Part Four · V

When, the next morning, at eleven o’clock sharp, Raskolnikov entered the building of the ——th district police, the department of the examining magistrate, and asked to be announced to Porfiry Petrovich, he was even surprised at how long they kept him waiting: at least ten minutes went by before he was called. And by his reckoning, it seemed, they ought to have simply pounced on him at once. Meanwhile he stood in the waiting room, and people walked past him back and forth who apparently had no concern with him at all. In the next room, which looked like an office, several clerks sat writing, and it was obvious that not one of them had the slightest notion who or what Raskolnikov was. With an uneasy, suspicious look he watched all around him, on the lookout: wasn’t there at least some guard near him, some mysterious eye appointed to keep watch on him so that he wouldn’t go off somewhere? But there was nothing of the kind: he saw only clerical faces, petty and preoccupied, then some other people, and nobody had the least need of him: he could have walked off that minute to the four corners of the earth. More and more firmly the thought took hold in him that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom who had sprung up out of the ground, had really known everything and seen everything—would they have let him, Raskolnikov, stand here like this now and wait calmly? And would they have waited for him here until eleven, until it pleased him to turn up of his own accord? It followed that either that man had not informed yet, or… or else he simply knew nothing either and had seen nothing with his own eyes (and how could he have seen?), and so all of yesterday, everything that had happened to him, Raskolnikov, was once again a phantom, exaggerated by his irritated and sick imagination. This guess had begun to take root in him even yesterday, in the midst of his worst alarms and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a new battle, he suddenly felt that he was trembling—and indignation even boiled up in him at the thought that he was trembling with fear before the hateful Porfiry Petrovich. The most terrible thing of all for him was to meet this man again: he hated him beyond measure, endlessly, and was even afraid of somehow giving himself away through his hatred. And so strong was his indignation that it stopped his trembling at once; he got ready to go in with a cold and insolent air and gave himself his word to keep silent as much as he could, to watch and to listen hard, and, this time at least, no matter what, to master his morbidly irritable nature. At that very moment he was called in to Porfiry Petrovich.

It turned out that Porfiry Petrovich was alone in his office at the moment. His office was a room neither large nor small; in it stood a large writing desk in front of a sofa covered in oilcloth, a bureau, a cupboard in the corner, and several chairs—all government furniture, of polished yellow wood. In the corner, in the back wall, or rather in the partition, there was a locked door: farther on, then, behind the partition, there must be some other rooms. As Raskolnikov came in, Porfiry Petrovich at once shut the door he had entered by, and they were left alone. He met his guest, to all appearances, with the most cheerful and cordial air, and only a few minutes later did Raskolnikov notice in him, by certain signs, something like embarrassment—as though he had suddenly been thrown off his stride or caught at something very private and secret.

“Ah, my most esteemed friend! Here you are… in our parts…” Porfiry began, holding out both hands to him. “Well, do sit down, my dear fellow! Or perhaps you don’t like being called most esteemed and… my dear fellow—like that, tout court? Please don’t take it for familiarity… Here, sir, on the little sofa.”

Raskolnikov sat down, not taking his eyes off him.

“In our parts,” the apology for familiarity, the little French phrase tout court, and so on, and so on—these were all characteristic signs. “He held out both hands to me, though, and didn’t give me either one, he pulled them back in time,” flashed through his mind suspiciously. Each was watching the other, but the moment their eyes met, both of them, quick as lightning, looked away.

“I’ve brought you this paper… about the watch… here you are, sir. Is it written properly, or do I have to copy it out again?”

“What? The paper? Yes, yes… don’t trouble yourself, that’s quite right, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich said, as though in a hurry to get somewhere, and only after he had said it did he take the paper and look it over. “Yes, quite right, sir. Nothing more is needed,” he said in the same rapid patter, and put the paper down on the desk. Then, a minute later, already talking about something else, he picked it up from the desk again and moved it over to his bureau.

“You said yesterday, I think, that you would like to question me… formally… about my acquaintance with that… murdered woman?” Raskolnikov began again. “Now why did I put in that ‘I think’?” flashed through him like lightning. “Now why am I so worried about having put in that ‘I think’?” another thought flashed through him at once, like lightning.

And he suddenly sensed that his suspiciousness, from a single contact with Porfiry, from only two words, only two glances, had already swollen in one instant to monstrous size… and that this was terribly dangerous: his nerves were fraying, his agitation was growing. “Trouble! Trouble!… I’ll let something slip again.”

“Yes, yes, yes! Don’t trouble yourself! There’s time, there’s plenty of time, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich muttered, pacing back and forth around the desk, but somehow without any purpose, as though darting now to the window, now to the bureau, now back to the desk, now avoiding Raskolnikov’s suspicious gaze, now suddenly stopping dead and looking straight at him, point-blank. His small, plump, round little figure looked extraordinarily strange as he did this, like a little ball rolling this way and that and bouncing straight back off every wall and corner.

“We’ve time, sir, we’ve time!… And do you smoke? Have you got any? Here you are, sir, a little cigarette, sir…” he went on, offering his guest a cigarette. “You know, I’m receiving you here, but my apartment is right here, behind the partition… government quarters, sir, but I’m in private lodgings just now, for a while. Some little repairs had to be done here. Now it’s nearly ready… government quarters, you know, are a splendid thing—eh? What do you think?”

“Yes, a splendid thing,” Raskolnikov answered, looking at him almost with derision.

“A splendid thing, a splendid thing…” Porfiry Petrovich kept repeating, as though he had suddenly fallen to thinking about something else entirely. “Yes! A splendid thing!” he all but shouted at the end, suddenly raising his eyes to Raskolnikov and stopping two steps away from him. This silly repetition, over and over, that government quarters were a splendid thing was, in its banality, far too much at odds with the serious, thoughtful, and enigmatic look he now fixed on his guest.

But this only stirred up Raskolnikov’s spite still more, and he could no longer keep himself from a mocking and rather incautious challenge.

“And do you know what,” he asked suddenly, looking at him almost insolently and as though taking pleasure in his own insolence, “there is, I believe, a sort of legal rule, a legal technique—for all possible investigators—of starting first from far off, with trifles, or even with something serious but entirely beside the point, so as, so to speak, to encourage, or rather to distract, the man being questioned, to lull his caution, and then suddenly, in the most unexpected way, to stun him with a blow right on the crown of the head with some most fatal and dangerous question; isn’t that so? It’s still religiously mentioned, I believe, in all the rules and manuals?”

“Yes, yes… so you think I was trying to, with the government quarters… eh?” And having said this, Porfiry Petrovich screwed up his eyes and winked; something merry and sly ran over his face, the little wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out, his little eyes narrowed, his features spread, and he suddenly dissolved into nervous, prolonged laughter, heaving and shaking all over and looking Raskolnikov straight in the eye. Raskolnikov began to laugh too, forcing himself a little; but when Porfiry, seeing that he was laughing too, went off into such a fit of laughter that he turned almost purple, Raskolnikov’s revulsion suddenly overran all caution: he stopped laughing, frowned, and looked long and with hatred at Porfiry, not taking his eyes off him all through that long laughter, which seemed to be kept going on purpose. The lack of caution, however, was obvious on both sides: it came out that Porfiry Petrovich was, as it were, laughing in the face of his guest, who received the laughter with hatred, and was very little embarrassed by this circumstance. This last was very significant for Raskolnikov: he understood that Porfiry Petrovich had surely not been embarrassed a while ago either, but that, on the contrary, it was he himself, Raskolnikov, who had perhaps walked into a trap; that there was clearly something here he did not know, some purpose; that perhaps everything was already prepared and would now, this very minute, come out and come crashing down…

He went straight to the point at once, got up from his seat, and took his cap.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” he began resolutely, but with rather strong irritation, “yesterday you expressed a wish that I should come to you for some sort of interrogations.” (He laid special stress on the word “interrogations.”) “I have come, and if you need anything, then ask, and if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time, I have business… I have to be at the funeral of that same official who was run over by horses, the one you… also know about…” he added, and at once grew angry at having added it, and so at once grew still more irritated. “I’m sick of all this, sir, do you hear, and have been for a long time… it’s partly why I was ill… in a word,” he almost shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was still more out of place, “in a word: kindly either question me or let me go, at once… and if you question me, then in no other way than in proper form, sir! Otherwise I won’t allow it; and so, good-bye for now, since there is nothing for the two of us to do here at present.”

“Good Lord! What are you saying! What is there to question you about?” Porfiry Petrovich suddenly began to cluck, instantly changing both his tone and his look and in a flash stopping his laughter. “Now don’t trouble yourself, please,” he fussed, now rushing in all directions again, now suddenly setting about getting Raskolnikov seated, “there’s time, there’s plenty of time, sir, and all this is mere trifles, sir! On the contrary, I’m so glad you’ve come to us at last… I’m receiving you as a guest. And as for that cursed laughter, my dear Rodion Romanovich, you must forgive me. Rodion Romanovich? That is how you’re called after your father, I believe?… I’m a nervous man, sir, you made me laugh so with the sharpness of your remark; sometimes, really, I start shaking like india rubber, and for a good half hour… I’m given to laughing, sir. With my build I’m even afraid of a stroke. But do sit down, what’s the matter?… Please, my dear fellow, or I’ll think you’re angry…”

Raskolnikov was silent, listening and watching, still frowning angrily. He did sit down, however, but without letting go of his cap.

“I’ll tell you one thing about myself, my dear Rodion Romanovich, by way of a character sketch, so to speak,” Porfiry Petrovich went on, bustling about the room and, as before, seeming to avoid meeting his guest’s eyes. “I’m a bachelor, you know, an unsociable sort, unknown, and what’s more a man who’s finished, a man who’s frozen stiff, sir, gone to seed, and… and… and have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that with us, I mean with us in Russia, sir, and most of all in our Petersburg circles, when two intelligent men who don’t yet know each other very well but who, so to speak, respect each other mutually, as you and I do now, sir, come together, they can’t for a whole half hour find anything to talk about—they freeze up in front of each other, sit there, and are mutually embarrassed. Everyone has something to talk about, ladies, for instance… society people, for instance, people of high tone, always have a topic of conversation, c’est de rigueur, but people of the middling sort, like us, are all bashful and tongue-tied… the thinking ones, I mean. Now why is that, my dear fellow? Is it that we’ve no public interests, sir, or are we just very honest and don’t wish to deceive each other, I don’t know, sir. Eh? What do you think? And do put your cap down, sir, it’s just as if you were about to leave, really, it’s awkward to look at… I, on the contrary, am so glad, sir…”

Raskolnikov put down his cap, still keeping silent and listening, seriously and with a frown, to Porfiry’s empty and muddled chatter. “Does he really mean to distract my attention with his silly chatter?”

“I won’t offer you coffee, sir, this isn’t the place for it; but why not sit for five little minutes with a friend, for a bit of diversion,” Porfiry poured out without a pause, “and you know, sir, all these official duties… now don’t be offended, my dear fellow, that I keep walking about, sir, back and forth; excuse me, my dear fellow, I’m terribly afraid of offending you, but exercise is simply indispensable to me, sir. I’m always sitting, and I’m so glad to walk about for five minutes… hemorrhoids, sir… I keep meaning to treat them with gymnastics; there, they say, state councillors, actual state councillors, and even privy councillors are happy to jump over a little rope, sir; that’s what science has come to in our age, sir… yes, sir… And as for these duties here, the interrogations and all these formalities… now you yourself, my dear fellow, were pleased to mention interrogations just now, sir… well, you know, really, my dear Rodion Romanovich, these interrogations sometimes throw the interrogator off more than the man interrogated… You were pleased to remark on that just now, my dear fellow, with perfect justice and wit.” (Raskolnikov had remarked nothing of the kind.) “You get tangled up, sir! Really, you get tangled up! And it’s always one and the same thing, always one and the same, like a drum! Now there’s a reform coming, and we’ll at least get a new name, heh-heh-heh! And as for our legal techniques—as you were pleased to put it so wittily—there I agree with you completely and entirely, sir. Tell me, who among all the accused, even the most homespun peasant, doesn’t know that they’ll begin, for instance, by lulling him with irrelevant questions (in your happy phrase), and then suddenly stun him right on the crown of the head, with the butt of an ax, sir, heh! heh! heh! right on the crown, in your happy simile, heh! heh! so you really did think that with the quarters I meant to… heh! heh! What an ironical man you are. Well, I won’t! Ah yes, by the way, one little word calls up another, one thought brings on another—you also mentioned form a while ago, regarding, you know, the little interrogation, sir… But what’s the use of form! Form, you know, in many cases is nonsense, sir. Sometimes you just have a friendly chat, and it’s more profitable. Form will never run away, allow me to reassure you on that score, sir; and what is form, essentially, I ask you? You can’t hamper an investigator with form at every step. The investigator’s work, after all, is, so to speak, a free art, in its own way, sir, or something of the sort… heh-heh-heh!…”

Porfiry Petrovich paused a moment for breath. He had simply kept pouring it out, without tiring, now senselessly empty phrases, now suddenly slipping in some enigmatic little words, and then at once wandering off into nonsense again. By now he was almost running about the room, moving his fat little legs faster and faster, his eyes on the floor the whole time, his right hand thrust behind his back, while with his left he kept waving and making all sorts of gestures, each one amazingly ill-suited to his words. Raskolnikov suddenly noticed that, as he ran about the room, he had a couple of times seemed to stop, as it were, near the door, for one instant, and seemed to listen… “Is he waiting for something?”

“And there you really are quite right, sir,” Porfiry took up again, looking at Raskolnikov cheerfully, with unusual simple-heartedness (which made Raskolnikov positively start and instantly brace himself), “really right, sir, to have laughed so wittily at legal forms, heh-heh! Those profoundly psychological techniques of ours (some of them, of course) are extremely ridiculous, sir, and perhaps useless too, sir, if one is much hampered by form, sir. Yes, sir… I’m on about form again: well, suppose I recognized, or rather suspected, someone or other, this one, that one, a third, so to speak, of being the criminal, sir, in some little case entrusted to me… You’re preparing for the law, aren’t you, Rodion Romanovich?”

“Yes, I was…”

“Well, then here’s a little example for you, so to speak, for the future—not that you should think I’d dare to teach you: just look at the articles on crime you publish! No, sir, but simply as a fact, I make so bold as to offer a little example—so, say I consider this one, that one, a third, for instance, to be the criminal, now why, I ask, should I disturb him before the time, even if I had evidence against him, sir? One man, for instance, I’m obliged to arrest as quickly as possible, but another, you see, is not of that character at all, really, sir; so why not let him take a walk about town, heh-heh, sir! No, I see you don’t quite understand, so I’ll paint it for you more clearly, sir: suppose I lock him up, for instance, too early, why, I might thereby give him moral support, so to speak, heh-heh! You’re laughing?” (Raskolnikov had not even thought of laughing: he sat with his lips pressed tight, not taking his inflamed gaze from Porfiry Petrovich’s eyes.) “And yet that’s how it is, sir, with certain subjects especially, because people are all so various, sir, and over all of it there is only practice, sir. Now you’re pleased to say: evidence; well, granted, there is evidence, sir, but evidence, my dear fellow, cuts both ways, for the most part, sir, and I am an investigator, and therefore a weak man, I confess it: I’d like to present the investigation, so to speak, with mathematical clarity, I’d like to get hold of such a piece of evidence that it would be like two times two makes four! That it would be like direct and indisputable proof! But if I lock him up at the wrong time—even though I were sure it was he—why, I might be taking away from myself the means of convicting him further, and why? Why, because I’d be giving him, so to speak, a definite position, I’d be, so to speak, defining him psychologically and setting his mind at rest, and then he’ll withdraw from me into his shell: he’ll realize at last that he’s a prisoner. They say in Sevastopol, right after the Alma, the clever people were oh so afraid that the enemy would attack any minute in open force and take Sevastopol at one stroke; but when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege and was opening the first parallel, my, how glad they were, they say, and how they calmed down, the clever people, sir: that meant the business would drag on for two months at least, because when would they ever take it by a regular siege! Laughing again, not believing again? Well, of course, you’re right too. You’re right, sir, right, sir! These are all particular cases, I agree with you; the case I’ve presented really is a particular one, sir! But here is what one ought to observe, my most excellent Rodion Romanovich: the general case, sir, that very one for which all the legal forms and rules are designed and from which they are calculated and written down in books, doesn’t exist at all, sir, for the very reason that every case, every single one, a crime, say, as soon as it happens in reality, at once turns into a completely particular case, sir; and sometimes into such a one: not like anything that came before, sir, not in the least. Most comical cases of that sort happen sometimes, sir. Now suppose I leave a certain gentleman entirely alone: suppose I don’t arrest him and don’t disturb him, but he knows every hour and every minute, or at least suspects, that I know everything, the whole inside story, and am watching him day and night, guarding him without sleep, and suppose he is consciously under perpetual suspicion and fear from me—why, I swear to God, his head will start spinning, really, sir, he’ll come himself, and perhaps do something besides that will look like two times two, that will have, so to speak, a mathematical look—and that’s pleasant, sir. That can happen even with a clod-footed peasant, but with our sort, a man who is intelligent in the modern way, and developed in a certain direction besides, all the more so! Because, my dear, it’s a very important thing to understand in which direction a man is developed. And nerves, sir, nerves, you’ve quite forgotten about them, sir! Why, nowadays it’s all sick, and thin, and irritated!… And the bile, the bile there is in all of them! Why, I tell you, on occasion that’s a gold mine of its kind, sir! And what worry is it to me that he walks about town untied! Let him, let him stroll a while, let him; I know anyway that he’s my little victim and won’t run away from me anywhere! And where would he run to, heh-heh! Abroad, perhaps? It’s a Pole who runs abroad, not he, all the more since I’m watching and have taken measures. Into the depths of the fatherland, perhaps? But that’s where the peasants live, the real, homespun Russian peasants; why, a man developed in the modern way would sooner choose prison than live among such foreigners as our peasants, heh-heh! But that’s all nonsense and externals. What’s this: run away! That’s a formality; that’s not the main thing; it isn’t only because there’s nowhere to run that he won’t run away from me: he won’t run away from me psychologically, heh-heh! There’s a little phrase for you! He won’t run away from me by a law of nature, even if there were somewhere to run. Have you ever seen a moth before a candle? Well, he’ll be just like that, he’ll keep circling, keep circling around me, as around a candle; freedom will lose its charm for him, he’ll start brooding, getting entangled, he’ll entangle himself all over, as if in a net, he’ll worry himself to death!… More than that: he’ll prepare some little mathematical thing for me himself, something like two times two—if only I give him a long enough intermission… And he’ll keep on, keep on making circles around me, narrowing and narrowing the radius, and—plop! He’ll fly straight into my mouth, and I’ll swallow him, sir, and that’s very pleasant indeed, sir, heh-heh-heh! You don’t believe me?”

Raskolnikov did not answer; he sat pale and motionless, still peering into Porfiry’s face with the same intensity.

“A fine lesson!” he thought, turning cold. “This isn’t even cat and mouse anymore, the way it was yesterday. And he can’t be showing me his strength for nothing and… prompting me: he’s much too clever for that! There’s another purpose here, but what? Eh, nonsense, brother, you’re trying to scare me, you’re being cunning! You have no proof, and yesterday’s man doesn’t exist! You simply want to throw me off, you want to provoke me too soon and then slam me down in that state, only you’re lying, you’ll fall flat, you’ll fall flat! But why, why prompt me so much?… Counting on my sick nerves, are we?… No, brother, you’re lying, you’ll fall flat, even if you have got something ready… Well, we’ll just see what it is you’ve got ready there.”

And he braced himself with all his strength, preparing for a terrible and unknown catastrophe. At moments he wanted to throw himself on Porfiry and strangle him right there on the spot. He had been afraid of this rage even as he came in. He felt that his lips had gone dry, his heart was pounding, foam had caked on his lips. But still he resolved to keep silent and not to utter a word until the time came. He understood that this was the best tactic in his position, because not only would he not let anything slip, but, on the contrary, he would irritate the enemy himself by his silence, and perhaps it would be the enemy who let something slip to him. At least that was what he hoped.

“No, I see you don’t believe me, sir, you keep thinking I’m playing innocent little jokes on you,” Porfiry took up, growing merrier and merrier, giggling with pleasure all the while and again beginning to circle the room. “Of course, you’re right, sir; God himself made my figure such that it puts nothing but comic thoughts into other people’s heads; a buffoon, sir; but I’ll tell you this, and I’ll say it again, sir, that you, my dear fellow, Rodion Romanovich, forgive an old man, are still a young man, sir, in your first youth, so to speak, and so you value the human intellect above everything, like all young people. Playful sharpness of wit and the abstract arguments of reason seduce you, sir. And that’s exactly like the old Austrian Hofkriegsrat, for instance, as far, that is, as I can judge of military events: on paper they’d beaten Napoleon and taken him captive, and there in their office they’d calculated and arranged everything in the wittiest way, and then you look, and General Mack surrenders with his whole army, heh-heh-heh! I see, I see, my dear Rodion Romanovich, you’re laughing at me because I, such a civilian, keep picking little examples out of military history. But what can I do, it’s a weakness, I love military matters, and how I love reading all those military dispatches… I’ve definitely missed my calling. I ought to have served in the army, sir, really, sir. I might not have become a Napoleon, but I’d have been a major, sir, heh-heh-heh! Well, sir, so now, my dear soul, I’ll tell you the whole detailed truth about that, I mean, particular case: reality and nature, my good sir, are an important thing, and oh, how they sometimes knock the legs out from under the most far-sighted calculation! Eh, listen to an old man, I’m speaking seriously, Rodion Romanovich” (as he said this, Porfiry Petrovich, who was hardly thirty-five, really did seem suddenly to have aged all over: even his voice changed, and he seemed somehow to hunch up all over), “besides, I’m a candid man, sir… Am I a candid man or not? What do you think? Entirely, it seems to me: here I am telling you such things for nothing, and not even demanding a reward for it, heh-heh! Well then, sir, I’ll go on, sir: wit, in my opinion, is a magnificent thing, sir; it is, so to speak, the adornment of nature and the consolation of life, and what tricks it can play, it seems, so that how on earth could some poor little investigator guess sometimes, especially since he’s carried away by his own fancy too, as always happens, because he’s a human being too, sir! But it’s nature that comes to the rescue of the poor little investigator, sir, that’s the trouble! And that’s just what young people carried away by their wit never think of, the ones ‘stepping over all obstacles’ (as you were pleased to put it in the wittiest and slyest way). He’ll lie, let us suppose, the man, I mean, sir, the particular case, sir, the incognito, sir, and lie superbly, in the slyest manner; here, you’d think, is triumph, and enjoy the fruits of your wit, but he—plop! At the most interesting point, the most scandalous point, he goes and faints. Granted, it’s illness, and rooms are sometimes stuffy too, but all the same, sir! All the same, he’s given you the idea! He lied incomparably, but he didn’t know how to reckon with nature. There it is, sir, that’s where the treachery lies! Another time, carried away by the playfulness of his wit, he’ll start making a fool of the man who suspects him, he’ll turn pale as if on purpose, as if in play, but he turns pale much too naturally, much too much like the truth, and there, he’s given the idea again! He may fool him the first time, but overnight the other will think it over, if he’s no fool himself. And it’s like that at every step, sir! Why, he’ll start running ahead himself, start poking his nose in where he’s not asked, start talking incessantly about what he ought, on the contrary, to keep quiet about, start throwing out various allegories, heh-heh! He’ll come himself and start asking: why, he says, are they so long about taking me in? Heh-heh-heh! And that can happen to the very wittiest man, to a psychologist and a man of letters, sir! Nature is a mirror, a mirror, sir, the most transparent one, sir! Look into it and admire yourself, that’s what, sir! But why have you turned so pale, Rodion Romanovich, isn’t it stuffy for you, shouldn’t I open the little window?”

“Oh, please, don’t trouble yourself,” cried Raskolnikov, and suddenly burst out laughing, “please, don’t trouble yourself!”

Porfiry stopped in front of him, waited, and suddenly burst out laughing himself, after him. Raskolnikov got up from the sofa, abruptly breaking off his own laughter, which had been perfectly hysterical.

“Porfiry Petrovich!” he said loudly and distinctly, though he could barely stand on his trembling legs. “I see clearly at last that you positively suspect me of the murder of that old woman and her sister Lizaveta. For my part, I declare that I have long been sick of it all. If you find you have the right to prosecute me lawfully, then prosecute me; to arrest me, then arrest me. But I will not allow myself to be laughed at to my face and tormented.”

Suddenly his lips began to tremble, his eyes blazed with fury, and his voice, held in until now, rang out.

“I won’t allow it, sir!” he suddenly shouted, bringing his fist down on the table with all his might. “Do you hear that, Porfiry Petrovich? I won’t allow it!”

“Oh, Lord, what is it now, again!” cried Porfiry Petrovich, apparently in utter fright. “My dear fellow! Rodion Romanovich! My dearest! My good man! What’s the matter with you?”

“I won’t allow it!” Raskolnikov began to shout a second time.

“Quieter, my dear fellow! They’ll hear, they’ll come in! And then what shall we tell them, just think!” Porfiry Petrovich whispered in horror, bringing his face right up to Raskolnikov’s face.

“I won’t allow it, I won’t allow it!” Raskolnikov repeated mechanically, but he too suddenly dropped to a whisper.

Porfiry quickly turned away and ran to open the window.

“Let in some fresh air! And you ought to drink a little water, my dear, why, it’s a fit, sir!” And he was about to rush to the door to order water, but right there in the corner, as it happened, there was a carafe of water.

“Drink, my dear fellow,” he whispered, rushing to him with the carafe, “it might help…” Porfiry Petrovich’s alarm and his very sympathy were so natural that Raskolnikov fell silent and began to study him with wild curiosity. He did not take the water, however.

“Rodion Romanovich! My dear! Why, you’ll drive yourself out of your mind like this, I assure you, oh-oh! Ah-ah! Do drink it! Drink just a tiny bit!”

He did manage to make him take the glass of water in his hand. Raskolnikov mechanically began to raise it to his lips, but, coming to himself, put it down on the table with disgust.

“Yes, sir, we had a little fit, sir! At this rate, my dear, you’ll bring your old illness back on yourself,” Porfiry Petrovich clucked with friendly sympathy, though still with a somewhat flustered look. “Lord! How can a man take so little care of himself? And there was Dmitry Prokofyich, he came to see me yesterday—I agree, I agree, sir, I have a caustic character, a nasty one, but just look what he concluded from it!… Lord! He came yesterday, after you, we were at dinner, and he talked and talked, I could only throw up my hands; well, I thought… oh, good Lord! Did he come from you, perhaps? But do sit down, my dear fellow, sit down, for Christ’s sake!”

“No, not from me! But I knew he had gone to you, and why he had gone,” Raskolnikov answered sharply.

“You knew?”

“I knew. Well, what of it?”

“Only this, my dear Rodion Romanovich, that I know of other exploits of yours besides; I’m informed about everything, sir! Why, I know how you went to rent the apartment, at nightfall, when it was getting dark, and started ringing the bell, and asked about the blood, and got the workmen and the caretakers all muddled. Why, I understand your state of mind, the state of mind you were in then… but all the same, at this rate you’ll simply drive yourself out of your mind, by God, sir! Your head will start spinning! Your indignation is boiling up much too strongly in you, sir, noble indignation, sir, at the injuries you’ve received, first from fate and then from the police, and so you rush about here and there in order, so to speak, to make everyone speak out as quickly as possible and so be done with it all at once, because you’re sick of these stupidities and of all these suspicions. Isn’t that so? Have I guessed your state of mind, sir?… Only at this rate you’ll set not only your own head spinning but Razumikhin’s as well; he’s much too kind a man for this, you know that yourself. With you it’s illness, but with him it’s virtue, and the illness turns out to be catching for him… I’ll tell you, my dear fellow, when you’ve calmed down… but do sit down, my dear fellow, for Christ’s sake! Please, rest, you look like death; do sit down.”

Raskolnikov sat down; his trembling was passing, and heat was breaking out all over his body. In deep amazement he listened tensely to Porfiry Petrovich, who was frightened and was looking after him like a friend. He did not believe a word of it. He felt, though, some strange inclination to believe. Porfiry’s unexpected words about the apartment had utterly stunned him. “How can this be, so he knows about the apartment?” it suddenly occurred to him. “And he tells me about it himself!”

“Yes, sir, there was a case almost exactly like it, a psychological case, in our legal practice, sir, a morbid sort of case, sir,” Porfiry went on in a rapid patter. “There, too, a man slandered himself with a murder, sir, and how he did it: he worked up a whole hallucination, presented facts, told circumstances, confused and baffled every last person, and why? He himself, quite unintentionally, had been partly the cause of the murder, but only partly, and when he found out that he had given the murderers their opportunity, he fell into anguish, his mind clouded, he began to imagine things, went quite off his head, and convinced himself that he was the murderer! But the Governing Senate finally sorted the case out, and the unfortunate man was acquitted and placed under care. Thanks be to the Governing Senate! Eh, dear me, ai-ai-ai! But where will this lead, my dear fellow? At this rate a man can bring on a brain fever, once such urges to work up his nerves start coming over him, going to ring doorbells at night and ask about blood! Why, I’ve studied that psychology thoroughly in practice, sir. At times, you know, a man is drawn to jump out of a window or off a bell tower, and the sensation is so tempting. The same with doorbells, sir… Illness, Rodion Romanovich, illness! You’ve begun to neglect your illness too much, sir. You ought to consult an experienced physician, for what good is that fat one of yours!… You’re delirious! All this is simply happening to you in delirium!…”

For a moment everything simply spun around Raskolnikov.

“Can it be, can it be,” flashed through him, “that he’s lying even now? Impossible, impossible!” He pushed the thought away from himself, feeling in advance to what a pitch of fury and rage it might drive him, feeling that he might go mad with fury.

“It wasn’t in delirium, I was awake!” he cried, straining every power of his reason to see through Porfiry’s game. “Awake, wide awake! Do you hear?”

“Yes, I understand and I hear, sir! You said yesterday too that it wasn’t in delirium, you even especially insisted that it wasn’t in delirium! I understand everything you can say, sir! Eh-eh!… But do listen, Rodion Romanovich, my benefactor, well, take just this very circumstance. Suppose you really were, in actual fact, a criminal, or mixed up somehow in this cursed business, now would you, for pity’s sake, insist yourself that you did all this not in delirium but, on the contrary, in full possession of your senses? And insist especially, with such stubbornness, such peculiar stubbornness, insist—now could that be, could that be, for pity’s sake? Why, quite the opposite, in my opinion. If you felt there was something against you, then the very thing you ought to insist on is: it was in delirium, mind you, it certainly was! Isn’t that so? Isn’t it?”

Something sly could be heard in this question. Raskolnikov drew back against the very back of the sofa, away from Porfiry, who was leaning toward him, and stared at him silently, point-blank, in bewilderment.

“Or take Mr. Razumikhin, regarding, I mean, whether he came yesterday to talk of his own accord or at your prompting? Why, you ought precisely to say that he came of his own accord, and conceal that it was at your prompting! And yet you don’t conceal it! You actually insist that it was at your prompting!”

Raskolnikov had never insisted on that. A chill ran down his spine.

“You keep lying,” he said slowly and weakly, his lips twisted into a sickly smile, “you want to show me again that you know my whole game, that you know all my answers beforehand,” he said, almost feeling himself that he was no longer weighing his words as he should, “you want to frighten me… or you’re simply laughing at me…”

He went on staring straight at him as he said this, and suddenly boundless rage flashed in his eyes again.

“You keep lying!” he cried. “You know perfectly well yourself that the best dodge for a criminal is, as far as possible, not to hide what needn’t be hidden. I don’t believe you!”

“What a wriggler you are!” Porfiry tittered. “There’s no managing you, my dear fellow; some sort of monomania has lodged itself in you. So you don’t believe me? But I tell you that you do believe me already, you believe me by a quarter of an arshin already, and I’ll make you believe me by the whole arshin, because I truly love you and sincerely wish you well.”¹

Raskolnikov’s lips trembled.

“Yes, sir, I do wish it, sir, I’ll tell you once and for all, sir,” he went on, lightly, amicably taking Raskolnikov by the arm, a little above the elbow, “once and for all, sir: look after your illness. Besides, your family has come to you now; think of them. You ought to be giving them rest and comfort, and you only frighten them…”

“What business is that of yours? How do you know? Why are you so interested? So you’re keeping watch on me, and you want to show me so?”

“My dear fellow! Why, it was from you, from you yourself that I learned it all! You don’t even notice that in your agitation you tell everything beforehand yourself, to me and to others. From Mr. Razumikhin, Dmitry Prokofyich, I also learned a good many interesting details yesterday. No, sir, you interrupted me, but I’ll say it: through your suspiciousness, for all your wit, you have actually lost a sound view of things. Well, take, for instance, the same subject again, the doorbells: why, a treasure like that, a fact like that (a real, whole fact, sir!), I handed it over to you just like that, lock, stock, and barrel, I, the investigator! And you see nothing in that? Why, if I suspected you even a little, is that how I ought to have acted? On the contrary, I ought first to have lulled your suspicions and not let on that I knew of this fact already; to draw you off, like this, in the opposite direction, and then suddenly, like the butt of an ax on the crown of the head (in your own expression), stun you: ‘And what, sir, were you pleased to be doing in the murdered woman’s apartment at ten o’clock at night, and very nearly eleven, wasn’t it? And why did you ring the bell? And why did you ask about the blood? And why did you get the caretakers muddled and call on them to come to the station, to the district lieutenant?’ That’s how I ought to have acted, if I’d had even a drop of suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your statement in full form, made a search, and perhaps even arrested you… Therefore I harbor no suspicions of you, since I acted otherwise! But you’ve lost a sound view of things, and you see nothing, I repeat, sir!”

Raskolnikov started all over, so that Porfiry Petrovich noticed it only too clearly.

“You keep lying!” he cried. “I don’t know what you’re after, but you keep lying… You weren’t speaking in that sense a while ago, and I can’t be mistaken… You’re lying!”

“I’m lying?” Porfiry took him up, apparently growing heated, but keeping a perfectly cheerful and mocking air and seeming not in the least troubled by what opinion Mr. Raskolnikov might have of him. “I’m lying?… Well, and how did I treat you a while ago (I, the investigator), prompting you myself and handing you all the means of defense, laying out all that psychology for you myself: ‘Illness, you see, delirium, he’d been wronged; melancholy and the police,’ and all the rest of it? Eh? Heh-heh-heh! Though, by the way—I’ll mention it in passing—all these psychological means of defense, these excuses and dodges, are extremely unsound, and they cut both ways too: ‘Illness, you see, delirium, dreams, I imagined it, I don’t remember,’ all that’s very well, sir, but why, my dear fellow, in illness and in delirium, is it precisely such dreams that one imagines, and not others? There could have been others, sir, couldn’t there? Isn’t that so? Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

Raskolnikov looked at him proudly and with contempt.

“In a word,” he said insistently and loudly, getting up and pushing Porfiry back a little as he did so, “in a word, I want to know: do you acknowledge me finally free of suspicion or not? Speak, Porfiry Petrovich, speak positively and finally, and quickly, now!”

“Oh, what a job! What a job you are, really,” cried Porfiry with a perfectly cheerful, sly, and not in the least alarmed air. “And what do you need to know for, what do you need to know so much for, when nobody has even begun to trouble you in the least! Why, you’re like a child: give it here, put fire in my hands! And why are you so worried? Why are you so eager to push yourself on us, for what reasons? Eh? Heh-heh-heh!”

“I repeat to you,” cried Raskolnikov in a fury, “that I cannot bear any longer…”

“What, sir? The uncertainty?” Porfiry broke in.

“Don’t taunt me! I won’t have it!… I tell you I won’t have it!… I can’t and I won’t!… Do you hear! Do you hear!” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table again.

“Quiet, quiet! They’ll hear! I’m warning you seriously: take care of yourself. I’m not joking, sir!” Porfiry said in a whisper, but this time his face no longer had the womanish, good-natured, frightened expression of a while ago; on the contrary, now he was openly giving orders, sternly, with knitted brows, as though breaking through all the secrets and ambiguities at a stroke. But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, nonplussed for a moment, suddenly fell into a real frenzy; but, strange to say, he again obeyed the order to speak more quietly, though he was in the most violent paroxysm of fury.

“I won’t let myself be tormented!” he suddenly began to whisper, as before, instantly conscious, with pain and hatred, that he could not help submitting to the order, and flying into still greater fury at the thought. “Arrest me, search me, but kindly act according to form, and don’t play with me, sir! Don’t you dare…”

“Now don’t you worry about form,” Porfiry interrupted, with his former sly smile and as though even admiring Raskolnikov with relish, “I invited you this time, my dear fellow, in a homely way, quite as a friend!”

“I don’t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And look here: I’m taking my cap and going. Well, what do you say now, if you mean to arrest me?”

He snatched up his cap and went to the door.

“And don’t you want to see my little surprise?” Porfiry tittered, catching hold of him again a little above the elbow and stopping him at the door. He was evidently growing merrier and more playful all the time, which drove Raskolnikov completely beside himself.

“What little surprise? What is it?” he asked, suddenly stopping and looking at Porfiry in fright.

“A little surprise, sir, sitting right here behind my door, heh-heh-heh!” (He pointed his finger at the locked door in the partition, which led into his government quarters.) “I even locked it, so it wouldn’t run away.”

“What is it? Where? What?…” Raskolnikov went up to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked.

“Locked, sir, and here’s the key!”

And indeed he showed him the key, taking it out of his pocket.

“You’re lying, all of it!” howled Raskolnikov, no longer holding back. “You’re lying, you damned Punchinello!” And he threw himself at Porfiry, who retreated toward the door, but was not in the least afraid.

“I understand it all, all of it!” he cried, leaping up to him. “You’re lying and teasing me so that I’ll give myself away…”

“Why, you couldn’t give yourself away any more than you have, my dear Rodion Romanych. You’re in a frenzy, you know. Don’t shout, or I’ll call my people, sir!”

“You’re lying, nothing will happen! Call your people! You knew I was ill, and you wanted to provoke me, into a fury, so that I’d give myself away, that was your aim! No, give me facts! I’ve understood it all! You have no facts, you only have rotten, worthless guesses, Zametov’s guesses!… You knew my character, you wanted to drive me into a frenzy and then stun me suddenly with priests and deputies… Are you waiting for them? Eh? What are you waiting for? Where? Bring them on!”

“Now what deputies, my dear fellow! The things a man will imagine! And one can’t act according to form like that, the way you say; you don’t know the business, my dear soul… But form won’t run away, sir, you’ll see for yourself!…” Porfiry muttered, listening at the door.

And indeed, at that moment, something like a noise was heard just outside the door, in the other room.

“Ah, they’re coming!” cried Raskolnikov. “You’ve sent for them!… You were waiting for them! You had it all worked out… Well, bring them all in here: deputies, witnesses, whatever you like… go on! I’m ready! Ready!…”

But here a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected in the ordinary course of things that, of course, neither Raskolnikov nor Porfiry Petrovich could have counted on such a denouement.

Notes

1. 1. The arshin, an old Russian measure of length, is about twenty-eight inches.