Crime and Punishment (72 page)

Thus, or almost thus, did Raskolnikov conclude his address, frequently interrupted by the exclamations of his audience, who were, however, listening with close attention. But in spite of all the interruptions, he spoke calmly, incisively, clearly, precisely
and firmly. His incisive voice, his tone of conviction and the stern expression on his face had an extremely powerful effect on all those present.

‘Yes, yes, it's true!’ Lebezyatnikov affirmed enthusiastically. ‘It must be true, because he made a special point of asking me as soon as Sofya Semyonovna came into the room whether you were there and whether I had seen you among Katerina Ivanovna's guests. He made me go over to the window with him in order to ask the question, which he put to me in secret. That means that the very thing he wanted was for you to be here! It's true, it's all true!’

Luzhin said nothing and smiled contemptuously. He was, however, very pale. He seemed to be trying to think of how he could extricate himself from this predicament. However much he might have wanted to give the whole thing up for lost and go away, this was hardly possible at the present moment; it would have been tantamount to an open admission that the accusations that had been brought against him were justified, and that he really had been guilty of defaming Sonya Semyonovna's character. What was more, the audience, already quite drunken, was growing extremely restless. The supply clerk, though he had not entirely grasped what was going on, was shouting louder than any of them, proposing certain measures for Luzhin that were of a decidedly unpleasant nature. There were, however, some who were not drunk; people came crowding and gathering from all the rooms. All three Poles were terribly excited and kept showering him with cries of ‘
panie lajdak
!’
⁴
which they accompanied with threats, Polish-style. Sonya had been listening with intense concentration, but she too seemed not to have grasped everything, as though she were wakening out of a trance. All she seemed set on was not to remove her eyes from Raskolnikov, sensing that in him lay her only protection. Katerina Ivanovna was breathing hoarsely and with difficulty, and was, it appeared, in a state of fearful exhaustion. The most uncomprehending of them all was Amalia Ivanovna who, mouth agape, had not been able to make anything of this latest part of the talk whatsoever. All she could see was that Pyotr Petrovich had somehow been caught in a fix. Raskolnikov started to ask
them all to listen again, but they would not let him finish; they were all shouting, crowding around Luzhin with oaths and threats. But Pyotr Petrovich was not abashed. Realizing that his attempt to incriminate Sonya had completely failed, he resorted to downright brazenness.

‘Now then, ladies and gentlemen, now then; don't jostle me, let me past!’ he said, as he made his way through the crowd. ‘And kindly stop threatening me; I assure you that you will get nowhere that way, I am no coward. On the contrary, ladies and gentlemen, it is you who will have to answer for having obstructed a criminal process by means of force. The she-thief has been unmasked, and more than so, and I shall prosecute. The members of a court will not be so blind, or… drunken, and they will not believe the two died-in-the-wool God-haters, insurrectionists and free-thinkers who have accused me from motives of personal vengeance which they, in their stupidity, admit… Yes, now then, if you please!’

‘I don't want to see you in my room again; please move out, and consider everything finished between us! Oh, when I think what efforts I've made to explain it all to him… for a whole two weeks!’

‘Why, I myself told you earlier today that I was going, when you were trying to detain me; now, sir, I will merely add that you are a fool. I wish you success in curing your mental deficiency and your weak-sighted eyes. Now then, if you please, ladies and gentlemen!’

He squeezed his way through; but the supply clerk did not intend to let him get away so easily, with nothing but oaths; he snatched up a glass tumbler from the table, brandished it in the air and threw it at Pyotr Petrovich; but the tumbler went flying straight at Amalia Ivanovna, and struck her. She uttered a shriek, and the supply clerk, who had lost his balance while swinging his arm, fell heavily under the table. Pyotr Petrovich returned to his room, and a half an hour later he was gone. Sonya, being of a timid disposition, had been aware long before now that her good name could be more easily destroyed than most people's, and that anyone who cared to could wound her practically without fear of retribution. Yet even so, right up
until this very moment, she had imagined that it might somehow be possible for her to avoid disaster – by being meek and cautious, and obedient to all and sundry. Great, therefore, was her disillusionment. She could, of course, have borne it all with patience and almost without a murmur – even this. Her initial suffering had, however, been too great. In spite of her sense of triumph and vindication, when her initial fear and shock had passed, when she had clearly understood and perceived the nature of the whole incident, her feeling of helplessness and personal mortification had constricted her heart with pain. She had begun to have a hysterical attack. At last, unable to endure any more, she had rushed out of the room and run off home. This had taken place almost immediately after Luzhin's departure. As for Amalia Ivanovna, when, amidst the loud laughter of those present, the glass had struck her, she too at last had enough of ‘the hangover after someone else's feast’, to quote the Russian proverb. With a shriek like a banshee, she hurled herself at Katerina Ivanovna, considering her to be to blame for everything:

‘Out of these apartments!
Now
!
Marsch!
’ And with these words she began to snatch up all the possessions of Katerina Ivanovna that fell within her grasp, throwing them on the floor. Almost crushed and defeated as it was, very nearly fainting, pale, and gasping for breath, Katerina Ivanovna leapt up from the bed (on which she had just collapsed in exhaustion) and rushed at Amalia Ivanovna. But the struggle was all too unequal: Amalia Ivanovna repulsed her as though she were a feather.

‘What? Is it not enough that I've been godlessly slandered? Must this creature attack me as well? What? Am I to be driven from my lodgings on the day of my husband's funeral after offering you my hospitality, on to the street, with my orphans? And where will I go?’ the poor woman wailed, sobbing and choking for breath. ‘Oh God!’ she shouted suddenly, her eyes flashing. ‘Is there really no justice? Who are you supposed to look after, if not us orphans? But we shall see! There
are
justice and truth on earth, there are, I'll find them! Wait for a moment, you godless creature! Polya, wait here with the children, I'll be back. Wait for me, even if it's out on the street! We'll see if there's any justice upon earth!’

And, casting over her head the same green
drap
-
de
-
dames
shawl that Marmeladov had described in his narrative, Katerina Ivanovna squeezed her way through the drunk and disorderly crowd of tenants who were still crowding the room, and with a wail ran out into the street in tears – with the ill-defined object of somewhere finding justice without delay and at whatever cost. In terror, Polya hid with the children in the corner on the travelling-box, where, embracing the two little ones, trembling all over, she began to await her mother's return. Amalia Ivanovna rushed about the room, screeching, wailing, hurling everything that came within her grasp on to the floor, and generally making an infernal din. The tenants were bawling things in all directions, this way and that – some giving their frank opinion of what had taken place, others shouting and quarrelling, and others yet again starting to sing songs…

‘And now it's my turn!’ Raskolnikov thought. ‘Very well, Sofya Semyonovna, let's see what you'll say to this!’

And he set off for Sonya's apartment.

Raskolnikov had been a brisk and active defender of Sonya against Luzhin, in spite of the fact that he himself bore so much horror and suffering within his soul. Having endured so much that morning, it was as if he had been glad of this opportunity to vary his thoughts and feelings, which had become intolerable. This was quite apart from any element of personal sincerity in his striving to intercede for Sonya. Moreover, his approaching rendezvous with her was preying on his mind and causing him terrible anxiety: he
would have to
tell her who had killed Lizaveta, and he kept sensing in advance the fearsome torment that would cause him, a torment he was almost physically attempting to ward off. And thus it was that when, as he left Katerina Ivanovna's, he exclaimed: ‘Very well, Sofya Semyonovna, let's see what you'll say to this?’ he had still been in a state of visible excitement which was connected to the
briskness of the challenge he had issued to Luzhin, and to his recent victory over him. But within him something strange took place. As he approached Kapernaumov's rented rooms, he felt a sudden sense of fear and helplessness. Outside Sonya's door he stopped, pondering to himself the strange question: ‘Do I have to tell her who killed Lizaveta?’ The question was a strange one because suddenly, at the same time, he felt that not only must he tell her – it was impossible for him to put off that moment, even temporarily. He had not yet managed to fathom why it was impossible; he simply
sensed
it, and this tormenting acknowledgement of his own helplessness in the face of necessity weighed him down. In order to stop thinking and worrying, he quickly opened the door and from the threshold looked at Sonya. She was sitting at the table, leaning her head on her hands, but when she became aware of Raskolnikov she immediately got up and came towards him as though she had been waiting for him.

‘What would have happened to me if it hadn't been for you?’ she said quickly, meeting him as he was only halfway across the room. It was clear that she had wanted to tell him this as soon as possible. This was why she had been waiting.

Raskolnikov went over to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had just risen. She stood two paces away from him, exactly as she had done the evening before.

‘Well, Sonya?’ he said, suddenly feeling his voice tremble. ‘I mean, the whole business, it was all because of your “social position and the habits associated with it”. Did you grasp that just now?’

A look of suffering came to her face.

‘Oh, don't speak to me the way you did last night!’ she said, interrupting him. ‘Please, don't begin that again. I have enough torments as it is…’

She smiled quickly, afraid that he might find the reproach unpleasing.

‘It was foolish of me to leave like that. What's going on there now? I was on the point of going back, but I kept thinking that you… might come here.’

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was turning them out of
the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere ‘to search for justice’.

‘Oh my God!’ Sonya said, starting. ‘We must go immediately!’

And she snatched up her little mantilla cape.

‘It's always the same story!’ Raskolnikov exclaimed in irritation. ‘They are all you ever think of! I want you to stay here with me.’

‘But what about… Katerina Ivanovna?’

‘Oh, you can't possibly avoid her. She'll be round here to see you herself, now that she's left the apartment,’ he added tetchily. ‘And you know as well as I do that if she doesn't find you here, you'll be held to blame…’

Sonya cowered down on a chair in agonized indecision. Raskolnikov said nothing, looked at the floor and seemed to be thinking about something.

‘Let's assume that Luzhin didn't feel like it just now,’ he began, not looking at Sonya. ‘Well, but if he
had
felt like it or if it had in any way been a part of his plans, he'd have tried to get you put in jail, and only Lebezyatnikov and I could have stopped him. He would, wouldn't he? Eh?’

‘Yes,’ she said, weakly. ‘Yes!’ she repeated, in a state of anxiety, her mind elsewhere.

‘And, I mean, I might very well not have been there! And as for Lebezyatnikov, it was quite by chance that he happened to turn up.’

Sonya said nothing.

‘Well, and if you had gone to jail, what then? Do you remember what I said to you last night?’

Again she made no reply. He waited until she was ready.

‘And there was I thinking you were going to shout: “Oh stop it, don't say anything!” again,’ Raskolnikov laughed, though with something of an effort. ‘What – more silence?’ he asked, after a moment. ‘I mean, we have to talk about something, don't we? You know, I'd be quite interested now to learn how you'd deal with a certain “question”, to use Lebezyatnikov's word.’ (He seemed to be growing confused.) ‘No, really, I'm serious. Imagine, Sonya, that you'd known in advance exactly what Luzhin had planned to do, and known (for a certainty, I mean)
that it would cause the total ruin of Katerina Ivanovna and her children; and of yourself, too, into the bargain (since you don't attach any value to yourself, let it be
into the bargain
). Of Polya too… because she'll go down the same road. Well, then: if it were suddenly given to you to decide which one of them was to go on living in the world, that is to say, whether Luzhin was to continue his existence and go on doing loathsome things, or whether Katerina Ivanovna was to die, what would your decision be? Which of them would you have die? I ask you.’

Sonya looked at him nervously: she had sensed something peculiar in this unsteady monologue that seemed to be working towards something by a devious route.

‘I had a feeling you were going to ask me something like that,’ she said, giving him a searching look.

‘Yes, all right; but what would you decide?’

‘Why do you ask about something that's impossible?’ Sonya said, with distaste.

‘So you'd rather Luzhin continued his existence, doing loathsome things! Don't you even dare to decide that?’

‘But I mean, I can't fathom Divine Providence… And why are you asking me a question that it's wrong to ask? Why such futile questions? How could that ever depend on my decision? And who am I to set myself up as a judge of who should live and who should not?’