Crime and Punishment (39 page)

‘Did the doctor really say that?’ asked Avdotya Romanovna, in fear.

‘Yes, he did. But he's wrong, quite wrong. He gave him some medicine, a powder, I saw it, and then you arrived. Damn!… You'd have done better to arrive tomorrow! It's just as well we left. But in an hour's time Zosimov himself will provide you with a report on him.
He
'
s
never drunk! And I won't be drunk by then, either… Why did I ever go and get myself so smashed? Oh, it was because I was led into an argument by those accursed fellows! I mean, I swore an oath that I wouldn't get involved in any arguments… ! Such nonsense they talk! I very nearly gave them a dusting! I've left my uncle there in charge of them… I mean, would you believe it: they demand complete impersonality, and find in that the very pith of the matter! How to avoid being themselves, how to resemble themselves as little as possible! That's what they consider to be the highest degree of progress. I mean, if at least it was their own nonsense, but this is simply…’

‘Listen now,’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna interrupted timidly, but this only increased the temperature.

‘What do you suppose?’ Razumikhin shouted, raising his voice even louder. ‘Do you suppose I'm going on like this because they talk nonsense? Rubbish! I like it when they talk
nonsense! Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that's an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can't even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one's own way is almost better than to talk a truth that's someone else's; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot! The truth won't go away, but life can be knocked on the head and done in. I can think of some examples. Well, and what's our position now? We're all of us, every one of us without exception, when it comes to the fields of learning, development, thought, invention, ideals, ambition, liberalism, reason, experience, and every, every, every other field you can think of, in the very lowest preparatory form of the gymnasium! We've got accustomed to making do with other people's intelligence – we're soaked in it! It's true, isn't it? Isn't what I'm saying true?’ cried Razumikhin, trembling all over and squeezing the hands of both ladies. ‘Isn't it?’

‘Oh, my goodness, I really don't know,’ said poor Pulkheria Aleksandrovna.

‘Yes, it is, it is… only I don't agree with all of what you've been saying,’ Avdotya Romanovna added seriously, and then let out a cry, so painfully did he squeeze her hand this time.

‘It is? You say it is? Well, if you can say that, you… you…’ he shouted in ecstasy, ‘you're the fount of goodness, purity, reason and… perfection! Give me your hand, give it me… and please give me yours as well, I want to kiss your hands here and now, on my knees!’

And he knelt down in the middle of the pavement, which at this time was fortunately deserted.

‘Stop it, I beg of you – what are you doing?’ cried Pulkheria Aleksandrovna, extremely alarmed.

‘Get up, get up!’ Dunya laughed, also somewhat anxiously.

‘Certainly not – not until you give me your hands! There we
are! That's enough, up I get, and on we go! I'm a miserable oaf, I'm drunk and unworthy of you, and I'm ashamed of myself… I'm not worthy to love you, but to kneel before you is the duty of every man, unless he's a complete brute. And so I too have knelt… Ah, here are your rooms. Rodion was right to kick Pyotr Petrovich out just for this reason alone! How dare he put you in such a place! It's outrageous! Do you know what sort of people they allow in here? I mean, you're going to be married! You are, aren't you? Well, let me tell you that if he can do a thing like this your fiancé is a villain!’

‘Look here, Mr Razumikhin, you seem to have forgotten…’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna began.

‘Yes, yes, you're right, I've forgotten myself, and I'm ashamed of it!’ Razumikhin said, suddenly remembering where he was, ‘but… but… you can't be angry at me for speaking as I have done! Because I'm speaking sincerely, and not because I… ahem! That would be a cheap thing to do; oh, all right then, let's leave it there, I shan't say why, I don't dare to!… But we all knew when that fellow walked in earlier on today that he wasn't one of us. Not because he'd been to the barber's to have his hair curled, not because he was in such a hurry to show off his intelligence, but because he's a spy and a speculator; because he's a Jew and an ingratiating hypocrite, and you can tell it a mile off. Do you suppose he's got brains? No, he's a fool, a fool! Well, is he any sort of a man for you? Oh my God! You see, ladies,’ he said, coming suddenly to a halt as they were climbing the staircase to the rented rooms, ‘even though those people at my place are all drunk, they're all honest, too, and even though we talk a lot of nonsense, for I too am talking nonsense, we'll finally talk our way to the truth, because we tread the path of decency, while Pyotr Petrovich… does not. Although I may have called them the most terrible names just now, but in the last analysis I respect them all; and even though I may not respect Zamyotov, I like him because he's a puppy! I even like that brute Zosimov, because he's a decent fellow and he knows his job… But enough, all is said and forgiven. It is forgiven, isn't it? Well, let's go on, then. I know this corridor, I've been here before; in the third room, here, there was a scandal… Well,
which number are you? Eight? Once you've locked yourselves in for the night, don't let anyone in. In a quarter of an hour I shall be back with news, and then a quarter of an hour after that I'll be back again with Zosimov, you'll see! Goodbye now, I must run!’

‘Oh Lord, Dunechka, what's going to happen?’ said Pulkheria Aleksandrovna, turning to her daughter in fear and alarm.

‘Calm down, mother,’ Dunya replied, taking off her hat and cape. ‘This gentleman has been sent by God himself, even though he's come straight from a drinking-bout. We may rely on him, I do assure you we may. And after all the things he's done for my brother…’

‘Oh, Dunechka, the Lord only knows whether he'll come back! And how could I ever have brought myself to leave Rodya!… I never, never imagined I should find him like that! How stern he was, as though he wasn't even glad to see us…’

Tears came to her eyes.

‘No, mother, that's not how it was. You didn't look at him properly, you kept crying all the time. He's very unsettled because he's been seriously ill. That's the reason for all of it.’

‘Oh, this illness! Something bad will happen, it will, I know it will! And the way he spoke to you, Dunya!’ said her mother, looking timidly into her daughter's eyes in order to find out what she was thinking, and already half consoled because Dunya was defending Rodya, and must therefore have forgiven him. ‘I'm sure he'll see it differently tomorrow,’ she added, trying to find out everything that was there.

‘And I'm sure that tomorrow he'll still be talking the same way… about that,’ Avdotya Romanovna said abruptly. There, of course, the matter rested, as this was the very point about which Pulkheria Aleksandrovna was now too afraid to open her mouth. Dunya went over to her mother and kissed her. Her mother embraced her tightly, saying nothing. Then she sat down in the anxious expectation of Razumikhin's return, and began timidly to follow the movements of her daughter, who, her arms folded, also in expectation, had begun to walk up and down the room, meditating to herself. This habit of walking up and down a room from one end to the other while meditating was a
constant one of Avdotya Romanovna's, and at such moments her mother was always afraid of disturbing the privacy of her thoughts.

Razumikhin had, of course, been making a fool of himself with his sudden and drunkenly conceived passion for Avdotya Romanovna; but had they taken one look at Avdotya Romanovna, particularly just then, as she walked up and down the room, sadly and meditatively, with her arms folded, it is possible that many people would have forgiven him, his eccentric condition apart, that is. Avdotya Romanovna was remarkably attractive: tall, with a wonderful figure, strong and self-confident, something that was expressed in her every gesture and yet in no way detracted from the softness and gracefulness of her movements. She bore a facial likeness to her brother, but in her these features were almost those of a beauty. Her hair was of a dark chestnut colour, a little lighter than that of her brother; her eyes were nearly black – flashing, proud, and yet at moments extraordinarily kind. She was pale, but not morbidly so; her face shone with freshness and health. Her mouth was a little too small, and her lower lip, fresh and scarlet, jutted ever so slightly forward, together with her chin – the only irregularity in this beautiful countenance, endowing it, however, with an especial characteristic distinctiveness and, it should be said, a certain hauteur. Her expression was generally more serious and thoughtful than it was lively; yet how well her smile suited that face of hers, how well it was adapted to laughter – young, lively, wholehearted! It was understandable that the hot-blooded, outspoken, simple-hearted, honest, Herculean-strong and drunken Razumikhin, who had never seen anything similar before, should have lost his head at first sight. As though on purpose, moreover, chance had given him his first sight of Dunya at the beautiful moment of her love for her brother, and of her joy at seeing him again. Thereafter he had seen how her lower lip had trembled in response to her brother's rudely delivered and cruelly ungrateful injunctions – and had been unable to restrain himself.

He had, however, not been mistaken when, drunk on the staircase earlier, he had unintentionally let it slip that Raskolnikov's eccentric landlady, Praskovya Pavlovna, would
be jealous not only of Avdotya Romanovna but also possibly of Pulkheria Aleksandrovna herself. In spite of the fact that Pulkheria Aleksandrovna was now forty-three, her face still retained the traces of her former beauty, and indeed she looked much younger than her years, something that nearly always happens to women who keep the lucidity of their spirit, the freshness of their perceptions, and an honest, pure warmth of heart until old age. Let us observe in parenthesis that the retention of all these things is the only means by which one may avoid losing one's looks even when one is old. Her hair was already beginning to turn grey and grow thin, small, radiating wrinkles had long ago started to appear around her eyes, her cheeks had become sunken and wasted from worry and grief, yet even so this face was beautiful. It was a portrait of Dunya, only twenty years later, and without that expression of the lower lip, which in her did not jut forward. Pulkheria Aleksandrovna was emotional, but not in a sickly-sweet way, timid and compliant, but only up to a certain point: there was much that she was capable of letting pass, much to which she would give her agreement, even that which ran counter to her convictions, but there was always a certain point of uprightness, good conduct and last principles beyond which no eventuality could induce her to go.

Exactly twenty minutes after Razumikhin's departure there were two low but hurried knocks at the door; he was back.

‘I won't come in, there's no time,’ he began to fuss as the door was opened to him. ‘He's sleeping like a log, soundly and peacefully, and may God see to it that he sleeps for ten hours. Nastasya's in his room; I told her not to leave it until I get back. Now I shall go and fish out Zosimov, he'll provide you with a report, and then you'd better turn in, too; I can see that you're plain worn out.’

And he set off along the corridor, away from them.

‘What a prompt and… devoted young man!’ Pulkheria Aleksandrovna exclaimed, thoroughly overjoyed.

‘He seems to be a wonderful character!’ Avdotya Romanovna replied with a certain ardour, starting to walk up and down the room again.

Almost an hour later there was the sound of footsteps in the corridor and another knock at the door. Both women had been waiting, this time entirely believing Razumikhin's promise; and indeed, he had managed to fish out Zosimov. Zosimov had at once agreed to leave the banquet and take a look at Raskolnikov, though he had come to the rooms of the ladies reluctantly and with great suspicion, unsure whether to believe the drunken Razumikhin. His vanity was, however, at once assuaged, and even somewhat flattered: he realized that he was actually being awaited as an oracle. He stayed precisely ten minutes, and completely succeeded in convincing Pulkheria Aleksandrovna and putting her fears to rest. He spoke with emphatic solicitude, but in a restrained manner and with the kind of intense seriousness entirely proper to a twenty-seven-year-old doctor at an important consultation, never once saying anything that was not relevant to the matter at hand and without displaying the slightest desire to enter into more personal and private relations with the two ladies. Having noted upon entering how dazzingly beautiful Avdotya Romanovna was, he at once endeavoured not to pay any attention to her at all, throughout the entire duration of his visit, addressing himself exclusively to Pulkheria Aleksandrovna. All this afforded him great inward satisfaction. With regard to the patient, he declared that at the present time he considered him to be in a thoroughly satisfactory condition. As far as he could determine, the patient's illness had, beyond the negative effect of the material environment in which he had been living for the last few months, certain mental causes: ‘It is, so to speak, the product of many complex mental and material influences – of anxieties, apprehensions, worries, of certain ideas… and the like.’ Having noticed in passing that Avdotya Romanovna had begun to listen attentively, Zosimov allowed himself to expand a little more on this theme. In response to Pulkheria Aleksandrovna's worried and timid inquiry regarding ‘certain suspicions of insanity’, however, he replied with a calm, open and ironic smile that he had been exaggerating; that, to be sure, the patient displayed a certain
ideé fixe
, something that suggested monomania – the fact was that he, Zosimov, was at present conducting a special study of this extremely interesting
branch of medicine – but, after all, it must be borne in mind that almost right up until today the patient had been in delirium, and… and, of course, the arrival of his family would strengthen him, take his mind off things and have a salutary effect on him, ‘as long as it is possible to avoid any more shocks of a particular kind,’ he added significantly. Then he got up, bowed solidly and affably, was escorted to the door with blessings, expressions of ardent gratitude, entreaties and even the hand of Avdotya Romanovna, which was extended towards him for him to shake without his asking, and he emerged thoroughly satisfied with his visit and even more so with himself.