Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

Part Three

I

RASKOLNIKOV raised himself and sat up on the sofa. He waved weakly at Razumikhin to stop the whole stream of incoherent and ardent consolations he was addressing to his mother and sister, took both of them by the hand, and for about two minutes peered silently now at the one, now at the other. His mother was frightened by his look. A strong feeling, to the point of suffering, shone in his eyes, but at the same time there was in them something fixed, even as if mad. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

Avdotya Romanovna was pale; her hand trembled in her brother's hand.

“Go home...with him,” he said in a broken voice, pointing at Razumikhin, “till tomorrow; tomorrow everything...Did you arrive long ago?”

“In the evening, Rodya,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna answered. “The train was terribly late. But, Rodya, I won't leave you now for anything! I'll spend the night here, beside...”

“Don't torment me!” he said, waving his hand irritably.

“I'll stay with him!” cried Razumikhin. “I won't leave him for a moment; devil take all the people at my place, let them climb the walls! They've got my uncle for a president.”

“How can I ever thank you!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna tried to begin, again pressing Razumikhin's hands, but Raskolnikov interrupted her once more.

“I can't, I can't,” he kept repeating irritably, “don't torment me! Enough, go away...I can't! . . .”

“Come, mama, let's at least leave the room for a moment,” Dunya whispered, frightened. “You can see we're distressing him.”

“But can I really not even look at him after three years!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

“Wait!” he stopped them again. “You keep interrupting me, and my thoughts get confused...Have you seen Luzhin?”

“No, Rodya, but he already knows of our arrival. We have heard, Rodya, that Pyotr Petrovich was so good as to visit you today,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna added, somewhat timidly.

“Yes...was so good...Dunya, I told Luzhin I'd kick him down the stairs today, and threw him the hell out of here...”

“Rodya, what are you saying! Surely you...you don't mean . . .” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began fearfully, but stopped, looking at Dunya.

Avdotya Romanovna peered intently at her brother and waited to hear more. They had both been forewarned of the quarrel by Nastasya, as far as she had been able to understand and convey it, and had suffered in perplexity and anticipation.

“Dunya,” Raskolnikov continued with effort, “I do not want this marriage, and therefore you must refuse him tomorrow, first thing, so that he won't drag his face here again.”

“My God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Brother, think what you are saying!” Avdotya Romanovna began hot-temperedly, but at once restrained herself. “Perhaps you're in no condition now, you're tired,” she said meekly.

“Raving? No...You're marrying Luzhin for my sake. And I do not accept the sacrifice. And therefore, by tomorrow, write a letter...of refusal...Give it to me to read in the morning, and there's an end to it!”

“I cannot do that!” the offended girl cried out. “What right have you . . .”

“Dunechka, you're too hot-tempered yourself; stop now; tomorrow...Don't you see . . .” the frightened mother rushed to Dunya. “Ah, we'd better go!”

“He's raving!” the drunk Razumikhin shouted. “Otherwise how would he dare! Tomorrow all this foolishness will leave him...But he really did throw him out today. Just like he said. Well, and the other one got angry...He was playing the orator here, showing off his knowledge, and then he left with his tail between his legs . . .”

“So it's true?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna cried out.

“Until tomorrow, brother,” Dunya said with compassion. “Come, mama...Good-bye, Rodya!”

“Listen, sister,” he repeated to her back, summoning a last effort.

“I'm not raving; this marriage is a vile thing. Maybe I'm vile myself, but you mustn't... one is enough...and though I may be vile, I will not regard such a sister as a sister. It's either me or Luzhin! Go, both of you . . .”

“You're out of your mind! Despot!” Razumikhin roared, but Raskolnikov no longer answered, and was perhaps unable to answer. He lay back on the sofa and turned to the wall, completely exhausted. Avdotya Romanovna gave Razumikhin a curious look; her dark eyes flashed; Razumikhin even jumped under her glance. Pulcheria Alexandrovna stood as if stunned.

“I cannot possibly leave!” she whispered to Razumikhin, almost in despair. “I'll stay here, somewhere...Take Dunya home.”

“You'll spoil the whole thing!” Razumikhin also whispered, losing his temper. “Let's at least go out to the stairs. Nastasya, a light! I swear to you,” he continued in a half whisper, once they were on the stairs, “he almost gave us a beating earlier, the doctor and me! Do you understand? The doctor himself! And he gave in and left so as not to irritate him, and I stayed to keep watch downstairs, but he got dressed and slipped out. And he'll slip out now if you irritate him, in the dark, and do something to himself . . .”

“Ah, what are you saying!”

“Besides, it's impossible for Avdotya Romanovna to be in that place without you! Just think where you're staying! As if that scoundrel Pyotr Petrovich couldn't have found you better...You know, I'm a bit drunk, though; that's why I'm...calling names; don't pay any . . .”

“But I shall go to the landlady here,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna insisted. “I shall plead with her to give me and Dunya a corner for tonight. I cannot leave him like this, I cannot!”

They were standing on the stairway as they spoke, on the landing just outside the landlady's door. Nastasya held the light for them from the bottom step. Razumikhin was extremely agitated. Half an hour earlier, as he was taking Raskolnikov home, though he had been unnecessarily talkative and he knew it, he had felt completely alert and almost fresh, despite the terrible quantity of wine he had drunk that evening. But now his condition even bordered on a sort of ecstasy, and at the same time it was as if all the wine he had drunk came rushing to his head again, all at once, and with twice the force. He stood with the two ladies, grasping them both by the hand, persuading them and presenting his arguments with amazing frankness, and at almost every word, probably for added conviction, he painfully squeezed their hands, very tightly, as in a vise, and he seemed to devour Avdotya Romanovna with his eyes, without being the least embarrassed by it. Once or twice the pain made them try to free their hands from his huge and bony grip, but he not only did not notice the reason for it, but drew them to him even more tightly. If at that moment they had ordered him to throw himself headlong down the stairs, as a service to them, he would have carried out the order at once, without argument or hesitation. Pulcheria Alexandrovna, alarmed as she was by the thought of her Rodya, though she felt that the young man was being much too eccentric and was pressing her hand too painfully, at the same time, since he was like her Providence, did not wish to notice all these eccentric details. But Avdotya Romanovna, who shared her alarm, though far from fearful by nature, was amazed and almost frightened to meet the eyes of her brother's friend, flashing with wild fire, and only the boundless trust inspired by Nastasya's stories about this strange man held her back from the temptation of running away from him and dragging her mother with her. She also understood that now, perhaps, they even could not run away from him. However, after about ten minutes she felt considerably reassured: Razumikhin had the property of speaking the whole of himself out at once, whatever mood he was in, so that everyone soon knew with whom they were dealing. “It's impossible to go to the landlady, and it's terrible nonsense!” he cried out, reasoning with Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “You may be his mother, but if you stay, you'll drive him into a fury, and then devil knows what will happen! Listen, here's what I'll do: Nastasya will sit with him now, and I'll take you both to your place, because you can't go through the streets by yourselves; our Petersburg, in that respect... Well, spit on it! ... Then I'll run back here at once, and in a quarter of an hour, on my greatest word of honor, I'll bring you a report: how he is, whether he's sleeping, and all the rest of it. Then—listen!—then from you I'll go straight to my place—I have guests there, all drunk– I'll pick up Zossimov—that's the doctor who's treating him, he's at my place now, not drunk; no, he's not drunk, he never gets drunk! I'll drag him to Rodka, and then straight to you, so within an hour you'll get two reports on him—one from the doctor, you understand, from the doctor himself; that's a whole lot better than from me! If he's bad, I swear I'll bring you here myself; if he's well, you can go to sleep. And I'll spend the whole night here, in the entryway, he won't hear me, and I'll tell Zossimov to sleep at the landlady's, so as to be on hand. So, what's better for him now, you or the doctor? The doctor is much more useful, much more. So go home, then! And staying with the landlady's impossible; possible for me, but impossible for you—she won't let you, because...because she's a fool. She'll get jealous of Avdotya Romanovna on account of me, if you want to know, and of you as well. . . And of Avdotya Romanovna certainly. She's a totally, totally unexpected character! However, I'm a fool myself...Spit on it! Let's go! Do you believe me? Well, do you believe me or not?”

“Come, mama,” said Avdotya Romanovna, “he will surely do as he's promised. He already resurrected my brother, and if it's true that the doctor is willing to spend the night here, what could be better?”

“So you...you...you understand me, because you're an angel!” Razumikhin cried out rapturously. “Let's go! Nastasya! Upstairs this minute, and sit there by him, with a light; I'll be back in a quarter of an hour . . .”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna, though not fully convinced, no longer resisted. Razumikhin took both women by the arm and dragged them down the stairs. Nevertheless, she worried about him: “He may be efficient and kind, but is he capable of carrying out his promise? He's in such a state! . . .”

“Ah, I see you're thinking what a state I'm in!” Razumikhin interrupted her thoughts, having guessed them, and went striding along the sidewalk with his enormously long steps, so that the two ladies could barely keep up with him—which fact, however, he did not notice. “Nonsense! That is...I'm drunk as a dolt, but that's not the point; I'm drunk, but not with wine. The moment I saw you, it went to my head...But spit on me! Don't pay any attention: I'm talking nonsense; I'm unworthy of you...I'm unworthy of you in the highest degree! ... But as soon as I've taken you home, I'll come straight here to the canal, and pour two tubs of water over my head, and be ready to go...If only you knew how I love you both! ... Don't laugh, and don't be angry! ... Be angry with everyone else, but don't be angry with me! I'm his friend, so I'm your friend, too. I want it that way...I had a presentiment. . . last year, there was a certain moment... Not a presentiment at all, however, because it's as if you fell from the sky. And maybe I won't even sleep all night. . . This Zossimov was afraid today that he might lose his mind...That's why he shouldn't be irritated.”

“What are you saying!” the mother cried out.

“Did the doctor really say so himself?” Avdotya Romanovna asked, frightened.

“He did, but it's not that, not that at all. And he gave him some sort of medication, a powder, I saw it, and then you arrived...Eh! ... If only you could have come a day later! It's a good thing we left. And in an hour Zossimov himself will give you a full report. He's certainly not drunk! And I won't be drunk either... Why did I get so cockeyed? Because they dragged me into an argument, curse them! I swore I wouldn't argue! ... They pour out such hogwash! I almost got into a fight! I left my uncle there as chairman...Well, so they insist on total impersonality, can you believe it? And that's just where they find the most relish! Not to be oneself, to be least of all like oneself! And that they consider the highest progress. If only they had their own way of lying, but no, they . . .”

“Listen,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna interrupted timidly, but she only added fuel to the fire.

“What do you think?” Razumikhin shouted, raising his voice even more. “You think it's because they're lying? Nonsense! I like it when people lie! Lying is man's only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie—you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that's honorable in its way; well, but we can't even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I'll kiss you for it. Lying in one's own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else's way; in the first case you're a man, and in the second—no better than a bird! The truth won't go away, but life can be nailed shut; there are examples. Well, so where are we all now? With regard to science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aspirations, liberalism, reason, experience, and everything, everything, everything, we're all, without exception, still sitting in the first grade! We like getting by on other people's reason—we've acquired a taste for it! Right? Am I right?” Razumikhin shouted, shaking and squeezing both ladies' hands. “Am I right?”

“Oh, my God, I don't know,” said poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Yes, you're right. . . though I don't agree with you in everything,” Avdotya Romanovna added seriously, and immediately cried out, so painfully did he squeeze her hand this time.

“Right? You say I'm right? Well, then you...you . . .” he cried rapturously, “you are a wellspring of kindness, purity, reason, and...perfection! Give me your hand, give it to me...you give me yours, too; I want to kiss your hands, here and now, on my knees!”

And he knelt in the middle of the sidewalk, which at that hour was fortunately deserted.

“Stop, I beg you! What are you doing?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna cried out, extremely alarmed.

“Get up, get up!” Dunya was alarmed, too, but laughing.

“Never! Not until you give me your hands! There, and enough now! I get up, and we go! I'm a miserable dolt, I'm unworthy of you, and drunk, and ashamed... I'm not worthy to love you, but to worship you is every man's duty, unless he's a perfect brute! So, I have worshipped...Here's your rooming house—and for this alone Rodion was right to throw your Pyotr Petrovich out today! How dared he place you in such rooms? It's a scandal! Do you know who they let in here? And you're his fiancée! You are his fiancée, aren't you? Well, let me tell you in that case that your fiancé is a scoundrel!”

“Listen, Mr. Razumikhin, you are forgetting yourself...” Pulcheria Alexandrovna tried to begin.

“Yes, yes, you're right, I'm forgetting myself, shame on me!” Razumikhin suddenly checked himself. “But... but... you cannot be angry with me for speaking this way! For I'm speaking sincerely, and not because...hm! that would be base; in short, not because I'm...hm...with you...well, never mind, let's drop it, I won't tell you why, I don't dare! ... And we all realized as soon as he came in today that he was not a man of our kind. Not because he came with his hair curled by a hairdresser, not because he was in a hurry to show off his intelligence, but because he's a stool pigeon and a speculator; because he's a Jew and a mountebank, and it shows. You think he's intelligent? No, he's a fool, a fool! So, is he a match for you? Oh, my God! You see, ladies,” he suddenly stopped, already on the way up to their rooms, “they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie—because I lie, too—in the end we'll lie our way to the truth, because we're on a noble path, while Pyotr Petrovich...is not on a noble path. And though I just roundly denounced them, I do respect them all—even Zamyotov; maybe I don't respect him, but I still love him, because he's a puppy! Even that brute Zossimov, because he's honest and knows his business...but enough, all's said and forgiven. Forgiven? Is it? So, let's go. I know this corridor, I was here once; here, in number three, there was a scandal. . . Well, which is yours? What number? Eight? So, lock your door for the night and don't let anyone in. I'll be back in a quarter of an hour with news, and in another half an hour with Zossimov—you'll see! Good-bye, I'm running!”

“My God, Dunechka, what will come of this?” said Pulcheria Alexandrovna, turning anxiously and fearfully to her daughter.

“Calm yourself, mama,” Dunya answered, taking off her hat and cape, “God Himself has sent us this gentleman, though he may have come straight from some binge. We can rely on him, I assure you. And with all he's already done for my brother . . .”

“Ah, Dunechka, God knows if he'll come back! How could I bring myself to leave Rodya! And this is not at all, not at all how I imagined finding him! He was so stern, as if he weren't glad to see us . . .”

Tears came to her eyes.

“No, mama, it's not so. You didn't look closely, you kept crying. He's very upset from this great illness—that's the reason for it all.”

“Ah, this illness! What will come of it, what will come of it! And how he spoke with you, Dunya!” her mother said, peeking timidly into her daughter's eyes in order to read the whole of her thought, and already half comforted by the fact that Dunya herself was defending Rodya and had therefore forgiven him. “I'm sure he'll think better of it tomorrow,” she added, trying to worm it all out of her.

“And I am sure he'll say the same thing tomorrow...about that,” Avdotya Romanovna cut her off, and here, of course, was the snag, because this was the point which Pulcheria Alexandrovna was simply too afraid to bring up now. Dunya went over and kissed her mother.

Her mother hugged her tightly and said nothing. Then she sat down, anxiously awaiting Razumikhin's return, and began timidly to watch her daughter who, also in expectation, crossed her arms and began to pace the room back and forth, thinking to herself. Such thoughtful pacing from corner to corner was a usual habit with Avdotya Romanovna, and her mother was somehow always afraid to interrupt her thinking at such times.

Razumikhin was of course ridiculous, with the sudden, drunken flaring up of his passion for Avdotya Romanovna; but one look at Avdotya Romanovna, especially now, as she paced the room with her arms crossed, sad and thoughtful, and many would perhaps have excused him, quite apart from his eccentric state. Avdotya Romanovna was remarkably good-looking—tall, wonderfully trim, strong, self-confident, as showed in her every gesture, but without in the least detracting from the softness and grace of her movements. She resembled her brother in looks, and could even be called a beauty. Her hair was dark blond, a little lighter than her brother's; her eyes were almost black, flashing, proud, and at the same time, occasionally, for moments, remarkably kind. She was pale, but not sickly pale; her face shone with freshness and health. Her mouth was somewhat small, and her lower lip, fresh and red, protruded slightly, as did her chin—the only irregularity in this beautiful face, but which lent it a specially characteristic quality and, incidentally, a trace of arrogance. The expression of her face was always serious and thoughtful rather than gay; but how becoming was her smile, how becoming her laughter—gay, young, wholehearted! It was understandable that Razumikhin, ardent, sincere, simple, honest, strong as a folk hero, and drunk, who had never seen anything like that, lost his head at first sight. Moreover, as if by design, chance showed him Dunya for the first time in a beautiful moment of love and joy at seeing her brother. Then he noticed how her lower lip trembled indignantly in response to her brother's impertinent and ungratefully cruel orders—and lost all resistance.

He was telling the truth, however, when he let out that drunken nonsense earlier, on the stairs, about Raskolnikov's eccentric landlady, Praskovya Pavlovna, becoming jealous on his account not only of Avdotya Romanovna, but perhaps of Pulcheria Alexandrovna as well. Although Pulcheria Alexandrovna was already forty-three years old, her face still kept the remnants of its former beauty, and besides, she looked much younger than her age, as almost always happens with women who keep their clarity of spirit, the freshness of their impressions, and the honest, pure ardor of their hearts into old age. Let us say parenthetically that keeping all this is the only means of preserving one's beauty even in old age. Her hair was already thinning and starting to turn gray, little radiating wrinkles had long since appeared around her eyes, her cheeks were sunken and dry from worry and grief, and still her face was beautiful. It was a portrait of Dunechka's face, only twenty years later, and lacking the expression of the protruding lower lip. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was sentimental, though not to the point of being saccharine; she was timid and yielding, but only up to a limit: she would yield much, would agree to much, even to something that went against her convictions, but there was always a limit of honesty, principle, and ultimate conviction beyond which no circumstances could make her step.

Exactly twenty minutes after Razumikhin left, there came two soft but hurried knocks on the door; he was back.

“No time to come in!” he began hastily, when they opened the door. “He's snoring away excellently, peacefully, and God grant he sleeps for ten hours. Nastasya's with him; I told her not to leave before I get back. Now I'll go and drag Zossimov there, he'll give you a report, and then you, too, should turn in; I see you're impossibly worn out.”

And he set off again down the corridor.

“What an efficient and...devoted young man!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna exclaimed, exceedingly glad.

“He seems to be a nice person!” Avdotya Romanovna answered with some warmth, again beginning to pace the room back and forth.

Almost an hour later steps were heard in the corridor and there was another knock at the door. Both women were waiting, this time, with complete faith in Razumikhin's promise; and indeed he had managed to drag Zossimov along. Zossimov had agreed at once to leave the feast and go to have a look at Raskolnikov, but he came to the ladies reluctantly and with great mistrust, not trusting the drunken Razumikhin. Yet his vanity was immediately set at ease, and even flattered: he realized that he was indeed being awaited like an oracle. He stayed for exactly ten minutes and managed to convince Pulcheria Alexandrovna and set her at ease completely. He spoke with extraordinary sympathy, but with restraint and with a somehow eager seriousness, precisely like a twenty-seven-year-old doctor in an important consultation, not deviating from the subject by a single word or revealing the least desire to enter into more private and personal relations with the two ladies. Having noted upon entering how dazzlingly beautiful Avdotya Roma-novna was, he immediately tried not to pay her any notice during the whole time of his visit, and addressed himself to Pulcheria Alexandrovna alone. All this gave him great inner satisfaction. About the patient himself he was able to say that at the present moment he found his condition quite satisfactory. Also, from his observations, the patient's illness had, apart from the poor material circumstances of the recent months of his life, some moral causes as well, “being, so to speak, a product of many complex moral and material influences, anxieties, apprehensions, worries, certain ideas...and other things.” Having noted in passing that Avdotya Romanovna had begun to listen with special attentiveness, Zossimov expanded somewhat further on this subject. To Pulcheria Alexandrovna's anxious and timid question concerning “some supposed suspicions of madness,” he replied, with a calm and frank smile, that his words had been overly exaggerated; that, of course, some fixed idea could be observed in the patient, something suggesting monomania—since he, Zossimov, was now especially following this extremely interesting branch of medicine—but it was also to be remembered that the patient had been delirious almost up to that day, and...and, of course, the arrival of his family would strengthen, divert, and have a salutary effect upon him, “if only it is possible to avoid any special new shocks,” he added significantly. Then he got up, bowed his way out sedately and cordially, to the accompaniment of blessings, warm gratitude, entreaties, and even, without his having sought it, the offer of Avdotya Romanovna's little hand to shake, and left extremely pleased with his visit and still more with himself.

“And we'll talk tomorrow; go to bed, right now, you must!” Razumikhin clinched, following Zossimov out. “Tomorrow, as early as possible, I'll come with a report.”

“But what a ravishing girl that Avdotya Romanovna is!” Zossimov observed, all but licking his chops, as they came out to the street.

“Ravishing? Did you say ravishing!” Razumikhin bellowed, and he suddenly flew at Zossimov and seized him by the throat. “If you ever dare...Understand? Understand?” he shouted, shaking him by the collar and pushing him against the wall. “Do you hear?”

“Let go, you drunken devil!” Zossimov fought him off and, when Razumikhin finally let go, looked at him closely and suddenly burst out laughing. Razumikhin stood before him, his arms hanging down, in dark and serious thought.

“I'm an ass, of course,” he said, dark as a storm cloud, “but then...so are you.”

“No, brother, not me. I don't have such foolish dreams.”

They walked on silently, and only as they were nearing Raskolnikov's house did Razumikhin, who was greatly preoccupied, break the silence.

“Listen,” he said to Zossimov, “you're a nice fellow, but, on top of all your other bad qualities, you're also a philanderer, I know that, and a dirty one. You're a piece of nervous, weak-willed trash, you're whimsical, you've grown fat and can't deny yourself anything—and I call that dirty, because it leads straight to dirt. You've pampered yourself so much that, I confess, the thing I'm least able to understand is how with all that you can still be a good and even selfless physician. You sleep on a feather bed (you, a doctor!), yet you get up in the night for a sick man! In three years or so you won't be getting up for any sick man...But, the devil, that's not the point; the point is that you'll be spending the night in the landlady's apartment (it took a lot to convince her!), and I in the kitchen—so here's a chance for you to get more closely acquainted! It's not what you're thinking! Not a shadow of it, brother . . .”

“But I'm not thinking anything.”

“What you have here, brother, is modesty, reticence, shyness, fierce chastity, and for all that—a few sighs and she melts like wax, just melts away! Deliver me from her, in the name of all the devils in the world! She's such a winsome little thing! ... I'll earn it, I'll earn it with my head!”

Zossimov guffawed more than ever.

“Well, you've really got it bad! But what do I need her for?”

“I guarantee it won't be much trouble; just talk whatever slop you like, just sit next to her and talk. Besides, you're a doctor, you can start treating her for something. I swear you won't regret it. She has a piano there; I can strum a little, you know; there's one song I sing, a Russian song, a real one: 'I'll bathe myself in bitter tears . . .' She likes the real ones—well, so it started with a little song; but you are a piano virtuoso, a maestro, a Rubinstein <sup>[69]69
  Anton Rubinstein (1829-94), Russian composer and world-famous pianist. He founded the Petersburg Conservatory in 1859.


[Закрыть]</sup> ...I guarantee you won't regret it.”

“Why, did you give her some sort of promise? A formal receipt or something? Maybe you promised to marry...”

“Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the sort! And she's not like that at all; Chebarov tried to . . .”

“Just drop her, then!”

“But I can't just drop her like that!”

“But why can't you?”

“Well, somehow I can't, that's all! There's a sucking-in principle here, brother.”

“Then why have you been leading her on?”

“But I haven't been leading her on at all; maybe I got led on myself, in my stupidity; and for her it makes absolutely no difference whether it's you or me, as long as somebody sits next to her and sighs. Look, brother...I don't know how to phrase it for you, but look—you know a lot about mathematics, for instance, and you're still studying it, I know...so, start teaching her integral calculus– by God, I'm not joking, I'm serious, it'll be decidedly all the same to her; she'll look at you and sigh, and so on for a whole year. I, incidentally, spent a very long time, two days in a row, telling her about the Prussian House of Lords <sup>[70]70
  The upper chamber of the Prussian legislature of the time.


[Закрыть]</sup> (because otherwise what can you talk to her about?)—and she just sighed and stewed! Only don't start talking about love—she's shy to the point of convulsions—but still make it look as if you can't leave her side—and that's enough. It's terribly comfortable, just like home—read, sit, lie down, write...You can even kiss her, if you do it carefully...”

“But what do I need her for?”

“Eh, really, I can't seem to explain it to you! You see, the two of you suit each other perfectly! I even thought about you before...You'll end up with it anyway! Do you care whether it's sooner or later? Here, brother, there's this feather-bed principle—eh, and not only a feather-bed principle! It sucks you in, it's the end of the world, an anchor, a quirt haven, the navel of the earth, the three-fish foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, rich meat pies, evening samovars, soft sighs and warm vests, heated beds on the stove—well, just as if you died and were alive at the same time, both benefits at once! Well, the devil, brother, I've talked enough rot, it's time for bed! Listen, I sometimes wake up at night, so I'll go and look in on him. Only it's nothing, nonsense, everything's fine. You needn't worry especially, but if you want, you can look in once. But if you notice anything, delirium, for instance, or a fever, or whatever, wake me up immediately. It's not possible, though . . .”