Cinq sous, cinq sous . . .
Not another soldier! Well, what do you want?'
A policeman really was squeezing through the crowd. But at the very same time a respectable-looking civil servant of about fifty, wearing uniform, a greatcoat and a decoration around his neck (which particularly pleased Katerina Ivanovna and impressed the policeman), came up and silently handed a green, three-rouble banknote to Katerina Ivanovna. His face expressed sincere compassion. Katerina Ivanovna accepted it and made a courteous, even ceremonious, bow.
'I thank you, kind sir,' she began loftily. 'The reasons prompting us to . . . Now take the money, Polechka. See, there are noble, generous souls, ready, at a moment's notice, to help a poor gentlewoman in distress. You see before you, kind sir, well-born orphans with, one might say, the most aristocratic connections . . . Meanwhile, that poxy general just sat there eating hazel grouse . . . and stamping his feet at me for having disturbed him . . . "Your Excellency," I say, "protect the orphans," I say, "knowing the late Semyon Zakharych so very well and bearing in mind the fact that his own daughter was slandered so viciously by that scoundrel, that scum of the earth, on the very day of his death . . ." Not that soldier again! Protect us!' she screamed at the civil servant. 'Why does he have to keep pestering me? We only came here to get away from another one, on Meshchanskaya Street . . . Mind your own business, you stupid man!'
'But this is forbidden in public, ma'am. Please cease this disgraceful behaviour.'
'You're the disgrace! I'm no different from an organ-grinder, so mind your business!'
'Organ-grinders need a licence, since you mention it, but you're making a public nuisance of yourself. Where are you lodging, ma'am?'
'A licence!' yelled Katerina Ivanovna. 'I buried my husband today and you talk about licences!'
'Madam, madam, please calm down,' the civil servant began. 'Let's go - I'll accompany you . . . It's unseemly here, with all this crowd . . . You're not well . . .'
'Kind sir, you know nothing!' shouted Katerina Ivanovna. 'We're off to Nevsky - Sonya, Sonya! Where has she got to? Crying as well! What's wrong with you all? . . . Kolya, Lenya, where are you off to?' she suddenly cried in alarm. 'Oh, stupid children! Kolya, Lenya, where on earth are they going?'
What had happened was that Kolya and Lenya, frightened out of their wits by the crowd and the whims of their crazy mother, and seeing that a soldier was just about to take them off somewhere, suddenly, as if with one mind, grabbed each other by the hand and took to their heels. Poor Katerina Ivanovna set off after them, yelling and weeping. It was a ghastly, pitiful thing to see her running, weeping, gasping. Sonya and Polechka rushed after her.
'Bring them back, Sonya! Bring them back! Oh, stupid, ungrateful children! . . . Polya, catch them! . . . It was for you that I . . .'
At full tilt, she stumbled and fell.
'She's badly hurt - she's bleeding! O Lord!' cried Sonya, bending over her.
Everyone came running, everyone crowded round. Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov were among the first to arrive; the civil servant also hurried over, followed by the policeman, grumbling 'My oh my!' and gesturing as if to say - what a nuisance this is going to be.
'Out of the way! Out of the way!' he shouted at the crowd.
'She's dying!' cried a voice.
'She's mad!' came another.
'God save us!' said one woman, crossing herself. 'Did they catch the little mites? Well I never - here they come, the eldest has caught 'em . . . All very peculiar!'
But when Katerina Ivanovna was properly examined, it transpired that she hadn't hurt herself against the stones, as Sonya thought; the blood that was staining the road purple was gushing up from her chest.
'I've seen this before, gentlemen,' the civil servant muttered to Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov. 'It's consumption. The blood just gushes up and chokes you. I saw it happen to a woman I know, a relative, just recently - about a pint of it . . . just like that . . . Still, what should we do now? She'll die any minute.'
'This way, this way, to my room!' Sonya pleaded. 'I live right here! . . . That building there, the second one along . . . To my place - quick! Quick!' she begged everyone, rushing from one person to another. 'Send for a doctor . . . O Lord!'
Thanks to the civil servant, this was quickly arranged, and even the policeman helped carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was brought into Sonya's room more dead than alive and placed on the bed. The bleeding continued, but it seemed as if she were beginning to come round. Sonya was immediately followed into her room by Raskolnikov, Lebezyatnikov, the civil servant and the policeman, the latter having first dispersed the crowd, from which a few accompanied them right to the door. Kolya and Lenya, trembling and crying, were led in by Polechka. The Kapernaumovs came over too: there was Kapernaumov himself, lame and crooked, a strange-looking man with unruly, bristly hair and whiskers; his wife, with her permanently frightened look; and several of their children, with faces frozen in perpetual surprise and mouths hanging open. Amidst all these another person suddenly appeared - Svidrigailov. Raskolnikov looked at him in astonishment, wondering how he'd got there and unable to recall his face in the crowd.
There was talk of doctors and priests. The civil servant, while whispering to Raskolnikov that there was little need for a doctor now, instructed that one be sent for. Kapernaumov himself hurried off to fetch him.
Meanwhile, Katerina Ivanovna got her breath back and for a time the bleeding abated. She fixed her sick, though steady and piercing gaze on pale, trembling Sonya, who was wiping beads of sweat from Katerina Ivanovna's brow; eventually, she asked to be lifted up. They sat her up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.
'And the children?' she asked in a weak voice. 'Did you bring them, Polya? Oh, stupid ones! . . . Why did you have to run away? . . . Ahh!'
Her parched lips were still covered in blood. She cast her eyes around her:
'So this is how you live, Sonya! The first time I've ever been here . . . Now of all times . . .'
Her eyes were full of pain as she looked at her:
'We've sucked you dry, Sonya . . . Polya, Lenya, Kolya, come here . . . So, Sonya, here they all are, take them . . . from my hands to yours . . . You'll get no more from me! . . . The dance is over! Ahh! . . . Lower me back down. Let me die in peace, at least . . .'
They lowered her onto the pillow again.
'What's that? A priest? Don't bother . . . As if you've got money for that! . . . There's no sins on me! . . . God should forgive me without all that . . . He knows how I've suffered! . . . And if he won't forgive me - fine!'
A restless delirium was steadily gaining hold of her. Now and then she would startle, cast her eyes around and briefly recognize everyone; but awareness instantly gave way to delirium. Her breathing was hoarse and laboured; a kind of gurgle seemed to come from her throat.
'"Your Excellency!" I say to him,' she yelled, stopping for breath after every word. 'That Amalia Ludwigovna . . . Ah! Lenya, Kolya! Arms on hips, look lively, glisse glisse, pas de basque!44 Beat those little feet . . . Look graceful, child!
Du hast Diamanten und Perlen . . .
Then what? Now there's a song . . .
Du hast die schonsten Augen,
Madchen, was willst du mehr?45
How could I forget? Was willst du mehr?, indeed! Whatever next? . . . Oh yes, and this:
In the midday heat, in a vale in Dagestan . . .46
Ah, how I loved that song . . . I simply adored it, Polechka! . . . Your father, you know . . . sang it when he was courting . . . Oh, days! . . . Now there's a song for us! But then what? Then what . . . ? I've forgotten again . . . Well, remind me!' She was terribly agitated and kept trying to lift herself up. Eventually, in a dreadful, hoarse, breaking voice she began to sing, shrieking and gasping at every word, and looking ever more frightened:
'In the midday heat . . . in a vale . . . in Dagestan!
With lead in my breast!
Your Excellency!' she suddenly howled with lace
rating force, drenched in tears. 'Protect the orphans! Remember the late Semyon Zakharych's bread and salt! . . . The aristocratic Semyon Zakharych, one might even say! . . . Ahh!' she said with a start, regaining her senses and casting her eyes over everyone with a sort of horror, before suddenly recognizing Sonya. 'Sonya, Sonya!' she said, meekly and tenderly, as if astonished to see her before her. 'Sonya, darling, you're here too?'
They lifted her up again.
'Enough! . . . It's time! . . . Goodbye, poor creature! . . . This nag's been ridden too hard! . . . She's had it!' she cried in despair and hatred, and her head fell back heavily onto the pillow.
She fell unconscious once more, but only briefly. Her pale, yellow, shrivelled face fell right back, her mouth opened wide, and a spasm stretched out her legs. She gave a deep, deep sigh and died.
Sonya fell on her corpse, wrapped her arms around her and froze, pressing her head tight against the dead woman's shrivelled bosom. Polechka fell at her mother's feet and kissed them, sobbing uncontrollably. Kolya and Lenya, still unsure of what exactly had happened, but sensing something quite dreadful, grabbed one another's little shoulders with both hands and, staring into each other's eyes, suddenly opened their mouths together and began to scream. Both were still in their outfits: one wearing a turban, the other a skullcap with an ostrich feather.
And how did this 'certificate of distinction' suddenly materialize on the bed, next to Katerina Ivanovna? It lay right there, by the pillow; Raskolnikov could see it.
He withdrew to the window. Lebezyatnikov hurried over to him.
'Dead!' said Lebezyatnikov.
'Rodion Romanovich, I have two urgent things to tell you,' said Svidrigailov, walking over. Lebezyatnikov immediately made way and faded tactfully into the background. Svidrigailov led the astonished Raskolnikov even further off into the corner.
'I'll take care of all this - the funeral and so on. I told you I had some money going spare - so why not use it? I'll find decent orphanages for those two mites and for Polechka, and put one thousand five hundred aside for each of them, until they come of age, so Sofya Semyonovna won't have the slightest cause for anxiety. And I'll save her from ruin as well, because she's a good girl, is she not? Well then, sir, be so kind as to tell Avdotya Romanovna that this is the use to which her ten thousand have been put.'
'And the purpose of all this charity?' asked Raskolnikov.
'Dear dear! Aren't we mistrustful!' laughed Svidrigailov. 'I told you this money was going spare. What if it's simply for reasons of humanity - can't you accept that? I mean, she was no "louse"' (he jabbed his finger in the general direction of the deceased), 'she wasn't some hag of a moneylender. I mean, really, "should Luzhin live and commit his abominations or should she die?" And, but for my help, "Polechka, say, will go the same way . . ."'
He said this with a sort of winking, merrily roguish air, never once taking his eyes off Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov turned white and a chill came over him as he heard his own words once spoken to Sonya. He immediately shrank back and stared wildly at Svidrigailov.
'H-how . . . do you know?' he whispered, scarcely able to breathe.
'Because I live right here, on the other side of the wall, at Madame Resslich's. She's a very old and devoted friend. Neighbours, sir.'
'You?'
'Yes, me,' Svidrigailov went on, swaying with mirth, 'and let me assure you, on my honour, dearest Rodion Romanovich, that I find you quite fascinating, astonishingly so. Didn't I tell you we'd become close? Didn't I predict it? Well, now we have. And you'll see what an accommodating fellow I am. You'll see that I'm not so very hard to get along with . . .'
PART SIX
I
For Raskolnikov a strange time had begun: it was as if a fog had suddenly descended, trapping him in hopeless, oppressive isolation. Recalling this time much later, he surmised that he'd experienced, now and then, a dimming of his consciousness and that this had continued, with a few intervals, right up until the final catastrophe. He was absolutely convinced that he'd been mistaken about many things, such as the duration and timing of certain events. At any rate, when he subsequently recalled what had happened and tried to make sense of it all, he learned a great deal about himself, guided as he now was by external information. He had, for example, mixed up one event with another, and considered a third to be the consequence of something that had happened solely in his imagination. At times, he'd been possessed by morbid, excruciating anxiety, which could even mutate into sheer panic. But he also remembered that minutes, hours and even, perhaps, days had been filled with an apathy that possessed him as if in direct contrast to his previous fear - an apathy that resembled the morbid, indifferent state occasionally experienced by the dying. On the whole, it was as if, during these final days, he himself had been trying to run away from a clear and full understanding of his situation; certain crucial facts that needed to be explained there and then weighed especially heavily upon him; but how glad he would have been to cast off some of his worries and flee - even if to forget them, in such a situation as his, threatened him with total and inevitable ruin.
Svidrigailov made him especially uneasy: he even seemed to get stuck, as it were, on Svidrigailov. It was as if, ever since he heard Svidrigailov say those words, so full of menace for him and so clearly expressed, at Sonya's apartment at the moment of Katerina Ivanovna's death, the usual flow of his thoughts was disrupted. But though this new fact made him exceptionally anxious, he seemed in no hurry to get to the bottom of it. Now and then, suddenly finding himself in a remote and isolated part of the city, alone at a table in some wretched tavern, brooding and barely conscious of how he'd ended up there, he would suddenly think of Svidrigailov: he would suddenly realize all too clearly and uneasily that he had to come to an arrangement with this man at the earliest opportunity and, if possible, settle things for good. Once, wandering off somewhere beyond the city limits, he even imagined that he was expecting Svidrigailov and that they'd fixed a meeting there. Another time, he woke before daybreak on the ground somewhere, in the bushes, unsure of how he'd got there. Although, in fact, in the course of these two or three days since Katerina Ivanovna's death he'd already met Svidrigailov a few times, almost always at Sonya's, where he would wander in as if for no reason and almost always for only a minute. They'd exchange brief remarks, never once touching on the essential point, as if they'd agreed not to mention it for the time being. Katerina Ivanovna's body still lay in the coffin. Svidrigailov was busy seeing to the funeral arrangements. Sonya also had her hands full. At their last meeting, Svidrigailov explained to Raskolnikov that he'd dealt with Katerina Ivanovna's children, and dealt with them successfully; that he'd managed, through certain connections, to find the right people to help him place the three orphans, without delay, in entirely suitable institutions; that the money set aside for them had also been a great help, since it was far easier to place orphans with money than orphans with nothing. He said something about Sonya, too, promised to call on Raskolnikov himself in the next day or two, and mentioned that he wished to ask his advice; that they really needed to have a chat; that they had 'some business to discuss' . . . This conversation took place by the main door, on the stairs. Svidrigailov stared straight into Raskolnikov's eyes and suddenly, pausing and lowering his voice, asked him:
'What's come over you, Rodion Romanych? You're not yourself at all! You look and listen, but it's as if you're not even following. You should cheer up a bit. And we must have a chat: just a shame I've so much on - other people's affairs as well as my own . . . Ah, Rodion Romanych,' he suddenly added, 'every human being needs air - Yes, air, air . . . More than anything!'
He suddenly stepped aside to make way for a priest and a deacon coming up the stairs. They were about to perform the memorial service. Svidrigailov had arranged for this to be done twice a day, on the dot. Svidrigailov went on his way. Raskolnikov stood there, thought for a moment, then followed the priest into Sonya's room.
He stood in the doorway. The ser
vice was beginning with quiet, sad decorum. Awareness of death and its presence had always contained for him something oppressive, some mystical dread, ever since childhood; besides, it was a long time since he'd last heard a service for the dead. But there was something else as well, something far too dreadful and disturbing. He was looking at the children: they were all by the coffin, on their knees; Polechka was crying. Behind them, weeping softly and almost shyly, Sonya was praying. The thought, 'She hasn't glanced at me once these past few days, nor spoken a word to me,' suddenly struck him. The room was brightly lit by the sun; puffs of smoke floated up from the censer. 'God rest her soul,' read the priest. Raskolnikov stood for the duration of the service. Giving his blessing and taking his leave, the priest looked about him in a strange kind of way. After the service Raskolnikov walked up to Sonya. Suddenly, she took both his hands in hers and inclined her head towards his shoulder. This brief gesture left Raskolnikov bewildered. In fact, it felt strange. What? Not the slightest disgust? Not the slightest revulsion towards him? Not the slightest tremble in her hand? What was this if not some infinity of self-abasement? That, at any rate, was how he understood it. Sonya said nothing. Raskolnikov squeezed her hand and left. He felt dreadful. Had he only been able to go off somewhere there and then and be entirely alone, even if it were for the rest of his life, he'd have thought himself lucky. But lately, even though he was almost always alone, he never felt alone. He might walk out of the city and out onto the high road or even, on one occasion, to some little wood; but the more isolated the place, the more strongly he seemed to be aware of someone's close and unsettling presence - it wasn't terrifying exactly, just extremely bothersome, so he would hurry back to the city, mix with the crowds, visit the taverns and drinking dens, go to the flea market, to Haymarket. It was as if he somehow felt better there, more isolated. In one eating-house, in the late afternoon, there was singing: he sat and listened for a whole hour and remembered having even enjoyed it. But towards the end he suddenly became anxious again, as if a pang of conscience had suddenly begun to torment him: 'Look at me sitting here, listening to songs - as if there's nothing else I should be doing!' was the kind of thought in his mind. But he soon realized that wasn't the only thing troubling him: there was something that demanded to be resolved at once, but it could neither be grasped nor put into words. As if everything were being wound into a ball. 'No, a fight would be better than this! Porfiry again . . . or Svidrigailov . . . I need a challenge, someone to attack me . . . Yes! Yes!' He left the eating-house and almost broke into a run. The thought of Dunya and his mother had, for some reason, suddenly thrown him into a kind of panic. That was the night when he woke before dawn in the bushes on Krestovsky Island, shivering to the bone and feverish. He set off home, arriving in the early morning. After several hours' sleep the fever passed, but it was already late when he woke: two in the afternoon.