Part Six · I

A strange time set in for Raskolnikov: it was as if a fog had suddenly fallen before him and enclosed him in a hopeless, heavy solitude. Recalling this time later, long afterward, he guessed that his consciousness had sometimes grown dim, as it were, and that it had gone on like this, with some intervals, right up to the final catastrophe. He was positively convinced that he had been mistaken about many things then, for instance about the dates and timing of certain events. At least, when he recalled it afterward and strove to make clear to himself what he recalled, he learned a great deal about himself relying now on what he had learned from others. He would confuse one event, for instance, with another; another he considered the consequence of an incident that had existed only in his imagination. At times a sickly, tormenting anxiety took hold of him, turning even into panic fear. But he remembered too that there had been minutes, hours, perhaps even days, full of apathy, which had taken hold of him as if in contrast to his former fear—an apathy like the sickly indifferent state of some dying people. In general, during these last days he himself seemed to be trying to run away from a clear and full understanding of his position; certain pressing facts that demanded immediate explanation weighed on him especially; but how glad he would have been to free himself and run away from certain cares, although forgetting them threatened, in his position, complete and inevitable ruin.

Svidrigailov in particular troubled him: one might even say that he had come to a halt, as it were, at Svidrigailov. Since Svidrigailov’s words, too menacing for him and too plainly spoken, in Sonya’s room, at the moment of Katerina Ivanovna’s death, the ordinary course of his thoughts seemed to have been disrupted. But although this new fact disturbed him extremely, Raskolnikov was somehow in no hurry to clear the matter up. At times, suddenly finding himself somewhere in a remote and solitary part of the city, in some wretched tavern, alone, at a table, deep in thought, and scarcely remembering how he had got there, he would suddenly remember Svidrigailov: he would suddenly become too clearly and anxiously aware that he ought, as soon as possible, to come to an understanding with this man and, as far as possible, settle things once and for all. Once, having wandered somewhere beyond the city gate, he even imagined that he was waiting for Svidrigailov here and that they had arranged to meet here. Another time he woke up before dawn somewhere on the ground, in the bushes, and could hardly understand how he had strayed there. However, in these two or three days after Katerina Ivanovna’s death he had already met Svidrigailov twice, almost always in Sonya’s room, where he would drop in somehow without purpose, but almost always just for a minute. They always exchanged brief words and never once spoke of the main point, as if it had been agreed between them of itself to keep silent about it for the time being. Katerina Ivanovna’s body still lay in the coffin. Svidrigailov was arranging the funeral and bustling about. Sonya too was very busy. At their last meeting Svidrigailov explained to Raskolnikov that he had somehow finished with Katerina Ivanovna’s children, and finished successfully; that, thanks to certain connections, he had found certain persons with whose help it had been possible to place all three orphans at once in institutions quite suitable for them; that the money set aside for them had also helped a great deal, since orphans with capital are much easier to place than penniless orphans. He said something about Sonya too, promised to drop in on Raskolnikov himself one of these days, and mentioned that he “would like to consult with him; that they very much ought to talk, that there were certain matters…” This conversation took place in the entryway, by the stairs. Svidrigailov looked intently into Raskolnikov’s eyes and suddenly, after a silence, lowering his voice, asked:

“But why are you so unlike yourself, Rodion Romanych? Really! You listen and look, yet it’s as if you don’t understand. Cheer up. Let’s have a talk: only it’s a pity there’s so much business, other people’s and my own… Eh, Rodion Romanych,” he suddenly added, “all men need air, air, sir… Before anything else!”

He suddenly stepped aside to let a priest and a sexton pass who were coming up the stairs. They were going to serve a memorial service (panikhida). By Svidrigailov’s arrangement, the services were held twice a day, punctually. Svidrigailov went his way. Raskolnikov stood a while, thought, and went into Sonya’s room after the priest.

He stood in the doorway. The service was beginning, quiet, decorous, sad. In the awareness of death and in the sense of death’s presence there had always been for him something oppressive and mystically terrible, ever since childhood; and besides, he had not heard a memorial service for a long time. And there was something else here as well, too terrible and disquieting. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the coffin, Polenka was crying. Behind them, weeping quietly and as if timidly, Sonya was praying. “And yet in these days she hasn’t once looked at me or said a word to me,” it suddenly occurred to Raskolnikov. The sun lit the room brightly; the incense smoke rose in billows; the priest was reading “Give rest, O Lord.” Raskolnikov stood through the whole service. As he gave his blessing and took his leave, the priest looked around somehow strangely. After the service Raskolnikov went up to Sonya. She suddenly took him by both hands and bowed her head onto his shoulder. This brief gesture even struck Raskolnikov with bewilderment; it was even strange: what? not the slightest aversion, not the slightest loathing for him, not the slightest tremor in her hand! This was some sort of infinity of self-abasement. So, at least, he understood it. Sonya said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He felt terribly heavy at heart. If it had been possible to go away somewhere at that minute and remain completely alone, even for his whole life, he would have counted himself happy. But the point was that lately, though he was almost always alone, he could never feel that he was alone. He would sometimes go out of town, walk out onto the high road, once he had even gone into some grove; but the more solitary the place, the more strongly he seemed to be aware of someone’s near and disquieting presence, not exactly frightening, but somehow very vexing, so that he would hurry back to the city, mingle with the crowd, go into taverns, into drinking dens, go to the flea market, to the Haymarket. Here it seemed easier somehow, and even more solitary. In one cookshop, toward evening, they were singing songs: he sat for a whole hour listening and remembered that he had even found it very pleasant. But toward the end he suddenly grew uneasy again; it was as if a pang of conscience had suddenly begun to torment him: “Here I sit listening to songs, but is that what I ought to be doing!” he seemed to think. However, he guessed at once that it was not this alone that troubled him; there was something that demanded immediate resolution, but that could neither be grasped nor put into words. Everything was winding itself into some kind of ball. “No, better some sort of struggle! Better Porfiry again… or Svidrigailov… If only some challenge would come again soon, someone’s attack… Yes! yes!” he thought. He left the cookshop and set off almost at a run. The thought of Dunya and his mother suddenly, for some reason, brought on him something like panic fear. It was that night, toward morning, that he woke up in the bushes on Krestovsky Island, chilled through, in a fever; he went home and arrived in the early morning. After several hours’ sleep the fever passed, but he woke up late: it was two o’clock in the afternoon.

He remembered that Katerina Ivanovna’s funeral had been set for that day, and was glad he had not been present at it. Nastasya brought him something to eat; he ate and drank with great appetite, almost greedily. His head was fresher, and he himself calmer, than in these last three days. He even marveled, in passing, at his former surges of panic fear. The door opened, and Razumikhin came in.

“Ah! he’s eating, so he’s not sick!” said Razumikhin, took a chair, and sat down at the table across from Raskolnikov. He was agitated and did not try to hide it. He spoke with visible vexation, but without hurrying and without especially raising his voice. One might have thought that some particular and even exceptional intention had lodged in him. “Listen,” he began resolutely, “the devil take the lot of you, as far as I’m concerned, but from what I see now, I see clearly that I can’t understand a thing; please don’t think I’ve come to interrogate you. To hell with it! I don’t want to myself! Go ahead and lay it all open now yourself, all your secrets, and I may not even listen, I’ll spit and walk out. I’ve come only to find out personally and finally: is it true, first of all, that you’re mad? There exists a conviction about you, you see (well, there, somewhere), that you may be mad or very much inclined that way. I confess to you that I myself was strongly inclined to support this opinion, first, judging by your stupid and partly vile actions (which nothing can explain), and second, by your recent behavior with your mother and sister. Only a monster and a scoundrel, if not a madman, could have treated them the way you did; and consequently, you’re mad…”

“How long is it since you saw them?”

“Just now. And you haven’t seen them since? Where do you go loafing about, tell me, please, I’ve come by three times. Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She got ready to come to you; Avdotya Romanovna tried to hold her back; she won’t listen to anything: ‘If he’s ill,’ she says, ‘if his mind is wandering, who will help him if not his mother?’ We all came here, because we couldn’t very well let her go alone. Right up to your door we were begging her to calm down. We came in, you weren’t here, and she sat right here. She sat for ten minutes, we stood over her, silent. She got up and said: ‘If he goes out of the house, and so he’s well and has forgotten his mother, then it’s unseemly and shameful for his mother to stand at his door and beg for affection like a handout.’ She went back home and took to her bed; now she’s in a fever: ‘I see,’ she says, ‘he has time for his own.’ She supposes that his own is Sofya Semyonovna, your fiancée or your mistress, I really don’t know. I went off right away to Sofya Semyonovna’s, because, brother, I wanted to find everything out—I arrive, I look: a coffin standing there, children crying. Sofya Semyonovna is trying little mourning dresses on them. You’re not there. I looked, apologized, and left, and that’s what I reported to Avdotya Romanovna. So all this is nonsense, and there is no own here at all; most likely, then, it’s madness. But here you sit gobbling boiled beef as if you hadn’t eaten for three days. Granted, madmen eat too, but even though you haven’t said a word to me, you’re… not mad! That I’ll swear to. Before anything else, not mad. And so, the devil take the lot of you, because there’s some mystery here, some secret; and I have no intention of racking my brains over your secrets. I only dropped in to curse you,” he concluded, getting up, “to relieve my soul, and I know what to do now!”

“What do you mean to do now?”

“What business is it of yours what I mean to do now?”

“Watch out, you’ll go on a binge!”

“How… how did you find that out?”

“Well, really!”

Razumikhin was silent for a minute.

“You’ve always been a very reasonable man, and never, never were you mad,” he remarked suddenly, with fervor. “That’s so: I will go on a binge! Goodbye!” And he moved to go.

“I was talking about you with my sister, Razumikhin, the day before yesterday, I think.”

“About me! But… where could you have seen her the day before yesterday?” Razumikhin suddenly stopped and even turned a little pale. One could guess that his heart had begun to pound slowly and with strain in his chest.

“She came here, alone, sat here, talked with me.”

“She did!”

“Yes, she did.”

“What did you say… I mean, about me?”

“I told her you were a very good, honest, and hardworking man. That you love her I didn’t tell her, because she knows it herself.”

“Knows it herself?”

“Well, really! Wherever I might go off to, whatever might happen to me, you would remain a providence for them. I am, so to speak, handing them over to you, Razumikhin. I’m saying this because I know perfectly well how you love her and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know too that she can love you, and perhaps even already does. Now decide for yourself, as you know best, whether you need to go on a binge or not.”

“Rodka… You see… Well… Ah, the devil! And where is it you mean to go off to? You see: if all this is a secret, then let it be! But I… I’ll find out the secret… And I’m sure it’s bound to be some nonsense and terrible trifles and that you cooked it all up yourself. Anyway, you’re a most excellent man! A most excellent man!…”

“And I meant to add, just when you interrupted me, that you reasoned very well a moment ago, about not finding out these mysteries and secrets. Leave it for the time being, don’t worry. You’ll find out everything in due time, precisely when it’s necessary. Yesterday a certain man told me that a man needs air, air, air! I want to go to him now and find out what he means by it.”

Razumikhin stood deep in thought and agitated, figuring something out.

“He’s a political conspirator! Certainly! And he’s on the eve of some decisive step—that’s certain! It can’t be otherwise, and… and Dunya knows…” he suddenly thought to himself.

“So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you,” he said, measuring out each word, “and you yourself want to see a man who says that more air is needed, air, and… and so, that letter too… that’s also something of the same sort,” he concluded, as if to himself.

“What letter?”

“She received a letter, today, it upset her very much. Very much. Even too much. I started talking about you—she asked me to stop. Then… then she said that we might perhaps part very soon, then she began thanking me warmly for something; then she went to her room and locked herself in.”

“She received a letter?” Raskolnikov asked again, thoughtfully.

“Yes, a letter; and you didn’t know? Hm.”

They were both silent for a while.

“Goodbye, Rodion. I, brother… there was a time… but anyway, goodbye, you see, there was a time… Well, goodbye! I must be going too. I won’t drink. There’s no need now… you were wrong!”

He was in a hurry; but as he was already going out and had almost shut the door behind him, he suddenly opened it again and said, looking somewhere off to the side:

“By the way! Remember that murder, well, Porfiry’s: the old woman? Well, know that the murderer has turned up, he’s confessed himself and presented all the proofs. It’s one of those very workmen, the house painters, imagine, remember, I was defending them right here? Would you believe that that whole scene of fighting and laughing on the stairs with his mate, while the others were climbing up, the caretaker and the two witnesses, he staged on purpose, precisely as a diversion? What cunning, what presence of mind in such a puppy! It’s hard to believe; but he explained it himself, he confessed to everything himself! And how I fell for it! Well, in my opinion, he’s simply a genius of dissimulation and resourcefulness, a genius of the legal diversion—and so there’s nothing particularly to be surprised at! Can’t there be such people? And the fact that he couldn’t keep it up and confessed makes me believe him all the more. It’s more plausible… But how I, how I fell for it then! I went to the wall for them!”

“Tell me, please, where did you find this out, and why does it interest you so much?” Raskolnikov asked, with visible agitation.

“Well, really! Why does it interest me! What a question!… I found out from Porfiry, among others. Actually, I found out almost everything from him.”

“From Porfiry?”

“From Porfiry.”

“Well… what did he say?” Raskolnikov asked in fright.

“He explained it to me excellently. Explained it psychologically, in his own way.”

“He explained it? He explained it to you himself?”

“Himself, himself; goodbye! I’ll tell you something more later, but now I have business. There… there was a time when I thought… Well, what of it; later!… Why should I get drunk now. You’ve made me drunk without wine. I’m drunk, you know, Rodka! Drunk without wine now, well, goodbye; I’ll drop in; very soon.”

He went out.

“He’s, he’s a political conspirator, that’s certain, certain!” Razumikhin decided once and for all to himself, slowly going down the stairs. “And he’s drawn his sister in; that’s very, very possible with Avdotya Romanovna’s character. They’ve started having meetings… And she did hint to me too. From many of her words… and little words… and hints, it all comes out exactly so! And how else is all this muddle to be explained? Hm! And I was thinking… Oh, Lord, what I nearly took into my head. Yes, sir, that was an eclipse, and I am guilty before him! It was he who brought that eclipse over me then, by the lamp, in the corridor. Pah! What a nasty, crude, base thought on my part! Good for Mikolka for confessing… And how everything from before is explained now! That illness of his then, all his strange actions, even before, before, back at the university, how gloomy, how sullen he always was… But what does this letter mean now? There may be something here too. Who is the letter from? I suspect… Hm. No, I’ll find all this out.”

He remembered and figured out everything about Dunechka, and his heart stood still. He tore himself from the spot and ran.

Raskolnikov, as soon as Razumikhin had gone out, got up, turned to the window, bumped into one corner, then another, as if forgetting how cramped his kennel was, and… sat down again on the sofa. He was entirely renewed, as it were; a struggle again—so a way out had been found!

“Yes, so a way out had been found! Otherwise everything had become too stifled and corked up, had begun to press on him agonizingly, some sort of stupor had been coming over him. Ever since the scene with Mikolka at Porfiry’s he had begun to suffocate without an outlet, in a cramped space. After Mikolka, on the same day, there had been the scene at Sonya’s; he had conducted and ended it completely, completely otherwise than he could have imagined before… he had weakened, then, instantly and radically! All at once! And he had agreed with Sonya then, after all, agreed himself, agreed in his heart, that he could not go on living alone like this with such a deed on his soul! And Svidrigailov? Svidrigailov was a riddle… Svidrigailov disturbed him, that was true, but somehow not from that side. With Svidrigailov too, perhaps, a struggle still lay ahead. Svidrigailov, perhaps, was also a whole way out; but Porfiry was another matter.

So Porfiry himself had even explained it to Razumikhin, explained it psychologically! He had started bringing in his damned psychology again! Porfiry? As if Porfiry could believe even for one minute that Mikolka was guilty, after what had passed between them then, after that scene, face to face, before Mikolka, for which no correct interpretation could be found except one? (Several times in these days that whole scene with Porfiry had flashed through Raskolnikov’s mind and come back to him in scraps; he could not have borne the memory of it as a whole.) Such words had been spoken between them then, such movements and gestures had passed, they had exchanged such looks, a thing or two had been said in such a voice, it had come to such limits, that after this it was not for Mikolka (whom Porfiry had known by heart from his first word and gesture), not for Mikolka to shake the very foundation of his convictions.

And what do you know! Even Razumikhin had begun to suspect! The scene in the corridor, by the lamp, had not gone for nothing then. So he had rushed off to Porfiry… But why on earth had that one started deceiving him like that? What was his aim in turning Razumikhin’s eyes toward Mikolka? He had certainly thought something up; there were intentions here, but what were they? True, much time had passed since that morning—too, too much—and there had been neither sight nor sound of Porfiry. Well, that, of course, was worse…” Raskolnikov took his cap and, lost in thought, went out of the room. It was the first day in all this time that he felt himself, at least, in his right mind. “I must finish with Svidrigailov,” he thought, “and at all costs, as soon as possible: he too, it seems, is waiting for me to come to him myself.” And at that instant such hatred suddenly rose up from his weary heart that he might perhaps have killed one of those two: Svidrigailov or Porfiry. At least he felt that if not now, then later he would be capable of doing it. “We’ll see, we’ll see,” he repeated to himself.

But no sooner had he opened the door to the entryway than he suddenly ran into Porfiry himself. He was coming in to see him. Raskolnikov was dumbfounded for a moment. Strangely, he was not very surprised at Porfiry and was almost not afraid of him. He only gave a start, but quickly, instantly prepared himself. “Perhaps it’s the denouement! But how did he come up so quietly, like a cat, and I heard nothing? Can he have been eavesdropping?”

“You weren’t expecting a visitor, Rodion Romanych,” cried Porfiry Petrovich, laughing. “I’ve been meaning to drop by for a long time, I was passing, I thought—why not stop in for five minutes and see how you are. You’re going out somewhere? I won’t keep you. Just one little cigarette, if you’ll allow me.”

“Do sit down, Porfiry Petrovich, sit down,” Raskolnikov said, seating his guest, with such an apparently pleased and friendly air that, really, he would have marveled at himself if he could have looked at himself. The last scraps, the dregs, were being scraped out! Sometimes a man will endure half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally put to his throat, then even the fear passes. He sat down squarely in front of Porfiry and looked at him without blinking. Porfiry narrowed his eyes and began lighting a cigarette.

“Well, speak, speak,” it seemed about to leap out of Raskolnikov’s heart. “Well, what, what, why don’t you speak?”