Dowd Siobhan - The London Eye Mystery 45 page

Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say

_friendship_ is quite another? No, you're wrong! It's not friendship,

but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of

love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound

to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about Zametov.

Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad

reputation, over a glass of champagne... that's all your Zametov is good

for! While I'm perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty

feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and

have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is

he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education... Then

these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous."

Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya

Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a

stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He

looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.

"I mean those crop-headed wenches," the talkative Ilya Petrovitch

continued. "Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory

one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I fall ill, am

I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ha-ha!" Ilya

Petrovitch laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. "It's an immoderate

zeal for education, but once you're educated, that's enough. Why abuse

it? Why insult honourable people, as that scoundrel Zametov does? Why

did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common

they are, you can't fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill

themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard

about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what

was the name of that gentleman who shot himself?"

"Svidrigailov," someone answered from the other room with drowsy

listlessness.

Raskolnikov started.

"Svidrigailov! Svidrigailov has shot himself!" he cried.

"What, do you know Svidrigailov?"

"Yes... I knew him.... He hadn't been here long."

"Yes, that's so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and

all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking way.... He left

in his notebook a few words: that he dies in full possession of his

faculties and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they

say. How did you come to know him?"

"I... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family."

"Bah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had

no suspicion?"

"I saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing."

Raskolnikov felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling

him.

"You've turned pale again. It's so stuffy here..."

"Yes, I must go," muttered Raskolnikov. "Excuse my troubling you...."

"Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It's a pleasure to see you and I

am glad to say so."

Ilya Petrovitch held out his hand.

"I only wanted... I came to see Zametov."

"I understand, I understand, and it's a pleasure to see you."

"I... am very glad... good-bye," Raskolnikov smiled.

He went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know

what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself

with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed

past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in

the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung a

rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard.

There, not far from the entrance, stood Sonia, pale and horror-stricken.

She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of

poignant agony, of despair, in her face. She clasped her hands. His lips

worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned

and went back to the police office.

Ilya Petrovitch had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before

him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs.

"Hulloa! Back again! have you left something behind? What's the matter?"

Raskolnikov, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer.

He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say

something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible.

"You are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!"

Raskolnikov dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the

face of Ilya Petrovitch, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both

looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought.

"It was I..." began Raskolnikov.

"Drink some water."

Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly,

but distinctly said:

"_It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with

an axe and robbed them._"

Ilya Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides.

Raskolnikov repeated his statement.

EPILOGUE

I

Siberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of

the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress,

in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class

convict Rodion Raskolnikov has been confined for nine months. Almost a

year and a half has passed since his crime.

There had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered

exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor

misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit

the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the

secret of _the pledge_ (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which

was found in the murdered woman's hand. He described minutely how he

had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its

contents; he explained the mystery of Lizaveta's murder; described how

Koch and, after him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said

to one another; how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolay

and Dmitri shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards

gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the

Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found.

The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the

judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he

had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making

use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the

trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had

never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed

incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hundred and

seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being so long under the stone,

some of the most valuable notes lying uppermost had suffered from the

damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man

should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made

a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers

more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really

not looked into the purse, and so didn't know what was in it when he

hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that

the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental

derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of

gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary

insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover

Raskolnikov's hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by

Dr. Zossimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant.

All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not

quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another

element in the case.

To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the

criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question

as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he

answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was

his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to

provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand

roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder

through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by

privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he

answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost

coarse....

The sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected,

perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself,

but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange

and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration.

There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition

of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he

had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his

abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the

murder of Lizaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man

commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the

confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by

the false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism,

and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no

suspicions even (Porfiry Petrovitch fully kept his word)--all this did

much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the prisoner's

favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow discovered and

proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university he had helped a poor

consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting

him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit

old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth year,

Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral

when he died. Raskolnikov's landlady bore witness, too, that when they

had lived in another house at Five Corners, Raskolnikov had rescued two

little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was

investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts

made an impression in his favour.

And in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating

circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a

term of eight years only.

At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov's mother fell ill. Dounia

and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during the

trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so

as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time

to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna's

illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial

derangement of her intellect.

When Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she

had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening

Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother's

questions about Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her

mother's benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia

on a business commission, which would bring him in the end money and

reputation.

But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never

asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the

contrary, she had her own version of her son's sudden departure; she

told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting

that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Rodya

had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be

in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be

brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured

Razumihin that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his

article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was

continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to bed

with her, but scarcely asked where Rodya was, though the subject was

obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken

her suspicions.

They began to be frightened at last at Pulcheria Alexandrovna's strange

silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of

getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived

on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodya. This was the cause of

great uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother

suspected that there was something terrible in her son's fate and was

afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any

case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of

her faculties.

It happened once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave

such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her

without mentioning where Rodya was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and

suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood

lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard to deceive

her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely

silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that

the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia remembered her

brother's telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her

sleep on the night after her interview with Svidrigailov and before the

fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that?

Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be

succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would

begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his

future.... Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her,

pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending),

but she still went on talking.

Five months after Raskolnikov's confession, he was sentenced. Razumihin

and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last

the moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother that the

separation should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in

his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least

of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving

up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every

natural resource and in need of workers, active men and capital. There

they would settle in the town where Rodya was and all together would

begin a new life. They all wept at parting.

Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great

deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried

so much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his

mother's illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly

reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by

Svidrigailov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to follow the

party of convicts in which he was despatched to Siberia. Not a word

passed between Raskolnikov and her on the subject, but both knew it

would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his

sister's and Razumihin's fervent anticipations of their happy future

together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their

mother's illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at last

set off.

Two months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and

sorrowful wedding; Porfiry Petrovitch and Zossimov were invited however.

During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute determination.

Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she

could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will.

Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order

to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future;

both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Till

then they rested their hopes on Sonia.

Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to Dounia's

marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became even more

melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how

Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father

and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two

little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Pulcheria

Alexandrovna's disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was

continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with

strangers in the street, though Dounia always accompanied her. In public

conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would

begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the

student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Dounia did

not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid

excitement, there was the risk of someone's recalling Raskolnikov's name

and speaking of the recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the

address of the mother of the two children her son had saved and insisted

on going to see her.

At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes

begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One

morning she declared that by her reckoning Rodya ought soon to be home,

that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must

expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming,

began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and

put up new hangings and so on. Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and

helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual

fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was

taken ill in the night and by morning she was feverish and delirious.

It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she

dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her

son's terrible fate than they had supposed.

For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother's death, though

a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached

Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month

to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At

first they found Sonia's letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on

they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for

from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate

brother's life. Sonia's letters were full of the most matter-of-fact

detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov's

surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no

conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of

any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the

simple facts--that is, his own words, an exact account of his health,

what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her

and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The

picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness

and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but

facts.

But Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news,

especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not

ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave

him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and

that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last

of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly

affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although

he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off

from everyone--he took a very direct and simple view of his new life;

that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time,

had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely

seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he

had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his

work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent

about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that

at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have

his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else,

declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote

further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she

had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were

crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a

rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that

he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply

from inattention and indifference.

Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits,

had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and

rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and

almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when

she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him

on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was

brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to

see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the

sheds on the banks of the Irtish.

About herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some

acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there

was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an

indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the

authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov; that his task

was lightened and so on.

At last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and

uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone,

that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days

at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote

that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of

the hospital.

II

He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not

the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes

that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships!

he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at

least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to

him--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a

student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited

to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed

of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia?

Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he

was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with

his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his

fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was

wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he

could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even

shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated

conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except

a simple _blunder_ which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just

because he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief

through some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to

"the idiocy" of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.

Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a

continual sacrifice leading to nothing--that was all that lay before

him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he

would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to

live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live

in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to

give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy.

Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted

more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he

had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.

And if only fate would have sent him repentance--burning repentance that

would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the

awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would

have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life.

But he did not repent of his crime.

At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he

had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison.

But now in prison, _in freedom_, he thought over and criticised all his

actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque

as they had seemed at the fatal time.

"In what way," he asked himself, "was my theory stupider than others

that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has

only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced

by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange.

Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!"

"Why does my action strike them as so horrible?" he said to himself. "Is

it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at

rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 858