Part Five · I
The morning that followed Pyotr Petrovich’s fateful talk with Dunechka and Pulcheria Alexandrovna had its sobering effect on Pyotr Petrovich as well. To his very great displeasure, he was forced little by little to accept as an accomplished and irrevocable fact what only yesterday had seemed to him an almost fantastic occurrence, one that, though it had come to pass, still seemed somehow impossible. All night the black serpent of stung vanity had sucked at his heart. On getting out of bed, Pyotr Petrovich at once looked at himself in the mirror. He was afraid his bile might have overflowed in the night. On that side, however, all was well so far, and, having looked at his noble, white countenance, which had grown a little fat of late, Pyotr Petrovich was even consoled for an instant, in the fullest conviction that he would find himself a bride somewhere else, and perhaps an even better one; but he came to himself at once and spat energetically to one side, which provoked a silent but sarcastic smile in his young friend and roommate, Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov. Pyotr Petrovich noticed this smile and at once silently put it down to his young friend’s account. He had managed to put a great deal down to his account lately. His spite redoubled when he suddenly realized that he ought not to have told Andrei Semyonovich yesterday about yesterday’s results. That was his second mistake of yesterday, made in the heat of the moment, from excessive expansiveness, in irritation… Then, all through that morning, as if on purpose, one unpleasantness followed another. Even at the Senate some setback awaited him in the case he was busy with there. He was particularly irritated by the landlord of the apartment he had rented in view of his approaching marriage and was having done up at his own expense: this landlord, some German craftsman who had grown rich, would not on any account agree to break the contract just concluded and demanded the full forfeit stipulated in the contract, even though Pyotr Petrovich was returning the apartment to him almost entirely redecorated. In the same way, at the furniture shop they would not on any account return a single rouble of the deposit for the furniture he had bought but not yet had moved into the apartment. “I can’t very well get married just for the sake of the furniture!” Pyotr Petrovich ground his teeth to himself, and at the same time a desperate hope flashed in him once more: “But can it really be that all this is so irretrievably lost and over? Is it really impossible to try once more?” The thought of Dunechka once more pricked his heart temptingly. He lived through that moment in torment, and of course, if it had been possible right then, by a mere wish, to kill Raskolnikov, Pyotr Petrovich would have uttered that wish at once.
“Another mistake, besides, was that I gave them no money at all,” he thought, returning gloomily to Lebezyatnikov’s little room. “And why the devil did I turn into such a Jew? There wasn’t even any calculation in it! I meant to keep them on short rations and bring them to the point where they’d look on me as their providence, and look at them now!… Pah!… No, if I’d handed them over in all this time, say, fifteen hundred or so for the trousseau, and for presents, for various little boxes, dressing cases, carnelians, dress materials, and all that trash from Knopp’s and the English shop, things would have been neater and… firmer! They wouldn’t have turned me down so easily now! They’re the sort of people who would certainly have considered it their duty, in case of a refusal, to give back both the presents and the money; and giving it back would have come rather hard, and they’d have been sorry to! And their conscience would have pricked them too: how, they’d say, can we suddenly drive away a man who till now has been so generous and fairly delicate?… Hm! I made a blunder!” And, grinding his teeth once more, Pyotr Petrovich called himself a fool then and there—to himself, of course.
Having reached this conclusion, he came home twice as spiteful and irritable as when he had gone out. The preparations for the memorial dinner in Katerina Ivanovna’s room somewhat aroused his curiosity. He had heard something about this memorial dinner yesterday; he even remembered, it seemed, that he had been invited too; but, busy with his own affairs, he had let all the rest go by unnoticed. Hastening to inquire of Mrs. Lippewechsel, who was busying herself, in the absence of Katerina Ivanovna (who was at the cemetery), around the table being laid, he learned that the memorial dinner would be a grand one, that almost all the lodgers had been invited, even some who had not known the deceased, that even Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov had been invited, in spite of his former quarrel with Katerina Ivanovna, and, finally, that he himself, Pyotr Petrovich, had not only been invited but was even awaited with great impatience, since he was almost the most important guest of all the lodgers. Amalia Ivanovna herself had also been invited with great honor, in spite of all the past unpleasantness, and was therefore playing hostess and bustling about now, almost taking pleasure in it, and on top of that was all dressed up, in mourning, to be sure, but all of it new, silk, in her very finest, and was proud of it. All these facts and pieces of information gave Pyotr Petrovich a certain idea, and he went into his room, that is, into Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov’s room, somewhat lost in thought. The fact was that he had also learned that Raskolnikov was among those invited.
Andrei Semyonovich, for some reason, had stayed at home all that morning. Between this gentleman and Pyotr Petrovich there had arisen relations of a rather strange, though partly also natural, kind: Pyotr Petrovich despised and hated him even beyond measure, almost from the very day he had settled in with him, but at the same time he seemed a little afraid of him. He had taken lodgings with him on arriving in Petersburg not only out of stingy economy, though that was almost the main reason, but there was another reason as well. While still in the provinces he had heard of Andrei Semyonovich, his former ward, as one of the most advanced young progressives and even as playing a significant role in certain curious and fabulous circles. This had struck Pyotr Petrovich. These very circles, mighty, all-knowing, despising everyone and exposing everyone, had long frightened Pyotr Petrovich with a kind of peculiar fear, though a completely indefinite one. Of course he himself, and in the provinces at that, could not form any accurate notion of anything of the sort, even approximately. He had heard, like everyone, that there existed, especially in Petersburg, certain progressives, nihilists, exposers, and so on, and so on, but, like many people, he exaggerated and distorted the sense and meaning of these names to the point of absurdity. What he had feared most of all for several years now was exposure, and this was the chief ground of his constant, exaggerated uneasiness, especially when he dreamed of transferring his activity to Petersburg. In this respect he was, as they say, scared, the way little children are sometimes scared. Several years before, in the provinces, when he was only just beginning to arrange his career, he had come across two cases of fairly important provincial figures being cruelly exposed, figures he had clung to until then and who had been his patrons. One case had ended in a particularly scandalous way for the person exposed, and the other had very nearly ended in a great deal of trouble. That was why Pyotr Petrovich had resolved, on arriving in Petersburg, to find out at once what it was all about, and, if need be, to run ahead just in case and curry favor with “our younger generations.” In this he was relying on Andrei Semyonovich, and when he visited Raskolnikov, for instance, he had already learned to round off certain phrases after a fashion, in someone else’s voice…
Of course he had quickly managed to make out that Andrei Semyonovich was an extremely banal and simple-minded little man. But this did not in the least undeceive or reassure Pyotr Petrovich. Even if he had been convinced that all progressives were the same sort of little fools, his uneasiness would still not have died down. Properly speaking, all these doctrines, ideas, systems (with which Andrei Semyonovich had simply pounced on him) were no concern of his at all. He had his own aim. All he needed was to find out quickly, right away: what had happened here, and how? Were these people powerful or not? Was there anything for him in particular to fear, or not? Would they expose him if he undertook this or that, or wouldn’t they? And if they exposed him, then for what exactly, and what exactly were they exposing people for now? More than that: couldn’t he somehow worm his way in with them and at the same time put one over on them, if they really were powerful? Was this necessary or not? Couldn’t he, for instance, arrange something in his career precisely through them? In a word, there were hundreds of questions ahead.
This Andrei Semyonovich was an anemic, scrofulous little man of short stature, who was employed somewhere in the service and was strangely fair-haired, with side-whiskers shaped like cutlets, of which he was very proud. Besides that, his eyes were almost always sore. His heart was rather soft, but his speech was very self-assured, and at times even extremely arrogant—which, compared with his little figure, almost always came out comical. At Amalia Ivanovna’s, however, he was counted among the more respectable lodgers, that is, he did not drink and paid his rent regularly. In spite of all these qualities, Andrei Semyonovich really was rather stupid. He had attached himself to progress and to “our younger generations” out of passion. He was one of that countless and motley legion of vulgarians, sickly half-formed runts, and petty tyrants who have never finished learning anything, who invariably attach themselves in a flash to the most fashionable current idea, only to vulgarize it at once, to turn into a caricature in a flash everything that they themselves sometimes serve in the most sincere way.
However, Lebezyatnikov, even though he was very good-natured, was also beginning in part to be unable to stand his roommate and former guardian, Pyotr Petrovich. This had come about on both sides somehow by chance and mutually. Simple as Andrei Semyonovich was, he had nevertheless begun little by little to make out that Pyotr Petrovich was deceiving him and secretly despised him, and that “this man is not at all the right sort.” He had tried to expound Fourier’s system and Darwin’s theory to him, but Pyotr Petrovich, especially lately, had begun to listen somehow much too sarcastically, and most recently of all had even begun to be abusive. The fact was that he was beginning, by instinct, to see through Lebezyatnikov: that he was not only a banal and stupid little man but perhaps a little liar too, and that he had no connections of any importance at all, even in his own circle, but had only heard things at third hand; more than that: perhaps he did not know his own business, his propaganda, properly, because he got much too muddled, and what sort of exposer could he ever be! Let us note in passing, by the way, that Pyotr Petrovich, in that week and a half, had readily accepted (especially at first) even very strange praise from Andrei Semyonovich, that is, he did not object, for instance, and kept quiet, when Andrei Semyonovich ascribed to him a readiness to assist in the future and early establishment of a new “commune” somewhere on Meshchanskaya Street; or, for instance, not to stand in Dunechka’s way if, in the very first month of marriage, she should take it into her head to have a lover; or not to have his future children baptized, and so on, and so on—everything of that sort. Pyotr Petrovich, as was his habit, did not object to such qualities being ascribed to him and allowed himself to be praised even in that fashion—so pleasant was any praise to him.
Pyotr Petrovich, who for some reason had changed several five-percent bonds that morning, sat at the table counting bundles of banknotes and treasury notes. Andrei Semyonovich, who almost never had any money, walked about the room and pretended to himself that he was looking at all these bundles with indifference and even with disdain. Pyotr Petrovich, for instance, would never on any account have believed that Andrei Semyonovich could really look at such money with indifference; and Andrei Semyonovich, in his turn, reflected bitterly that Pyotr Petrovich might indeed be capable of thinking that about him, and was perhaps even glad of the chance to tickle and tease his young friend with the bundles of banknotes laid out, reminding him of his insignificance and of all the difference that supposedly existed between the two of them.
He found him this time irritable and inattentive as never before, even though he, Andrei Semyonovich, had launched into expounding to him his favorite theme of founding a new, special “commune.” The brief objections and remarks that escaped Pyotr Petrovich between the clicks of the beads on his abacus breathed the most obvious and deliberately impolite mockery. But the “humane” Andrei Semyonovich ascribed Pyotr Petrovich’s mood to the impression made by yesterday’s break with Dunechka and was burning with desire to start on that subject as soon as possible: he had something progressive and propagandistic to say on that score that might console his respected friend and “undoubtedly” benefit his further development.
“What’s this memorial dinner they’re getting up there at that… at the widow’s?” Pyotr Petrovich asked suddenly, interrupting Andrei Semyonovich at the very most interesting point.
“As if you didn’t know; why, I spoke with you on this very subject yesterday and developed the idea about all these rites… And she invited you too, I heard. You talked with her yourself yesterday…”
“I never expected that beggarly fool to sink all the money she got from that other fool… Raskolnikov… into a memorial dinner. I was even amazed just now, passing by: such preparations there, wines!… Several people invited—the devil knows what it is!” Pyotr Petrovich went on, questioning him and steering the conversation this way as though with some purpose. “What? You say I was invited too?” he added suddenly, raising his head. “When was that? I don’t remember, sir. However, I shan’t go. What would I do there? I only spoke with her yesterday, in passing, about the possibility of her obtaining, as the destitute widow of an official, a year’s salary as a lump-sum grant. So isn’t that why she’s inviting me? Heh-heh!”
“I don’t intend to go either,” said Lebezyatnikov.
“I should think not! You gave her a thrashing with your own hands. Understandable that you’d be ashamed, heh-heh-heh!”
“Who gave a thrashing? To whom?” Lebezyatnikov was suddenly flustered and even blushed.
“Why, you did, to Katerina Ivanovna, a month or so ago! I heard about it, sir, yesterday, sir… So much for your convictions!… And the woman question took a bit of a beating too. Heh-heh-heh!”
And Pyotr Petrovich, as though consoled, began clicking at his abacus again.
“That’s all nonsense and slander!” Lebezyatnikov flared up; he was always afraid of being reminded of this story. “And it wasn’t like that at all! It was something else… You heard it wrong; it’s gossip! I was simply defending myself then. She threw herself at me first, with her claws… She plucked out my whole side-whisker… Every man is permitted, I hope, to defend his person. Besides, I will not allow violence against me from anyone… On principle. Because that’s already almost despotism. What was I supposed to do: just stand there in front of her? I only pushed her away.”
“Heh-heh-heh!” Luzhin went on laughing spitefully.
“You’re picking on me because you’re angry and in a temper yourself… But that’s nonsense and has nothing, nothing whatever to do with the woman question! You don’t understand it rightly; I even thought that if it’s accepted that woman is equal to man in everything, even in strength (which is already being asserted), then there ought to be equality here too. Of course, I reasoned afterward that such a question ought not, in essence, to exist, because there ought not to be any fighting, and that cases of fighting in the future society are unthinkable… and that it’s strange, of course, to look for equality in a fight. I’m not so stupid… though fighting, by the way, does exist… that is, later there won’t be any, but now, for the time being, there still is… pah! Damn! You make a man lose track! It’s not because of that unpleasantness that I’m not going to the memorial dinner. I’m simply not going on principle, so as not to take part in the vile prejudice of memorial dinners, that’s what! Though one might go, actually, just to laugh at it… But it’s a pity there won’t be any priests. Otherwise I’d certainly go.”
“That is, sit down to another man’s bread and salt and spit on it then and there, and on the people who invited you, equally. Is that it?”
“Not spit on it at all, but protest. My aim is a useful one. I can indirectly further development and propaganda. Every man is obliged to develop and propagandize, and perhaps the more sharply the better. I can toss out an idea, a seed… From that seed a fact will grow. How am I insulting them? At first they’ll be offended, and then they’ll see for themselves that I’ve done them good. Take Terebyeva, one of us (she’s in the commune now): they accused her because, when she left her family and… gave herself, she wrote to her mother and father that she did not wish to live among prejudices and was entering into a civil marriage, and they said that this was supposedly too crude, toward the fathers, that she might have spared them, written more gently. In my opinion, that’s all nonsense, and there’s no need at all to be gentler; on the contrary, on the contrary, that’s exactly where one ought to protest. Or take Varents, she lived with her husband for seven years, abandoned two children, and cut him off at one stroke in a letter: ‘I have realized that I cannot be happy with you. I will never forgive you for deceiving me by concealing from me that there exists another organization of society, by means of communes. I recently learned all this from a magnanimous man, to whom I have given myself, and with whom I am starting a commune. I say it straight out, because I consider it dishonorable to deceive you. Remain as you please. Do not hope to get me back, you are too late. I wish you happiness.’ That’s how letters of this kind are written!”
“And this Terebyeva, isn’t she the very one you told me about that time, who’s in her third civil marriage?”
“Only her second, if you judge it properly! But even if it were her fourth, even her fifteenth, all that’s nonsense! And if I have ever regretted that my father and mother are dead, it’s certainly now. Several times I’ve even dreamed of how, if they were still alive, I’d have hit them with a protest! I’d have set it up on purpose… What is all this, some ‘slice cut off the loaf,’ a child gone from the family, pah! I’d have shown them! I’d have astonished them! Really, it’s a pity there’s nobody!”
“To astonish, you mean? Heh-heh! Well, have it however you like,” Pyotr Petrovich interrupted, “but tell me this: you know that daughter of the deceased, the skinny little thing! It’s the perfect truth, what they say about her, eh?”
“What of it? In my opinion, that is, by my personal conviction, that is precisely the most normal condition for a woman. Why not? That is, distinguons. In present-day society it is, of course, not entirely normal, because it is forced, but in the future it will be perfectly normal, because it will be free. And even now she had the right: she was suffering, and this was her fund, her capital, so to speak, which she had every right to dispose of. Of course, in the future society there will be no need of funds; but her role will be designated in another sense, conditioned harmoniously and rationally. As for Sofya Semyonovna personally, at present I look on her actions as an energetic and personified protest against the organization of society, and I deeply respect her for it; I even rejoice looking at her!”
“And yet I was told that it was you who drove her out of these rooms!”
Lebezyatnikov positively flew into a rage.
“That’s more gossip!” he howled. “It wasn’t like that at all, not at all! That part least of all! That was all Katerina Ivanovna’s lies at the time, because she didn’t understand anything! And I wasn’t making up to Sofya Semyonovna at all! I was simply developing her, quite disinterestedly, trying to rouse a protest in her… All I needed was the protest, and Sofya Semyonovna couldn’t have stayed here in these rooms anyway!”
“Inviting her into the commune, were you?”
“You keep laughing, and very unsuccessfully, allow me to make that observance to you. You don’t understand anything! In the commune there are no such roles. The commune is set up precisely so that there should be no such roles. In the commune this role will change its whole present essence, and what is stupid here will become intelligent there, what is unnatural here, in present circumstances, will become perfectly natural there. Everything depends on what surroundings and what environment a man is in. Everything comes from the environment, and man himself is nothing. And I’m on good terms with Sofya Semyonovna even now, which may serve you as proof that she never considered me her enemy or her offender. Yes! I am tempting her into the commune now, only on completely, completely, completely different grounds! What’s funny about that? We want to found our own commune, a special one, only on broader grounds than the earlier ones. We’ve gone further in our convictions. We negate more! If Dobrolyubov rose from the grave, I’d argue with him. And Belinsky I’d flatten!1 And meanwhile I go on developing Sofya Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful nature!”
“Well, and you make use of the beautiful nature, eh? Heh-heh!”
“No, no! Oh, no! On the contrary!”
“Oh, on the contrary, is it! Heh-heh-heh! Listen to him!”
“But do believe me! What reasons would I have to hide it from you, tell me, please? On the contrary, I find it strange myself: with me she is somehow intensely, somehow fearfully chaste and modest!”
“And you, of course, are developing her… heh-heh! proving to her that all this modesty is nonsense?…”
“Not at all! Not at all! Oh, how crudely, how even stupidly—forgive me—you understand the word development! You don’t understand a th-thing! Oh, God, how you are still… not ready! We seek the freedom of woman, and you have only one thing on your mind… Setting aside entirely the question of chastity and female modesty, as things useless in themselves and even prejudiced, I fully, fully accept her chastity with me, because in that lies her whole will, her whole right. Of course, if she herself said to me: ‘I want to have you,’ I would consider myself very lucky, because I like the girl very much; but now, now at least, certainly no one has ever treated her more politely and courteously than I, with more respect for her dignity… I wait and hope—that’s all!”
“You’d do better to give her a present of some kind. I’ll bet you never thought of that.”
“You don’t understand a th-thing, I told you! Of course, that’s her situation, but this is a different question! Quite different! You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider worthy of contempt, you at once refuse a human being a humane view of her. You don’t know yet what a nature she has! I’m only very annoyed that lately she has somehow quite stopped reading and no longer borrows books from me. And she used to. It’s a pity, too, that with all her energy and resolve to protest—which she has already shown once—she still seems to have too little self-reliance, independence, so to speak, too little negation, to break away completely from certain prejudices and… stupidities. In spite of that, she understands some questions excellently. She understood superbly, for instance, the question of kissing hands, that is, that a man insults a woman by inequality if he kisses her hand. That question was debated among us, and I passed it on to her at once. She also listened attentively about the workers’ associations in France. Now I’m explaining to her the question of free entry into rooms in the future society.”
“And what’s that, now?”
“The question was recently debated: does a member of the commune have the right to enter another member’s room, a man’s or a woman’s, at any time… and it was decided that he does…”
“Well, and what if he or she is occupied at that moment with necessary needs, heh-heh!”
Andrei Semyonovich actually lost his temper.
“And you keep on about that, about these damned ‘needs’!” he cried with hatred. “Pah, how angry and annoyed I am that, when I was expounding the system, I mentioned these damned needs to you prematurely that time! Damn it! It’s a stumbling block for everyone like you, and worst of all—they make a laughingstock of it before they know what it’s about! And just as if they were right! Just as if they had something to be proud of! Pah! I have asserted several times that this whole question can be expounded to novices only at the very end, when he is already convinced of the system, when the man is already developed and set on his course. And besides, what, tell me please, what do you find so shameful and contemptible, say, in cesspools? I’ll be the first, I, ready to clean out any cesspools you like! There isn’t even any self-sacrifice in it! It’s simply work, a noble activity useful to society, which is worth any other, and much higher, for instance, than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin, because it is more useful!”
“And nobler, nobler—heh-heh-heh!”
“What does ‘nobler’ mean? I don’t understand such expressions as a definition of human activity. ‘Nobler,’ ‘more magnanimous’—all that is nonsense, absurdities, old prejudiced words, which I negate! Everything that is useful to mankind is noble! I understand only one word: useful! Snigger as much as you like, but it’s so!”
Pyotr Petrovich laughed a great deal. He had finished counting by now and had put the money away. Part of it, however, for some reason still remained on the table. This “cesspool question” had already served several times, in spite of all its vulgarity, as a cause of rupture and disagreement between Pyotr Petrovich and his young friend. The whole stupidity of it lay in the fact that Andrei Semyonovich really did get angry. Luzhin, for his part, found relief for his feelings in it, and at the present moment he particularly wanted to make Lebezyatnikov angry.
“It’s because of your failure yesterday that you’re so spiteful and keep picking on me,” Lebezyatnikov burst out at last; generally speaking, in spite of all his “independence” and all his “protests,” he somehow did not dare to oppose Pyotr Petrovich and still maintained toward him a kind of respectfulness that was habitual, from former years.
“You’d better tell me this,” Pyotr Petrovich interrupted haughtily and with vexation, “can you, sir… or rather, are you really on close enough terms with the aforementioned young person to ask her to come here now, for a minute, into this room? I believe they’ve all come back by now, from the cemetery… I hear people moving about… I need to see her, sir, the person, sir.”
“But what for?” Lebezyatnikov asked in surprise.
“Oh, just so, sir, I need to, sir. Today or tomorrow I’m moving out of here, and so I’d like to inform her… However, do stay here, perhaps, during the interview. So much the better. Otherwise you might think God knows what.”
“I shan’t think anything whatever… I only asked, and if you have business with her, nothing is easier than to call her. I’ll go right away. And as for me, you may be sure, I shan’t be in your way.”
Indeed, some five minutes later Lebezyatnikov returned with Sonechka. She came in extremely surprised and, as usual, timid. She was always timid on such occasions and was very much afraid of new faces and new acquaintances; she had been afraid before, since childhood, and now all the more… Pyotr Petrovich received her “kindly and politely,” though with a certain shade of a kind of jovial familiarity, befitting, however, in Pyotr Petrovich’s opinion, so respectable and solid a man as he in relation to so young and, in a certain sense, interesting a creature. He hastened to “encourage” her and sat her down at the table opposite himself. Sonya sat down, looked around—at Lebezyatnikov, at the money lying on the table, and then suddenly at Pyotr Petrovich again, and after that no longer took her eyes off him, as though she were chained to him. Lebezyatnikov started toward the door. Pyotr Petrovich stood up, motioned Sonya to stay seated, and stopped Lebezyatnikov in the doorway.
“Is that Raskolnikov there? Has he come?” he asked him in a whisper.
“Raskolnikov? He’s there. Why? Yes, he’s there… He just came in, I saw him… Why?”
“Well, then I particularly ask you to stay here with us, and not to leave me alone with this… young lady. It’s a trifling matter, but God knows what they’ll make of it. I don’t want Raskolnikov to pass it on there… You understand what I’m talking about?”
“Ah, I understand, I understand!” Lebezyatnikov suddenly grasped. “Yes, you have the right… Of course, by my personal conviction, you’re going too far in your apprehensions, but… you still have the right. Very well, I’ll stay. I’ll stand here by the window and not be in your way… In my opinion, you have the right…”
Pyotr Petrovich went back to the sofa, sat down opposite Sonya, looked at her attentively, and suddenly assumed an extremely solid, even somewhat stern air: “Don’t you go thinking anything either, madam.” Sonya was utterly abashed.
“In the first place, Sofya Semyonovna, please make my excuses to your highly respected mamma… That’s right, I believe? Katerina Ivanovna stands in place of a mother to you?” Pyotr Petrovich began very solidly, but fairly kindly, however. It was evident that he had the most friendly intentions.
“Yes, sir, that’s right, sir; in place of a mother, sir,” Sonya answered hurriedly and timorously.
“Well, sir, then make my excuses to her that, owing to circumstances beyond my control, I am obliged to miss it and shall not be at your pancakes… that is, at your memorial dinner, in spite of your mamma’s kind invitation.”2
“Yes, sir; I’ll tell her, sir; right away, sir”—and Sonechka hurriedly jumped up from her chair.
“That’s not all yet, miss,” Pyotr Petrovich stopped her, smiling at her simplicity and ignorance of good manners, “and you know me little, my dearest Sofya Semyonovna, if you thought that for this unimportant reason, which concerns me alone, I would trouble a person like you personally and summon you to me. My aim is a different one, miss.”
Sonya hurriedly sat down. The gray and rainbow-colored banknotes, still not cleared from the table, again flickered before her eyes, but she quickly turned her face away from them and raised it to Pyotr Petrovich: it suddenly seemed to her terribly indecent, especially for her, to look at another person’s money. She fixed her gaze on Pyotr Petrovich’s gold lorgnette, which he held in his left hand, and at the same time on the large, massive, extremely handsome ring with a yellow stone that was on the middle finger of that hand—but suddenly she took her eyes off that too and, not knowing where to turn, ended by again staring straight into Pyotr Petrovich’s eyes. After a silence even more solid than before, he went on:
“I happened yesterday, in passing, to exchange a couple of words with the unfortunate Katerina Ivanovna. A couple of words were enough to learn that she is in a state—unnatural, if one may so express it…”
“Yes, sir… unnatural, sir,” Sonya hurriedly assented.
“Or, to put it more simply and understandably—a sick one.”
“Yes, sir, more simply and understand… yes, sir, she’s sick, sir.”
“Just so, miss. And so, out of a feeling of humanity and-and-and, so to speak, compassion, I would like, for my part, to be of some use, foreseeing her inevitably unhappy lot. It seems that this whole most destitute family now depends on you alone.”
“Allow me to ask,” Sonya suddenly stood up, “what were you pleased to tell her yesterday about the possibility of a pension? Because she told me yesterday that you had undertaken to get her a pension. Is that true, sir?”
“Not in the least, miss, and even in a certain sense an absurdity. I only hinted at temporary assistance for the widow of an official who died in the service—provided there were some patronage—but it seems that your late parent not only did not serve out his term but had not even been serving at all lately. In a word, though there might be some hope, it would be very ephemeral, because in essence no rights to assistance exist in this case, rather the contrary… And she’s already thinking of a pension, heh-heh-heh! A spirited lady!”
“Yes, sir, of a pension… Because she’s trusting and kind, and from kindness she believes everything, and… and… and… that’s the kind of mind she has… Yes, sir… excuse me, sir,” said Sonya, and stood up again to leave.
“Allow me, you haven’t heard me out yet, miss.”
“Yes, sir, I haven’t heard you out, sir,” Sonya murmured.
“Then do sit down, miss.”
Sonya was terribly abashed and sat down again, for the third time.
“Seeing her in such a situation, with unfortunate little children, I would like—as I have already said—to be of some use, as far as I am able, that is, as they say, as far as I am able, miss, no more. One might, for instance, get up a subscription for her benefit, or, so to speak, a lottery… or something of the sort—as is always arranged in such cases by people close to the family, or even by outsiders, but in general by people who wish to help. That is what I intended to tell you. It could be done, miss.”
“Yes, sir, that’s good, sir… God will… you for this, sir…” Sonya faltered, looking intently at Pyotr Petrovich.
“It could be done, miss, but… we’ll go into that later, miss… that is, we might even start today. We’ll see each other this evening, come to an agreement, and lay, so to speak, the foundation. Come here to me at about seven o’clock. Andrei Semyonovich, I hope, will also take part with us… But… there is one circumstance here that ought to be mentioned beforehand and with care. It is for that very purpose that I have troubled you, Sofya Semyonovna, by calling you here. Precisely, miss, it is my opinion that money cannot be given into the hands of Katerina Ivanovna herself, indeed that it is dangerous to; and the proof of this is this very memorial dinner today. Not having, so to speak, a single crust of daily bread for tomorrow, and… well, or shoes, or anything, she buys Jamaica rum today, and even, I believe, Madeira and-and-and coffee. I saw it as I passed. And tomorrow it will all fall on you again, down to the last piece of bread; that is absurd, miss. And therefore the subscription, in my personal view, must be carried out in such a way that the unfortunate widow, so to speak, should not even know about the money, and only you, for instance, should know. Am I right?”
“I don’t know, sir. It’s only today, sir, that she… it’s once in a lifetime… she wanted so much to remember him, to do him honor, his memory… and she’s very intelligent, sir. But anyway, as you wish, sir, and I’ll be very, very, very… they’ll all be… to you… and God will… you, sir… and the orphans, sir…”
Sonya did not finish and began to cry.
“Just so, miss. Well, miss, so bear it in mind, miss; and now be so good as to accept, in the interests of your relative, for a start, a sum within my means from me personally. I very, very much wish that my name not be mentioned in this connection. Here, miss… having, so to speak, cares of my own, I am not able to do more…”
And Pyotr Petrovich held out to Sonya a ten-rouble note, carefully unfolding it. Sonya took it, flushed, jumped up, murmured something, and hastened to take her leave. Pyotr Petrovich solemnly saw her to the door. She darted out of the room at last, all agitated and worn out, and went back to Katerina Ivanovna in extreme confusion.
All during this scene Andrei Semyonovich had now stood at the window, now walked about the room, not wishing to interrupt the conversation; but when Sonya had gone he suddenly went up to Pyotr Petrovich and solemnly held out his hand to him:
“I heard everything and saw everything,” he said, laying special stress on the last word. “That is noble, that is, I meant to say, humane! You wished to avoid gratitude, I saw it! And though, I confess to you, I cannot on principle sympathize with private charity, because not only does it not eradicate evil radically, but it even nourishes it still more, nonetheless I can’t help confessing that I watched your action with pleasure—yes, yes, I like it.”
“Eh, that’s all nonsense!” muttered Pyotr Petrovich, somewhat agitated and looking at Lebezyatnikov rather closely.
“No, it’s not nonsense! A man who has been offended and vexed, as you have, by yesterday’s incident and at the same time is capable of thinking of the misfortune of others—such a man, sir… although by his actions he is committing a social error—nonetheless… is worthy of respect! I didn’t even expect it of you, Pyotr Petrovich, all the more since by your notions—oh! how your notions still hamper you! How upset you are, for instance, by that failure yesterday,” exclaimed the good-natured Andrei Semyonovich, feeling a heightened affection for Pyotr Petrovich again, “and what, what do you need this marriage for, this legal marriage, my most noble, most amiable Pyotr Petrovich? What do you need this legality in marriage for? Well, beat me if you like, but I’m glad, glad it didn’t come off, that you’re free, that you’re not yet entirely lost to mankind, glad… You see: I’ve spoken my mind!”
“What I need a legal marriage for, sir, is that in your civil marriage I don’t want to wear horns and raise other men’s children, that’s what I need a legal marriage for, sir,” said Luzhin, in order to say something. He was particularly preoccupied with something and lost in thought.
“Children? You touched on children?” Andrei Semyonovich started like a warhorse hearing the military trumpet. “Children are a social question and a question of the first importance, I agree; but the question of children will be resolved differently. Some even negate children altogether, as any hint of the family. We’ll talk about children later, but now let’s take up the horns! I confess to you, that’s my weak point. That nasty, hussar, Pushkinian expression is unthinkable even in the lexicon of the future.3 And what are horns, anyway? Oh, what a delusion! What horns? Why horns? What nonsense! On the contrary, in a civil marriage there won’t be any! Horns are only the natural consequence of every legal marriage, its correction, so to speak, a protest, so that in that sense they are not in the least humiliating… And if I am ever—supposing an absurdity—in a legal marriage, I shall even be glad of your thrice-damned horns; I shall say to my wife then: ‘My dear, until now I only loved you, but now I respect you, because you have known how to protest!’ You’re laughing? That’s because you are unable to tear yourself away from prejudices! Damn it, I do understand exactly where the unpleasantness lies when one is deceived in a legal marriage; but that is only the base consequence of a base fact, in which both parties are humiliated. When horns are put on openly, though, as in a civil marriage, then they no longer exist, they are unthinkable and even lose the name of horns. On the contrary, your wife will only be proving to you how much she respects you, considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and developed enough not to take revenge on her for a new husband. Damn it, I sometimes dream that if I were given in marriage—pah! if I married (civilly or legally, it’s all the same), I believe I’d bring my wife a lover myself, if she was slow to get one. ‘My dear,’ I’d say to her, ‘I love you, but more than that, I want you to respect me—there!’ Am I right, am I right?…”
Pyotr Petrovich tittered as he listened, but without any particular enthusiasm. He was hardly even listening. He really was thinking something else over, and even Lebezyatnikov noticed it at last. Pyotr Petrovich was even agitated, kept rubbing his hands, falling into thought. All this Andrei Semyonovich worked out and remembered afterward…