Crime and Punishment (48 page)

‘I don't intend to go, either,' said Lebezyatnikov.

‘I dare say! Not after that pummelling. No wonder you're ashamed, heh-heh-heh!'

‘Who pummelled who?' asked Lebezyatnikov, suddenly flustered and even turning red.

‘You pummelled Katerina Ivanovna a month or so ago, I believe! I heard about it, sir, just yesterday . . . So much for all those convictions of yours! . . . And so much for the Woman Question, heh-heh-heh!'

Cheering up a bit, Pyotr Petrovich set about clicking his beads again.

‘Hogwash and slander, all of it!' flared Lebezyatnikov, always fearful of any allusion to this episode. ‘That's not how it was at all! It was
quite different . . . You got the wrong end of the stick. Sheer gossip! I was merely defending myself. She was the one who went at me with her claws . . . Barely left a whisker in place . . . All men, I trust, are permitted to defend their person. Moreover, I will not permit anyone to use force against me . . . On principle. Because that's tyranny, more or less. What was I supposed to do, just stand there? All I did was push her away.'

‘Heh-heh-heh!' Luzhin continued to scoff.

‘You're only picking on me because you're angry and peeved yourself . . . But this is pure hogwash and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Woman Question! You've got it all wrong. I even used to think that if women really are men's equal now, even in strength (as some are already claiming), then there should be equality here as well. Later, of course, I reasoned that, in essence, such a question should not arise, because fights should not arise, and that fights in the society of the future are inconceivable . . . and that it's rather strange, of course, to demand equality in fighting. I'm not that stupid . . . although fighting is . . . I mean, there won't be any later, but as of now there still is . . . Ugh! Dammit! Anyone would get in a muddle talking to you! I'm not not going to the banquet on account of that unpleasantness. I'm not going on principle, simple as that. I want no part in the vile preconception of funeral banquets! Although, I suppose one might go just to laugh . . . A shame there won't be any priests. Otherwise I'd have been there like a shot.'

‘So you would enjoy someone's hospitality while insulting it and those who invited you. Is that what you mean?'

‘Not insulting – protesting. For a useful cause: I may thereby be of indirect benefit to the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. Every man has a duty to enlighten and propagandize, and the harsher the message, perhaps, the better. I can thereby scatter ideas, seeds . . . From the seed will grow a fact. In what way am I offending them? First they'll take offence, then they'll see for themselves that I've done them a favour. Take Terebyeva (she's in the commune now), only recently she was being criticized for how, when she left her family and . . . gave herself . . . she wrote a letter to her mother and father saying she didn't want to live among preconceptions and was entering into a civil marriage;
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apparently this was too rude, writing to your parents like that, and she should have spared their feelings and been a little more gentle. Utter hogwash, if you ask me. You shouldn't be gentle, far from it – you should protest. Look at Varents: spent seven
years with her husband, abandoned her two children and fired off a letter to her husband: “I realized that with you I could never be happy. I will never forgive you for deceiving me by concealing the fact that a different social order exists, via the commune. I learned all this recently from a certain high-minded man, to whom I gave myself, and together we will start a commune. I speak frankly because I think it dishonourable to deceive you. Carry on as you see fit. Do not hope to get me back. You are too late for that. I wish you happiness.” Now that's the way to write 'em!'

‘This Terebyeva, isn't she the one you said was in her third civil marriage?'

‘Only her second proper one, as it happens! But anyway, fourth, tenth or fifteenth, so what? And if there was ever a time I regretted the death of my father and mother, then, of course, it's now. I keep dreaming about how, if only they were still alive, I'd really give it to them hot! When they were least expecting it . . . Another young man who's “flown the nest”,
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they'd say. H'm! I'd show them what protest means! I'd shock them! Such a shame there's no one left!'

‘No one left to surprise, you mean? Heh-heh! Well, have it your way,' Pyotr Petrovich interrupted. ‘But tell me this: I believe you know the daughter of the late departed, that slip of a girl! Well, is it really true what they say about her, eh?'

‘What are you saying? My opinion – my personal conviction, I mean – is that there can be no more normal state for a woman. And why not? Well,
distinguons
.
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In today's society, of course, it is not quite normal, because it is forced, but in the future it will be entirely normal, because it will be free. But even now she had the right: she was suffering and this was her fund, her capital, as it were, which she had every right to dispose of. In the society of the future, of course, there'll be no need for funds; but her role will signify a different significance – it will be elegantly and rationally determined. As for Sofya Semyonovna, at the present time I view her actions as a vigorous and embodied protest against the social order and I respect her deeply for it. I am overjoyed just to look at her!'

‘But I was told it was you who forced her out of this building!'

Lebezyatnikov went positively berserk.

‘More gossip!' he shrieked. ‘That's not how it was at all! Not at all! I mean, really! It was all Katerina Ivanovna's invention – she hadn't understood a thing! I wasn't making up to Sofya Semyonovna in the
slightest! I was simply enlightening her, without a thought for myself, striving to rouse her to protest . . . That was all I was after! And anyway, Sofya Semyonovna could hardly have stayed on here.'

‘Invited her into the commune, did you?'

‘These jokes of yours are pretty feeble, if you don't mind my saying so. You don't understand a thing! In the commune, this role does not exist. That's why people found communes in the first place. In the commune, the essence of this role will be completely transformed: what is stupid here will become clever there, and what, in the current circumstances, is unnatural here will be entirely natural there. Everything depends on a man's circumstances and environment. Environment is everything, man is nothing. Sofya Semyonovna and I get on well to this day, which you may take as proof that she never took offence at me or thought me her enemy. Yes! I may be tempting her into the commune, but my grounds for doing so are quite different, quite different! What's so funny? We want to found our own commune, a special commune, on broader grounds than the previous ones. We've gone further in our convictions. We reject even more! Were Dobrolyubov to rise from his grave, I'd argue with him. Not to mention Belinsky
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 – I'd pulverise
him
! But meanwhile I'll carry on enlightening Sofya Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!'

‘And you make good use of her beautiful character, I suppose? Heh-heh!'

‘No! Goodness, no! On the contrary!'

‘On the contrary, my foot! Heh-heh-heh! Well said!'

‘Believe me! What reasons could I possibly have to lie to you? Tell me that! On the contrary, I myself find it strange: with me she's somehow even chaster and coyer than usual!'

‘And you, needless to say, enlighten her . . . heh-heh . . . and tell her how silly it is to be coy?'

‘Not at all! Not at all! Oh, how crudely, how stupidly even – do forgive me – you understand the word “enlightenment”! You don't understand a thing about it! Goodness me, how very . . . immature you are! We want women's freedom, but you have only one thing on your mind . . . Leaving completely to one side the question of chastity and female coyness, as things that are useless in themselves and even preconceived, I fully, fully accept her chastity towards me, because that is her freedom, that is her right. Of course, if she were to say to me, “I want to have you,” I'd think myself a very lucky man, because
I like the girl very much: but for now, at the very least, could anyone have treated her more courteously or considerately than I, or with greater respect for her dignity . . . ? I wait and hope – that's all!'

‘You'd be better off giving her something. I dare say the thought's never even crossed your mind.'

‘You don't understand a thing, I say! Her situation is what it is, but I'm talking about something different here! Quite different! You have nothing but contempt for her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly deem worthy of contempt, you refuse to view a person with any humanity. You know nothing of her character! Only one thing upsets me: recently, for some reason, she's completely stopped reading and no longer borrows books from me. She certainly used to. And it's also a shame that with all her vigour and determination to protest – which she's proved once already – there still doesn't seem to be quite enough self-sufficiency about her, enough independence, as it were, enough negation, so as to make a clean break with various preconceptions and . . . idiocies. Nevertheless, there are some questions she understands extremely well. She grasped the question of hand-kissing superbly well, for example: how a man insults a woman through the unequal gesture of hand-kissing.
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We'd had a debate about it and I immediately informed her of what was said. She also listened attentively when I told her about workers' associations in France.
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Now I'm explaining the question of open doors
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in the society of the future.'

‘And what on earth's that?'

‘Recently there was a debate on the question: does a member of a commune have the right to enter another member's room, a man's or a woman's, at any time he or she chooses . . . ? Well, it was decided that yes, the member does . . .'

‘And what if he or she happens to be attending to their essential needs? Heh-heh!'

Andrei Semyonovich became positively angry.

‘Is that all you can talk about, these blasted “needs”?' he cried with loathing. ‘Ugh, I'm so furious and annoyed with myself for mentioning them to you when I was explaining the system that time – I should have waited! Damn it! It's always a sticking point for people like you. Not only that – they don't even know what they're making fun of! And they think they're right! They're even proud of themselves! Ugh! Haven't I stated several times that this whole question should be explained to novices only at the very end, once they are already convinced about the
system, once they've already been enlightened and guided? And anyway, pray tell me what you find so shameful and despicable about, say, cesspits?
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I'd be the first to clean out any cesspit you care to mention! And without the slightest self-sacrifice! It's just work; a noble, socially useful activity, as good as any other and certainly far better, say, than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin. Why? Because it's more useful!'
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‘And noble, nobler – heh-heh-heh!'

‘What does “nobler” mean? I don't understand such expressions when applied to human activity. “Nobler”, “more high-minded”, etcetera – it's all hogwash, mere absurdities, the old preconceived language which I reject! Whatever is
useful
to humanity is thereby noble!
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That's the only word I understand:
useful
! Snigger all you like, but that's how it is!'

Pyotr Petrovich just couldn't stop laughing. He'd finished counting the money and put it away. Some of it, though, remained on the table. This wasn't the first time that the ‘cesspit question', for all its vulgarity, had caused rifts and disagreements between Pyotr Petrovich and his young friend. The stupidest thing was that Andrei Semyonovich really did get angry. Pyotr Petrovich found it all a pleasant distraction and right now he had a particular urge to rile his friend.

‘You're still cross about yesterday's setback – that's why you're so tetchy,' Lebezyatnikov finally snapped. On the whole, for all his ‘independence' and for all his ‘protests', he didn't quite dare stand up to Pyotr Petrovich, and, from long-established habit, continued to treat him with respect.

‘Tell you what,' Luzhin interrupted in a haughty, irritated tone, ‘would you be able . . . or rather, are you really on close enough terms with the aforementioned young person to ask her to come over, right now, just for a minute, to this room? It seems they're already all back from the cemetery . . . I can hear people walking around . . . I need to see her, the one we mentioned, I mean.'

‘You? But why?' Lebezyatnikov asked in amazement.

‘I just do, sir. I'll be leaving in the next day or two, which is why I'd like to tell her . . . But why don't you stay here while we're having our talk? That would be even better. Otherwise, God knows what you might think.'

‘I wouldn't think anything . . . I was merely asking. Of course I can call her over if you have business with her. I'll go now. And rest assured, I won't get in the way.'

Sure enough, some five minutes later Lebezyatnikov came back with Sonechka. She entered the room in complete astonishment, as shy as ever. She was always shy at moments like these and had a great fear of new faces and new acquaintances; she'd always had it, even as a child, but now more than ever . . . Pyotr Petrovich greeted her ‘warmly and courteously', though not without a hint of the kind of light-hearted familiarity which he deemed appropriate to such a distinguished and respectable man as himself in relation to such a young and, in a certain sense,
interesting
creature. He hastened to ‘reassure' her and sat her opposite him. Sonya sat down and looked around – at Lebezyatnikov, at the money lying on the table, then suddenly back at Pyotr Petrovich again, her eyes never leaving him from that moment on, as if riveted. Lebezyatnikov moved towards the door. Pyotr Petrovich got up, gestured to Sonya to stay seated and stopped Lebezyatnikov in the doorway.