Raskolnikov really was almost better, especially when compared to the previous day, but he was very pale, distracted and sullen. He might have been taken for a man who'd been wounded or who was in acute physical pain: his brows were knitted, his lips clenched, his eyes swollen. He spoke little and unwillingly, as though he were forcing himself or discharging a duty, and every now and again his gestures betrayed a certain anxiety.
The only thing lacking was a sling on his arm or gauze round his finger to complete his resemblance to a man with an excruciating abscess or an injured hand or something of that kind.
Still, even this pale and sullen face seemed to light up momentarily when his mother and sister walked in, though this merely lent to his features a greater intensity of torment, in place of the anguished distraction of before. The light faded quickly, but the torment remained, and Zosimov, observing and studying his patient with all the youthful enthusiasm of a doctor who has only just begun to practise, was surprised to see him react to his family's arrival not with joy but with a kind of grim, hidden resolve to endure an hour or two of torture that could be put off no longer. Later, he noticed how almost every word in the ensuing conversation seemed to touch a nerve in his patient or irritate a wound; but at the same time he was amazed by his self-control, by the new-found ability of yesterday's monomaniac to conceal his feelings, when only the day before the slightest word had been enough to drive him to the edge of fury.
'Yes, I can see myself I'm almost better,' said Raskolnikov, kissing his mother and sister warmly, which instantly made Pulkheria Alexandrovna beam, 'and that's not the me of yesterday speaking,' he added, turning to Razumikhin and offering him a friendly handshake.
'I've been quite amazed by him today, I must say,' Zosimov began, greatly relieved by their arrival: keeping up a conversation with his patient for a whole ten minutes had proved beyond him. 'In three or four days' time, if he keeps on like this, he'll be just as he was before; I mean, just as he was a month ago, or two . . . or perhaps even three? After all, this didn't just begin now . . . it's been brewing for a while, eh? Perhaps you'll admit now that you were to blame, too?' he added with a wary smile, as if still afraid of irritating him in some way.
'Quite possibly,' Raskolnikov answered coldly.
'The reason I say that,' Zosimov continued, warming to his theme, 'is that your full recovery now depends mainly and solely on you. Now that you are capable of proper conversation, I should like to impress upon you how essential it is for you to eliminate the primary and, as it were, deep-rooted causes that helped bring about your illness; only then will you be cured, while the alternative may be even worse. I don't know what these primary causes are, but you should. You're an intelligent man, after all, and you must have studied your own symptoms. It seems to me that the onset of your condition coincided at least in part with your leaving university. You need to keep yourself occupied, which is why work and a clearly defined aim could, it seems to me, help you greatly.'
'Yes, yes, how right you are . . . I'll resume my studies just as soon as I can and then everything will be . . . just dandy . . .'
Zosimov, who had delivered these pearls of wisdom partly to impress the ladies, was, of course, rather taken aback when, after finishing his speech and glancing at his listener, he noticed a look of unmistakable derision on his face. But it lasted no more than an instant. Pulkheria Alexandrovna immediately set about thanking Zosimov, especially for his visit to their rooms the night before.
'You mean he was with you last night too?' asked Raskolnikov, as if in alarm. 'So you didn't get any sleep after the journey either?'
'Oh, Rodya, that was all over by two. Even at home Dunya and I never went to bed before two.'
'I don't know how to thank him either,' Raskolnikov went on, frowning and staring at the floor. 'Setting aside the question of money - and do forgive me for mentioning it' (he remarked to Zosimov) 'I just can't imagine what I've done to deserve such special attention from you. I simply don't understand it . . . and . . . and actually, I find it rather difficult, for that same reason. I'm being frank with you.'
'Now don't get worked up,' said Zosimov with a forced laugh. 'Just imagine that you're my first patient and, well, anyone who's just started practising loves his first cases like his own children; some almost fall in love with them. As for me, I'm hardly overrun with patients.'
'And I haven't even mentioned him,' added Raskolnikov, pointing to Razumikhin. 'He's had nothing from me except insults and bother.'
'Complete drivel! Feeling sentimental, are we?' Razumikhin shouted.
He would have seen, had he been a little more perceptive, that there was nothing sentimental about Raskolnikov's mood; if anything, just the opposite. But Avdotya Romanovna had noticed. Her anxious gaze never left her brother.
'I daren't even mention you, Mama,' he went on, as though he'd memorized these lines in the morning. 'Only today could I begin to understand what you must have been through here, yesterday, waiting for me to return.' Having said this, he suddenly stretched out a hand to his sister with a wordless smile. But this time real, unfeigned emotion could be glimpsed in his smile. Dunya immediately grabbed the hand extended towards her and squeezed it tight, gladdened and grateful. It was the first time he'd spoken to her since yesterday's disagreement. His mother's face lit up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this definitive, silent reconciliation between brother and sister.
'And that's why I love him!' whispered Razumikhin, exaggerating as always and turning round energetically in his chair. 'He has these sudden gusts!'
'And how well he carries it all off,' Pulkheria Alexandrovna thought to herself. 'What noble impulses he has, and how simply, how tactfully he put an end to yesterday's misunderstanding with his sister - merely by stretching out a hand and looking at her nicely . . . And what beautiful eyes he has, what a beautiful face in general! . . . He's even better looking than Dunechka . . . But good grief, just look at the state of his suit! Even Vasya, the errand boy in Afanasy Ivanovich's shop, is better dressed than he is! . . . If only I could run over to him and hug him and . . . cry - but I'm afraid, afraid . . . dear God, there's something about him! . . . Even when he's tender I'm afraid! What on earth am I afraid of?'
'Oh, Rodya,' she said suddenly, hurrying to reply to his comment, 'you wouldn't believe how . . . miserable Dunechka and I were yesterday! Now it's all over and we're all happy again, I can tell you more. Just imagine, we were rushing over here to embrace you, almost straight off the train, and this woman - ah, here she is! Hello, Nastasya! . . . She suddenly told us that you'd been in bed, raving deliriously, and that you'd just given your doctor the slip and gone out, still delirious, and people had run off to look for you. Can you imagine the state we were in? I couldn't help thinking of the tragic death of Lieutenant Potanchikov, an acquaintance of ours, a friend of your father's - you won't remember him, Rodya. He was delirious, too, and ran off just like you did and fell down the well in the yard - he wasn't pulled out till the next day. And, of course, that wasn't the worst we imagined. We were about to rush off to look for Pyotr Petrovich, maybe he could do something . . . because we were alone here, quite alone,' she went on plaintively, then suddenly cut herself short, remembering that it wasn't yet safe to bring up Pyotr Petrovich, despite the fact that everyone was 'already entirely happy again'.
'Yes, yes . . . all very vexing, of course . . . ,' Raskolnikov mumbled in reply, but with such a distracted, almost inattentive air that Dunechka looked at him in astonishment.
'What was the other thing?' he continued, trying hard to remember. 'Oh yes. Please, Mama, and you, Dunechka, please don't think I didn't want to come to you first today and was just waiting for you here.'
'Whatever next, Rodya?' cried Pulkheria Alexandrovna, also surprised.
'Why's he replying like this - from a sense of duty?' Dunechka wondered. 'Making peace, asking forgiveness, as if he were going through the motions or had learned it all by rote.'
'I'd just w
oken up and was all ready to go, but my clothes kept me back. I forgot yesterday to tell her . . . Nastasya . . . to wash off that blood . . . I've only just managed to get dressed now.'
'Blood! What blood?' panicked Pulkheria Alexandrovna.
'It's nothing . . . don't worry. There was blood because yesterday, when I was knocking about, slightly delirious, I came across a man who'd been run over and trampled . . . a civil servant . . .'
'Delirious? But you remember everything,' Razumikhin broke in.
'That's true,' Raskolnikov replied with unusual solicitude, 'I remember everything down to the very last detail, but try asking me why I did this or that, went here or there, said this or that, and I'd be hard put to tell you.'
'An all too familiar phenomenon,' Zosimov intervened. 'A deed can be carried out in a consummate, highly resourceful fashion, but the subject's control over his actions, the basis of his actions, is disturbed and depends on various morbid impressions. As if he were dreaming.'
'Well, it's probably no bad thing that he thinks me half-mad,' thought Raskolnikov.
'But you could probably say exactly the same about the healthy,' observed Dunechka, looking anxiously at Zosimov.
'A quite accurate observation,' the latter replied. 'In this sense all of us are, often enough, pretty much crazy, with the one small distinction that "the sick" are that little bit crazier - one must draw a line. It's true, though, that there's almost no such thing as a well-balanced person. You might find one in a hundred, or one in several hundred thousand, and even then only a fairly weak specimen . . .'
At the word 'crazy', which Zosimov, getting carried away by his favourite topic, had carelessly let slip, everyone frowned. Raskolnikov sat there as if he hadn't noticed, deep in thought and with a strange smile on his pale lips. He was still trying to work something out.
'Well, what about that man who got trampled? I interrupted you!' shouted Razumikhin in a hurry.
'What?' said Raskolnikov, as if waking up. 'Oh yes . . . well, I stained myself with blood when I helped carry him into the apartment . . . By the way, Mama, I did one unforgivable thing yesterday. I really must have been out of my mind. Yesterday I gave away all the money you sent me . . . to his wife . . . for the funeral! She's a widow now, consumptive, a pitiful woman . . . Three little orphans, all hungry . . . nothing in the house . . . and another daughter as well . . . You might have done the same if you'd seen . . . Though I had no right at all, I admit, especially knowing how you got this money in the first place. To help, one must first have the right to help, otherwise it's "Crevez, chiens, si vous n'etes pas contents!"'7 He laughed. 'Isn't that right, Dunya?'
'No, it's not,' Dunya replied firmly.
'Ha! Now you, too . . . with your own intentions!' he muttered with a mocking smile, looking at her almost with hatred. 'I should have expected that . . . Well, I suppose it's commendable . . . and at some point you'll reach a mark: stop there and you'll be miserable; step over it and you might be more miserable still . . . But anyway, how stupid this is!' he added, annoyed that he'd let himself get carried away. 'All I wanted to say, Mama, is that I'm asking your forgiveness,' he concluded tersely and abruptly.
'That'll do, Rodya, I'm sure that everything you do is quite wonderful!' said his gladdened mother.
'Don't be so sure,' he replied, twisting his mouth into a smile. Silence followed. There was something strained about the whole conversation - the silence, the reconciliation, the forgiveness - and everyone could feel it.
'Maybe they really are afraid of me,' Raskolnikov thought to himself, with a mistrustful glance at his mother and sister. And indeed, the longer Pulkheria Alexandrovna was silent, the more timid she became.
'I seemed to love them so much from a distance,' flashed through his mind.
'You know, Rodya, Marfa Petrovna has died!' Pulkheria Alexandrovna suddenly ventured.
'Who's Marfa Petrovna?'
'Good grief . . . You know, Marfa Petrovna, Svidrigailova! How many times have I written to you about her?'
'Ah yes, I remember . . . So she's died, has she? Has she really?' he asked, as if suddenly rousing himself. 'Of what?'
'Just like that. Can you imagine?' Pulkheria Alexandrovna rattled on, encouraged by his curiosity. 'And just after I sent off that letter to you, on that very same day! The cause of her death seems to have been that dreadful man - can you imagine? He gave her an awful beating by all accounts.'
'Was that really how they lived?' he asked, turning to his sister.
'No, quite the opposite. He was always very patient with her, even courteous. In fact, he was probably much too indulgent, for seven years running . . . His patience must have suddenly snapped.'
'He can hardly be that dreadful, then, if he managed to grin and bear it for seven years. You seem to be standing up for him, Dunechka.'
'No, no, he's dreadful! I can't imagine anyone more dreadful,' Dunya replied, almost with a shudder. She frowned and became pensive.
'It happened at their place in the morning,' Pulkheria Alexandrovna hurried on. 'Afterwards, she immediately had the horses harnessed, so that she could go into town straight after lunch, because she would always go into town on such occasions; she had a very hearty appetite that day, by all accounts . . .'
'After being beaten?'
'... Well, she'd always had this . . . habit, and as soon as she'd eaten, so as not to be late setting off, she immediately went off to the bathing hut . . . You see, water was a kind of cure for her. They've got a cold spring there and she'd bathe in it every day, and just as soon as she got in - a stroke!'
'Now there's a surprise!' said Zosimov.
'Did he beat her badly, then?'
'What difference does it make?' answered Dunya.
'A fine topic for conversation, Mama, I must say,' Raskolnikov suddenly snapped, as if without meaning to.
'But my dear, I didn't know what else to talk about,' Pulkheria Alexandrovna blurted out.
'Are you all scared of me, is that it?' he asked with a twisted grin.
'Yes, it's true,' said Dunya, fixing her brother with a stern look. 'Coming up the stairs, Mama even crossed herself from fear.'
His face twisted, as if from a spasm.
'Oh really, Dunya! Please don't get angry, Rodya . . . Dunya, did you have to?' Pulkheria Alexandrovna began in embarrassment. 'I won't deny that I spent the entire train journey dreaming about seeing you again, about all the things we would have to tell each other . . . and I felt so happy I barely noticed the journey! But what am I saying? I'm happy now, too. You shouldn't have, Dunya! Just seeing you, Rodya, is enough to make me happy . . .'
'That'll do, Mama,' he mumbled in embarrassment, squeezing her hand without looking at her. 'We'll have plenty of time to talk!'
Saying this, he suddenly became troubled and pale: once again a dreadful, recent sensation touched his soul with a deathly chill, once again it suddenly became crystal clear to him that he'd just told a dreadful lie, that not only would he never have plenty of time to talk, but that now it had become impossible for him to talk about anything, with anyone, ever again. The effect produced on him by this excruciating thought was so powerful that, for a moment, he fell into a kind of trance, got to his feet and, without a glance in anyone's direction, made for the door.
'Now what?' shouted Razumikhin, grabbing him by the arm.
He sat down again and began looking around without speaking. They were all staring at him in bewilderment.
'What on earth's the matter with you all?' he suddenly cried, quite out of the blue. 'Say something! We can't just sit here! Well? Speak! Let's have a conversation . . . seeing as we've got together . . . Anything!'
'Thank goodness for that! For a moment I thought he was back to how he was yesterday,' said Pulkheria Alexandrovna, crossing herself.
'What is it, Rodya?' asked Avdotya Romanovna mistrustfully.
'Oh, nothing, I just remembered something,' he replied, and suddenly burst out laughing.
'Well,
nothing wrong with that! I was also beginning to think . . . ,' muttered Zosimov, getting up from the couch. 'Time for me to be off, though. I might drop by again later . . . if I find you in . . .'
He bowed and left.
'What a splendid man!' remarked Pulkheria Alexandrovna.
'Yes, a splendid man, first-rate, educated, intelligent . . . ,' Raskolnikov suddenly began to say at surprising speed and with unusual gusto. 'Can't remember where it was I met him before I fell sick . . . Pretty sure I did meet him somewhere . . . And he's all right, too!' he added, nodding towards Razumikhin. 'How do you like him, Dunya?' he asked her and suddenly, for no apparent reason, burst out laughing.
'Very much,' replied Dunya.
'Ugh, you . . . swine!' said a terribly embarrassed, bright-red Razumikhin, getting up from his chair. Pulkheria Alexandrovna half-smiled and Raskolnikov roared with laughter.
'Where are you off to?'
'I've also . . . I have to . . .'
'No you don't - stay where you are! Zosimov's left, so you have to go too? Don't go . . . What's the time? Is it twelve yet? What a lovely watch you have, Dunya! Now why have you all gone quiet again? Why's it always me doing the talking?'
'It's a present from Marfa Petrovna,' replied Dunya.
'An extremely expensive one,' added Pulkheria Alexandrovna.
'I see! Look at the size of it - more like a man's watch.'
'I like this kind,' said Dunya.
'So it's not from the fiance,' thought Razumikhin, rejoicing.
'There was me thinking Luzhin gave it to you,' remarked Raskolnikov.
'No, Dunechka hasn't received any gifts from him yet.'
'I see! And do you remember, Mama, when I was in love and wanted to get married?' he suddenly said, looking at his mother, who was struck by the sudden change of subject and the tone with which he'd broached it.
'Oh yes, my dear, of course I do!'
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