Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  Of course, it didn't take him long to identify Andrei Semyonovich as an exceptionally crass and simple-minded individual. But this did nothing to reassure or hearten Pyotr Petrovich. Even if he had managed to convince himself that all progressivists were equally stupid, it would have done nothing to relieve his anxiety. Frankly, he couldn't care less about all the doctrines, philosophies and systems which Andrei Semyonovich was in such a hurry to share with him. He had his own goal in mind. The only thing that mattered to him was to find out right away: what had happened here and how had it come about? Were these people in the ascendant or were they not? Did he himself have anything to fear or did he not? Would he be shown up if he undertook this or that, or would he not? If yes, then what for exactly? What were people shown up for nowadays? And another thing: couldn't he butter them up somehow and then trick them, if they really were in the ascendant? Or maybe he shouldn't? Mightn't he even use them to make some headway in his own career? In short, hundreds of questions confronted him.

  This Andrei Semyonovich was an under-nourished, scrofulous little man with a job in some department, peculiarly blond hair and mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. On top of that his eyes were almost always sore. He was soft-hearted enough, but he spoke with great confidence and sometimes exceptional arrogance - the effect of which, given his stature, was almost always comical. Still, Mrs Lippewechsel numbered him among her more distinguished tenants - i.e., he didn't get drunk and he paid on time. For all these qualities Andrei Semyonovich really was rather dense. He'd signed up to progress, together with 'our young generations', out of mere enthusiasm. He was one of that numberless and motley legion of crass, wilting halfwits - half-educated, pig-headed fools - who are always the first to jump on the latest intellectual bandwagon, so as to cheapen every idea right away and reduce to ridicule whatever they venerate, however sincerely.

  But Lebezyatnikov, for all his niceness, was also beginning to find his room-mate and former guardian, Pyotr Petrovich, a touch unbearable. On both sides this process had somehow just happened of its own accord. Andrei Semyonovich may have been somewhat simple, but even he had begun, little by little, to see that Pyotr Petrovich was playing him for a fool and secretly despised him; that 'this man is not what he seems'. He'd wanted to introduce him to Fourier's system and Darwin's theory,2 but Pyotr Petrovich, especially recently, had started listening with a little too much sarcasm, and more recently still, had actually become quite abusive. By instinct more than anything, it was beginning to get through to him that Lebezyatnikov was not just a crass and rather stupid little man but possibly a fibber to boot, and that he had no connections worth talking about at all, not even in his own circle, but merely heard this or that at third hand; not only that: he didn't even seem to be much good at this propaganda of his, to judge by all the muddles he kept getting himself into; as if he could show anyone up! We should note in passing that, in the course of these ten days, Pyotr Petrovich had (especially at the beginning) gladly accepted all manner of strange compliments from Andrei Semyonovich, never correcting him or objecting if, say, Andrei Semyonovich ascribed to him a willingness to facilitate the imminent construction of a new commune somewhere on Meshchanskaya Street,3 or a refusal to stand in Dunechka's way if she, in the very first month of marriage, felt like taking a lover, and to have his future children baptized, and so on and so forth - all in the same vein. Pyotr Petrovich, as was his habit, did not object to such qualities being ascribed to him and found even this sort of praise acceptable - indeed, any compliment at all was music to his ears.

  Having cashed several five per cent bonds that morning for some purpose or other, Pyotr Petrovich was sitting at the table and counting bundles of banknotes and Treasury notes. Andrei Semyonovich, almost always penniless, was walking around the room pretending (to himself) that he was observing all these bundles with indifference and even disdain. Nothing, of course, would ever have persuaded Pyotr Petrovich that Andrei Semyonovich could observe so much money with indifference; and Andrei Semyonovich, for his part, was reflecting bitterly on the fact that Pyotr Petrovich was more than capable of entertaining such thoughts about him and was probably only too glad to have the chance to tickle and taunt his young friend with this display of banknotes, the better to put him in his place and remind him of the gulf that was meant to lie between them.

  On this occasion he found him quite exceptionally irritable and inattentive, despite the fact that he, Andrei Semyonovich, had launched into his favourite topic: the founding of a new and special 'commune'. The terse objections and remarks that escaped Pyotr Petrovich in the intervals between the clinking of abacus beads exuded the most blatant and deliberately discourteous scorn. But Andrei Semyonovich, being so very 'humane', put Pyotr Petrovich's mood down to the effects of yesterday's rift with Dunechka, and had a burning desire to broach this subject as quickly as possible: he had something progressivist and propagandicist to say about it, something that would console his esteemed friend and 'undoubtedly' advance his subsequent development.

  'What's all this about some funeral banquet over at that . . . widow's?' Pyotr Petrovich suddenly asked, interrupting Andrei Semyonovich at the most interesting point.

  'As if you don't know. Only yesterday I was discussing this very subject with you and gave you my opinion of all these rites and rituals . . . Anyway, she's invited you along, too. I heard as much. You spoke with her yesterday yourself . . .'

  'I could never have imagined that this fool of a beggar would go and fritter away all the money she got from that other fool, Raskolnikov, on a banquet. I was quite amazed as I walked past just now: so many preparations, so much wine! Several people have been invited - whatever next?' continued Pyotr Petrovich, who seemed to be driving at something with all his comments and questions. 'What? She's invited me along too, you say?' he suddenly added, lifting his head. 'When was that? Can't say I remember. Anyway, I won't go. Me, there? Yesterday, in passing, I merely mentioned to her the possibility of her receiving, as the destitute widow of a civil servant, a year's salary as a lump-sum payment. Surely that's not why she's inviting me, is it? Heh-heh!'

  'I don't intend to go, either,' said Lebezyatnikov.

  'I dare say! Not after that pummelling. No wonder you're ashamed, heh-heh-heh!'

  'Who pummelled who?' asked Lebezyatnikov, suddenly flustered and even turning red.

  'You pummelled Katerina Ivanovna a month or so ago, I believe! I heard about it, sir, just yesterday . . . So much for all those convictions of yours! . . . And so much for the Woman Question, heh-heh-heh!'

  Cheering up a bit, Pyotr Petrovich set about clicking his beads again.

  'Hogwash and slander, all of it!' flared Lebezyatnikov, always fearful of any allusion to this episode. 'That's not how it was at all! It was quite different . . . You got the wrong end of the stick. Sheer gossip! I was merely defending myself. She was the one who went at me with her claws . . . Barely left a whisker in place . . . All men, I trust, are permitted to defend their person. Moreover, I will not permit anyone to use force against me . . . On principle. Because that's tyranny, more or less. What was I supposed to do, just stand there? All I did was push her away.'

  'Heh-heh-heh!' Luzhin continued to scoff.

  'You're only picking on me because you're angry and peeved yourself . . . But this is pure hogwash and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Woman Question! You've got it all wrong. I even used to think that if women really are men's equal now, even in strength (as some are already claiming), then there should be equality here as well. Later, of course, I reasoned that, in essence, such a question should not arise, because fights should not arise, and that fights in the society of the future are inconceivable . . . and that it's rather strange, of course, to demand equality in fighting. I'm not that stupid . . . although fighting is . . . I mean, there won't be any later, but as of now there still is . . . Ugh! Dammit! Anyone would get in a muddle talking to you! I'm not not going to the banquet on account of that unpleasantness
. I'm not going on principle, simple as that. I want no part in the vile preconception of funeral banquets! Although, I suppose one might go just to laugh . . . A shame there won't be any priests. Otherwise I'd have been there like a shot.'

  'So you would enjoy someone's hospitality while insulting it and those who invited you. Is that what you mean?'

  'Not insulting - protesting. For a useful cause: I may thereby be of indirect benefit to the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. Every man has a duty to enlighten and propagandize, and the harsher the message, perhaps, the better. I can thereby scatter ideas, seeds . . . From the seed will grow a fact. In what way am I offending them? First they'll take offence, then they'll see for themselves that I've done them a favour. Take Terebyeva (she's in the commune now), only recently she was being criticized for how, when she left her family and . . . gave herself . . . she wrote a letter to her mother and father saying she didn't want to live among preconceptions and was entering into a civil marriage;4 apparently this was too rude, writing to your parents like that, and she should have spared their feelings and been a little more gentle. Utter hogwash, if you ask me. You shouldn't be gentle, far from it - you should protest. Look at Varents: spent seven years with her husband, abandoned her two children and fired off a letter to her husband: "I realized that with you I could never be happy. I will never forgive you for deceiving me by concealing the fact that a different social order exists, via the commune. I learned all this recently from a certain high-minded man, to whom I gave myself, and together we will start a commune. I speak frankly because I think it dishonourable to deceive you. Carry on as you see fit. Do not hope to get me back. You are too late for that. I wish you happiness." Now that's the way to write 'em!'

  'This Terebyeva, isn't she the one you said was in her third civil marriage?'

  'Only her second proper one, as it happens! But anyway, fourth, tenth or fifteenth, so what? And if there was ever a time I regretted the death of my father and mother, then, of course, it's now. I keep dreaming about how, if only they were still alive, I'd really give it to them hot! When they were least expecting it . . . Another young man who's "flown the nest",5 they'd say. H'm! I'd show them what protest means! I'd shock them! Such a shame there's no one left!'

  'No one left to surprise, you mean? Heh-heh! Well, have it your way,' Pyotr Petrovich interrupted. 'But tell me this: I believe you know the daughter of the late departed, that slip of a girl! Well, is it really true what they say about her, eh?'

  'What are you saying? My opinion - my personal conviction, I mean - is that there can be no more normal state for a woman. And why not? Well, distinguons.6 In today's society, of course, it is not quite normal, because it is forced, but in the future it will be entirely normal, because it will be free. But even now she had the right: she was suffering and this was her fund, her capital, as it were, which she had every right to dispose of. In the society of the future, of course, there'll be no need for funds; but her role will signify a different significance - it will be elegantly and rationally determined. As for Sofya Semyonovna, at the present time I view her actions as a vigorous and embodied protest against the social order and I respect her deeply for it. I am overjoyed just to look at her!'

  'But I was told it was you who forced her out of this building!'

  Lebezyatnikov went positively berserk.

  'More gossip!' he shrieked. 'That's not how it was at all! Not at all! I mean, really! It was all Katerina Ivanovna's invention - she hadn't understood a thing! I wasn't making up to Sofya Semyonovna in the slightest! I was simply enlightening her, without a thought for myself, striving to rouse her to protest . . . That was all I was after! And anyway, Sofya Semyonovna could hardly have stayed on here.'

  'Invited her into the commune, did you?'

  'These jokes of yours are pretty feeble, if you don't mind my saying so. You don't understand a thing! In the commune, this role does not exist. That's why people found communes in the first place. In the commune, the essence of this role will be completely transformed: what is stupid here will become clever there, and what, in the current circumstances, is unnatural here will be entirely natural there. Everything depends on a man's circumstances and environment. Environment is everything, man is nothing. Sofya Semyonovna and I get on well to this day, which you may take as proof that she never took offence at me or thought me her enemy. Yes! I may be tempting her into the commune, but my grounds for doing so are quite different, quite different! What's so funny? We want to found our own commune, a special commune, on broader grounds than the previous ones. We've gone further in our convictions. We reject even more! Were Dobrolyubov to rise from his grave, I'd argue with him. Not to mention Belinsky7 - I'd pulverise him! But meanwhile I'll carry on enlightening Sofya Semyonovna. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!'

  'And you make good use of her beautiful character, I suppose? Heh-heh!'

  'No! Goodness, no! On the contrary!'

  'On the contrary, my foot! Heh-heh-heh! Well said!'

  'Believe me! What reasons could I possibly have to lie to you? Tell me that! On the contrary, I myself find it strange: with me she's somehow even chaster and coyer than usual!'

  'And you, needless to say, enlighten her . . . heh-heh . . . and tell her how silly it is to be coy?'

  'Not at all! Not at all! Oh, how crudely, how stupidly even - do forgive me - you understand the word "enlightenment"! You don't understand a thing about it! Goodness me, how very . . . immature you are! We want women's freedom, but you have only one thing on your mind . . . Leaving completely to one side the question of chastity and female coyness, as things that are useless in themselves and even preconceived, I fully, fully accept her chastity towards me, because that is her freedom, that is her right. Of course, if she were to say to me, "I want to have you," I'd think myself a very lucky man, because I like the girl very much: but for now, at the very least, could anyone have treated her more courteously or considerately than I, or with greater respect for her dignity . . . ? I wait and hope - that's all!'

  'You'd be better off giving her something. I dare say the thought's never even crossed your mind.'

  'You don't understand a thing, I say! Her situation is what it is, but I'm talking about something different here! Quite different! You have nothing but contempt for her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly deem worthy of contempt, you refuse to view a person with any humanity. You know nothing of her character! Only one thing upsets me: recently, for some reason, she's completely stopped reading and no longer borrows books from me. She certainly used to. And it's also a shame that with all her vigour and determination to protest - which she's proved once already - there still doesn't seem to be quite enough self-sufficiency about her, enough independence, as it were, enough negation, so as to make a clean break with various preconceptions and . . . idiocies. Nevertheless, there are some questions she understands extremely well. She grasped the question of hand-kissing superbly well, for example: how a man insults a woman through the unequal gesture of hand-kissing.8 We'd had a debate about it and I immediately informed her of what was said. She also listened attentively when I told her about workers' associations in France.9 Now I'm explaining the question of open doors10 in the society of the future.'

  'And what on earth's that?'

  'Recently there was a debate on the question: does a member of a commune have the right to enter another member's room, a man's or a woman's, at any time he or she chooses . . . ? Well, it was decided that yes, the member does . . .'

  'And what if he or she happens to be attending to their essential needs? Heh-heh!'

  Andrei Semyonovich became positively angry.

  'Is that all you can talk about, these blasted "needs"?' he cried with loathing. 'Ugh, I'm so furious and annoyed with myself for mentioning them to you when I was explaining the system that time - I should have waited! Damn it! It's always a sticking point for people like you. Not only that - they don't even know what they're making fun of! And they think they're r
ight! They're even proud of themselves! Ugh! Haven't I stated several times that this whole question should be explained to novices only at the very end, once they are already convinced about the system, once they've already been enlightened and guided? And anyway, pray tell me what you find so shameful and despicable about, say, cesspits?11 I'd be the first to clean out any cesspit you care to mention! And without the slightest self-sacrifice! It's just work; a noble, socially useful activity, as good as any other and certainly far better, say, than the activity of some Raphael or Pushkin. Why? Because it's more useful!'12