Crime and Punishment (16 page)

‘You're a student?' the man asked, glancing at the summons.

‘Yes, a former student.'

The clerk looked him over, though without the faintest curiosity. He was a particularly unkempt individual, with something obsessive in his gaze.

‘You won't learn anything from him: he doesn't give a damn,' thought Raskolnikov.

‘Go and see the head clerk,' said the unkempt man, jabbing his finger in the direction of the very last room.

He entered this room (the fourth), which was cramped and filled to bursting with a somewhat smarter crowd than the others. Among the visitors were two ladies. One, dressed in humble mourning clothes, was sitting at a table opposite the head clerk, who was dictating something to her. The other lady – a very plump, crimson, blotchy, striking woman, dressed rather too lavishly with a brooch on her chest the size of a saucer – was standing to one side, waiting for something. Raskolnikov thrust his summons at the head clerk, who took one glance at it, told him to wait and turned back to the lady in mourning.

He could breathe more freely. ‘Must be something else!' Little by little he began to cheer up, exhorting himself as best he could to pull himself together.

‘Say something stupid or even just a tiny bit careless and you'll give yourself away completely! H'm . . . Shame there's no air in here,' he added. ‘So stuffy . . . My head's spinning even more . . . and my mind, too . . .'

Everything inside him was at sixes and sevens. He feared losing control. He tried to find something to hold on to, something to think about – something totally irrelevant – but without any success. The head clerk intrigued him greatly, though: he kept scanning his face for signs, for clues to his character. He was very young, twenty-two or so, with swarthy, mobile features that made him look older than his years, foppishly dressed, his hair parted at the back, combed and pomaded, with a great number of jewels and rings on white, brush-scrubbed fingers, and gold chains on his waistcoat. He even exchanged a few words in French – very competently, too – with a foreigner who happened to be in the room.

‘Luiza Ivanovna, won't you sit down?' he said in passing to the overdressed, crimson lady, who was still standing as if she dared not sit, though there was a chair right beside her.

‘
Ich danke
,' she said and, with a rustle of silk, lowered herself quietly into the chair. Her light-blue dress with white lace trimmings spread out around the chair like an air balloon, taking up nearly half the room. There was a whiff of perfume. But the lady was clearly embarrassed to be taking up half the room and to be filling it with her scent, though she was smiling, too, timidly and insolently at one and the same time, albeit with evident anxiety.

The lady in mourning finally finished and started getting up. Suddenly, somewhat noisily, rolling his shoulders at each step in a very dashing, rather emphatic way, an officer walked in, flung his service cap down on the table and sat down in an armchair. The lavish lady all but leapt from her seat on seeing him and set about curtseying with particular enthusiasm; but the officer didn't pay her the slightest attention and she dared not sit down again in his presence. He was a lieutenant, assistant to the superintendent, with a ginger moustache that stuck out horizontally on both sides and exceptionally small features that failed to express anything much other than a certain insolence. He looked askance and with some indignation at Raskolnikov: his clothes were too shabby for words, but his bearing was somehow at odds with them, for all his abjection; Raskolnikov, in his recklessness, had stared at the lieutenant so long and so hard he'd even managed to offend him.

‘Well then?' shouted the lieutenant, probably amazed that this tramp had no intention of vaporizing beneath his fiery gaze.

‘An order . . . a summons . . . .,' Raskolnikov half-replied.

‘It's about that claim for some money, from
the student
, I mean,' the head clerk threw out, lifting his head from his papers. ‘There you go, sir!' He tossed Raskolnikov a notebook, after pointing to the right place. ‘Read it!'

‘Money? What money?' thought Raskolnikov. ‘But that means . . . it definitely can't be
that
!' And he shuddered with joy. He suddenly felt dreadfully, inexpressibly relieved. Everything simply fell from his shoulders.

‘And when were you told to come, gracious sir?' shouted the lieutenant, who for some reason was taking ever greater offence. ‘Nine o'clock is what's written and now it's gone eleven!'

‘It was only delivered a quarter of an hour ago,' Raskolnikov replied loudly over his shoulder, suddenly getting angry as well, to his own surprise, and even taking a certain pleasure in the fact. ‘It's enough that I'm here at all, with a fever like mine.'

‘No need to shout!'

‘I'm not shouting, I'm speaking perfectly calmly. You're the one shouting; but I am a student and I will not allow myself to be shouted at.'

The assistant was so incensed that at first he couldn't even speak and merely sputtered and spat. He leapt from his seat.

‘Kindly hold your tongue, sir! You're on state premises. Watch your step, I say!'

‘You, too, are on state premises,' shrieked Raskolnikov, ‘and not only are you shouting, you are also smoking, thereby showing us all a distinct lack of respect!' Saying this, Raskolnikov experienced inexpressible pleasure.

The head clerk smiled at them. The fiery lieutenant was visibly flustered.

‘None of your business, sir!' he yelled at last, more loudly than was natural. ‘Now kindly supply the statement demanded of you. Show him, Alexander Grigoryevich. We've received a complaint about you! For not paying up! You've got some pluck, I'll give you that!'

But Raskolnikov was no longer listening and greedily snatched the document, desperate to see what it was all about. He read it once, twice, and still didn't understand.

‘What is it?' he asked the head clerk.

‘A demand for payment on a promissory note, a recovery claim. Either you pay up, including all the costs, fines and so on, or you submit a statement in writing, saying when you will be able to pay and undertaking not to leave the capital until that time and not to sell or conceal your property. The creditor, meanwhile, is free to sell your property and to deal with you in accordance with the law.'

‘But I . . . don't owe anyone!'

‘That's none of our business. What concerns us is the legitimate claim we have received for overdue payment on a promissory note made out for one hundred and fifteen roubles, issued by yourself to the collegiate assessor's widow Zarnitsyna nine months ago and transferred as payment to court counsellor Chebarov. Hence, we are inviting you to make a statement.'

‘But she's my landlady!'

‘And what if she is?'

The head clerk looked at him with a patronizing smile of pity mixed with a note of triumph, as if Raskolnikov were a raw recruit coming under fire for the first time: ‘Now how do you feel?' he seemed to be saying. But how could any of this – promissory notes, recovery claims – matter to him now? Did it really warrant the faintest anxiety or even a moment's attention? He stood, read, listened, replied, even asked questions himself, but he did so mechanically. The triumph of survival, of deliverance from oppressive danger – this was what filled his entire being at that moment; no predictions or analysis, no speculations or deductions, no doubts or questions. It was a moment of complete, spontaneous, purely animal joy.
But at this very same moment something like thunder and lightning erupted in the bureau. The lieutenant, still badly shaken by such shocking familiarity, ablaze with indignation and clearly desperate to avenge his wounded vanity, was now directing all his thunderbolts at the unfortunate ‘lavish lady', who'd been looking at him, ever since he walked in, with a perfectly stupid smile.

‘And you, Mrs Whatnot,' he suddenly yelled at the top of his voice (the lady in mourning had already left), ‘what was all that about over at yours last night? Eh? Bringing shame on the whole street again! More debauchery, more fights, more drunkenness. Suppose you fancy a stint in a house of correction! Ten times I've told you, Mrs Whatnot, ten times I've warned you that the eleventh will be one too many! And here you are, all over again!'

The document fell from Raskolnikov's hands and he stared wildly at the lavish lady who was being told off so unceremoniously; but he soon grasped what it was all about and immediately began to find the whole business most entertaining. He listened with such pleasure that he wanted to roar and roar with laughter . . . His nerves were all tingling inside him.

‘Ilya Petrovich!' the head clerk began solicitously, before deciding to bide his time: there was no way of restraining the lieutenant once his blood was up other than by force, as he knew from his own experience.

As for the lavish lady, at first she simply quivered from the force of the thunder and lightning; but, strangely enough, the more frequent and the more abusive the insults became, the more courteous she seemed and the more charmingly she smiled at the menacing lieutenant. She danced from foot to foot, dropping one curtsey after another and impatiently waiting for the moment when she, too, would be allowed to have her say; it finally came.

‘Zer vas no noise und no fighting in my haus, Herr Kapitän,' she suddenly rapped out, scattering her words like peas, in boisterous Russian, albeit with a heavy German accent, ‘und zer vas no scandal, und he come back to haus drunken, und I tell you everysing, Herr Kapitän, und I not guilty . . . I haff honourable haus, Herr Kapitän, and honourable behaviour, Herr Kapitän, and alvays, alvays no scandal vant. Und he come back very drunken, und he three more pottles ask for, und zen he lifted one leg and begin play piano with foot, und zis very bad in honourable haus, und he break piano, und zis very, very vulgar, und I say so. Zen he pottle take and begin pushing everyone behind mit
pottle. Und I begin call ze caretaker, und Karl come. He take Karl und black eye give him, und Genriet too, und my cheek hit five times. Zis is so rude in honourable haus, Herr Kapitän, und I begin shout. Zen he open window to Ditch and begin sqveal in vindow like small pig; vat disgrace, Herr Kapitän. Sqveal, sqveal, sqveal, like little pig! Vat disgrace! Foo-foo-foo! Und Karl grab him behind mit tails und take him from vindow, und zen – zis is true, Herr Kapitän – he tear sein tailcoat. Und zen he shout zat Karl muss fifteen roubles fine pay. Und I myself, Herr Kapitän, him five roubles for sein tailcoat pay. Und he dishonourable guest, Herr Kapitän, und great scandal making! I will have big satire in all ze papers about you gedruckt, he say.'

‘A scribbler, I suppose?'

‘Yes, Herr Kapitän, und such dishonourable guest, Herr Kapitän, in such honourable haus . . .'

‘All right, all right! Enough! If I've told you once, I've told you . . .'

‘Ilya Petrovich!' said the head clerk again with meaning. The lieutenant glanced in his direction and the head clerk gave the faintest of nods.

‘... So here's what I'll say to you, most esteemed
Laviza
Ivanovna,
2
and I'm saying it for the very last time,' the lieutenant went on. ‘One more scandal in your honourable house and I'll have your guts for garters, as ze poets say. Got it? So, you say, a scribbler, a writer, earned five roubles in an “honourable house” for a coat-tail. A fine lot, these writers!' he exclaimed, with a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. ‘There was another scene in a tavern a couple of days ago: he'd eaten, but didn't want to pay. “I'll write you up in a satire instead,” he said. Then there was that chap on a steamer last week who heaped the vilest abuse on the respected family of a state counsellor, his wife and daughter. And another who recently got himself chucked out of a pastry shop. That's what they're like, these writers, scribblers, students, town criers . . . Ugh! Well, clear off then! I'll be paying you a visit myself . . . so watch your step! Got it?'

With precipitate civility, Luiza Ivanovna set about curtseying in all directions and curtsied her way back to the door; but in the doorway, still walking backwards, she bumped into a rather striking officer with a fresh, open face and quite magnificent thick blond whiskers. This was Nikodim Fomich himself, the district superintendent. Luiza Ivanovna hastily curtsied almost to the floor and flew out of the bureau with quick, mincing, bouncing steps.

‘Making a racket again, more thunder and lightning, a tornado, a hurricane!' remarked Nikodim Fomich to Ilya Petrovich in an amiable, friendly way. ‘I see they've got you all worked up again, boiling over again! I could hear you from the stairs.'

‘Come off it!' said Ilya Petrovich with well-bred nonchalance (and not so much ‘off it' as ‘orf it'), taking some documents or other over to another table and lifting his shoulders theatrically with each step. ‘Please judge for yourself: Mr Writer here, or should I say Mr Student or rather former student, won't pay, having written out one promissory note after another, won't vacate the apartment, is the subject of endless complaints, yet still has the temerity to rebuke me for lighting a papirosa in his presence! His behaviour is simply disgraceful, and anyway, just take a look at him: a fine specimen!'

‘Poverty is no sin, my friend, but why all the fuss? You're a powder keg, as everyone knows, and you can't take an insult. I expect he insulted you first, so you lashed out,' Nikodim Fomich went on, courteously addressing Raskolnikov, ‘but you really shouldn't have done: he's the noblest of men, let me assure you, the noblest, but he's gunpowder! Flares up, sizzles away, burns out – and that's that! Finished! And all that's left is the gold in his heart! Lieutenant Powder Keg, that's what they called him in the regiment . . .'