Crime and Punishment

And Pyotr Petrovich handed Sonya a ten-rouble bill, after carefully unfolding it. Sonya took it, blushed, jumped up, murmured something, and hastily began bowing her way out. Pyotr Petrovich solemnly accompanied her to the door. She sprang out of the room at last, all agitated and exhausted, and returned in great embarrassment to Katerina Ivanovna.

During the course of this whole scene, Andrei Semyonovich either stood by the window or paced the room, not wishing to interrupt the conversation; but when Sonya left, he suddenly went up to Pyotr Petrovich and solemnly offered him his hand.

“I heard everything, and saw everything,” he said, with special emphasis on the word saw. “What a noble thing—that is, I meant to say, humane! You wished to avoid gratitude, I could see! And though I confess to you that, on principle, I ca

“Eh, what nonsense!” Pyotr Petrovich muttered, a bit disturbed, and looking somehow closely at Lebezyatnikov.

“No, it's not nonsense! A man insulted and irritated as you are by yesterday's incident, and at the same time capable of thinking of the misfortune of others—such a man, sir...though by his actions he may be making a social mistake—nevertheless...is worthy of respect! I did not even expect it of you, Pyotr Petrovich, the less so since according to your ideas—oh! how your ideas still hinder you! How troubled you are, for instance, by yesterday's failure,” the good little Andrei Semyonovich went on exclaiming, once more feeling fervently inclined towards Pyotr Petrovich, “but why, why the absolute need for this marriage, this legal marriage, my most noble and most amiable Pyotr Petrovich? Why this absolute need for legality in marriage? Well, beat me if you like, but I'm glad, glad that it fell through, that you are free, that you are not yet altogether lost to mankind, glad...You see, I've spoken my mind.”

“Because I don't want to wear horns and breed up other men's children—that's why I need a legal marriage,” Luzhin said, just to make a reply. He was especially pensive and preoccupied with something.

“Children? You've touched upon children?” Andrei Semyonovich gave a start, like a war horse hearing the sound of trumpets. “Children are a social question, and the question is of the first importance, I agree; but the question of children will be resolved differently. There are even some who negate children altogether, as they do every suggestion of the family. We'll talk about children later, but now let us turn our attention to horns! I confess, this is my weak spot. This nasty, Pushkinian, hussar's expression is even unthinkable in the future lexicon.[112]Besides, what are horns? Oh, delusion! What horns? Why horns? What nonsense! On the contrary, in civil marriage there won't be any horns! Horns are simply the natural consequence of every legal marriage, its correction, so to speak, a protest, so that in this sense they are not humiliating in the least. . . And—absurd as it is to think of it—if ever I wind up in a legal marriage, I will even be glad of your thrice-cursed horns; in that case I'll say to my wife: 'My friend, before now I have only loved you, but now I respect you, because you've been able to protest!'[113] You laugh? That's because you're not strong enough to tear yourself free of prejudices! Devil take it, don't I know precisely what makes it so unpleasant when you're deceived in the legal sort? But that is merely the base consequence of a base fact, in which both parties are humiliated. But when the horns are given openly, as in a civil marriage, then they no longer exist, they are unthinkable, and lose even the name of horns. On the contrary, your wife will merely be proving how much she respects you, by considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and developed enough not to take revenge on her for her new husband. Devil take it, I sometimes dream that if I were given in marriage—pah!—if I were to marry (civilly or legally, it makes no difference), I think I'd bring my wife a lover myself, if she was too slow in taking one. 'My friend,' I'd say, 'I love you, but beyond that I wish you to respect me—here!' Is it right, is it right what I'm saying? . . .”

Pyotr Petrovich was chuckling as he listened, but with no particular enthusiasm. Indeed, he was scarcely even listening. He was actually thinking over something else, and even Lebezyatnikov finally noticed it. Pyotr Petrovich was even excited; he rubbed his hands and kept lapsing into thought. All this Andrei Semyonovich realized and recalled afterwards . . .

II

It would be difficult to point to exactly what caused the idea of this witless memorial meal to be born in Katerina Ivanovna's unsettled head. Indeed, nearly ten roubles had been thrown away on it, out of the more than twenty she had received from Raskolnikov for Marmeladov's actual funeral. Perhaps Katerina Ivanovna considered it her duty towards the dead man to honor his memory “properly,” so that all the tenants would know, Amalia Ivanovna especially, that he was “not only in no way worse than they, but maybe even much better,” and that none of them had the right to “turn up his nose” at him. Perhaps what had greatest influence here was that special poor man's pride, which brings it about that in some of the social rituals obligatory for one and all in our daily life, many poor people turn themselves inside out and spend every last kopeck of their savings, only so as to be “no worse than others” and “not to be condemned” somehow by these others. It is quite probable that Katerina Ivanovna wished, precisely on that occasion, precisely at that moment when it seemed she had been abandoned by everyone in the world, to show all these “worthless and nasty tenants” not only that she “knew how to live and how to entertain,” but that she had even been brought up for an altogether different lot, that she had been brought up “in a noble, one might even say aristocratic, colonel's house,” and was not at all prepared for sweeping the floor herself and washing the children's rags at night. Such paroxysms of pride and vanity sometimes visit the poorest and most downtrodden people, and at times turn into an irksome and irrepressible need in them. Katerina Ivanovna, moreover, was not the downtrodden sort at all; she could be utterly crushed by circumstances, but to make her morally downtrodden—that is, to intimidate her and break her will—was impossible. Moreover, Sonechka had quite good grounds for saying of her that her mind was becoming deranged. True, one could not say it positively and finally as yet, but indeed, recently, during the whole past year, her poor head had been too tormented not to have become at least partially damaged. An acute development of consumption, physicians say, also leads to a deranging of the mental faculties.

Wines in plural and in great variety there were not, nor was there any Madeira; all this had been exaggerated; but there was wine. There were vodka, rum, and Lisbon, all of the worst quality, but all in sufficient quantity. Of food, besides kutya,[114] there were three or four dishes (pancakes among them), all from Amalia Ivanovna's kitchen, and in addition two samovars were being prepared for tea and punch, which were supposed to follow the meal. The purchasing had been seen to by Katerina Ivanovna herself, with the help of one tenant, a pathetic little Pole, who for God knows what reason was living at Mrs. Lippewechsel's, and who immediately attached himself to Katerina Ivanovna as an errand boy, and had spent the whole day yesterday and all that morning ru

112

Pushkin mentions "horns" in at least three poems, "horns" and "hussars" in one of them ("Couplets," 1816).

113

A parody of ideas about love and jealousy in Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?

114

See Part One, note 37.

115

"Lady cornet's wife" (Polish); an absurd compliment.