Marmeladov fell silent, as though his voice had failed him. Then suddenly he poured a quick glass, drank it, and grunted.
“Since then, my dear sir,” he went on after some silence, “since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and reports made by ill-meaning persons—which Darya Frantsevna especially abetted, on the pretext that she had not been shown due respect—since then my daughter, Sofya Semyonovna, has been obliged to carry a yellow pass, and under such circumstances could no longer remain with us. For the landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna, would not allow it (though she herself had abetted Darya Frantsevna before), and Mr. Lebezyatnikov also...hm...It was because of Sonya that this story happened between him and Katerina Ivanovna. First he sought after Sonya himself, but then he suddenly got puffed up: 'What?' he said. 'Is such an enlightened man as myself to live in the same apartment with such a woman?' And Katerina Ivanovna would not let that pass, she interfered...well, so it happened...And now Sonechka comes to us mostly at dusk, and helps Katerina Ivanovna, and brings whatever means she can...But she lives at the tailor Kapernaumov's, she rents a room from him, and Kapernaumov is lame and tongue-tied, and the whole of his extremely numerous family is also tongue-tied. And his wife, too, is tongue-tied...They occupy one room, and Sonya has her own, separately, with a partition...Hm, yes...The poorest people, and all of them tongue-tied...yes...So I got up that next morning, sir, put my rags on, lifted up my hands to heaven, and went to see his excellency, Ivan Afanasyevich. Do you know his excellency, Ivan Afanasyevich? No? Then you have missed knowing a man of God! He is wax...wax before the face of the Lord; as the wax melteth![13]...He even shed a tear when he heard it all. 'Well, Marmeladov,' he said, 'you have deceived my expectations once already....I am taking you one more time, on my personal responsibility'—that's just what he said. 'Remember that,' he said, 'and now go!' I kissed the dust at his feet—mentally, because in reality he would not have allowed it, being a dignitary, and a man of the new political and educated thinking; I went home again, and when I announced that I had been taken back into the service and would have a salary, Lord, what went on then! . . .”
Marmeladov again stopped in great agitation. At that moment a whole party of drinkers walked in from the street, already drunk to begin with, and from the entrance came the sounds of a hired barrel organ and a child's cracked seven-year-old voice singing “The Little Farm.”[14] It became noisy. The proprietor and servants occupied themselves with the newcomers. Marmeladov, ignoring the newcomers, went on with his story. He seemed to have grown quite weak, but the drunker he got, the more loquacious he became. The recollection of his recent success in the service seemed to animate him and was even reflected in his face as a sort of radiance. Raskolnikov listened attentively.
“That was all five weeks ago, sir. Yes...As soon as the two of them, Katerina Ivanovna and Sonechka, found out, Lord, it was just as though I'd moved into the Kingdom of God. I used to lie there like a brute, all I heard was abuse! But now they were tiptoeing around, quieting the children: 'Semyon Zakharych is tired from his work, he's resting, shh!' They brought me coffee before work, with scalded cream! They started getting real cream, do you hear! How they managed to knock together eleven roubles and fifty kopecks to have me decently outfitted, I don't understand. Boots, cotton shirtfronts— most magnificent, a uniform, they cooked it all up for eleven fifty, in the most excellent aspect, sir. The first day I came home after a morning's work, I saw that Katerina Ivanovna had prepared two courses, soup and corned beef with horseradish, which we'd had no notion of before then. She doesn't have any dresses...I mean, not any, sir, and here it was as if she were going to a party, all dressed up, and not just in anything, no, she knows how to do it all out of nothing: she fixed her hair, put on some clean collar, some cuffs, and—quite a different person emerged, younger and prettier. Sonechka, my dove, contributed only money, and as for herself, she said, for the time being it's not proper for me to visit you too often, or only when it's dark, so no one can see me. Do you hear? Do you hear? I went to take a nap after dinner, and what do you suppose? Katerina Ivanovna simply couldn't help herself: just a week earlier she had quarreled to the ultimate degree with the landlady, Amalia Ivodorovna, and now she invited her for a cup of coffee. They sat whispering for two hours: 'So,' she said, 'Semyon Zakharych has work now and is getting a salary, and he went to his excellency himself, and his excellency came out in person, and told everyone to wait, and took Semyon Zakharych by the arm, and led him past everyone into the office.' Do you hear? Do you hear? ' “Of course I remember your merits, Semyon Zakharych, and though you were given to that frivolous weakness, since you have now promised, and, moreover, since without you things have gone badly for us” ' (hear that, hear that!), ' “I shall now place my hopes,” he said, “in your gentleman's word” '—that is, I must tell you, she up and invented it all, and not really out of frivolousness, not merely to boast, sir! No, she believed it all, she delights in her own fancies, by God, sir! And I do not condemn that, no, I do not condemn it! ... And six days ago, when I brought home my first salary—twenty-three roubles and forty kopecks—brought it in full, she called me a sweet little thing: 'You sweet little thing!' she said. We were by ourselves, sir, you understand. And what sort of beauty would you say is in me, and what sort of husband am I? But no, she pinched my cheek and said, 'You sweet little thing!’”
13
See Psalm 68:2: "as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God."
14
"The Little Farm" was a popular Russian song of the mid-nineteenth century, with words by A. V. Koltsov (1809-42), a poet of humble origin.