Part Six · III

He was hurrying to Svidrigailov. What he could hope for from this man he did not know himself. But this man held some kind of power over him. Once he had realized it he could no longer be at peace, and now, besides, the time had come.

On the way one question tormented him above all: had Svidrigailov been to see Porfiry?

As far as he could judge, and he would have sworn to it—no, he had not! He thought it over again and again, went back over the whole of Porfiry’s visit, worked it out: no, he had not, of course he had not!

But if he had not been yet, would he go to Porfiry or would he not?

For the moment it seemed to him that he would not. Why? He could not have explained that either, and even if he could have, he would not have racked his brains over it much just now. All this tormented him, and at the same time he somehow had no mind for it. A strange thing, and perhaps no one would have believed it, but for his own present, immediate fate he cared somehow weakly, absently. Something else was tormenting him, something far more important, extraordinary—about himself and no one else, but something else, something central. Besides, he felt a boundless moral exhaustion, although his reason was working better that morning than it had in all these last days.

And was it worth it now, after everything that had happened, to try to overcome all these paltry new difficulties? Was it worth it, for instance, to scheme so that Svidrigailov would not go to Porfiry; to study, find things out, waste time on some Svidrigailov or other?

Oh, how sick he was of all of it!

And yet he was still hurrying to Svidrigailov; was he not, perhaps, expecting something new from him, some pointer, a way out? A drowning man will clutch at a straw, after all! Was it not fate, was it not some instinct that was bringing them together? Perhaps it was only exhaustion, despair; perhaps it was not Svidrigailov he needed but someone else, and Svidrigailov had simply turned up. Sonya? But why would he go to Sonya now? To ask her for her tears again? Besides, Sonya frightened him. Sonya stood for an inexorable sentence, a decision without appeal. It was either her road or his. At this moment especially he was in no state to see her. No, was it not better to try Svidrigailov: what was he, after all? And he could not help admitting inwardly that the man had indeed, for a long time now, been somehow necessary to him for something.

Well, but what could they have in common? Even their villainy could not be of the same kind. Besides, this man was very unpleasant, obviously depraved in the extreme, cunning and deceitful for certain, perhaps very wicked. Such stories were told about him. True, he had taken trouble over Katerina Ivanovna’s children; but who knew why, and what it meant? The man always had some intentions and projects.

All these days one more thought had kept flashing through Raskolnikov’s mind and disturbing him terribly, though he even tried to drive it away, so heavy was it to bear! He thought at times: Svidrigailov had kept circling around him, and was circling still; Svidrigailov had found out his secret; Svidrigailov had had designs on Dunya. And what if he had them still? It was almost certain that he did. And what if now, having learned his secret and so gained power over him, he wanted to use it as a weapon against Dunya?

The thought had tormented him at times, even in his sleep, but never before had it come to him as consciously vivid as now, as he walked to Svidrigailov’s. The thought alone was enough to throw him into a dark fury. In the first place, everything would change then, even in his own position: he would have to reveal the secret to Dunechka at once. He might have to give himself up, to keep Dunechka from some rash step. The letter? This morning Dunya had received a letter of some kind! From whom in Petersburg could she be getting letters? (Luzhin, perhaps?) True, Razumikhin was standing guard there; but Razumikhin knew nothing. Perhaps he ought to confide in Razumikhin too? Raskolnikov thought of this with loathing.

“In any case I must see Svidrigailov as soon as possible,” he decided finally to himself. “Thank God, it isn’t the details that matter so much here as the substance of the thing; but if, if he is only capable of it, if Svidrigailov is scheming something against Dunya—then…”

Raskolnikov was so worn out by all this time, by this whole month, that he could no longer settle such questions otherwise than by a single decision: “Then I’ll kill him,” he thought in cold despair. A heavy feeling squeezed his heart; he stopped in the middle of the street and began looking around: which way was he going, and where had he got to? He was on ——sky Avenue, thirty or forty paces from the Haymarket, which he had passed through. The whole second floor of the house on the left was taken up by a tavern. All the windows were flung wide open; the tavern, judging by the figures moving in the windows, was packed full. Songs spilled through the hall, a clarinet and a violin rang out, and a Turkish drum boomed. Women’s shrieks could be heard. He was about to turn back, puzzled as to why he had turned onto ——sky Avenue, when suddenly, at one of the open windows at the end of the tavern, he saw Svidrigailov, sitting right by the window at a tea table with a pipe between his teeth. This struck him terribly, to the point of horror. Svidrigailov was watching him and studying him in silence and, which also struck Raskolnikov at once, seemed to be on the point of getting up, so as to slip away quietly before he was noticed. Raskolnikov immediately pretended that he had not noticed him either and was looking off to one side, lost in thought, while he went on watching him out of the corner of his eye. His heart was pounding with alarm. So it was: Svidrigailov obviously did not want to be seen. He took the pipe from his lips and was about to hide; but, having stood up and pushed back his chair, he probably noticed suddenly that Raskolnikov could see him and was watching him. Something passed between them very like the scene of their first meeting at Raskolnikov’s, while he was asleep. A sly, roguish smile appeared on Svidrigailov’s face and spread wider and wider. Each knew that both of them were seeing and watching each other. At last Svidrigailov burst into loud laughter.

“Well, well! Come in, then, if you like; here I am!” he shouted from the window.

Raskolnikov went up into the tavern.

He found him in a very small back room with one window, which adjoined the large hall where, at twenty little tables, to the shouts of a chorus of singers bawling for all they were worth, merchants, clerks, and a crowd of every sort of people were drinking tea. From somewhere came the click of billiard balls. On the little table in front of Svidrigailov stood an opened bottle of champagne and a glass half full of wine. In the little room there were also a boy organ-grinder with a small hand organ and a healthy, red-cheeked girl in a tucked-up striped skirt and a Tyrolean hat with ribbons, a singer of about eighteen, who, in spite of the chorus in the other room, was singing to the organ-grinder’s accompaniment, in a rather hoarse contralto, some sort of servants’-hall ditty…

“That’ll do!” Svidrigailov cut her short as Raskolnikov came in.

The girl broke off at once and stood waiting respectfully. She had been singing her rhymed lackey’s ditty with a kind of serious and respectful expression on her face.

“Hey, Filipp, a glass!” shouted Svidrigailov.

“I won’t drink wine,” said Raskolnikov.

“As you like, it isn’t for you. Drink up, Katya! Nothing more will be wanted today, off you go!” He poured her a full glass of wine and laid out a yellow one-rouble note. Katya drank the glass off at once, the way women drink wine, that is, without stopping, in twenty swallows, took the note, kissed Svidrigailov’s hand, which he very seriously allowed her to kiss, and went out of the room, and the boy with the organ trailed after her. Both of them had been brought in from the street. Svidrigailov had not been in Petersburg even a week, and already everything around him was on a sort of patriarchal footing. The tavern waiter, Filipp, was also an “acquaintance” by now, and fawned on him. The door to the hall could be locked; Svidrigailov was at home in this room and spent whole days in it, perhaps. The tavern was dirty, wretched, and not even second-rate.

“I was on my way to you, looking for you,” Raskolnikov began, “but why did I suddenly turn off the Haymarket onto ——sky Avenue just now! I never turn this way and never come here. From the Haymarket I turn right. And this isn’t the way to your place either. I’d only just turned, and there you were! It’s strange!”

“Why don’t you say it straight out: it’s a miracle!”

“Because it may be only chance.”

“What a cast of mind all you people have!” Svidrigailov roared with laughter. “Won’t admit it, even if inwardly you do believe in the miracle! You say yourself it ‘may be’ only chance. And what little cowards they all are here about having opinions of their own, you can’t imagine, Rodion Romanych! I don’t mean you. You have an opinion of your own and weren’t afraid to have it. That’s just how you caught my curiosity.”

“Nothing else?”

“Well, that’s enough, surely.”

Svidrigailov was obviously in an excited state, but only the tiniest bit; he had drunk only half a glass of wine.

“It seems to me you came to see me before you knew I was capable of having what you call an opinion of my own,” Raskolnikov observed.

“Well, then it was a different matter. Everyone has his own steps to take. And as for the miracle, I’ll tell you this: you seem to have slept through these last two or three days. I named this tavern to you myself, and there was no miracle at all in your coming straight here; I explained the whole way myself, told you where it stands and the hours when I can be found here. Remember?”

“I forgot,” Raskolnikov answered in surprise.

“I believe you. I told you twice. The address stamped itself on your memory mechanically. And you turned this way mechanically, and yet strictly by the address, without knowing it yourself. Even as I was telling you, I didn’t expect you’d understood me. You give yourself away far too much, Rodion Romanych. And here’s something else: I’m convinced that a great many people in Petersburg talk to themselves as they walk. It’s a city of half-madmen. If we had any sciences, then doctors, lawyers, and philosophers could make the most valuable studies of Petersburg, each in his own field. You’ll rarely find a place with so many gloomy, harsh, and strange influences on a man’s soul as Petersburg. The climatic influences alone are worth something! And yet it’s the administrative center of all Russia, and its character must be reflected in everything. But that’s not the point now; the point is that I’ve watched you several times from the side. You come out of the house—you’re still holding your head up. Twenty paces on, you’re already lowering it, you fold your hands behind your back. You’re looking, and obviously you no longer see anything either in front of you or on either side. At last you start moving your lips and talking to yourself, and sometimes you free one hand and declaim, and at last you stop in the middle of the road for a long time. That’s not good at all, sir. Perhaps somebody besides me notices you, and that’s not to your advantage. It’s all the same to me, really, and I won’t cure you, but of course you understand me.”

“And do you know that I’m being followed?” Raskolnikov asked, looking at him searchingly.

“No, I know nothing about it,” Svidrigailov answered, as if surprised.

“Well, then let’s leave me in peace,” Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.

“Very well, let’s leave you in peace.”

“Tell me instead: if you come here to drink, and twice named this place yourself for me to come to you here, then why, just now, when I was looking up at the window from the street, were you hiding and trying to leave? I noticed that very well.”

“Heh-heh! And why, that time when I was standing on your threshold, were you lying on your sofa with your eyes shut, pretending to be asleep, when you weren’t asleep at all? I noticed that very well.”

“I may have had… reasons… you know that yourself.”

“And I may have had my reasons, though you won’t find out what they are.”

Raskolnikov lowered his right elbow onto the table, propped his chin from below with the fingers of his right hand, and fixed his eyes on Svidrigailov. For a minute or so he studied his face, which had always struck him before as well. It was a strange face, somehow like a mask: white and ruddy, with ruddy scarlet lips, a light-blond beard, and still rather thick blond hair. The eyes were somehow too blue, and their gaze somehow too heavy and fixed; there was something terribly unpleasant in this handsome face, so extraordinarily youthful for his years. Svidrigailov’s clothes were dandyish, light, summery; he was especially dandyish about his linen, and on his finger was an enormous ring with a costly stone.

“Do I really have to bother with you too, on top of everything,” Raskolnikov said suddenly, coming straight out into the open with convulsive impatience, “though you may well be the most dangerous of men, if you want to do harm, but I don’t want to break myself anymore. I’ll show you right now that I don’t value myself as much as you probably think. Know this, then: I’ve come to tell you straight out that if you still hold to your former intentions concerning my sister, and if you mean to use anything that’s come to light lately for that purpose, I’ll kill you before you put me in prison. My word is good: you know I’ll be able to keep it. Second, if you have something to declare to me—because all this time it’s seemed to me that you somehow want to tell me something—then declare it quickly, because time is precious, and perhaps very soon it will be too late.”

“Where are you in such a hurry to?” asked Svidrigailov, studying him curiously.

“Everyone has his own steps to take,” Raskolnikov said, gloomy and impatient.

“You yourself called for frankness just now, and you refuse to answer the very first question,” Svidrigailov remarked with a smile. “You keep imagining I have some aims or other, and so you look at me with suspicion. Well, that’s perfectly understandable in your position. But much as I’d like to be on good terms with you, I still won’t take the trouble to persuade you otherwise. By God, the game isn’t worth the candle, and I didn’t intend to talk to you about anything so very special.”

“Then what did you need me so much for? You were hanging around me, weren’t you?”

“Why, simply as a curious subject for observation. I liked the fantastic quality of your situation—that’s what! Besides, you’re the brother of a person who interested me very much, and finally, from that very person, in her time, I heard a terrible lot about you, and often, from which I concluded that you have great influence over her; isn’t that enough? Heh-heh-heh! I confess, though, that your question is very complicated for me, and it’s hard for me to answer it. Well, here, for instance: you came to me now not just on business but for something new, didn’t you? Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?” Svidrigailov insisted with a sly smile. “Well, then imagine that I myself, on my way here, in the train, was counting on you too, on your telling me something new as well, and on my managing to borrow something from you! That’s how rich we are!”

“Borrow what?”

“What can I tell you? Do I know what? You see what a miserable little tavern I sit in the whole time, and I enjoy it, that is, not that I enjoy it, but, well, a man has to sit somewhere. Well, take this poor Katya—you saw her?… Now, if I were a glutton, say, a club gourmet, but just look what I can eat!” (He jabbed a finger toward the corner, where on a little table, on a tin plate, stood the remains of a dreadful beefsteak with potatoes.) “Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had a bite and don’t want any more. Wine, for instance, I don’t drink at all. Nothing but champagne, and of champagne only one glass a whole evening, and even then my head aches. I ordered it just now to wind myself up, because I’m going somewhere, and you see me in a special frame of mind. That’s why I hid just now like a schoolboy, because I thought you’d get in my way; but it seems (he took out his watch) I can spend an hour with you; it’s half past four now. Would you believe it, if only there were something; well, to be a landowner, say, or a father, or an uhlan, a photographer, a journalist… n-nothing, no specialty at all! Sometimes it’s even boring. Really, I thought you’d tell me something new.”

“But who are you, and why have you come here?”

“Who am I? You know: a nobleman, served two years in the cavalry, then knocked about here in Petersburg, then married Marfa Petrovna and lived in the country. There’s my biography!”

“You’re a gambler, I believe?”

“No, what kind of gambler am I? A cardsharp is no gambler.”

“So you were a cardsharp?”

“Yes, I was a cardsharp.”

“Well, and did they beat you?”

“It happened. Why?”

“Well, then you could have called them out to a duel… and in general it livens things up.”

“I won’t contradict you, and besides, I’m no hand at philosophizing. I’ll confess to you, I hurried here mostly on account of women.”

“When you’ve only just buried Marfa Petrovna?”

“Well, yes,” Svidrigailov smiled with disarming frankness. “What of it? You seem to find something wrong in my talking about women this way?”

“That is, do I or don’t I find something wrong in debauchery?”

“In debauchery! So that’s what you’re driving at! But anyway, let me answer you in order, first about women in general; I’m in the mood to chatter, you know. Tell me, why should I restrain myself? Why give up women, if I’m fond of them, at least? At least it’s an occupation.”

“So debauchery is all you’re hoping for here?”

“Well, what of it, debauchery, then! Debauchery is all they can think of. But I do like a direct question, at least. In this debauchery there is at least something constant, something even founded in nature and not subject to fancy, something that stays in the blood like an ever-glowing coal, forever kindling you, something that for a long while yet, even with the years, you won’t put out so soon. You’ll agree yourself, isn’t it an occupation of a sort?”

“What is there to be glad about? It’s a disease, and a dangerous one.”

“Ah, so that’s what you’re driving at! I agree that it’s a disease, like everything that goes beyond measure—and here you’re bound to go beyond measure—but, in the first place, it’s one way with one man and another way with another, and in the second place, of course, keep measure in everything, keep calculation, even if it’s a mean sort, but what can you do? If it weren’t for this, why, a man might have to shoot himself. I agree that a decent man is obliged to be bored, but still…”

“And could you shoot yourself?”

“Oh, come now!” Svidrigailov parried with disgust. “Do me a favor, don’t talk to me about it,” he added hastily, and even without any of the bravado that had shown in everything he had said before. Even his face seemed to change. “I confess to an unpardonable weakness, but what can I do: I’m afraid of death and don’t like it when people talk about it. Do you know that I’m something of a mystic?”

“Ah! Marfa Petrovna’s ghosts! Well, do they keep on visiting?”

“Oh, drop them, don’t mention them; not yet in Petersburg; and the devil take them!” he cried with a sort of irritable air. “No, let’s talk rather about… but anyway… Hm! Eh, there’s not much time, I can’t stay with you long, and it’s a pity! There’d be something to tell.”

“And what have you got, a woman?”

“Yes, a woman, just one chance incident… no, that’s not what I mean.”

“Well, and the vileness of all these surroundings doesn’t affect you anymore? You’ve already lost the strength to stop?”

“So you lay claim to strength too? Heh-heh-heh! You surprised me just now, Rodion Romanych, though I knew beforehand it would be so. You talk to me about debauchery and aesthetics! You’re a Schiller, you’re an idealist! All of which, of course, is as it should be, and one ought to be surprised if it were otherwise, but still, it’s somehow strange in reality… Ah, it’s a pity there’s so little time, because you’re a most curious subject yourself! And, by the way, do you like Schiller? I like him terribly.”

“What a braggart you are, though!” Raskolnikov said with some disgust.

“No, by God, I’m not!” Svidrigailov answered, laughing. “Still, I won’t argue, braggart let it be; but why not brag a little, when it’s harmless? I lived seven years in the country with Marfa Petrovna, and so, having pounced on an intelligent man like you now—intelligent and curious in the highest degree—I’m simply glad to chatter, and besides, I’ve drunk this half glass of wine and it’s already gone to my head a tiny bit. And above all, there is one circumstance that has wound me up a great deal, but about which I’ll… say nothing. Where are you going?” Svidrigailov asked suddenly, in alarm.

Raskolnikov had started to get up. He felt heavy and stifled and somehow awkward for having come here. He was convinced that Svidrigailov was the emptiest and most worthless villain in the world.

“Eh-eh! Sit down, stay a while,” Svidrigailov pleaded, “and do order yourself some tea at least. Come, sit down, I won’t talk nonsense, about myself, that is. I’ll tell you something. Well, would you like me to tell you how a woman, to put it in your style, tried to ‘save’ me? It’ll even be an answer to your first question, because that person is your sister. May I tell it? And we’ll kill some time.”

“Tell it, but I hope you…”

“Oh, don’t worry! Besides, Avdotya Romanovna can inspire nothing but the deepest respect even in a nasty, empty man like me.”