II
It would be hard to identify with any precision the reasons that gave rise, in the distressed mind of Katerina Ivanovna, to the notion of this idiotic banquet. Nearly half of the twenty-odd roubles received from Raskolnikov and intended for the funeral itself had been thrown at it.
Perhaps Katerina Ivanovna felt that she owed it to the deceased to honour his memory by ‘doing things properly’, in order that all the tenants, and especially Amalia Ivanovna Lippewechsel, understood that not only was Marmeladov ‘not one whit worse’ than them, but very possibly ‘a cut above them’, and that none of them had any right to ‘turn their nose up’ at him. Perhaps the most influential factor here was that particularpauper’s pride, whereby certain social rituals, deemed obligatory for all and sundry in our country, lead many to stretch their resources to the limit and spend what few copecks they’ve saved merely in order to be ‘no worse than the others’ and to prevent any of these others somehow ‘finding fault’ with them. It also seems more than likely that Katerina Ivanovna, on precisely this occasion, at precisely this moment, when the whole world seemed to have forsaken her, felt like showing all these ‘worthless and poxy tenants’ that not only did she know ‘how to live and how to receive’, but also that this was nothing compared to the life she was raised for ‘in the noble, one might even say aristocratic house of a colonel’, and that the last thing she of all people was brought up to do was sweep floors and wash children’s rags by night. Such paroxysms of pride and vanity do sometimes visit the poorest and most browbeaten people, in whom, on occasion, they are transformed into a nervous, irrepressible need. Katerina Ivanovna, moreover, was not
the browbeaten sort: she could be beaten to death by circumstances, but for her to be morally beaten, through intimidation and the subordination of her will – that was simply impossible. Sonechka, moreover, had every reason to say that Katerina Ivanovna was unhinged. True, it was still too early to assert this definitively, but there was no doubt that over the past year her poor mind had been through far too much not to have been at least partly affected. The later stages of consumption, the medics say, also lead to the impairment of the mental faculties.
Wines, as such, were not on offer, nor was Madeira: that was an exaggeration. Still, there was Lisbon wine, and there was vodka, and there was rum, making up in quantity what they lacked in quality. In terms of food, apart from the 17 kutya,there were three or four dishes (pancakes among them), all from Amalia Ivanovna’s kitchen, as well as two samovars on the go for the tea, and punch to follow the meal. Katerina Ivanovna had seen to the purchases herself with the help of a tenant, some sorry little Pole living at Mrs Lippewechsel’s for reasons best known to himself, who was immediately recruited as Katerina Ivanovna’s errand boy and spent the whole of the previous day and the whole of that morning tearing about at breakneck speed with his tongue hanging out – something he seemed particularly keen to draw attention to. He came running up to Katerina Ivanovna on the merest trifle, even went looking for her in 18 the shops of Gostiny Dvor,and was forever calling her 19 Pani chorazyna,until she was heartily sick of the sight of him, although to start with she’d been saying how lost she would have been without this ‘obliging and high-minded’ man. It was a feature of Katerina Ivanovna’s character to paint every random acquaintance in the best and brightest colours, making some of them feel quite uneasy, and, to this end, to invent all manner of circumstances with not the slightest foundation in reality, but which she believed in
with complete, open-hearted sincerity, and then, all of sudden, to be disappointed, to cut off, insult and forcibly drive out the same person whom, only a few hours earlier, she had been literally worshipping. By nature she was of a giggly, cheerful and peaceable disposition, but an endless succession of misfortunes and setbacks had made her so veryfierce in desiring and demanding that everyone live in peace and joy anddare not live otherwise that the slightest discordant note, the smallest setback, instantly drove her to a virtual frenzy, and in the blink of an eye, after the brightest possible hopes and fantasies, she began cursing fate, ripping up whatever came to hand, hurling it across the room and bashing her head against the wall. Amalia Ivanovna had also suddenly gained extraordinary significance and respect in Katerina Ivanovna’s eyes, for no other reason, perhaps, than the fact that there was a funeral banquet to arrange and Amalia Ivanovna was putting her heart and soul into preparing it: she’d taken it upon herself to set the table, provide the linen, the crockery and so on, and cook the food in her kitchen.
Setting out for the cemetery, Katerina Ivanovna had left her in sole command. And the results were truly impressive: the table was set and looked almost clean; the crockery, forks, knives, cups and glasses for wine and vodka were a jumble of different styles and qualities, gathered from various tenants, but everything was in place on time, and Amalia Ivanovna, sensing that she had excelled at her task, greeted the returning group with a certain pride, all dressed up in a bonnet with new mourning ribbons and a black gown. This pride, however well-earned, was not to Katerina Ivanovna’s liking: ‘You’d have thought we couldn’t set a table without her!’ Nor did she like the bonnet with new ribbons: ‘I wouldn’t put it past this stupid German to take pride in the fact that she’s the landlady here and has agreed to help some poor tenants out of the goodness of her heart. I mean, really! There were times when Papa,
who was a colonel and very nearly a governor, had the table set for forty and no Amalia Ivanovnas – or perhaps I should say Ludwigovnas – were allowed anywhere near it, nor even the kitchen . . .’ Still, Katerina Ivanovna resolved to keep her feelings to herself for the time being, though in her heart she’d decided that today was the day to take Amalia Ivanovna down a peg or two and remind her of her proper place, or else God only knows what airs she might start giving herself, but for now she contented herself with being merely unfriendly. Katerina Ivanovna’s irritation was further exacerbated by the fact that almost none of the tenants invited to the funeral showed up at the cemetery, except for the Pole, who seemed to turn up everywhere; the banquet, meanwhile, had drawn only the poorest and most inconsequential lodgers, many looking quite out of sorts – the dregs of society, if ever there were. Those who were a bit older and a bit more respectable had all made themselves scarce, as if by prior agreement. Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, for example, the most respectable of all the tenants, was nowhere to be seen, yet only the previous evening Katerina Ivanovna had been telling anyone who would listen – namely, Amalia Ivanovna, Polechka, Sonya and the Pole – that he was the noblest and most high- minded of men, that he had vast connections and great wealth, that he’d been a friend of her first husband and was received by her father at home, and that he was promising to do all he could to arrange a sizeable pension for her. We should note at this point that if Katerina Ivanovna boasted of someone else’s connections and means, she did so without any personal interest or design, entirely selflessly, from the warmth of her heart, as it were, and for no other reason than the pleasure of ascribing even greater merit to the object of her praise. ‘That toad Lebezyatnikov’ hadn’t shown up either – he must have ‘taken his cue’ from Luzhin. ‘Who does he think he is? We only invited him out of the goodness of our hearts and because he shares a
room with Pyotr Petrovich, his acquaintance. It would have been awkward not to.’ Also absent were a lady of fashion and her ‘overripe wench of a daughter’ – they’d only been lodging at Amalia Ivanovna’s for two weeks, but they’d already made several complaints about the hue and cry emanating from the Marmeladovs’ room, especially when the deceased came home drunk, and these, needless to say, had been conveyed to Katerina Ivanovna by Amalia Ivanovna herself when she, quarrelling with Katerina Ivanovna and threatening to throw out the entire family, yelled at the top of her voice that they were disturbing ‘noble tenants whose toes they were not worth’. So Katerina Ivanovna had made a point of inviting this lady and her daughter, ‘whose toes they were not worth’, especially as the lady was in the habit of turning away from her in disdain whenever they chanced to meet – well, now was the time for her to find out that around here ‘people have a nobler way of thinking and feeling, and issue invitations without bearing grudges’, and for them to see that this was the least Katerina Ivanovna was accustomed to. Her plan was to explain this to them during the meal, and to tell them about the governorship of her late papa, while giving them to understand that there was no need for them to turn away on meeting her and that nothing could be more silly. Absent, too, was the fat lieutenant colonel (actually, a retired junior captain), who, it turned out, had been ‘the worse for wear’ since the previous morning. In short, the only people present were: the Pole; a shabby, tongue-tied paper-pusher, wearing a soiled tailcoat, ridden with acne and smelling disgusting; and a deaf and almost completely blind old man, who’d once worked in some post office and whom someone, since time immemorial and for reasons unknown, had been maintaining at Amalia Ivanovna’s. There was also a drunk retired lieutenant – actually, a quartermaster – who had the loudest and most indecent laugh imaginable and who appeared (‘Fancy
that!’) without a waistcoat! Some other chap just sat down at the table without even a bow in Katerina Ivanovna’s direction; and, lastly, one character, lacking the appropriate attire, turned up in his house-gown, but this was simply too indecent and he was shown out through the joint efforts of Amalia Ivanovna and the Pole. The Pole, though, had brought along two more compatriots, who had never once stayed at Amalia Ivanovna’s and whom no one had ever seen in her rooms before. Katerina Ivanovna found it all extremely disagreeable and extremely annoying. ‘So who have we gone to all this bother for?’ To make space, the children were not even at the table, which already took up the whole of the room, but on a trunk in the far corner, where both the little ones were sat on a bench, while Polechka, being the eldest, was charged with watching over them, feeding them and keeping their noses clean, ‘like all noble children’. In short, Katerina Ivanovna found herself greeting everyone with redoubled self-importance, even haughtiness. She ran a particularly fierce eye over some of the guests, before condescendingly inviting them to sit down. Convinced for whatever reason that Amalia Ivanovna should be held responsible for all the absentees, she suddenly became exceptionally short with her, which Amalia Ivanovna immediately noticed, becoming exceptionally offended. Such beginnings did not augur well.
Eventually, everyone took their places.
Raskolnikov walked in almost at the very moment they got back from the cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was terribly pleased to see him. Firstly, because he was the only ‘educated guest’ present and, as everyone knew, was ‘in line for a chair at the university here in two years’ time’, and secondly, because he made an instant and courteous apology to her for having had to miss the funeral, much to his regret. She all but threw herself on him, offered him the seat to her left (Amalia Ivanovna was on her right) and, despite her endless fussing and worrying about how the
food was being served and whether everyone had their share, despite the excruciating cough which kept interrupting her and choking her and which seemed to have got a great deal worse during these past two days, constantly engaged him in conversation and, in a half- whisper, poured out to him all her pent-up feelings and all her righteous indignation about the failed banquet; moreover, her indignation frequently gave way to the gayest, most irrepressible ridicule of the assembled company, and of the landlady in particular. ‘It’s all the fault of that cuckoo over there. You know who I mean. Her! Her!’ she told Raskolnikov, nodding in the direction of the landlady. ‘Just look at her with those eyes popping out of her head. She senses we’re talking about her, but can’t understand a thing. A real owl! Ha-ha-ha! . . .
Cuh-cuh-cuh! And what’s she trying to say with that bonnet of hers? Cuh-cuh-cuh! Have you noticed how desperate she is for everyone to think she’s bestowing her favour on me and honouring me with her presence? I asked her nicely enough to invite the right sort of people, by which I mean acquaintances of the dear departed, and look who she’s dragged in: clowns and slatterns! Take that one with the filthy face: a real snot-rag! And as for these Polskees . . .
Ha-ha-ha! Cuh-cuh-cuh! Nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever seen them here before, and I’ve never seen them. So why have they come? Tell me that! So solemn, the lot of 20 them. Hey,Panie!’she suddenly yelled at one of them. ‘Had your pancakes yet? Have some seconds! And have some beer! Or perhaps some vodka? Just look at him leaping to his feet and bowing to the floor. They must be starving, poor chaps! Well, let them eat. At least they’re not rowdy, although . . . although I fear for the landlady’s silver spoons! . . . Amalia Ivanovna!’ she suddenly said to her, for almost everyone to hear. ‘If they do steal your spoons don’t expect me to answer for it! Ha-ha-ha!’ she continued, in
stitches, before turning to Raskolnikov again and nodding towards the landlady, delighted with her sally. ‘She didn’t understand. Once again she didn’t understand! Look at her sitting there, gawping: an owl, a proper owl, a screech owl in new ribbons – ha-ha-ha!’ Here her laughter turned once more into a violent fit of coughing that lasted a good five minutes. It left blood on her handkerchief and beads of sweat on her forehead. She showed the blood to Raskolnikov in silence and, scarcely pausing to catch her breath, started whispering to him again in the most animated tones, with red blotches all over her cheeks: ‘See for yourself: I gave her the extremely delicate task of inviting that lady and her daughter – you know who I mean, don’t you? The task called for the greatest subtlety, the greatest refinement, but she went about it in such a way that this silly parvenue, this stuck-up so-and-so, this provincial nobody, simply because she’s the widow of some major or other and has come to Petersburg to wear out her skirts begging for a pension in government offices, because, at fifty-five years of age, she slaps on powder and rouge and dyes her hair (everyone knows) . . . well, not only did this so-and-so not deign to show up, she didn’t even ask anyone to convey her apologies, as even the most elementary rules of etiquette demand! And why on earth hasn’t Pyotr Petrovich come either? And where’s Sonya?
Where’s she got to? Ah, here she is at last! Well, Sonya, where have you been? Strange that you can’t even arrive at your father’s funeral on time. Rodion Romanovich, she can sit next to you. There’s your place, Sonechka . . . Take whatever you want. Try the aspic – that’s the best.
Pancakes are on their way. What about the children?
Polechka, got everything you need down that end? Cuh- cuh-cuh! Good. Lenya, be a good little girl, and you Kolya, stop swinging your legs; sit like all noble children should sit. What were you saying, Sonechka?’
Sonya breathlessly conveyed to her Pyotr Petrovich’s apologies, trying to raise her voice so that everyone might hear and using only the most respectful turns of phrase, specially chosen, in fact, to imitate Pyotr Petrovich, and further embellished by her. She added that Pyotr Petrovich had specifically instructed her to convey that, at the first possible opportunity, he would pay her a visit in order to discusssome business in private and agree about what could be done and undertaken in future, and so on and so forth.
Sonya knew that this would appease and assuage Katerina Ivanovna, flatter her, and above all be a sop to her pride. After a hasty bow to Raskolnikov, she sat down next to him and threw him a curious glance. For the rest of the time, though, she managed to avoid both looking at him and talking to him. She even seemed rather distracted, though she barely took her eyes off Katerina Ivanovna’s face, the better to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna were in mourning, for want of appropriate clothing; Sonya was wearing a sort of darkish brown, while Katerina Ivanovna was in the only dress she had, a dark cotton one with stripes. The news about Pyotr Petrovich went down very well. Gravely hearing Sonya out, Katerina Ivanovna enquired with the same air of importance: how’s Pyotr Petrovich’s health? Then, instantly and for almost everyone to hear, shewhispered to Raskolnikov that it really would have been rather strange for such an esteemed and respectable man as Pyotr Petrovich to find himself in such an ‘unusual crowd’, notwithstanding all his devotion to their family and his old friendship with her papa. ‘That is why I am especially grateful to you, Rodion 21 Romanovich, for not shunning my bread and salt,even in such a setting as this,’ she added, for almost everyone to hear, ‘though I dare say that it is only on account of your
special friendship towards my poor late husband that you have kept your word.’ Next, she once again ran a proud and dignified gaze over her guests and, with particular solicitude, loudly asked the deaf old man sitting across the table whether he might like some seconds and whether he’d been served any Lisbon.
The man made no reply and struggled for a long time to grasp the meaning of the question, although his neighbours even started shaking him, just for fun. But he merely looked around with his mouth hanging open, which only increased the general merriment. ‘What a dolt! Just look at him! What’s he doing here? But as for Pyotr Petrovich, I’ve always had complete confidence in him,’ Katerina Ivanovna went on to Raskolnikov, ‘and, of course, he has nothing in common . . . ,’ she snapped at Amalia Ivanovna, who positively wilted from the exceptional ferocity of her look, ‘nothing in common with those overdressed tail-slappers of yours whom Papa wouldn’t even have taken on as his cooks, and whom my late husband, needless to say, would have accorded a great honour by receiving, and even then only on account of his inexhaustible kindness.’ ‘Yes, ma’am, he liked a drink. That he did, ma’am!’ the ex-quartermaster suddenly shouted, draining his twelfth vodka. ‘My late husband did indeed possess that weakness, as everyone knows,’ Katerina Ivanovna suddenly pounced on him, ‘but he was a kind and noble man, who loved and respected his family. More’s the pity that in his kindness he was far too trusting of all manner of debauchees, and drank with God knows who – people who weren’t even worth the sole of his shoe! You know, Rodion Romanovich, they found a gingerbread cockerel in his pocket: he may have been dead drunk, but he hadn’t forgotten his children.’ ‘Cock-er-el? Did I hear you say cock-er-el?’ yelled the quartermaster.
Katerina Ivanovna did not dignify him with a reply. She was thinking about something and sighed. ‘I expect that you, like everyone else, think I was much too strict with him,’ she continued, turning to Raskolnikov. ‘But I wasn’t! He respected me. He truly, truly respected me! He had a kind soul, that man! And sometimes you couldn’t help but pity him! He’d be sitting in the corner looking at me and I’d feel so sorry for him I’d want to be nice to him, but then I’d think: “Be nice to him and he’ll only get drunk again.” Being strict was the only way of restraining him even a little.’ ‘Yes, ma’am, there was much tugging of forelocks; more than once, ma’am,’ roared the quartermaster again, then sank another vodka. ‘Never mind forelocks: a broom would do well enough for dealing with certain idiots. And I don’t mean my late husband!’ Katerina Ivanovna fired back.
The red blotches on her cheeks burned brighter and brighter; her chest heaved. Another minute of this and she’d be making a scene. There was much tittering among the guests, who were evidently enjoying the show. They started nudging the quartermaster and whispering something to him. They were clearly hoping for a fight. ‘Per-permission to ask, ma’am, what you mean,’ the quartermaster began. ‘I mean which . . . noble . . . individual . . . did you see fit, just now . . . ? Actually, forget it! Rubbish! Widow! Widowed! I forgive . . . I’m out!’ – and he dispatched another vodka.
Raskolnikov sat and listened in disgusted silence. Out of courtesy he nibbled at the food which Katerina Ivanovna kept putting on his plate, simply so as not to offend her. He studied Sonya closely. But Sonya was becoming more and more anxious and preoccupied; she, too, had a feeling that the banquet would end badly, and observed Katerina Ivanovna’s mounting irritation with dread. She happened to know that the main reason the two ladies from the
provinces had given such short shrift to Katerina Ivanovna’s invitation was her, Sonya. She’d heard from Amalia Ivanovna herself that the mother had even been offended by the invitation and had posed the question: ‘How could she even think of sitting our daughter at the same table asthat girl?’ Sonya sensed that Katerina Ivanovna somehow knew about this already, and an insult directed at her, Sonya, meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than any insult directed at herself, her children, her father; in short, it was a mortal insult, and Sonya knew that nothing could appease Katerina Ivanovna now, not until ‘she shows these tail-slappers that they are both’ etcetera, etcetera. As if on cue, someone sent a plate down to Sonya from the other end of the table; on it two hearts had been sculpted out of black bread, both pierced by an arrow.
Katerina Ivanovna flared up and immediately shouted down the table that whoever had sent it was a ‘drunken ass’.
Amalia Ivanovna, who also sensed trouble, while being wounded to the depths of her soul by Katerina Ivanovna’s disdain, suddenly, in the hope of improving the general mood and, at one and the same time, her own reputation, launched into a story, apropos of nothing, about how some acquaintance of hers, ‘Karl of the chemist’s’, had taken a cab one night and ‘the cabbie vanted him to kill und Karl begged und begged him not kill him, und cried, und folded his arms, und frightened, und from terror his heart vas pierced.’ Katerina Ivanovna smiled before immediately remarking that Amalia Ivanovna would be well advised not to tell stories in Russian. The landlady took even greater 22 offence at this and objected that her ‘Vater aus Berlinvas ferry important man and vent about hands in pockets putting.’ This was too much for giggly Katerina Ivanovna and she guffawed outrageously. By now, Amalia Ivanovna was at the very end of her tether and could barely contain herself.
‘A real screech-owl!’ Katerina Ivanovna whispered to Raskolnikov again, cheering up considerably. ‘She meant to say “with his hands in his pockets”, but instead made him out to be a pickpocket, cuh-cuh! And wouldn’t you agree, Rodion Romanovich, once and for all, that these Petersburg foreigners, mainly Germans, who come here from God knows where, are all so much more stupid than we are? I mean, what a way to tell a story: “Karl of the chemist’s with terror heart pierced” and (what a baby!) instead of tying up the cabbie “folded his arms, und cried, und ferry begged”.
What a birdbrain! And she thinks this is so very touching, and has no idea how stupid she is! If you ask me this sozzled quartermaster is far cleverer than her; at least with him it’s obvious he’s a soak, that he’s drunk himself stupid, but the rest of them are so very solemn and serious . . . Just look at her, with those eyes popping out. She’s angry! She’s angry! Ha-ha-ha! Cuh-cuh-cuh!’ Brightening up, Katerina Ivanovna got carried away and suddenly started talking about how she would be sure to use the hard-won pension to found a boarding school for 23 noble girls in T——, the town of her birth.Katerina Ivanovna had never spoken to Raskolnikov about this before and she immediately plunged into the most beguiling details. As if from nowhere, there suddenly appeared in her hands that same ‘certificate of distinction’ which Raskolnikov had first heard about from Marmeladov, the late departed, who had explained to him in the drinking den that Katerina Ivanovna, his spouse, had danced thepas de châle ‘in the presence of the governor and other persons’ at the school leaving ball. Evidently, this certificate of distinction was now meant to serve as evidence of Katerina Ivanovna’s right to found a boarding school herself; above all, though, she was keeping it up her sleeve in order to take ‘those overdressed tail-slappers’ down a peg or two once and for all, should they appear at
the banquet, and prove to them that Katerina Ivanovna was ‘from the noblest, one might even say most aristocratic, home, a colonel’s daughter and a cut above the adventure- seekers who are two a penny nowadays’. The certificate of distinction immediately did the rounds of the drunken guests, something which Katerina Ivanovna did nothing to 24 prevent, for it did indeed spell out,en toutes lettres,that she was the daughter of a court counsellor, one decorated by the state, and that she really was, thereby, almost a colonel’s daughter. Afire with inspiration, Katerina Ivanovna lost no time in enlarging on every detail of her beautiful and tranquil future life in T——; about the teachers she would invite to her boarding school from the gymnasium; about a certain estimable old Frenchman, Mangot, who had taught French to Katerina Ivanovna herself at her boarding school, was living out his days in T ——, and would almost certainly agree to join her for a very reasonable fee. She eventually got on to Sonya as well, who would accompany her to T—— ‘and help out with everything’. But at this point there was a sudden snort from the other end of the table. Though Katerina Ivanovna made every effort to appear oblivious to the laughter, she immediately raised her voice and began enthusing about Sofya Semyonovna’s undoubted abilities to serve as her helper, about ‘her meekness, patience, self-sacrifice, nobility and education’; not only that, she patted Sonya on the cheek and, half-rising, kissed her twice with great warmth. Sonya blushed, while Katerina Ivanovna burst into tears, noting to herself as she did so that she was a ‘silly fool who’s lost her nerve and gets upset over nothing, and anyway, this has gone on long enough – they’ve finished eating, so let’s have tea’. At that very moment Amalia Ivanovna, now utterly offended by having taken no part at all in the entire conversation and by the fact that nobody had even listened to her, suddenly made one final sally and,
concealing her pain, ventured an eminently sensible and profound observation to Katerina Ivanovna about how, at the boarding school, she would need to pay particular attention to the cleanness of the girls’ linen (die Wäsche) and that ‘there better be one gut lady keeping eyes on the linen’, and secondly that ‘all the young girls better no noffels read under cover’. Katerina Ivanovna, who really was upset and exhausted and had had quite enough of this banquet, immediately snapped back that Amalia Ivanovna was ‘talking rubbish’ and didn’t have a clue; thatdie Wäsche was a matter for the linen-keeper and not the director of a boarding school for the nobility; and as for novel-reading, well, that was simply indecent of her and could she please shut up. Amalia Ivanovna turned red and spitefully remarked that she ‘only vanted to help’, that she ‘ferry much only vanted to help’, and that she was owed 25 ‘rentGeldfor ferry long time’. Katerina Ivanovna immediately ‘put her in her place’ by telling her that she was lying about ‘vanting to help’, because even yesterday, with the late departed still laid out on the table, she’d been bothering her about the unpaid rent. To this, Amalia Ivanovna made the entirely logical riposte that she ‘invited those ladies, but those ladies not come because those ladies noble and not come to not-noble ladies’. Katerina Ivanovna ‘reminded’ her that, as a slattern, she was hardly in a position to know about true nobility. This was too much for Amalia Ivanovna, who declared that her ‘Vater aus Berlin vas ferry, ferry important man and vent about hands in pockets putting and everything didPouf! Pouf!’ and, the better to impersonate herVater, Amalia Ivanovna leapt from her chair, thrust both hands into her pockets, puffed out her cheeks and started making vague sounds with her mouth resemblingpouf-pouf, to the loud guffaws of all the tenants, who purposely egged Amalia Ivanovna on with their approval, sensing a fight. But this was more than
Katerina Ivanovna could bear and thereupon, for all to hear, she shot back that perhaps Amalia Ivanovna never had aVater at all – she was simply a drunken Balt who probably used to work in a kitchen, if not worse. Amalia Ivanovna turned red as a lobster and screeched that perhaps it was Katerina Ivanovna who ‘noVater had’, but she, Amalia Ivanovna, had a ‘Vater aus Berlin, and he such long frock coats had and everything didpouf,pouf,pouf!’ Katerina Ivanovna noted contemptuously that her own origins were well known and that the certificate of distinction spelled out in black and white that her father 26 was a colonel;and that Amalia Ivanovna’s father (assuming she even had one) was probably some milk- selling Balt, though in all likelihood there really was no father, because even now no one knew what her patronymic was: Ivanovna or Ludwigovna? At this Amalia Ivanovna, positively livid, banged her fist on the table and set about screeching that she was Ivanovna, not Ludwigovna, that 27 herVater was called Johann and ‘aBürgermeistervas’, while Katerina Ivanovna’sVater ‘neverBürgermeister vas’.
Katerina Ivanovna got up from her chair and in a stern, seemingly calm voice (despite her pallor and heaving chest) remarked that should she dare ever again, even once, put her ‘lousyVater on a level with Papa’, then she, Katerina Ivanovna, would ‘rip off that bonnet and stamp all over it’.
On hearing this, Amalia Ivanovna started tearing around the room and yelling at the top of her voice that she was the landlady and that Katerina Ivanovna should ‘vacate the apartment this ferry minute’, after which, for some reason, she set about clearing the silver spoons from the table.
Uproar ensued; the children began crying. Sonya rushed to restrain Katerina Ivanovna, but when Amalia Ivanovna suddenly shouted something about a yellow ticket, Katerina Ivanovna pushed Sonya aside and made straight for Amalia Ivanovna, to bring her warning about the bonnet into
immediate effect. At that moment the door opened and a man suddenly appeared on the threshold: Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin. He stood there casting a stern, attentive gaze over the assembled company. Katerina Ivanovna rushed towards him.
