Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"
Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 40 (всего у книги 44 страниц)
He went up to Dunya and gently put his arm around her waist. She did not resist but, all trembling like a leaf, looked at him with imploring eyes. He wanted to say something, his lips twisted, but he was unable to speak.
“Let me go!” Dunya said imploringly. [150]150
Here they both begin to speak in the second person singular, through "ever?"
[Закрыть]
Svidrigailov started; this let mewas spoken somehow differently from the previous one.
“So you don't love me?” he asked softly.
Dunya moved her head negatively.
“And...you can't...ever?” he whispered in despair.
“Never!” whispered Dunya.
A moment of terrible, mute struggle passed in Svidrigailov's soul. He looked at her with an inexpressible look. Suddenly he withdrew his arm, turned away, walked quickly to the window, and stood in front of it.
Another moment passed.
“Here's the key!” (He took it from the left pocket of his coat and placed it on the table behind him, without looking and without turning to Dunya.) “Take it; go quickly! . . .”
He went on staring out the window.
Dunya approached the table to take the key.
“Quickly! Quickly!” Svidrigailov repeated, still without moving and without turning around. But in this “quickly” some terrible note must have sounded.
Dunya understood it, seized the key, rushed to the door, quickly unlocked it, and burst out of the room. A moment later, beside herself, she rushed madly to the canal and ran in the direction of the –y Bridge.
Svidrigailov stood by the window for about three minutes; at last, he quietly turned, looked around, and slowly passed his hand over his forehead. A strange smile twisted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of despair. Blood, already drying, stained his palm; he looked at the blood spitefully; then he wet a towel and washed his temple. The revolver Dunya had thrown aside, which had landed near the door, suddenly caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a small pocket revolver with a three-shot cylinder, of old-fashioned construction; there were two loads and one cap left. It could be fired one more time. He thought a moment, put the revolver into his pocket, took his hat, and went out.
VI
All that evening until ten o'clock he spent in various taverns and cesspools, passing from one to the other. Somewhere he came across Katya, who sang another lackey song about some “scoundrel and tyrant” who “Began kissing Katya.”
Svidrigailov bought drinks for Katya, and the organ-grinder, and the singers, and the lackeys, and two wretched little scriveners. He took up with these scriveners, in fact, because they both had crooked noses: one was crooked to the right, the other to the left. This struck Svidrigailov. They drew him finally to some pleasure garden, where he paid for them and for the entrance. In this garden were one spindly, three-year-old fir tree and three little bushes. Besides that, a “Vauxhall” had also been built, actually a bar, but one could also get tea there; and a few green tables and chairs were standing around. [151]151
The original Vauxhall was a seventeenth-century pleasure garden in London. Here the term refers to an outdoor space for concerts and entertainment, with a tea-house, tables, and so on. Russian borrowed the word from English; evidently vauxhalls were a new thing in the 1860s.
[Закрыть] A chorus of bad singers and some drunken German from Munich, like a clown with a red nose, but for some reason extremely downcast, were entertaining the public. The little scriveners quarreled with some other little scriveners and started a fight. They chose Svidrigailov as their arbiter. He arbitrated between them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so much that there was not the slightest possibility of making anything out. In all likelihood one of them had stolen something and even managed to sell it at once to some Jew who happened to be there; but, having sold it, he did not want to share the proceeds with his friend. In the end the stolen object turned out to be a teaspoon belonging to the vauxhall. It was found missing from the vauxhall, and the affair began to take on troublesome dimensions. Svidrigailov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of the garden. It was around ten o'clock. He himself had not drunk a drop of wine the whole time, but had only ordered some tea in the vauxhall, and even that more for propriety's sake. Meanwhile the evening was close and lowering. By ten o'clock terrible clouds had approached from all sides; thunder rolled, and rain poured down like a waterfall. It did not come in drops, but lashed the ground in steady streams. Lightning flashed every moment, and one could count to five in the course of each flash. Drenched to the skin, he arrived home, locked himself in, opened his bureau, took out all his money, and tore up two or three papers. Then, having thrust the money into his pocket, he thought of changing his clothes, but looking out the window and hearing the thunder and rain, he waved his hand, took his hat, and walked out without locking his apartment. He went straight to Sonya. She was at home.
She was not alone; with her were Kapernaumov's four little children. Sofya Semyonovna was giving them tea. She met Svidrigailov silently and respectfully, looked with surprise at his wet clothes, but did not say a word. The children all ran away at once in indescribable terror.
Svidrigailov sat at the table and asked Sonya to sit near him. She timidly prepared to listen.
“Sofya Semyonovna,” Svidrigailov said, “I shall perhaps be leaving for America, and as we are probably seeing each other for the last time, I have come to make certain arrangements. So, you saw that lady today? I know what she said to you; you needn't repeat it.” (Sonya stirred and blushed.) “Those people have their ways. As far as your sisters and brother are concerned, they are indeed provided for, and the money due them I have placed where it ought to be, in sure hands, with a receipt for each of them. But you had better take the receipts, just in case. Here, take them! Well, now that's done. Here are three five-percent notes, for three thousand altogether. Take them for yourself, for yourself personally, and let it be between us, so that no one knows, no matter what you may hear. And you'll need them, because, Sofya Semyonovna, to live like this, as you have been, is bad, and it's no longer necessary.”
“You have been such a benefactor to me, sir, and the orphans, and the dead woman,” Sonya rushed on, “that if I have so far thanked you so little, you mustn't take it . . .”
“Eh, enough, enough.”
“And this money, Arkady Ivanovich, I'm very grateful to you, but I have no need of it now. I can always earn enough for myself; you mustn't take it as ingratitude: if you're so charitable, sir, this money...”
“It's for you, for you, Sofya Semyonovna, and, please, with no special words on the subject, because I really haven't time. And you will need it. There are two ways open for Rodion Romanovich: a bullet in the head, or Siberia.” (Sonya looked wildly at him and trembled.) “Don't worry, I know everything, from him, and I'm not a babbler, I won't tell anyone. You did well to advise him that he should go and denounce himself. It would be much more advantageous for him. Now, what if it's Siberia—he'll go, and you'll follow him, is that so? Is it so? Well, and if it's so, then you'll need money. You'll need it for him, understand? In giving it to you, it's as if I were giving it to him. Besides, you did promise Amalia Ivanovna that you would pay her the debt; I heard you. Why do you so rashly take such contracts and obligations upon yourself, Sofya Semyonovna? It was Katerina Ivanovna who was left owing to the German woman, not you; so just spit on the German woman. You can't survive in the world that way. Now, if anyone ever asks you—tomorrow, say, or the day after tomorrow—about me, or anything concerning me (and they will ask you), don't mention that I came to you, and by no means show them the money or tell anyone that I gave it to you. Well, now good-bye.” (He got up from his chair.) “Bow to Rodion Romanych for me. By the way, for the time being why don't you keep the money with, say, Mr. Razumikhin? Do you know Mr. Razumikhin? Of course you do. A so-so fellow. Take it to him tomorrow, or...when the time comes. And until then hide it well away.”
Sonya had also jumped up from her chair and was looking at him in fear. She wanted very much to say something, to ask something, but in those first moments she did not dare or know how to begin.
“But how can you...how can you go now, sir, in such rain?”
“What? To go off to America and be afraid of rain? Heh, heh! Farewell, my good Sofya Semyonovna! Live, and live long, you'll be needed by others. Incidentally...tell Mr. Razumikhin that I bow to him. Tell him just that: Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov bows to you. Do it without fail.”
He went out, leaving Sonya in amazement, in fear, and in some vague and somber apprehension.
It later turned out that on that same evening, after eleven o'clock, he paid yet another quite eccentric and unexpected visit. It had still not stopped raining. Soaking wet, at twenty minutes past eleven, he walked into the small apartment of his fiancee's parents on Vasilievsky Island, at the corner of the Third Line and Maly Prospect. He had difficulty getting them to open, and at first produced a great commotion; but Arkady Ivanovich, when he chose, could be a man of quite beguiling manners, so that the original (and, incidentally, quite shrewd) surmise of the fiancee's sensible parents—that Arkady Ivanovich was most likely so cockeyed drunk that he no longer knew what he was doing—immediately collapsed of itself. The paralyzed parent was rolled out in his chair to meet Arkady Ivanovich by the fiancee's tenderhearted and sensible mother, who, as was her custom, began at once with certain roundabout questions. (This woman never asked direct questions, but always resorted first to smiles and the rubbing of hands, and then, if she wanted to find out something certainly and accurately, such as when Arkady Ivanovich would be pleased to have the wedding take place, she would begin with the most curious and even greedy questions about Paris and court life there, and only later come around in due course to the Third Line on Vasilievsky Island.) At some other time all this would, of course, have inspired great respect, but on this occasion Arkady Ivanovich turned out to be somehow especially impatient and flatly demanded to see his fiancée, though he had been informed at the very beginning that the fiancée had already gone to bed. Naturally, the fiancée appeared. Arkady Ivanovich told her directly that because of a certain rather important circumstance he was obliged to leave Petersburg for some time, and therefore he had brought her various bank notes worth fifteen thousand roubles in silver, which he asked her to accept from him as a gift, since he had been intending for a long time to give her this trifle before the wedding. Of course, these explanations by no means revealed any logical connection between the gift and his urgent departure, or the unavoidable necessity of coming for that purpose at midnight, in the rain, but the thing nevertheless came off quite neatly. Even the requisite ohs and ahs, questions and exclamations, suddenly became somehow remarkably moderate and restrained; to make up for which, the most ardent gratitude was shown, and was even reinforced by tears from the most sensible mother. Arkady Ivanovich stood up, laughed, kissed the fiancee, patted her on the cheek, repeated that he would be coming back soon, and, noticing in her eyes not only a child's curiosity but also some mute and very serious question, he thought for a moment, kissed her a second time, and sincerely regretted in his soul that the gift would immediately be taken and locked up by the most sensible of mothers. He walked out, leaving everyone in an extremely excited state. But the tenderhearted mama at once, in a half-whispered patter, resolved some of the more important perplexities, saying that Arkady Ivanovich was a big man, a man with affairs and connections, and a very rich one—God knew what was in his head, he chose to go away and so he went, he chose to give money and so he gave it, and therefore there was nothing to marvel at. Of course, it was strange that he was all wet, but Englishmen, for example, are even more eccentric, and such high-toned people never pay attention to what is said about them, and never stand on ceremony. Maybe he went around like that on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anybody. And the main thing was not to say a word about it to anyone, because God knew what might still come of it, and the money should be locked up quickly, and most certainly the best thing in all this was that Fedosya had stayed in the kitchen the whole time, and the main thing was that they should by no means, by no means, by no means ever say anything to that cunning old fox Resslich, and so on and so forth. They sat and whispered until two o'clock. The fiancée, however, went to bed much earlier, surprised and a little sad.
And meanwhile, at midnight precisely, Svidrigailov was crossing the –kov Bridge in the direction of the Petersburg side. The rain had stopped, but the wind was blowing. He was beginning to shiver, and for a moment he looked down at the black water of the Little Neva with some special curiosity, and even questioningly. But soon he felt it was much too cold for him to be standing there over the water; he turned away and went on to the –y Prospect. He had been walking down the endless –y Prospect for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling on the wooden pavement in the dark, but without ceasing to look curiously for something on the right side of the prospect. Driving by recently, he had noticed somewhere there, towards the end of the prospect, a hotel, wooden but spacious, and its name, as far as he could remember, was something like “The Adrianople.” He was not mistaken in his reckoning: in such a backwater, the hotel was such a conspicuous point that one could not possibly fail to find it, even in the dark. It was a long, blackened, wooden building, in which, despite the late hour, lights were still burning and a certain animation could be noticed. He went in and asked the ragamuffin he met in the corridor for a room. The ragamuffin, looking Svidrigailov over, roused himself and at once led him to a remote room, stuffy and small, somewhere at the very end of the corridor, in a corner, under the stairs. But it was the only room; all the others were occupied. The ragamuffin had a questioning look.
“Is there tea?” Svidrigailov asked.
“It's possible, sir.”
“What else is there?”
“Veal, sir, vodka, hors d'oeuvres.”
“Bring some veal and tea.”
“And you won't require anything else?” the ragamuffin asked, even in some perplexity.
“Nothing, nothing.”
The ragamuffin withdrew, thoroughly disappointed.
“Must be a nice place,” Svidrigailov thought, “why didn't I know about it? I, too, probably look like someone coming back from a café-chantant,and who already got into something on the way. Curious, however; who would stay and spend the night here?”
He lighted the candle and looked the room over in more detail. It was a closet, such a small one that Svidrigailov could barely fit into it, with a single window; a very dirty bed, a simple painted table, and a chair took up almost all the space. The walls looked as though they had been knocked together from boards, and the shabby wallpaper was so dusty and tattered that, while it was still possible to guess its color (yellow), the pattern was no longer discernible. A portion of the wall and ceiling was cut away at an angle, as is usual in garrets, but here there was a stairway above it. Svidrigailov put down the candle, sat on the bed, and lapsed into thought. But a strange, incessant whispering in the next closet, which sometimes rose almost to a shout, suddenly drew his attention. This whispering had not ceased from the moment he entered. He began to listen: someone was scolding and almost tearfully reproaching someone else, but only one voice could be heard. Svidrigailov stood up, shaded the candle with his hand, and at once a crack flashed in the wall; he went up and began to look through it.
There were two guests, in a room somewhat larger than his own. One of them, coatless, with extremely curly hair and a red, inflamed face, was standing in the pose of an orator, legs apart to keep his balance, and, beating his breast with his fist, in a voice full of pathos, was reproaching the other with being a beggar and even having no rank, claiming that he had dragged him from the mud and could throw him out whenever he wanted, and that only the finger of God sees it all. The reproached friend sat on a chair looking like someone who has a great desire to sneeze but cannot manage to do it. From time to time he glanced at the orator with dull and bovine eyes, but evidently had no idea what it was all about, and most likely had not even heard any of it. On the table, where a candle was burning down, stood an almost empty carafe of vodka, wineglasses, bread, tumblers, pickles, and the dishes from a long-since-finished tea. Having examined this picture attentively, Svidrigailov left the crack with indifference and again sat down on the bed.
The ragamuffin, who came back with the tea and veal, could not refrain from asking once more: “Will anything else be required?” and having again heard a negative reply, withdrew for good. Svidrigailov fell upon the tea to warm himself, and drank a whole glassful, but could not eat even a single bite for total loss of appetite. He was apparently beginning to have a fever. He took off his coat and jacket, wrapped himself in a blanket, and lay on the bed. This was annoying: “It would be better to be well at such a moment,” he thought, and grinned. The room was stuffy, the candlelight was dim, the noise of the wind came from outside, a mouse was scratching somewhere in a corner, and the whole room seemed to smell of mice and something leathery. He lay as if dreaming: one thought gave way to another. It seemed he would have liked very much to catch hold of at least something particular in his imagination. “It's outside the window, must be some garden,” he thought, “trees rustling; how I dislike the rustling of trees at night, in a storm, in the darkness—a nasty feeling!” And he remembered that as he was passing by the Petrovsky Park earlier he had even thought of it with loathing. Here he incidentally remembered the –kov Bridge as well, and the Little Neva, and again he seemed to feel cold, as he had then when he was standing over the water. “Never in my life have I liked water, not even in landscapes,” he thought again, and again suddenly grinned at a certain strange thought: “Well, it seems it ought to be all the same now, with regard to all this aesthetics and comfort, but it's precisely now that I've become particular, the way an animal makes sure to choose a place for itself... on a similar occasion. I ought precisely to have turned in at the Petrovsky Park earlier! It must have seemed dark and cold, heh, heh! One all but requires pleasant sensations! ... By the way, why don't I put out the candle?” (He blew it out.) “The neighbors have gone to bed,” he thought, seeing no light from the crack. “Well, Marfa Petrovna, why don't you come now, if you like? It's dark, and the place is suitable, and the moment is an original one. But it's precisely now that you won't come . . .”
Suddenly, for some reason, he remembered how earlier, an hour before carrying out his designs on Dunechka, he had recommended that Raskolnikov entrust her to Razumikhin's protection. “In fact, perhaps I said it more to egg myself on, as Raskolnikov guessed. What a rogue this Raskolnikov is, however! He's taken a lot on himself. Might become a big rogue in time, when the nonsense gets out of him, but now he wants too muchto live! On that point these people are scoundrels. Well, devil take him, he can do what he likes, it's nothing to me.”
He still could not fall asleep. Little by little today's image of Dunechka began to emerge before him, and a sudden trembling ran down his body. “No, that has to be dropped now,” he thought, coming to himself, “I have to think of something else. How strange and funny: I've never had a great hatred for anyone, never even wished especially to revenge myself on anyone—it's a bad sign, a bad sign! I didn't like arguing either, and never got into a temper—also a bad sign! And look at all I promised her today—pah, the devil! And she might really have ground me up somehow . . .” He again fell silent and clenched his teeth: again Dunechka's image appeared before him exactly as she had been when, after firing the first time, terribly frightened, she lowered the revolver and looked at him numbly, so that he could have seized her twice over, and she would not have raised a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He remembered it was just as if he had felt sorry for her at that moment, as if his heart had been wrung...”Eh, devil take it! These thoughts again! It all has to be dropped, dropped! . . .”
He was beginning to doze off; the feverish trembling was going away; suddenly something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the blanket. He jumped: “Pah, the devil, a mouse no less!” he thought. “It's the veal I left on the table . . .” He was terribly reluctant to uncover himself, get out of bed, freeze; but suddenly something again scurried unpleasantly over his leg; he tore the blanket off and lighted the candle. Trembling 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 rushed to catch it; but the mouse, refusing to get off the bed, flashed zigzagging in all directions, slipped from under his fingers, ran across his hand, and suddenly darted under the pillow; he threw the pillow aside, but instantly felt something jump onto his chest, scurry over his body, and down his back under his shirt. He shuddered nervously, and woke up. The room was dark, he was lying in bed wrapped up in the blanket as before, the wind was howling outside the window. “What nastiness!” he thought vexedly.
He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, his back to the window. “Better not to sleep at all,” he decided. From the window, however, there came a cold, damp draft; without getting up, he pulled the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He did not light the candle. He was not thinking of anything, and did not want to think; but reveries rose one after another, fragments of thoughts with no beginning, no end, no connection. As if he were falling into a half slumber. Perhaps it was the cold, or the darkness, or the dampness, or the wind howling outside the window and swaying the trees, that called up in him some stubborn, fantastic inclination and desire—but he began to picture flowers. He imagined a lovely landscape; a bright, warm, almost hot day, a feast-day, the day of the Trinity. [152]152
In the Orthodox Church, the Sunday of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter.
[Закрыть] A rich, luxurious country cottage in the English style, all sunk in fragrant flowerbeds, with rows surrounding the entire house; the porch, entwined with climbing plants, filled with banks of roses; a bright, cool stairway, laid with sumptuous carpet, adorned with rare flowers in Chinese jars. He noticed especially the bouquets of white and tender narcissus, in jars of water on the windowsills, bending on long, bright green, fleshy stems, with their heavy, sweet scent. He was even reluctant to leave them; but he went up the stairs and entered a large, high-ceilinged room, and here again, at the windows, by the doors opening to the terrace, on the terrace itself, everywhere there were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly cut, fragrant grass, the windows were open, fresh, light, cool air penetrated the room, birds chirped outside the windows, and in the middle of the room, on tables covered with white satin cloths, stood a coffin. The coffin was lined with white gros de Naples silk and abundantly trimmed with white ruche. Garlands of flowers twined it on all sides. All in flowers, a girl was lying in it, in a white lace dress, her hands, as if carved from marble, folded and pressed to her breast. But her loose hair, hair of a light blond color, was wet; it was twined with a wreath of roses. The stern and already stiff profile of her face also seemed carved from marble, but the smile on her pale lips was full of some unchildlike, boundless grief and great complaint. Svidrigailov knew the girl: no icons, no lighted candles stood by the coffin, no prayers were heard. The girl was a suicide—by drowning. [153]153
The Church does not grant suicides Christian burial or offer prayers for them.
[Закрыть] She was only fourteen, but hers was already a broken heart, and it destroyed itself, insulted by an offense that had horrified and astonished this young child's consciousness, that had covered her angelically pure soul with undeserved shame, and torn from her a last cry of despair, not heeded but insolently defiled in the black night, in the darkness, in the cold, in the damp thaw, while the wind was howling . . .
Svidrigailov came to his senses, got up from the bed, and stepped to the window. He fumbled for the latch and opened it. Wind swept furiously into his small closet and coated as if with hoarfrost his face and chest, covered only by a shirt. There must indeed have been something like a garden outside the window, and it, too, seemed to be a pleasure garden; probably singers would be singing there in the daytime, and tea would be served at the tables. But now drops came flying in the window from the trees and bushes, and it was dark as a cellar, so that one could just barely distinguish certain darker spots, signifying objects. Bending down and leaning his elbows on the windowsill, for all of five minutes Svidrigailov stared into the darkness without tearing himself away. From the blackness and the night a cannon shot resounded, then another.
“Ah, the signal! The water's rising,” he thought. [154]154
Cannon shots fired from the Petropavlovsky Fortress in Petersburg served as a flood warning; they also signaled such events as the spring thaw, military victories, fires, or the birth of a son to the imperial household.
[Закрыть] “Towards morning it will flood all the lower places, the streets; it will pour into the basements and cellars, the cellar rats will float up, and amid rain and wind people, cursing and drenched, will begin transferring their stuff to the upper floors...I wonder what time it is now?” And as soon as he thought of it, somewhere nearby, ticking and as if hurrying as fast as it could, a wall clock struck three. “Aha! It will be daybreak in an hour! What's the use of waiting? I'll leave now, go straight to the Petrovsky: somewhere there I'll choose a big bush doused all over with rain, so that if you barely touch it with your shoulder, millions of drops will shower down on your head...” He withdrew from the window, locked it, lighted the candle, pulled on his waistcoat and overcoat, put his hat on, and went out to the corridor with his candle to hunt up the ragamuffin, asleep somewhere in a closet amid some junk and candle-ends, pay him for the room, and leave the hotel. “The best moment; one even couldn't pick a better one!”
He spent much time walking through the long, narrow corridor without finding anyone, and was just about to call out when suddenly, in a dark corner, between an old wardrobe and a door, he made out some strange object, something as if alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a child—a girl of about five, not more, in a wretched little dress soaked through like a dishrag, who was shivering and crying. She seemed not to be afraid of Svidrigailov, but looked at him in dull astonishment with her big, black eyes, sobbing now and then, as children do who have been crying for a long time, but have now stopped and are even comforted, and yet every once in a while suddenly sob. The girl's little face was pale and exhausted; she was stiff with cold, but “how did she get here? She must have hidden herself here and not slept all night.” He began questioning her. The girl suddenly came to life and began prattling something to him very, very quickly in her child's language. There was something in it about “mommy” and that “mommy was gonna beat her,” about some cup she had “bwoken.” The girl talked nonstop. It was possible to make out haphazardly from all she said that she was an unloved child, beaten down and terrorized by her mother, some eternally drunken cook, probably from this same hotel; that the girl had broken her mama's cup, and was so afraid that she ran away earlier in the evening; she must have hidden for a long time somewhere in the yard, in the rain, and finally crept in here, hidden behind the wardrobe, and stayed in this corner all night, crying, shivering from the damp, the darkness, and the fear that for all this she would now be beaten badly. He picked her up in his arms, went to his room, sat her on his bed, and began to undress her. The torn little shoes on her bare feet were as wet as if they had lain all night in a puddle. After undressing her, he placed her on the bed, covered her, and wrapped her up completely, head and all, in the blanket. She fell asleep at once. Having done all this, he again lapsed into sullen thought.
“The idea of getting involved!” he suddenly decided, with a heavy and spiteful feeling. “What nonsense!” Annoyed, he picked up the candle, so as to go and find the ragamuffin at all costs and quickly leave the place. “Eh, this girl!” he thought with a curse, already opening the door, but he went back once more to see if she was asleep and how she was sleeping. He carefully lifted the blanket. The little girl was soundly and blissfully asleep. She had warmed up under the blanket, and color had already spread over her pale cheeks. But, strangely, this color appeared brighter and deeper than a child's red cheeks would ordinarily be. “It's the flush of fever,” Svidrigailov thought; it was just like the flush from wine, as if she had been given a whole glass to drink. Her scarlet lips were as if burning, aflame—but what is this? It suddenly seems to him as if her long black eyelashes are fluttering and blinking, as if they are opening, and a coy, sharp eye, winking somehow in an unchildlike way, is peeping out from under them, as if the girl is not asleep but pretending. Yes, so it is: her lips are expanding into a smile, the corners of her mouth are quivering, as if she were still restraining herself. But now she has lost all restraint; now it is laughter, obvious laughter; something insolent, defiant, shines in this completely unchildlike face; it is depravity, it is the face of a scarlet woman, the insolent face of a woman for sale, of the French sort. Now, without hiding it at all, both eyes open: they look him over with a fiery and shameless glance, they beckon to him, they laugh...There is something infinitely hideous and insulting in this laughter, in these eyes, in all this vileness in the face of a child. “What! A five-year-old!” Svidrigailov whispered in genuine horror. “This...what is this?” But by now she has fully turned her whole burning face to him, she reaches her arms out...”Ah, cursed one!” Svidrigailov cried out in horror, raising his hand over her...But at that moment he woke up.
