“What? A little paper? Right, right...don't worry, it's quite all right, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich said, as if he were hurrying somewhere, and after saying it, he took the paper and looked it over. “Quite all right, sir. Nothing more is needed,” he confirmed in the same patter, and put the paper on the desk. Then, a minute later, already speaking of something else, he took it up again and put it on the bureau.
“You seemed to be saying yesterday that you wished to ask me...formally...about my acquaintance with this...murdered woman?” Raskolnikov tried to begin again. “Why did I put in that seemed?”flashed in him like lightning. “And why am I so worried about having put in that seemed?”a second thought immediately flashed in him like lightning.
And he suddenly felt that his insecurity, from the mere contact with Porfiry, from two words only, from two glances only, had bushed out to monstrous proportions in a moment...and that it was terribly dangerous—frayed nerves, mounting agitation. “It's bad! It's bad! ... I'll betray myself again.”
“Yes, yes, yes! Don't worry! It will keep, it will keep, sir,” Porfiry Petrovich muttered, moving back and forth by the desk, but somehow aimlessly, as if darting now to the window, now to the bureau, then back to the desk, first avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious eyes, then suddenly stopping dead and staring point-blank at him. His plump, round little figure gave it all an extremely strange effect, like a ball rolling in different directions and bouncing off all the walls and corners.
“We'll have time, sir, we'll have time! ... Do you smoke, by chance? Have you got your own? Here, sir, take a cigarette...” he continued, offering his visitor a cigarette. “You know, I'm receiving you here, but my apartment is right there, behind the partition...government quarters, sir, but just now I'm renting another for a while. They've been doing a bit of renovating here. It's almost ready now...a government apartment is a fine thing, eh? What do you think?”
“Yes, a fine thing,” Raskolnikov answered, looking at him almost mockingly.
“A fine thing, a fine thing . . .” Porfiry Petrovich kept repeating, as if he had suddenly begun thinking of something quite different; “yes, a fine thing!” he all but shouted in the end, suddenly fixing his eyes on Raskolnikov and stopping two steps away from him. This silly, multiple repetition that a government apartment is a fine thing was too contradictory, in its triteness, to the serious, reflective, and enigmatic look that he now directed at his visitor.
But this only made Raskolnikov's anger boil the more, and he was no longer able to refrain from making a mocking and rather imprudent challenge.
“You know what,” he suddenly asked, looking at him almost insolently, and as if enjoying his own insolence, “it seems there exists a certain legal rule, a certain legal technique—for all possible investigators—to begin from afar at first, with little trifles, or even with something serious but quite unrelated, in order to encourage, so to speak, or, better, to divert the person being interrogated, to lull his prudence, and then suddenly, in the most unexpected way, to stun him right on the head with the most fatal and dangerous question—is it so? I suppose it's mentioned religiously to this day in all the rule books and manuals?”
“Well, well...so you think I've been using this government apartment to get you to...eh?” And having said this, Porfiry Petrovich squinted, winked; something merry and sly ran across his face, the little wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out, his little eyes narrowed, his features stretched out, and he suddenly dissolved into prolonged, nervous laughter, heaving and swaying with his whole body, and looking straight into Raskolnikov's eyes. The latter began to laugh himself, somewhat forcedly; but when Porfiry, seeing that he was also laughing, went off into such gales of laughter that he almost turned purple, Raskolnikov's loathing suddenly went beyond all prudence; he stopped laughing, frowned, and stared at Porfiry long and hatefully, not taking his eyes off him during this whole long and as if deliberately unceasing fit of laughter. The imprudence, however, was obvious on both sides: it appeared that Porfiry Petrovich was laughing in the face of his visitor, who was meeting his laughter with hatred, and that he was hardly embarrassed by this circumstance. Raskolnikov found the last fact very portentous: he realized that Porfiry Petrovich had certainly also not been at all embarrassed earlier, but on the contrary, that he himself, Raskolnikov, had perhaps stepped into a trap; that evidently there was something here that he was unaware of, some goal; that everything was perhaps prepared already, and now, this minute, would be revealed and come crashing down . . .
He went straight to the point at once, rose from his place, and took his cap.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” he began resolutely, but with rather strong irritation, “yesterday you expressed a wish that I come for some sort of interrogations” (he put special emphasis on the word interrogations).“I have come. If there is anything you need to ask, ask it; if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time, I have things to do...I have to be at the funeral of that official who was run over, about whom...you also know...” he added, and at once became angry for having added it, and therefore at once became more irritated. “I am quite sick of it all, sir, do you hear? And have been for a long time...that is partly what made me ill...In short,” he almost shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was even more inappropriate, “in short, kindly either ask your questions or let me go, right now...and if you ask, do so not otherwise than according to form, sir! I will not allow it otherwise; and so, good-bye for now, since there's nothing for the two of us to do here.”
“Lord! What is it? What is there to ask?” Porfiry Petrovich suddenly began clucking, immediately changing his tone and aspect, and instantly ceasing to laugh. “Don't worry, please,” he fussed, again rushing in all directions, then suddenly trying to sit Raskolnikov down, “it will keep, it will keep, sir, and it's all just trifles, sir! I am, on the contrary, so glad that you have finally come to us...I am receiving you as a guest. And excuse me, dear Rodion Romanovich, for this cursed laughter. Rodion Romanovich—is that right?... I'm a nervous man, sir, and you made me laugh by the wittiness of your remark; sometimes, really, I start shaking like a piece of gum rubber and can't stop for half an hour...I laugh easily, sir. With my constitution I'm even afraid of a stroke. But do sit down, won't you?...Please, my dear, or I'll think you're angry . . .”
Raskolnikov kept silent, listened, and watched, still frowning wrathfully. He sat down nonetheless, but without letting the cap out of his hands.
“I'll tell you one thing about myself, dear Rodion Romanovich, in explanation of my personal characteristics, so to speak,” Porfiry Petrovich went on, fussing about the room, and, as before, seeming to avoid meeting his visitor's eyes. “I am, you know, a bachelor, an unworldly and unknowing man, and, moreover, a finished man, a frozen man, sir, gone to seed, and...and...and have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that among us—that is, in our Russia, sir, and most of all in our Petersburg circles—if two intelligent men get together, not very well acquainted yet, but, so to speak, mutually respecting each other, just like you and me now, sir, it will take them a whole half hour to find a topic of conversation—they freeze before each other, they sit feeling mutually embarrassed. Everybody has topics for discussion—ladies, for instance...worldly men, for instance, of a higher tone, always have a topic for discussion, c'est de rigueur [101] —but people of the neuter kind, like us, are all easily embarrassed and have trouble talking...the thinking ones, I mean. Why do you suppose that is, my dear? Do we have no social interests, or is it that we're too honest and don't want to deceive each other, I don't know. Eh? What do you think? And do put your cap aside, sir, it's as if you were just about to leave, really, it's awkward looking at you...On the contrary, I'm so glad, sir . . .”
Raskolnikov put down the cap, but remained silent and went on listening seriously and frowningly to Porfiry's empty and inconsistent babble. “What is he trying to do, divert my attention with his silly babble, or what?”
“I won't offer you coffee, sir, this is no place for it; but why shouldn't one sit down for five little minutes with a friend, as a diversion,” Porfiry continued in a steady stream, “and you know, sir, all these official duties...you won't be offended, my dear, that I keep pacing back and forth like this; excuse me, my dear, I'm so afraid of offending you, but it's simply necessary for me to move, sir. I sit all the time, and I'm so glad to be able to walk around for five minutes or so...hemorrhoids, sir...I keep thinking of trying gymnastics as a treatment; they say there are state councillors, senior state councillors, even privy councillors, happily skipping rope, sir; that's how it is, this science, in our age, sir... yes, sir... But concerning these duties here, interrogations, and all these formalities...now you, my dear, were just so good as to mention interrogations yourself...and you know, really, my dear Rodion Romanovich, these interrogations frequently throw off the interrogator himself more than the one who is being interrogated...As you, my dear, so justly and wittily remarked a moment ago.” (Raskolnikov had made no such remark.) “One gets mixed up, sir! Really mixed up! And it's all the same thing, all the same thing, like a drum! Now that the reform is coming, they'll at least change our title, heh, heh, heh! [102] And concerning our legal techniques—as you were pleased to put it so wittily—there I agree with you completely, sir. Tell me, really, who among all the accused, even the most cloddish peasant, doesn't know, for instance, that they will first lull him with unrelated questions (to use your happy expression) and then suddenly stun him right on the head, with an axe, sir—heh, heh, heh!—right on the head, to use your happy comparison, heh, heh! So you really thought I was talking about this apartment to make you...heh, heh! Aren't you an ironical man. Very well, I'll stop! Ah, yes, incidentally, one word calls up another, one thought evokes another— now, you were just pleased to mention form, with regard to a bit of interrogating, that is...But what is it about form? You know, sir, in many cases form is nonsense. Oftentimes one may just have a friendly talk, and it's far more advantageous. Form won't run away, allow me to reassure you on that score, sir; but, I ask you, what is form essentially? One cannot bind the investigator with form at every step. The investigator's business is, so to speak, a free art, in its own way, or something like that...heh, heh, heh!”
102
The judicial reforms of 1864 introduced, among many more important changes, a new nomenclature for police and court personnel.