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
Allan Hough (7858)
Brittany Janis & Katie Cruz (104)
ERMAHGAWD THEY PARKED 6 CENTIMETERS OFF THE CURBBBBB
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
Me and my friend were arguing about an issue similar to this! Now I know that I was right. lol! Thanks for the information you post.
how to not use the grammar