Crime and Punishment
it? I have guessed how you feel, haven’t I? Only in that way you’ll
lose your head and Razumihin’s, too; he’s too _good_ a man for such
a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is good and your
illness is infectious for him... I’ll tell you about it when you are
more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness’ sake. Please rest, you
look shocking, do sit down.”
Raskolnikov sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In
amazement he listened with strained attention to Porfiry Petrovitch who
still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly solicitude.
But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a strange
inclination to believe. Porfiry’s unexpected words about the flat had
utterly overwhelmed him. “How can it be, he knows about the flat then,”
he thought suddenly, “and he tells it me himself!”
“Yes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar, a
case of morbid psychology,” Porfiry went on quickly. “A man confessed to
murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular hallucination; he brought
forward facts, he imposed upon everyone and why? He had been partly, but
only partly, unintentionally the cause of a murder and when he knew that
he had given the murderers the opportunity, he sank into dejection, it
got on his mind and turned his brain, he began imagining things and he
persuaded himself that he was the murderer. But at last the High Court
of Appeal went into it and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under
proper care. Thanks to the Court of Appeal! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear
fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse
to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about
blood! I’ve studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man
is sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the
same with bell-ringing.... It’s all illness, Rodion Romanovitch! You
have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an experienced
doctor, what’s the good of that fat fellow? You are lightheaded! You
were delirious when you did all this!”
For a moment Raskolnikov felt everything going round.
“Is it possible, is it possible,” flashed through his mind, “that he is
still lying? He can’t be, he can’t be.” He rejected that idea, feeling
to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that fury
might drive him mad.
“I was not delirious. I knew what I was doing,” he cried, straining
every faculty to penetrate Porfiry’s game, “I was quite myself, do you
hear?”
“Yes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not delirious,
you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all you can tell
me! A-ach!... Listen, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow. If you were
actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this damnable business,
would you insist that you were not delirious but in full possession
of your faculties? And so emphatically and persistently? Would it be
possible? Quite impossible, to my thinking. If you had anything on
your conscience, you certainly ought to insist that you were delirious.
That’s so, isn’t it?”
There was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Raskolnikov drew back on
the sofa as Porfiry bent over him and stared in silent perplexity at
him.
“Another thing about Razumihin--you certainly ought to have said that he
came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But you don’t
conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your instigation.”
Raskolnikov had not done so. A chill went down his back.
“You keep telling lies,” he said slowly and weakly, twisting his lips
into a sickly smile, “you are trying again to show that you know all
my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand,” he said, conscious
himself that he was not weighing his words as he ought. “You want to
frighten me... or you are simply laughing at me...”
He still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light of
intense hatred in his eyes.
“You keep lying,” he said. “You know perfectly well that the best
policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to
conceal as little as possible. I don’t believe you!”
“What a wily person you are!” Porfiry tittered, “there’s no catching
you; you’ve a perfect monomania. So you don’t believe me? But still you
do believe me, you believe a quarter; I’ll soon make you believe the
whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely wish you
good.”
Raskolnikov’s lips trembled.
“Yes, I do,” went on Porfiry, touching Raskolnikov’s arm genially, “you
must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister are here
now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them and you do
nothing but frighten them...”
“What has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is it of
yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?”
“Good heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don’t
notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From
Razumihin, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday. No,
you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit, your
suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To return
to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have betrayed a
precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact worth having),
and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the slightest suspicion of you,
should I have acted like that? No, I should first have disarmed your
suspicions and not let you see I knew of that fact, should have diverted
your attention and suddenly have dealt you a knock-down blow (your
expression) saying: ‘And what were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or
nearly eleven at the murdered woman’s flat and why did you ring the bell
and why did you ask about blood? And why did you invite the porters
to go with you to the police station, to the lieutenant?’ That’s how
I ought to have acted if I had a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to
have taken your evidence in due form, searched your lodging and perhaps
have arrested you, too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have
not done that! But you can’t look at it normally and you see nothing, I
say again.”
Raskolnikov started so that Porfiry Petrovitch could not fail to
perceive it.
“You are lying all the while,” he cried, “I don’t know your object,
but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and I cannot be
mistaken!”
“I am lying?” Porfiry repeated, apparently incensed, but preserving
a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in the least
concerned at Raskolnikov’s opinion of him. “I am lying... but how did
I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting you and giving
you every means for your defence; illness, I said, delirium, injury,
melancholy and the police officers and all the rest of it? Ah! He-he-he!
Though, indeed, all those psychological means of defence are not very
reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don’t remember--that’s
all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium
were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There
may have been others, eh? He-he-he!”
Raskolnikov looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.
“Briefly,” he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so
doing pushing Porfiry back a little, “briefly, I want to know, do you
acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Porfiry
Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!”
“What a business I’m having with you!” cried Porfiry with a perfectly
good-humoured, sly and composed face. “And why do you want to know, why
do you want to know so much, since they haven’t begun to worry you? Why,
you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why
do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!”
“I repeat,” Raskolnikov cried furiously, “that I can’t put up with it!”
“With what? Uncertainty?” interrupted Porfiry.
“Don’t jeer at me! I won’t have it! I tell you I won’t have it. I can’t
and I won’t, do you hear, do you hear?” he shouted, bringing his fist
down on the table again.
“Hush! Hush! They’ll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of
yourself. I am not joking,” Porfiry whispered, but this time there was
not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now
he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all
mystification.
But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, bewildered, suddenly fell
into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to
speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury.
“I will not allow myself to be tortured,” he whispered, instantly
recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and
driven to even greater fury by the thought. “Arrest me, search me, but
kindly act in due form and don’t play with me! Don’t dare!”
“Don’t worry about the form,” Porfiry interrupted with the same sly
smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Raskolnikov. “I invited
you to see me quite in a friendly way.”
“I don’t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here,
I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?”
He took up his cap and went to the door.
“And won’t you see my little surprise?” chuckled Porfiry, again taking
him by the arm and stopping him at the door.
He seemed to become more playful and good-humoured, which maddened
Raskolnikov.
“What surprise?” he asked, standing still and looking at Porfiry in
alarm.
“My little surprise, it’s sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!”
(He pointed to the locked door.) “I locked him in that he should not
escape.”
“What is it? Where? What?...”
Raskolnikov walked to the door and would have opened it, but it was
locked.
“It’s locked, here is the key!”
And he brought a key out of his pocket.
“You are lying,” roared Raskolnikov without restraint, “you lie, you
damned punchinello!” and he rushed at Porfiry who retreated to the other
door, not at all alarmed.
“I understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray
myself to you...”
“Why, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Rodion
Romanovitch. You are in a passion. Don’t shout, I shall call the
clerks.”
“You are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to work
me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your object! Produce
your facts! I understand it all. You’ve no evidence, you have only
wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zametov’s! You knew my character, you
wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down with priests and
deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are you waiting for?
Where are they? Produce them?”
“Why deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And to do
so would not be acting in form as you say, you don’t know the business,
my dear fellow.... And there’s no escaping form, as you see,” Porfiry
muttered, listening at the door through which a noise could be heard.
“Ah, they’re coming,” cried Raskolnikov. “You’ve sent for them! You
expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your witnesses,
what you like!... I am ready!”
But at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected
that neither Raskolnikov nor Porfiry Petrovitch could have looked for
such a conclusion to their interview.
CHAPTER VI
When he remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Raskolnikov saw it.
The noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was opened a
little.
“What is it?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, annoyed. “Why, I gave orders...”
For an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there were
several persons at the door, and that they were apparently pushing
somebody back.