Crime and Punishment (22 page)

‘I'm sorry, but I'm no great wit myself,' Razumikhin abruptly interrupted, ‘so let's stop there. I piped up for a reason: for three years now I've been listening to all this talk and self-amusement, all these endless clichés, one after the other, over and over again, and I'm so damned sick of them that I blush to hear other people, never mind me, trotting them out. Naturally, you were desperate to flaunt your knowledge, and that can be easily forgiven on first acquaintance – I don't judge you for it. All I was trying to do was find out what kind of a man you are, because recently, you see, that “common task” has attracted such a motley crew of operators, ruining whatever they touch for their personal gain, that the whole thing stinks. Enough said, sir!'

‘My good sir,' Mr Luzhin began, positively quivering with self-worth, ‘surely you are not suggesting, so very unceremoniously, that I too . . . ?'

‘Come come . . . How could I? . . . Enough said, sir!' snapped Razumikhin, before turning sharply towards Zosimov to resume their earlier conversation.

Pyotr Petrovich had the good sense to believe these words without hesitation. All the same, he had made up his mind to leave within the next two minutes.

‘I trust that our newly initiated acquaintance,' he addressed Raskolnikov, ‘will, after your recovery and in the light of the circumstances known to you, grow stronger still . . . Above all, I wish you good health . . .'

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

‘The murderer must have been one of her pawners!' Zosimov asserted.

‘Must have been!' Razumikhin echoed. ‘Porfiry gives nothing away, but we know he's interrogating the pawners . . .'

‘Interrogating the pawners?' Raskolnikov asked loudly.

‘Yes, and?'

‘Nothing.'

‘How does he find them?' asked Zosimov.

‘Kokh put him on to some of them. The names of others were written on the paper their items were wrapped in, and some just came along themselves when they heard . . .'

‘What a crafty, experienced little scoundrel! So daring! So bold!'

‘That's exactly what he isn't!' Razumikhin interrupted. ‘And that's exactly what trips you all up. He's neither crafty nor experienced, and I'll bet you this was his first time! Assume some calculating, crafty little scoundrel, and it hardly seems credible. Assume someone inexperienced and it seems like only chance could have saved him from disaster, and chance can do anything, can it not? He probably didn't anticipate a single obstacle! Just look how he went about it – grabbing ten- or twenty-rouble items, stuffing his pockets with them, rummaging about in the old woman's box, among the rags – and meanwhile, over in the chest of drawers, in a box in the top drawer, they found one and a half thousand in ready cash, excluding notes! He didn't even know how to rob – only to kill! His first time, I tell you, his first time. He lost his nerve! It was chance, not design, that saved him!'

‘This has to do with the recent murder of that civil servant's old widow, I assume,' Pyotr Petrovich put in, addressing Zosimov. He was already on his feet, hat and gloves in hand, but he didn't want to leave without making a few more clever remarks. He was clearly anxious to make a favourable impression, and vanity prevailed over good sense.

‘So you've heard?'

‘How could I not, living so close . . . ?'

‘Do you know the details?'

‘I cannot say, but what concerns me here is something else, the problem in the round, as it were. Leaving aside the fact that crime among the lower classes has been on the rise during the last five years or so, leaving aside the ubiquitous and never-ending robberies and fires, what I find strangest of all is the fact that crime among the upper classes is on the rise in just the same way and, as it were, in parallel. First you hear that a former student robbed a mail coach on the high road; next, that people at the very forefront of society are counterfeiting banknotes; then, in Moscow, an entire gang is caught forging tickets for the latest lottery – with a lecturer in world history among the ringleaders; while abroad, one of our diplomatic secretaries is murdered
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for financial reasons that remain obscure . . . And now, if this old moneylender has been murdered by one of her pawners, then he, too, must be a member of higher society – for peasants do not pawn their gold – so how can we explain this laxity, as it were, of the civilized part of our society?'

‘All these economic changes . . . ,' responded Zosimov.

‘How can we explain it?' asked Razumikhin, seizing on his words. ‘I'll tell you how: by our inveterate shortage of doers.'

‘I don't follow, sir.'

‘Well, what did that lecturer of yours in Moscow have to say for himself when he was asked why he forged tickets: “Everyone's getting rich one way or another, so I wanted to make a quick fortune myself.” I've forgotten his exact words, but that was the gist: money for nothing, quick, without breaking sweat! We're used to having everything laid on for us, to our leading-strings, to our food being chewed for us. But when the great hour struck,
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everyone showed their true colours . . .'

‘But what about morality? And, as it were, rules . . . ?'

‘Why this great fuss?' Raskolnikov suddenly broke in. ‘That was your theory in action!'

‘What do you mean, my theory?'

‘Take what you were preaching just now to its conclusions, and bumping people off is perfectly acceptable . . .'

‘For heaven's sake!' cried Luzhin.

‘No, that's wrong!' Zosimov put in.

Raskolnikov lay pale-faced, his upper lip twitching, breathing heavily.

‘One must observe moderation in all things,' continued Luzhin, superciliously. ‘The economic idea is hardly an invitation to murder, and it is enough to assume . . .'

‘So is it true that you,' Raskolnikov cut in again, in a voice trembling with anger and reverberating with a kind of injured joy, ‘is it true that you told your intended . . . the moment you received her consent . . . that what pleased you most of all . . . was her beggarly condition . . . because there is much to be said for taking a wife out of beggary, the better to rule over her later . . . and to reproach her with the favour you bestow?'

‘My good sir!' cried Luzhin, with anger and irritation, all flushed and flustered. ‘My good sir! . . . What a way to twist my words! Forgive me, but I must make it clear to you that the rumours that have come to your attention, or rather, that have been brought to your attention, are devoid of any sound foundation, and I . . . have an inkling as to who . . . in a word . . . this dart . . . in a word, your mama . . . She struck me even before as having, for all her outstanding qualities, a slightly over-enthusiastic and romantic cast of mind . . . But still, I was a million
miles from presuming that she might apprehend and present the matter in a light so distorted by fantasy . . . And finally . . . finally . . .'

‘Well, do you know what?' cried Raskolnikov, propping himself up on the pillow and fixing him with piercing, flashing eyes. ‘Do you know what?'

‘What, sir?' Luzhin paused, waiting with an offended and defiant air. The silence lasted a few seconds.

‘If you dare utter . . . another word, ever again . . . about my mother . . . I'll send you flying down the stairs!'

‘What's wrong with you?' shouted Razumikhin.

‘So that's how it is!' said Luzhin, turning pale and biting his lip. ‘Now listen to me, sir,' he began slowly and deliberately, restraining himself as best he could, but still gasping for breath. ‘I discerned your animosity the moment I walked in, but I remained here on purpose, so as to find out more. There is much that I might have forgiven a sick man and a relative, but you . . . now . . . never, sir . . .'

‘I'm not sick!' cried Raskolnikov.

‘All the more reason . . .'

‘Clear off, damn you!'

But Luzhin, without finishing what he wanted to say, was already wriggling his way out between the table and the chair; and this time, Razumikhin got up to let him through. Without glancing at anyone or even nodding in the direction of Zosimov, who had long been nodding at him to leave the sick man in peace, Luzhin went out, taking care to raise his hat to the level of his shoulder as he ducked beneath the door-frame. Even the curve of his back seemed to suggest that he was bearing away with him some deadly insult.

‘How could you? Really, how could you?' Razumikhin asked in bewilderment, shaking his head.

‘Leave me alone, all of you!' Raskolnikov cried in sheer frenzy. ‘Can't you just leave me alone and stop tormenting me! I'm not scared of you! I'm not scared of anyone now, anyone! Get away from me! I want to be alone! Alone! Alone!'

‘Let's go!' said Zosimov, nodding to Razumikhin.

‘We can hardly leave him like this, for heaven's sake.'

‘Let's go!' Zosimov insisted and walked out. Razumikhin thought for a moment, then ran out after him.

‘It could have been even worse if we hadn't obeyed him,' said Zosimov, once they were out on the stairs. ‘We mustn't irritate him . . .'

‘What's wrong with him?'

‘If only he could be given a beneficial shock of some kind . . . that would do it! He seemed to have picked up, earlier on . . . You know, there's something on his mind! Something immovable, something oppressing him . . . That's what scares me. Yes, that's it!'

‘Perhaps it's this gentleman, this Pyotr Petrovich! It was clear from the conversation that he's marrying his sister and that Rodya received a letter about it just before he got ill . . .'

‘Yes, the devil himself must have brought him here now. He may have spoiled the whole thing. By the way, did you notice how indifferent he is to everything? You can't get a word out of him, with one exception that completely unhinges him: that murder . . .'

‘Yes, yes!' Razumikhin agreed. ‘Too right I did! It interests him, frightens him. He got a fright the same day he fell ill, in the bureau, with the district superintendent; even fainted.'

‘Tell me more this evening, then I'll tell you something. He interests me, he really does! I'll drop by in half an hour to check up on him . . . But it's not an inflammation . . .'

‘Thanks! In the meantime I'll be waiting at Pashenka's, keeping an eye on things through Nastasya . . .'

Raskolnikov, left alone, shot an impatient, pained glance at Nastasya; but she was in no hurry to leave.

‘P'haps you'll have some tea now?' she asked.

‘Later! I want to sleep! Leave me . . .'

With a violent jerk, he turned to face the wall; Nastasya went out.

But no sooner had she gone out than he got up, hooked the door, untied the bundle of clothes which Razumikhin had brought round earlier and then tied it up again, and started getting dressed. Strange: he seemed, all of a sudden, to have become perfectly calm; gone was the demented raving of before and the panicky terror of this whole recent time. This was the first instant of some strange, sudden tranquillity. His movements were precise and well-defined; a firm intention showed through them. ‘Today, yes, today!' he muttered to himself. He understood, however, that he was still weak, but the most intense mental strain, having reached the point of tranquillity, of obsession, now gave him strength and confidence; even so, he hoped he wouldn't collapse in
the street. All dressed up in his new things, he glanced at the money lying on the table, thought for a moment and pocketed it. Twenty-five roubles in total. He also took all the five-copeck pieces – the change from the ten roubles Razumikhin had spent on the clothes. Next, he quietly lifted the hook, left the room, went down the stairs and peeked through the wide-open door of the kitchen: Nastasya, standing with her back to him, was bending over and fanning the landlady's samovar. She didn't hear a thing. Anyway, who could have imagined that he might go out? A minute later he was already in the street.

It was about eight o'clock. The sun was going down. It was as stifling as before, but he hungrily breathed in this stinking, dusty, town-poisoned air. He felt his head begin to spin. His inflamed eyes and wasted, pallid-yellow face suddenly shone with some wild energy. He didn't know where he was going, and hadn't even given it a thought. He knew one thing only: ‘All this has to end today, in one go, right now.' He wouldn't go home otherwise, because
he didn't want to live like this
. End how? By what means? He had no idea, no wish even to think about it. He chased away thought: thought tormented him. He merely felt and knew that everything had to change, one way or another. ‘Any way will do,' he kept repeating, with desperate, immovable confidence and resolve.

By old habit, following the route he usually took on his walks, he made straight for Haymarket. Just before Haymarket, standing in the road in front of a general shop, was a young, raven-haired organ-grinder, turning out a heartfelt song. He was accompanying a girl standing before him on the pavement, aged fifteen or so and dressed up like a lady, wearing a crinoline, a cape, gloves and a straw hat with a feather the colour of fire, all old and worn. Her voice was cracked – the voice of a street singer – but pleasant and strong, and she was hoping for a copeck or two from the shop. Raskolnikov stopped for a moment to listen with a few others, took out a five-copeck piece and placed it in the girl's hand. She suddenly cut off her singing, as if with a knife, on the most heartfelt and high-pitched note, snapped ‘Enough!' to the organ-grinder, and they shuffled off to the next shop.

‘Do you like street singing?' Raskolnikov suddenly asked a passer-by, no longer young, who was standing next to him near the barrel organ and had the look of a flâneur. The latter stared at him in wild astonishment. ‘I do,' Raskolnikov went on, but it was as if he were talking about something else entirely. ‘I like songs sung to a barrel
organ on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings – dampness is a must – when the faces of all the passers-by are pale, green and sick; or, even better, when wet snow is falling down in a straight line, with no wind at all (you know?) and the gas lamps shine through it . . .'

‘I'm afraid I don't know, sir . . . ,' muttered the gentleman, frightened both by the question and by Raskolnikov's strange appearance, and crossed to the other side of the street.

Raskolnikov continued on his way and reached the corner of Haymarket, where the tradesman and his wife, who had been talking to Lizaveta that time, sold their goods; but they weren't there now. Recognizing the spot, he stopped, looked around and turned to a young lad in a red shirt who was yawning by the entrance to a flour shop.

‘There's a tradesman selling here on the corner, isn't there, with his missus, his wife?'

‘There's all sorts selling,' the lad replied, disdainfully looking him up and down.

‘What's his name?'

‘The one he was christened with.'

‘Don't tell me you're from Zaraisk, too? Your province?'

The lad took another look at Raskolnikov.

‘Ours is a district, Your Excellency, not a province, and anyway I'm far too provincial to know, sir . . . Do forgive me, Your Excellency, most graciously.'

‘Is that an eating-house, up there?'

‘That's a tavern, with billiards, too, and princesses,
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come to that . . . Ding dong!'

Raskolnikov crossed the square. There, in the corner, stood a throng of people, all of them peasants. He made straight for the thick of it, peering into faces. He had a strange urge to talk to everyone he met. But the peasants paid him no attention, keeping up a constant hubbub in their little groups. He stood for a while, pondered, and set off to the right, along the pavement, in the direction of V——y.
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Leaving the square behind, he found himself in a lane . . .

Previously, too, he had often taken this short little lane,
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which made a dog-leg from the square to Sadovaya Street. Recently he'd even felt the urge, whenever he felt sick, to wander around this part of town, ‘so as to feel even sicker'. Now he entered it without a thought in his head. There's a large house here, entirely given over to drinking dens and cheap restaurants; women run in and out, dressed as if ‘to
go next door' – bare-headed, in simple frocks. They gather in bunches on the pavement, usually wherever a couple of steps lead down to various, very cheerful establishments on the lower floor. The racket coming from one of these at that moment could be heard from one end of the street to the other – a guitar was being strummed, songs were being sung and it was all very jolly. The entrance was thronged with a large group of women; some sat on the steps or the pavement, others stood and chatted. Nearby, on the road, a drunken soldier was sauntering along, smoking a papirosa and swearing loudly; he looked like he wanted to go in somewhere, only he'd forgotten where. Two tramps were having a row and someone else was sprawled, dead drunk, across the street. Raskolnikov stopped near the gaggle of women. They were chatting away in croaky voices; all wore cotton-print dresses and goatskin shoes, their heads uncovered. Some were over forty, others only seventeen or so; almost all had black eyes.

He was intrigued for some reason by the singing down below, and all that noise . . . He could hear, amid the laughter and the shrieks, someone dancing for dear life to the rollicking strains of a thin falsetto and to the strumming of a guitar, beating out the rhythm with his heels. He listened intently, dismally, pensively, stooping by the entrance and peering in.

Please, my 'ansome bobby

T'ain't no need to beat me!

sang the thin little voice. Raskolnikov was desperate to make out the words, as if they really were the key to it all.

‘Perhaps I should go in?' he wondered. ‘Listen to them laugh! Must be the drink. Well, why don't I get drunk too?'

‘Won't you come in, kind master?' asked one of the women in a voice that still carried and was not yet completely hoarse. She was young and not even repulsive – unlike the rest of the group.

‘Well you're a nice one!' he replied, straightening up to look at her.

She smiled, delighted by the compliment.

‘You're very nice yourself, sir,' she said.

‘He's skin and bones!' remarked another in a deep voice. ‘Straight out of hospital, I suppose?'

‘Generals' daughters and all sorts, but they've all got snub noses!' interrupted a peasant who'd suddenly approached, three sheets to the
wind, his thick coat open and his mug wrinkled up with sly laughter. ‘Well this is fun!'

‘Go in, since you've come!'

‘Try stopping me!'

And he tumbled in.

Raskolnikov went on his way.

‘Listen, master!' the girl shouted after him.

‘What?'

She became embarrassed.

‘Kind master, I'll always be glad to pass some time with you, but here I am before you and I'm simply burning with shame. Won't you spare me six copecks for a drink, my lovely?'

Raskolnikov fished out all he had: fifteen copecks.

‘Oh, what a nice sweet master!'

‘What's your name?'

‘Just ask for Duklida.'

‘Well, that's really something,' someone in the group suddenly remarked, shaking her head at Duklida. ‘Search me how you can ask like that! I'd die from the shame of it . . .'

Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pockmarked girl of about thirty, covered in bruises, with a fat lip. She made her criticisms calmly and seriously.

‘Where was it?' thought Raskolnikov, walking on. ‘Where was it I read how a man sentenced to death, an hour before he was due to die, said or thought that if he were obliged to live somewhere very high up, on a cliff, on a ledge with room for a pair of feet and nothing more, while all around him were chasms, the ocean, eternal gloom, eternal solitude and eternal tempest, and he had to stay like that, standing on one square yard, for the rest of his life, for a thousand years, for eternity – then he'd rather live like that than die there and then? To live, to live, to live! No matter how – just live!
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There's truth in that! Lord, what truth! Man is a scoundrel! And a scoundrel is he who calls him a scoundrel,' he added a minute later.

He entered another street: ‘Ha! The “Crystal Palace”! Razumikhin was talking about the “Crystal Palace”
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just earlier. Only, what was it I wanted? Oh yes, to read! . . . Zosimov was saying that he'd read in the papers . . .

‘Any papers?' he asked, entering an extremely spacious, even salubrious tavern, which had several rooms and few customers. Two or
three were drinking tea, while in one of the far rooms there was a group of about four sitting around a table drinking champagne. Raskolnikov thought he saw Zametov among them. From a distance, though, it was hard to be sure.

‘Well, so what?' he thought.

‘Some vodka for you, sir?' asked a waiter.

‘I'll have tea. Bring me some newspapers, too, old ones, for the last five days or so, and you'll get some drink money.'

‘Yes, sir. Here are today's, sir. Some vodka with that, sir?'

The old papers arrived with the tea. Raskolnikov made himself comfortable and started searching: ‘Izler – Izler – Aztecs – Aztecs – Izler – Bartola – Massimo – Aztecs – Izle
r
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 . . . damn it all! Ah, the titbits: woman falls from a landing – tradesman drinks himself to death – fire in Peski – fire on Petersburg Side – another fire on Petersburg Side – another fire on Petersburg Side – Izler – Izler – Izler – Izler – Massimo . . . Ah, here we are . . .'

He'd finally found what he was after and started reading; the lines seemed to jump about as he read, but he got to the end of the ‘report' all the same and hungrily set about searching in subsequent issues for further additions. Flicking through them, his hands shook with convulsive impatience. Suddenly, someone sat down beside him at his table. He glanced up – Zametov, the very same, and looking just the same, with his jewels, his chains, the parting in his curly and pomaded black hair, wearing a foppish waistcoat, a somewhat shabby frock coat and somewhat grimy linen. He was in a jolly mood, or at least he was smiling in a very jolly and good-natured way. His swarthy face was a little flushed from champagne.

‘What! You – here?' he began in bewilderment and in a tone that suggested a lifetime's acquaintance. ‘But Razumikhin told me only yesterday that you still hadn't come to. How strange! I visited you only . . .'

Raskolnikov knew he'd walk over. He set the newspapers aside and turned towards him. A grin played on his lips, betraying some kind of new, irritable impatience.

‘I know you did, sir,' he replied. ‘You were searching for my sock, I hear . . . Razumikhin's mad about you, says the two of you went to see Laviza Ivanovna, the one you were putting yourself out for that time and winking to Powder Keg about, but he didn't catch your drift, remember? Quite incredible, really – it was all plain as day, eh?'

‘Now there's a loose cannon, if ever there was!'

‘Who, the lieutenant?'

‘No, your friend Razumikhin . . .'

‘Some life you have, Mr Zametov. A free pass to all the nicest places! So who's been treating you to champagne?'

‘We were just . . . having a drink . . . Treating me indeed!'

‘Your fee, then! It's all grist to your mill!' Raskolnikov laughed. ‘That's all right, my dear sweet boy, that's all right!' he added, giving Zametov a light punch on the shoulder. ‘I didn't mean it unkindly, “but loving-like, playful-like”, just like that worker of yours said when he was clobbering Mitka – you know, that business with the old crone.'

‘And why should you know about that?'

‘I may know more than you do.'

‘You're acting rather strange . . . You must still be very sick. Should have stayed at home . . .'

‘So I seem strange to you?'

‘Yes. Are those newspapers you're reading?'

‘Yes, newspapers.'

‘There's been a lot about fires . . .'

‘No, I'm not reading about fires.' He gave Zametov an enigmatic look; a derisive smile twisted his lips once more. ‘No, I'm not reading about fires,' he went on with a wink. ‘Just admit it, my nice young man – you're desperate to know what I was reading about, aren't you?'