Part One · II

Raskolnikov was not used to crowds and, as has been said already, fled all society, especially of late. But now something suddenly drew him toward people. Something seemed to be happening in him, something new, as it were, and at the same time he felt a sort of thirst for people. He was so tired after a whole month of this concentrated anguish of his and gloomy excitement that he wanted to breathe, if only for one minute, in another world, any world at all, and in spite of all the filth of the surroundings he was glad now to stay on in the tavern.

The owner of the establishment was in another room, but often came into the main one, descending into it from somewhere by a few steps, and the first thing to appear each time was his dandified tarred boots with big red tops. He wore a sleeveless peasant coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat, no cravat, and his whole face looked as if it had been oiled, like an iron lock. Behind the counter was a boy of about fourteen, and there was another, younger boy who served when anything was asked for. There were sliced cucumbers, black rusks, and fish cut into pieces; all of it smelled very bad. It was so stuffy that sitting there was almost unbearable, and everything was so soaked with the smell of liquor that it seemed you could get drunk in five minutes from the air alone.

There are some encounters, even with people completely unknown to us, in which we begin to take an interest from the first glance, somehow suddenly, all at once, before we have said a word. Exactly such an impression was made on Raskolnikov by the customer who was sitting apart and looked like a retired clerk. The young man recalled this first impression several times afterward and even ascribed it to a presentiment. He kept glancing at the clerk, of course partly because the man himself was staring at him persistently, and it was plain that he very much wanted to start a conversation. At the others in the tavern, the owner included, the clerk looked in a habitual way, even with boredom, and at the same time with a shade of a certain haughty disdain, as if at people of lower station and development, with whom he had nothing to talk about. He was a man already past fifty, of middle height and stout build, with graying hair and a large bald patch, with a yellow, even greenish face bloated from constant drinking, and with swollen eyelids, from behind which shone tiny, slitlike, but lively reddish eyes. But there was something very strange about him; in his look there shone what seemed even a kind of rapture—perhaps there was sense in it, and intelligence too—but at the same time something like madness seemed to flicker there as well. He was dressed in an old, utterly tattered black tailcoat that had shed its buttons. Only one was still holding on somehow, and this was the one he buttoned it with, evidently wishing not to depart from propriety. From under a nankeen waistcoat stuck out a shirtfront, all crumpled, soiled, and stained with drink. His face had been shaved, in the manner of a government clerk, but a long time ago, so that a thick bluish-gray stubble had begun to show. And there was in fact something of the solid official in his manners. But he was restless, kept ruffling his hair, and now and then, in anguish, propped his head in both hands, setting his torn elbows on the wet and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Raskolnikov and said loudly and firmly:

“May I make so bold, my dear sir, as to address you in polite conversation? For although your appearance is not of the most distinguished, my experience discerns in you a man of education and one unaccustomed to drink. I myself have always respected education joined with the feelings of the heart, and, besides, I hold the rank of titular councillor.¹ Marmeladov is my name; titular councillor. May I make so bold as to inquire, have you been in the service?”

“No, I’m a student…” the young man replied, somewhat surprised both by the peculiar flowery tone of the speech and by being addressed so directly, point-blank. In spite of his momentary wish, a little while before, for some sort of company, any company at all, at the first word actually addressed to him he suddenly felt his usual unpleasant and irritable feeling of revulsion toward any stranger who touched, or merely wished to touch, his person.

“A student, then, or a former student!” cried the clerk. “Just as I thought! Experience, my dear sir, repeated experience!” And by way of boasting he laid a finger to his forehead. “You have been a student, or have pursued the path of learning! But allow me…” He got up, swayed, picked up his bottle and his little glass, and sat down beside the young man, at an angle to him. He was drunk, but spoke fluently and briskly, only now and then losing the thread a little here and there and drawing out his words. He fell upon Raskolnikov with something like greed, as if he too had not spoken to anyone for a whole month.

“My dear sir,” he began, almost with solemnity, “poverty is no vice, that is a truth. I know that drunkenness is no virtue either, and that all the more so. But destitution, my dear sir, destitution is a vice, sir. In poverty you still preserve the nobility of your innate feelings; in destitution no one ever does. For destitution they don’t even drive you out of human company with a stick, they sweep you out with a broom, so as to make it all the more insulting; and rightly so, for in destitution I am the first to be ready to insult myself. And hence the drinking! My dear sir, a month ago Mr. Lebezyatnikov gave my spouse a beating, and my spouse is not the same as me! Do you understand, sir? Allow me to ask you something more, merely, let us say, out of simple curiosity: have you ever had occasion to spend the night on the Neva, on the hay barges?”

“No, I haven’t,” answered Raskolnikov. “What is that?”

“Well, sir, that’s where I’ve come from, and this is the fifth night, sir…”

He filled his glass, drank it, and fell to thinking. Indeed, here and there on his clothes, and even in his hair, wisps of hay could be seen sticking. It was very likely that he had not undressed or washed for five days. His hands were especially dirty, greasy, red, with black nails.

His talk seemed to have aroused general, if lazy, attention. The boys behind the counter began to snigger. The owner had apparently come down from the upper room on purpose to listen to the “funny fellow,” and sat a little way off, yawning lazily but with an air of importance. Evidently Marmeladov had long been known here. And his bent for flowery speech he had probably acquired from the habit of frequent tavern conversations with various strangers. In some drinkers this habit turns into a necessity, and chiefly in those who are treated harshly at home and ordered about. That is why, in drinking company, they always seem to be trying to secure some justification for themselves, and, if possible, even respect.

“Funny fellow!” the owner said loudly. “And why don’t you work, why aren’t you in the service, if you’re a clerk?”

“Why am I not in the service, my dear sir?” Marmeladov took him up, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as if it were he who had asked him the question. “Why am I not in the service? And does my heart not ache because I grovel in vain? When Mr. Lebezyatnikov, a month ago, beat my spouse with his own hands, and I lay there drunk, did I not suffer? Allow me, young man, have you ever happened… hm… well, let us say, to ask for a loan without hope?”

“I have… that is, what do you mean, without hope?”

“I mean utterly without hope, sir, knowing in advance that nothing will come of it. Here you know, for instance, in advance and thoroughly, that this man, this most well-intentioned and most useful citizen, will on no account give you money, for why, I ask, should he give it? After all, he knows I won’t pay it back. Out of compassion? But Mr. Lebezyatnikov, who follows the new ideas, was explaining the other day that in our time compassion is even forbidden by science, and that that is how things are done already in England, where they have political economy. Why then, I ask, should he give it? And so, knowing beforehand that he won’t give it, you nonetheless set out on your way and…”

“Then why go?” Raskolnikov put in.

“But if there’s no one else to go to, if there’s nowhere else to go! For every man must have somewhere at least he can go. For there come times when one absolutely must go somewhere, anywhere at all! When my only-begotten daughter went out for the first time on the yellow ticket,² I went out then too… (for my daughter lives on the yellow ticket, sir…),” he added in parentheses, looking at the young man with some uneasiness. “Never mind, my dear sir, never mind!” he hastened at once to declare, apparently calmly, when both boys behind the counter snorted and the owner himself smiled. “Never mind, sir! I am not put out by this wagging of heads, for everything is already known to everyone, and every secret thing is made manifest; and I regard it not with contempt but with humility. Let it be! let it be! ‘Behold the man!’ Allow me, young man: can you… But no, let me put it more strongly and more vividly: not can you, but dare you, looking at me at this hour, affirm that I am not a swine?”

The young man did not answer a word.

“Well, sir,” the orator went on, having waited out, with dignity and this time even with heightened dignity, the sniggering that again followed in the room. “Well, sir, let me be a swine, but she is a lady! I bear the image of the beast, but Katerina Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education and born the daughter of a field officer. Let me be, let me be a scoundrel, but she has a lofty heart and is full of feelings ennobled by upbringing. And meanwhile… oh, if only she would pity me! My dear sir, my dear sir, every man must have at least one place where he too is pitied! But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is a magnanimous lady, is unjust… And although I understand myself that when she pulls my hair she pulls it for no other reason than pity of heart (for, I repeat without embarrassment, she pulls my hair, young man,” he confirmed with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again), “but, God, what if she even once… But no! no! all this is in vain, and there’s nothing to say! nothing to say!… for more than once what I wished for has come to pass, and more than once I have been pitied, but… such is my nature, and I am a born brute!”

“I’ll say!” the owner remarked, yawning.

Marmeladov struck the table resolutely with his fist.

“Such is my nature! Do you know, do you know, sir, that I have even drunk away her stockings? Not her shoes, sir, for that would at least resemble the order of things somewhat, but her stockings, her stockings I drank away, sir! Her goat’s-down shawl I drank away too, a gift, from long ago, her own, not mine; and we live in a cold corner, and this winter she caught a chill and began to cough, and now it’s blood. And we have three little children, and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till night, scrubbing and washing and washing the children, for she has been used to cleanliness since childhood, and with a weak chest and inclined to consumption, and I feel it. Don’t I feel it? And the more I drink, the more I feel it. That is why I drink, for in this drink I seek compassion and feeling. Not joy, but sorrow alone I seek… I drink, for I wish to suffer doubly!” And he laid his head down on the table, as if in despair.

“Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I read a kind of sorrow, as it were. As soon as you came in I read it, and that is why I addressed you at once. For in telling you the story of my life, it is not to expose myself to shame before these idlers, who know it all already, that I wish, but I seek a man of feeling and education. Know, then, that my spouse was brought up in a noble provincial institute for daughters of the nobility, and at her graduation she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages, for which she received a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal… well, the medal was sold… long ago… hm… the certificate of merit is still lying in their trunk, and not long ago she was showing it to the landlady. And although she has the most incessant quarrels with the landlady, she wanted to show off before someone, anyone at all, and to tell of happy days gone by. And I do not condemn, I do not condemn, for this is the last thing left her in her memories, and all the rest has turned to dust! Yes, yes; she is a hot-tempered lady, proud and unbending. She washes the floor herself and lives on black bread, but she will not allow disrespect toward herself. That is why she would not let Mr. Lebezyatnikov’s rudeness pass, and when Mr. Lebezyatnikov gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed, not so much from the blows as from her feelings. I took her as a widow already, with three children, each one smaller than the last. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her parents’ house. She loved her husband beyond measure, but he took to cards, was brought to trial, and with that he died. Toward the end he used to beat her; and though she did not let him get away with it, as I know for a fact and from documents, to this day she remembers him with tears and reproaches me with him, and I am glad, I am glad, for at least in her imaginings she sees herself as having once been happy. And she was left after him with three young children in a remote and savage district, where I too happened to be at the time, and was left in such hopeless destitution that, though I have seen a great many adventures of every kind, I am not even able to describe it. Her relatives all refused her. And she was proud, too, exceedingly proud… And it was then, my dear sir, it was then that I, a widower too, with a fourteen-year-old daughter by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not look upon such suffering. You can judge from this to what a pitch her misfortunes had come, that she, educated and well brought up and of a well-known family, consented to marry me! But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands—she did! For she had nowhere to go. Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go? No! That you do not understand yet… And for a whole year I fulfilled my duty piously and sacredly and did not touch this” (he jabbed a finger at the half-bottle), “for I have feelings. But even so I could not please her; and then I lost my place, and that too through no fault of mine, but owing to a reorganization of the staff, and then I did touch it!… It will be a year and a half ago now that we found ourselves at last, after wanderings and numerous calamities, in this magnificent capital, adorned with numerous monuments. And here I got a place… I got it and lost it again. Do you understand, sir? This time I lost it through my own fault, for my nature got the better of me… And now we live in a corner, with a landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna Lippewechsel, and what we live on and what we pay with, I do not know. There are many others living there besides us… A Sodom, sir, the foulest Sodom… hm… yes… And in the meantime my daughter by my first marriage was growing up, and what she endured, my daughter, from her stepmother while she was growing up, of that I keep silent. For although Katerina Ivanovna is filled to overflowing with magnanimous feelings, she is a hot-tempered and irritable lady, and she’ll snap… Yes, sir! But there’s no use recalling it! Sonya, as you can imagine, received no education. I tried, some four years ago, to go through geography and world history with her; but as I myself was not strong in that knowledge, and there were no suitable textbooks for it, for what little books we had… hm!… well, they’re gone now, those little books, so that was the end of all the instruction. We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Later, when she had reached maturity, she read several books of a romantic content, and not long ago, through the agency of Mr. Lebezyatnikov, one more little book, Lewes’s Physiology—perhaps you know it, sir?—she read it with great interest and even read bits of it aloud to us: and that is all her enlightenment. And now I turn to you, my dear sir, on my own account, with a private question: how much, in your opinion, can a poor but honest girl earn by honest labor?… She won’t earn fifteen kopecks a day, sir, if she is honest and has no special talents, and that working without rest! And even then State Councillor Klopstock, Ivan Ivanovich—you’ve heard of him?—not only has not paid her to this day for sewing half a dozen Holland linen shirts, but even drove her out with insults, stamping his feet and calling her indecent names, on the pretext that the shirt collars were not made to measure and were crooked. And there are the little ones hungry… And there is Katerina Ivanovna walking up and down the room wringing her hands, and red spots coming out on her cheeks—which always happens in that illness: ‘Here you live with us, you sponger,’ she says, ‘you eat and drink and keep warm,’ and what is there to eat and drink, when even the little ones don’t see a crust for three days at a time! I was lying there then… well, what of it! I was lying there drunk, sir, and I hear my Sonya say (she never answers back, and she has such a meek little voice… fair-haired, her little face always pale, thin), she says: ‘Well, Katerina Ivanovna, must I really go and do such a thing?’ And Darya Frantsevna, a woman of evil intent and many times known to the police, had already been to inquire through the landlady three times or so. ‘And why not?’ answers Katerina Ivanovna, mocking. ‘What’s to save? Some treasure!’ But do not blame her, do not blame her, my dear sir, do not blame her! It was not said in her right mind, but with her feelings in turmoil, in illness, and with the children crying who hadn’t eaten, and it was said more to wound than to be taken literally… For that is Katerina Ivanovna’s character, and when the children start crying, even from hunger, she starts beating them at once. And I see, sometime after five, Sonechka gets up, puts on her kerchief, puts on her little cloak, and leaves the apartment, and after eight she comes back again. She came in and went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and silently laid out thirty silver roubles on the table before her. Not a word did she say as she did it, she didn’t even look, but only took our big green drap-de-dames shawl (we have a shawl like that we all share, of drap-de-dames), covered her head and face with it completely, and lay down on the bed, face to the wall, only her little shoulders and her whole body kept shuddering… And I lay there, as before, in the same condition, sir… And then I saw, young man, I saw how afterward Katerina Ivanovna, also without saying a word, went over to Sonechka’s little bed and knelt the whole evening at her feet, kissing her feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep like that, together, in each other’s arms… both… both… yes, sir… and I… lay there drunk, sir.”

Marmeladov fell silent, as if his voice had broken off. Then suddenly he hastily poured, drank, and cleared his throat.

“Since then, sir,” he went on after a short silence, “since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and to information laid by ill-intentioned persons—to which Darya Frantsevna particularly contributed, supposedly because she had not been shown due respect—since then my daughter, Sofya Semyonovna, has been obliged to take the yellow ticket, and on that account could no longer remain with us. For the landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna, would not allow it (though earlier she had herself abetted Darya Frantsevna), and Mr. Lebezyatnikov too… hm… It was over Sonya that this business of his with Katerina Ivanovna came about. At first he was after Sonechka himself, and then all at once he stood on his dignity: ‘What,’ he says, ‘am I, such an enlightened man, to live in the same apartment with one of that sort?’ And Katerina Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for her… and so it happened… And now Sonechka comes to us mostly at dusk, and eases things for Katerina Ivanovna, and brings what means she can. She lodges with the tailor Kapernaumov, rents a room from them, and Kapernaumov is lame and tongue-tied, and his whole very numerous family is tongue-tied too. And his wife is tongue-tied too… They all live in one room, but Sonya has her own, separate, with a partition… Hm, yes… The poorest people, and tongue-tied… yes… Only I got up then in the morning, sir, put on my rags, raised my hands to heaven, and set off to see His Excellency Ivan Afanasyevich. Do you happen to know His Excellency Ivan Afanasyevich?… No? Then you don’t know a man of God! He is wax… wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!… He even shed tears when he had deigned to hear it all. ‘Well, Marmeladov,’ he says, ‘you have deceived my expectations once already… I’ll take you on once more on my own personal responsibility’—that’s what he said—‘remember that,’ he says, ‘and go!’ I kissed the dust of his feet, in my thoughts, for in reality he would not have permitted it, being a dignitary and a man of the new political and enlightened ideas; I went back home, and when I announced that I had been taken back into the service and would be drawing a salary, oh, what went on then!…”

Marmeladov stopped again in strong agitation. At that moment a whole party of drunks came in from the street, drunk already, and at the entrance the sounds of a hired barrel organ rang out and a child’s cracked little voice, a seven-year-old’s, singing “The Little Farmstead.” It grew noisy. The owner and the servers were busy with the newcomers. Marmeladov, paying no attention to them, went on with his story. He seemed to have grown very weak, but the drunker he got, the more talkative he became. The memory of his recent success in the service seemed to have revived him and was even reflected in his face as a kind of radiance. Raskolnikov listened attentively.

“That was, sir, five weeks ago. Yes… As soon as they found out, both of them, Katerina Ivanovna and Sonechka, Lord, it was as if I had moved into the kingdom of God. Before, you could lie there like a brute, and nothing but abuse! But now: they walk on tiptoe, they hush the children: ‘Semyon Zakharych is tired from the office, he’s resting, shh!’ They give me coffee before I go to the office, they boil cream! They began getting real cream, do you hear! And where they scraped together eleven roubles fifty kopecks for a decent outfit for me, I can’t understand. Boots, calico shirtfronts—most magnificent—a uniform coat, they put it all together for eleven and a half in the most excellent style, sir. I came home from my first morning at the office, and I look: Katerina Ivanovna has cooked two courses, soup and salt beef with horseradish, which until then we hadn’t had the least notion of. She has no dresses of any kind… I mean none at all, sir, and yet here she was dressed up as if she were going visiting, and not that she had anything, but they know how to make it all out of nothing: they do up their hair, some little clean collar or other, little cuffs, and there you are, a different person altogether, younger and prettier. Sonechka, my dove, only helped with money, ‘but for me myself,’ she says, ‘it isn’t proper now to visit you often, for the time being, unless maybe at dusk, so that no one sees.’ Do you hear, do you hear? I came home after dinner to take a nap, and what do you think, Katerina Ivanovna couldn’t restrain herself: only a week before she’d had the worst possible quarrel with the landlady, with Amalia Fyodorovna, and now she invited her for a cup of coffee. They sat for two hours and kept whispering: ‘Now that Semyon Zakharych is in the service and drawing a salary, and he went to His Excellency himself, and His Excellency came out himself, told everyone to wait, and led Semyon Zakharych by the hand past all of them into his study.’ Do you hear, do you hear? ‘I, of course,’ he says, ‘Semyon Zakharych, remembering your services, and although you have been given to that frivolous weakness, yet since you now promise, and since, besides, things have gone badly for us without you’ (do you hear, do you hear!), ‘I am counting now,’ he says, ‘on your word of honor’—that is, all this, I tell you, she simply went and invented, and not out of frivolity, not just for boasting, sir! No, sir, she believes it all herself, she amuses herself with her own imaginings, by God, sir! And I do not condemn it: no, that I do not condemn!… And when, six days ago, I brought home my first salary—twenty-three roubles forty kopecks—all of it, she called me her little sprat: ‘You little sprat, you!’ she says. And in private, sir, you understand? Well, what beauty is there in me, you would think, and what kind of husband am I? But no, she pinched my cheek: ‘You little sprat, you!’ she says.”

Marmeladov stopped, was about to smile, but suddenly his chin began to twitch. He controlled himself, however. This tavern, his depraved appearance, the five nights on the hay barges and the bottle, and at the same time this morbid love for his wife and family bewildered his listener. Raskolnikov listened intently, but with a painful sensation. He was annoyed with himself for having come in.

“My dear sir, my dear sir!” exclaimed Marmeladov, recovering himself. “Oh, sir, perhaps to you all this is a laughing matter, as it is to the others, and I am only troubling you with the foolishness of all these wretched details of my domestic life, but to me it is no laughing matter! For I can feel all this. And for the whole of that paradisal day of my life and the whole of that evening I passed my time in fleeting dreams: that is, how I would arrange it all, and dress the little ones, and give her rest, and bring my only-begotten daughter back from dishonor into the bosom of the family… And much, much more… It is permissible, sir. Well, sir, my dear sir” (Marmeladov suddenly seemed to start, raised his head, and looked point-blank at his listener), “well, sir, and on the very next day, after all those dreams (that is, it will be exactly five days ago now), toward evening, by a cunning deceit, like a thief in the night, I stole the key of Katerina Ivanovna’s trunk from her, took out what was left of the salary I had brought, how much I don’t remember anymore, and there you are, sir, look at me, that’s all! The fifth day away from home, and they’re looking for me there, and it’s the end of the service, and the uniform coat is lying in a tavern by the Egyptian Bridge, and in exchange I got these garments… and it’s the end of everything!”

Marmeladov struck his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth, shut his eyes, and leaned his elbow heavily on the table. But a minute later his face suddenly changed, and with a sort of put-on slyness and affected impudence he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed, and said:

“And today I was at Sonya’s, I went to ask her for something for a hair of the dog! Heh-heh-heh!”

“Don’t tell me she gave it to you?” someone among the newcomers shouted from the side, shouted and roared with laughter.

“This very half-bottle, sir, was bought with her money,” said Marmeladov, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov. “Thirty kopecks she brought out, with her own hands, her last, all she had, I saw it myself… She said nothing, only looked at me in silence… Not on earth, but there… that is how they grieve over people, weep, and do not reproach, do not reproach! And it hurts more, sir, it hurts more when they don’t reproach!… Thirty kopecks, yes, sir. And she needs them herself now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she has to keep up her cleanliness. That cleanliness costs money, the special kind, you understand? You understand? Well, and pomade to buy, too, for she can’t do without, sir; starched petticoats, a little shoe of a certain kind, a bit showier, to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, do you understand, sir, what that cleanliness means? Well, sir, and here I, her own father, went and filched those thirty kopecks for a hair of the dog! And I’m drinking, sir! And I’ve drunk it away already, sir!… Well, who will pity a man like me? Eh? Do you pity me now, sir, or not? Speak, sir, do you pity me or not? Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

He was about to pour, but there was nothing left. The half-bottle was empty.

“And why should anyone pity you?” shouted the owner, who had turned up beside them again.

There was laughter and even swearing. Those who had been listening and those who had not laughed and swore, simply looking at the figure of the retired clerk.

“Pity! why pity me!” Marmeladov suddenly wailed, rising with his arm stretched out before him, in positive inspiration, as if he had only been waiting for those words. “Why pity me, you say? Yes! there is nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! But crucify, O judge, crucify, and having crucified, pity him! And then I myself will come to you to be crucified, for it is not joy I thirst for, but sorrow and tears!… Do you think, you merchant, that this half-bottle of yours went down sweet with me? Sorrow, sorrow is what I sought at the bottom of it, sorrow and tears, and I tasted them, and I found them; and He will pity us who pitied all men and who understood all men and all things, He alone, He is the judge. He will come on that day and He will ask: ‘Where is the daughter who gave herself up for a cruel and consumptive stepmother, for strange little children? Where is the daughter who pitied her earthly father, a worthless drunkard, not shrinking from his beastliness?’ And He will say: ‘Come! I have forgiven thee once… I have forgiven thee once… And now thy sins, which are many, are forgiven, for thou lovedst much…’ And He will forgive my Sonya, He will forgive her, I know already that He will forgive her… I felt it in my heart a while ago, when I was at her place!… And He will judge all and forgive all, the good and the wicked, the wise and the meek… And when He has finished with all of them, then He will speak to us too: ‘Come forth,’ He will say, ‘you too! Come forth, you drunkards, come forth, you weaklings, come forth, you shameless ones!’ And we shall all come forth, unashamed, and stand there. And He will say: ‘You are swine! made in the image of the beast and bearing his mark; but come you too!’ And the wise will speak up, the prudent will speak up: ‘Lord! why dost Thou receive these?’ And He will say: ‘This is why I receive them, O wise ones, this is why I receive them, O prudent ones, because not one of them ever considered himself worthy of this…’ And He will stretch out His hands to us, and we shall fall down before Him… and weep… and understand everything! Then we shall understand everything!… and everyone will understand… and Katerina Ivanovna… she too will understand… Lord, Thy kingdom come!”

And he sank down onto the bench, exhausted and drained of strength, not looking at anyone, as if he had forgotten his surroundings and was deep in thought. His words had produced a certain impression; for a moment silence reigned, but soon the same laughter and swearing broke out again:

“A fine judge!”

“Lying his head off!”

“Some official!”

And so on and so forth.

“Let us go, sir,” Marmeladov said suddenly, raising his head and turning to Raskolnikov. “Take me there… The Kozel house, in the courtyard. It’s time… to Katerina Ivanovna…”

Raskolnikov had long been wanting to leave; and he himself had been thinking of helping him. Marmeladov turned out to be much weaker in his legs than in his speeches and leaned heavily on the young man. They had two or three hundred steps to go. Confusion and fear took more and more hold of the drunkard as they neared the house.

“It’s not Katerina Ivanovna I’m afraid of now,” he muttered in agitation, “and not that she’ll start pulling my hair. What’s hair!… hair is nonsense! I tell you so! It’s even better if she starts pulling it, that’s not what I’m afraid of… I… I’m afraid of her eyes… yes… her eyes… I’m afraid of the red spots on her cheeks too… and one more thing, I’m afraid of her breathing… Have you seen how they breathe in that illness… when their feelings are in turmoil? I’m afraid of the children crying too… Because if Sonya hasn’t fed them, then… I don’t know what! I don’t know! But I’m not afraid of a beating… Know, sir, that such beatings are not only no pain to me but even a pleasure… For I can’t do without them myself. It’s better that way. Let her beat me, let her ease her heart… it’s better… And here’s the house. The Kozel house. A locksmith, a German, a rich one… lead on!”

They went in from the courtyard and climbed to the fourth floor. The farther up they went, the darker the stairs became. It was already almost eleven o’clock, and although at that time of year there is no real night in Petersburg, at the top of the stairs it was very dark.

A small, soot-blackened door at the end of the stairs, at the very top, stood open. A candle end lit up a most wretched room, about ten paces long; the whole of it could be seen from the entry. Everything was strewn about and in disorder, especially various children’s rags. Across the back corner a sheet full of holes had been strung. Behind it, probably, stood a bed. In the room itself there were only two chairs and a very tattered oilcloth sofa, in front of which stood an old pine kitchen table, unpainted and uncovered. On the edge of the table, in an iron candlestick, a tallow candle end was burning down. It turned out that Marmeladov had a room to himself and not just a corner, but his room was a passageway. The door into the further rooms, or cages, into which Amalia Lippewechsel’s apartment was divided, stood ajar. There it was noisy and loud. People were roaring with laughter. They seemed to be playing cards and drinking tea. Now and then the most unceremonious words came flying out.

Raskolnikov recognized Katerina Ivanovna at once. She was a terribly emaciated woman, thin, rather tall and shapely, with still beautiful dark brown hair and, indeed, cheeks flushed to the point of red spots. She was pacing up and down her small room, her hands pressed to her chest, her lips parched, and breathing unevenly, in gasps. Her eyes glittered as in a fever, but her gaze was sharp and fixed, and this consumptive and agitated face, in the last light of the dying candle end flickering over it, made a morbid impression. She seemed to Raskolnikov about thirty, and she was indeed no match for Marmeladov… She had not heard or noticed them come in; she seemed to be in a kind of oblivion, not hearing and not seeing. The room was stuffy, but she had not opened the window; a stench came up from the stairs, but the door to the stairs was not shut; from the inner rooms, through the door left ajar, came waves of tobacco smoke, she was coughing, but she did not close the door. The smallest girl, about six, was asleep on the floor, somehow sitting, curled up, with her head buried in the sofa. A boy a year older than she was trembling all over in a corner and crying. He had probably just been beaten. The eldest girl, about nine, tallish and thin as a matchstick, in nothing but a thin shift torn all over and an old drap-de-dames cloak thrown over her bare shoulders, made for her probably two years before, because now it did not reach even to her knees, stood in the corner beside her little brother, her long arm, dried up like a matchstick, around his neck. She seemed to be calming him, whispering something to him, doing all she could to keep him from whimpering again somehow, and at the same time following her mother fearfully with her large, large dark eyes, which seemed even larger in her thin and frightened little face. Marmeladov, without coming into the room, knelt down in the very doorway and pushed Raskolnikov ahead. The woman, seeing a stranger, stopped absently before him, coming to herself for an instant and seeming to consider: what has he come in for? But probably it occurred to her at once that he was going through to the other rooms, since theirs was a passageway. Having realized this and paying no more attention to him, she went to the door to the entry to shut it, and suddenly cried out, seeing her husband on his knees on the very threshold.

“Ah!” she shrieked in a frenzy. “He’s come back! Jailbird! Monster!… And where’s the money? What’s in your pocket, show me! And those aren’t your clothes! where are your clothes? where’s the money? speak!…”

And she rushed to search him. Marmeladov at once obediently and submissively spread his arms wide, to make the search of his pockets easier. There was not a kopeck of money.

“Where’s the money, then?” she cried. “Oh, Lord, can he have drunk it all away? There were twelve roubles left in the trunk!…” And suddenly, in a rage, she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room. Marmeladov himself eased her efforts, meekly crawling after her on his knees.

“And this is a pleasure to me! And this is no pain to me but a plea-sure, my dear si-ir,” he kept crying out as he was shaken by the hair, and once he even knocked his forehead against the floor. The child asleep on the floor woke up and began to cry. The boy in the corner could not bear it, trembled, screamed, and rushed to his sister in terrible fright, almost in a fit. The eldest girl, still half asleep, was trembling like a leaf.

“Drunk it away! all, all of it drunk away!” the poor woman cried in despair. “And those aren’t his clothes! Hungry, hungry!” (and, wringing her hands, she pointed at the children). “Oh, thrice-cursed life! And you, aren’t you ashamed,” she suddenly fell upon Raskolnikov, “coming from the tavern! Were you drinking with him? You were drinking with him too! Get out!”

The young man hurried to leave without saying a word. Besides, the inner door had been flung wide open, and several curious people were peering out of it. Brazen, laughing heads were thrust forward, with cigarettes and pipes, in skullcaps. Figures could be seen in dressing gowns, wide open, in summer outfits to the point of indecency, some with cards in their hands. They laughed especially merrily when Marmeladov, dragged by the hair, cried out that it was a pleasure to him. They even began to come into the room; at last an ominous shriek was heard: it was Amalia Lippewechsel herself pushing her way forward to restore order in her own fashion and to frighten the poor woman for the hundredth time with an abusive order to clear out of the apartment the very next day. As he was leaving, Raskolnikov managed to slip his hand into his pocket, scooped up as many copper coins as came to hand, from the change he had got for his rouble in the tavern, and laid them unnoticed on the windowsill. Then, already on the stairs, he thought better of it and wanted to go back.

“What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he thought. “They have Sonya there, and I need it myself.” But reasoning that it was impossible to take it back now and that he would not have taken it anyway, he waved his hand and went to his lodging. “Sonya needs pomade too, after all,” he went on, striding along the street, and he smiled caustically. “That cleanliness costs money… Hm! And Sonechka herself may well go bankrupt today, for it’s the same risk, hunting big game… digging for gold… and then they’d all be left high and dry tomorrow without my money… Well done, Sonya! What a well they’ve managed to dig, though! and they’re making use of it! Making use of it, they are! And they’ve got used to it. They wept a little, and they got used to it. Man is a scoundrel, he gets used to anything!”

He fell to thinking.

“But what if I lied,” he suddenly exclaimed in spite of himself, “what if man really is not a scoundrel, man in general, the whole human race, I mean, then all the rest is just prejudice, nothing but fears put into us, and there are no barriers of any kind, and that is just as it should be!…”

Notes

1. 1. Under the Table of Ranks, the fourteen-grade ladder of the Russian civil service, a titular councillor stood in the ninth grade, a lowly clerk’s rank; a state councillor stood in the fifth, high enough to be addressed as a gentleman of consequence.

2. 2. The “yellow ticket” was the identity card issued by the police to registered prostitutes in place of an ordinary passport.