He suddenly came to his senses and stopped.
“It won't happen? And how are you going to keep it from happening? Forbid it? What right do you have? What can you promise them in return for such a right? To devote your whole fate, your whole future to them, once you finish your studies and find a position?We've heard that before, but it's still a blind deal,and what about now? It's necessary to do something now, do you understand? And what are you doing now? You're fleecing them. Because they get the money on the credit of a hundred-rouble pension, or as an advance from the Svidrigailovs! How are you going to protect them from the Svidrigailovs, from Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin, you future millionaire, you Zeus disposing of their fates? In ten years? But in ten years your mother will go blind from those kerchiefs, and maybe from tears as well; she'll waste away with fasting; and your sister? Go on, think what may happen to your sister after those ten years, or during those ten years. Have you guessed?”
He kept tormenting and taunting himself with these questions, even taking a certain delight in it. None of the questions was new or sudden, however; they were all old, sore, long-standing. They had begun torturing him long ago and had worn out his heart. Long, long ago this present anguish had been born in him, had grown, accumulated, and ripened recently and become concentrated, taking the form of a horrible, wild, and fantastic question that tormented his heart and mind, irresistibly demanding resolution. And now his mother's letter suddenly struck him like a thunderbolt. Clearly, he now had not to be anguished, not to suffer passively, by mere reasoning about unresolvable questions, but to do something without fail, at once, quickly. Decide at all costs to do at least something, or . . .
“Or renounce life altogether!” he suddenly cried out in frenzy. “Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love!”
“Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go?” he suddenly recalled Marmeladov's question yesterday. “For it is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go . . .”
Suddenly he gave a start: a certain thought, also from yesterday, raced through his head again. But he started not because this thought raced through his head. Indeed, he knew, he had anticipatedthat it would certainly “race through his head,” and was already expecting it; and it was not yesterday's thought at all. But the difference was that a month ago, and even yesterday, it was only a dream, whereas now...now it suddenly appeared not as a dream, but in some new, menacing, and quite unfamiliar form, and he suddenly became aware of it himself... It hit him in the head, and everything went dark before his eyes.
He glanced hastily around; he was looking for something. He wanted to sit down, and was looking for a bench; at the moment he was walking along the ------ Boulevard. He could see a bench ahead, about a hundred steps away. He walked as quickly as he could; but on the way a small adventure befell him, which for a few minutes took all his attention.
As he was looking out for a bench, he had noticed a woman walking ahead of him, about twenty steps away, but at first he did not rest his attention on her any more than on all the other objects flashing in front of him. It had happened to him many times before that he would arrive at home, for example, having absolutely no recollection of which way he had come, and he had already grown used to going around that way. But there was something so strange about this walking woman, and so striking, even at first glance, that little by little his attention became riveted on her—reluctantly at first and as if with annoyance, but then more and more strongly. He suddenly wanted to understand what precisely was so strange about this woman. First of all, she had to be very young, a girl, and she was walking bareheaded in such heat, with no parasol or gloves, swinging her arms somehow ridiculously. She was wearing a dress of some light, silken material, which was also somehow oddly put on, barely buttoned, and torn behind at the waist, near the very top of the skirt; a whole strip had come away and was hanging loosely. A little kerchief was thrown over her bare neck, but it stuck out somehow crookedly and sideways. To top it off, the girl was walking unsteadily, stumbling and even reeling this way and that. The encounter finally aroused all of Raskolnikov's attention. He caught up with the girl just by the bench, but she, having reached the bench, simply collapsed on it at one end, threw her head against the back of the bench, and closed her eyes, apparently from extreme fatigue. Taking a close look at her, Raskolnikov realized at once that she was completely drunk. It was strange and wild to see such a phenomenon. He even thought he might be mistaken. Before him was an extremely young little face, about sixteen years old, perhaps only fifteen—small, fair, pretty, but all flushed and as if swollen. The girl seemed to understand very little; she crossed one leg over the other, exposing it much more than she ought, and by all appearances was scarcely aware that she was in the street.
Raskolnikov did not sit down and did not want to go away, but stood perplexed in front of her. That boulevard was generally deserted anyway, but just then, past one o'clock in the afternoon, and in such heat, there was almost no one about. And yet, a short distance away, about fifteen steps, at the edge of the boulevard, a gentleman had stopped, who by all evidence would also have liked very much to approach the girl with certain intentions. He, too, had probably noticed her from afar and was overtaking her, but Raskolnikov had hindered him. The man kept glancing at him angrily, trying at the same time to keep him from noticing it, and was waiting impatiently for his turn, when the vexatious ragamuffin would leave. The thing was clear: this gentleman was about thirty, thickset, fat, full-blooded, with pink cheeks and a little moustache, and very foppishly dressed. Raskolnikov became terribly angry; he suddenly wanted to insult the fat dandy in some way. He left the girl for a moment and went up to the gentleman.
“Hey, you—Svidrigailov! [32] What do you want here?” he shouted, clenching his teeth and laughing, his lips foaming with spite.
“What is the meaning of this?” the gentleman asked sternly, scowling in haughty amazement.
“Get out of here, that's what!”
“How dare you, canaille! ... ”
And he brandished his whip. Raskolnikov fell on him with both fists, not stopping to think that the thickset gentleman could take on two men like him. But at that moment someone seized him firmly from behind; a policeman stepped between them.
“Enough, gentlemen; no fighting in public places, if you please. What do you want? Who are you?” he addressed Raskolnikov sternly, having noticed his rags.
Raskolnikov looked at him attentively. He had a good soldier's face, with gray moustache and side-whiskers, and sensible eyes.
“You're just what I want,” he cried, gripping his arm. “I am a former student, Raskolnikov...You may as well know that, too,” he turned to the gentleman, “and you, come with me, I want to show you something.”
Gripping the policeman's arm, he pulled him towards the bench.
“Here, look, she's completely drunk, she just came walking down the boulevard: who knows who she is, but it doesn't look like it's her profession. Most likely they got her drunk somewhere and deceived her...for the first time...understand?...and then just put her out in the street. Look how her dress is torn, look how it's put on; she's been dressed, she didn't do it herself, and it was clumsy male hands that dressed her. That's obvious. And now look over there: that dandy I was going to fight with is a stranger to me, I've never seen him before; but he, too, noticed her on the way just now, drunk, out of her senses, and he's dying to come and intercept her—seeing what state she's in—and take her somewhere...And it's certainly so; believe me, I'm not mistaken. I saw myself how he was watching her and following her, only I hindered him, and now he's waiting until I go away. There, now he's moved off a little, pretending he's rolling a cigarette...How can we keep him from her? How can we get her home? Think, man!”
The policeman understood and figured it all out at once. The fat gentleman was no mystery, of course; what remained was the girl. The good soldier bent down to look at her more closely, and genuine commiseration showed in his features.
32
Though Raskolnikov has just heard about Svidrigailov in his mother's letter, for Dostoevsky and his contemporaries the name was not unknown. In several issues of the newspaper