Crime and Punishment (7 page)

‘What? It's down to a rouble fifteen, now, is it?’

‘That's right, dearie.’

The young man did not attempt to argue, and took the money. He looked at the old woman and made no sign of being in a hurry to leave, as though there were something else he wanted to say or do, but did not himself quite know what it was…

‘I may bring you something else in a day or two, Alyona Ivanovna… an item of silver… good quality… a cigarette-case… as soon as I get it back from a friend of mine…’ He grew confused, and fell silent.

‘Right you are then, dearie. We'll talk about it when you come again.’

‘Goodbye, then… I say, do you spend all the time alone here? Isn't your sister around?’ he asked as casually as he could, going out into the hallway.

‘And what would you be wanting with her, dearie?’

‘Oh, nothing in particular. I was simply asking. I mean, just now, you… Goodbye, Alyona Ivanovna!’

Raskolnikov went out feeling decidedly confused. The confusion got worse and worse. As he descended the stairs he even stopped several times, as though he had been struck by some sudden thought. And, at last, when he was out on the street, he exclaimed:

‘Oh God! How loathsome all this is! And could I really, could I really… No, it's nonsensical, it's absurd!’ he added, firmly. ‘Could I really ever have contemplated such a monstrous act? It
shows what filth my heart is capable of, though! Yes, that's what it is: filthy, mean, vile, vile!… And for a whole month I've been…’

But he could find neither words nor exclamations with which to give voice to his disturbed state of mind. The sense of infinite loathing that had begun to crush and sicken his heart even while he had only been on his way to the old woman had now attained such dimensions and become so vividly conscious that he was quite simply overwhelmed by his depression. He moved along the pavement like a drunkard, not noticing the passers-by and knocking into them, and only recovered himself when he reached the next street. Looking round, he observed that he was standing beside a drinking den, the entrance to which lay down from the pavement, at the foot of some steps, in the basement. Just at that moment two drunks emerged from the doorway and began to clamber their way up to street-level, supporting each other and cursing. Without so much as a thought, Raskolnikov went down the steps. Never before had he been a visitor to the drinking dens, but now his head was spinning and, what was more, he was parched by a burning thirst. He wanted some cold beer, all the more so since he attributed his sudden state of debility to the fact that he had nothing in his stomach. In a dark and dirty corner he found himself a seat at a sticky little table, asked for some beer and drank his first glass of it with avid greed. The relief he experienced was total and immediate, and his thoughts brightened up. ‘This is all a lot of nonsense,’ he said to himself with hope. ‘There was no need for me to get into such a flap. It was just physical exhaustion! One glass of beer, a
sukhar
’
⁶
– and in a single moment the mind gains strength, one's thoughts grow lucid and one's intentions firm! Pah! What trivial rubbish all of this is!…’ But, this contemptuous spit notwithstanding, he already looked cheerful, as if he had suddenly freed himself from some terrible burden, and cast his eyes round at the other people there in a friendly manner. But even as he did so he had a distant sense that all this optimism was also morbid.

At that time there were only a few people left in the drinking den. The two drunk men he had encountered on the steps had been followed out almost immediately by a whole crowd of
about five, with one tart and a concertina. After their departure the place seemed quiet and empty. There remained one fellow, a tradesman by the look of him, who was intoxicated, but only slightly, sitting with his beer, and his companion, an enormous, fat, grey-bearded man in a Siberian caftan, thoroughly intoxicated, who had fallen asleep on a bench and who every so often, suddenly, as though in his sleep, snapping his fingers and throwing his arms apart, would begin to make the upper part of his body jerk up and down and, without getting up from the bench, croon some nonsense or other, making an effort to remember the words, which sounded something like:

Or, having woken up, again:

But no one shared his happiness; indeed, his silent companion viewed all these sudden explosions with hostility and suspicion. There was yet another man in the den, who by his outward appearance could have been taken for a retired civil servant. He was sitting apart from the other men in front of his jug of vodka, from time to time taking a sip from his glass and looking around him. He also appeared to be in a state of some agitation.

Raskolnikov was not accustomed to crowds and, as we have already said, had been avoiding all forms of society, particularly of late. Now, however, he had a sudden longing for company. Something new seemed to be accomplishing itself within him, and one of the things that went with it was a kind of craving for people. So tired was he after a whole month of concentrated depression and gloomy excitement that he wanted, if only for a
single moment, to get his breath back in another environment, no matter what it was, and, in spite of all the filth of his surroundings, he was now content to stay on sitting in the drinking den.

The owner of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently entered the main one, coming down into it by way of some steps, whereupon the first thing one saw of him was his dandified blacked boots with their large, red, flapped tops. He was wearing a long-waisted
poddyovka
¹
and a hideously greasy black velvet waistcoat; he wore no cravat, and his entire face looked as though it had been lubricated with oil, like an iron lock. Behind the bar there was a boy of about fourteen, and there was also another, younger boy who took the drinks round when anyone ordered anything. On the bar there were sliced cucumbers, black
sukhari
and some cut-up pieces of fish; all of it smelt very bad. The place was suffocatingly hot, making it almost unbearable to sit there, and so saturated with the fumes of alcohol that the air on its own would have been enough to make a man drunk in five minutes.

There are some encounters, even with people who are complete strangers to us, in which we begin to take an interest right from the very first glance, suddenly, before we have uttered a word. This was precisely the impression made on Raskolnikov by the customer who was sitting some distance away and who looked like a retired civil servant. Several times later on the young man would recall this first impression and would even ascribe it to foreknowledge. He kept glancing at the civil servant incessantly, no doubt because the official was staring persistently at him, and seemed very anxious to get into conversation with him. At the other people in the drinking den, including the owner, however, the official cast a look that seemed in some way habituated and even bored, containing a shade of haughty disdain, as though these were people of inferior social class and education, to whom he had nothing to say. He was a man already on the other side of fifty, of average height and stocky constitution, with hair that was turning grey and a large bald patch. His face had the swollen look that comes of constant drinking, yellow, almost greenish in colour, with puffy eyelids
through which his tiny, slitlike eyes shone, reddish and animated. But there was something very strange about him; his gaze displayed an enthusiasm that was positively luminous, and said that here there were most likely both sense and intelligence; but at the same time there was a flicker of something akin to madness. He was wearing an old and completely tattered black dress-coat which had shed all of its buttons except one. This one button was still managing to hang on somehow, and he had it fastened, evidently wishing to observe the proprieties. From under his nankeen waistcoat protruded a white dicky, all crumpled, splashed and stained. He was clean-shaven, in the manner appropriate to government officials, but it must have been a long time since his last shave, for a thick, greyish stubble had begun to appear on his features. There was in his manner, too, something that bespoke the solid, dependable air of the civil servant. He was, however, in a state of agitation; he kept ruffling his hair and from time to time would prop his head in both hands as if in despair, placing his threadbare elbows on the splashed and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov and said, loudly and firmly:

‘My dear sir, may I make so bold as to address you with some polite conversation? For although you are not in a condition of eminence, experience tells me that you are a man of education, unhabituated to the beverage. I personally have always respected education united with the feelings of the heart, and am, if I may so inform you, a titular councillor. Marmeladov – such is my name; titular councillor. Dare I inquire whether you yourself have been working in the service?’

‘No, I'm studying…’ the young man answered, rather surprised both at the speaker's peculiarly flowery tone and at being spoken to in such a direct, point-blank manner. In spite of his recent momentary desire for any kind of contact with people, at the first word that was actually addressed to him he suddenly felt his customary irritable and unpleasant sense of revulsion towards any stranger who touched, or merely attempted to touch, his personal individuality.

‘So you're a student, or an ex-student!’ the civil servant cried. ‘I knew it! Experience, dear sir, repeated experience!’ And he
put a finger to his forehead as a token of bravado. ‘You've been a student or have trodden the path of learning! But if you will permit me…’ He rose to his feet, swayed slightly, picked up his jug and glass, and came over and sat down at the young man's table, slightly to one side of him. He was intoxicated, but he spoke volubly and with eloquence, only on occasion losing his thread slightly and slurring his speech. He pounced upon Raskolnikov avidly, as though he had not spoken to anyone for a whole month, either.

‘My dear respected sir,’ he began with almost ceremonial formality, ‘poverty is not a sin – that is a true saying. I know that drunkenness is not a virtue, either, and that's an even truer saying. But destitution, dear sir, destitution – that is a sin. When a man is poor he may still preserve the nobility of his inborn feelings, but when he's destitute he never ever can. If a man's destitute he isn't even driven out with a stick, he's swept out of human society with a broom, to make it as insulting as possible; and that is as it should be, for I will admit that when I'm destitute I'm the first to insult myself. Hence the beverage! Dear sir, a month ago Mr Lebezyatnikov gave my lady-wife a most unmerciful beating, and that's not quite the same as if he'd given it to me, now, is it? Do you take my meaning, sir? Permit me to ask you another question, sir: have you ever spent the night on the Neva, on the hay barges?’
²

‘No, I haven't had occasion to,’ Raskolnikov replied. ‘What are you driving at?’

‘Well, sir, that's where I've just come from, this night will be the fifth I've spent there…’

He poured himself another glass, drank it, and paused for reflection. The odd wisp of hay could indeed be seen sticking to his clothes; there were even some in his hair. It looked highly probable that for five days he had neither undressed nor washed. His hands, in particular, were filthy – red and oleaginous, with black fingernails.

His conversation seemed to be arousing general, though indolent, attention. The boys behind the bar had begun to snigger. The owner, it appeared, had come down from his upstairs room especially in order to listen to the ‘funny man’,
and had sat down some distance away, yawning languidly but with an air of importance. It was evident that Marmeladov had long been a familiar figure here. Indeed, he had probably acquired his penchant for flowery rhetoric as a consequence of being used to frequent boozy conversations with strangers of various types. This habit becomes a necessity with some drinkers, particularly those who are given rough treatment at home and whose lives are made a misery. It is for this reason that in the company of other drinkers they invariably seem to be doing all they can to justify themselves, and if possible even to gain respect.

‘Hey, funny man!’ the owner said, loudly. ‘Why don't you do any work, why don't you do any serving, if you're a civil servant?’

‘You ask why I am not currently engaged in the service, dear sir?’ Marmeladov said quickly, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as though it were the latter who had asked the question. ‘You ask me that? Do you think my reptilian existence doesn't make my heart weep? A month ago, when Mr Lebezyatnikov unmercifully beat my lady-wife and I simply lay there drunk, don't you think I suffered? Permit me to inquire, young man, whether you have ever had occasion to… er… well, to ask for a loan of some money when it's hopeless?’

‘Yes, I have… but what do you mean “when it's hopeless”?’

‘What I mean, sir, is when it's completely hopeless, when you know beforehand that nothing will come of it. For example, you know in advance with absolute certainty that this man, this most well-intentioned and thoroughly useful citizen, will on no account lend you money, for why, I ask you, should he? I mean, he knows I won't pay it back to him. Out of compassion? But only the other day Mr Lebezyatnikov,
³
who follows the latest ideas, was explaining that the science of our day has actually declared compassion a social evil, and that this notion is already being put into practice in England, where they have political economy. Why, I ask you, should he lend me anything? And yet, knowing beforehand that he won't, you none the less set off down the high road and…’

‘But why go to him?’ Raskolnikov added.

‘But if there is no one, if there is nowhere left to go? I mean, everyone must have at least somewhere to go. For there comes a time in every man's life when he simply must have somewhere he can go! When my only daughter went on the yellow card
⁴
for the first time, I went then too… (for my daughter lives by the yellow card, sir…)’ he added in parenthesis, looking at the young man with a certain uneasiness. ‘No matter, my dear sir, no matter!’ he hastened to add, evidently quite unruffled, as both of the boys snorted with laughter, and even the owner smiled. ‘No matter! Such wagging of heads does not confound me, for it is all well known to everyone already, and that which was hid is now revealed;
⁵
indeed, my attitude to all that now is one not of contempt but of resignation. So be it! So be it! “Behold the man!” Permit me to ask you, young man, whether you can… But no, I must put it more strongly, more figuratively: not
can
you, but
dare
you, as you look upon me in this hour, say beyond all shadow of a doubt that I am not a swine?’