Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [best books to read for women TXT] 📗

which may be observed in the presence of a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim, from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest sympathy and compassion.

Voices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and saying that they’d no business to make a disturbance here.

‘No business to die!’ cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she was rushing to the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came face to face with Madame

Lippevechsel who had only just heard of the accident and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly quarrelsome and irresponsible German.

‘Ah, my God!’ she cried, clasping her hands, ‘your husband drunken horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!’

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‘Amalia Ludwigovna, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,’ Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with the landlady that she might

‘remember her place’ and even now could not deny herself this satisfaction). ‘Amalia Ludwigovna …’

‘I have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna may not dare; I am Amalia Ivanovna.’

‘You are not Amalia Ivanovna, but Amalia

Ludwigovna, and as I am not one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who’s laughing behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of ‘they are at it again’ was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always call you Amalia Ludwigovna, though I fail to understand why you dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to Semyon Zaharovitch; he is dying. I beg you to close that door at once and to admit no one. Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you the Governor-General, himself, shall be informed of your conduct to-morrow. The prince knew me as a girl; he remembers Semyon Zaharovitch well and has often been a benefactor to him. Everyone knows that Semyon Zaharovitch had many friends and protectors, whom he abandoned himself from an honourable pride, knowing his unhappy

weakness, but now (she pointed to Raskolnikov) a 330 of 967

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generous young man has come to our assistance, who has wealth and connections and whom Semyon Zaharovitch has known from a child. You may rest assured, Amalia Ludwigovna …’

All this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and quicker, but a cough suddenly cut short Katerina Ivanovna’s eloquence. At that instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a groan; she ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without recognition or understanding gazed at Raskolnikov who was bending over him. He drew deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners of his mouth and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not recognising Raskolnikov, he began looking round uneasily. Katerina Ivanovna looked at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled from her eyes.

‘My God! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding,’ she said in despair. ‘We must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Semyon Zaharovitch, if you can,’

she cried to him.

Marmeladov recognised her.

‘A priest,’ he articulated huskily.

Katerina Ivanovna walked to the window, laid her head against the window frame and exclaimed in despair: 331 of 967

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‘Oh, cursed life!’

‘A priest,’ the dying man said again after a moment’s silence.

‘They’ve gone for him,’ Katerina Ivanovna shouted to him, he obeyed her shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for her; she returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier but not for long.

Soon his eyes rested on little Lida, his favourite, who was shaking in the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him with her wondering childish eyes.

‘A-ah,’ he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something.

‘What now?’ cried Katerina Ivanovna.

‘Barefoot, barefoot!’ he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the child’s bare feet.

‘Be silent,’ Katerina Ivanovna cried irritably, ‘you know why she is barefooted.’

‘Thank God, the doctor,’ exclaimed Raskolnikov, relieved.

The doctor came in, a precise little old man, a German, looking about him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse, carefully felt his head and with the help of Katerina Ivanovna he unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man’s chest. It was 332 of 967

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gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large, sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise—a cruel kick from the horse’s hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in the wheel and turned round with it for thirty yards on the road.

‘It’s wonderful that he has recovered consciousness,’ the doctor whispered softly to Raskolnikov.

‘What do you think of him?’ he asked.

‘He will die immediately.’

‘Is there really no hope?’

‘Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp…. His head is badly injured, too … Hm … I could bleed him if you like, but … it would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten minutes.’

‘Better bleed him then.’

‘If you like…. But I warn you it will be perfectly useless.’

At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident.

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with him. Raskolnikov begged the doctor to remain a little while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained.

All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial satisfaction. Katerina Ivanovna bit her lips and held back her tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy’s shirt, and managed to cover the girl’s bare shoulders with a kerchief, which she took from the chest without rising from her knees or ceasing to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the scene.

At that moment Polenka forced her way through the crowd at the door. She came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief, looked for her mother, went up 334 of 967

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to her and said, ‘She’s coming, I met her in the street.’

Her mother made her kneel beside her.

Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror. Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.

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The service was over. Katerina Ivanovna went up to her husband again. The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of admonition and consolation to Katerina Ivanovna on leaving.

‘What am I to do with these?’ she interrupted sharply and irritably, pointing to the little ones.

‘God is merciful; look to the Most High for succour,’

the priest began.

‘Ach! He is merciful, but not to us.’

‘That’s a sin, a sin, madam,’ observed the priest, shaking his head.

‘And isn’t that a sin?’ cried Katerina Ivanovna, pointing to the dying man.

‘Perhaps those who have involuntarily caused the accident will agree to compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings.’

‘You don’t understand!’ cried Katerina Ivanovna angrily waving her hand. ‘And why should they

compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank God he’s dying! One less to keep!’

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‘You must forgive in the hour of death, that’s a sin, madam, such feelings are a great sin.’

Katerina Ivanovna was busy with the dying man; she was giving him water, wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow straight, and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the priest. Now she flew at him almost in a frenzy.

‘Ah, father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. That’s how I spend my nights! … What’s the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!’

A terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her handkerchief to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her other hand to her aching chest. The handkerchief was covered with blood. The priest bowed his head and said nothing.

Marmeladov was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again. He kept trying to say something to her; 337 of 967

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he began moving his tongue with difficulty and articulating indistinctly, but Katerina Ivanovna, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, called peremptorily to him:

‘Be silent! No need! I know what you want to say!’

And the sick man was silent, but at the same instant his wandering eyes strayed to the doorway and he saw Sonia.

Till then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow in a corner.

‘Who’s that? Who’s that?’ he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice, in agitation, turning his eyes in horror towards the door where his daughter was standing, and trying to sit up.

‘Lie down! Lie do-own!’ cried Katerina Ivanovna.

With unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on his elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter, as though not recognising her.

He had never seen her before in such attire. Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dying father. His face showed intense suffering.

‘Sonia! Daughter! Forgive!’ he cried, and he tried to hold out his hand to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face downwards on the floor. They rushed to 338 of 967

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