such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her
without mentioning where Rodya was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and
suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood
lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard to deceive
her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely
silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that
the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia remembered her
brother’s telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her
sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigaïlov and before the
fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that?
Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be
succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would
begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his
future.... Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her,
pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending),
but she still went on talking.

Five months after Raskolnikov’s confession, he was sentenced. Razumihin
and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last
the moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother that the
separation should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in
his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least
of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving
up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every
natural resource and in need of workers, active men and capital. There
they would settle in the town where Rodya was and all together would
begin a new life. They all wept at parting.

Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great
deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried
so much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his
mother’s illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly
reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by
Svidrigaïlov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to follow the
party of convicts in which he was despatched to Siberia. Not a word
passed between Raskolnikov and her on the subject, but both knew it
would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his
sister’s and Razumihin’s fervent anticipations of their happy future
together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their
mother’s illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at last
set off.

Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and
sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and Zossimov were invited however.
During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute determination.
Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she
could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will.
Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order
to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future;
both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Till
then they rested their hopes on Sonia.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to Dounia’s
marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became even more
melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how
Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father
and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two
little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Pulcheria
Alexandrovna’s disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was
continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with
strangers in the street, though Dounia always accompanied her. In public
conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would
begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the
student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Dounia did
not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid
excitement, there was the risk of someone’s recalling Raskolnikov’s name
and speaking of the recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the
address of the mother of the two children her son had saved and insisted
on going to see her.

At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes
begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One
morning she declared that by her reckoning Rodya ought soon to be home,
that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must
expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming,
began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and
put up new hangings and so on. Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and
helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual
fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was
taken ill in the night and by morning she was feverish and delirious.
It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she
dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her
son’s terrible fate than they had supposed.

For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother’s death, though
a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached
Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month
to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At
first they found Sonia’s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on
they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for
from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate
brother’s life. Sonia’s letters were full of the most matter-of-fact
detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov’s
surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no
conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of
any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the
simple facts--that is, his own words, an exact account of his health,
what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her
and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The
picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness
and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but
facts.

But Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news,
especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not
ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave
him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and
that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last
of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly
affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although
he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off
from everyone--he took a very direct and simple view of his new life;
that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time,
had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely
seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he
had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his
work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent
about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that
at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have
his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else,
declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote
further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she
had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were
crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a
rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that
he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply
from inattention and indifference.

Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits,
had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and
rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and
almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when
she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him
on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was
brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to
see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the
sheds on the banks of the Irtish.

About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some
acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there
was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an
indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the
authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task
was lightened and so on.

At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and
uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone,
that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days
at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote
that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of
the hospital.



II

He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not
the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes
that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships!
he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at
least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to
him--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a
student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited
to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed
of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia?
Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he
was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with
his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his
fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was
wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he
could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even
shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated
conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except
a simple _blunder_ which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just
because he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief
through some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to
“the idiocy” of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.

Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a
continual sacrifice leading to nothing--that was all that lay before
him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he
would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to
live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live
in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to
give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy.
Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted
more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he
had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.

And if only fate would have sent him repentance--burning repentance that
would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the
awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would
have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life.
But he did not repent of his crime.

At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he
had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison.
But now in prison, _in freedom_, he thought over and criticised all his
actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque
as they had seemed at the fatal time.

“In what way,” he asked himself, “was my theory stupider than others
that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has
only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced
by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange.
Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!

“Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is
it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at
rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law
was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the
law... and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the
benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of
inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But
those men succeeded and so _they were right_, and I didn’t, and so I
had no right to have taken that step.”

It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact
that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.

He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why
had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the
desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not
Svidrigaïlov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?

In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that,
at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had
perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and
his convictions. He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be
the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future
resurrection.

He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he
could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at
his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and
prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in
prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of
them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for
a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away
in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and
longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the
green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he
saw still more inexplicable examples.

In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not
want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome
and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that
surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much
that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was
the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They
seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at
him with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his
isolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons
were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political
prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as
ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov could not look upon them like that.
He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the
Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former
officer and two seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly.
He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him at
last--why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised
and laughed at his crime.

“You’re a gentleman,” they used to say. “You shouldn’t hack about with
an axe; that’s not a gentleman’s work.”

The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his
gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out
one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.

“You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in God,” they shouted. “You ought
to be killed.”

He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to
kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at
him in a perfect frenzy. Raskolnikov awaited him calmly and silently;
his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard
succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would
have been bloodshed.

There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so
fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met
them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet
everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow _him_,
knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no
particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents
of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between
them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their
relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their
instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives
and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited
Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they
all took off their hats to her. “Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you
are our dear, good little mother,” coarse branded criminals said to that
frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was
delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round
to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in
fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her
for help in their illnesses.

He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When
he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish
and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a
terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of
Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts
of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were
endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once
mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual
and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never
had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their
moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples
went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand
one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched
looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung
his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to
consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom
to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They
gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march
the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken
and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting
and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in
the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was
summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned,
because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they
could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed
on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something
quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another,
fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All
men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and
moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole
world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and
a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these
men, no one had heard their words and their voices.

Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so
miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long.
The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring
days; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinel
paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during
his illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it was
difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially
in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the
windows of the ward.

One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. On
waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the
distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone.
Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and
moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day
after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was
discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that
Sofya Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to go out.

He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that
her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her,
Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better,
that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and
see him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.

Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, he
went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster
and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only
three of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the
fortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and
laying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on to the river
bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the
wide deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before
him, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank.
In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black
specks, the nomads’ tents. There there was freedom, there other men were
living, utterly unlike those here; there time itself seemed to stand
still, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed.
Raskolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, into
contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited
and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come up
noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; the
morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the
green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and
paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand
with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand
to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would
repel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always
seemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout
her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply
grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance
at her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were
alone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.

How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to
seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round
her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she
turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same
moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her
eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and
that at last the moment had come....

They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They
were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the
dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were
renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the
heart of the other.

They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to
wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before
them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his
being, while she--she only lived in his life.

On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,
Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied
that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him
differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answered
him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound
to be so. Wasn’t everything now bound to be changed?

He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her
and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face.
But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what
infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all,
_all_ the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence
and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an
external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not
think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have
analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped
into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself
out in his mind.

Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically.
The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the
raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry
him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with
books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject
and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it
himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without
a word. Till now he had not opened it.

He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: “Can
her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at
least....”

She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken
ill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she was
almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, _only_ seven years! At
the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready
to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not
know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would
have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great
suffering.

But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual
renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing
from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.
That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is
ended.





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