Part Five · V

Lebezyatnikov looked alarmed.

“I’ve come to you, Sofya Semyonovna. Excuse me… I thought I’d find you here,” he suddenly turned to Raskolnikov, “that is, I didn’t think anything… of that sort… but I did think so, precisely… Katerina Ivanovna has gone out of her mind back at our place,” he suddenly blurted out to Sonya, abandoning Raskolnikov.

Sonya cried out.

“That is, at least it seems so. However… We don’t know what to do back there, that’s how it is, ma’am! She came back—she’d been thrown out of somewhere, it seems, maybe even beaten… at least, so it seems… She’d run off to Semyon Zakharovich’s superior and didn’t find him at home; he was dining at the house of some other general… Imagine, she dashed off to where they were dining… to this other general’s, and, imagine—she actually insisted, got Semyon Zakharovich’s superior called out, and straight from the table, it seems. You can picture what came of it. She was thrown out, of course; but she says that she cursed him herself and threw something at him. One can well believe it… how they didn’t arrest her—I don’t understand! Now she’s telling everyone, Amalia Ivanovna too, only it’s hard to understand her, she’s shouting and thrashing about… Oh, yes: she says, she shouts, that since everyone has abandoned her now, she’ll take the children and go out into the street, carry a barrel organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she will too, and collect money, and go under the general’s window every day… ‘Let them see,’ she says, ‘how the well-born children of an official go begging in the streets!’ She’s beating all the children, they’re crying. She’s teaching Lenya to sing ‘The Little Farm,’ the boy to dance, Polina Mikhailovna too, she’s tearing up all the dresses; she’s making them some kind of little caps, like actors; she wants to carry a basin herself and bang on it, instead of music… She won’t listen to anything… Imagine, how can this be? It’s simply impossible!”

Lebezyatnikov would have gone on, but Sonya, who had listened to him scarcely breathing, suddenly snatched up her little mantle and her hat and ran out of the room, dressing as she ran. Raskolnikov went out after her, Lebezyatnikov after him.

“She’s certainly lost her mind!” he said to Raskolnikov as they came out into the street together. “I just didn’t want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said ‘it seems,’ but there isn’t a doubt of it. They say it’s these little tubercles, in consumption, that pop up on the brain; it’s a pity I don’t know medicine. I did try to convince her, though, but she won’t listen to anything.”

“You talked to her about tubercles?”

“Well, not exactly about tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood a thing. But what I’m saying is this: if you convince a person logically that he essentially has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. And you’re convinced he won’t stop?”

“Life would be too easy then,” Raskolnikov answered.

“Allow me, allow me; of course, it’s rather hard for Katerina Ivanovna to understand; but are you aware that in Paris serious experiments have already been conducted concerning the possibility of curing the insane by acting through logical persuasion alone? A professor there, who died recently, a serious scholar, got the idea that they could be treated that way. His basic idea is that there’s no particular disorder in the bodies of the insane, and that insanity is, so to speak, a logical error, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He would gradually refute the patient, and, just imagine, he achieved results, they say! But since he also used cold showers in the process, the results of this treatment are open to doubt, of course… At least, so it seems…”

Raskolnikov had long since stopped listening. When they came level with his building, he nodded to Lebezyatnikov and turned in under the gateway. Lebezyatnikov came to himself, looked around, and ran on.

Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood in the middle of it. “Why had he come back here?” He looked around at the yellowish, scuffed wallpaper, the dust, his couch… From the courtyard came some sharp, incessant knocking; somewhere someone seemed to be hammering something in, a nail of some kind… He went to the window, rose on tiptoe, and for a long time, with an air of extraordinary attention, peered out into the courtyard. But the courtyard was empty, and the people knocking could not be seen. To the left, in the wing, open windows could be seen here and there; on the sills stood little pots of thin, straggly geraniums. Laundry was hung out beyond the windows… He knew all this by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.

Never, never yet had he felt so terribly alone!

Yes, he felt once more that perhaps he really would come to hate Sonya, and precisely now, when he had made her more unhappy. “Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? Why did he so need to eat up her life? Oh, the baseness of it!”

“I’ll remain alone!” he said suddenly and resolutely. “And she won’t come to visit me in prison!”

About five minutes later he raised his head and smiled strangely. It was a strange thought: “Maybe in penal servitude it really is better,” it suddenly occurred to him.

He did not remember how long he sat there in his room, with vague thoughts crowding his head. Suddenly the door opened and Avdotya Romanovna came in. At first she stopped and looked at him from the threshold, as he had looked at Sonya earlier; only then did she come in and sit down on a chair facing him, in her place of yesterday. He looked at her in silence and somehow without a thought.

“Don’t be angry, brother, I’ve only come for a minute,” said Dunya. The expression on her face was thoughtful, but not stern. Her gaze was clear and quiet. He saw that this one too had come to him with love.

“Brother, now I know everything, everything. Dmitry Prokofyich explained and told me everything. You’re being persecuted and tormented because of a stupid and vile suspicion… Dmitry Prokofyich told me that there’s no danger at all and that you’re wrong to take it with such horror. I don’t think so, and I understand completely how everything in you is outraged and that this indignation may leave its marks forever. That’s what I’m afraid of. For abandoning us I don’t judge you and don’t dare to judge you, and forgive me for reproaching you before. I feel in myself that if I had such a great sorrow, I too would go away from everyone. I won’t tell Mother anything about this, but I’ll talk about you constantly, and I’ll tell her from you that you’ll come very soon. Don’t torment yourself about her; I’ll calm her; but don’t you torment her either—come at least once; remember that she’s your mother! And now I’ve come only to say” (Dunya began to rise from her seat) “that if, by any chance, you should need me for anything, or should need… my whole life, or anything… then call me, I’ll come. Goodbye!”

She turned sharply and went toward the door.

“Dunya!” Raskolnikov stopped her, stood up, and went over to her. “This Razumikhin, Dmitry Prokofyich, is a very good man.”

Dunya blushed ever so slightly.

“Well?” she asked, after waiting a minute.

“He’s a practical man, hardworking, honest, and capable of loving deeply… Goodbye, Dunya.”

Dunya flushed all over, then suddenly grew alarmed.

“But what is this, brother, are we really parting forever, that you’re… making me such bequests?”

“It doesn’t matter… goodbye…”

He turned away and walked from her to the window. She stood a while, looked at him uneasily, and went out in alarm.

No, he was not cold toward her. There was one instant (the very last one) when he had wanted terribly to hold her tight and say goodbye to her, and even to tell her, but he had not even dared to give her his hand:

“Later on, perhaps, she’ll shudder when she remembers that I embraced her just now, she’ll say I stole her kiss!”

“And will this one hold out or not?” he added to himself a few minutes later. “No, she won’t hold out; that kind can’t hold out! That kind never holds out…”

And he thought of Sonya.

A freshness breathed in from the window. Outside the light was no longer shining so brightly. He suddenly took his cap and went out.

He could not, of course, and did not want to, attend to his sickly condition. But all this incessant anxiety and all this horror of the soul could not pass without consequences. And if he was not yet lying in a real fever, it was perhaps precisely because this inner, incessant anxiety still kept him on his feet and conscious, but somehow artificially, for the time being.

He wandered without aim. The sun was setting. A peculiar kind of anguish had begun to make itself felt in him lately. There was nothing especially corrosive, especially burning in it; but there breathed from it something permanent, eternal; he had a foreboding of hopeless years of this cold, deadening anguish, a foreboding of some eternity on “an arshin of space.” At the evening hour this sensation usually began to torment him even more.

“Just try, with these stupidest, purely physical infirmities, that depend on some sunset or other, to keep from doing something stupid! Never mind Sonya, you’ll end up going to Dunya!” he muttered hatefully.

Someone called out to him. He looked around; Lebezyatnikov came rushing up to him.

“Imagine, I’ve been to your place, I’m looking for you. Imagine, she’s carried out her intention and taken the children away! Sofya Semyonovna and I barely found them. She’s banging on a frying pan herself, making the children sing and dance. The children are crying. They stop at the crossroads and by the shops. Foolish people are running after them. Let’s go.”

“And Sonya?…” Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebezyatnikov.

“Simply in a frenzy. That is, it’s not Sofya Semyonovna who’s in a frenzy, it’s Katerina Ivanovna; though Sofya Semyonovna is in a frenzy too. But Katerina Ivanovna is completely in a frenzy. I tell you, she’s lost her mind for good. They’ll take them to the police. You can imagine what effect that will have… They’re on the canal now, by the ——sky Bridge, not far at all from Sofya Semyonovna’s. Close by.”

On the canal, not very far from the bridge and two houses short of the house where Sonya lived, a crowd of people had gathered. Boys and girls especially came running. Katerina Ivanovna’s hoarse, strained voice could be heard from the bridge. And it really was a strange spectacle, of the kind to interest the street public. Katerina Ivanovna, in her old dress, in her drap-de-dames shawl and her broken straw hat, knocked to one side in an ugly lump, was indeed in a real frenzy. She was tired and gasping for breath. Her worn-out consumptive face looked more suffering than ever (besides, in the street, in the sun, a consumptive always looks sicker and more disfigured than at home); but her excited state did not let up, and with every minute she grew more irritated still. She would rush at the children, shout at them, coax them, teach them right there in front of the people how to dance and sing, begin to explain to them why it was necessary, despair at their slowness, beat them… Then, without finishing, she would rush to the public; if she noticed a person even slightly well dressed who had stopped to look, she would at once set about explaining to him that here, you see, was what the children “of a noble, one might even say aristocratic, house” had been brought to. If she heard laughter in the crowd or some teasing little word, she would at once fall upon the insolent ones and start squabbling with them. Some did indeed laugh, others shook their heads; everyone in general was curious to look at the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying pan Lebezyatnikov had spoken of was not there; at least Raskolnikov did not see it; but instead of banging on a frying pan, Katerina Ivanovna would start clapping time with her dry palms when she made Polenka sing and Lenya and Kolya dance; she would even join in the singing herself, but each time she broke off at the second note from an agonizing cough, at which she fell into despair again, cursed her cough, and even wept. Most of all she was driven beside herself by Kolya’s and Lenya’s crying and fear. There had indeed been an attempt to dress the children up in costume, the way street singers, men and women, dress up. On the boy had been put a turban made of something red and white, so that he would represent a Turk. There were not enough costumes for Lenya; all that had been put on her head was the red knitted worsted cap (or, rather, nightcap) of the late Semyon Zakharovich, and stuck in the cap was a broken piece of white ostrich feather that had belonged to Katerina Ivanovna’s grandmother and had been kept until now in a trunk as a family rarity. Polenka was in her ordinary little dress. She looked at her mother timidly and at a loss, did not leave her side, hid her tears, guessed at her mother’s derangement, and looked around her uneasily. The street and the crowd had frightened her terribly. Sonya followed Katerina Ivanovna relentlessly, weeping and begging her every minute to go back home. But Katerina Ivanovna was implacable.

“Stop it, Sonya, stop it!” she shouted in a patter, hurrying, gasping, and coughing. “You don’t know yourself what you’re asking, just like a child! I’ve already told you that I won’t go back to that drunken German woman. Let everyone see, all Petersburg, how the children of a noble father beg for alms, a father who served faithfully and truly all his life and, one may say, died in the service.” (Katerina Ivanovna had already managed to create this fantasy for herself and to believe it blindly.) “Let him, let that worthless little general see. And you’re foolish, Sonya: what is there to eat now, tell me? We’ve tortured you enough, I don’t want any more of it! Ah, Rodion Romanych, it’s you!” she cried out, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing toward him. “Please explain to this little fool that there’s nothing more sensible we can do! Even organ-grinders make a living, and we’ll be singled out at once by everyone, they’ll learn that we’re a poor, well-born family of orphans brought to beggary, and that little general will lose his post, you’ll see! We’ll go under his windows every day, and when the sovereign drives by, I’ll go down on my knees, put all these in front, and point to them: ‘Protect us, father!’ He is the father of all orphans, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll see, and that little general… Lenya! tenez-vous droite! You, Kolya, are going to dance again right now. What are you whimpering for? Whimpering again! Well, what, what are you afraid of, you little fool! Lord! What am I to do with him, Rodion Romanych! If you only knew how muddleheaded they are! What can you do with ones like these!…”

And she, nearly crying herself (which did not interrupt her ceaseless, unstoppable patter), pointed out the whimpering children to him. Raskolnikov tried to persuade her to go back, and even said, thinking to work on her pride, that it was improper for her to walk the streets the way organ-grinders do, since she was preparing to become the directress of a boarding school for well-born young ladies…

“A boarding school, ha-ha-ha! Drums sound sweet from over the hills!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, going off into a fit of coughing right after her laughter. “No, Rodion Romanych, the dream is gone! Everyone has abandoned us!… And that little general… You know, Rodion Romanych, I threw an inkwell at him—there, in the footmen’s room, it happened to be standing on the table, by the sheet where people signed their names, and I signed, threw it, and ran away. Oh, base, base people. But I spit on them; now I’ll feed these myself, I won’t bow to anyone! We’ve tormented her enough!” (She pointed at Sonya.) “Polenka, how much have we collected, show me? What? Only two kopecks in all? Oh, the vile creatures! They give nothing, they only run after us with their tongues hanging out! Well, what is that blockhead laughing at?” (she pointed at someone in the crowd). “It’s all because this Kolka is so slow, he’s such a bother! What do you want, Polenka? Speak to me in French, parlez-moi français. I did teach you, you do know a few phrases!… Otherwise how will they tell that you’re of a noble family, well-brought-up children, and not at all like all the organ-grinders; we’re not putting on some ‘Petrushka’ puppet show in the streets, we’ll sing a genteel romance… Ah, yes! What are we going to sing? You all keep interrupting me, and we… you see, Rodion Romanych, we’ve stopped here to choose what to sing—something Kolya can dance to as well… because all this, you can imagine, is without any preparation on our part; we have to agree on it, so as to rehearse everything thoroughly, and then we’ll set off for Nevsky, where there are many more people of high society, and we’ll be noticed at once: Lenya knows ‘The Little Farm’… Only it’s always ‘The Little Farm’ and ‘The Little Farm,’ everybody sings it! We must sing something far more genteel… Well, what have you thought of, Polya, if only you’d help your mother! My memory, I have no memory, or I’d remember! We’re not going to sing ‘The Hussar Leaning on His Saber,’ really! Ah, let’s sing ‘Cinq sous’ in French! I did teach it to you, I did teach you. And above all, since it’s in French, they’ll see at once that you’re children of the gentry, and it will be much more touching… We could even do ‘Malborough s’en va-t-en guerre,’ since it’s a perfect children’s song and is used in all aristocratic houses to lull children to sleep.

Malborough s’en va-t-en guerre, Ne sait quand reviendra…¹

she started to sing… “But no, ‘Cinq sous’ is better! Come on, Kolya, hands on your hips, quickly, and you, Lenya, turn too, the other way, and Polenka and I will sing along and clap!

Cinq sous, cinq sous, Pour monter notre ménage…

“Khee-khee-khee!” (And she went off into a fit of coughing.) “Straighten your dress, Polenka, the shoulders have slipped down,” she remarked through her coughing, catching her breath. “Now you especially must behave properly and with refinement, so that everyone sees you’re children of the gentry. I said back then that the bodice should be cut longer, and in two widths besides. It was you, Sonya, with your advice: ‘Shorter, shorter,’ and look how it turned out, the child is completely disfigured… Well, you’re all crying again! Whatever is the matter with you, silly things! Come, Kolya, begin quickly, quickly, quickly—oh, what an insufferable child this is!…

Cinq sous, cinq sous…

“A soldier again! Well, what do you want?”

A policeman was indeed squeezing his way through the crowd. But at the same time a gentleman in a uniform frock coat and an overcoat, a solid official of about fifty, with an order around his neck (this last was very pleasing to Katerina Ivanovna and had an effect on the policeman), came up and silently handed Katerina Ivanovna a green three-rouble note. His face expressed sincere compassion. Katerina Ivanovna accepted it and bowed to him politely, even ceremoniously.

“I thank you, my dear sir,” she began loftily, “the reasons that have prompted us… take the money, Polenka. You see, there are noble and generous people, ready at once to help a poor gentlewoman in misfortune. You see before you, my dear sir, well-born orphans, one might even say with the most aristocratic connections… And that little general sat there eating hazel grouse… stamped his feet because I had disturbed him… ‘Your Excellency,’ I say, ‘protect the orphans, since you knew the late Semyon Zakharovich so well,’ I say, ‘and since his own daughter was slandered by the basest of scoundrels on the very day of his death…’ That soldier again! Protect me!” she shouted to the official. “What is that soldier pestering me for? We’ve already run away from one, from Meshchanskaya, to here… Well, what business is it of yours, you fool!”

“Because it’s forbidden in the streets, ma’am. Kindly don’t make a disturbance.”

“You’re the one making a disturbance! It’s the same as if I were going around with a barrel organ, what business is it of yours?”

“For a barrel organ you have to have a permit, ma’am, and you’re on your own and gathering a crowd in this manner. Where is it you reside?”

“A permit, indeed!” wailed Katerina Ivanovna. “I buried my husband today, what permit can there be!”

“Madam, madam, calm yourself,” the official began, “come, I’ll see you home… It’s improper here in the crowd… you’re not well…”

“My dear sir, my dear sir, you don’t know anything!” Katerina Ivanovna shouted. “We’re going to Nevsky—Sonya, Sonya! But where is she? Crying too! But what’s the matter with all of you!… Kolya, Lenya, where are you going?” she cried out suddenly in fright. “Oh, silly children! Kolya, Lenya, where are they going!…”

It so happened that Kolya and Lenya, frightened to the last degree by the street crowd and by their deranged mother’s antics, seeing at last the soldier who wanted to take them and lead them off somewhere, suddenly, as if by agreement, seized each other by the hand and took to their heels. With a wail and with weeping, poor Katerina Ivanovna rushed to catch up with them. It was ugly and pitiful to look at her, running, weeping, gasping for breath. Sonya and Polenka rushed after her.

“Bring them back, bring them back, Sonya! Oh, stupid, ungrateful children!… Polya! catch them… It’s for your sake that I…”

She stumbled at full speed and fell.

“She’s hurt herself, she’s bleeding! Oh, Lord!” cried Sonya, bending over her.

Everyone came running, everyone crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov were among the first to run up; the official hurried over too, and after him the policeman, grumbling “Eh, there!” and waving his hand, sensing that the business would turn troublesome.

“Move along! Move along!” he said, driving off the people crowding around.

“She’s dying!” someone shouted.

“She’s gone mad!” said another.

“Lord preserve us!” said a woman, crossing herself. “Did they catch the little girl and the boy? Look there, they’re bringing them, the oldest one caught them… Crazy little things!”

But when they got a good look at Katerina Ivanovna, they saw that she had not hurt herself on a stone at all, as Sonya had thought, but that the blood that had stained the pavement red had gushed from her chest through her throat.

“I know this, I’ve seen it,” the official muttered to Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov, “it’s consumption, sir; the blood gushes like this and chokes them. With a relative of mine, I was a witness not long ago, and like this, about a glass and a half… suddenly, sir… What’s to be done, though, is she going to die right away?”

“This way, this way, to my place!” Sonya pleaded. “This is where I live!… That house there, the second one from here… To my place, quickly, quickly!…” she darted from one person to another. “Send for a doctor… Oh, Lord!”

Through the official’s efforts this was arranged; even the policeman helped to carry Katerina Ivanovna. They carried her, almost lifeless, into Sonya’s room and laid her on the bed. The bleeding was still going on, but she seemed to be starting to come to. Besides Sonya, there came into the room all at once Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov, the official, and the policeman, who had first dispersed the crowd, some of whom had followed right up to the door. Polenka brought in Kolya and Lenya, holding them by the hand; they were trembling and crying. The Kapernaumovs came in too: he himself, lame and blind in one eye, a strange-looking man with bristly hair and whiskers that stood straight up; his wife, who had a look of being frightened once and for all; and several of their children, with faces gone wooden from constant amazement and with mouths hanging open. Among all this public Svidrigailov too suddenly appeared. Raskolnikov looked at him in surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not remembering him in the crowd.

They talked about a doctor and a priest. Though the official whispered to Raskolnikov that a doctor, it seemed, would be superfluous by now, he gave orders to send for one. Kapernaumov ran off himself.

Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had got her breath back; for a time the blood had stopped. She looked with a pained but fixed and penetrating gaze at the pale, trembling Sonya, who was wiping the drops of sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief; at last she asked to be raised up. They sat her up on the bed, holding her on both sides.

“Where are the children?” she asked in a weak voice. “You brought them, Polya? Oh, silly things!… Well, why did you run away… Oh!”

Blood still covered her parched lips. She moved her eyes around, looking about her.

“So this is how you live, Sonya! Not once did I come to see you… now it’s come to this…”

She looked at her with suffering.

“We’ve sucked you dry, Sonya… Polya, Lenya, Kolya, come here… Well, here they are, Sonya, all of them, take them… from my hands into yours… and I’ve had enough!… The ball is over! Hah!… Lay me down, let me at least die in peace…”

They lowered her onto the pillow again.

“What? A priest?… No need… Where would you find a spare rouble?… I have no sins!… God must forgive me anyway… He knows how I’ve suffered!… And if He won’t forgive, then there’s no need!…”

A restless delirium took hold of her more and more. At times she would start, look around her, recognize everyone for a minute; but at once consciousness gave way again to delirium. She breathed hoarsely and with difficulty; something seemed to be gurgling in her throat.

“I say to him, ‘Your Excellency!…’” she cried out, catching her breath after each word. “That Amalia Ludwigovna… ah! Lenya, Kolya! hands on your hips, quickly, quickly, glissez, glissez, pas de basque! Tap your feet… Be a graceful child.

Du hast Diamanten und Perlen…

“How does it go after that? That’s what we should sing…

Du hast die schönsten Augen, Mädchen, was willst du mehr?²

“Oh yes, not likely! was willst du mehr—the things he makes up, the blockhead!… Ah, yes, here’s another:

In the noonday heat, in a valley of Dagestan…³

“Ah, how I loved… I loved that romance to adoration, Polenka!… you know, your father… used to sing it when he was courting me… Oh, those days!… That’s what, that’s what we should sing! Well, how does it, how does it… there, I’ve forgotten… do remind me, how does it go?” She was in an extraordinary agitation and was straining to raise herself. At last, in a terrible, hoarse, breaking voice, she began, crying out and gasping at every word, with a look of some kind of growing fright:

In the noonday heat!… in a valley!… of Dagestan!… With lead in my breast!…

“Your Excellency!” she suddenly wailed with a heart-rending wail, bursting into tears. “Protect the orphans! Knowing the bread and salt of the late Semyon Zakharovich!… One might even say aristocratic!… Hah!” she suddenly started, coming to herself and looking around at everyone with a kind of horror, but at once she recognized Sonya. “Sonya, Sonya!” she said meekly and tenderly, as if surprised to see her before her. “Sonya, dear, you’re here too?”

They raised her up again.

“Enough!… It’s time!… Farewell, poor wretch!… They’ve ridden the nag to death!… I’ve broken my ba-a-ack!” she cried out desperately and hatefully, and her head crashed down on the pillow.

She lost consciousness again, but this last oblivion did not last long. Her pale yellow, wasted face fell back, her mouth opened, her legs stretched out convulsively. She gave a deep, deep sigh and died.

Sonya fell upon her body, threw her arms around her, and so froze, her head pressed to the dead woman’s wasted breast. Polenka fell at her mother’s feet and kissed them, sobbing. Kolya and Lenya, not yet understanding what had happened but sensing something very terrible, seized each other by the shoulders with both hands and, staring into each other’s eyes, suddenly together, all at once, opened their mouths and began to scream. Both were still in their costumes: one in the turban, the other in the skullcap with the ostrich feather.

And how had that “certificate of merit” suddenly turned up on the bed beside Katerina Ivanovna? It lay right there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.

He went over to the window. Lebezyatnikov skipped over to him.

“She’s dead!” said Lebezyatnikov.

“Rodion Romanovich, I have two necessary little words to pass on to you,” Svidrigailov said, coming up. Lebezyatnikov at once gave way and delicately effaced himself. Svidrigailov led the surprised Raskolnikov still farther off into the corner.

“All this fuss, that is, the funeral and so on, I’ll take upon myself. You know, as long as there’s money, and I did tell you that I have money to spare. These two fledglings and this Polenka I’ll place in some orphanages, better ones, and settle on each of them, until they come of age, fifteen hundred roubles in capital, so that Sofya Semyonovna can be completely at ease. And I’ll pull her out of the pit too, because she’s a good girl, isn’t she? Well, sir, so you can tell Avdotya Romanovna that this is just how I’ve used her ten thousand.”

“With what aims have you become so very charitable?” asked Raskolnikov.

“Eh-eh! A distrustful man!” Svidrigailov laughed. “I did say that I had this money to spare. Well, and simply out of humanity, you don’t allow that, or what? After all, she wasn’t a ‘louse’” (he jabbed his finger toward the corner where the deceased lay), “like some little old moneylending woman. Well, you must agree, well, ‘is Luzhin, really, to live and do vile things, or is she to die?’ And if I don’t help, then, you know, ‘Polenka, for instance, will go there too, down the same road…’”

He said this with an air of some winking, merry roguishness, not taking his eyes off Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov turned pale and went cold, hearing his own expressions, the ones he had said to Sonya. He quickly recoiled and looked wildly at Svidrigailov.

“H-how… do you know?” he whispered, barely able to breathe.

“Why, I’m lodging right here, through the wall, at Madame Resslich’s. Here is Kapernaumov, and there is Madame Resslich, an old and most devoted friend. I’m a neighbor, sir.”

“You?”

“I,” Svidrigailov went on, shaking with laughter, “and I can assure you on my honor, dearest Rodion Romanovich, that you’ve interested me amazingly. I did say that we would become close, I predicted it to you—well, and here we are, close. And you’ll see what an accommodating man I am. You’ll see that one can still get along with me…”

Notes

1. 1. French: “Marlborough is off to the war, no one knows when he’ll return,” an old nursery song. The next song, “Cinq sous,” runs “Five sous, five sous, to set up our household.”

2. 2. German, from a poem by Heine: “You have diamonds and pearls… You have the loveliest eyes, girl, what more do you want?”

3. 3. The opening of Lermontov’s poem “The Dream” (1841), set to music as a romance: a man lies dying of a bullet wound in a Dagestan valley.