anyway, just take a look at him: a fine specimen!’
‘Poverty is no sin, my friend, but why all the fuss? You’re a powder keg, as everyone knows, and you can’t take an insult. I expect he insulted you first, so you lashed out,’ Nikodim Fomich went on, courteously addressing Raskolnikov, ‘but you really shouldn’t have done: he’s the noblest of men, let me assure you, the noblest, but he’s gunpowder! Flares up, sizzles away, burns out – and that’s that! Finished! And all that’s left is the gold in his heart! Lieutenant Powder Keg, that’s what they called him in the regiment . . .’
‘And what a regiment that was!’ exclaimed Ilya Petrovich, delighted at being so agreeably tickled, though still in a huff.
Raskolnikov had a sudden urge to say something exceptionally nice to them all.
‘Have a heart, Captain,’ he began very freely, turning all of a sudden to Nikodim Fomich, ‘and put yourself in my shoes for a moment . . . I’m even prepared to offer him an apology, if I’ve shown a lack of respect. I’m a poor, sick student, dejected’ (that was his exact word: ‘dejected’) ‘by poverty. I’m a former student, because I can’t support myself at the moment, but I’m expecting some money . . . My mother and sister live in —— province . . . They’re sending me some and I’ll . . . pay. My landlady’s a kind woman, but she’s so angry with me for losing my teaching and not paying four months in a row that she won’t even send up meals . . . And as for the promissory note – I haven’t a clue what you mean! She’s waving that IOU at me, but what can I pay her with? Judge for yourselves!’
‘But that’s none of our business . . . ,’ the head clerk tried to put in again.
‘Quite so, I couldn’t agree more, but kindly allow me to put my side of the story,’ Raskolnikov rejoined, still addressing Nikodim Fomich rather than the head clerk, while making every effort to address Ilya Petrovich at the same time, even though the latter kept up a stubborn pretence of rummaging through his papers and contemptuously ignoring him. ‘Allow me to explain, for my part, that I’ve been living at hers for about three years now, ever since I arrived from the provinces, and before . . . before . . . well, why don’t I just admit it? You see, I gave her my word right from the start that I’d marry her daughter, a verbal promise, freely undertaken . . . This girl was . . . well, I even took a fancy to her . . . though I wasn’t in love with her . . . youth, in a word . . . What I mean is, my landlady lent me plenty of money at the time and the life I led was, to a certain extent . . . well, I was very frivolous . . .’
‘Nobody’s asking you for such intimacies, sir, and there’s no time for them anyway,’ Ilya Petrovich interrupted, rudely and gloatingly, but Raskolnikov rushed to cut him short, even though he was suddenly finding it terribly difficult to speak.
‘But kindly allow me, if you would, to tell the whole story . . . to explain how it was . . . for my part . . . though it’s quite unnecessary, I agree . . . but a year ago this young girl died of typhus, while I stayed on as a lodger, and the landlady, when she’d moved into the apartment she has now, said to me . . . in a friendly way . . . that she had every confidence in me and so on . . . but wouldn’t I like to write her a promissory note for one hundred and fifteen roubles, which, according to her sums, was what I owed her? Take note, sir: she specifically said that just as soon as I gave her that document she’d once again lend me as much as I wanted and that never, never, for her part – these were her exact words – would she take advantage of this document, until I paid up myself . . . And now, just when I have lost my teaching and have nothing