“You wouldn't believe, you can't even imagine, Polenka,” she was saying, pacing the room, “how great was the gaiety and splendor of our life in papa's house, and how this drunkard has ruined me and will ruin you all! Father had the state rank of colonel [64] and was nearly a governor by then, he only had one more step to go, so that everyone that called on him used to say, 'Even now, Ivan Mikhailovich, we already regard you as our governor!' When I...hem! ... when I...hem, hem, hem...oh, curse this life!” she exclaimed, coughing up phlegm and clutching her chest. “When I...ah, at the marshal's last ball [65] ... when Princess Bezzemelny saw me—the one who blessed me afterwards when I was marrying your father, Polya—she asked at once: 'Isn't this that nice young lady who danced with a shawl at the graduation?'...That rip should be mended; why don't you take the needle and darn it now, the way I taught you, otherwise tomorrow...hem, hem, hem! ... it'll tear wo-o-orse!” she cried, straining herself. “At that same time, a kammerjunker, Prince Shchegolskoy, [66] had just come from Petersburg...he danced a mazurka with me, and the very next day wanted to come with a proposal; but I thanked him personally in flattering terms and said that my heart had long belonged to another. That other was your father, Polya; papa was terribly cross with me...Is the water ready? Now, give me the shirt; and the stockings?...Lida,” she turned to the little daughter, “you'll just have to sleep without your shirt tonight, somehow...and lay out your stockings, too...so they can be washed together...Why doesn't that ragtag come home, the drunkard! He's worn his shirt out like some old dustcloth, it's all torn...I could wash it with the rest and not have to suffer two nights in a row! Lord! Hem, hem, hem, hem! Again! What's this?” she cried out, looking at the crowd in the entry-way and the people squeezing into her room with some burden. “What's this? What are they carrying? Lord!”
“Is there somewhere to put him?” the policeman asked, looking around, when the bloodstained and unconscious Marmeladov had already been lugged into the room.
“On the sofa! Lay him out on the sofa, head this way,” Raskolnikov pointed.
“Run over in the street! Drunk!” someone shouted from the entry-way.
Katerina Ivanovna stood all pale, breathing with difficulty. The children were completely frightened. Little Lidochka cried out, rushed to Polenka, threw her arms around her, and began shaking all over.
Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov rushed to Katerina Ivanovna.
“For God's sake, calm yourself, don't be afraid!” he spoke in a quick patter. “He was crossing the street and was run over by a carriage; don't worry, he'll come round; I told them to bring him here...I was here once, you remember...He'll come round, I'll pay!”
“He finally got it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried desperately, and rushed to her husband.
Raskolnikov quickly noted that she was not one of those women who immediately fall into a faint. Instantly there was a pillow under the unfortunate man's head, something no one had thought of yet; Katerina Ivanovna began undressing him, examining him, fussing over him, not losing her presence of mind, forgetting herself, biting her trembling lips, and suppressing the cries that were about to burst from her breast.
Raskolnikov meanwhile persuaded someone to run and get a doctor. As it turned out, there was a doctor living two houses away.
“I've sent for a doctor,” he kept saying to Katerina Ivanovna, “don't worry, I'll pay. Is there any water?...And bring a napkin, a towel, something, quickly; we don't know yet what his injuries are...He's been injured, not killed...rest assured...The doctor will say!”
Katerina Ivanovna rushed to the window; there, on a broken-seated chair, in the corner, a big clay bowl full of water had been set up, ready for the nighttime washing of her children's and husband's linen. This nighttime washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna herself, with her own hands, at least twice a week and sometimes more often, for it had reached a point where they no longer had any changes of linen, each member of the family had only one, and Katerina Ivanovna, who could not bear uncleanliness, preferred to wear herself out at night and beyond her strength, while everyone was asleep, so that the laundry would have time to dry on the line by morning and she could give them all clean things, rather than to see dirt in the house. She tried to lift the bowl and bring it over, as Raskolnikov had requested, but almost fell with the burden. But he had already managed to find a towel, and he wet it and began washing Marmeladov's bloodstained face. Katerina Ivanovna stood right there, painfully catching her breath and clutching her chest with her hands. She herself was in need of help. Raskolnikov began to realize that he had perhaps not done well in persuading them to bring the trampled man there. The policeman also stood perplexed.
“Polya!” Katerina Ivanovna cried, “run to Sonya, quickly. If you don't find her there, never mind, tell them that her father has been run over by a carriage and that she should come here at once...as soon as she gets back. Quickly, Polya! Here, put on a kerchief!”
“Run fas' as you can!” the boy suddenly cried from his chair, and, having said it, relapsed into his former silent, straight-backed sitting, wide-eyed, heels together, toes apart.
Meanwhile the room had become so crowded that there was no space for an apple to fall. The police had left, except for one who stayed for a time and tried to chase the public thronging in from the stairs back out to the stairs again. In their stead, almost all of Mrs. Lippewechsel's tenants came pouring from the inner rooms, crowding in the doorway at first, but then flooding into the room itself. Katerina Ivanovna flew into a rage.
“You might at least let him die in peace!” she shouted at the whole crowd. “A fine show you've found for yourselves! With cigarettes!
Hem, hem, hem! Maybe with your hats on, too! ... Really, there's one in a hat...Out! At least have respect for a dead body!”
Coughing stopped her breath, but the tongue-lashing had its effect. Obviously, Katerina Ivanovna even inspired some fear; the tenants, one by one, squeezed back through the door, with that strange feeling of inner satisfaction which can always be observed, even in those who are near and dear, when a sudden disaster befalls their neighbor, and which is to be found in all men, without exception, however sincere their feelings of sympathy and commiseration.
Outside the door, however, voices were raised about the hospital, and how one ought not to disturb people unnecessarily.
“So one ought not to die!” cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she rushed for the door, to loose a blast of thunder at them, but in the doorway she ran into Mrs. Lippewechsel herself, who had just managed to learn of the accident and came running to re-establish order. She was an extremely cantankerous and disorderly German woman.
“Ach, my God!” she clasped her hands. “Your trunken husband has a horse trampled! To the hospital mit him! I am the landlady!”
“Amalia Ludwigovna! I ask you to consider what you are saying,” Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily. (She always spoke in a haughty tone with the landlady, so that she would “remember her place,” and even now she could not deny herself the pleasure.) “Amalia Ludwigovna...”
65
A provincial marshal of nobility was, prior to the reforms of the 1860s, the highest elected officer in a province.
66
The names in Katerina Ivanovna's account are allegorical but plausible: Be/./.e-melny means "landless," and Shchegolskoy means "foppish." This lends an air of fantasy to her memories. "Kammerjunker," borrowed by Russian from the German, was an honorary court title.