Crime and Punishment
up a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. “In another three or
four days, if he goes on like this, he will be just as before, that is,
as he was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even three. This has been
coming on for a long while.... eh? Confess, now, that it has been
perhaps your own fault?” he added, with a tentative smile, as though
still afraid of irritating him.
“It is very possible,” answered Raskolnikov coldly.
“I should say, too,” continued Zossimov with zest, “that your complete
recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you,
I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the
elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your
morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go
from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don’t know, but they must
be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed
yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement
coincides with your leaving the university. You must not be left without
occupation, and so, work and a definite aim set before you might, I
fancy, be very beneficial.”
“Yes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and return to
the university: and then everything will go smoothly....”
Zossimov, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect before
the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at his
patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted
an instant, however. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began at once thanking
Zossimov, especially for his visit to their lodging the previous night.
“What! he saw you last night?” Raskolnikov asked, as though startled.
“Then you have not slept either after your journey.”
“Ach, Rodya, that was only till two o’clock. Dounia and I never go to
bed before two at home.”
“I don’t know how to thank him either,” Raskolnikov went on,
suddenly frowning and looking down. “Setting aside the question of
payment--forgive me for referring to it (he turned to Zossimov)--I
really don’t know what I have done to deserve such special attention
from you! I simply don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon
me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”
“Don’t be irritated.” Zossimov forced himself to laugh. “Assume that you
are my first patient--well--we fellows just beginning to practise love
our first patients as if they were our children, and some almost fall in
love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.”
“I say nothing about him,” added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumihin,
“though he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.”
“What nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day,
are you?” shouted Razumihin.
If he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no
trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite.
But Avdotya Romanovna noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching
her brother.
“As for you, mother, I don’t dare to speak,” he went on, as though
repeating a lesson learned by heart. “It is only to-day that I have
been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here
yesterday, waiting for me to come back.”
When he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister,
smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real
unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed his
hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her
since their dispute the previous day. The mother’s face lighted up
with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken
reconciliation. “Yes, that is what I love him for,” Razumihin,
exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his
chair. “He has these movements.”
“And how well he does it all,” the mother was thinking to herself. “What
generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end
to all the misunderstanding with his sister--simply by holding out his
hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what
fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better
looking than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a suit--how terribly
he’s dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch’s shop, is
better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him... weep over him--but
I am afraid.... Oh, dear, he’s so strange! He’s talking kindly, but I’m
afraid! Why, what am I afraid of?...”
“Oh, Rodya, you wouldn’t believe,” she began suddenly, in haste to
answer his words to her, “how unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now
that it’s all over and done with and we are quite happy again--I can
tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace
you and that woman--ah, here she is! Good morning, Nastasya!... She told
us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away
from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the
streets. You can’t imagine how we felt! I couldn’t help thinking of the
tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father’s--you
can’t remember him, Rodya--who ran out in the same way in a high fever
and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn’t pull him out
till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of
rushing to find Pyotr Petrovitch to ask him to help.... Because we were
alone, utterly alone,” she said plaintively and stopped short,
suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Pyotr
Petrovitch, although “we are quite happy again.”
“Yes, yes.... Of course it’s very annoying....” Raskolnikov muttered in
reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed
at him in perplexity.
“What else was it I wanted to say?” He went on trying to recollect. “Oh,
yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don’t think that I didn’t mean
to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.”
“What are you saying, Rodya?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. She, too,
was surprised.
“Is he answering us as a duty?” Dounia wondered. “Is he being reconciled
and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating
a lesson?”
“I’ve only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing
to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Nastasya... to wash out
the blood... I’ve only just dressed.”
“Blood! What blood?” Pulcheria Alexandrovna asked in alarm.
“Oh, nothing--don’t be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about
yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run
over... a clerk...”
“Delirious? But you remember everything!” Razumihin interrupted.
“That’s true,” Raskolnikov answered with special carefulness. “I
remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet--why I did
that and went there and said that, I can’t clearly explain now.”
“A familiar phenomenon,” interposed Zossimov, “actions are sometimes
performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the
actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions--it’s
like a dream.”
“Perhaps it’s a good thing really that he should think me almost a
madman,” thought Raskolnikov.
“Why, people in perfect health act in the same way too,” observed
Dounia, looking uneasily at Zossimov.
“There is some truth in your observation,” the latter replied. “In that
sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the
slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we
must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among
dozens--perhaps hundreds of thousands--hardly one is to be met with.”
At the word “madman,” carelessly dropped by Zossimov in his chatter on
his favourite subject, everyone frowned.
Raskolnikov sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a
strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something.
“Well, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!”
Razumihin cried hastily.
“What?” Raskolnikov seemed to wake up. “Oh... I got spattered with
blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an
unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave
away all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She’s
a widow now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children,
starving... nothing in the house... there’s a daughter, too... perhaps
you’d have given it yourself if you’d seen them. But I had no right to
do it I admit, especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself.
To help others one must have the right to do it, or else _Crevez,
chiens, si vous n’êtes pas contents_.” He laughed, “That’s right, isn’t
it, Dounia?”
“No, it’s not,” answered Dounia firmly.
“Bah! you, too, have ideals,” he muttered, looking at her almost with
hatred, and smiling sarcastically. “I ought to have considered that....
Well, that’s praiseworthy, and it’s better for you... and if you reach a
line you won’t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it,
maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all that’s nonsense,” he added
irritably, vexed at being carried away. “I only meant to say that I beg
your forgiveness, mother,” he concluded, shortly and abruptly.
“That’s enough, Rodya, I am sure that everything you do is very good,”
said his mother, delighted.
“Don’t be too sure,” he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile.
A silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this
conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the
forgiveness, and all were feeling it.
“It is as though they were afraid of me,” Raskolnikov was thinking
to himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Pulcheria
Alexandrovna was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent.
“Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,” flashed through
his mind.
“Do you know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna is dead,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna
suddenly blurted out.
“What Marfa Petrovna?”
“Oh, mercy on us--Marfa Petrovna Svidrigaïlov. I wrote you so much about
her.”
“A-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she’s dead! Oh, really?” he roused
himself suddenly, as if waking up. “What did she die of?”
“Only imagine, quite suddenly,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna answered
hurriedly, encouraged by his curiosity. “On the very day I was sending
you that letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have been
the cause of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully.”
“Why, were they on such bad terms?” he asked, addressing his sister.
“Not at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very
patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their
married life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases. All
of a sudden he seems to have lost patience.”
“Then he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for seven
years? You seem to be defending him, Dounia?”
“No, no, he’s an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!” Dounia
answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and sinking into
thought.
“That had happened in the morning,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on
hurriedly. “And directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be
harnessed to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always used
to drive to the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I am
told....”
“After the beating?”
“That was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as not
to be late in starting, she went to the bath-house.... You see, she was
undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring there, and
she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no sooner had she got
into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!”
“I should think so,” said Zossimov.