Читать книгу A Man from the Future. 1856 - Евгений Платонов - Страница 28

In the evening Praskovia Pavlovna came again, bringing a bowl of shchi and a piece of rye bread.

“Eat, dear,” she said. “You’ve wasted away, look so pale.”

“Thank you,” Dmitry took the bowl.

The shchi was hot, fatty, with pieces of cabbage and meat. The spoon was wooden, roughly made. He ate slowly, unaccustomed to it – in the twenty-first century he’d eaten mostly ready-made meals and fast food.

But it’s delicious, he thought. Real food, not chemistry. Except the spoon pokes my tongue.

“Praskovia Pavlovna,” he asked, chewing the shchi, “tell me, how long have you known Gospodin Rodion Romanovich?”

“For a long time, dear. About two years now he’s been living here. Was a student, then quit his studies. Sits in his little room, thinking about something. Strange one, I must say. Either not of this world or God knows what.”

Says things to himself, Dmitry repeated. A strange student who quit studying. Lives in a little room, thinks about something. Lord, this is straight out of Crime and Punishment! Could Dostoevsky have based Raskolnikov on a real person living in this house?

“What does he think about?” Dmitry asked.

“Who knows,” Praskovia Pavlovna shrugged. “He said once he wanted to do something great. Test himself, prove something. I didn’t understand what he meant. But he spoke so seriously, it even frightened me.”

Test himself, prove something, a chill ran down Dmitry’s spine. Lord, what if he really is planning to… no, that can’t be. Raskolnikov is a fictional character. There was no actual murder.

But was there certainty? Dostoevsky was a master of psychological realism. He didn’t invent but observed. And right now Dmitry was living near a person who possibly became the prototype for the most famous literary criminal.

I should stop him, he suddenly thought. If he really is planning to commit a crime, I should intervene.

But how? And did he have the right to interfere in someone else’s fate?

Praskovia Pavlovna left, wishing him a good night. Dmitry was left in darkness – she’d left a candle, but he blew it out to save it. He lay listening to the sounds of the house.

Behind the wall someone was coughing – long, agonizing, with wheezing. Downstairs came drunk voices – someone cursing, someone crying. Somewhere a door creaked, footsteps went up the stairs. There it is, Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg, Dmitry thought. A city of poverty, disease, crime. Not the romantic city of white nights from tourist brochures, but real, terrifying, merciless.

He thought about his former life – the rental studio apartment with its cleanliness and solitude, the office work, the metro, the shops, the television. All of it seemed unreal now, like a dream.

What if I really am asleep? he thought. What if all this is a hallucination caused by stress? Maybe I’m lying in a psychiatric hospital right now, and it seems to me I’m in the nineteenth century?

But no. The smells were too real. The taste of the shchi was too authentic. The cold from the damp walls was too tangible. This wasn’t a dream.

So it’s real, he concluded. And I need to learn to live in it. Or die.