Crime and Punishment (11 page)

While looking for the bench, he noticed a woman walking twenty steps ahead of him, but at first he paid her no more heed than any of the other objects flitting before his eyes. It had occurred to him many times already to walk home, say, and have not the faintest memory of the route he had taken, and he was already used to walking like this. But there was something so very strange about the woman, something which immediately leapt out at him, that little by little she began to compel his attention – against his will at first, almost as a nuisance, but then with increasing force. He was seized by a sudden urge to understand what it was about her that was so very strange. For one thing, there she was – to all appearances, a very young girl – walking bare-headed in the sultry heat, without a parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in a somehow comical manner. She wore an airy silk dress and this, too, looked very odd, being barely fastened and with a
rip by the waist at the back, at the very top of the skirt; a large scrap hung down, dangling behind her. A small shawl had been thrown round her bare neck, but it stuck out crookedly to one side. To top it all, the girl was unsteady on her feet, stumbling – even staggering – this way and that. This encounter eventually claimed Raskolnikov's full attention. He drew up with the girl right by the bench, but she collapsed at one end of it as soon as she got there, rested her head on the back of the bench and shut her eyes, as if she were utterly exhausted. On closer inspection, he immediately realized that she was dead drunk. To observe such a scene felt strange, bizarre. He even wondered if he were mistaken. Before him was the extremely young face of a girl of sixteen or perhaps only fifteen – a small, blonde, pretty enough face, but all flushed and swollen-looking. The girl no longer seemed capable of understanding much; she had one leg crossed over the other, baring far more than was proper, and clearly had very little idea that she was out in the street.

Raskolnikov didn't sit down and didn't wish to leave, so he stood before her in bewilderment. This boulevard is rarely busy, but now, between one and two o'clock on such a sultry day, there was almost no one. And yet over there, a dozen paces away, on the far side of the boulevard, a man had stopped and everything about him indicated that he, too, was very keen to approach the girl for reasons of his own. He, too, must have spotted her from a distance and wanted to catch up with her, but Raskolnikov had got in his way. He kept throwing him angry glances, while trying not to let him notice, and was impatiently waiting for this annoying tramp to clear off. The situation was perfectly clear. The gentleman was about thirty years old, thick-set, fat, a picture of health, with pink lips and a moustache, and very foppishly dressed. Raskolnikov saw red: he had a sudden urge to insult this fat dandy in any way he could. He left the girl for a moment and walked up to the gentleman.

‘Hey you, Svidrigailov!
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What're you after?' he shouted, clenching his fists and laughing through lips foaming with anger.

‘What is the meaning of this?' the gentleman asked sternly, knitting his brows in supercilious surprise.

‘Clear off, that's what I mean!'

‘How dare you, you little wretch!'

With this, he flashed his whip. Raskolnikov threw himself on him, fists flailing, without even considering that the thick-set gentleman
might respond with two fists of his own. But at that very moment somebody grabbed him firmly from behind: a police officer had come between them.

‘That'll do, gentlemen. Have the good manners not to fight in public. What are you after? Who are you anyway?' he asked Raskolnikov sternly, after noticing the state of his clothes.

Raskolnikov looked at him attentively. Before him was a gallant soldier's face with a grey moustache, grey whiskers and an intelligent gaze.

‘It's you I'm after!' he exclaimed, grabbing him by the hand. ‘I'm a former student, Raskolnikov . . . You may as well know that, too,' he added, turning to the gentleman, ‘and you, come along with me, I've something to show you . . .'

He dragged the policeman over to the bench.

‘Just look at her – dead drunk. Just now she was walking down the boulevard: who knows what kind of family she's from, but it doesn't look like she's on the game. Much more likely that she was plied with drink somewhere and tricked . . . her first time . . . understand? And then just thrown out on the street. Look at the rip in her dress and look how it hangs on her: she can't have dressed herself. She was dressed, and clumsily so – a man's work. That's obvious. And now look over here: this dandy, who I was picking a fight with just now, is a complete stranger to me – I've never seen him before; but he also spotted her, drunk and insensible, as he was passing just now, and now he desperately wants to go up and grab her – seeing as she's in such a state – and take her off somewhere . . . I'm sure of it. Trust me. I could see myself that he was observing and following her, but I got in his way and now he's just waiting for me to leave. He's moved off a little; look at him standing there, pretending to roll a papirosa . . . How can we stop him? How can we get her home? Think of something!'

The policeman grasped the situation at once. The fat gentleman was no mystery, of course, but the girl? The officer leant over to take a better look, and sincere compassion was etched on his face.

‘A crying shame!' he said, shaking his head. ‘All but a child. Tricked, and no two ways about it. Listen, miss,' he addressed her, ‘may I ask where you live?' The girl opened her tired, dazed eyes, looked dully at her interrogators and waved them away.

‘Here,' said Raskolnikov, rummaging about in his pocket and
eventually fishing out twenty copecks. ‘Here, hail a cab, and give the driver her address. The address, that's all we need to know!'

‘Well, miss?' the policeman began again, taking the money. ‘I'm going to hail you a cab and I'll accompany you myself. Where should we take you? Eh? Where do you reside?'

‘Push off! . . . Pests!' the girl muttered, waving them away again.

‘Dear oh dear! A shameful business, miss, a shameful business!' He shook his head again, in shame, pity and indignation. ‘A fine pickle!' he added, turning to Raskolnikov, before looking him up and down once more. He, too, must have looked odd to him: in rags like those and handing out money!

‘Did you find the young lady far from here?' he asked him.

‘As I said: she was walking ahead of me, staggering, right here on the boulevard. She collapsed just as soon as she reached the bench.'

‘Lord, what a world we're living in! An ordinary lass like her and already drunk! Tricked, and no two ways about it! Look, even her dress is ripped . . . Depravity, wherever you look! . . . Wouldn't surprise me if she's of gentry blood, the poorer kind . . . They're ten to a dozen nowadays. Looks a delicate sort, just like a gentry girl,' and he leant over her once more.

Perhaps he had daughters of his own who were also growing up ‘just like gentry girls, delicate sorts', with all the airs of good breeding and second-hand fashion . . .

‘The main thing,' Raskolnikov fussed, ‘is to stop this scoundrel having his way with her! Are we going to let him abuse her as well? It's blindingly obvious what he's after; and look, he's still there!'

Raskolnikov was speaking loudly and pointing straight at him. The other man heard him and was on the point of losing his temper again, but thought better of it and restricted himself to a contemptuous glance. Then he slowly retreated a further ten paces or so and halted once more.

‘We can stop him all right, sir,' replied the officer, thinking it over. ‘If only the young lady can tell us where to take her . . . Eh, miss? Miss?' Again he leant over.

She suddenly opened her eyes wide, took a good hard look, as though she had finally understood something, got up from the bench and headed off in the direction from which she'd come.

‘Shameless . . . pests!' she said with another flap of her arms. She
walked off briskly, though staggering just as much as before. The dandy followed her, but along another alley, never taking his eyes off her.

‘I'll stop him, don't you worry,' said the policeman decisively, and set off after them. ‘Dear, dear – depravity, wherever you look!' he repeated with a sigh.

At that very moment Raskolnikov felt as if he'd been stung; as if, in a flash, he'd been turned inside out.

‘Hey, listen!' he shouted to the man with the moustache.

The policeman turned around.

‘Forget about it! What's it to you? Just drop it! Let him have his fun.' (He pointed at the dandy.) ‘What's it to you, I say?'

The policeman failed to understand and stared at him wide-eyed. Raskolnikov burst out laughing.

‘Good grief!' the policeman uttered with a dismissive wave of the hand, then headed off after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a madman or worse.

‘He's taken my twenty copecks,' Raskolnikov, left on his own, muttered angrily. ‘Well, he can take some off that man as well, leave him the girl and end of story . . . What on earth was I doing, offering to help? Me – helping? Do I even have the right? They can eat each other alive – what's it to me? And how dare I give those twenty copecks away? Were they really mine?'

Despite these strange words, he felt quite wretched. He sat down on the abandoned bench. His thoughts were in disarray . . . In fact, at that moment it was hard for him to think about anything at all. Total oblivion was what he wanted: to forget everything, then wake up and begin afresh . . .

‘Poor girl!' he said, glancing at the empty corner of the bench. ‘She'll come round, have a cry, then her mother will find out . . . First she'll beat her a bit, then she'll whip her, hurting her and shaming her, then she might even throw her out . . . And even if she doesn't, some Darya Frantsevna or other will sniff her out, and my girl will start doing the rounds . . . Then it's straight off to hospital (that's always the way with girls who live with very honest mothers and misbehave on the quiet) and then . . . well . . . back to hospital . . . booze . . . the pothouse . . . the hospital again . . . and within two or three years you've got yourself a cripple, her whole life over at the age of nineteen or less . . . Haven't I seen girls like that? And how did they get there?
That's how they got there, all of them . . . Pah! So be it! That's how it should be, they say. A certain percentage, they say, must go that way every year . . . Which way? . . . To the devil, I suppose, so as to freshen up the rest and not get in their way. Percentage!
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What lovely words they use: so soothing, so scholarly. You hear a word like that and wonder what on earth you were worrying about. Now if it were a different word, you might feel a little less comfortable . . . But what if Dunechka also ended up in that percentage . . . and if not that one, then another?

‘But where am I going?' he suddenly wondered. ‘How strange. After all, I must have gone out for a reason. I read the letter and set off right away . . . To Vasilyevsky Island, to see Razumikhin, that's where I was going . . . I remember now. But still, what was the reason? And why on earth did the thought of visiting Razumikhin enter my head now of all times? Quite astonishing.'

He marvelled at himself. Razumikhin was one of his old university friends. It was a remarkable fact that Raskolnikov had hardly made any friends at university; he kept his distance, never called on anyone and was a reluctant host. People soon gave up on him. Meetings, conversations, amusements – somehow, he avoided them all. He never spared himself in his studies, and for this he was respected; but nobody liked him. He was very poor and somehow haughty in his pride and unsociability, almost as if he were hiding something. Some of his peers had the impression that he looked down on them all as if they were children, as if he had outstripped them all in his development, knowledge and convictions, and that he viewed their convictions and interests as simply beneath him.

For some reason, though, he got along well with Razumikhin, or rather, he was more sociable, more open with him. In truth, there was no other way of responding to Razumikhin. He was an unusually cheerful and sociable lad, kind to the point of simplicity. This simplicity concealed both depth and virtue. The best of his friends understood this, and everybody liked him. He was far from stupid, if occasionally dim. His appearance was very striking – tall, thin, ill-shaven, raven-haired. He could be rowdy and was known for his strength. One night, among friends, he felled a seven-foot reactionary with a single blow. He could drink like a fish, but he could also not drink at all; he could lark about and go too far, and he could rein himself in. Razumikhin was remarkable in yet another way: no
failure could ever ruffle him, just as no circumstance was ever bad enough, it seemed, to bring him down. He could pitch his tent on a roof if he had to, endure hellish hunger and the bitterest cold. He was dirt poor yet persisted in supporting himself all on his own, taking odd jobs to get by. He knew any number of sources from which he could draw (by working, of course). Once, he survived a whole winter without heating his room and claimed that he even preferred it that way, because you sleep better in the cold. Now he, too, had been forced to leave university, but not for long, and he was straining every sinew to put things right and continue his studies. Raskolnikov hadn't been to see him for a good four months, while Razumikhin didn't even know where his old friend lived. There was one occasion, some two months previously, when they had almost met in the street, but Raskolnikov turned away, even crossing to the other side to avoid being noticed. Razumikhin noticed him, but walked past, not wishing to trouble his
friend
.