TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE to Crime and Punishment.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Translated By Constance Garnett.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help
the English reader to understand his work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents
were very hard-working and deeply religious
people, but so poor that they lived with their
five children in only two rooms. The father
and mother spent their evenings in reading
aloud to their children, generally from books
of a serious character.
Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky
came out third in the final examination of
the Petersburg school of Engineering. There
he had already begun his first work, “Poor
Folk.”
This story was published by the poet Nekrassov
in his review and was received with acclamations.
The shy, unknown youth found himself instantly
something of a celebrity. A brilliant and
successful career seemed to open before him,
but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849
he was arrested.
Though neither by temperament nor conviction
a revolutionist, Dostoevsky was one of a little
group of young men who met together to read
Fourier and Proudhon. He was accused of “taking
part in conversations against the censorship,
of reading a letter from Byelinsky to Gogol,
and of knowing of the intention to set up
a printing press.” Under Nicholas I. (that
“stern and just man,” as Maurice Baring
calls him) this was enough, and he was condemned
to death. After eight months’ imprisonment
he was with twenty-one others taken out to
the Semyonovsky Square to be shot. Writing
to his brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: “They
snapped words over our heads, and they made
us put on the white shirts worn by persons
condemned to death. Thereupon we were bound
in threes to stakes, to suffer execution.
Being the third in the row, I concluded I
had only a few minutes of life before me.
I thought of you and your dear ones and I
contrived to kiss Plestcheiev and Dourov,
who were next to me, and to bid them farewell.
Suddenly the troops beat a tattoo, we were
unbound, brought back upon the scaffold, and
informed that his Majesty had spared us our
lives.” The sentence was commuted to hard
labour.
One of the prisoners, Grigoryev, went mad
as soon as he was untied, and never regained
his sanity.
The intense suffering of this experience left
a lasting stamp on Dostoevsky’s mind. Though
his religious temper led him in the end to
accept every suffering with resignation and
to regard it as a blessing in his own case,
he constantly recurs to the subject in his
writings. He describes the awful agony of
the condemned man and insists on the cruelty
of inflicting such torture. Then followed
four years of penal servitude, spent in the
company of common criminals in Siberia, where
he began the “Dead House,” and some years
of service in a disciplinary battalion.
He had shown signs of some obscure nervous
disease before his arrest and this now developed
into violent attacks of epilepsy, from which
he suffered for the rest of his life. The
fits occurred three or four times a year and
were more frequent in periods of great strain.
In 1859 he was allowed to return to Russia.
He started a journal—“Vremya,” which
was forbidden by the Censorship through a
misunderstanding. In 1864 he lost his first
wife and his brother Mihail. He was in terrible
poverty, yet he took upon himself the payment
of his brother’s debts. He started another
journal—“The Epoch,” which within a
few months was also prohibited. He was weighed
down by debt, his brother’s family was dependent
on him, he was forced to write at heart-breaking
speed, and is said never to have corrected
his work. The later years of his life were
much softened by the tenderness and devotion
of his second wife.
In June 1880 he made his famous speech at
the unveiling of the monument to Pushkin in
Moscow and he was received with extraordinary
demonstrations of love and honour.
A few months later Dostoevsky died. He was
followed to the grave by a vast multitude
of mourners, who “gave the hapless man the
funeral of a king.” He is still probably
the most widely read writer in Russia.
In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks
to explain the feeling inspired by Dostoevsky:
“He was one of ourselves, a man of our blood
and our bone, but one who has suffered and
has seen so much more deeply than we have
his insight impresses us as wisdom... that
wisdom of the heart which we seek that we
may learn from it how to live. All his other
gifts came to him from nature, this he won
for himself and through it he became great.”
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
PART I
CHAPTER I
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July
a young man came out of the garret in which
he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as
though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady
on the staircase. His garret was under the
roof of a high, five-storied house and was
more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady
who provided him with garret, dinners, and
attendance, lived on the floor below, and
every time he went out he was obliged to pass
her kitchen, the door of which invariably
stood open. And each time he passed, the young
man had a sick, frightened feeling, which
made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly
in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of
meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject,
quite the contrary; but for some time past
he had been in an overstrained irritable condition,
verging on hypochondria. He had become so
completely absorbed in himself, and isolated
from his fellows that he dreaded meeting,
not only his landlady, but anyone at all.
He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties
of his position had of late ceased to weigh
upon him. He had given up attending to matters
of practical importance; he had lost all desire
to do so. Nothing that any landlady could
do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped
on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her
trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands
for payment, threats and complaints, and to
rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate,
to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep
down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into
the street, he became acutely aware of his
fears.
“I want to attempt a thing like that and
am frightened by these trifles,” he thought,
with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in
a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from
cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be
interesting to know what it is men are most
afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new
word is what they fear most.... But I am talking
too much. It’s because I chatter that I
do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter
because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter
this last month, lying for days together in
my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer.
Why am I going there now? Am I capable of
that? Is that serious? It is not serious at
all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself;
a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.”
The heat in the street was terrible: and the
airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding,
bricks, and dust all about him, and that special
Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who
are unable to get out of town in summer—all
worked painfully upon the young man’s already
overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench
from the pot-houses, which are particularly
numerous in that part of the town, and the
drunken men whom he met continually, although
it was a working day, completed the revolting
misery of the picture. An expression of the
profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in
the young man’s refined face. He was, by
the way, exceptionally handsome, above the
average in height, slim, well-built, with
beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon
he sank into deep thought, or more accurately
speaking into a complete blankness of mind;
he walked along not observing what was about
him and not caring to observe it. From time
to time, he would mutter something, from the
habit of talking to himself, to which he had
just confessed. At these moments he would
become conscious that his ideas were sometimes
in a tangle and that he was very weak; for
two days he had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed
to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be
seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter
of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming
in dress would have created surprise. Owing
to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number
of establishments of bad character, the preponderance
of the trading and working class population
crowded in these streets and alleys in the
heart of Petersburg, types so various were
to be seen in the streets that no figure,
however queer, would have caused surprise.
But there was such accumulated bitterness
and contempt in the young man’s heart, that,
in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth,
he minded his rags least of all in the street.
It was a different matter when he met with
acquaintances or with former fellow students,
whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time.
And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown
reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge
waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly
shouted at him as he drove past: “Hey there,
German hatter” bawling at the top of his
voice and pointing at him—the young man
stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously
at his hat. It was a tall round hat from Zimmerman’s,
but completely worn out, rusty with age, all
torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on
one side in a most unseemly fashion. Not shame,
however, but quite another feeling akin to
terror had overtaken him.
“I knew it,” he muttered in confusion,
“I thought so! That’s the worst of all!
Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial
detail might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my
hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd
and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags
I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake,
but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears
such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off,
it would be remembered.... What matters is
that people would remember it, and that would
give them a clue. For this business one should
be as little conspicuous as possible.... Trifles,
trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just
such trifles that always ruin everything....”
He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many
steps it was from the gate of his lodging
house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He
had counted them once when he had been lost
in dreams. At the time he had put no faith
in those dreams and was only tantalising himself
by their hideous but daring recklessness.
Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon
them differently, and, in spite of the monologues
in which he jeered at his own impotence and
indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard
this “hideous” dream as an exploit to
be attempted, although he still did not realise
this himself. He was positively going now
for a “rehearsal” of his project, and
at every step his excitement grew more and
more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor,
he went up to a huge house which on one side
looked on to the canal, and on the other into
the street. This house was let out in tiny
tenements and was inhabited by working people
of all kinds—tailors, locksmiths, cooks,
Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living
as best they could, petty clerks, etc. There
was a continual coming and going through the
two gates and in the two courtyards of the
house. Three or four door-keepers were employed
on the building. The young man was very glad
to meet none of them, and at once slipped
unnoticed through the door on the right, and
up the staircase. It was a back staircase,
dark and narrow, but he was familiar with
it already, and knew his way, and he liked
all these surroundings: in such darkness even
the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
“If I am so scared now, what would it be
if it somehow came to pass that I were really
going to do it?” he could not help asking
himself as he reached the fourth storey. There
his progress was barred by some porters who
were engaged in moving furniture out of a
flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied
by a German clerk in the civil service, and
his family. This German was moving out then,
and so the fourth floor on this staircase
would be untenanted except by the old woman.
“That’s a good thing anyway,” he thought
to himself, as he rang the bell of the old
woman’s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle
as though it were made of tin and not of copper.
The little flats in such houses always have
bells that ring like that. He had forgotten
the note of that bell, and now its peculiar
tinkle seemed to remind him of something and
to bring it clearly before him.... He started,
his nerves were terribly overstrained by now.
In a little while, the door was opened a tiny
crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with
evident distrust through the crack, and nothing
could be seen but her little eyes, glittering
in the darkness. But, seeing a number of people
on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened
the door wide. The young man stepped into
the dark entry, which was partitioned off
from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood
facing him in silence and looking inquiringly
at him. She was a diminutive, withered up
old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes
and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat
grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil,
and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her
thin long neck, which looked like a hen’s
leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag,
and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping
on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow
with age. The old woman coughed and groaned
at every instant. The young man must have
looked at her with a rather peculiar expression,
for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes
again.
“Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month
ago,” the young man made haste to mutter,
with a half bow, remembering that he ought
to be more polite.
“I remember, my good sir, I remember quite
well your coming here,” the old woman said
distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes
on his face.
“And here... I am again on the same errand,”
Raskolnikov continued, a little disconcerted
and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust.
“Perhaps she is always like that though,
only I did not notice it the other time,”
he thought with an uneasy feeling.
The old woman paused, as though hesitating;
then stepped on one side, and pointing to
the door of the room, she said, letting her
visitor pass in front of her:
“Step in, my good sir.”
The little room into which the young man walked,
with yellow paper on the walls, geraniums
and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly
lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.
“So the sun will shine like this then too!”
flashed as it were by chance through Raskolnikov’s
mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned everything
in the room, trying as far as possible to
notice and remember its arrangement. But there
was nothing special in the room. The furniture,
all very old and of yellow wood, consisted
of a sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an
oval table in front of the sofa, a dressing-table
with a looking-glass fixed on it between the
windows, chairs along the walls and two or
three half-penny prints in yellow frames,
representing German damsels with birds in
their hands—that was all. In the corner
a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything
was very clean; the floor and the furniture
were brightly polished; everything shone.
“Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young
man. There was not a speck of dust to be seen
in the whole flat.
“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows
that one finds such cleanliness,” Raskolnikov
thought again, and he stole a curious glance
at the cotton curtain over the door leading
into another tiny room, in which stood the
old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and
into which he had never looked before. These
two rooms made up the whole flat.
“What do you want?” the old woman said
severely, coming into the room and, as before,
standing in front of him so as to look him
straight in the face.
“I’ve brought something to pawn here,”
and he drew out of his pocket an old-fashioned
flat silver watch, on the back of which was
engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.
“But the time is up for your last pledge.
The month was up the day before yesterday.”
“I will bring you the interest for another
month; wait a little.”
“But that’s for me to do as I please,
my good sir, to wait or to sell your pledge
at once.”
“How much will you give me for the watch,
Alyona Ivanovna?”
“You come with such trifles, my good sir,
it’s scarcely worth anything. I gave you
two roubles last time for your ring and one
could buy it quite new at a jeweler’s for
a rouble and a half.”
“Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem
it, it was my father’s. I shall be getting
some money soon.”
“A rouble and a half, and interest in advance,
if you like!”
“A rouble and a half!” cried the young
man.
“Please yourself”—and the old woman
handed him back the watch. The young man took
it, and was so angry that he was on the point
of going away; but checked himself at once,
remembering that there was nowhere else he
could go, and that he had had another object
also in coming.
“Hand it over,” he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her
keys, and disappeared behind the curtain into
the other room. The young man, left standing
alone in the middle of the room, listened
inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her
unlocking the chest of drawers.
“It must be the top drawer,” he reflected.
“So she carries the keys in a pocket on
the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring....
And there’s one key there, three times as
big as all the others, with deep notches;
that can’t be the key of the chest of drawers...
then there must be some other chest or strong-box...
that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always
have keys like that... but how degrading it
all is.”
The old woman came back.
“Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble
a month, so I must take fifteen copecks from
a rouble and a half for the month in advance.
But for the two roubles I lent you before,
you owe me now twenty copecks on the same
reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five
copecks altogether. So I must give you a rouble
and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it
is.”
“What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks
now!”
“Just so.”
The young man did not dispute it and took
the money. He looked at the old woman, and
was in no hurry to get away, as though there
was still something he wanted to say or to
do, but he did not himself quite know what.
“I may be bringing you something else in
a day or two, Alyona Ivanovna—a valuable
thing—silver—a cigarette-box, as soon
as I get it back from a friend...” he broke
off in confusion.
“Well, we will talk about it then, sir.”
“Good-bye—are you always at home alone,
your sister is not here with you?” He asked
her as casually as possible as he went out
into the passage.
“What business is she of yours, my good
sir?”
“Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked.
You are too quick.... Good-day, Alyona Ivanovna.”
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion.
This confusion became more and more intense.
As he went down the stairs, he even stopped
short, two or three times, as though suddenly
struck by some thought. When he was in the
street he cried out, “Oh, God, how loathsome
it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No,
it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added
resolutely. “And how could such an atrocious
thing come into my head? What filthy things
my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above
all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!—and
for a whole month I’ve been....” But no
words, no exclamations, could express his
agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion,
which had begun to oppress and torture his
heart while he was on his way to the old woman,
had by now reached such a pitch and had taken
such a definite form that he did not know
what to do with himself to escape from his
wretchedness. He walked along the pavement
like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by,
and jostling against them, and only came to
his senses when he was in the next street.
Looking round, he noticed that he was standing
close to a tavern which was entered by steps
leading from the pavement to the basement.
At that instant two drunken men came out at
the door, and abusing and supporting one another,
they mounted the steps. Without stopping to
think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at
once. Till that moment he had never been into
a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented
by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink
of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness
to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky
little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered
some beer, and eagerly drank off the first
glassful. At once he felt easier; and his
thoughts became clear.
“All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully,
“and there is nothing in it all to worry
about! It’s simply physical derangement.
Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread—and
in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind
is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how
utterly petty it all is!”
But in spite of this scornful reflection,
he was by now looking cheerful as though he
were suddenly set free from a terrible burden:
and he gazed round in a friendly way at the
people in the room. But even at that moment
he had a dim foreboding that this happier
frame of mind was also not normal.
There were few people at the time in the tavern.
Besides the two drunken men he had met on
the steps, a group consisting of about five
men and a girl with a concertina had gone
out at the same time. Their departure left
the room quiet and rather empty. The persons
still in the tavern were a man who appeared
to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely
so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his
companion, a huge, stout man with a grey beard,
in a short full-skirted coat. He was very
drunk: and had dropped asleep on the bench;
every now and then, he began as though in
his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his
arms wide apart and the upper part of his
body bounding about on the bench, while he
hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to
recall some such lines as these:
“His wife a year he fondly loved
His wife a—a year he—fondly loved.”
Or suddenly waking up again:
“Walking along the crowded row
He met the one he used to know.”
But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent
companion looked with positive hostility and
mistrust at all these manifestations. There
was another man in the room who looked somewhat
like a retired government clerk. He was sitting
apart, now and then sipping from his pot and
looking round at the company. He, too, appeared
to be in some agitation.
CHAPTER II
Raskolnikov was not used to crowds, and, as
we said before, he avoided society of every
sort, more especially of late. But now all
at once he felt a desire to be with other
people. Something new seemed to be taking
place within him, and with it he felt a sort
of thirst for company. He was so weary after
a whole month of concentrated wretchedness
and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest,
if only for a moment, in some other world,
whatever it might be; and, in spite of the
filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad
now to stay in the tavern.
The master of the establishment was in another
room, but he frequently came down some steps
into the main room, his jaunty, tarred boots
with red turn-over tops coming into view each
time before the rest of his person. He wore
a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin
waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face
seemed smeared with oil like an iron lock.
At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen,
and there was another boy somewhat younger
who handed whatever was wanted. On the counter
lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried
black bread, and some fish, chopped up small,
all smelling very bad. It was insufferably
close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits
that five minutes in such an atmosphere might
well make a man drunk.
There are chance meetings with strangers that
interest us from the first moment, before
a word is spoken. Such was the impression
made on Raskolnikov by the person sitting
a little distance from him, who looked like
a retired clerk. The young man often recalled
this impression afterwards, and even ascribed
it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly at
the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter
was staring persistently at him, obviously
anxious to enter into conversation. At the
other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper,
the clerk looked as though he were used to
their company, and weary of it, showing a
shade of condescending contempt for them as
persons of station and culture inferior to
his own, with whom it would be useless for
him to converse. He was a man over fifty,
bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly
built. His face, bloated from continual drinking,
was of a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with
swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish
eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there
was something very strange in him; there was
a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling—perhaps
there were even thought and intelligence,
but at the same time there was a gleam of
something like madness. He was wearing an
old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat,
with all its buttons missing except one, and
that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging
to this last trace of respectability. A crumpled
shirt front, covered with spots and stains,
protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like
a clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache,
but had been so long unshaven that his chin
looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there
was something respectable and like an official
about his manner too. But he was restless;
he ruffled up his hair and from time to time
let his head drop into his hands dejectedly
resting his ragged elbows on the stained and
sticky table. At last he looked straight at
Raskolnikov, and said loudly and resolutely:
“May I venture, honoured sir, to engage
you in polite conversation? Forasmuch as,
though your exterior would not command respect,
my experience admonishes me that you are a
man of education and not accustomed to drinking.
I have always respected education when in
conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I
am besides a titular counsellor in rank. Marmeladov—such
is my name; titular counsellor. I make bold
to inquire—have you been in the service?”
“No, I am studying,” answered the young
man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent
style of the speaker and also at being so
directly addressed. In spite of the momentary
desire he had just been feeling for company
of any sort, on being actually spoken to he
felt immediately his habitual irritable and
uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached
or attempted to approach him.
“A student then, or formerly a student,”
cried the clerk. “Just what I thought! I’m
a man of experience, immense experience, sir,”
and he tapped his forehead with his fingers
in self-approval. “You’ve been a student
or have attended some learned institution!...
But allow me....” He got up, staggered,
took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside
the young man, facing him a little sideways.
He was drunk, but spoke fluently and boldly,
only occasionally losing the thread of his
sentences and drawling his words. He pounced
upon Raskolnikov as greedily as though he
too had not spoken to a soul for a month.
“Honoured sir,” he began almost with solemnity,
“poverty is not a vice, that’s a true
saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is
not a virtue, and that that’s even truer.
But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice.
In poverty you may still retain your innate
nobility of soul, but in beggary—never—no
one. For beggary a man is not chased out of
human society with a stick, he is swept out
with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating
as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch
as in beggary I am ready to be the first to
humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house! Honoured
sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my
wife a beating, and my wife is a very different
matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me
to ask you another question out of simple
curiosity: have you ever spent a night on
a hay barge, on the Neva?”
“No, I have not happened to,” answered
Raskolnikov. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s
the fifth night I’ve slept so....” He
filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits
of hay were in fact clinging to his clothes
and sticking to his hair. It seemed quite
probable that he had not undressed or washed
for the last five days. His hands, particularly,
were filthy. They were fat and red, with black
nails.
His conversation seemed to excite a general
though languid interest. The boys at the counter
fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down
from the upper room, apparently on purpose
to listen to the “funny fellow” and sat
down at a little distance, yawning lazily,
but with dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was
a familiar figure here, and he had most likely
acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches
from the habit of frequently entering into
conversation with strangers of all sorts in
the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity
in some drunkards, and especially in those
who are looked after sharply and kept in order
at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers
they try to justify themselves and even if
possible obtain consideration.
“Funny fellow!” pronounced the innkeeper.
“And why don’t you work, why aren’t
you at your duty, if you are in the service?”
“Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,”
Marmeladov went on, addressing himself exclusively
to Raskolnikov, as though it had been he who
put that question to him. “Why am I not
at my duty? Does not my heart ache to think
what a useless worm I am? A month ago when
Mr. Lebeziatnikov beat my wife with his own
hands, and I lay drunk, didn’t I suffer?
Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened
to you... hm... well, to petition hopelessly
for a loan?”
“Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?”
“Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you
know beforehand that you will get nothing
by it. You know, for instance, beforehand
with positive certainty that this man, this
most reputable and exemplary citizen, will
on no consideration give you money; and indeed
I ask you why should he? For he knows of course
that I shan’t pay it back. From compassion?
But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern
ideas explained the other day that compassion
is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and
that that’s what is done now in England,
where there is political economy. Why, I ask
you, should he give it to me? And yet though
I know beforehand that he won’t, I set off
to him and...”
“Why do you go?” put in Raskolnikov.
“Well, when one has no one, nowhere else
one can go! For every man must have somewhere
to go. Since there are times when one absolutely
must go somewhere! When my own daughter first
went out with a yellow ticket, then I had
to go... (for my daughter has a yellow passport),”
he added in parenthesis, looking with a certain
uneasiness at the young man. “No matter,
sir, no matter!” he went on hurriedly and
with apparent composure when both the boys
at the counter guffawed and even the innkeeper
smiled—“No matter, I am not confounded
by the wagging of their heads; for everyone
knows everything about it already, and all
that is secret is made open. And I accept
it all, not with contempt, but with humility.
So be it! So be it! ‘Behold the man!’
Excuse me, young man, can you.... No, to put
it more strongly and more distinctly; not
can you but dare you, looking upon me, assert
that I am not a pig?”
The young man did not answer a word.
“Well,” the orator began again stolidly
and with even increased dignity, after waiting
for the laughter in the room to subside. “Well,
so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I
have the semblance of a beast, but Katerina
Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education
and an officer’s daughter. Granted, granted,
I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a
noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by
education. And yet... oh, if only she felt
for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know
every man ought to have at least one place
where people feel for him! But Katerina Ivanovna,
though she is magnanimous, she is unjust....
And yet, although I realise that when she
pulls my hair she only does it out of pity—for
I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls
my hair, young man,” he declared with redoubled
dignity, hearing the sniggering again—“but,
my God, if she would but once.... But no,
no! It’s all in vain and it’s no use talking!
No use talking! For more than once, my wish
did come true and more than once she has felt
for me but... such is my fate and I am a beast
by nature!”
“Rather!” assented the innkeeper yawning.
Marmeladov struck his fist resolutely on the
table.
“Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you
know, I have sold her very stockings for drink?
Not her shoes—that would be more or less
in the order of things, but her stockings,
her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair
shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long
ago, her own property, not mine; and we live
in a cold room and she caught cold this winter
and has begun coughing and spitting blood
too. We have three little children and Katerina
Ivanovna is at work from morning till night;
she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing
the children, for she’s been used to cleanliness
from a child. But her chest is weak and she
has a tendency to consumption and I feel it!
Do you suppose I don’t feel it? And the
more I drink the more I feel it. That’s
why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and
feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may
suffer twice as much!” And as though in
despair he laid his head down on the table.
“Young man,” he went on, raising his head
again, “in your face I seem to read some
trouble of mind. When you came in I read it,
and that was why I addressed you at once.
For in unfolding to you the story of my life,
I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock
before these idle listeners, who indeed know
all about it already, but I am looking for
a man of feeling and education. Know then
that my wife was educated in a high-class
school for the daughters of noblemen, and
on leaving she danced the shawl dance before
the governor and other personages for which
she was presented with a gold medal and a
certificate of merit. The medal... well, the
medal of course was sold—long ago, hm...
but the certificate of merit is in her trunk
still and not long ago she showed it to our
landlady. And although she is most continually
on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted
to tell someone or other of her past honours
and of the happy days that are gone. I don’t
condemn her for it, I don’t blame her, for
the one thing left her is recollection of
the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes.
Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and
determined. She scrubs the floors herself
and has nothing but black bread to eat, but
won’t allow herself to be treated with disrespect.
That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s
rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a
beating for it, she took to her bed more from
the hurt to her feelings than from the blows.
She was a widow when I married her, with three
children, one smaller than the other. She
married her first husband, an infantry officer,
for love, and ran away with him from her father’s
house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband;
but he gave way to cards, got into trouble
and with that he died. He used to beat her
at the end: and although she paid him back,
of which I have authentic documentary evidence,
to this day she speaks of him with tears and
she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I
am glad that, though only in imagination,
she should think of herself as having once
been happy.... And she was left at his death
with three children in a wild and remote district
where I happened to be at the time; and she
was left in such hopeless poverty that, although
I have seen many ups and downs of all sort,
I don’t feel equal to describing it even.
Her relations had all thrown her off. And
she was proud, too, excessively proud....
And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being
at the time a widower, with a daughter of
fourteen left me by my first wife, offered
her my hand, for I could not bear the sight
of such suffering. You can judge the extremity
of her calamities, that she, a woman of education
and culture and distinguished family, should
have consented to be my wife. But she did!
Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands,
she married me! For she had nowhere to turn!
Do you understand, sir, do you understand
what it means when you have absolutely nowhere
to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet....
And for a whole year, I performed my duties
conscientiously and faithfully, and did not
touch this” (he tapped the jug with his
finger), “for I have feelings. But even
so, I could not please her; and then I lost
my place too, and that through no fault of
mine but through changes in the office; and
then I did touch it!... It will be a year
and a half ago soon since we found ourselves
at last after many wanderings and numerous
calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned
with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained
a situation.... I obtained it and I lost it
again. Do you understand? This time it was
through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness
had come out.... We have now part of a room
at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s; and
what we live upon and what we pay our rent
with, I could not say. There are a lot of
people living there besides ourselves. Dirt
and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes...
And meanwhile my daughter by my first wife
has grown up; and what my daughter has had
to put up with from her step-mother whilst
she was growing up, I won’t speak of. For,
though Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous
feelings, she is a spirited lady, irritable
and short-tempered.... Yes. But it’s no
use going over that! Sonia, as you may well
fancy, has had no education. I did make an
effort four years ago to give her a course
of geography and universal history, but as
I was not very well up in those subjects myself
and we had no suitable books, and what books
we had... hm, anyway we have not even those
now, so all our instruction came to an end.
We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Since she has
attained years of maturity, she has read other
books of romantic tendency and of late she
had read with great interest a book she got
through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes’ Physiology—do
you know it?—and even recounted extracts
from it to us: and that’s the whole of her
education. And now may I venture to address
you, honoured sir, on my own account with
a private question. Do you suppose that a
respectable poor girl can earn much by honest
work? Not fifteen farthings a day can she
earn, if she is respectable and has no special
talent and that without putting her work down
for an instant! And what’s more, Ivan Ivanitch
Klopstock the civil counsellor—have you
heard of him?—has not to this day paid her
for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him
and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling
her, on the pretext that the shirt collars
were not made like the pattern and were put
in askew. And there are the little ones hungry....
And Katerina Ivanovna walking up and down
and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed
red, as they always are in that disease: ‘Here
you live with us,’ says she, ‘you eat
and drink and are kept warm and you do nothing
to help.’ And much she gets to eat and drink
when there is not a crust for the little ones
for three days! I was lying at the time...
well, what of it! I was lying drunk and I
heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle creature
with a soft little voice... fair hair and
such a pale, thin little face). She said:
‘Katerina Ivanovna, am I really to do a
thing like that?’ And Darya Frantsovna,
a woman of evil character and very well known
to the police, had two or three times tried
to get at her through the landlady. ‘And
why not?’ said Katerina Ivanovna with a
jeer, ‘you are something mighty precious
to be so careful of!’ But don’t blame
her, don’t blame her, honoured sir, don’t
blame her! She was not herself when she spoke,
but driven to distraction by her illness and
the crying of the hungry children; and it
was said more to wound her than anything else....
For that’s Katerina Ivanovna’s character,
and when children cry, even from hunger, she
falls to beating them at once. At six o’clock
I saw Sonia get up, put on her kerchief and
her cape, and go out of the room and about
nine o’clock she came back. She walked straight
up to Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty
roubles on the table before her in silence.
She did not utter a word, she did not even
look at her, she simply picked up our big
green drap de dames shawl (we have a shawl,
made of drap de dames), put it over her head
and face and lay down on the bed with her
face to the wall; only her little shoulders
and her body kept shuddering.... And I went
on lying there, just as before.... And then
I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna,
in the same silence go up to Sonia’s little
bed; she was on her knees all the evening
kissing Sonia’s feet, and would not get
up, and then they both fell asleep in each
other’s arms... together, together... yes...
and I... lay drunk.”
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice
had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his
glass, drank, and cleared his throat.
“Since then, sir,” he went on after a
brief pause—“Since then, owing to an unfortunate
occurrence and through information given by
evil-intentioned persons—in all which Darya
Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext
that she had been treated with want of respect—since
then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been
forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing
to that she is unable to go on living with
us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would
not hear of it (though she had backed up Darya
Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too...
hm.... All the trouble between him and Katerina
Ivanovna was on Sonia’s account. At first
he was for making up to Sonia himself and
then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity:
‘how,’ said he, ‘can a highly educated
man like me live in the same rooms with a
girl like that?’ And Katerina Ivanovna would
not let it pass, she stood up for her... and
so that’s how it happened. And Sonia comes
to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts
Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can....
She has a room at the Kapernaumovs’ the
tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov
is a lame man with a cleft palate and all
of his numerous family have cleft palates
too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate.
They all live in one room, but Sonia has her
own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very
poor people and all with cleft palates...
yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put
on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and
set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch.
His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know
him? No? Well, then, it’s a man of God you
don’t know. He is wax... wax before the
face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!...
His eyes were dim when he heard my story.
‘Marmeladov, once already you have deceived
my expectations... I’ll take you once more
on my own responsibility’—that’s what
he said, ‘remember,’ he said, ‘and now
you can go.’ I kissed the dust at his feet—in
thought only, for in reality he would not
have allowed me to do it, being a statesman
and a man of modern political and enlightened
ideas. I returned home, and when I announced
that I’d been taken back into the service
and should receive a salary, heavens, what
a to-do there was!...”
Marmeladov stopped again in violent excitement.
At that moment a whole party of revellers
already drunk came in from the street, and
the sounds of a hired concertina and the cracked
piping voice of a child of seven singing “The
Hamlet” were heard in the entry. The room
was filled with noise. The tavern-keeper and
the boys were busy with the new-comers. Marmeladov
paying no attention to the new arrivals continued
his story. He appeared by now to be extremely
weak, but as he became more and more drunk,
he became more and more talkative. The recollection
of his recent success in getting the situation
seemed to revive him, and was positively reflected
in a sort of radiance on his face. Raskolnikov
listened attentively.
“That was five weeks ago, sir. Yes.... As
soon as Katerina Ivanovna and Sonia heard
of it, mercy on us, it was as though I stepped
into the kingdom of Heaven. It used to be:
you can lie like a beast, nothing but abuse.
Now they were walking on tiptoe, hushing the
children. ‘Semyon Zaharovitch is tired with
his work at the office, he is resting, shh!’
They made me coffee before I went to work
and boiled cream for me! They began to get
real cream for me, do you hear that? And how
they managed to get together the money for
a decent outfit—eleven roubles, fifty copecks,
I can’t guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts—most
magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in
splendid style, for eleven roubles and a half.
The first morning I came back from the office
I found Katerina Ivanovna had cooked two courses
for dinner—soup and salt meat with horse
radish—which we had never dreamed of till
then. She had not any dresses... none at all,
but she got herself up as though she were
going on a visit; and not that she’d anything
to do it with, she smartened herself up with
nothing at all, she’d done her hair nicely,
put on a clean collar of some sort, cuffs,
and there she was, quite a different person,
she was younger and better looking. Sonia,
my little darling, had only helped with money
‘for the time,’ she said, ‘it won’t
do for me to come and see you too often. After
dark maybe when no one can see.’ Do you
hear, do you hear? I lay down for a nap after
dinner and what do you think: though Katerina
Ivanovna had quarrelled to the last degree
with our landlady Amalia Fyodorovna only a
week before, she could not resist then asking
her in to coffee. For two hours they were
sitting, whispering together. ‘Semyon Zaharovitch
is in the service again, now, and receiving
a salary,’ says she, ‘and he went himself
to his excellency and his excellency himself
came out to him, made all the others wait
and led Semyon Zaharovitch by the hand before
everybody into his study.’ Do you hear,
do you hear? ‘To be sure,’ says he, ‘Semyon
Zaharovitch, remembering your past services,’
says he, ‘and in spite of your propensity
to that foolish weakness, since you promise
now and since moreover we’ve got on badly
without you,’ (do you hear, do you hear;)
‘and so,’ says he, ‘I rely now on your
word as a gentleman.’ And all that, let
me tell you, she has simply made up for herself,
and not simply out of wantonness, for the
sake of bragging; no, she believes it all
herself, she amuses herself with her own fancies,
upon my word she does! And I don’t blame
her for it, no, I don’t blame her!... Six
days ago when I brought her my first earnings
in full—twenty-three roubles forty copecks
altogether—she called me her poppet: ‘poppet,’
said she, ‘my little poppet.’ And when
we were by ourselves, you understand? You
would not think me a beauty, you would not
think much of me as a husband, would you?...
Well, she pinched my cheek, ‘my little poppet,’
said she.”
Marmeladov broke off, tried to smile, but
suddenly his chin began to twitch. He controlled
himself however. The tavern, the degraded
appearance of the man, the five nights in
the hay barge, and the pot of spirits, and
yet this poignant love for his wife and children
bewildered his listener. Raskolnikov listened
intently but with a sick sensation. He felt
vexed that he had come here.
“Honoured sir, honoured sir,” cried Marmeladov
recovering himself—“Oh, sir, perhaps all
this seems a laughing matter to you, as it
does to others, and perhaps I am only worrying
you with the stupidity of all the trivial
details of my home life, but it is not a laughing
matter to me. For I can feel it all.... And
the whole of that heavenly day of my life
and the whole of that evening I passed in
fleeting dreams of how I would arrange it
all, and how I would dress all the children,
and how I should give her rest, and how I
should rescue my own daughter from dishonour
and restore her to the bosom of her family....
And a great deal more.... Quite excusable,
sir. Well, then, sir” (Marmeladov suddenly
gave a sort of start, raised his head and
gazed intently at his listener) “well, on
the very next day after all those dreams,
that is to say, exactly five days ago, in
the evening, by a cunning trick, like a thief
in the night, I stole from Katerina Ivanovna
the key of her box, took out what was left
of my earnings, how much it was I have forgotten,
and now look at me, all of you! It’s the
fifth day since I left home, and they are
looking for me there and it’s the end of
my employment, and my uniform is lying in
a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I exchanged
it for the garments I have on... and it’s
the end of everything!”
Marmeladov struck his forehead with his fist,
clenched his teeth, closed his eyes and leaned
heavily with his elbow on the table. But a
minute later his face suddenly changed and
with a certain assumed slyness and affectation
of bravado, he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed
and said:
“This morning I went to see Sonia, I went
to ask her for a pick-me-up! He-he-he!”
“You don’t say she gave it to you?”
cried one of the new-comers; he shouted the
words and went off into a guffaw.
“This very quart was bought with her money,”
Marmeladov declared, addressing himself exclusively
to Raskolnikov. “Thirty copecks she gave
me with her own hands, her last, all she had,
as I saw.... She said nothing, she only looked
at me without a word.... Not on earth, but
up yonder... they grieve over men, they weep,
but they don’t blame them, they don’t
blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more
when they don’t blame! Thirty copecks yes!
And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do
you think, my dear sir? For now she’s got
to keep up her appearance. It costs money,
that smartness, that special smartness, you
know? Do you understand? And there’s pomatum,
too, you see, she must have things; petticoats,
starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones
to show off her foot when she has to step
over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do
you understand what all that smartness means?
And here I, her own father, here I took thirty
copecks of that money for a drink! And I am
drinking it! And I have already drunk it!
Come, who will have pity on a man like me,
eh? Are you sorry for me, sir, or not? Tell
me, sir, are you sorry or not? He-he-he!”
He would have filled his glass, but there
was no drink left. The pot was empty.
“What are you to be pitied for?” shouted
the tavern-keeper who was again near them.
Shouts of laughter and even oaths followed.
The laughter and the oaths came from those
who were listening and also from those who
had heard nothing but were simply looking
at the figure of the discharged government
clerk.
“To be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?”
Marmeladov suddenly declaimed, standing up
with his arm outstretched, as though he had
been only waiting for that question.
“Why am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there’s
nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified,
crucified on a cross, not pitied! Crucify
me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And
then I will go of myself to be crucified,
for it’s not merry-making I seek but tears
and tribulation!... Do you suppose, you that
sell, that this pint of yours has been sweet
to me? It was tribulation I sought at the
bottom of it, tears and tribulation, and have
found it, and I have tasted it; but He will
pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has
understood all men and all things, He is the
One, He too is the judge. He will come in
that day and He will ask: ‘Where is the
daughter who gave herself for her cross, consumptive
step-mother and for the little children of
another? Where is the daughter who had pity
upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father,
undismayed by his beastliness?’ And He will
say, ‘Come to me! I have already forgiven
thee once.... I have forgiven thee once....
Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee
for thou hast loved much....’ And he will
forgive my Sonia, He will forgive, I know
it... I felt it in my heart when I was with
her just now! And He will judge and will forgive
all, the good and the evil, the wise and the
meek.... And when He has done with all of
them, then He will summon us. ‘You too come
forth,’ He will say, ‘Come forth ye drunkards,
come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children
of shame!’ And we shall all come forth,
without shame and shall stand before him.
And He will say unto us, ‘Ye are swine,
made in the Image of the Beast and with his
mark; but come ye also!’ And the wise ones
and those of understanding will say, ‘Oh
Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?’
And He will say, ‘This is why I receive
them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them,
oh ye of understanding, that not one of them
believed himself to be worthy of this.’
And He will hold out His hands to us and we
shall fall down before him... and we shall
weep... and we shall understand all things!
Then we shall understand all!... and all will
understand, Katerina Ivanovna even... she
will understand.... Lord, Thy kingdom come!”
And he sank down on the bench exhausted, and
helpless, looking at no one, apparently oblivious
of his surroundings and plunged in deep thought.
His words had created a certain impression;
there was a moment of silence; but soon laughter
and oaths were heard again.
“That’s his notion!”
“Talked himself silly!”
“A fine clerk he is!”
And so on, and so on.
“Let us go, sir,” said Marmeladov all
at once, raising his head and addressing Raskolnikov—“come
along with me... Kozel’s house, looking
into the yard. I’m going to Katerina Ivanovna—time
I did.”
Raskolnikov had for some time been wanting
to go and he had meant to help him. Marmeladov
was much unsteadier on his legs than in his
speech and leaned heavily on the young man.
They had two or three hundred paces to go.
The drunken man was more and more overcome
by dismay and confusion as they drew nearer
the house.
“It’s not Katerina Ivanovna I am afraid
of now,” he muttered in agitation—“and
that she will begin pulling my hair. What
does my hair matter! Bother my hair! That’s
what I say! Indeed it will be better if she
does begin pulling it, that’s not what I
am afraid of... it’s her eyes I am afraid
of... yes, her eyes... the red on her cheeks,
too, frightens me... and her breathing too....
Have you noticed how people in that disease
breathe... when they are excited? I am frightened
of the children’s crying, too.... For if
Sonia has not taken them food... I don’t
know what’s happened! I don’t know! But
blows I am not afraid of.... Know, sir, that
such blows are not a pain to me, but even
an enjoyment. In fact I can’t get on without
it.... It’s better so. Let her strike me,
it relieves her heart... it’s better so...
There is the house. The house of Kozel, the
cabinet-maker... a German, well-to-do. Lead
the way!”
They went in from the yard and up to the fourth
storey. The staircase got darker and darker
as they went up. It was nearly eleven o’clock
and although in summer in Petersburg there
is no real night, yet it was quite dark at
the top of the stairs.
A grimy little door at the very top of the
stairs stood ajar. A very poor-looking room
about ten paces long was lighted up by a candle-end;
the whole of it was visible from the entrance.
It was all in disorder, littered up with rags
of all sorts, especially children’s garments.
Across the furthest corner was stretched a
ragged sheet. Behind it probably was the bed.
There was nothing in the room except two chairs
and a sofa covered with American leather,
full of holes, before which stood an old deal
kitchen-table, unpainted and uncovered. At
the edge of the table stood a smoldering tallow-candle
in an iron candlestick. It appeared that the
family had a room to themselves, not part
of a room, but their room was practically
a passage. The door leading to the other rooms,
or rather cupboards, into which Amalia Lippevechsel’s
flat was divided stood half open, and there
was shouting, uproar and laughter within.
People seemed to be playing cards and drinking
tea there. Words of the most unceremonious
kind flew out from time to time.
Raskolnikov recognised Katerina Ivanovna at
once. She was a rather tall, slim and graceful
woman, terribly emaciated, with magnificent
dark brown hair and with a hectic flush in
her cheeks. She was pacing up and down in
her little room, pressing her hands against
her chest; her lips were parched and her breathing
came in nervous broken gasps. Her eyes glittered
as in fever and looked about with a harsh
immovable stare. And that consumptive and
excited face with the last flickering light
of the candle-end playing upon it made a sickening
impression. She seemed to Raskolnikov about
thirty years old and was certainly a strange
wife for Marmeladov.... She had not heard
them and did not notice them coming in. She
seemed to be lost in thought, hearing and
seeing nothing. The room was close, but she
had not opened the window; a stench rose from
the staircase, but the door on to the stairs
was not closed. From the inner rooms clouds
of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing,
but did not close the door. The youngest child,
a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled
up on the floor with her head on the sofa.
A boy a year older stood crying and shaking
in the corner, probably he had just had a
beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years
old, tall and thin, wearing a thin and ragged
chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung
over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and
barely reaching her knees. Her arm, as thin
as a stick, was round her brother’s neck.
She was trying to comfort him, whispering
something to him, and doing all she could
to keep him from whimpering again. At the
same time her large dark eyes, which looked
larger still from the thinness of her frightened
face, were watching her mother with alarm.
Marmeladov did not enter the door, but dropped
on his knees in the very doorway, pushing
Raskolnikov in front of him. The woman seeing
a stranger stopped indifferently facing him,
coming to herself for a moment and apparently
wondering what he had come for. But evidently
she decided that he was going into the next
room, as he had to pass through hers to get
there. Taking no further notice of him, she
walked towards the outer door to close it
and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her
husband on his knees in the doorway.
“Ah!” she cried out in a frenzy, “he
has come back! The criminal! the monster!...
And where is the money? What’s in your pocket,
show me! And your clothes are all different!
Where are your clothes? Where is the money!
Speak!”
And she fell to searching him. Marmeladov
submissively and obediently held up both arms
to facilitate the search. Not a farthing was
there.
“Where is the money?” she cried—“Mercy
on us, can he have drunk it all? There were
twelve silver roubles left in the chest!”
and in a fury she seized him by the hair and
dragged him into the room. Marmeladov seconded
her efforts by meekly crawling along on his
knees.
“And this is a consolation to me! This does
not hurt me, but is a positive con-so-la-tion,
ho-nou-red sir,” he called out, shaken to
and fro by his hair and even once striking
the ground with his forehead. The child asleep
on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The
boy in the corner losing all control began
trembling and screaming and rushed to his
sister in violent terror, almost in a fit.
The eldest girl was shaking like a leaf.
“He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,”
the poor woman screamed in despair—“and
his clothes are gone! And they are hungry,
hungry!”—and wringing her hands she pointed
to the children. “Oh, accursed life! And
you, are you not ashamed?”—she pounced
all at once upon Raskolnikov—“from the
tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You
have been drinking with him, too! Go away!”
The young man was hastening away without uttering
a word. The inner door was thrown wide open
and inquisitive faces were peering in at it.
Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes
and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in
at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures
in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes
of unseemly scantiness, some of them with
cards in their hands. They were particularly
diverted, when Marmeladov, dragged about by
his hair, shouted that it was a consolation
to him. They even began to come into the room;
at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard:
this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself
pushing her way amongst them and trying to
restore order after her own fashion and for
the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman
by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear
out of the room next day. As he went out,
Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into
his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had
received in exchange for his rouble in the
tavern and to lay them unnoticed on the window.
Afterwards on the stairs, he changed his mind
and would have gone back.
“What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he
thought to himself, “they have Sonia and
I want it myself.” But reflecting that it
would be impossible to take it back now and
that in any case he would not have taken it,
he dismissed it with a wave of his hand and
went back to his lodging. “Sonia wants pomatum
too,” he said as he walked along the street,
and he laughed malignantly—“such smartness
costs money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia herself
will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always
a risk, hunting big game... digging for gold...
then they would all be without a crust to-morrow
except for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What
a mine they’ve dug there! And they’re
making the most of it! Yes, they are making
the most of it! They’ve wept over it and
grown used to it. Man grows used to everything,
the scoundrel!”
He sank into thought.
“And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly
after a moment’s thought. “What if man
is not really a scoundrel, man in general,
I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all
the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors
and there are no barriers and it’s all as
it should be.”
CHAPTER III
He
waked up late next day after a broken sleep.
But his sleep had not refreshed him; he waked
up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked
with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard
of a room about six paces in length. It had
a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty
yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it
was so low-pitched that a man of more than
average height was ill at ease in it and felt
every moment that he would knock his head
against the ceiling. The furniture was in
keeping with the room: there were three old
chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in
the corner on which lay a few manuscripts
and books; the dust that lay thick upon them
showed that they had been long untouched.
A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole
of one wall and half the floor space of the
room; it was once covered with chintz, but
was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as
a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he
was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped
in his old student’s overcoat, with his
head on one little pillow, under which he
heaped up all the linen he had, clean and
dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table
stood in front of the sofa.
It would have been difficult to sink to a
lower ebb of disorder, but to Raskolnikov
in his present state of mind this was positively
agreeable. He had got completely away from
everyone, like a tortoise in its shell, and
even the sight of a servant girl who had to
wait upon him and looked sometimes into his
room made him writhe with nervous irritation.
He was in the condition that overtakes some
monomaniacs entirely concentrated upon one
thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight
given up sending him in meals, and he had
not yet thought of expostulating with her,
though he went without his dinner. Nastasya,
the cook and only servant, was rather pleased
at the lodger’s mood and had entirely given
up sweeping and doing his room, only once
a week or so she would stray into his room
with a broom. She waked him up that day.
“Get up, why are you asleep?” she called
to him. “It’s past nine, I have brought
you some tea; will you have a cup? I should
think you’re fairly starving?”
Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognised
Nastasya.
“From the landlady, eh?” he asked, slowly
and with a sickly face sitting up on the sofa.
“From the landlady, indeed!”
She set before him her own cracked teapot
full of weak and stale tea and laid two yellow
lumps of sugar by the side of it.
“Here, Nastasya, take it please,” he said,
fumbling in his pocket (for he had slept in
his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers—“run
and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage,
the cheapest, at the pork-butcher’s.”
“The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute,
but wouldn’t you rather have some cabbage
soup instead of sausage? It’s capital soup,
yesterday’s. I saved it for you yesterday,
but you came in late. It’s fine soup.”
When the soup had been brought, and he had
begun upon it, Nastasya sat down beside him
on the sofa and began chatting. She was a
country peasant-woman and a very talkative
one.
“Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to
the police about you,” she said.
He scowled.
“To the police? What does she want?”
“You don’t pay her money and you won’t
turn out of the room. That’s what she wants,
to be sure.”
“The devil, that’s the last straw,”
he muttered, grinding his teeth, “no, that
would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,”
he added aloud. “I’ll go and talk to her
to-day.”
“Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am.
But why, if you are so clever, do you lie
here like a sack and have nothing to show
for it? One time you used to go out, you say,
to teach children. But why is it you do nothing
now?”
“I am doing...” Raskolnikov began sullenly
and reluctantly.
“What are you doing?”
“Work...”
“What sort of work?”
“I am thinking,” he answered seriously
after a pause.
Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter.
She was given to laughter and when anything
amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering
and shaking all over till she felt ill.
“And have you made much money by your thinking?”
she managed to articulate at last.
“One can’t go out to give lessons without
boots. And I’m sick of it.”
“Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.”
“They pay so little for lessons. What’s
the use of a few coppers?” he answered,
reluctantly, as though replying to his own
thought.
“And you want to get a fortune all at once?”
He looked at her strangely.
“Yes, I want a fortune,” he answered firmly,
after a brief pause.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten
me! Shall I get you the loaf or not?”
“As you please.”
“Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday
when you were out.”
“A letter? for me! from whom?”
“I can’t say. I gave three copecks of
my own to the postman for it. Will you pay
me back?”
“Then bring it to me, for God’s sake,
bring it,” cried Raskolnikov greatly excited—“good
God!”
A minute later the letter was brought him.
That was it: from his mother, from the province
of R——. He turned pale when he took it.
It was a long while since he had received
a letter, but another feeling also suddenly
stabbed his heart.
“Nastasya, leave me alone, for goodness’
sake; here are your three copecks, but for
goodness’ sake, make haste and go!”
The letter was quivering in his hand; he did
not want to open it in her presence; he wanted
to be left alone with this letter. When Nastasya
had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his
lips and kissed it; then he gazed intently
at the address, the small, sloping handwriting,
so dear and familiar, of the mother who had
once taught him to read and write. He delayed;
he seemed almost afraid of something. At last
he opened it; it was a thick heavy letter,
weighing over two ounces, two large sheets
of note paper were covered with very small
handwriting.
“My dear Rodya,” wrote his mother—“it’s
two months since I last had a talk with you
by letter which has distressed me and even
kept me awake at night, thinking. But I am
sure you will not blame me for my inevitable
silence. You know how I love you; you are
all we have to look to, Dounia and I, you
are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What
a grief it was to me when I heard that you
had given up the university some months ago,
for want of means to keep yourself and that
you had lost your lessons and your other work!
How could I help you out of my hundred and
twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen
roubles I sent you four months ago I borrowed,
as you know, on security of my pension, from
Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant of
this town. He is a kind-hearted man and was
a friend of your father’s too. But having
given him the right to receive the pension,
I had to wait till the debt was paid off and
that is only just done, so that I’ve been
unable to send you anything all this time.
But now, thank God, I believe I shall be able
to send you something more and in fact we
may congratulate ourselves on our good fortune
now, of which I hasten to inform you. In the
first place, would you have guessed, dear
Rodya, that your sister has been living with
me for the last six weeks and we shall not
be separated in the future. Thank God, her
sufferings are over, but I will tell you everything
in order, so that you may know just how everything
has happened and all that we have hitherto
concealed from you. When you wrote to me two
months ago that you had heard that Dounia
had a great deal to put up with in the Svidrigraïlovs’
house, when you wrote that and asked me to
tell you all about it—what could I write
in answer to you? If I had written the whole
truth to you, I dare say you would have thrown
up everything and have come to us, even if
you had to walk all the way, for I know your
character and your feelings, and you would
not let your sister be insulted. I was in
despair myself, but what could I do? And,
besides, I did not know the whole truth myself
then. What made it all so difficult was that
Dounia received a hundred roubles in advance
when she took the place as governess in their
family, on condition of part of her salary
being deducted every month, and so it was
impossible to throw up the situation without
repaying the debt. This sum (now I can explain
it all to you, my precious Rodya) she took
chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles,
which you needed so terribly then and which
you received from us last year. We deceived
you then, writing that this money came from
Dounia’s savings, but that was not so, and
now I tell you all about it, because, thank
God, things have suddenly changed for the
better, and that you may know how Dounia loves
you and what a heart she has. At first indeed
Mr. Svidrigaïlov treated her very rudely
and used to make disrespectful and jeering
remarks at table.... But I don’t want to
go into all those painful details, so as not
to worry you for nothing when it is now all
over. In short, in spite of the kind and generous
behaviour of Marfa Petrovna, Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s
wife, and all the rest of the household, Dounia
had a very hard time, especially when Mr.
Svidrigaïlov, relapsing into his old regimental
habits, was under the influence of Bacchus.
And how do you think it was all explained
later on? Would you believe that the crazy
fellow had conceived a passion for Dounia
from the beginning, but had concealed it under
a show of rudeness and contempt. Possibly
he was ashamed and horrified himself at his
own flighty hopes, considering his years and
his being the father of a family; and that
made him angry with Dounia. And possibly,
too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behaviour
to hide the truth from others. But at last
he lost all control and had the face to make
Dounia an open and shameful proposal, promising
her all sorts of inducements and offering,
besides, to throw up everything and take her
to another estate of his, or even abroad.
You can imagine all she went through! To leave
her situation at once was impossible not only
on account of the money debt, but also to
spare the feelings of Marfa Petrovna, whose
suspicions would have been aroused: and then
Dounia would have been the cause of a rupture
in the family. And it would have meant a terrible
scandal for Dounia too; that would have been
inevitable. There were various other reasons
owing to which Dounia could not hope to escape
from that awful house for another six weeks.
You know Dounia, of course; you know how clever
she is and what a strong will she has. Dounia
can endure a great deal and even in the most
difficult cases she has the fortitude to maintain
her firmness. She did not even write to me
about everything for fear of upsetting me,
although we were constantly in communication.
It all ended very unexpectedly. Marfa Petrovna
accidentally overheard her husband imploring
Dounia in the garden, and, putting quite a
wrong interpretation on the position, threw
the blame upon her, believing her to be the
cause of it all. An awful scene took place
between them on the spot in the garden; Marfa
Petrovna went so far as to strike Dounia,
refused to hear anything and was shouting
at her for a whole hour and then gave orders
that Dounia should be packed off at once to
me in a plain peasant’s cart, into which
they flung all her things, her linen and her
clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it
up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain
came on, too, and Dounia, insulted and put
to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an
open cart all the seventeen versts into town.
Only think now what answer could I have sent
to the letter I received from you two months
ago and what could I have written? I was in
despair; I dared not write to you the truth
because you would have been very unhappy,
mortified and indignant, and yet what could
you do? You could only perhaps ruin yourself,
and, besides, Dounia would not allow it; and
fill up my letter with trifles when my heart
was so full of sorrow, I could not. For a
whole month the town was full of gossip about
this scandal, and it came to such a pass that
Dounia and I dared not even go to church on
account of the contemptuous looks, whispers,
and even remarks made aloud about us. All
our acquaintances avoided us, nobody even
bowed to us in the street, and I learnt that
some shopmen and clerks were intending to
insult us in a shameful way, smearing the
gates of our house with pitch, so that the
landlord began to tell us we must leave. All
this was set going by Marfa Petrovna who managed
to slander Dounia and throw dirt at her in
every family. She knows everyone in the neighbourhood,
and that month she was continually coming
into the town, and as she is rather talkative
and fond of gossiping about her family affairs
and particularly of complaining to all and
each of her husband—which is not at all
right—so in a short time she had spread
her story not only in the town, but over the
whole surrounding district. It made me ill,
but Dounia bore it better than I did, and
if only you could have seen how she endured
it all and tried to comfort me and cheer me
up! She is an angel! But by God’s mercy,
our sufferings were cut short: Mr. Svidrigaïlov
returned to his senses and repented and, probably
feeling sorry for Dounia, he laid before Marfa
Petrovna a complete and unmistakable proof
of Dounia’s innocence, in the form of a
letter Dounia had been forced to write and
give to him, before Marfa Petrovna came upon
them in the garden. This letter, which remained
in Mr. Svidrigaïlov’s hands after her departure,
she had written to refuse personal explanations
and secret interviews, for which he was entreating
her. In that letter she reproached him with
great heat and indignation for the baseness
of his behaviour in regard to Marfa Petrovna,
reminding him that he was the father and head
of a family and telling him how infamous it
was of him to torment and make unhappy a defenceless
girl, unhappy enough already. Indeed, dear
Rodya, the letter was so nobly and touchingly
written that I sobbed when I read it and to
this day I cannot read it without tears. Moreover,
the evidence of the servants, too, cleared
Dounia’s reputation; they had seen and known
a great deal more than Mr. Svidrigaïlov had
himself supposed—as indeed is always the
case with servants. Marfa Petrovna was completely
taken aback, and ‘again crushed’ as she
said herself to us, but she was completely
convinced of Dounia’s innocence. The very
next day, being Sunday, she went straight
to the Cathedral, knelt down and prayed with
tears to Our Lady to give her strength to
bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then
she came straight from the Cathedral to us,
told us the whole story, wept bitterly and,
fully penitent, she embraced Dounia and besought
her to forgive her. The same morning without
any delay, she went round to all the houses
in the town and everywhere, shedding tears,
she asserted in the most flattering terms
Dounia’s innocence and the nobility of her
feelings and her behavior. What was more,
she showed and read to everyone the letter
in Dounia’s own handwriting to Mr. Svidrigaïlov
and even allowed them to take copies of it—which
I must say I think was superfluous. In this
way she was busy for several days in driving
about the whole town, because some people
had taken offence through precedence having
been given to others. And therefore they had
to take turns, so that in every house she
was expected before she arrived, and everyone
knew that on such and such a day Marfa Petrovna
would be reading the letter in such and such
a place and people assembled for every reading
of it, even many who had heard it several
times already both in their own houses and
in other people’s. In my opinion a great
deal, a very great deal of all this was unnecessary;
but that’s Marfa Petrovna’s character.
Anyway she succeeded in completely re-establishing
Dounia’s reputation and the whole ignominy
of this affair rested as an indelible disgrace
upon her husband, as the only person to blame,
so that I really began to feel sorry for him;
it was really treating the crazy fellow too
harshly. Dounia was at once asked to give
lessons in several families, but she refused.
All of a sudden everyone began to treat her
with marked respect and all this did much
to bring about the event by which, one may
say, our whole fortunes are now transformed.
You must know, dear Rodya, that Dounia has
a suitor and that she has already consented
to marry him. I hasten to tell you all about
the matter, and though it has been arranged
without asking your consent, I think you will
not be aggrieved with me or with your sister
on that account, for you will see that we
could not wait and put off our decision till
we heard from you. And you could not have
judged all the facts without being on the
spot. This was how it happened. He is already
of the rank of a counsellor, Pyotr Petrovitch
Luzhin, and is distantly related to Marfa
Petrovna, who has been very active in bringing
the match about. It began with his expressing
through her his desire to make our acquaintance.
He was properly received, drank coffee with
us and the very next day he sent us a letter
in which he very courteously made an offer
and begged for a speedy and decided answer.
He is a very busy man and is in a great hurry
to get to Petersburg, so that every moment
is precious to him. At first, of course, we
were greatly surprised, as it had all happened
so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and
talked it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do
man, to be depended upon, he has two posts
in the government and has already made his
fortune. It is true that he is forty-five
years old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing
appearance and might still be thought attractive
by women, and he is altogether a very respectable
and presentable man, only he seems a little
morose and somewhat conceited. But possibly
that may only be the impression he makes at
first sight. And beware, dear Rodya, when
he comes to Petersburg, as he shortly will
do, beware of judging him too hastily and
severely, as your way is, if there is anything
you do not like in him at first sight. I give
you this warning, although I feel sure that
he will make a favourable impression upon
you. Moreover, in order to understand any
man one must be deliberate and careful to
avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas,
which are very difficult to correct and get
over afterwards. And Pyotr Petrovitch, judging
by many indications, is a thoroughly estimable
man. At his first visit, indeed, he told us
that he was a practical man, but still he
shares, as he expressed it, many of the convictions
‘of our most rising generation’ and he
is an opponent of all prejudices. He said
a good deal more, for he seems a little conceited
and likes to be listened to, but this is scarcely
a vice. I, of course, understood very little
of it, but Dounia explained to me that, though
he is not a man of great education, he is
clever and seems to be good-natured. You know
your sister’s character, Rodya. She is a
resolute, sensible, patient and generous girl,
but she has a passionate heart, as I know
very well. Of course, there is no great love
either on his side, or on hers, but Dounia
is a clever girl and has the heart of an angel,
and will make it her duty to make her husband
happy who on his side will make her happiness
his care. Of that we have no good reason to
doubt, though it must be admitted the matter
has been arranged in great haste. Besides
he is a man of great prudence and he will
see, to be sure, of himself, that his own
happiness will be the more secure, the happier
Dounia is with him. And as for some defects
of character, for some habits and even certain
differences of opinion—which indeed are
inevitable even in the happiest marriages—Dounia
has said that, as regards all that, she relies
on herself, that there is nothing to be uneasy
about, and that she is ready to put up with
a great deal, if only their future relationship
can be an honourable and straightforward one.
He struck me, for instance, at first, as rather
abrupt, but that may well come from his being
an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how
it is. For instance, at his second visit,
after he had received Dounia’s consent,
in the course of conversation, he declared
that before making Dounia’s acquaintance,
he had made up his mind to marry a girl of
good reputation, without dowry and, above
all, one who had experienced poverty, because,
as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted
to his wife, but that it is better for a wife
to look upon her husband as her benefactor.
I must add that he expressed it more nicely
and politely than I have done, for I have
forgotten his actual phrases and only remember
the meaning. And, besides, it was obviously
not said of design, but slipped out in the
heat of conversation, so that he tried afterwards
to correct himself and smooth it over, but
all the same it did strike me as somewhat
rude, and I said so afterwards to Dounia.
But Dounia was vexed, and answered that ‘words
are not deeds,’ and that, of course, is
perfectly true. Dounia did not sleep all night
before she made up her mind, and, thinking
that I was asleep, she got out of bed and
was walking up and down the room all night;
at last she knelt down before the ikon and
prayed long and fervently and in the morning
she told me that she had decided.
“I have mentioned already that Pyotr Petrovitch
is just setting off for Petersburg, where
he has a great deal of business, and he wants
to open a legal bureau. He has been occupied
for many years in conducting civil and commercial
litigation, and only the other day he won
an important case. He has to be in Petersburg
because he has an important case before the
Senate. So, Rodya dear, he may be of the greatest
use to you, in every way indeed, and Dounia
and I have agreed that from this very day
you could definitely enter upon your career
and might consider that your future is marked
out and assured for you. Oh, if only this
comes to pass! This would be such a benefit
that we could only look upon it as a providential
blessing. Dounia is dreaming of nothing else.
We have even ventured already to drop a few
words on the subject to Pyotr Petrovitch.
He was cautious in his answer, and said that,
of course, as he could not get on without
a secretary, it would be better to be paying
a salary to a relation than to a stranger,
if only the former were fitted for the duties
(as though there could be doubt of your being
fitted!) but then he expressed doubts whether
your studies at the university would leave
you time for work at his office. The matter
dropped for the time, but Dounia is thinking
of nothing else now. She has been in a sort
of fever for the last few days, and has already
made a regular plan for your becoming in the
end an associate and even a partner in Pyotr
Petrovitch’s business, which might well
be, seeing that you are a student of law.
I am in complete agreement with her, Rodya,
and share all her plans and hopes, and think
there is every probability of realising them.
And in spite of Pyotr Petrovitch’s evasiveness,
very natural at present (since he does not
know you), Dounia is firmly persuaded that
she will gain everything by her good influence
over her future husband; this she is reckoning
upon. Of course we are careful not to talk
of any of these more remote plans to Pyotr
Petrovitch, especially of your becoming his
partner. He is a practical man and might take
this very coldly, it might all seem to him
simply a day-dream. Nor has either Dounia
or I breathed a word to him of the great hopes
we have of his helping us to pay for your
university studies; we have not spoken of
it in the first place, because it will come
to pass of itself, later on, and he will no
doubt without wasting words offer to do it
of himself, (as though he could refuse Dounia
that) the more readily since you may by your
own efforts become his right hand in the office,
and receive this assistance not as a charity,
but as a salary earned by your own work. Dounia
wants to arrange it all like this and I quite
agree with her. And we have not spoken of
our plans for another reason, that is, because
I particularly wanted you to feel on an equal
footing when you first meet him. When Dounia
spoke to him with enthusiasm about you, he
answered that one could never judge of a man
without seeing him close, for oneself, and
that he looked forward to forming his own
opinion when he makes your acquaintance. Do
you know, my precious Rodya, I think that
perhaps for some reasons (nothing to do with
Pyotr Petrovitch though, simply for my own
personal, perhaps old-womanish, fancies) I
should do better to go on living by myself,
apart, than with them, after the wedding.
I am convinced that he will be generous and
delicate enough to invite me and to urge me
to remain with my daughter for the future,
and if he has said nothing about it hitherto,
it is simply because it has been taken for
granted; but I shall refuse. I have noticed
more than once in my life that husbands don’t
quite get on with their mothers-in-law, and
I don’t want to be the least bit in anyone’s
way, and for my own sake, too, would rather
be quite independent, so long as I have a
crust of bread of my own, and such children
as you and Dounia. If possible, I would settle
somewhere near you, for the most joyful piece
of news, dear Rodya, I have kept for the end
of my letter: know then, my dear boy, that
we may, perhaps, be all together in a very
short time and may embrace one another again
after a separation of almost three years!
It is settled for certain that Dounia and
I are to set off for Petersburg, exactly when
I don’t know, but very, very soon, possibly
in a week. It all depends on Pyotr Petrovitch
who will let us know when he has had time
to look round him in Petersburg. To suit his
own arrangements he is anxious to have the
ceremony as soon as possible, even before
the fast of Our Lady, if it could be managed,
or if that is too soon to be ready, immediately
after. Oh, with what happiness I shall press
you to my heart! Dounia is all excitement
at the joyful thought of seeing you, she said
one day in joke that she would be ready to
marry Pyotr Petrovitch for that alone. She
is an angel! She is not writing anything to
you now, and has only told me to write that
she has so much, so much to tell you that
she is not going to take up her pen now, for
a few lines would tell you nothing, and it
would only mean upsetting herself; she bids
me send you her love and innumerable kisses.
But although we shall be meeting so soon,
perhaps I shall send you as much money as
I can in a day or two. Now that everyone has
heard that Dounia is to marry Pyotr Petrovitch,
my credit has suddenly improved and I know
that Afanasy Ivanovitch will trust me now
even to seventy-five roubles on the security
of my pension, so that perhaps I shall be
able to send you twenty-five or even thirty
roubles. I would send you more, but I am uneasy
about our travelling expenses; for though
Pyotr Petrovitch has been so kind as to undertake
part of the expenses of the journey, that
is to say, he has taken upon himself the conveyance
of our bags and big trunk (which will be conveyed
through some acquaintances of his), we must
reckon upon some expense on our arrival in
Petersburg, where we can’t be left without
a halfpenny, at least for the first few days.
But we have calculated it all, Dounia and
I, to the last penny, and we see that the
journey will not cost very much. It is only
ninety versts from us to the railway and we
have come to an agreement with a driver we
know, so as to be in readiness; and from there
Dounia and I can travel quite comfortably
third class. So that I may very likely be
able to send to you not twenty-five, but thirty
roubles. But enough; I have covered two sheets
already and there is no space left for more;
our whole history, but so many events have
happened! And now, my precious Rodya, I embrace
you and send you a mother’s blessing till
we meet. Love Dounia your sister, Rodya; love
her as she loves you and understand that she
loves you beyond everything, more than herself.
She is an angel and you, Rodya, you are everything
to us—our one hope, our one consolation.
If only you are happy, we shall be happy.
Do you still say your prayers, Rodya, and
believe in the mercy of our Creator and our
Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you
may have been visited by the new spirit of
infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is
so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how
in your childhood, when your father was living,
you used to lisp your prayers at my knee,
and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye,
till we meet then—I embrace you warmly,
warmly, with many kisses.
“Yours till death,
“PULCHERIA RASKOLNIKOV.”
Almost from the first, while he read the letter,
Raskolnikov’s face was wet with tears; but
when he finished it, his face was pale and
distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant
smile was on his lips. He laid his head down
on his threadbare dirty pillow and pondered,
pondered a long time. His heart was beating
violently, and his brain was in a turmoil.
At last he felt cramped and stifled in the
little yellow room that was like a cupboard
or a box. His eyes and his mind craved for
space. He took up his hat and went out, this
time without dread of meeting anyone; he had
forgotten his dread. He turned in the direction
of the Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along
Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though hastening
on some business, but he walked, as his habit
was, without noticing his way, muttering and
even speaking aloud to himself, to the astonishment
of the passers-by. Many of them took him to
be drunk.
CHAPTER IV
His mother’s letter had been a torture to
him, but as regards the chief fact in it,
he had felt not one moment’s hesitation,
even whilst he was reading the letter. The
essential question was settled, and irrevocably
settled, in his mind: “Never such a marriage
while I am alive and Mr. Luzhin be damned!”
“The thing is perfectly clear,” he muttered
to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating
the triumph of his decision. “No, mother,
no, Dounia, you won’t deceive me! and then
they apologise for not asking my advice and
for taking the decision without me! I dare
say! They imagine it is arranged now and can’t
be broken off; but we will see whether it
can or not! A magnificent excuse: ‘Pyotr
Petrovitch is such a busy man that even his
wedding has to be in post-haste, almost by
express.’ No, Dounia, I see it all and I
know what you want to say to me; and I know
too what you were thinking about, when you
walked up and down all night, and what your
prayers were like before the Holy Mother of
Kazan who stands in mother’s bedroom. Bitter
is the ascent to Golgotha.... Hm... so it
is finally settled; you have determined to
marry a sensible business man, Avdotya Romanovna,
one who has a fortune (has already made his
fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive),
a man who holds two government posts and who
shares the ideas of our most rising generation,
as mother writes, and who seems to be kind,
as Dounia herself observes. That seems beats
everything! And that very Dounia for that
very ‘seems’ is marrying him! Splendid!
splendid!
“... But I should like to know why mother
has written to me about ‘our most rising
generation’? Simply as a descriptive touch,
or with the idea of prepossessing me in favour
of Mr. Luzhin? Oh, the cunning of them! I
should like to know one thing more: how far
they were open with one another that day and
night and all this time since? Was it all
put into words, or did both understand that
they had the same thing at heart and in their
minds, so that there was no need to speak
of it aloud, and better not to speak of it.
Most likely it was partly like that, from
mother’s letter it’s evident: he struck
her as rude a little, and mother in her simplicity
took her observations to Dounia. And she was
sure to be vexed and ‘answered her angrily.’
I should think so! Who would not be angered
when it was quite clear without any naïve
questions and when it was understood that
it was useless to discuss it. And why does
she write to me, ‘love Dounia, Rodya, and
she loves you more than herself’? Has she
a secret conscience-prick at sacrificing her
daughter to her son? ‘You are our one comfort,
you are everything to us.’ Oh, mother!”
His bitterness grew more and more intense,
and if he had happened to meet Mr. Luzhin
at the moment, he might have murdered him.
“Hm... yes, that’s true,” he continued,
pursuing the whirling ideas that chased each
other in his brain, “it is true that ‘it
needs time and care to get to know a man,’
but there is no mistake about Mr. Luzhin.
The chief thing is he is ‘a man of business
and seems kind,’ that was something, wasn’t
it, to send the bags and big box for them!
A kind man, no doubt after that! But his bride
and her mother are to drive in a peasant’s
cart covered with sacking (I know, I have
been driven in it). No matter! It is only
ninety versts and then they can ‘travel
very comfortably, third class,’ for a thousand
versts! Quite right, too. One must cut one’s
coat according to one’s cloth, but what
about you, Mr. Luzhin? She is your bride....
And you must be aware that her mother has
to raise money on her pension for the journey.
To be sure it’s a matter of business, a
partnership for mutual benefit, with equal
shares and expenses;—food and drink provided,
but pay for your tobacco. The business man
has got the better of them, too. The luggage
will cost less than their fares and very likely
go for nothing. How is it that they don’t
both see all that, or is it that they don’t
want to see? And they are pleased, pleased!
And to think that this is only the first blossoming,
and that the real fruits are to come! But
what really matters is not the stinginess,
is not the meanness, but the tone of the whole
thing. For that will be the tone after marriage,
it’s a foretaste of it. And mother too,
why should she be so lavish? What will she
have by the time she gets to Petersburg? Three
silver roubles or two ‘paper ones’ as
she says.... that old woman... hm. What does
she expect to live upon in Petersburg afterwards?
She has her reasons already for guessing that
she could not live with Dounia after the marriage,
even for the first few months. The good man
has no doubt let slip something on that subject
also, though mother would deny it: ‘I shall
refuse,’ says she. On whom is she reckoning
then? Is she counting on what is left of her
hundred and twenty roubles of pension when
Afanasy Ivanovitch’s debt is paid? She knits
woollen shawls and embroiders cuffs, ruining
her old eyes. And all her shawls don’t add
more than twenty roubles a year to her hundred
and twenty, I know that. So she is building
all her hopes all the time on Mr. Luzhin’s
generosity; ‘he will offer it of himself,
he will press it on me.’ You may wait a
long time for that! That’s how it always
is with these Schilleresque noble hearts;
till the last moment every goose is a swan
with them, till the last moment, they hope
for the best and will see nothing wrong, and
although they have an inkling of the other
side of the picture, yet they won’t face
the truth till they are forced to; the very
thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust
the truth away with both hands, until the
man they deck out in false colours puts a
fool’s cap on them with his own hands. I
should like to know whether Mr. Luzhin has
any orders of merit; I bet he has the Anna
in his buttonhole and that he puts it on when
he goes to dine with contractors or merchants.
He will be sure to have it for his wedding,
too! Enough of him, confound him!
“Well,... mother I don’t wonder at, it’s
like her, God bless her, but how could Dounia?
Dounia darling, as though I did not know you!
You were nearly twenty when I saw you last:
I understood you then. Mother writes that
‘Dounia can put up with a great deal.’
I know that very well. I knew that two years
and a half ago, and for the last two and a
half years I have been thinking about it,
thinking of just that, that ‘Dounia can
put up with a great deal.’ If she could
put up with Mr. Svidrigaïlov and all the
rest of it, she certainly can put up with
a great deal. And now mother and she have
taken it into their heads that she can put
up with Mr. Luzhin, who propounds the theory
of the superiority of wives raised from destitution
and owing everything to their husband’s
bounty—who propounds it, too, almost at
the first interview. Granted that he ‘let
it slip,’ though he is a sensible man, (yet
maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant
to make himself clear as soon as possible)
but Dounia, Dounia? She understands the man,
of course, but she will have to live with
the man. Why! she’d live on black bread
and water, she would not sell her soul, she
would not barter her moral freedom for comfort;
she would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein,
much less Mr. Luzhin’s money. No, Dounia
was not that sort when I knew her and... she
is still the same, of course! Yes, there’s
no denying, the Svidrigaïlovs are a bitter
pill! It’s a bitter thing to spend one’s
life a governess in the provinces for two
hundred roubles, but I know she would rather
be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with
a German master than degrade her soul, and
her moral dignity, by binding herself for
ever to a man whom she does not respect and
with whom she has nothing in common—for
her own advantage. And if Mr. Luzhin had been
of unalloyed gold, or one huge diamond, she
would never have consented to become his legal
concubine. Why is she consenting then? What’s
the point of it? What’s the answer? It’s
clear enough: for herself, for her comfort,
to save her life she would not sell herself,
but for someone else she is doing it! For
one she loves, for one she adores, she will
sell herself! That’s what it all amounts
to; for her brother, for her mother, she will
sell herself! She will sell everything! In
such cases, ‘we overcome our moral feeling
if necessary,’ freedom, peace, conscience
even, all, all are brought into the market.
Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be
happy! More than that, we become casuists,
we learn to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe
we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade ourselves
that it is one’s duty for a good object.
That’s just like us, it’s as clear as
daylight. It’s clear that Rodion Romanovitch
Raskolnikov is the central figure in the business,
and no one else. Oh, yes, she can ensure his
happiness, keep him in the university, make
him a partner in the office, make his whole
future secure; perhaps he may even be a rich
man later on, prosperous, respected, and may
even end his life a famous man! But my mother?
It’s all Rodya, precious Rodya, her first
born! For such a son who would not sacrifice
such a daughter! Oh, loving, over-partial
hearts! Why, for his sake we would not shrink
even from Sonia’s fate. Sonia, Sonia Marmeladov,
the eternal victim so long as the world lasts.
Have you taken the measure of your sacrifice,
both of you? Is it right? Can you bear it?
Is it any use? Is there sense in it? And let
me tell you, Dounia, Sonia’s life is no
worse than life with Mr. Luzhin. ‘There
can be no question of love,’ mother writes.
And what if there can be no respect either,
if on the contrary there is aversion, contempt,
repulsion, what then? So you will have to
‘keep up your appearance,’ too. Is not
that so? Do you understand what that smartness
means? Do you understand that the Luzhin smartness
is just the same thing as Sonia’s and may
be worse, viler, baser, because in your case,
Dounia, it’s a bargain for luxuries, after
all, but with Sonia it’s simply a question
of starvation. It has to be paid for, it has
to be paid for, Dounia, this smartness. And
what if it’s more than you can bear afterwards,
if you regret it? The bitterness, the misery,
the curses, the tears hidden from all the
world, for you are not a Marfa Petrovna. And
how will your mother feel then? Even now she
is uneasy, she is worried, but then, when
she sees it all clearly? And I? Yes, indeed,
what have you taken me for? I won’t have
your sacrifice, Dounia, I won’t have it,
mother! It shall not be, so long as I am alive,
it shall not, it shall not! I won’t accept
it!”
He suddenly paused in his reflection and stood
still.
“It shall not be? But what are you going
to do to prevent it? You’ll forbid it? And
what right have you? What can you promise
them on your side to give you such a right?
Your whole life, your whole future, you will
devote to them when you have finished your
studies and obtained a post? Yes, we have
heard all that before, and that’s all words,
but now? Now something must be done, now,
do you understand that? And what are you doing
now? You are living upon them. They borrow
on their hundred roubles pension. They borrow
from the Svidrigaïlovs. How are you going
to save them from Svidrigaïlovs, from Afanasy
Ivanovitch Vahrushin, oh, future millionaire
Zeus who would arrange their lives for them?
In another ten years? In another ten years,
mother will be blind with knitting shawls,
maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to
a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine
for a moment what may have become of your
sister in ten years? What may happen to her
during those ten years? Can you fancy?”
So he tortured himself, fretting himself with
such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment
in it. And yet all these questions were not
new ones suddenly confronting him, they were
old familiar aches. It was long since they
had first begun to grip and rend his heart.
Long, long ago his present anguish had its
first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered
strength, it had matured and concentrated,
until it had taken the form of a fearful,
frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured
his heart and mind, clamouring insistently
for an answer. Now his mother’s letter had
burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear
that he must not now suffer passively, worrying
himself over unsolved questions, but that
he must do something, do it at once, and do
it quickly. Anyway he must decide on something,
or else...
“Or throw up life altogether!” he cried
suddenly, in a frenzy—“accept one’s
lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle
everything in oneself, giving up all claim
to activity, life and love!”
“Do you understand, sir, do you understand
what it means when you have absolutely nowhere
to turn?” Marmeladov’s question came suddenly
into his mind, “for every man must have
somewhere to turn....”
He gave a sudden start; another thought, that
he had had yesterday, slipped back into his
mind. But he did not start at the thought
recurring to him, for he knew, he had felt
beforehand, that it must come back, he was
expecting it; besides it was not only yesterday’s
thought. The difference was that a month ago,
yesterday even, the thought was a mere dream:
but now... now it appeared not a dream at
all, it had taken a new menacing and quite
unfamiliar shape, and he suddenly became aware
of this himself.... He felt a hammering in
his head, and there was a darkness before
his eyes.
He looked round hurriedly, he was searching
for something. He wanted to sit down and was
looking for a seat; he was walking along the
K—— Boulevard. There was a seat about
a hundred paces in front of him. He walked
towards it as fast he could; but on the way
he met with a little adventure which absorbed
all his attention. Looking for the seat, he
had noticed a woman walking some twenty paces
in front of him, but at first he took no more
notice of her than of other objects that crossed
his path. It had happened to him many times
going home not to notice the road by which
he was going, and he was accustomed to walk
like that. But there was at first sight something
so strange about the woman in front of him,
that gradually his attention was riveted upon
her, at first reluctantly and, as it were,
resentfully, and then more and more intently.
He felt a sudden desire to find out what it
was that was so strange about the woman. In
the first place, she appeared to be a girl
quite young, and she was walking in the great
heat bareheaded and with no parasol or gloves,
waving her arms about in an absurd way. She
had on a dress of some light silky material,
but put on strangely awry, not properly hooked
up, and torn open at the top of the skirt,
close to the waist: a great piece was rent
and hanging loose. A little kerchief was flung
about her bare throat, but lay slanting on
one side. The girl was walking unsteadily,
too, stumbling and staggering from side to
side. She drew Raskolnikov’s whole attention
at last. He overtook the girl at the seat,
but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it,
in the corner; she let her head sink on the
back of the seat and closed her eyes, apparently
in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely,
he saw at once that she was completely drunk.
It was a strange and shocking sight. He could
hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He
saw before him the face of a quite young,
fair-haired girl—sixteen, perhaps not more
than fifteen, years old, pretty little face,
but flushed and heavy looking and, as it were,
swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know what
she was doing; she crossed one leg over the
other, lifting it indecorously, and showed
every sign of being unconscious that she was
in the street.
Raskolnikov did not sit down, but he felt
unwilling to leave her, and stood facing her
in perplexity. This boulevard was never much
frequented; and now, at two o’clock, in
the stifling heat, it was quite deserted.
And yet on the further side of the boulevard,
about fifteen paces away, a gentleman was
standing on the edge of the pavement. He,
too, would apparently have liked to approach
the girl with some object of his own. He,
too, had probably seen her in the distance
and had followed her, but found Raskolnikov
in his way. He looked angrily at him, though
he tried to escape his notice, and stood impatiently
biding his time, till the unwelcome man in
rags should have moved away. His intentions
were unmistakable. The gentleman was a plump,
thickly-set man, about thirty, fashionably
dressed, with a high colour, red lips and
moustaches. Raskolnikov felt furious; he had
a sudden longing to insult this fat dandy
in some way. He left the girl for a moment
and walked towards the gentleman.
“Hey! You Svidrigaïlov! What do you want
here?” he shouted, clenching his fists and
laughing, spluttering with rage.
“What do you mean?” the gentleman asked
sternly, scowling in haughty astonishment.
“Get away, that’s what I mean.”
“How dare you, you low fellow!”
He raised his cane. Raskolnikov rushed at
him with his fists, without reflecting that
the stout gentleman was a match for two men
like himself. But at that instant someone
seized him from behind, and a police constable
stood between them.
“That’s enough, gentlemen, no fighting,
please, in a public place. What do you want?
Who are you?” he asked Raskolnikov sternly,
noticing his rags.
Raskolnikov looked at him intently. He had
a straight-forward, sensible, soldierly face,
with grey moustaches and whiskers.
“You are just the man I want,” Raskolnikov
cried, catching at his arm. “I am a student,
Raskolnikov.... You may as well know that
too,” he added, addressing the gentleman,
“come along, I have something to show you.”
And taking the policeman by the hand he drew
him towards the seat.
“Look here, hopelessly drunk, and she has
just come down the boulevard. There is no
telling who and what she is, she does not
look like a professional. It’s more likely
she has been given drink and deceived somewhere...
for the first time... you understand? and
they’ve put her out into the street like
that. Look at the way her dress is torn, and
the way it has been put on: she has been dressed
by somebody, she has not dressed herself,
and dressed by unpractised hands, by a man’s
hands; that’s evident. And now look there:
I don’t know that dandy with whom I was
going to fight, I see him for the first time,
but he, too, has seen her on the road, just
now, drunk, not knowing what she is doing,
and now he is very eager to get hold of her,
to get her away somewhere while she is in
this state... that’s certain, believe me,
I am not wrong. I saw him myself watching
her and following her, but I prevented him,
and he is just waiting for me to go away.
Now he has walked away a little, and is standing
still, pretending to make a cigarette....
Think how can we keep her out of his hands,
and how are we to get her home?”
The policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout
gentleman was easy to understand, he turned
to consider the girl. The policeman bent over
to examine her more closely, and his face
worked with genuine compassion.
“Ah, what a pity!” he said, shaking his
head—“why, she is quite a child! She has
been deceived, you can see that at once. Listen,
lady,” he began addressing her, “where
do you live?” The girl opened her weary
and sleepy-looking eyes, gazed blankly at
the speaker and waved her hand.
“Here,” said Raskolnikov feeling in his
pocket and finding twenty copecks, “here,
call a cab and tell him to drive her to her
address. The only thing is to find out her
address!”
“Missy, missy!” the policeman began again,
taking the money. “I’ll fetch you a cab
and take you home myself. Where shall I take
you, eh? Where do you live?”
“Go away! They won’t let me alone,”
the girl muttered, and once more waved her
hand.
“Ach, ach, how shocking! It’s shameful,
missy, it’s a shame!” He shook his head
again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant.
“It’s a difficult job,” the policeman
said to Raskolnikov, and as he did so, he
looked him up and down in a rapid glance.
He, too, must have seemed a strange figure
to him: dressed in rags and handing him money!
“Did you meet her far from here?” he asked
him.
“I tell you she was walking in front of
me, staggering, just here, in the boulevard.
She only just reached the seat and sank down
on it.”
“Ah, the shameful things that are done in
the world nowadays, God have mercy on us!
An innocent creature like that, drunk already!
She has been deceived, that’s a sure thing.
See how her dress has been torn too.... Ah,
the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely
as not she belongs to gentlefolk too, poor
ones maybe.... There are many like that nowadays.
She looks refined, too, as though she were
a lady,” and he bent over her once more.
Perhaps he had daughters growing up like that,
“looking like ladies and refined” with
pretensions to gentility and smartness....
“The chief thing is,” Raskolnikov persisted,
“to keep her out of this scoundrel’s hands!
Why should he outrage her! It’s as clear
as day what he is after; ah, the brute, he
is not moving off!”
Raskolnikov spoke aloud and pointed to him.
The gentleman heard him, and seemed about
to fly into a rage again, but thought better
of it, and confined himself to a contemptuous
look. He then walked slowly another ten paces
away and again halted.
“Keep her out of his hands we can,” said
the constable thoughtfully, “if only she’d
tell us where to take her, but as it is....
Missy, hey, missy!” he bent over her once
more.
She opened her eyes fully all of a sudden,
looked at him intently, as though realising
something, got up from the seat and walked
away in the direction from which she had come.
“Oh shameful wretches, they won’t let
me alone!” she said, waving her hand again.
She walked quickly, though staggering as before.
The dandy followed her, but along another
avenue, keeping his eye on her.
“Don’t be anxious, I won’t let him have
her,” the policeman said resolutely, and
he set off after them.
“Ah, the vice one sees nowadays!” he repeated
aloud, sighing.
At that moment something seemed to sting Raskolnikov;
in an instant a complete revulsion of feeling
came over him.
“Hey, here!” he shouted after the policeman.
The latter turned round.
“Let them be! What is it to do with you?
Let her go! Let him amuse himself.” He pointed
at the dandy, “What is it to do with you?”
The policeman was bewildered, and stared at
him open-eyed. Raskolnikov laughed.
“Well!” ejaculated the policeman, with
a gesture of contempt, and he walked after
the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov
for a madman or something even worse.
“He has carried off my twenty copecks,”
Raskolnikov murmured angrily when he was left
alone. “Well, let him take as much from
the other fellow to allow him to have the
girl and so let it end. And why did I want
to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I
any right to help? Let them devour each other
alive—what is to me? How did I dare to give
him twenty copecks? Were they mine?”
In spite of those strange words he felt very
wretched. He sat down on the deserted seat.
His thoughts strayed aimlessly.... He found
it hard to fix his mind on anything at that
moment. He longed to forget himself altogether,
to forget everything, and then to wake up
and begin life anew....
“Poor girl!” he said, looking at the empty
corner where she had sat—“She will come
to herself and weep, and then her mother will
find out.... She will give her a beating,
a horrible, shameful beating and then maybe,
turn her out of doors.... And even if she
does not, the Darya Frantsovnas will get wind
of it, and the girl will soon be slipping
out on the sly here and there. Then there
will be the hospital directly (that’s always
the luck of those girls with respectable mothers,
who go wrong on the sly) and then... again
the hospital... drink... the taverns... and
more hospital, in two or three years—a wreck,
and her life over at eighteen or nineteen....
Have not I seen cases like that? And how have
they been brought to it? Why, they’ve all
come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it
matter? That’s as it should be, they tell
us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must
every year go... that way... to the devil,
I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste,
and not be interfered with. A percentage!
What splendid words they have; they are so
scientific, so consolatory.... Once you’ve
said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more
to worry about. If we had any other word...
maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But what
if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another
one if not that one?
“But where am I going?” he thought suddenly.
“Strange, I came out for something. As soon
as I had read the letter I came out.... I
was going to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin.
That’s what it was... now I remember. What
for, though? And what put the idea of going
to Razumihin into my head just now? That’s
curious.”
He wondered at himself. Razumihin was one
of his old comrades at the university. It
was remarkable that Raskolnikov had hardly
any friends at the university; he kept aloof
from everyone, went to see no one, and did
not welcome anyone who came to see him, and
indeed everyone soon gave him up. He took
no part in the students’ gatherings, amusements
or conversations. He worked with great intensity
without sparing himself, and he was respected
for this, but no one liked him. He was very
poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride
and reserve about him, as though he were keeping
something to himself. He seemed to some of
his comrades to look down upon them all as
children, as though he were superior in development,
knowledge and convictions, as though their
beliefs and interests were beneath him.
With Razumihin he had got on, or, at least,
he was more unreserved and communicative with
him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any
other terms with Razumihin. He was an exceptionally
good-humoured and candid youth, good-natured
to the point of simplicity, though both depth
and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity.
The better of his comrades understood this,
and all were fond of him. He was extremely
intelligent, though he was certainly rather
a simpleton at times. He was of striking appearance—tall,
thin, blackhaired and always badly shaved.
He was sometimes uproarious and was reputed
to be of great physical strength. One night,
when out in a festive company, he had with
one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his
back. There was no limit to his drinking powers,
but he could abstain from drink altogether;
he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but
he could do without pranks altogether. Another
thing striking about Razumihin, no failure
distressed him, and it seemed as though no
unfavourable circumstances could crush him.
He could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes
of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and
kept himself entirely on what he could earn
by work of one sort or another. He knew of
no end of resources by which to earn money.
He spent one whole winter without lighting
his stove, and used to declare that he liked
it better, because one slept more soundly
in the cold. For the present he, too, had
been obliged to give up the university, but
it was only for a time, and he was working
with all his might to save enough to return
to his studies again. Raskolnikov had not
been to see him for the last four months,
and Razumihin did not even know his address.
About two months before, they had met in the
street, but Raskolnikov had turned away and
even crossed to the other side that he might
not be observed. And though Razumihin noticed
him, he passed him by, as he did not want
to annoy him.
CHAPTER V
“Of course, I’ve been meaning lately to
go to Razumihin’s to ask for work, to ask
him to get me lessons or something...” Raskolnikov
thought, “but what help can he be to me
now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose he
shares his last farthing with me, if he has
any farthings, so that I could get some boots
and make myself tidy enough to give lessons...
hm... Well and what then? What shall I do
with the few coppers I earn? That’s not
what I want now. It’s really absurd for
me to go to Razumihin....”
The question why he was now going to Razumihin
agitated him even more than he was himself
aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some sinister
significance in this apparently ordinary action.
“Could I have expected to set it all straight
and to find a way out by means of Razumihin
alone?” he asked himself in perplexity.
He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and,
strange to say, after long musing, suddenly,
as if it were spontaneously and by chance,
a fantastic thought came into his head.
“Hm... to Razumihin’s,” he said all
at once, calmly, as though he had reached
a final determination. “I shall go to Razumihin’s
of course, but... not now. I shall go to him...
on the next day after It, when It will be
over and everything will begin afresh....”
And suddenly he realised what he was thinking.
“After It,” he shouted, jumping up from
the seat, “but is It really going to happen?
Is it possible it really will happen?” He
left the seat, and went off almost at a run;
he meant to turn back, homewards, but the
thought of going home suddenly filled him
with intense loathing; in that hole, in that
awful little cupboard of his, all this had
for a month past been growing up in him; and
he walked on at random.
His nervous shudder had passed into a fever
that made him feel shivering; in spite of
the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort
he began almost unconsciously, from some inner
craving, to stare at all the objects before
him, as though looking for something to distract
his attention; but he did not succeed, and
kept dropping every moment into brooding.
When with a start he lifted his head again
and looked round, he forgot at once what he
had just been thinking about and even where
he was going. In this way he walked right
across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came out on to
the Lesser Neva, crossed the bridge and turned
towards the islands. The greenness and freshness
were at first restful to his weary eyes after
the dust of the town and the huge houses that
hemmed him in and weighed upon him. Here there
were no taverns, no stifling closeness, no
stench. But soon these new pleasant sensations
passed into morbid irritability. Sometimes
he stood still before a brightly painted summer
villa standing among green foliage, he gazed
through the fence, he saw in the distance
smartly dressed women on the verandahs and
balconies, and children running in the gardens.
The flowers especially caught his attention;
he gazed at them longer than at anything.
He was met, too, by luxurious carriages and
by men and women on horseback; he watched
them with curious eyes and forgot about them
before they had vanished from his sight. Once
he stood still and counted his money; he found
he had thirty copecks. “Twenty to the policeman,
three to Nastasya for the letter, so I must
have given forty-seven or fifty to the Marmeladovs
yesterday,” he thought, reckoning it up
for some unknown reason, but he soon forgot
with what object he had taken the money out
of his pocket. He recalled it on passing an
eating-house or tavern, and felt that he was
hungry.... Going into the tavern he drank
a glass of vodka and ate a pie of some sort.
He finished eating it as he walked away. It
was a long while since he had taken vodka
and it had an effect upon him at once, though
he only drank a wineglassful. His legs felt
suddenly heavy and a great drowsiness came
upon him. He turned homewards, but reaching
Petrovsky Ostrov he stopped completely exhausted,
turned off the road into the bushes, sank
down upon the grass and instantly fell asleep.
In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams
often have a singular actuality, vividness,
and extraordinary semblance of reality. At
times monstrous images are created, but the
setting and the whole picture are so truth-like
and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly,
but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer,
were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev
even, could never have invented them in the
waking state. Such sick dreams always remain
long in the memory and make a powerful impression
on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.
Raskolnikov had a fearful dream. He dreamt
he was back in his childhood in the little
town of his birth. He was a child about seven
years old, walking into the country with his
father on the evening of a holiday. It was
a grey and heavy day, the country was exactly
as he remembered it; indeed he recalled it
far more vividly in his dream than he had
done in memory. The little town stood on a
level flat as bare as the hand, not even a
willow near it; only in the far distance,
a copse lay, a dark blur on the very edge
of the horizon. A few paces beyond the last
market garden stood a tavern, a big tavern,
which had always aroused in him a feeling
of aversion, even of fear, when he walked
by it with his father. There was always a
crowd there, always shouting, laughter and
abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting.
Drunken and horrible-looking figures were
hanging about the tavern. He used to cling
close to his father, trembling all over when
he met them. Near the tavern the road became
a dusty track, the dust of which was always
black. It was a winding road, and about a
hundred paces further on, it turned to the
right to the graveyard. In the middle of the
graveyard stood a stone church with a green
cupola where he used to go to mass two or
three times a year with his father and mother,
when a service was held in memory of his grandmother,
who had long been dead, and whom he had never
seen. On these occasions they used to take
on a white dish tied up in a table napkin
a special sort of rice pudding with raisins
stuck in it in the shape of a cross. He loved
that church, the old-fashioned, unadorned
ikons and the old priest with the shaking
head. Near his grandmother’s grave, which
was marked by a stone, was the little grave
of his younger brother who had died at six
months old. He did not remember him at all,
but he had been told about his little brother,
and whenever he visited the graveyard he used
religiously and reverently to cross himself
and to bow down and kiss the little grave.
And now he dreamt that he was walking with
his father past the tavern on the way to the
graveyard; he was holding his father’s hand
and looking with dread at the tavern. A peculiar
circumstance attracted his attention: there
seemed to be some kind of festivity going
on, there were crowds of gaily dressed townspeople,
peasant women, their husbands, and riff-raff
of all sorts, all singing and all more or
less drunk. Near the entrance of the tavern
stood a cart, but a strange cart. It was one
of those big carts usually drawn by heavy
cart-horses and laden with casks of wine or
other heavy goods. He always liked looking
at those great cart-horses, with their long
manes, thick legs, and slow even pace, drawing
along a perfect mountain with no appearance
of effort, as though it were easier going
with a load than without it. But now, strange
to say, in the shafts of such a cart he saw
a thin little sorrel beast, one of those peasants’
nags which he had often seen straining their
utmost under a heavy load of wood or hay,
especially when the wheels were stuck in the
mud or in a rut. And the peasants would beat
them so cruelly, sometimes even about the
nose and eyes, and he felt so sorry, so sorry
for them that he almost cried, and his mother
always used to take him away from the window.
All of a sudden there was a great uproar of
shouting, singing and the balalaïka, and
from the tavern a number of big and very drunken
peasants came out, wearing red and blue shirts
and coats thrown over their shoulders.
“Get in, get in!” shouted one of them,
a young thick-necked peasant with a fleshy
face red as a carrot. “I’ll take you all,
get in!”
But at once there was an outbreak of laughter
and exclamations in the crowd.
“Take us all with a beast like that!”
“Why, Mikolka, are you crazy to put a nag
like that in such a cart?”
“And this mare is twenty if she is a day,
mates!”
“Get in, I’ll take you all,” Mikolka
shouted again, leaping first into the cart,
seizing the reins and standing straight up
in front. “The bay has gone with Matvey,”
he shouted from the cart—“and this brute,
mates, is just breaking my heart, I feel as
if I could kill her. She’s just eating her
head off. Get in, I tell you! I’ll make
her gallop! She’ll gallop!” and he picked
up the whip, preparing himself with relish
to flog the little mare.
“Get in! Come along!” The crowd laughed.
“D’you hear, she’ll gallop!”
“Gallop indeed! She has not had a gallop
in her for the last ten years!”
“She’ll jog along!”
“Don’t you mind her, mates, bring a whip
each of you, get ready!”
“All right! Give it to her!”
They all clambered into Mikolka’s cart,
laughing and making jokes. Six men got in
and there was still room for more. They hauled
in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed
in red cotton, in a pointed, beaded headdress
and thick leather shoes; she was cracking
nuts and laughing. The crowd round them was
laughing too and indeed, how could they help
laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all
the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young
fellows in the cart were just getting whips
ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of “now,”
the mare tugged with all her might, but far
from galloping, could scarcely move forward;
she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking
from the blows of the three whips which were
showered upon her like hail. The laughter
in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled,
but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously
thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she
really could gallop.
“Let me get in, too, mates,” shouted a
young man in the crowd whose appetite was
aroused.
“Get in, all get in,” cried Mikolka, “she
will draw you all. I’ll beat her to death!”
And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare,
beside himself with fury.
“Father, father,” he cried, “father,
what are they doing? Father, they are beating
the poor horse!”
“Come along, come along!” said his father.
“They are drunken and foolish, they are
in fun; come away, don’t look!” and he
tried to draw him away, but he tore himself
away from his hand, and, beside himself with
horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was
in a bad way. She was gasping, standing still,
then tugging again and almost falling.
“Beat her to death,” cried Mikolka, “it’s
come to that. I’ll do for her!”
“What are you about, are you a Christian,
you devil?” shouted an old man in the crowd.
“Did anyone ever see the like? A wretched
nag like that pulling such a cartload,”
said another.
“You’ll kill her,” shouted the third.
“Don’t meddle! It’s my property, I’ll
do what I choose. Get in, more of you! Get
in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop!...”
All at once laughter broke into a roar and
covered everything: the mare, roused by the
shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even
the old man could not help smiling. To think
of a wretched little beast like that trying
to kick!
Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and
ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs.
One ran each side.
“Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the
eyes,” cried Mikolka.
“Give us a song, mates,” shouted someone
in the cart and everyone in the cart joined
in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and
whistling. The woman went on cracking nuts
and laughing.
... He ran beside the mare, ran in front of
her, saw her being whipped across the eyes,
right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt
choking, his tears were streaming. One of
the men gave him a cut with the whip across
the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his
hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed
old man with the grey beard, who was shaking
his head in disapproval. One woman seized
him by the hand and would have taken him away,
but he tore himself from her and ran back
to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp,
but began kicking once more.
“I’ll teach you to kick,” Mikolka shouted
ferociously. He threw down the whip, bent
forward and picked up from the bottom of the
cart a long, thick shaft, he took hold of
one end with both hands and with an effort
brandished it over the mare.
“He’ll crush her,” was shouted round
him. “He’ll kill her!”
“It’s my property,” shouted Mikolka
and brought the shaft down with a swinging
blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud.
“Thrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?”
shouted voices in the crowd.
And Mikolka swung the shaft a second time
and it fell a second time on the spine of
the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches,
but lurched forward and tugged forward with
all her force, tugged first on one side and
then on the other, trying to move the cart.
But the six whips were attacking her in all
directions, and the shaft was raised again
and fell upon her a third time, then a fourth,
with heavy measured blows. Mikolka was in
a fury that he could not kill her at one blow.
“She’s a tough one,” was shouted in
the crowd.
“She’ll fall in a minute, mates, there
will soon be an end of her,” said an admiring
spectator in the crowd.
“Fetch an axe to her! Finish her off,”
shouted a third.
“I’ll show you! Stand off,” Mikolka
screamed frantically; he threw down the shaft,
stooped down in the cart and picked up an
iron crowbar. “Look out,” he shouted,
and with all his might he dealt a stunning
blow at the poor mare. The blow fell; the
mare staggered, sank back, tried to pull,
but the bar fell again with a swinging blow
on her back and she fell on the ground like
a log.
“Finish her off,” shouted Mikolka and
he leapt beside himself, out of the cart.
Several young men, also flushed with drink,
seized anything they could come across—whips,
sticks, poles, and ran to the dying mare.
Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing
random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched
out her head, drew a long breath and died.
“You butchered her,” someone shouted in
the crowd.
“Why wouldn’t she gallop then?”
“My property!” shouted Mikolka, with bloodshot
eyes, brandishing the bar in his hands. He
stood as though regretting that he had nothing
more to beat.
“No mistake about it, you are not a Christian,”
many voices were shouting in the crowd.
But the poor boy, beside himself, made his
way, screaming, through the crowd to the sorrel
nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead
head and kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed
the lips.... Then he jumped up and flew in
a frenzy with his little fists out at Mikolka.
At that instant his father, who had been running
after him, snatched him up and carried him
out of the crowd.
“Come along, come! Let us go home,” he
said to him.
“Father! Why did they... kill... the poor
horse!” he sobbed, but his voice broke and
the words came in shrieks from his panting
chest.
“They are drunk.... They are brutal... it’s
not our business!” said his father. He put
his arms round his father but he felt choked,
choked. He tried to draw a breath, to cry
out—and woke up.
He waked up, gasping for breath, his hair
soaked with perspiration, and stood up in
terror.
“Thank God, that was only a dream,” he
said, sitting down under a tree and drawing
deep breaths. “But what is it? Is it some
fever coming on? Such a hideous dream!”
He felt utterly broken: darkness and confusion
were in his soul. He rested his elbows on
his knees and leaned his head on his hands.
“Good God!” he cried, “can it be, can
it be, that I shall really take an axe, that
I shall strike her on the head, split her
skull open... that I shall tread in the sticky
warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble;
hide, all spattered in the blood... with the
axe.... Good God, can it be?”
He was shaking like a leaf as he said this.
“But why am I going on like this?” he
continued, sitting up again, as it were in
profound amazement. “I knew that I could
never bring myself to it, so what have I been
torturing myself for till now? Yesterday,
yesterday, when I went to make that... experiment,
yesterday I realised completely that I could
never bear to do it.... Why am I going over
it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I
came down the stairs yesterday, I said myself
that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile...
the very thought of it made me feel sick and
filled me with horror.
“No, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t do
it! Granted, granted that there is no flaw
in all that reasoning, that all that I have
concluded this last month is clear as day,
true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway I couldn’t
bring myself to it! I couldn’t do it, I
couldn’t do it! Why, why then am I still...?”
He rose to his feet, looked round in wonder
as though surprised at finding himself in
this place, and went towards the bridge. He
was pale, his eyes glowed, he was exhausted
in every limb, but he seemed suddenly to breathe
more easily. He felt he had cast off that
fearful burden that had so long been weighing
upon him, and all at once there was a sense
of relief and peace in his soul. “Lord,”
he prayed, “show me my path—I renounce
that accursed... dream of mine.”
Crossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and
calmly at the Neva, at the glowing red sun
setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his
weakness he was not conscious of fatigue.
It was as though an abscess that had been
forming for a month past in his heart had
suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was
free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!
Later on, when he recalled that time and all
that happened to him during those days, minute
by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously
impressed by one circumstance, which, though
in itself not very exceptional, always seemed
to him afterwards the predestined turning-point
of his fate. He could never understand and
explain to himself why, when he was tired
and worn out, when it would have been more
convenient for him to go home by the shortest
and most direct way, he had returned by the
Hay Market where he had no need to go. It
was obviously and quite unnecessarily out
of his way, though not much so. It is true
that it happened to him dozens of times to
return home without noticing what streets
he passed through. But why, he was always
asking himself, why had such an important,
such a decisive and at the same time such
an absolutely chance meeting happened in the
Hay Market (where he had moreover no reason
to go) at the very hour, the very minute of
his life when he was just in the very mood
and in the very circumstances in which that
meeting was able to exert the gravest and
most decisive influence on his whole destiny?
As though it had been lying in wait for him
on purpose!
It was about nine o’clock when he crossed
the Hay Market. At the tables and the barrows,
at the booths and the shops, all the market
people were closing their establishments or
clearing away and packing up their wares and,
like their customers, were going home. Rag
pickers and costermongers of all kinds were
crowding round the taverns in the dirty and
stinking courtyards of the Hay Market. Raskolnikov
particularly liked this place and the neighbouring
alleys, when he wandered aimlessly in the
streets. Here his rags did not attract contemptuous
attention, and one could walk about in any
attire without scandalising people. At the
corner of an alley a huckster and his wife
had two tables set out with tapes, thread,
cotton handkerchiefs, etc. They, too, had
got up to go home, but were lingering in conversation
with a friend, who had just come up to them.
This friend was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or, as
everyone called her, Lizaveta, the younger
sister of the old pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna,
whom Raskolnikov had visited the previous
day to pawn his watch and make his experiment....
He already knew all about Lizaveta and she
knew him a little too. She was a single woman
of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid,
submissive and almost idiotic. She was a complete
slave and went in fear and trembling of her
sister, who made her work day and night, and
even beat her. She was standing with a bundle
before the huckster and his wife, listening
earnestly and doubtfully. They were talking
of something with special warmth. The moment
Raskolnikov caught sight of her, he was overcome
by a strange sensation as it were of intense
astonishment, though there was nothing astonishing
about this meeting.
“You could make up your mind for yourself,
Lizaveta Ivanovna,” the huckster was saying
aloud. “Come round to-morrow about seven.
They will be here too.”
“To-morrow?” said Lizaveta slowly and
thoughtfully, as though unable to make up
her mind.
“Upon my word, what a fright you are in
of Alyona Ivanovna,” gabbled the huckster’s
wife, a lively little woman. “I look at
you, you are like some little babe. And she
is not your own sister either—nothing but
a step-sister and what a hand she keeps over
you!”
“But this time don’t say a word to Alyona
Ivanovna,” her husband interrupted; “that’s
my advice, but come round to us without asking.
It will be worth your while. Later on your
sister herself may have a notion.”
“Am I to come?”
“About seven o’clock to-morrow. And they
will be here. You will be able to decide for
yourself.”
“And we’ll have a cup of tea,” added
his wife.
“All right, I’ll come,” said Lizaveta,
still pondering, and she began slowly moving
away.
Raskolnikov had just passed and heard no more.
He passed softly, unnoticed, trying not to
miss a word. His first amazement was followed
by a thrill of horror, like a shiver running
down his spine. He had learnt, he had suddenly
quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day
at seven o’clock Lizaveta, the old woman’s
sister and only companion, would be away from
home and that therefore at seven o’clock
precisely the old woman would be left alone.
He was only a few steps from his lodging.
He went in like a man condemned to death.
He thought of nothing and was incapable of
thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole
being that he had no more freedom of thought,
no will, and that everything was suddenly
and irrevocably decided.
Certainly, if he had to wait whole years for
a suitable opportunity, he could not reckon
on a more certain step towards the success
of the plan than that which had just presented
itself. In any case, it would have been difficult
to find out beforehand and with certainty,
with greater exactness and less risk, and
without dangerous inquiries and investigations,
that next day at a certain time an old woman,
on whose life an attempt was contemplated,
would be at home and entirely alone.
CHAPTER VI
Later on Raskolnikov happened to find out
why the huckster and his wife had invited
Lizaveta. It was a very ordinary matter and
there was nothing exceptional about it. A
family who had come to the town and been reduced
to poverty were selling their household goods
and clothes, all women’s things. As the
things would have fetched little in the market,
they were looking for a dealer. This was Lizaveta’s
business. She undertook such jobs and was
frequently employed, as she was very honest
and always fixed a fair price and stuck to
it. She spoke as a rule little and, as we
have said already, she was very submissive
and timid.
But Raskolnikov had become superstitious of
late. The traces of superstition remained
in him long after, and were almost ineradicable.
And in all this he was always afterwards disposed
to see something strange and mysterious, as
it were, the presence of some peculiar influences
and coincidences. In the previous winter a
student he knew called Pokorev, who had left
for Harkov, had chanced in conversation to
give him the address of Alyona Ivanovna, the
old pawnbroker, in case he might want to pawn
anything. For a long while he did not go to
her, for he had lessons and managed to get
along somehow. Six weeks ago he had remembered
the address; he had two articles that could
be pawned: his father’s old silver watch
and a little gold ring with three red stones,
a present from his sister at parting. He decided
to take the ring. When he found the old woman
he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for
her at the first glance, though he knew nothing
special about her. He got two roubles from
her and went into a miserable little tavern
on his way home. He asked for tea, sat down
and sank into deep thought. A strange idea
was pecking at his brain like a chicken in
the egg, and very, very much absorbed him.
Almost beside him at the next table there
was sitting a student, whom he did not know
and had never seen, and with him a young officer.
They had played a game of billiards and began
drinking tea. All at once he heard the student
mention to the officer the pawnbroker Alyona
Ivanovna and give him her address. This of
itself seemed strange to Raskolnikov; he had
just come from her and here at once he heard
her name. Of course it was a chance, but he
could not shake off a very extraordinary impression,
and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly
for him; the student began telling his friend
various details about Alyona Ivanovna.
“She is first-rate,” he said. “You can
always get money from her. She is as rich
as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles
at a time and she is not above taking a pledge
for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had
dealings with her. But she is an awful old
harpy....”
And he began describing how spiteful and uncertain
she was, how if you were only a day late with
your interest the pledge was lost; how she
gave a quarter of the value of an article
and took five and even seven percent a month
on it and so on. The student chattered on,
saying that she had a sister Lizaveta, whom
the wretched little creature was continually
beating, and kept in complete bondage like
a small child, though Lizaveta was at least
six feet high.
“There’s a phenomenon for you,” cried
the student and he laughed.
They began talking about Lizaveta. The student
spoke about her with a peculiar relish and
was continually laughing and the officer listened
with great interest and asked him to send
Lizaveta to do some mending for him. Raskolnikov
did not miss a word and learned everything
about her. Lizaveta was younger than the old
woman and was her half-sister, being the child
of a different mother. She was thirty-five.
She worked day and night for her sister, and
besides doing the cooking and the washing,
she did sewing and worked as a charwoman and
gave her sister all she earned. She did not
dare to accept an order or job of any kind
without her sister’s permission. The old
woman had already made her will, and Lizaveta
knew of it, and by this will she would not
get a farthing; nothing but the movables,
chairs and so on; all the money was left to
a monastery in the province of N——, that
prayers might be said for her in perpetuity.
Lizaveta was of lower rank than her sister,
unmarried and awfully uncouth in appearance,
remarkably tall with long feet that looked
as if they were bent outwards. She always
wore battered goatskin shoes, and was clean
in her person. What the student expressed
most surprise and amusement about was the
fact that Lizaveta was continually with child.
“But you say she is hideous?” observed
the officer.
“Yes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like
a soldier dressed up, but you know she is
not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured
face and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof
of it is that lots of people are attracted
by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature,
ready to put up with anything, always willing,
willing to do anything. And her smile is really
very sweet.”
“You seem to find her attractive yourself,”
laughed the officer.
“From her queerness. No, I’ll tell you
what. I could kill that damned old woman and
make off with her money, I assure you, without
the faintest conscience-prick,” the student
added with warmth. The officer laughed again
while Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it
was!
“Listen, I want to ask you a serious question,”
the student said hotly. “I was joking of
course, but look here; on one side we have
a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful,
ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless
but doing actual mischief, who has not an
idea what she is living for herself, and who
will die in a day or two in any case. You
understand? You understand?”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” answered the
officer, watching his excited companion attentively.
“Well, listen then. On the other side, fresh
young lives thrown away for want of help and
by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand
good deeds could be done and helped, on that
old woman’s money which will be buried in
a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps,
might be set on the right path; dozens of
families saved from destitution, from ruin,
from vice, from the Lock hospitals—and all
with her money. Kill her, take her money and
with the help of it devote oneself to the
service of humanity and the good of all. What
do you think, would not one tiny crime be
wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For
one life thousands would be saved from corruption
and decay. One death, and a hundred lives
in exchange—it’s simple arithmetic! Besides,
what value has the life of that sickly, stupid,
ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence!
No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle,
less in fact because the old woman is doing
harm. She is wearing out the lives of others;
the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger
out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.”
“Of course she does not deserve to live,”
remarked the officer, “but there it is,
it’s nature.”
“Oh, well, brother, but we have to correct
and direct nature, and, but for that, we should
drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that,
there would never have been a single great
man. They talk of duty, conscience—I don’t
want to say anything against duty and conscience;—but
the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay,
I have another question to ask you. Listen!”
“No, you stay, I’ll ask you a question.
Listen!”
“Well?”
“You are talking and speechifying away,
but tell me, would you kill the old woman
yourself?”
“Of course not! I was only arguing the justice
of it.... It’s nothing to do with me....”
“But I think, if you would not do it yourself,
there’s no justice about it.... Let us have
another game.”
Raskolnikov was violently agitated. Of course,
it was all ordinary youthful talk and thought,
such as he had often heard before in different
forms and on different themes. But why had
he happened to hear such a discussion and
such ideas at the very moment when his own
brain was just conceiving... the very same
ideas? And why, just at the moment when he
had brought away the embryo of his idea from
the old woman had he dropped at once upon
a conversation about her? This coincidence
always seemed strange to him. This trivial
talk in a tavern had an immense influence
on him in his later action; as though there
had really been in it something preordained,
some guiding hint....
On returning from the Hay Market he flung
himself on the sofa and sat for a whole hour
without stirring. Meanwhile it got dark; he
had no candle and, indeed, it did not occur
to him to light up. He could never recollect
whether he had been thinking about anything
at that time. At last he was conscious of
his former fever and shivering, and he realised
with relief that he could lie down on the
sofa. Soon heavy, leaden sleep came over him,
as it were crushing him.
He slept an extraordinarily long time and
without dreaming. Nastasya, coming into his
room at ten o’clock the next morning, had
difficulty in rousing him. She brought him
in tea and bread. The tea was again the second
brew and again in her own tea-pot.
“My goodness, how he sleeps!” she cried
indignantly. “And he is always asleep.”
He got up with an effort. His head ached,
he stood up, took a turn in his garret and
sank back on the sofa again.
“Going to sleep again,” cried Nastasya.
“Are you ill, eh?”
He made no reply.
“Do you want some tea?”
“Afterwards,” he said with an effort,
closing his eyes again and turning to the
wall.
Nastasya stood over him.
“Perhaps he really is ill,” she said,
turned and went out. She came in again at
two o’clock with soup. He was lying as before.
The tea stood untouched. Nastasya felt positively
offended and began wrathfully rousing him.
“Why are you lying like a log?” she shouted,
looking at him with repulsion.
He got up, and sat down again, but said nothing
and stared at the floor.
“Are you ill or not?” asked Nastasya and
again received no answer. “You’d better
go out and get a breath of air,” she said
after a pause. “Will you eat it or not?”
“Afterwards,” he said weakly. “You can
go.”
And he motioned her out.
She remained a little longer, looked at him
with compassion and went out.
A few minutes afterwards, he raised his eyes
and looked for a long while at the tea and
the soup. Then he took the bread, took up
a spoon and began to eat.
He ate a little, three or four spoonfuls,
without appetite, as it were mechanically.
His head ached less. After his meal he stretched
himself on the sofa again, but now he could
not sleep; he lay without stirring, with his
face in the pillow. He was haunted by day-dreams
and such strange day-dreams; in one, that
kept recurring, he fancied that he was in
Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The
caravan was resting, the camels were peacefully
lying down; the palms stood all around in
a complete circle; all the party were at dinner.
But he was drinking water from a spring which
flowed gurgling close by. And it was so cool,
it was wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold water
running among the parti-coloured stones and
over the clean sand which glistened here and
there like gold.... Suddenly he heard a clock
strike. He started, roused himself, raised
his head, looked out of the window, and seeing
how late it was, suddenly jumped up wide awake
as though someone had pulled him off the sofa.
He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily
opened it and began listening on the staircase.
His heart beat terribly. But all was quiet
on the stairs as if everyone was asleep....
It seemed to him strange and monstrous that
he could have slept in such forgetfulness
from the previous day and had done nothing,
had prepared nothing yet.... And meanwhile
perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness
and stupefaction were followed by an extraordinary,
feverish, as it were distracted haste. But
the preparations to be made were few. He concentrated
all his energies on thinking of everything
and forgetting nothing; and his heart kept
beating and thumping so that he could hardly
breathe. First he had to make a noose and
sew it into his overcoat—a work of a moment.
He rummaged under his pillow and picked out
amongst the linen stuffed away under it, a
worn out, old unwashed shirt. From its rags
he tore a long strip, a couple of inches wide
and about sixteen inches long. He folded this
strip in two, took off his wide, strong summer
overcoat of some stout cotton material (his
only outer garment) and began sewing the two
ends of the rag on the inside, under the left
armhole. His hands shook as he sewed, but
he did it successfully so that nothing showed
outside when he put the coat on again. The
needle and thread he had got ready long before
and they lay on his table in a piece of paper.
As for the noose, it was a very ingenious
device of his own; the noose was intended
for the axe. It was impossible for him to
carry the axe through the street in his hands.
And if hidden under his coat he would still
have had to support it with his hand, which
would have been noticeable. Now he had only
to put the head of the axe in the noose, and
it would hang quietly under his arm on the
inside. Putting his hand in his coat pocket,
he could hold the end of the handle all the
way, so that it did not swing; and as the
coat was very full, a regular sack in fact,
it could not be seen from outside that he
was holding something with the hand that was
in the pocket. This noose, too, he had designed
a fortnight before.
When he had finished with this, he thrust
his hand into a little opening between his
sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner
and drew out the pledge, which he had got
ready long before and hidden there. This pledge
was, however, only a smoothly planed piece
of wood the size and thickness of a silver
cigarette case. He picked up this piece of
wood in one of his wanderings in a courtyard
where there was some sort of a workshop. Afterwards
he had added to the wood a thin smooth piece
of iron, which he had also picked up at the
same time in the street. Putting the iron
which was a little the smaller on the piece
of wood, he fastened them very firmly, crossing
and re-crossing the thread round them; then
wrapped them carefully and daintily in clean
white paper and tied up the parcel so that
it would be very difficult to untie it. This
was in order to divert the attention of the
old woman for a time, while she was trying
to undo the knot, and so to gain a moment.
The iron strip was added to give weight, so
that the woman might not guess the first minute
that the “thing” was made of wood. All
this had been stored by him beforehand under
the sofa. He had only just got the pledge
out when he heard someone suddenly about in
the yard.
“It struck six long ago.”
“Long ago! My God!”
He rushed to the door, listened, caught up
his hat and began to descend his thirteen
steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat.
He had still the most important thing to do—to
steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed
must be done with an axe he had decided long
ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but
he could not rely on the knife and still less
on his own strength, and so resolved finally
on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity
in regard to all the final resolutions taken
by him in the matter; they had one strange
characteristic: the more final they were,
the more hideous and the more absurd they
at once became in his eyes. In spite of all
his agonising inward struggle, he never for
a single instant all that time could believe
in the carrying out of his plans.
And, indeed, if it had ever happened that
everything to the least point could have been
considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty
of any kind had remained, he would, it seems,
have renounced it all as something absurd,
monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass
of unsettled points and uncertainties remained.
As for getting the axe, that trifling business
cost him no anxiety, for nothing could be
easier. Nastasya was continually out of the
house, especially in the evenings; she would
run in to the neighbours or to a shop, and
always left the door ajar. It was the one
thing the landlady was always scolding her
about. And so, when the time came, he would
only have to go quietly into the kitchen and
to take the axe, and an hour later (when everything
was over) go in and put it back again. But
these were doubtful points. Supposing he returned
an hour later to put it back, and Nastasya
had come back and was on the spot. He would
of course have to go by and wait till she
went out again. But supposing she were in
the meantime to miss the axe, look for it,
make an outcry—that would mean suspicion
or at least grounds for suspicion.
But those were all trifles which he had not
even begun to consider, and indeed he had
no time. He was thinking of the chief point,
and put off trifling details, until he could
believe in it all. But that seemed utterly
unattainable. So it seemed to himself at least.
He could not imagine, for instance, that he
would sometime leave off thinking, get up
and simply go there.... Even his late experiment
(i.e. his visit with the object of a final
survey of the place) was simply an attempt
at an experiment, far from being the real
thing, as though one should say “come, let
us go and try it—why dream about it!”—and
at once he had broken down and had run away
cursing, in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile
it would seem, as regards the moral question,
that his analysis was complete; his casuistry
had become keen as a razor, and he could not
find rational objections in himself. But in
the last resort he simply ceased to believe
in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought
arguments in all directions, fumbling for
them, as though someone were forcing and drawing
him to it.
At first—long before indeed—he had been
much occupied with one question; why almost
all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily
detected, and why almost all criminals leave
such obvious traces? He had come gradually
to many different and curious conclusions,
and in his opinion the chief reason lay not
so much in the material impossibility of concealing
the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost
every criminal is subject to a failure of
will and reasoning power by a childish and
phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant
when prudence and caution are most essential.
It was his conviction that this eclipse of
reason and failure of will power attacked
a man like a disease, developed gradually
and reached its highest point just before
the perpetration of the crime, continued with
equal violence at the moment of the crime
and for longer or shorter time after, according
to the individual case, and then passed off
like any other disease. The question whether
the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether
the crime from its own peculiar nature is
always accompanied by something of the nature
of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.
When he reached these conclusions, he decided
that in his own case there could not be such
a morbid reaction, that his reason and will
would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying
out his design, for the simple reason that
his design was “not a crime....” We will
omit all the process by means of which he
arrived at this last conclusion; we have run
too far ahead already.... We may add only
that the practical, purely material difficulties
of the affair occupied a secondary position
in his mind. “One has but to keep all one’s
will-power and reason to deal with them, and
they will all be overcome at the time when
once one has familiarised oneself with the
minutest details of the business....” But
this preparation had never been begun. His
final decisions were what he came to trust
least, and when the hour struck, it all came
to pass quite differently, as it were accidentally
and unexpectedly.
One trifling circumstance upset his calculations,
before he had even left the staircase. When
he reached the landlady’s kitchen, the door
of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously
in to see whether, in Nastasya’s absence,
the landlady herself was there, or if not,
whether the door to her own room was closed,
so that she might not peep out when he went
in for the axe. But what was his amazement
when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not
only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied
there, taking linen out of a basket and hanging
it on a line. Seeing him, she left off hanging
the clothes, turned to him and stared at him
all the time he was passing. He turned away
his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed
nothing. But it was the end of everything;
he had not the axe! He was overwhelmed.
“What made me think,” he reflected, as
he went under the gateway, “what made me
think that she would be sure not to be at
home at that moment! Why, why, why did I assume
this so certainly?”
He was crushed and even humiliated. He could
have laughed at himself in his anger.... A
dull animal rage boiled within him.
He stood hesitating in the gateway. To go
into the street, to go a walk for appearance’
sake was revolting; to go back to his room,
even more revolting. “And what a chance
I have lost for ever!” he muttered, standing
aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the
porter’s little dark room, which was also
open. Suddenly he started. From the porter’s
room, two paces away from him, something shining
under the bench to the right caught his eye....
He looked about him—nobody. He approached
the room on tiptoe, went down two steps into
it and in a faint voice called the porter.
“Yes, not at home! Somewhere near though,
in the yard, for the door is wide open.”
He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled
it out from under the bench, where it lay
between two chunks of wood; at once, before
going out, he made it fast in the noose, he
thrust both hands into his pockets and went
out of the room; no one had noticed him! “When
reason fails, the devil helps!” he thought
with a strange grin. This chance raised his
spirits extraordinarily.
He walked along quietly and sedately, without
hurry, to avoid awakening suspicion. He scarcely
looked at the passers-by, tried to escape
looking at their faces at all, and to be as
little noticeable as possible. Suddenly he
thought of his hat. “Good heavens! I had
the money the day before yesterday and did
not get a cap to wear instead!” A curse
rose from the bottom of his soul.
Glancing out of the corner of his eye into
a shop, he saw by a clock on the wall that
it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make
haste and at the same time to go someway round,
so as to approach the house from the other
side....
When he had happened to imagine all this beforehand,
he had sometimes thought that he would be
very much afraid. But he was not very much
afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed.
His mind was even occupied by irrelevant matters,
but by nothing for long. As he passed the
Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in
considering the building of great fountains,
and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere
in all the squares. By degrees he passed to
the conviction that if the summer garden were
extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps
joined to the garden of the Mihailovsky Palace,
it would be a splendid thing and a great benefit
to the town. Then he was interested by the
question why in all great towns men are not
simply driven by necessity, but in some peculiar
way inclined to live in those parts of the
town where there are no gardens nor fountains;
where there is most dirt and smell and all
sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through
the Hay Market came back to his mind, and
for a moment he waked up to reality. “What
nonsense!” he thought, “better think of
nothing at all!”
“So probably men led to execution clutch
mentally at every object that meets them on
the way,” flashed through his mind, but
simply flashed, like lightning; he made haste
to dismiss this thought.... And by now he
was near; here was the house, here was the
gate. Suddenly a clock somewhere struck once.
“What! can it be half-past seven? Impossible,
it must be fast!”
Luckily for him, everything went well again
at the gates. At that very moment, as though
expressly for his benefit, a huge waggon of
hay had just driven in at the gate, completely
screening him as he passed under the gateway,
and the waggon had scarcely had time to drive
through into the yard, before he had slipped
in a flash to the right. On the other side
of the waggon he could hear shouting and quarrelling;
but no one noticed him and no one met him.
Many windows looking into that huge quadrangular
yard were open at that moment, but he did
not raise his head—he had not the strength
to. The staircase leading to the old woman’s
room was close by, just on the right of the
gateway. He was already on the stairs....
Drawing a breath, pressing his hand against
his throbbing heart, and once more feeling
for the axe and setting it straight, he began
softly and cautiously ascending the stairs,
listening every minute. But the stairs, too,
were quite deserted; all the doors were shut;
he met no one. One flat indeed on the first
floor was wide open and painters were at work
in it, but they did not glance at him. He
stood still, thought a minute and went on.
“Of course it would be better if they had
not been here, but... it’s two storeys above
them.”
And there was the fourth storey, here was
the door, here was the flat opposite, the
empty one. The flat underneath the old woman’s
was apparently empty also; the visiting card
nailed on the door had been torn off—they
had gone away!... He was out of breath. For
one instant the thought floated through his
mind “Shall I go back?” But he made no
answer and began listening at the old woman’s
door, a dead silence. Then he listened again
on the staircase, listened long and intently...
then looked about him for the last time, pulled
himself together, drew himself up, and once
more tried the axe in the noose. “Am I very
pale?” he wondered. “Am I not evidently
agitated? She is mistrustful.... Had I better
wait a little longer... till my heart leaves
off thumping?”
But his heart did not leave off. On the contrary,
as though to spite him, it throbbed more and
more violently. He could stand it no longer,
he slowly put out his hand to the bell and
rang. Half a minute later he rang again, more
loudly.
No answer. To go on ringing was useless and
out of place. The old woman was, of course,
at home, but she was suspicious and alone.
He had some knowledge of her habits... and
once more he put his ear to the door. Either
his senses were peculiarly keen (which it
is difficult to suppose), or the sound was
really very distinct. Anyway, he suddenly
heard something like the cautious touch of
a hand on the lock and the rustle of a skirt
at the very door. Someone was standing stealthily
close to the lock and just as he was doing
on the outside was secretly listening within,
and seemed to have her ear to the door....
He moved a little on purpose and muttered
something aloud that he might not have the
appearance of hiding, then rang a third time,
but quietly, soberly, and without impatience,
Recalling it afterwards, that moment stood
out in his mind vividly, distinctly, for ever;
he could not make out how he had had such
cunning, for his mind was as it were clouded
at moments and he was almost unconscious of
his body.... An instant later he heard the
latch unfastened.
CHAPTER VII
The 
door was as before opened a tiny crack, and
again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared
at him out of the darkness. Then Raskolnikov
lost his head and nearly made a great mistake.
Fearing the old woman would be frightened
by their being alone, and not hoping that
the sight of him would disarm her suspicions,
he took hold of the door and drew it towards
him to prevent the old woman from attempting
to shut it again. Seeing this she did not
pull the door back, but she did not let go
the handle so that he almost dragged her out
with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she
was standing in the doorway not allowing him
to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She
stepped back in alarm, tried to say something,
but seemed unable to speak and stared with
open eyes at him.
“Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began,
trying to speak easily, but his voice would
not obey him, it broke and shook. “I have
come... I have brought something... but we’d
better come in... to the light....”
And leaving her, he passed straight into the
room uninvited. The old woman ran after him;
her tongue was unloosed.
“Good heavens! What it is? Who is it? What
do you want?”
“Why, Alyona Ivanovna, you know me... Raskolnikov...
here, I brought you the pledge I promised
the other day...” And he held out the pledge.
The old woman glanced for a moment at the
pledge, but at once stared in the eyes of
her uninvited visitor. She looked intently,
maliciously and mistrustfully. A minute passed;
he even fancied something like a sneer in
her eyes, as though she had already guessed
everything. He felt that he was losing his
head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened
that if she were to look like that and not
say a word for another half minute, he thought
he would have run away from her.
“Why do you look at me as though you did
not know me?” he said suddenly, also with
malice. “Take it if you like, if not I’ll
go elsewhere, I am in a hurry.”
He had not even thought of saying this, but
it was suddenly said of itself. The old woman
recovered herself, and her visitor’s resolute
tone evidently restored her confidence.
“But why, my good sir, all of a minute....
What is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge.
“The silver cigarette case; I spoke of it
last time, you know.”
She held out her hand.
“But how pale you are, to be sure... and
your hands are trembling too? Have you been
bathing, or what?”
“Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You
can’t help getting pale... if you’ve nothing
to eat,” he added, with difficulty articulating
the words.
His strength was failing him again. But his
answer sounded like the truth; the old woman
took the pledge.
“What is it?” she asked once more, scanning
Raskolnikov intently, and weighing the pledge
in her hand.
“A thing... cigarette case.... Silver....
Look at it.”
“It does not seem somehow like silver....
How he has wrapped it up!”
Trying to untie the string and turning to
the window, to the light (all her windows
were shut, in spite of the stifling heat),
she left him altogether for some seconds and
stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned
his coat and freed the axe from the noose,
but did not yet take it out altogether, simply
holding it in his right hand under the coat.
His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them
every moment growing more numb and more wooden.
He was afraid he would let the axe slip and
fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.
“But what has he tied it up like this for?”
the old woman cried with vexation and moved
towards him.
He had not a minute more to lose. He pulled
the axe quite out, swung it with both arms,
scarcely conscious of himself, and almost
without effort, almost mechanically, brought
the blunt side down on her head. He seemed
not to use his own strength in this. But as
soon as he had once brought the axe down,
his strength returned to him.
The old woman was as always bareheaded. Her
thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly
smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat’s
tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which
stood out on the nape of her neck. As she
was so short, the blow fell on the very top
of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly,
and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor,
raising her hands to her head. In one hand
she still held “the pledge.” Then he dealt
her another and another blow with the blunt
side and on the same spot. The blood gushed
as from an overturned glass, the body fell
back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at
once bent over her face; she was dead. Her
eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets,
the brow and the whole face were drawn and
contorted convulsively.
He laid the axe on the ground near the dead
body and felt at once in her pocket (trying
to avoid the streaming body)—the same right-hand
pocket from which she had taken the key on
his last visit. He was in full possession
of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness,
but his hands were still trembling. He remembered
afterwards that he had been particularly collected
and careful, trying all the time not to get
smeared with blood.... He pulled out the keys
at once, they were all, as before, in one
bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into
the bedroom with them. It was a very small
room with a whole shrine of holy images. Against
the other wall stood a big bed, very clean
and covered with a silk patchwork wadded quilt.
Against a third wall was a chest of drawers.
Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit
the keys into the chest, so soon as he heard
their jingling, a convulsive shudder passed
over him. He suddenly felt tempted again to
give it all up and go away. But that was only
for an instant; it was too late to go back.
He positively smiled at himself, when suddenly
another terrifying idea occurred to his mind.
He suddenly fancied that the old woman might
be still alive and might recover her senses.
Leaving the keys in the chest, he ran back
to the body, snatched up the axe and lifted
it once more over the old woman, but did not
bring it down. There was no doubt that she
was dead. Bending down and examining her again
more closely, he saw clearly that the skull
was broken and even battered in on one side.
He was about to feel it with his finger, but
drew back his hand and indeed it was evident
without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect
pool of blood. All at once he noticed a string
on her neck; he tugged at it, but the string
was strong and did not snap and besides, it
was soaked with blood. He tried to pull it
out from the front of the dress, but something
held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience
he raised the axe again to cut the string
from above on the body, but did not dare,
and with difficulty, smearing his hand and
the axe in the blood, after two minutes’
hurried effort, he cut the string and took
it off without touching the body with the
axe; he was not mistaken—it was a purse.
On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus
wood and one of copper, and an image in silver
filigree, and with them a small greasy chamois
leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The
purse was stuffed very full; Raskolnikov thrust
it in his pocket without looking at it, flung
the crosses on the old woman’s body and
rushed back into the bedroom, this time taking
the axe with him.
He was in terrible haste, he snatched the
keys, and began trying them again. But he
was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the
locks. It was not so much that his hands were
shaking, but that he kept making mistakes;
though he saw for instance that a key was
not the right one and would not fit, still
he tried to put it in. Suddenly he remembered
and realised that the big key with the deep
notches, which was hanging there with the
small keys could not possibly belong to the
chest of drawers (on his last visit this had
struck him), but to some strong box, and that
everything perhaps was hidden in that box.
He left the chest of drawers, and at once
felt under the bedstead, knowing that old
women usually keep boxes under their beds.
And so it was; there was a good-sized box
under the bed, at least a yard in length,
with an arched lid covered with red leather
and studded with steel nails. The notched
key fitted at once and unlocked it. At the
top, under a white sheet, was a coat of red
brocade lined with hareskin; under it was
a silk dress, then a shawl and it seemed as
though there was nothing below but clothes.
The first thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained
hands on the red brocade. “It’s red, and
on red blood will be less noticeable,” the
thought passed through his mind; then he suddenly
came to himself. “Good God, am I going out
of my senses?” he thought with terror.
But no sooner did he touch the clothes than
a gold watch slipped from under the fur coat.
He made haste to turn them all over. There
turned out to be various articles made of
gold among the clothes—probably all pledges,
unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed—bracelets,
chains, ear-rings, pins and such things. Some
were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper,
carefully and exactly folded, and tied round
with tape. Without any delay, he began filling
up the pockets of his trousers and overcoat
without examining or undoing the parcels and
cases; but he had not time to take many....
He suddenly heard steps in the room where
the old woman lay. He stopped short and was
still as death. But all was quiet, so it must
have been his fancy. All at once he heard
distinctly a faint cry, as though someone
had uttered a low broken moan. Then again
dead silence for a minute or two. He sat squatting
on his heels by the box and waited holding
his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized
the axe and ran out of the bedroom.
In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta with
a big bundle in her arms. She was gazing in
stupefaction at her murdered sister, white
as a sheet and seeming not to have the strength
to cry out. Seeing him run out of the bedroom,
she began faintly quivering all over, like
a leaf, a shudder ran down her face; she lifted
her hand, opened her mouth, but still did
not scream. She began slowly backing away
from him into the corner, staring intently,
persistently at him, but still uttered no
sound, as though she could not get breath
to scream. He rushed at her with the axe;
her mouth twitched piteously, as one sees
babies’ mouths, when they begin to be frightened,
stare intently at what frightens them and
are on the point of screaming. And this hapless
Lizaveta was so simple and had been so thoroughly
crushed and scared that she did not even raise
a hand to guard her face, though that was
the most necessary and natural action at the
moment, for the axe was raised over her face.
She only put up her empty left hand, but not
to her face, slowly holding it out before
her as though motioning him away. The axe
fell with the sharp edge just on the skull
and split at one blow all the top of the head.
She fell heavily at once. Raskolnikov completely
lost his head, snatching up her bundle, dropped
it again and ran into the entry.
Fear gained more and more mastery over him,
especially after this second, quite unexpected
murder. He longed to run away from the place
as fast as possible. And if at that moment
he had been capable of seeing and reasoning
more correctly, if he had been able to realise
all the difficulties of his position, the
hopelessness, the hideousness and the absurdity
of it, if he could have understood how many
obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still
to overcome or to commit, to get out of that
place and to make his way home, it is very
possible that he would have flung up everything,
and would have gone to give himself up, and
not from fear, but from simple horror and
loathing of what he had done. The feeling
of loathing especially surged up within him
and grew stronger every minute. He would not
now have gone to the box or even into the
room for anything in the world.
But a sort of blankness, even dreaminess,
had begun by degrees to take possession of
him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather,
forgot what was of importance, and caught
at trifles. Glancing, however, into the kitchen
and seeing a bucket half full of water on
a bench, he bethought him of washing his hands
and the axe. His hands were sticky with blood.
He dropped the axe with the blade in the water,
snatched a piece of soap that lay in a broken
saucer on the window, and began washing his
hands in the bucket. When they were clean,
he took out the axe, washed the blade and
spent a long time, about three minutes, washing
the wood where there were spots of blood rubbing
them with soap. Then he wiped it all with
some linen that was hanging to dry on a line
in the kitchen and then he was a long while
attentively examining the axe at the window.
There was no trace left on it, only the wood
was still damp. He carefully hung the axe
in the noose under his coat. Then as far as
was possible, in the dim light in the kitchen,
he looked over his overcoat, his trousers
and his boots. At the first glance there seemed
to be nothing but stains on the boots. He
wetted the rag and rubbed the boots. But he
knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there
might be something quite noticeable that he
was overlooking. He stood in the middle of
the room, lost in thought. Dark agonising
ideas rose in his mind—the idea that he
was mad and that at that moment he was incapable
of reasoning, of protecting himself, that
he ought perhaps to be doing something utterly
different from what he was now doing. “Good
God!” he muttered “I must fly, fly,”
and he rushed into the entry. But here a shock
of terror awaited him such as he had never
known before.
He stood and gazed and could not believe his
eyes: the door, the outer door from the stairs,
at which he had not long before waited and
rung, was standing unfastened and at least
six inches open. No lock, no bolt, all the
time, all that time! The old woman had not
shut it after him perhaps as a precaution.
But, good God! Why, he had seen Lizaveta afterwards!
And how could he, how could he have failed
to reflect that she must have come in somehow!
She could not have come through the wall!
He dashed to the door and fastened the latch.
“But no, the wrong thing again! I must get
away, get away....”
He unfastened the latch, opened the door and
began listening on the staircase.
He listened a long time. Somewhere far away,
it might be in the gateway, two voices were
loudly and shrilly shouting, quarrelling and
scolding. “What are they about?” He waited
patiently. At last all was still, as though
suddenly cut off; they had separated. He was
meaning to go out, but suddenly, on the floor
below, a door was noisily opened and someone
began going downstairs humming a tune. “How
is it they all make such a noise?” flashed
through his mind. Once more he closed the
door and waited. At last all was still, not
a soul stirring. He was just taking a step
towards the stairs when he heard fresh footsteps.
The steps sounded very far off, at the very
bottom of the stairs, but he remembered quite
clearly and distinctly that from the first
sound he began for some reason to suspect
that this was someone coming there, to the
fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were
the sounds somehow peculiar, significant?
The steps were heavy, even and unhurried.
Now he had passed the first floor, now he
was mounting higher, it was growing more and
more distinct! He could hear his heavy breathing.
And now the third storey had been reached.
Coming here! And it seemed to him all at once
that he was turned to stone, that it was like
a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly
caught and will be killed, and is rooted to
the spot and cannot even move one’s arms.
At last when the unknown was mounting to the
fourth floor, he suddenly started, and succeeded
in slipping neatly and quickly back into the
flat and closing the door behind him. Then
he took the hook and softly, noiselessly,
fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him.
When he had done this, he crouched holding
his breath, by the door. The unknown visitor
was by now also at the door. They were now
standing opposite one another, as he had just
before been standing with the old woman, when
the door divided them and he was listening.
The visitor panted several times. “He must
be a big, fat man,” thought Raskolnikov,
squeezing the axe in his hand. It seemed like
a dream indeed. The visitor took hold of the
bell and rang it loudly.
As soon as the tin bell tinkled, Raskolnikov
seemed to be aware of something moving in
the room. For some seconds he listened quite
seriously. The unknown rang again, waited
and suddenly tugged violently and impatiently
at the handle of the door. Raskolnikov gazed
in horror at the hook shaking in its fastening,
and in blank terror expected every minute
that the fastening would be pulled out. It
certainly did seem possible, so violently
was he shaking it. He was tempted to hold
the fastening, but he might be aware of it.
A giddiness came over him again. “I shall
fall down!” flashed through his mind, but
the unknown began to speak and he recovered
himself at once.
“What’s up? Are they asleep or murdered?
D-damn them!” he bawled in a thick voice,
“Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, old witch! Lizaveta
Ivanovna, hey, my beauty! open the door! Oh,
damn them! Are they asleep or what?”
And again, enraged, he tugged with all his
might a dozen times at the bell. He must certainly
be a man of authority and an intimate acquaintance.
At this moment light hurried steps were heard
not far off, on the stairs. Someone else was
approaching. Raskolnikov had not heard them
at first.
“You don’t say there’s no one at home,”
the new-comer cried in a cheerful, ringing
voice, addressing the first visitor, who still
went on pulling the bell. “Good evening,
Koch.”
“From his voice he must be quite young,”
thought Raskolnikov.
“Who the devil can tell? I’ve almost broken
the lock,” answered Koch. “But how do
you come to know me?”
“Why! The day before yesterday I beat you
three times running at billiards at Gambrinus’.”
“Oh!”
“So they are not at home? That’s queer.
It’s awfully stupid though. Where could
the old woman have gone? I’ve come on business.”
“Yes; and I have business with her, too.”
“Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose,
Aie—aie! And I was hoping to get some money!”
cried the young man.
“We must give it up, of course, but what
did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed
the time for me to come herself. It’s out
of my way. And where the devil she can have
got to, I can’t make out. She sits here
from year’s end to year’s end, the old
hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of
a sudden she is out for a walk!”
“Hadn’t we better ask the porter?”
“What?”
“Where she’s gone and when she’ll be
back.”
“Hm.... Damn it all!... We might ask....
But you know she never does go anywhere.”
And he once more tugged at the door-handle.
“Damn it all. There’s nothing to be done,
we must go!”
“Stay!” cried the young man suddenly.
“Do you see how the door shakes if you pull
it?”
“Well?”
“That shows it’s not locked, but fastened
with the hook! Do you hear how the hook clanks?”
“Well?”
“Why, don’t you see? That proves that
one of them is at home. If they were all out,
they would have locked the door from the outside
with the key and not with the hook from inside.
There, do you hear how the hook is clanking?
To fasten the hook on the inside they must
be at home, don’t you see. So there they
are sitting inside and don’t open the door!”
“Well! And so they must be!” cried Koch,
astonished. “What are they about in there?”
And he began furiously shaking the door.
“Stay!” cried the young man again. “Don’t
pull at it! There must be something wrong....
Here, you’ve been ringing and pulling at
the door and still they don’t open! So either
they’ve both fainted or...”
“What?”
“I tell you what. Let’s go fetch the porter,
let him wake them up.”
“All right.”
Both were going down.
“Stay. You stop here while I run down for
the porter.”
“What for?”
“Well, you’d better.”
“All right.”
“I’m studying the law you see! It’s
evident, e-vi-dent there’s something wrong
here!” the young man cried hotly, and he
ran downstairs.
Koch remained. Once more he softly touched
the bell which gave one tinkle, then gently,
as though reflecting and looking about him,
began touching the door-handle pulling it
and letting it go to make sure once more that
it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing
and panting he bent down and began looking
at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock
on the inside and so nothing could be seen.
Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the
axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was
even making ready to fight when they should
come in. While they were knocking and talking
together, the idea several times occurred
to him to end it all at once and shout to
them through the door. Now and then he was
tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them,
while they could not open the door! “Only
make haste!” was the thought that flashed
through his mind.
“But what the devil is he about?...” Time
was passing, one minute, and another—no
one came. Koch began to be restless.
“What the devil?” he cried suddenly and
in impatience deserting his sentry duty, he,
too, went down, hurrying and thumping with
his heavy boots on the stairs. The steps died
away.
“Good heavens! What am I to do?”
Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the
door—there was no sound. Abruptly, without
any thought at all, he went out, closing the
door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.
He had gone down three flights when he suddenly
heard a loud voice below—where could he
go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just
going back to the flat.
“Hey there! Catch the brute!”
Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting,
and rather fell than ran down the stairs,
bawling at the top of his voice.
“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast
him!”
The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds
came from the yard; all was still. But at
the same instant several men talking loud
and fast began noisily mounting the stairs.
There were three or four of them. He distinguished
the ringing voice of the young man. “Hey!”
Filled with despair he went straight to meet
them, feeling “come what must!” If they
stopped him—all was lost; if they let him
pass—all was lost too; they would remember
him. They were approaching; they were only
a flight from him—and suddenly deliverance!
A few steps from him on the right, there was
an empty flat with the door wide open, the
flat on the second floor where the painters
had been at work, and which, as though for
his benefit, they had just left. It was they,
no doubt, who had just run down, shouting.
The floor had only just been painted, in the
middle of the room stood a pail and a broken
pot with paint and brushes. In one instant
he had whisked in at the open door and hidden
behind the wall and only in the nick of time;
they had already reached the landing. Then
they turned and went on up to the fourth floor,
talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe
and ran down the stairs.
No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway.
He passed quickly through the gateway and
turned to the left in the street.
He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that
moment they were at the flat, that they were
greatly astonished at finding it unlocked,
as the door had just been fastened, that by
now they were looking at the bodies, that
before another minute had passed they would
guess and completely realise that the murderer
had just been there, and had succeeded in
hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping.
They would guess most likely that he had been
in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs.
And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace
much, though the next turning was still nearly
a hundred yards away. “Should he slip through
some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown
street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away
the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!”
At last he reached the turning. He turned
down it more dead than alive. Here he was
half way to safety, and he understood it;
it was less risky because there was a great
crowd of people, and he was lost in it like
a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had
so weakened him that he could scarcely move.
Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck
was all wet. “My word, he has been going
it!” someone shouted at him when he came
out on the canal bank.
He was only dimly conscious of himself now,
and the farther he went the worse it was.
He remembered however, that on coming out
on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding
few people there and so being more conspicuous,
and he had thought of turning back. Though
he was almost falling from fatigue, he went
a long way round so as to get home from quite
a different direction.
He was not fully conscious when he passed
through the gateway of his house! He was already
on the staircase before he recollected the
axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before
him, to put it back and to escape observation
as far as possible in doing so. He was of
course incapable of reflecting that it might
perhaps be far better not to restore the axe
at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s
yard. But it all happened fortunately, the
door of the porter’s room was closed but
not locked, so that it seemed most likely
that the porter was at home. But he had so
completely lost all power of reflection that
he walked straight to the door and opened
it. If the porter had asked him, “What do
you want?” he would perhaps have simply
handed him the axe. But again the porter was
not at home, and he succeeded in putting the
axe back under the bench, and even covering
it with the chunk of wood as before. He met
no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way
to his room; the landlady’s door was shut.
When he was in his room, he flung himself
on the sofa just as he was—he did not sleep,
but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone
had come into his room then, he would have
jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and
shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in
his brain, but he could not catch at one,
he could not rest on one, in spite of all
his efforts....
PART II
CHAPTER I
So he lay a very long while. Now and then
he seemed to wake up, and at such moments
he noticed that it was far into the night,
but it did not occur to him to get up. At
last he noticed that it was beginning to get
light. He was lying on his back, still dazed
from his recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing
cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds
which he heard every night, indeed, under
his window after two o’clock. They woke
him up now.
“Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the
taverns,” he thought, “it’s past two
o’clock,” and at once he leaped up, as
though someone had pulled him from the sofa.
“What! Past two o’clock!”
He sat down on the sofa—and instantly recollected
everything! All at once, in one flash, he
recollected everything.
For the first moment he thought he was going
mad. A dreadful chill came over him; but the
chill was from the fever that had begun long
before in his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken
with violent shivering, so that his teeth
chattered and all his limbs were shaking.
He opened the door and began listening—everything
in the house was asleep. With amazement he
gazed at himself and everything in the room
around him, wondering how he could have come
in the night before without fastening the
door, and have flung himself on the sofa without
undressing, without even taking his hat off.
It had fallen off and was lying on the floor
near his pillow.
“If anyone had come in, what would he have
thought? That I’m drunk but...”
He rushed to the window. There was light enough,
and he began hurriedly looking himself all
over from head to foot, all his clothes; were
there no traces? But there was no doing it
like that; shivering with cold, he began taking
off everything and looking over again. He
turned everything over to the last threads
and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through
his search three times.
But there seemed to be nothing, no trace,
except in one place, where some thick drops
of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed
edge of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife
and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed
to be nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered that the purse and
the things he had taken out of the old woman’s
box were still in his pockets! He had not
thought till then of taking them out and hiding
them! He had not even thought of them while
he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly
he rushed to take them out and fling them
on the table. When he had pulled out everything,
and turned the pocket inside out to be sure
there was nothing left, he carried the whole
heap to the corner. The paper had come off
the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters.
He began stuffing all the things into the
hole under the paper: “They’re in! All
out of sight, and the purse too!” he thought
gleefully, getting up and gazing blankly at
the hole which bulged out more than ever.
Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror;
“My God!” he whispered in despair: “what’s
the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that
the way to hide things?”
He had not reckoned on having trinkets to
hide. He had only thought of money, and so
had not prepared a hiding-place.
“But now, now, what am I glad of?” he
thought, “Is that hiding things? My reason’s
deserting me—simply!”
He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and
was at once shaken by another unbearable fit
of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a
chair beside him his old student’s winter
coat, which was still warm though almost in
rags, covered himself up with it and once
more sank into drowsiness and delirium. He
lost consciousness.
Not more than five minutes had passed when
he jumped up a second time, and at once pounced
in a frenzy on his clothes again.
“How could I go to sleep again with nothing
done? Yes, yes; I have not taken the loop
off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing
like that! Such a piece of evidence!”
He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it
to pieces and threw the bits among his linen
under the pillow.
“Pieces of torn linen couldn’t rouse suspicion,
whatever happened; I think not, I think not,
any way!” he repeated, standing in the middle
of the room, and with painful concentration
he fell to gazing about him again, at the
floor and everywhere, trying to make sure
he had not forgotten anything. The conviction
that all his faculties, even memory, and the
simplest power of reflection were failing
him, began to be an insufferable torture.
“Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely
it isn’t my punishment coming upon me? It
is!”
The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers
were actually lying on the floor in the middle
of the room, where anyone coming in would
see them!
“What is the matter with me!” he cried
again, like one distraught.
Then a strange idea entered his head; that,
perhaps, all his clothes were covered with
blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many
stains, but that he did not see them, did
not notice them because his perceptions were
failing, were going to pieces... his reason
was clouded.... Suddenly he remembered that
there had been blood on the purse too. “Ah!
Then there must be blood on the pocket too,
for I put the wet purse in my pocket!”
In a flash he had turned the pocket inside
out and, yes!—there were traces, stains
on the lining of the pocket!
“So my reason has not quite deserted me,
so I still have some sense and memory, since
I guessed it of myself,” he thought triumphantly,
with a deep sigh of relief; “it’s simply
the weakness of fever, a moment’s delirium,”
and he tore the whole lining out of the left
pocket of his trousers. At that instant the
sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock
which poked out from the boot, he fancied
there were traces! He flung off his boots;
“traces indeed! The tip of the sock was
soaked with blood;” he must have unwarily
stepped into that pool.... “But what am
I to do with this now? Where am I to put the
sock and rags and pocket?”
He gathered them all up in his hands and stood
in the middle of the room.
“In the stove? But they would ransack the
stove first of all. Burn them? But what can
I burn them with? There are no matches even.
No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere.
Yes, better throw it away,” he repeated,
sitting down on the sofa again, “and at
once, this minute, without lingering...”
But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again
the unbearable icy shivering came over him;
again he drew his coat over him.
And for a long while, for some hours, he was
haunted by the impulse to “go off somewhere
at once, this moment, and fling it all away,
so that it may be out of sight and done with,
at once, at once!” Several times he tried
to rise from the sofa, but could not.
He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent
knocking at his door.
“Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps
sleeping here!” shouted Nastasya, banging
with her fist on the door. “For whole days
together he’s snoring here like a dog! A
dog he is too. Open I tell you. It’s past
ten.”
“Maybe he’s not at home,” said a man’s
voice.
“Ha! that’s the porter’s voice.... What
does he want?”
He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating
of his heart was a positive pain.
“Then who can have latched the door?”
retorted Nastasya. “He’s taken to bolting
himself in! As if he were worth stealing!
Open, you stupid, wake up!”
“What do they want? Why the porter? All’s
discovered. Resist or open? Come what may!...”
He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched
the door.
His room was so small that he could undo the
latch without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter
and Nastasya were standing there.
Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He
glanced with a defiant and desperate air at
the porter, who without a word held out a
grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.
“A notice from the office,” he announced,
as he gave him the paper.
“From what office?”
“A summons to the police office, of course.
You know which office.”
“To the police?... What for?...”
“How can I tell? You’re sent for, so you
go.”
The man looked at him attentively, looked
round the room and turned to go away.
“He’s downright ill!” observed Nastasya,
not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned
his head for a moment. “He’s been in a
fever since yesterday,” she added.
Raskolnikov made no response and held the
paper in his hands, without opening it. “Don’t
you get up then,” Nastasya went on compassionately,
seeing that he was letting his feet down from
the sofa. “You’re ill, and so don’t
go; there’s no such hurry. What have you
got there?”
He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds
he had cut from his trousers, the sock, and
the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep
with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting
upon it, he remembered that half waking up
in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly
in his hand and so fallen asleep again.
“Look at the rags he’s collected and sleeps
with them, as though he has got hold of a
treasure...”
And Nastasya went off into her hysterical
giggle.
Instantly he thrust them all under his great
coat and fixed his eyes intently upon her.
Far as he was from being capable of rational
reflection at that moment, he felt that no
one would behave like that with a person who
was going to be arrested. “But... the police?”
“You’d better have some tea! Yes? I’ll
bring it, there’s some left.”
“No... I’m going; I’ll go at once,”
he muttered, getting on to his feet.
“Why, you’ll never get downstairs!”
“Yes, I’ll go.”
“As you please.”
She followed the porter out.
At once he rushed to the light to examine
the sock and the rags.
“There are stains, but not very noticeable;
all covered with dirt, and rubbed and already
discoloured. No one who had no suspicion could
distinguish anything. Nastasya from a distance
could not have noticed, thank God!” Then
with a tremor he broke the seal of the notice
and began reading; he was a long while reading,
before he understood. It was an ordinary summons
from the district police-station to appear
that day at half-past nine at the office of
the district superintendent.
“But when has such a thing happened? I never
have anything to do with the police! And why
just to-day?” he thought in agonising bewilderment.
“Good God, only get it over soon!”
He was flinging himself on his knees to pray,
but broke into laughter—not at the idea
of prayer, but at himself.
He began, hurriedly dressing. “If I’m
lost, I am lost, I don’t care! Shall I put
the sock on?” he suddenly wondered, “it
will get dustier still and the traces will
be gone.”
But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled
it off again in loathing and horror. He pulled
it off, but reflecting that he had no other
socks, he picked it up and put it on again—and
again he laughed.
“That’s all conventional, that’s all
relative, merely a way of looking at it,”
he thought in a flash, but only on the top
surface of his mind, while he was shuddering
all over, “there, I’ve got it on! I have
finished by getting it on!”
But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.
“No, it’s too much for me...” he thought.
His legs shook. “From fear,” he muttered.
His head swam and ached with fever. “It’s
a trick! They want to decoy me there and confound
me over everything,” he mused, as he went
out on to the stairs—“the worst of it
is I’m almost light-headed... I may blurt
out something stupid...”
On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving
all the things just as they were in the hole
in the wall, “and very likely, it’s on
purpose to search when I’m out,” he thought,
and stopped short. But he was possessed by
such despair, such cynicism of misery, if
one may so call it, that with a wave of his
hand he went on. “Only to get it over!”
In the street the heat was insufferable again;
not a drop of rain had fallen all those days.
Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench
from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken
men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down
cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes,
so that it hurt him to look out of them, and
he felt his head going round—as a man in
a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into
the street on a bright sunny day.
When he reached the turning into the street,
in an agony of trepidation he looked down
it... at the house... and at once averted
his eyes.
“If they question me, perhaps I’ll simply
tell,” he thought, as he drew near the police-station.
The police-station was about a quarter of
a mile off. It had lately been moved to new
rooms on the fourth floor of a new house.
He had been once for a moment in the old office
but long ago. Turning in at the gateway, he
saw on the right a flight of stairs which
a peasant was mounting with a book in his
hand. “A house-porter, no doubt; so then,
the office is here,” and he began ascending
the stairs on the chance. He did not want
to ask questions of anyone.
“I’ll go in, fall on my knees, and confess
everything...” he thought, as he reached
the fourth floor.
The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy
with dirty water. The kitchens of the flats
opened on to the stairs and stood open almost
the whole day. So there was a fearful smell
and heat. The staircase was crowded with porters
going up and down with their books under their
arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts
and both sexes. The door of the office, too,
stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting within.
There, too, the heat was stifling and there
was a sickening smell of fresh paint and stale
oil from the newly decorated rooms.
After waiting a little, he decided to move
forward into the next room. All the rooms
were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience
drew him on and on. No one paid attention
to him. In the second room some clerks sat
writing, dressed hardly better than he was,
and rather a queer-looking set. He went up
to one of them.
“What is it?”
He showed the notice he had received.
“You are a student?” the man asked, glancing
at the notice.
“Yes, formerly a student.”
The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest
interest. He was a particularly unkempt person
with the look of a fixed idea in his eye.
“There would be no getting anything out
of him, because he has no interest in anything,”
thought Raskolnikov.
“Go in there to the head clerk,” said
the clerk, pointing towards the furthest room.
He went into that room—the fourth in order;
it was a small room and packed full of people,
rather better dressed than in the outer rooms.
Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed
in mourning, sat at the table opposite the
chief clerk, writing something at his dictation.
The other, a very stout, buxom woman with
a purplish-red, blotchy face, excessively
smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom
as big as a saucer, was standing on one side,
apparently waiting for something. Raskolnikov
thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The
latter glanced at it, said: “Wait a minute,”
and went on attending to the lady in mourning.
He breathed more freely. “It can’t be
that!”
By degrees he began to regain confidence,
he kept urging himself to have courage and
be calm.
“Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness,
and I may betray myself! Hm... it’s a pity
there’s no air here,” he added, “it’s
stifling.... It makes one’s head dizzier
than ever... and one’s mind too...”
He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil.
He was afraid of losing his self-control;
he tried to catch at something and fix his
mind on it, something quite irrelevant, but
he could not succeed in this at all. Yet the
head clerk greatly interested him, he kept
hoping to see through him and guess something
from his face.
He was a very young man, about two and twenty,
with a dark mobile face that looked older
than his years. He was fashionably dressed
and foppish, with his hair parted in the middle,
well combed and pomaded, and wore a number
of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and
a gold chain on his waistcoat. He said a couple
of words in French to a foreigner who was
in the room, and said them fairly correctly.
“Luise Ivanovna, you can sit down,” he
said casually to the gaily-dressed, purple-faced
lady, who was still standing as though not
venturing to sit down, though there was a
chair beside her.
“Ich danke,” said the latter, and softly,
with a rustle of silk she sank into the chair.
Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace
floated about the table like an air-balloon
and filled almost half the room. She smelt
of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed
at filling half the room and smelling so strongly
of scent; and though her smile was impudent
as well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness.
The lady in mourning had done at last, and
got up. All at once, with some noise, an officer
walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing
of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his
cockaded cap on the table and sat down in
an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped
from her seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying
in a sort of ecstasy; but the officer took
not the smallest notice of her, and she did
not venture to sit down again in his presence.
He was the assistant superintendent. He had
a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally
on each side of his face, and extremely small
features, expressive of nothing much except
a certain insolence. He looked askance and
rather indignantly at Raskolnikov; he was
so very badly dressed, and in spite of his
humiliating position, his bearing was by no
means in keeping with his clothes. Raskolnikov
had unwarily fixed a very long and direct
look on him, so that he felt positively affronted.
“What do you want?” he shouted, apparently
astonished that such a ragged fellow was not
annihilated by the majesty of his glance.
“I was summoned... by a notice...” Raskolnikov
faltered.
“For the recovery of money due, from the
student,” the head clerk interfered hurriedly,
tearing himself from his papers. “Here!”
and he flung Raskolnikov a document and pointed
out the place. “Read that!”
“Money? What money?” thought Raskolnikov,
“but... then... it’s certainly not that.”
And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense
indescribable relief. A load was lifted from
his back.
“And pray, what time were you directed to
appear, sir?” shouted the assistant superintendent,
seeming for some unknown reason more and more
aggrieved. “You are told to come at nine,
and now it’s twelve!”
“The notice was only brought me a quarter
of an hour ago,” Raskolnikov answered loudly
over his shoulder. To his own surprise he,
too, grew suddenly angry and found a certain
pleasure in it. “And it’s enough that
I have come here ill with fever.”
“Kindly refrain from shouting!”
“I’m not shouting, I’m speaking very
quietly, it’s you who are shouting at me.
I’m a student, and allow no one to shout
at me.”
The assistant superintendent was so furious
that for the first minute he could only splutter
inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat.
“Be silent! You are in a government office.
Don’t be impudent, sir!”
“You’re in a government office, too,”
cried Raskolnikov, “and you’re smoking
a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are
showing disrespect to all of us.”
He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having
said this.
The head clerk looked at him with a smile.
The angry assistant superintendent was obviously
disconcerted.
“That’s not your business!” he shouted
at last with unnatural loudness. “Kindly
make the declaration demanded of you. Show
him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint
against you! You don’t pay your debts! You’re
a fine bird!”
But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he
had eagerly clutched at the paper, in haste
to find an explanation. He read it once, and
a second time, and still did not understand.
“What is this?” he asked the head clerk.
“It is for the recovery of money on an I
O U, a writ. You must either pay it, with
all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written
declaration when you can pay it, and at the
same time an undertaking not to leave the
capital without payment, and nor to sell or
conceal your property. The creditor is at
liberty to sell your property, and proceed
against you according to the law.”
“But I... am not in debt to anyone!”
“That’s not our business. Here, an I O
U for a hundred and fifteen roubles, legally
attested, and due for payment, has been brought
us for recovery, given by you to the widow
of the assessor Zarnitsyn, nine months ago,
and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to one
Mr. Tchebarov. We therefore summon you, hereupon.”
“But she is my landlady!”
“And what if she is your landlady?”
The head clerk looked at him with a condescending
smile of compassion, and at the same time
with a certain triumph, as at a novice under
fire for the first time—as though he would
say: “Well, how do you feel now?” But
what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ
of recovery! Was that worth worrying about
now, was it worth attention even! He stood,
he read, he listened, he answered, he even
asked questions himself, but all mechanically.
The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance
from overwhelming danger, that was what filled
his whole soul that moment without thought
for the future, without analysis, without
suppositions or surmises, without doubts and
without questioning. It was an instant of
full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But
at that very moment something like a thunderstorm
took place in the office. The assistant superintendent,
still shaken by Raskolnikov’s disrespect,
still fuming and obviously anxious to keep
up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate
smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever
since he came in with an exceedingly silly
smile.
“You shameful hussy!” he shouted suddenly
at the top of his voice. (The lady in mourning
had left the office.) “What was going on
at your house last night? Eh! A disgrace again,
you’re a scandal to the whole street. Fighting
and drinking again. Do you want the house
of correction? Why, I have warned you ten
times over that I would not let you off the
eleventh! And here you are again, again, you...
you...!”
The paper fell out of Raskolnikov’s hands,
and he looked wildly at the smart lady who
was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon
saw what it meant, and at once began to find
positive amusement in the scandal. He listened
with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh
and laugh... all his nerves were on edge.
“Ilya Petrovitch!” the head clerk was
beginning anxiously, but stopped short, for
he knew from experience that the enraged assistant
could not be stopped except by force.
As for the smart lady, at first she positively
trembled before the storm. But, strange to
say, the more numerous and violent the terms
of abuse became, the more amiable she looked,
and the more seductive the smiles she lavished
on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily,
and curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently
for a chance of putting in her word: and at
last she found it.
“There was no sort of noise or fighting
in my house, Mr. Captain,” she pattered
all at once, like peas dropping, speaking
Russian confidently, though with a strong
German accent, “and no sort of scandal,
and his honour came drunk, and it’s the
whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain, and
I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable
house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour,
Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike
any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy,
and asked for three bottles again, and then
he lifted up one leg, and began playing the
pianoforte with one foot, and that is not
at all right in an honourable house, and he
ganz broke the piano, and it was very bad
manners indeed and I said so. And he took
up a bottle and began hitting everyone with
it. And then I called the porter, and Karl
came, and he took Karl and hit him in the
eye; and he hit Henriette in the eye, too,
and gave me five slaps on the cheek. And it
was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house,
Mr. Captain, and I screamed. And he opened
the window over the canal, and stood in the
window, squealing like a little pig; it was
a disgrace. The idea of squealing like a little
pig at the window into the street! Fie upon
him! And Karl pulled him away from the window
by his coat, and it is true, Mr. Captain,
he tore sein rock. And then he shouted that
man muss pay him fifteen roubles damages.
And I did pay him, Mr. Captain, five roubles
for sein rock. And he is an ungentlemanly
visitor and caused all the scandal. ‘I will
show you up,’ he said, ‘for I can write
to all the papers about you.’”
“Then he was an author?”
“Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly
visitor in an honourable house....”
“Now then! Enough! I have told you already...”
“Ilya Petrovitch!” the head clerk repeated
significantly.
The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the
head clerk slightly shook his head.
“... So I tell you this, most respectable
Luise Ivanovna, and I tell it you for the
last time,” the assistant went on. “If
there is a scandal in your honourable house
once again, I will put you yourself in the
lock-up, as it is called in polite society.
Do you hear? So a literary man, an author
took five roubles for his coat-tail in an
‘honourable house’? A nice set, these
authors!”
And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov.
“There was a scandal the other day in a
restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner
and would not pay; ‘I’ll write a satire
on you,’ says he. And there was another
of them on a steamer last week used the most
disgraceful language to the respectable family
of a civil councillor, his wife and daughter.
And there was one of them turned out of a
confectioner’s shop the other day. They
are like that, authors, literary men, students,
town-criers.... Pfoo! You get along! I shall
look in upon you myself one day. Then you
had better be careful! Do you hear?”
With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell
to curtsying in all directions, and so curtsied
herself to the door. But at the door, she
stumbled backwards against a good-looking
officer with a fresh, open face and splendid
thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent
of the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch.
Luise Ivanovna made haste to curtsy almost
to the ground, and with mincing little steps,
she fluttered out of the office.
“Again thunder and lightning—a hurricane!”
said Nikodim Fomitch to Ilya Petrovitch in
a civil and friendly tone. “You are aroused
again, you are fuming again! I heard it on
the stairs!”
“Well, what then!” Ilya Petrovitch drawled
with gentlemanly nonchalance; and he walked
with some papers to another table, with a
jaunty swing of his shoulders at each step.
“Here, if you will kindly look: an author,
or a student, has been one at least, does
not pay his debts, has given an I O U, won’t
clear out of his room, and complaints are
constantly being lodged against him, and here
he has been pleased to make a protest against
my smoking in his presence! He behaves like
a cad himself, and just look at him, please.
Here’s the gentleman, and very attractive
he is!”
“Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we
know you go off like powder, you can’t bear
a slight, I daresay you took offence at something
and went too far yourself,” continued Nikodim
Fomitch, turning affably to Raskolnikov. “But
you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow,
I assure you, but explosive, explosive! He
gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no stopping
him! And then it’s all over! And at the
bottom he’s a heart of gold! His nickname
in the regiment was the Explosive Lieutenant....”
“And what a regiment it was, too,” cried
Ilya Petrovitch, much gratified at this agreeable
banter, though still sulky.
Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something
exceptionally pleasant to them all. “Excuse
me, Captain,” he began easily, suddenly
addressing Nikodim Fomitch, “will you enter
into my position?... I am ready to ask pardon,
if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student,
sick and shattered (shattered was the word
he used) by poverty. I am not studying, because
I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get
money.... I have a mother and sister in the
province of X. They will send it to me, and
I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted
woman, but she is so exasperated at my having
lost my lessons, and not paying her for the
last four months, that she does not even send
up my dinner... and I don’t understand this
I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her
on this I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge
for yourselves!...”
“But that is not our business, you know,”
the head clerk was observing.
“Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But
allow me to explain...” Raskolnikov put
in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch,
but trying his best to address Ilya Petrovitch
also, though the latter persistently appeared
to be rummaging among his papers and to be
contemptuously oblivious of him. “Allow
me to explain that I have been living with
her for nearly three years and at first...
at first... for why should I not confess it,
at the very beginning I promised to marry
her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely
given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked
her, though I was not in love with her...
a youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean
to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely
in those days, and I led a life of... I was
very heedless...”
“Nobody asks you for these personal details,
sir, we’ve no time to waste,” Ilya Petrovitch
interposed roughly and with a note of triumph;
but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though
he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult
to speak.
“But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me
to explain... how it all happened... In my
turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary.
But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I
remained lodging there as before, and when
my landlady moved into her present quarters,
she said to me... and in a friendly way...
that she had complete trust in me, but still,
would I not give her an I O U for one hundred
and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her.
She said if only I gave her that, she would
trust me again, as much as I liked, and that
she would never, never—those were her own
words—make use of that I O U till I could
pay of myself... and now, when I have lost
my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes
action against me. What am I to say to that?”
“All these affecting details are no business
of ours.” Ilya Petrovitch interrupted rudely.
“You must give a written undertaking but
as for your love affairs and all these tragic
events, we have nothing to do with that.”
“Come now... you are harsh,” muttered
Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at the table
and also beginning to write. He looked a little
ashamed.
“Write!” said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.
“Write what?” the latter asked, gruffly.
“I will dictate to you.”
Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated
him more casually and contemptuously after
his speech, but strange to say he suddenly
felt completely indifferent to anyone’s
opinion, and this revulsion took place in
a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to
think a little, he would have been amazed
indeed that he could have talked to them like
that a minute before, forcing his feelings
upon them. And where had those feelings come
from? Now if the whole room had been filled,
not with police officers, but with those nearest
and dearest to him, he would not have found
one human word for them, so empty was his
heart. A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting
solitude and remoteness, took conscious form
in his soul. It was not the meanness of his
sentimental effusions before Ilya Petrovitch,
nor the meanness of the latter’s triumph
over him that had caused this sudden revulsion
in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now with
his own baseness, with all these petty vanities,
officers, German women, debts, police-offices?
If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that
moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly
have heard the sentence to the end. Something
was happening to him entirely new, sudden
and unknown. It was not that he understood,
but he felt clearly with all the intensity
of sensation that he could never more appeal
to these people in the police-office with
sentimental effusions like his recent outburst,
or with anything whatever; and that if they
had been his own brothers and sisters and
not police-officers, it would have been utterly
out of the question to appeal to them in any
circumstance of life. He had never experienced
such a strange and awful sensation. And what
was most agonising—it was more a sensation
than a conception or idea, a direct sensation,
the most agonising of all the sensations he
had known in his life.
The head clerk began dictating to him the
usual form of declaration, that he could not
pay, that he undertook to do so at a future
date, that he would not leave the town, nor
sell his property, and so on.
“But you can’t write, you can hardly hold
the pen,” observed the head clerk, looking
with curiosity at Raskolnikov. “Are you
ill?”
“Yes, I am giddy. Go on!”
“That’s all. Sign it.”
The head clerk took the paper, and turned
to attend to others.
Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead
of getting up and going away, he put his elbows
on the table and pressed his head in his hands.
He felt as if a nail were being driven into
his skull. A strange idea suddenly occurred
to him, to get up at once, to go up to Nikodim
Fomitch, and tell him everything that had
happened yesterday, and then to go with him
to his lodgings and to show him the things
in the hole in the corner. The impulse was
so strong that he got up from his seat to
carry it out. “Hadn’t I better think a
minute?” flashed through his mind. “No,
better cast off the burden without thinking.”
But all at once he stood still, rooted to
the spot. Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly
with Ilya Petrovitch, and the words reached
him:
“It’s impossible, they’ll both be released.
To begin with, the whole story contradicts
itself. Why should they have called the porter,
if it had been their doing? To inform against
themselves? Or as a blind? No, that would
be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student,
was seen at the gate by both the porters and
a woman as he went in. He was walking with
three friends, who left him only at the gate,
and he asked the porters to direct him, in
the presence of the friends. Now, would he
have asked his way if he had been going with
such an object? As for Koch, he spent half
an hour at the silversmith’s below, before
he went up to the old woman and he left him
at exactly a quarter to eight. Now just consider...”
“But excuse me, how do you explain this
contradiction? They state themselves that
they knocked and the door was locked; yet
three minutes later when they went up with
the porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.”
“That’s just it; the murderer must have
been there and bolted himself in; and they’d
have caught him for a certainty if Koch had
not been an ass and gone to look for the porter
too. He must have seized the interval to get
downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch
keeps crossing himself and saying: ‘If I
had been there, he would have jumped out and
killed me with his axe.’ He is going to
have a thanksgiving service—ha, ha!”
“And no one saw the murderer?”
“They might well not see him; the house
is a regular Noah’s Ark,” said the head
clerk, who was listening.
“It’s clear, quite clear,” Nikodim Fomitch
repeated warmly.
“No, it is anything but clear,” Ilya Petrovitch
maintained.
Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards
the door, but he did not reach it....
When he recovered consciousness, he found
himself sitting in a chair, supported by someone
on the right side, while someone else was
standing on the left, holding a yellowish
glass filled with yellow water, and Nikodim
Fomitch standing before him, looking intently
at him. He got up from the chair.
“What’s this? Are you ill?” Nikodim
Fomitch asked, rather sharply.
“He could hardly hold his pen when he was
signing,” said the head clerk, settling
back in his place, and taking up his work
again.
“Have you been ill long?” cried Ilya Petrovitch
from his place, where he, too, was looking
through papers. He had, of course, come to
look at the sick man when he fainted, but
retired at once when he recovered.
“Since yesterday,” muttered Raskolnikov
in reply.
“Did you go out yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Though you were ill?”
“Yes.”
“At what time?”
“About seven.”
“And where did you go, may I ask?”
“Along the street.”
“Short and clear.”
Raskolnikov, white as a handkerchief, had
answered sharply, jerkily, without dropping
his black feverish eyes before Ilya Petrovitch’s
stare.
“He can scarcely stand upright. And you...”
Nikodim Fomitch was beginning.
“No matter,” Ilya Petrovitch pronounced
rather peculiarly.
Nikodim Fomitch would have made some further
protest, but glancing at the head clerk who
was looking very hard at him, he did not speak.
There was a sudden silence. It was strange.
“Very well, then,” concluded Ilya Petrovitch,
“we will not detain you.”
Raskolnikov went out. He caught the sound
of eager conversation on his departure, and
above the rest rose the questioning voice
of Nikodim Fomitch. In the street, his faintness
passed off completely.
“A search—there will be a search at once,”
he repeated to himself, hurrying home. “The
brutes! they suspect.”
His former terror mastered him completely
again.
CHAPTER II
“And what if there has been a search already?
What if I find them in my room?”
But here was his room. Nothing and no one
in it. No one had peeped in. Even Nastasya
had not touched it. But heavens! how could
he have left all those things in the hole?
He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand
under the paper, pulled the things out and
lined his pockets with them. There were eight
articles in all: two little boxes with ear-rings
or something of the sort, he hardly looked
to see; then four small leather cases. There
was a chain, too, merely wrapped in newspaper
and something else in newspaper, that looked
like a decoration.... He put them all in the
different pockets of his overcoat, and the
remaining pocket of his trousers, trying to
conceal them as much as possible. He took
the purse, too. Then he went out of his room,
leaving the door open. He walked quickly and
resolutely, and though he felt shattered,
he had his senses about him. He was afraid
of pursuit, he was afraid that in another
half-hour, another quarter of an hour perhaps,
instructions would be issued for his pursuit,
and so at all costs, he must hide all traces
before then. He must clear everything up while
he still had some strength, some reasoning
power left him.... Where was he to go?
That had long been settled: “Fling them
into the canal, and all traces hidden in the
water, the thing would be at an end.” So
he had decided in the night of his delirium
when several times he had had the impulse
to get up and go away, to make haste, and
get rid of it all. But to get rid of it, turned
out to be a very difficult task. He wandered
along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal
for half an hour or more and looked several
times at the steps running down to the water,
but he could not think of carrying out his
plan; either rafts stood at the steps’ edge,
and women were washing clothes on them, or
boats were moored there, and people were swarming
everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and
noticed from the banks on all sides; it would
look suspicious for a man to go down on purpose,
stop, and throw something into the water.
And what if the boxes were to float instead
of sinking? And of course they would. Even
as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare
and look round, as if they had nothing to
do but to watch him. “Why is it, or can
it be my fancy?” he thought.
At last the thought struck him that it might
be better to go to the Neva. There were not
so many people there, he would be less observed,
and it would be more convenient in every way,
above all it was further off. He wondered
how he could have been wandering for a good
half-hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous
past without thinking of it before. And that
half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan,
simply because he had thought of it in delirium!
He had become extremely absent and forgetful
and he was aware of it. He certainly must
make haste.
He walked towards the Neva along V—— Prospect,
but on the way another idea struck him. “Why
to the Neva? Would it not be better to go
somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and
there hide the things in some solitary place,
in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot
perhaps?” And though he felt incapable of
clear judgment, the idea seemed to him a sound
one. But he was not destined to go there.
For coming out of V—— Prospect towards
the square, he saw on the left a passage leading
between two blank walls to a courtyard. On
the right hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall
of a four-storied house stretched far into
the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding
ran parallel with it for twenty paces into
the court, and then turned sharply to the
left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place
where rubbish of different sorts was lying.
At the end of the court, the corner of a low,
smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some
workshop, peeped from behind the hoarding.
It was probably a carriage builder’s or
carpenter’s shed; the whole place from the
entrance was black with coal dust. Here would
be the place to throw it, he thought. Not
seeing anyone in the yard, he slipped in,
and at once saw near the gate a sink, such
as is often put in yards where there are many
workmen or cab-drivers; and on the hoarding
above had been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured
witticism, “Standing here strictly forbidden.”
This was all the better, for there would be
nothing suspicious about his going in. “Here
I could throw it all in a heap and get away!”
Looking round once more, with his hand already
in his pocket, he noticed against the outer
wall, between the entrance and the sink, a
big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds.
The other side of the wall was a street. He
could hear passers-by, always numerous in
that part, but he could not be seen from the
entrance, unless someone came in from the
street, which might well happen indeed, so
there was need of haste.
He bent down over the stone, seized the top
of it firmly in both hands, and using all
his strength turned it over. Under the stone
was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately
emptied his pocket into it. The purse lay
at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled
up. Then he seized the stone again and with
one twist turned it back, so that it was in
the same position again, though it stood a
very little higher. But he scraped the earth
about it and pressed it at the edges with
his foot. Nothing could be noticed.
Then he went out, and turned into the square.
Again an intense, almost unbearable joy overwhelmed
him for an instant, as it had in the police-office.
“I have buried my tracks! And who, who can
think of looking under that stone? It has
been lying there most likely ever since the
house was built, and will lie as many years
more. And if it were found, who would think
of me? It is all over! No clue!” And he
laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began
laughing a thin, nervous noiseless laugh,
and went on laughing all the time he was crossing
the square. But when he reached the K——
Boulevard where two days before he had come
upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased.
Other ideas crept into his mind. He felt all
at once that it would be loathsome to pass
that seat on which after the girl was gone,
he had sat and pondered, and that it would
be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered policeman
to whom he had given the twenty copecks: “Damn
him!”
He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly.
All his ideas now seemed to be circling round
some single point, and he felt that there
really was such a point, and that now, now,
he was left facing that point—and for the
first time, indeed, during the last two months.
“Damn it all!” he thought suddenly, in
a fit of ungovernable fury. “If it has begun,
then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good
Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I
told to-day! How despicably I fawned upon
that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is
all folly! What do I care for them all, and
my fawning upon them! It is not that at all!
It is not that at all!”
Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected
and exceedingly simple question perplexed
and bitterly confounded him.
“If it all has really been done deliberately
and not idiotically, if I really had a certain
and definite object, how is it I did not even
glance into the purse and don’t know what
I had there, for which I have undergone these
agonies, and have deliberately undertaken
this base, filthy degrading business? And
here I wanted at once to throw into the water
the purse together with all the things which
I had not seen either... how’s that?”
Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he
had known it all before, and it was not a
new question for him, even when it was decided
in the night without hesitation and consideration,
as though so it must be, as though it could
not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had
known it all, and understood it all; it surely
had all been settled even yesterday at the
moment when he was bending over the box and
pulling the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes,
so it was.
“It is because I am very ill,” he decided
grimly at last, “I have been worrying and
fretting myself, and I don’t know what I
am doing.... Yesterday and the day before
yesterday and all this time I have been worrying
myself.... I shall get well and I shall not
worry.... But what if I don’t get well at
all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!”
He walked on without resting. He had a terrible
longing for some distraction, but he did not
know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming
sensation was gaining more and more mastery
over him every moment; this was an immeasurable,
almost physical, repulsion for everything
surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling
of hatred. All who met him were loathsome
to him—he loathed their faces, their movements,
their gestures. If anyone had addressed him,
he felt that he might have spat at him or
bitten him....
He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the
bank of the Little Neva, near the bridge to
Vassilyevsky Ostrov. “Why, he lives here,
in that house,” he thought, “why, I have
not come to Razumihin of my own accord! Here
it’s the same thing over again.... Very
interesting to know, though; have I come on
purpose or have I simply walked here by chance?
Never mind, I said the day before yesterday
that I would go and see him the day after;
well, and so I will! Besides I really cannot
go further now.”
He went up to Razumihin’s room on the fifth
floor.
The latter was at home in his garret, busily
writing at the moment, and he opened the door
himself. It was four months since they had
seen each other. Razumihin was sitting in
a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on his
bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed.
His face showed surprise.
“Is it you?” he cried. He looked his comrade
up and down; then after a brief pause, he
whistled. “As hard up as all that! Why,
brother, you’ve cut me out!” he added,
looking at Raskolnikov’s rags. “Come sit
down, you are tired, I’ll be bound.”
And when he had sunk down on the American
leather sofa, which was in even worse condition
than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his
visitor was ill.
“Why, you are seriously ill, do you know
that?” He began feeling his pulse. Raskolnikov
pulled away his hand.
“Never mind,” he said, “I have come
for this: I have no lessons.... I wanted,...
but I don’t really want lessons....”
“But I say! You are delirious, you know!”
Razumihin observed, watching him carefully.
“No, I am not.”
Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had
mounted the stairs to Razumihin’s, he had
not realised that he would be meeting his
friend face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew,
that what he was least of all disposed for
at that moment was to be face to face with
anyone in the wide world. His spleen rose
within him. He almost choked with rage at
himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin’s
threshold.
“Good-bye,” he said abruptly, and walked
to the door.
“Stop, stop! You queer fish.”
“I don’t want to,” said the other, again
pulling away his hand.
“Then why the devil have you come? Are you
mad, or what? Why, this is... almost insulting!
I won’t let you go like that.”
“Well, then, I came to you because I know
no one but you who could help... to begin...
because you are kinder than anyone—cleverer,
I mean, and can judge... and now I see that
I want nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all...
no one’s services... no one’s sympathy.
I am by myself... alone. Come, that’s enough.
Leave me alone.”
“Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect
madman. As you like for all I care. I have
no lessons, do you see, and I don’t care
about that, but there’s a bookseller, Heruvimov—and
he takes the place of a lesson. I would not
exchange him for five lessons. He’s doing
publishing of a kind, and issuing natural
science manuals and what a circulation they
have! The very titles are worth the money!
You always maintained that I was a fool, but
by Jove, my boy, there are greater fools than
I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced,
not that he has an inkling of anything, but,
of course, I encourage him. Here are two signatures
of the German text—in my opinion, the crudest
charlatanism; it discusses the question, ‘Is
woman a human being?’ And, of course, triumphantly
proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to
bring out this work as a contribution to the
woman question; I am translating it; he will
expand these two and a half signatures into
six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half
a page long and bring it out at half a rouble.
It will do! He pays me six roubles the signature,
it works out to about fifteen roubles for
the job, and I’ve had six already in advance.
When we have finished this, we are going to
begin a translation about whales, and then
some of the dullest scandals out of the second
part of Les Confessions we have marked for
translation; somebody has told Heruvimov,
that Rousseau was a kind of Radishchev. You
may be sure I don’t contradict him, hang
him! Well, would you like to do the second
signature of ‘Is woman a human being?’
If you would, take the German and pens and
paper—all those are provided, and take three
roubles; for as I have had six roubles in
advance on the whole thing, three roubles
come to you for your share. And when you have
finished the signature there will be another
three roubles for you. And please don’t
think I am doing you a service; quite the
contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how
you could help me; to begin with, I am weak
in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes
utterly adrift in German, so that I make it
up as I go along for the most part. The only
comfort is, that it’s bound to be a change
for the better. Though who can tell, maybe
it’s sometimes for the worse. Will you take
it?”
Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence,
took the three roubles and without a word
went out. Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment.
But when Raskolnikov was in the next street,
he turned back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin’s
again and laying on the table the German article
and the three roubles, went out again, still
without uttering a word.
“Are you raving, or what?” Razumihin shouted,
roused to fury at last. “What farce is this?
You’ll drive me crazy too... what did you
come to see me for, damn you?”
“I don’t want... translation,” muttered
Raskolnikov from the stairs.
“Then what the devil do you want?” shouted
Razumihin from above. Raskolnikov continued
descending the staircase in silence.
“Hey, there! Where are you living?”
No answer.
“Well, confound you then!”
But Raskolnikov was already stepping into
the street. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was
roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant
incident. A coachman, after shouting at him
two or three times, gave him a violent lash
on the back with his whip, for having almost
fallen under his horses’ hoofs. The lash
so infuriated him that he dashed away to the
railing (for some unknown reason he had been
walking in the very middle of the bridge in
the traffic). He angrily clenched and ground
his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.
“Serves him right!”
“A pickpocket I dare say.”
“Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting
under the wheels on purpose; and you have
to answer for him.”
“It’s a regular profession, that’s what
it is.”
But while he stood at the railing, still looking
angry and bewildered after the retreating
carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly
felt someone thrust money into his hand. He
looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief
and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably
her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying
a green parasol.
“Take it, my good man, in Christ’s name.”
He took it and they passed on. It was a piece
of twenty copecks. From his dress and appearance
they might well have taken him for a beggar
asking alms in the streets, and the gift of
the twenty copecks he doubtless owed to the
blow, which made them feel sorry for him.
He closed his hand on the twenty copecks,
walked on for ten paces, and turned facing
the Neva, looking towards the palace. The
sky was without a cloud and the water was
almost bright blue, which is so rare in the
Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is
seen at its best from the bridge about twenty
paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight,
and in the pure air every ornament on it could
be clearly distinguished. The pain from the
lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot about
it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea
occupied him now completely. He stood still,
and gazed long and intently into the distance;
this spot was especially familiar to him.
When he was attending the university, he had
hundreds of times—generally on his way home—stood
still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent
spectacle and almost always marvelled at a
vague and mysterious emotion it roused in
him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous
picture was for him blank and lifeless. He
wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic
impression and, mistrusting himself, put off
finding the explanation of it. He vividly
recalled those old doubts and perplexities,
and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance
that he recalled them now. It struck him as
strange and grotesque, that he should have
stopped at the same spot as before, as though
he actually imagined he could think the same
thoughts, be interested in the same theories
and pictures that had interested him... so
short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing,
and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden
far away out of sight all that seemed to him
now—all his old past, his old thoughts,
his old problems and theories, his old impressions
and that picture and himself and all, all....
He felt as though he were flying upwards,
and everything were vanishing from his sight.
Making an unconscious movement with his hand,
he suddenly became aware of the piece of money
in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at
the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung
it into the water; then he turned and went
home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself
off from everyone and from everything at that
moment.
Evening was coming on when he reached home,
so that he must have been walking about six
hours. How and where he came back he did not
remember. Undressing, and quivering like an
overdriven horse, he lay down on the sofa,
drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank
into oblivion....
It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful
scream. Good God, what a scream! Such unnatural
sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears,
blows and curses he had never heard.
He could never have imagined such brutality,
such frenzy. In terror he sat up in bed, almost
swooning with agony. But the fighting, wailing
and cursing grew louder and louder. And then
to his intense amazement he caught the voice
of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking
and wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently,
so that he could not make out what she was
talking about; she was beseeching, no doubt,
not to be beaten, for she was being mercilessly
beaten on the stairs. The voice of her assailant
was so horrible from spite and rage that it
was almost a croak; but he, too, was saying
something, and just as quickly and indistinctly,
hurrying and spluttering. All at once Raskolnikov
trembled; he recognised the voice—it was
the voice of Ilya Petrovitch. Ilya Petrovitch
here and beating the landlady! He is kicking
her, banging her head against the steps—that’s
clear, that can be told from the sounds, from
the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the
world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running
in crowds from all the storeys and all the
staircases; he heard voices, exclamations,
knocking, doors banging. “But why, why,
and how could it be?” he repeated, thinking
seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he
heard too distinctly! And they would come
to him then next, “for no doubt... it’s
all about that... about yesterday.... Good
God!” He would have fastened his door with
the latch, but he could not lift his hand...
besides, it would be useless. Terror gripped
his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed
him.... But at last all this uproar, after
continuing about ten minutes, began gradually
to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning;
Ilya Petrovitch was still uttering threats
and curses.... But at last he, too, seemed
to be silent, and now he could not be heard.
“Can he have gone away? Good Lord!” Yes,
and now the landlady is going too, still weeping
and moaning... and then her door slammed....
Now the crowd was going from the stairs to
their rooms, exclaiming, disputing, calling
to one another, raising their voices to a
shout, dropping them to a whisper. There must
have been numbers of them—almost all the
inmates of the block. “But, good God, how
could it be! And why, why had he come here!”
Raskolnikov sank worn out on the sofa, but
could not close his eyes. He lay for half
an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable
sensation of infinite terror as he had never
experienced before. Suddenly a bright light
flashed into his room. Nastasya came in with
a candle and a plate of soup. Looking at him
carefully and ascertaining that he was not
asleep, she set the candle on the table and
began to lay out what she had brought—bread,
salt, a plate, a spoon.
“You’ve eaten nothing since yesterday,
I warrant. You’ve been trudging about all
day, and you’re shaking with fever.”
“Nastasya... what were they beating the
landlady for?”
She looked intently at him.
“Who beat the landlady?”
“Just now... half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovitch,
the assistant superintendent, on the stairs....
Why was he ill-treating her like that, and...
why was he here?”
Nastasya scrutinised him, silent and frowning,
and her scrutiny lasted a long time. He felt
uneasy, even frightened at her searching eyes.
“Nastasya, why don’t you speak?” he
said timidly at last in a weak voice.
“It’s the blood,” she answered at last
softly, as though speaking to herself.
“Blood? What blood?” he muttered, growing
white and turning towards the wall.
Nastasya still looked at him without speaking.
“Nobody has been beating the landlady,”
she declared at last in a firm, resolute voice.
He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.
“I heard it myself.... I was not asleep...
I was sitting up,” he said still more timidly.
“I listened a long while. The assistant
superintendent came.... Everyone ran out on
to the stairs from all the flats.”
“No one has been here. That’s the blood
crying in your ears. When there’s no outlet
for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying
things.... Will you eat something?”
He made no answer. Nastasya still stood over
him, watching him.
“Give me something to drink... Nastasya.”
She went downstairs and returned with a white
earthenware jug of water. He remembered only
swallowing one sip of the cold water and spilling
some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.
CHAPTER III
He was not completely unconscious, however,
all the time he was ill; he was in a feverish
state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half
conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards.
Sometimes it seemed as though there were a
number of people round him; they wanted to
take him away somewhere, there was a great
deal of squabbling and discussing about him.
Then he would be alone in the room; they had
all gone away afraid of him, and only now
and then opened the door a crack to look at
him; they threatened him, plotted something
together, laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered
Nastasya often at his bedside; he distinguished
another person, too, whom he seemed to know
very well, though he could not remember who
he was, and this fretted him, even made him
cry. Sometimes he fancied he had been lying
there a month; at other times it all seemed
part of the same day. But of that—of that
he had no recollection, and yet every minute
he felt that he had forgotten something he
ought to remember. He worried and tormented
himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into
a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror.
Then he struggled to get up, would have run
away, but someone always prevented him by
force, and he sank back into impotence and
forgetfulness. At last he returned to complete
consciousness.
It happened at ten o’clock in the morning.
On fine days the sun shone into the room at
that hour, throwing a streak of light on the
right wall and the corner near the door. Nastasya
was standing beside him with another person,
a complete stranger, who was looking at him
very inquisitively. He was a young man with
a beard, wearing a full, short-waisted coat,
and looked like a messenger. The landlady
was peeping in at the half-opened door. Raskolnikov
sat up.
“Who is this, Nastasya?” he asked, pointing
to the young man.
“I say, he’s himself again!” she said.
“He is himself,” echoed the man.
Concluding that he had returned to his senses,
the landlady closed the door and disappeared.
She was always shy and dreaded conversations
or discussions. She was a woman of forty,
not at all bad-looking, fat and buxom, with
black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from
fatness and laziness, and absurdly bashful.
“Who... are you?” he went on, addressing
the man. But at that moment the door was flung
open, and, stooping a little, as he was so
tall, Razumihin came in.
“What a cabin it is!” he cried. “I am
always knocking my head. You call this a lodging!
So you are conscious, brother? I’ve just
heard the news from Pashenka.”
“He has just come to,” said Nastasya.
“Just come to,” echoed the man again,
with a smile.
“And who are you?” Razumihin asked, suddenly
addressing him. “My name is Vrazumihin,
at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always
called, but Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman;
and he is my friend. And who are you?”
“I am the messenger from our office, from
the merchant Shelopaev, and I’ve come on
business.”
“Please sit down.” Razumihin seated himself
on the other side of the table. “It’s
a good thing you’ve come to, brother,”
he went on to Raskolnikov. “For the last
four days you have scarcely eaten or drunk
anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls.
I brought Zossimov to see you twice. You remember
Zossimov? He examined you carefully and said
at once it was nothing serious—something
seemed to have gone to your head. Some nervous
nonsense, the result of bad feeding, he says
you have not had enough beer and radish, but
it’s nothing much, it will pass and you
will be all right. Zossimov is a first-rate
fellow! He is making quite a name. Come, I
won’t keep you,” he said, addressing the
man again. “Will you explain what you want?
You must know, Rodya, this is the second time
they have sent from the office; but it was
another man last time, and I talked to him.
Who was it came before?”
“That was the day before yesterday, I venture
to say, if you please, sir. That was Alexey
Semyonovitch; he is in our office, too.”
“He was more intelligent than you, don’t
you think so?”
“Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight
than I am.”
“Quite so; go on.”
“At your mamma’s request, through Afanasy
Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of whom I presume you
have heard more than once, a remittance is
sent to you from our office,” the man began,
addressing Raskolnikov. “If you are in an
intelligible condition, I’ve thirty-five
roubles to remit to you, as Semyon Semyonovitch
has received from Afanasy Ivanovitch at your
mamma’s request instructions to that effect,
as on previous occasions. Do you know him,
sir?”
“Yes, I remember... Vahrushin,” Raskolnikov
said dreamily.
“You hear, he knows Vahrushin,” cried
Razumihin. “He is in ‘an intelligible
condition’! And I see you are an intelligent
man too. Well, it’s always pleasant to hear
words of wisdom.”
“That’s the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy
Ivanovitch. And at the request of your mamma,
who has sent you a remittance once before
in the same manner through him, he did not
refuse this time also, and sent instructions
to Semyon Semyonovitch some days since to
hand you thirty-five roubles in the hope of
better to come.”
“That ‘hoping for better to come’ is
the best thing you’ve said, though ‘your
mamma’ is not bad either. Come then, what
do you say? Is he fully conscious, eh?”
“That’s all right. If only he can sign
this little paper.”
“He can scrawl his name. Have you got the
book?”
“Yes, here’s the book.”
“Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I’ll
hold you. Take the pen and scribble ‘Raskolnikov’
for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter
to us than treacle.”
“I don’t want it,” said Raskolnikov,
pushing away the pen.
“Not want it?”
“I won’t sign it.”
“How the devil can you do without signing
it?”
“I don’t want... the money.”
“Don’t want the money! Come, brother,
that’s nonsense, I bear witness. Don’t
trouble, please, it’s only that he is on
his travels again. But that’s pretty common
with him at all times though.... You are a
man of judgment and we will take him in hand,
that is, more simply, take his hand and he
will sign it. Here.”
“But I can come another time.”
“No, no. Why should we trouble you? You
are a man of judgment.... Now, Rodya, don’t
keep your visitor, you see he is waiting,”
and he made ready to hold Raskolnikov’s
hand in earnest.
“Stop, I’ll do it alone,” said the latter,
taking the pen and signing his name.
The messenger took out the money and went
away.
“Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?”
“Yes,” answered Raskolnikov.
“Is there any soup?”
“Some of yesterday’s,” answered Nastasya,
who was still standing there.
“With potatoes and rice in it?”
“Yes.”
“I know it by heart. Bring soup and give
us some tea.”
“Very well.”
Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound
astonishment and a dull, unreasoning terror.
He made up his mind to keep quiet and see
what would happen. “I believe I am not wandering.
I believe it’s reality,” he thought.
In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with
the soup, and announced that the tea would
be ready directly. With the soup she brought
two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard
for the beef, and so on. The table was set
as it had not been for a long time. The cloth
was clean.
“It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya
Pavlovna were to send us up a couple of bottles
of beer. We could empty them.”
“Well, you are a cool hand,” muttered
Nastasya, and she departed to carry out his
orders.
Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained
attention. Meanwhile Razumihin sat down on
the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear
put his left arm round Raskolnikov’s head,
although he was able to sit up, and with his
right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing
on it that it might not burn him. But the
soup was only just warm. Raskolnikov swallowed
one spoonful greedily, then a second, then
a third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls
of soup, Razumihin suddenly stopped, and said
that he must ask Zossimov whether he ought
to have more.
Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.
“And will you have tea?”
“Yes.”
“Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea,
for tea we may venture on without the faculty.
But here is the beer!” He moved back to
his chair, pulled the soup and meat in front
of him, and began eating as though he had
not touched food for three days.
“I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this
here every day now,” he mumbled with his
mouth full of beef, “and it’s all Pashenka,
your dear little landlady, who sees to that;
she loves to do anything for me. I don’t
ask for it, but, of course, I don’t object.
And here’s Nastasya with the tea. She is
a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won’t you
have some beer?”
“Get along with your nonsense!”
“A cup of tea, then?”
“A cup of tea, maybe.”
“Pour it out. Stay, I’ll pour it out myself.
Sit down.”
He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and
sat on the sofa again. As before, he put his
left arm round the sick man’s head, raised
him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again
blowing each spoonful steadily and earnestly,
as though this process was the principal and
most effective means towards his friend’s
recovery. Raskolnikov said nothing and made
no resistance, though he felt quite strong
enough to sit up on the sofa without support
and could not merely have held a cup or a
spoon, but even perhaps could have walked
about. But from some queer, almost animal,
cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his
strength and lying low for a time, pretending
if necessary not to be yet in full possession
of his faculties, and meanwhile listening
to find out what was going on. Yet he could
not overcome his sense of repugnance. After
sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly
released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously,
and sank back on the pillow. There were actually
real pillows under his head now, down pillows
in clean cases, he observed that, too, and
took note of it.
“Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam
to-day to make him some raspberry tea,”
said Razumihin, going back to his chair and
attacking his soup and beer again.
“And where is she to get raspberries for
you?” asked Nastasya, balancing a saucer
on her five outspread fingers and sipping
tea through a lump of sugar.
“She’ll get it at the shop, my dear. You
see, Rodya, all sorts of things have been
happening while you have been laid up. When
you decamped in that rascally way without
leaving your address, I felt so angry that
I resolved to find you out and punish you.
I set to work that very day. How I ran about
making inquiries for you! This lodging of
yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered
it, indeed, because I did not know it; and
as for your old lodgings, I could only remember
it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov’s house.
I kept trying to find that Harlamov’s house,
and afterwards it turned out that it was not
Harlamov’s, but Buch’s. How one muddles
up sound sometimes! So I lost my temper, and
I went on the chance to the address bureau
next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they
looked you up! Your name is down there.”
“My name!”
“I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev
they could not find while I was there. Well,
it’s a long story. But as soon as I did
land on this place, I soon got to know all
your affairs—all, all, brother, I know everything;
Nastasya here will tell you. I made the acquaintance
of Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and
the house-porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr
Grigorievitch, the head clerk in the police
office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka;
Nastasya here knows....”
“He’s got round her,” Nastasya murmured,
smiling slyly.
“Why don’t you put the sugar in your tea,
Nastasya Nikiforovna?”
“You are a one!” Nastasya cried suddenly,
going off into a giggle. “I am not Nikiforovna,
but Petrovna,” she added suddenly, recovering
from her mirth.
“I’ll make a note of it. Well, brother,
to make a long story short, I was going in
for a regular explosion here to uproot all
malignant influences in the locality, but
Pashenka won the day. I had not expected,
brother, to find her so... prepossessing.
Eh, what do you think?”
Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept
his eyes fixed upon him, full of alarm.
“And all that could be wished, indeed, in
every respect,” Razumihin went on, not at
all embarrassed by his silence.
“Ah, the sly dog!” Nastasya shrieked again.
This conversation afforded her unspeakable
delight.
“It’s a pity, brother, that you did not
set to work in the right way at first. You
ought to have approached her differently.
She is, so to speak, a most unaccountable
character. But we will talk about her character
later.... How could you let things come to
such a pass that she gave up sending you your
dinner? And that I O U? You must have been
mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of
marriage when her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna,
was alive?... I know all about it! But I see
that’s a delicate matter and I am an ass;
forgive me. But, talking of foolishness, do
you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly
so foolish as you would think at first sight?”
“No,” mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away,
but feeling that it was better to keep up
the conversation.
“She isn’t, is she?” cried Razumihin,
delighted to get an answer out of him. “But
she is not very clever either, eh? She is
essentially, essentially an unaccountable
character! I am sometimes quite at a loss,
I assure you.... She must be forty; she says
she is thirty-six, and of course she has every
right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually,
simply from the metaphysical point of view;
there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between
us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don’t
understand it! Well, that’s all nonsense.
Only, seeing that you are not a student now
and have lost your lessons and your clothes,
and that through the young lady’s death
she has no need to treat you as a relation,
she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in
your den and dropped all your old relations
with her, she planned to get rid of you. And
she’s been cherishing that design a long
time, but was sorry to lose the I O U, for
you assured her yourself that your mother
would pay.”
“It was base of me to say that.... My mother
herself is almost a beggar... and I told a
lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,” Raskolnikov
said loudly and distinctly.
“Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst
of it is that at that point Mr. Tchebarov
turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never
have thought of doing anything on her own
account, she is too retiring; but the business
man is by no means retiring, and first thing
he puts the question, ‘Is there any hope
of realising the I O U?’ Answer: there is,
because he has a mother who would save her
Rodya with her hundred and twenty-five roubles
pension, if she has to starve herself; and
a sister, too, who would go into bondage for
his sake. That’s what he was building upon....
Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs
of your affairs now, my dear boy—it’s
not for nothing that you were so open with
Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law,
and I say all this as a friend.... But I tell
you what it is; an honest and sensitive man
is open; and a business man ‘listens and
goes on eating’ you up. Well, then she gave
the I O U by way of payment to this Tchebarov,
and without hesitation he made a formal demand
for payment. When I heard of all this I wanted
to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience,
but by that time harmony reigned between me
and Pashenka, and I insisted on stopping the
whole affair, engaging that you would pay.
I went security for you, brother. Do you understand?
We called Tchebarov, flung him ten roubles
and got the I O U back from him, and here
I have the honour of presenting it to you.
She trusts your word now. Here, take it, you
see I have torn it.”
Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov
looked at him and turned to the wall without
uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a twinge.
“I see, brother,” he said a moment later,
“that I have been playing the fool again.
I thought I should amuse you with my chatter,
and I believe I have only made you cross.”
“Was it you I did not recognise when I was
delirious?” Raskolnikov asked, after a moment’s
pause without turning his head.
“Yes, and you flew into a rage about it,
especially when I brought Zametov one day.”
“Zametov? The head clerk? What for?” Raskolnikov
turned round quickly and fixed his eyes on
Razumihin.
“What’s the matter with you?... What are
you upset about? He wanted to make your acquaintance
because I talked to him a lot about you....
How could I have found out so much except
from him? He is a capital fellow, brother,
first-rate... in his own way, of course. Now
we are friends—see each other almost every
day. I have moved into this part, you know.
I have only just moved. I’ve been with him
to Luise Ivanovna once or twice.... Do you
remember Luise, Luise Ivanovna?
“Did I say anything in delirium?”
“I should think so! You were beside yourself.”
“What did I rave about?”
“What next? What did you rave about? What
people do rave about.... Well, brother, now
I must not lose time. To work.” He got up
from the table and took up his cap.
“What did I rave about?”
“How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having
let out some secret? Don’t worry yourself;
you said nothing about a countess. But you
said a lot about a bulldog, and about ear-rings
and chains, and about Krestovsky Island, and
some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya
Petrovitch, the assistant superintendent.
And another thing that was of special interest
to you was your own sock. You whined, ‘Give
me my sock.’ Zametov hunted all about your
room for your socks, and with his own scented,
ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag.
And only then were you comforted, and for
the next twenty-four hours you held the wretched
thing in your hand; we could not get it from
you. It is most likely somewhere under your
quilt at this moment. And then you asked so
piteously for fringe for your trousers. We
tried to find out what sort of fringe, but
we could not make it out. Now to business!
Here are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of
them, and shall give you an account of them
in an hour or two. I will let Zossimov know
at the same time, though he ought to have
been here long ago, for it is nearly twelve.
And you, Nastasya, look in pretty often while
I am away, to see whether he wants a drink
or anything else. And I will tell Pashenka
what is wanted myself. Good-bye!”
“He calls her Pashenka! Ah, he’s a deep
one!” said Nastasya as he went out; then
she opened the door and stood listening, but
could not resist running downstairs after
him. She was very eager to hear what he would
say to the landlady. She was evidently quite
fascinated by Razumihin.
No sooner had she left the room than the sick
man flung off the bedclothes and leapt out
of bed like a madman. With burning, twitching
impatience he had waited for them to be gone
so that he might set to work. But to what
work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded
him.
“Good God, only tell me one thing: do they
know of it yet or not? What if they know it
and are only pretending, mocking me while
I am laid up, and then they will come in and
tell me that it’s been discovered long ago
and that they have only... What am I to do
now? That’s what I’ve forgotten, as though
on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I remembered
a minute ago.”
He stood in the middle of the room and gazed
in miserable bewilderment about him; he walked
to the door, opened it, listened; but that
was not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though
recalling something, he rushed to the corner
where there was a hole under the paper, began
examining it, put his hand into the hole,
fumbled—but that was not it. He went to
the stove, opened it and began rummaging in
the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers
and the rags cut off his pocket were lying
there just as he had thrown them. No one had
looked, then! Then he remembered the sock
about which Razumihin had just been telling
him. Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the
quilt, but it was so covered with dust and
grime that Zametov could not have seen anything
on it.
“Bah, Zametov! The police office! And why
am I sent for to the police office? Where’s
the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was
then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now...
now I have been ill. But what did Zametov
come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?”
he muttered, helplessly sitting on the sofa
again. “What does it mean? Am I still in
delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real....
Ah, I remember; I must escape! Make haste
to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes...
but where? And where are my clothes? I’ve
no boots. They’ve taken them away! They’ve
hidden them! I understand! Ah, here is my
coat—they passed that over! And here is
money on the table, thank God! And here’s
the I O U... I’ll take the money and go
and take another lodging. They won’t find
me!... Yes, but the address bureau? They’ll
find me, Razumihin will find me. Better escape
altogether... far away... to America, and
let them do their worst! And take the I O
U... it would be of use there.... What else
shall I take? They think I am ill! They don’t
know that I can walk, ha-ha-ha! I could see
by their eyes that they know all about it!
If only I could get downstairs! And what if
they have set a watch there—policemen! What’s
this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half
a bottle, cold!”
He snatched up the bottle, which still contained
a glassful of beer, and gulped it down with
relish, as though quenching a flame in his
breast. But in another minute the beer had
gone to his head, and a faint and even pleasant
shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and
pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent
thoughts grew more and more disconnected,
and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came
upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled
his head into the pillow, wrapped more closely
about him the soft, wadded quilt which had
replaced the old, ragged greatcoat, sighed
softly and sank into a deep, sound, refreshing
sleep.
He woke up, hearing someone come in. He opened
his eyes and saw Razumihin standing in the
doorway, uncertain whether to come in or not.
Raskolnikov sat up quickly on the sofa and
gazed at him, as though trying to recall something.
“Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Nastasya,
bring in the parcel!” Razumihin shouted
down the stairs. “You shall have the account
directly.”
“What time is it?” asked Raskolnikov,
looking round uneasily.
“Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it’s
almost evening, it will be six o’clock directly.
You have slept more than six hours.”
“Good heavens! Have I?”
“And why not? It will do you good. What’s
the hurry? A tryst, is it? We’ve all time
before us. I’ve been waiting for the last
three hours for you; I’ve been up twice
and found you asleep. I’ve called on Zossimov
twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter,
he will turn up. And I’ve been out on my
own business, too. You know I’ve been moving
to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle
living with me now. But that’s no matter,
to business. Give me the parcel, Nastasya.
We will open it directly. And how do you feel
now, brother?”
“I am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin,
have you been here long?”
“I tell you I’ve been waiting for the
last three hours.”
“No, before.”
“How do you mean?”
“How long have you been coming here?”
“Why I told you all about it this morning.
Don’t you remember?”
Raskolnikov pondered. The morning seemed like
a dream to him. He could not remember alone,
and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.
“Hm!” said the latter, “he has forgotten.
I fancied then that you were not quite yourself.
Now you are better for your sleep.... You
really look much better. First-rate! Well,
to business. Look here, my dear boy.”
He began untying the bundle, which evidently
interested him.
“Believe me, brother, this is something
specially near my heart. For we must make
a man of you. Let’s begin from the top.
Do you see this cap?” he said, taking out
of the bundle a fairly good though cheap and
ordinary cap. “Let me try it on.”
“Presently, afterwards,” said Raskolnikov,
waving it off pettishly.
“Come, Rodya, my boy, don’t oppose it,
afterwards will be too late; and I shan’t
sleep all night, for I bought it by guess,
without measure. Just right!” he cried triumphantly,
fitting it on, “just your size! A proper
head-covering is the first thing in dress
and a recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov,
a friend of mine, is always obliged to take
off his pudding basin when he goes into any
public place where other people wear their
hats or caps. People think he does it from
slavish politeness, but it’s simply because
he is ashamed of his bird’s nest; he is
such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here
are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston”—he
took from the corner Raskolnikov’s old,
battered hat, which for some unknown reason,
he called a Palmerston—“or this jewel!
Guess the price, Rodya, what do you suppose
I paid for it, Nastasya!” he said, turning
to her, seeing that Raskolnikov did not speak.
“Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say,”
answered Nastasya.
“Twenty copecks, silly!” he cried, offended.
“Why, nowadays you would cost more than
that—eighty copecks! And that only because
it has been worn. And it’s bought on condition
that when’s it’s worn out, they will give
you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well,
now let us pass to the United States of America,
as they called them at school. I assure you
I am proud of these breeches,” and he exhibited
to Raskolnikov a pair of light, summer trousers
of grey woollen material. “No holes, no
spots, and quite respectable, although a little
worn; and a waistcoat to match, quite in the
fashion. And its being worn really is an improvement,
it’s softer, smoother.... You see, Rodya,
to my thinking, the great thing for getting
on in the world is always to keep to the seasons;
if you don’t insist on having asparagus
in January, you keep your money in your purse;
and it’s the same with this purchase. It’s
summer now, so I’ve been buying summer things—warmer
materials will be wanted for autumn, so you
will have to throw these away in any case...
especially as they will be done for by then
from their own lack of coherence if not your
higher standard of luxury. Come, price them!
What do you say? Two roubles twenty-five copecks!
And remember the condition: if you wear these
out, you will have another suit for nothing!
They only do business on that system at Fedyaev’s;
if you’ve bought a thing once, you are satisfied
for life, for you will never go there again
of your own free will. Now for the boots.
What do you say? You see that they are a bit
worn, but they’ll last a couple of months,
for it’s foreign work and foreign leather;
the secretary of the English Embassy sold
them last week—he had only worn them six
days, but he was very short of cash. Price—a
rouble and a half. A bargain?”
“But perhaps they won’t fit,” observed
Nastasya.
“Not fit? Just look!” and he pulled out
of his pocket Raskolnikov’s old, broken
boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. “I did
not go empty-handed—they took the size from
this monster. We all did our best. And as
to your linen, your landlady has seen to that.
Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen
but with a fashionable front.... Well now
then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles
twenty-five copecks the suit—together three
roubles five copecks—a rouble and a half
for the boots—for, you see, they are very
good—and that makes four roubles fifty-five
copecks; five roubles for the underclothes—they
were bought in the lot—which makes exactly
nine roubles fifty-five copecks. Forty-five
copecks change in coppers. Will you take it?
And so, Rodya, you are set up with a complete
new rig-out, for your overcoat will serve,
and even has a style of its own. That comes
from getting one’s clothes from Sharmer’s!
As for your socks and other things, I leave
them to you; we’ve twenty-five roubles left.
And as for Pashenka and paying for your lodging,
don’t you worry. I tell you she’ll trust
you for anything. And now, brother, let me
change your linen, for I daresay you will
throw off your illness with your shirt.”
“Let me be! I don’t want to!” Raskolnikov
waved him off. He had listened with disgust
to Razumihin’s efforts to be playful about
his purchases.
“Come, brother, don’t tell me I’ve been
trudging around for nothing,” Razumihin
insisted. “Nastasya, don’t be bashful,
but help me—that’s it,” and in spite
of Raskolnikov’s resistance he changed his
linen. The latter sank back on the pillows
and for a minute or two said nothing.
“It will be long before I get rid of them,”
he thought. “What money was all that bought
with?” he asked at last, gazing at the wall.
“Money? Why, your own, what the messenger
brought from Vahrushin, your mother sent it.
Have you forgotten that, too?”
“I remember now,” said Raskolnikov after
a long, sullen silence. Razumihin looked at
him, frowning and uneasy.
The door opened and a tall, stout man whose
appearance seemed familiar to Raskolnikov
came in.
CHAPTER IV
Zossimov was a tall, fat man with a puffy,
colourless, clean-shaven face and straight
flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big
gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven.
He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat,
light summer trousers, and everything about
him loose, fashionable and spick and span;
his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain
was massive. In manner he was slow and, as
it were, nonchalant, and at the same time
studiously free and easy; he made efforts
to conceal his self-importance, but it was
apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances
found him tedious, but said he was clever
at his work.
“I’ve been to you twice to-day, brother.
You see, he’s come to himself,” cried
Razumihin.
“I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?”
said Zossimov to Raskolnikov, watching him
carefully and, sitting down at the foot of
the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably
as he could.
“He is still depressed,” Razumihin went
on. “We’ve just changed his linen and
he almost cried.”
“That’s very natural; you might have put
it off if he did not wish it.... His pulse
is first-rate. Is your head still aching,
eh?”
“I am well, I am perfectly well!” Raskolnikov
declared positively and irritably. He raised
himself on the sofa and looked at them with
glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow
at once and turned to the wall. Zossimov watched
him intently.
“Very good.... Going on all right,” he
said lazily. “Has he eaten anything?”
They told him, and asked what he might have.
“He may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms
and cucumbers, of course, you must not give
him; he’d better not have meat either, and...
but no need to tell you that!” Razumihin
and he looked at each other. “No more medicine
or anything. I’ll look at him again to-morrow.
Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind...”
“To-morrow evening I shall take him for
a walk,” said Razumihin. “We are going
to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais
de Cristal.”
“I would not disturb him to-morrow at all,
but I don’t know... a little, maybe... but
we’ll see.”
“Ach, what a nuisance! I’ve got a house-warming
party to-night; it’s only a step from here.
Couldn’t he come? He could lie on the sofa.
You are coming?” Razumihin said to Zossimov.
“Don’t forget, you promised.”
“All right, only rather later. What are
you going to do?”
“Oh, nothing—tea, vodka, herrings. There
will be a pie... just our friends.”
“And who?”
“All neighbours here, almost all new friends,
except my old uncle, and he is new too—he
only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see
to some business of his. We meet once in five
years.”
“What is he?”
“He’s been stagnating all his life as
a district postmaster; gets a little pension.
He is sixty-five—not worth talking about....
But I am fond of him. Porfiry Petrovitch,
the head of the Investigation Department here...
But you know him.”
“Is he a relation of yours, too?”
“A very distant one. But why are you scowling?
Because you quarrelled once, won’t you come
then?”
“I don’t care a damn for him.”
“So much the better. Well, there will be
some students, a teacher, a government clerk,
a musician, an officer and Zametov.”
“Do tell me, please, what you or he”—Zossimov
nodded at Raskolnikov—“can have in common
with this Zametov?”
“Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles!
You are worked by principles, as it were by
springs; you won’t venture to turn round
on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow,
that’s the only principle I go upon. Zametov
is a delightful person.”
“Though he does take bribes.”
“Well, he does! and what of it? I don’t
care if he does take bribes,” Razumihin
cried with unnatural irritability. “I don’t
praise him for taking bribes. I only say he
is a nice man in his own way! But if one looks
at men in all ways—are there many good ones
left? Why, I am sure I shouldn’t be worth
a baked onion myself... perhaps with you thrown
in.”
“That’s too little; I’d give two for
you.”
“And I wouldn’t give more than one for
you. No more of your jokes! Zametov is no
more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one
must draw him not repel him. You’ll never
improve a man by repelling him, especially
a boy. One has to be twice as careful with
a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don’t
understand. You harm yourselves running another
man down.... But if you want to know, we really
have something in common.”
“I should like to know what.”
“Why, it’s all about a house-painter....
We are getting him out of a mess! Though indeed
there’s nothing to fear now. The matter
is absolutely self-evident. We only put on
steam.”
“A painter?”
“Why, haven’t I told you about it? I only
told you the beginning then about the murder
of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter
is mixed up in it...”
“Oh, I heard about that murder before and
was rather interested in it... partly... for
one reason.... I read about it in the papers,
too....”
“Lizaveta was murdered, too,” Nastasya
blurted out, suddenly addressing Raskolnikov.
She remained in the room all the time, standing
by the door listening.
“Lizaveta,” murmured Raskolnikov hardly
audibly.
“Lizaveta, who sold old clothes. Didn’t
you know her? She used to come here. She mended
a shirt for you, too.”
Raskolnikov turned to the wall where in the
dirty, yellow paper he picked out one clumsy,
white flower with brown lines on it and began
examining how many petals there were in it,
how many scallops in the petals and how many
lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as
lifeless as though they had been cut off.
He did not attempt to move, but stared obstinately
at the flower.
“But what about the painter?” Zossimov
interrupted Nastasya’s chatter with marked
displeasure. She sighed and was silent.
“Why, he was accused of the murder,” Razumihin
went on hotly.
“Was there evidence against him then?”
“Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no
evidence, and that’s what we have to prove.
It was just as they pitched on those fellows,
Koch and Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly
it’s all done, it makes one sick, though
it’s not one’s business! Pestryakov may
be coming to-night.... By the way, Rodya,
you’ve heard about the business already;
it happened before you were ill, the day before
you fainted at the police office while they
were talking about it.”
Zossimov looked curiously at Raskolnikov.
He did not stir.
“But I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you.
What a busybody you are!” Zossimov observed.
“Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway,”
shouted Razumihin, bringing his fist down
on the table. “What’s the most offensive
is not their lying—one can always forgive
lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it
leads to truth—what is offensive is that
they lie and worship their own lying.... I
respect Porfiry, but... What threw them out
at first? The door was locked, and when they
came back with the porter it was open. So
it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were
the murderers—that was their logic!”
“But don’t excite yourself; they simply
detained them, they could not help that....
And, by the way, I’ve met that man Koch.
He used to buy unredeemed pledges from the
old woman? Eh?”
“Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts,
too. He makes a profession of it. But enough
of him! Do you know what makes me angry? It’s
their sickening rotten, petrified routine....
And this case might be the means of introducing
a new method. One can show from the psychological
data alone how to get on the track of the
real man. ‘We have facts,’ they say. But
facts are not everything—at least half the
business lies in how you interpret them!”
“Can you interpret them, then?”
“Anyway, one can’t hold one’s tongue
when one has a feeling, a tangible feeling,
that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do
you know the details of the case?”
“I am waiting to hear about the painter.”
“Oh, yes! Well, here’s the story. Early
on the third day after the murder, when they
were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov—though
they accounted for every step they took and
it was as plain as a pikestaff—an unexpected
fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin,
who keeps a dram-shop facing the house, brought
to the police office a jeweller’s case containing
some gold ear-rings, and told a long rigamarole.
‘The day before yesterday, just after eight
o’clock’—mark the day and the hour!—‘a
journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had
been in to see me already that day, brought
me this box of gold ear-rings and stones,
and asked me to give him two roubles for them.
When I asked him where he got them, he said
that he picked them up in the street. I did
not ask him anything more.’ I am telling
you Dushkin’s story. ‘I gave him a note’—a
rouble that is—‘for I thought if he did
not pawn it with me he would with another.
It would all come to the same thing—he’d
spend it on drink, so the thing had better
be with me. The further you hide it the quicker
you will find it, and if anything turns up,
if I hear any rumours, I’ll take it to the
police.’ Of course, that’s all taradiddle;
he lies like a horse, for I know this Dushkin,
he is a pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen
goods, and he did not cheat Nikolay out of
a thirty-rouble trinket in order to give it
to the police. He was simply afraid. But no
matter, to return to Dushkin’s story. ‘I’ve
known this peasant, Nikolay Dementyev, from
a child; he comes from the same province and
district of Zaraïsk, we are both Ryazan men.
And though Nikolay is not a drunkard, he drinks,
and I knew he had a job in that house, painting
work with Dmitri, who comes from the same
village, too. As soon as he got the rouble
he changed it, had a couple of glasses, took
his change and went out. But I did not see
Dmitri with him then. And the next day I heard
that someone had murdered Alyona Ivanovna
and her sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna, with an
axe. I knew them, and I felt suspicious about
the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered
woman lent money on pledges. I went to the
house, and began to make careful inquiries
without saying a word to anyone. First of
all I asked, “Is Nikolay here?” Dmitri
told me that Nikolay had gone off on the spree;
he had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed
in the house about ten minutes, and went out
again. Dmitri didn’t see him again and is
finishing the job alone. And their job is
on the same staircase as the murder, on the
second floor. When I heard all that I did
not say a word to anyone’—that’s Dushkin’s
tale—‘but I found out what I could about
the murder, and went home feeling as suspicious
as ever. And at eight o’clock this morning’—that
was the third day, you understand—‘I saw
Nikolay coming in, not sober, though not to
say very drunk—he could understand what
was said to him. He sat down on the bench
and did not speak. There was only one stranger
in the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench
and our two boys. “Have you seen Dmitri?”
said I. “No, I haven’t,” said he. “And
you’ve not been here either?” “Not since
the day before yesterday,” said he. “And
where did you sleep last night?” “In Peski,
with the Kolomensky men.” “And where did
you get those ear-rings?” I asked. “I
found them in the street,” and the way he
said it was a bit queer; he did not look at
me. “Did you hear what happened that very
evening, at that very hour, on that same staircase?”
said I. “No,” said he, “I had not heard,”
and all the while he was listening, his eyes
were staring out of his head and he turned
as white as chalk. I told him all about it
and he took his hat and began getting up.
I wanted to keep him. “Wait a bit, Nikolay,”
said I, “won’t you have a drink?” And
I signed to the boy to hold the door, and
I came out from behind the bar; but he darted
out and down the street to the turning at
a run. I have not seen him since. Then my
doubts were at an end—it was his doing,
as clear as could be....’”
“I should think so,” said Zossimov.
“Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought
high and low for Nikolay; they detained Dushkin
and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was arrested;
the Kolomensky men also were turned inside
out. And the day before yesterday they arrested
Nikolay in a tavern at the end of the town.
He had gone there, taken the silver cross
off his neck and asked for a dram for it.
They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards
the woman went to the cowshed, and through
a crack in the wall she saw in the stable
adjoining he had made a noose of his sash
from the beam, stood on a block of wood, and
was trying to put his neck in the noose. The
woman screeched her hardest; people ran in.
‘So that’s what you are up to!’ ‘Take
me,’ he says, ‘to such-and-such a police
officer; I’ll confess everything.’ Well,
they took him to that police station—that
is here—with a suitable escort. So they
asked him this and that, how old he is, ‘twenty-two,’
and so on. At the question, ‘When you were
working with Dmitri, didn’t you see anyone
on the staircase at such-and-such a time?’—answer:
‘To be sure folks may have gone up and down,
but I did not notice them.’ ‘And didn’t
you hear anything, any noise, and so on?’
‘We heard nothing special.’ ‘And did
you hear, Nikolay, that on the same day Widow
So-and-so and her sister were murdered and
robbed?’ ‘I never knew a thing about it.
The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch
the day before yesterday.’ ‘And where
did you find the ear-rings?’ ‘I found
them on the pavement.’ ‘Why didn’t you
go to work with Dmitri the other day?’ ‘Because
I was drinking.’ ‘And where were you drinking?’
‘Oh, in such-and-such a place.’ ‘Why
did you run away from Dushkin’s?’ ‘Because
I was awfully frightened.’ ‘What were
you frightened of?’ ‘That I should be
accused.’ ‘How could you be frightened,
if you felt free from guilt?’ Now, Zossimov,
you may not believe me, that question was
put literally in those words. I know it for
a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What
do you say to that?”
“Well, anyway, there’s the evidence.”
“I am not talking of the evidence now, I
am talking about that question, of their own
idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed
and squeezed him and he confessed: ‘I did
not find it in the street, but in the flat
where I was painting with Dmitri.’ ‘And
how was that?’ ‘Why, Dmitri and I were
painting there all day, and we were just getting
ready to go, and Dmitri took a brush and painted
my face, and he ran off and I after him. I
ran after him, shouting my hardest, and at
the bottom of the stairs I ran right against
the porter and some gentlemen—and how many
gentlemen were there I don’t remember. And
the porter swore at me, and the other porter
swore, too, and the porter’s wife came out,
and swore at us, too; and a gentleman came
into the entry with a lady, and he swore at
us, too, for Dmitri and I lay right across
the way. I got hold of Dmitri’s hair and
knocked him down and began beating him. And
Dmitri, too, caught me by the hair and began
beating me. But we did it all not for temper
but in a friendly way, for sport. And then
Dmitri escaped and ran into the street, and
I ran after him; but I did not catch him,
and went back to the flat alone; I had to
clear up my things. I began putting them together,
expecting Dmitri to come, and there in the
passage, in the corner by the door, I stepped
on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped up
in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little
hooks, undid them, and in the box were the
ear-rings....’”
“Behind the door? Lying behind the door?
Behind the door?” Raskolnikov cried suddenly,
staring with a blank look of terror at Razumihin,
and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning
on his hand.
“Yes... why? What’s the matter? What’s
wrong?” Razumihin, too, got up from his
seat.
“Nothing,” Raskolnikov answered faintly,
turning to the wall. All were silent for a
while.
“He must have waked from a dream,” Razumihin
said at last, looking inquiringly at Zossimov.
The latter slightly shook his head.
“Well, go on,” said Zossimov. “What
next?”
“What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings,
forgetting Dmitri and everything, he took
up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know,
got a rouble from him. He told a lie saying
he found them in the street, and went off
drinking. He keeps repeating his old story
about the murder: ‘I know nothing of it,
never heard of it till the day before yesterday.’
‘And why didn’t you come to the police
till now?’ ‘I was frightened.’ ‘And
why did you try to hang yourself?’ ‘From
anxiety.’ ‘What anxiety?’ ‘That I
should be accused of it.’ Well, that’s
the whole story. And now what do you suppose
they deduced from that?”
“Why, there’s no supposing. There’s
a clue, such as it is, a fact. You wouldn’t
have your painter set free?”
“Now they’ve simply taken him for the
murderer. They haven’t a shadow of doubt.”
“That’s nonsense. You are excited. But
what about the ear-rings? You must admit that,
if on the very same day and hour ear-rings
from the old woman’s box have come into
Nikolay’s hands, they must have come there
somehow. That’s a good deal in such a case.”
“How did they get there? How did they get
there?” cried Razumihin. “How can you,
a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and
who has more opportunity than anyone else
for studying human nature—how can you fail
to see the character of the man in the whole
story? Don’t you see at once that the answers
he has given in the examination are the holy
truth? They came into his hand precisely as
he has told us—he stepped on the box and
picked it up.”
“The holy truth! But didn’t he own himself
that he told a lie at first?”
“Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter
and Koch and Pestryakov and the other porter
and the wife of the first porter and the woman
who was sitting in the porter’s lodge and
the man Kryukov, who had just got out of a
cab at that minute and went in at the entry
with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten
witnesses, agree that Nikolay had Dmitri on
the ground, was lying on him beating him,
while Dmitri hung on to his hair, beating
him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking
the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all
sides while they ‘like children’ (the
very words of the witnesses) were falling
over one another, squealing, fighting and
laughing with the funniest faces, and, chasing
one another like children, they ran into the
street. Now take careful note. The bodies
upstairs were warm, you understand, warm when
they found them! If they, or Nikolay alone,
had murdered them and broken open the boxes,
or simply taken part in the robbery, allow
me to ask you one question: do their state
of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish
scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed,
fiendish cunning, robbery? They’d just killed
them, not five or ten minutes before, for
the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving
the flat open, knowing that people would go
there at once, flinging away their booty,
they rolled about like children, laughing
and attracting general attention. And there
are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!”
“Of course it is strange! It’s impossible,
indeed, but...”
“No, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings
being found in Nikolay’s hands at the very
day and hour of the murder constitutes an
important piece of circumstantial evidence
against him—although the explanation given
by him accounts for it, and therefore it does
not tell seriously against him—one must
take into consideration the facts which prove
him innocent, especially as they are facts
that cannot be denied. And do you suppose,
from the character of our legal system, that
they will accept, or that they are in a position
to accept, this fact—resting simply on a
psychological impossibility—as irrefutable
and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial
evidence for the prosecution? No, they won’t
accept it, they certainly won’t, because
they found the jewel-case and the man tried
to hang himself, ‘which he could not have
done if he hadn’t felt guilty.’ That’s
the point, that’s what excites me, you must
understand!”
“Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit.
I forgot to ask you; what proof is there that
the box came from the old woman?”
“That’s been proved,” said Razumihin
with apparent reluctance, frowning. “Koch
recognised the jewel-case and gave the name
of the owner, who proved conclusively that
it was his.”
“That’s bad. Now another point. Did anyone
see Nikolay at the time that Koch and Pestryakov
were going upstairs at first, and is there
no evidence about that?”
“Nobody did see him,” Razumihin answered
with vexation. “That’s the worst of it.
Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them
on their way upstairs, though, indeed, their
evidence could not have been worth much. They
said they saw the flat was open, and that
there must be work going on in it, but they
took no special notice and could not remember
whether there actually were men at work in
it.”
“Hm!... So the only evidence for the defence
is that they were beating one another and
laughing. That constitutes a strong presumption,
but... How do you explain the facts yourself?”
“How do I explain them? What is there to
explain? It’s clear. At any rate, the direction
in which explanation is to be sought is clear,
and the jewel-case points to it. The real
murderer dropped those ear-rings. The murderer
was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and Pestryakov
knocked at the door. Koch, like an ass, did
not stay at the door; so the murderer popped
out and ran down, too; for he had no other
way of escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov
and the porter in the flat when Nikolay and
Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped
there while the porter and others were going
upstairs, waited till they were out of hearing,
and then went calmly downstairs at the very
minute when Dmitri and Nikolay ran out into
the street and there was no one in the entry;
possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There
are lots of people going in and out. He must
have dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket
when he stood behind the door, and did not
notice he dropped them, because he had other
things to think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive
proof that he did stand there.... That’s
how I explain it.”
“Too clever! No, my boy, you’re too clever.
That beats everything.”
“But, why, why?”
“Why, because everything fits too well...
it’s too melodramatic.”
“A-ach!” Razumihin was exclaiming, but
at that moment the door opened and a personage
came in who was a stranger to all present.
CHAPTER V
This was a gentleman no longer young, of a
stiff and portly appearance, and a cautious
and sour countenance. He began by stopping
short in the doorway, staring about him with
offensive and undisguised astonishment, as
though asking himself what sort of place he
had come to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation
of being alarmed and almost affronted, he
scanned Raskolnikov’s low and narrow “cabin.”
With the same amazement he stared at Raskolnikov,
who lay undressed, dishevelled, unwashed,
on his miserable dirty sofa, looking fixedly
at him. Then with the same deliberation he
scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and
unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him
boldly and inquiringly in the face without
rising from his seat. A constrained silence
lasted for a couple of minutes, and then,
as might be expected, some scene-shifting
took place. Reflecting, probably from certain
fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get
nothing in this “cabin” by attempting
to overawe them, the gentleman softened somewhat,
and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising
every syllable of his question, addressed
Zossimov:
“Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student,
or formerly a student?”
Zossimov made a slight movement, and would
have answered, had not Razumihin anticipated
him.
“Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you
want?”
This familiar “what do you want” seemed
to cut the ground from the feet of the pompous
gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but
checked himself in time and turned to Zossimov
again.
“This is Raskolnikov,” mumbled Zossimov,
nodding towards him. Then he gave a prolonged
yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible.
Then he lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket,
pulled out a huge gold watch in a round hunter’s
case, opened it, looked at it and as slowly
and lazily proceeded to put it back.
Raskolnikov himself lay without speaking,
on his back, gazing persistently, though without
understanding, at the stranger. Now that his
face was turned away from the strange flower
on the paper, it was extremely pale and wore
a look of anguish, as though he had just undergone
an agonising operation or just been taken
from the rack. But the new-comer gradually
began to arouse his attention, then his wonder,
then suspicion and even alarm. When Zossimov
said “This is Raskolnikov” he jumped up
quickly, sat on the sofa and with an almost
defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated:
“Yes, I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?”
The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced
impressively:
“Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin. I believe I have
reason to hope that my name is not wholly
unknown to you?”
But Raskolnikov, who had expected something
quite different, gazed blankly and dreamily
at him, making no reply, as though he heard
the name of Pyotr Petrovitch for the first
time.
“Is it possible that you can up to the present
have received no information?” asked Pyotr
Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.
In reply Raskolnikov sank languidly back on
the pillow, put his hands behind his head
and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay
came into Luzhin’s face. Zossimov and Razumihin
stared at him more inquisitively than ever,
and at last he showed unmistakable signs of
embarrassment.
“I had presumed and calculated,” he faltered,
“that a letter posted more than ten days,
if not a fortnight ago...”
“I say, why are you standing in the doorway?”
Razumihin interrupted suddenly. “If you’ve
something to say, sit down. Nastasya and you
are so crowded. Nastasya, make room. Here’s
a chair, thread your way in!”
He moved his chair back from the table, made
a little space between the table and his knees,
and waited in a rather cramped position for
the visitor to “thread his way in.” The
minute was so chosen that it was impossible
to refuse, and the visitor squeezed his way
through, hurrying and stumbling. Reaching
the chair, he sat down, looking suspiciously
at Razumihin.
“No need to be nervous,” the latter blurted
out. “Rodya has been ill for the last five
days and delirious for three, but now he is
recovering and has got an appetite. This is
his doctor, who has just had a look at him.
I am a comrade of Rodya’s, like him, formerly
a student, and now I am nursing him; so don’t
you take any notice of us, but go on with
your business.”
“Thank you. But shall I not disturb the
invalid by my presence and conversation?”
Pyotr Petrovitch asked of Zossimov.
“N-no,” mumbled Zossimov; “you may amuse
him.” He yawned again.
“He has been conscious a long time, since
the morning,” went on Razumihin, whose familiarity
seemed so much like unaffected good-nature
that Pyotr Petrovitch began to be more cheerful,
partly, perhaps, because this shabby and impudent
person had introduced himself as a student.
“Your mamma,” began Luzhin.
“Hm!” Razumihin cleared his throat loudly.
Luzhin looked at him inquiringly.
“That’s all right, go on.”
Luzhin shrugged his shoulders.
“Your mamma had commenced a letter to you
while I was sojourning in her neighbourhood.
On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few
days to elapse before coming to see you, in
order that I might be fully assured that you
were in full possession of the tidings; but
now, to my astonishment...”
“I know, I know!” Raskolnikov cried suddenly
with impatient vexation. “So you are the
fiancé? I know, and that’s enough!”
There was no doubt about Pyotr Petrovitch’s
being offended this time, but he said nothing.
He made a violent effort to understand what
it all meant. There was a moment’s silence.
Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned a little
towards him when he answered, began suddenly
staring at him again with marked curiosity,
as though he had not had a good look at him
yet, or as though something new had struck
him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to
stare at him. There certainly was something
peculiar in Pyotr Petrovitch’s whole appearance,
something which seemed to justify the title
of “fiancé” so unceremoniously applied
to him. In the first place, it was evident,
far too much so indeed, that Pyotr Petrovitch
had made eager use of his few days in the
capital to get himself up and rig himself
out in expectation of his betrothed—a perfectly
innocent and permissible proceeding, indeed.
Even his own, perhaps too complacent, consciousness
of the agreeable improvement in his appearance
might have been forgiven in such circumstances,
seeing that Pyotr Petrovitch had taken up
the rôle of fiancé. All his clothes were
fresh from the tailor’s and were all right,
except for being too new and too distinctly
appropriate. Even the stylish new round hat
had the same significance. Pyotr Petrovitch
treated it too respectfully and held it too
carefully in his hands. The exquisite pair
of lavender gloves, real Louvain, told the
same tale, if only from the fact of his not
wearing them, but carrying them in his hand
for show. Light and youthful colours predominated
in Pyotr Petrovitch’s attire. He wore a
charming summer jacket of a fawn shade, light
thin trousers, a waistcoat of the same, new
and fine linen, a cravat of the lightest cambric
with pink stripes on it, and the best of it
was, this all suited Pyotr Petrovitch. His
very fresh and even handsome face looked younger
than his forty-five years at all times. His
dark, mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable
setting on both sides, growing thickly upon
his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair,
touched here and there with grey, though it
had been combed and curled at a hairdresser’s,
did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled
hair usually does, by inevitably suggesting
a German on his wedding-day. If there really
was something unpleasing and repulsive in
his rather good-looking and imposing countenance,
it was due to quite other causes. After scanning
Mr. Luzhin unceremoniously, Raskolnikov smiled
malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared
at the ceiling as before.
But Mr. Luzhin hardened his heart and seemed
to determine to take no notice of their oddities.
“I feel the greatest regret at finding you
in this situation,” he began, again breaking
the silence with an effort. “If I had been
aware of your illness I should have come earlier.
But you know what business is. I have, too,
a very important legal affair in the Senate,
not to mention other preoccupations which
you may well conjecture. I am expecting your
mamma and sister any minute.”
Raskolnikov made a movement and seemed about
to speak; his face showed some excitement.
Pyotr Petrovitch paused, waited, but as nothing
followed, he went on:
“... Any minute. I have found a lodging
for them on their arrival.”
“Where?” asked Raskolnikov weakly.
“Very near here, in Bakaleyev’s house.”
“That’s in Voskresensky,” put in Razumihin.
“There are two storeys of rooms, let by
a merchant called Yushin; I’ve been there.”
“Yes, rooms...”
“A disgusting place—filthy, stinking and,
what’s more, of doubtful character. Things
have happened there, and there are all sorts
of queer people living there. And I went there
about a scandalous business. It’s cheap,
though...”
“I could not, of course, find out so much
about it, for I am a stranger in Petersburg
myself,” Pyotr Petrovitch replied huffily.
“However, the two rooms are exceedingly
clean, and as it is for so short a time...
I have already taken a permanent, that is,
our future flat,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov,
“and I am having it done up. And meanwhile
I am myself cramped for room in a lodging
with my friend Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov,
in the flat of Madame Lippevechsel; it was
he who told me of Bakaleyev’s house, too...”
“Lebeziatnikov?” said Raskolnikov slowly,
as if recalling something.
“Yes, Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov,
a clerk in the Ministry. Do you know him?”
“Yes... no,” Raskolnikov answered.
“Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry.
I was once his guardian.... A very nice young
man and advanced. I like to meet young people:
one learns new things from them.” Luzhin
looked round hopefully at them all.
“How do you mean?” asked Razumihin.
“In the most serious and essential matters,”
Pyotr Petrovitch replied, as though delighted
at the question. “You see, it’s ten years
since I visited Petersburg. All the novelties,
reforms, ideas have reached us in the provinces,
but to see it all more clearly one must be
in Petersburg. And it’s my notion that you
observe and learn most by watching the younger
generation. And I confess I am delighted...”
“At what?”
“Your question is a wide one. I may be mistaken,
but I fancy I find clearer views, more, so
to say, criticism, more practicality...”
“That’s true,” Zossimov let drop.
“Nonsense! There’s no practicality.”
Razumihin flew at him. “Practicality is
a difficult thing to find; it does not drop
down from heaven. And for the last two hundred
years we have been divorced from all practical
life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,”
he said to Pyotr Petrovitch, “and desire
for good exists, though it’s in a childish
form, and honesty you may find, although there
are crowds of brigands. Anyway, there’s
no practicality. Practicality goes well shod.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Pyotr Petrovitch
replied, with evident enjoyment. “Of course,
people do get carried away and make mistakes,
but one must have indulgence; those mistakes
are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the
cause and of abnormal external environment.
If little has been done, the time has been
but short; of means I will not speak. It’s
my personal view, if you care to know, that
something has been accomplished already. New
valuable ideas, new valuable works are circulating
in the place of our old dreamy and romantic
authors. Literature is taking a maturer form,
many injurious prejudices have been rooted
up and turned into ridicule.... In a word,
we have cut ourselves off irrevocably from
the past, and that, to my thinking, is a great
thing...”
“He’s learnt it by heart to show off!”
Raskolnikov pronounced suddenly.
“What?” asked Pyotr Petrovitch, not catching
his words; but he received no reply.
“That’s all true,” Zossimov hastened
to interpose.
“Isn’t it so?” Pyotr Petrovitch went
on, glancing affably at Zossimov. “You must
admit,” he went on, addressing Razumihin
with a shade of triumph and superciliousness—he
almost added “young man”—“that there
is an advance, or, as they say now, progress
in the name of science and economic truth...”
“A commonplace.”
“No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance,
if I were told, ‘love thy neighbour,’
what came of it?” Pyotr Petrovitch went
on, perhaps with excessive haste. “It came
to my tearing my coat in half to share with
my neighbour and we both were left half naked.
As a Russian proverb has it, ‘Catch several
hares and you won’t catch one.’ Science
now tells us, love yourself before all men,
for everything in the world rests on self-interest.
You love yourself and manage your own affairs
properly and your coat remains whole. Economic
truth adds that the better private affairs
are organised in society—the more whole
coats, so to say—the firmer are its foundations
and the better is the common welfare organised
too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely
and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring,
so to speak, for all, and helping to bring
to pass my neighbour’s getting a little
more than a torn coat; and that not from private,
personal liberality, but as a consequence
of the general advance. The idea is simple,
but unhappily it has been a long time reaching
us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality.
And yet it would seem to want very little
wit to perceive it...”
“Excuse me, I’ve very little wit myself,”
Razumihin cut in sharply, “and so let us
drop it. I began this discussion with an object,
but I’ve grown so sick during the last three
years of this chattering to amuse oneself,
of this incessant flow of commonplaces, always
the same, that, by Jove, I blush even when
other people talk like that. You are in a
hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements;
and I don’t blame you, that’s quite pardonable.
I only wanted to find out what sort of man
you are, for so many unscrupulous people have
got hold of the progressive cause of late
and have so distorted in their own interests
everything they touched, that the whole cause
has been dragged in the mire. That’s enough!”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Luzhin, affronted,
and speaking with excessive dignity. “Do
you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that
I too...”
“Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come,
that’s enough,” Razumihin concluded, and
he turned abruptly to Zossimov to continue
their previous conversation.
Pyotr Petrovitch had the good sense to accept
the disavowal. He made up his mind to take
leave in another minute or two.
“I trust our acquaintance,” he said, addressing
Raskolnikov, “may, upon your recovery and
in view of the circumstances of which you
are aware, become closer... Above all, I hope
for your return to health...”
Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr
Petrovitch began getting up from his chair.
“One of her customers must have killed her,”
Zossimov declared positively.
“Not a doubt of it,” replied Razumihin.
“Porfiry doesn’t give his opinion, but
is examining all who have left pledges with
her there.”
“Examining them?” Raskolnikov asked aloud.
“Yes. What then?”
“Nothing.”
“How does he get hold of them?” asked
Zossimov.
“Koch has given the names of some of them,
other names are on the wrappers of the pledges
and some have come forward of themselves.”
“It must have been a cunning and practised
ruffian! The boldness of it! The coolness!”
“That’s just what it wasn’t!” interposed
Razumihin. “That’s what throws you all
off the scent. But I maintain that he is not
cunning, not practised, and probably this
was his first crime! The supposition that
it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal
doesn’t work. Suppose him to have been inexperienced,
and it’s clear that it was only a chance
that saved him—and chance may do anything.
Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps!
And how did he set to work? He took jewels
worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his
pockets with them, ransacked the old woman’s
trunks, her rags—and they found fifteen
hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in
the top drawer of the chest! He did not know
how to rob; he could only murder. It was his
first crime, I assure you, his first crime;
he lost his head. And he got off more by luck
than good counsel!”
“You are talking of the murder of the old
pawnbroker, I believe?” Pyotr Petrovitch
put in, addressing Zossimov. He was standing,
hat and gloves in hand, but before departing
he felt disposed to throw off a few more intellectual
phrases. He was evidently anxious to make
a favourable impression and his vanity overcame
his prudence.
“Yes. You’ve heard of it?”
“Oh, yes, being in the neighbourhood.”
“Do you know the details?”
“I can’t say that; but another circumstance
interests me in the case—the whole question,
so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime
has been greatly on the increase among the
lower classes during the last five years,
not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson
everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest
thing is that in the higher classes, too,
crime is increasing proportionately. In one
place one hears of a student’s robbing the
mail on the high road; in another place people
of good social position forge false banknotes;
in Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured
who used to forge lottery tickets, and one
of the ringleaders was a lecturer in universal
history; then our secretary abroad was murdered
from some obscure motive of gain.... And if
this old woman, the pawnbroker, has been murdered
by someone of a higher class in society—for
peasants don’t pawn gold trinkets—how
are we to explain this demoralisation of the
civilised part of our society?”
“There are many economic changes,” put
in Zossimov.
“How are we to explain it?” Razumihin
caught him up. “It might be explained by
our inveterate impracticality.”
“How do you mean?”
“What answer had your lecturer in Moscow
to make to the question why he was forging
notes? ‘Everybody is getting rich one way
or another, so I want to make haste to get
rich too.’ I don’t remember the exact
words, but the upshot was that he wants money
for nothing, without waiting or working! We’ve
grown used to having everything ready-made,
to walking on crutches, to having our food
chewed for us. Then the great hour struck,[*]
and every man showed himself in his true colours.”
[*] The emancipation of the serfs in 1861
is meant.
—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
“But morality? And so to speak, principles...”
“But why do you worry about it?” Raskolnikov
interposed suddenly. “It’s in accordance
with your theory!”
“In accordance with my theory?”
“Why, carry out logically the theory you
were advocating just now, and it follows that
people may be killed...”
“Upon my word!” cried Luzhin.
“No, that’s not so,” put in Zossimov.
Raskolnikov lay with a white face and twitching
upper lip, breathing painfully.
“There’s a measure in all things,” Luzhin
went on superciliously. “Economic ideas
are not an incitement to murder, and one has
but to suppose...”
“And is it true,” Raskolnikov interposed
once more suddenly, again in a voice quivering
with fury and delight in insulting him, “is
it true that you told your fiancée... within
an hour of her acceptance, that what pleased
you most... was that she was a beggar... because
it was better to raise a wife from poverty,
so that you may have complete control over
her, and reproach her with your being her
benefactor?”
“Upon my word,” Luzhin cried wrathfully
and irritably, crimson with confusion, “to
distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow
me to assure you that the report which has
reached you, or rather, let me say, has been
conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth,
and I... suspect who... in a word... this
arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed
to me in other things, with all her excellent
qualities, of a somewhat high-flown and romantic
way of thinking.... But I was a thousand miles
from supposing that she would misunderstand
and misrepresent things in so fanciful a way....
And indeed... indeed...”
“I tell you what,” cried Raskolnikov,
raising himself on his pillow and fixing his
piercing, glittering eyes upon him, “I tell
you what.”
“What?” Luzhin stood still, waiting with
a defiant and offended face. Silence lasted
for some seconds.
“Why, if ever again... you dare to mention
a single word... about my mother... I shall
send you flying downstairs!”
“What’s the matter with you?” cried
Razumihin.
“So that’s how it is?” Luzhin turned
pale and bit his lip. “Let me tell you,
sir,” he began deliberately, doing his utmost
to restrain himself but breathing hard, “at
the first moment I saw you you were ill-disposed
to me, but I remained here on purpose to find
out more. I could forgive a great deal in
a sick man and a connection, but you... never
after this...”
“I am not ill,” cried Raskolnikov.
“So much the worse...”
“Go to hell!”
But Luzhin was already leaving without finishing
his speech, squeezing between the table and
the chair; Razumihin got up this time to let
him pass. Without glancing at anyone, and
not even nodding to Zossimov, who had for
some time been making signs to him to let
the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his
hat to the level of his shoulders to avoid
crushing it as he stooped to go out of the
door. And even the curve of his spine was
expressive of the horrible insult he had received.
“How could you—how could you!” Razumihin
said, shaking his head in perplexity.
“Let me alone—let me alone all of you!”
Raskolnikov cried in a frenzy. “Will you
ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid
of you! I am not afraid of anyone, anyone
now! Get away from me! I want to be alone,
alone, alone!”
“Come along,” said Zossimov, nodding to
Razumihin.
“But we can’t leave him like this!”
“Come along,” Zossimov repeated insistently,
and he went out. Razumihin thought a minute
and ran to overtake him.
“It might be worse not to obey him,” said
Zossimov on the stairs. “He mustn’t be
irritated.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“If only he could get some favourable shock,
that’s what would do it! At first he was
better.... You know he has got something on
his mind! Some fixed idea weighing on him....
I am very much afraid so; he must have!”
“Perhaps it’s that gentleman, Pyotr Petrovitch.
From his conversation I gather he is going
to marry his sister, and that he had received
a letter about it just before his illness....”
“Yes, confound the man! he may have upset
the case altogether. But have you noticed,
he takes no interest in anything, he does
not respond to anything except one point on
which he seems excited—that’s the murder?”
“Yes, yes,” Razumihin agreed, “I noticed
that, too. He is interested, frightened. It
gave him a shock on the day he was ill in
the police office; he fainted.”
“Tell me more about that this evening and
I’ll tell you something afterwards. He interests
me very much! In half an hour I’ll go and
see him again.... There’ll be no inflammation
though.”
“Thanks! And I’ll wait with Pashenka meantime
and will keep watch on him through Nastasya....”
Raskolnikov, left alone, looked with impatience
and misery at Nastasya, but she still lingered.
“Won’t you have some tea now?” she asked.
“Later! I am sleepy! Leave me.”
He turned abruptly to the wall; Nastasya went
out.
CHAPTER VI
But as soon as she went out, he got up, latched
the door, undid the parcel which Razumihin
had brought in that evening and had tied up
again and began dressing. Strange to say,
he seemed immediately to have become perfectly
calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor
of the panic fear that had haunted him of
late. It was the first moment of a strange
sudden calm. His movements were precise and
definite; a firm purpose was evident in them.
“To-day, to-day,” he muttered to himself.
He understood that he was still weak, but
his intense spiritual concentration gave him
strength and self-confidence. He hoped, moreover,
that he would not fall down in the street.
When he had dressed in entirely new clothes,
he looked at the money lying on the table,
and after a moment’s thought put it in his
pocket. It was twenty-five roubles. He took
also all the copper change from the ten roubles
spent by Razumihin on the clothes. Then he
softly unlatched the door, went out, slipped
downstairs and glanced in at the open kitchen
door. Nastasya was standing with her back
to him, blowing up the landlady’s samovar.
She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed
of his going out, indeed? A minute later he
was in the street.
It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was
setting. It was as stifling as before, but
he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town
air. His head felt rather dizzy; a sort of
savage energy gleamed suddenly in his feverish
eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face.
He did not know and did not think where he
was going, he had one thought only: “that
all this must be ended to-day, once for all,
immediately; that he would not return home
without it, because he would not go on living
like that.” How, with what to make an end?
He had not an idea about it, he did not even
want to think of it. He drove away thought;
thought tortured him. All he knew, all he
felt was that everything must be changed “one
way or another,” he repeated with desperate
and immovable self-confidence and determination.
From old habit he took his usual walk in the
direction of the Hay Market. A dark-haired
young man with a barrel organ was standing
in the road in front of a little general shop
and was grinding out a very sentimental song.
He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who
stood on the pavement in front of him. She
was dressed up in a crinoline, a mantle and
a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather
in it, all very old and shabby. In a strong
and rather agreeable voice, cracked and coarsened
by street singing, she sang in hope of getting
a copper from the shop. Raskolnikov joined
two or three listeners, took out a five copeck
piece and put it in the girl’s hand. She
broke off abruptly on a sentimental high note,
shouted sharply to the organ grinder “Come
on,” and both moved on to the next shop.
“Do you like street music?” said Raskolnikov,
addressing a middle-aged man standing idly
by him. The man looked at him, startled and
wondering.
“I love to hear singing to a street organ,”
said Raskolnikov, and his manner seemed strangely
out of keeping with the subject—“I like
it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings—they
must be damp—when all the passers-by have
pale green, sickly faces, or better still
when wet snow is falling straight down, when
there’s no wind—you know what I mean?—and
the street lamps shine through it...”
“I don’t know.... Excuse me...” muttered
the stranger, frightened by the question and
Raskolnikov’s strange manner, and he crossed
over to the other side of the street.
Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out
at the corner of the Hay Market, where the
huckster and his wife had talked with Lizaveta;
but they were not there now. Recognising the
place, he stopped, looked round and addressed
a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping
before a corn chandler’s shop.
“Isn’t there a man who keeps a booth with
his wife at this corner?”
“All sorts of people keep booths here,”
answered the young man, glancing superciliously
at Raskolnikov.
“What’s his name?”
“What he was christened.”
“Aren’t you a Zaraïsky man, too? Which
province?”
The young man looked at Raskolnikov again.
“It’s not a province, your excellency,
but a district. Graciously forgive me, your
excellency!”
“Is that a tavern at the top there?”
“Yes, it’s an eating-house and there’s
a billiard-room and you’ll find princesses
there too.... La-la!”
Raskolnikov crossed the square. In that corner
there was a dense crowd of peasants. He pushed
his way into the thickest part of it, looking
at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination
to enter into conversation with people. But
the peasants took no notice of him; they were
all shouting in groups together. He stood
and thought a little and took a turning to
the right in the direction of V.
He had often crossed that little street which
turns at an angle, leading from the market-place
to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often felt
drawn to wander about this district, when
he felt depressed, that he might feel more
so.
Now he walked along, thinking of nothing.
At that point there is a great block of buildings,
entirely let out in dram shops and eating-houses;
women were continually running in and out,
bare-headed and in their indoor clothes. Here
and there they gathered in groups, on the
pavement, especially about the entrances to
various festive establishments in the lower
storeys. From one of these a loud din, sounds
of singing, the tinkling of a guitar and shouts
of merriment, floated into the street. A crowd
of women were thronging round the door; some
were sitting on the steps, others on the pavement,
others were standing talking. A drunken soldier,
smoking a cigarette, was walking near them
in the road, swearing; he seemed to be trying
to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten
where. One beggar was quarrelling with another,
and a man dead drunk was lying right across
the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of
women, who were talking in husky voices. They
were bare-headed and wore cotton dresses and
goatskin shoes. There were women of forty
and some not more than seventeen; almost all
had blackened eyes.
He felt strangely attracted by the singing
and all the noise and uproar in the saloon
below.... someone could be heard within dancing
frantically, marking time with his heels to
the sounds of the guitar and of a thin falsetto
voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently,
gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the
entrance and peeping inquisitively in from
the pavement.
“Oh, my handsome soldier
Don’t beat me for nothing,”
trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov
felt a great desire to make out what he was
singing, as though everything depended on
that.
“Shall I go in?” he thought. “They are
laughing. From drink. Shall I get drunk?”
“Won’t you come in?” one of the women
asked him. Her voice was still musical and
less thick than the others, she was young
and not repulsive—the only one of the group.
“Why, she’s pretty,” he said, drawing
himself up and looking at her.
She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.
“You’re very nice looking yourself,”
she said.
“Isn’t he thin though!” observed another
woman in a deep bass. “Have you just come
out of a hospital?”
“They’re all generals’ daughters, it
seems, but they have all snub noses,” interposed
a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face,
wearing a loose coat. “See how jolly they
are.”
“Go along with you!”
“I’ll go, sweetie!”
And he darted down into the saloon below.
Raskolnikov moved on.
“I say, sir,” the girl shouted after him.
“What is it?”
She hesitated.
“I’ll always be pleased to spend an hour
with you, kind gentleman, but now I feel shy.
Give me six copecks for a drink, there’s
a nice young man!”
Raskolnikov gave her what came first—fifteen
copecks.
“Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!”
“What’s your name?”
“Ask for Duclida.”
“Well, that’s too much,” one of the
women observed, shaking her head at Duclida.
“I don’t know how you can ask like that.
I believe I should drop with shame....”
Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker.
She was a pock-marked wench of thirty, covered
with bruises, with her upper lip swollen.
She made her criticism quietly and earnestly.
“Where is it,” thought Raskolnikov. “Where
is it I’ve read that someone condemned to
death says or thinks, an hour before his death,
that if he had to live on some high rock,
on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room
to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness,
everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest
around him, if he had to remain standing on
a square yard of space all his life, a thousand
years, eternity, it were better to live so
than to die at once! Only to live, to live
and live! Life, whatever it may be!... How
true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile
creature!... And vile is he who calls him
vile for that,” he added a moment later.
He went into another street. “Bah, the Palais
de Cristal! Razumihin was just talking of
the Palais de Cristal. But what on earth was
it I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... Zossimov
said he’d read it in the papers. Have you
the papers?” he asked, going into a very
spacious and positively clean restaurant,
consisting of several rooms, which were, however,
rather empty. Two or three people were drinking
tea, and in a room further away were sitting
four men drinking champagne. Raskolnikov fancied
that Zametov was one of them, but he could
not be sure at that distance. “What if it
is?” he thought.
“Will you have vodka?” asked the waiter.
“Give me some tea and bring me the papers,
the old ones for the last five days, and I’ll
give you something.”
“Yes, sir, here’s to-day’s. No vodka?”
The old newspapers and the tea were brought.
Raskolnikov sat down and began to look through
them.
“Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence.
An accident on a staircase, spontaneous combustion
of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire in Peski...
a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another
fire in the Petersburg quarter... and another
fire in the Petersburg quarter.... Ah, here
it is!” He found at last what he was seeking
and began to read it. The lines danced before
his eyes, but he read it all and began eagerly
seeking later additions in the following numbers.
His hands shook with nervous impatience as
he turned the sheets. Suddenly someone sat
down beside him at his table. He looked up,
it was the head clerk Zametov, looking just
the same, with the rings on his fingers and
the watch-chain, with the curly, black hair,
parted and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat,
rather shabby coat and doubtful linen. He
was in a good humour, at least he was smiling
very gaily and good-humouredly. His dark face
was rather flushed from the champagne he had
drunk.
“What, you here?” he began in surprise,
speaking as though he’d known him all his
life. “Why, Razumihin told me only yesterday
you were unconscious. How strange! And do
you know I’ve been to see you?”
Raskolnikov knew he would come up to him.
He laid aside the papers and turned to Zametov.
There was a smile on his lips, and a new shade
of irritable impatience was apparent in that
smile.
“I know you have,” he answered. “I’ve
heard it. You looked for my sock.... And you
know Razumihin has lost his heart to you?
He says you’ve been with him to Luise Ivanovna’s—you
know, the woman you tried to befriend, for
whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant
and he would not understand. Do you remember?
How could he fail to understand—it was quite
clear, wasn’t it?”
“What a hot head he is!”
“The explosive one?”
“No, your friend Razumihin.”
“You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov;
entrance free to the most agreeable places.
Who’s been pouring champagne into you just
now?”
“We’ve just been... having a drink together....
You talk about pouring it into me!”
“By way of a fee! You profit by everything!”
Raskolnikov laughed, “it’s all right,
my dear boy,” he added, slapping Zametov
on the shoulder. “I am not speaking from
temper, but in a friendly way, for sport,
as that workman of yours said when he was
scuffling with Dmitri, in the case of the
old woman....”
“How do you know about it?”
“Perhaps I know more about it than you do.”
“How strange you are.... I am sure you are
still very unwell. You oughtn’t to have
come out.”
“Oh, do I seem strange to you?”
“Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a lot about the fires.”
“No, I am not reading about the fires.”
Here he looked mysteriously at Zametov; his
lips were twisted again in a mocking smile.
“No, I am not reading about the fires,”
he went on, winking at Zametov. “But confess
now, my dear fellow, you’re awfully anxious
to know what I am reading about?”
“I am not in the least. Mayn’t I ask a
question? Why do you keep on...?”
“Listen, you are a man of culture and education?”
“I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium,”
said Zametov with some dignity.
“Sixth class! Ah, my cock-sparrow! With
your parting and your rings—you are a gentleman
of fortune. Foo! what a charming boy!” Here
Raskolnikov broke into a nervous laugh right
in Zametov’s face. The latter drew back,
more amazed than offended.
“Foo! how strange you are!” Zametov repeated
very seriously. “I can’t help thinking
you are still delirious.”
“I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cock-sparrow!
So I am strange? You find me curious, do you?”
“Yes, curious.”
“Shall I tell you what I was reading about,
what I was looking for? See what a lot of
papers I’ve made them bring me. Suspicious,
eh?”
“Well, what is it?”
“You prick up your ears?”
“How do you mean—‘prick up my ears’?”
“I’ll explain that afterwards, but now,
my boy, I declare to you... no, better ‘I
confess’... No, that’s not right either;
‘I make a deposition and you take it.’
I depose that I was reading, that I was looking
and searching....” he screwed up his eyes
and paused. “I was searching—and came
here on purpose to do it—for news of the
murder of the old pawnbroker woman,” he
articulated at last, almost in a whisper,
bringing his face exceedingly close to the
face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him steadily,
without moving or drawing his face away. What
struck Zametov afterwards as the strangest
part of it all was that silence followed for
exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one
another all the while.
“What if you have been reading about it?”
he cried at last, perplexed and impatient.
“That’s no business of mine! What of it?”
“The same old woman,” Raskolnikov went
on in the same whisper, not heeding Zametov’s
explanation, “about whom you were talking
in the police-office, you remember, when I
fainted. Well, do you understand now?”
“What do you mean? Understand... what?”
Zametov brought out, almost alarmed.
Raskolnikov’s set and earnest face was suddenly
transformed, and he suddenly went off into
the same nervous laugh as before, as though
utterly unable to restrain himself. And in
one flash he recalled with extraordinary vividness
of sensation a moment in the recent past,
that moment when he stood with the axe behind
the door, while the latch trembled and the
men outside swore and shook it, and he had
a sudden desire to shout at them, to swear
at them, to put out his tongue at them, to
mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
“You are either mad, or...” began Zametov,
and he broke off, as though stunned by the
idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
“Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!”
“Nothing,” said Zametov, getting angry,
“it’s all nonsense!”
Both were silent. After his sudden fit of
laughter Raskolnikov became suddenly thoughtful
and melancholy. He put his elbow on the table
and leaned his head on his hand. He seemed
to have completely forgotten Zametov. The
silence lasted for some time.
“Why don’t you drink your tea? It’s
getting cold,” said Zametov.
“What! Tea? Oh, yes....” Raskolnikov sipped
the glass, put a morsel of bread in his mouth
and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to
remember everything and pulled himself together.
At the same moment his face resumed its original
mocking expression. He went on drinking tea.
“There have been a great many of these crimes
lately,” said Zametov. “Only the other
day I read in the Moscow News that a whole
gang of false coiners had been caught in Moscow.
It was a regular society. They used to forge
tickets!”
“Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read
about it a month ago,” Raskolnikov answered
calmly. “So you consider them criminals?”
he added, smiling.
“Of course they are criminals.”
“They? They are children, simpletons, not
criminals! Why, half a hundred people meeting
for such an object—what an idea! Three would
be too many, and then they want to have more
faith in one another than in themselves! One
has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses.
Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people
to change the notes—what a thing to trust
to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose
that these simpletons succeed and each makes
a million, and what follows for the rest of
their lives? Each is dependent on the others
for the rest of his life! Better hang oneself
at once! And they did not know how to change
the notes either; the man who changed the
notes took five thousand roubles, and his
hands trembled. He counted the first four
thousand, but did not count the fifth thousand—he
was in such a hurry to get the money into
his pocket and run away. Of course he roused
suspicion. And the whole thing came to a crash
through one fool! Is it possible?”
“That his hands trembled?” observed Zametov,
“yes, that’s quite possible. That, I feel
quite sure, is possible. Sometimes one can’t
stand things.”
“Can’t stand that?”
“Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn’t.
For the sake of a hundred roubles to face
such a terrible experience? To go with false
notes into a bank where it’s their business
to spot that sort of thing! No, I should not
have the face to do it. Would you?”
Raskolnikov had an intense desire again “to
put his tongue out.” Shivers kept running
down his spine.
“I should do it quite differently,” Raskolnikov
began. “This is how I would change the notes:
I’d count the first thousand three or four
times backwards and forwards, looking at every
note and then I’d set to the second thousand;
I’d count that half-way through and then
hold some fifty-rouble note to the light,
then turn it, then hold it to the light again—to
see whether it was a good one. ‘I am afraid,’
I would say, ‘a relation of mine lost twenty-five
roubles the other day through a false note,’
and then I’d tell them the whole story.
And after I began counting the third, ‘No,
excuse me,’ I would say, ‘I fancy I made
a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second
thousand, I am not sure.’ And so I would
give up the third thousand and go back to
the second and so on to the end. And when
I had finished, I’d pick out one from the
fifth and one from the second thousand and
take them again to the light and ask again,
‘Change them, please,’ and put the clerk
into such a stew that he would not know how
to get rid of me. When I’d finished and
had gone out, I’d come back, ‘No, excuse
me,’ and ask for some explanation. That’s
how I’d do it.”
“Foo! what terrible things you say!” said
Zametov, laughing. “But all that is only
talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you’d
make a slip. I believe that even a practised,
desperate man cannot always reckon on himself,
much less you and I. To take an example near
home—that old woman murdered in our district.
The murderer seems to have been a desperate
fellow, he risked everything in open daylight,
was saved by a miracle—but his hands shook,
too. He did not succeed in robbing the place,
he couldn’t stand it. That was clear from
the...”
Raskolnikov seemed offended.
“Clear? Why don’t you catch him then?”
he cried, maliciously gibing at Zametov.
“Well, they will catch him.”
“Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch
him? You’ve a tough job! A great point for
you is whether a man is spending money or
not. If he had no money and suddenly begins
spending, he must be the man. So that any
child can mislead you.”
“The fact is they always do that, though,”
answered Zametov. “A man will commit a clever
murder at the risk of his life and then at
once he goes drinking in a tavern. They are
caught spending money, they are not all as
cunning as you are. You wouldn’t go to a
tavern, of course?”
Raskolnikov frowned and looked steadily at
Zametov.
“You seem to enjoy the subject and would
like to know how I should behave in that case,
too?” he asked with displeasure.
“I should like to,” Zametov answered firmly
and seriously. Somewhat too much earnestness
began to appear in his words and looks.
“Very much?”
“Very much!”
“All right then. This is how I should behave,”
Raskolnikov began, again bringing his face
close to Zametov’s, again staring at him
and speaking in a whisper, so that the latter
positively shuddered. “This is what I should
have done. I should have taken the money and
jewels, I should have walked out of there
and have gone straight to some deserted place
with fences round it and scarcely anyone to
be seen, some kitchen garden or place of that
sort. I should have looked out beforehand
some stone weighing a hundredweight or more
which had been lying in the corner from the
time the house was built. I would lift that
stone—there would sure to be a hollow under
it, and I would put the jewels and money in
that hole. Then I’d roll the stone back
so that it would look as before, would press
it down with my foot and walk away. And for
a year or two, three maybe, I would not touch
it. And, well, they could search! There’d
be no trace.”
“You are a madman,” said Zametov, and
for some reason he too spoke in a whisper,
and moved away from Raskolnikov, whose eyes
were glittering. He had turned fearfully pale
and his upper lip was twitching and quivering.
He bent down as close as possible to Zametov,
and his lips began to move without uttering
a word. This lasted for half a minute; he
knew what he was doing, but could not restrain
himself. The terrible word trembled on his
lips, like the latch on that door; in another
moment it will break out, in another moment
he will let it go, he will speak out.
“And what if it was I who murdered the old
woman and Lizaveta?” he said suddenly and—realised
what he had done.
Zametov looked wildly at him and turned white
as the tablecloth. His face wore a contorted
smile.
“But is it possible?” he brought out faintly.
Raskolnikov looked wrathfully at him.
“Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?”
“Not a bit of it, I believe it less than
ever now,” Zametov cried hastily.
“I’ve caught my cock-sparrow! So you did
believe it before, if now you believe less
than ever?”
“Not at all,” cried Zametov, obviously
embarrassed. “Have you been frightening
me so as to lead up to this?”
“You don’t believe it then? What were
you talking about behind my back when I went
out of the police-office? And why did the
explosive lieutenant question me after I fainted?
Hey, there,” he shouted to the waiter, getting
up and taking his cap, “how much?”
“Thirty copecks,” the latter replied,
running up.
“And there is twenty copecks for vodka.
See what a lot of money!” he held out his
shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it.
“Red notes and blue, twenty-five roubles.
Where did I get them? And where did my new
clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck.
You’ve cross-examined my landlady, I’ll
be bound.... Well, that’s enough! Assez
causé! Till we meet again!”
He went out, trembling all over from a sort
of wild hysterical sensation, in which there
was an element of insufferable rapture. Yet
he was gloomy and terribly tired. His face
was twisted as after a fit. His fatigue increased
rapidly. Any shock, any irritating sensation
stimulated and revived his energies at once,
but his strength failed as quickly when the
stimulus was removed.
Zametov, left alone, sat for a long time in
the same place, plunged in thought. Raskolnikov
had unwittingly worked a revolution in his
brain on a certain point and had made up his
mind for him conclusively.
“Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead,” he decided.
Raskolnikov had hardly opened the door of
the restaurant when he stumbled against Razumihin
on the steps. They did not see each other
till they almost knocked against each other.
For a moment they stood looking each other
up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded,
then anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in
his eyes.
“So here you are!” he shouted at the top
of his voice—“you ran away from your bed!
And here I’ve been looking for you under
the sofa! We went up to the garret. I almost
beat Nastasya on your account. And here he
is after all. Rodya! What is the meaning of
it? Tell me the whole truth! Confess! Do you
hear?”
“It means that I’m sick to death of you
all and I want to be alone,” Raskolnikov
answered calmly.
“Alone? When you are not able to walk, when
your face is as white as a sheet and you are
gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you
been doing in the Palais de Cristal? Own up
at once!”
“Let me go!” said Raskolnikov and tried
to pass him. This was too much for Razumihin;
he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.
“Let you go? You dare tell me to let you
go? Do you know what I’ll do with you directly?
I’ll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle,
carry you home under my arm and lock you up!”
“Listen, Razumihin,” Raskolnikov began
quietly, apparently calm—“can’t you
see that I don’t want your benevolence?
A strange desire you have to shower benefits
on a man who... curses them, who feels them
a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out
at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was
very glad to die. Didn’t I tell you plainly
enough to-day that you were torturing me,
that I was... sick of you! You seem to want
to torture people! I assure you that all that
is seriously hindering my recovery, because
it’s continually irritating me. You saw
Zossimov went away just now to avoid irritating
me. You leave me alone too, for goodness’
sake! What right have you, indeed, to keep
me by force? Don’t you see that I am in
possession of all my faculties now? How, how
can I persuade you not to persecute me with
your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may
be mean, only let me be, for God’s sake,
let me be! Let me be, let me be!”
He began calmly, gloating beforehand over
the venomous phrases he was about to utter,
but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy,
as he had been with Luzhin.
Razumihin stood a moment, thought and let
his hand drop.
“Well, go to hell then,” he said gently
and thoughtfully. “Stay,” he roared, as
Raskolnikov was about to move. “Listen to
me. Let me tell you, that you are all a set
of babbling, posing idiots! If you’ve any
little trouble you brood over it like a hen
over an egg. And you are plagiarists even
in that! There isn’t a sign of independent
life in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment
and you’ve lymph in your veins instead of
blood. I don’t believe in anyone of you!
In any circumstances the first thing for all
of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!”
he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that
Raskolnikov was again making a movement—“hear
me out! You know I’m having a house-warming
this evening, I dare say they’ve arrived
by now, but I left my uncle there—I just
ran in—to receive the guests. And if you
weren’t a fool, a common fool, a perfect
fool, if you were an original instead of a
translation... you see, Rodya, I recognise
you’re a clever fellow, but you’re a fool!—and
if you weren’t a fool you’d come round
to me this evening instead of wearing out
your boots in the street! Since you have gone
out, there’s no help for it! I’d give
you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one...
a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie
on the sofa—any way you would be with us....
Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?”
“No.”
“R-rubbish!” Razumihin shouted, out of
patience. “How do you know? You can’t
answer for yourself! You don’t know anything
about it.... Thousands of times I’ve fought
tooth and nail with people and run back to
them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and
goes back to a man! So remember, Potchinkov’s
house on the third storey....”
“Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you’d
let anybody beat you from sheer benevolence.”
“Beat? Whom? Me? I’d twist his nose off
at the mere idea! Potchinkov’s house, 47,
Babushkin’s flat....”
“I shall not come, Razumihin.” Raskolnikov
turned and walked away.
“I bet you will,” Razumihin shouted after
him. “I refuse to know you if you don’t!
Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“Talked to him?”
“Yes.”
“What about? Confound you, don’t tell
me then. Potchinkov’s house, 47, Babushkin’s
flat, remember!”
Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner
into Sadovy Street. Razumihin looked after
him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his
hand he went into the house but stopped short
of the stairs.
“Confound it,” he went on almost aloud.
“He talked sensibly but yet... I am a fool!
As if madmen didn’t talk sensibly! And this
was just what Zossimov seemed afraid of.”
He struck his finger on his forehead. “What
if... how could I let him go off alone? He
may drown himself.... Ach, what a blunder!
I can’t.” And he ran back to overtake
Raskolnikov, but there was no trace of him.
With a curse he returned with rapid steps
to the Palais de Cristal to question Zametov.
Raskolnikov walked straight to X—— Bridge,
stood in the middle, and leaning both elbows
on the rail stared into the distance. On parting
with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that
he could scarcely reach this place. He longed
to sit or lie down somewhere in the street.
Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically
at the last pink flush of the sunset, at the
row of houses growing dark in the gathering
twilight, at one distant attic window on the
left bank, flashing as though on fire in the
last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening
water of the canal, and the water seemed to
catch his attention. At last red circles flashed
before his eyes, the houses seemed moving,
the passers-by, the canal banks, the carriages,
all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started,
saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny
and hideous sight. He became aware of someone
standing on the right side of him; he looked
and saw a tall woman with a kerchief on her
head, with a long, yellow, wasted face and
red sunken eyes. She was looking straight
at him, but obviously she saw nothing and
recognised no one. Suddenly she leaned her
right hand on the parapet, lifted her right
leg over the railing, then her left and threw
herself into the canal. The filthy water parted
and swallowed up its victim for a moment,
but an instant later the drowning woman floated
to the surface, moving slowly with the current,
her head and legs in the water, her skirt
inflated like a balloon over her back.
“A woman drowning! A woman drowning!”
shouted dozens of voices; people ran up, both
banks were thronged with spectators, on the
bridge people crowded about Raskolnikov, pressing
up behind him.
“Mercy on it! it’s our Afrosinya!” a
woman cried tearfully close by. “Mercy!
save her! kind people, pull her out!”
“A boat, a boat” was shouted in the crowd.
But there was no need of a boat; a policeman
ran down the steps to the canal, threw off
his great coat and his boots and rushed into
the water. It was easy to reach her: she floated
within a couple of yards from the steps, he
caught hold of her clothes with his right
hand and with his left seized a pole which
a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman
was pulled out at once. They laid her on the
granite pavement of the embankment. She soon
recovered consciousness, raised her head,
sat up and began sneezing and coughing, stupidly
wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said
nothing.
“She’s drunk herself out of her senses,”
the same woman’s voice wailed at her side.
“Out of her senses. The other day she tried
to hang herself, we cut her down. I ran out
to the shop just now, left my little girl
to look after her—and here she’s in trouble
again! A neighbour, gentleman, a neighbour,
we live close by, the second house from the
end, see yonder....”
The crowd broke up. The police still remained
round the woman, someone mentioned the police
station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a strange
sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt
disgusted. “No, that’s loathsome... water...
it’s not good enough,” he muttered to
himself. “Nothing will come of it,” he
added, “no use to wait. What about the police
office...? And why isn’t Zametov at the
police office? The police office is open till
ten o’clock....” He turned his back to
the railing and looked about him.
“Very well then!” he said resolutely;
he moved from the bridge and walked in the
direction of the police office. His heart
felt hollow and empty. He did not want to
think. Even his depression had passed, there
was not a trace now of the energy with which
he had set out “to make an end of it all.”
Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
“Well, it’s a way out of it,” he thought,
walking slowly and listlessly along the canal
bank. “Anyway I’ll make an end, for I
want to.... But is it a way out? What does
it matter! There’ll be the square yard of
space—ha! But what an end! Is it really
the end? Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn!
How tired I am! If I could find somewhere
to sit or lie down soon! What I am most ashamed
of is its being so stupid. But I don’t care
about that either! What idiotic ideas come
into one’s head.”
To reach the police office he had to go straight
forward and take the second turning to the
left. It was only a few paces away. But at
the first turning he stopped and, after a
minute’s thought, turned into a side street
and went two streets out of his way, possibly
without any object, or possibly to delay a
minute and gain time. He walked, looking at
the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper
in his ear; he lifted his head and saw that
he was standing at the very gate of the house.
He had not passed it, he had not been near
it since that evening. An overwhelming, unaccountable
prompting drew him on. He went into the house,
passed through the gateway, then into the
first entrance on the right, and began mounting
the familiar staircase to the fourth storey.
The narrow, steep staircase was very dark.
He stopped at each landing and looked round
him with curiosity; on the first landing the
framework of the window had been taken out.
“That wasn’t so then,” he thought. Here
was the flat on the second storey where Nikolay
and Dmitri had been working. “It’s shut
up and the door newly painted. So it’s to
let.” Then the third storey and the fourth.
“Here!” He was perplexed to find the door
of the flat wide open. There were men there,
he could hear voices; he had not expected
that. After brief hesitation he mounted the
last stairs and went into the flat. It, too,
was being done up; there were workmen in it.
This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied
that he would find everything as he left it,
even perhaps the corpses in the same places
on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture;
it seemed strange. He walked to the window
and sat down on the window-sill. There were
two workmen, both young fellows, but one much
younger than the other. They were papering
the walls with a new white paper covered with
lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty,
yellow one. Raskolnikov for some reason felt
horribly annoyed by this. He looked at the
new paper with dislike, as though he felt
sorry to have it all so changed. The workmen
had obviously stayed beyond their time and
now they were hurriedly rolling up their paper
and getting ready to go home. They took no
notice of Raskolnikov’s coming in; they
were talking. Raskolnikov folded his arms
and listened.
“She comes to me in the morning,” said
the elder to the younger, “very early, all
dressed up. ‘Why are you preening and prinking?’
says I. ‘I am ready to do anything to please
you, Tit Vassilitch!’ That’s a way of
going on! And she dressed up like a regular
fashion book!”
“And what is a fashion book?” the younger
one asked. He obviously regarded the other
as an authority.
“A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured,
and they come to the tailors here every Saturday,
by post from abroad, to show folks how to
dress, the male sex as well as the female.
They’re pictures. The gentlemen are generally
wearing fur coats and for the ladies’ fluffles,
they’re beyond anything you can fancy.”
“There’s nothing you can’t find in Petersburg,”
the younger cried enthusiastically, “except
father and mother, there’s everything!”
“Except them, there’s everything to be
found, my boy,” the elder declared sententiously.
Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other
room where the strong box, the bed, and the
chest of drawers had been; the room seemed
to him very tiny without furniture in it.
The paper was the same; the paper in the corner
showed where the case of ikons had stood.
He looked at it and went to the window. The
elder workman looked at him askance.
“What do you want?” he asked suddenly.
Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into
the passage and pulled the bell. The same
bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a
second and a third time; he listened and remembered.
The hideous and agonisingly fearful sensation
he had felt then began to come back more and
more vividly. He shuddered at every ring and
it gave him more and more satisfaction.
“Well, what do you want? Who are you?”
the workman shouted, going out to him. Raskolnikov
went inside again.
“I want to take a flat,” he said. “I
am looking round.”
“It’s not the time to look at rooms at
night! and you ought to come up with the porter.”
“The floors have been washed, will they
be painted?” Raskolnikov went on. “Is
there no blood?”
“What blood?”
“Why, the old woman and her sister were
murdered here. There was a perfect pool there.”
“But who are you?” the workman cried,
uneasy.
“Who am I?”
“Yes.”
“You want to know? Come to the police station,
I’ll tell you.”
The workmen looked at him in amazement.
“It’s time for us to go, we are late.
Come along, Alyoshka. We must lock up,”
said the elder workman.
“Very well, come along,” said Raskolnikov
indifferently, and going out first, he went
slowly downstairs. “Hey, porter,” he cried
in the gateway.
At the entrance several people were standing,
staring at the passers-by; the two porters,
a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and
a few others. Raskolnikov went straight up
to them.
“What do you want?” asked one of the porters.
“Have you been to the police office?”
“I’ve just been there. What do you want?”
“Is it open?”
“Of course.”
“Is the assistant there?”
“He was there for a time. What do you want?”
Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside
them lost in thought.
“He’s been to look at the flat,” said
the elder workman, coming forward.
“Which flat?”
“Where we are at work. ‘Why have you washed
away the blood?’ says he. ‘There has been
a murder here,’ says he, ‘and I’ve come
to take it.’ And he began ringing at the
bell, all but broke it. ‘Come to the police
station,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you everything
there.’ He wouldn’t leave us.”
The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning
and perplexed.
“Who are you?” he shouted as impressively
as he could.
“I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly
a student, I live in Shil’s house, not far
from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter,
he knows me.” Raskolnikov said all this
in a lazy, dreamy voice, not turning round,
but looking intently into the darkening street.
“Why have you been to the flat?”
“To look at it.”
“What is there to look at?”
“Take him straight to the police station,”
the man in the long coat jerked in abruptly.
Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his
shoulder and said in the same slow, lazy tones:
“Come along.”
“Yes, take him,” the man went on more
confidently. “Why was he going into that,
what’s in his mind, eh?”
“He’s not drunk, but God knows what’s
the matter with him,” muttered the workman.
“But what do you want?” the porter shouted
again, beginning to get angry in earnest—“Why
are you hanging about?”
“You funk the police station then?” said
Raskolnikov jeeringly.
“How funk it? Why are you hanging about?”
“He’s a rogue!” shouted the peasant
woman.
“Why waste time talking to him?” cried
the other porter, a huge peasant in a full
open coat and with keys on his belt. “Get
along! He is a rogue and no mistake. Get along!”
And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he
flung him into the street. He lurched forward,
but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators
in silence and walked away.
“Strange man!” observed the workman.
“There are strange folks about nowadays,”
said the woman.
“You should have taken him to the police
station all the same,” said the man in the
long coat.
“Better have nothing to do with him,”
decided the big porter. “A regular rogue!
Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once
take him up, you won’t get rid of him....
We know the sort!”
“Shall I go there or not?” thought Raskolnikov,
standing in the middle of the thoroughfare
at the cross-roads, and he looked about him,
as though expecting from someone a decisive
word. But no sound came, all was dead and
silent like the stones on which he walked,
dead to him, to him alone.... All at once
at the end of the street, two hundred yards
away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd
and heard talk and shouts. In the middle of
the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed
in the middle of the street. “What is it?”
Raskolnikov turned to the right and went up
to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything
and smiled coldly when he recognised it, for
he had fully made up his mind to go to the
police station and knew that it would all
soon be over.
