Crime and Punishment (8 page)

The young man said not a word in reply.

‘Well, sir,’ the orator continued, in a tone of massive assurance which even had an increased air of dignity about it this time, after he had waited once more for the sniggering that had ensued in the room to die down. ‘Well, sir, so be it, I am a swine, but she is a lady! I may possess bestial form, but Katerina Ivanovna, my lady-wife, is a person of education and a field-officer's daughter. So be it, so be it, I am a blackguard, but she has been filled by her upbringing with both lofty spirit and ennobled feelings. And yet… oh, if she would only take pity on me! Oh my dear sir, my dear respected sir, I mean, every man must have at least one place where people take pity on him! Even though Katerina Ivanovna is a magnanimous lady, she is also an unjust one… And though I am well aware that when she tugs my locks she does it solely out of the kindness of her heart – for, I say it again without embarrassment, she tugs my locks, young man –’ he affirmed with especial dignity, having detected more sniggering, ‘but, oh God, if only one single time she would… But no! No! All that is in vain, and there's no more to be said, no more to be said!… For on more than one occasion I attained that which I desired, and pity was shown me on more
than one occasion, but… such is my proclivity: I am a born brute!’

‘You can say that again,’ the owner remarked, yawning.

Marmeladov resolutely hammered his fist down on the table.

‘Such is my proclivity! Do you know, do you know, dear sir, that I even bartered her stockings for drink? Not her shoes, sir, for that would have been ever so slightly in the normal way of events, but her stockings – it was her stockings I pawned! She had a little mohair scarf, given to her as a present before our marriage – it was hers, not mine – and I bartered that, too; yet we live in a cold corner of a room, and that winter she caught a chill and began to cough, brought up blood, she did. And we have three little children, and Katerina Ivanovna works from morning to night, scrubbing and washing and bathing the children, for she's been used to cleanliness since an early age, and she has a weak chest and a predisposition to tuberculosis, and I feel that. How could I not feel it? And the more I drink, the more I feel. That's the reason for my drinking. I'm looking for feeling and compassion in it… Not revelry do I seek, but pure sorrow… I drink, for I desire to suffer doubly!’ And, as if in despair, he let his head sink on to the table.

‘Young man,’ he went on, straightening up. ‘In your features I seem to read a certain unhappiness. I saw it as soon as you came in, and that's why I lost no time in appealing to you. For, in communicating to you the story of my life, I seek to avoid exposing myself to the most grotesque ridicule in the eyes of these lovers of idleness, to whom it is all in any case common knowledge, and come to you perceiving you to be a man of sensitivity and education. I may as well tell you that my lady-wife was brought up in a high-class establishment for daughters of the local aristocracy, and that at the ball that was held upon her graduation she danced with the shawl
⁶
in the presence of the governor and other notables, for which she received a gold medal and a testimonial of good progress. The medal… oh, the medal got sold… a long time ago… hm… but she still keeps the testimonial in her travelling-box, and not so long ago she showed it to our landlady. Even though she exists in a state of the most incessant strife with our landlady, she felt a desire
to take a bit of pride in herself in front of someone for a change, and to tell her about her happy bygone days. And I don't condemn her, I don't condemn her, for these memories are all that remain to her now – the rest has all passed to ashes! Yes, yes; she's a hot-tempered, proud and indomitable lady. She scrubs the floors herself, she lives on black bread, but she won't tolerate disrespect towards herself. That's why she made Mr Lebezyatnikov pay for his coarse behaviour, and when Mr Lebezyatnikov gave her a battering in return, she took to her bed not so much because of the beating she'd received as because her feelings had been hurt. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, each smaller than the other. Her first marriage, to an infantry officer, had been an affair of the heart – she'd run away from her parents’ house in order to be with him. She loved that husband of hers beyond all bounds, but he took to gambling at cards, got into trouble with the law, and then died. Towards the end he used to beat her; and although she made him pay for it, in terms for which I have irrefutable and documentary evidence, she remembers him to this day with tears in her eyes and uses him in order to reproach me, and I'm glad, I'm glad, for even though it's only in her imaginings, she's able to perceive herself as having once been happy… And after his death she was left with three little children in the remote and brutish government district where I happened to be at that time, left in such hopeless destitution, moreover, that although I have experienced a good many various things, I am unable to even describe it. Her relatives had all turned their backs on her, too. And she was proud, far too proud… And it was then, dear sir, it was then that I, also in a widowed state, with a fourteen-year-old daughter by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear to look at such suffering. You may be able to judge the degree of her misfortunes by the fact that she, an educated, well brought-up woman from a family of renown, should have consented to marry a man such as myself! But marry me she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands – she married me! For she had nowhere left to go. Do you understand, do you understand, dear sir, what it means to have nowhere left to go? No! That you do not yet understand… And for a whole year I
discharged my duties piously and devoutly and did not touch this (he prodded a finger at his half-
shtof
of vodka
⁷
), for I do have feelings. But even that failed to please; and then I lost my job, and that wasn't my fault, either, it was because of a staff reorganization, and then my abstemiousness came to an end. It is now a year and a half since we at last found ourselves, after wanderings and many tribulations, in this magnificent capital city, adorned as it is with numerous monuments. And here I obtained a job… Obtained it, and lost it again. Do you understand, sir? This time I lost it through my own fault, for my proclivity started to act up again… Now we live in a corner, in the apartment of our landlady, Amalia Ivanovna Lippewechsel, and what we live on and how we manage to pay our rent, I do not know. There are a lot of other people living there besides us… It's a Sodom, sir, of the most outrageous kind… hm… yes… And in the meanwhile my daughter, the one from my first marriage, has also grown to woman's estate, and the things she has had to put up with from her stepmother in the process I will not tell you. For although Katerina Ivanovna is full of magnanimous emotions, she is a hot-tempered and irritable lady, and she likes cutting people short… Yes, sir! Well, there's no point in raking over all that again. As you may imagine, Sonya has received no education. About four years ago I tried to take her through the elements of geography and world history; but since I myself was never very strong in those branches of knowledge, and there were no suitable textbooks, for the books that we did have… hm! Well, we don't even have them any more, those books, and that was the end of the whole attempt at her instruction. We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Later on, when she'd already attained maturity, she read a few books of a romantic content, and quite recently, through the agency of Mr Lebezyatnikov, she obtained a copy of Lewes’
Physiology
⁸
– are you familiar with it, sir? – and read it with great interest; she even communicated extracts from it aloud to us. There you have the full extent of her enlightenment. But now I will address you, my dear respected sir, with a private question on my own account: in your opinion, can a poor but honest girl expect to earn a great deal by honest work?
⁹
… She'll be lucky to earn
fifteen copecks a day, sir, if she's honest and has no particular talents, and even that's only if she never takes a moment off! And what's more, State Councillor Klopstock, Ivan Ivanovich – perhaps you've heard of him? – has not only to this day refused to give her the money he owes her for a half-dozen shirts she made him, but actually turned her out of his house, stamping his foot and calling her indecent names, on the pretext that the shirt collars were the wrong size and not cut straight. And there are the little ones with no food in their bellies… And there's Katerina Ivanovna wringing her hands, pacing up and down the room, and saying, with the red spots standing out on her cheeks, as they invariably do in that illness: “You live with us, you female parasite, you eat our food and drink our drink, and take advantage of our heating!” – yet what could she have been eating and drinking when even the little ones hadn't seen a crust of bread for three days? I was lying in bed at the time… oh, what the hell, I was drunk, sir, and I heard my Sonya (she's as meek as a lamb, and has such a gentle little voice… she has fair hair, and her little face is always pale and thin), I heard my Sonya say: “Oh, no, Katerina Ivanovna, you don't want me to go and do that, do you?” Yet Darya Frantsovna, an ill-intentioned woman who's been in trouble with the police on many occasions, had already two or three times been to make inquiries through the landlady. “So what if I do?” replied Katerina Ivanovna, mockingly. “What's there to protect? Some treasure!” But don't blame her, don't blame her, dear sir, don't blame her! It was something she said when she wasn't in full possession of her faculties, she was ill and agitated, and her children hadn't had anything to eat and were crying; it was said more in order to wound than in any precise sense… For that's just the way Katerina Ivanovna is by nature: as soon as the children cry, for example, even if it's because they're hungry, she immediately starts beating them. Well, then I saw Sonechka – this would be at about six o'clock in the evening – get up, put on her shawl and her “burnous” mantlet and leave the apartment, and at nine o'clock she came back again. She came in, went straight up to Katerina Ivanovna, and silently put down thirty roubles on the table in front of her. Not one word did she
say as she did this; she didn't even give her a look; she just picked up our big, green
drap-de-dames
shawl
¹⁰
(we have a
drap-de-dames
shawl which we all make use of), completely covered her head and face with it, and lay down on her bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and the rest of her body kept quivering… And meanwhile I went on lying there in the state I'd been in all along… And then, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna go over to Sonechka's bed, also without saying a word; all evening she kneeled before her, kissed her feet, wouldn't get up, and then they both fell asleep together, in each other's arms… both of them… both of them… yes, sir… while I… lay there drunk.’

Marmeladov fell silent, as though his voice had been cut off by inward emotion. Then he suddenly refilled his glass in haste, drank its contents down and grunted.

‘Ever since then, my dear sir,’ he continued after a period of silence, ‘ever since then, because of a certain inauspicious happening and the fact that some ill-intentioned persons reported the matter to the authorities – something in which Darya Frantsovna played a leading role, apparently in order to get her own back for not having been treated with due respect – ever since then my daughter, Sofya Semyonovna, has been compelled to take the yellow card, and on account of that has been unable to remain with us. For one thing, our landlady, Amalia Ivanovna, would not allow it (though earlier she herself had given Darya Frantsovna a helping hand), and for another, Mr Lebezyatnikov… hm… Well you see, it was because of Sonya that that entire episode between him and Katerina Ivanovna took place. To start with he'd made the most persistent advances towards Sonechka, but then he went and took umbrage, saying: “How could I, a man of such enlightenment, live in the same apartment as a girl like that?” And Katerina Ivanovna made him pay for that remark, she took her daughter's side… well, and then it happened… And now Sonechka looks in to see us more towards evening, when it's getting dark, and she tries to make things easier for Katerina Ivanovna and does everything she can to help her. She lodges with Kapernaumov,
¹¹
the tailor, she rents a bit of floor-space from him; Kapernaumov's
lame, and he suffers from a speech disorder, like all the numerous members of his family. His wife has a speech disorder, too… They live in the one room, but Sonya has her own bit of space, partitioned off from the rest… Hm… yes… They're of the very poorest – poor folk who can't speak properly… yes. Well, that morning, sir, I girded up my loins, attired myself in my rags, raised my hands to heaven and set off to see His Excellency Ivan Afanasyevich. Perhaps you're familiar with His Excellency Ivan Afanasyevich?… No? Well, in that case you don't know a man of true meekness! He's wax – wax before the countenance of the Lord; for the wax it melteth… He even shed a tear or two after he'd heard what I had to tell him. “Well, Marmeladov,” he said, “you've already let me down once… I'll take you on once again, on my own personal responsibility this time” – those were his very words – “but mind now,” he said, “and off you go!” I kissed the dust at his feet, mentally, for in reality he would never have permitted it, being one of the top brass and a man of the very latest ideas with regard to education and public service; I returned home, and when I announced that I'd got my job back and would be receiving my salary again – Lord, what happened then…’

Marmeladov again broke off in violent agitation. Just at that moment a whole party of tipplers who were already quite drunk came in off the street, and outside the entrance the sounds of a rented hurdy-gurdy and the small cracked voice of a seven-year-old child singing ‘The Little Homestead’
¹²
became audible. It grew noisy. The owner and his crew began to attend to the newcomers’ requirements. Marmeladov, paying no attention to the new arrivals, began to continue his story. By now he seemed to have grown very weak, but the more the drink went to his head, the more eager he became to talk. The memories of his recent success in the field of work seemed to have enlivened him and were even reflected in his features by a kind of radiance. Raskolnikov listened closely.