Dowd Siobhan - The London Eye Mystery 34 page

Sonia like a madwoman. The children, too, were embracing Sonia on

all sides, and Polenka--though she did not fully understand what was

wrong--was drowned in tears and shaking with sobs, as she hid her pretty

little face, swollen with weeping, on Sonia's shoulder.

"How vile!" a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway.

Pyotr Petrovitch looked round quickly.

"What vileness!" Lebeziatnikov repeated, staring him straight in the

face.

Pyotr Petrovitch gave a positive start--all noticed it and recalled it

afterwards. Lebeziatnikov strode into the room.

"And you dared to call me as witness?" he said, going up to Pyotr

Petrovitch.

"What do you mean? What are you talking about?" muttered Luzhin.

"I mean that you... are a slanderer, that's what my words mean!"

Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his short-sighted

eyes.

He was extremely angry. Raskolnikov gazed intently at him, as though

seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Pyotr

Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.

"If you mean that for me,..." he began, stammering. "But what's the

matter with you? Are you out of your mind?"

"I'm in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard

everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own

even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I

can't understand."

"Why, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical

riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!"

"You may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never touch

vodka, for it's against my convictions. Would you believe it, he, he

himself, with his own hands gave Sofya Semyonovna that hundred-rouble

note--I saw it, I was a witness, I'll take my oath! He did it, he!"

repeated Lebeziatnikov, addressing all.

"Are you crazy, milksop?" squealed Luzhin. "She is herself before

you--she herself here declared just now before everyone that I gave her

only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?"

"I saw it, I saw it," Lebeziatnikov repeated, "and though it is against

my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath you like

before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket. Only

like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were saying

good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one hand, with

the other, the left, you slipped the note into her pocket. I saw it, I

saw it!"

Luzhin turned pale.

"What lies!" he cried impudently, "why, how could you, standing by the

window, see the note? You fancied it with your short-sighted eyes. You

are raving!"

"No, I didn't fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I saw

it all. And though it certainly would be hard to distinguish a note from

the window--that's true--I knew for certain that it was a hundred-rouble

note, because, when you were going to give Sofya Semyonovna ten roubles,

you took up from the table a hundred-rouble note (I saw it because I

was standing near then, and an idea struck me at once, so that I did not

forget you had it in your hand). You folded it and kept it in your hand

all the time. I didn't think of it again until, when you were getting

up, you changed it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped

it! I noticed it because the same idea struck me again, that you meant

to do her a kindness without my seeing. You can fancy how I watched you

and I saw how you succeeded in slipping it into her pocket. I saw it, I

saw it, I'll take my oath."

Lebeziatnikov was almost breathless. Exclamations arose on all hands

chiefly expressive of wonder, but some were menacing in tone. They all

crowded round Pyotr Petrovitch. Katerina Ivanovna flew to Lebeziatnikov.

"I was mistaken in you! Protect her! You are the only one to take her

part! She is an orphan. God has sent you!"

Katerina Ivanovna, hardly knowing what she was doing, sank on her knees

before him.

"A pack of nonsense!" yelled Luzhin, roused to fury, "it's all nonsense

you've been talking! 'An idea struck you, you didn't think, you

noticed'--what does it amount to? So I gave it to her on the sly on

purpose? What for? With what object? What have I to do with this...?"

"What for? That's what I can't understand, but that what I am telling

you is the fact, that's certain! So far from my being mistaken, you

infamous criminal man, I remember how, on account of it, a question

occurred to me at once, just when I was thanking you and pressing

your hand. What made you put it secretly in her pocket? Why you did it

secretly, I mean? Could it be simply to conceal it from me, knowing that

my convictions are opposed to yours and that I do not approve of private

benevolence, which effects no radical cure? Well, I decided that you

really were ashamed of giving such a large sum before me. Perhaps,

too, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, when she finds a whole

hundred-rouble note in her pocket. (For I know, some benevolent people

are very fond of decking out their charitable actions in that way.) Then

the idea struck me, too, that you wanted to test her, to see whether,

when she found it, she would come to thank you. Then, too, that you

wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the saying is, your right hand

should not know... something of that sort, in fact. I thought of so

many possibilities that I put off considering it, but still thought it

indelicate to show you that I knew your secret. But another idea struck

me again that Sofya Semyonovna might easily lose the money before she

noticed it, that was why I decided to come in here to call her out of

the room and to tell her that you put a hundred roubles in her pocket.

But on my way I went first to Madame Kobilatnikov's to take them the

'General Treatise on the Positive Method' and especially to recommend

Piderit's article (and also Wagner's); then I come on here and what a

state of things I find! Now could I, could I, have all these ideas and

reflections if I had not seen you put the hundred-rouble note in her

pocket?"

When Lebeziatnikov finished his long-winded harangue with the logical

deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration streamed

from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself correctly

in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was quite

exhausted, almost emaciated after this heroic exploit. But his speech

produced a powerful effect. He had spoken with such vehemence, with such

conviction that everyone obviously believed him. Pyotr Petrovitch felt

that things were going badly with him.

"What is it to do with me if silly ideas did occur to you?" he shouted,

"that's no evidence. You may have dreamt it, that's all! And I tell you,

you are lying, sir. You are lying and slandering from some spite against

me, simply from pique, because I did not agree with your free-thinking,

godless, social propositions!"

But this retort did not benefit Pyotr Petrovitch. Murmurs of disapproval

were heard on all sides.

"Ah, that's your line now, is it!" cried Lebeziatnikov, "that's

nonsense! Call the police and I'll take my oath! There's only one thing

I can't understand: what made him risk such a contemptible action. Oh,

pitiful, despicable man!"

"I can explain why he risked such an action, and if necessary, I, too,

will swear to it," Raskolnikov said at last in a firm voice, and he

stepped forward.

He appeared to be firm and composed. Everyone felt clearly, from the

very look of him that he really knew about it and that the mystery would

be solved.

"Now I can explain it all to myself," said Raskolnikov, addressing

Lebeziatnikov. "From the very beginning of the business, I suspected

that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it. I began

to suspect it from some special circumstances known to me only, which

I will explain at once to everyone: they account for everything. Your

valuable evidence has finally made everything clear to me. I beg all,

all to listen. This gentleman (he pointed to Luzhin) was recently

engaged to be married to a young lady--my sister, Avdotya Romanovna

Raskolnikov. But coming to Petersburg he quarrelled with me, the day

before yesterday, at our first meeting and I drove him out of my room--I

have two witnesses to prove it. He is a very spiteful man.... The day

before yesterday I did not know that he was staying here, in your room,

and that consequently on the very day we quarrelled--the day before

yesterday--he saw me give Katerina Ivanovna some money for the funeral,

as a friend of the late Mr. Marmeladov. He at once wrote a note to

my mother and informed her that I had given away all my money, not

to Katerina Ivanovna but to Sofya Semyonovna, and referred in a most

contemptible way to the... character of Sofya Semyonovna, that is,

hinted at the character of my attitude to Sofya Semyonovna. All this you

understand was with the object of dividing me from my mother and sister,

by insinuating that I was squandering on unworthy objects the money

which they had sent me and which was all they had. Yesterday evening,

before my mother and sister and in his presence, I declared that I had

given the money to Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral and not to Sofya

Semyonovna and that I had no acquaintance with Sofya Semyonovna and had

never seen her before, indeed. At the same time I added that he,

Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin, with all his virtues, was not worth Sofya

Semyonovna's little finger, though he spoke so ill of her. To his

question--would I let Sofya Semyonovna sit down beside my sister, I

answered that I had already done so that day. Irritated that my mother

and sister were unwilling to quarrel with me at his insinuations, he

gradually began being unpardonably rude to them. A final rupture took

place and he was turned out of the house. All this happened yesterday

evening. Now I beg your special attention: consider: if he had now

succeeded in proving that Sofya Semyonovna was a thief, he would

have shown to my mother and sister that he was almost right in his

suspicions, that he had reason to be angry at my putting my sister on

a level with Sofya Semyonovna, that, in attacking me, he was protecting

and preserving the honour of my sister, his betrothed. In fact he might

even, through all this, have been able to estrange me from my family,

and no doubt he hoped to be restored to favour with them; to say nothing

of revenging himself on me personally, for he has grounds for supposing

that the honour and happiness of Sofya Semyonovna are very precious to

me. That was what he was working for! That's how I understand it. That's

the whole reason for it and there can be no other!"

It was like this, or somewhat like this, that Raskolnikov wound up his

speech which was followed very attentively, though often interrupted by

exclamations from his audience. But in spite of interruptions he spoke

clearly, calmly, exactly, firmly. His decisive voice, his tone of

conviction and his stern face made a great impression on everyone.

"Yes, yes, that's it," Lebeziatnikov assented gleefully, "that must be

it, for he asked me, as soon as Sofya Semyonovna came into our room,

whether you were here, whether I had seen you among Katerina Ivanovna's

guests. He called me aside to the window and asked me in secret. It was

essential for him that you should be here! That's it, that's it!"

Luzhin smiled contemptuously and did not speak. But he was very pale. He

seemed to be deliberating on some means of escape. Perhaps he would have

been glad to give up everything and get away, but at the moment this

was scarcely possible. It would have implied admitting the truth of

the accusations brought against him. Moreover, the company, which had

already been excited by drink, was now too much stirred to allow it. The

commissariat clerk, though indeed he had not grasped the whole position,

was shouting louder than anyone and was making some suggestions very

unpleasant to Luzhin. But not all those present were drunk; lodgers came

in from all the rooms. The three Poles were tremendously excited

and were continually shouting at him: "The _pan_ is a _lajdak_!" and

muttering threats in Polish. Sonia had been listening with strained

attention, though she too seemed unable to grasp it all; she seemed as

though she had just returned to consciousness. She did not take her

eyes off Raskolnikov, feeling that all her safety lay in him. Katerina

Ivanovna breathed hard and painfully and seemed fearfully exhausted.

Amalia Ivanovna stood looking more stupid than anyone, with her mouth

wide open, unable to make out what had happened. She only saw that Pyotr

Petrovitch had somehow come to grief.

Raskolnikov was attempting to speak again, but they did not let him.

Everyone was crowding round Luzhin with threats and shouts of abuse.

But Pyotr Petrovitch was not intimidated. Seeing that his accusation of

Sonia had completely failed, he had recourse to insolence:

"Allow me, gentlemen, allow me! Don't squeeze, let me pass!" he said,

making his way through the crowd. "And no threats, if you please! I

assure you it will be useless, you will gain nothing by it. On the

contrary, you'll have to answer, gentlemen, for violently obstructing

the course of justice. The thief has been more than unmasked, and I

shall prosecute. Our judges are not so blind and... not so drunk, and

will not believe the testimony of two notorious infidels, agitators, and

atheists, who accuse me from motives of personal revenge which they are

foolish enough to admit.... Yes, allow me to pass!"

"Don't let me find a trace of you in my room! Kindly leave at once, and

everything is at an end between us! When I think of the trouble I've

been taking, the way I've been expounding... all this fortnight!"

"I told you myself to-day that I was going, when you tried to keep me;

now I will simply add that you are a fool. I advise you to see a doctor

for your brains and your short sight. Let me pass, gentlemen!"

He forced his way through. But the commissariat clerk was unwilling to

let him off so easily: he picked up a glass from the table, brandished

it in the air and flung it at Pyotr Petrovitch; but the glass flew

straight at Amalia Ivanovna. She screamed, and the clerk, overbalancing,

fell heavily under the table. Pyotr Petrovitch made his way to his room

and half an hour later had left the house. Sonia, timid by nature, had

felt before that day that she could be ill-treated more easily than

anyone, and that she could be wronged with impunity. Yet till that

moment she had fancied that she might escape misfortune by care,

gentleness and submissiveness before everyone. Her disappointment was

too great. She could, of course, bear with patience and almost without

murmur anything, even this. But for the first minute she felt it too

bitter. In spite of her triumph and her justification--when her first

terror and stupefaction had passed and she could understand it all

clearly--the feeling of her helplessness and of the wrong done to her

made her heart throb with anguish and she was overcome with hysterical

weeping. At last, unable to bear any more, she rushed out of the room

and ran home, almost immediately after Luzhin's departure. When amidst

loud laughter the glass flew at Amalia Ivanovna, it was more than the

landlady could endure. With a shriek she rushed like a fury at Katerina

Ivanovna, considering her to blame for everything.

"Out of my lodgings! At once! Quick march!"

And with these words she began snatching up everything she could lay

her hands on that belonged to Katerina Ivanovna, and throwing it on the

floor. Katerina Ivanovna, pale, almost fainting, and gasping for breath,

jumped up from the bed where she had sunk in exhaustion and darted at

Amalia Ivanovna. But the battle was too unequal: the landlady waved her

away like a feather.

"What! As though that godless calumny was not enough--this vile creature

attacks me! What! On the day of my husband's funeral I am turned out of

my lodging! After eating my bread and salt she turns me into the street,

with my orphans! Where am I to go?" wailed the poor woman, sobbing and

gasping. "Good God!" she cried with flashing eyes, "is there no justice

upon earth? Whom should you protect if not us orphans? We shall see!

There is law and justice on earth, there is, I will find it! Wait a bit,

godless creature! Polenka, stay with the children, I'll come back. Wait

for me, if you have to wait in the street. We will see whether there is

justice on earth!"

And throwing over her head that green shawl which Marmeladov had

mentioned to Raskolnikov, Katerina Ivanovna squeezed her way through the

disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room, and,

wailing and tearful, she ran into the street--with a vague intention

of going at once somewhere to find justice. Polenka with the two little

ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the corner of the

room, where she waited trembling for her mother to come back. Amalia

Ivanovna raged about the room, shrieking, lamenting and throwing

everything she came across on the floor. The lodgers talked

incoherently, some commented to the best of their ability on what had

happened, others quarrelled and swore at one another, while others

struck up a song....

"Now it's time for me to go," thought Raskolnikov. "Well, Sofya

Semyonovna, we shall see what you'll say now!"

And he set off in the direction of Sonia's lodgings.

CHAPTER IV

Raskolnikov had been a vigorous and active champion of Sonia against

Luzhin, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his own

heart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sort

of relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personal

feeling which impelled him to defend Sonia. He was agitated too,

especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching interview

with Sonia: he _had_ to tell her who had killed Lizaveta. He knew the

terrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were, brushed away the

thought of it. So when he cried as he left Katerina Ivanovna's, "Well,

Sofya Semyonovna, we shall see what you'll say now!" he was still

superficially excited, still vigorous and defiant from his triumph over

Luzhin. But, strange to say, by the time he reached Sonia's lodging, he

felt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood still in hesitation at the

door, asking himself the strange question: "Must he tell her who killed

Lizaveta?" It was a strange question because he felt at the very time

not only that he could not help telling her, but also that he could

not put off the telling. He did not yet know why it must be so, he

only _felt_ it, and the agonising sense of his impotence before

the inevitable almost crushed him. To cut short his hesitation and

suffering, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonia from the

doorway. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in

her hands, but seeing Raskolnikov she got up at once and came to meet

him as though she were expecting him.

"What would have become of me but for you?" she said quickly, meeting

him in the middle of the room.

Evidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had been

waiting for.

Raskolnikov went to the table and sat down on the chair from which she

had only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as she

had done the day before.

"Well, Sonia?" he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, "it was

all due to 'your social position and the habits associated with it.' Did

you understand that just now?"

Her face showed her distress.

"Only don't talk to me as you did yesterday," she interrupted him.

"Please don't begin it. There is misery enough without that."

She made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach.

"I was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? I

wanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would come."

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was turning them out of their lodging

and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere "to seek justice."

"My God!" cried Sonia, "let's go at once...."

And she snatched up her cape.

"It's everlastingly the same thing!" said Raskolnikov, irritably.

"You've no thought except for them! Stay a little with me."

"But... Katerina Ivanovna?"

"You won't lose Katerina Ivanovna, you may be sure, she'll come to you

herself since she has run out," he added peevishly. "If she doesn't find

you here, you'll be blamed for it...."

Sonia sat down in painful suspense. Raskolnikov was silent, gazing at

the floor and deliberating.

"This time Luzhin did not want to prosecute you," he began, not looking

at Sonia, "but if he had wanted to, if it had suited his plans, he would

have sent you to prison if it had not been for Lebeziatnikov and me.

Ah?"

"Yes," she assented in a faint voice. "Yes," she repeated, preoccupied

and distressed.

"But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an accident

Lebeziatnikov's turning up."

Sonia was silent.

"And if you'd gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I said

yesterday?"

Again she did not answer. He waited.

"I thought you would cry out again 'don't speak of it, leave off.'"

Raskolnikov gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. "What, silence

again?" he asked a minute later. "We must talk about something, you

know. It would be interesting for me to know how you would decide a

certain 'problem' as Lebeziatnikov would say." (He was beginning to lose

the thread.) "No, really, I am serious. Imagine, Sonia, that you had

known all Luzhin's intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact,

that they would be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna and the children and

yourself thrown in--since you don't count yourself for anything--Polenka

too... for she'll go the same way. Well, if suddenly it all depended on

your decision whether he or they should go on living, that is whether

Luzhin should go on living and doing wicked things, or Katerina Ivanovna

should die? How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?"

Sonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in this

hesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a roundabout

way.

"I felt that you were going to ask some question like that," she said,

looking inquisitively at him.

"I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?"

"Why do you ask about what could not happen?" said Sonia reluctantly.

"Then it would be better for Luzhin to go on living and doing wicked

things? You haven't dared to decide even that!"

"But I can't know the Divine Providence.... And why do you ask what

can't be answered? What's the use of such foolish questions? How could

it happen that it should depend on my decision--who has made me a judge

to decide who is to live and who is not to live?"

"Oh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no doing

anything," Raskolnikov grumbled morosely.

"You'd better say straight out what you want!" Sonia cried in distress.

"You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply to

torture me?"

She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at

her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.

"Of course you're right, Sonia," he said softly at last. He was suddenly

changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone.

Even his voice was suddenly weak. "I told you yesterday that I was not

coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I've said is to ask

forgiveness.... I said that about Luzhin and Providence for my own sake.

I was asking forgiveness, Sonia...."

He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete in

his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.

And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred

for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened

of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he

met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was

love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real

feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that

_that_ minute had come.

He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he

turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and without

uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.

His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had

stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that "he must

not lose another minute."

"What's the matter?" asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.

He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way he

had intended to "tell" and he did not understand what was happening to

him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him and

waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. It

was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked,

helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror passed

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 632