Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

was hoping to see you awfully. Porfiry, too, wants to make your acquaintance⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… he too⁠ ⁠… but why did they put me down as mad?”

“Oh, not mad. I must have said too much, brother.⁠ ⁠… What struck him, you see, was that only that subject seemed to interest you; now it’s clear why it did interest you; knowing all the circumstances⁠ ⁠… and how that irritated you and worked in with your illness⁠ ⁠… I am a little drunk, brother, only, confound him, he has some idea of his own⁠ ⁠… I tell you, he’s mad on mental diseases. But don’t you mind him⁠ ⁠…”

For half a minute both were silent.

“Listen, Razumihin,” began Raskolnikov, “I want to tell you plainly: I’ve just been at a deathbed, a clerk who died⁠ ⁠… I gave them all my money⁠ ⁠… and besides I’ve just been kissed by someone who, if I had killed anyone, would just the same⁠ ⁠… in fact I saw someone else there⁠ ⁠… with a flame-coloured feather⁠ ⁠… but I am talking nonsense; I am very weak, support me⁠ ⁠… we shall be at the stairs directly⁠ ⁠…”

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter with you?” Razumihin asked anxiously.

“I am a little giddy, but that’s not the point, I am so sad, so sad⁠ ⁠… like a woman. Look, what’s that? Look, look!”

“What is it?”

“Don’t you see? A light in my room, you see? Through the crack⁠ ⁠…”

They were already at the foot of the last flight of stairs, at the level of the landlady’s door, and they could, as a fact, see from below that there was a light in Raskolnikov’s garret.

“Queer! Nastasya, perhaps,” observed Razumihin.

“She is never in my room at this time and she must be in bed long ago, but⁠ ⁠… I don’t care! Goodbye!”

“What do you mean? I am coming with you, we’ll come in together!”

“I know we are going in together, but I want to shake hands here and say goodbye to you here. So give me your hand, goodbye!”

“What’s the matter with you, Rodya?”

“Nothing⁠ ⁠… come along⁠ ⁠… you shall be witness.”

They began mounting the stairs, and the idea struck Razumihin that perhaps Zossimov might be right after all. “Ah, I’ve upset him with my chatter!” he muttered to himself.

When they reached the door they heard voices in the room.

“What is it?” cried Razumihin. Raskolnikov was the first to open the door; he flung it wide and stood still in the doorway, dumbfoundered.

His mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been waiting an hour and a half for him. Why had he never expected, never thought of them, though the news that they had started, were on their way and would arrive immediately, had been repeated to him only that day? They had spent that hour and a half plying Nastasya with questions. She was standing before them and had told them everything by now. They were beside themselves with alarm when they heard of his “running away” today, ill and, as they understood from her story, delirious! “Good Heavens, what had become of him?” Both had been weeping, both had been in anguish for that hour and a half.

A cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Raskolnikov’s entrance. Both rushed to him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable sensation struck him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to embrace them, he could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him, laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell to the ground, fainting.

Anxiety, cries of horror, moans⁠ ⁠… Razumihin who was standing in the doorway flew into the room, seized the sick man in his strong arms and in a moment had him on the sofa.

“It’s nothing, nothing!” he cried to the mother and sister⁠—“it’s only a faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much better, that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to himself, he is all right again!”

And seizing Dounia by the arm so that he almost dislocated it, he made her bend down to see that “he is all right again.” The mother and sister looked on him with emotion and gratitude, as their Providence. They had heard already from Nastasya all that had been done for their Rodya during his illness, by this “very competent young man,” as Pulcheria Alexandrovna Raskolnikov called him that evening in conversation with Dounia.

Part III I

Raskolnikov got up, and sat down on the sofa. He waved his hand weakly to Razumihin to cut short the flow of warm and incoherent consolations he was addressing to his mother and sister, took them both by the hand and for a minute or two gazed from one to the other without speaking. His mother was alarmed by his expression. It revealed an emotion agonisingly poignant, and at the same time something immovable, almost insane. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

Avdotya Romanovna was pale; her hand trembled in her brother’s.

“Go home⁠ ⁠… with him,” he said in a broken voice, pointing to Razumihin, “goodbye till tomorrow; tomorrow everything⁠ ⁠… Is it long since you arrived?”

“This evening, Rodya,” answered Pulcheria Alexandrovna, “the train was awfully late. But, Rodya, nothing would induce me to leave you now! I will spend the night here, near you⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t torture me!” he said with a gesture of irritation.

“I will stay with him,” cried Razumihin, “I won’t leave him for a moment. Bother all my visitors! Let them rage to their hearts’ content! My uncle is presiding there.”

“How, how can I thank you!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna was beginning, once more pressing Razumihin’s hands, but Raskolnikov interrupted her again.

“I can’t have it! I can’t have it!” he repeated irritably, “don’t worry me! Enough, go away⁠ ⁠… I can’t stand it!”

“Come, mamma, come out of the room at least for a minute,” Dounia whispered in dismay; “we are distressing him, that’s evident.”

“Mayn’t I look at him after three years?” wept Pulcheria Alexandrovna.

“Stay,” he stopped them again, “you keep interrupting me, and my ideas get muddled.⁠ ⁠… Have you seen Luzhin?”

“No,