بخش 03 - فصل 06

CHAPTER SIX

“I DON’T BELIEVE IT, I can’t believe it!” repeated Razumikhin, trying in perplexity to refute Raskolnikov’s arguments.

They were by now approaching Bakaleyev’s lodgings, where Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Dunia had been expecting them a long while. Razumikhin kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused and excited by the very fact that they were for the first time speaking openly about it.

“Don’t believe it, then!” answered Raskolnikov, with a cold, careless smile. “You were noticing nothing as usual, but I was weighing every word.”

“You are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words . . . hm . . . certainly, I agree, Porfiry’s tone was rather strange, and still more that wretch Zametov! . . . You are right, there was something about him—but why? Why?”

“He has changed his mind since last night.”

“Quite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would do their best to hide it, and conceal their cards, in order to catch you afterwards . . . But it was all impudent and careless.”

“If they had had facts—I mean, real facts—or at least grounds for suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their game, in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search long ago anyway). But they haven’t got any facts, not a single one. It’s all a mirage—all ambiguous. Just a floating idea. So they try to throw me with impudence. And perhaps he was irritated at having no facts, and blurted it out in vexation—or perhaps he has a plan . . . he seems like an intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by pretending to know. They have a psychology of their own, my friend. But it’s so revolting to explain it all; let’s stop.” “And it’s insulting, insulting! I understand you. But . . . since we have spoken openly now (and it is an excellent thing that we have at last, I’m glad) I will now admit frankly that I noticed it in them long ago, this idea. Just a hint, of course—an insinuation—but why even an insinuation? How dare they? What grounds do they have? If only you knew how furious I’ve been. Think about it! Just because a poor student, unhinged by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a severe delirious illness (note that), suspicious, vain, proud, who has not seen a soul to speak to for six months, in rags and in boots without soles, has to face some wretched policemen and put up with their insolence; and the unexpected debt thrust under his nose, the I.O.U. presented by Chebarov, the new paint, thirty degrees and a stifling atmosphere, a crowd of people, a conversation about the murder of a person whose apartment he had been at just before, and all that on an empty stomach—he might well have a fainting fit! And that, that is what they base it all on! Damn them! I understand how annoying it is, but if I were you, Rodia, I would laugh at them, or better still, spit in their ugly faces, and spit a dozen times in all directions. I’d hit out in all directions, neatly too, and put an end to it. Damn them! Don’t be downhearted. How shameful it all is!” “He really has put it well, though,” Raskolnikov thought.

“Damn them? But the cross-examination again, tomorrow?” he said with bitterness. “Must I really start explaining things to them? I feel annoyed as it is that I started speaking to Zametov yesterday in the restaurant . . . ”

“Damn it! I will go myself to Porfiry. I will squeeze it out of him, as one of the family: he must let me know the ins and outs of it all! And as for Zametov . . . ”

“At last he sees through him!” thought Raskolnikov.

“Stop!” cried Razumikhin, seizing him by the shoulder again. “Stop! You were wrong. I have thought it out. You’re wrong! How was that a trap? You say that the question about the workmen was a trap. But if you had done that, could you have said you had seen them painting the apartment . . . and the workmen? On the contrary, you would have seen nothing, even if you had seen it. Who would produce evidence against himself?” “If I had done that thing, I should certainly have said that I had seen the workmen and the apartment.” Raskolnikov answered, with reluctance and obvious disgust.

“But why speak against yourself?”

“Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny everything flatly at examinations. If a man is undeveloped and inexperienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts that can’t be avoided, but seek other explanations of them, introduce some special, unexpected turn that will lend them another meaning and put them in another light. Porfiry might well reckon that I should be sure to answer so, and say I had seen them to give an air of truth, and then make some explanation.” “But he would have told you at once, that the workmen could not have been there two days before, and that therefore you must have been there on the day of the murder at eight o’clock. And so he would have caught you over a detail.”

“Yes, that is what he was reckoning on, that I should not have time to reflect, and should be in a hurry to make the most likely answer, and so would forget that the workmen could not have been there two days before.”

“But how could you forget it?”

“Nothing easier. It is in just such stupid things that clever people are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught out in a simple trap. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Porfiry is not as much of a fool as you think . . . ” “He is a knave then, if that is so!”

Raskolnikov could not help laughing. But at the very moment, he was struck by the strangeness of his own frankness, and the eagerness with which he had made this explanation, though he had kept up all the preceding conversation with gloomy repulsion, obviously with a motive, from necessity.

“I am getting a relish for certain aspects!” he thought to himself. But almost at the same instant, he became suddenly uneasy, as though an unexpected and alarming idea had occurred to him. His uneasiness kept on increasing. They had just reached the entrance to Bakaleyev’s.

“Go in alone!” said Raskolnikov suddenly. “I’ll be back soon.”

“Where are you going? We’ve just got here.”

“I can’t help it . . . I will come back in half an hour. Tell them.”

“Say what you like, I will come with you.”

“So you want to torture me too!” he screamed, with such bitter irritation, such despair in his eyes that Razumikhin’s hands dropped. He stood for some time on the steps, looking gloomily at Raskolnikov striding rapidly away in the direction of his lodging. At last, gritting his teeth and clenching his fist, he swore he would squeeze Porfiry like a lemon that very day, and went up the stairs to reassure Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who was by now alarmed at their long absence.

When Raskolnikov got home, his hair was soaked with sweat and he was breathing heavily. He went rapidly up the stairs, walked into his unlocked room and at once fastened the latch. Then in senseless terror he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put the thing; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the hole, in every crack and fold of the paper. Finding nothing, he got up and drew a deep breath. As he was reaching the steps of Bakaleyev’s, he suddenly thought that something, a chain, a stud or even a bit of paper in which they had been wrapped with the old woman’s handwriting on it, might somehow have slipped out and been lost in some crack, and then might suddenly turn up as unexpected, conclusive evidence against him.

He stood as if were lost in thought, and a strange, humiliated, half senseless smile strayed on his lips. He took his cap at last and went quietly out of the room. His ideas were all tangled. He went dreamily through the gateway.

“Here he is,” shouted a loud voice.

He raised his head.

The porter was standing at the door of his little room and was pointing him out to a short man who looked like an artisan, wearing a long coat and a waistcoat, and looking at a distance remarkably like a woman. He stooped, and his head in a greasy cap hung forward. From his wrinkled flabby face he looked over fifty; his little eyes were lost in fat and they looked out grimly, sternly and discontentedly.

“What is it?” Raskolnikov asked, going up to the porter.

The man stole a look at him from under his brows and he looked at him attentively, deliberately; then he turned slowly and went out of the gate into the street without saying a word.

“What is it?” cried Raskolnikov.

“He was asking whether a student lived here, mentioned your name and who you lodged with. I saw you coming and pointed you out and he went away. Seems strange to me.”

The porter also seemed fairly puzzled, but not excessively so, and after wondering about it for a moment he turned and went back to his room.

Raskolnikov ran after the stranger, and at once caught sight of him walking along the other side of the street with the same even, deliberate step, his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were meditating. He soon overtook him, but kept walking behind him for some time. At last, moving level with him, he looked at his face. The man noticed him at once, looked at him quickly, but dropped his eyes again; and so they walked for a minute side by side without uttering a word.

“You were asking for me . . . at the porter’s?” Raskolnikov said at last, but in a strangely quiet voice.

The man didn’t answer; he didn’t even look at him. Again they were both silent.

“Why did you . . . come and ask for me . . . and say nothing . . . Why?”

Raskolnikov’s voice broke and he seemed unable to articulate the words clearly.

The man raised his eyes this time and turned a gloomy sinister look at Raskolnikov.

“Murderer!” he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.

Raskolnikov went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence.

The man did not look at him.

“What do you mean . . . what is . . . Who’s a murderer?” muttered Raskolnikov hardly audibly.

“You are a murderer,” the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Raskolnikov’s pale face and stricken eyes.

They had just reached the crossroads. The man turned to the left without looking behind him. Raskolnikov remained standing, gazing after him. He saw him turn round fifty paces away and look back at him still standing there. Raskolnikov could not see clearly, but he imagined that he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and triumph.

With slow faltering steps, with shaking knees, Raskolnikov made his way back to his little garret, feeling chilled all over. He took off his cap and put it on the table, and for ten minutes he stood without moving. Then he sank exhausted on the sofa and with a weak moan of pain he stretched himself out on it. So he lay for half an hour.

He thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind—faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco store, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere . . . The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppressive feeling inside him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant . . . The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.

He heard the hurried footsteps of Razumikhin; he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Razumikhin opened the door and stood for some time in the doorway as though hesitating, then he stepped softly into the room and went cautiously to the sofa. Raskolnikov heard Nastasia’s whisper:

“Don’t disturb him! Let him sleep. He can have his dinner later.”

“Fine,” answered Razumikhin. Both withdrew carefully and closed the door. Another half hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes, turned on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head.

“Who is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was he, what did he see? He saw it all, that’s clear. Where was he then? And where did he see it from? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth? And how could he see it? Is it possible? Hm . . . ” continued Raskolnikov, turning cold and shivering, “and the jewel case Nikolai found behind the door—was that possible? A clue? You miss an infinitesimal line and you can build it into a pyramid of evidence! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible?” He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he had become. “I ought to have known it,” he thought with a bitter smile. “And how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I would be, take up an axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand . . . Ah, but I did know!” he whispered in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some thought.

“No, those men are not made like that. The real Master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and so everything is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are made not of flesh but of bronze!” One sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed—it’s a nice hash for Porfiry Petrovich to digest! How can they digest it! It’s too inartistic. “A Napoleon creeping under an old woman’s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!” At moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish excitement. “The old woman doesn’t matter,” he thought, hotly and incoherently. “The old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she isn’t what matters! The old woman was just an illness . . . I was in a hurry to overstep . . . I didn’t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn’t overstep, I stopped on this side . . . I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn’t even capable of that … Principle? Why was that fool Razumikhin abusing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people; ‘universal happiness’ is their case. No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don’t want to wait for ‘universal happiness.’ I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn’t pass by my mother starving, keeping my trouble in my pocket while I waited for ‘universal happiness.’ I am putting my little brick into universal happiness and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only live once, I too want . . . God, esthetically I’m a louse and nothing else,” he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. “Yes, I’m definitely a louse,” he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing with it with vindictive pleasure. “In the first place, because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that I didn’t do it for my own fleshly lusts, but with a grand and noble object—ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed to carry it out as justly as possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed for the first step, no more, no less (so the rest would have gone to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And the thing which really shows that I am a louse,” he added, grinding his teeth, “is that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I would tell myself so after I killed her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that! The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the ‘prophet’ with his saber, on his steed: Allah commands and ‘trembling’ creation must obey! The ‘prophet’ is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without explaining! It’s for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, that’s not for you! . . . I shall never, never forgive the old woman!” His hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.

“Mother, sister—how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can’t bear to have them near me . . . I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember . . . To embrace her and think if she only knew . . . shall I tell her then? That’s just what I might do . . . She must be the same as I am,” he added, straining himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. “Ah, how I hate the old woman now! I feel I would kill her again if she came to life! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she come in? . . . It’s strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn’t killed her! Lizaveta! Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes … Dear women! Why don’t they weep? Why don’t they moan? They give up everything . . . their eyes are soft and gentle . . . Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!” He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn’t remember how he got into the street. It was late in the evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked along, mournful and anxious; he was definitely aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over, but at once the man turned and walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to him. “Hold on, did he really beckon?” Raskolnikov wondered, but he tried to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognized him and was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long coat. Raskolnikov followed him at a distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. “Does he know I am following him?” thought Raskolnikov. The man went into the gateway of a big house. Raskolnikov hastened to the gate and looked in to see whether he would look round and make a sign to him. In the courtyard the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Raskolnikov at once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone up the first staircase. Raskolnikov rushed after him. He heard slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he reached the second floor. Bah! This is the apartment where the painters were at work . . . but how was it he did not recognize it at once? The steps of the man above had died away. “So he must have stopped or hidden somewhere.” He reached the third floor, should he go on? There was a stillness that was dreadful . . . But he went on. The sound of his own footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding in some corner here. Ah! the apartment was standing wide open, he hesitated and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlor which was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows. “It’s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,” thought Raskolnikov. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, until it grew painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary sharp crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A fly flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the little cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. “Why is that cloak there?” he thought, “it wasn’t there before . . . ” He went up to it quietly and felt that there was someone hiding behind it. He cautiously moved the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the corner, the old woman bent double so that he couldn’t see her face; but it was she. He stood over her. “She is afraid,” he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull. But strange to say she did not stir, as though she were made of wood. He was frightened, bent down nearer and tried to look at her; but she, too, bent her head lower. He bent right down to the ground and peeped up into her face from below—he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old woman was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter, doing her best to prevent him hearing it. Suddenly he imagined that the door from the bedroom was ajar and that there was laughter and whispering inside. He was overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the old woman on the head with all his strength, but at every blow of the axe the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old woman was actually shaking with amusement. He was rushing away, but the passage was full of people, the doors of the apartments stood open and on the landing, on the stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of heads, all looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation. Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they would not move . . . He tried to scream and woke up.

He drew a deep breath—but his dream seemed to persist strangely: his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in the doorway watching him intently.

Raskolnikov had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed them again. He lay on his back without stirring.

“Is it still a dream?” he wondered and again raised his eyelids almost imperceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still watching him.

He stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door after him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his eyes on Raskolnikov and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the sofa; he put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on his cane and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait indefinitely. As far as Raskolnikov could make out from his stolen glances, he was stout, with a full, fair, almost whitish beard.

Ten minutes passed. It was still light, but dusk was just falling. There was a complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the stairs. Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane. Finally, it became unbearable. Raskolnikov suddenly got up and sat on the sofa.

“Come, tell me what you want.”

“I knew you weren’t asleep, just pretending,” the stranger answered oddly, laughing calmly. “Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, allow me to introduce myself . . . ”