Part One · III
He woke late the next day, after a troubled sleep, but the sleep had not refreshed him. He woke bilious, irritable, angry, and looked at his little room with hatred. It was a tiny cell, about six paces long, of the most pitiful appearance, with its yellowish, dusty wallpaper coming away from the walls everywhere, and so low that a man even a little on the tall side felt uneasy in it, and it seemed all the time that any moment you would bump your head on the ceiling. The furniture matched the room: there were three old chairs, not quite sound, a painted table in the corner on which lay a few notebooks and books; from the mere fact of how dusty they were you could see that no hand had touched them for a long time; and, finally, a big clumsy sofa that took up almost the whole of one wall and half the width of the room, once upholstered in chintz but now in tatters, which served Raskolnikov as a bed. He often slept on it just as he was, without undressing, without a sheet, covering himself with his old, threadbare student’s overcoat, with one small pillow at his head, under which he stuffed all the linen he had, clean and worn, so that the head of the bed would be higher. In front of the sofa stood a little table.
It would have been hard to sink lower or grow more slovenly; but in his present state of mind Raskolnikov even found it pleasant. He had withdrawn from everyone decisively, like a tortoise into its shell, and even the face of the servant who was supposed to wait on him and who sometimes looked into his room roused bile and convulsions in him. This happens with certain monomaniacs who have concentrated too much on something. His landlady had stopped sending up his meals two weeks before, and he had not yet thought of going down to have it out with her, though he went without dinner. Nastasya, the landlady’s cook and only servant, was partly glad of her lodger’s mood and had stopped tidying and sweeping his room altogether, except that once a week or so, by chance, she would sometimes take up the broom. It was she who woke him now.
“Get up, what are you sleeping for!” she shouted over him. “It’s past nine. I’ve brought you tea; want a drop of tea? Starved, I bet?”
The lodger opened his eyes, gave a start, and recognized Nastasya.
“Is the tea from the landlady, or what?” he asked, slowly and with a sickly look raising himself on the sofa.
“From the landlady, says he!”
She set down before him her own cracked teapot, with tea already brewed once, and laid down two yellow lumps of sugar.
“Here, Nastasya, take this, please,” he said, rummaging in his pocket (he had slept in his clothes) and pulling out a handful of coppers. “Go and buy me a white roll. And get a little sausage at the sausage shop, the cheaper kind.”
“The roll I’ll bring you this very minute, but wouldn’t you like some shchi instead of the sausage? Good cabbage soup, yesterday’s. I put some by for you yesterday, but you came in late. Good shchi.”
When the shchi had been brought and he had started on it, Nastasya sat down beside him on the sofa and began to chatter. She was a village woman and a very chatty woman.
“Praskovya Pavlovna wants to go to the p’lice about you,” she said.
He winced hard.
“To the police? What does she want?”
“You don’t pay and you won’t clear out. Plain enough what she wants.”
“Eh, that’s all I needed,” he muttered, grinding his teeth. “No, that’s… no good to me now… She’s a fool,” he added aloud. “I’ll go see her today and talk to her.”
“A fool she is, sure, same as me, but what about you, mister clever, lying there like a sack, nothing to show for it? Before, you say, you went out teaching children, and now why don’t you do nothing?”
“I am doing something…” Raskolnikov said reluctantly and sternly.
“Doing what?”
“Work…”
“What work?”
“I’m thinking,” he answered seriously, after a pause.
Nastasya simply rolled over with laughter. She was the laughing kind, and when anyone made her laugh she laughed without a sound, heaving and shaking with her whole body, until she felt sick from it herself.
“Thought up lots of money, have you?” she managed to get out at last.
“You can’t teach children without boots. And I spit on it anyway.”
“Don’t you spit in the well.”
“They pay coppers for teaching children. What can you do with kopecks?” he went on reluctantly, as if answering his own thoughts.
“And you want the whole fortune at once?”
He gave her a strange look.
“Yes, the whole fortune,” he answered firmly, after a pause.
“Well, easy now, or you’ll scare a body; you’re awful frightening. Shall I go for the roll or not?”
“As you like.”
“Oh, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday while you were out.”
“A letter! for me! from whom?”
“Who from, I don’t know. I gave the postman three kopecks of my own. You’ll pay me back, will you?”
“Then bring it, for God’s sake, bring it!” Raskolnikov cried, all in a flutter. “Lord!”
A minute later the letter appeared. Just as he thought: from his mother, from R—— Province. He even turned pale as he took it. He had not had a letter for a long time; but now something else too suddenly wrung his heart.
“Nastasya, go away, for God’s sake; here are your three kopecks, only for God’s sake go away quickly!”
The letter trembled in his hands; he did not want to open it in front of her: he wanted to be alone with this letter. When Nastasya had gone out, he quickly raised it to his lips and kissed it; then for a long time he kept gazing at the handwriting of the address, at the small, slanting handwriting, so familiar and dear to him, of his mother, who had once taught him to read and write. He hesitated; he even seemed afraid of something. At last he opened it: it was a long, thick letter, weighing two lots;1 two large sheets of notepaper were covered with tiny, tiny writing.
“My dear Rodya,” his mother wrote, “it is over two months now since I last talked with you by letter, which has made me suffer myself, and some nights I could not even sleep for thinking. But surely you will not blame me for this silence of mine, which I could not help. You know how I love you; you are all we have, Dunya and I, you are our everything, all our hope and our trust. What I went through when I learned that you had left the university several months ago for lack of means to support yourself, and that your lessons and other means had come to an end! How could I help you with my hundred and twenty roubles a year of pension? The fifteen roubles I sent you four months ago I borrowed, as you know yourself, against that same pension, from our local merchant here, Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin. He is a kind man and was a friend of your father’s too. But having given him the right to draw my pension for me, I had to wait until the debt was paid off, and that has only just now been done, so that all this time I could send you nothing. But now, thank God, I think I can send you something more, and in general we can even boast of our fortune now, which I hasten to tell you about. And first of all, can you guess, dear Rodya, that your sister has been living with me for six weeks now, and we shall not be parted again from now on. Glory be to Thee, O Lord, her torments are over, but I will tell you everything in order, so that you will know how it all happened and what we have been hiding from you until now. When you wrote me two months ago that you had heard from someone that Dunya was supposedly suffering a great deal of rudeness in the Svidrigailovs’ house, and asked me for exact explanations—what could I write you in answer then? If I had written you the whole truth, you might well have dropped everything and come to us, on foot if need be, for I know your character and your feelings, and you would not have let your sister be wronged. I was in despair myself, but what was to be done? I did not know the whole truth myself then. The main difficulty was that Dunechka, when she went into their house last year as governess, took a whole hundred roubles in advance on condition that it be deducted from her salary every month, and so she could not leave the place without paying off the debt. And this sum (now I can explain everything to you, my precious Rodya) she took chiefly in order to send you the sixty roubles you needed so badly then and which you did receive from us last year. We deceived you then, we wrote that it came from Dunechka’s old savings, but that was not so, and now I am telling you the whole truth, because everything has now suddenly changed for the better, by the will of God, and so that you will know how Dunya loves you and what a priceless heart she has. It is true that at first Mr. Svidrigailov treated her very rudely and was uncivil to her in various ways and mocked her at table… But I do not want to go into all these painful details, so as not to upset you for nothing, now that it is all over. In short, in spite of the kind and noble treatment of Marfa Petrovna, Mr. Svidrigailov’s wife, and of everyone in the household, Dunechka had a very hard time of it, especially when Mr. Svidrigailov was, as an old habit from his regiment, under the influence of Bacchus. But what came out afterward? Imagine, this madcap had long since conceived a passion for Dunya, but kept hiding it under a show of rudeness and contempt toward her. Perhaps he was ashamed himself and horrified, seeing himself, a man getting on in years and the father of a family, with such frivolous hopes, and so he could not help being angry with Dunya. Or perhaps it was that by his rude behavior and his mockery he only wanted to hide the whole truth from others. But at last he could not restrain himself and dared to make Dunya an open and vile proposal, promising her various rewards and, besides, to drop everything and go away with her to another estate, or even abroad. You can imagine all her sufferings! To leave the place at once was impossible, not only because of the money she owed but also to spare Marfa Petrovna, who might suddenly have had her suspicions, and so it would have meant sowing discord in the family. And for Dunechka too there would have been a great scandal; it could not have been avoided. There were many other reasons as well, so that Dunya could not possibly count on breaking free of that terrible house in less than six weeks. Of course, you know Dunya, you know how clever she is and what a firm character she has. Dunechka can bear a great deal, and even in the most extreme cases can find enough generosity in herself not to lose her firmness. She did not even write to me about all of it, so as not to upset me, though we often sent each other news. The outcome came unexpectedly. Marfa Petrovna by chance overheard her husband pleading with Dunechka in the garden and, misunderstanding everything, blamed her for it all, thinking that she was the cause of everything. There was a terrible scene between them right there in the garden: Marfa Petrovna even struck Dunya, would not listen to anything, and screamed for a whole hour herself, and at last ordered Dunya to be taken back to me in town at once, in a plain peasant cart, into which they threw all her things, linen, dresses, everything just as it came, not tied up and not packed. And then a downpour started, and Dunya, insulted and disgraced, had to ride with a peasant a whole seventeen versts in an open cart. Think now, what could I have written you in my letter in answer to yours, which I received two months ago, and what was there to write about? I was in despair myself; I did not dare write you the truth, because you would have been very unhappy, grieved, and indignant, and what could you have done? Ruined yourself, perhaps, and besides Dunechka forbade it; and fill a letter with trifles and odds and ends, when there was such grief in my soul, I could not. For a whole month the gossip about this affair went all over our town, and it came to the point where Dunya and I could not even go to church because of the contemptuous looks and whisperings, and there was even talk out loud in front of us. All our acquaintances drew away from us, all of them even stopped bowing to us, and I found out for certain that some merchants’ clerks and some office copyists meant to put a low insult on us by smearing tar on the gate of our house, so that the landlords began to demand that we move out. The cause of all this was Marfa Petrovna, who had managed to accuse and blacken Dunya in every house. She knows everyone here, and that month she was forever driving into town, and since she is a bit of a chatterbox and likes to tell about her family affairs, and especially to complain about her husband to each and every one, which is not nice at all, she spread the whole story in a short time not only in town but all over the district. I fell ill, but Dunechka was firmer than I, and if you could have seen how she bore it all, and comforted and encouraged me besides! She is an angel! But by God’s mercy our torments were cut short: Mr. Svidrigailov came to his senses and repented and, probably feeling sorry for Dunya, presented Marfa Petrovna with complete and evident proof of all Dunechka’s innocence, namely: a letter that Dunya, even before Marfa Petrovna came upon them in the garden, had been forced to write and hand to him, to avoid the personal explanations and secret meetings he was insisting on, and which, after Dunechka left, had remained in Mr. Svidrigailov’s hands. In this letter she reproached him in the most ardent way and with full indignation precisely for the ignoble way he was behaving toward Marfa Petrovna, pointed out to him that he was a father and a family man, and, finally, how vile it was of him to torment and make unhappy a girl who was unhappy and defenseless enough already. In a word, dear Rodya, this letter is written so nobly and so touchingly that I sobbed as I read it, and to this day I cannot read it without tears. Besides that, in Dunya’s vindication there came at last the testimony of the servants, who had seen and known much more than Mr. Svidrigailov himself supposed, as always happens. Marfa Petrovna was utterly thunderstruck and ‘struck down anew,’ as she confessed to us herself, but on the other hand she was fully convinced of Dunechka’s innocence, and the very next day, a Sunday, she drove straight to the cathedral, and on her knees and in tears she prayed to the Queen of Heaven to give her strength to bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then, straight from the cathedral, without calling on anyone, she drove to us, told us everything, wept bitterly, and in full repentance embraced Dunya and begged her to forgive her. That same morning, without delaying a moment, straight from our house, she set off round all the houses in town and everywhere, in the terms most flattering to Dunechka, shedding tears, restored her innocence and the nobility of her feelings and conduct. More than that, she showed everyone and read aloud Dunechka’s own letter to Mr. Svidrigailov in her own hand and even let them make copies of it (which, it seems to me, was going too far). In this way she had to drive around to everyone in town for several days running, since some began to take offense that others had been given preference, and so turns were set up, so that in every house they were waiting beforehand and everyone knew that on such and such a day Marfa Petrovna would be reading the letter in such and such a place, and for every reading people gathered again, even those who had already heard the letter several times both in their own houses and at other acquaintances’, in turn. My opinion is that much, very much, of this was unnecessary; but that is Marfa Petrovna’s character. At least she fully restored Dunechka’s honor, and all the vileness of the affair has fallen as an indelible disgrace on her husband, as the one chiefly to blame, so that I even feel sorry for him; that madcap was treated too severely. Dunya was at once invited to give lessons in several houses, but she refused. And altogether everyone suddenly began to treat her with particular respect. All this contributed chiefly to the unexpected event through which our whole fate, one may say, is now changing. Know, dear Rodya, that a suitor has asked for Dunya’s hand and that she has already given her consent, which I hasten to let you know as soon as possible. And although this has been done without your advice, you will probably not hold it against either me or your sister, since you will see for yourself, from the facts, that it would have been impossible for us to wait and put it off until we received your answer. Nor could you yourself have judged everything exactly from so far away. This is how it happened. He is already a court councillor,2 Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, and a distant relation of Marfa Petrovna, who helped a great deal in this. He began by expressing, through her, a wish to make our acquaintance, was received as was proper, drank coffee, and the very next day sent a letter in which he set out his proposal very politely and asked for a speedy and decisive answer. He is a man of business and busy, and is in a hurry now to get to Petersburg, so that every minute is precious to him. Of course, at first we were very much taken aback, since it all happened too quickly and unexpectedly. We considered and pondered it together all that day. He is a reliable man and well provided for, serves in two places, and already has his own capital. True, he is already forty-five, but he is rather pleasant-looking and can still be attractive to women, and in general he is a very solid and proper man, only a little morose and somewhat haughty, as it were. But perhaps it only seems so at first glance. And I warn you, dear Rodya, when you see him in Petersburg, which will happen very soon, do not judge too quickly and too hotly, as is your way, if at first glance something about him does not appeal to you. I say this just in case, though I am sure he will make a pleasant impression on you. And besides, to get to know any person whatever, one must approach him gradually and carefully, so as not to fall into error and prejudice, which are very hard to correct and smooth over afterward. And Pyotr Petrovich, by many signs at least, is a most respectable man. On his very first visit he told us that he was a positive man, but shares in many respects, as he himself put it, ‘the convictions of our newest generations,’ and is an enemy of all prejudices. He said a good deal more, because he is somewhat vain, as it were, and likes very much to be listened to, but that is hardly a vice. I, of course, understood little, but Dunya explained to me that, though he is a man of no great education, he is intelligent and, it seems, kind. You know your sister’s character, Rodya. She is a firm, sensible, patient, and generous girl, though with an ardent heart, which I have studied well in her. Of course, there is no special love here on either her side or his, but Dunya, besides being a clever girl, is at the same time a creature as noble as an angel, and will make it her duty to secure the happiness of her husband, who in his turn would care for her happiness, and of the latter we have, as yet, no great reason to doubt, though the thing was done rather quickly, I confess. Besides, he is a very calculating man and will of course see for himself that his own conjugal happiness will be the surer, the happier Dunechka is with him. And as for some unevenness of character, some old habits, and even a certain disagreement in ideas (which cannot be avoided even in the happiest marriages), on that score Dunechka told me herself that she relies on herself; that there is nothing to worry about and that she can bear a great deal, on condition that their further relations are honest and fair. He seemed to me too, for instance, a little abrupt at first; but that may come precisely from his being a straightforward man, and surely it does. For instance, at his second visit, when he had already received her consent, he remarked in conversation that even before, without knowing Dunya, he had made up his mind to take a girl who was honest but without a dowry, and certainly one who had already known hardship; because, as he explained, a husband ought to be under no obligation to his wife, and it is much better if the wife looks on her husband as her benefactor. I add that he put it somewhat more gently and kindly than I have written it, because I have forgotten his actual expression and remember only the idea, and besides, he said it not at all deliberately but, evidently, letting it slip in the heat of conversation, so that he even tried afterward to correct himself and soften it; but all the same it seemed to me a little harsh, as it were, and I mentioned it to Dunya. But Dunya even answered me with annoyance that ‘words are not deeds yet,’ and that, of course, is true. Before making up her mind, Dunechka did not sleep all night and, thinking that I was asleep already, got out of bed and walked up and down the room all night; at last she knelt down and prayed long and fervently before the icon, and in the morning she told me that she had made up her mind.
“I have mentioned already that Pyotr Petrovich is leaving now for Petersburg. He has important affairs there, and he wants to open a public law office in Petersburg. He has long been occupied with handling all sorts of suits and litigation and only the other day won a considerable lawsuit. He must go to Petersburg also because he has a considerable case there before the Senate. And so, dear Rodya, he may be very useful to you too, even in everything, and Dunya and I have already decided that you, even from this very day, could definitely begin your future career and consider your lot already clearly settled. Oh, if only it came true! It would be such an advantage that we would have to regard it as nothing less than a direct mercy to us from the Almighty. Dunya dreams of nothing else. We have already ventured to say a few words on this subject to Pyotr Petrovich. He expressed himself cautiously and said that, of course, since he could not do without a secretary, it would naturally be better to pay a salary to a relative than to a stranger, if only the relative proved capable of the post (as if you would not prove capable!), but then he expressed a doubt that your university studies would leave you time for work in his office. That was the end of it for the time being, but Dunya now thinks of nothing but this. For several days now she has simply been in a kind of fever, and she has drawn up a whole project by which you may later become Pyotr Petrovich’s associate and even partner in his legal business, all the more so since you are in the faculty of law yourself. I, Rodya, entirely agree with her and share all her plans and hopes, seeing every likelihood in them; and in spite of Pyotr Petrovich’s present evasiveness, which is very understandable (since he does not know you yet), Dunya is firmly convinced that she will achieve everything by her good influence on her future husband, and of this she is convinced. Of course, we took care not to let slip to Pyotr Petrovich even a word about these further dreams of ours, and above all about your becoming his partner. He is a positive man and might take it very drily, since all this would seem to him mere dreaming. In the same way, neither Dunya nor I have said half a word to him yet about our firm hope that he will help us to assist you with money while you are at the university; we did not speak of it because, in the first place, it will come about of itself later on, and he will surely offer it himself without unnecessary words (as if he would refuse Dunechka that), all the more readily since you may become his right hand in the office yourself and receive this help not as a charity but as a salary you have earned. That is how Dunechka wants to arrange it, and I entirely agree with her. And in the second place we did not speak of it because I particularly wanted to put you on an equal footing with him at our coming meeting. When Dunya spoke to him about you with enthusiasm, he answered that one must first look a man over oneself, and closely, before judging him, and that he expects, on making your acquaintance, to form his own opinion of you. Do you know, my precious Rodya, it seems to me, for certain reasons (which have nothing to do with Pyotr Petrovich, though, but are just some personal whims of my own, an old woman’s, a silly woman’s whims, perhaps), it seems to me that I might do better to live on my own after their marriage, as I do now, and not with them. I am quite sure that he will be so noble and delicate as to invite me himself and propose that I should not be parted from my daughter any longer, and if he has not said so yet, it is of course because it is taken for granted without words; but I will refuse. I have noticed more than once in my life that mothers-in-law are not much to husbands’ liking, and I not only do not want to be the least burden to anyone at all, but I want to be entirely free myself, as long as I have some crust of my own and children like you and Dunechka. If possible, I will settle near you both, because, Rodya, I have saved the most pleasant thing for the end of my letter: know, then, my dear friend, that perhaps very soon we shall all come together again and embrace, all three of us, after a separation of almost three years! It is already quite certainly settled that Dunya and I are leaving for Petersburg, exactly when I do not know, but in any case very, very soon, perhaps even in a week. Everything depends on the arrangements of Pyotr Petrovich, who will let us know as soon as he has looked around in Petersburg. For certain reasons of his own he wants to hurry the marriage ceremony as much as possible and even, if it can be managed, to have the wedding during the present meat-eating season, and if that does not work out, because the time is so short, then right after the Assumption fast.3 Oh, with what happiness I shall press you to my heart! Dunya is all excited with joy at seeing you, and once she said, as a joke, that for that alone she would marry Pyotr Petrovich. She is an angel! She is not adding anything to this letter now, but only told me to write that she has so much to talk over with you, so much, that she cannot bring herself to take up a pen now, because in a few lines you cannot write anything and only upset yourself; but she told me to give you a big hug and send you countless kisses. But although we may very soon be together in person, I will still send you money one of these days, as much as I can. Now that everyone has found out that Dunechka is marrying Pyotr Petrovich, my credit has suddenly grown too, and I know for certain that Afanasy Ivanovich will now trust me, against my pension, for as much as seventy-five roubles, so that perhaps I will send you twenty-five or even thirty roubles. I would send more, but I am afraid for our traveling expenses; and although Pyotr Petrovich has been so kind as to take on part of the costs of our journey to the capital, that is, he offered himself, at his own expense, to have our luggage and the big trunk delivered (somehow through acquaintances of his), still we must reckon on our arrival in Petersburg too, where one cannot show oneself without a kopeck, at least for the first few days. Dunechka and I, though, have already worked everything out to the last detail, and it turns out that the journey will not cost much. It is only ninety versts from us to the railroad, and we have already, just in case, made an arrangement with a peasant driver we know; and from there Dunechka and I will ride very comfortably in third class. So perhaps I will manage to send you not twenty-five but surely thirty roubles. But enough; I have filled two sheets all round, and there is no room left; our whole story; and so many things have happened, too! And now, my precious Rodya, I embrace you until we meet soon, and I give you my mother’s blessing. Love Dunya, your sister, Rodya; love her as she loves you, and know that she loves you boundlessly, more than herself. She is an angel, and you, Rodya, you are everything to us—all our hope and all our trust. If only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you pray to God, Rodya, as you used to, and do you believe in the goodness of our Creator and Redeemer? I fear in my heart that the latest fashionable unbelief may have visited you too. If so, I pray for you. Remember, dear, how in your childhood, while your father was still alive, you used to lisp your prayers on my knees, and how happy we all were then! Goodbye, or rather, till we meet again! I embrace you tight, tight, and kiss you countless times.
Yours until the grave,
Pulcheria Raskolnikova.”
Almost the whole time Raskolnikov was reading, from the very beginning of the letter, his face was wet with tears; but when he had finished, it was pale, twisted with a spasm, and a heavy, bilious, spiteful smile crept over his lips. He laid his head down on his thin, grimy pillow and thought, thought for a long time. His heart was beating hard, and his thoughts were in turmoil. At last he felt stifled and cramped in this yellow little room that was like a cupboard or a trunk. His eyes and his mind begged for space. He seized his hat and went out, this time without fear of meeting anyone on the stairs; he had forgotten about that. He took the way toward Vasilyevsky Island along V—— Avenue, as if hurrying there on business, but, as was his habit, he walked without noticing where he was going, whispering to himself and even talking aloud to himself, which greatly surprised the passersby. Many took him for drunk.
Notes
1. A lot was an old Russian unit of weight, about half an ounce (12.8 g); two lots made a heavy letter.
2. Court councillor: the seventh grade in the fourteen-grade Table of Ranks, a solid middle rank in the civil service.
3. The Orthodox Church did not perform weddings during fasts. The “meat-eating season” was a period when weddings were allowed; the Assumption (Dormition) fast ran from August 1 to 14.