“But you're seriously ill, do you know that?” He began feeling his pulse; Raskolnikov pulled his hand back.
“Don't,” he said. “I've come...the thing is, I have no lessons...I wanted...however, I don't need any lessons...”
“You know what? You're raving!” observed Razumikhin, who was watching him closely.
“No, I'm not raving.” Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. It had not occurred to him as he was going upstairs to Razumikhin's that he would therefore have to come face-to-face with him. But now, in an instant, he realized from his earlier experience that he was least of all disposed at that moment to come face-to-face with anyone in the whole world, whoever it might be. All his bile rose up in him. He nearly choked with anger at himself as soon as he crossed Razumikhin's threshold.
“Good-bye!” he said suddenly, and went to the door.
“But wait, wait, you crank!”
“Don't! . . .” the latter repeated, pulling his hand back again.
“And why the devil did you come, then! Are you cracked or something? I'm...almost hurt. I won't let you go like that.”
“Well, listen: I came to you because aside from you I don't know anyone who would help...to start...because you're kinder than the rest of them—smarter, that is—and you're able to talk about things...But now I see that I need nothing, do you hear, absolutely nothing...no favors, no concern from anyone...I myself...alone...And enough! Let me be, all of you!”
“But wait a minute, you chimney sweep! This is completely crazy! You can do as you like for all I care. You see, I don't have any lessons either, and to hell with it, but there's a bookseller in the flea market named Cherubimov, and he's a sort of lesson in himself. I wouldn't exchange him now for five merchants' lessons. He does a bit of publishing, brings out little books on natural science—and how they sell! The titles alone are priceless! Now, you've always maintained that I'm stupid: by God, brother, there are some that are stupider! And lately he's also hooked on to the trend; he doesn't know beans about it, but, well, naturally I encourage him. Now, here we have two sheets and a bit more of German text—the stupidest sort of charlatanism, in my opinion; in short, it examines whether woman is or is not a human being. Well, and naturally it solemnly establishes that she is a human being. Cherubimov is preparing it in line with the woman question; I'm doing the translating; he'll stretch these two and a half sheets to six, we'll concoct a nice, frilly title half a page long, and peddle it for fifty kopecks. It'll do! I'll get six roubles a sheet for the translation, making it fifteen roubles in all, and I took six roubles in advance. That done, we'll start translating something about whales; then we've marked out some of the dullest gossip from the second part of the Confessionsfor translation—somebody told Cherubimov that Rousseau is supposedly a Radishchev in his own way. [45] Naturally, I don't contradict—devil take him! So, do you want to translate the second sheet of Is Woman a Human Being? [46] If you do, take the text right now, take some pens and paper—it's all supplied—and take three roubles, because I took the advance for the whole translation, first and second sheets, so three roubles would be exactly your share. When you finish the sheet, you'll get another three roubles. And one more thing, please don't regard this as some sort of favor on my part. On the contrary, the moment you walked in, I already saw how you were going to be of use to me. First of all, my spelling is poor, and second, my German just goes kaput sometimes, so that I have to make things up on my own instead, my only consolation being that it comes out even better. But who knows, maybe it comes out worse instead of better...Are you going to take it or not?”
Raskolnikov silently took the German pages of the article, took the three roubles, and walked out without saying a word. Razumikhin gazed after him in astonishment. But, having gone as far as the First Line, [47] Raskolnikov suddenly turned back, went up to Razumikhin's again, placed both the German pages and the three roubles on the table, and again walked out without saying a word.
“Have you got brain fever or what?” Razumikhin bellowed, finally enraged. “What is this farce you're playing? You've even got me all screwed up...Ah, the devil, what did you come for, then?”
“I don't want...translations . . .” Raskolnikov muttered, already going down the stairs.
“What the devil do you want?” Razumikhin shouted from above. The other silently went on down.
“Hey! Where are you living?”
There was no answer.
“Ah, the devil! . . .”
But Raskolnikov was already outside. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was once more brought fully back to his senses, owing to an incident that was most unpleasant for him. He was stoutly lashed on the back with a whip by the driver of a carriage, for almost falling under the horses' hoofs even after the driver had shouted to him three or four times. The stroke of the whip made him so angry that, as he jumped to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking in the very middle of the bridge, which is for driving, not for walking), he snarled and bared his teeth spitefully. Of course, there was laughter around him.
“He had it coming!”
“Some kind of scofflaw!”
“You know, they pretend they're drunk and get under the wheels on purpose, and then you have to answer for it.”
“They live from it, my good sir, they live from it . . .”
But at that moment, as he stood by the railing rubbing his back and still senselessly and spitefully watching the carriage drive away, he suddenly felt someone put money in his hand. He looked; it was an elderly merchant's wife in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl beside her in a little hat and holding a green parasol, probably her daughter. “Take it, my dear, in Christ's name.” He took it, and they went on. It was a twenty-kopeck piece. From his clothes and appearance, they could well have taken him for a beggar, for a real collector of half kopecks in the street, and the offering of so much as twenty kopecks he doubtless owed to the stroke of the whip's having moved them to pity.
He clutched the twenty kopecks in his hand, walked about ten steps, and turned his face to the Neva, in the direction of the palace. [48] There was not the least cloud in the sky, and the water was almost blue, which rarely happens with the Neva. The dome of the cathedral, which is not outlined so well from any other spot as when looked at from here, on the bridge, about twenty paces from the chapel, was simply shining, and through the clear air one could even make out each of its ornaments distinctly. [49] The pain from the whip subsided, and Raskolnikov forgot about the blow; one troublesome and not entirely clear thought now occupied him exclusively. He stood and looked long and intently into the distance; this place was especially familiar to him. While he was attending the university, he often used to stop, mostly on his way home, at precisely this spot (he had done it perhaps a hundred times), and gaze intently at the indeed splendid panorama, and to be surprised almost every time by a certain unclear and unresolved impression. An inexplicable chill always breathed on him from this splendid panorama; for him the magnificent picture was filled with a mute and deaf spirit...He marveled each time at this gloomy and mysterious impression, and, mistrusting himself, put off the unriddling of it to some future time. Now suddenly he abruptly recalled these former questions and perplexities, and it seemed no accident to him that he should recall them now. The fact alone that he had stopped at the same spot as before already seemed wild and strange to him, as if indeed he could imagine thinking now about the same things as before, and being interested in the same themes and pictures he had been interested in...still so recently. He even felt almost like laughing, yet at the same time his chest was painfully constricted. It was as if he now saw all his former past, and former thoughts, and former tasks, and former themes, and former impressions, and this whole panorama, and himself, and everything, everything, somewhere far down below, barely visible under his feet...It seemed as if he were flying upwards somewhere, and everything was vanishing from his sight. . . Inadvertently moving his hand, he suddenly felt the twenty-kopeck piece clutched in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, swung, and threw it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him that at that moment he had cut himself off, as with scissors, from everyone and everything.
45
The
46
This title is an ironic reference to the controversy surrounding the "woman question" that began in the 1860s.
47
The streets on Vasilievsky Island, called "Lines," were laid out in a grid like the streets of Manhattan, and have numbers in place of names.
49
The cathedral is St. Isaac's. Designed in a mixed style suggesting a neoclassical interpretation of St. Peter's in Rome, it is heavily ornamented with sculptures, including (as Soviet guides say) "four life-size angels." There was a small chapel of St. Nicholas built on to the Nikolaevsky Bridge; both were made of wood and burned down in 1916.