فصل 04 - بخش 01

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS MOTHER’S LETTER HAD been a torture to him. But as regards the chief, the fundamental fact in it, he had felt not one moment’s hesitation, even while he was reading the letter. The essential question was settled, and irrevocably settled, in his mind: “Never such a marriage while I am alive, and Mr. Luzhin be damned!” “The thing is perfectly clear,” he muttered to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph of his decision.

“No, Mother, no, Dunia, you won’t deceive me! And then they apologize for not asking my advice and for making the decision without me! I dare say! They imagine it is arranged now and can’t be broken off; but we will see whether it can or not! A magnificent excuse: ‘Peter Petrovich is such a busy man, such a busy man that even his wedding has to be rushed, almost express. ‘ No, Dunechka, I see it all and I know what that much is that you want to say to me; and I know too what you were thinking about, when you walked up and down all night, and what your prayers were like before the Holy Mother of Kazan who stands in mother’s bedroom.

Bitter is the ascent to Golgotha9 . . . Hm . . . So it is finally settled; you have determined to marry a rational business man, Avdotia Romanovna, one who has a fortune (has already made his fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive), a man who holds two government posts and who shares the ideas of our most rising generation, as mother writes, and who ‘seems to be kind,’ as Dunechka herself observes. That seems beats everything! And that very Dunechka is marrying that very ‘seems’! Splendid! splendid!

“ . . . But I wonder why mother has written to me about ‘our most rising generation’? Simply as a descriptive touch, or with the idea of predisposing me in favor of Mr. Luzhin? Oh, the cunning of them! I wonder about one other item: how far were they open with one another that day and night and all this time since? Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it.

Most likely it was partly like that, from mother’s letter it’s evident: he struck her as rude, just a little, and mother in her simplicity took her observations to Dunia. And she was sure to be vexed and ‘answered her angrily.’ I should think so! Who would not be furious when it was quite clear without any naive questions and when it was understood that it was useless to discuss it.

And why does she write to me, ‘love Dunia, Rodia, and she loves you more than herself’? Has she a secret conscience-prick at sacrificing her daughter to her son? ‘You are our one comfort, you are everything to us.’ Oh, Mother!” His bitterness grew more and more intense, and if he had happened to meet Mr. Luzhin at the moment, he might have murdered him.

“Hm . . . yes, that’s true,” he continued, pursuing the whirling ideas that chased each other in his brain, “it is true that ‘to get to know a man, one must approach gradually and carefully,’ but there is no mistake about Mr. Luzhin. The chief thing is he is ‘a man of business and seems kind,’ that was something, wasn’t it, to send the bags and big box for them at his own expense! A kind man, no doubt after that! But his bride and her mother are to ride in a peasant’s cart covered with matting (I know, I have been driven in it).

No matter! It is only ninety versts and then they can ‘travel very comfortably, third class,’ for a thousand versts! Quite sensible, too. One must cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth, but what about you, Mr. Luzhin? She is your bride . . . And you couldn’t fail to be aware that her mother has to borrow money on her pension for the journey. To be sure it’s a matter of transacting business together, a partnership for mutual benefit, with equal shares and, therefore, expenses;—food and drink in common, but pay for your tobacco, as the proverb goes. But here too the business man has got the better of them.

The luggage will cost less than their fares and very likely go for nothing. How is it that they don’t both see all that, or is it that they don’t want to see? And they are pleased, pleased! And to think that this is only the first blossoming, and that the real fruits are to come! For what really matters is not the stinginess, not the tightfistedness, but the tone of the whole thing. For that will be the tone after marriage, it’s a foretaste of it. And mother too, why is she spending recklessly? What will she have by the time she gets to Petersburg? Three silver rubles or two ‘paper ones’ as she says . . . that old woman . . . hm.

What does she expect to live on in Petersburg afterwards? She has her reasons already for guessing that she could not live with Dunia after the marriage, even at first. The good man has no doubt let it slip on that subject also, made himself clear, though mother is waving the notion aside with both hands: ‘I will refuse,’ says she. What is she hoping for then? Is she counting on what is left of her hundred and twenty rubles of pension when Afanasy Ivanovich’s debt is paid? She knits woolen shawls and embroiders cuffs, ruining her old eyes. And all her shawls don’t add more than twenty rubles a year to her hundred and twenty, I know that.

So she is building all her hopes on Mr. Luzhin’s generosity; ‘he will offer it himself, he will press it on me.’ You’ll have a long wait! That’s how it always is with these Schilleresque10 noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last moment they hope for good and not ill, and although they have an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won’t face the truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they deck out in false colors puts a fool’s cap on them with his own hands. I wonder whether Mr. Luzhin has any orders of merit; I bet he has the Anna11 in his buttonhole and that he puts it on when he goes to dine with contractors or merchants. He’ll put it on for his wedding, too! Enough of him, devil take him!

“Well . . . Mother, I don’t wonder at, it’s like her, God bless her, but how could Dunia? Dunechka, darling, as though I did not know you! You were nearly twenty when I saw you last: I understood you then. Mother writes that ‘Dunia can put up with a great deal.’ I know that very well. I knew that two years and a half ago, and for the last two and a half years I have been thinking about it, thinking of just that, that ‘Dunia can put up with a great deal.’ If she could put up with Mr. Svidrigailov and all the rest of it, she certainly can put up with a great deal.

And now mother and she have taken it into their heads that she can put up with Mr. Luzhin, who propounds the theory of the superiority of wives raised from destitution and owing everything to their husbands’ bounty—who propounds it, too, almost at the first interview. Granted that he ‘let it slip,’ though he is a rational man (so maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant to make himself clear as soon as possible), but Dunia, Dunia? She understands the man, of course, but she will have to live with the man. Why! She’d live on black bread and water, she would not sell her soul, she would not barter her moral freedom for comfort; she would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein, much less Mr. Luzhin’s money.

No, Dunia was not that sort when I knew her and . . . she is still the same, of course! Yes, there’s no denying, the Svidrigailovs are a bitter pill! It’s hard to spend one’s life as a governess in the provinces for two hundred rubles, but I know she would rather be a slave on a plantation or a Latvian with a German master, than degrade her soul, and her moral feeling, by binding herself forever to a man whom she does not respect and with whom she has nothing in common—for her own advantage. And if Mr. Luzhin had been made of pure gold, or one huge diamond, she would never have consented to become his legal concubine.

Why is she consenting then? What is this? What’s the answer? It’s clear enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone else she is doing it! For the one she loves, for the one she adores, she will sell herself! That’s what it all amounts to; for her brother, for her mother, she will sell herself! She will sell everything! In such cases, we squash our moral feeling if necessary, freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the street market. goodbye life! If only these our dear ones may be happy. More than that, we become casuists, we learn to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade ourselves that it is, really is one’s duty for a good cause.

That’s just like us, it’s as clear as daylight. It’s clear that Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is the central figure in the business, and no-one else. Oh, yes, she can ensure his happiness, keep him in the university, make him a partner in the office, make his whole future secure; perhaps he may even be a rich man later on, esteemed, respected, and may even end his life a famous man! But mother? Oh, but it’s all Rodia, dearest Rodia, her first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice even such a daughter! Oh, loving, over-partial hearts!

Why, for his sake we would not shrink even from Sonia’s fate. Sonechka, Sonechka Marmeladov, the eternal Sonechka so long as the world lasts. Have you taken the measure of your sacrifice, both of you, have you? Is it right? Can you bear it? Is it any use? Is there sense in it? And let me tell you, Dunechka, Sonechka’s life is no worse than life with Mr. Luzhin. ‘There can be no question of love,’ mother writes. And what if there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is aversion, contempt, repulsion, what then?

Then you will have to ‘keep up your appearance,’ too. Is that not so? Do you understand, do you, do you, what that cleanliness means? Do you understand that the Luzhin cleanliness is just the same thing as Sonechka’s and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case, Dunechka, it’s a bargain for luxuries, after all, but there it’s simply a question of starvation. ‘It has to be paid for, it has to be paid for, Dunechka, this cleanliness!’ And what if it’s more than you can bear afterwards, if you regret it? The grief, the misery, the curses, the tears hidden from all the world, for you are not a Marfa Petrovna.

And how will your mother feel then? Even now she is uneasy, she is worried, but then, when she sees it all clearly? And I? Yes, indeed, what have you taken me for? I won’t have your sacrifice, Dunechka, I won’t have it, Mother! It will not be, so long as I am alive, it will not, it will not! I won’t accept it!” He suddenly recollected himself and paused.

“It shall not be? But what are you going to do to prevent it? You’ll forbid it? And what right have you? What can you promise them on your side to give you such a right? Your whole life, your whole future, you will devote to them when you have finished your studies and obtained a post? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that’s all words, but now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And what are you doing now? You are robbing them.

They borrow on their hundred rubles pension. They borrow from the Svidrigailovs. How are you going to save them from the Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin, oh, future millionaire, oh Zeus who would arrange their lives for them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during those ten years? Have you guessed?”

So he tortured himself, taunting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken the form of a horrible, wild and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamoring insistently for an answer. Now his mother’s letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now languish and suffer passively, in thought alone, over questions that appeared insoluble, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. He must decide on something no matter what, on anything at all, or . . .

“Or renounce life altogether!” he cried suddenly, in a frenzy—“accept one’s lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in oneself, giving up every right to act, live, and love!”

“Do you understand, dear sir, do you understand what it means when there is absolutely nowhere to go?” Marmeladov’s question of the previous day came suddenly into his mind, “for every man must have somewhere to go . . . ”

He gave a sudden start; another thought, that he had also had yesterday, flashed through his mind. But he did not start at the thought recurring to him, for he knew, he had felt beforehand, that it must ‘flash,’ he was expecting it; besides it was not only yesterday’s thought. The difference was that a month ago, yesterday even, the thought was a mere dream: but now . . . now it appeared not a dream at all, it had taken a new, menacing and completely unfamiliar shape, and he suddenly became aware of this himself . . . He felt a hammering in his head, and eyes were darkened.

He looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted to sit down and was looking for a bench; he was walking along K_ Boulevard.13 There was a bench about a hundred paces in front of him. He walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a little adventure which for several minutes absorbed all his attention. Looking for the seat, he had noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of him, but at first he took no more notice of her than of other objects that crossed his path.

It had happened to him many times already, on the way home, for example, not to notice the road by which he was going, and he was accustomed to walk like that. But there was something so strange about the woman in front of him, so striking even at first sight, that gradually his attention was riveted on her, at first reluctantly and, as it were, resentfully, and then more and more intently.

He felt a sudden desire to find out what it was that was so strange about the woman. In the first place, she appeared to be quite a young, and she was walking in the great heat bareheaded and with no parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had on a dress of some light silky material, but also put on strangely awry, scarcely fastened, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the waist at the back: a great piece was coming apart and hanging loose. A little kerchief was flung about her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. On top of everything, the girl was walking unsteadily, stumbling and even staggering from side to side.

The encounter drew Raskolnikov’s whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at the bench, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner; she let her head sink on the back of the bench and closed her eyes, apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he realized at once that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking sight. He could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before him the face of an extremely young, fair-haired girl—sixteen, even perhaps only fifteen years old, pretty little face, but flushed and, as it were, swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know what she was doing; she crossed one leg over the other, lifting it indecorously, and showed every sign of being unconscious that she was in the street.

Raskolnikov did not sit down, but he felt unwilling to leave her, and stood facing her in perplexity. This boulevard is never much frequented; and now, at two o’clock, in the stifling heat, it was quite deserted. And yet on the further side of the boulevard, about fifteen paces away, a gentleman was standing on the edge of the pavement; he, too, would apparently have liked very much to approach the girl with some purpose of his own. He, too, had probably seen her in the distance and had followed her, but found Raskolnikov in his way.

He looked angrily at him, though he tried to escape his notice, and stood impatiently biding his time, till the unwelcome ragamuffin should have moved away. His intentions were unmistakable. The gentleman was a fat, thickly-set man, about thirty, full-blooded, with red lips and a little moustache, and very foppishly dressed. Raskolnikov felt furious; he had a sudden longing to insult this fat dandy in some way. He left the girl for a moment and walked towards the gentleman.

“Hey! You Svidrigailov! What do you want here?” he shouted, clenching his fists and laughing, spluttering with rage.

“What do you mean?” the gentleman asked sternly, frowning with haughty astonishment.

“Get away, that’s what I mean.”

“How dare you, you rabble!”

He raised his cane. Raskolnikov rushed at him with his fists, without reflecting even that the stout gentleman was a match for two men like himself. But at that instant someone seized him from behind, and a police constable stood between them.

“That’s enough, gentlemen, no fighting, please, in a public place. What do you want? Who are you?” he asked Raskolnikov sternly, noticing his rags.

Raskolnikov looked at him intently. He had a straight-forward, sensible, soldierly face, with a gray moustache and whiskers.

“You are just the man I want,” Raskolnikov cried, grabbing his arm. “I am a former student, Raskolnikov . . . You may as well know that too,” he added, addressing the gentleman, “come along, I have something to show you.”

And taking the policeman by the hand he dragged him towards the bench.

“Look here, hopelessly drunk, and she has just come down the boulevard. There is no telling who and what she is, but she does not look like a professional. It’s more likely she has been given drink and deceived somewhere . . . for the first time . . . you understand? And they’ve put her out into the street like that. Look at the way her dress is torn, look at the way it has been put on: she’s been dressed by somebody, she hasn’t dressed herself, and dressed by unpracticed hands, by a man’s hands; that’s evident.

And now look there: I don’t know that dandy I was going to fight just now, I see him for the first time, but, he, too has seen her on the road, just now, drunk, not knowing what she is doing, and now he is extremely eager to get hold of her, to get her away somewhere while she is in this state . . . that’s certain, believe me, I am not wrong. I saw him myself watching her and following her, but I prevented him, and he is just waiting for me to go away.

Now he has walked away a little, and is standing still, pretending to roll a cigarette . . . Think—how can we keep her out of his hands, and how are we to get her home?” The policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout gentleman was easy to understand, he turned to consider the girl. The policeman bent over to examine her more closely, and his face worked with genuine compassion.

“Ah, what a pity!” he said, shaking his head—“why, she is still a child! She has been deceived, that’s right. Listen, lady,” he began addressing her, “where do you live?” The girl opened her tired and bleary eyes, gazed blankly at the speaker and waved her hand.

“Here,” said Raskolnikov feeling in his pocket and finding twenty kopecks, “here, call a cab and tell him to drive her to her address. The only thing is to find out her address!”

“Young lady, young lady!” the policeman began again, taking the money. “I’ll fetch you a cab and take you home myself. Where shall I take you, eh? Where do you live?”

“Go away! .Won’t leave me alone,” the girl muttered, and once more waved her hand.

“Ah, ah, how awful! It’s shameful, young lady, it’s a shame!” He shook his head again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant.

“It’s a difficult job,” the policeman said to Raskolnikov, and as he did so, he again looked him up and down in a rapid glance. He, too, must have seemed a strange figure to him: dressed in rags and handing him money!

“Did you find her far from here?” he asked him.

“I tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here, in the boulevard. She only just reached the bench and sank down on it.”

“Ah, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, God have mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She has been deceived, that’s a sure thing. See how her dress has been torn too . . . Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And she probably belongs to gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe . . . There are many like that nowadays. She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady,” and he bent over her once more.

Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that, “looking like ladies and refined” with pretensions to gentility and fashion . . .

“The chief thing is,” Raskolnikov persisted, “to keep her out of this scoundrel’s hands! Why should he too outrage her! It’s as clear as day what he is after; ah, the brute, he is not moving off!”

Raskolnikov spoke aloud and pointed to him. The gentleman heard him, and seemed about to fly into a rage again, but thought better of it, and confined himself to a contemptuous look. He then walked slowly another ten paces away and again halted.

“Keep her out of his hands we can,” said the constable thoughtfully, “if only she’d tell us where to take her, but as it is .Young lady, hey, young lady!” he bent over her once more.

She opened her eyes fully all of a sudden, looked at him intently, as though realizing something, got up from the bench and started walking away in the direction from which she had come. “Ugh! No shame, won’t leave me alone!” she said, waving her hand again. She walked quickly, though staggering as before. The dandy followed her, but along another avenue, keeping his eye on her.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him have her,” the policeman said resolutely, and he set off after them.

“Ah, the vice we see nowadays!” he repeated aloud, sighing.

At that moment something seemed to sting Raskolnikov; in an instant everything turned over inside of him.

“Hey, here!” he shouted after the policeman.

The latter turned round.

“Let it be! What’s it to you? Let it go! Let him amuse himself.” He pointed at the dandy, “What do you care?”

The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Raskolnikov laughed.

“Eh!” said the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a madman or something even worse.

“He has carried off my twenty kopecks,” Raskolnikov murmured angrily when he was left alone. “Well, let him take as much from the other fellow and let him have the girl and so let it end. And why did I want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let them devour each other alive—what is to me? How did I dare to give him twenty kopecks? Were they mine?”

In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on the deserted bench. His thought strayed aimlessly . . . In fact he found it hard to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin anew . . .

“Poor girl!” he said, looking at the empty corner where she had sat—“She will come to her senses and weep, and then her mother will find out . . . She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and then maybe, throw her out . . . And even if she does not, the Daria Frantsevnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be slipping out on the sly here and there.

Then right away there will be the hospital (that’s always the luck of those girls with respectable mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then . . . again the hospital . . . drink . . . the taverns . . . and more hospital, in two or three years—a wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen . . . Have not I seen cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? They’ve all come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That’s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go . . . that way . . . to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain fresh, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory . . . Once you’ve said ‘percentage,’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word . . . maybe we might feel more uneasy . . . But what if Dunechka were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?”

“But where am I going?” he thought suddenly. “Strange, I came out for something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out . . . I was going to Vassilyevsky Island, to Razumikhin. That’s what it was . . . now I remember. What for, though? And how is it that the idea of going to Razumikhin flew into my head just now? That’s curious.”

He wondered at himself. Razumikhin was one of his former comrades at the university. It was remarkable that Raskolnikov had hardly any friends at the university; he kept aloof from everyone, went to see no-one, and did not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon turned away from him too. He took no part in the students’ gatherings, amusements or conversations. He worked with great intensity without sparing himself, and he was respected for this, but no-one liked him.

He was very poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in development, knowledge and convictions, as though their convictions and interests were beneath him.

With Razumikhin, though, he had for some reason become friends, or, rather, he was more open and communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any other terms with Razumikhin. He was an exceptionally good-humored and communicative youth, kind to the point of simplicity, though both depth and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of his comrades understood this, and all loved him. He was a man of no small intelligence, though he was certainly rather a simpleton at times.

He was of striking appearance—tall, thin, black-haired and always badly shaved. He was sometimes rowdy and was reputed to be of great physical strength. One night, when out in a festive company, he had with one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his back. There was no limit to his drinking powers, but he could abstain from drink altogether; he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but he could do without pranks altogether. Another thing striking about Razumikhin, no failure ever distressed him, and it seemed as though no unfavorable circumstances could crush him.

He could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and supported himself entirely on what he could earn by work of one sort or another. He knew of no end of resources by which to get money, through work of course. He spent one whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to declare that he liked it better, because one slept more soundly in the cold.

For the present he, too, had been obliged to give up the university, but it was only for a time, and he was working with all his might to save enough to return to his studies again. Raskolnikov had not been to see him for the last four months, and Razumikhin did not even know his address. About two months before, they had met in the street, but Raskolnikov had turned away and even crossed to the other side so that he might not be observed. And though Razumikhin noticed him, he passed him by, as he did not want to disturb a friend.