Part Two · V

This was a gentleman no longer young, stiff, portly, with a cautious and peevish physiognomy, who began by stopping in the doorway and looking around with offensively undisguised surprise, as if asking with his eyes: “Where on earth have I ended up?” Distrustfully, and even with an affectation of a certain alarm, almost of affront, he surveyed Raskolnikov’s cramped and low “ship’s cabin.” With the same surprise he then shifted and fixed his eyes on Raskolnikov himself, undressed, disheveled, unwashed, lying on his wretched dirty sofa and also motionlessly studying him. Then, with the same deliberateness, he began to study the tousled, unshaven, and uncombed figure of Razumikhin, who in his turn was looking him straight in the eye, insolently and questioningly, without moving from his place. A tense silence lasted for about a minute, and at last, as was to be expected, there was a small change of scene. Realizing, no doubt, from certain data, which were, by the way, very striking, that an exaggeratedly stern bearing would get him absolutely nowhere here in this “ship’s cabin,” the gentleman who had come in softened somewhat and said politely, though not without sternness, addressing Zosimov and rapping out each syllable of his question:

“Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov, a student, or a former student?”

Zosimov stirred slowly and might perhaps have answered, if Razumikhin, who had not been addressed at all, had not at once forestalled him:

“Why, there he is lying on the sofa! And what do you want?”

This familiar “and what do you want?” fairly cut the stiff gentleman off at the knees; he very nearly turned toward Razumikhin, but managed to restrain himself in time and quickly turned back to Zosimov.

“That’s Raskolnikov!” mumbled Zosimov, nodding at the sick man, and then yawned, opening his mouth somehow extraordinarily wide and holding it that way extraordinarily long. Then he slowly reached into his waistcoat pocket, took out an enormous, bulging gold hunter watch, opened it, looked, and just as slowly and lazily set about putting it back.

Raskolnikov himself lay silent all this time, on his back, and stared stubbornly, though without any thought at all, at the newcomer. His face, turned away now from the curious flower on the wallpaper, was extremely pale and expressed extraordinary suffering, as though he had just undergone an agonizing operation or had just been released from torture. But little by little the gentleman who had come in began to arouse in him more and more attention, then perplexity, then distrust, and even something like fear. And when Zosimov, pointing at him, said, “That’s Raskolnikov,” he suddenly raised himself quickly, almost jumping up, sat up in bed, and said in an almost defiant but faltering and weak voice:

“Yes! I’m Raskolnikov! What do you want?”

The visitor looked at him attentively and pronounced impressively:

“Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin. I am in full hope that my name is not entirely unknown to you by now.”

But Raskolnikov, who had been expecting something quite different, looked at him dully and pensively and made no answer, as though he were hearing Pyotr Petrovich’s name decidedly for the first time.

“What? Can it be that you have not yet been pleased to receive any communications?” asked Pyotr Petrovich, somewhat put out.

In answer to this Raskolnikov slowly sank back on the pillow, put his hands behind his head, and began looking at the ceiling. Dismay showed in Luzhin’s face. Zosimov and Razumikhin began looking him over with still greater curiosity, and at last he was visibly embarrassed.

“I had supposed and calculated,” he mumbled, “that a letter dispatched more than ten days ago, indeed almost two weeks…”

“Listen, why do you keep standing by the door?” Razumikhin suddenly interrupted. “If you have something to explain, then sit down, there’s no room for the two of you there, you and Nastasya. Nastasyushka, step aside, let him through! Come in, here’s a chair for you, here! Squeeze on through!”

He moved his chair back from the table, freed a little space between the table and his knees, and waited in a somewhat strained position for the visitor to “squeeze through” this little gap. The moment was so chosen that it was quite impossible to refuse, and the visitor made his way through the narrow space, hurrying and stumbling. Having reached the chair, he sat down and looked suspiciously at Razumikhin.

“Don’t be embarrassed, though,” Razumikhin blurted out. “Rodya has been ill for five days now and delirious for three, but now he’s come to and even ate with an appetite. That’s his doctor sitting there, he’s just examined him, and I’m Rodka’s comrade, also a former student, and now I’m nursing him; so don’t count us and don’t feel shy, just go on with whatever it is you need.”

“Thank you. But will I not disturb the patient with my presence and conversation?” Pyotr Petrovich turned to Zosimov.

“N-no,” mumbled Zosimov, “you may even amuse him,” and he yawned again.

“Oh, he’s been in his right mind for a long time, since this morning!” Razumikhin went on, and his familiarity had such an air of unfeigned simplicity that Pyotr Petrovich thought it over and began to take heart, perhaps partly also because this ragamuffin and impudent fellow had managed after all to introduce himself as a student.

“Your mamma…” Luzhin began.

“Hm!” Razumikhin went loudly. Luzhin looked at him questioningly.

“Never mind, just me; go on…”

Luzhin shrugged.

“…Your mamma, while I was still with them, began a letter to you. On arriving here, I deliberately let a few days go by and did not come to see you, so as to be fully certain that you had been informed of everything; but now, to my surprise…”

“I know, I know!” Raskolnikov said suddenly, with an expression of the most impatient vexation. “Is it you? The fiancé? Well, I know!… and that’s enough!”

Pyotr Petrovich was decidedly offended, but kept silent. He was hurrying with all his might to figure out what all this meant. For about a minute the silence continued.

Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned slightly toward him as he answered, suddenly began studying him again, intently and with a sort of particular curiosity, as though he had not managed to study all of him earlier or as though something new in him had struck him: he even raised himself from the pillow on purpose for this. And indeed, there was something particular, as it were, that was striking in Pyotr Petrovich’s general appearance, namely, something that seemed to justify the title of “fiancé” so unceremoniously given him just now. In the first place, it was evident, and even all too noticeable, that Pyotr Petrovich had hastened strenuously to make use of his few days in the capital to get himself dressed up and spruced up while awaiting his bride, which, however, was quite innocent and permissible. Even his own, perhaps even too self-satisfied, own awareness of his pleasant change for the better might have been forgiven on such an occasion, for Pyotr Petrovich was on the footing of a fiancé. All his clothes were fresh from the tailor’s, and everything was fine, except perhaps only that everything was too new and too plainly betrayed a certain purpose. Even the stylish, brand-new round hat bore witness to this purpose: Pyotr Petrovich treated it somehow too respectfully and held it too carefully in his hands. Even the charming pair of lilac gloves, genuine Jouvins, bore witness to the same thing, if only by the fact that they were not worn but just carried in the hand for show. In Pyotr Petrovich’s clothes light and youthful colors predominated. He wore a pretty summer jacket of a light brown shade, light-colored lightweight trousers, a waistcoat to match, fine linen just purchased, a very light cambric tie with pink stripes, and best of all: all this even suited Pyotr Petrovich. His face, very fresh and even handsome, looked younger than his forty-five years anyway. Dark side-whiskers pleasantly shaded it on both sides, in the shape of two cutlets, and thickened very handsomely beside his gleaming, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair, by the way only just a little touched with gray, combed and curled at the barber’s, did not by that circumstance present anything ridiculous or any sort of stupid look, which is usually always the case with curled hair, since it gives the face an inevitable resemblance to a German on his way to the altar. If there really was anything unpleasant and repellent in this rather handsome and solid physiognomy, it came from other causes. Having studied Mr. Luzhin without ceremony, Raskolnikov smiled venomously, sank back on the pillow, and went on looking at the ceiling as before.

But Mr. Luzhin steeled himself and, it seemed, decided not to notice all these oddities for the time being.

“I regret very, very much to find you in such a condition,” he began again, breaking the silence with an effort. “Had I known of your indisposition, I would have called sooner. But, you know, all the bustle!… I have, besides, a very important case in my capacity as attorney before the Senate. Not to mention those concerns which you, too, will guess. Your family, that is, your mamma and sister, I expect any hour…”

Raskolnikov stirred and was about to say something; his face showed some agitation. Pyotr Petrovich paused, waited, but since nothing followed, he went on:

“…Any hour. I have found them an apartment for the time being…”

“Where?” Raskolnikov said weakly.

“Very close to here, Bakaleev’s house…”

“That’s on Voznesensky,” Razumikhin interrupted. “Two floors of furnished rooms; the merchant Yushin runs it; I’ve been there.”

“Yes, furnished rooms, sir…”

“The most terrible vileness: filth, stench, and a shady place besides; things have happened there; and the devil knows who doesn’t live there!… I went there myself over a scandalous business. It’s cheap, though.”

“I could not, of course, gather so much information, being new here myself,” Pyotr Petrovich objected touchily, “but, still, two very, very clean little rooms, and since it is for a very short time… I have already found our real, that is, our future apartment,” he turned to Raskolnikov, “and it is being done up now; and in the meantime I am crowded in furnished rooms myself, two steps from here, at Mrs. Lippewechsel’s, in the apartment of a young friend of mine, Andrei Semyonych Lebezyatnikov; it was he who pointed out Bakaleev’s house to me…”

“Lebezyatnikov?” Raskolnikov said slowly, as if remembering something.

“Yes, Andrei Semyonych Lebezyatnikov, who serves in a ministry. Are you acquainted with him?”

“Yes… no…” answered Raskolnikov.

“Forgive me, it seemed so to me from your question. I was once his guardian… a very nice young man… and one who keeps up with things… I am glad, for my part, to meet young people: you learn from them what is new.” Pyotr Petrovich looked around hopefully at all those present.

“In what respect?” asked Razumikhin.

“In the most serious, so to speak, in the very essence of the matter,” Pyotr Petrovich took up, as if delighted by the question. “I have not, you see, visited Petersburg for ten years. All these novelties of ours, reforms, ideas—all this has touched us too, in the provinces; but to see more clearly and to see everything, one must be in Petersburg. Well, sir, and my idea is precisely this: that you notice and learn most of all by observing our younger generations. And I confess: I have been gladdened…”

“By what, exactly?”

“Your question is a broad one. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me I find a clearer view, more, so to speak, criticism; more practicality…”

“That’s true,” Zosimov let drop.

“You’re lying, there’s no practicality,” Razumikhin pounced. “Practicality is hard to come by, it doesn’t fall from the sky for nothing. And for nearly two hundred years now we’ve been weaned from doing anything… Ideas, maybe, are fermenting,” he turned to Pyotr Petrovich, “and there’s a desire for good, though a childish one; and even honesty can be found, in spite of the fact that swindlers beyond counting have come pouring in, but practicality there still isn’t! Practicality walks around in boots.”

“I cannot agree with you,” Pyotr Petrovich objected with visible enjoyment. “Of course there are enthusiasms, irregularities, but one must be indulgent too: the enthusiasms testify to ardor for the cause and to the irregular external circumstances in which the cause finds itself. And if little has been done, then there has not been much time either. Not to speak of the means. In my personal view, however, if you like, something has even been done: new, useful ideas have been disseminated, certain new, useful works have been disseminated in place of the former dreamy and romantic ones; literature is taking on a more mature shade; many harmful prejudices have been rooted out and ridiculed… In a word, we have irrevocably cut ourselves off from the past, and that, in my opinion, is already something, sir…”

“Learned it by heart! Showing his credentials,” Raskolnikov said suddenly.

“What, sir?” asked Pyotr Petrovich, who had not caught it, but he received no answer.

“That’s all perfectly fair,” Zosimov hastened to put in.

“Isn’t it so, sir?” Pyotr Petrovich went on, with an agreeable glance at Zosimov. “You must agree yourself,” he went on, addressing Razumikhin, but now with a shade of a certain triumph and superiority, and he nearly added “young man,” “that there is prosperity, or, as they say now, progress, if only in the name of science and economic truth…”

“A commonplace!”

“No, not a commonplace, sir! If, for instance, up to now I have been told, ‘Love,’ and I loved, then what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovich went on, perhaps with excessive haste. “What came of it was that I tore my coat in half and shared it with my neighbor, and we were both left half naked, as in the Russian proverb: ‘Chase several hares at once, and you won’t catch a single one.’ Science, however, says: love yourself first of all, for everything in the world is based on personal interest. Love yourself alone, and you will manage your affairs properly, and your coat will remain whole. Economic truth adds that the more well-ordered private affairs there are in a society, and, so to speak, whole coats, the firmer its foundations and the better ordered its common cause as well. Consequently, by acquiring solely and exclusively for myself, I am precisely thereby acquiring, as it were, for everyone, and bringing it about that my neighbor receives something more than a torn coat, and that no longer from private, individual largesse, but as a result of universal prosperity. A simple idea, but one which, unfortunately, was too long in coming, obscured by rapturousness and dreaminess, though it would seem that it takes little wit to figure it out…”

“Excuse me, I have no wit either,” Razumikhin interrupted sharply, “and so let’s drop it. I only started this conversation with a purpose, you know; otherwise all this self-amusing chatter, all these unceasing, uninterrupted commonplaces, and all the same thing over and over, have become so loathsome to me in three years that, by God, I blush when other people, let alone me, talk this way in my presence. You were in a hurry, naturally, to present your credentials in learning, that’s quite forgivable, and I don’t condemn it. I only wanted to find out now who you are, because, you see, so many assorted entrepreneurs have latched on to the common cause lately, and they’ve so distorted everything they touched, in their own interest, that they’ve absolutely fouled up the whole cause. Well, sir, and that’s enough!”

“My dear sir,” Mr. Luzhin began, bristling with extraordinary dignity, “do you mean, so unceremoniously, to imply that I, too…”

“Oh, mercy, mercy… How could I!… Well, sir, and that’s enough!” Razumikhin cut him short and turned sharply to Zosimov to continue their earlier conversation.

Pyotr Petrovich proved intelligent enough to believe the explanation at once. He decided, however, to leave in two minutes.

“I hope that our acquaintance, begun now,” he addressed Raskolnikov, “will grow still stronger after your recovery and in view of the circumstances known to you… I particularly wish you good health…”

Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr Petrovich began to get up from his chair.

“It was a pledger who killed her, without fail!” Zosimov was saying positively.

“A pledger, without fail!” Razumikhin agreed. “Porfiry doesn’t give his thoughts away, but he’s questioning the pledgers all the same…”

“Questioning the pledgers?” Raskolnikov asked loudly.

“Yes, why?”

“Nothing.”

“Where does he get them from?” asked Zosimov.

“Koch pointed out some; the names of others were written on the wrappings of the articles, and some came on their own when they heard about it…”

“Well, he must be a deft and experienced scoundrel! What boldness! What resolve!”

“That’s just it, he’s not!” Razumikhin broke in. “That’s exactly what throws you all off the track. And I say he’s clumsy, inexperienced, and it was surely his first step! Suppose calculation and a deft scoundrel, and it comes out improbable. But suppose an inexperienced man, and it comes out that only chance got him out of trouble, and what won’t chance do? Good Lord, he may not even have foreseen any obstacles! And how does he go about it?—he takes things worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffs his pockets with them, rummages in the old woman’s chest, among the rags—and in the top drawer of the chest of drawers, in a box, they found fifteen hundred roubles in cash alone, not counting the securities! He didn’t even know how to rob, all he knew how to do was kill! The first step, I tell you, the first step; he lost his head! And he wriggled out not by calculation but by chance!”

“This, it seems, is about the recent murder of the old civil servant’s widow,” Pyotr Petrovich interposed, addressing Zosimov; he was already standing with his hat and gloves in his hand, but before leaving he had wished to drop a few more clever words. He was evidently anxious to make a favorable impression, and vanity got the better of prudence.

“Yes. Have you heard about it?”

“Why, of course, sir, it’s in the neighborhood…”

“Do you know the details?”

“I cannot say I do; but what interests me in this is another circumstance, a whole question, so to speak. I need not mention that crime among the lower classes has increased in the last five years or so; I need not mention the robberies and fires everywhere and unceasing; what is strangest of all to me is that crime among the upper classes is increasing in the same way and, so to speak, in parallel. In one place, you hear, a former student has robbed the mail on the highroad; in another, people who are in the vanguard by their social position are making counterfeit banknotes; in another, in Moscow, they catch a whole gang of forgers of tickets of the last lottery loan—and among the chief participants a lecturer in world history; in another, one of our secretaries abroad is murdered, for a financial and enigmatic reason… And if now this old woman moneylender has been killed by one of her pledgers, then he too, consequently, was a man from a higher stratum of society—for peasants do not pawn gold articles—then how are we to explain this, on the one hand, dissoluteness of the civilized part of our society?”

“There are many economic changes…” responded Zosimov.

“How to explain it?” Razumikhin latched on. “Why, it could be explained precisely by our too inveterate impracticality.”

“That is, how so, sir?”

“Why, what did that lecturer of yours in Moscow answer when asked why he forged the tickets: ‘Everybody’s getting rich in various ways, so I wanted to get rich quickly too.’ I don’t remember the exact words, but the sense was, for free, quickly, without effort! We’ve got used to living with everything provided, to walking in other people’s leading strings, to eating food already chewed for us. Well, and when the great hour struck, everybody showed what he really is…”

“But what about morality, though? And, so to speak, principles…”

“But what are you fussing about?” Raskolnikov interfered unexpectedly. “It came out according to your own theory!”

“How, according to my theory?”

“Why, carry what you were preaching just now to its consequences, and it will come out that people can be butchered…”

“Mercy!” cried Luzhin.

“No, that’s not so!” responded Zosimov.

Raskolnikov lay pale, his upper lip quivering, breathing with difficulty.

“There is a measure in all things,” Luzhin went on haughtily. “An economic idea is not yet an invitation to murder, and if one only supposes…”

“And is it true that you,” Raskolnikov suddenly interrupted again, in a voice trembling with spite, in which a sort of joy at the offense could be heard, “is it true that you told your bride… at the very hour you received her consent, that what pleased you most of all was… that she was a pauper… because it’s more advantageous to take a wife out of poverty, so as to lord it over her afterward… and reproach her with having been your beneficiary?…”

“My dear sir!” Luzhin cried spitefully and irritably, flushing all over and flustered. “My dear sir… to distort an idea so! Excuse me, but I must tell you that the rumors that have reached you, or rather, that have been brought to you, have not a shadow of sound foundation, and I… suspect who… in a word… this arrow… in a word, your mamma… Even before this, she struck me, with all her excellent qualities, however, as having a somewhat rapturous and romantic shade to her thinking… But still I was a thousand versts from supposing that she could understand and present the matter in a form so distorted by fancy… And finally… finally…”

“And do you know what?” cried Raskolnikov, raising himself on the pillow and looking at him point-blank with a piercing, glittering gaze. “Do you know what?”

“What, sir?” Luzhin stopped and waited with an offended and defiant air. The silence lasted several seconds.

“Just this, that if you ever again… dare to mention even one word… about my mother… I’ll throw you head over heels down the stairs!”

“What’s the matter with you!” cried Razumikhin.

“Ah, so that’s how it is, sir!” Luzhin turned pale and bit his lip. “Listen to me, sir,” he began, deliberately and restraining himself with all his might, but gasping all the same, “I saw through your hostility earlier, from my very first step, but I deliberately stayed here in order to learn still more. Much I could have forgiven a sick man and a relative, but now… you… never, sir…”

“I’m not ill!” cried Raskolnikov.

“All the more so, sir…”

“Go to the devil!”

But Luzhin was already leaving of his own accord, without finishing his speech, again squeezing between the table and the chair; this time Razumikhin got up to let him pass. Without looking at anyone, and without even nodding to Zosimov, who had long been nodding to him to leave the sick man in peace, Luzhin went out, cautiously raising his hat to the level of his shoulder as he stooped to pass through the door. And even the curve of his back seemed on this occasion to express that he was carrying away with him a terrible insult.

“How can you, how can you do that?” said the bewildered Razumikhin, shaking his head.

“Leave me, leave me, all of you!” Raskolnikov cried in a frenzy. “Will you leave me alone at last, you tormentors! I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of anyone, anyone now! Get away from me! I want to be alone, alone, alone, alone!”

“Let’s go!” said Zosimov, nodding to Razumikhin.

“Good Lord, how can we leave him like this?”

“Let’s go!” Zosimov repeated insistently and went out. Razumikhin thought a moment and ran to catch up with him.

“It could have been worse if we hadn’t done as he said,” said Zosimov, already on the stairs. “He mustn’t be irritated…”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“If only he could get some favorable jolt, that’s what he needs! He was strong enough earlier… You know, he’s got something on his mind! Something fixed, weighing on him… I’m very much afraid of that; I really am!”

“Maybe it’s this gentleman, this Pyotr Petrovich! You could tell from the conversation that he’s marrying his sister and that Rodya got a letter about it, right before his illness…”

“Yes; the devil had to bring him now; he may have upset the whole thing. And did you notice that he’s indifferent to everything, says nothing about anything, except one point that drives him out of himself: that murder…”

“Yes, yes!” Razumikhin took up. “I noticed it very much! He’s interested, he’s frightened. They frightened him with it on the very day he fell ill, at the police office, at the superintendent’s; he fainted.”

“You tell me about it in more detail this evening, and afterward I’ll tell you something. He interests me, very much! I’ll look in to check on him in half an hour… There won’t be any inflammation, though…”

“Thank you! And meanwhile I’ll wait at Pashenka’s and keep watch through Nastasya…”

Raskolnikov, left alone, looked at Nastasya with impatience and anguish; but she still lingered.

“Will you drink your tea now?” she asked.

“Later! I want to sleep! Leave me…”

He turned convulsively to the wall; Nastasya went out.