He to Svidrigaïlov’s. What he had to from that man he
did not know. But that man had some power over him. Having once
recognised this, he not rest, and now the time had come.
On the way, one question particularly him: had Svidrigaïlov been
to Porfiry’s?
As as he judge, he would to it, that he had not. He
pondered again and again, over Porfiry’s visit; no, he hadn’t been,
of he hadn’t.
But if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the present he
fancied he couldn’t. Why? He not have explained, but if he could,
he would not have much over it at the moment. It all
worried him and at the same time he not to it. Strange to
say, none would have it perhaps, but he only a vague
anxiety about his future. Another, much more anxiety
tormented him--it himself, but in a different, more way.
Moreover, he was of fatigue, though his mind was
working that than it had done of late.
And was it while, after all that had happened, to with
these new difficulties? Was it while, for instance, to
manoeuvre that Svidrigaïlov should not go to Porfiry’s? Was it worth
while to investigate, to the facts, to waste time over anyone
like Svidrigaïlov?
Oh, how he was of it all!
And yet he was to Svidrigaïlov; he be expecting
something _new_ from him, information, or means of escape? Men will
catch at straws! Was it or some them together?
Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; it was not Svidrigaïlov
but some other he needed, and Svidrigaïlov had presented
himself by chance. Sonia? But what should he go to Sonia for now? To beg
her again? He was of Sonia, too. Sonia him as
an sentence. He must go his own way or hers. At that moment
especially he did not equal to her. No, would it not be
better to try Svidrigaïlov? And he not help owning that
he had long that he must see him for some reason.
But what they have in common? Their very evil-doing not
be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently
depraved, and deceitful, possibly malignant. Such
stories were told about him. It is true he was Katerina
Ivanovna’s children, but who tell with what and what it
meant? The man always had some design, some project.
There was another which had been of late
about Raskolnikov’s mind, and him great uneasiness. It was so
painful that he to of it. He sometimes
thought that Svidrigaïlov was his footsteps. Svidrigaïlov had
found out his and had had designs on Dounia. What if he had them
still? Wasn’t it that he had? And what if, having
learnt his and so having power over him, he were to use it
as a against Dounia?
This idea sometimes his dreams, but it had never
presented itself so to him as on his way to Svidrigaïlov.
The very moved him to rage. To with, this would
transform everything, his own position; he would have at once to
confess his to Dounia. Would he have to give himself up perhaps
to prevent Dounia from taking some step? The letter? This morning
Dounia had a letter. From she in
Petersburg? Luzhin, perhaps? It’s true Razumihin was there to protect
her, but Razumihin nothing of the position. Perhaps it was his duty
to tell Razumihin? He of it with repugnance.
In any case he must see Svidrigaïlov as soon as possible, he decided
finally. Thank God, the of the were of little
consequence, if only he at the of the matter; but
if Svidrigaïlov were capable... if he were against
Dounia--then...
Raskolnikov was so by what he had passed through that month
that he only decide such questions in one way; “then I shall kill
him,” he in cold despair.
A his heart, he still in the middle of
the and looking about to see where he was and which way he
was going. He himself in X. Prospect, thirty or from
the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second of
the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the were wide
open; from the moving at the windows, the rooms were
full to overflowing. There were of singing, of and
violin, and the of a Turkish drum. He shrieking.
He was about to turn why he had come to the X. Prospect,
when at one of the end he saw Svidrigaïlov, sitting
at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth.
Raskolnikov was taken aback, almost terrified. Svidrigaïlov
was and him and, what Raskolnikov
at once, to be meaning to up and away unobserved.
Raskolnikov at once not to have him, but to be looking
absent-mindedly away, while he him out of the of his eye.
His was violently. Yet, it was that Svidrigaïlov
did not want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on
the point of himself, but as he got up and moved his
chair, he to have aware that Raskolnikov had seen
him, and was him. What had passed them was much the
same as what at their meeting in Raskolnikov’s room. A
sly came into Svidrigaïlov’s and and
broader. Each that he was and by the other. At last
Svidrigaïlov into a loud laugh.
“Well, well, come in if you want me; I am here!” he from the
window.
Raskolnikov up into the tavern. He Svidrigaïlov in a tiny
back room, the in which merchants, and numbers
of people of all were tea at twenty little tables to the
desperate of a of singers. The of balls
could be in the distance. On the table Svidrigaïlov stood
an open bottle and a full of champagne. In the room he found
also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl
of eighteen, a tucked-up skirt, and a Tyrolese with
ribbons. In of the in the other room, she was some
servants’ song in a contralto, to the of
the organ.
“Come, that’s enough,” Svidrigaïlov stopped her at Raskolnikov’s
entrance. The girl at once off and waiting respectfully.
She had her rhymes, too, with a and respectful
expression in her face.
“Hey, Philip, a glass!” Svidrigaïlov.
“I won’t drink anything,” said Raskolnikov.
“As you like, I didn’t it for you. Drink, Katia! I don’t want
anything more to-day, you can go.” He her out a full glass, and
laid a yellow note.
Katia off her of wine, as do, without it down,
in twenty gulps, took the note and Svidrigaïlov’s hand, which he
allowed seriously. She out of the room and the boy trailed
after her with the organ. Both had been in from the street.
Svidrigaïlov had not been a week in Petersburg, but about him
was already, so to speak, on a footing; the waiter, Philip,
was by now an old friend and very obsequious.
The door leading to the had a lock on it. Svidrigaïlov was at
home in this room and whole days in it. The was
dirty and wretched, not second-rate.
“I was going to see you and looking for you,” Raskolnikov began, “but
I don’t know what me turn from the Hay Market into the X. Prospect
just now. I take this turning. I turn to the right from the Hay
Market. And this isn’t the way to you. I and here you are.
It is strange!”
“Why don’t you say at once ‘it’s a miracle’?”
“Because it may be only chance.”
“Oh, that’s the way with all you folk,” laughed Svidrigaïlov. “You won’t
admit it, if you do it a miracle! Here you say
that it may be only chance. And what they all are here, about
having an opinion of their own, you can’t fancy, Rodion Romanovitch. I
don’t you, you have an opinion of your own and are not to
have it. That’s how it was you my curiosity.”
“Nothing else?”
“Well, that’s enough, you know,” Svidrigaïlov was exhilarated,
but only so, he had not had more than a of wine.
“I you came to see me you that I was of having
what you call an opinion of my own,” Raskolnikov.
“Oh, well, it was a different matter. Everyone has his own plans. And
apropos of the let me tell you that I think you have been asleep
for the last two or three days. I told you of this myself, there
is no in your here. I the way myself,
told you where it was, and the hours you me here. Do you
remember?”
“I don’t remember,” answered Raskolnikov with surprise.
“I you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped
mechanically on your memory. You this way and yet
precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware of
it. When I told you then, I you me. You give
yourself away too much, Rodion Romanovitch. And another thing, I’m
convinced there are of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves
as they walk. This is a town of people. If only we had scientific
men, doctors, lawyers and might make most valuable
investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There are places
where there are so many gloomy, and on the soul
of man as in Petersburg. The of so much.
And it’s the centre of all Russia and its must
be on the whole country. But that is neither here there
now. The point is that I have times you. You walk out
of your house--holding your high--twenty from home you let it
sink, and your hands your back. You look and see
nothing you. At last you moving your and
talking to yourself, and sometimes you one hand and declaim, and at
last still in the middle of the road. That’s not at all the thing.
Someone may be you me, and it won’t do you any good.
It’s nothing to do with me and I can’t you, but, of course,
you me.”
“Do you know that I am being followed?” asked Raskolnikov, looking
inquisitively at him.
“No, I know nothing about it,” said Svidrigaïlov, surprised.
“Well, then, let us me alone,” Raskolnikov muttered, frowning.
“Very good, let us you alone.”
“You had tell me, if you come here to drink, and me
twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to away just
now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it.”
“He-he! And why was it you on your sofa with closed and
pretended to be asleep, though you were wide while I in your
doorway? I saw it.”
“I may have had... reasons. You know that yourself.”
“And I may have had my reasons, though you don’t know them.”
Raskolnikov his right on the table, his in the
fingers of his right hand, and at Svidrigaïlov. For a
full minute he his face, which had him before. It
was a face, like a mask; white and red, with red lips,
with a beard, and still thick hair. His were somehow
too and their somehow too and fixed. There was
something in that face, which looked so
wonderfully for his age. Svidrigaïlov was in light
summer and was particularly in his linen. He a huge
ring with a in it.
“Have I got to myself about you, too, now?” said Raskolnikov
suddenly, with to the point. “Even
though you are the most man if you to me,
I don’t want to put myself out any more. I will you at once that I
don’t prize myself as you think I do. I’ve come to tell you at
once that if you keep to your with to my sister
and if you think to any in that direction from what has
been of late, I will kill you you me locked up.
You can on my word. You know that I can keep it. And in the
second place if you want to tell me anything--for I keep all
this time that you have something to tell me--make and tell it,
for time is and very likely it will soon be too late.”
“Why in such haste?” asked Svidrigaïlov, looking at him curiously.
“Everyone has his plans,” Raskolnikov answered and impatiently.
“You me to just now, and at the question
you to answer,” Svidrigaïlov with a smile. “You
keep that I have of my own and so you look at me with
suspicion. Of it’s perfectly natural in your position. But
though I should like to be friends with you, I shan’t trouble myself
to you of the contrary. The game isn’t the and I
wasn’t to talk to you about anything special.”
“What did you want me, for, then? It was you who came about me.”
“Why, as an for observation. I liked the
fantastic nature of your position--that’s what it was! Besides you are
the of a person who me, and from that person
I had in the past a very great about you, from which I
gathered that you had a great over her; isn’t that enough?
Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is complex, and
is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to me
not only for a object, but for the of something
new. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?” Svidrigaïlov with a sly
smile. “Well, can’t you then that I, too, on my way here in the
train was on you, on your telling me something new, and on my
making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!”
“What profit you make?”
“How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a I all
my time and it’s my enjoyment, that’s to say it’s no great enjoyment,
but one must somewhere; that Katia now--you saw her?... If only
I had been a now, a gourmand, but you see I can eat this.”
He pointed to a little table in the where the of a
terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes on a dish.
“Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had something and want nothing more.
I don’t drink, for instance, at all. Except for I touch
anything, and not more than a of that all the evening, and even
that is to make my ache. I ordered it just now to wind
myself up, for I am just going off and you see me in a
peculiar of mind. That was why I myself just now like a
schoolboy, for I was you would me. But I believe,” he
pulled out his watch, “I can an hour with you. It’s half-past
four now. If only I’d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry
officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty,
and sometimes I am positively bored. I you would tell me
something new.”
“But what are you, and why have you come here?”
“What am I? You know, a gentleman, I for two years in the
cavalry, then I about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa
Petrovna and in the country. There you have my biography!”
“You are a gambler, I believe?”
“No, a of gambler. A card-sharper--not a gambler.”
“You have been a card-sharper then?”
“Yes, I’ve been a card-sharper too.”
“Didn’t you sometimes?”
“It did happen. Why?”
“Why, you might have them... it must have been
lively.”
“I won’t you, and I am no hand at philosophy. I
confess that I here for the of the women.”
“As soon as you Marfa Petrovna?”
“Quite so,” Svidrigaïlov with candour. “What of it? You
seem to something in my speaking like that about women?”
“You ask I anything in vice?”
“Vice! Oh, that’s what you are after! But I’ll answer you in order,
first about in general; you know I am of talking. Tell me,
what should I myself for? Why should I give up women, since I
have a for them? It’s an occupation, anyway.”
“So you for nothing here but vice?”
“Oh, very well, for then. You on its being vice. But anyway
I like a direct question. In this at least there is something
permanent, upon nature and not on fantasy,
something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever
setting one on fire and, maybe, not to be extinguished, even
with years. You’ll agree it’s an of a sort.”
“That’s nothing to at, it’s a and a one.”
“Oh, that’s what you think, is it! I agree, that it is a like
everything that moderation. And, of course, in this one must
exceed moderation. But in the place, so in one way
or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate
and prudent, it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn’t
this, I might have to shoot myself. I am to admit that a decent
man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...”
“And you shoot yourself?”
“Oh, come!” Svidrigaïlov with disgust. “Please don’t speak of
it,” he added and with none of the he had shown
in all the previous conversation. His changed. “I admit it’s
an weakness, but I can’t help it. I am of death and
I its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a extent
a mystic?”
“Ah, the of Marfa Petrovna! Do they still go on visiting
you?”
“Oh, don’t talk of them; there have been no more in Petersburg, confound
them!” he with an air of irritation. “Let’s talk of that...
though... H’m! I have not much time, and can’t long with you,
it’s a pity! I should have to tell you.”
“What’s your engagement, a woman?”
“Yes, a woman, a incident.... No, that’s not what I want to talk
of.”
“And the hideousness, the of all your surroundings, doesn’t
that affect you? Have you the to stop yourself?”
“And do you to strength, too? He-he-he! You me just
now, Rodion Romanovitch, though I it would be so.
You to me about and æsthetics! You--a Schiller, you--an
idealist! Of that’s all as it should be and it would be
surprising if it were not so, yet it is in reality.... Ah,
what a I have no time, for you’re a most type! And,
by-the-way, are you of Schiller? I am of him.”
“But what a you are,” Raskolnikov said with some disgust.
“Upon my word, I am not,” answered Svidrigaïlov laughing. “However, I
won’t it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if it no
one? I seven years in the country with Marfa Petrovna, so now when
I come across an person like you--intelligent and highly
interesting--I am to talk and, besides, I’ve that
half-glass of and it’s gone to my a little. And besides,
there’s a that has me up tremendously, but about that
I... will keep quiet. Where are you off to?” he asked in alarm.
Raskolnikov had up. He and and,
as it were, at at having come here. He that
Svidrigaïlov was the most on the of the earth.
“A-ach! Sit down, a little!” Svidrigaïlov begged. “Let them bring
you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won’t talk nonsense, about
myself, I mean. I’ll tell you something. If you like I’ll tell you how a
woman ‘to save’ me, as you would call it? It will be an answer to
your question indeed, for the woman was your sister. May I tell
you? It will help to the time.”
“Tell me, but I trust that you...”
“Oh, don’t be uneasy. Besides, in a low like me,
Avdotya Romanovna can only the respect.”
