Crime and Punishment (44 page)

‘Look, Dunya,’ he began seriously and coldly. ‘Of course I'm sorry about the way I said goodbye to you yesterday, but I feel it's my duty to remind you again that I meant what I said. It's either me or Luzhin. I may be a villain, but you mustn't go down that road. That jumped-up nobody. If you marry Luzhin I'll stop regarding you as my sister.’

‘Rodya, Rodya! Oh no, now you're acting the way you did yesterday!’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna wailed piteously. ‘And why do you keep calling yourself a villain, I can't bear it! You said the same thing yesterday…’

‘Brother,’ Dunya replied firmly and also coldly, ‘somewhere in all this there is an error on your part. I thought about it all last night, and I believe I know what that error is. The whole trouble with you is that you seem to believe I'm sacrificing myself to someone for someone else's sake. That really is not the case. I'm simply getting married for my own sake, because things are not going well for me; later on, of course, I shall be pleased if I can succeed in being of assistance to my family, but that is not the principal element in my determination…’

‘She's lying!’ he thought to himself, biting his fingernails in fury. ‘The proud bitch. She doesn't want to admit that she has an ambition to be a benefactress… What arrogance! Oh, these base characters! Even when they love it's as if they hated… Oh, how I… hate them all!’

‘In other words,’ Dunya continued, ‘I am marrying Pyotr Petrovich because I consider that to be the lesser of two evils. I intend to fulfil decently all the expectations he has of me, and thus I am not deceiving him… Why did you smile like that just now?’

She flushed, and in her eyes there was a momentary gleam of anger.

‘Ah, so you're going to fulfil them all, are you?’ he asked, with a poisonous smile.

‘Within certain limits. Both the manner and the form of Pyotr Petrovich's proposal showed me at once what he requires. Of course, it's probably true that he has rather too high an opinion of himself, but I hope that he has a high opinion of me, too… Why are you laughing again?’

‘Why are you blushing again? You're lying, sister, you're lying for the sake of it, out of sheer female cussedness, just in order to have your own way with me… You can't possibly respect Luzhin: I've met him and talked to him. So what you're doing is selling yourself for money, or at any rate acting basely, and I'm glad you can at least blush about it!’

‘It's not true, I'm not lying!…’ Dunya exclaimed, losing all her sang-froid. ‘I won't marry him unless I'm convinced that he has a high opinion of me and will look after me; I won't marry him unless I'm firmly persuaded that I can respect him. Fortunately, I am so persuaded, and have actually received certain confirmation of that today. And a marriage of this kind is not a “vile business”, as you call it. Even if you were right, even if I really had decided to do something vile – wouldn't it be cruel of you to say a thing like that to me? Why do you demand of me a heroism you yourself probably don't possess? That's despotism! It's coercion! If I ruin anyone's life, it will only be my own… I haven't killed anyone yet!… Why are you looking at me like that? Why have you gone so pale? Rodya, what's the matter with you? Rodya, dear…’

‘Oh, good Lord! You've given him a fainting-fit!’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna exclaimed.

‘No, no… it's not serious… it's nothing… My head started to go round, that's all. It's not a fainting-fit! You've got fainting-fits on the brain… Hm… Yes… Now what was I going to say? Yes: what is this “certain confirmation” you received today that makes you able to respect him and know that he… has a high opinion of you, as you said? You did say today, didn't you? Or did I mishear you?’

‘Mother, show Rodya Pyotr Petrovich's letter,’ Dunya said.

With trembling hands Pulkheria Aleksandrovna gave him the
letter. He took it with great curiosity. But, before unfolding it, he suddenly looked at Dunya with vague astonishment.

‘It's funny,’ he said slowly, as though a new idea had suddenly occurred to him. ‘Why am I getting so worked up? What's all the fuss about? Go and marry anyone you like!’

He said it almost to himself, but spoke the words out loud and looked at his sister for a moment or two, seemingly perplexed.

At last he unfolded the letter, still retaining an air of strange and vague astonishment; then slowly and attentively he began to read it, and read it through twice. Pulkheria Aleksandrovna was in a state of peculiar anxiety; and indeed they were all waiting for something peculiar to happen.

‘I find this surprising,’ he began after some reflection, handing the letter back to his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular. ‘I mean, he's a man of business, a lawyer, and he even talks in that special way… with a bit of a flourish; yet he writes like an illiterate.’

They all shifted uneasily; this was not at all what they had been expecting.

‘Oh, they all write like that,’ Razumikhin observed, curtly.

‘You've read it, too, have you?’

‘Yes.’

‘We showed it to him, Rodya, we… asked for his advice earlier,’ an embarrassed Pulkheria Aleksandrovna began.

‘It's actually written in a judicial style,’ Razumikhin cut in. ‘Judicial documents are still written like that.’

‘Judicial? Yes, that's right – a judicial, business style… Not exactly illiterate, but not what you might call literary, either; a business style!’

‘Pyotr Petrovich makes no attempt to conceal the fact that he was brought up on a shoestring, and actually boasts of having made his own way in the world,’ Avdotya Romanovna observed, slightly offended by her brother's new tone.

‘Well, if he boasts of it, there must be something in it. Don't let me contradict him. If you ask me, sister, you're offended because after reading the whole letter I could only find such a frivolous comment to make, and think I've started talking about such trifles in order to upset you because I'm annoyed with you.
On the contrary: with regard to the style there occurred to me an observation that is not at all out of place in the present context. There's a certain expression there: “you will have only yourself to thank”, which puts it all very clearly and succinctly, and there's also his threat to walk out if I show up. That threat is nothing more nor less than a threat to abandon you both if you don't obey him, and do it to you now, when he's brought you all the way to St Petersburg. Well, what's your opinion? Don't you think one ought to be offended at such an expression from Luzhin every bit as much as if he had used it (he pointed to Razumikhin), or Zosimov, or any of the rest of us?’

‘N-no,’ Dunya replied, growing animated. ‘I realized very well that that bit was put too clumsily and that perhaps he's not all that gifted at writing… It was clever of you to spot that, Rodya. I actually didn't expect…’

‘It's put in judicial language, and in judicial language that's the sort of thing they say, and I daresay it came out more crudely than he'd intended. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disillusion you a bit; there's another expression in that letter, a certain slanderous remark about myself, and a pretty vile one, too. I gave that money yesterday to a consumptive and broken widow, and not “on the pretext of funeral expenses”, but precisely in order to help her to cover them, and I didn't put the money in the hands of her daughter – an unmarried woman, as he writes, “of immoral behaviour” (and one, incidentally, whom I saw yesterday for the first time in my life), but gave it straight to the widow. In all this I see an over-hasty desire to blacken my name and make me quarrel with you. It's again expressed in judicial language, that's to say with an all too obvious disclosure of the intended aim, and with a haste that's thoroughly inept. He's a clever man, but in order to act cleverly, cleverness alone is not enough. It all bespeaks the man and… I don't really think he has a high opinion of you. I'm telling you this solely for your own edification, because I sincerely wish you well…’

Dunya made no reply; her decision had been made long ago, and she was simply waiting for it to be evening.

‘So what have you decided, Rodya?’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna asked, disturbed even more than she had been the previous day,
the source of her fresh anxiety being his new and suddenly adopted ‘business-like’ tone of voice.

‘What do you mean – decided?’

‘Well, Pyotr Petrovich says in his letter that he doesn't want you to be present this evening and that he'll leave… if you come. So – will you?’

‘I must say I think that's not for me to decide, but for you, if Pyotr Petrovich's demand doesn't seem offensive to you; and secondly for Dunya, if she's also not offended by it. As for myself, I will do what you prefer,’ he added coldly.

‘Dunya has already decided, and I agree with her completely,’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna hurried to insert.

‘Rodya, I've decided to ask you most urgently to be present at this meeting of ours,’ Dunya said. ‘Will you come?’

‘I will.’

‘I'd like to ask you to come and join us at eight o'clock, too,’ she said, turning to Razumikhin. ‘Mother, I'm inviting him, too.’

‘That's excellent, Dunya. Well, since you're all decided now, let that be the way it's to be,’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna added. ‘Why, I feel better now; I don't like all that pretence and lying; I'd rather we spoke the whole truth… whether it makes Pyotr Petrovich angry or not!’

Just then the door opened quietly, and a certain young girl entered the room, looking timidly around her. They all turned towards her in surprise and curiosity. It took Raskolnikov a glance or two before he recognized her. This was Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova. He had seen her the evening before, but such had been the moment, the surroundings and her manner of dress that his memory had retained the image of someone very different. Now she was modestly and even poorly dressed, and she looked very young, almost like a little girl, with a modest and demure manner and a clear but rather frightened-looking face. She was wearing a very plain little house-dress,
and on her head there was an old-fashioned bonnet of a kind that is no longer worn; the only item of yesterday's costume was the parasol, which she held in one hand. Having suddenly realized that the room was full of people, she was less embarrassed than completely at a loss, as intimidated as a small child, and she even made a movement as if to go away again.

‘Oh… it's you!’ Raskolnikov said, extremely surprised, and was suddenly himself thrown off-balance.

It immediately occurred to him that his mother and sister must already have picked up some knowledge in passing from Luzhin's letter about an unmarried woman ‘of immoral conduct’. Only just now he had been protesting against Luzhin's slanderous remarks, mentioning that he had seen the woman for the first time on the day in question, and now here she was. He remembered, too, that he had raised no protest against Luzhin's use of the expression ‘of immoral conduct’. All this slipped through his head obscurely, in an instant. Giving her a closer look, however, he suddenly perceived that this humiliated creature was so humble that he felt sorry for her. And when she made that movement to flee in terror – something in him seemed to turn over.

‘I wasn't expecting you at all,’ he said hurriedly, stopping her with his gaze. ‘Please be so good as to sit down. I expect you've come from Katerina Ivanovna. No, not over here, please sit there…’

When Sonya had come in, Razumikhin, who was sitting on one of Raskolnikov's three chairs, right beside the door, had got up in order to allow her into the room. At first Raskolnikov had been about to ask her to sit down in the corner of the sofa where Zosimov had sat, but reflecting that this sofa was rather too ‘familiar’ a spot, as it served him as a bed, he hastily directed her to Razumikhin's chair.

‘And you sit here,’ he said to Razumikhin, motioning to him to sit down in the corner Zosimov had occupied.

Sonya sat down, almost shivering with terror, and gave the two ladies a timid look. It was evident that she herself had not the faintest idea of how she could possibly have sat down beside them. Having pondered this, she grew so frightened that she
suddenly got up again and, in complete confusion, turned to Raskolnikov.

‘I… I’ve… only dropped in for a moment, forgive me for disturbing you,’ she said, falteringly. ‘I've come from Katerina Ivanovna, there was no one else she could send… she told me to say that she would be very glad if you would come to the funeral tomorrow morning… for the service… at the Mitrofaniyev Cemetery,
¹
and then… to our home… to her home… afterwards, to take some food… You would be doing her an honour… She told me to ask you.’

Sonya faltered and was silent.

‘I'll certainly… see if I can… certainly…’ Raskolnikov replied, who had also got up and was also faltering, his sentence unfinished… ‘Look, do me the favour of sitting down,’ he said suddenly. ‘I want to talk to you. Please – I know you're probably in a hurry – but do me this favour and give me two minutes of your time…’

And he moved up a chair for her. Sonya again sat down, again gave the two ladies a quick look of timid embarrassment, and suddenly lowered her gaze.

Raskolnikov's pale face flushed; he seemed to convulse all over; his eyes caught fire.

‘Mother,’ he said firmly and insistently. ‘This is Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, the daughter of poor Mr Marmeladov, the man whom I saw run down by the horses yesterday and whom I've already told you about…’

Pulkheria Aleksandrovna glanced at Sonya and narrowed her eyes at her slightly. In spite of all her confusion before Rodya's insistent and challenging stare, she could on no account deny herself this satisfaction. Dunya had battened her gaze earnestly and directly on the poor girl's face, and was examining her with perplexity. On hearing the introduction, Sonya looked up again, but this time grew even more embarrassed.

‘What I wanted to ask you,’ Raskolnikov said, turning to her, ‘is how you've managed to cope with things today? Have you had any trouble?… from the police, for example?’

‘No, sir, it all went… I mean, it's only too plain to see what
caused his death; no one's given us any trouble; except the other lodgers – they're angry with us.’