Crime and Punishment - Noyemi

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

wagging of their heads; for everyone knows everything about it
already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not
with contempt, but with humility. So be it! So be it! 'Behold the
man!' Excuse me, young man, can you. . . . No, to put it more strongly
and more distinctly; not can you but dare you, looking upon me,
assert that I am not a pig?"

The young man did not answer a word.

"Well," the orator began again stolidly and with even increased
dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. "Well,
so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a
beast, but Katerina Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education and
an officer's daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is
a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education.
And yet . . . oh, if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir,
you know every man ought to have at least one place where people feel
for him! But Katerina Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is
unjust. . . . And yet, although I realise that when she pulls my hair
she only does it out of pity--for I repeat without being ashamed, she
pulls my hair, young man," he declared with redoubled dignity, hearing
the sniggering again--"but, my God, if she would but once. . . . But
no, no! It's all in vain and it's no use talking! No use talking! For
more than once, my wish did come true and more than once she has felt
for me but . . . such is my fate and I am a beast by nature!"

"Rather!" assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov struck his fist
resolutely on the table.

"Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very
stockings for drink? Not her shoes--that would be more or less in the
order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for
drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago,
her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught
cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We
have three little children and Katerina Ivanovna is at work from
morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the
children, for she's been used to cleanliness from a child. But her
chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do
you suppose I don't feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it.
That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.
. . . I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!" And as though in
despair he laid his head down on the table.

"Young man," he went on, raising his head again, "in your face I seem
to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was
why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my
life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle
listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for
a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in
a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving she
danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for
which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit.
The medal . . . well, the medal of course was sold--long ago, hm . . .
but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago
she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on
bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell someone or other
of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don't
condemn her for it, I don't blame her, for the one thing left her is
recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes,
yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the
floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won't allow
herself to be treated with disrespect. That's why she would not
overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov's rudeness to her, and so when he gave her
a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her
feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with
three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first
husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her
father's house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave
way to cards, got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat
her at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have
authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with
tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am glad that,
though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once
been happy. . . . And she was left at his death with three children in
a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she
was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups
and downs of all sort, I don't feel equal to describing it even. Her
relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively
proud. . . . And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a
widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered
her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can
judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education
and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my
wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she
married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do
you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?
No, that you don't understand yet. . . . And for a whole year, I
performed my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch
this" (he tapped the jug with his finger), "for I have feelings. But
even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place too, and
that through no fault of mine but through changes in the office; and
then I did touch it! . . . It will be a year and a half ago soon since
we found ourselves at last after many wanderings and numerous
calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable
monuments. Here I obtained a situation. . . . I obtained it and I lost
it again. Do you understand? This time it was through my own fault I
lost it: for my weakness had come out. . . . We have now part of a
room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel's; and what we live upon and
what we pay our rent with, I could not say. There are a lot of people
-7-
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"There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."
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Crime and Punishment - Noyemi

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

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