بخش 06 - فصل 06

CHAPTER SIX

HE SPENT THAT EVENING until ten o’clock going from one low haunt to another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, about how a certain “villain and tyrant”—“began kissing Katia.”—

Svidrigailov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky three-year-old pine tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a “Vauxhall,”72 which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken, but extremely depressed German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent. Svidrigailov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that there was no possibility of understanding them. The only fact that seemed certain was that one of them had stolen something and had even succeeded in selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share the spoil with his companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen object was a teaspoon belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the affair began to seem troublesome. Svidrigailov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of the garden. It was about six o’clock. He had not drunk a drop of wine all this time and had ordered tea more for the sake of appearances than anything.

It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over the sky at about ten o’clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain came down like a waterfall. The water did not fall in drops, but beat on the earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and each flash lasted while one could count five.

Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then, putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes, but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at home.

She was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her. She was giving them tea. She received Svidrigailov in respectful silence, looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away at once in indescribable terror.

Svidrigailov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside him. She timidly prepared to listen.

“I may be going to America, Sofia Semionovna,” said Svidrigailov,” and as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make some arrangements. Well, did you see the lady today? I know what she said to you, you need not tell me.” (Sonia made a movement and blushed.) “Those people have their own way of doing things. As to your sisters and your brother, they are really provided for and the money assigned to them I’ve put into safe keeping and have received acknowledgments. You had better take charge of the receipts, in case anything happens. Here, take them! Well, now that’s settled. Here are three 5 per cent bonds to the value of three thousand rubles. Take those for yourself, entirely for yourself, and let that be strictly between ourselves, so that no-one knows of it, whatever you hear. You will need the money, because to go on living in the old way, Sofia Semionovna, is bad, and besides there is no need for it now.” “I am so obliged to you, and so are the children and my step- mother,” said Sonia hurriedly, “and if I’ve said so little . . . please don’t consider . . . ”

“That’s enough! That’s enough!”

“But as for the money, Arkady Ivanovich, I am very grateful to you, but I don’t need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don’t think me ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money . . . ”

“It’s for you, for you, Sofia Semionovna, and please don’t waste words over it. I haven’t got the time for it. You will want it. Rodion Romanovich has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia.” (Sonia looked wildly at him, and started.) “Don’t be uneasy, I know all about it from his own lips and I am not a gossip; I won’t tell anyone. It was good advice when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be much better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Siberia, he will go and you will follow him. That’s so, isn’t it? And if so, you’ll need money. You’ll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is the same as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Amalia Ivanovna to pay what you owe. I heard you. How can you undertake such obligations so carelessly, Sofia Semionovna? It was Katerina Ivanovna’s debt and not yours, so you ought not to have taken any notice of the German woman. You can’t get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned about me—tomorrow or the day after you will be asked—don’t say anything about the fact that I am coming to see you now and don’t show the money to anyone or say a word about it. Well, now, goodbye.” (He got up.) “My greetings to Rodion Romanovich. By the way, you’d better put the money for the present in Mr. Razumikhin’s keeping. You know Mr. Razumikhin? Of course you do. He’s not a bad man. Take it to him tomorrow or . . . when the time comes. And until then, hide it carefully.” Sonia, too, jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at Svidrigailov. She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the first moments she did not dare and did not know how to begin.

“How can you . . . how can you be going now, in rain like this?”

“What, set off for America, and get stopped by the rain! Ha, ha! goodbye, Sofia Semionovna, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use to others. By the way . . . tell Mr. Razumikhin I send my greetings to him. Tell him Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov sends his greetings. Be sure to.”

He went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague apprehension.

It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past eleven, he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain still persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little apartment where the parents of his fiancée lived, in Third Street on Vassilyevsky Island. He knocked for some time before he was admitted, and his visit at first caused a great disturbance; but Svidrigailov could be very fascinating when he liked, so that the first and in fact very intelligent surmise of the sensible parents—that Svidrigailov had probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing—vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see Svidrigailov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a direct question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then, if she had to ask about some detail—for instance, when Svidrigailov would like to have the wedding—she would start with interested and almost eager questions about Paris and the court life there, and only by degrees brought the conversation round to Third Street. On other occasions this had of course been very impressive, but this time Arkady Ivanovich seemed particularly impatient, and insisted on seeing his betrothed at once, though he had been informed to begin with that she had already gone to bed. The girl of course appeared.

Svidrigailov informed her at once that very important affairs obliged him to leave Petersburg for a time, that he had therefore brought her fifteen thousand rubles and that he begged her accept them as a present from him, as he had long been intending to make her this trifling present before their wedding. The logical connection of the present with his immediate departure and the absolute necessity of visiting them for that purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not made clear. But it all came off very well; even the inevitable questions, the inevitable expressions of wonder and regret were extraordinarily few and restrained. On the other hand, the gratitude expressed was remarkably glowing and was reinforced by tears from this most sensible of mothers. Svidrigailov got up, laughed, kissed his fiancée, patted her cheek, declared he would soon come back, and noticing in her eyes, along with childish curiosity, a sort of earnest, dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though he felt sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers. He went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement, but the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some of the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidrigailov was a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great wealth—there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start off on a journey and give away money just as his fancy took him, so there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange that he was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric, and all these people of high society didn’t think about what people said and didn’t stand on ceremony. In fact, he may have come like that on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone. Above all, not a word should be said about it, because God knows what might come of it, and the money must be locked up, and it was extremely fortunate that Fedosia, the cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be said to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so on and so on. They sat up whispering until two o’clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier, amazed and rather sorrowful.

Meanwhile, at midnight exactly, Svidrigailov crossed the bridge on the way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest, even inquiry. But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he turned and went towards Y____ Prospect. He walked along that endless street for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling in the dark on the wooden pavement, but continually looking for something on the right side of the street. He had noticed passing through this street recently that there was a hotel somewhere near the end, built of wood, but fairly large, and its name, he remembered, was something like Adrianople. He was not mistaken: the hotel was so conspicuous in that God-forsaken place that he could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long, blackened wooden building, and although it was late there were lights in the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked a ragged fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter, scanning Svidrigailov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a tiny, stuffy room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under the stairs. There was no other room; all of them were occupied. The ragged fellow looked inquiringly.

“Is there tea?” asked Svidrigailov.

“Yes, sir.”

“What else is there?”

“Veal, vodka, savories.”

“Bring me tea and veal.”

“And you don’t want anything else?” he asked with apparent surprise.

“Nothing, nothing.”

The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.

“It must be a nice place,” thought Svidrigailov. “How was it I didn’t know it? I expect I look as if I came from a café chantant and had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who stayed here.”

He lit the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was so low-pitched that Svidrigailov could only just stand up in it; it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain stained chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as though they were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn and dusty that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general color—yellow—could still be made out. One of the walls was cut short by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic, but just under the stairs.

Svidrigailov put down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a shout in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not ceased from the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was upbraiding and almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice.

Svidrigailov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing like an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart to keep his balance, and smiting himself on the chest. He reproached the other with being a beggar, with having no standing whatsoever. He declared that he had taken the other one out of the gutter and he could turn him out when he liked, and that only the finger of Providence sees it all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a chair, and had the air of a man who desperately wants to sneeze, but can’t. He sometimes turned sheepish and misty eyes on the speaker, but obviously had not the slightest idea what he was talking about and scarcely heard it. A candle was burning down on the table; there were wine glasses, a nearly empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this, Svidrigailov turned away indifferently and sat down on the bed.

The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking him again whether he didn’t want anything more, and again receiving a negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigailov swiftly drank a glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began to feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. “It would have been better to be well for the occasion,” he thought with a smile. The room was close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he heard a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and of leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another. He felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. “It must be a garden under the window,” he thought. “There’s a sound of trees. How I dislike the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give me a horrible feeling.” He remembered how he had disliked it when he passed Petrovsky Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little Neva and he felt cold again as he had when standing there. “I never have liked water,” he thought, “even in a landscape,” and he suddenly smiled again at a strange idea: “Surely now all these questions of taste and comfort ought not to matter, but I’ve become more particular, like an animal that picks out a special place . . . for such an occasion. I ought to have gone into Petrovsky Park! I suppose it seemed dark, cold, ha-ha! As though I were looking for pleasant sensations! . . . By the way, why haven’t I put out the candle?” he blew it out. “They’ve gone to bed next door,” he thought, not seeing the light at the crack. “Well, now, Marfa Petrovna, now is the time for you to turn up; it’s dark, and the very time and place for you. But now you won’t come!” He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his plan involving Dunia, he had recommended Raskolnikov to trust her to Razumikhin’s keeping. “I suppose I really did say it, as Raskolnikov guessed, to tease myself. But what a rogue that Raskolnikov is! He’s gone through a good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he’s got over his nonsense. But now he’s too eager for life. These young men are contemptible on that point. But damn him! Let him please himself, it’s nothing to do with me.” He could not get to sleep. By degrees Dunia’s image rose before him, and a shudder ran over him. “No, I must give up all that now,” he thought, rousing himself. “I must think of something else. It’s strange. I never had any great hatred for anyone, I never particularly wanted to revenge myself even, and that’s a bad sign, a bad sign, a bad sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper—that’s a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too—Damnation! But—who knows?—perhaps she would have made a new man of me somehow . . . ” He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dunia’s image rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time, she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so that he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how at that instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang at his heart . . .

“Ah! God, these thoughts again! I must put them away!”

He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had stopped, when suddenly something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He started. “Ugh! Damn it! I think it’s a mouse,” he thought, “that’s the veal I left on the table.” He was extremely unwilling to pull off the blanket, get up, get cold, but suddenly something unpleasant ran over his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking in a feverish chill, he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing. He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.

The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket as before. The wind was howling under the window. “How disgusting,” he thought with annoyance.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he imagined a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity Sunday. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors onto the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with fragrant, freshly-cut hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though it too was chiseled of marble, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigailov knew that girl. There was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin, no sound of prayers; the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had corrupted that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled . . .

Svidrigailov came to, got up from the bed and went to the window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered with his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have been something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There, too, probably there were tea tables and singing in the daytime. Now drops of rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was as dark as in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark blurs of objects. Svidrigailov, bending down with elbows on the window-sill, gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a cannon, followed by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the night. “Ah, the signal! The river is overflowing,” he thought. “By morning it will be swirling down the street in the lower parts, flooding the basements and cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper floors. What time is it now?” And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three.

“Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I’ll go out at once, straight to the park. I’ll choose a great bush there drenched with rain, so that as soon as one’s shoulder touches it, millions of drops drip on one’s head.”

He moved away from the window, shut it, lit the candle, put on his waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle, into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep somewhere in the midst of candle ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay him for the room and leave the hotel. “It’s the best moment; I couldn’t choose a better one.”

He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidrigailov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time, but are starting to be comforted. The child’s face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. “How can she have come here? She must have hidden here and not slept all night.” He began questioning her. The child suddenly became animated, chattered away in her baby language, something about “Mother” and that “Mother would beat her,” and about some cup that she had “bwoken.” The child chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken a cup of her mother’s and was so frightened that she had run away the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took her in his arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and began undressing her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless feet were as wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night. When he had undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and wrapped her in the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at once. Then he sank into dreary musing again.

“How stupid it was to trouble myself,” he decided suddenly with an oppressive feeling of annoyance. “What idiocy!” In vexation he picked up the candle to go and look for the ragged attendant again and leave. “Damn the child!” he thought as he opened the door, but he turned again to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. “It’s a flush of fever,” thought Svidrigailov. It was like the flush from drinking, as though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were hot and glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they turned a glowing, shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited him . . . There was something infinitely hideous and shocking in that laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. “What, at five years old?” Svidrigailov muttered in genuine horror. “What does it mean?” And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding out her arms . . . “Damned child!” Svidrigailov cried, raising his hand to strike her, but at that moment he woke up.

He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had not been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.

“I’ve been having bad dreams all night!” He got up angrily, feeling utterly shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he could see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept! He got up, put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the revolver in his pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a notebook out of his pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the title page wrote a few lines in large letters. Reading them over, he sank into thought with his elbows on the table. The revolver and the notebook lay beside him. Some flies woke up and settled on the untouched veal, which was still on the table. He stared at them and at last with his free right hand began trying to catch one. He tried until he was tired, but could not catch it. At last, realizing that he was engaged in this interesting pursuit, he started, got up and walked resolutely out of the room. A minute later he was in the street.

A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigailov walked along the slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the bush . . . He began ill-humoredly staring at the houses, trying to think of something else. There was not a cabman or a passerby in the street. The bright yellow, wooden, little houses looked dirty and dejected with their closed shutters. The cold and damp penetrated his whole body and he began to shiver. From time to time he came across store signs and read each carefully. At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between its legs. A man in an overcoat lay dead drunk, face downwards across the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower stood up on the left. “Bah!” he shouted, “here is a place. Why should it be Petrovsky? It will be in the presence of an official witness anyway . . . ” He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a gray soldier’s coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigailov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. Both of them, Svidrigailov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck Achilles that it was unusual for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a word.

“What do you want here?” he said, without moving or changing his position.

“Nothing, my friend, good morning,” answered Svidrigailov.

“This isn’t the place.”

“I am going to foreign lands, my friend.”

“To foreign lands?”

“To America.”

“America.”

Svidrigailov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his eyebrows.

“I told you, this is no place for jokes!”

“Why shouldn’t it be the place?”

“Because it isn’t.”

“Well, my friend, I don’t mind. It’s a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”

He put the revolver to his right temple.

“You can’t do it here, it’s not the place,” cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.

Svidrigailov pulled the trigger.