Demons

'Let's go, let's go!' Liza cried out as if in hysterics, again drawing Mavriky Nikolaevich after her. 'Wait, Stepan Trofimovich,' she suddenly went back to him, 'wait, poor dear, let me make a cross over you. It might be better to tie you up, but I'd better make a cross over you. You, too, pray for 'poor' Liza—just so, a little, don't trouble yourself too much. Mavriky Nikolaevich, give this child back his umbrella, you must give it back. There... Let's go now! Let's go!'

Their arrival at the fatal house occurred precisely at the moment when the thick crowd thronging in front of the house had heard a good deal about Stavrogin and how it was profitable for him to kill his wife. But still, I repeat, the great majority went on listening silently and motionlessly. Only bawling drunkards and 'breaking-loose' people like that arm-waving tradesman lost control of themselves. Everyone knew him as even a quiet man, but it was as if he would suddenly break loose and fly off somewhere if something suddenly struck him in a certain way. I did not see Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevich arrive. I first noticed Liza, to my stupefied amazement, when she was already far away from me in the crowd, and in the beginning I did not even make out Mavriky Nikolaevich. It seems there was a moment when he lagged a couple of steps behind her because of the crowd, or else he was forced aside. Liza, who was tearing through the crowd without seeing or noticing anything around her, like someone in a fever, like someone escaped from a hospital, of course drew attention to herself all too quickly: there was loud talk and suddenly shouting. Then someone yelled: 'That's Stavrogin's woman!' And from the other side: 'They don't just kill, they also come and look!' Suddenly I saw someone's hand, above her head, from behind, raised and lowered; Liza fell. There came a terrible cry from Mavriky Nikolaevich, who tore to her aid and struck the man who was between him and Liza with all his strength. But at the same moment that tradesman seized him from behind with both arms. For some time it was impossible to make anything out in the ensuing scuffle. It seems Liza got up, but fell again from another blow. Suddenly the crowd parted and a small empty circle formed around the prostrate Liza, with the bloody, crazed Mavriky Nikolaevich standing over her, shouting, weeping, and wringing his hands. I do not remember with complete precision how things went after that; I only remember that Liza was suddenly being carried away. I ran after her; she was still alive, and perhaps still conscious. From among the crowd, the tradesman and another three men were seized. These three up to now have denied any participation in the evil-doing, stubbornly insisting that they were seized by mistake; perhaps they are right. The tradesman, though clearly exposed, being a witless man, has been unable up to now to explain coherently what happened. I, too, had to give my evidence at the investigation, as a witness, though a distant one: I declared that everything had happened to the highest degree by chance, through people who, though perhaps of a certain inclination, had very little awareness, were drunk, and had already lost the thread. I am still of that opinion.

4: The Last Decision

I

Many saw Pyotr Stepanovich that morning; those who did recall that he was extremely excited. At two o'clock in the afternoon he ran by to see Gaganov, who had arrived from the country just the day before, and where a whole house full of visitors had gathered who talked much and hotly about the events that had just transpired. Pyotr Stepanovich talked most of all and made himself heard. He was always regarded among us as a 'garrulous student with a hole in his head,' but now he was talking about Yulia Mikhailovna, and, considering the general turmoil, the topic was a gripping one. In his quality as her recent and most intimate confidant, he reported many quite new and unexpected details about her; inadvertently (and, of course, imprudently) he reported some of her personal opinions about people widely known in town, thereby instantly pricking some vanities. It all came out vague and muddled, as from a none-too-clever man who yet, as an honest person, was faced with the painful necessity of explaining all at once a whole heap of perplexities, and who, in his simplehearted awkwardness, did not know himself where to begin and where to end. He let slip, also rather imprudently, that Yulia Mikhailovna knew the whole of Stavrogin's secret and that she herself had conducted the whole intrigue. And she had also done him, Pyotr Stepanovich, a bad turn, because he himself had been in love with this unfortunate Liza, and yet he had been so 'turned around' that he had almost taken her to Stavrogin in a carriage. 'Yes, yes, gentlemen, it's all very well for you to laugh, but if only I'd known, if I'd known how it would end!' he concluded. To various anxious inquiries about Stavrogin, he declared directly that the catastrophe with Lebyadkin was, in his opinion, pure chance, and the one to blame for it all was Lebyadkin himself who displayed his money. He explained this particularly well. One of the listeners at some point observed to him that he had no business 'playacting'; that he ate, drank, and all but slept in Yulia Mikhailovna's house, and was now the first to besmirch her, and that it was not at all as pretty a thing as he supposed. But Pyotr Stepanovich defended himself at once: 'I ate and drank not because I had no money, and I'm not to blame if I was invited there. Allow me to judge for myself how grateful I ought to be for that.'

Generally, the impression was in his favor: 'Granted he's an absurd fellow and, of course, an empty one, but how is he to blame for Yulia Mikhailovna's follies? On the contrary, it appears he tried to stop her...'

At about two o'clock the news suddenly spread that Stavrogin, of whom there was so much talk, had unexpectedly left for Petersburg on the midday train. This was very interesting; many frowned. Pyotr Stepanovich was struck to such an extent that they say he even changed countenance and exclaimed strangely: 'But who could have let him out?' He immediately left Gaganov's at a run. However, he was seen in two or three other houses.

Towards dusk he found an opportunity for penetrating to Yulia Mikhailovna, though with great difficulty, because she decidedly had no wish to receive him. I learned of this circumstance only three weeks later from the lady herself, before her departure for Petersburg. She did not go into detail, but observed with a shudder that he had 'amazed her then beyond all measure.' I suppose he simply frightened her with a threat of complicity in case she decided to 'talk.' This need to frighten was closely bound up with his designs at the time, certainly unknown to her, and only afterwards, about five days later, did she guess why he had so doubted her silence and so feared any new outbursts of indignation from her...

Before eight o'clock in the evening, when it was already quite dark, on the outskirts of town, in Fomin Lane, in a small lopsided house, in the apartment of Ensign Erkel, our people gathered in full complement, all five of them. The place of the general meeting had been appointed by Pyotr Stepanovich himself; but he was unpardonably late, and the members had already been waiting an hour for him. This Ensign Erkel was that same little visiting officer who had sat the whole time at Virginsky's party with a pencil in his hand and a notebook in front of him. He had arrived in town not long ago, rented a solitary place in a secluded lane from two sisters, old tradeswomen, and was due to leave soon; to gather at his place was most inconspicuous. This strange boy was distinguished by an extraordinary taciturnity; he could sit for ten evenings in a row, in noisy company and amid the most extraordinary conversations, without saying a word himself, but, on the contrary, with extreme attention, following the speakers with his child's eyes and listening. His face was very pretty and even as if intelligent. He did not belong to the fivesome; our people supposed he had special instructions of some sort and from somewhere, purely along executive lines. It is now known that he had no instructions, and that he hardly even understood his position. He simply bowed down before Pyotr Stepanovich, whom he had met not long before. Had he met some prematurely depraved monster who under some socio-romantic pretext egged him on to found a band of robbers and ordered him, as a test, to kill and rob the first peasant he came upon, he would certainly have gone and obeyed. He had a sick mother somewhere to whom he sent half of his scanty pay—and how she must have kissed that poor blond head, trembled for it, prayed for it! I enlarge upon him so much because I am very sorry for him.

Our people were excited. They had been struck by the events of the past night and, it seems, had gone cowardly. The simple but systematic scandal in which they had so zealously taken part so far, had had an outcome they did not expect. The night fire, the murder of the Lebyadkins, the crowd's violence over Liza—