بخش 05 - فصل 05

CHAPTER FIVE

LEBEZIATNIKOV LOOKED ANXIOUS.

“I’ve come to you, Sofia Semionovna,” he began. “Excuse me . . . I thought I would find you,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov suddenly, “that is, I didn’t mean anything . . . of that sort . . . But I just thought . . . Katerina Ivanovna has gone out of her mind,” he blurted out suddenly, turning from Raskolnikov to Sonia.

Sonia screamed.

“At least it seems so. But . . . we don’t know what to do, you see! She came back—she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps even beaten . . . So it seems at least, . . . She had run to your father’s former boss, she didn’t find him at home: he was dining at some other general’s . . . Only imagine this, she rushed off there, to the other general’s, and she was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to see her, had him fetched out in the middle of his dinner, it seems. You can imagine what happened. She was turned out, of course; but, according to her own story, she abused him and threw something at him. You could well believe it . . . How she wasn’t arrested, I can’t understand! Now she’s telling everyone, including Amalia Ivanovna; but it’s difficult to understand her, she is screaming and flinging herself about . . . Oh yes, she is shouting that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and will go every day under the general’s window . . . ‘to let everyone see well-born children, whose father was an official, begging in the street.’ She keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida to sing ‘My Village,’ the boy to dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors; she intends to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of music . . . She won’t listen to anything . . . Imagine the state of things! It’s beyond anything!” Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room, putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her and Lebeziatnikov came after him.

“She’s gone mad for sure!” he said to Raskolnikov, as they went out into the street. “I didn’t want to frighten Sofia Semionovna, so I said ‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t a doubt. They say that in tuberculosis, the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I know nothing about medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.” “Did you talk to her about the tubercles?”

“Not precisely. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood! But what I say is that if you convince a person logically that they have nothing to cry about, they’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your conviction that they won’t?” “Life would be too easy if that were so,” answered Raskolnikov.

“Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of standing who died recently, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too; how far his success was due to that treatment remains uncertain . . . So it seems, at least.” Raskolnikov had stopped listening long ago. Reaching the house where he lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov woke up with a start, looked around him and hurried on.

Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow, tattered paper, at the dust, at his sofa . . . From the yard came a loud continuous knocking; someone seemed to be hammering . . . He went to the window, rose on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hanging out of the windows . . . He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.

Never, never had he felt so terribly alone!

Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable.

“Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!”

“I’ll remain alone,” he said resolutely, “and she won’t come to the prison!”

Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a strange thought.

“Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia,” he thought suddenly.

He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dunia came in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost vacantly at her.

“Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for a minute,” said Dunia.

Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft. He saw that she too had come to him with love.

“Rodia, now I know everything, everything. Dmitri Prokofich has explained and told me about all of it. They are worrying and persecuting you with a stupid and contemptible suspicion . . . Dmitri Prokofich told me that there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking at it with such horror. I don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That’s what I am afraid of. As for your proposal to cut yourself off from us, I’m not judging you, I’m not going to judge you, and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel that, if I had a difficulty as great as that, I too would keep away from everyone. I shall tell mother nothing of this, but I shall talk about you continually and shall tell her from you that you will come very soon. Don’t worry about her; I will set her mind at rest; but don’t you try her too much—come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say” (Dunia began to get up) “that if you should need me or should need . . . all my life or anything . . . call me, and I’ll come. Goodbye!” She turned abruptly and went towards the door.

“Dunia!” Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. “That Razumikhin, Dmitri Prokofich, is a very good person.”

Dunia flushed slightly.

“Well?” she asked, waiting a moment.

“He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love … Goodbye, Dunia.”

Dunia flushed crimson, then suddenly became alarmed.

“But what does that mean, Rodia? Are we really parting for ever so you . . . can give me such a parting message?”

“Never mind . . . Goodbye.”

He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood for a moment, looked at him uneasily, and went out troubled.

No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and say goodbye to her, and even to tell her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.

“Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and will feel that I stole her kiss.”

“And would she stand that test?” he went on a few minutes later to himself. “No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They never do.”

And he thought of Sonia.

There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was fading. He took up his cap and went out.

He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him recently. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity “on a square yard of space.” Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.

“With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or something, you can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dunia’s, as well as Sonia’s,” he muttered bitterly.

He heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to him.

“Just imagine, I’ve been to your room looking for you. Imagine, she’s carried out her plan and taken away the children. Sofia Semionovna and I have had a difficult time finding them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the crossroads and in front of the stores; there’s a crowd of fools running after them. Come along!” “And Sonia?” Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.

“Just frantic. That is, it’s not Sofia Semionovna who’s frantic, but Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofia Semionovna’s frantic too. But Katerina Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I’m telling you, she’s completely mad. They’ll be taken to the police. You can imagine what an effect that’ll have . . . They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofia Semionovna’s, quite close.” On the canal bank near the bridge and not even two houses away from the one where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally of street urchins. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her wasted tubercular face looked more long-suffering than ever, and in fact out of doors in the sunshine a tubercular person always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them in front of the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why it was necessary and, driven to desperation by their lack of understanding, beat them . . . Then she would make a rush at the crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she immediately appealed to them to see what these children “from a genteel, one may say aristocratic, house” had been brought to. If she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan which Lebeziatnikov had mentioned was not there; at least, Raskolnikov did not see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolia dance and Polenka sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the second note with a terrible cough, which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and terror of Kolia and Lida. Some effort had been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to make him look like a Turk. There had been no costume for Lida; she just had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina Ivanovna’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family possession. Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realized her mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was extremely frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed Katerina Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.

“Leave off, Sonia, leave off,” she shouted, speaking fast, panting and coughing. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do; you’re like a child! I’ve told you before that I am not going back to that drunken German. Let everyone, let all of Petersburg see the children begging in the streets, though their father was an honorable man who served all his life in truth and fidelity and, you might say, died in service.” (Katerina Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.) “Let that wretch of a general see it! And, Sonia, you’re being silly: what do we have to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I won’t go on! Ah, Rodion Romanovich, is that you?” she cried, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing up to him. “Explain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are an honorable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And that general will lose his post, you’ll see! We shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll fall on my knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say ‘Defend us, father.’ He is the father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll see, and that wretch of a general . . . Lida, tenezvous droite!51 Kolia, you’ll be dancing again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what should I do with them, Rodion Romanovich? If you only knew how stupid they are! What can you do with such children?” And she, almost crying herself—which did not stop her uninterrupted, rapid flow of talk—pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried to persuade her to go home and even said, hoping to work on her vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a boarding-school.

“A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. “No, Rodion Romanovich, that dream is over! Everyone has abandoned us! . . . And that general … You know, Rodion Romanovich, I threw an ink spot at him—it happened to be standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh the scoundrels, the scoundrels! But enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!” she pointed to Sonia. “Polenka, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing at?” (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) “It’s all because Kolia here is so stupid; I have such problems with him. What do you want, Polenka? Tell me in French, parlez-moi français.52 But I’ve taught you, you know some phrases. How else are you going to show that you are from a good family, that you’re well-bred children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, we’re going to sing a genteel song . . . Ah, yes, . . . What are we going to sing? You keep putting me out, but we . . . you see, we are standing here, Rodion Romanovich, to find something to sing and get money, something Kolia can dance to . . . Because, as you can imagine, our performance is all improvised … We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people from fine society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida only knows ‘My Village,’ nothing apart from ‘My Village,’ and everyone sings that. We must sing something far more genteel … Well, have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you’d help your mother! My memory’s completely gone, or I would have thought of something. We really can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’ Ah, let’s sing in French, ‘Cinq sous,’53 I have taught it to you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children from a good family, and that will be much more touching . . . You might sing ‘Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre,’54 for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses.— Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre

Ne sait quand reviendra . . . ”—55

she began singing. “But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’ Now, Kolia, your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!—

Cinq sous, cinq sous

Pour monter notre ménage.—56

(Cough-cough-cough!) Put your dress straight, Polenka, it’s slipped down on your shoulders,” she observed, panting from coughing. “Now it’s particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, so that everyone will see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Sonia, with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is seriously deformed by it . . . Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter, stupids? Come, Kolia, begin. Hurry up, hurry up! Oh, what an unbearable child!— Cinq sous, cinq sous.—

A policeman again! What do you want?”

A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat—a solid-looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which delighted Katerina Ivanovna and had its effect on the policeman) —approached and wordlessly handed her a green three-ruble note. His face wore a look of genuine sympathy. Katerina Ivanovna took it and gave him a polite, even ceremonious, bow.

“I thank you, honored sir,” she began loftily. “The causes that have induced us (take the money, Polenka: you see there are generous and honorable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress). You see, honored sir, these orphans of good family—I might even say of aristocratic connections—and that wretch of a gen- eral sat eating grouse . . . and stamped at my disturbing him. ‘Your excellency,’ I said, ‘protect the orphans: you knew my late husband, Semion Zakharovich, and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his only daughter.’ . . . That policeman again! Protect me,” she cried to the official. “Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run away from one of them. What do you want, fool?” “It’s forbidden in the streets. You mustn’t make a disturbance.”

“It’s you who are making a disturbance. It’s just as if I were grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?”

“You have to get a license for an organ, and you haven’t got one, and that way you collect a crowd. Where do you live?”

“What, a license?” wailed Katerina Ivanovna. “I buried my husband today. Why do I need a license?”

“Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself,” began the official. “Come along; I will escort you . . . This is no place for you in the crowd. You are ill.”

“Honored sir, honored sir, you don’t know,” screamed Katerina Ivanovna. “We are going to the Nevsky . . . Sonia, Sonia! Where is she? She is crying too! What’s the matter with you all? Kolia, Lida, where are you going?” she cried suddenly in alarm. “Oh, silly children! Kolia, Lida, where are they off to? . . . ” Kolia and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their mother’s mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere. Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them. She was a pitiful and indecent spectacle when she ran, weeping and panting for breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.

“Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful children! . . . Polenka! catch them . . . It’s for your sakes I . . . ”

She stumbled as she ran and fell down.

“She’s cut herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, dear!” cried Sonia, bending over her.

All ran up and crowded round. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the policeman who muttered, “Bother!” with a gesture of impatience, feeling that the job was going to be a troublesome one.

“Pass on! Pass on!” he said to the crowd that pressed forward.

“She’s dying,” someone shouted.

“She’s gone out of her mind,” said another.

“Lord have mercy on us,” said a woman, crossing herself. “Have they caught the little girl and the boy? They’re being brought back, the elder one’s got them . . . Ah, the wicked little things!”

When they examined Katerina Ivanovna carefully, they saw that she had not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood that stained the pavement red was from her chest.

“I’ve seen that before,” muttered the official to Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov; “that’s tuberculosis; the blood flows and chokes the patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago . . . nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute . . . What’s to be done though? She is dying.” “This way, this way, to my room!” Sonia implored. “I live here! . . . See, that house, the second from here . . . Come to me, make haste,” she turned from one to the other. “Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!”

Thanks to the official’s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia’s room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still flowing, but she seemed to be coming round. Raskolnikov, Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed right up to the door. Polenka came in holding Kolia and Lida, who were trembling and weeping. Several people came in too from the Kapernaumovs’ room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his wife, a woman with a constantly scared expression, and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these, Svidrigailov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran himself.

Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.

“Where are the children?” she said in a faint voice. “You’ve brought them, Polenka? Oh the silly idiots! Why did you run away . . . Oh!”

Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes, looking around her.

“So that’s how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room.”

She looked at her with a face of suffering.

“We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolia, come here! Well, here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I’ve had enough! The ball is over. (Cough!) Lay me down, let me die in peace.”

They laid her back on the pillow.

“What, the priest? I don’t want him. You haven’t got a ruble to spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered . . . And if He won’t forgive me, I don’t care!”

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognized everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, and there was a sort of a rattle in her throat.

“I said to him, your excellency,” she forced out, gasping after each word. “That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolia, hands on your hips, hurry up! Glissez, glissez!57 Pas de basque! Tap with your heels, be a graceful child!— Du hast Diamanten und Perlen—58

“What next? That’s what we should sing.—

Du hast die schönsten Augen

Mädchen, was willst du mehr?—59

“What an idea! Was willst du mehr.What things the fool invents! Ah, yes!—

In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.—

“Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged . . . Oh those days! Oh that’s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I’ve forgotten. Remind me! How was it?” She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word, with a look of growing terror.

“In the heat of midday! . . . in the vale! . . . of Dagestan! . . .

With lead in my breast! . . . ”60

“Your excellency!” she wailed suddenly with a heartrending scream and a flood of tears, “protect the orphans! You have been their father’s guest . . . aristocratic, you might say . . . ” She started, regaining consciousness, and gazed at everyone with a sort of terror, but at once recognized Sonia.

“Sonia, Sonia!” she articulated softly and caressingly, as though surprised to find her there. “Sonia darling, are you here, too?”

They lifted her up again.

“Enough! It’s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!” she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the pillow.

She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.

Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms around her, and remained motionless with her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted chest. Polenka threw herself at her mother’s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though Kolia and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other’s little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.

And how did “the certificate of merit” come to be on the bed beside Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.

He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.

“She is dead,” he said.

“Rodion Romanovich, I must have a word with you,” said Svidrigailov, coming up to them.

Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew. Svidrigailov drew Raskolnikov further away.

“I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and all that. You know it’s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphanage, and I will settle fifteen hundred rubles to be paid to each on coming of age, so that Sofia Semionovna need not worry about them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn’t she? So tell Avdotia Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.” “What is your motive for such benevolence?” asked Raskolnikov.

“Ah! You skeptical person!” laughed Svidrigailov. “I told you I had no need of that money. Won’t you admit that I’m just doing it for the sake of human kindness? She wasn’t ‘a louse,’ you know” (he pointed to the corner where the dead woman lay), “was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you’ll agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to die? And if I didn’t help them, Polenka would go the same way.” He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing the phrases which he had used with Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at Svidrigailov.

“How do you know?” he whispered, hardly able to breathe.

“I live here at Madame Resslich’s, the other side of the wall. Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted friend of mine. I am a neighbor.”

“You?”

“Yes,” continued Svidrigailov, shaking with laughter. “I assure you on my honor, dear Rodion Romanovich, that you have interested me enormously. I told you we’d become friends, I predicted it. Well, here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You’ll see you can get on with me!”