Crime and Punishment
police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even
now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round
and made him some answer....
So this was the solution of yesterday’s horror. The most awful thought
was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself
on account of such a _trivial_ circumstance. So this man could tell
nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So
Porfiry, too, had nothing but that _delirium_, no facts but this
_psychology_ which _cuts both ways_, nothing positive. So if no more
facts come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then... then
what can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest
him? And Porfiry then had only just heard about the flat and had not
known about it before.
“Was it you who told Porfiry... that I’d been there?” he cried, struck
by a sudden idea.
“What Porfiry?”
“The head of the detective department?”
“Yes. The porters did not go there, but I went.”
“To-day?”
“I got there two minutes before you. And I heard, I heard it all, how he
worried you.”
“Where? What? When?”
“Why, in the next room. I was sitting there all the time.”
“What? Why, then you were the surprise? But how could it happen? Upon my
word!”
“I saw that the porters did not want to do what I said,” began the man;
“for it’s too late, said they, and maybe he’ll be angry that we did not
come at the time. I was vexed and I lost my sleep, and I began making
inquiries. And finding out yesterday where to go, I went to-day. The
first time I went he wasn’t there, when I came an hour later he couldn’t
see me. I went the third time, and they showed me in. I informed him of
everything, just as it happened, and he began skipping about the room
and punching himself on the chest. ‘What do you scoundrels mean by it?
If I’d known about it I should have arrested him!’ Then he ran out,
called somebody and began talking to him in the corner, then he turned
to me, scolding and questioning me. He scolded me a great deal; and I
told him everything, and I told him that you didn’t dare to say a word
in answer to me yesterday and that you didn’t recognise me. And he
fell to running about again and kept hitting himself on the chest, and
getting angry and running about, and when you were announced he told
me to go into the next room. ‘Sit there a bit,’ he said. ‘Don’t move,
whatever you may hear.’ And he set a chair there for me and locked
me in. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘I may call you.’ And when Nikolay’d been
brought he let me out as soon as you were gone. ‘I shall send for you
again and question you,’ he said.”
“And did he question Nikolay while you were there?”
“He got rid of me as he did of you, before he spoke to Nikolay.”
The man stood still, and again suddenly bowed down, touching the ground
with his finger.
“Forgive me for my evil thoughts, and my slander.”
“May God forgive you,” answered Raskolnikov.
And as he said this, the man bowed down again, but not to the ground,
turned slowly and went out of the room.
“It all cuts both ways, now it all cuts both ways,” repeated
Raskolnikov, and he went out more confident than ever.
“Now we’ll make a fight for it,” he said, with a malicious smile, as he
went down the stairs. His malice was aimed at himself; with shame and
contempt he recollected his “cowardice.”
PART V
CHAPTER I
The morning that followed the fateful interview with Dounia and
her mother brought sobering influences to bear on Pyotr Petrovitch.
Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept
as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before
fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been
gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Pyotr Petrovitch
immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had
jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and looking at
his noble, clear-skinned countenance which had grown fattish of
late, Pyotr Petrovitch for an instant was positively comforted in the
conviction that he would find another bride and, perhaps, even a better
one. But coming back to the sense of his present position, he turned
aside and spat vigorously, which excited a sarcastic smile in Andrey
Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, the young friend with whom he was staying.
That smile Pyotr Petrovitch noticed, and at once set it down against his
young friend’s account. He had set down a good many points against him
of late. His anger was redoubled when he reflected that he ought not to
have told Andrey Semyonovitch about the result of yesterday’s interview.
That was the second mistake he had made in temper, through impulsiveness
and irritability.... Moreover, all that morning one unpleasantness
followed another. He even found a hitch awaiting him in his legal case
in the senate. He was particularly irritated by the owner of the flat
which had been taken in view of his approaching marriage and was being
redecorated at his own expense; the owner, a rich German tradesman,
would not entertain the idea of breaking the contract which had just
been signed and insisted on the full forfeit money, though Pyotr
Petrovitch would be giving him back the flat practically redecorated. In
the same way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the
instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the
flat.
“Am I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?” Pyotr
Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a
gleam of desperate hope. “Can all that be really so irrevocably over?
Is it no use to make another effort?” The thought of Dounia sent a
voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that moment,
and if it had been possible to slay Raskolnikov instantly by wishing it,
Pyotr Petrovitch would promptly have uttered the wish.
“It was my mistake, too, not to have given them money,” he thought, as
he returned dejectedly to Lebeziatnikov’s room, “and why on earth was I
such a Jew? It was false economy! I meant to keep them without a penny
so that they should turn to me as their providence, and look at them!
foo! If I’d spent some fifteen hundred roubles on them for the trousseau
and presents, on knick-knacks, dressing-cases, jewellery, materials, and
all that sort of trash from Knopp’s and the English shop, my position
would have been better and... stronger! They could not have refused me
so easily! They are the sort of people that would feel bound to return
money and presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to
do it! And their conscience would prick them: how can we dismiss a man
who has hitherto been so generous and delicate?.... H’m! I’ve made a
blunder.”
And grinding his teeth again, Pyotr Petrovitch called himself a
fool--but not aloud, of course.
He returned home, twice as irritated and angry as before. The
preparations for the funeral dinner at Katerina Ivanovna’s excited
his curiosity as he passed. He had heard about it the day before; he
fancied, indeed, that he had been invited, but absorbed in his own cares
he had paid no attention. Inquiring of Madame Lippevechsel who was busy
laying the table while Katerina Ivanovna was away at the cemetery, he
heard that the entertainment was to be a great affair, that all the
lodgers had been invited, among them some who had not known the dead
man, that even Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov was invited in spite of
his previous quarrel with Katerina Ivanovna, that he, Pyotr Petrovitch,
was not only invited, but was eagerly expected as he was the most
important of the lodgers. Amalia Ivanovna herself had been invited with
great ceremony in spite of the recent unpleasantness, and so she was
very busy with preparations and was taking a positive pleasure in them;
she was moreover dressed up to the nines, all in new black silk, and she
was proud of it. All this suggested an idea to Pyotr Petrovitch and he
went into his room, or rather Lebeziatnikov’s, somewhat thoughtful. He
had learnt that Raskolnikov was to be one of the guests.
Andrey Semyonovitch had been at home all the morning. The attitude of
Pyotr Petrovitch to this gentleman was strange, though perhaps natural.
Pyotr Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay
with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He
had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from
parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard
of Andrey Semyonovitch, who had once been his ward, as a leading young
progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting
circles, the doings of which were a legend in the provinces. It had
impressed Pyotr Petrovitch. These powerful omniscient circles who
despised everyone and showed everyone up had long inspired in him a
peculiar but quite vague alarm. He had not, of course, been able to form
even an approximate notion of what they meant. He, like everyone, had
heard that there were, especially in Petersburg, progressives of some
sort, nihilists and so on, and, like many people, he exaggerated and
distorted the significance of those words to an absurd degree. What for
many years past he had feared more than anything was _being shown
up_ and this was the chief ground for his continual uneasiness at the
thought of transferring his business to Petersburg. He was afraid of
this as little children are sometimes panic-stricken. Some years before,
when he was just entering on his own career, he had come upon two cases
in which rather important personages in the province, patrons of his,
had been cruelly shown up. One instance had ended in great scandal
for the person attacked and the other had very nearly ended in serious
trouble. For this reason Pyotr Petrovitch intended to go into the
subject as soon as he reached Petersburg and, if necessary, to
anticipate contingencies by seeking the favour of “our younger
generation.” He relied on Andrey Semyonovitch for this and before
his visit to Raskolnikov he had succeeded in picking up some current
phrases. He soon discovered that Andrey Semyonovitch was a commonplace
simpleton, but that by no means reassured Pyotr Petrovitch. Even if he
had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it
would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas, the
systems, with which Andrey Semyonovitch pestered him had no interest for
him. He had his own object--he simply wanted to find out at once what
was happening _here_. Had these people any power or not? Had he anything
to fear from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And what
precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he somehow make up
to them and get round them if they really were powerful? Was this the
thing to do or not? Couldn’t he gain something through them? In fact
hundreds of questions presented themselves.
Andrey Semyonovitch was an anæmic, scrofulous little man, with strangely
flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk
and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather
soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in
speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure.
He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did
not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch
really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause of progress
and “our younger generation” from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous
and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited,
half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in
fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve,