hers wrapped up in the same piece of paper, and your name was clearly marked on the paper in pencil, as was the day of the month when she received them from you . . .’
‘How very perceptive of you . . . ,’ said Raskolnikov, forcing an awkward grin and trying his best to look him straight in the eye; but he couldn’t restrain himself and suddenly added: ‘I said that just now because there must have been a great number of pawners . . . and it would have been hard for you to remember them all . . . Yet you remember them all so clearly and . . . and . . .’
(‘How stupid! How pathetic! Why did I go and say that?’)
‘Nearly all the pawners have now been identified – you alone did not see fit to visit,’ Porfiry replied, with a barely discernible hint of mockery.
‘I wasn’t entirely well.’
‘So I heard, sir. I even heard that you were terribly upset about something. You seem somewhat pale even now?’
‘I’m not remotely pale . . . in fact, I’m perfectly well!’ Raskolnikov snapped back, suddenly changing his tone. The spite was bubbling up inside him and he couldn’t keep it down. ‘I’ll end up saying something I regret!’ flashed through his mind once more. ‘But why must they torment me?’
‘Perfectly well, did he say?’ Razumikhin jumped in. ‘Poppycock! Even yesterday you were still raving, almost out of your mind . . . Consider this, Porfiry: he could barely stand, but the second Zosimov and I turned our backs yesterday he got dressed, made off and gadded about somewhere until it was nearly midnight, and all this, let me tell you, when he was completely and utterly delirious. Can you imagine? A most extraordinary case!’
‘Completely and utterly delirious! Really? Well I never!’ said Porfiry, with a womanish shake of the head.
‘What nonsense! Don’t believe him! Though actually, you don’t believe a word of this anyway!’ Raskolnikov let slip in his anger. But Porfiry Petrovich appeared not to hear these strange words.
‘But how could you have gone out if you weren’t delirious?’ asked Razumikhin with a sudden rush of excitement. ‘Why did you go out? What for? . . . And why so secretly? You can’t have been thinking straight, can you? I can be frank with you now the danger’s passed!’
‘I was sick to death of them yesterday,’ Raskolnikov suddenly told Porfiry with an insolent, defiant sneer, ‘so I ran off to rent a place where they couldn’t find me, and took a pile of money with me. Mr Zametov over there saw the cash. Well, Mr Zametov: was I delirious yesterday or was I clever? You settle the argument.’
He could have strangled Zametov there and then. The way he was looking at him without saying anything was more than he could stand.
‘If you ask me, you were speaking perfectly sensibly and even cunningly, sir, only you were much too irritable,’ came Zametov’s dry response.
‘And today,’ Porfiry Petrovich put in, ‘Nikodim Fomich was telling me that he met you yesterday, at a terribly late hour, in the apartment of a man who’d been trampled by horses, a civil servant . . .’
‘There you go – that civil servant!’ Razumikhin exclaimed. ‘I mean, what was that if not crazy? You gave away your every last copeck to a widow for the funeral! All right, you felt like helping out – so give her fifteen roubles, give her twenty, or at least leave yourself three, but no, you had to fork out all twenty-five!’
‘What if I’ve found a hidden treasure somewhere and you don’t know? Wouldn’t that explain my fit of generosity yesterday? . . . Mr Zametov over there knows all about it! . . . Please excuse us,’ he said to Porfiry, lips trembling, ‘for bothering you with half an hour of such silliness. I expect you’ve had quite enough of us, eh?’
‘The very idea, sir! On the contrary, on the contrary! If only you knew how much you intrigue me! How interesting it is to observe you and listen to you . . . and, I must admit, I’m so glad you’ve seen fit to