Part Four · II

It was already almost eight o’clock; the two of them were hurrying to Bakaleyev’s in order to get there before Luzhin.

“Well, who was that?” asked Razumikhin, as soon as they were out in the street.

“That was Svidrigailov, the very landowner in whose house my sister was insulted when she was their governess. Because of his amorous pursuit she left them, driven out by his wife, Marfa Petrovna. This Marfa Petrovna afterward begged Dunya’s forgiveness, and now she has suddenly died. It was her they were talking about earlier. I don’t know why, but I am very much afraid of this man. He came here right after his wife’s funeral. He is very strange, and he has made up his mind to something… It’s as if he knows something… Dunya has to be protected from him… that is what I wanted to tell you, do you hear?”

“Protected! What can he do against Avdotya Romanovna? Well, thank you, Rodya, for telling me this… We will, we will protect her!… Where does he live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you ask? Eh, too bad! But I’ll find out!”

“Did you see him?” Raskolnikov asked after some silence.

“Why, yes, I noticed him; I got a good look at him.”

“You really saw him? Saw him clearly?” Raskolnikov insisted.

“Why, yes, I remember him clearly; I’d know him out of a thousand, I have a good memory for faces.”

Again they were silent.

“Hm… that’s it, then…” Raskolnikov muttered. “Because, you know… I was thinking… I keep feeling… that it might be a fantasy.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t quite understand you.”

“Well, you all keep saying,” Raskolnikov went on, twisting his mouth into a smile, “that I’m mad; and just now it seemed to me that perhaps I really am mad and saw only a phantom!”

“What’s got into you?”

“But who knows! Maybe I really am mad, and everything that has happened all these days, all of it, perhaps, was just so, in my imagination…”

“Eh, Rodya! They’ve upset you again!… But what did he say, what did he come about?”

Raskolnikov did not answer; Razumikhin thought for a minute.

“Well, then, listen to my report,” he began. “I came by your place, you were asleep. Then we had dinner, and then I went to Porfiry’s. Zametov is still there. I meant to begin, and nothing came of it. I just couldn’t get to talking properly. It’s exactly as if they don’t understand and can’t understand, but they aren’t the least bit embarrassed. I took Porfiry over to the window and began to talk, but again for some reason it didn’t come out right: he looks away, and I look away. Finally I put my fist up to his mug and told him I’d smash it, as one relative to another. He only looked at me. I spat and left, and that’s all. Very stupid. With Zametov not a word. Only, you see: I thought I’d spoiled things, but as I was going down the stairs a thought came to me, it simply dawned on me: what are you and I fussing about? Now, if you were in danger, or something of that sort, well, of course. But what is it to you! You have nothing to do with it, so spit on them; we’ll have a laugh at them later, and if I were you I’d even start mystifying them. Won’t they be ashamed afterward! Spit on it; later we can give them a thrashing, too, but for now let’s laugh!”

“Of course, that’s right!” Raskolnikov answered. “And what will you be saying tomorrow?” he thought to himself. Strange to say, until now it had never once entered his head: “What will Razumikhin think when he finds out?” Thinking this, Raskolnikov looked at him intently. As for Razumikhin’s present report on his visit to Porfiry, it interested him very little: so much had gone and so much had been added since then!…

In the corridor they ran into Luzhin: he had arrived at exactly eight o’clock and was looking for the room, so that all three went in together, but without looking at one another and without bowing. The young men went in first, while Pyotr Petrovich, for propriety’s sake, lingered a little in the entry, taking off his overcoat. Pulcheria Alexandrovna at once came out to meet him on the threshold. Dunya was greeting her brother.

Pyotr Petrovich came in and bowed to the ladies rather amiably, though with redoubled solemnity. However, he looked as if he had been thrown off a little and had not yet recovered himself. Pulcheria Alexandrovna, also seeming somehow embarrassed, at once hastened to seat everyone at the round table, on which the samovar was boiling. Dunya and Luzhin sat facing each other at the two ends of the table. Razumikhin and Raskolnikov found themselves facing Pulcheria Alexandrovna—Razumikhin nearer to Luzhin, and Raskolnikov beside his sister.

A momentary silence fell. Pyotr Petrovich unhurriedly took out a cambric handkerchief, which gave off a waft of scent, and blew his nose with the air of a man who, though virtuous, was nonetheless somewhat wounded in his dignity, and who had, besides, firmly resolved to demand explanations. Back in the entry the thought had occurred to him: not to take off his overcoat, and to leave, and so to punish both ladies swiftly and impressively, to make them feel everything at once. But he could not bring himself to it. Besides, this man did not like uncertainty, and here things had to be cleared up: if his order had been so openly violated, it meant there was something to it, and so it was better to find out beforehand; as for punishing, there would always be time for that, and it was in his hands.

“I hope your journey went well?” he addressed Pulcheria Alexandrovna officially.

“Thank God, Pyotr Petrovich.”

“Very gratifying, ma’am. And Avdotya Romanovna is not tired either?”

“I’m young and strong, I don’t get tired, but it was very hard on Mama,” Dunechka answered.

“What can one do, ma’am; our national roads are very long. Great is the so-called ‘Mother Russia’… And I, for all my wishes, simply could not hurry to meet you yesterday. I hope, however, that everything went off without any special trouble?”

“Oh, no, Pyotr Petrovich, we were very disheartened,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hastened to declare with a special intonation, “and if God himself, it seems, hadn’t sent us Dmitry Prokofyich yesterday, we would simply have been lost. Here he is, Dmitry Prokofyich Razumikhin,” she added, introducing him to Luzhin.

“Why, yes, I had the pleasure… yesterday,” Luzhin muttered, with a hostile sidelong glance at Razumikhin, then frowned and fell silent. And indeed Pyotr Petrovich belonged to that category of people who are, apparently, extremely amiable in society and lay special claim to amiability, but who, as soon as anything is not to their liking, at once lose all their resources and become more like sacks of flour than free and easy cavaliers who enliven society. Again everyone fell silent: Raskolnikov was stubbornly silent, Avdotya Romanovna did not want to break the silence before it was time, Razumikhin had nothing to say, so that Pulcheria Alexandrovna grew anxious again.

“Marfa Petrovna has died, have you heard?” she began, resorting to her chief resource.

“Why, certainly, I heard, ma’am. I was informed at the first rumor, and have even come now to tell you that Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, immediately after his spouse’s funeral, set off in haste for Petersburg. So, at least, according to the most exact reports I have received.”

“To Petersburg? Here?” Dunechka asked in alarm, and exchanged glances with her mother.

“Precisely so, ma’am, and, needless to say, not without purposes, taking into consideration the haste of his departure and, in general, the preceding circumstances.”

“Lord! Can it be that he won’t leave Dunechka in peace even here?” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“It seems to me there is no particular reason for alarm, either for you or for Avdotya Romanovna, provided, of course, that you yourselves do not wish to enter into any relations with him whatsoever. As far as I am concerned, I am keeping watch, and am now trying to find out where he is staying…”

“Oh, Pyotr Petrovich, you wouldn’t believe how much you’ve frightened me just now!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna went on. “I have only seen him twice, and he seemed terrible to me, terrible! I am sure he was the cause of the late Marfa Petrovna’s death.”

“On that score no conclusion can be drawn. I have exact reports. I do not dispute that he may have contributed to the accelerated course of events, so to speak, by the moral influence of the offense; but as regards the conduct and, in general, the moral characteristics of the person, I agree with you. I do not know whether he is rich now and what exactly Marfa Petrovna left him; that will be known to me within the very shortest time; but certainly here, in Petersburg, having even some pecuniary means, he will at once take up his old ways. He is the most depraved man, the most sunk in vice, of all people of that sort! I have considerable grounds for supposing that Marfa Petrovna, who had the misfortune to love him so and to buy him out of his debts eight years ago, served him in another respect as well: solely by her efforts and sacrifices a criminal case was hushed up, at the very beginning, with an admixture of brutal and, so to speak, fantastic murder, for which he might very well have taken a stroll to Siberia. That is the kind of man he is, if you wish to know.”

“Oh, Lord!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna. Raskolnikov was listening attentively.

“Are you telling the truth, that you have exact information about this?” Dunya asked, sternly and impressively.

“I am saying only what I heard myself, in confidence, from the late Marfa Petrovna. I must observe that from the legal point of view the matter is very obscure. There lived here, and, it seems, lives here still, a certain Resslich, a foreigner and, on top of that, a small-time moneylender, who engages in other business as well. With this Resslich Mr. Svidrigailov had long been in certain very close and mysterious relations. Living with her was a distant relative, a niece, it seems, a deaf-mute, a girl of fifteen or even fourteen, whom this Resslich hated beyond measure and reproached for every crust; she even beat her inhumanly. One day she was found in the attic, hanged. The verdict was suicide. After the usual procedures the case ended there, but later, however, a denunciation turned up that the child had been… cruelly abused by Svidrigailov. True, it was all obscure, the denunciation came from another German woman, a notorious woman who enjoyed no credit; in the end, in essence, there was no denunciation at all, thanks to Marfa Petrovna’s efforts and money; it all stopped at a rumor. But this rumor, however, was highly significant. You, of course, Avdotya Romanovna, also heard there about the story of the servant Philip, who died of torments some six years ago, still in the days of serfdom.”

“I heard, on the contrary, that this Philip hanged himself.”

“Precisely so, ma’am, but he was forced, or, better to say, inclined toward a violent death by Mr. Svidrigailov’s incessant system of persecutions and penalties.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dunya answered dryly. “I only heard some very strange story, that this Philip was some sort of hypochondriac, some sort of household philosopher, the servants said he had ‘read too much,’ and that he hanged himself more from mockery than from Mr. Svidrigailov’s blows. And in my time he treated the servants well, and the servants even liked him, though it’s true that they too blamed him for Philip’s death.”

“I see, Avdotya Romanovna, that you have somehow suddenly become inclined to justify him,” Luzhin observed, twisting his mouth into an ambiguous smile. “Indeed, he is a cunning man and seductive where ladies are concerned, of which Marfa Petrovna, who died so strangely, serves as a lamentable example. I merely wished to be of service to you and your mama with my advice, in view of his new and undoubtedly forthcoming attempts. As far as I am concerned, I am firmly convinced that this man will undoubtedly disappear again into the debtors’ prison. Marfa Petrovna never had the slightest intention of settling anything on him, having the children in view, and if she did leave him something, then only something most necessary, of small value, ephemeral, which would not last a man of his habits even a year.”

“Pyotr Petrovich, I beg you,” said Dunya, “let us stop talking about Mr. Svidrigailov. It makes me feel dreary.”

“He came to see me just now,” Raskolnikov said suddenly, breaking his silence for the first time.

Exclamations came from all sides; everyone turned to him. Even Pyotr Petrovich grew agitated.

“An hour and a half ago, when I was asleep, he came in, woke me, and introduced himself,” Raskolnikov went on. “He was rather free and easy and cheerful, and fully hopes that I will become friends with him. Among other things, he very much asks for and is seeking a meeting with you, Dunya, and he asked me to be the go-between at this meeting. He has a certain proposal for you; he told me what it is. Besides that, he informed me positively that Marfa Petrovna, a week before her death, had managed to leave you, Dunya, three thousand roubles in her will, and that you can now receive this money very soon.”

“Thank God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna, and crossed herself. “Pray for her, Dunya, pray!”

“That is the actual truth,” broke from Luzhin.

“Well, well, what else?” Dunechka urged.

“Then he said that he himself is not rich and that the whole estate goes to his children, who are now with their aunt. Then that he is staying somewhere not far from me, but where?—I don’t know, I didn’t ask…”

“But what, what does he want to propose to Dunechka?” asked the frightened Pulcheria Alexandrovna. “Did he tell you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What is it, then?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Raskolnikov fell silent and turned to his tea.

Pyotr Petrovich took out his watch and looked at it.

“I must go on business, and in that way I shall not be in the way,” he added with a somewhat piqued air, and began to rise from his chair.

“Stay, Pyotr Petrovich,” said Dunya, “you did intend to spend the evening. Besides, you wrote yourself that you wished to have an explanation with Mama about something.”

“Precisely so, Avdotya Romanovna,” Pyotr Petrovich said impressively, sitting down again on his chair but still keeping his hat in his hands. “I did indeed wish to have an explanation both with you and with your highly esteemed mama, and on very important points, too. But just as your brother cannot explain himself in my presence regarding certain proposals of Mr. Svidrigailov’s, so I do not wish to and cannot explain myself… in the presence of others… regarding certain very, very important points. Besides, my capital and most urgent request was not carried out…”

Luzhin assumed a bitter look and fell silent with dignity.

“Your request that my brother not be present at our meeting was not carried out solely on my insistence,” said Dunya. “You wrote that you had been insulted by my brother; I think this must be cleared up at once, and you must make peace. And if Rodya really did insult you, then he must and will ask your pardon.”

Pyotr Petrovich at once grew cocky.

“There are certain insults, Avdotya Romanovna, that with all the goodwill in the world cannot be forgotten, ma’am. In everything there is a line that it is dangerous to cross; for once one has stepped over it, it is impossible to go back.”

“That isn’t really what I was talking about, Pyotr Petrovich,” Dunya interrupted a little impatiently. “Understand properly that our whole future now depends on whether all this is cleared up and settled as soon as possible or not. I tell you plainly, from the first word, that I cannot look at it any other way, and if you value me even a little, then, hard as it is, this whole story must end today. I repeat, if my brother is to blame, he will ask your forgiveness.”

“I am surprised that you put the question so, Avdotya Romanovna,” Luzhin said, growing more and more irritated. “While valuing and, so to speak, adoring you, I may at the same time very, very well dislike someone among your family. While aspiring to the happiness of your hand, I cannot at the same time take upon myself obligations that are incompatible…”

“Oh, drop all this touchiness, Pyotr Petrovich,” Dunya interrupted with feeling, “and be the intelligent and noble man I have always considered you and want to consider you. I have given you a great promise, I am your fiancée; trust me, then, in this matter, and believe me, I shall be able to judge impartially. That I am taking on the role of judge is as much a surprise to my brother as it is to you. When I invited him today, after your letter, to be sure to come to our meeting, I told him nothing of my intentions. Understand that if you do not make peace, I must choose between you: either you or he. That is how the question has been put, on his side and on yours. I do not want to and must not make a mistake in my choice. For your sake I must break with my brother; for my brother’s sake I must break with you. I want to and can find out now for certain: is he a brother to me? And about you: am I dear to you, do you value me: are you a husband to me?”

“Avdotya Romanovna,” Luzhin pronounced, bridling, “your words are too significant for me; I will say more, they are even offensive, in view of the position I have the honor to occupy in relation to you. Not to say a word of the offensive and strange comparison, on the same footing, between me and… an arrogant youth, by your words you admit the possibility of breaking the promise given to me. You say: ‘either you or he,’ and thereby you show me how little I mean to you… I cannot allow this, given the relations and… obligations existing between us.”

“What!” Dunya flared up. “I set your interest beside everything that has been precious to me in life until now, that has made up my whole life until now, and suddenly you are offended that I set too little value on you!”

Raskolnikov smiled silently and caustically; Razumikhin winced all over; but Pyotr Petrovich did not accept the objection; on the contrary, with every word he became more captious and irritable, as though he were acquiring a taste for it.

“Love for one’s future companion in life, for one’s husband, ought to exceed love for one’s brother,” he pronounced sententiously, “and in any case I cannot stand on the same footing… Although I insisted earlier that in your brother’s presence I do not wish to and cannot set forth everything I came with, nonetheless I now intend to turn to your highly esteemed mama for a necessary explanation on one very capital point, and one offensive to me. Your son,” he turned to Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “yesterday, in the presence of Mr. Rassudkin¹ (or… is that it? excuse me, I have forgotten your surname,” he bowed amiably to Razumikhin), “insulted me by distorting a thought of mine which I communicated to you then in private conversation, over coffee, namely, that marriage to a poor girl who has already experienced life’s grief is, in my opinion, more advantageous in the conjugal respect than to one who has known prosperity, for it is more beneficial for morality. Your son deliberately exaggerated the meaning of the words to the point of absurdity, accusing me of malicious intentions and, in my view, basing himself on your own correspondence. I shall consider myself happy, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, if it proves possible for you to convince me of the contrary and thereby considerably reassure me. Tell me, then, in what terms precisely did you convey my words in your letter to Rodion Romanovich?”

“I don’t remember,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna faltered, “but I conveyed them as I understood them myself. I don’t know how Rodya conveyed them to you… Maybe he did exaggerate something.”

“He could not have exaggerated without your suggestion.”

“Pyotr Petrovich,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna pronounced with dignity, “the proof that Dunya and I did not take your words in a very bad sense is that we are here.”

“Good, Mama!” said Dunya approvingly.

“So I am to blame here too!” Luzhin took offense.

“You see, Pyotr Petrovich, you keep blaming Rodion, but you yourself wrote an untruth about him in your letter,” Pulcheria Alexandrovna added, taking heart.

“I do not recall writing any untruth, ma’am.”

“You wrote,” Raskolnikov said sharply, not turning to Luzhin, “that yesterday I gave the money not to the widow of the man who was run over, as was actually the case, but to his daughter (whom I had never seen until yesterday). You wrote this in order to set me at odds with my family, and for that purpose you added, in vile expressions, something about the conduct of a girl you do not know. All of it is gossip and baseness.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Luzhin answered, trembling with rage, “in my letter I enlarged upon your qualities and actions solely in fulfillment of the requests of your sister and mama to describe to them how I found you and what impression you made on me. As regards what is set out in my letter, find even one unjust line, that is, that you did not spend the money and that in that family, unfortunate though it may be, there were no unworthy persons?”

“But in my opinion you, with all your merits, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you are casting a stone.”

“So you would go so far as to introduce her into the company of your mother and sister?”

“I have already done so, if you want to know. Today I sat her down next to Mama and Dunya.”

“Rodya!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

Dunechka blushed; Razumikhin knitted his brows. Luzhin smiled caustically and haughtily.

“You may see for yourself, Avdotya Romanovna,” he said, “whether an agreement is possible here. I hope now that this matter is concluded and cleared up once and for all. I shall withdraw, so as not to hinder the further pleasantness of the family reunion and the communication of secrets” (he got up from his chair and took his hat). “But in leaving I venture to observe that in the future I hope to be spared such encounters and, so to speak, compromises. And you particularly, highly esteemed Pulcheria Alexandrovna, I shall ask on this same subject, all the more since my letter was addressed to you and to no one else.”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna was a little offended.

“Why, you’re taking us completely into your power, Pyotr Petrovich. Dunya has told you the reason why your wish was not carried out: she had good intentions. And besides, you write to me as if you were giving orders. Are we really to consider your every wish an order? And I’ll tell you, on the contrary, that you ought to be especially delicate and indulgent toward us now, because we have given up everything and come here trusting you, and so we are already almost in your power as it is.”

“That is not quite just, Pulcheria Alexandrovna, and especially at the present moment, when the three thousand bequeathed by Marfa Petrovna have been announced, which seems to have come very opportunely, judging by the new tone in which I am being addressed,” he added caustically.

“Judging by that remark, one might indeed suppose that you were counting on our helplessness,” Dunya observed irritably.

“But now, at least, I cannot count on it, and I particularly do not wish to hinder the communication of the secret proposals of Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, with which he has entrusted your brother and which, as I see, have for you a capital, and perhaps even a very pleasant, significance.”

“Oh, my God!” cried Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

Razumikhin could not sit still on his chair.

“And aren’t you ashamed now, sister?” asked Raskolnikov.

“I am ashamed, Rodya,” said Dunya. “Pyotr Petrovich, get out!” she turned to him, pale with anger.

Pyotr Petrovich, it seems, had not at all expected such an ending. He had relied too much on himself, on his power, and on the helplessness of his victims. He did not believe it even now. He turned pale, and his lips began to tremble.

“Avdotya Romanovna, if I go out of that door now, with such a send-off, then—take this into account—I shall never come back. Think it over well! My word is firm.”

“What insolence!” cried Dunya, quickly rising from her seat. “Why, I don’t want you to come back!”

“What? So that’s ho-o-ow it is, ma’am!” cried Luzhin, who had not believed in such a denouement until the very last moment and had therefore now lost the thread entirely. “So that’s how it is, ma’am! But do you know, Avdotya Romanovna, that I might lodge a protest, ma’am.”

“What right do you have to talk to her like that!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna hotly intervened. “What can you protest with? And what are these rights of yours? Am I to give my Dunya to you, to the likes of you? Go, leave us altogether! We are to blame ourselves for going into an unjust business, and I most of all…”

“Nevertheless, Pulcheria Alexandrovna,” Luzhin fumed in a rage, “you bound me by the word you gave, which you are now renouncing… and finally… finally, I was drawn thereby, so to speak, into expenses…”

This last claim was so much in Pyotr Petrovich’s character that Raskolnikov, who had been turning pale with anger and with the effort to contain it, suddenly could not hold out and—burst out laughing. Pulcheria Alexandrovna lost her temper:

“Into expenses? What expenses are these? You don’t mean our trunk, do you? Why, the conductor carried it for you for nothing. Lord, and it’s we who bound you! Come to your senses, Pyotr Petrovich, it’s you who bound us hand and foot, not we you!”

“Enough, Mama, please, enough!” Avdotya Romanovna pleaded. “Pyotr Petrovich, do me the kindness, go away!”

“I’m going, ma’am, but just one last word!” he said, by now almost completely unable to control himself. “Your mama, it seems, has completely forgotten that I resolved to take you, so to speak, after the town talk about your reputation that had spread throughout the whole neighborhood. Disregarding public opinion for your sake and restoring your reputation, I might certainly have very, very much hoped for a recompense and even demanded your gratitude… And only now have my eyes been opened! I see myself that I may have acted very, very rashly in disregarding the voice of the public…”

“Has he got a head to spare, or what!” shouted Razumikhin, jumping up from his chair and already preparing to deal with him.

“You are a low and wicked man!” said Dunya.

“Not a word! Not a gesture!” cried Raskolnikov, holding Razumikhin back; then, going up almost point-blank to Luzhin:

“Kindly get out!” he said quietly and distinctly. “And not one word more, or else…”

Pyotr Petrovich looked at him for several seconds with a face pale and twisted with spite, then turned and went out, and certainly rarely has anyone carried away in his heart so much spiteful hatred for anyone as this man did for Raskolnikov. Him, and him alone, he blamed for everything. It is remarkable that, already going down the stairs, he still imagined that the matter was perhaps not entirely lost and, as far as the ladies alone were concerned, even “very, very” remediable.

Notes

1. 1. Luzhin garbles Razumikhin’s name: Razumikhin comes from razum, “reason,” Rassudkin from rassudok, “good sense.”