Part Three · IV

At that moment the door opened quietly, and into the room, looking timidly around, came a girl. Everyone turned to her in surprise and curiosity. Raskolnikov did not recognize her at first glance. It was Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova. He had seen her yesterday for the first time, but at such a moment, in such surroundings, and in such a costume that his memory had kept the image of an entirely different face. Now this was a modestly, even poorly dressed girl, still very young, almost like a little girl, with a modest and proper manner and a clear but somehow rather frightened face. She was wearing a very plain little housedress, and on her head an old hat of an outmoded style; only in her hands was there, as yesterday, a parasol. Seeing the room unexpectedly full of people, she was not so much embarrassed as completely lost; she grew shy as a small child, and even made a movement to go back out.

“Ah… it’s you?…” said Raskolnikov in extreme surprise, and suddenly he was flustered himself.

It at once occurred to him that his mother and sister already knew in passing, from Luzhin’s letter, about a certain girl of “notorious” conduct. Only just now he had protested against Luzhin’s slander and mentioned that he had seen this girl for the first time, and suddenly here she was, walking in herself. He remembered too that he had not protested at all against the expression “of notorious conduct.” All this slid vaguely through his head in an instant. But looking more closely, he suddenly saw that this humiliated creature was already so humiliated that he suddenly felt sorry for her. And when she made a movement to run away out of fright, something seemed to turn over in him.

“I wasn’t expecting you at all,” he hurried on, stopping her with his eyes. “Do me the favor, sit down. You must be from Katerina Ivanovna. Please, not there, sit here…”

When Sonya came in, Razumikhin, who was sitting on one of Raskolnikov’s three chairs, just by the door, half rose to let her through. At first Raskolnikov pointed her to the place in the corner of the sofa where Zosimov had been sitting, but, remembering that this sofa was too familiar a place and served him as his bed, he hastened to point her to Razumikhin’s chair.

“And you sit here,” he said to Razumikhin, putting him in the corner where Zosimov had been sitting.

Sonya sat down, almost trembling with fright, and glanced timidly at the two ladies. It was plain that she herself did not understand how she could sit down beside them. Realizing this, she was so frightened that she suddenly stood up again and in complete confusion turned to Raskolnikov.

“I… I… I’ve only stopped by for a minute, forgive me for disturbing you,” she began, stammering. “I’ve come from Katerina Ivanovna, and she had no one else to send… And Katerina Ivanovna told me to beg you very much to be at the funeral service tomorrow, in the morning… at the liturgy… at the Mitrofanievsky, and then at our place… at hers… to take a meal… To do her the honor… She told me to ask you.”

Sonya stumbled and fell silent.

“I’ll try without fail… without fail,” answered Raskolnikov, also half rising, also stammering and not finishing… “Do me the favor, sit down,” he said suddenly, “I need to talk to you. Please—you may be in a hurry—do me the favor, give me two minutes…”

And he moved a chair up for her. Sonya sat down again, and again, timidly, helplessly, hurriedly, glanced at the two ladies, and suddenly lowered her eyes.

Raskolnikov’s pale face flushed; he seemed to shudder all over; his eyes lit up.

“Mama,” he said firmly and insistently, “this is Sofya Semyonovna Marmeladova, the daughter of that same unfortunate Mr. Marmeladov who was run over by the horses yesterday before my eyes, and about whom I already told you…”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna looked at Sonya and narrowed her eyes slightly. In spite of all her confusion before Rodya’s insistent and challenging look, she simply could not deny herself this pleasure. Dunechka stared seriously, intently, straight into the poor girl’s face and studied her in bewilderment. Sonya, hearing herself introduced, raised her eyes again, but was more embarrassed than before.

“I wanted to ask you,” Raskolnikov quickly turned to her, “how did things go for you today? They didn’t trouble you?… from the police, for example.”

“No, sir, it all went off… It’s only too plain what he died of; they didn’t trouble us; only the lodgers are angry.”

“Why?”

“Because the body has been there so long… it’s hot now, you know, the smell… so today, by vespers, they’ll carry him to the cemetery, to the chapel, until tomorrow. Katerina Ivanovna didn’t want to at first, but now she sees herself that it can’t be helped…”

“So it’s today?”

“She asks you to do us the honor of being at the funeral service in church tomorrow, and then to come to her, for the memorial meal.”

“She’s giving a memorial meal?”

“Yes, sir, a little something to eat; she told me to thank you very much for helping us yesterday… without you we’d have had nothing at all to bury him with.” And suddenly her lips and chin began to quiver, but she took hold of herself and held back, quickly lowering her eyes to the ground again.

All through the conversation Raskolnikov studied her intently. It was a thin, a very thin and pale little face, rather irregular, somehow sharp, with a sharp little nose and chin. She could not even be called pretty, but on the other hand her blue eyes were so clear, and when they came alive, the expression of her face became so kind and so artless that it drew you to her in spite of yourself. In her face, and in her whole figure too, there was besides one peculiar, characteristic feature: in spite of her eighteen years she seemed almost still a little girl, much younger than her age, almost a child, and this sometimes came out even comically in some of her movements.

“But can Katerina Ivanovna really manage with such small means, and even intend to give a meal?…” asked Raskolnikov, insistently keeping the conversation going.

“The coffin will be a plain one, sir… and everything will be plain, so it won’t cost much… Katerina Ivanovna and I worked it all out earlier, so there’ll even be enough left for the remembrance… and Katerina Ivanovna wants so much for it to be that way. It has to be done, sir… it’s a comfort to her… she’s like that, you know yourself…”

“I understand, I understand… of course… Why are you looking around my room like that? Mama says too that it looks like a coffin.”

“You gave us everything yesterday!” Sonechka suddenly said in reply, in a sort of strong, rapid whisper, suddenly looking down hard again. Her lips and chin began to quiver again. She had been struck for some time already by Raskolnikov’s poor surroundings, and now these words suddenly broke out of her by themselves. A silence followed. Dunechka’s eyes somehow brightened, and Pulcheria Alexandrovna even looked at Sonya kindly.

“Rodya,” she said, getting up, “of course we’ll have dinner together. Dunechka, let’s go… And you, Rodya, ought to go out, take a little walk, and then rest, lie down, and then come to us soon… We’ve tired you out, I’m afraid…”

“Yes, yes, I’ll come,” he answered, getting up and suddenly in a hurry… “I have some business, though…”

“What, are you really going to have dinner separately?” cried Razumikhin, looking at Raskolnikov in surprise. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll come, of course, of course… And you stay for a minute. You don’t need him right now, do you, Mama? Or am I taking him away from you?”

“Oh, no, no! And you, Dmitry Prokofyich, will you come to dinner, will you be so kind?”

“Please do come,” Dunya asked.

Razumikhin bowed and was all radiant. For a moment everyone was somehow suddenly, strangely embarrassed.

“Goodbye, Rodya—I mean, till we meet; I don’t like saying ‘goodbye.’ Goodbye, Nastasya… oh, I’ve said ‘goodbye’ again!…”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna meant to bow to Sonechka too, but somehow it did not come off, and she hurried out of the room.

But Avdotya Romanovna seemed to be waiting her turn, and, passing Sonya behind her mother, she gave her an attentive, courteous, and full bow. Sonechka was flustered and bowed back in a hurried, frightened way, and something even like pain showed in her face, as if Avdotya Romanovna’s courtesy and attention were a burden and a torment to her.

“Dunya, goodbye, then!” Raskolnikov shouted, already out in the entry. “Give me your hand!”

“But I already gave it to you, have you forgotten?” answered Dunya, turning to him tenderly and awkwardly.

“Well, so what, give it again!”

And he squeezed her slender fingers hard. Dunechka smiled at him, blushed, quickly pulled her hand away, and went after her mother, for some reason all happy too.

“Well, that’s splendid!” he said to Sonya, coming back into his room and looking at her brightly. “The Lord rest the dead, but the living still have to live! Isn’t that so? Isn’t it so? It is so, isn’t it?”

Sonya looked with something like surprise at his suddenly brightened face; for a few moments he gazed at her silently and intently: the whole story her late father had told about her suddenly swept through his memory at that minute…

“Lord, Dunechka!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna began at once, as soon as they came out into the street. “Here I am actually glad myself, now, that we’ve left: it’s somehow easier. Well, could I have thought yesterday, in the train, that I would be glad even of this!”

“I tell you again, Mama, he’s still very ill. Can’t you see it? Maybe he’s upset himself suffering over us. We have to be indulgent, and much, so much can be forgiven.”

“But you weren’t indulgent!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna at once interrupted, hotly and jealously. “You know, Dunya, I was looking at the two of you, and you’re his perfect portrait, and not so much in your face as in your soul: you’re both melancholics, both sullen and hot-tempered, both haughty, and both generous… It can’t be that he’s an egoist, can it, Dunechka? Eh?… And when I think what’s going to happen at our place this evening, my heart just fails me!”

“Don’t worry, Mama, what must be will be.”

“Dunechka! Just think what a position we’re in now! What if Pyotr Petrovich breaks it off?” poor Pulcheria Alexandrovna suddenly blurted out incautiously.

“Then what will he be worth after that!” Dunechka answered sharply and contemptuously.

“We did well to leave just now,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hurried on, interrupting, “he was hurrying off somewhere on business: let him take a walk, breathe some air at least… it’s terribly stuffy in his room… but where is there any air to breathe here? Even in the streets here it’s like rooms with no vent windows. Lord, what a city!… Wait, step aside, they’ll crush you, they’re carrying something! Why, that was a piano they carried past, really… how they shove… I’m very much afraid of that girl too…”

“What girl, Mama?”

“Why, that one, Sofya Semyonovna, who was there just now…”

“Afraid of what?”

“I have a presentiment, Dunya. Well, believe it or not, as soon as she came in, I thought that very minute that this is where the main thing lies…”

“Nothing lies there at all!” Dunya cried in vexation. “What you are with your presentiments, Mama! He’s only known her since yesterday, and when she came in just now, he didn’t recognize her.”

“Well, you’ll see!… She troubles me, you’ll see, you’ll see! And I got so frightened: she looks at me, looks at me, such eyes, I could hardly stay in my chair, do you remember, when he began introducing her? And it seems strange to me: Pyotr Petrovich writes such things about her, and he introduces her to us, and to you besides! So she must be dear to him!”

“Who cares what he writes! People talked about us too, and wrote, have you forgotten? And I’m sure she’s… a fine girl, and that all this is nonsense!”

“God grant it!”

“And Pyotr Petrovich is a worthless gossip,” Dunechka suddenly snapped.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna simply shrank. The conversation broke off.

“Here’s the thing, here’s the business I have with you…” said Raskolnikov, drawing Razumikhin over to the window…

“Then I’ll tell Katerina Ivanovna you’ll come…” Sonya hurried, bowing to leave.

“One moment, Sofya Semyonovna, we have no secrets, you’re not in the way… I’d like to say a couple more words to you… Here’s the thing,” he suddenly turned to Razumikhin without finishing, as if he had broken it off. “You know that… what’s his name!… Porfiry Petrovich?”

“I should say so! He’s a relative. Why?” the other added, in a sort of burst of curiosity.

“He’s handling that case now… well, that murder… you were talking about it yesterday… isn’t he?”

“Yes… well?” Razumikhin suddenly goggled.

“He’s been asking the people who pawned things, and I have some pledges there too, just junk, but there’s my sister’s little ring, which she gave me as a keepsake when I was leaving to come here, and my father’s silver watch. It’s all worth five or six roubles, but it’s dear to me, as a memory. So what should I do now? I don’t want the things to be lost, especially the watch. I was trembling earlier that Mama would ask to see it, when they started talking about Dunechka’s watch. It’s the only thing of my father’s that survived. She’ll fall ill if it’s lost! Women! So how should I go about it, teach me! I know I ought to report it at the station. But wouldn’t it be better to go to Porfiry himself, eh? What do you think? I’d like to get the thing settled quickly. You’ll see, Mama will ask even before dinner!”

“By no means the station, and Porfiry without fail!” Razumikhin shouted in a sort of extraordinary agitation. “Well, how glad I am! What are we waiting for, let’s go now, it’s two steps away, we’re sure to find him in!”

“All right… let’s go…”

“And he’ll be very, very, very, very glad to meet you! I’ve talked to him a lot about you, at different times… And yesterday too. Let’s go!… So you knew the old woman? So that’s it!… It’s all turned out mag-ni-fi-cent-ly!… Oh, yes… Sofya Ivanovna…”

“Sofya Semyonovna,” Raskolnikov corrected. “Sofya Semyonovna, this is my friend Razumikhin, and he’s a good man…”

“If you have to go now…” Sonya began, without even looking at Razumikhin, and growing all the more embarrassed for that.

“Then let’s go!” Raskolnikov decided. “I’ll come to see you today, Sofya Semyonovna, only tell me where you live?”

He was not exactly confused, but seemed somehow to be in a hurry and to be avoiding her eyes. Sonya gave her address and blushed as she did. They all went out together.

“Don’t you lock up?” asked Razumikhin, going down the stairs after them.

“Never!… Though for two years now I’ve been meaning to buy a lock,” he added carelessly. “Happy people, aren’t they, who have nothing to lock up?” he turned, laughing, to Sonya.

In the street they stopped at the gate.

“You go to the right, Sofya Semyonovna? By the way: how did you find me?” he asked, as if he wanted to say something entirely different to her. He kept wanting to look into her quiet, clear eyes, and somehow it kept not working out…

“Why, you gave Polechka the address yesterday.”

“Polya? Ah, yes… Polechka! That’s… the little one… that’s your sister? So I gave her the address?”

“But have you really forgotten?”

“No… I remember…”

“And I’d heard about you from him, the deceased, back then… Only I didn’t know your last name then, and he didn’t know it himself… And now I came… and since I found out your last name yesterday… I asked today: where does Mr. Raskolnikov live here?… And I didn’t know that you lived in a rented room too… Goodbye, sir… I’ll tell Katerina Ivanovna…”

She was terribly glad that she had finally got away; she walked with her eyes down, hurrying, so as to get out of their sight somehow quickly, to get somehow quickly over those twenty steps to the turn to the right into the street, and to be alone at last, and there, walking, hurrying, looking at no one, noticing nothing, to think, to remember, to weigh every word that had been said, every circumstance. Never, never had she felt anything like it. A whole new world had descended, unknowingly and dimly, into her soul. She suddenly recalled that Raskolnikov himself meant to come to see her today, maybe even in the morning, maybe right now!

“Only not today, please, not today!” she muttered with a sinking heart, as if begging someone, like a frightened child. “Lord! To me… to that room… he’ll see… oh, Lord!”

And, of course, at that moment she could not notice a certain gentleman, a stranger to her, who was diligently watching her and following on her heels. He had been following her from the moment she came out of the gate. At the moment when all three of them, Razumikhin, Raskolnikov, and she, had stopped on the sidewalk for a couple of words, this passerby, going around them, had suddenly seemed to start, catching Sonya’s words by chance on the fly: “and I asked: where does Mr. Raskolnikov live?” He had looked quickly but attentively at all three, especially at Raskolnikov, whom Sonya was addressing; then he looked at the house and took note of it. All this was done in an instant, in passing, and the passerby, trying not even to let it show, walked on, slowing his pace and as if waiting. He was waiting for Sonya; he saw that they were saying goodbye and that Sonya would now be going off somewhere to her own place.

“Now where would her own place be? I’ve seen that face somewhere,” he thought, recalling Sonya’s face… “I must find out.”

When he reached the turn, he crossed to the opposite side of the street, turned around, and saw that Sonya was already coming after him, the same way, and noticing nothing. When she reached the turn, she turned into the very same street. He followed, not taking his eyes off her from the opposite sidewalk; after fifty steps or so he crossed back to the side Sonya was walking on, caught up with her, and walked behind her, keeping five steps away.

He was a man of about fifty, taller than average, portly, with broad, steep shoulders that made him look somewhat stooped. He was smartly and comfortably dressed and looked like a stately gentleman of means. In his hands was a handsome cane, which he tapped on the sidewalk with every step, and his hands were in fresh gloves. His broad face, with its high cheekbones, was rather pleasant, and his complexion was fresh, not a Petersburg complexion. His hair, still very thick, was quite blond, with just a touch of gray, perhaps, and his broad, thick beard, hanging down like a spade, was even lighter than the hair on his head. His eyes were blue and had a cold, fixed, and thoughtful look; his lips were scarlet. All in all he was a remarkably well-preserved man who seemed much younger than his years.

When Sonya came out onto the canal, the two of them were alone on the sidewalk. Watching her, he had managed to notice her pensiveness and absentmindedness. Reaching her building, Sonya turned in at the gate, and he after her, and as if somewhat surprised. Coming into the courtyard, she turned right, into the corner where the stairway to her lodging was. “Bah!” muttered the unknown gentleman, and began climbing the steps behind her. Only then did Sonya notice him. She went up to the third floor, turned into the gallery, and rang at number nine, on whose door was written in chalk: “Kapernaumov, Tailor.” “Bah!” the stranger repeated, surprised at the odd coincidence, and rang next door at number eight. The two doors were some six steps from each other.

“You’re lodging at Kapernaumov’s!” he said, looking at Sonya and laughing. “He altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. And I’m here, right next door to you, at Madame Resslich’s, Gertruda Karlovna’s. How things work out!”

Sonya looked at him attentively.

“Neighbors,” he went on, somehow especially cheerfully. “I’ve only been in town three days, you know. Well, then, goodbye for now.”

Sonya did not answer; the door was opened, and she slipped into her room. She felt ashamed of something, and somehow frightened…

On the way to Porfiry’s Razumikhin was in a particularly excited state.

“This is splendid, brother,” he repeated several times, “and I’m glad! I’m glad!”

“What are you so glad about?” Raskolnikov thought to himself.

“I didn’t even know that you pawned things with the old woman too. And… and… was it long ago? I mean, was it long ago you were at her place?”

“What a naïve fool he is!”

“When?…” Raskolnikov paused, trying to remember. “Why, I was at her place about three days before her death, I think. But I’m not going to redeem the things now,” he took up, with a sort of hurried and peculiar concern about the things, “I have only one silver rouble again… thanks to that cursed delirium yesterday!…”

He spoke about the delirium with special emphasis.

“Well, yes, yes, yes,” Razumikhin hurriedly agreed, to what was not clear, “so that’s why it… partly struck you, back then… and you know, in your delirium you kept mentioning some rings and chains!… Well, yes, yes… That’s clear, it’s all clear now.”

“There you go! How that idea has spread among them! Here’s a man who would go to the cross for me, and he’s very glad it’s been cleared up why I talked about rings in my delirium! How it’s set in all of them!…”

“And will we find him in?” he asked aloud.

“We will, we will,” Razumikhin hurried. “He’s a splendid fellow, brother, you’ll see! A bit clumsy—I mean, he’s a man of the world, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. A clever fellow, clever, not at all stupid in fact, only he has some sort of peculiar cast of mind… Mistrustful, a skeptic, a cynic… likes to fool people, I mean not to cheat them, but to make fools of them… And then the old method, the material one… But he knows his business, he knows it… Last year he tracked down one case, a murder, in which almost all the traces had been lost! He very, very, very much wants to meet you!”

“But why on earth very much?”

“I mean, not that… you see, lately, since you fell ill, I’ve had to mention you a lot and often… Well, he listened… and when he heard you were in law and can’t finish the course, because of circumstances, he said, ‘What a pity!’ And I concluded… I mean, all of it together, not just that; yesterday Zametov… You see, Rodya, I was babbling something to you yesterday when I was drunk, on the way home… so I’m afraid, brother, that you may be exaggerating it, you see…”

“What’s that? That they think I’m mad? Well, maybe it’s true.”

He smiled a strained smile.

“Yes… yes… I mean, pah, no!… Well, everything I said (and about the other thing, too) was all nonsense, and from being hung over.”

“What are you apologizing for! How sick I am of all this!” cried Raskolnikov with exaggerated irritability. He was, however, partly pretending.

“I know, I know, I understand. Rest assured that I understand. It’s shameful even to talk about…”

“Well, if it’s shameful, then don’t talk about it!”

Both fell silent. Razumikhin was more than in raptures, and Raskolnikov felt it with disgust. What troubled him too was what Razumikhin had just been saying about Porfiry.

“I’ll have to play poor Lazarus for this one too,” he thought, turning pale and with his heart thumping, “and play it more naturally. The most natural thing would be not to play anything at all. To make a point of playing nothing! No, making a point of it would be unnatural again… Well, we’ll see how it turns out… we’ll see… right now… is it good or not good that I’m going? The moth flies to the candle of its own accord. My heart is pounding, that’s what’s not good!…”

“In this gray house,” said Razumikhin.

“The most important thing is whether Porfiry knows or doesn’t know that I was in that witch’s apartment yesterday… and asked about the blood? I must find that out in an instant, from the first step, as soon as I go in, find it out from his face; oth-er-wise… even if I’m lost, I’ll find out!”

“And you know what?” he suddenly turned to Razumikhin with a sly smile. “I noticed today, brother, that since morning you’ve been in a sort of extraordinary agitation? True?”

“What agitation? I’m not in any agitation at all,” Razumikhin winced.

“No, brother, really, it shows. Earlier you were sitting on your chair the way you never sit, sort of on the edge, and you kept twitching. You’d jump up for no reason at all. One minute you’re angry, and the next, for some reason, your mug turns into the sweetest sugar candy. You even blushed; especially when they invited you to dinner, you blushed terribly.”

“I did nothing of the kind; you’re lying!… What are you talking about?”

“Why are you wriggling like a schoolboy! Pfoo, the devil, he’s blushing again!”

“What a swine you are, though!”

“But why are you so embarrassed? Romeo! Wait, I’ll tell this around today, ha-ha-ha! Won’t I make Mama laugh… and a certain someone else…”

“Listen, listen, listen, this is serious, this is… What will come of it after this, devil take it!” Razumikhin was completely thrown, going cold with horror. “What will you tell them? I, brother… Pfoo, what a swine you are!”

“A regular spring rose! And how it suits you, if you only knew; a Romeo ten vershoks tall!¹ And how you’ve washed today, you’ve even cleaned your nails, eh? When did that ever happen? And, by God, you’ve pomaded your hair! Bend down!”

“Swine!!!”

Raskolnikov was laughing so hard that it seemed he could no longer contain himself, and so they entered Porfiry Petrovich’s apartment laughing. That was just what Raskolnikov needed: from the rooms it could be heard that they had come in laughing and were still guffawing in the hall.

“Not a word here, or I’ll… smash you!” Razumikhin whispered in a fury, seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder.

Notes

1. 1. Russians gave a man’s height in vershoks (about an inch and three quarters) above the standard two arshins (about four feet eight inches). Ten vershoks over makes Razumikhin about six foot two.