Porfiry had shown almost the whole of his game; he was taking a risk, of course, but he had shown it, and (Raskolnikov kept thinking) if Porfiry really had something more, he would have shown that, too. What was this “surprise”? A mockery, perhaps? Did it mean anything, or not? Could it have concealed anything resembling a fact, a positive accusation? That man yesterday? Where had he dropped to? Where was he today? Because if Porfiry had anything positive, it must certainly be connected with that man yesterday . . .

He was sitting on the sofa, his head hanging down, his elbows resting on his knees, and his face buried in his hands. A nervous trembling still shook his whole body. Finally he got up, took his cap, thought, and made for the door.

He somehow had a presentiment that for today, at least, he could almost certainly consider himself safe. Suddenly his heart felt almost joyful: he wanted to hasten to Katerina Ivanovna's. To be sure, he was late for the funeral, but he would still be in time for the memorial meal, and there, now, he would see Sonya.

He stopped, thought, and a sickly smile forced itself to his lips.

“Today! Today!” he repeated to himself. “Yes, today! It must be . . .”

He was just about to open the door, when it suddenly began to open by itself. He trembled and jumped back. The door was opening slowly and quietly, and suddenly a figure appeared—of yesterday's man from under the ground.

The man stopped on the threshold, looked silently at Raskolnikov, and took a step into the room. He was exactly the same as yesterday, the same figure, the same clothes, but in his face and eyes a great change had taken place: he now looked somehow rueful, and, having stood for a little, he sighed deeply. He need only have put his palm to his cheek and leaned his head to one side, to complete his resemblance to a peasant woman.

“What do you want?” Raskolnikov asked, going dead.

The man paused and then suddenly bowed deeply to him, almost to the ground. At least he touched the ground with one finger of his right hand.

“What is this?” Raskolnikov cried out.

“I am guilty,” the man said softly.

“Of what?”

“Of wicked thoughts.”

The two stood looking at each other.

“I felt bad. When you came that time, maybe under the influence, and told the caretakers to go to the precinct, and asked about blood, I felt bad because it all came to nothing, and you were taken for drunk. And I felt so bad that I lost my sleep. And, remembering the address, we came here yesterday and asked...”

“Who came?” Raskolnikov interrupted, instantly beginning to recall.

“I came, that is. I did you a bad turn.”

“You're from that house, then?”

“But I was standing with them in the gateway that time, don't you remember? We have our handcraft there, from old times. We're furriers, tradespeople, we work at home...but most of all I felt bad . . .”

And all at once Raskolnikov clearly recalled the whole scene in the gateway two days ago; he realized that besides the caretakers several other people had been standing there, and women as well. He recalled one voice suggesting that he be taken straight to the police. He could not recall the speaker's face, and even now he did not recognize him, but he remembered that he had even made him some reply then, and turned to him . . .

So this was the solution to yesterday's horror. Most horrible was the thought that he had really almost perished, almost destroyed himself, because of such a worthless circumstance. So except for the renting of the apartment and the talk about blood, this man had nothing to tell. So Porfiry also had nothing, nothing except this delirium, no facts except for psychology, which is double-ended, nothing positive. So if no more facts emerged (and they must not emerge, they must not, they must not!), then...then what could they possibly do to him? How could they expose him finally, even if they should arrest him? And so Porfiry had learned about the apartment only now, only that day, and knew nothing before.

“Was it you who told Porfiry today...that I went there?” he cried, struck by the sudden idea.

“What Porfiry?”

“The chief investigator.”

“Yes, me. The caretakers wouldn't go that time, so I went.”

“Today?”

“I was there just a minute before you. And I heard everything, everything, the way he was tormenting you.”

“Where? What? When?”

“But, right there, behind the partition, I was sitting there the whole time.”

“What? So the surprise was you? But how could it have happened? For pity's sake!”

“Seeing as the caretakers didn't want to go on my words,” the tradesman began, “because they said it was late by then and he might even be angry that they came at the wrong time, I felt bad, and lost my sleep, and began finding things out. And having found out yesterday, I went today. The first time I came, he wasn't there. I tarried an hour longer, and then he couldn't see me. The third time I came, they let me in. I began reporting to him everything as it was, and he began rushing around the room and beat himself on the chest with his fist: 'What are you doing to me, you robbers?' he said. 'If I'd known anything of the sort, I'd have gone and brought him in under guard!' Then he ran out, called someone, and began talking to him in the corner, and then he came back to me, and began questioning and chiding me. And he reproached me very much; and I informed him of everything, and said that you didn't dare answer anything to my words yesterday, and that you didn't recognize me. And here he began running around again, and kept beating himself on the chest, and he was angry, and running around, and when you were announced— 'Well,' he said, 'get behind the partition, sit there for now, don't move, no matter what you hear,' and he himself brought me a chair there and locked me in; 'I may ask for you,' he said. And when they brought Nikolai, he took me out, just after you: 'I'll want you again,' he said, 'I'll question you again' . . .”

“And did he ask Nikolai any questions while you were there?” “As soon as he took you out, he immediately took me out as well, and began questioning Nikolai.”

The tradesman stopped and suddenly bowed again, touching the floor with his finger.

“For my slander and my wickedness, forgive me.” “God will forgive,” Raskolnikov replied, and as soon as he uttered it, the tradesman bowed to him, not to the ground this time but from the waist, turned slowly, and walked out of the room. “Everything's double-ended, now everything's double-ended,” Raskolnikov kept repeating, and he walked out of the room more cheerful than ever.

“The struggle's not over yet,” he said with a spiteful grin, on his way down the stairs. The spite was directed at himself: with scorn and shame he looked back on his “faintheartedness.”

Part Five

I

The morning that followed his fatal talk with Dunechka and Pulcheria Alexandrovna had its sobering effect on Pyotr Petrovich as well. To his greatest displeasure, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact, accomplished and irreversible, that which even yesterday had seemed to him an almost fantastic event, which, though real, was still somehow impossible. The black serpent of stung vanity had sucked all night at his heart. Having gotten out of bed, Pyotr Petrovich at once looked in the mirror. He feared the bile might have risen in him during the night. So far, however, all was well in that regard, and, having considered his white and noble aspect, grown slightly fat of late, Pyotr Petrovich even took comfort for a moment, feeling quite sure of finding a bride for himself somewhere in another place, and perhaps even a cut above this one; but he came to his senses at once and spat aside vigorously, thereby evoking a silent but sarcastic smile in his young friend and cohabitant, Andrei Semyonovich Lebezyatnikov. Pyotr Petrovich noticed this smile, and inwardly set it down at once against his young friend's account. Of late he had managed to set a lot against his account. He grew doubly spiteful at the sudden realization that he ought not to have informed Andrei Semyonovich yesterday about yesterday's results. That was his second mistake yesterday, made in the heat of the moment, from overexpansiveness, in irritation...Then, throughout the morning, as if by design, nuisance followed nuisance. Some trouble even awaited him in the Senate, in connection with a case he was pleading there. But he was especially irritated with the owner of the apartment he had rented with a view to his impending marriage and decorated at his own expense: the owner, some German craftsman grown rich, would in no way agree to break the just concluded contract, and demanded the full forfeit mentioned in it, notwithstanding that Pyotr Petrovich would be turning the apartment back to him almost entirely done over. In the same way, the furniture store refused to return even a single rouble of the deposit for furniture bought but not yet delivered to the apartment. “I'm not going to get married just for the sake of the furniture!” Pyotr Petrovich snarled to himself, and at the same moment a desperate hope flashed in him once more: “But can it all be so irrevocably lost and finished? Can't I try one more time?” Again the thought of Dunechka needled his heart seductively. He endured this moment with pain, and certainly, had it been possible right then to kill Raskolnikov merely by wishing, Pyotr Petrovich would immediately have voiced this wish.