Crime and Punishment (66 page)

On this occasion he found Pyotr Petrovich quite extraordinarily irritable and inattentive, in spite of the fact that he, Andrei Semyonovich, had just begun to expand on his favourite theme – the establishment of a new and special form of ‘commune’. The brief retorts and observations that escaped from Pyotr Petrovich in the intervals between his clicking of the beads on the abacus were redolent of the most undisguised and intentionally discourteous mockery. But the ‘humane’ Andrei Semyonovich ascribed Pyotr Petrovich's mood to his break with Dunya of the evening before, and burned with eagerness to bring the conversation round to that subject as soon as possible: he had something progressive and propagandistic to say on that account, something that might console his estimable friend and would ‘undoubtedly’ be of benefit to his further development.

‘What's this funeral banquet they're organizing at that… widow's place?’ Pyotr Petrovich suddenly asked, interrupting Andrei Semyonovich just as he was coming to the most interesting part.

‘You mean you don't know? But I spoke to you on that theme yesterday, developing my theory about all those rituals… And I mean, she invited you too, so I heard. You yourself spoke to her yesterday.’

‘I certainly never expected that that destitute fool of a woman would spend all the money she got from that other fool, Raskolnikov, on a funeral banquet… I was positively astonished just now, as I walked past: such preparations are going on there – they even have wines!… People have been invited – the devil
only knows what sort of an affair it's going to be!’ Pyotr Petrovich continued, probing the matter and pursuing the conversation apparently with some ulterior motive. ‘What? You say I've been invited, too?’ he added suddenly, raising his head. ‘When was that? I don't remember it. In any case, I shan't go. What business have I there? I talked with her only yesterday, in passing, about the possibility of her receiving a year's salary as the destitute widow of a civil servant, in the form of an extraordinary allowance. Perhaps that's why she's invited me, ha-ha!’

‘I'm not going, either,’ Lebezyatnikov said.

‘I don't wonder! After dealing out a personal thrashing like that. I can imagine you might feel too ashamed, ha-ha-ha!’

‘Who dealt out a thrashing? To whom?’ Lebezyatnikov said, thrown suddenly into a flutter, and even blushing.

‘Why, you did, to Katerina Ivanovna, about a month ago! I mean, I heard about it, sir, yesterday, sir… So that's the sort of thing those convictions of yours lead you to do!… And the woman question didn't fare very well, either, did it? Ha-ha-ha!’

‘It's all nonsense and slander!’ Lebezyatnikov said, flaring up; he was constantly afraid of anyone mentioning this episode. ‘It wasn't like that at all! It was quite different… What you heard is wrong; it's just idle gossip! I was simply defending myself that time. It was she who attacked me, she used her fingernails… She pulled out the whole of one of my side-whiskers… I would hope that it is permissible for anyone to defend his or her person. Quite apart from the fact that I will not allow anyone to treat me with violence… on principle. Because it more or less amounts to despotism. What should I have done: just stood there and let her carry on? I merely pushed her away, that's all.’

‘Ha-ha-ha!’ Luzhin continued to mock, with angry malice.

‘You're just picking on me because you're annoyed and angry… It's all nonsense, and it has not the slightest, not the slightest connection with the woman question. You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick; at first I thought that if it were accepted that a woman is a man's equal in everything, even in strength (which people are already claiming is so), then there ought to be equality in this case, too. Of course, I reasoned afterwards
that such a question ought in essence never to arise, because fights ought never to arise, and because in the society of the future fighting will be unthinkable… and because, in the last analysis, it's a bit strange to look for equality in fighting. I'm not so stupid… though of course fighting does still exist… that's to say, it won't exist in the future, but for the present it does… oh, the devil confound it! You're getting me quite confused! That unpleasant incident has nothing to do with my not going to the funeral banquet. I'm staying away out of principle, so as to have no part in the vile superstition of funeral banquets, that's what! Actually, I might even have gone, just to laugh at the whole business… But there aren't going to be any priests there, worse luck. If there were to be priests, I'd most certainly have gone.’

‘You mean you'd sit down to other people's hospitality and at the same time spit on it, and on those who've invited you? Is that what you're saying?’

‘Oh, it has nothing to do with spitting; it's more a question of making a protest. I'd be doing it with the aim of being useful. I might indirectly assist the cause of education and propaganda. Everyone has a duty to spread education and propaganda, and the more bluntly the better, if you ask me. I might implant an idea, a seed… From that seed something real might grow. How would I be offending them? They might get offended initially, but then they would see for themselves that I'd done them a good turn. It's like what happened with Terebyeva (she's a member of our commune just now) recently, when she left her family and… gave herself to a fellow; they said she'd acted too crassly in writing to her mother, saying she didn't want to live among prejudice any more and was entering into a citizens’ marriage, and that she ought to have spared her parents’ feelings, been more gentle with them in her letter. But in my opinion that's all rubbish, and being gentle would have been quite the wrong thing; on the contrary, on the contrary, in a case like that, too, what she needed to do was make a protest. Or look at Varents. She'd lived with her husband for seven years, but she abandoned her two children and severed her relations with her husband in one go, writing to him: “I have come to the
realization that I cannot be happy with you. I will never forgive you for having kept me from the truth and concealing from me that there exists another ordering of society, embodied in the commune. I have recently learned all this from a man of generous ideals, to whom I have given myself, and together with him I am settling down in a commune. I tell you this directly, as I consider it ignoble to deceive you. You may do as you think fit. Do not suppose you can make me come back, you are too late. I want to be happy.” That's how to write a letter of that kind!’

‘Is this the Terebyeva you told me the other day was in the middle of her third citizens’ marriage?’

‘It's only her second, if one takes a correct view of the matter! But even if it were her fourth, or her fifteenth, what does it matter? That's all just a lot of nonsense. I've never felt so sorry that my father and mother are dead as I do now. Sometimes I've even dreamt of how, if they'd been alive still, I'd have given them a thumping great protest to think about! I'd have let them down on purpose… And it wouldn't have just been a question of my being “self-supporting”, confound it! I'd have shown them! I'd have surprised them, all right! It really is too bad I don't have anyone!’

‘No one to surprise, eh? Ha-ha! Well, have it as you will,’ Pyotr Petrovich said, interrupting. ‘But tell me: I mean, you know the dead man's daughter, the skinny creature, don't you? Are they really true, the things people say about her?’

‘What can I say? In my opinion, that is, in my own personal opinion, she's in the most normal situation a woman can find herself in. Why not? I mean to say –
distinguons
. In the way society is ordered at present, it is, of course, not quite a normal one, because it has been compelled upon her, but in the future order of society it will be completely normal, as it will be freely chosen. Why, even now she has been within her rights: she has suffered, and that has been her reserve, her capital, as it were, of which she has a perfect right to dispose as she pleases. Of course, in the society of the future those sort of reserves won't be necessary; but her role will be defined in a different sense, determined rationally and harmoniously. As for Sofya Semyonovna's personal actions, I regard them as an energetic
and wholehearted protest against the arrangements of society, and I respect her profoundly for it; as I watch her, I even rejoice!’

‘The way I heard it was that you were the person who got her kicked out of these rooms!’

Lebezyatnikov grew positively enraged.

‘That's another piece of idle gossip!’ he howled. ‘That's not at all, not at all the way it happened! I mean, it's simply not true! It was Katerina Ivanovna who made all that up, because she didn't understand! And I never tried to endear myself to Sofya Semyonovna! All I did was quite simply try to educate her, completely disinterestedly, trying to arouse her to protest… Protest was all I was after, and in any case Sofya Semyonovna couldn't have stayed in these rooms!’

‘What did you do – ask her to go and live in that commune?’

‘You're still trying to make a fool of me, and rather unsuccessfully, may I add. You don't understand. Roles like that don't exist in a commune. Communes are set up precisely in order to avoid there being roles like that. In a commune a role like that would entirely alter its current significance; things that seem stupid here become intelligent there, and what might seem unnatural here, the way things are currently, become entirely natural there. Everything depends on a man's surroundings and environment. Everything proceeds from the environment, and a man is nothing on his own. I'm still on good terms with Sofya Semyonovna even now, which may serve as proof to you that she has never considered me her enemy or molester. Yes! I am trying to coax her to join the commune now, but from quite, quite different motives! What do you find so amusing about it? We're trying to establish our own commune, which is of a special kind, and is based much more broadly than those that have existed previously. We have taken our convictions further. There is more that we reject! If Dobrolyubov were to come back from the grave, I'd have a few things to tell him. And if Belinsky were to, I'd roll right over him! But meanwhile I'm continuing to educate Sofya Semyonovna. What a noble, noble character she has!’

‘Oh, so you're profiting from her noble character, too, eh? Ha-ha!’

‘No, no! Absolutely not! On the contrary!’

‘Aha, it's on the contrary, now, is it? Ha-ha-ha! Now you're talking!’

‘But I assure you it's so! Why would I try to conceal it from you, be so good as to tell me? On the contrary, I even find it strange myself: she's so intensely, so timorously chaste and modest with me!’

‘And you, of course, are trying to educate her… ha-ha! Trying to demonstrate to her that all that modesty is nonsense?’

‘Absolutely not! Absolutely not! Oh, what a crass, what a downright stupid – if you will forgive me – conception you have of the word “education”! You d-don't understand! Oh, Lord, how… unready you are! We are seeking the liberation of woman, yet you can only think of one thing… Leaving aside entirely the question of chastity and female modesty as things useless in themselves and even based on downright prejudice, I am perfectly, perfectly willing to tolerate her chaste behaviour with me, because it expresses the whole of her freedom, the whole of her right! Naturally, if she were to say to me: “I want to possess you,” I would consider myself very fortunate, for I fancy the girl quite a lot; but for the present, for the present, at least, it goes without saying that no one has treated her more courteously and considerately, or with more respect for her dignity, than I… I wait and hope – that is all!’

‘What you ought to do is give her some sort of present. I'll wager you've never even thought of doing that.’

‘I told you, you d-don't understand! It's true that that's the sort of position she's in, but – that's another matter! Quite another matter! You simply have contempt for her. In apprehending a phenomenon that you mistakenly consider to be worthy of contempt, you deny a human creature a humane response. You don't know what a character she has! The only thing that vexes me is that she seems to have stopped reading altogether of late, and doesn't borrow books from me any more. She used to, you know. The other thing that's a pity is that for all her energy and her determination to register a protest – which she's demonstrated to me once – she still doesn't seem to have very much self-dependence, or independence, if you know what
I mean, she's rather short on the kind of negation that's required if one is to throw off certain prejudices and… stupidities. But even in spite of that, she has an excellent grasp of certain questions. She's developed a marvellous grasp, for example, of the question concerning the kissing of hands,
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that's to say, that a man insults a woman and doesn't treat her as an equal if he kisses her hand. That matter was the subject of debate among us, and I told her about it immediately. She was also very interested when I described to her the workers’ cooperatives in France. Just now I'm telling her about the question concerning the free access to rooms
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in the society of the future.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘We had a debate recently on the question of whether one member of the commune has a right to walk into the room of another member, whether it's a man or a woman, at any time of the day or night… well, and it was decided that they do…’

‘Yes, and at the very moment when he or she is engaged in some pressing personal necessity, ha-ha!’

At this, Andrei Semyonovich really lost his temper.

‘You're still going on about that! That's all you want to talk about, those damned “necessities”!’ he shouted with hatred. ‘Confound it, I shall never forgive myself for having mentioned those damned necessities, in the course of explaining the system to you, before you were ready for it. The devil take it! It's invariably a stumbling-block for your sort of person – and what's even worse, you make it into the subject of jokes before you have any idea of what it's all about. I mean, it's as though you were proud of it, or something! Confound it! I've said time and time again that the only way that that question can be explained to newcomers is right at the end, when they've been won over to the system, when they've completed their education and are on the right path. And what, tell me please, is so shameful and contemptible, even in cesspools? I'd be the first to go and clean out any cesspools you'd care to name! It doesn't even involve any self-sacrifice! It's simply work, a noble activity that is socially useful and is far and away superior to the activity of any Raphael or Pushkin,
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for the simple reason that it's more useful!’