来自：Crime and Punishment
VI
"...I don't believe it! I can't believe it!" the puzzled Razumikhin kept repeating, trying with all his might to refute Raskolnikov's arguments. They were already approaching Bakaleyev's inn, where Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Dunya had long been waiting for them. Razumikhin kept stopping every moment along the way in the heat of conversation, embarrassed and agitated by the mere fact that they were speaking clearly about this for the first time.
"Don't believe it!" Raskolnikov answered with a cold and careless smile. "As usual, you didn't notice anything, while I weighed every word."
"You're suspicious, that's why you were weighing things... Hm... indeed, I agree, Porfiry's tone was rather strange, and especially that scoundrel Zametov!... You're right, there was something about him—but why? Why?"
"Changed his mind overnight."
"But on the contrary, on the contrary! If they had this brainless idea, they would have tried with all their might to hide it and conceal their cards in order to catch you later... But now—this is brazen and careless!"
"If they had facts, that is, real facts, or at least somewhat solid suspicions, then they really would have tried to hide their game in hopes of winning even more (and besides, they would have already conducted a search!). But they have no facts, not a single one—everything is a mirage, everything cuts both ways, just one fleeting idea—so they're trying to throw me off with their audacity. And perhaps he got angry himself that there are no facts, and broke through in vexation. Or perhaps he has some intention... He seems to be an intelligent man... Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by showing that he knows... That's their psychology, brother... But it's disgusting to explain all this. Leave it!"
"And it's offensive, offensive! I understand you! But... since we've now spoken clearly (and it's excellent that we've finally spoken clearly, I'm glad!)—I'll admit to you frankly now that I've noticed this idea in them for a long time, all this time, of course, only in the most minute form, a creeping one, but why even in a creeping form! How dare they? Where, where are the roots of this hidden? If you knew how furious I was! What: because a poor student, mutilated by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a severe illness with delirium, perhaps already beginning in him (note that!), suspicious, vain, aware of his own worth, and for six months hasn't seen anyone in his corner, in rags and boots without soles—stands before some police clerks and endures their abuse; and here's an unexpected debt in his face, an overdue note from Court Councilor Chebarov, stinking paint, thirty degrees Réaumur, stuffy air, a crowd of people, a story about the murder of a person he had visited the day before, and all this—on an empty stomach! How could he not faint! And on this, on this alone they base everything! Devil take it! I understand, it's annoying, but in your place, Rodya, I would have laughed in everyone's face, or better: spit in everyone's mug, and thickly, and scattered a couple dozen spits in all directions, cleverly, as one should always give them, and that would be the end of it. Spit! Take heart! It's shameful!"
"He expounded that well, though," thought Raskolnikov.
"Spit? And tomorrow another interrogation!" he said bitterly. "Must I really enter into explanations with them? I'm already annoyed that yesterday I humiliated myself in the tavern with Zametov..."
"Devil take it! I'll go to Porfiry myself! And I'll corner him, as a relative; let him lay everything out to me down to the roots! And as for Zametov..."
"Finally figured it out!" thought Raskolnikov.
"Wait!" Razumikhin suddenly cried, grabbing him by the shoulder. "Wait! You lied! I've thought it through: you lied! What kind of trick is this? You say the question about the workmen was a trick? Figure it out: if you had done it, could you have let slip that you saw them painting the apartment... and the workmen? On the contrary: you would have seen nothing, even if you had seen! Who would testify against himself?"
"If I had done that deed, I certainly would have said that I saw both the workmen and the apartment," Raskolnikov continued to answer reluctantly and with visible disgust.
"But why testify against yourself?"
"Because only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices, flatly deny everything during interrogations. If a person is even slightly developed and experienced, he necessarily and as far as possible tries to admit all external and unavoidable facts; only he seeks out other causes for them, introduces some feature of his own, special and unexpected, which gives them a completely different meaning and presents them in a different light. Porfiry could have calculated precisely that I would necessarily answer this way and necessarily say that I saw them, for plausibility, and at the same time insert something in explanation..."
"But he would have told you immediately that the workmen couldn't have been there two days earlier and that, therefore, you must have been there on the day of the murder, at eight o'clock. He would have tripped you up on that trifle!"
"He was counting on just that, that I wouldn't have time to think it through and would hasten to answer in a more plausible way and forget that the workmen couldn't have been there two days earlier."
"But how could you forget that?"
"Nothing easier! It's precisely on such trivial things that clever people are most easily tripped up. The cleverer the person, the less he suspects that he can be tripped up on something simple. The cleverest person must be tripped up on the simplest thing. Porfiry is not at all as stupid as you think..."
"He's a scoundrel after this!"
Raskolnikov couldn't help laughing. But at the same moment his own animation and the eagerness with which he had spoken his last explanation seemed strange to him, when he had maintained the entire previous conversation with gloomy disgust, obviously for purposes, out of necessity.
"I'm getting a taste for certain points!" he thought to himself.
But almost at the same instant he suddenly became anxious, as if an unexpected and alarming thought had struck him. His anxiety increased. They had already reached the entrance to Bakaleyev's inn.
"Go alone," Raskolnikov said suddenly. "I'll be back in a moment."
"Where are you going? We're already here!"
"I must, I must; business... I'll come in half an hour... Tell them."
"As you wish, I'll go with you!"
"What, you want to torture me too!" he cried out with such bitter irritation, with such despair in his look, that Razumikhin's hands dropped. For some time he stood on the porch and gloomily watched him stride quickly toward his lane. Finally, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists, swearing right then and there that he would squeeze Porfiry like a lemon that very day, he went upstairs to reassure Pulcheria Alexandrovna, who was already alarmed by their long absence.
When Raskolnikov reached his building, his temples were damp with sweat and he was breathing heavily. He hurriedly climbed the stairs, entered his unlocked apartment, and immediately locked himself in with the hook. Then, frightened and frenzied, he rushed to the corner, to that very hole in the wallpaper where the things had lain then, thrust his hand into it, and for several minutes carefully searched the hole, going through all the recesses and all the folds of the wallpaper. Finding nothing, he stood up and drew a deep breath. As he was approaching the porch of Bakaleyev's earlier, he had suddenly imagined that some item, some little chain, cufflink, or even the paper in which they had been wrapped, with a note in the old woman's hand, might somehow have slipped through then and gotten lost in some little crack, and then suddenly appear before him as an unexpected and irrefutable piece of evidence.
He stood as if in thought, and a strange, humiliated, half-senseless smile wandered on his lips. He finally took his cap and quietly left the room. His thoughts were confused. Lost in thought, he descended to the gate.
"There they are themselves!" a loud voice cried out; he raised his head.
The caretaker stood at the door of his room and pointed directly at him to a shortish man who looked like a petty bourgeois, dressed in something like a robe with a vest, and very much resembling a woman from a distance. His head, in a greasy cap, hung downward, and his whole person seemed stooped. His flabby, wrinkled face showed him to be over fifty; his small, puffy eyes looked sullen, stern, and displeased.
"What is it?" asked Raskolnikov, approaching the caretaker.
The petty bourgeois glanced at him sideways from under his brows and examined him closely and attentively, without hurrying; then he slowly turned and, without saying a word, walked out of the gate onto the street.
"What is it!" Raskolnikov cried.
"Well, someone was asking if a student lives here, named you, asking who you're staying with. You came down just then, I pointed you out, and he left. There you have it."
The caretaker was also somewhat puzzled, but not very, and after thinking a bit more, he turned and went back into his room.
Raskolnikov rushed after the petty bourgeois and immediately saw him walking on the other side of the street with the same even and unhurried gait, his eyes fixed on the ground, as if thinking about something. He soon caught up with him but walked behind for some time; finally he drew even with him and glanced sideways at his face. The man immediately noticed him, quickly looked him over, but again lowered his eyes, and so they walked for a minute, side by side, not saying a word.
"You were asking about me... at the caretaker's?" Raskolnikov finally said, but somehow very quietly.
The petty bourgeois gave no answer and didn't even look. They were silent again.
"Why do you... come asking... and stay silent... what is all this?" Raskolnikov's voice broke off, and the words somehow wouldn't come out clearly.
This time the petty bourgeois raised his eyes and looked at Raskolnikov with an ominous, dark gaze.
"Murderer!" he suddenly said in a quiet but clear and distinct voice...
Raskolnikov walked beside him. His legs suddenly grew terribly weak, his back went cold, and his heart seemed to freeze for a moment; then it suddenly began pounding, as if it had torn loose from its hook. So they walked about a hundred paces, side by side and again in complete silence.
The petty bourgeois didn't look at him.
"What do you... what... who's a murderer?" Raskolnikov mumbled barely audibly.
"You're the murderer," the man pronounced, even more distinctly and imposingly, and as if with a smile of some hateful triumph, and again looked directly into Raskolnikov's pale face and his deadened eyes. They had then reached a crossroads. The petty bourgeois turned left onto a street and walked on without looking back. Raskolnikov remained in place and gazed after him for a long time. He saw how the man, having already walked about fifty paces, turned around and looked at him, still standing motionless in the same spot. It was impossible to make out clearly, but it seemed to Raskolnikov that this time too the man smiled with his cold, hateful, and triumphant smile.
With a quiet, weakened step, with trembling knees, and as if terribly frozen, Raskolnikov returned and went up to his garret. He took off his cap and placed it on the table and stood beside it for about ten minutes, motionless. Then he lay down powerlessly on the couch and stretched out on it painfully, with a weak moan; his eyes were closed. So he lay for about half an hour.
He didn't think about anything. There were just some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images, without order or connection—faces of people he had seen in childhood or met somewhere only once and whom he would never have remembered; the bell tower of V— Church; a billiard table in some tavern and some officer at the billiard table, the smell of cigars in some basement tobacco shop, a drinking establishment, a back staircase, completely dark, all flooded with slops and strewn with eggshells, and from somewhere came the Sunday ringing of bells... Objects changed and whirled like a vortex. Some even pleased him, and he clung to them, but they faded, and in general something was pressing inside him, but not very much. Sometimes it was even good... The slight chill didn't pass, and this too was almost pleasant to feel.
He heard Razumikhin's hurried steps and his voice, closed his eyes, and pretended to be asleep. Razumikhin opened the door and stood on the threshold for some time, as if deliberating. Then he quietly stepped into the room and carefully approached the couch. Nastasya's whisper was heard:
"Don't disturb him; let him sleep; he'll eat later."
"Right indeed," answered Razumikhin.
They both carefully went out and closed the door. Another half hour passed. Raskolnikov opened his eyes and flung himself on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head...
"Who is he? Who is this man who came up from under the ground? Where was he and what did he see? He saw everything, that's certain. Where was he standing then and from where was he watching? Why has he only now emerged from under the floor? And how could he have seen—is that even possible?.. Hm..." Raskolnikov continued, turning cold and shuddering, "and the case that Nikolai found behind the door: is that also possible? Evidence? Miss one hundred-thousandth little detail—and there's evidence in an Egyptian pyramid! A fly was flying, it saw! Is that really possible?"
And he suddenly felt with disgust how weak he had become, physically weak.
"I should have known this," he thought with a bitter smile, "and how did I dare, knowing myself, anticipating myself, to take an axe and bloody myself! I was obliged to know beforehand... Eh! But I did know beforehand!.." he whispered in despair.
At times he would stop motionless before some thought:
"No, those people aren't made that way; the real master, to whom everything is permitted, storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow campaign and gets away with a pun in Vilna; and after his death they erect idols to him—so therefore, everything is permitted. No, such people, evidently, are made not of flesh but of bronze!"
One sudden extraneous thought almost made him laugh:
"Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo—and a scrawny, vile registrar's wife, an old hag, a moneylender with a red trunk under her bed—well, how's that for Porfiry Petrovich to digest!.. How can they digest it!.. Aesthetics will get in the way: would Napoleon, they'll say, crawl under a bed to 'an old hag'! Eh, rubbish!.."
At moments he felt as if he were delirious: he fell into a feverishly ecstatic mood.
"The old hag is nonsense!" he thought hotly and impetuously. "The old woman, perhaps, was even a mistake, not the point! The old woman was just a disease... I wanted to step over quickly... I didn't kill a person, I killed a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn't step over, I remained on this side... All I managed was to kill. And I didn't even manage that, it turns out... A principle? Why was that fool Razumikhin abusing the socialists earlier? A hardworking and commercial people, occupied with 'universal happiness'... No, I have life only once, and I'll never have it again, I don't want to wait for 'universal happiness.' I want to live myself, or else it's better not to live at all. So what? I simply didn't want to pass by my starving mother, clutching my ruble in my pocket, waiting for 'universal happiness.' 'I'm carrying, they say, a brick for universal happiness and therefore feel peace of heart.' Ha-ha! Why did you let me pass? I only live once, I also want... Eh, I'm an aesthetic louse, and nothing more," he suddenly added, bursting into laughter like a madman. "Yes, I really am a louse," he continued, maliciously clinging to the thought, wallowing in it, playing with it and amusing himself with it, "if only because, first, I'm now reasoning about being a louse; because, secondly, for a whole month I've been bothering all-merciful providence, calling it to witness that I was undertaking this not for my own flesh and lust, but had in view a magnificent and pleasant goal—ha-ha! Because, thirdly, I resolved to observe as much justice as possible in the execution, weight and measure and arithmetic, and of all the lice I chose the most utterly useless one, and having killed her, I resolved to take from her exactly as much as I needed for the first step, and neither more nor less (so the rest, therefore, would have gone to a monastery, according to her will—ha-ha!)... Because, because I'm definitively a louse," he added, gnashing his teeth, "because I myself am perhaps even more vile and loathsome than the louse I killed, and I anticipated beforehand that I would say this to myself after I killed! Can anything compare with such horror! Oh, vulgarity! Oh, vileness!.. Oh, how I understand the 'prophet' with a saber, on horseback. Allah commands, and obey, 'trembling' creature! The 'prophet' is right, right when he plants a fi-i-ine battery somewhere across the street and fires into the righteous and the guilty, not even deigning to explain! Obey, trembling creature, and—do not desire, because—that's not your business!.. Oh, never, never will I forgive the old hag!"
His hair was damp with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his motionless gaze was fixed on the ceiling.
"Mother, sister, how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, physically hate them, I can't bear them near me... Earlier I went up and kissed mother, I remember... To embrace and think, what if she found out, then... should I tell her then? It's in me to do it... Hm! She must be the same as I am," he added, thinking with effort, as if struggling with the delirium overtaking him. "Oh, how I hate the old hag now! It seems I'd kill her again if she came back to life! Poor Lizaveta! Why did she turn up there!.. Strange, though, why do I almost not think about her, as if I didn't kill her?.. Lizaveta! Sonya! Poor, meek ones, with meek eyes... Dear ones!.. Why don't they cry? Why don't they moan?.. They give everything... they look meekly and quietly... Sonya, Sonya! Quiet Sonya!.."
He lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn't remember how he could have ended up on the street. It was already late evening. The twilight was thickening, the full moon was shining brighter and brighter; but somehow the air was especially stuffy. People crowded the streets; artisans and working people were going home, others were strolling; there was a smell of lime, dust, stagnant water. Raskolnikov walked sad and preoccupied: he remembered very well that he had left home with some intention, that something had to be done and done quickly, but what exactly—he had forgotten. Suddenly he stopped and saw that on the other side of the street, on the sidewalk, a man was standing and waving to him. He crossed the street toward him, but suddenly this man turned and walked as if nothing had happened, lowering his head, not turning around and giving no sign that he had called him. "Wait, did he call me?" thought Raskolnikov, but nevertheless began to catch up. Before reaching about ten paces, he suddenly recognized him and—was frightened; it was the same petty bourgeois from earlier, in the same robe and similarly stooped. Raskolnikov followed from a distance; his heart was pounding; they turned into a lane—the man still didn't turn around. "Does he know I'm following him?" thought Raskolnikov. The petty bourgeois entered the gate of a large building. Raskolnikov quickly approached the gate and began watching: would he look back and call him? Indeed, having passed through the entire passageway and already entering the courtyard, he suddenly turned around and again seemed to wave to him. Raskolnikov immediately passed through the archway, but the petty bourgeois was no longer in the courtyard. He must have just gone up the first staircase here. Raskolnikov rushed after him. Indeed, two flights up he could still hear someone's measured, unhurried steps. Strange, the staircase seemed somehow familiar! There's the window on the first floor; sad and mysterious, moonlight passed through the glass; here's the second floor. Ba! This is the very apartment where the workmen were painting... How did he not recognize it at once? The steps of the person ahead fell silent: "so he stopped or is hiding somewhere." Here's the third floor; should he go farther? And what silence there, even frightening... But he went on. The sound of his own steps frightened and troubled him. God, how dark! The petty bourgeois must be hiding somewhere here in a corner. Ah! The apartment is wide open to the staircase; he thought and entered. In the front hall it was very dark and empty, not a soul, as if everything had been carried out; quietly, on tiptoe, he passed into the sitting room: the whole room was brightly flooded with moonlight; everything was the same as before: chairs, mirror, yellow sofa, and pictures in frames. An enormous, round, copper-red moon looked directly into the windows. "It's the moon that makes such silence," thought Raskolnikov, "it must be posing a riddle now." He stood and waited, waited a long time, and the quieter the moon was, the harder his heart pounded, until it even became painful. And still silence. Suddenly there came a momentary dry crack, as if someone broke a splinter, and everything fell silent again. A fly that had awakened suddenly struck the window pane in flight and began buzzing pitifully. At that very moment, in the corner between a small cabinet and the window, he made out what seemed like a cloak hanging on the wall. "Why is there a cloak here?" he thought. "It wasn't there before..." He approached quietly and guessed that someone seemed to be hiding behind the cloak. Carefully he moved the cloak aside with his hand and saw that there stood a chair, and on the chair in the corner sat the little old woman, all hunched over and with her head bowed, so that he couldn't make out her face at all, but it was her. He stood over her: "She's afraid!" he thought, quietly freed the axe from its loop and struck the old woman on the crown of her head, once and again. But strangely: she didn't even move from the blows, as if made of wood. He became frightened, bent closer and began examining her; but she bent her head even lower. He crouched down completely to the floor and looked up into her face from below, looked and turned deathly pale: the little old woman sat there laughing—simply dissolved in quiet, inaudible laughter, straining with all her might so that he wouldn't hear her. Suddenly it seemed to him that the door from the bedroom had opened slightly and that there too people seemed to be laughing and whispering. Rage overcame him: he began beating the old woman on the head with all his strength, but with each blow of the axe the laughter and whispering from the bedroom rang out louder and more audibly, and the little old woman simply shook all over with laughter. He rushed to flee, but the entire front hall was already full of people, the doors to the staircase were wide open, and on the landing, on the stairs and below—everywhere people, head upon head, all looking—but all hiding and waiting, silent... His heart constricted, his legs wouldn't move, they were rooted... He wanted to cry out and—woke up.
He drew a heavy breath—but strangely, the dream seemed to still be continuing: his door was wide open, and on the threshold stood a man completely unfamiliar to him, examining him intently.
Raskolnikov hadn't yet fully opened his eyes and instantly closed them again. He lay on his back and didn't move. "Is this the dream continuing or not," he thought, and barely perceptibly raised his eyelids again to look: the stranger stood in the same place and continued peering at him. Suddenly he stepped carefully across the threshold, carefully closed the door behind him, approached the table, waited a moment—all this time not taking his eyes off him—and quietly, without noise, sat down on the chair beside the couch; he set his hat to the side on the floor, and leaned both hands on his cane, resting his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait a long time. As far as could be made out through flickering eyelashes, this man was no longer young, stout, and with a thick, light, almost white beard...
About ten minutes passed. It was still light, but evening was approaching. The room was completely silent. Not a single sound came even from the staircase. Only some large fly buzzed and beat itself, striking the windowpane in flight. Finally it became unbearable: Raskolnikov suddenly raised himself and sat up on the couch.
"Well, speak, what do you want?"
"I knew it, that you weren't sleeping, just pretending," the stranger answered oddly, laughing calmly. "Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov, allow me to introduce myself..."
PART FOUR