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

will set her mind at rest; but don’t you try her too much—come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say’ (Dounia began to get up) ‘that if you should need me or should need … all my life or anything … call me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!’

She turned abruptly and went towards the door.

‘Dounia!’ Raskolnikov stopped her and went towards her. ‘That Razumihin, Dmitri Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.’

Dounia flushed slightly.

‘Well?’ she asked, waiting a moment.

‘He is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love…. Good-bye, Dounia.’

Dounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.

‘But what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that you … give me such a parting message?’

‘Never mind…. Good-bye.’

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He turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at him uneasily, and went out troubled.

No, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and say good-bye to her, and even to tell her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.

‘Afterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and will feel that I stole her kiss.’

‘And would she stand that test?’ he went on a few minutes later to himself. ‘No, she wouldn’t; girls like that can’t stand things! They never do.’

And he thought of Sonia.

There was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was fading. He took up his cap and went out.

He could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it 755 of 967

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brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity ‘on a square yard of space.’ Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.

‘With this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or something, one can’t help doing something stupid! You’ll go to Dounia, as well as to Sonia,’ he muttered bitterly.

He heard his name called. He looked round.

Lebeziatnikov rushed up to him.

‘Only fancy, I’ve been to your room looking for you.

Only fancy, she’s carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Sofya Semyonovna and I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the cross-roads and in front of shops; there’s a crowd of fools running after them. Come along!’

‘And Sonia?’ Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.

‘Simply frantic. That is, it’s not Sofya Semyonovna’s frantic, but Katerina Ivanovna, though Sofya Semyonova’s frantic too. But Katerina Ivanovna is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They’ll be taken to the police.

You can fancy what an effect that will have…. They are 756 of 967

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on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Sofya Semyonovna’s, quite close.’

On the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Katerina Ivanovna could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Katerina Ivanovna in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic.

She was exhausted and breathless. Her wasted

consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense.

She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by their not understanding, beat them…. Then she would make a rush at the crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she immediately appealed to him to see what these children

‘from a genteel, one may say aristocratic, house’ had been brought to. If she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, 757 of 967

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she would rush at once at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan of which Lebeziatnikov had spoken was not there, at least Raskolnikov did not see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Katerina Ivanovna began clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolya dance and Polenka sing.

She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the second note with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and terror of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Marmeladov, decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Katerina Ivanovna’s grandmother’s and had been preserved as a family possession. Polenka was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her mother’s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly frightened of the street and the 758 of 967

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crowd. Sonia followed Katerina Ivanovna, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Katerina Ivanovna was not to be persuaded.

‘Leave off, Sonia, leave off,’ she shouted, speaking fast, panting and coughing. ‘You don’t know what you ask; you are like a child! I’ve told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let everyone, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets, though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service.’ (Katerina Ivanovna had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.) ‘Let that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly, Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I won’t go on so! Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, is that you?’

she cried, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing up to him.

‘Explain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary.

And that general will lose his post, you’ll see! We shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I’ll fall on my knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say ‘Defend us father.’ He is the 759 of 967

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father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he’ll protect us, you’ll see, and that wretch of a general…. Lida, tenez vous droite! Kolya, you’ll dance again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Rodion Romanovitch? If you only knew how stupid they are!

What’s one to do with such children?’

And she, almost crying herself—which did not stop her uninterrupted, rapid flow of talk—pointed to the crying children. Raskolnikov tried to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a boarding-school.

‘A boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,’ cried Katerina Ivanovna, her laugh ending in a cough. ‘No, Rodion Romanovitch, that dream is over! All have forsaken us! … And that general…. You know, Rodion Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him—it happened to be standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels! But enough of them, now I’ll provide for the children myself, I won’t bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for 760 of 967

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us!’ she pointed to Sonia. ‘Polenka, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing at?’ (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) ‘It’s all because Kolya here is so stupid; I have such a bother with him.

What do you want, Polenka? Tell me in French, parlez-moi français. Why, I’ve taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are you to show that you are of good family, well brought-up children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren’t going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel song…. Ah, yes,

… What are we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we … you see, we are standing here, Rodion

Romanovitch, to find something to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to…. For, as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu…. We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida knows ‘My Village’

only, nothing but ‘My Village,’ and everyone sings that.

We must sing something far more genteel…. Well, have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you’d help your mother! My memory’s quite gone, or I should have 761 of 967

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thought of something. We really can’t sing ‘An Hussar.’

Ah, let us sing in French, ‘Cinq sous,’ I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much more touching…. You might sing ‘Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre,’ for that’s quite a child’s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses.

" Marlborough s’en va-t-en guerre

Ne sait quand reviendra …’

she began singing. ‘But no, better sing ‘Cinq sous.’

Now, Kolya, your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands!

‘ Cinq sous, cinq sous

Pour monter notre menage.’

(Cough-cough-cough!) ‘Set your dress straight, Polenka, it’s slipped down on your shoulders,’ she observed, panting from coughing. ‘Now it’s particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It 762 of 967

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was your fault, Sonia, with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite deformed by it….

Why, you’re all crying again! What’s the matter, stupids?

Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an unbearable child!

‘Cinq sous, cinq sous.

‘A policeman again! What do you want?’

A policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But