Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (famous ebook reader TXT) 📖

she knows that herself.’

‘She knows that herself?’

‘Well, it’s pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me, you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite well how you love her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too may love you and perhaps does love you already.

Now decide for yourself, as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not.’

‘Rodya! You see … well…. Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go? Of course, if it’s all a secret, never mind…. But I … I shall find out the secret … and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense and that you’ve made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a capital fellow! …’

‘That was just what I wanted to add, only you

interrupted, that that was a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to time, don’t worry 783 of 967

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about it. You’ll know it all in time when it must be.

Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant by that.’

Razumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent conclusion.

‘He’s a political conspirator! He must be. And he’s on the eve of some desperate step, that’s certain. It can only be that! And … and Dounia knows,’ he thought suddenly.

‘So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you,’ he said, weighing each syllable, ‘and you’re going to see a man who says we need more air, and so of course that letter …

that too must have something to do with it,’ he concluded to himself.

‘What letter?’

‘She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much—very much indeed. Too much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then … then she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part … then she began warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked herself in.’

‘She got a letter?’ Raskolnikov asked thoughtfully.

‘Yes, and you didn’t know? hm …’

They were both silent.

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‘Good-bye, Rodion. There was a time, brother, when I…. Never mind, good-bye. You see, there was a time….

Well, good-bye! I must be off too. I am not going to drink. There’s no need now…. That’s all stuff!’

He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:

‘Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Porfiry’s, that old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed and given the proofs. It’s one of those very workmen, the painter, only fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it’s his own explanation, he has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he’s simply a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of the lawyers—so there’s nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course people like that are always possible.

And the fact that he couldn’t keep up the character, but 785 of 967

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confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!’

‘Tell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest you so?’ Raskolnikov asked with unmistakable agitation.

‘What next? You ask me why it interests me! … Well, I heard it from Porfiry, among others … It was from him I heard almost all about it.’

‘From Porfiry?’

‘From Porfiry.’

‘What … what did he say?’ Raskolnikov asked in dismay.

‘He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his fashion.’

‘He explained it? Explained it himself?’

‘Yes, yes; good-bye. I’ll tell you all about it another time, but now I’m busy. There was a time when I fancied

… But no matter, another time! … What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk without wine. I am drunk, Rodya! Good-bye, I’m going. I’ll come again very soon.’

He went out.

‘He’s a political conspirator, there’s not a doubt about it,’ Razumihin decided, as he slowly descended the stairs.

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‘And he’s drawn his sister in; that’s quite, quite in keeping with Avdotya Romanovna’s character. There are

interviews between them! … She hinted at it too … So many of her words…. and hints … bear that meaning!

And how else can all this tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking … Good heavens, what I thought!

Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Pfoo!

What a crude, nasty, vile idea on my part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing…. And how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions … before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy….

But what’s the meaning now of that letter? There’s something in that, too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect …! No, I must find out!’

He thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed, and he suddenly broke into a run.

As soon as Razumihin went out, Raskolnikov got up, turned to the window, walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of escape had come.

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‘Yes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too cramping, the burden had been too agonising.

A lethargy had come upon him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at Porfiry’s he had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Nikolay’s confession, on that very day had come the scene with Sonia; his behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia, he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his mind!

‘And Svidrigaïlov was a riddle … He worried him, that was true, but somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come with Svidrigaïlov.

Svidrigaïlov, too, might be a means of escape; but Porfiry was a different matter.

‘And so Porfiry himself had explained it to Razumihin, had explained it psychologically. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology again! Porfiry? But to think that Porfiry should for one moment believe that Nikolay was guilty, after what had passed between them before Nikolay’s appearance, after that tête-à-tête interview, which could have only one explanation? (During those 788 of 967

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days Raskolnikov had often recalled passages in that scene with Porfiry; he could not bear to let his mind rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed between them, they had exchanged such glances, things had been said in such a tone and had reached such a pass, that Nikolay, whom Porfiry had seen through at the first word, at the first gesture, could not have shaken his conviction.

‘And to think that even Razumihin had begun to suspect! The scene in the corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had rushed to Porfiry…. But what had induced the latter to receive him like that? What had been his object in putting Razumihin off with Nikolay? He must have some plan; there was some design, but what was it? It was true that a long time had passed since that morning—too long a time—and no sight nor sound of Porfiry. Well, that was a bad sign….’

Raskolnikov took his cap and went out of the room, still pondering. It was the first time for a long while that he had felt clear in his mind, at least. ‘I must settle Svidrigaïlov,’ he thought, ‘and as soon as possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to come to him of my own accord.’ And at that moment there was such a rush of hate in his weary heart that he might have killed either of those 789 of 967

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two—Porfiry or Svidrigaïlov. At least he felt that he would be capable of doing it later, if not now.

‘We shall see, we shall see,’ he repeated to himself.

But no sooner had he opened the door than he

stumbled upon Porfiry himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Raskolnikov was dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say, he was not very much astonished at seeing Porfiry and scarcely afraid of him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly, on his guard. ‘Perhaps this will mean the end?

But how could Porfiry have approached so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard nothing? Could he have been listening at the door?’

‘You didn’t expect a visitor, Rodion Romanovitch,’

Porfiry explained, laughing. ‘I’ve been meaning to look in a long time; I was passing by and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you going out? I won’t keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette.’

‘Sit down, Porfiry Petrovitch, sit down.’ Raskolnikov gave his visitor a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he would have marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it.

The last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man will sometimes go through half an hour 790 of 967

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of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.

Raskolnikov seated himself directly facing Porfiry, and looked at him without flinching. Porfiry screwed up his eyes and began lighting a cigarette.

‘Speak, speak,’ seemed as though it would burst from Raskolnikov’s heart. ‘Come, why don’t you speak?’

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Chapter II

‘Ah these cigarettes!’ Porfiry Petrovitch ejaculated at last, having lighted one. ‘They are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I can’t give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and a difficulty in breathing.

You know I am a coward, I went lately to Dr. B——n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me:

‘Tobacco’s bad for you,’ he said, ‘your lungs are affected.’

But how am I to give it up? What is there to take its place? I don’t drink, that’s the mischief, he-he-he, that I don’t. Everything is relative, Rodion Romanovitch, everything is relative!’

‘Why, he’s playing his professional tricks again,’

Raskolnikov thought with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview suddenly came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that had come upon him then.

‘I came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you didn’t know?’ Porfiry Petrovitch went on, looking round the room. ‘I came into this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day, and I thought I’d return your call. I walked in as your door was wide open, 792 of 967

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I looked round, waited and went out without leaving my name with your servant. Don’t you lock your door?’

Raskolnikov’s face grew more and more gloomy.

Porfiry seemed to guess his state of mind.

‘I’ve come to have it out with you, Rodion

Romanovitch, my dear fellow! I owe you an explanation and must give it to you,’ he