Crime and Punishment (64 page)

‘Alyona Ivanovna and her sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna – I murdered them… with an axe. I had a black turn…’ he added suddenly, and again fell silent. He was still on his knees.

Porfiry Petrovich stood motionless for a few seconds, as though he were reflecting, but then suddenly flew into motion again, waving his arms at the uninvited witnesses. In a trice they disappeared from view, and the door closed. Then he took a glance at Raskolnikov, who was standing in the corner, staring wildly at Nikolai, and began to move in his direction, but then stopped suddenly, looked at him, swiftly transferred his gaze to Nikolai, then back to Raskolnikov, then over to Nikolai again and then abruptly, as though with great interest, pounced on Nikolai.

‘What do you mean, trying to run ahead of me with your black turns?’ he shouted at him, with something approaching malice. ‘I haven't asked you yet if you had a black turn… what I want to know is: have you committed a murder?’

‘I'm the one that did it… I'll make a statement…’ Nikolai said.

‘Oh, for God's sake! What did you do it with?’

‘An axe. One I had handy.’

‘I say, the man's in a hurry! Just you alone?’

Nikolai did not understand the question.

‘Was it just you who did it?’

‘Yes. Mitka's innocent – he had no part in any of it.’

‘Now take your time with Mitka, will you? Oh, my God!… But then why, why did you run down the stairs that time? I mean, the yardkeepers ran into you both!’

‘I did it to throw them off the trail… running away with Mitka… that time,’ Nikolai answered, hurrying his words as though he had prepared them in advance.

‘Yes, I was right!’ Porfiry exclaimed malevolently. ‘He's
simply repeating something he was told to say!’ he muttered, as if to himself, and again he suddenly looked at Raskolnikov.

So taken up with Nikolai had he apparently been that for one second he had actually forgotten about Raskolnikov. Now he suddenly gathered his thoughts again, and looked positively embarrassed…

‘Rodion Romanovich, my dear fellow! I'm terribly sorry, sir!’ he said, rushing over to him. ‘This simply won't do, sir; please… there's nothing for you to do here… I'm afraid I'm… you see what surprises there are!… Please be so good, sir!…’

And taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door.

‘It looks as though you weren't expecting this,’ Raskolnikov said. As might have been expected, although he had not really taken everything in as yet, he had already cheered up considerably.

‘You weren't expecting it either, dear fellow. Look at your hand – it's trembling, tee-hee!’

‘You're trembling, too, Porfiry Petrovich.’

‘So I am, sir, so I am; most unexpected…’

By now they were standing in the doorway. Porfiry was waiting in impatience for Raskolnikov to go out of it.

‘So you're not going to show me your little surprise, then?’ Raskolnikov said, suddenly.

‘Listen to him talk, yet his teeth
are
chattering together in his head, tee-hee! You are an ironical fellow, aren't you? Well, sir,
au revoir
.’

‘If you want my opinion, it's
goodbye
.’

‘As God sees fit, sir, as God sees fit!’ Porfiry muttered, with a sort of twisted smile.

As he passed through the office, Raskolnikov noticed that many of the people there gave him fixed stares. Among the crowd in the entrance hall he saw the two yardkeepers from
that
building, the ones he had tried to talk into going down to the police station with him that night. They were standing there, waiting for something. But no sooner was he out on the staircase than he suddenly heard the voice of Porfiry Petrovich behind him once again. Turning round, he saw that Porfiry was trying to catch him up, thoroughly out of breath.

‘There's just one other thing, Rodion Romanovich, sir; as far as all that other stuff's concerned, it's as God sees fit, but even so I shall have to ask you a few formal questions… so we'll be seeing each other again, yes, we shall, sir.’

And Porfiry came to a standstill in front of him, smiling.

‘Yes, we shall, sir,’ he added, once more.

He looked as though there was something else he wanted to say, but was somehow unable to get it out.

‘You really must forgive me for my behaviour just now… I was a little hasty,’ Raskolnikov began, his spirits now completely restored, to a point where he could not resist a bit of a swagger.

‘It's quite all right, sir, it's quite all right…’ Porfiry chipped in, almost joyfully. ‘I was hasty, too… I do have a poisonous tongue, I confess, I confess! So we'll be seeing each other, sir. If God sees fit, we'll be seeing a great, great deal of each other, sir!…’

‘And shall we really get to know each other at last?’ Raskolnikov asked.

‘We shall, we shall,’ Porfiry Petrovich said, affirmatively, and, screwing up his eyes, gave him a very serious look. ‘Off to that name-day celebration, are you, sir?’

‘It's a funeral, actually.’

‘Ah yes, it's that funeral! Well, do look after your health, sir, do look after your health…’

‘I must say I don't really know what I can wish you in return,’ Raskolnikov said, already beginning to resume his descent of the staircase, but then turning round again to face Porfiry. ‘I'd like to wish you every success, but I mean, you yourself are aware of what a comical job yours is!’

‘Why is it comical, sir?’ Porfiry Petrovich said, instantly pricking up his ears, and also on the point of turning to go.

‘Well, I mean, look at the psychological torture you've been meting out to that poor Mikolka, in that way of yours you have, to the point where he confessed; you must have been hammering on at him day and night, telling him “you're the murderer, you're the murderer!” – Well, and yet now that he's confessed, you're picking him to little pieces again, telling him that he's
lying, that he's not the murderer, that he couldn't possibly be the murderer, and that he's just repeating something he was told to say. Well, what sort of a job is that if it's not a comical one?’

‘Tee-hee-hee! So you noticed when I told Nikolai just now that he was repeating something someone had told him to say?’

‘How could I fail to?’

‘Tee-hee! That was sharp-witted, sharp-witted of you, sir. You notice everything! You have a genuinely playful intellect, sir! And you fasten right on the most comical note… tee-hee! Is it the writer Gogol whom they say possessed that ability in the very highest degree?’

‘Yes, that's right, Gogol…’

‘Yes, sir, Gogol, sir… I look forward to our next meeting with the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

‘I, too…’

Raskolnikov headed straight for home. So tired and confused was he that when he got back to his room he threw himself on the sofa and sat there for a quarter of an hour, merely resting and trying to do what he could to gather his thoughts. He did not even try to think about Nikolai: he felt he had been defeated; that in Nikolai's confession there had been something inexplicable, astonishing, something he could not fathom now for all the world. But Nikolai's confession was an established fact. The consequences of that fact at once became clear to him: his lie could not but be found out, and when it was he would be taken in hand again. But until then, at least, he was free; now he must do all he could in order to protect himself, for the danger was unavoidable.

The question was: how unavoidable? The situation was beginning to become clear. As he recalled,
in rough outline
, the overall implications of the scene that had taken place between Porfiry and himself, he could not help but shudder with horror again. Of course, he did not yet know all Porfiry's motives, had been unable to make out what it was he had been bargaining on just now. But a part of the game he was playing had been revealed, and of course, no one was more aware than he was of the risk to himself that this ‘move’ in Porfiry's game involved. A little longer and he
might
have given himself away completely, in
such a manner that it could be regarded as evidence against him. Aware of his morbid temperament, having correctly sized him up and seen into him right from the very first glance, Porfiry had acted, if somewhat too vigorously, then none the less with almost unerring sureness. There was no question but that Raskolnikov had succeeded in compromising himself to the hilt just now, but so far he had not given Porfiry any
evidence
; as yet there was nothing positive. But did he have a proper grasp of the situation now? Was he not mistaken? What result had Porfiry been trying to achieve today? Had he really had something up his sleeve? What had it been? Had he really been waiting for something or not? What would their parting have been like today had it not been for the unexpected catastrophe brought about by Nikolai?

Porfiry had come very close to showing his entire hand; of course, he had taken a risk in doing so, but he had done it, and if he had really had something more up his sleeve, he would (so it seemed to Raskolnikov) have shown that, too. What had the ‘surprise’ been? Was it a joke of some kind? Had it meant anything, or not? Could there have been some piece of evidence concealed beneath it, something akin to a positive accusation? What about the man who had come to see him yesterday? Where had he vanished to? Where was he today? He was certain that if Porfiry really had anything on him, it had something to do with that man yesterday…

He was sitting on the sofa, his head slumped on his chest, leaning his elbows on his knees and covering his face with his hands. The nervous tremor still continued in every limb of his body. At last he got up, took his cap, thought for a moment and then walked towards the door.

He somehow felt that at least for the rest of today he could almost certainly consider himself out of danger. Suddenly his heart felt a sensation approaching joy: he wanted to go to Katerina Ivanovna's as soon as possible. He was too late for the funeral, of course, but he would still be in time for the
zakuski
, and there, in a moment or two, he would see Sonya.

He stopped, reflected, and a painful smile forced itself to his lips.

‘Today! Today!’ he said to himself. ‘Yes, this very day! That's how it must be…’

At the instant he began to open the door it suddenly began to open of its own accord. He shivered and leapt back. The door was opening slowly and quietly, and suddenly a figure appeared – that of yesterday's man
from under the ground
.

The man paused in the doorway, looked at Raskolnikov without saying anything, and took a step into the room. He was exactly as he had been yesterday, the same figure, dressed in the same way, but in his gaze and features there was a marked alteration: now he looked somewhat down-in-the-mouth, and after a moment or two he exhaled a deep sigh. All that remained was for him to put his palm to his cheek and twist his head to one side, and he would have looked just like a woman.

‘What do you want?’ Raskolnikov asked, stiff with fright.

The man said nothing; then suddenly he bowed deeply to him, almost down to the floor. At any rate, he touched the floor with one finger of his right hand.

‘What are you up to?’ Raskolnikov shouted.

‘I'm guilty,’ the man articulated quietly.

‘What of?’

‘Evil thoughts.’

They both looked at each other.

‘I got annoyed. When you arrived that time – maybe you were drunk or something – and tried to make the yardkeepers go down to the police station with you and asked questions about the blood, I got annoyed about them leaving you alone and thinking you were just drunk. I got so annoyed that I couldn't sleep. And since we remembered your address, we came here yesterday and asked for you…’

‘Who did?’ Raskolnikov interrupted, beginning to remember for an instant.

‘I did. I mean, I insulted you.’

‘So you live in that building?’

‘In the same; why, I was standing with them in the gateway, or have you forgotten? We've had our workshop there from time immemorial. We're furriers, artisans, do our work at home… but what made me most annoyed of all was…’

And suddenly Raskolnikov had a clear memory of the entire scene that had taken place in the gateway two days earlier; he remembered that there had been, in addition to the yardkeepers, a few other men standing there; there had been women, too. He recalled one voice suggesting they take him straight to the police station. He could not remember what the man who had spoken had looked like, but he did have a memory of having said something to him in reply, of turning round towards him…

So this was what lay behind all yesterday's horrible events. Most horrible of all was the thought that he really had almost come to grief, had very nearly cooked his own goose because of a
trivial
occurrence like that. It meant that, apart from the story of his visit to the apartment as a prospective lodger and his asking about the blood, this man knew nothing worth telling. It meant that Porfiry, too, knew about nothing, nothing, apart from his
delirium
, had no other evidence than all this
psychology
, which was all
conjecture
, had nothing positive to go on. It meant that, unless more evidence turned up (and it must not turn up, must not, must not!)… there was nothing more they could do to him, was there? How could they convict him, even if they were to arrest him? It also meant that Porfiry had only now found out about the apartment, and had not known about it earlier.

‘Was it you who told Porfiry today… that I went there?’ he exclaimed, struck by a sudden idea.

‘Which Porfiry would that be?’

‘The state investigator.’

‘Yes, I told him. The yardkeepers didn't go down to the station at the time, but I did.’

‘Today?’

‘I got there a minute before you. And I heard it all, the whole thing, the way he tortured you.’

‘Where? How on earth? When?’

‘I was sitting in there all the time, right behind that partition of his.’

‘What? So you were the surprise, were you? But how could this possibly happen? For pity's sake!’

‘When I saw,’ the artisan began, ‘that the yardkeepers weren't
going to go down there just because I told them to, saying that it was too late, and that in any case he'd probably fly off the handle at them for not having come immediately, I got annoyed, I couldn't sleep, and I started finding a few things out. Well, I finished doing that yesterday, and today I went along there. The first time I went, he wasn't there. I went back about an hour later, but they wouldn't let me in to see him. The third time I went, I was allowed in. I began to give him all the information, just the way it happened, and he started leaping about the room and beating his breast: “What are you doing to me, you bandits?” he said. “If I'd known all this, I'd have had him brought here under armed escort!” Then he ran out, told someone to come and see him and stood talking to him in a corner, and then he came back to me again and started asking me questions and shouting at me. Read me a regular sermon, he did; I gave him all the information I had and told him you hadn't dared to make any reply to the things I said to you yesterday and that you hadn't recognized me. And he began running about again, beating his breast, flying off the handle and racing to and fro, and when they came in to tell him you were there, “All right,” he said, “you go behind that partition, sit there and don't move, whatever you may hear,” and he brought me a chair himself and locked me in; “I may question you, too,” he said. But when Nikolai was brought in, as soon as you'd gone, he let me out and told me to go: “I'll require your presence again,” he said, “and I'll want to ask you some more questions…”’