Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

V

This was a gentleman already well past his youth, prim, stately, with a wary and peevish physiognomy, who began by stopping in the doorway and glancing about with offensively unconcealed astonishment, as if asking with his eyes: “Where on earth have I come to?” Mistrustfully, and even with a pretense of being somewhat alarmed, even almost affronted, he looked around Raskolnikov's cramped and low “ship's cabin.” After which, with the same astonishment, he shifted his gaze and fixed it upon Raskolnikov himself, undressed, unkempt, unwashed, lying on his meagre and dirty sofa, who was also staring motionlessly at him. Then, with the same deliberateness, he began staring at the disheveled, uncombed, unshaven figure of Razumikhin, who with insolent inquisitiveness looked him straight in the eye, not moving from where he sat. The tense silence lasted for about a minute; then at last, as might be expected, a slight change of scene took place. The newly arrived gentleman must have realized from certain, albeit rather sharp, indications, that in this “ship's cabin” his exaggeratedly stern bearing would get him precisely nowhere, and, softening somewhat, he turned and addressed Zossimov, politely though not without sternness, rapping out each syllable of his question:

“Mr. Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, a student, or a former student?”

Zossimov slowly stirred himself and would perhaps have answered if Razumikhin, who had not been addressed at all, had not immediately prevented him.

“He's here, lying on the sofa! What is it you want?”

This offhanded “What is it you want?” simply floored the prim gentleman; he even almost turned to Razumikhin, but managed to catch himself in time and quickly turned back to Zossimov.

“This is Raskolnikov,” Zossimov drawled, nodding towards the sick man, and he yawned, opening his mouth extraordinarily widely as he did so, and keeping it that way for an extraordinarily long time. Then he slowly drew his hand up to his waistcoat pocket, took out an enormous, convex, gold-lidded watch, opened it, looked, and as slowly and sluggishly put it back into his pocket.

Raskolnikov himself lay silently on his back all the while, staring obstinately, though without any thought, at the man who had come in. His face, now turned away from the curious flower on the wallpaper, was extremely pale and had a look of extraordinary suffering, as though he had just undergone painful surgery or had just been released from torture. But the newly arrived gentleman gradually began to elicit more and more attention from him, then perplexity, then mistrust, then even something like fear. And when Zossimov, pointing to him, said: “This is Raskolnikov,” he suddenly raised himself quickly, as if jumping up a little, sat up on his bed, and spoke in an almost defiant, but faltering and weak voice:

“Yes! I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?”

The visitor looked at him attentively and said imposingly:

“Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin. I have every hope that by now my name is not wholly unfamiliar to you.”

But Raskolnikov, who had been expecting something quite different, looked at him dully and pensively and made no reply, as though he were decidedly hearing Pyotr Petrovich's name for the first time.

“What? Is it possible that you have received no news as yet?” Pyotr Petrovich asked, wincing slightly.

In response to which Raskolnikov slowly sank back on the pillow, flung his hands up behind his head, and began staring at the ceiling. Anguish flitted across Luzhin's face. Zossimov and Razumikhin began scrutinizing him with even greater curiosity, and he finally became visibly embarrassed.

“I had supposed and reckoned,” he began to drawl, “that a letter sent more than ten days ago, almost two weeks, in fact . . .”

“Listen, why do you go on standing in the doorway?” Razumikhin suddenly interrupted. “If you've got something to explain, do sit down; there's not room enough there for both you and Nastasya. Step aside, Nastasyushka, let him pass! Come in, there's a chair for you right here! Squeeze by!”

He pushed his chair back from the table, made a small space between the table and his knees, and waited in that somewhat strained position for the visitor to “squeeze” through the crack. The moment was chosen in such a way that it was quite impossible to refuse, and the visitor started through the narrow space, hurrying and stumbling. Having reached the chair, he sat down and eyed Razumikhin suspiciously.

“Anyway, you oughtn't to be embarrassed,” Razumikhin blurted out, “it's the fifth day that Rodya's been sick, for three days he was delirious, but now he's come to and even got his appetite back. Here sits his doctor, he's just finished examining him; and I am Rodka's friend, also a former student, and presently his nurse; so you oughtn't to count us or be confused, but just go ahead and say what it is you want.”

“Thank you. But shall I not disturb the sick man with my presence and conversation?” Pyotr Petrovich turned to Zossimov.

“No-o-o,” Zossimov drawled, “you may even divert him.” And he yawned again.

“Oh, he's been conscious for a long time, since morning!” continued Razumikhin, whose familiarity had the appearance of such unfeigned ingenuousness that Pyotr Petrovich reconsidered and began to take heart, perhaps also partly because the insolent ragamuffin had had time to introduce himself as a student.

“Your mama . . .” Luzhin began.

A loud “Hm!” came from Razumikhin. Luzhin looked at him questioningly.

“Nothing; never mind; go on . . .”

Luzhin shrugged.

“... Your mama began a letter to you, myself being among them at the time. Having arrived here, I waited purposely for a few days before coming to see you, so as to be completely certain that you had been informed of everything; but now, to my surprise...”

“I know, I know!” Raskolnikov suddenly said, with an expression of the most impatient annoyance. “That's you, is it? The fiancé? So, I know! ... and enough!”

Pyotr Petrovich was decidedly hurt, but held his tongue. He hastened to try and understand what it all meant. The silence lasted for about a minute.

Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned slightly towards him when he replied, suddenly began looking him over again, attentively and with some special curiosity, as if he had not managed to look him over well enough before, or as if he had been struck by something new in him; he even raised himself from his pillow on purpose to do so. Indeed, there was some striking peculiarity, as it were, in Pyotr Petrovich's general appearance—namely, something that seemed to justify the appellation of “fiancé” just given him so unceremoniously. First, it was evident, and even all too noticeable, that Pyotr Petrovich had hastened to try to use his few days in the capital to get himself fitted out and spruced up while waiting for his fiancée—which, incidentally, was quite innocent and pardonable. Even his own, perhaps all too smug awareness of his pleasant change for the better could be forgiven on such an occasion, for Pyotr Petrovich did indeed rank as a fiancé. All his clothes were fresh from the tailor and everything was fine, except perhaps that it was all too new and spoke overly much of a certain purpose. Even the smart, spanking-new top hat testified to this purpose: Pyotr Petrovich somehow treated it all too reverently and held it all too carefully in his hands. Even the exquisite pair of lilac-colored, real Jouvain gloves <sup>[56]56
  Xavier Jouvain, of Grenoble, brought about a revolution in glove-making with his invention, in 1834, of a special mold for shaping gloves.


[Закрыть]</sup> testified to the same thing, by this alone, that they were not worn but were merely carried around for display. In Pyotr Petrovich's attire, light and youthful colors predominated. He was wearing a pretty summer jacket of a light brown shade, light-colored summer trousers, a matching waistcoat, a fine, newly purchased shirt, a little tie of the lightest cambric with pink stripes, and the best part was that it all even became Pyotr Petrovich. His face, very fresh and even handsome, looked younger than his forty-five years to begin with. Dark side-whiskers pleasantly overshadowed it from both sides, like a pair of mutton chops, setting off very handsomely his gleaming, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair, only slightly touched with gray, combed and curled by the hairdresser, did not thereby endow him with a ridiculous or somehow silly look, as curled hair most often does, inevitably making one resemble a German on his way to the altar. And if there was indeed something unpleasant and repulsive in this rather handsome and solid physiognomy, it proceeded from other causes. Having looked Mr. Luzhin over unceremoniously, Raskol-nikov smiled venomously, sank onto the pillow again, and went back to staring at the ceiling.

But Mr. Luzhin checked himself, and apparently decided to ignore all this strangeness for the time being.

“I am quite, quite sorry to find you in such a state,” he began again, breaking the silence with some effort. “If I had known you were unwell, I would have come sooner. But, you know, one gets caught up! ... Moreover, in my line as a lawyer, I have a rather important case in the Senate. Not to mention those cares which you yourself may surmise. I am expecting your relations—that is, your mama and sister—any time now...”

Raskolnikov stirred and wanted to say something; a certain agitation showed on his face. Pyotr Petrovich stopped and waited, but since nothing followed, he went on.

“. . . Any time now. I have found them an apartment for the immediate future . . .”

“Where?” Raskolnikov said weakly.

“Quite near here, in Bakaleev's house . . .”

“That's on Voznesensky,” Razumikhin interrupted, “there are two floors of furnished rooms; the merchant Yushin runs the place; I've been there.”

“Yes, furnished rooms, sir . . .”

“Utterly vile: filth, stench, and a suspicious place besides; things have happened there; and devil knows who the tenants are! ... I went there on a scandalous occasion myself. But it's cheap.”

“I, of course, was not able to gather so much information, being new here,” Pyotr Petrovich objected touchily, “but in any case they are two quite, quite clean little rooms, and since it is for quite a short period of time...I have already found a real, that is, our future apartment,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “and it is now being decorated; and I myself am squeezed into furnished rooms for the time being, two steps away, at Mrs. Lippewechsel's, in the apartment of a young friend of mine, Andrei Semyonych Lebezyatnikov; it was he who directed me to Bakaleev's house . . .”

“Lebezyatnikov?” Raskolnikov said slowly, as if recalling something.

“Yes, Andrei Semyonych Lebezyatnikov, a clerk in the ministry. Do you know him perchance?”

“Yes...no . . .” Raskolnikov replied.

“Excuse me, but your question made it seem that you did. I once used to be his guardian...a very nice young man...up-to-date...I am delighted to meet young people: one learns what is new from them.” Pyotr Petrovich looked hopefully around at those present.

“In what sense do you mean?” Razumikhin asked.

“In the most serious, so to speak, in the very essence of things,” Pyotr Petrovich picked up, as if delighted to be asked. “You see, it has been ten years since I last visited Petersburg. All these new things of ours, reforms, ideas—all this has touched us in the provinces as well; but to see better, and to see everything, one must be in Petersburg. Well, sir, it is precisely my notion that one sees and learns most of all by observing our younger generations. And I confess I am delighted...”

“With what, exactly?”

“A vast question. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that I find a clearer vision, more criticism, so to speak, more practicality . . .”

“That's true,” Zossimov said through his teeth.

“Nonsense, there's no practicality,” Razumikhin seized upon him. “Practicality is acquired with effort, it doesn't fall from the sky for free. And we lost the habit of any activity about two hundred years ago...There may be some ideas wandering around,” he turned to Pyotr Petrovich, “and there is a desire for the good, albeit a childish one; even honesty can be found, though there are crooks all over the place; but still there's no practicality! Practicality is a scant item these days.”

“I cannot agree with you,” Pyotr Petrovich objected with visible pleasure. “Of course, there are passions, mistakes, but one must also make allowances: passions testify to enthusiasm for the cause, and to the wrong external situation in which the cause finds itself. And if little has in fact been done, there also has not been much time. Not to mention means. But it is my personal view, if you like, that something has been done: useful new ideas have been spread, and some useful new books, instead of the former dreamy and romantic ones; literature is acquiring a shade of greater maturity; many harmful prejudices have been eradicated and derided...In short, we have cut ourselves off irrevocably from the past, and that in itself, I think, is already something, sir . . .”

“All by rote! Recommending himself!” Raskolnikov said suddenly.

“What, sir?” asked Pyotr Petrovich, who had not caught the remark, but he received no reply.

“That is all quite correct,” Zossimov hastened to put in.

“Is it not, sir?” Pyotr Petrovich continued, glancing affably at Zossimov. “You yourself must agree,” he went on addressing Razumikhin, but now with the shade of a certain triumph and superiority, and he almost added “young man,” “that there is such a thing as prosperity or, as they now say, progress, if only in the name of science and economic truth...”

“A commonplace!”

“No, it is not a commonplace, sir! If up to now, for example, I have been told to 'love my neighbor,' and I did love him, what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovich continued, perhaps with unnecessary haste. “What came of it was that I tore my caftan in two, shared it with my neighbor, and we were both left half naked, in accordance with the Russian proverb which says: If you chase several hares at once, you won't overtake any one of them. <sup>[57]57
  The actual proverb is much terser in Russian; Luzhin bungles it, as if he were making a "literal" translation, something like, "If you throw one stone at two birds, you may not kill either of them."


[Закрыть]</sup> But science says: Love yourself before all, because everything in the world is based on self-interest. If you love only yourself, you will set your affairs up properly, and your caftan will also remain in one piece. And economic truth adds that the more properly arranged personal affairs and, so to speak, whole caftans there are in society, the firmer its foundations are and the better arranged its common cause. It follows that by acquiring solely and exclusively for myself, I am thereby precisely acquiring for everyone, as it were, and working so that my neighbor will have something more than a torn caftan, not from private, isolated generosities now, but as a result of universal prosperity. A simple thought, which unfortunately has been too long in coming, overshadowed by rapturousness and dreaminess, though it seems it would not take much wit to realize . . .” <sup>[58]58
  Luzhin's words here echo ideas of the English economist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832), which were the subject of great polemics in Russia at the time. They also contain suggestions of Chernyshevsky's theory of "rational egoism."


[Закрыть]</sup>

“Sorry, wit is what I happen to lack,” Razumikhin interrupted sharply, “so let's stop. I did have some purpose when I started talking, but all this self-gratifying chatter, this endless stream of commonplaces, and all the same, always the same, has become so sickening after three years that, by God, I blush not only to say such things, but to hear them said in my presence. Naturally, you've hastened to recommend yourself with regard to your knowledge; that is quite pardonable, and I do not condemn it. For the time being I simply wanted to find out who you were, because, you know, there are all sorts of traffickers hanging on to this common cause who in their own interest have so distorted everything they've touched that they have decidedly befouled the whole cause. And so, enough, sir!”

“My dear sir,” Mr. Luzhin began, wincing with extreme dignity, “do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I, too . . .”

“Oh, heavens, heavens...How could I! ... And so, enough, sir!” Razumikhin cut him off and turned abruptly to Zossimov, to continue their previous conversation.

Pyotr Petrovich proved intelligent enough to believe the explanation at once. But he resolved to leave in two minutes anyway.

“I hope that our acquaintance, which has presently begun,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “will, upon your recovery and in view of circumstances known to you, continue to grow...I wish especially that your health . . .”

Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr Petrovich began to get up from his chair.

“The killer was certainly one of her clients!” Zossimov was saying assertively.

“Certainly one of her clients!” Razumikhin echoed. “Porfiry doesn't give away his thoughts, but all the same he's interrogating the clients . . .”

“Interrogating the clients?” Raskolnikov asked loudly.

“Yes. What of it?”

“Nothing.”

“How does he get hold of them?” asked Zossimov.

“Koch has led him to some; the names of others were written on the paper the articles were wrapped in; and some came on their own when they heard...”

“Must be a cunning and experienced rogue! What boldness! What determination!”

“But he's not, that's precisely the point!” Razumikhin interrupted. “That's what throws you all off. I say he was not cunning, not experienced, and this was certainly his first attempt! Assume calculation and a cunning rogue, and it all looks improbable. Assume an inexperienced man, and it looks as if he escaped disaster only by chance, and chance can do all sorts of things! Good God, maybe he didn't even foresee any obstacles! And how does he go about the business? He takes things worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffs his pockets with them, rummages in a woman's trunk, among her rags—while in the chest, in the top drawer, in a strongbox, they found fifteen hundred roubles in hard cash, and notes besides! He couldn't even rob, all he could do was kill! A first attempt, I tell you, a first attempt; he lost his head! And he got away not by calculation, but by chance!”

“It seems you're referring to the recent murder of the official's old widow,” Pyotr Petrovich put in, addressing Zossimov. He was already standing, hat and gloves in hand, but wished to drop a few more clever remarks before leaving. He was obviously anxious to make a favorable impression, and vanity overcame his good sense.

“True. Have you heard about it?”

“Of course. It was in the neighborhood.”

“You know the details?”

“I cannot say that I do; but there is another circumstance in it that interests me—a whole question, so to speak. I am not even referring to the fact that crime has been increasing among the lower classes over the past five years; I am not referring to the constant robberies and fires everywhere; what is most strange to me is that crime has been increasing among the upper classes as well, and in a parallel way, so to speak. In one place they say a former student intercepted mail on the highway; in another, people of advanced social position have been counterfeiting banknotes; then, in Moscow, a whole band is caught making forged tickets for the latest lottery—and among the chief participants is a lecturer in world history; then one of our embassy secretaries is murdered abroad, for reasons mysterious and monetary.. <sup>. [59]59
  A "band" of forgers, including a university lecturer, was indeed uncovered in Moscow in 1865. At his trial, the lecturer gave explanations similar to those quoted by Razumikhin further on. The murder of the embassy secretary is also an allusion to an actual trial, mentioned in Dostoevsky's notebooks, involving a retired army lieutenant who made an attempt on the life of a Russian embassy secretary in Paris.


[Закрыть]</sup>And now, if this old pawnbroker was killed by one of her clients, it follows that he is a man of higher society—because peasants do not pawn gold objects—and what, then, explains this licentiousness, on the one hand, in the civilized part of our society?”

“There have been many economic changes . . .” Zossimov responded.

“What explains it?” Razumikhin took up. “It might be explained precisely by an all too inveterate impracticality.”

“How do you mean that, sir?”

“It's what your Moscow lecturer answered when he was asked why he forged lottery tickets: 'Everybody else is getting rich one way or another, so I wanted to get rich quickly, too.' I don't remember his exact words, but the meaning was for nothing, quickly, without effort. We're used to having everything handed to us, to pulling ourselves up by other men's bootstraps, to having our food chewed for us. Well, and when the great hour struck, everyone showed what he was made of . . .”

“But morality, after all? The rules, so to speak...”

“What are you so worried about?” Raskolnikov broke in unexpectedly. “It all went according to your theory!”

“How according to my theory?”

“Get to the consequences of what you've just been preaching, and it will turn out that one can go around putting a knife in people.”

“Good God!” cried Luzhin.

“No, that's not so,” echoed Zossimov.

Raskolnikov was lying pale on the sofa, his upper lip trembling; he was breathing heavily.

“There is measure in all things,” Luzhin continued haughtily. “An economic idea is not yet an invitation to murder, and if one simply supposes . . .”

“And is it true,” Raskolnikov again suddenly interrupted, his voice, trembling with anger, betraying a certain joy of offense, “is it true that you told your fiancée...at the same time as you received her consent, that above all you were glad she was poor...because it's best to take a wife up from destitution, so that you can lord it over her afterwards...and reproach her with having been her benefactor? . . .”

“My dear sir!” Luzhin, all flushed and confused, cried out angrily and irritably, “my dear sir...to distort a thought in such a fashion! Excuse me, but I must tell you that the rumors which have reached you, or, better, which have been conveyed to you, do not have even the shadow of a reasonable foundation, and I...suspect I know...in short...this barb...your mama, in short. . . Even without this, she seemed to me, for all her excellent qualities, incidentally, to be of a somewhat rapturous and romantic cast of mind...But all the same I was a thousand miles from supposing that she could understand and present the situation in such a perversely fantastic form...And finally...finally . . .”

“And do you know what?” Raskolnikov cried out, raising himself on his pillow and looking point-blank at him with piercing, glittering eyes, “do you know what?”

“What, sir?” Luzhin stopped and waited, with an offended and defiant air. The silence lasted a few seconds.

“Just this, that if you dare...ever again...to mention my mother...even a single word...I'll send you flying down the stairs!”

“What's got into you!” cried Razumikhin.

“Ah, so that's how it is, sir!” Luzhin became pale and bit his lip. “Listen to me, sir,” he began distinctly, restraining himself as much as he could, but still breathless, “even earlier, from the first moment, I guessed at your hostility, but I remained here on purpose to learn still more. I could forgive much in a sick man, and a relation, but now...you...never, sir . . .”

“I am not sick!” Raskolnikov cried out.

“So much the worse, sir . . .”

“Get the hell out of here!”

But Luzhin was already leaving on his own, without finishing his speech, again squeezing between the table and the chair; this time Razumikhin stood to let him pass. Without looking at anyone, without even nodding to Zossimov, who for a long time had been shaking his head at him to leave the sick man alone, Luzhin went out, cautiously raising his hat just to shoulder height and ducking a little as he stepped through the doorway. And even the curve of his back at that moment seemed expressive of the terrible insult he was bearing away with him.

“Impossible, simply impossible!” the bewildered Razumikhin said, shaking his head.

“Leave me, leave me, all of you!” Raskolnikov cried out frenziedly. “Will you tormentors never leave me! I'm not afraid of you! I'm not afraid of anyone now, not of anyone! Away from me! Alone, I want to be alone, alone, alone!”

“Come on!” said Zossimov, nodding to Razumikhin.

“Good God, can we leave him like this?”

“Come on!” Zossimov repeated insistently, and he walked out. Razumikhin thought a little and ran after him.

“It might get worse if we don't do as he says,” Zossimov said, already on the stairs. “He shouldn't be irritated . . .”

“What is it with him?”

“He needs some sort of favorable push, that's all! He was strong enough today...You know, he's got something on his mind! Something fixed, heavy...That I'm very much afraid of; most assuredly!”

“But maybe it's this gentleman, this Pyotr Petrovich! You could see from what they said that he's marrying his sister, and that Rodya got a letter about it just before his illness . . .”

“Yes; why the devil did he have to come now; he may have spoiled the whole thing. And did you notice that he's indifferent to everything, doesn't respond to anything, except for one point that drives him wild: this murder . . .”

“Yes, yes!” Razumikhin picked up, “of course I noticed it! He gets interested, frightened. He got frightened the very day of his illness, in the police chief's office; he passed out.”

“Tell me about it in more detail this evening, and then I'll tell you a thing or two. He interests me, very much so! I'll come and check on him in half an hour...There won't be any inflammation, though . . .”

“My thanks to you! And I'll wait at Pashenka's meanwhile, and keep an eye on him through Nastasya...”

Raskolnikov, after they left, looked at Nastasya with impatience and anguish; but she still lingered and would not go away.

“Will you have some tea now?” she asked.

“Later! I want to sleep! Leave me . . .”

He turned convulsively to the wall; Nastasya went out.