CHAPTER II

<h2><a id="link2HCH0028"/>
  CHAPTER II
</h2>
<p>
  It would be difficult to explain exactly what could have originated the
  idea of that senseless dinner in Katerina Ivanovna’s disordered brain.
  Nearly ten of the twenty roubles, given by Raskolnikov for Marmeladov’s
  funeral, were wasted upon it. Possibly Katerina Ivanovna felt obliged to
  honour the memory of the deceased “suitably,” that all the lodgers, and
  still more Amalia Ivanovna, might know “that he was in no way their
  inferior, and perhaps very much their superior,” and that no one had the
  right “to turn up his nose at him.” Perhaps the chief element was that
  peculiar “poor man’s pride,” which compels many poor people to spend their
  last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do
  “like other people,” and not to “be looked down upon.” It is very
  probable, too, that Katerina Ivanovna longed on this occasion, at the
  moment when she seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those
  “wretched contemptible lodgers” that she knew “how to do things, how to
  entertain” and that she had been brought up “in a genteel, she might
  almost say aristocratic colonel’s family” and had not been meant for
  sweeping floors and washing the children’s rags at night. Even the poorest
  and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to these paroxysms of
  pride and vanity which take the form of an irresistible nervous craving.
  And Katerina Ivanovna was not broken-spirited; she might have been killed
  by circumstance, but her spirit could not have been broken, that is, she
  could not have been intimidated, her will could not be crushed. Moreover
  Sonia had said with good reason that her mind was unhinged. She could not
  be said to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that
  her mind might well be overstrained. The later stages of consumption are
  apt, doctors tell us, to affect the intellect.
</p>
<p>
  There was no great variety of wines, nor was there Madeira; but wine there
  was. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon wine, all of the poorest quality but
  in sufficient quantity. Besides the traditional rice and honey, there were
  three or four dishes, one of which consisted of pancakes, all prepared in
  Amalia Ivanovna’s kitchen. Two samovars were boiling, that tea and punch
  might be offered after dinner. Katerina Ivanovna had herself seen to
  purchasing the provisions, with the help of one of the lodgers, an
  unfortunate little Pole who had somehow been stranded at Madame
  Lippevechsel’s. He promptly put himself at Katerina Ivanovna’s disposal
  and had been all that morning and all the day before running about as fast
  as his legs could carry him, and very anxious that everyone should be
  aware of it. For every trifle he ran to Katerina Ivanovna, even hunting
  her out at the bazaar, at every instant called her “<i>Pani</i>.” She was
  heartily sick of him before the end, though she had declared at first that
  she could not have got on without this “serviceable and magnanimous man.”
   It was one of Katerina Ivanovna’s characteristics to paint everyone she
  met in the most glowing colours. Her praises were so exaggerated as
  sometimes to be embarrassing; she would invent various circumstances to
  the credit of her new acquaintance and quite genuinely believe in their
  reality. Then all of a sudden she would be disillusioned and would rudely
  and contemptuously repulse the person she had only a few hours before been
  literally adoring. She was naturally of a gay, lively and peace-loving
  disposition, but from continual failures and misfortunes she had come to
  desire so <i>keenly</i> that all should live in peace and joy and should
  not <i>dare</i> to break the peace, that the slightest jar, the smallest
  disaster reduced her almost to frenzy, and she would pass in an instant
  from the brightest hopes and fancies to cursing her fate and raving, and
  knocking her head against the wall.
</p>
<p>
  Amalia Ivanovna, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance in
  Katerina Ivanovna’s eyes and was treated by her with extraordinary
  respect, probably only because Amalia Ivanovna had thrown herself heart
  and soul into the preparations. She had undertaken to lay the table, to
  provide the linen, crockery, etc., and to cook the dishes in her kitchen,
  and Katerina Ivanovna had left it all in her hands and gone herself to the
  cemetery. Everything had been well done. Even the table-cloth was nearly
  clean; the crockery, knives, forks and glasses were, of course, of all
  shapes and patterns, lent by different lodgers, but the table was properly
  laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Ivanovna, feeling she had done her work
  well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new mourning ribbons
  and met the returning party with some pride. This pride, though
  justifiable, displeased Katerina Ivanovna for some reason: “as though the
  table could not have been laid except by Amalia Ivanovna!” She disliked
  the cap with new ribbons, too. “Could she be stuck up, the stupid German,
  because she was mistress of the house, and had consented as a favour to
  help her poor lodgers! As a favour! Fancy that! Katerina Ivanovna’s father
  who had been a colonel and almost a governor had sometimes had the table
  set for forty persons, and then anyone like Amalia Ivanovna, or rather
  Ludwigovna, would not have been allowed into the kitchen.”
 </p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna, however, put off expressing her feelings for the time
  and contented herself with treating her coldly, though she decided
  inwardly that she would certainly have to put Amalia Ivanovna down and set
  her in her proper place, for goodness only knew what she was fancying
  herself. Katerina Ivanovna was irritated too by the fact that hardly any
  of the lodgers invited had come to the funeral, except the Pole who had
  just managed to run into the cemetery, while to the memorial dinner the
  poorest and most insignificant of them had turned up, the wretched
  creatures, many of them not quite sober. The older and more respectable of
  them all, as if by common consent, stayed away. Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin,
  for instance, who might be said to be the most respectable of all the
  lodgers, did not appear, though Katerina Ivanovna had the evening before
  told all the world, that is Amalia Ivanovna, Polenka, Sonia and the Pole,
  that he was the most generous, noble-hearted man with a large property and
  vast connections, who had been a friend of her first husband’s, and a
  guest in her father’s house, and that he had promised to use all his
  influence to secure her a considerable pension. It must be noted that when
  Katerina Ivanovna exalted anyone’s connections and fortune, it was without
  any ulterior motive, quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of
  adding to the consequence of the person praised. Probably “taking his cue”
   from Luzhin, “that contemptible wretch Lebeziatnikov had not turned up
  either. What did he fancy himself? He was only asked out of kindness and
  because he was sharing the same room with Pyotr Petrovitch and was a
  friend of his, so that it would have been awkward not to invite him.”
 </p>
<p>
  Among those who failed to appear were “the genteel lady and her
  old-maidish daughter,” who had only been lodgers in the house for the last
  fortnight, but had several times complained of the noise and uproar in
  Katerina Ivanovna’s room, especially when Marmeladov had come back drunk.
  Katerina Ivanovna heard this from Amalia Ivanovna who, quarrelling with
  Katerina Ivanovna, and threatening to turn the whole family out of doors,
  had shouted at her that they “were not worth the foot” of the honourable
  lodgers whom they were disturbing. Katerina Ivanovna determined now to
  invite this lady and her daughter, “whose foot she was not worth,” and who
  had turned away haughtily when she casually met them, so that they might
  know that “she was more noble in her thoughts and feelings and did not
  harbour malice,” and might see that she was not accustomed to her way of
  living. She had proposed to make this clear to them at dinner with
  allusions to her late father’s governorship, and also at the same time to
  hint that it was exceedingly stupid of them to turn away on meeting her.
  The fat colonel-major (he was really a discharged officer of low rank) was
  also absent, but it appeared that he had been “not himself” for the last
  two days. The party consisted of the Pole, a wretched looking clerk with a
  spotty face and a greasy coat, who had not a word to say for himself, and
  smelt abominably, a deaf and almost blind old man who had once been in the
  post office and who had been from immemorial ages maintained by someone at
  Amalia Ivanovna’s.
</p>
<p>
  A retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was drunk,
  had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy—was without a
  waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the table without even
  greeting Katerina Ivanovna. Finally one person having no suit appeared in
  his dressing-gown, but this was too much, and the efforts of Amalia
  Ivanovna and the Pole succeeded in removing him. The Pole brought with
  him, however, two other Poles who did not live at Amalia Ivanovna’s and
  whom no one had seen here before. All this irritated Katerina Ivanovna
  intensely. “For whom had they made all these preparations then?” To make
  room for the visitors the children had not even been laid for at the
  table; but the two little ones were sitting on a bench in the furthest
  corner with their dinner laid on a box, while Polenka as a big girl had to
  look after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like well-bred
  children’s.
</p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests with
  increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of them with
  special severity, and loftily invited them to take their seats. Rushing to
  the conclusion that Amalia Ivanovna must be responsible for those who were
  absent, she began treating her with extreme nonchalance, which the latter
  promptly observed and resented. Such a beginning was no good omen for the
  end. All were seated at last.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov came in almost at the moment of their return from the
  cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly delighted to see him, in the first
  place, because he was the one “educated visitor, and, as everyone knew,
  was in two years to take a professorship in the university,” and secondly
  because he immediately and respectfully apologised for having been unable
  to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon him, and made him sit on
  her left hand (Amalia Ivanovna was on her right). In spite of her
  continual anxiety that the dishes should be passed round correctly and
  that everyone should taste them, in spite of the agonising cough which
  interrupted her every minute and seemed to have grown worse during the
  last few days, she hastened to pour out in a half whisper to Raskolnikov
  all her suppressed feelings and her just indignation at the failure of the
  dinner, interspersing her remarks with lively and uncontrollable laughter
  at the expense of her visitors and especially of her landlady.
</p>
<p>
  “It’s all that cuckoo’s fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!” Katerina
  Ivanovna nodded towards the landlady. “Look at her, she’s making round
  eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can’t understand. Pfoo,
  the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does she put on that cap
  for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that she wants everyone to
  consider that she is patronising me and doing me an honour by being here?
  I asked her like a sensible woman to invite people, especially those who
  knew my late husband, and look at the set of fools she has brought! The
  sweeps! Look at that one with the spotty face. And those wretched Poles,
  ha-ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) Not one of them has ever poked his nose in
  here, I’ve never set eyes on them. What have they come here for, I ask
  you? There they sit in a row. Hey, <i>pan</i>!” she cried suddenly to one
  of them, “have you tasted the pancakes? Take some more! Have some beer!
  Won’t you have some vodka? Look, he’s jumped up and is making his bows,
  they must be quite starved, poor things. Never mind, let them eat! They
  don’t make a noise, anyway, though I’m really afraid for our landlady’s
  silver spoons... Amalia Ivanovna!” she addressed her suddenly, almost
  aloud, “if your spoons should happen to be stolen, I won’t be responsible,
  I warn you! Ha-ha-ha!” She laughed turning to Raskolnikov, and again
  nodding towards the landlady, in high glee at her sally. “She didn’t
  understand, she didn’t understand again! Look how she sits with her mouth
  open! An owl, a real owl! An owl in new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!”
 </p>
<p>
  Here her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that lasted
  five minutes. Drops of perspiration stood out on her forehead and her
  handkerchief was stained with blood. She showed Raskolnikov the blood in
  silence, and as soon as she could get her breath began whispering to him
  again with extreme animation and a hectic flush on her cheeks.
</p>
<p>
  “Do you know, I gave her the most delicate instructions, so to speak, for
  inviting that lady and her daughter, you understand of whom I am speaking?
  It needed the utmost delicacy, the greatest nicety, but she has managed
  things so that that fool, that conceited baggage, that provincial
  nonentity, simply because she is the widow of a major, and has come to try
  and get a pension and to fray out her skirts in the government offices,
  because at fifty she paints her face (everybody knows it)... a creature
  like that did not think fit to come, and has not even answered the
  invitation, which the most ordinary good manners required! I can’t
  understand why Pyotr Petrovitch has not come? But where’s Sonia? Where has
  she gone? Ah, there she is at last! what is it, Sonia, where have you
  been? It’s odd that even at your father’s funeral you should be so
  unpunctual. Rodion Romanovitch, make room for her beside you. That’s your
  place, Sonia... take what you like. Have some of the cold entrée with
  jelly, that’s the best. They’ll bring the pancakes directly. Have they
  given the children some? Polenka, have you got everything?
  (Cough-cough-cough.) That’s all right. Be a good girl, Lida, and, Kolya,
  don’t fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman. What are you
  saying, Sonia?”
 </p>
<p>
  Sonia hastened to give her Pyotr Petrovitch’s apologies, trying to speak
  loud enough for everyone to hear and carefully choosing the most
  respectful phrases which she attributed to Pyotr Petrovitch. She added
  that Pyotr Petrovitch had particularly told her to say that, as soon as he
  possibly could, he would come immediately to discuss <i>business</i> alone
  with her and to consider what could be done for her, etc., etc.
</p>
<p>
  Sonia knew that this would comfort Katerina Ivanovna, would flatter her
  and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Raskolnikov; she made him a
  hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the rest of the time she
  seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to him. She seemed
  absent-minded, though she kept looking at Katerina Ivanovna, trying to
  please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna had been able to get
  mourning; Sonia was wearing dark brown, and Katerina Ivanovna had on her
  only dress, a dark striped cotton one.
</p>
<p>
  The message from Pyotr Petrovitch was very successful. Listening to Sonia
  with dignity, Katerina Ivanovna inquired with equal dignity how Pyotr
  Petrovitch was, then at once whispered almost aloud to Raskolnikov that it
  certainly would have been strange for a man of Pyotr Petrovitch’s position
  and standing to find himself in such “extraordinary company,” in spite of
  his devotion to her family and his old friendship with her father.
</p>
<p>
  “That’s why I am so grateful to you, Rodion Romanovitch, that you have not
  disdained my hospitality, even in such surroundings,” she added almost
  aloud. “But I am sure that it was only your special affection for my poor
  husband that has made you keep your promise.”
 </p>
<p>
  Then once more with pride and dignity she scanned her visitors, and
  suddenly inquired aloud across the table of the deaf man: “Wouldn’t he
  have some more meat, and had he been given some wine?” The old man made no
  answer and for a long while could not understand what he was asked, though
  his neighbours amused themselves by poking and shaking him. He simply
  gazed about him with his mouth open, which only increased the general
  mirth.
</p>
<p>
  “What an imbecile! Look, look! Why was he brought? But as to Pyotr
  Petrovitch, I always had confidence in him,” Katerina Ivanovna continued,
  “and, of course, he is not like...” with an extremely stern face she
  addressed Amalia Ivanovna so sharply and loudly that the latter was quite
  disconcerted, “not like your dressed up draggletails whom my father would
  not have taken as cooks into his kitchen, and my late husband would have
  done them honour if he had invited them in the goodness of his heart.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, he was fond of drink, he was fond of it, he did drink!” cried the
  commissariat clerk, gulping down his twelfth glass of vodka.
</p>
<p>
  “My late husband certainly had that weakness, and everyone knows it,”
   Katerina Ivanovna attacked him at once, “but he was a kind and honourable
  man, who loved and respected his family. The worst of it was his good
  nature made him trust all sorts of disreputable people, and he drank with
  fellows who were not worth the sole of his shoe. Would you believe it,
  Rodion Romanovitch, they found a gingerbread cock in his pocket; he was
  dead drunk, but he did not forget the children!”
 </p>
<p>
  “A cock? Did you say a cock?” shouted the commissariat clerk.
</p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in thought.
</p>
<p>
  “No doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,” she
  went on, addressing Raskolnikov. “But that’s not so! He respected me, he
  respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man! And how sorry I was for
  him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to feel so
  sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then would think to
  myself: ‘Be kind to him and he will drink again,’ it was only by severity
  that you could keep him within bounds.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often,” roared the
  commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka.
</p>
<p>
  “Some fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as having
  their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!” Katerina
  Ivanovna snapped at him.
</p>
<p>
  The flush on her cheeks grew more and more marked, her chest heaved. In
  another minute she would have been ready to make a scene. Many of the
  visitors were sniggering, evidently delighted. They began poking the
  commissariat clerk and whispering something to him. They were evidently
  trying to egg him on.
</p>
<p>
  “Allow me to ask what are you alluding to,” began the clerk, “that is to
  say, whose... about whom... did you say just now... But I don’t care!
  That’s nonsense! Widow! I forgive you.... Pass!”
 </p>
<p>
  And he took another drink of vodka.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov sat in silence, listening with disgust. He only ate from
  politeness, just tasting the food that Katerina Ivanovna was continually
  putting on his plate, to avoid hurting her feelings. He watched Sonia
  intently. But Sonia became more and more anxious and distressed; she, too,
  foresaw that the dinner would not end peaceably, and saw with terror
  Katerina Ivanovna’s growing irritation. She knew that she, Sonia, was the
  chief reason for the ‘genteel’ ladies’ contemptuous treatment of Katerina
  Ivanovna’s invitation. She had heard from Amalia Ivanovna that the mother
  was positively offended at the invitation and had asked the question: “How
  could she let her daughter sit down beside <i>that young person</i>?”
   Sonia had a feeling that Katerina Ivanovna had already heard this and an
  insult to Sonia meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than an insult to herself,
  her children, or her father, Sonia knew that Katerina Ivanovna would not
  be satisfied now, “till she had shown those draggletails that they were
  both...” To make matters worse someone passed Sonia, from the other end of
  the table, a plate with two hearts pierced with an arrow, cut out of black
  bread. Katerina Ivanovna flushed crimson and at once said aloud across the
  table that the man who sent it was “a drunken ass!”
 </p>
<p>
  Amalia Ivanovna was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time
  deeply wounded by Katerina Ivanovna’s haughtiness, and to restore the
  good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she began,
  apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of hers “Karl
  from the chemist’s,” who was driving one night in a cab, and that “the
  cabman wanted him to kill, and Karl very much begged him not to kill, and
  wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from fear pierced his heart.”
   Though Katerina Ivanovna smiled, she observed at once that Amalia Ivanovna
  ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian; the latter was still more
  offended, and she retorted that her “<i>Vater aus Berlin</i> was a very
  important man, and always went with his hands in pockets.” Katerina
  Ivanovna could not restrain herself and laughed so much that Amalia
  Ivanovna lost patience and could scarcely control herself.
</p>
<p>
  “Listen to the owl!” Katerina Ivanovna whispered at once, her good-humour
  almost restored, “she meant to say he kept his hands in his pockets, but
  she said he put his hands in people’s pockets. (Cough-cough.) And have you
  noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that all these Petersburg foreigners, the
  Germans especially, are all stupider than we! Can you fancy anyone of us
  telling how ‘Karl from the chemist’s’ ‘pierced his heart from fear’ and
  that the idiot, instead of punishing the cabman, ‘clasped his hands and
  wept, and much begged.’ Ah, the fool! And you know she fancies it’s very
  touching and does not suspect how stupid she is! To my thinking that
  drunken commissariat clerk is a great deal cleverer, anyway one can see
  that he has addled his brains with drink, but you know, these foreigners
  are always so well behaved and serious.... Look how she sits glaring! She
  is angry, ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.)”
 </p>
<p>
  Regaining her good-humour, Katerina Ivanovna began at once telling
  Raskolnikov that when she had obtained her pension, she intended to open a
  school for the daughters of gentlemen in her native town T——.
  This was the first time she had spoken to him of the project, and she
  launched out into the most alluring details. It suddenly appeared that
  Katerina Ivanovna had in her hands the very certificate of honour of which
  Marmeladov had spoken to Raskolnikov in the tavern, when he told him that
  Katerina Ivanovna, his wife, had danced the shawl dance before the
  governor and other great personages on leaving school. This certificate of
  honour was obviously intended now to prove Katerina Ivanovna’s right to
  open a boarding-school; but she had armed herself with it chiefly with the
  object of overwhelming “those two stuck-up draggletails” if they came to
  the dinner, and proving incontestably that Katerina Ivanovna was of the
  most noble, “she might even say aristocratic family, a colonel’s daughter
  and was far superior to certain adventuresses who have been so much to the
  fore of late.” The certificate of honour immediately passed into the hands
  of the drunken guests, and Katerina Ivanovna did not try to retain it, for
  it actually contained the statement <i>en toutes lettres</i>, that her
  father was of the rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so
  that she really was almost the daughter of a colonel.
</p>
<p>
  Warming up, Katerina Ivanovna proceeded to enlarge on the peaceful and
  happy life they would lead in T——, on the gymnasium teachers
  whom she would engage to give lessons in her boarding-school, one a most
  respectable old Frenchman, one Mangot, who had taught Katerina Ivanovna
  herself in old days and was still living in T——, and would no
  doubt teach in her school on moderate terms. Next she spoke of Sonia who
  would go with her to T—— and help her in all her plans. At
  this someone at the further end of the table gave a sudden guffaw.
</p>
<p>
  Though Katerina Ivanovna tried to appear to be disdainfully unaware of it,
  she raised her voice and began at once speaking with conviction of Sonia’s
  undoubted ability to assist her, of “her gentleness, patience, devotion,
  generosity and good education,” tapping Sonia on the cheek and kissing her
  warmly twice. Sonia flushed crimson, and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly burst
  into tears, immediately observing that she was “nervous and silly, that
  she was too much upset, that it was time to finish, and as the dinner was
  over, it was time to hand round the tea.”
 </p>
<p>
  At that moment, Amalia Ivanovna, deeply aggrieved at taking no part in the
  conversation, and not being listened to, made one last effort, and with
  secret misgivings ventured on an exceedingly deep and weighty observation,
  that “in the future boarding-school she would have to pay particular
  attention to <i>die Wäsche</i>, and that there certainly must be a good <i>dame</i>
  to look after the linen, and secondly that the young ladies must not
  novels at night read.”
 </p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well as
  heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Amalia Ivanovna, saying
  “she knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it was the
  business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a high-class
  boarding-school to look after <i>die Wäsche</i>, and as for novel-reading,
  that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be silent.” Amalia
  Ivanovna fired up and getting angry observed that she only “meant her
  good,” and that “she had meant her very good,” and that “it was long since
  she had paid her <i>gold</i> for the lodgings.”
 </p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna at once “set her down,” saying that it was a lie to say
  she wished her good, because only yesterday when her dead husband was
  lying on the table, she had worried her about the lodgings. To this Amalia
  Ivanovna very appropriately observed that she had invited those ladies,
  but “those ladies had not come, because those ladies <i>are</i> ladies and
  cannot come to a lady who is not a lady.” Katerina Ivanovna at once
  pointed out to her, that as she was a slut she could not judge what made
  one really a lady. Amalia Ivanovna at once declared that her “<i>Vater aus
  Berlin</i> was a very, very important man, and both hands in pockets went,
  and always used to say: ‘Poof! poof!’” and she leapt up from the table to
  represent her father, sticking her hands in her pockets, puffing her
  cheeks, and uttering vague sounds resembling “poof! poof!” amid loud
  laughter from all the lodgers, who purposely encouraged Amalia Ivanovna,
  hoping for a fight.
</p>
<p>
  But this was too much for Katerina Ivanovna, and she at once declared, so
  that all could hear, that Amalia Ivanovna probably never had a father, but
  was simply a drunken Petersburg Finn, and had certainly once been a cook
  and probably something worse. Amalia Ivanovna turned as red as a lobster
  and squealed that perhaps Katerina Ivanovna never had a father, “but she
  had a <i>Vater aus Berlin</i> and that he wore a long coat and always said
  poof-poof-poof!”
 </p>
<p>
  Katerina Ivanovna observed contemptuously that all knew what her family
  was and that on that very certificate of honour it was stated in print
  that her father was a colonel, while Amalia Ivanovna’s father—if she
  really had one—was probably some Finnish milkman, but that probably
  she never had a father at all, since it was still uncertain whether her
  name was Amalia Ivanovna or Amalia Ludwigovna.
</p>
<p>
  At this Amalia Ivanovna, lashed to fury, struck the table with her fist,
  and shrieked that she was Amalia Ivanovna, and not Ludwigovna, “that her
  <i>Vater</i> was named Johann and that he was a burgomeister, and that
  Katerina Ivanovna’s <i>Vater</i> was quite never a burgomeister.” Katerina
  Ivanovna rose from her chair, and with a stern and apparently calm voice
  (though she was pale and her chest was heaving) observed that “if she
  dared for one moment to set her contemptible wretch of a father on a level
  with her papa, she, Katerina Ivanovna, would tear her cap off her head and
  trample it under foot.” Amalia Ivanovna ran about the room, shouting at
  the top of her voice, that she was mistress of the house and that Katerina
  Ivanovna should leave the lodgings that minute; then she rushed for some
  reason to collect the silver spoons from the table. There was a great
  outcry and uproar, the children began crying. Sonia ran to restrain
  Katerina Ivanovna, but when Amalia Ivanovna shouted something about “the
  yellow ticket,” Katerina Ivanovna pushed Sonia away, and rushed at the
  landlady to carry out her threat.
</p>
<p>
  At that minute the door opened, and Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin appeared on
  the threshold. He stood scanning the party with severe and vigilant eyes.
  Katerina Ivanovna rushed to him.
</p>