Crime and Punishment (69 page)

At that point her laughter again turned into an unbearable coughing, which went on for all of five minutes. Some blood was left on her handkerchief, and drops of sweat stood out on her forehead. She showed the blood to Raskolnikov without saying anything and, as soon as she had recovered her breath, immediately whispered to him again in extreme animation, with a red spot on each cheek:

‘You see, I gave her the most subtle task, one might say, of inviting that lady and her daughter – you know who I'm talking about, don't you? Well, she needed to do it in the most delicate manner possible, to employ all her tact and skill, but she went about it in such a way that that country goosecap, that overweening frump, that worthless provincial slattern, just because she's the widow of some major or other and has come to plead for a pension and wear out her skirt-hems on the doorsteps of the government offices, because at fifty-five she dyes her hair with antimony and uses powder and rouge (it's well-known!)… that even a frump like that did not see fit to come – not only that, but she didn't even send her excuses for not attending, as the most ordinary rules of politeness demand! Also, I simply
can't understand why Pyotr Petrovich hasn't come, either! And where's Sonya? Where's she got to? Ah, here she is at last! Well, Sonya, where have you been? I find it strange that you should be late even for your father's funeral. Rodion Romanovich, please let her in at your side. There's a place for you, Sonya… have some of whatever you like. Have some of the jellied meat, it's the best thing there is on the table. They'll be bringing some more
blinis
in a minute. Have the children had some? Polya, have you something of everything over there? Cahuh-cahuh-cahuh! Well, that's all right, then. Now be a good girl, Lyonya, and Kolya, don't kick your legs; sit the way a well-brought-up boy ought to sit. What's that, Sonya?’

Sonya had at once launched into a hurried delivery of Pyotr Petrovich's excuses, trying to speak her words out loud, so that everyone could hear, and using the most carefully chosen and deferential expressions which she had specially made up on Pyotr Petrovich's behalf, with certain adornments of her own. She added that Pyotr Petrovich had particularly asked her to say that as soon as it was possible for him to come and see her he would do so in order to discuss certain business matters
confidentially
, and come to an agreement about what might be arranged for the future, and so on, and so forth.

Sonya knew that this would appease and quieten Katerina Ivanovna, flatter her vanity and, most importantly, satisfy her pride. She sat down beside Raskolnikov, hastily greeted him, and gave him an inquisitive look in passing. During all the time that remained, however, she seemed to avoid either looking at him or talking to him. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere, though this did not prevent her from looking Katerina Ivanovna in the face in order to play along with her wishes. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna were dressed in mourning, since they had no such garments; Sonya was wearing some dark brown affair, and Katerina Ivanovna had on her only dress, a dark cotton one with stripes. The tidings from Pyotr Petrovich had the desired effect. Having listened to Sonya gravely, Katerina Ivanovna inquired with continued gravity after Pyotr Petrovich's health. Immediately after that, and almost out loud, she
whispered
to Raskolnikov that it really would have been a little strange for a
man as respected and of such social standing as Pyotr Petrovich to fall in with such ‘unusual company’, in spite of all his devotion to her family and his earlier friendship with her father.

‘That is why I am particularly grateful to you, Rodion Romanovich, for not having shunned my hospitality, even in surroundings such as these,’ she added, almost so everyone could hear. ‘However, I am certain that it was only your special friendship with my poor deceased husband that prompted you to keep your word.’

Then once more she surveyed her guests proudly and with dignity, and suddenly she inquired of the little deaf old man with particular solicitude whether he would like some more of the main course and whether he had been served with the Lisbon wine? The little old man made no reply, and it took him a long time to understand what the question was, even though his neighbours began to shake him out of his slumbers. All he did, however, was gaze around him with his mouth open, which fanned the general mirth still further.

‘Look at that moon-calf! Look, look! What have they brought him along for? Now as far as Pyotr Petrovich is concerned, I have always had great faith in him,’ Katerina Ivanovna went on in Raskolnikov's ear, ‘and of course I need hardly say that he's not like…’ – she turned to Amalia Ivanovna, loudly and abruptly, with an air of such extreme severity that Amalia Ivanovna grew positively frightened – ‘not like those dressed-up draggle-tails whom Papa would never have even engaged as cooks in his kitchen, and whom my deceased husband would have been doing an honour in receiving, which he would only have done out of the inexhaustible kindness of his nature.’

‘Yes, ma'am, he was certainly fond of a drink; that was what he used to like – a good drink, ma'am!’ the retired supply clerk bawled suddenly, downing his twelfth glass of vodka.

‘My deceased husband did indeed have that failing, and it's no secret to anyone,’ Katerina Ivanovna said, battening on to him suddenly. ‘But he was a kind and noble man who loved and respected his family; the only bad thing was that because of his kindness he put too much trust in all kinds of depraved people and heaven only knows who he used to drink with – men
who were not worth the soles of his boots! Imagine, Rodion Romanovich, they found a honey-cake cockerel in one of his pockets: he'd come back dead drunk, yet he'd remembered the children.’

‘A cock-er-el? Did you say: a cock-er-el?’ bawled the gentleman from supplies.

Katerina Ivanovna did not favour him with an answer. She had fallen into a reverie, and uttered a sigh.

‘I expect you're like all the rest, and think I was too strict with him,’ she continued, turning to Raskolnikov. ‘But you know, it's not true! He respected me, he respected me very, very much! The man had a good, kind soul! And how sorry I used to feel for him sometimes! He used to sit looking at me from a corner, and I'd feel so sorry for him, I'd want to put my arms round him, but then I'd think to myself: “If you do that, he'll go and get drunk again,” and it was only by being strict that I could do anything to restrain him.’

‘Yes, ma'am, much was the tugging of his locks, much was the tugging thereof,’ the supply clerk roared again, emptying another glass of vodka into himself.

‘There are some fools who could do with a taste of the broom handle, never mind the tugging of locks. And I don't mean the departed now, either!’ Katerina Ivanovna snapped at the supply clerk.

The red spots on her cheeks were glowing brighter and brighter, her chest was heaving. She looked, given another moment or two, as though she might start a scandalous scene. Many of the guests were sniggering, and many of them evidently found this an agreeable prospect. People began to nudge the supply clerk and whisper things to him. It was obvious that they were trying to egg him on.

‘Pe-e-ermit me to inquire what you are getting at, ma'am,’ the supply clerk began. ‘That is to say, on whose noble account… you were so good just now as to… But oh, never mind! It's just nonsense! A widow! A widow woman! I forgive her…
Passe!
’ And he knocked back another glass of vodka.

Raskolnikov sat listening in silent disgust. He ate merely from politeness, picking at the titbits that Katerina Ivanovna kept
putting on his plate every moment, and then only in order not to offend her. He kept giving Sonya fixed glances. But Sonya was becoming more and more anxious and concerned; she had also begun to sense that the funeral banquet was not going to end peacefully, and was watching Katerina Ivanovna's mounting irritation in terror. She was, it should be noted, aware that the principal reason for the two out-of-town ladies having greeted Katerina Ivanovna's invitation with such contempt was herself, Sonya. She had heard from Amalia Ivanovna that the mother had taken positive umbrage at the invitation and had advanced the question: ‘How can I possibly ask my daughter to sit beside
that girl
?’ Sonya had a foreboding that Katerina Ivanovna somehow already knew this, and that the insult to her, Sonya, meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than the insult to her personally, to her father and children; that it was, in short, a mortal insult; and Sonya knew that Katerina Ivanovna would not rest now until she had ‘shown those draggle-tails that they're both…’ and so on, and so forth. Just then, as though he had been waiting for precisely this moment, someone at the far end of the table sent Sonya a plate containing two hearts, shaped from black bread, pierced by an arrow made of the same substance. Katerina Ivanovna flushed crimson and at once observed in a very loud voice, the full length of the table, that the man who had sent it was a ‘drunken ass’. Amalia Ivanovna, also sensing that something unpleasant was about to happen, and at the same time wounded to the depths of her soul by Katerina Ivanovna's haughty attitude towards her, suddenly began, for no particular reason other than to divert the unpleasant mood of the gathering in another direction and, while she was about it, raise herself in the general esteem, to relate the story of how ‘Karl from the pharmacy’, an acquaintance of hers, had been taking a cab somewhere one night and of how ‘the cabman tried to kill him, and Karl begged him very, very much not to kill him, and cried, and begged with folded hands, and was so very, very frightened that his fear broke his heart’. Katerina Ivanovna, though she smiled, also observed that Amalia Ivanovna should not try to tell anecdotes in Russian. This offended Amalia Ivanovna even more, and she retorted that her ‘
Vater aus Berlin
was a very,
very important man who went about with his hands in the pockets’. Being easily amused, Katerina Ivanovna could not restrain herself and went off into terrible fits of laughter, with the result that Amalia Ivanovna began to lose the last of her patience and very nearly lost it altogether.

‘There's the brown owl for you!’ Katerina Ivanovna immediately began whispering to Raskolnikov. ‘What she was trying to say was that he used to keep his hands in his pockets, but the way she said it sounded as though he was a pickpocket, cahuh-cahuh! And have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that it really is true that all these St Petersburg foreigners, who are most of them Germans, and come to settle with us for some strange reason, are all more stupid than we are! I mean, you must admit, what sort of a story is that to tell, about “Karl from the pharmacy” getting his heart “broken with fright” and instead of tackling the cabman “folding his hands” – the milksop! – “and crying, and begging very, very much”? Oh, the big birdbrain! And I mean, she thinks it's very touching, and has no idea of how stupid she is! If you ask me, that drunken supply clerk's far more intelligent than she is; at least he doesn't try to hide the fact that he's a dissolute fellow who's drunk away the last remaining shreds of any sense he may have had – whereas these foreigners are all so sedate and serious… Look at her sitting there with her eyes popping out of her head. She's angry! Angry! Ha-ha-ha! Cahuh-cahuh-cahuh!’

Thus cheered and fortified, Katerina Ivanovna immediately launched into various details of this and that, and suddenly began to talk about how with the help of the pension she was going to receive she would most certainly open a boarding-school for daughters of the gentry in her native town of T… Katerina Ivanovna had not yet told Raskolnikov about this matter herself, and she lost no time in throwing herself into the most alluringly detailed description of her plans. By some mysterious magic there suddenly appeared in her hands the very same ‘testimonial of good progress’ that Marmeladov had told Raskolnikov about back in the drinking den, when he had explained to him that Katerina Ivanovna, his wife, at the ball that was held upon her graduation had danced with the shawl
‘in the presence of the governor and other notables’. This testimonial was evidently now intended to serve as a proof of Katerina Ivanovna's right to establish a boarding-school in her own name; but had really been held in reserve with the aim of removing the shine from ‘those two dressed-up draggle-tails’ once and for all, if they should put in an appearance at the banquet, and of clearly demonstrating to them that Katerina Ivanovna came from a most well-born, ‘one might even say aristocratic family’, was ‘a colonel's daughter and quite certainly better than those adventuresses of whom there seemed to have been such a proliferation just lately’. The testimonial at once passed from hand to hand among the drunken guests, something that Katerina Ivanovna did not try to stop, as it really did state
en toutes lettres
that she was the daughter of a court councillor and chevalier, and was consequently very nearly a colonel's daughter. Blazing with ardour now, Katerina Ivanovna immediately began to expand on all the details of her future bright and tranquil life in T…; she talked of the male teachers from the local gymnasium whom she would invite to give lessons in her boarding-school; of a certain venerable old man, a Frenchman by the name of Mangot, who had taught Katerina Ivanovna French at the institute she had attended and who even now was living out his days in T… and would certainly agree to teach for her in return for the most modest payment. At last she came to the subject of Sonya, who would ‘go to T… together with Katerina Ivanovna and help her there in all things’. At that point, however, someone at the other end of the table gave a snort. Katerina Ivanovna, though she at once tried to pretend that in her scorn she had not even noticed the laughter that had broken out at the other end of the table, at once began, raising her voice on purpose, to talk with animation about Sofya Semyonovna's undoubted qualifications for serving as her assistant, about her ‘meekness, patience, self-denial, good manners and education’, while she patted Sonya on the cheek and, getting up slightly, implanted two hot kisses there as well. Sonya blushed scarlet, and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly began to cry, observing of herself as she did so that she was ‘an idiot with weak nerves and upset beyond the limit’, that it was ‘time toc
bring the proceedings to an end’ and, since the snacks had all been eaten, that tea should be served. At that very moment Amalia Ivanovna, who had by now taken thorough offence at the fact that she had not taken the slightest part in any of this conversation and that no one had even been listening to her, suddenly risked making one final attempt to join in and, with concealed sadness, ventured to communicate to Katerina Ivanovna a certain rather down-to-earth and well-considered observation to the effect that in the future boarding-school it would be necessary to pay particular attention to the cleanliness of the young ladies’ linen (‘
die Wäsche
’) and that ‘there would have to be one good lady (“
die Dame
”) who would see that the laundry was done properly’, and in the second place, ‘that none of the young girls read novels on the sly at nights’. Katerina Ivanovna, who really was upset and very tired and who had by now had quite enough of the funeral banquet, immediately ‘snapped’ at Amalia Ivanovna that she was ‘spouting nonsense’ and did not know what she was talking about; that concerns about ‘
die Wäsche
’ were the province of the matron, and had nothing to do with the directress of a high-class boarding-school; and that as for her remark about the reading of novels, it was simply improper, and she must ask her to be silent. Amalia Ivanovna flushed red and, losing her temper, observed that she had ‘meant well’, and had ‘very much meant well already’, and that Katerina Ivanovna had ‘long not paid the debt for the apartment’. Katerina Ivanovna at once ‘laid into her’, saying she was not telling the truth when she said she had ‘meant well’, as the day before, when her departed husband had still been lying on the table, she had importuned her about the rent. In reply to this Amalia Ivanovna quite logically observed that she had ‘invited those ladies’, but that ‘those ladies had not arrived’, because ‘those ladies’ were ‘high-class ladies’ and could not come visiting ‘low-class ladies’. Katerina Ivanovna immediately ‘stressed’ to her that in view of the fact that she was a slut, it ill became her to make judgements about what ‘high-class’ meant. Amalia Ivanovna would not put up with this, and declared in return that her ‘
Vater aus Berlin
’ was ‘a very important man who walked with both hands in the pockets and did everything
like this: poof! poof!’; and in order to make the representation of her ‘
Vater
’ more lifelike, Amalia Ivanovna leapt up from the chair, stuck both her hands in her pockets, blew out her cheeks and began to mouth incoherent sounds that resembled ‘poof-poof’, surrounded by the loud laughter of all the tenants, who had been purposely encouraging Amalia Ivanovna with their approval, sensing that a skirmish was near. But this was more than Katerina Ivanovna could endure, and she ‘rapped out’ for all to hear that more likely than not there was no ‘,
Vater
’, and never had been, and that Amalia Ivanovna was simply a drunken St Petersburg Finn, and had probably worked as a cook earlier, or even as something worse. Amalia Ivanovna went as red as a lobster and shrieked that Katerina Ivanovna had probably ‘never had a
Vater
at all’; but that she ‘had a
Vater aus Berlin
’ who ‘wore a long frock-coat, and alvays went “poof, poof, poof!”’ Katerina Ivanovna observed with scorn that her own origins were well-known to everyone and that in the testimonial it was stated in printed characters that her father had been a colonel; but that Amalia Ivanovna's father (if she had one) was probably some St Petersburg Finn who worked as a milkman; but that it was more likely she had no father at all, since nobody seemed to know whether Amalia Ivanovna's patronymic was Ivanovna, or whether it was Lyudvigovna. At that Amalia Ivanovna, flying at last into an all-out rage and banging her fist on the table, began to shriek that her name was ‘Amal-Ivan’, not ‘Lyudvigovna’, and that her Vater's name was ‘Johann’ and that ‘he was a
Bürgermeister
’, and that Katerina Ivanovna's Vater had ‘never ever been a
Bürgermeister
’. Katerina Ivanovna rose from her chair and sternly, in a voice that seemed calm (though she was deadly pale and her chest was heaving deeply), announced to her that if she dared to ‘mention her rubbishy Vater in the same breath’ as her ‘beloved Papa’ one more time, then she, Katerina Ivanovna, would ‘tear off her cap and stamp on it with her heels’. At the sound of this, Amalia Ivanovna began to rush about the room, shouting for all she was worth that she was the landlady and that Katerina Ivanovna must ‘get out of the apartments this minute’; then for some reason she ran to collect her silver spoons from the table. Noise and uproar
followed; the children began to cry. Sonya rushed over to Katerina Ivanovna in an attempt to restrain her; but when Amalia Ivanovna suddenly shouted something about ‘the yellow card’, Katerina Ivanovna shoved Sonya aside and threw herself at Amalia Ivanovna in order to execute her threat in respect of the cap there and then. At that moment the door opened, and in the threshold Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin suddenly appeared. He stood surveying the entire company with a stern and attentive gaze. Katerina Ivanovna threw herself towards him.