Here her laughter again turned into an unbearable coughing, which lasted for about five minutes. There was blood left on her handkerchief; drops of sweat stood out on her forehead. She silently showed the blood to Raskolnikov and, having only just caught her breath, at once began whispering to him again in great animation and with flushed spots on her cheeks:
“You see, I gave her a most subtle errand, one might say—to invite that lady and her daughter, you know the ones I'm talking about? It was necessary to behave in the most delicate manner here, to act most skillfully, but she managed it so that this visiting fool, this presumptuous creature, this worthless provincial, simply because she's some sort of major's widow and has come to ask for a pension, and is wearing out her skirt-hems in all the offices, because at the age of fifty-five she blackens her eyebrows, powders her face, and wears rouge (as everyone knows)... and such a creature not only did not deem it necessary to come, but did not even send an apology for being unable to come, as common courtesy demands in such cases! But I cannot understand why Pyotr Petrovich hasn't come. And where is Sonya? Where did she go? Ah, here she is at last! Why, Sonya, where have you been? It's strange of you to be so unpunctual even at your own father's funeral. Rodion Romanych, let her sit next to you. Here's a place for you, Sonechka...take what you'd like. Have some fish in aspic, that's the best. They'll bring more pancakes soon. Did the children have any? Polechka, do you have everything there? Hem, hem, hem! All right, then. Be a good girl, Lenya; and you, Kolya, stop swinging your feet; sit like a noble child. What's that you're saying, Sonechka?”
Sonya hastened to convey at once Pyotr Petrovich's apology to her, trying to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear, and choosing the most respectful expressions, which she even invented and embellished a bit on Pyotr Petrovich's behalf. She added that Pyotr Petrovich had asked her to say especially that as soon as he could, he would come at once to talk over certain mattersprivately, and to discuss what could be done and undertaken in the future, and so on and so forth.
Sonya knew that this would calm and appease Katerina Ivanovna, that it would flatter her, and, above all—would satisfy her pride. She sat down next to Raskolnikov, having hastily bowed to him and looked curiously at him in passing. For the rest of the time, however, she somehow avoided looking at him or speaking to him. She even seemed absentminded, though she kept peering into Katerina Ivanovna's face in order to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna was wearing mourning, for lack of dresses. Sonya had on something brown, of a darkish shade; Katerina Ivanovna was wearing her only dress, a dark cotton one with stripes. The news about Pyotr Petrovich went over swimmingly. Having listened to Sonya with an air of importance, Katerina Ivanovna, with the same importance, inquired after Pyotr Petrovich's health. Then, immediately and almost aloud, she whisperedto Raskolnikov that it would indeed be strange for such a respected and solid man as Pyotr Petrovich to find himself in such “extraordinary company,” in spite of all his devotion to her family and his old friendship with her papa.
“That is why I am so especially grateful to you, Rodion Romanych, for not scorning my bread and salt, even in such circumstances,” she added, almost aloud. [117] “However, I'm sure that only your special friendship with my poor late husband prompted you to keep your word.”
Then once again, with pride and dignity, she surveyed her guests, and suddenly, with special solicitude, inquired loudly of the old man across the table: “Wouldn't he care for some more stew, and had he tried the Lisbon wine?” The old man did not reply and for a long time could not understand what he was being asked, though his neighbors even began nudging him for the fun of it. He only looked around open-mouthed, which fueled the general merriment even more.
“What a dolt! Look, look! Why did they bring him? As for Pyotr Petrovich, I've always been confident of him,” Katerina Ivanovna continued to Raskolnikov, “and he certainly bears no resemblance...” (she addressed Amalia Ivanovna sharply and loudly, and with an extremely stern look, under which even Amalia Ivanovna quailed) “no resemblance to those frippery skirt-swishers of yours, whom my papa wouldn't even have taken as cooks into his kitchen, and as for my late husband, he, of course, would have been doing them an honor by receiving them, and then only out of his inexhaustible kindness.”
“Yes, ma'am, he liked his drink; he liked it, that he did, ma'am!” the retired supply officer suddenly exclaimed, emptying his twelfth glass of vodka.
“My late husband indeed had that weakness, and everyone knows it,” Katerina Ivanovna simply fastened on him all at once, “but he was a kind and noble man, who loved and respected his family; the only bad thing was that in his kindness he trusted too much in all sorts of depraved people, and God alone knows who he didn't drink with, even people who weren't worth his shoe sole! Imagine, Rodion Romanovich, they found a gingerbread rooster in his pocket: he was walking around dead drunk, yet he remembered the children.”
“A roo-ooster? Did you say a roo-ooster?” cried the supply gentleman.
Katerina Ivanovna did not deign to answer him. She lapsed into thought about something and sighed.
“You no doubt think, as everyone else does, that I was too strict with him,” she went on, addressing Raskolnikov. “But it wasn't so! He respected me, he respected me very, very much! He was a man of good soul! And I oftentimes felt so sorry for him! He used to sit and look at me from the corner, and I'd feel such pity for him, I'd have liked to be nice to him, but then I'd think to myself: 'I'll be nice to him, and he'll just get drunk again.' It was only by strictness that it was possible to restrain him at all.”
“Yes, ma'am, it did go on, the hair-pulling, that it did, more than once, ma'am,” the supply man bellowed again, and poured another glass of vodka into himself.
“Not just hair-pulling but even the broom would be a useful treatment for some fools. I'm not talking about my late husband now,” Katerina Ivanovna snapped at the supply man.
The flushed spots on her cheeks glowed brighter and brighter; her chest was heaving. Another minute and she would be ready to start a scene. Many were chuckling; evidently many found it enjoyable. They began nudging the supply man and whispering something to him. Obviously they wanted to set them at each other.
“And ma-a-ay I ask on what account, ma'am,” the supply man began, “that is, on whose noble account... you have just been so good as to...but, no! Nonsense! A widow! A widow-woman! I forgive...I pass!” and he knocked back some more vodka.
Raskolnikov sat and listened silently and with loathing. And he ate only out of politeness, barely touching the food that Katerina Ivanovna was constantly putting on his plate, and then only to avoid offending her. He kept a close eye on Sonya. But Sonya was becoming more and more anxious and preoccupied; she, too, anticipated that the memorial meal was not going to end peaceably, and watched with fear Katerina Ivanovna's mounting irritation. She knew, incidentally, that she herself, Sonya, was the main reason that the two visiting ladies had treated Katerina Ivanovna's invitation so contemptuously. She had heard from Amalia Ivanovna herself that the mother was even offended at the invitation and had posed the question: “How could she possibly place her daughter next to that girl?”Sonya had a feeling that this had somehow already become known to Katerina Ivanovna; and an offense to her, Sonya, meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than an offense to herself personally, or to her children, or to her papa; in short, it was a mortal offense, and Sonya knew that now Katerina Ivanovna would not rest “until she had proved to those skirt-swishers that they were both...” and so on and so forth. As if on purpose, someone sent Sonya a plate from the other end of the table with two hearts on it pierced by an arrow, molded in black bread. Katerina Ivanovna flared up and at once loudly remarked across the table that whoever had sent it was, of course, “a drunken ass.” Amalia Ivanovna, who also anticipated something bad, and furthermore was insulted to the bottom of her soul by Katerina Ivanovna's haughtiness, in order to divert the unpleasant mood of the company, and at the same time raise herself in the general esteem, suddenly, out of the blue, began telling of how an acquaintance of hers, “Karl from the pharmacy,” had taken a cab one night, and the driver “vanted to kill him, and Karl he pegged him fery, fery much not to kill him, and he vept and clasped his hands, and he vas sheared, and from fear vas pierced his heart.” Katerina Ivanovna, though she smiled, immediately observed that Amalia Ivanovna ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian. The woman became even more offended, and replied that her “fater aus Berlin vas a fery, fery important mann and vent mit his hands into the pockets.” The easily amused Katerina Ivanovna could not help herself and burst into a terrible fit of laughter, so that Amalia Ivanovna began to lose all patience and could barely contain herself.