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CHAPTER VI
He spent that evening till ten o'clock going from one low haunt to
another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a
certain "villain and tyrant"
"began kissing Katia."
Svidrigaïlov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and
the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these
clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the
left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure
garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky three-
year-old pine-tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a
"Vauxhall," which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was
served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round
it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly
depressed German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the
public. The clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight
seemed imminent. Svidrigaïlov was chosen to decide the dispute. He
listened to them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud
that there was no possibility of understanding them. The only fact
that seemed certain was that one of them had stolen something and had
even succeeded in selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share
the spoil with his companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen
object was a teaspoon belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the
affair began to seem troublesome. Svidrigaïlov paid for the spoon, got
up, and walked out of the garden. It was about six o'clock. He had not
drunk a drop of wine all this time and had ordered tea more for the
sake of appearances than anything.
It was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over
the sky about ten o'clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain
came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat on
the earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and
each flash lasted while one could count five.
Drenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the
bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then,
putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes,
but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the
rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room
without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at home.
She was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her. She
was giving them tea. She received Svidrigaïlov in respectful silence,
looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away
at once in indescribable terror.
Svidrigaïlov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside him.
She timidly prepared to listen.
"I may be going to America, Sofya Semyonovna," said Svidrigaïlov, "and
as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make
some arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what she
said to you, you need not tell me." (Sonia made a movement and
blushed.) "Those people have their own way of doing things. As to your
sisters and your brother, they are really provided for and the money
assigned to them I've put into safe keeping and have received
acknowledgments. You had better take charge of the receipts, in case
anything happens. Here, take them! Well now, that's settled. Here are
three 5-per-cent bonds to the value of three thousand roubles. Take
those for yourself, entirely for yourself, and let that be strictly
between ourselves, so that no one knows of it, whatever you hear. You
will need the money, for to go on living in the old way, Sofya
Semyonovna, is bad, and besides there is no need for it now."
"I am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my
stepmother," said Sonia hurriedly, "and if I've said so little . . .
please don't consider . . ."
"That's enough! that's enough!"
"But as for the money, Arkady Ivanovitch, I am very grateful to you,
but I don't need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don't think
me ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money. . . ."
"It's for you, for you, Sofya Semyonovna, and please don't waste words
over it. I haven't time for it. You will want it. Rodion Romanovitch
has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia." (Sonia looked
wildly at him, and started.) "Don't be uneasy, I know all about it
from himself and I am not a gossip; I won't tell anyone. It was good
advice when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be
much better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Siberia, he will go
and you will follow him. That's so, isn't it? And if so, you'll need
money. You'll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is
the same as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Amalia Ivanovna
to pay what's owing. I heard you. How can you undertake such
obligations so heedlessly, Sofya Semyonovna? It was Katerina
Ivanovna's debt and not yours, so you ought not to have taken any
notice of the German woman. You can't get through the world like that.
If you are ever questioned about me--to-morrow or the day after you
will be asked--don't say anything about my coming to see you now and
don't show the money to anyone or say a word about it. Well, now good-
bye." (He got up.) "My greetings to Rodion Romanovitch. By the way,
you'd better put the money for the present in Mr. Razumihin's keeping.
You know Mr. Razumihin? Of course you do. He's not a bad fellow. Take
it to him to-morrow or . . . when the time comes. And till then, hide
it carefully."
Sonia too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at
Svidrigaïlov. She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the
first moments she did not dare and did not know how to begin.
"How can you . . . how can you be going now, in such rain?"
"Why, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha! Good-
bye, Sofya Semyonovna, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use
to others. By the way . . . tell Mr. Razumihin I send my greetings to
him. Tell him Arkady Ivanovitch Svidrigaïlov sends his greetings. Be
sure to."
He went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague
apprehension.
It appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past
eleven, he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain
still persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little flat
where the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third Street in
Vassilyevsky Island. He knocked some time before he was admitted, and
his visit at first caused great perturbation; but Svidrigaïlov could
be very fascinating when he liked, so that the first, and indeed very
intelligent surmise of the sensible parents that Svidrigaïlov had
probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing
vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see
Svidrigaïlov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the
conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a
direct question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then,
if she were obliged to ascertain something--for instance, when
Svidrigaïlov would like to have the wedding--she would begin by
interested and almost eager questions about Paris and the court life
there, and only by degrees brought the conversation round to Third
Street. On other occasions this had of course been very impressive,
but this time Arkady Ivanovitch seemed particularly impatient, and
insisted on seeing his betrothed at once, though he had been informed,
to begin with, that she had already gone to bed. The girl of course
appeared.
Svidrigaïlov informed her at once that he was obliged by very
important affairs to leave Petersburg for a time, and therefore
brought her fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a
present from him, as he had long been intending to make her this
trifling present before their wedding. The logical connection of the
present with his immediate departure and the absolute necessity of
visiting them for that purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not
made clear. But it all went off very well; even the inevitable
ejaculations of wonder and regret, the inevitable questions were
extraordinarily few and restrained. On the other hand, the gratitude
expressed was most glowing and was reinforced by tears from the most
sensible of mothers. Svidrigaïlov got up, laughed, kissed his
betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon come back, and
noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a sort of
earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though he felt
sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be
immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers.
He went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement,
but the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some
of the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidrigaïlov
was a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great
wealth--there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start
off on a journey and give away money just as the fancy took him, so
that there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange
that he was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more
eccentric, and all these people of high society didn't think of what
was said of them and didn't stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he
came like that on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone.
Above all, not a word should be said about it, for God knows what
might come of it, and the money must be locked up, and it was most
fortunate that Fedosya, the cook, had not left the kitchen. And above
all not a word must be said to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so
on and so on. They sat up whispering till two o'clock, but the girl
went to bed much earlier, amazed and rather sorrowful.
Svidrigaïlov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on the
way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring
wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black
waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest, even
inquiry. But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he
turned and went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless
street for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling
in the dark on the wooden pavement, but continually looking for
something on the right side of the street. He had noticed passing
through this street lately that there was a hotel somewhere towards
the end, built of wood, but fairly large, and its name he remembered
was something like Adrianople. He was not mistaken: the hotel was so
conspicuous in that God-forsaken place that he could not fail to see
it even in the dark. It was a long, blackened wooden building, and in
spite of the late hour there were lights in the windows and signs of
life within. He went in and asked a ragged fellow who met him in the
corridor for a room. The latter, scanning Svidrigaïlov, pulled himself
together and led him at once to a close and tiny room in the distance,
at the end of the corridor, under the stairs. There was no other, all
were occupied. The ragged fellow looked inquiringly.
"Is there tea?" asked Svidrigaïlov.
"Yes, sir."
"What else is there?"
"Veal, vodka, savouries."
"Bring me tea and veal."
"And you want nothing else?" he asked with apparent surprise.
"Nothing, nothing."
The ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.
"It must be a nice place," thought Svidrigaïlov. "How was it I didn't
know it? I expect I look as if I came from a café chantant and have
had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who
stay here?"
He lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was a
room so low-pitched that Svidrigaïlov could only just stand up in it;
it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain-
stained chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as
though they were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn
and dusty that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general
colour--yellow--could still be made out. One of the walls was cut
short by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic but
just under the stairs.
Svidrigaïlov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into
thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a
shout in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not
ceased from the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was
upbraiding and almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice.
Svidrigaïlov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw
light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The
room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of
them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing
in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart
to preserve his balance, and smiting himself on the breast. He
reproached the other with being a beggar, with having no standing
whatever. He declared that he had taken the other out of the gutter
and he could turn him out when he liked, and that only the finger of
Providence sees it all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a
chair, and had the air of a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but
can't. He sometimes turned sheepish and befogged eyes on the speaker,
but obviously had not the slightest idea what he was talking about and
scarcely heard it. A candle was burning down on the table; there were
wine-glasses, a nearly empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and
glasses with the dregs of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this,
Svidrigaïlov turned away indifferently and sat down on the bed.
The ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking
him again whether he didn't want anything more, and again receiving a
negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidrigaïlov made haste to drink a
glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began to
feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the
blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. "It would have been
better to be well for the occasion," he thought with a smile. The room
was close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he
heard a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and
of leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another.
He felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. "It must be a
garden under the window," he thought. "There's a sound of trees. How I
dislike the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give
one a horrid feeling." He remembered how he had disliked it when he
passed Petrovsky Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over
the Little Neva and he felt cold again as he had when standing there.
"I never have liked water," he thought, "even in a landscape," and he
suddenly smiled again at a strange idea: "Surely now all these
questions of taste and comfort ought not to matter, but I've become
more particular, like an animal that picks out a special place . . .
for such an occasion. I ought to have gone into the Petrovsky Park! I
suppose it seemed dark, cold, ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant
sensations! . . . By the way, why haven't I put out the candle?" he
blew it out. "They've gone to bed next door," he thought, not seeing
the light at the crack. "Well, now, Marfa Petrovna, now is the time
for you to turn up; it's dark, and the very time and place for you.
But now you won't come!"
He suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design on
Dounia, he had recommended Raskolnikov to trust her to Razumihin's
keeping. "I suppose I really did say it, as Raskolnikov guessed, to
tease myself. But what a rogue that Raskolnikov is! He's gone through
a good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he's got over
his nonsense. But now he's /too/ eager for life. These young men are
contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let him please
himself, it's nothing to do with me."
He could not get to sleep. By degrees Dounia's image rose before him,
and a shudder ran over him. "No, I must give up all that now," he
thought, rousing himself. "I must think of something else. It's queer
and funny. I never had a great hatred for anyone, I never particularly
desired to avenge myself even, and that's a bad sign, a bad sign, a
bad sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper--
that's a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too--
Damnation! But--who knows?--perhaps she would have made a new man of
me somehow. . . ."
He ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dounia's image
rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time,
she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so
that he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted
a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how
at that instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang
at his heart . . .
"Aïe! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!"
He was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly
something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He
started. "Ugh! hang it! I believe it's a mouse," he thought, "that's
the veal I left on the table." He felt fearfully disinclined to pull
off the blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something
unpleasant ran over his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and
lighted the candle. Shaking with feverish chill he bent down to
examine the bed: there was nothing. He shook the blanket and suddenly
a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He tried to catch it, but the mouse
ran to and fro in zigzags without leaving the bed, slipped between his
fingers, ran over his hand and suddenly darted under the pillow. He
threw down the pillow, but in one instant felt something leap on his
chest and dart over his body and down his back under his shirt. He
trembled nervously and woke up.
The room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the
blanket as before. The wind was howling under the window. "How
disgusting," he thought with annoyance.
He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the
window. "It's better not to sleep at all," he decided. There was a
cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew
the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of
anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another,
incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through
his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness,
or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the
trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept
dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a
bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday--Trinity day. A fine,
sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant
flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed
in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool
staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in
china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender,
white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green,
thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he
went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again
everywhere--at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the
balcony itself--were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut
fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came
into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the
middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud,
stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with
a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides.
Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms
crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But
her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head.
The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though
chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an
immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that
girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no
sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen,
but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an
insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched
that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last
scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night
in the cold and wet while the wind howled. . . .
Svidrigaïlov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the
window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously
into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered
with his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have
been something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There,
too, probably there were tea-tables and singing in the daytime. Now
drops of rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was
dark as in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark
blurs of objects. Svidrigaïlov, bending down with elbows on the
window-sill, gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a
cannon, followed by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the
night. "Ah, the signal! The river is overflowing," he thought. "By
morning it will be swirling down the street in the lower parts,
flooding the basements and cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and
men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to
their upper storeys. What time is it now?" And he had hardly thought
it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away hurriedly,
struck three.
"Aha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I'll go out at once
straight to the park. I'll choose a great bush there drenched with
rain, so that as soon as one's shoulder touches it, millions of drops
drip on one's head."
He moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on his
waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle,
into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep
somewhere in the midst of candle-ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay
him for the room and leave the hotel. "It's the best minute; I
couldn't choose a better."
He walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding
anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner
between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange
object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw
a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying,
with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem
afraid of Svidrigaïlov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of
her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they
have been crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The
child's face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. "How can she
have come here? She must have hidden here and not slept all night." He
began questioning her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered
away in her baby language, something about "mammy" and that "mammy
would beat her," and about some cup that she had "bwoken." The child
chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said
that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook,
in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the
child had broken a cup of her mother's and was so frightened that she
had run away the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere
outside in the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind
the cupboard and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the
damp, the darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it.
He took her in his arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed,
and began undressing her. The torn shoes which she had on her
stockingless feet were as wet as if they had been standing in a puddle
all night. When he had undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered
her up and wrapped her in the blanket from her head downwards. She
fell asleep at once. Then he sank into dreary musing again.
"What folly to trouble myself," he decided suddenly with an oppressive
feeling of annoyance. "What idiocy!" In vexation he took up the candle
to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make haste to go
away. "Damn the child!" he thought as he opened the door, but he
turned again to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the
blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm
under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to
say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of
childhood. "It's a flush of fever," thought Svidrigaïlov. It was like
the flush from drinking, as though she had been given a full glass to
drink. Her crimson lips were hot and glowing; but what was this? He
suddenly fancied that her long black eyelashes were quivering, as
though the lids were opening and a sly crafty eye peeped out with an
unchildlike wink, as though the little girl were not asleep, but
pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in a smile. The corners of
her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to control them. But now
she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin, a broad grin; there
was something shameless, provocative in that quite unchildish face; it
was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a
French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they turned a glowing,
shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited him. . . . There was
something infinitely hideous and shocking in that laugh, in those
eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. "What, at five years
old?" Svidrigaïlov muttered in genuine horror. "What does it mean?"
And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding out her
arms. . . . "Accursed child!" Svidrigaïlov cried, raising his hand to
strike her, but at that moment he woke up.
He was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had
not been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.
"I've had nightmare all night!" He got up angrily, feeling utterly
shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he
could see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He
got up, put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the
revolver in his pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a
notebook out of his pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the
title page wrote a few lines in large letters. Reading them over, he
sank into thought with his elbows on the table. The revolver and the
notebook lay beside him. Some flies woke up and settled on the
untouched veal, which was still on the table. He stared at them and at
last with his free right hand began trying to catch one. He tried till
he was tired, but could not catch it. At last, realising that he was
engaged in this interesting pursuit, he started, got up and walked
resolutely out of the room. A minute later he was in the street.
A thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidrigaïlov walked along the
slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was
picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night,
Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and
bushes and at last the bush. . . . He began ill-humouredly staring at
the houses, trying to think of something else. There was not a cabman
or a passer-by in the street. The bright yellow, wooden, little houses
looked dirty and dejected with their closed shutters. The cold and
damp penetrated his whole body and he began to shiver. From time to
time he came across shop signs and read each carefully. At last he
reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone house.
A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between its
legs. A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead drunk, across the
pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower stood up on the
left. "Bah!" he shouted, "here is a place. Why should it be Petrovsky?
It will be in the presence of an official witness anyway. . . ."
He almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where
there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of
the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them,
wrapped in a grey soldier's coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his
head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidrigaïlov. His
face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly
printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both,
Svidrigaïlov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes
without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man
not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying
a word.
"What do you want here?" he said, without moving or changing his
position.
"Nothing, brother, good morning," answered Svidrigaïlov.
"This isn't the place."
"I am going to foreign parts, brother."
"To foreign parts?"
"To America."
"America."
Svidrigaïlov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his
eyebrows.
"I say, this is not the place for such jokes!"
"Why shouldn't it be the place?"
"Because it isn't."
"Well, brother, I don't mind that. It's a good place. When you are
asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America."
He put the revolver to his right temple.
"You can't do it here, it's not the place," cried Achilles, rousing
himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.
Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.
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