He forced him to take the glass. Raskolnikov raised it mechanically to his lips, but set it on the table again with disgust.
“Yes, you’ve had a little attack! You’ll bring back your illness again, my dear fellow,” Porfiry Petrovitch cackled with friendly sympathy, though he still looked rather disconcerted. “Good heavens, you must take more care of yourself! Dmitri Prokofitch was here, came to see me yesterday — I know, I know, I’ve a nasty, ironical temper, but what they made of it!... Good heavens, he came yesterday after you’d been. We dined and he talked and talked away, and I could only throw up my hands in despair! Did he come from you? But do sit down, for mercy’s sake, sit down!”
“No, not from me, but I knew he went to you and why he went,” Raskolnikov answered sharply.
“You knew?”
“I knew. What of it?”
“Why this, Rodion Romanovitch, that I know more than that about you; I know about everything. I know how you went to take a flat at night when it was dark and how you rang the bell and asked about the blood, so that the workmen and the porter did not know what to make of it. Yes, I understand your state of mind at that time... but you’ll drive yourself mad like that, upon my word! You’ll lose your head! You’re full of generous indignation at the wrongs you’ve received, first from destiny, and then from the police officers, and so you rush from one thing to another to force them to speak out and make an end of it all, because you are sick of all this suspicion and foolishness. That’s so, isn’t it? I have guessed how you feel, haven’t I? Only in that way you’ll lose your head and Razumihin’s, too; he’s too good a man for such a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is good and your illness is infectious for him... I’ll tell you about it when you are more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness’ sake. Please rest, you look shocking, do sit down.”
Raskolnikov sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In amazement he listened with strained attention to Porfiry Petrovitch who still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly solicitude. But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a strange inclination to believe. Porfiry’s unexpected words about the flat had utterly overwhelmed him. “How can it be, he knows about the flat then,” he thought suddenly, “and he tells it me himself!”
“Yes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar, a case of morbid psychology,” Porfiry went on quickly. “A man confessed to murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular hallucination; he brought forward facts, he imposed upon everyone and why? He had been partly, but only partly, unintentionally the cause of a murder and when he knew that he had given the murderers the opportunity, he sank into dejection, it got on his mind and turned his brain, he began imagining things and he persuaded himself that he was the murderer. But at last the High Court of Appeal went into it and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under proper care. Thanks to the Court of Appeal! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about blood! I’ve studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man is sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the same with bell-ringing.... It’s all illness, Rodion Romanovitch! You have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an experienced doctor, what’s the good of that fat fellow? You are lightheaded! You were delirious when you did all this!”
For a moment Raskolnikov felt everything going round.
“Is it possible, is it possible,” flashed through his mind, “that he is still lying? He can’t be, he can’t be.” He rejected that idea, feeling to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that fury might drive him mad.
“I was not delirious. I knew what I was doing,” he cried, straining every faculty to penetrate Porfiry’s game, “I was quite myself, do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not delirious, you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all you can tell me! A-ach!... Listen, Rodion Romanovitch, my dear fellow. If you were actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this damnable business, would you insist that you were not delirious but in full possession of your faculties? And so emphatically and persistently? Would it be possible? Quite impossible, to my thinking. If you had anything on your conscience, you certainly ought to insist that you were delirious. That’s so, isn’t it?”
There was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Raskolnikov drew back on the sofa as Porfiry bent over him and stared in silent perplexity at him.
“Another thing about Razumihin — you certainly ought to have said that he came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But you don’t conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your instigation.”
Raskolnikov had not done so. A chill went down his back.
“You keep telling lies,” he said slowly and weakly, twisting his lips into a sickly smile, “you are trying again to show that you know all my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand,” he said, conscious himself that he was not weighing his words as he ought. “You want to frighten me... or you are simply laughing at me...”
He still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light of intense hatred in his eyes.
“You keep lying,” he said. “You know perfectly well that the best policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to conceal as little as possible. I don’t believe you!”
“What a wily person you are!” Porfiry tittered, “there’s no catching you; you’ve a perfect monomania. So you don’t believe me? But still you do believe me, you believe a quarter; I’ll soon make you believe the whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely wish you good.”
Raskolnikov’s lips trembled.
“Yes, I do,” went on Porfiry, touching Raskolnikov’s arm genially, “you must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister are here now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them and you do nothing but frighten them...”
“What has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is it of yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?”
“Good heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don’t notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From Razumihin, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday. No, you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit, your suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To return to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have betrayed a precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact worth having), and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the slightest suspicion of you, should I have acted like that? No, I should first have disarmed your suspicions and not let you see I knew of that fact, should have diverted your attention and suddenly have dealt you a knock-down blow (your expression) saying: ‘And what were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or nearly eleven at the murdered woman’s flat and why did you ring the bell and why did you ask about blood? And why did you invite the porters to go with you to the police station, to the lieutenant?’ That’s how I ought to have acted if I had a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your evidence in due form, searched your lodging and perhaps have arrested you, too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have not done that! But you can’t look at it normally and you see nothing, I say again.”
Raskolnikov started so that Porfiry Petrovitch could not fail to perceive it.
“You are lying all the while,” he cried, “I don’t know your object, but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and I cannot be mistaken!”
“I am lying?” Porfiry repeated, apparently incensed, but preserving a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in the least concerned at Raskolnikov’s opinion of him. “I am lying... but how did I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting you and giving you every means for your defence; illness, I said, delirium, injury, melanc
holy and the police officers and all the rest of it? Ah! He-he-he! Though, indeed, all those psychological means of defence are not very reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don’t remember — that’s all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There may have been others, eh? He-he-he!”
Raskolnikov looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.
“Briefly,” he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so doing pushing Porfiry back a little, “briefly, I want to know, do you acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Porfiry Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!”
“What a business I’m having with you!” cried Porfiry with a perfectly good-humoured, sly and composed face. “And why do you want to know, why do you want to know so much, since they haven’t begun to worry you? Why, you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!”
“I repeat,” Raskolnikov cried furiously, “that I can’t put up with it!”
“With what? Uncertainty?” interrupted Porfiry.
“Don’t jeer at me! I won’t have it! I tell you I won’t have it. I can’t and I won’t, do you hear, do you hear?” he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table again.
“Hush! Hush! They’ll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of yourself. I am not joking,” Porfiry whispered, but this time there was not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all mystification.
But this was only for an instant. Raskolnikov, bewildered, suddenly fell into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury.
“I will not allow myself to be tortured,” he whispered, instantly recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and driven to even greater fury by the thought. “Arrest me, search me, but kindly act in due form and don’t play with me! Don’t dare!”
“Don’t worry about the form,” Porfiry interrupted with the same sly smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Raskolnikov. “I invited you to see me quite in a friendly way.”
“I don’t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here, I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?”
He took up his cap and went to the door.
“And won’t you see my little surprise?” chuckled Porfiry, again taking him by the arm and stopping him at the door.
He seemed to become more playful and good-humoured which maddened Raskolnikov.
“What surprise?” he asked, standing still and looking at Porfiry in alarm.
“My little surprise, it’s sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!” (He pointed to the locked door.) “I locked him in that he should not escape.”
“What is it? Where? What?...”
Raskolnikov walked to the door and would have opened it, but it was locked.
“It’s locked, here is the key!”
And he brought a key out of his pocket.
“You are lying,” roared Raskolnikov without restraint, “you lie, you damned punchinello!” and he rushed at Porfiry who retreated to the other door, not at all alarmed.
“I understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray myself to you...”
“Why, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Rodion Romanovitch. You are in a passion. Don’t shout, I shall call the clerks.”
“You are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to work me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your object! Produce your facts! I understand it all. You’ve no evidence, you have only wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zametov’s! You knew my character, you wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down with priests and deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are you waiting for? Where are they? Produce them?”
“Why deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And to do so would not be acting in form as you say, you don’t know the business, my dear fellow.... And there’s no escaping form, as you see,” Porfiry muttered, listening at the door through which a noise could be heard.
“Ah, they’re coming,” cried Raskolnikov. “You’ve sent for them! You expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your witnesses, what you like!... I am ready!”
But at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected that neither Raskolnikov nor Porfiry Petrovitch could have looked for such a conclusion to their interview.
CHAPTER VI
When he remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Raskolnikov saw it.
The noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was opened a little.
“What is it?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, annoyed. “Why, I gave orders...”
For an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there were several persons at the door, and that they were apparently pushing somebody back.
“What is it?” Porfiry Petrovitch repeated, uneasily.
“The prisoner Nikolay has been brought,” someone answered.
“He is not wanted! Take him away! Let him wait! What’s he doing here? How irregular!” cried Porfiry, rushing to the door.
“But he..,” began the same voice, and suddenly ceased.
Two seconds, not more, were spent in actual struggle, then someone gave a violent shove, and then a man, very pale, strode into the room.
This man’s appearance was at first sight very strange. He stared straight before him, as though seeing nothing. There was a determined gleam in his eyes; at the same time there was a deathly pallor in his face, as though he were being led to the scaffold. His white lips were faintly twitching.
He was dressed like a workman and was of medium height, very young, slim, his hair cut in round crop, with thin spare features. The man whom he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded in seizing him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Nikolay pulled his arm away.
Several persons crowded inquisitively into the doorway. Some of them tried to get in. All this took place almost instantaneously.
“Go away, it’s too soon! Wait till you are sent for!... Why have you brought him so soon?” Porfiry Petrovitch muttered, extremely annoyed, and as it were thrown out of his reckoning.
But Nikolay suddenly knelt down.
“What’s the matter?” cried Porfiry, surprised.
“I am guilty! Mine is the sin! I am the murderer,” Nikolay articulated suddenly, rather breathless, but speaking fairly loudly.
For ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck dumb; even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the door, and stood immovable.
“What is it?” cried Porfiry Petrovitch, recovering from his momentary stupefaction.
“I... am the murderer,” repeated Nikolay, after a brief pause.
“What... you... what... whom did you kill?” Porfiry Petrovitch was obviously bewildered.
Nikolay again was silent for a moment.
“Alyona Ivanovna and her sister Lizaveta Ivanovna, I... killed... with an axe. Darkness came over me,” he added suddenly, and was again silent.
He still remained on his knees. Porfiry Petrovitch stood for some moments as though meditating, but suddenly roused himself and waved back the uninvited spectators. They instantly vanished and closed the door. Then he looked towards Raskolnikov, who was standing in the corner, staring wildly at Nikolay and moved towards him, but stopped short, looked from Nikolay to Raskolnikov and then again at Nikolay, and seeming unable to restrain himself darted at the latter.
“You’re in too great a hurry,” he shouted at him, almost angrily. “I didn’t ask you what came over you.... Speak, did you kill them?”
“I am the murderer.... I want to give evidence,” Nikolay pronounced.
“Ach! What did you kill them with?”
> “An axe. I had it ready.”
“Ach, he is in a hurry! Alone?”
Nikolay did not understand the question.
“Did you do it alone?”
“Yes, alone. And Mitka is not guilty and had no share in it.”
“Don’t be in a hurry about Mitka! A-ach! How was it you ran downstairs like that at the time? The porters met you both!”
“It was to put them off the scent... I ran after Mitka,” Nikolay replied hurriedly, as though he had prepared the answer.
“I knew it!” cried Porfiry, with vexation. “It’s not his own tale he is telling,” he muttered as though to himself, and suddenly his eyes rested on Raskolnikov again.
He was apparently so taken up with Nikolay that for a moment he had forgotten Raskolnikov. He was a little taken aback.
“My dear Rodion Romanovitch, excuse me!” he flew up to him, “this won’t do; I’m afraid you must go... it’s no good your staying... I will... you see, what a surprise!... Good-bye!”
And taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door.
“I suppose you didn’t expect it?” said Raskolnikov who, though he had not yet fully grasped the situation, had regained his courage.
“You did not expect it either, my friend. See how your hand is trembling! He-he!”
“You’re trembling, too, Porfiry Petrovitch!”
“Yes, I am; I didn’t expect it.”
They were already at the door; Porfiry was impatient for Raskolnikov to be gone.
“And your little surprise, aren’t you going to show it to me?” Raskolnikov said, sarcastically.
“Why, his teeth are chattering as he asks, he-he! You are an ironical person! Come, till we meet!”
“I believe we can say good-bye!”
“That’s in God’s hands,” muttered Porfiry, with an unnatural smile.
As he walked through the office, Raskolnikov noticed that many people were looking at him. Among them he saw the two porters from the house, whom he had invited that night to the police station. They stood there waiting. But he was no sooner on the stairs than he heard the voice of Porfiry Petrovitch behind him. Turning round, he saw the latter running after him, out of breath.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 223
