Crime and Punishment (32 page)

For some reason the singing interested him – all that noise and uproar down there… From inside, through shrieks and bursts of laughter, came the sound of a reedy, falsetto voice singing an impetuous melody to a guitar accompaniment; someone was dancing desperately to it, beating out the rhythm with his heels. He listened with an attention that was fixed, sombre and reflective, bent forward as he stood at the entrance looking curiously down from the pavement into the passage below.

the singer's reedy voice spilled out. Raskolnikov felt a terrible desire to find out what this song was, as though everything were bound up in that.

‘Why don't I just go in?’ he thought. ‘They're laughing. Drunk. Well, what if they are: why don't I get drunk, too?’

‘Why don't you go in, dear master?’ one of the women asked in a somewhat resonant voice that was not yet completely hoarse. She was young and even not bad-looking – the only one in the whole group.

‘Not likely, pretty-face!’ he replied, coming out of his stooping position and giving her a look.

She smiled: the compliment was thoroughly to her liking.

‘You're rather pretty yourself,’ she said.

‘Look how skinny he is!’ another woman observed in a bass voice. ‘Have you just come out of hospital, or something?’

‘You could almost believe they were generals' daughters if it weren't for those snub noses of theirs!’ a muzhik who had just approached suddenly said, interrupting in a tipsy fashion; his
armyak
was hanging wide open, and his ugly horse-face bore a crafty grin. ‘Cor, what a party!’

‘In you go, since you've come!’

‘I will, too! Yum-yum!’

And he fell down the steps, head over heels.

Raskolnikov began to move on.

‘Oh, master, listen!’ the girl called after him.

‘What is it?’

She began to show signs of confusion.

‘Well, you see, dear master, normally I'd be glad to spend some time with you, but right now you've got my conscience going so I don't know where to look. O charming chevalier, please give me six copecks for a drink!’

Raskolnikov took out what came into his hand: three five-copeck pieces.

‘Oh, what a kind master!’

‘What's your name?’

‘You just ask for Duklida, sir.’

‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ one of the women in the group observed suddenly, shaking her head at Duklida. ‘Begging like that – I don't know what things are coming to. If it were me, I'd drop dead from sheer embarrassment!’

Raskolnikov looked with curiosity at the woman who had spoken. She was a pockmarked prostitute of about thirty, covered in bruises, with a swollen upper lip. She had delivered her condemnation in quiet, serious tones.

‘Where was it,’ thought Raskolnikov, as he walked onward, ‘where was it I read about a man who's been sentenced to die,
³
saying or thinking, the hour before his death, that even if he had to live somewhere high up on a rock, and in such a tiny area that he could only just stand on it, with all around precipices, an ocean, endless murk, endless solitude and endless storms – and had to stand there, on those two feet of space, all his life, for a thousand years, eternity – that it would be better to live like that, than to die so very soon! If only he could live, live and live! Never mind what that life was like! As long as he could live!… What truth there is in that! Lord, what truth! Man is a villain. And whoever calls him a villain because of it is one himself!’ he added a moment later.

He came out at another street. ‘Ah – the “Crystal Palace”! This is the place Razumikhin was talking about earlier on. But why would I want to go in there just now? Oh yes: to catch up
on my reading!… Zosimov said he'd seen something in the newspapers…’

‘Do you keep newspapers?’ he asked, going into the extremely spacious and well-kept inn premises which stretched for several rooms and were, moreover, rather empty. Two or three visitors were drinking tea, and in one distant room sat a group of what looked like four men drinking champagne. Raskolnikov thought one of them might be Zamyotov. It was, however, impossible to be sure from so far away.

‘Oh well, if it is, it is,’ he thought.

‘Ordering vodka, sir?’ the waiter asked.

‘Some tea, please. And if you'll bring me some newspapers, the old ones, for five days back, I'll give you something for your own vodka.’

‘Very well, sir. These are today's. And you'll order some vodka, too?’

The old newspapers appeared, together with the tea. Raskolnikov settled down and began to hunt through them: ‘Izler
⁴
… Izler… Aztecs… Aztecs… Izler… Bartola… Massimo… Aztecs
⁵
… Izler… God, what revolting rubbish! Ah, here's the chronicle: woman falls down staircase… artisan dies, drunk, in fire… fire at Peski… fire at St Petersburg Side
⁶
… Izler… Izler… Izler… Izler… Massimo… Ah, here it is…’

At last he found what he had been looking for, and began to read. The lines jumped before his eyes, but he read the entire item of ‘news’ to the end and then began to hunt avidly through the subsequent issues for later additions. His hands trembled as they turned over the pages, in convulsive impatience. Suddenly someone sat down beside him, at the table. He took a quick glance: it was Zamyotov, the same Zamyotov, looking just as he had done before, with his rings and chains, the parting in his black, curly and pomaded hair, in his flashy waistcoat, his somewhat shabby frock-coat and his stale linen. He was in a good mood, or at any rate was smiling a very good-natured smile, which appeared to imply that this was so. His swarthy features were slightly flushed from the champagne he had drunk.

‘I say, are you here?’ he began, taken aback, and in a tone of voice that suggested a lifetime's acquaintance. ‘Yet Razumikhin
was telling me only yesterday that you were still unconscious. There's a strange thing! I mean, I was at your place…’

Raskolnikov had known he would come up to him. He set his newspapers aside and turned to face Zamyotov. There was an ironical smile on his lips, and in this smile there was a touch of some new element, a kind of irritable impatience.

‘I know you were,’ he replied. ‘I heard you. You were looking for my sock… You know, Razumikhin's simply wild about you, he says you and he went to see Laviza Ivanovna – you know, the woman you were trying to get off with that time, the one you kept winking to “Lieutenant Gunpowder” about, but he didn't get it – remember? Though how he could ever have been in the dark about it beats me… it was as plain as daylight… eh?’

‘What a rowdy chap he is!’

‘Who, “Gunpowder”?’

‘No, your friend. Razumikhin…’

‘You live a good life, don't you, Mr Zamyotov? Free entry to all the best establishments! Who was that filling you up with champagne just now?’

‘Oh, we were just… having a drink or two… Do you call that filling up?’

‘An honorarium! You never let an opportunity slip!’ Raskolnikov began to laugh. ‘It's all right, my chubby little man, it's all right!’ he added, slapping Zamyotov on the shoulder. ‘I don't mean it in a nasty way, “more like two friends having a playful scrap”, as that decorator fellow of yours said after he'd been having a go at Mitka – you know, in the case about the old woman.’

‘How do you know about that?’

‘Perhaps I know more about it than you do.’

‘I say, it strikes me there's something strange about you… I think you're still very ill. You should never have come out…’

‘Something strange about me?’

‘Yes. What are you doing, reading the newspapers?’

‘That's right.’

‘There's a lot about fires in them.’

‘No, I haven't been reading about the fires.’ Just then he gave
Zamyotov a mysterious look; the mocking smile distorted his lips once more. ‘No, not about the fires,’ he went on, winking at Zamyotov. ‘Come on, dear young man, own up: you're just dying to know what I've been reading about, aren't you?’

‘No, I'm not; I just asked, that's all. What's wrong with that? Why do you keep…’

‘Listen: you're a well-read, educated man, aren't you?’

‘I did six years at the gymnasium,’ Zamyotov replied with a certain amount of dignity.

‘Six! A real little man of the world! With a parting, and rings – a wealthy individual! Goodness me, what a charming little fellow!’ At this point Raskolnikov dissolved into nervous laughter, right in Zamyotov's face. Zamyotov started back, not so much offended as thoroughly astonished.

‘I say, you really are behaving most strangely!’ Zamyotov said again in a very serious tone of voice. ‘If you ask me, you're still delirious.’

‘Delirious? You're wrong there, my little man of the world!… So you think I'm strange, do you? Curious, are you? Eh?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Curious to know what I was reading about, what I was looking for? Goodness, how many back numbers I asked them to bring me! Looks suspicious, eh?’

‘Well, tell me then.’

‘All ears upstairs?’

‘What do you mean – upstairs?’

‘I'll tell you afterwards what stairs I have in mind, but right now, my dear, beloved little fellow, I'm going to make you a declaration… No, a “confession”… No, that's not right, either: “I shall make a deposition, and you shall take it down” – that's it! My deposition is as follows: I was reading, I'd got interested… was looking… searching…’ Raskolnikov screwed up his eyes and waited. ‘Searching – and so I dropped in here – to find out about the murder of the civil servant's widow –’ he articulated at last, almost in a whisper, bringing his face extremely close to Zamyotov's. Zamyotov was looking steadily at him, not moving a muscle and never once turning his face away. Later on, Zamyotov thought that the strangest
thing of all had been the fact that their silence had lasted a whole minute, and that they had spent its entirety staring at each other.

‘Well, so what if you have been reading about it?’ he shouted suddenly, in bewilderment and impatience. ‘What business is it of mine? What does it matter?’

‘It's the same old woman,’ Raskolnikov went on, still in a whisper and without batting an eyelid at Zamyotov's outburst, ‘the same old woman you'd started to talk about in the bureau that time when I passed out, if you remember. Well, now do you understand?’

‘What do you mean? What should I… understand?’ Zamyotov managed to get out, almost in a state of panic.

For a single instant, Raskolnikov's impassive and serious face was transformed, and he suddenly dissolved again into the same nervous laughter as before, as though unable to control himself. And in a single flash he remembered with extreme clarity of sensation a certain moment, not long past, when he had stood behind the door with the axe, when the bolt had leapt up and down, when those men had been cursing and trying to break their way in, and he had suddenly felt like shouting to them, returning their abuse, sticking his tongue out at them, teasing them, laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing!

‘You're either crazy, or…’ Zamyotov said – and stopped, as though a thought had suddenly struck him, having flickered without warning through his brain.

‘Or? What do you mean “or”? Well, explain yourself!’

‘Never mind!’ Zamyotov replied, angrily. ‘It's all rubbish!’

They both fell silent. In the wake of his abrupt, paroxysmic explosion of laughter Raskolnikov grew suddenly reflective and sad. He leaned his elbows on the table and propped his head in his hand. One might have thought he had completely forgotten about Zamyotov. The silence lasted rather a long time.

‘Why aren't you drinking your tea? It'll get cold,’ Zamyotov said.

‘Eh? What? Tea?… Yes, I suppose so…’ Raskolnikov took a swallow from his glass, put a piece of bread in his mouth and suddenly, as he looked at Zamyotov, remembered everything
and seemed to brighten up: at the same moment his features re-acquired their previous mocking expression. He continued to drink the tea.

‘There's a lot of this crookery going on just now,’ Zamyotov said. ‘Not so long ago I read in the
Moscow Gazette
that they'd caught a whole gang of forgers. It was a regular business. They were forging lottery tickets.’

‘Oh, that's history! I read about it a month ago,’ Raskolnikov replied calmly. ‘So you think they're crooks, do you?’ he added with an ironic smile.

‘What else?’

‘Those men? Those men are just children –
blancs
-
becs
, not crooks! Fifty of them joined forces on that racket! Is it possible? Three would be too many, and each of them would have to be more sure of the others than he was of himself! And if just one of them got drunk and spilled the beans, the whole thing would go up in smoke!
Blancs
-
becs
! They hired unreliable people to cash the forged tickets at the banks: is that the kind of thing you'd entrust to the first person who walked along? All right, let's suppose it worked, even with
blancs
-
becs
, each man succeeds in cashing a million's worth – all right, what about afterwards? The whole of the rest of their lives? Each of them depending on the others for the whole of the rest of his life! A man would do better to hang himself! But these fellows didn't even know how to go about cashing the things: one of them walked into a bank, got five thousand, and his hands started to tremble. He managed to count four, but took the fifth without counting, on trust, in a hurry just to get the loot into his pocket and make off as quickly as possible. Well, of course he aroused suspicion. And the whole thing went bang just because of one simpleton! Is it possible?’

‘That his hands shook?’ Zamyotov said, catching on to his train of thought. ‘Oh yes, sir, it's possible. Indeed, I'm quite sure that it's possible. Sometimes they just can't go through with it.’

‘A thing like that?’

‘Well, I mean – would you be able to? I know I wouldn't! To endure such horrors just for the sake of a hundred-rouble pay-off? Take forged lottery tickets – where? – to a bank, where
they know that kind of thing inside out? No, I'd lose my nerve. Wouldn't you?’

Raskolnikov suddenly had a terrible urge to stick out his tongue. At moments a feverish chill ran up and down his spine.