Dowd Siobhan - The London Eye Mystery 37 page

not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood

that stained the pavement red was from her chest.

"I've seen that before," muttered the official to Raskolnikov and

Lebeziatnikov; "that's consumption; the blood flows and chokes the

patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago...

nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What's to be done though?

She is dying."

"This way, this way, to my room!" Sonia implored. "I live here!... See,

that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste," she turned

from one to the other. "Send for the doctor! Oh, dear!"

Thanks to the official's efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman

even helping to carry Katerina Ivanovna. She was carried to Sonia's

room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still

flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Raskolnikov,

Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were

followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed

to the very door. Polenka came in holding Kolya and Lida, who

were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the

Kapernaumovs' room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange

appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his

wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several

open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these,

Svidrigailov suddenly made his appearance. Raskolnikov looked at him

with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having

noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The

official whispered to Raskolnikov that he thought it was too late now

for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran

himself.

Meanwhile Katerina Ivanovna had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased

for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at

Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with

a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the

bed, supporting her on both sides.

"Where are the children?" she said in a faint voice. "You've brought

them, Polenka? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!"

Once more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes,

looking about her.

"So that's how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room."

She looked at her with a face of suffering.

"We have been your ruin, Sonia. Polenka, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well,

here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I've had

enough! The ball is over." (Cough!) "Lay me down, let me die in peace."

They laid her back on the pillow.

"What, the priest? I don't want him. You haven't got a rouble to spare.

I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have

suffered.... And if He won't forgive me, I don't care!"

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered,

turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute,

but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and

difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.

"I said to him, your excellency," she ejaculated, gasping after each

word. "That Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips,

make haste! _Glissez, glissez! pas de basque!_ Tap with your heels, be a

graceful child!

"_Du hast Diamanten und Perlen_

"What next? That's the thing to sing.

"_Du hast die schonsten Augen Madchen, was willst du mehr?_

"What an idea! _Was willst du mehr?_ What things the fool invents! Ah,

yes!

"In the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.

"Ah, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Polenka! Your

father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those

days! Oh that's the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I've

forgotten. Remind me! How was it?"

She was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly

hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word,

with a look of growing terror.

"In the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in

my breast!..."

"Your excellency!" she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and

a flood of tears, "protect the orphans! You have been their father's

guest... one may say aristocratic...." She started, regaining

consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once

recognised Sonia.

"Sonia, Sonia!" she articulated softly and caressingly, as though

surprised to find her there. "Sonia darling, are you here, too?"

They lifted her up again.

"Enough! It's over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!"

she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the

pillow.

She sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long.

Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg

moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.

Sonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless

with her head pressed to the dead woman's wasted bosom. Polenka threw

herself at her mother's feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though

Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling

that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other's

little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened

their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy

dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.

And how did "the certificate of merit" come to be on the bed beside

Katerina Ivanovna? It lay there by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw it.

He walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.

"She is dead," he said.

"Rodion Romanovitch, I must have two words with you," said Svidrigailov,

coming up to them.

Lebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew.

Svidrigailov drew Raskolnikov further away.

"I will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know

it's a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I

will put those two little ones and Polenka into some good orphan asylum,

and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming

of age, so that Sofya Semyonovna need have no anxiety about them. And I

will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn't she? So

tell Avdotya Romanovna that that is how I am spending her ten thousand."

"What is your motive for such benevolence?" asked Raskolnikov.

"Ah! you sceptical person!" laughed Svidrigailov. "I told you I had no

need of that money. Won't you admit that it's simply done from humanity?

She wasn't 'a louse,' you know" (he pointed to the corner where the

dead woman lay), "was she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you'll

agree, is Luzhin to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to

die? And if I didn't help them, Polenka would go the same way."

He said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his

eyes fixed on Raskolnikov, who turned white and cold, hearing his own

phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at

Svidrigailov.

"How do you know?" he whispered, hardly able to breathe.

"Why, I lodge here at Madame Resslich's, the other side of the wall.

Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted

friend of mine. I am a neighbour."

"You?"

"Yes," continued Svidrigailov, shaking with laughter. "I assure you

on my honour, dear Rodion Romanovitch, that you have interested me

enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well,

here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You'll

see that you can get on with me!"

PART VI

CHAPTER I

A strange period began for Raskolnikov: it was as though a fog had

fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which there

was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed that his

mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so, with

intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he had been

mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to the date

of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece his

recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself from what

other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had explained

events as due to circumstances which existed only in his imagination. At

times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness, amounting sometimes

to panic. But he remembered, too, moments, hours, perhaps whole days,

of complete apathy, which came upon him as a reaction from his previous

terror and might be compared with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes

seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape

from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential

facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome

to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the

neglect of which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable

ruin.

He was particularly worried about Svidrigailov, he might be said to be

permanently thinking of Svidrigailov. From the time of Svidrigailov's

too menacing and unmistakable words in Sonia's room at the moment of

Katerina Ivanovna's death, the normal working of his mind seemed to

break down. But although this new fact caused him extreme uneasiness,

Raskolnikov was in no hurry for an explanation of it. At times, finding

himself in a solitary and remote part of the town, in some wretched

eating-house, sitting alone lost in thought, hardly knowing how he had

come there, he suddenly thought of Svidrigailov. He recognised

suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that he ought at once to come to an

understanding with that man and to make what terms he could. Walking

outside the city gates one day, he positively fancied that they had

fixed a meeting there, that he was waiting for Svidrigailov. Another

time he woke up before daybreak lying on the ground under some bushes

and could not at first understand how he had come there.

But during the two or three days after Katerina Ivanovna's death, he

had two or three times met Svidrigailov at Sonia's lodging, where he

had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made no

reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not

to speak of it for a time.

Katerina Ivanovna's body was still lying in the coffin, Svidrigailov was

busy making arrangements for the funeral. Sonia too was very busy. At

their last meeting Svidrigailov informed Raskolnikov that he had made

an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Katerina Ivanovna's

children; that he had, through certain connections, succeeded in getting

hold of certain personages by whose help the three orphans could be at

once placed in very suitable institutions; that the money he had settled

on them had been of great assistance, as it is much easier to place

orphans with some property than destitute ones. He said something

too about Sonia and promised to come himself in a day or two to see

Raskolnikov, mentioning that "he would like to consult with him, that

there were things they must talk over...."

This conversation took place in the passage on the stairs. Svidrigailov

looked intently at Raskolnikov and suddenly, after a brief pause,

dropping his voice, asked: "But how is it, Rodion Romanovitch; you

don't seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you don't seem to

understand. Cheer up! We'll talk things over; I am only sorry, I've

so much to do of my own business and other people's. Ah, Rodion

Romanovitch," he added suddenly, "what all men need is fresh air, fresh

air... more than anything!"

He moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who

were coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By

Svidrigailov's orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidrigailov

went his way. Raskolnikov stood still a moment, thought, and followed

the priest into Sonia's room. He stood at the door. They began quietly,

slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his childhood the

thought of death and the presence of death had something oppressive

and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had heard the requiem

service. And there was something else here as well, too awful and

disturbing. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the

coffin; Polenka was weeping. Behind them Sonia prayed, softly and, as it

were, timidly weeping.

"These last two days she hasn't said a word to me, she hasn't glanced at

me," Raskolnikov thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room;

the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, "Give rest, oh Lord...."

Raskolnikov stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and

took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service,

Raskolnikov went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her

head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered

Raskolnikov. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of

repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the

furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it.

Sonia said nothing. Raskolnikov pressed her hand and went out. He felt

very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he

would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life

there. But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had

never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he walked out of the town on to

the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier

the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near

him. It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he

made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter

restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt

easier and even more solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour

listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively

enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again,

as though his conscience smote him. "Here I sit listening to singing,

is that what I ought to be doing?" he thought. Yet he felt at once

that that was not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something

requiring immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly

understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. "No, better the

struggle again! Better Porfiry again... or Svidrigailov.... Better some

challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!" he thought. He went out of

the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of Dounia and

his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That night he woke

up before morning among some bushes in Krestovsky Island, trembling

all over with fever; he walked home, and it was early morning when he

arrived. After some hours' sleep the fever left him, but he woke up

late, two o'clock in the afternoon.

He remembered that Katerina Ivanovna's funeral had been fixed for that

day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Nastasya brought him

some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness. His

head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last three

days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of panic.

The door opened and Razumihin came in.

"Ah, he's eating, then he's not ill," said Razumihin. He took a chair

and sat down at the table opposite Raskolnikov.

He was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with evident

annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked as though

he had some special fixed determination.

"Listen," he began resolutely. "As far as I am concerned, you may all go

to hell, but from what I see, it's clear to me that I can't make head or

tail of it; please don't think I've come to ask you questions. I don't

want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say

I shouldn't stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come

to find out once for all whether it's a fact that you are mad? There is

a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit

I've been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid,

repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior

to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them

as you have; so you must be mad."

"When did you see them last?"

"Just now. Haven't you seen them since then? What have you been doing

with yourself? Tell me, please. I've been to you three times already.

Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had made up

her mind to come to you; Avdotya Romanovna tried to prevent her; she

wouldn't hear a word. 'If he is ill, if his mind is giving way, who can

look after him like his mother?' she said. We all came here together, we

couldn't let her come alone all the way. We kept begging her to be calm.

We came in, you weren't here; she sat down, and stayed ten minutes,

while we stood waiting in silence. She got up and said: 'If he's

gone out, that is, if he is well, and has forgotten his mother, it's

humiliating and unseemly for his mother to stand at his door begging for

kindness.' She returned home and took to her bed; now she is in a fever.

'I see,' she said, 'that he has time for _his girl_.' She means by _your

girl_ Sofya Semyonovna, your betrothed or your mistress, I don't know. I

went at once to Sofya Semyonovna's, for I wanted to know what was going

on. I looked round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and

Sofya Semyonovna trying them on mourning dresses. No sign of you. I

apologised, came away, and reported to Avdotya Romanovna. So that's all

nonsense and you haven't got a girl; the most likely thing is that you

are mad. But here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you'd not had

a bite for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but

though you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I'd

swear! Above all, you are not mad! So you may go to hell, all of you,

for there's some mystery, some secret about it, and I don't intend to

worry my brains over your secrets. So I've simply come to swear at you,"

he finished, getting up, "to relieve my mind. And I know what to do

now."

"What do you mean to do now?"

"What business is it of yours what I mean to do?"

"You are going in for a drinking bout."

"How... how did you know?"

"Why, it's pretty plain."

Razumihin paused for a minute.

"You always have been a very rational person and you've never been mad,

never," he observed suddenly with warmth. "You're right: I shall drink.

Good-bye!"

And he moved to go out.

"I was talking with my sister--the day before yesterday, I think it

was--about you, Razumihin."

"About me! But... where can you have seen her the day before yesterday?"

Razumihin stopped short and even turned a little pale.

One could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently.

"She came here by herself, sat there and talked to me."

"She did!"

"Yes."

"What did you say to her... I mean, about me?"

"I told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn't

tell her you love her, because she knows that herself."

"She knows that herself?"

"Well, it's pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me,

you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your

keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite well how you love

her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too

may love you and perhaps does love you already. Now decide for yourself,

as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not."

"Rodya! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go?

Of course, if it's all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall find

out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense

and that you've made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a

capital fellow!..."

"That was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that was

a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to

time, don't worry about it. You'll know it all in time when it must be.

Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh

air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant

by that."

Razumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent

conclusion.

"He's a political conspirator! He must be. And he's on the eve of some

desperate step, that's certain. It can only be that! And... and Dounia

knows," he thought suddenly.

"So Avdotya Romanovna comes to see you," he said, weighing each

syllable, "and you're going to see a man who says we need more air, and

so of course that letter... that too must have something to do with it,"

he concluded to himself.

"What letter?"

"She got a letter to-day. It upset her very much--very much indeed. Too

much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then... then

she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part... then she began

warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked

herself in."

"She got a letter?" Raskolnikov asked thoughtfully.

"Yes, and you didn't know? hm..."

They were both silent.

"Good-bye, Rodion. There was a time, brother, when I.... Never mind,

good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must be off

too. I am not going to drink. There's no need now.... That's all stuff!"

He hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he

suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:

"Oh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Porfiry's, that

old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed

and given the proofs. It's one of those very workmen, the painter, only

fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all

that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs

while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on

purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the

young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it's his own explanation, he

has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he's simply

a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of

the lawyers--so there's nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course

people like that are always possible. And the fact that he couldn't keep

up the character, but confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But

what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!"

"Tell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest

you so?" Raskolnikov asked with unmistakable agitation.

"What next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from

Porfiry, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it."

"From Porfiry?"

"From Porfiry."

"What... what did he say?" Raskolnikov asked in dismay.

"He gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his

fashion."

"He explained it? Explained it himself?"

"Yes, yes; good-bye. I'll tell you all about it another time, but now

I'm busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter, another

time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk

without wine. I am drunk, Rodya! Good-bye, I'm going. I'll come again

very soon."

He went out.

"He's a political conspirator, there's not a doubt about it," Razumihin

decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. "And he's drawn his sister

in; that's quite, quite in keeping with Avdotya Romanovna's character.

There are interviews between them!... She hinted at it too... So many of

her words.... and hints... bear that meaning! And how else can all this

tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking... Good heavens,

what I thought! Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was

his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Pfoo! What a crude,

nasty, vile idea on my part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing.... And

how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions...

before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy....

But what's the meaning now of that letter? There's something in that,

too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!"

He thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed,

and he suddenly broke into a run.

As soon as Razumihin went out, Raskolnikov got up, turned to the window,

walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the

smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 691