asked. What’s wrong with asking? Why are you so . . . ?’
‘Listen, you’re an educated, literary type, are you not?’
‘Six years at the gymnasium,’ Zametov replied with a certain pride.
‘Six years! Ah, my dear little dicky bird! With his hair parted and jewels on his fingers – a man of means! Such a sweet young boy!’ Here Raskolnikov broke into peals of nervous laughter right in Zametov’s face. Zametov shrank back, not so much offended as deeply astonished.
‘My, you’re acting strange!’ Zametov repeated very seriously. ‘Seems to me you’re still raving.’
‘Raving? You’re lying, my little dicky bird! . . . So I’m strange? All right, but I intrigue you, don’t I? Don’t I?’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘I mean, what was I reading about, what was I hunting for, eh? Just look how many back issues I made the waiter lug over! Suspicious, eh?’
‘Tell me, then.’
‘Hanging on my lips, eh?’
‘Hanging where?’
‘I’ll explain later, but now, my dearest, I declare to you . . . no, better: “I confess” . . . No, still not right: “I testify and you record” – that’s it! I testify, then, that I read, showed interest in . . . searched for . . . hunted for . . .’ – Raskolnikov screwed up his eyes and paused – ‘hunted for anything at all – which is why I’ve come here – relating to the murder of the civil servant’s old widow,’ he uttered finally, almost in a whisper, bringing his face exceptionally close to Zametov’s. Zametov stared straight back at him, neither twitching nor flinching. Strangest of all, Zametov later thought, was the fact that the silence between them should have lasted for precisely one minute, and that they should have looked at one another like that for precisely one minute.
‘So you were reading, so what?’ he suddenly cried, in impatient bewilderment. ‘Why should I care?’
‘It’s that same old woman,’ Raskolnikov went on in the same whisper, without a twitch, ‘the very same one, remember, who you started talking about in the bureau when I fainted. Understand now?’
‘What are you on about? Understand what?’ asked Zametov, in near panic.
Raskolnikov’s motionless, serious face was transformed in a flash and he suddenly broke into the same nervous guffaws as before, as if quite incapable of restraining himself. And in a twinkling there came back to him with exceptional clarity of sensation one recent moment, when he was standing behind the door, with the axe, and the latch was twitching about, and people were swearing and trying to force their way in, and he had a sudden urge to yell at them, to argue with them, stick his tongue out at them, tease them, laugh, roar, roar, roar with laughter!
‘You’re either mad or . . . ,’ said Zametov – and stopped, as if suddenly struck by a thought that had just flashed across his mind.
‘Or? Or what? Well? Go on, out with it!’
‘Nothing!’ Zametov replied in a huff. ‘What utter nonsense!’
Both fell silent. After his sudden, convulsive burst of laughter Raskolnikov had suddenly become pensive and sad. He rested his elbow on the table and propped his head in his hand. He seemed to have entirely forgotten about Zametov. The silence lasted quite some time.
‘Why aren’t you drinking your tea? It’ll get cold,’ said Zametov.
‘Eh? What? Tea? . . . Why not . . . ?’ Raskolnikov took a swig, put a piece of bread in his mouth and suddenly, after a glance at Zametov, seemed to recall everything and even pull himself together: his face instantly regained its initial, derisive expression. He carried on drinking his tea.
‘There are so many swindlers about just now,’ said Zametov. ‘Just recently I read in the Moscow Gazette that a gang of counterfeiters has been caught in Moscow. An entire band of them. Forging lottery tickets.’
‘Oh, that’s old news! I read that a month ago,’ Raskolnikov calmly replied. ‘So you call them swindlers, do you?’ he added with a grin.
‘What else can you call them?’
‘Them? They’re children, fledglings, not swindlers! Fifty people getting together for something