Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky (mini ebook reader .TXT) 📗

in the hope of better to come.’

‘That ‘hoping for better to come’ is the best thing you’ve said, though ‘your mamma’ is not bad either.

Come then, what do you say? Is he fully conscious, eh?’

‘That’s all right. If only he can sign this little paper.’

‘He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?’

‘Yes, here’s the book.’

‘Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I’ll hold you. Take the pen and scribble ‘Raskolnikov’ for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter to us than treacle.’

‘I don’t want it,’ said Raskolnikov, pushing away the pen.

‘Not want it?’

‘I won’t sign it.’

‘How the devil can you do without signing it?’

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‘I don’t want … the money.’

‘Don’t want the money! Come, brother, that’s

nonsense, I bear witness. Don’t trouble, please, it’s only that he is on his travels again. But that’s pretty common with him at all times though…. You are a man of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more simply, take his hand and he will sign it. Here.’

‘But I can come another time.’

‘No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment…. Now, Rodya, don’t keep your visitor, you see he is waiting,’ and he made ready to hold

Raskolnikov’s hand in earnest.

‘Stop, I’ll do it alone,’ said the latter, taking the pen and signing his name.

The messenger took out the money and went away.

‘Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?’

‘Yes,’ answered Raskolnikov.

‘Is there any soup?’

‘Some of yesterday’s,’ answered Nastasya, who was still standing there.

‘With potatoes and rice in it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea.’

‘Very well.’

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Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound

astonishment and a dull, unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see what would happen. ‘I believe I am not wandering. I believe it’s reality,’ he thought.

In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with the soup, and announced that the tea would be ready directly.

With the soup she brought two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef, and so on. The table was set as it had not been for a long time. The cloth was clean.

‘It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya Pavlovna were to send us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them.’

‘Well, you are a cool hand,’ muttered Nastasya, and she departed to carry out his orders.

Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained attention.

Meanwhile Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put his left arm round Raskolnikov’s head, although he was able to sit up, and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm.

Raskolnikov swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin suddenly stopped, and said 225 of 967

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that he must ask Zossimov whether he ought to have more.

Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.

‘And will you have tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture on without the faculty. But here is the beer!’

He moved back to his chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as though he had not touched food for three days.

‘I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this here every day now,’ he mumbled with his mouth full of beef, ‘and it’s all Pashenka, your dear little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me. I don’t ask for it, but, of course, I don’t object. And here’s Nastasya with the tea.

She is a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won’t you have some beer?’

‘Get along with your nonsense!’

‘A cup of tea, then?’

‘A cup of tea, maybe.’

‘Pour it out. Stay, I’ll pour it out myself. Sit down.’

He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa again. As before, he put his left arm round the sick man’s head, raised him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, 226 of 967

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again blowing each spoonful steadily and earnestly, as though this process was the principal and most effective means towards his friend’s recovery. Raskolnikov said nothing and made no resistance, though he felt quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa without support and could not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have walked about. But from some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his strength and lying low for a time, pretending if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took note of it.

‘Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some raspberry tea,’ said Razumihin, going back to his chair and attacking his soup and beer again.

‘And where is she to get raspberries for you?’ asked Nastasya, balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea through a lump of sugar.

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‘She’ll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Rodya, all sorts of things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This lodging of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it, indeed, because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I could only remember it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov’s house. I kept trying to find that Harlamov’s house, and afterwards it turned out that it was not Harlamov’s, but Buch’s. How one muddles up sound sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the address bureau next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked you up! Your name is down there.’

‘My name!’

‘I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find while I was there. Well, it’s a long story.

But as soon as I did land on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs—all, all, brother, I know everything; Nastasya here will tell you. I made the acquaintance of Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and the house-porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the 228 of 967

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head clerk in the police office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka; Nastasya here knows….’

‘He’s got round her,’ Nastasya murmured, smiling slyly.

‘Why don’t you put the sugar in your tea, Nastasya Nikiforovna?’

‘You are a one!’ Nastasya cried suddenly, going off into a giggle. ‘I am not Nikiforovna, but Petrovna,’ she added suddenly, recovering from her mirth.

‘I’ll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story short, I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all malignant influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I had not expected, brother, to find her so … prepossessing. Eh, what do you think?’

Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon him, full of alarm.

‘And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,’

Razumihin went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.

‘Ah, the sly dog!’ Nastasya shrieked again. This conversation afforded her unspeakable delight.

‘It’s a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her character later….

How could you let things come to such a pass that she 229 of 967

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gave up sending you your dinner? And that I O U? You must have been mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of marriage when her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive? … I know all about it! But I see that’s a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But, talking of foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly so foolish as you would think at first sight?’

‘No,’ mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away, but feeling that it was better to keep up the conversation.

‘She isn’t, is she?’ cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out of him. ‘But she is not very clever either, eh?

She is essentially, essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you…. She must be forty; she says she is thirty- six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don’t understand it! Well, that’s all nonsense.

Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady’s death she has no need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to get rid of you. And she’s been cherishing that design a long 230 of 967

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time, but was sorry to lose the I O U, for you assured her yourself that your mother would pay.’

‘It was base of me to say that…. My mother herself is almost a beggar … and I told a lie to keep my lodging …

and be fed,’ Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.

‘Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man.

Pashenka would never have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the question, ‘Is there any hope of realising the I O U?’

Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save her Rodya with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That’s what he was building upon…. Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy—it’s not for nothing that you were so open with Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend…. But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man ‘listens and goes on eating’ you up. Well, then she gave the I O U by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all 231 of 967

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this I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that time harmony reigned between me and Pashenka, and I insisted on stopping the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went security for you, brother. Do you understand? We called Tchebarov, flung him ten roubles and got the I O U back from him, and here I have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts your word now. Here, take it, you see I have torn it.’

Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov looked at him and turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a twinge.

‘I see, brother,’ he said a moment later, ‘that I have been playing the