Crime and Punishment (77 page)

‘You're not allowed to carry on like this in the street, ma'am! You're causing a disturbance.’

‘Speak for yourself! It's just the same as if I were going around playing the hurdy-gurdy. What's it got to do with you?’

‘As far as the hurdy-gurdy's concerned, ma'am, you have to have a licence to possess one of them, and in any case you're upsetting people just by the way you're carrying on. Where do you live, may I ask?’

‘What do you mean, a licence?’ Katerina Ivanovna wailed. ‘I've only just buried my husband today, what licence do I need?’

‘Madam, madam, please calm yourself,’ the civil servant began. ‘Come along, I'll take you home… It isn't right for you to be out here in this crowd… you aren't well…’

‘My dear, dear sir, you don't know anything about it!’ Katerina Ivanovna shouted. ‘We're going to the Nevsky Prospect. Sonya! Sonya! She's crying, too! Oh, what's wrong with you all?… Kolya, Lyonya, where are you off to?’ she suddenly exclaimed in a scared voice. ‘Oh, stupid children! Kolya, Lyonya! Oh, where are they going?…’

What had happened was that Kolya and Lyonya, frightened beyond the limits of endurance by the street crowd and the behaviour of their mentally disturbed mother, and having, moreover, caught sight of a soldier who looked as though he was going to capture them and take them off somewhere, had suddenly, as if by some tacit agreement, seized each other by the hand and rushed off in flight. Sobbing and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna dashed off to catch them up. As she ran, weeping and gasping for breath, she made a pitiful spectacle. Sonya and Polya darted after her in pursuit.

‘Get them back, get them back, Sonya! Oh, stupid, ungrateful children!… Polya! Catch them… It was for you children that I…’

As she ran at full speed she tripped and fell.

‘She's cut and bleeding! O merciful Lord!’ Sonya exclaimed, stooping over her.

Everyone came running, everyone crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov were the first to arrive; the civil servant also hurried over, followed by the policeman, who was muttering ‘
Ekh-ma
!’ the way peasants do, and making a hopeless gesture, sensing that the incident had taken a troublesome turn.

‘Off you go now! Move along!’ he shouted, trying to disperse the people who were crowding around.

‘She's dying!’ somebody cried.

‘She's gone mad!’ said someone else.

‘May the Lord preserve us,’ a woman said, crossing herself. ‘Have they caught the little boy and girl? There they are, bringing them now, the eldest daughter's got hold of them… Look at them, the wild things!’

But when they had a proper look at Katerina Ivanovna, they saw that she had not cut herself on a stone, as Sonya had thought, and that the blood that was staining the pavement was welling up from inside her by way of her throat.

‘I know what that is, I've seen it before,’ the civil servant muttered to Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov. ‘It's consumption; the blood comes welling up and chokes them. It happened to a female relative of mine, I witnessed it only recently, and it was the same with her, she coughed up a tumbler and a half, quite suddenly… But what ought we to do? I mean, she's going to die in a moment!’

‘Bring her this way, this way, up to my room!’ Sonya begged. ‘This is where I live!… Look, it's this house here, the second one along… Bring her up to my room, quickly, quickly!…’ she said, rushing from one person to the other. ‘Send for a doctor… O merciful Lord!’

By dint of the civil servant's efforts this task was completed, and even the policeman helped to carry Katerina Ivanovna upstairs. She was brought into Sonya's room practically unconscious and placed on the bed. She was still bleeding from the mouth, but she seemed to be coming round. They all came into the room, one after the other – Sonya, Raskolnikov, Lebezyatnikov, the civil servant and the policeman, who had been chasing the crowd away, some members of which had accompanied them right up to the door. Polya brought Kolya and Lyonya in, holding them by the hands; they were both weeping and trembling. People even came through from the Kapernaumovs’: Kapernaumov himself, lame and blind in one eye, a strangelooking man with hair and side-whiskers that bristled upright; his wife, who looked as though she had been frightened once too often, and a few of their children with faces that were frozen in expressions of constant surprise, their mouths open wide.
Amidst all these spectators Svidrigailov, too, suddenly appeared. Raskolnikov stared at him in astonishment, unable to think where he could have come from, and failing to recollect him among the crowd.

People were talking about the need for a doctor and a priest. Although the civil servant whispered to Raskolnikov that in his opinion a doctor was now superfluous, he made arrangements to have one sent for all the same. Kapernaumov himself went on this errand.

In the meantime Katerina Ivanovna had got her breath back, and the blood had stopped flowing temporarily. She was looking with an unhealthy but fixed and penetrating gaze at the pale and trembling Sonya, who was wiping the drops of sweat from her brow with a handkerchief; at last she asked to be lifted up. She was raised into a sitting position on the bed, while hands supported her on both sides.

‘Where are the children?’ she asked in a faint voice. ‘Have you brought them, Polya? Oh, you stupid things!… Why did you run off like that… ah?’

Blood still caked her dried-up lips. She let her gaze move round the room, taking everything in:

‘So this is the kind of place you live in, Sonya! I've never been to see you here before… never had the occasion…’

She looked at her with suffering:

‘We've sucked you dry, Sonya… Polya, Lyonya, Kolya, come here… Well, here they are, Sonya, all of them, take them… from one set of hands to another… but I've had enough! The ball is over! Gh-ha!… Lay me down again, let me at least die peacefully.’

And they lowered her back onto the pillow again.

‘What? A priest?… There's no need… Where would you get the money for one?… I have no sins!… In any case, God will have to forgive me… he knows how much I've suffered!… And if he won't forgive me, there's even less need!…’

A restless fever was taking an ever-increasing hold of her. From time to time she would shudder, move her gaze round and recognize everyone for a moment; but these brief glimpses of awareness would immediately give way to delirium once more.
She was breathing hoarsely and with difficulty, and something seemed to be bubbling in her throat.

‘“Your Excellency!…” I said to him,’ she screamed out, taking a deep gulp of breath after every word. ‘“That Amalia Ivanovna…” Ah! Lyonya, Kolya! Hands at your sides, quick, quick,
glissez
-
glissez
,
pas
-
de
-
basque
! Tap your feet… Be a graceful child.

How does it go after that? That's what we ought to sing…

Oh yes, of course!
Was willst du mehr
– he's contradicting her, the idiot!… Ah yes, and then there's another one:

Ah, how I used to love that song… I loved that romance to the point of adoration, Polechka!… you know, your father… used to sing it before we were married… Oh, vanished days!… That's the one, that's what we ought to sing! Now how does it go, how does it go… Oh, I've forgotten… But remind me – how does it go?’ She was in a state of extreme agitation and was making efforts to get up. At last, in a hoarse, terrible, overstrained voice she began to recite, screaming and gasping at every word, with an air of obscurely mounting terror:

‘Your Excellency!’ she suddenly cried in a heart-rending wail, and dissolving in tears, ‘protect these orphans! Since you've known the hospitality of the deceased Semyon Zakharych!… who was even almost an aristocrat!… Gh-ha!’ she gasped, shuddering, suddenly regaining consciousness and gazing round at everyone with a kind of horror, but then recognizing Sonya.
’Sonya, Sonya!’ she said meekly and affectionately, as though surprised at seeing her in front of her. ‘Sonya, dearest, are you here, too?’

Once more they helped her to sit up.

‘Enough!… It's time!… Farewell, my poor creature!… They've driven the jade to death!… I've overstrai-i-ned myself!’ she cried, despairingly and full of hatred, and collapsed on the pillow with a thud.

Again she lost consciousness, but this final oblivion did not last long. Her withered, pale-yellow face jerked back, her mouth opened, and her legs stretched out convulsively. She gave a deep, deep sigh and died.

Sonya fell on her corpse, gripped her in her arms and froze there, her head fixed close to the dead woman's withered chest. Polya fell prostrate at her mother's feet, kissing them and sobbing violently. Kolya and Lyonya, who did not yet understand what had happened, but sensed that it must be something very dreadful, seized each other's little shoulders in an embrace and, fixing each other with their eyes, suddenly, both at the same time, opened their mouths wide and began to howl. They were both still wearing their fancy costumes: Kolya in his turban, and Lyonya in her skull-cap with its ostrich-feather.

And how was it that the ‘testimonial of good progress’ had suddenly turned up on the bed beside Katerina Ivanovna? It was lying right there, by her pillow; Raskolnikov could see it.

He withdrew to the window. Lebezyatnikov came running over to him.

‘She's dead!’ Lebezyatnikov said.

‘Rodion Romanovich, I'd like to have a couple of words with you,’ Svidrigailov said, approaching. Lebezyatnikov immediately made way for him and retired discreetly into the background. Svidrigailov led the surprised Raskolnikov even further into the corner.

‘All this bother, I mean the funeral and so on – I shall take it all upon myself personally. You know, it all costs money, and as I told you, I have more than I need. I shall place the little Polya and those two little fledglings in some better category of orphanage and endow each of them with the capital sum of one
and a half thousand roubles, to be paid on their maturity, in order that Sofya Semyonovna may not be troubled any more on their account. And while I'm about it, I shall pull her out of the cesspool, too, for she's a fine girl, don't you think? Well sir, and so you may tell Avdotya Romanovna that this is the use to which I have put her ten thousand.’

‘What do you expect to gain by all this philanthropy?’ Raskolnikov inquired.

‘A-ah! A man of suspicion!’ Svidrigailov laughed. ‘Look, I told you: I don't need that money. Well, won't you let me simply do it out of humanity? I mean, after all, it's not as if she were a “louse”’ (he poked a finger in the direction of the corner where the dead woman lay) ‘like certain old female pawnbrokers we know, is she? Come now, I think you'll agree: “Is Luzhin to continue his existence and go on doing loathsome things, or is she to die?” And I mean, if I don't offer my assistance, why “Polya, for example, will go that way too, she'll go down the same road…”

He said this with a kind of
winking
, jolly roguery, never taking his eyes off Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov turned pale and his blood ran cold as he heard the things he himself had said to Sonya. He instantly recoiled, staring wildly at Svidrigailov.

‘H-how… do you know?’ he whispered, scarcely breathing.

‘Why, I live just through the wall from here, at Madam Resslich's. These are Kapernaumov's rooms, and through there lives Madam Resslich, my old and most devoted friend. I'm one of the neighbours, sir.’

‘You?’

‘The very same,’ Svidrigailov continued, quaking with laughter. ‘And I can assure you on my honour, my dear, dear Rodion Romanrovich, that I found what you said of remarkable interest. Why, I told you we would come to be on closer terms with each other, I predicted it to you – well, and so it's come true. And you will see what an adaptable fellow I am. You'll see that I'm still not too much of a bore…’

For Raskolnikov a strange time began: as though a mist had suddenly fallen before him, enclosing him in a gloomy and desperate solitude. When he remembered this time later on, long afterwards, he was able to perceive that his awareness must at times have been dimmed and that this must have gone on, with various intervals, right up until the final catastrophe. He was positively convinced that there were many things about those days concerning which he had been in error – the length of time that had elapsed between certain events, for example, and the dates at which they had occurred. At least, as he remembered it all subsequently and endeavoured to make sense of it all, there were many things he discovered about himself, going merely on the information he received from people who had happened to be present. He would, for example, confuse an event with one that bore no relation to it; another event he would view as the consequence of one that existed only in his imagination. At times he was seized by a morbid and tormenting anxiety, which had even transformed itself into panic terror. But he also recalled that there had been minutes, hours and even possibly days full of an apathy that had taken hold of him as though in contrast to his earlier terror – an apathy similar to the morbidly indifferent condition of certain people on their deathbeds. In general, during those final days he tried more or less to flee from any clear and complete understanding of his position; certain vital facts that demanded instant clarification were a particular source of depression to him; there were, however, other worries from
which he would have given anything to escape and shake himself free, because in the situation he was in to forget about them threatened him with total and inevitable disaster.

Svidrigailov caused him particular anxiety; one might even have said that he was, in a sense, fixated on Svidrigailov. From the time that Svidrigailov had spoken those threatening words, whose import was all too clear to him, in Sonya's lodgings at the moment of Katerina Ivanovna's death, the normal flow of his thoughts seemed to have been broken. But, in spite of being extremely worried by this new event, Raskolnikov seemed to delay in seeking an explanation for it. At times – as, for example, finding himself one day in some remote and secluded district of the city, alone at a table of some wretched inn, sunk in reflection and hardly conscious of how he had ended up there – he would suddenly remember Svidrigailov: he would suddenly become all too clearly and uneasily aware that he ought to come to some arrangement with that man and, as far as was possible, settle the matter once and for all. On one occasion, having wandered to some place beyond the city boundaries, he even fancied that he was waiting for Svidrigailov and that they had agreed to meet there. On another occasion he awoke before dawn to find himself somewhere on the ground, in the midst of some bushes, with almost no inkling of how he had strayed there. There was also the fact that during those two or three days that followed the death of Katerina Ivanovna he had actually met Svidrigailov a few times, almost invariably in Sonya's lodgings, where he would look in more or less without purpose, but always only for a moment. They would always bandy a few words, but never once spoke about the capital point, as though they had agreed to keep quiet about that for the time being. The body of Katerina Ivanovna still lay in its coffin. Svidrigailov dealt with the arrangements for the funeral, fussing around. Sonya was also very preoccupied. During their last meeting Svidrigailov had explained to Raskolnikov that he had managed to solve the problem of what to do about Katerina Ivanovna's children, and that the solution was a successful one; that, thanks to some connections he had, certain persons had been contacted with whose help all three orphans could be placed at once in institutions
that were thoroughly suitable for them; that the money which had been put aside for them had also helped in many respects, as it was far easier to place orphans with capital than orphans who were destitute. He also said something about Sonya, promising to look in on Raskolnikov himself in a day or two's time, saying that he wanted to ask his advice, that it was essential that they had a word or two together, that there were certain matters… This conversation took place out in the passage, by the staircase. Svidrigailov looked fixedly into Raskolnikov's eyes and then suddenly, after a pause and with his voice lowered, inquired: