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Sonya had also jumped up from her chair and was looking at him in fear. She wanted very much to say something, to ask something, but in those first moments she did not dare or know how to begin.
“But how can you...how can you go now, sir, in such rain?”
“What? To go off to America and be afraid of rain? Heh, heh! Farewell, my good Sofya Semyonovna! Live, and live long, you'll be needed by others. Incidentally...tell Mr. Razumikhin that I bow to him. Tell him just that: Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov bows to you. Do it without fail.”
He went out, leaving Sonya in amazement, in fear, and in some vague and somber apprehension.
It later turned out that on that same evening, after eleven o'clock, he paid yet another quite eccentric and unexpected visit. It had still not stopped raining. Soaking wet, at twenty minutes past eleven, he walked into the small apartment of his fiancee's parents on Vasilievsky Island, at the corner of the Third Line and Maly Prospect. He had difficulty getting them to open, and at first produced a great commotion; but Arkady Ivanovich, when he chose, could be a man of quite beguiling ma
And meanwhile, at midnight precisely, Svidrigailov was crossing the ------kov Bridge in the direction of the Petersburg side. The rain had stopped, but the wind was blowing. He was begi
“Is there tea?” Svidrigailov asked.
“It's possible, sir.”
“What else is there?”
“Veal, sir, vodka, hors d'oeuvres.”
“Bring some veal and tea.”
“And you won't require anything else?” the ragamuffin asked, even in some perplexity.
“Nothing, nothing.”
The ragamuffin withdrew, thoroughly disappointed.
“Must be a nice place,” Svidrigailov thought, “why didn't I know about it? I, too, probably look like someone coming back from a café-chantant, and who already got into something on the way. Curious, however; who would stay and spend the night here?”
He lighted the candle and looked the room over in more detail. It was a closet, such a small one that Svidrigailov could barely fit into it, with a single window; a very dirty bed, a simple painted table, and a chair took up almost all the space. The walls looked as though they had been knocked together from boards, and the shabby wallpaper was so dusty and tattered that, while it was still possible to guess its color (yellow), the pattern was no longer discernible. A portion of the wall and ceiling was cut away at an angle, as is usual in garrets, but here there was a stairway above it. Svidrigailov put down the candle, sat on the bed, and lapsed into thought. But a strange, incessant whispering in the next closet, which sometimes rose almost to a shout, suddenly drew his attention. This whispering had not ceased from the moment he entered. He began to listen: someone was scolding and almost tearfully reproaching someone else, but only one voice could be heard. Svidrigailov stood up, shaded the candle with his hand, and at once a crack flashed in the wall; he went up and began to look through it.