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

walked along in silence and only when they were close to Raskolnikov’s lodgings, Razumihin broke the silence in considerable anxiety.

“Listen,” he said, “you’re a first-rate fellow, but among your other failings, you’re a loose fish, that I know, and a dirty one, too. You are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you’re getting fat and lazy and can’t deny yourself anything⁠—and I call that dirty because it leads one straight into the dirt. You’ve let yourself get so slack that I don’t know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor. You⁠—a doctor⁠—sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your patients! In another three or four years you won’t get up for your patients⁠ ⁠… But hang it all, that’s not the point!⁠ ⁠… You are going to spend tonight in the landlady’s flat here. (Hard work I’ve had to persuade her!) And I’ll be in the kitchen. So here’s a chance for you to get to know her better.⁠ ⁠… It’s not as you think! There’s not a trace of anything of the sort, brother⁠ ⁠… !”

“But I don’t think!”

“Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue⁠ ⁠… and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that’s unholy! She’s most prepossessing⁠ ⁠… I’ll repay you, I’ll do anything.⁠ ⁠…”

Zossimov laughed more violently than ever.

“Well, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?”

“It won’t be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You’re a doctor, too; try curing her of something. I swear you won’t regret it. She has a piano, and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: ‘I shed hot tears.’ She likes the genuine article⁠—and well, it all began with that song; Now you’re a regular performer, a maître, a Rubinstein.⁠ ⁠… I assure you, you won’t regret it!”

“But have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of marriage, perhaps?”

“Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not that sort at all.⁠ ⁠… Tchebarov tried that.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well then, drop her!”

“But I can’t drop her like that!”

“Why can’t you?”

“Well, I can’t, that’s all about it! There’s an element of attraction here, brother.”

“Then why have you fascinated her?”

“I haven’t fascinated her; perhaps I was fascinated myself in my folly. But she won’t care a straw whether it’s you or I, so long as somebody sits beside her, sighing.⁠ ⁠… I can’t explain the position, brother⁠ ⁠… look here, you are good at mathematics, and working at it now⁠ ⁠… begin teaching her the integral calculus; upon my soul, I’m not joking, I’m in earnest, it’ll be just the same to her. She will gaze at you and sigh for a whole year together. I talked to her once for two days at a time about the Prussian House of Lords (for one must talk of something)⁠—she just sighed and perspired! And you mustn’t talk of love⁠—she’s bashful to hysterics⁠—but just let her see you can’t tear yourself away⁠—that’s enough. It’s fearfully comfortable; you’re quite at home, you can read, sit, lie about, write. You may even venture on a kiss, if you’re careful.”

“But what do I want with her?”

“Ach, I can’t make you understand! You see, you are made for each other! I have often been reminded of you!⁠ ⁠… You’ll come to it in the end! So does it matter whether it’s sooner or later? There’s the featherbed element here, brother⁠—ach! and not only that! There’s an attraction here⁠—here you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on⁠—as snug as though you were dead, and yet you’re alive⁠—the advantages of both at once! Well, hang it, brother, what stuff I’m talking, it’s bedtime! Listen. I sometimes wake up at night; so I’ll go in and look at him. But there’s no need, it’s all right. Don’t you worry yourself, yet if you like, you might just look in once, too. But if you notice anything⁠—delirium or fever⁠—wake me at once. But there can’t be.⁠ ⁠…”

II

Razumihin waked up next morning at eight o’clock, troubled and serious. He found himself confronted with many new and unlooked-for perplexities. He had never expected that he would ever wake up feeling like that. He remembered every detail of the previous day and he knew that a perfectly novel experience had befallen him, that he had received an impression unlike anything he had known before. At the same time he recognised clearly that the dream which had fired his imagination was hopelessly unattainable⁠—so unattainable that he felt positively ashamed of it, and he hastened to pass to the other more practical cares and difficulties bequeathed him by that “thrice accursed yesterday.”

The most awful recollection of the previous day was the way he had shown himself “base and mean,” not only because he had been drunk, but because he had taken advantage of the young girl’s position to abuse her fiancé in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself. And what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded manner? Who had asked for his opinion? Was it thinkable that such a creature as Avdotya Romanovna would be marrying an unworthy man for money? So there must be something in him. The lodgings? But after all how could he know the character of the lodgings? He was furnishing a flat⁠ ⁠… Foo! how despicable it all was! And what justification was it that he was drunk? Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading! In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, “that is, all the uncleanness