Crime and Punishment (12 page)

‘Hm, that's true,’ he went on, following the vortex of thoughts that was whirling inside his head. ‘It is true that “in order to get to know anyone, it is necessary to approach them cautiously and by stages”; but Mr Luzhin doesn't take much figuring out. The main thing is that “he's a man of business, and,
it would appear
, kind”; it's no small matter that he should have taken responsibility for their luggage, forwarding that big trunk at his own expense! How could he be anything but kind? And the two of them, the mother and the
bride
-
to
-
be
, are hiring a muzhik and a cart with a hood made of bast-matting. (Why, I've ridden in just such a cart myself!) Oh, it's nothing! Only ninety versts, “and we'll be quite happy to travel third class”, a thousand versts, if need be. And sensible, too: one must cut one's coat according to the cloth; but I say, Mr Luzhin – what can you be thinking of? After all, you're the one whose bride she's going to be… surely you must know that mother is borrowing money on the strength of her pension in order to pay for the journey? Of course, you've a common commercial interest here, something
undertaken to mutual advantage and in equal shares, the expenses split fifty-fifty, in other words; “some bread and salt together but a pinch of snuff apart,” as the saying goes. And the man of business has managed to pull the wool over their eyes a little in this instance: paying to have their luggage moved is less expensive than paying for their journey, and it may even go for nothing. Why can't they both see that? Or don't they want to see it? I mean, they're pleased, they're actually pleased! And to think that this is just the blossom on the boughs, and the real fruits have still to come! I mean, what's important here? It's not the meanness and the miserliness, but the
tone
of all this. I mean, it's setting the tone for the whole marriage, it's a prophecy… And why is mother being so extravagant, anyway? What's she going to have left by the time she shows up in St Petersburg? Three silver roubles, or two “tickets”, as she… the old woman… calls them… hm! What does she think she's going to live on in St Petersburg afterwards? I mean, she must surely realize by now that it'll be
impossible
for her and Dunya to go on living together after the marriage, even just initially? The charming fellow has doubtless
let the cat out of the bag
on that score, too, and showed himself in his true colours, even though mother is warding the invitations off with both hands, saying, “I shall refuse.” What does she think she's up to? What's she got to rely on? Her hundred and twenty roubles’ pension, with deductions in order to pay off her debt to Afanasy Ivanovich? She knits her little scarves and sews her little armlets, ruining her old eyes. And I mean, the scarves only bring in about twenty-five roubles a year to add to her hundred and twenty, I know that for a fact. So one must conclude that she's relying on the nobility of Mr Luzhin's feelings: “He'll make the offer himself, he'll beg me.” Don't bank on it! That's the way it always is with these Schillerean “
Schöne Seelen
”
¹
– right up until the last possible moment they'll deck a man out in peacock feathers, hoping for the good and refusing to believe in the bad, and although they have a sense that there may be another side to the coin, nothing will induce them to utter so much as one word of truth before they absolutely have to; the very thought gives them the shivers, they ward off the truth with both hands right up to the moment
when the man they've adorned with all those virtues makes a fool of them. I wonder if Mr Luzhin has any medals? I bet he has a St Anne's Ribbon
²
and puts it in his lapel when he goes out to dine with contractors and merchants. He'll probably wear it at his wedding, too. But the devil take him!…

‘… Well, mother I can understand, there's nothing to be done there, that's just the way she is, but I'm surprised at Dunya. Dear Dunechka, I mean, I know you!… Why, the last time we saw each other you were just about to be twenty; but I already understood your temperament. Mother writes that “Dunechka can put up with a great deal”. I could have told her that! I already knew that two and a half years ago, and I've spent the past two and a half years thinking about it, about that very fact that “Dunechka can put up with a great deal”. After all, if she can put up with Mr Svidrigailov, and all the consequences of that, she really must be able to put up with a great deal. And now they've decided that she can put up with Mr Luzhin as well, who expounds the theory of the superiority of wives who have been plucked from poverty and are the recipients of charity from their husbands, and expounds it practically at their first meeting, what's more. Well, all right, suppose he “unintentionally let it slip”, even though he's a man of reason (which means, perhaps, that he didn't let it slip unintentionally at all, but was simply anxious to make the situation plain as soon as possible), but what of Dunya, what of her? I mean, the man must be an open book to her, yet she's going to live with him. I mean, she'd live on black bread and water rather than sell her soul, she wouldn't give up her inner freedom for the sake of a bit of comfort; she wouldn't give it up for the whole of Schleswig-Holstein, never mind about Mr Luzhin. No, Dunya wasn't like that when I knew her, and… well, she hasn't changed, that's all!… There's no use denying it, the Svidrigailovs are hard work! It's hard work trailing around in the provinces all your life as a governess on two hundred roubles a year, but I know all the same that my sister would rather go and work with the Negroes on some plantation-owner's estate or with the Latvian peasants of some Baltic German than defile her spirit and her moral sensibility by a liaison – forever – with a man whom she
doesn't respect and to whom she has nothing to say, solely for her own personal gain! And even if Mr Luzhin had been made of the purest gold or sheer unadulterated diamond, not even then would she have agreed to become the legal concubine of Mr Luzhin! Why is she agreeing to it now? What's the game? What's the clue? It's not hard to see: she won't sell herself for the sake of her own comfort, not even in order to save herself from death, but she'll do it for someone else! She'll sell herself for those who are dear to her, those she looks up to! That's what the whole business is all about: she's selling herself for her brother, for her mother! Selling everything! Oh, in cases like that we suppress our moral sensibilities; our freedom, our peace of mind, even our conscience, all of it, all of it goes to the secondhand market. Let my life go to hang, we say, just as long as those dear, beloved creatures of mine are happy. Not only that: we invent our own casuistry, too, we study with the Jesuits for a time, perhaps, and put our minds at rest, convince ourselves that this is how it has to be, that it really must be like this if the good object is to be attained. That's just the way we are, and it's all as plain as daylight. It's plain that it's Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov and no one else who is at stake here and who has pride of place. Yes, of course, she can see to it that he's happy, support him while he's at the university, make him a partner in an office, provide a whole future for him; perhaps he'll be a rich man one day, and end his days honoured, respected, even famous! And mother? Oh, but it's Rodya, her precious Rodya, her first-born! How could she not sacrifice even such a daughter as this for such an important son? Oh loving and inequitable hearts! And what of that? In this case we wouldn't even refuse the lot of Sonechka, Sonechka Marmeladova, eternal Sonechka, for as long as the world lasts! Are you completely aware of the size of the sacrifice you're making? Is it right? Is it being made under duress? Will it do any good? Is it sensible? Do you realize, Dunechka, that Sonechka's fate is in no way any uglier than the one you're contemplating with Mr Luzhin? “There can't be any love between them,” mother writes. But what if it's not only love, but also respect that there can't be; what if, instead, there's revulsion, contempt, loathing, what then? And what if it then
turns out that once again it's necessary to “
keep oneself clean
”? Am I right? Do you realize, do you realize what that kind of cleanliness involves? Do you realize that the Luzhin kind of cleanliness is just the same as Sonechka's cleanliness, and perhaps even worse, even more filthy and more vile, because you, Dunechka, can still count on a surplus of comfort, while over there it's quite simply a question of staving off death by starvation! “It's expensive, expensive, that kind of cleanliness, Dunechka!” Well, and what if your strength isn't up to it, what if you wish you'd never done it? Think of the hurt, the sadness, the cursing, the tears, hidden from everyone, because you're not Marfa Petrovna, are you? And what do you think mother will feel like then? I mean, even now she's uneasy, she's worried; but what about when she sees it all clearly for what it is? And what do you think I'll feel like?… Have the two of you ever really stopped to think about me? I don't want your sacrifice, Dunechka, I don't want it, mother! It won't take place while I'm alive, it won't, it won't! I won't accept it!’

He suddenly came to himself, and paused.

‘Won't take place? And what are you going to do to stop it? Forbid it? By what right? What can you promise them instead, in order to possess such a right? To devote your whole life, your whole future to them,
when you finish your course and get a job
? We've heard that one before, that's just maybe – what about
now
? I mean, you've got to do something right now, do you realize that? And what are you doing? Robbing them. I mean, the only money they've got is what they can raise on the strength of a hundred-rouble pension and the patronage of the Svidrigailovs! How are you going to protect them from the Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin, you million-aire-to-be, you Zeus, disposer of their fortunes? You'll do it in ten years' time? But in ten years' time mother's eyesight will have gone, from all those scarves she's made, and doubtless from shedding too many tears as well; she'll have wasted away from hunger; and your sister? Well, just think what may have happened to your sister in ten years' time, or even during them? Got it?’

With these questions he teased and tormented himself, even
deriving a certain amount of enjoyment from them. Actually, none of them were new or unexpected questions; they were all old, painful ones of long standing. It was a long time since they had begun to lacerate his heart, and it was positively an age since his present sense of anguish and depression had come into being, having grown, accumulated and, of late, matured and taken concentrated form, assuming the guise of a terrible, monstrous and fantastic question that had begun to torture his heart and mind and inexorably demanded resolution. Only now his mother's letter suddenly struck him like a thunderbolt. It was clear that now was not the time to feel miserable, to suffer passively with the thought that the questions were not capable of resolution; no, instead he must do something, and at once, as quickly as possible. Whatever happened, he must take some action, or else…

‘Or else turn my back on life altogether!’ he suddenly cried in a frenzy. ‘Obediently accept my fate, such as it is, once and for all, and stifle all my aspirations, renouncing every right to action, life and love!’

‘Do you understand, do you understand, dear sir, what it means to have nowhere left to go?’ The question Marmeladov had asked the day before suddenly came back to him. ‘For every man must have at least somewhere he can go…’

Suddenly he gave a start: a certain thought, another from yesterday, had flashed through his head. But that was not what had made him start. After all, he had
known in advance
that it was about to ‘flash through’, and he had been waiting for it; and in fact it was not really a thought from yesterday at all. The difference was that a month ago, and even yesterday, it had been only a dream, while now… now it was suddenly no longer a dream, but had acquired a new, menacing and completely unfamiliar aspect, and it had been that which he had suddenly realized… There was a hammering in his head, and everything went dark before his eyes.

Quickly, he glanced around. He was looking for something. He wanted to sit down, and he was looking for a bench; at that moment he was walking along K— Boulevard.
³
A bench was visible some hundred yards ahead of him. He began to walk
towards it as quickly as he could; on the way, however, he had a little adventure which for a few minutes took up all his attention.

In spying out the bench he had noticed a woman who was walking along some twenty yards in front of him, but at first had not let his attention dwell upon her, any more than it had dwelt on any of the other objects that had flitted before his gaze until that moment. Many had been the occasions on which he had arrived home quite without remembering the route he had taken, and he was used to this kind of walking. There was, however, something strange about this woman who was making her way along, something that was immediately striking – at first sight – so that little by little his attention began to fasten itself on her – at first reluctantly and almost with annoyance, and then with increasing intensity. He suddenly wanted to find out just what it was that was so strange about this woman. For one thing, she could only have been a girl, and quite a young one at that; she was walking along in that blazing heat with no headwear, parasol or gloves, swinging her arms in an absurd sort of way. She was wearing a little silk dress of thin material (‘silk stuff’), but she had it on in a very odd manner, with hardly any of its fasteners done, and in behind, just where the skirt began, at her waist, it was torn; a whole piece of material had come away and hung loose. She had a little triangular scarf thrown over her exposed neck, but it protruded sideways, and was not on straight. To complete it all, the girl was walking unsteadily, stumbling and even reeling in all directions. This encounter finally aroused all of Raskolnikov's attention. He drew level with the girl as they approached the bench, but as soon as she reached it she fairly flopped down on it, in one corner, threw her head back against the rear support and closed her eyes, plainly in extreme exhaustion. Taking a close look at her, he at once realized that she was completely drunk. It made a strange and preposterous sight. He even wondered whether he might not be mistaken. Before him was an extremely young little face, that of a girl of about sixteen or even perhaps a year younger – a face that was small, framed by fair hair, pretty but flushed all over and somehow swollen-looking. By now the girl
appeared to be taking in very little; she had crossed one of her legs over the other, advancing it out far more than was decent, and looked by all the signs as though she had only the dimmest awareness that she was out on the street.