Dowd Siobhan - The London Eye Mystery 9 page

they were in the hole in the wall, "and very likely, it's on purpose

to search when I'm out," he thought, and stopped short. But he was

possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery, if one may so call

it, that with a wave of his hand he went on. "Only to get it over!"

In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had

fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench

from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish

pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes,

so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going

round--as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into the

street on a bright sunny day.

When he reached the turning into _the_ street, in an agony of

trepidation he looked down it... at _the_ house... and at once averted

his eyes.

"If they question me, perhaps I'll simply tell," he thought, as he drew

near the police-station.

The police-station was about a quarter of a mile off. It had lately been

moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a new house. He had been once

for a moment in the old office but long ago. Turning in at the gateway,

he saw on the right a flight of stairs which a peasant was mounting with

a book in his hand. "A house-porter, no doubt; so then, the office is

here," and he began ascending the stairs on the chance. He did not want

to ask questions of anyone.

"I'll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything..." he thought, as

he reached the fourth floor.

The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty water. The

kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and stood open almost

the whole day. So there was a fearful smell and heat. The staircase

was crowded with porters going up and down with their books under their

arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The door of

the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting within. There,

too, the heat was stifling and there was a sickening smell of fresh

paint and stale oil from the newly decorated rooms.

After waiting a little, he decided to move forward into the next room.

All the rooms were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience drew him

on and on. No one paid attention to him. In the second room some

clerks sat writing, dressed hardly better than he was, and rather a

queer-looking set. He went up to one of them.

"What is it?"

He showed the notice he had received.

"You are a student?" the man asked, glancing at the notice.

"Yes, formerly a student."

The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest interest. He was a

particularly unkempt person with the look of a fixed idea in his eye.

"There would be no getting anything out of him, because he has no

interest in anything," thought Raskolnikov.

"Go in there to the head clerk," said the clerk, pointing towards the

furthest room.

He went into that room--the fourth in order; it was a small room and

packed full of people, rather better dressed than in the outer rooms.

Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the

table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his dictation.

The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face,

excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as big as a

saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for something.

Raskolnikov thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The latter glanced

at it, said: "Wait a minute," and went on attending to the lady in

mourning.

He breathed more freely. "It can't be that!"

By degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging himself to have

courage and be calm.

"Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray myself!

Hm... it's a pity there's no air here," he added, "it's stifling.... It

makes one's head dizzier than ever... and one's mind too..."

He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was afraid of losing

his self-control; he tried to catch at something and fix his mind on it,

something quite irrelevant, but he could not succeed in this at all. Yet

the head clerk greatly interested him, he kept hoping to see through him

and guess something from his face.

He was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a dark mobile

face that looked older than his years. He was fashionably dressed and

foppish, with his hair parted in the middle, well combed and pomaded,

and wore a number of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a gold chain

on his waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to a foreigner who

was in the room, and said them fairly correctly.

"Luise Ivanovna, you can sit down," he said casually to the

gaily-dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as though not

venturing to sit down, though there was a chair beside her.

"Ich danke," said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk she sank

into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated

about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She

smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed at filling half

the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though her smile was

impudent as well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness.

The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once, with

some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing of

his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the table and

sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her

seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the

officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to

sit down again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He

had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side of his

face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing much except

a certain insolence. He looked askance and rather indignantly at

Raskolnikov; he was so very badly dressed, and in spite of his

humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in keeping with his

clothes. Raskolnikov had unwarily fixed a very long and direct look on

him, so that he felt positively affronted.

"What do you want?" he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged

fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.

"I was summoned... by a notice..." Raskolnikov faltered.

"For the recovery of money due, from _the student_," the head clerk

interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. "Here!" and he

flung Raskolnikov a document and pointed out the place. "Read that!"

"Money? What money?" thought Raskolnikov, "but... then... it's certainly

not _that_."

And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable relief. A

load was lifted from his back.

"And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?" shouted the

assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and more

aggrieved. "You are told to come at nine, and now it's twelve!"

"The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago," Raskolnikov

answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he, too, grew

suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. "And it's enough that

I have come here ill with fever."

"Kindly refrain from shouting!"

"I'm not shouting, I'm speaking very quietly, it's you who are shouting

at me. I'm a student, and allow no one to shout at me."

The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first minute he

could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat.

"Be silent! You are in a government office. Don't be impudent, sir!"

"You're in a government office, too," cried Raskolnikov, "and you're

smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect

to all of us."

He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.

The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant

superintendent was obviously disconcerted.

"That's not your business!" he shouted at last with unnatural loudness.

"Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr

Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don't pay your

debts! You're a fine bird!"

But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at the

paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a second

time, and still did not understand.

"What is this?" he asked the head clerk.

"It is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You must

either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written

declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking not

to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal your

property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and proceed

against you according to the law."

"But I... am not in debt to anyone!"

"That's not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred and fifteen

roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been brought us

for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor Zarnitsyn, nine

months ago, and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to one Mr. Tchebarov.

We therefore summon you, hereupon."

"But she is my landlady!"

"And what if she is your landlady?"

The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of compassion,

and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a novice under fire

for the first time--as though he would say: "Well, how do you feel now?"

But what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery! Was that

worth worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He stood, he

read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions himself, but

all mechanically. The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance from

overwhelming danger, that was what filled his whole soul that moment

without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions

or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant

of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very moment

something like a thunderstorm took place in the office. The assistant

superintendent, still shaken by Raskolnikov's disrespect, still fuming

and obviously anxious to keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the

unfortunate smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever since he came in

with an exceedingly silly smile.

"You shameful hussy!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. (The

lady in mourning had left the office.) "What was going on at your house

last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you're a scandal to the whole street.

Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of correction? Why,

I have warned you ten times over that I would not let you off the

eleventh! And here you are again, again, you... you...!"

The paper fell out of Raskolnikov's hands, and he looked wildly at the

smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw what it

meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the scandal. He

listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh... all his

nerves were on edge.

"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but stopped

short, for he knew from experience that the enraged assistant could not

be stopped except by force.

As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the

storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms of

abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive the

smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and

curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in her

word: and at last she found it.

"There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain," she

pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian confidently,

though with a strong German accent, "and no sort of scandal, and his

honour came drunk, and it's the whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain,

and I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain,

and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any

scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles

again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte

with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and

he _ganz_ broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said

so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then

I called the porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the

eye; and he hit Henriette in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the

cheek. And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain,

and I screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in

the window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of

squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon him!

And Karl pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is true,

Mr. Captain, he tore _sein rock_. And then he shouted that _man muss_

pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain, five

roubles for _sein rock_. And he is an ungentlemanly visitor and caused

all the scandal. 'I will show you up,' he said, 'for I can write to all

the papers about you.'"

"Then he was an author?"

"Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable

house...."

"Now then! Enough! I have told you already..."

"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk repeated significantly.

The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook his

head.

"... So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna, and I tell it

you for the last time," the assistant went on. "If there is a scandal

in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself in the

lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a literary

man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an 'honourable

house'? A nice set, these authors!"

And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. "There was a scandal

the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner and

would not pay; 'I'll write a satire on you,' says he. And there was

another of them on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful

language to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and

daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a confectioner's shop

the other day. They are like that, authors, literary men, students,

town-criers.... Pfoo! You get along! I shall look in upon you myself one

day. Then you had better be careful! Do you hear?"

With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell to curtsying in all

directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she

stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open

face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of

the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Ivanovna made haste

to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she

fluttered out of the office.

"Again thunder and lightning--a hurricane!" said Nikodim Fomitch to Ilya

Petrovitch in a civil and friendly tone. "You are aroused again, you are

fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!"

"Well, what then!" Ilya Petrovitch drawled with gentlemanly nonchalance;

and he walked with some papers to another table, with a jaunty swing of

his shoulders at each step. "Here, if you will kindly look: an author,

or a student, has been one at least, does not pay his debts, has given

an I O U, won't clear out of his room, and complaints are constantly

being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased to make a protest

against my smoking in his presence! He behaves like a cad himself, and

just look at him, please. Here's the gentleman, and very attractive he

is!"

"Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like powder,

you can't bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at something and

went too far yourself," continued Nikodim Fomitch, turning affably to

Raskolnikov. "But you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I assure

you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no

stopping him! And then it's all over! And at the bottom he's a heart of

gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Explosive Lieutenant...."

"And what a regiment it was, too," cried Ilya Petrovitch, much gratified

at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.

Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally pleasant

to them all. "Excuse me, Captain," he began easily, suddenly addressing

Nikodim Fomitch, "will you enter into my position?... I am ready to

ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick

and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not

studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get money.... I

have a mother and sister in the province of X. They will send it to

me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted woman, but she is so

exasperated at my having lost my lessons, and not paying her for the

last four months, that she does not even send up my dinner... and I

don't understand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this

I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves!..."

"But that is not our business, you know," the head clerk was observing.

"Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain..."

Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying

his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter persistently

appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously

oblivious of him. "Allow me to explain that I have been living with her

for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not

confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it

was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked

her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact...

that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those

days, and I led a life of... I was very heedless..."

"Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we've no time to

waste," Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph;

but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it

exceedingly difficult to speak.

"But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all

happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary.

But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as

before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said

to me... and in a friendly way... that she had complete trust in me,

but still, would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen

roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that,

she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never,

never--those were her own words--make use of that I O U till I could pay

of myself... and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to

eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?"

"All these affecting details are no business of ours." Ilya Petrovitch

interrupted rudely. "You must give a written undertaking but as for your

love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with

that."

"Come now... you are harsh," muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at

the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.

"Write!" said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.

"Write what?" the latter asked, gruffly.

"I will dictate to you."

Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually and

contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly felt

completely indifferent to anyone's opinion, and this revulsion took

place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a little,

he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked to them like

that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where had

those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not

with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he

would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart. A

gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took

conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness of his sentimental

effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor the meanness of the latter's

triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion in his heart.

Oh, what had he to do now with his own baseness, with all these petty

vanities, officers, German women, debts, police-offices? If he had been

sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have stirred, would

hardly have heard the sentence to the end. Something was happening to

him entirely new, sudden and unknown. It was not that he understood, but

he felt clearly with all the intensity of sensation that he could

never more appeal to these people in the police-office with sentimental

effusions like his recent outburst, or with anything whatever; and that

if they had been his own brothers and sisters and not police-officers,

it would have been utterly out of the question to appeal to them in any

circumstance of life. He had never experienced such a strange and awful

sensation. And what was most agonising--it was more a sensation than a

conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonising of all the

sensations he had known in his life.

The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration,

that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date, that

he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on.

"But you can't write, you can hardly hold the pen," observed the head

clerk, looking with curiosity at Raskolnikov. "Are you ill?"

"Yes, I am giddy. Go on!"

"That's all. Sign it."

The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others.

Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going away,

he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his hands. He

felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A strange idea

suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up to Nikodim

Fomitch, and tell him everything that had happened yesterday, and then

to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in the hole

in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up from his seat

to carry it out. "Hadn't I better think a minute?" flashed through his

mind. "No, better cast off the burden without thinking." But all at once

he stood still, rooted to the spot. Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly

with Ilya Petrovitch, and the words reached him:

"It's impossible, they'll both be released. To begin with, the whole

story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if it

had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a blind? No,

that would be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student, was seen at

the gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He was walking

with three friends, who left him only at the gate, and he asked the

porters to direct him, in the presence of the friends. Now, would he

have asked his way if he had been going with such an object? As for

Koch, he spent half an hour at the silversmith's below, before he went

up to the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to eight. Now

just consider..."

"But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state

themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three minutes

later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was

unfastened."

"That's just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted himself

in; and they'd have caught him for a certainty if Koch had not been

an ass and gone to look for the porter too. _He_ must have seized the

interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch keeps crossing

himself and saying: 'If I had been there, he would have jumped out and

killed me with his axe.' He is going to have a thanksgiving service--ha,

ha!"

"And no one saw the murderer?"

"They might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah's Ark," said

the head clerk, who was listening.

"It's clear, quite clear," Nikodim Fomitch repeated warmly.

"No, it is anything but clear," Ilya Petrovitch maintained.

Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he did

not reach it....

When he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a chair,

supported by someone on the right side, while someone else was standing

on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow water, and

Nikodim Fomitch standing before him, looking intently at him. He got up

from the chair.

"What's this? Are you ill?" Nikodim Fomitch asked, rather sharply.

"He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing," said the head clerk,

settling back in his place, and taking up his work again.

"Have you been ill long?" cried Ilya Petrovitch from his place, where

he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come to look at

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 607