Crime and Punishment - Noyemi

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

official about his manner too. But he was restless; he ruffled up his
hair and from time to time let his head drop into his hands dejectedly
resting his ragged elbows on the stained and sticky table. At last he
looked straight at Raskolnikov, and said loudly and resolutely:

"May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation?
Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my
experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not
accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in
conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular
counsellor in rank. Marmeladov--such is my name; titular counsellor. I
make bold to inquire--have you been in the service?"

"No, I am studying," answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the
grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly
addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling
for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt
immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any
stranger who approached or attempted to approach him.

"A student then, or formerly a student," cried the clerk. "Just what I
thought! I'm a man of experience, immense experience, sir," and he
tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. "You've been a
student or have attended some learned institution! . . . But allow me.
. . ." He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down
beside the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk, but
spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread of his
sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Raskolnikov as
greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month.

"Honoured sir," he began almost with solemnity, "poverty is not a
vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a
virtue, and that that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary
is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of
soul, but in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased
out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as
to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch
as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence
the pot-house! Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my
wife a beating, and my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you
understand? Allow me to ask you another question out of simple
curiosity: have you ever spent a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?"

"No, I have not happened to," answered Raskolnikov. "What do you
mean?"

"Well, I've just come from one and it's the fifth night I've slept
so. . . ." He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay
were in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It
seemed quite probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last
five days. His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and
red, with black nails.

His conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest.
The boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down
from the upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the "funny
fellow" and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with
dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had
most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the
habit of frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all
sorts in the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some
drunkards, and especially in those who are looked after sharply and
kept in order at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try
to justify themselves and even if possible obtain consideration.

"Funny fellow!" pronounced the innkeeper. "And why don't you work, why
aren't you at your duty, if you are in the service?"

"Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir," Marmeladov went on,
addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as though it had been
he who put that question to him. "Why am I not at my duty? Does not my
heart ache to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr.
Lebeziatnikov beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn't
I suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you . . . hm
. . . well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?"

"Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?"

"Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you
will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with
positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary
citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you
why should he? For he knows of course that I shan't pay it back. From
compassion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas
explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by
science itself, and that that's what is done now in England, where
there is political economy. Why, I ask you, should he give it to me?
And yet though I know beforehand that he won't, I set off to him
and . . ."

"Why do you go?" put in Raskolnikov.

"Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man
must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely
must go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow
ticket, then I had to go . . . (for my daughter has a yellow
passport)," he added in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness
at the young man. "No matter, sir, no matter!" he went on hurriedly
and with apparent composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed
and even the innkeeper smiled--"No matter, I am not confounded by the
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