Part Two · VII

In the middle of the street stood a carriage, a stylish gentleman’s carriage, harnessed to a pair of spirited gray horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman himself had got down from the box and was standing beside it; the horses were being held by the bridles. All around a great many people were crowding, the police in front of everyone. One of them had a lighted lantern in his hand, with which, bending down, he was lighting up something on the roadway, right by the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, gasping; the coachman seemed bewildered and every now and then repeated:

“What a sin! Lord, what a sin!”

Raskolnikov pushed his way through as far as he could and saw at last the object of all this bustle and curiosity. On the ground lay a man who had just been run over by the horses, unconscious, it seemed, very badly dressed, but in “gentleman’s” clothes, all covered in blood. Blood was flowing from his face, from his head; his face was all battered, scraped, mangled. You could see he had been run over in earnest.

“Merciful heavens!” the coachman lamented. “How could you watch out for it! If I’d been driving hard, or hadn’t shouted to him, but I was going along not in a hurry, steady. Everybody saw: as folks say, so say I. A drunk man won’t light a candle to God—everybody knows!… I see him, crossing the street, staggering, about to fall over—I shouted once, and again, and a third time, and I reined the horses in; and he fell right smack under their feet! Whether he did it on purpose, or was just very far from sober… The horses are young, skittish—they jerked, and he cried out—that set them off worse… and that’s the trouble.”

“That’s just how it was!” some witness’s voice spoke up in the crowd.

“He did shout, that’s true, he shouted to him three times,” another voice responded.

“Three times exactly, everybody heard!” cried a third.

The coachman, however, was not very downcast or frightened. You could see that the carriage belonged to a rich and important owner who was waiting for it somewhere; the police, of course, were taking no little care over how to settle this last circumstance. The man who had been run over had to be taken to the police station and the hospital. No one knew his name.

Meanwhile Raskolnikov squeezed his way through and bent down still closer. Suddenly the lantern brightly lit up the unfortunate man’s face; he recognized him.

“I know him, I know him!” he shouted, squeezing all the way to the front. “It’s an official, retired, a titular councillor, Marmeladov! He lives here, close by, in Kozel’s house… A doctor, quickly! I’ll pay, here!” He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to a policeman. He was in an astonishing state of agitation.

The police were pleased to have learned who the man was. Raskolnikov gave his own name too, gave his address, and with all his might, as though it were a matter of his own father, urged them to carry the unconscious Marmeladov to his flat as quickly as possible.

“Right here, three houses down,” he bustled. “Kozel’s house, a German, a rich one… He must have been making his way home drunk just now. I know him… He’s a drunkard… He has a family there, a wife, children, there’s a daughter. It’s a long way yet to drag him to the hospital, and here, in the very building, there must be a doctor! I’ll pay, I’ll pay!… At least he’ll have his own people caring for him, they’ll help him right away, otherwise he’ll die before the hospital…”

He even managed to slip something unnoticed into a hand; the matter, however, was clear and lawful, and in any case help was nearer here. They lifted the injured man and carried him; helpers were found. Kozel’s house was some thirty paces off. Raskolnikov walked behind, carefully supporting the head and showing the way.

“This way, this way! You have to carry him up the stairs head first; turn him around… that’s it! I’ll pay, I’ll be grateful,” he muttered.

Katerina Ivanovna, as always, the moment she had a free minute, would at once begin walking back and forth in her little room, from the window to the stove and back, her arms tightly crossed on her chest, talking to herself and coughing. Lately she had taken to talking more and more often and at greater length with her elder girl, ten-year-old Polenka, who, though she did not yet understand a great deal, did understand very well that her mother needed her, and therefore always followed her with her big clever little eyes and did all she could, by every artful means, to appear to understand everything. This time Polenka was undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day, to put him to bed. While waiting to have his shirt changed, which was to be washed that same night, the boy sat silently on a chair, with a serious face, straight and motionless, his little legs stretched out in front of him, pressed tight together, heels toward the public and toes apart. He was listening to what Mama was saying to his sister, his lips pouting, his little eyes goggling, not stirring, exactly as all clever little boys are supposed to sit when they are being undressed to go to bed. A girl still smaller than he, in utter rags, stood by the screen waiting her turn. The door to the stairs was open, to give at least some protection from the waves of tobacco smoke that burst in from the other rooms and every minute made the poor consumptive woman cough long and agonizingly. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even thinner that week, and the red spots on her cheeks burned brighter than before.

“You won’t believe it, you can’t even imagine, Polenka,” she was saying, walking about the room, “how gaily and splendidly we lived in Papa’s house, and how this drunkard has ruined me and will ruin all of you! Papa was a colonel in the civil service and very nearly a governor; he had only one more step or so to go, so that everyone used to visit him and say: ‘We already consider you, Ivan Mikhailych, our governor.’ When I… khe! when I… khe-khe-khe… oh, thrice-cursed life!” she cried out, coughing up phlegm and clutching her chest, “when I… ah, when at the last ball… at the marshal of nobility’s… Princess Bezzemelnaya saw me—who afterward gave me her blessing when I married your papa, Polya—she asked at once: ‘Isn’t that the charming girl who danced the shawl dance at the graduation?’… (That tear has to be sewn up; you should take a needle and darn it right now, the way I taught you, or else tomorrow… khe! tomorrow… khe-khe-khe!… it’ll tear wo-orse!” she cried, straining herself)… “Prince Shchegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had only just arrived from Petersburg then… he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to come the very next day with a proposal; but I thanked him myself in flattering terms and said that my heart had long belonged to another. That other was your father, Polya; Papa was terribly angry… Is the water ready? Well, give me the little shirt; and the stockings?… Lida,” she turned to her little daughter, “you’ll just have to sleep tonight without a shirt; somehow… and put your stockings out beside it… I’ll wash them all at once… Why doesn’t that ragamuffin come, the drunkard! He’s worn his shirt like some old dishrag, torn it all to pieces… I’d do it all at once, so as not to suffer two nights in a row! Lord! Khe-khe-khe-khe! Again! What is it?” she cried out, glancing at the crowd in the entryway and the people pushing into her room with some kind of burden. “What is it? What are they carrying? Lord!”

“Where do we put him?” asked the policeman, looking around, when the bloodied and unconscious Marmeladov had already been dragged into the room.

“On the sofa! Put him right on the sofa, head this way,” Raskolnikov showed them.

“Run over in the street! Drunk!” someone shouted from the entryway.

Katerina Ivanovna stood all pale, breathing with difficulty. The children were terrified. Little Lidochka cried out, rushed to Polenka, threw her arms around her, and trembled all over.

Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov rushed to Katerina Ivanovna:

“For God’s sake, calm yourself, don’t be frightened!” he said in a rapid patter. “He was crossing the street, a carriage ran him over, don’t worry, he’ll come to, I had them carry him here… I was at your place, remember… He’ll come to, I’ll pay!”

“Now he’s done it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried out in despair and rushed to her husband.

Raskolnikov soon noticed that this woman was not one of those who promptly fall into a faint. In a flash a pillow appeared under the unfortunate man’s head, a thing no one had thought of yet; Katerina Ivanovna began undressing him, examining him, bustled about and did not lose her head, forgetting about herself, biting her trembling lips and stifling the cries that were ready to burst from her breast.

Meanwhile Raskolnikov persuaded someone to run for a doctor. The doctor, as it turned out, lived next door but one.

“I’ve sent for a doctor,” he kept telling Katerina Ivanovna, “don’t worry, I’ll pay. Is there any water?… And give me a napkin, a towel, something, quickly; we don’t know yet how he’s hurt… He’s hurt, not killed, you may be sure… We’ll see what the doctor says!”

Katerina Ivanovna rushed to the window; there, on a broken-seated chair, in the corner, stood a big earthenware basin of water, made ready for the night washing of the children’s and her husband’s linen. This night washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna herself, with her own hands, at least twice a week, and sometimes more often, for they had come to the point where there was almost no change of linen left at all, and each member of the family had only a single set, and Katerina Ivanovna could not bear uncleanness and would rather torment herself at night and beyond her strength, while everyone was asleep, so as to get the wet linen dried on a line by morning and hand out clean things, than see dirt in the house. She seized the basin to carry it over at Raskolnikov’s demand, but nearly fell with the load. But he had already found a towel, wet it with water, and begun washing Marmeladov’s blood-covered face. Katerina Ivanovna stood right there, painfully catching her breath and holding her chest with her hands. She needed help herself. Raskolnikov began to understand that he had perhaps done a bad thing in persuading them to carry the injured man here. The policeman too stood at a loss.

“Polya!” cried Katerina Ivanovna. “Run to Sonya, quickly. If you don’t find her at home, never mind, tell them that her father’s been run over by horses and that she’s to come here at once… as soon as she gets back. Quickly, Polya! Here, cover yourself with the shawl!”

“Wun as fast as you can!” the boy suddenly shouted from his chair, and, having said this, sank back again into his former silent upright sitting on the chair, little eyes goggling, heels forward and toes apart.

Meanwhile the room had filled so that there was no room for an apple to fall. The police had left, except for one, who stayed for a while and tried to drive the public that had gathered from the stairs back out to the stairs again. But then out of the inner rooms poured almost all of Mrs. Lippewechsel’s lodgers, and at first they only crowded in the doorway, but then they surged in a mob into the room itself. Katerina Ivanovna flew into a frenzy.

“You might at least let him die in peace!” she shouted at the whole crowd. “What a show you’ve found for yourselves! With cigarettes! Khe-khe-khe! Why not come in with your hats on!… And there’s one in a hat… Out! Have some respect at least for a dead body!”

Her cough choked her, but the scolding served its purpose. They were evidently even a little afraid of Katerina Ivanovna; the lodgers, one after another, squeezed back toward the door with that strange inner feeling of satisfaction which is always to be observed, even in the closest people, at a sudden misfortune befalling their neighbor, and from which not a single person is exempt, without exception, despite even the most sincere feeling of pity and sympathy.

Outside the door, however, voices could be heard about the hospital, and that it wasn’t right to disturb the house for nothing.

“Not right to die, is it!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she was already rushing to fling open the door and burst upon them in a whole thunderstorm, but in the doorway she ran into Mrs. Lippewechsel herself, who had only just heard of the misfortune and had come running to establish order. She was an extremely quarrelsome and disorderly German woman.

“Ach, my God!” she threw up her hands. “Your husband drunk, horse has trampled. In hospital with him! I am landlady!”

“Amalia Ludwigovna! I beg you to remember what you are saying,” Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily (she always spoke to the landlady in a haughty tone, so that she would “remember her place,” and even now could not deny herself this pleasure). “Amalia Ludwigovna…”

“I have said you once-for-before that you never dare to say me Amal Ludwigovna; I am Amal-Ivan!”

“You are not Amal-Ivan but Amalia Ludwigovna, and since I do not belong to your vile flatterers, like Mr. Lebezyatnikov, who is laughing now behind the door” (behind the door there really was laughter and a shout: “They’ve gone for each other!”), “I shall always call you Amalia Ludwigovna, though I positively cannot understand why you dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to Semyon Zakharovich; he is dying. I beg you to lock this door at once and let no one in. Let him at least die in peace! Otherwise, I assure you, your conduct will be known tomorrow to the governor-general himself. The prince knew me when I was still a girl and remembers Semyon Zakharovich very well, and did him kindnesses many times. Everyone knows that Semyon Zakharovich had many friends and patrons, whom he himself gave up out of noble pride, feeling his unhappy weakness, but now” (she pointed at Raskolnikov) “we are being helped by a generous young man who has means and connections, and whom Semyon Zakharovich knew as a child, and you may be sure, Amalia Ludwigovna…”

All this was uttered in an extremely rapid patter, the longer the faster, but a cough at once cut short Katerina Ivanovna’s eloquence. At that moment the dying man came to and moaned, and she ran to him. The sick man opened his eyes and, not yet recognizing or understanding, began peering at Raskolnikov, who was standing over him. He breathed heavily, deeply, and at long intervals; blood had oozed out at the corners of his lips; sweat had come out on his forehead. Not recognizing Raskolnikov, he began uneasily moving his eyes around. Katerina Ivanovna looked at him with a sad but stern gaze, and tears were flowing from her eyes.

“My God! His whole chest is crushed! The blood, the blood!” she said in despair. “We must take off all his outer clothes! Turn a little, Semyon Zakharovich, if you can,” she cried to him.

Marmeladov recognized her.

“A priest!” he said in a hoarse voice.

Katerina Ivanovna went over to the window, leaned her forehead against the window frame, and exclaimed in despair:

“Oh, thrice-cursed life!”

“A priest!” the dying man said again after a minute’s silence.

“We’ve se-e-ent for one!” Katerina Ivanovna shouted at him; he obeyed the shout and fell silent. With a timid, anguished look he searched for her with his eyes; she came back to him again and stood at the head of the sofa. He grew somewhat calmer, but not for long. Soon his eyes came to rest on little Lidochka (his favorite), who was trembling in the corner as if in a fit and looking at him with her astonished, childishly intent eyes.

“Ah… ah…” he pointed at her uneasily. He wanted to say something.

“What now?” cried Katerina Ivanovna.

“Barefoot! Barefoot!” he muttered, pointing with a half-crazed look at the girl’s bare little feet.

“Be qui-i-iet!” Katerina Ivanovna shouted irritably. “You know yourself why she’s barefoot!”

“Thank God, the doctor!” cried Raskolnikov, overjoyed.

The doctor came in, a neat little old man, a German, looking around with a mistrustful air; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse, carefully felt his head, and, with Katerina Ivanovna’s help, unbuttoned the shirt, all soaked with blood, and bared the sick man’s chest. The whole chest was mangled, crushed, and torn; several ribs on the right side were broken. On the left side, right over the heart, there was an ominous, large, yellowish-black bruise, a cruel blow of a hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that the injured man had been caught in the wheel and dragged, spinning, some thirty paces along the roadway.

“It’s amazing that he came to at all,” the doctor whispered softly to Raskolnikov.

“What do you say?” Raskolnikov asked.

“He’ll die any moment.”

“Is there really no hope?”

“Not the slightest! He’s at his last gasp… Besides, his head is very dangerously injured… Hm. I could let some blood, I suppose… but… it will be useless. In five or ten minutes he will certainly die.”

“Then you’d better let some blood!”

“If you like… However, I warn you, it will be completely useless.”

At that moment more footsteps were heard, the crowd in the entryway parted, and on the threshold appeared a priest with the reserved Sacrament, a gray-haired little old man. A policeman had gone for him, back when they were still in the street. The doctor at once gave up his place to him and exchanged a significant look with him. Raskolnikov begged the doctor to wait at least a little. The doctor shrugged and stayed.

Everyone stepped back. The confession lasted a very short time. The dying man hardly understood anything well; and he could utter only abrupt, indistinct sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took Lidochka, lifted the boy down from his chair, and, going off into the corner by the stove, knelt down and set the children on their knees in front of her. The little girl only trembled; but the boy, kneeling on his bare little knees, raised his small hand rhythmically, crossed himself with a full sign of the cross, and bowed to the ground, knocking his forehead, which apparently gave him special pleasure. Katerina Ivanovna bit her lips and held back her tears; she was praying too, now and then straightening the little shirt on the child, and managed to throw over the girl’s too-bare shoulders a kerchief she took from the chest of drawers without rising from her knees and while praying. Meanwhile the doors from the inner rooms began to be opened again by the curious. And in the entryway the spectators, lodgers from the whole staircase, packed in more and more tightly, without stepping, however, over the threshold of the room. A single candle end lit the whole scene.

At that moment Polenka, who had run for her sister, quickly pushed her way through the crowd from the entryway. She came in, barely catching her breath from running fast, took off her shawl, found her mother with her eyes, went up to her, and said: “She’s coming! I met her in the street!” Her mother pulled her down on her knees and set her beside her. Out of the crowd, noiselessly and timidly, a girl pushed her way through, and her sudden appearance in this room was strange, amid poverty, rags, death, and despair. She too was in rags; her outfit was cheap, but decked out in street fashion, to the taste and rules that had taken shape in her own special world, with a brightly and shamefully obvious purpose. Sonya stopped in the entryway right at the threshold, but did not cross the threshold, and looked on like someone lost, not conscious, it seemed, of anything, forgetting about her silk dress, bought at fourth hand, colored, indecent here, with its long and ridiculous train, and the immense crinoline that blocked the whole doorway, and about her light-colored ankle boots, and the little parasol, useless at night, which she had nevertheless brought with her, and the ridiculous round straw hat with its bright flame-colored feather. From under this hat, worn tilted to one side like a boy’s, peeped out a thin, pale, frightened little face with a gaping mouth and eyes fixed in horror. Sonya was small, about eighteen, thin, but a rather pretty blonde, with remarkable blue eyes. She was looking intently at the bed, at the priest; she too was out of breath from walking fast. At last the whispering, some words in the crowd, must have reached her. She lowered her eyes, took one step over the threshold, and stood in the room, but again right in the doorway.

The confession and communion were over. Katerina Ivanovna again went up to her husband’s bed. The priest stepped back and, as he was leaving, turned to say a few words of farewell and consolation to Katerina Ivanovna.

“And what am I to do with these?” she interrupted sharply and irritably, pointing to the little ones.

“God is merciful; trust in the help of the Most High,” the priest began.

“Eh-eh! Merciful, but not to us!”

“That is a sin, a sin, madam,” the priest remarked, shaking his head.

“And isn’t that a sin?” cried Katerina Ivanovna, pointing at the dying man.

“Perhaps those who were the unwitting cause will agree to compensate you, at least for the loss of income…”

“You don’t understand me!” Katerina Ivanovna cried irritably, with a wave of her hand. “And compensate for what? Why, he got under the horses himself, drunk! What income? He brought us no income, only torment. He drank everything away, the drunkard. He robbed us and carried it to the pothouse, wasted their life and mine in the pothouse! And thank God he’s dying! Less loss!”

“You ought to forgive in the hour of death, but this is a sin, madam, such feelings are a great sin!”

Katerina Ivanovna was bustling about the sick man, giving him something to drink, wiping the sweat and blood from his head, straightening the pillows, and talking with the priest, managing now and then to turn to him in the midst of it all. But now she suddenly fell upon him almost in a frenzy.

“Eh, Father! Words and nothing but words! Forgive! Here he’d have come home today drunk, if he hadn’t been run over, with the only shirt he has on him, all worn through, in rags, and he’d have flopped down to snore, and I’d have been splashing in the water till dawn, washing his rags and the children’s, and then drying them out the window, and then, as soon as it was light, I’d have sat down to darn—that’s my night for you!… So what’s the use of talking about forgiveness! As it is, I’ve forgiven!”

A deep, terrible cough cut off her words. She coughed into her handkerchief and thrust it out for the priest to see, painfully holding her chest with her other hand. The handkerchief was all bloody…

The priest bowed his head and said nothing.

Marmeladov was in his last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again. He kept wanting to tell her something; he even began, moving his tongue with effort and pronouncing the words indistinctly, but Katerina Ivanovna, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, at once shouted at him peremptorily:

“Be qui-i-iet! No need!… I know what you want to say!…” And the sick man fell silent; but at that same moment his wandering gaze fell on the door, and he saw Sonya…

Until then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the corner and in the shadow.

“Who’s that? Who’s that?” he said suddenly in a hoarse, gasping voice, all in alarm, pointing with his eyes in horror at the door where his daughter stood, and straining to raise himself.

“Lie down! Lie dow-ow-own!” Katerina Ivanovna tried to shout.

But with an unnatural effort he managed to prop himself on his arm. He looked wildly and fixedly at his daughter for some time, as though not recognizing her. And indeed he had never once seen her in such a costume. Suddenly he recognized her, humbled, crushed, dressed up and ashamed, meekly waiting her turn to say goodbye to her dying father. Infinite suffering showed in his face.

“Sonya! Daughter! Forgive me!” he cried, and tried to stretch out his hand to her, but, losing his support, he slipped and crashed down from the sofa, face down on the floor; they rushed to lift him, laid him down, but he was already passing. Sonya cried out faintly, ran up, embraced him, and froze in that embrace. He died in her arms.

“He’s got what he was after!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, seeing her husband’s corpse. “Well, what am I to do now! What will I bury him with! And what, what will I feed them with tomorrow?”

Raskolnikov went up to Katerina Ivanovna.

“Katerina Ivanovna,” he began, “last week your late husband told me his whole life and all the circumstances… You may be sure that he spoke of you with rapturous respect. From that evening, when I learned how devoted he was to all of you and how especially he respected and loved you, Katerina Ivanovna, in spite of his unhappy weakness, from that evening we became friends… Allow me now… to contribute… toward the last respects due to my late friend. Here… twenty roubles, I think—and if this can be of help to you, then… I… in a word, I’ll come by—I’ll certainly come by… I may come by tomorrow, even… Goodbye!”

And he quickly went out of the room, pushing his way through the crowd to the stairs as fast as he could; but in the crowd he suddenly ran into Nikodim Fomich, who had heard of the accident and wished to give orders in person. They had not seen each other since the scene at the office, but Nikodim Fomich recognized him instantly.

“Ah, it’s you?” he asked him.

“He’s dead,” Raskolnikov answered. “The doctor came, the priest came, everything’s in order. Don’t trouble the poor woman too much, she’s consumptive as it is. Cheer her up, if you can in any way… You’re a kind man, after all, I know…” he added with a smirk, looking him straight in the eye.

“But how you’ve got yourself soaked in blood,” Nikodim Fomich remarked, making out by the light of a lantern several fresh stains on Raskolnikov’s waistcoat.

“Yes, I’m soaked… I’m covered in blood!” Raskolnikov said with a peculiar air, then smiled, nodded, and went down the stairs.

He went down quietly, without hurrying, all in a fever and, without being aware of it, filled with one single, new, immense sensation of a full and mighty life that had suddenly come surging in. This sensation might have resembled that of a man condemned to death who is suddenly and unexpectedly told he is pardoned. Halfway down the stairs the priest, on his way home, overtook him; Raskolnikov silently let him go ahead, exchanging a wordless bow with him. But as he was going down the last steps, he suddenly heard hurried footsteps behind him. Someone was catching up with him. It was Polenka; she was running after him and calling: “Listen! Listen!”

He turned to her. She ran down the last flight and stopped right in front of him, one step above him. A dim light came in from the courtyard. Raskolnikov made out the girl’s thin but sweet little face, which was smiling at him and looking at him gaily, like a child. She had come running with an errand that she herself evidently liked very much.

“Listen, what’s your name?… and also: where do you live?” she asked hurriedly, in a breathless little voice.

He laid both hands on her shoulders and looked at her with a kind of happiness. It was so pleasant for him to look at her—he did not know why himself.

“And who sent you?”

“Sister Sonya sent me,” the girl answered, smiling still more gaily.

“I just knew it was Sister Sonya who sent you.”

“Mama sent me too. When Sister Sonya started sending me, Mama came over too and said: ‘Run quickly, Polenka!’”

“Do you love Sister Sonya?”

“I love her more than anybody!” Polenka said with a peculiar firmness, and her smile suddenly became more serious.

“And will you love me?”

Instead of an answer he saw the girl’s little face coming close to him and her plump little lips naively held out to kiss him. Suddenly her arms, thin as matchsticks, hugged him tight, tight, her head sank onto his shoulder, and the girl began to cry softly, pressing her face against him harder and harder.

“I’m sorry for Papa!” she said a minute later, raising her tear-stained little face and wiping away the tears with her hands. “It’s all such misfortunes now,” she added unexpectedly, with that especially solemn air children try so hard to put on when they suddenly want to talk like “grown-ups.”

“And did your papa love you?”

“He loved Lidochka most of all of us,” she went on very seriously and without smiling, now exactly the way grown-ups talk, “he loved her because she’s little, and because she’s sickly too, and he always brought her treats, and us he taught to read, and me grammar and Scripture,” she added with dignity, “and Mama never said anything, but we just knew she liked it, and Papa knew, and Mama wants to teach me French, because it’s already time for me to get an education.”

“And do you know how to pray?”

“Oh, of course, we do! For a long time now; I, since I’m big already, pray to myself, and Kolya and Lidochka pray out loud together with Mama; first they say the prayer to the Mother of God, and then one more prayer: ‘God, forgive and bless Sister Sonya,’ and then another: ‘God, forgive and bless our other papa,’ because our older papa died already, and this one’s our other one, and we pray for that one too.”

“Polechka, my name is Rodion; pray for me too sometime: ‘and the servant of God Rodion’—nothing more.”

“I’ll pray for you all my future life,” the girl said fervently, and suddenly laughed again, rushed to him, and again hugged him tight.

Raskolnikov told her his name, gave his address, and promised to come by without fail the very next day. The girl went away utterly enchanted with him. It was past ten when he came out into the street. Five minutes later he was standing on the bridge, at exactly the same spot from which the woman had thrown herself earlier.

“Enough!” he pronounced resolutely and solemnly. “Away with mirages, away with feigned fears, away with phantoms!… There is life! Haven’t I been living just now? My life hasn’t died yet along with the old woman! May she rest in the Kingdom of Heaven, and—enough, old mother, it’s time you were at rest! Now the kingdom of reason and light and… and of will, and of strength… and now we’ll see! Now we’ll measure our strength!” he added defiantly, as if addressing some dark power and challenging it. “And I was already agreeing to live on an arshin of space!

“… I’m very weak at this minute, but… I think the illness has all passed. I knew it would pass when I went out earlier. By the way: Pochinkov’s house is just two steps from here. I’ll go to Razumikhin’s without fail, even if it weren’t two steps… let him win his bet!… Let him have his fun too—never mind, let him!… Strength, strength is what’s needed: without strength you get nothing; and strength has to be won by strength, that’s what they don’t know,” he added proudly and self-confidently, and walked off the bridge, barely able to move his legs. Pride and self-confidence were growing in him every minute; already the next minute he was not the same man as the minute before. What had happened, though, that was so special as to turn him around like this? He did not know himself; to him, like a man clutching at a straw, it suddenly seemed that he too “could live, that there was still life, that his life had not died along with the old woman.” Perhaps he was too hasty in his conclusion, but he did not think about that.

“But I did ask her to pray for the servant of God Rodion, though,” suddenly flashed through his head. “Well, that’s… just in case!” he added, and at once laughed himself at his boyish trick. He was in the most excellent spirits.

He easily found Razumikhin; in Pochinkov’s house the new lodger was already known, and the caretaker at once showed him the way. From halfway up the stairs you could already make out the noise and lively talk of a large gathering. The door to the stairs was wide open; shouts and arguments could be heard. Razumikhin’s room was rather large, and the gathering was some fifteen people. Raskolnikov stopped in the front hall. Here, behind a partition, two of the landlord’s maids were busy around two big samovars, around bottles, plates, and platters with a pie and hors d’oeuvres, brought from the landlord’s kitchen. Raskolnikov sent for Razumikhin. Razumikhin came running, delighted. At first glance you could see that he had drunk an extraordinary amount, and although Razumikhin almost never could get drunk, this time something showed.

“Listen,” Raskolnikov hurried, “I came only to tell you that you’ve won your bet and that it’s true nobody knows what may happen to him. But I can’t come in: I’m so weak that I’ll fall down any minute. And so hello and goodbye! And come to me tomorrow…”

“You know what, I’ll see you home! If you say yourself that you’re weak, then…”

“And your guests? Who’s that curly-haired one, the one who just looked in here?”

“That one? Devil knows! An acquaintance of my uncle’s, must be, or maybe he came on his own… I’ll leave my uncle with them; he’s the most precious man; pity you can’t meet him now. But anyway, devil take them all! They don’t need me now, and I need some fresh air, so, brother, you’ve come just in time: two more minutes and I’d have got into a fight in there, by God! The wild nonsense they’re talking… You can’t imagine to what lengths a man can lie himself out in the end! But then, why can’t you imagine it? Don’t we lie ourselves? And let them lie: that way they won’t lie later… Sit a minute, I’ll bring Zosimov.”

Zosimov fell upon Raskolnikov even with a kind of greed; some peculiar curiosity was noticeable in him; soon his face cleared.

“To bed immediately,” he decided, having examined the patient as far as possible, “and for the night you ought to take a little something. Will you take it? I made it up earlier… a little powder.”

“Two, if you like,” Raskolnikov answered.

The powder was taken then and there.

“It’s very good that you’re taking him yourself,” Zosimov remarked to Razumikhin. “What tomorrow will be, we’ll see, but today’s not at all bad: a considerable change from earlier. Live and learn…”

“You know what Zosimov whispered to me just now as we were going out,” Razumikhin blurted, as soon as they were out in the street. “I’ll tell you everything straight, brother, because they’re fools. Zosimov told me to chatter with you on the way and get you chattering, and then tell him, because he has an idea… that you’re… mad, or close to it. Just imagine that! In the first place, you’re three times cleverer than he is, in the second place, if you’re not crazy, you don’t give a damn that he has such wild stuff in his head, and in the third place, that lump of meat, a surgeon by specialty, has gone crazy now about mental illnesses, and what turned him around completely about you was your conversation with Zametov today.”

“Zametov told you everything?”

“Everything, and he did right. I understand the whole inside story now, and so does Zametov… Well, in a word, Rodya… the point is… I’m a tiny bit drunk now… But that doesn’t matter… the point is that this idea… you understand? really was hatching in their heads… you understand? That is, none of them dared say it out loud, because it’s the most absurd wild nonsense, and especially when they took that painter, it all burst and went out forever. But why are they such fools? I gave Zametov a bit of a beating that time—this is between us, brother; please don’t give the slightest hint that you know; I’ve noticed he’s touchy; it was at Laviza’s—but today, today it all became clear. The main thing is that Ilya Petrovich! He took advantage of your fainting at the office that time, and afterward he was ashamed of himself; I know…”

Raskolnikov listened greedily. Razumikhin, being drunk, was blabbing.

“I fainted that time because it was stuffy and there was a smell of oil paint,” said Raskolnikov.

“He’s explaining, too! And it wasn’t only the paint: the inflammation had been coming on the whole month; Zosimov’s right here to say so! But how crushed that boy is now, you can’t imagine! ‘I’m not worth that man’s little finger,’ he says. Yours, that is. He has good feelings sometimes, brother. But the lesson, the lesson you gave him today in the Crystal Palace, that’s the height of perfection! You frightened him at first, drove him to convulsions! You almost made him convinced again of all that hideous nonsense and then, suddenly—stuck your tongue out at him: ‘There, you see, so much for you!’ Perfection! He’s crushed, annihilated now! You’re a master, by God, that’s just what they need. Eh, too bad I wasn’t there! He was waiting for you terribly just now. Porfiry wants to meet you too…”

“Ah… that one too… But why have they put me down as mad?”

“That is, not as mad. I seem to have chattered too much to you, brother… What struck him earlier, you see, is that only that one point interests you; now it’s clear why it interests you; knowing all the circumstances… and how it irritated you then and got tangled up with the illness… I’m a little drunk, brother, only, devil knows, he has some idea of his own… I’m telling you: he’s gone crazy about mental illnesses. But you just spit on it…”

For half a minute or so both were silent.

“Listen, Razumikhin,” Raskolnikov began, “I want to tell you straight out: I was just now with a dead man, an official died… I gave all my money there… and besides, just now I was kissed by a being who, even if I had killed someone, would also… in a word, I saw another being there too… with a flame-colored feather… but I’m talking nonsense; I’m very weak, hold me up… the stairs are right here…”

“What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter?” Razumikhin asked in alarm.

“My head is spinning a little, only that’s not the point, the point is that I’m so sad, so sad! like a woman… really! Look, what’s that? Look! look!”

“What is it?”

“Don’t you see? A light in my room, see? Through the crack…”

They were already standing before the last flight, beside the landlady’s door, and indeed it could be seen from below that there was a light in Raskolnikov’s little room.

“Strange! Nastasya, maybe,” Razumikhin remarked.

“She’s never in my room at this hour, and she’s been asleep for ages, but… I don’t care! Goodbye!”

“What are you saying? I’ll see you up, we’ll go in together!”

“I know we’ll go in together, but I want to shake your hand here and say goodbye to you here. Well, give me your hand, goodbye!”

“What’s the matter with you, Rodya?”

“Nothing; come on; you’ll be a witness…”

They began climbing the stairs, and the thought flashed through Razumikhin’s mind that Zosimov might be right after all. “Eh! I’ve upset him with my chatter!” he muttered to himself. Suddenly, as they approached the door, they heard voices in the room.

“What on earth is going on here?” cried Razumikhin.

Raskolnikov was the first to take hold of the door, and he flung it wide open, flung it open and stood on the threshold as if rooted to the spot.

His mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been waiting for an hour and a half. Why was it that he had expected them least of all and thought of them least of all, despite the news, repeated even today, that they were leaving, were on their way, would arrive any moment? All that hour and a half they had been questioning Nastasya, interrupting each other; she was standing before them even now and had already managed to tell them the whole inside story. They were beside themselves with fright when they heard that he had “run away today,” ill and, as was clear from the story, certainly delirious! “God, what’s happened to him!” Both had been weeping, both had borne the torments of the cross in that hour and a half of waiting.

A joyful, rapturous cry greeted Raskolnikov’s appearance. Both rushed to him. But he stood as if dead; an unbearable, sudden awareness struck him like a thunderbolt. And his arms would not rise to embrace them: they could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him, laughed, cried… He took a step, swayed, and collapsed onto the floor in a faint.

Alarm, cries of horror, moans… Razumikhin, who had been standing on the threshold, flew into the room, seized the sick man in his powerful arms, and in an instant the sick man was on the sofa.

“It’s nothing, nothing!” he shouted to the mother and sister. “It’s a faint, it’s a trifle! The doctor said just now that he’s much better, that he’s perfectly well! Water! There, he’s already coming to, there, he’s come to!…”

And seizing Dunechka by the arm so hard that he nearly wrenched it out of its socket, he bent her down to look at how “he’s already come to.” Both mother and sister looked at Razumikhin as at Providence, with tenderness and gratitude; they had already heard from Nastasya what this “quick-witted young man” had been to their Rodya all through his illness, as Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikova herself called him that same evening, in an intimate conversation with Dunya.