Crime and Punishment (52 page)

Some ten minutes went by. It was still light, but the day was drawing to a close. In the room there was complete silence. Not even from the staircase came a single sound. There was only the buzzing and struggling of some large fly as it swooped and beat against the windowpane. At last it became intolerable: Raskolnikov suddenly raised himself on one elbow and sat up on the sofa.

‘All right, what do you want?’

‘You know, I had a feeling you weren't asleep, but were just pretending,’ the stranger replied in a peculiar tone of voice, laughing easily. ‘Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov. Permit me to introduce myself…’

‘Can this really still be my dream?’ Raskolnikov wondered again. Cautiously and with suspicion he peered closely at his unexpected guest.

‘Svidrigailov? Rubbish! I don't believe it!’ he finally said out loud, in a puzzled voice.

His guest seemed to find this exclamation not at all astonishing.

‘I've looked in to see you on account of two reasons: for one thing, I felt like making your personal acquaintance, as I've long been hearing things about you that put you in a curious and favourable light; and for another, I cherish the fond hope that you may not refuse to assist me in a certain undertaking that directly affects your sister, Avdotya Romanovna. Alone and without introduction, she would probably not admit me to her chambers just now, because of prejudice, but, well, now, with your assistance, I expect to…’

‘You expect too much,’ Raskolnikov said, interrupting.

‘They only arrived in town yesterday, if I'm not mistaken?’

Raskolnikov made no reply.

‘It was yesterday, I know. Why, I myself arrived only the day before. Well now, Rodion Romanovich, sir, this is what I want to say to you on that account: while I consider it superfluous to embark upon self-justifications, I should be grateful if you would tell me what was so particularly criminal about my part in that matter, viewing it without prejudice, that is, and from a common-sense point of view?’

Raskolnikov continued to study him in silence.

‘The fact that I went chasing after a defenceless young girl in my own home and “outraged her honour with my infamous proposals”? Is that it, sir? (Thus do I anticipate your reply!) But I mean to say, if you will only bear in mind that I am a human being,
et nihil humanum
… in a word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (something which, needless to say, takes place without deference to our wishes), then everything may be explained in the most natural fashion. The point at issue here is as follows: am I a monster or am I myself a victim? What if the latter be true? I mean, in suggesting to the object of my desires that she elope to America or Switzerland with me, I may have entertained the most respectful feelings towards her, and may even have intended to usher in our future happiness!… Reason is, after all, the servant of passion; I may have been harming myself even more, for heaven's sake!’

‘That's not what's at issue at all,’ Raskolnikov interrupted, with disgust. ‘The simple fact is that, quite apart from the question of whether you're right or wrong, you're an obnoxious character – well, and so people don't want to have anything to do with you, they show you the door, and out you go!…’

Svidrigailov suddenly roared with laughter.

‘I say… I say, there's no putting you off the mark, is there?’ he said, laughing in the frankest possible manner. ‘I thought I could pull the wool over your eyes, but no, you've gone straight to the heart of it all!’

‘You're still trying to pull the wool over my eyes at this very moment.’

‘What if I am? What if I am?’ Svidrigailov replied, with a gaping laugh. ‘I mean, it's what they call
bonne guerre
, and it's the most permissible form of wool-pulling there is!… But you interrupted me just now, you know; and one way or the other, I shall say it again: there would have been no unpleasantness if it hadn't been for the incident in the garden. Marfa Petrovna…’

‘Did you wear her out, as well, the way they say you did?’ Raskolnikov interrupted, rudely.

‘Oh, you've heard about that, too, have you? Though you couldn't really have failed to, I suppose… Well, with regard to
your question, I must admit that I really don't know what to say, though my own conscience is perfectly clear on the matter. What I mean is, please don't get the idea that I had any misgivings about it – it all took place quite in accordance with the natural order of events and in precisely the manner common to such cases: the medical inquiry established apoplexy as the cause of death, brought on by bathing immediately after a large meal accompanied by nearly a whole bottle of wine, and there is no way in which it could possibly have discovered anything else… You know, sir, for a while I thought about it, particularly as I sat in the train on my way here, wondering whether I might not have helped to bring about this whole… misfortune, oh, by causing her some inner upset, or something of that sort? But I have come to the conclusion that of that, too, there can have been absolutely no question.’

Raskolnikov began to laugh.

‘I wonder you let it bother you!’

‘Now what are you laughing at? Look at it like this: I only hit her with that little horsewhip twice, there weren't even any marks… Please don't think me a cynic; I mean, I have a precise awareness of just what an infamous thing it was to do, and so on, and so forth; but you see, I also know for a fact that Marfa Petrovna actually derived pleasure from my, as it were, enthusiasm. The story of the episode concerning your sister had been squeezed of its last dregs of interest. It was the third day running that Marfa Petrovna had been compelled to stay at home; she had no pretext for showing her nose in town, and she'd bored everyone to death with that letter of hers (you've heard about the letter-reading, I expect?). And suddenly these two smacks of a horsewhip land on her out of the blue! She ordered that carriage like a shot!… And all this quite apart from the fact that there are certain occasions when women take an inordinate degree of enjoyment in being trampled on, all their surface indignation to the contrary. They all have them, those occasions; and indeed, human beings in general are fond, even inordinately fond, of being trampled on, have you noticed that? But of women it's especially true. One might even say that they can't get along without it.’

At one particular time Raskolnikov thought of getting up and leaving, thereby terminating the interview. But a certain curiosity, not unmixed with circumspection, held him back for a moment.

‘So you like a good fight, do you?’ he asked, absent-mindedly.

‘No, not terribly,’ Svidrigailov replied, unruffled. ‘But Marfa Petrovna and I hardly ever came to blows. We lived in harmony most of the time, and she never seemed to grumble at me. As for the horsewhip, I think that, during the whole of our seven years together, I used it on her only twice (that's if one doesn't count a certain third occasion, which was, I may add, highly ambiguous, to say the least): the first time was two months after our marriage, just after we arrived at the estate, and the second time is the one there's just been. What did you think: that I was a monster, a reactionary, a feudalist? Hee-hee!… By the way, Rodion Romanovich, I wonder if you remember how a few years ago, when we were still in the era of beneficent
glasnost
,
¹
a certain member of our gentry – I've forgotten his name! – was publicly disgraced in all the organs of the press for having horsewhipped a German woman in a train – remember? I believe it was the year of “The Indecent Act of
The Age
”.
²
(Oh, you remember – the reading from
Egyptian Nights
, the public one! The “black eyes”, and “Oh, where art thou, golden springtime of our youth?”!) Well, sir, if you want my opinion, I am deeply out of sympathy with the gentleman who horsewhipped the German woman, because… there's really not much to sympathize with, is there? But at the same time I can't help adding that one occasionally encounters “German women” of such an inflammatory nature that I doubt if there's a single progressive who would be able to entirely answer for himself. No one saw the matter from that point of view at the time, yet it's the only genuinely humane one, I do assure you, sir!’

Having delivered himself of this remark, Svidrigailov once again went off into roars of laughter. It was evident to Raskolnikov that this was a man who had firmly made up his mind to do something, and who had all his wits about him.

‘It sounds as though it must be several days since you spoke to anyone,’ he said.

‘Just about. Why? Are you surprised that I'm such an adaptable man?’

‘No, what surprises me is that you're too much of one.’

‘Because I didn't take offence at the rudeness of your questions? Is that what you mean? Yes, well… why take offence? As I was asked, so did I reply,’ he added, with an astonishingly ingenuous look. ‘After all, to be quite honest with you, there's practically nothing that interests me,’ he went on, reflectively. ‘Particularly just now – I've nothing on my hands… Actually, you're quite entitled to suppose that I'm sucking up to you with some ulterior motive, all the more so since I have some business with your sister, as I told you. But I tell you quite frankly: I've been bored stiff! Particularly these last three days, so I'm actually rather glad to see you… Don't be angry, Rodion Romanovich, but for some reason you seem terribly strange to me. Say what you like, but there's something funny about you; and particularly now… that's to say, not precisely at this very moment, but now in general… There, there, it's all right, I won't, I won't, don't be dismayed! After all, I'm not such a boor as you think.’

Raskolnikov gave him a gloomy look. ‘Actually, I think you're probably very far from being a boor,’ he said. ‘I even think that you may be a man of very good society, or that at any rate you can on occasion behave like a decent human being.’

‘Oh, I'm not really interested in what anyone thinks of me,’ Svidrigailov replied coldly, and even with a touch of superciliousness, ‘and so why shouldn't I go around like a vulgar parvenu when those clothes fit so comfortably in our climate and… and particularly if one has a natural inclination that way,’ he added, starting to laugh again.

‘I've heard you have a lot of acquaintances here, though. I mean, you're what's known as “not without connections”. So it stands to reason you wouldn't be coming to see me unless you had ulterior motives.’

‘What you say is true, I do indeed have acquaintances,’ Svidrigailov said, following on without replying to the main thrust of the question. ‘I've started running into them already; after all, this is the third day I've been loitering about; either I recognize
them, or they apparently recognize me. Oh, it's perfectly true, I'm dressed quite well and am not thought poor; the peasant reforms didn't affect us, you see: the place is just woods and water-meadows, so the money keeps on coming in; but… I shan't go to call on them; I was sick of their company even in the old days; this is the third day I've been at large, and I haven't declared myself to anyone… My, what a town it is! I mean, who on earth ever dreamed it up? A town of red-tapists, and seminarists of every description! You know, I must say there are a lot of things I never noticed in the old days, eight years or so ago, when I used to hang around here… I tell you quite frankly, I put all my faith in anatomy now!’

‘What sort of anatomy might that be?’

‘And as for those clubs, those evenings at Dussot's,
³
those outdoor fêtes on the
pointe
,
⁴
or even, dare I say it, that progress of theirs – well, they don't need yours truly for any of that,’ he went on, again ignoring the question. ‘What's so wonderful about being a card-sharper, anyway?’

‘So you've been a card-sharper too, have you?’

‘How could I have failed to be? There was a whole set of us, a most respectable bunch we were, eight or so years ago; we used to pass the time together; and you know, we all had excellent manners, we were poets, capitalists. In fact, as a general rule in Russian society the best manners are found among those who've been horsewhipped – have you noticed that? Oh, nowadays I've lost the knack down there in the country. But even so, I did go to prison for debt one time, some trouble with a filthy Greek from Nezhin. At that point Marfa Petrovna turned up, she did some haggling and bought me out for thirty thousand silver roubles. (I owed seventy thousand altogether.) We were united in lawful wedlock, and she carried me straight off to her country estate as though I were some treasure trove. I mean, she was five years older than me, you know.
Very
fond of me, she was. For seven years I never left the place. And please observe that she had a document she was going to keep for the rest of her life, signed in someone else's name, which said I was beholden to the tune of those thirty thousand roubles, so if I'd once taken it into my head to rebel she'd have banged the lid shut on me, like
that! Oh, she'd have done it! In women all those things co-exist together, you know.’

‘And if she hadn't had the document, you'd have taken to your heels?’

‘I don't know what to say to you. That document troubled me hardly at all. I didn't feel like going anywhere, and on a couple of occasions Marfa Petrovna even invited me to go abroad with her, when she saw I was bored. But, well, I'd been abroad before, and the place always made me feel sick. I don't know why it is, but the dawn arrives, there's the Bay of Naples, the sea, one looks at it, and feels somehow sad. What makes it even worse is that one really does have something to feel sad about! No, it's better in Russia: here, at least, one can blame other people for everything, and find excuses for oneself. I may go on an expedition to the North Pole now,
⁵
as
j
'
ai le vin mauvais
and loathe drinking, yet drink's about all there is left. I've tried the lot. I say, is it true that Berg
⁶
is to make an ascent in a giant balloon in Yusupov Park this Sunday, and that he's willing to take passengers with him for a fee?’