7

Re: Достоевский Ф. М. - Преступление и наказание в переводе на английский

He walked towards the Neva along V___ Prospect, but on the way
another idea struck him. "Why to the Neva? Would it not be better to
go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the
things in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the
spot perhaps?" And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the
idea seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there.
For coming out of V___ Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left
a passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right
hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched
far into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with
it for twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the
left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of
different sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a
low, smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from
behind the hoarding. It was probably a carriage builder's or
carpenter's shed; the whole place from the entrance was black with
coal dust. Here would be the place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing
any one in the yard, he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a
sink, such as is often put in yards where there are many workmen or
cabdrivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk
the time-honoured witticism, "Standing here strictly forbidden."
This was all the better, for there would be nothing suspicious about
his going in. "Here I could throw it all in a heap and get away!"
  Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he
noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a
big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the
wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that
part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless some one came
in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was
need of haste.
  He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both
hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone
was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his
pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not
filled up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it
back, so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a
very little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it
at the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed.
  Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense,
almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the
police office. "I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of
looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever
since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if
it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!" And he
laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous
noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the
square. But when he reached the K___ Boulevard where two days before
he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other
ideas crept into his mind. He felt all at once that it would be
loathsome to pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had
sat and pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that
whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: "Damn
him!"
  He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas
now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that
there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing
that point- and for the first time, indeed, during the last two
months.
  "Damn it all!" he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury.
"If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how
stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I
fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What
do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at
all! It is not that at all!"
  Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple
question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.
  "If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if
I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even
glance into the purse and don't know what I had there, for which I
have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this
base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw
into the water the purse together with all the things which I had
not seen either... how's that?"
  Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before,
and it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the
night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be,
as though it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known
it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even
yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling
the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes, so it was.
  "It is because I am very ill," he decided grimly at last, "I have
been worrying and fretting myself, and I don't know what I am
doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I
have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not
worry.... But what if I don't get well at all? Good God, how sick I am
of it all!"
  He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some
distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new
overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him
every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for
everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred.
All who met him were loathsome to him- he loathed their faces, their
movements, their gestures. If any one had addressed him, he felt
that he might have spat at him or bitten him....
  He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Neva,
near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. "Why, he lives here, in that
house," he thought, "why, I have not come to Razumihin of my own
accord! Here it's the same thing over again.... Very interesting to
know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by
chance? Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go
and see him the day after; well, and so I will! Besides I really
cannot go further now."
  He went up to Razumihin's room on the fifth floor.
  The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the
moment, and he opened the door himself. It was four months since
they had seen each other. Razumihin was sitting in a ragged
dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and
unwashed. His face showed surprise.
  "Is it you?" he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after
a brief pause, he whistled. "As hard up as all that! Why, brother,
you've cut me out!" he added, looking at Raskolnikov's rags. "Come sit
down, you are tired, I'll be bound."
  And when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was in
even worse condition than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his
visitor was ill.
  "Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?" He began feeling his
pulse. Raskolnikov pulled away his hand.
  "Never mind," he said, "I have come for this; I have no
lessons.... I wanted... but I don't want lessons...."
  "But I say! You are delirious, you know!" Razumihin observed,
watching him carefully.
  "No, I am not."
  Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to
Razumihin's, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend
face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of
all disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with any one in
the wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage
at himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin's threshold.
  "Good-bye," he said abruptly, and walked to the door.
  "Stop, stop! You queer fish."
  "I don't want to," said the other, again pulling away his hand.
  "Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this
is... almost insulting! I won't let you go like that."
  "Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could
help... to begin... because you are kinder than any one- clever, I
mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear?
Nothing at all... no one's services... no one's sympathy. I am by
myself... alone. Come, that's enough. Leave me alone."
  "Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for
all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don't care about
that, but there's a bookseller, Heruvimov- and he takes the place of a
lesson. I would not exchange him for five lessons. He's doing
publishing of a kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a
circulation they have! The very titles are worth the money! You always
maintained that I was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater
fools than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that
he has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here
are two signatures of the German text- in my opinion, the crudest
charlatanism; it discusses the question, 'Is woman a human being?'
And, of course, triumphantly proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to
bring out this work as a contribution to the woman question; I am
translating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures into
six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long and bring it
out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six roubles the
signature, it works out to fifteen roubles for the job, and I've had
six already in advance. When we have finished this, we are going to
begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest
scandals out of the second part of Les Confessions we have marked
for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind
of Radishchev. You may be sure I don't contradict him, hang him! Well,
would you like to do the second signature of 'Is woman a human being?'
If you would, take the German and pens and paper- all those are
provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in
advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your
share. And when you have finished the signature there will be
another three roubles for you. And please don't think I am doing you a
service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you
could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I
am sometimes utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go
along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it's bound to be
a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it's sometimes for
the worse. Will you take it?"
  Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took the three
roubles and without a word went out. Razumihin gazed after him in
astonishment. But when Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned
back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin's again and laying on the
table the German article and the three roubles, went out again,
still without uttering a word.
  "Are you raving, or what?" Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at
last. "What farce is this? You'll drive me crazy too... what did you
come to see me for, damn you?"
  "I don't want... translation," muttered Raskolnikov from the stairs.
  "Then what the devil do you want?" shouted Razumihin from above.
Raskolnikov continued descending the staircase in silence.
  "Hey, there! Where are you living?"
  No answer.
  "Well, confound you then!"
  But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the
Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an
unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three
times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having
almost fallen under his horses' hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that
he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been
walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily
clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.
  "Serves him right!"
  "A pickpocket I dare say."
  "Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on
purpose; and you have to answer for him."
  "It's a regular profession, that's what it is."
  But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and
bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he
suddenly felt some one thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was
an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl,
probably her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.
  "Take it, my good man, in Christ's name."
  He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks.
From his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a
beggar asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty
copecks he doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry
for him.
  He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces,
and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was
without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare
in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best
from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the
sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly
distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot
about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now
completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the
distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was
attending the university, he had hundreds of times- generally on his
way home- stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent
spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious
emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous
picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at
his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put
off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old
doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere
chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and
grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before,
as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be
interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested
him... so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it
wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that
seemed to him now- all his old past, his old thoughts, his old
problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and
himself and all, all.... He felt as though he were flying upwards, and
everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious
movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money
in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a
sweep his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home.
It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from every one and from
everything that moment.
  Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have
been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not
remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay
down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into
oblivion....
  It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what
a scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding,
tears, blows and curses he had never heard.
  He could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In
terror he sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting,
wailing and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense
amazement he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling,
shrieking and wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he
could not make out what she was talking about; she was beseeching,
no doubt, not to be beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on
the stairs. The voice of her assailant was so horrible from spite
and rage that it was almost a croak; but he, too, was saying
something, and just as quickly and indistinctly, hurrying and
spluttering. All at once Raskolnikov trembled; he recognized the
voice- it was the voice of Ilya Petrovitch. Ilya Petrovitch here and
beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against
the steps- that's clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the
cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could
hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the
staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging.
"But why, why, and how could it be?" he repeated, thinking seriously
that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they
would come to him then next, "for no doubt... it's all about that...
about yesterday.... Good God!" He would have fastened his door with
the latch, but he could not lift his hand... besides, it would be
useless. Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed
him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten
minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and
groaning; Ilya Petrovitch was still uttering threats and curses....
But at last he, too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be
heard. "Can he have gone away? Good Lord!" Yes, and now the landlady
is going too, still weeping and moaning...  and then her door
slammed.... Now the crowd was going from the stairs to their rooms,
exclaiming, disputing, calling to one another, raising their voices to
a shout, dropping them to a whisper. There must have been numbers of
them- almost all the inmates of the block. "But, good God, how could
it be! And why, why had he come here!"
  Raskolnikov sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes.
He lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation
of infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a
bright light flashed into his room. Nastasya came in with a candle and
a plate of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was
not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out
what she had brought- bread, salt, a plate, a spoon.
  "You've eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You've been
trudging about all day, and you're shaking with fever."
  "Nastasya... what were they beating the landlady for?"
  She looked intently at him.
  "Who beat the landlady?"
  "Just now... half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovitch, the
assistant-superintendent, on the stairs.... Why was he ill-treating
her like that, and... why was he here?"
  Nastasya scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny
lasted a long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching
eyes.
  "Nastasya, why don't you speak?" he said timidly at last in a weak
voice.
  "It's the blood," she answered at last softly, as though speaking to
herself.
  "Blood? What blood?" he muttered, growing white and turning
towards the wall.
  Nastasya still looked at him without speaking.
  "Nobody has been beating the landlady," she declared at last in a
firm, resolute voice.
  He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.
  "I heard it myself.... I was not asleep... I was sitting up," he
said still more timidly. "I listened a long while. The
assistant-superintendent came.... Every one ran out on to the stairs
from all the flats."
  "No one has been here. That's the blood crying in your ears. When
there's no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying
things.... Will you eat something?"
  He made no answer. Nastasya still stood over him, watching him.
  "Give me something to drink... Nastasya."
  She went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of
water. He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and
spilling some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.

CHAPTER_THREE
                            Chapter Three
-
  HE WAS not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill;
he was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half
conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it
seemed as though there were a number of people round him; they
wanted to take him away somewhere, there was a great deal of
squabbling and discussing about him. Then he would be alone in the
room; they had all gone away afraid of him, and only now and then
opened the door a crack to look at him; they threatened him, plotted
something together, laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered Nastasya
often at his bedside; he distinguished another person, too, whom he
seemed to know very well, though he could not remember who he was, and
this fretted him, even made him cry. Sometimes he fancied he had
been lying there a month; at other times it all seemed part of the
same day. But of that- of that he had no recollection, and yet every
minute he felt that he had forgotten something he ought to remember.
He worried and tormented himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into
a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror. Then he struggled to
get up, would have run away, but some one always prevented him by
force, and he sank back into impotence and forgetfulness. At last he
returned to complete consciousness.
  It happened at ten o'clock in the morning. On fine days the sun
shone into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the
right wall and the corner near the door. Nastasya was standing
beside him with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking
at him very inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing
a full, short-waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The
landlady was peeping in at the half-opened door. Raskolnikov sat up.
  "Who is this, Nastasya?" he asked, pointing to the young man.
  "I say, he's himself again!" she said.
  "He is himself," echoed the man.
  Concluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed
the door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations
or discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking,
fat and buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness
and laziness, and absurdly bashful.
  "Who... are you?" he went on, addressing the man. But at that moment
the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so tall,
Razumihin came in.
  "What a cabin it is!" he cried. "I am always knocking my head. You
call this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I've just heard
the news from Pashenka."
  "He has just come to," said Nastasya.
  "Just come to," echoed the man again, with a smile.
  "And who are you?" Razumihin asked, suddenly addressing him. "My
name is Vrazumihin, at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always
called, but Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman; and he is my
friend. And who are you?"
  "I am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Shelopaev,
and I've come on business."
  "Please sit down." Razumihin seated himself on the other side of the
table. "It's a good thing you've come to, brother," he went on to
Raskolnikov. "For the last four days you have scarcely eaten or
drunk anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought
Zossimov to see you twice. You remember Zossimov? He examined you
carefully and said at once it was nothing serious- something seemed to
have gone to your head. Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad
feeding, he says you have not had enough beer and radish, but it's
nothing much, it will pass and you will be all right. Zossimov is a
first-rate fellow! He is making quite a name. Come, I won't keep you,"
he said, addressing the man again. "Will you explain what you want?
You must know, Rodya, this is the second time they have sent from
the office; but it was another man last time, and I talked to him. Who
was it came before?"
  "That was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please,
sir. That was Alexey Semyonovitch; he is in our office, too."
  "He was more intelligent than you, don't you think so?"
  "Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am."
  "Quite so; go on."
  "At your mamma's request, through Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of
whom I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent
to you from our office," the man began, addressing Raskolnikov. "If
you are in an intelligible condition, I've thirty-five roubles to
remit to you, as Semyon Semyonovitch has received from Afanasy
Ivanovitch at your mamma's request instructions to that effect, as
on previous occasions. Do you know him, sir?"
  "Yes, I remember... Vahrushin," Raskolnikov said dreamily.
  "You hear, he knows Vahrushin," cried Razumihin. "He is in 'an
intelligible condition'! And I see you are an intelligent man too.
Well, it's always pleasant to hear words of wisdom."
  "That's the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy Ivanovitch. And at the
request of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in
the same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and
sent instructions to Semyon Semyonovitch some days since to hand you
thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come."
  "That 'hoping for better to come' is the best thing you've said,
though 'your mamma' is not bad either. Come then, what do you say?
Is he fully conscious, eh?"
  "That's all right. If only he can sign this little paper."
  "He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?"
  "Yes, here's the book."
  "Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I'll hold you. Take the pen and
scribble 'Raskolnikov' for him. For just now, brother, money is
sweeter to us than treacle."
  "I don't want it," said Raskolnikov, pushing away the pen.
  "Not want it?"
  "I won't sign it."
  "How the devil can you do without signing it?"
  "I don't want... the money."
  "Don't want the money! Come, brother, that's nonsense, I bear
witness. Don't trouble, please, it's only that he is on his travels
again. But that's pretty common with him at all times though.... You
are a man of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more
simply, take his hand and he will sign it. Here."
  "But I can come another time."
  "No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment....
Now, Rodya, don't keep your visitor, you see he is waiting," and he
made ready to hold Raskolnikov's hand in earnest.
  "Stop, I'll do it alone," said the latter, taking the pen and
signing his name.
  The messenger took out the money and went away.
  "Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?"
  "Yes," answered Raskolnikov.
  "Is there any soup?"
  "Some of yesterday's," answered Nastasya, who was still standing
there.
  "With potatoes and rice in it?"
  "Yes."
  "I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea."
  "Very well."
  Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound astonishment and a
dull, unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see
what would happen. "I believe I am not wandering. I believe it's
reality," he thought.
  In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with the soup, and
announced that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she
brought two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef,
and so on. The table was set as it had not been for a long time. The
cloth was clean.
  "It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya Pavlovna were to send
us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them."
  "Well, you are a cool hand," muttered Nastasya, and she departed
to carry out his orders.
  Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile
Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put
his left arm round Raskolnikov's head, although he was able to sit up,
and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it
that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm.
Raskolnikov swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a
third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin
suddenly stopped, and said that he must ask Zossimov whether he
ought to have more.
  Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.
  "And will you have tea?"
  "Yes."
  "Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture
on without the faculty. But here is the beer!" He moved back to his
chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as
though he had not touched food for three days.
  "I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this here every day now," he
mumbled with his mouth full of beef, "and it's all Pashenka, your dear
little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me.
I don't ask for it, but, of course, I don't object. And here's
Nastasya with the tea. She is a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won't
you have some beer?"
  "Get along with your nonsense!"
  "A cup of tea, then?"
  "A cup of tea, maybe."
  "Pour it out. Stay, I'll pour it out myself. Sit down."
  He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa
again. As before, he put his left arm round the sick man's head,
raised him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each
spoonful steadily and earnestly, as though this process was the
principal and most effective means towards his friend's recovery.
Raskolnikov said nothing and made no resistance, though he felt
quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa without support and could
not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have
walked about. But from some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived
the idea of hiding his strength and lying low for a time, pretending
if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and
meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not
overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of
tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away
capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real
pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed
that, too, and took note of it.
  "Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some
raspberry tea," said Razumihin, going back to his chair and
attacking his soup and beer again.
  "And where is she to get raspberries for you?" asked Nastasya,
balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea
through a lump of sugar.
  "She'll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Rodya, all sorts of
things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you
decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt
so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work
that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This
lodging of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it,
indeed, because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I
could only remember it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov's house. I
kept trying to find that Harlamov's house, and afterwards it turned
out that it was not Harlamov's, but Buch's. How one muddles up sound
sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the
address bureau next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked
you up! Your name is down there."
  "My name!"
  "I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find
while I was there. Well, it's a long story. But as soon as I did
land on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs- all, all,
brother, I know everything; Nastasya here will tell you. I made the
acquaintance of Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and the
house-porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the head clerk
in the police office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka;
Nastasya here knows...."
  "He's got round her," Nastasya murmured, smiling slyly.
  "Why don't you put the sugar in your tea, Nastasya Nikiforovna?"
  "You are a one!" Nastasya cried suddenly, going off into a giggle.
"I am not Nikiforovna, but Petrovna," she added suddenly, recovering
from her mirth.
  "I'll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story
short, I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all
malignant influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I
had not expected, brother, to find her so... prepossessing. Eh, what
do you think?"
  Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon
him, full of alarm.
  "And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,"
Razumihin went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.
  "Ah, the sly dog!" Nastasya shrieked again. This conversation
afforded her unspeakable delight.
  "It's a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way
at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so
to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her
character later.... How could you let things come to such a pass
that she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I.O.U.? You must
have been mad to sign an I.O.U. And that promise of marriage when
her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive?... I know all about it!
But I see that's a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But,
talking of foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly
so foolish as you would think at first sight?"
  "No," mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away, but feeling that it was
better to keep up the conversation.
  "She isn't, is she?" cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out
of him. "But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially,
essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a
loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is
thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I
judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of
view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of
algebra or what not! I don't understand it! Well, that's all nonsense.
Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons
and your clothes, and that through the young lady's death she has no
need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as
you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she
planned to get rid of you. And she's been cherishing that design a
long time, but was sorry to lose the I.O.U. for you assured her
yourself that your mother would pay."
  "It was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost a
beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,"
Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.
  "Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that
point Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never
have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too
retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first
thing he puts the question, 'Is there any hope of realising the
I.O.U.?' Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save
her Rodya with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has
to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for
his sake. That's what he was building upon.... Why do you start? I
know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy- it's not
for nothing that you were so open with Pashenka when you were her
prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend.... But I
tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a
business man 'listens and goes on eating' you up. Well, then she
gave the I.O.U. by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without
hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all
this I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that
time harmony reigned between me and Pashenka, and I insisted on
stopping the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went
security for you, brother. Do you understand? We called Tchebarov,
flung him ten roubles and got the I.O.U. back from him, and here I
have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts your word now.
Here, take it, you see I have torn it."
  Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov looked at him and
turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a
twinge.
  "I see, brother," he said a moment later, "that I have been
playing the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my
chatter, and I believe I have only made you cross."
  "Was it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?" Raskolnikov
asked, after a moment's pause without turning his head.
  "Yes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought
Zametov one day."
  "Zametov? The head clerk? What for?" Raskolnikov turned round
quickly and fixed his eyes on Razumihin.
  "What's the matter with you?... What are you upset about? He
wanted to make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about
you.... How could I have found out so much except from him? He is a
capital fellow, brother, first-rate... in his own way, of course.
Now we are friends- see each other almost every day. I have moved into
this part, you know. I have only just moved. I've been with him to
Luise Ivanovna once or twice.... Do you remember Luise, Luise
Ivanovna?
  "Did I say anything in delirium?"
  "I should think so! You were beside yourself."
  "What did I rave about?"
  "What next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about....
Well, brother, now I must not lose time. To work." He got up from
the table and took up his cap.
  "What did I rave about?"
  "How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret?
Don't worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you
said a lot about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and
about Krestovsky Island, and some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya
Petrovitch, the assistant superintendent. And another thing that was
of special interest to you was your own sock. You whined, 'Give me
my sock.' Zametov hunted all about your room for your socks, and
with his own scented, ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And
only then were you comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you
held the wretched thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It
is most likely somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you
asked so piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find
out what sort of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to
business! Here are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and
shall give you an account of them in an hour or two. I will let
Zossimov know at the same time, though he ought to have been here long
ago, for it is nearly twelve. And you, Nastasya, look in pretty
often while I am away, to see whether he wants a drink or anything
else. And I will tell Pashenka what is wanted myself. Good-bye!"
  "He calls her Pashenka! Ah, he's a deep one!" said Nastasya as he
went out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could
not resist running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear
what he would say to the landlady. She was evidently quite
fascinated by Razumihin.
  No sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the
bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, switching
impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to
work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.
  "Good God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not?
What if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am
laid up, and then they will come in and tell me that it's been
discovered long ago and that they have only... What am I to do now?
That's what I've forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all
at once, I remembered a minute ago."
  He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable
bewilderment about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened;
but that was not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling
something, he rushed to the corner where there was a hole under the
paper, began examining it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled- but
that was not it. He went to the stove, opened it and began rummaging
in the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers and the rags cut off
his pocket were lying there just as he had thrown them. No one had
looked, then! Then he remembered, the sock about which Razumihin had
just been telling him. Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the
quilt, but it was so covered with dust and grime that Zametov could
not have seen anything on it.
  "Bah, Zametov! The police office! And why am I sent for to the
police office? Where's the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was
then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now... now I have been ill.
But what did Zametov come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?" he
muttered, helplessly sitting on the sofa again. "What does it mean? Am
I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I
remember, I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must
escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I've no boots.
They've taken them away! They've hidden them! I understand! Ah, here
is my coat- they passed that over! And here is money on the table,
thank God! And here's the I.O.U.... I'll take the money and go and
take another lodging. They won't find me!... Yes, but the address
bureau? They'll find me, Razumihin will find me. Better escape
altogether... far away... to America, and let them do their worst! And
take the I.O.U.... it would be of use there.... What else shall I
take? They think I am ill! They don't know that I can walk,
ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it! If
only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch
there- policemen! What's this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a
bottle, cold!"
  He snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer,
and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his
breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a
faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and
pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew
more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came
upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head in the pillow,
wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had
replaced the old, ragged great-coat, sighed softly and sank into a
deep, sound, refreshing sleep.
  He woke up, hearing some one come in. He opened his eyes and saw
Razumihin standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or
not. Raskolnikov sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as
though trying to recall something.
  "Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Nastasya, bring in the
parcel!" Razumihin shouted down the stairs. "You shall have the
account directly."
  "What time is it?" asked Raskolnikov, looking round uneasily.
  "Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it's almost evening, it will be
six o'clock directly. You have slept more than six hours."
  "Good heaven! Have I?"
  "And why not? It will do you good. What's the hurry? A tryst, is it?
We've all time before us. I've been waiting for the last three hours
for you; I've been up twice and found you asleep. I've called on
Zossimov twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn
up. And I've been out on my own business, too. You know I've been
moving to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me
now. But that's no matter, to business. Give me the parcel,
Nastasya. We will open it directly. And how do you feel now, brother?"
  "I am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin, have you been here long?"
  "I tell you I've been waiting for the last three hours."
  "No, before."
  "How do you mean?"
  "How long have you been coming here?"
  "Why I told you all about it this morning. Don't you remember?"
  Raskolnikov pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He
could not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.
  "Hm!" said the latter, "he has forgotten. I fancied then that you
were not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You
really look much better. First rate! Well, to business. Look here,
my dear boy."
  He began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him.
  "Believe me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For
we must make a man of you. Let's begin from the top. Do you see this
cap?" he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good, though cheap,
and ordinary cap. "Let me try it on."
  "Presently, afterwards," said Raskolnikov, waving it of pettishly.
  "Come, Rodya, my boy, don't oppose it, afterwards will be too
late; and I shan't sleep all night, for I bought it by guess,
without measure. Just right!" he cried triumphantly, fitting it on,
"just your size! A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress
and a recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine,
is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into
any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People
think he does it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he
is ashamed of his bird's nest; he is such a bashful fellow! Look,
Nastasya, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"- he
took from the corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some
unknown reason, he called a Palmerston- "or this jewel! Guess the
price, Rodya, what do you suppose I paid for it, Nastasya!" he said,
turning to her, seeing that Raskolnikov did not speak.
  "Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say," answered Nastasya.
  "Twenty copecks, silly!" he cried, offended. "Why, nowadays you
would cost more than that- eighty copecks! And that only because it
has been worn. And it's bought on condition that when's it's worn out,
they will give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let
us pass to the United States of America, as they called them at
school. I assure you I am proud of these breeches," and he exhibited
to Raskolnikov a pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen
material. "No holes, no spots, and quite respectable, although a
little worn; and a waistcoat to match, quite in the fashion. And its
being worn really is an improvement, it's softer, smoother.... You
see, Rodya, to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the
world is always to keep to the seasons; if you don't insist on
having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse! and
it's the same with this purchase. It's summer now, so I've been buying
summer things- warmer materials will be wanted for autumn, so you will
have to throw these away in any case... especially as they will be
done for by then from their own lack of coherence if not your higher
standard of luxury. Come, price them! What do you say? Two roubles
twenty-five copecks! And remember the conditions: if you wear these
out, you will have another suit for nothing! They only do business
on that system at Fedyaev's; if you've bought a thing once, you are
satisfied for life, for you will never go there again of your own free
will. Now for the boots. What do you say? You see that they are a
bit worn, but they'll last a couple of months, for it's foreign work
and foreign leather; the secretary of the English Embassy sold them
last week- he had only worn them six days, but he was very short of
cash. Price- a rouble and a half. A bargain?"
  "But perhaps they won't fit," observed Nastasya.
  "Not fit? Just look!" and he pulled out of his pocket
Raskolnikov's old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. "I did
not go empty-handed- they took the size from this monster. We all
did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that.
Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable
front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles
twenty-five copecks the suit- together three roubles five copecks- a
rouble and a half for the boots- for, you see, they are very good- and
that makes four roubles fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the
underclothes- they were bought in the lot- which makes exactly nine
roubles fifty-five copecks. Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will
you take it? And so, Rodya, you are set up with a complete new
rig-out, for your overcoat will serve, and even has a style of its
own. That comes from getting one's clothes from Sharmer's! As for your
socks and other things, I leave them to you; we've twenty-five roubles
left. And as for Pashenka and paying for your lodging, don't you
worry. I tell you she'll trust you for anything. And now, brother, let
me change your linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness
with your shirt."
  "Let me be! I don't want to!" Raskolnikov waved him off. He had
listened with disgust to Razumihin's efforts to be playful about his
purchases.
  "Come, brother, don't tell me I've been trudging around for
nothing," Razumihin insisted. "Nastasya, don't be bashful, but help
me- that's it," and in spite of Raskolnikov's resistance he changed
his linen. The latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two
said nothing.
  "It will be long before I get rid of them," he thought. "What
money was all that bought with?" he asked at last, gazing at the wall.
  "Money? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Vahrushin,
your mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?"
  "I remember now," said Raskolnikov after a long, sullen silence.
Razumihin looked at him, frowning and uneasy.
  The door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed
familiar to Raskolnikov came in.
  "Zossimov! At last!" cried Razumihin, delighted.

CHAPTER_FOUR
                             Chapter Four
-
  ZOSSIMOV WAS a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless,
clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and
a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a
light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and
everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and able, his
linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he
was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time
studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his
self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his
acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at his work.
  "I've been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he's come to
himself," cried Razumihin.
  "I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?" said Zossimov to
Raskolnikov, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of
the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could.
  "He is still depressed," Razumihin went on. "We've just changed
his linen and he almost cried."
  "That's very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish
it.... His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?"
  "I am well, I am perfectly well!" Raskolnikov declared positively
and irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with
glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned
to the wall. Zossimov watched him intently.
  "Very good.... Going on all right," he said lazily. "Has he eaten
anything?"

8

Re: Достоевский Ф. М. - Преступление и наказание в переводе на английский

They told him, and asked what he might have.
  "He may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms and cucumbers, of
course, you must not give him; he'd better not have meat either,
and... but no need to tell you that!" Razumihin and he looked at
each other. "No more medicine or anything. I'll look at him again
to-morrow. Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind..."
  "To-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk," said Razumihin. "We
are going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de Crystal."
  "I would not disturb him to-morrow at all, but I don't know... a
little, maybe... but we'll see."
  "Ach, what a nuisance! I've got a house-warming party tonight;
it's only a step from here. Couldn't he come? He could lie on the
sofa. You are coming?" Razumihin said to Zossimov. "Don't forget,
you promised."
  "All right, only rather later. What are you going to do?"
  "Oh, nothing- tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie... just
our friends."
  "And who?"
  "All neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle,
and he is new too- he only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see to
some business of his. We meet once in five years."
  "What is he?"
  "He's been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets
a little pension. He is sixty-five- not worth talking about.... But
I am fond of him. Porfiry Petrovitch, the head of the Investigation
Department here... But you know him."
  "Is he a relation of yours, too?"
  "A very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you
quarrelled once, won't you come then?"
  "I don't care a damn for him."
  "So much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a
government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zametov."
  "Do tell me, please, what you or he"- Zossimov nodded at
Raskolnikov- "can have in common with this Zametov?"
  "Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by
principles, as it were by springs; you won't venture to turn round
on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that's the only
principle I go upon, Zametov is a delightful person."
  "Though he does take bribes."
  "Well, he does! and what of it? I don't care if he does take
bribes," Razumihin cried with unnatural irritability. "I don't
praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own
way! But if one looks at men in all ways- are there many good ones
left? Why, I am sure I shouldn't be worth a baked onion myself...
perhaps with you thrown in."
  "That's too little; I'd give two for you."
  "And I wouldn't give more than one for you. No more of your jokes!
Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw
him not repel him. You'll never improve a man by repelling him,
especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you
progressive dullards! You don't understand. You harm yourselves
running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have
something in common."
  "I should like to know what."
  "Why, it's all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of a
mess! Though indeed there's nothing to fear now. The matter is
absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam."
  "A painter?"
  "Why, haven't I told you about it? I only told you the beginning
then about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter
is mixed up in it..."
  "Oh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in
it... partly... for one reason.... I read about it in the papers,
too...."
  "Lizaveta was murdered, too," Nastasya blurted out, suddenly
addressing Raskolnikov. She remained in the room all the time,
standing by the door listening.
  "Lizaveta," murmured Raskolnikov hardly audibly.
  "Lizaveta, who sold old clothes. Didn't you know her? She used to
come here. She mended a shirt for you, too."
  Raskolnikov turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he
picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began
examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the
petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as
lifeless as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to
move, but stared obstinately at the flower.
  "But what about the painter?" Zossimov interrupted Nastasya's
chatter with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent.
  "Why, he was accused of the murder," Razumihin went on hotly.
  "Was there evidence against him then?"
  "Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that's what we
have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Koch
and Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly it's all done, it makes
one sick, though it's not one's business! Pestryakov may be coming
to-night.... By the way, Rodya, you've heard about the business
already; it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted
at the police office while they were talking about it."
  Zossimov looked curiously at Raskolnikov. He did not stir.
  "But I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!"
Zossimov observed.
  "Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway," shouted Razumihin,
bringing his fist down on the table. "What's the most offensive is not
their lying- one can always forgive lying- lying is a delightful
thing, for it leads to truth- what is offensive is that they lie and
worship their own lying.... I respect Porfiry, but... What threw
them out at first? The door was locked, and when they came back with
the porter it was open. So it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were
the murderers- that was their logic!"
  "But don't excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could
not help that.... And, by the way, I've met that man Koch. He used
to buy unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?"
  "Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a
profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me
angry? It's their sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this
case might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from
the psychological data alone how to get on the track of the real
man. 'We have facts,' they say. But facts are not everything- at least
half the business lies in how you interpret them!"
  "Can you interpret them, then?"
  "Anyway, one can't hold one's tongue when one has a feeling, a
tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do you know
the details of the case?"
  "I am waiting to hear about the painter."
  "Oh, yes! Well, here's the story. Early on the third day after the
murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov- though they
accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff-
an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a
dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a
jeweller's case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long
rigamarole. 'The day before yesterday, just after eight o'clock'- mark
the day and the hour!- 'a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had
been in to see me already that day, brought me this box of gold
ear-rings and stones, and asked me to give him two roubles for them.
When I asked him where he got them, he said that he picked them up
in the street. I did not ask him anything more.' I am telling you
Dushkin's story. 'I gave him a note'- a rouble that is- 'for I thought
if he did not pawn it with me he would with another. It would all come
to the same thing- he'd spend it on drink, so the thing had better
be with me. The further you hide it the quicker you will find it,
and if anything turns up, if I hear any rumours, I'll take it to the
police.' Of course, that's all taradiddle; he lies like a horse, for I
know this Dushkin, he is a pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen
goods, and he did not cheat Nikolay out of a thirty-rouble trinket
in order to give it to the police. He was simply afraid. But no
matter, to return to Dushkin's story. 'I've known this peasant,
Nikolay Dementyev, from a child; he comes from the same province and
district of Zaraisk, we are both Ryazan men. And though Nikolay is not
a drunkard, he drinks, and I knew he had a job in that house, painting
work with Dmitri, who comes from the same village, too. As soon as
he got the rouble he changed it, had a couple of glasses, took his
change and went out. But I did not see Dmitri with him then. And the
next day I heard that some one had murdered Alyona Ivanovna and her
sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna, with an axe. I knew them, and I felt
suspicious about the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered
woman lent money on pledges. I went to the house, and began to make
careful inquiries without saying a word to any one. First of all I
asked, "Is Nikolay here?" Dmitri told me that Nikolay had gone off
on the spree; he had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed in the
house about ten minutes, and went out again. Dmitri didn't see him
again and is finishing the job alone. And their job is on the same
staircase as the murder, on the second floor. When I heard all that
I did not say a word to any one'- that's Dushkin's tale- 'but I
found out what I could about the murder, and went home feeling as
suspicious as ever. And at eight o'clock this morning'- that was the
third day, you understand- 'I saw Nikolay coming in, not sober, though
not so very drunk- he could understand what was said to him. He sat
down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one stranger in
the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two boys. "Have you
seen Dmitri?" said I. "No, I haven't," said he. "And you've not been
here either?" "Not since the day before yesterday," said he. "And
where did you sleep last night?" "In Peski, with the Kolomensky
men." "And where did you get those ear-rings?" I asked. "I found
them in the street," and the way he said it was a bit queer; he did
not look at me. "Did you hear what happened that very evening, at that
very hour, on that same staircase?" said I. "No," said he, "I had
not heard," and all the while he was listening, his eyes were
staring out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I told him
all about it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted to
keep him. "Wait a bit, Nikolay," said I, "won't you have a drink?" And
I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the
bar; but he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run.
I have not seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end- it was his
doing, as clear as could be...."
  "I should think so," said Zossimov.
  "Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay;
they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was
arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the
day before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of
the town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and
asked for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards
the woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw
in the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam,
stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose.
The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. 'So that's what you
are up to!' 'Take me,' he says, 'to such-and-such a police officer;
I'll confess everything.' Well, they took him to that police
station- that is here- with a suitable escort. So they asked him
this and that, how old he is, 'twenty-two,' and so on. At the
question, 'When you were working with Dmitri, didn't you see any one
on the staircase at such-and-such a time?'- answer: 'To be sure
folks may have gone up and down, but I did not notice them.' 'And
didn't you hear anything, any noise, and so on?' 'We heard nothing
special.' 'And did you hear, Nikolay, that on the same day Widow
So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?' 'I never knew a
thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch
the day before yesterday.' 'And where did you find the ear-rings?'
'I found them on the pavement. "Why didn't you go to work with
Dmitri the other day?' 'Because I was drinking.' 'And where were you
drinking?' 'Oh, in such-and-such a place.' 'Why did you run away
from Dushkin's?' 'Because I was awfully frightened.' 'What were you
frightened of?' 'That I should be accused.' 'How could you be
frightened, if you felt free from guilt?' Now, Zossimov, you may not
believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know
it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to
that?"
  "Well, anyway, there's the evidence."
  "I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that
question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed
and squeezed him and he confessed: 'I did not find it in the street,
but in the flat where I was painting with Dmitri.' 'And how was that?'
'Why, Dmitri and I were painting there all day, and we were just
getting ready to go, and Dmitri took a brush and painted my face,
and he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my
hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the
porter and some gentlemen- and how many gentlemen were there I don't
remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too,
and the porter's wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a
gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too,
for Dmitri and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Dmitri's hair
and knocked him down and began beating him. And Dmitri, too, caught me
by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper,
but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Dmitri escaped and ran into
the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went
back to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting
them together, expecting Dmitri to come, and there in the passage,
in the corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying
there wrapped up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little
hooks, undid them, and in the box were the ear-rings....'"
  "Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?"
Raskolnikov cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at
Razumihin, and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.
  "Yes... why? What's the matter? What's wrong?" Razumihin, too, got
up from his seat.
  "Nothing," Raskolnikov answered faintly, turning to the wall. All
were silent for a while.
  "He must have waked from a dream," Razumihin said at last, looking
inquiringly at Zossimov. The latter slightly shook his head.
  "Well, go on," said Zossimov. "What next?"
  "What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Dmitri and
everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got
a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street,
and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the
murder: 'I knew nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before
yesterday.' 'And why didn't you come to the police till now?' 'I was
frightened.' 'And why did you try to hang yourself?' 'From anxiety.'
'What anxiety?' 'That I should be accused of it.' Well, that's the
whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?"
  "Why, there's no supposing. There's a clue, such as it is, a fact.
You wouldn't have your painter set free?"
  "Now they've simply taken him for the murderer. They haven't a
shadow of doubt."
  "That's nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You
must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the
old woman's box have come into Nikolay's hands, they must have come
there somehow. That's a good deal in such a case."
  "How did they get there? How did they get there?" cried Razumihin.
"How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more
opportunity than any one else for studying human nature- how can you
fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don't you see
at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the
holy truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us- he
stepped on the box and picked it up."
  "The holy truth! But didn't he own himself that he told a lie at
first?"
  "Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and
Pestryakov and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and
the woman who was sitting in the porter's lodge and the man Kryukov,
who had just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the
entry with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree
that Nikolay had Dmitri on the ground, was lying on him beating him,
while Dmitri hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right
across the way, blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all
sides while they 'like children' (the very words of the witnesses)
were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with
the funniest faces, and, chasing one another like children, they ran
into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm,
you understand, warm when they found them! If they, or Nikolay
alone, had murdered them and broken open the boxes, or simply taken
part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one question: do their
state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish scuffling at the
gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They'd
just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies
were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that
people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they
rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention.
And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!"
  "Of course it is strange! It's impossible, indeed, but..."
  "No, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings' being found in
Nikolay's hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes
an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him- although
the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does
not tell seriously against him- one must take into consideration the
facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that
cannot be denied. And do you suppose, from the character of our
legal system, that they will accept, or that they are in a position to
accept, this fact- resting simply on a psychological impossibility- as
irrefutable and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence
for the prosecution? No, they won't accept it, they certainly won't,
because they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself,
'which he could not have done if he hadn't felt guilty.' That's the
point, that's what excites me, you must understand!"
  "Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what
proof is there that the box came from the old woman?"
  "That's been proved," said Razumihin with apparent reluctance,
frowning. "Koch recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the
owner, who proved conclusively that it was his."
  "That's bad. Now another point. Did any one see Nikolay at the
time that Koch and Pestryakov were going upstairs at first, and is
there no evidence about that?"
  "Nobody did see him," Razumihin answered with vexation. "That's
the worst of it. Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them on their
way upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth
much. They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be
work going on in it, but they took no special notice and could not
remember whether there actually were men at work in it."
  "Hm!... So the only evidence for the defence is that they were
beating one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong
presumption, but... How do you explain the facts yourself?"
  "How do I explain them? What is there to explain? It's clear. At any
rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and
the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those
ear-rings. The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and
Pestryakov knocked at the door. Koch, like an ass, did not stay at the
door; so the murderer popped out and ran down, too, for he had no
other way of escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in
the flat when Nikolay and Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped
there while the porter and others were going upstairs, waited till
they were out of hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the
very minute when Dmitri and Nikolay ran out into the street and
there was no one in the entry; possibly he was seen, but not
noticed. There are lots of people going in and out. He must have
dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket when he stood behind the door,
and did not notice he dropped them, because he had other things to
think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that he did stand
there.... That's how I explain it."
  "Too clever! No, my boy, you're too clever. That beats everything."
  "But, why, why?"
  "Why, because everything fits too well... it's too melodramatic."
  "A-ach!" Razumihin was exclaiming, but at that moment the door
opened and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present.

CHAPTER_FIVE
                             Chapter Five
-
  THIS WAS a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly
appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by
stopping short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and
undisguised astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of
place he had come to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being
alarmed and almost affronted, he scanned Raskolnikov's low and
narrow "cabin." With the same amazement he stared at Raskolnikov,
who lay undressed, dishevelled, unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa,
looking fixedly at him. Then with the same deliberation he scrutinised
the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked
him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A
constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might
be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from
certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this
"cabin" by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened
somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising every
syllable of his question, addressed Zossimov:
  "Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student, or formerly a student?"
  Zossimov made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not
Razumihin anticipated him.
  "Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?"
  This familiar "what do you want" seemed to cut the ground from the
feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but
checked himself in time and turned to Zossimov again.
  "This is Raskolnikov," mumbled Zossimov, nodding towards him. Then
he gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible.
Then he lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a
huge gold watch in a round hunter's case, opened it, looked at it
and as slowly and lazily proceeded to put it back.
  Raskolnikov himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing
persistently, though 'without understanding, at the stranger. Now that
his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it
was extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just
undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But
the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his
wonder, then suspicion and even alarm. When Zossimov said "This is
Raskolnikov" he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an
almost defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated:
  "Yes, I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?"
  The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively:
  "Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin. I believe I have reason to hope that my
name is not wholly unknown to you?"
  But Raskolnikov, who had expected something quite different, gazed
blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the
name of Pyotr Petrovitch for the first time.
  "Is it possible that you can up to the present have received no
information?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.
  In reply Raskolnikov sank languidly back on the pillow, put his
hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay
came into Luzhin's face. Zossimov and Razumihin stared at him more
inquisitively than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of
embarrassment.
  "I had presumed and calculated," he faltered, "that a letter
posted more than ten days, if not a fortnight ago..."
  "I say, why are you standing in the doorway?" Razumihin
interrupted suddenly. "If you've something to say, sit down.
Nastasya and you are so crowded. Nastasya, make room. Here's a
chair, thread your way in!"
  He moved his chair back from the table, made a little space
between the table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped
position for the visitor to "thread his way in." The minute was so
chosen that it was impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed
his way through, hurrying and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat
down, looking suspiciously at Razumihin.
  "No need to be nervous," the latter blurted out. "Rodya has been ill
for the last five days and delirious for three, but now he is
recovering and has got an appetite. This is his doctor, who has just
had a look at him. I am a comrade of Rodya's, like him, formerly a
student, and now I am nursing him; so don't you take any notice of us,
but go on with your business."
  "Thank you. But shall I not disturb the invalid by my presence and
conversation?" Pyotr Petrovitch asked of Zossimov.
  "N-no," mumbled Zossimov; "you may amuse him." He yawned again.
  "He has been conscious a long time, since the morning," went on
Razumihin, whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected
good-nature that Pyotr Petrovitch began to be more cheerful, partly,
perhaps, because this shabby and impudent person had introduced
himself as a student.
  "Your mamma," began Luzhin.
  "Hm!" Razumihin cleared his throat loudly. Luzhin looked at him
inquiringly.
  "That's all right, go on."
  Luzhin shrugged his shoulders.
  "Your mamma had commenced a letter to you while I was sojourning
in her neighbourhood. On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few
days to elapse before coming to see you, in order that I might be
fully assured that you were in full possession of the tidings; but
now, to my astonishment..."
  "I know, I know!" Raskolnikov cried suddenly with impatient
vexation. "So you are the fiance? I know, and that's enough!"
  There was no doubt about Pyotr Petrovitch's being offended this
time, but he said nothing. He made a violent effort to understand what
it all meant. There was a moment's silence.
  Meanwhile Raskolnikov, who had turned a little towards him when he
answered, began suddenly staring at him again with marked curiosity,
as though he had not had a good look at him yet, or as though
something new had struck him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to
stare at him. There certainly was something peculiar in Pyotr
Petrovitch's whole appearance, something which seemed to justify the
title of "fiance" so unceremoniously applied to him. In the first
place, it was evident, far too much so indeed, that Pyotr Petrovitch
had made eager use of his few days in the capital to get himself up
and rig himself out in expectation of his betrothed- a perfectly
innocent and permissible proceeding, indeed. Even his own, perhaps too
complacent, consciousness of the agreeable improvement in his
appearance might have been forgiven in such circumstances, seeing that
Pyotr Petrovitch had taken up the role of fiance. All his clothes were
fresh from the tailor's and were all right, except for being too new
and too distinctly appropriate. Even the stylish new round hat had the
same significance. Pyotr Petrovitch treated it too respectfully and
held it too carefully in his hands. The exquisite pair of lavender
gloves, real Louvain, told the same tale, if only from the fact of his
not wearing them, but carrying them in his hand for show. Light and
youthful colours predominated in Pyotr Petrovitch's attire. He wore
a charming summer jacket of a fawn shade, light thin trousers, a
waistcoat of the same, new and fine linen, a cravat of the lightest
cambric with pink stripes on it, and the best of it was, this all
suited Pyotr Petrovitch. His very fresh and even handsome face
looked younger than his forty-five years at all times. His dark,
mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable setting on both sides,
growing thickly about his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair,
touched here and there with grey, though it had been combed and curled
at a hairdresser's, did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled
hair usually does, by inevitably suggesting a German on his
wedding-day. If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in
his rather good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to
quite other causes. After scanning Mr. Luzhin unceremoniously,
Raskolnikov smiled malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared
at the ceiling as before.
  But Mr. Luzhin hardened his heart and seemed to determine to take no
notice of their oddities.
  "I feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation," he
began, again breaking the silence with an effort. "If I had been aware
of your illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business
is. I have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to
mention other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am
expecting your mamma and sister any minute."
  Raskolnikov made a movement and seemed about to speak; his face
showed some excitement. Pyotr Petrovitch paused, waited, but as
nothing followed, he went on:
  "...Any minute. I have found a lodging for them on their arrival."
  "Where?" asked Raskolnikov weakly.
  "Very near here, in Bakaleyev's house."
  "That's in Voskresensky," put in Razumihin. "There are two storeys
of rooms, let by a merchant called Yushin; I've been there."
  "Yes, rooms..."
  "A disgusting place- filthy, stinking and, what's more, of
doubtful character. Things have happened there, and there are all
sorts of queer people living there. And I went there about a
scandalous business. It's cheap, though..."
  "I could not, of course, find out so much about it, for I am a
stranger in Petersburg myself," Pyotr Petrovitch replied huffily.
"However, the two rooms are exceedingly clean, and as it is for so
short a time... I have already taken a permanent, that is, our
future flat," he said, addressing Raskolnikov, "and I am having it
done up. And meanwhile I am myself cramped for room in a lodging
with my friend Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, in the flat of
Madame Lippevechsel; it was he who told me of Bakaleyev's house,
too...."
  "Lebeziatnikov?" said Raskolnikov slowly, as if recalling something.
  "Yes, Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, a clerk in the Ministry. Do
you know him?"
  "Yes... no," Raskolnikov answered.
  "Excuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his
guardian.... A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet
young people: one learns new things from them." Luzhin looked round
hopefully at them all.
  "How do you mean?" asked Razumihin.
  "In the most serious and essential matters," Pyotr Petrovitch
replied, as though delighted at the question. "You see, it's ten years
since I visited Petersburg. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have
reached us in the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must
be in Petersburg. And it's my notion that you observe and learn most
by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted..."
  "At what?"
  "Your question is a wide one. I may be mistaken, but I fancy I
find clearer views, more, so to say, criticism, more practicality..."
  "That's true," Zossimov let drop.
  "Nonsense! There's no practicality." Razumihin flew at him.
"Practicality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from
heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced
from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting," he
said to Pyotr Petrovitch, "and desire for good exists, though it's
in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are
crowds of brigands. Anyway, there's no practicality. Practicality goes
well shod."
  "I don't agree with you," Pyotr Petrovitch replied, with evident
enjoyment. "Of course, people do get carried away and make mistakes,
but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of
enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment. If
little has been done, the time has been but short; of means I will not
speak. It's my personal view, if you care to know, that something
has been accomplished already. New valuable ideas, new valuable
works are circulating in the place of our old dreamy and romantic
authors. Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudice
have been rooted up and turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have
cut ourselves off irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking,
is a great thing..."
  "He's learnt it by heart to show off Raskolnikov pronounced
suddenly.
  "What?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, not catching his words; but he
received no reply.
  "That's all true," Zossimov hastened to interpose.
  "Isn't it so?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at
Zossimov. "You must admit," he went on, addressing Razumihin with a
shade of triumph and superciliousness- he almost added "young man"-
"that there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name
of science and economic truth..."
  "A commonplace."
  "No, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told,
'love thy neighbour,' what came of it?" Pyotr Petrovitch went on,
perhaps with excessive haste. "It came to my tearing my coat in half
to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a
Russian proverb has it, 'catch several hares and you won't catch one.'
Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything
in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your
own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth
adds that the better private affairs are organised in society- the
more whole coats, so to say- the firmer are its foundations and the
better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring
wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring so to
speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour's getting
a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal
liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is
simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being
hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want
very little wit to perceive it..."
  "Excuse me, I've very little wit myself," Razumihin cut in
sharply, "and so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an
object, but I've grown so sick during the last three years of this
chattering to amuse oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces,
always the same, that, by Jove, I blush even when other people talk
like that. You are in a hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements;
and I don't blame you, that's quite pardonable. I only wanted to
find out what sort of man you are, for so many unscrupulous people
have got hold of the progressive cause of late and have so distorted
in their own interests everything they touched, that the whole cause
has been dragged in the mire. That's enough!"
  "Excuse me, sir," said Luzhin, affronted, and speaking with
excessive dignity. "Do you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I
too..."
  "Oh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that's enough,"
Razumihin concluded, and he turned abruptly to Zossimov to continue
their previous conversation.
  Pyotr Petrovitch had the good sense to accept the disavowal. He made
up his mind to take leave in another minute or two.
  "I trust our acquaintance," he said, addressing Raskolnikov, "may,
upon your recovery and in view of the circumstances of which you are
aware, become closer.... Above all, I hope for your return to
health..."
  Raskolnikov did not even turn his head. Pyotr Petrovitch began
getting up from his chair.
  "One of her customers must have killed her," Zossimov declared
positively.
  "Not a doubt of it," replied Razumihin. "Porfiry doesn't give his
opinion, but is examining all who have left pledges with her there."
  "Examining them?" Raskolnikov asked aloud.
  "Yes. What then?"
  "Nothing."
  "How does he get hold of them?" asked Zossimov.
  "Koch has given the names of some of them, other names are on the
wrappers of the pledges and some have come forward of themselves."
  "It must have been a cunning and practised ruffian! The boldness
of it! The coolness!"
  "That's just what it wasn't!" interposed Razumihin. "That's what
throws you all off the scent. But I maintain that he is not cunning,
nor practised, and probably this was his first crime! The
supposition that it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal
doesn't work. Suppose him to have been inexperienced, and it's clear
that it was only a chance that saved him- and chance may do
anything. Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps! And how did he
set to work? He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing
his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman's trunk, her rags-
and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the
top drawer of the chest! He did not know how to rob; he could only
murder. It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost
his head. And he got off more by luck than good counsel!"
  "You are talking of the murder of the old pawnbroker, I believe?"
Pyotr Petrovitch put in, addressing Zossimov. He was standing, hat and
gloves in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a
few more intellectual phrases. He was evidently anxious to make a
favourable impression and his vanity overcame his prudence.
  "Yes. You've heard of it?"
  "Oh, yes, being in the neighbourhood."
  "Do you know the details?"
  "I can't say that; but another circumstance interests me in the
case- the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that
crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes
during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and
arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in
the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one
place one hears of a student's robbing the mail on the high road; in
another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in
Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured who used to forge
lottery tickets, and one of the ringleaders was a lecturer in
universal history; then our secretary abroad was murdered from some
obscure motive of gain.... And if this old woman, the pawnbroker,
has been murdered by some one of a higher class in society- for
peasants don't pawn gold trinkets- how are we to explain this
demoralisation of the civilised part of our society?"
  "There are many economic changes," put in Zossimov.
  "How are we to explain it?" Razumihin caught him up. "It might be
explained by our inveterate unpracticality."
  "How do you mean?"
  "What answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why
he was forging notes? 'Everybody is getting rich one way or another,
so I want to make haste to get rich too.' I don't remember the exact
words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without
waiting or working! We've grown used to having everything
ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for
us. Then the great hour struck,* and every man showed himself in his
true colours."
-
  * The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 is meant.- TRANSLATOR'S
NOTE.
-
  "But morality? And so to speak, principles..."
  "But why do you worry about it?" Raskolnikov interposed suddenly.
"It's in accordance with your theory!"
  "In accordance with my theory?"
  "Why, carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now,
and it follows that people may be killed..."
  "Upon my word!" cried Luzhin.
  "No, that's not so," put in Zossimov.
  Raskolnikov lay with a white face and twitching upper lip, breathing
painfully.
  "There's a measure in all things," Luzhin went on superciliously.
"Economic ideas are not an incitement to murder, and one has but to
suppose..."
  "And is it true," Raskolnikov interposed once more suddenly, again
in a voice quivering with fury and delight in insulting him, "is it
true that you told your fiancee... within an hour of her acceptance,
that what pleased you most... was that she was a beggar... because
it was better to raise a wife from poverty, so that you may have
complete control over her, and reproach her with your being her
benefactor?"
  "Upon my word," Luzhin cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson
with confusion, "to distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow
me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather
let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth,
and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your
mamma... She seemed to me in other things, with all her excellent
qualities, of a somewhat highflown and romantic way of thinking....
But I was a thousand miles from supposing that she would misunderstand
and misrepresent things in so fanciful a way.... And indeed...
indeed..."
  "I tell you what," cried Raskolnikov, raising himself on his
pillow and fixing his piercing, glittering eyes upon him, "I tell
you what."
  "What?" Luzhin stood still, waiting with a defiant and offended
face. Silence lasted for some seconds.
  "Why, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my
mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!"
  "What's the matter with you?" cried Razumihin.
  "So that's how it is?" Luzhin turned pale and bit his lip. "Let me
tell you, sir," he began deliberately, doing his utmost to restrain
himself but breathing hard, "at the first moment I saw you you were
ill-disposed to me, but I remained here on purpose to find out more. I
could forgive a great deal in a sick man and a connection, but
you... never after this..."
  "I am not ill," cried Raskolnikov.
  "So much the worse..."
  "Go to hell!"
  But Luzhin was already leaving without finishing his speech,
squeezing between the table and the chair; Razumihin got up this
time to let him pass. Without glancing at any one, and not even
nodding to Zossimov, who had for some time been making signs to him to
let the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his hat to the level of
his shoulders to avoid crushing it as he stooped to go out of the
door. And even the curve of his spine was expressive of the horrible
insult he had received.
  "How could you- how could you!" Razumihin said, shaking his head
in perplexity.
  "Let me alone- let me alone all of you!" Raskolnikov cried in a
frenzy. "Will you ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid of
you! I am not afraid of any one, any one now! Get away from me! I want
to be alone, alone, alone!"
  "Come along," said Zossimov, nodding to Razumihin.
  "But we can't leave him like this!"
  "Come along," Zossimov repeated insistently, and he went out.
Razumihin thought a minute and ran to overtake him.
  "It might be worse not to obey him," said Zossimov on the stairs.
"He mustn't be irritated."
  "What's the matter with him?"
  "If only he could get some favourable shock, that's what would do
it! At first he was better.... You know he has got something on his
mind! Some fixed idea weighing on him.... I am very much afraid so; he
must have!"
  "Perhaps it's that gentleman, Pyotr Petrovitch. From his
conversation I gather he is going to marry his sister, and that he had
received a letter about it just before his illness...."
  "Yes, confound the man! he may have upset the case altogether. But
have you noticed, he takes no interest in anything, he does not
respond to anything except one point on which he seems excited- that's
the murder?"
  "Yes, yes," Razumihin agreed, "I noticed that, too. He is
interested, frightened. It gave him a shock on the day he was ill in
the police office; he fainted."
  "Tell me more about that this evening and I'll tell you something
afterwards. He interests me very much! In half an hour I'll go and see
him again.... There'll be no inflammation though."
  "Thanks! And I'll wait with Pashenka meantime and will keep watch on
him through Nastasya...."
  Raskolnikov, left alone, looked with impatience and misery at
Nastasya, but she still lingered.
  "Won't you have some tea now?" she asked.
  "Later! I am sleepy! Leave me."
  He turned abruptly to the wall; Nastasya went out.

CHAPTER_SIX
                             Chapter Six
-
  BUT AS SOON as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid
the parcel which Razumihin had brought in that evening and had tied up
again and began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to
have become perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor
of the panic fear that had haunted him of late. It was the first
moment of a strange sudden calm. His movements were precise and
definite; a firm purpose was evident in them. "To-day, to-day," he
muttered to himself. He understood that he was still weak, but his
intense spiritual concentration gave him strength and self-confidence.
He hoped, moreover, that he would not fall down in the street. When he
had dressed in entirely new clothes, he looked at the money lying on
the table, and after a moment's thought put it in his pocket. It was
twenty-five roubles. He took also all the copper change from the ten
roubles spent by Razumihin on the clothes. Then he softly unlatched
the door, went out, slipped downstairs and glanced in at the open
kitchen door. Nastasya was standing with her back to him, blowing up
the landlady's samovar. She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed of
his going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the street.
  It was nearly eight o'clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling
as before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His
head felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in
his feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not
know and did not think where he was going, he had one thought only
"that all this must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that
he would not return home without it, because he would not go on living
like that." How, with what to make an end? He had not an idea about
it, he did not even want to think of it. He drove away thought;
thought tortured him. All he knew, all he felt was that everything
must be changed "one way or another," he repeated with desperate and
immovable self-confidence and determination.
  From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay
Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in
the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very
sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood
on the pavement in front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline,
a mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very
old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and
coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from
the shop. Raskolnikov joined two or three listeners, took out a five
copeck piece and put it in the girl's hand. She broke off abruptly
on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder "Come
on," and both moved on to the next shop.
  "Do you like street music?" said Raskolnikov, addressing a
middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him,
startled and wondering.
  "I love to hear singing to a street organ," said Raskolnikov, and
his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject- "I like
it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings- they must be damp- when all
the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet
snow is falling straight down, when there's no wind- you know what I
mean? and the street lamps shine through it..."
  "I don't know.... Excuse me..." muttered the stranger, frightened by
the question and Raskolnikov's strange manner, and he crossed over
to the other side of the street.
  Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay
Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Lizaveta;
but they were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked
round and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping
before a corn chandler's shop.
  "Isn't there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?"
  "All sorts of people keep booths here," answered the young man,
glancing superciliously at Raskolnikov.
  "What's his name?"
  "What he was christened."
  "Aren't you a Zaraisky man, too? Which province?"
  The young man looked at Raskolnikov again.
  "It's not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously
forgive me, your excellency!"
  "Is that a tavern at the top there?"
  "Yes, it's an eating-house and there's a billiard-room and you'll
find princesses there too.... La-la!"
  Raskolnikov crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense
crowd of peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it,
looking at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter
into conversation with people. But the peasants took no notice of him;
they were all shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a
little and took a turning to the right in the direction of V.
  He had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle,
leading from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often
felt drawn to wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that
he might feel more so.
  Now he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a
great block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and
eating-houses; women were continually running in and out,
bare-headed and in their indoor clothes. Here and there they
gathered in groups, on the pavement, especially about the entrances to
various festive establishments in the lower storeys. From one of these
a loud din, sounds of singing, the tinkling of a guitar and shouts
of merriment, floated into the street. A crowd of women were thronging
round the door; some were sitting on the steps, others on the
pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken soldier, smoking a
cigarette, was walking near them in the road, swearing; he seemed to
be trying to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten where. One
beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead drunk was lying
right across the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of women, who
were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore cotton
dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some not
more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.
  He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and
uproar in the saloon below.... Some one could be heard within
dancing frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of
the guitar and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He
listened intently, gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance
and peeping inquisitively in from the pavement.

9

Re: Достоевский Ф. М. - Преступление и наказание в переводе на английский

-
                    "Oh, my handsome soldier
                     Don't beat me for nothing,"
-
  trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great
desire to make out what he was singing, as though everything
depended on that.
  "Shall I go in?" he thought. "They are laughing. From drink. Shall I
get drunk?"
  "Won't you come in?" one of the women asked him. Her voice was still
musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not
repulsive- the only one of the group.
  "Why, she's pretty," he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.
  She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.
  "You're very nice looking yourself," she said.
  "Isn't he thin though!" observed another woman in a deep bass. "Have
you just come out of a hospital?"
  "They're all generals' daughters, it seems, but they have all snub
noses," interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face,
wearing a loose coat. "See how jolly they are."
  "Go along with you!"
  "I'll go, sweetie!"
  And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.
  "I say, sir," the girl shouted after him.
  "What is it?"
  She hesitated.
  "I'll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman,
but now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there's a nice
young man!"
  Raskolnikov gave her what came first- fifteen copecks.
  "Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!"
  "What's your name?"
  "Ask for Duclida."
  "Well, that's too much," one of the women observed, shaking her head
at Duclida. "I don't know how you can ask like that. I believe I
should drop with shame...."
  Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked
wench of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She
made her criticism quietly and earnestly. "Where is it," thought
Raskolnikov. "Where is it I've read that some one condemned to death
says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on
some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand,
and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting
tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of
space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live
so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever
it may be!... How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile
creature!... And vile is he who calls him vile for that," he added a
moment later.
  He went into another street. "Bah, the Palais de Crystal!
Razumihin was just talking of the Palais de Crystal. But what on earth
was it I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... Zossimov said he'd read it in
the papers. Have you the papers?" he asked, going into a very spacious
and positively clean restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which
were however rather empty. Two or three people were drinking tea,
and in a room further away were sitting four men drinking champagne.
Raskolnikov fancied that Zametov was one of them, but he could not
be sure at that distance. "What if it is!" he thought.
  "Will you have vodka?" asked the waiter.
  "Give me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last
five days and I'll give you something."
  "Yes, sir, here's to-day's. No vodka?"
  The old newspapers and the tea were brought. Raskolnikov sat down
and began to look through them.
  "Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a
staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire
in Peski... a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another fire in the
Petersburg quarter... and another fire in the Petersburg quarter...
Ah, here it is!" He found at last what he was seeking and began to
read it. The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and
began eagerly seeking later additions in the following numbers. His
hands shook with nervous impatience as he turned the sheets.
Suddenly some one sat down beside him at his table. He looked up, it
was the head clerk Zametov, looking just the same, with the rings on
his fingers and the watch-chain, with the curly, black hair, parted
and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat, rather shabby coat and doubtful
linen. He was in a good humour, at least he was smiling very gaily and
good-humouredly. His dark face was rather flushed from the champagne
he had drunk.
  "What, you here?" he began in surprise, speaking as though he'd
known him all his life. "Why, Razumihin told me only yesterday you
were unconscious. How strange! And do you know I've been to see you?"
  Raskolnikov knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers
and turned to Zametov. There was a smile on his lips, and a new
shade of irritable impatience was apparent in that smile.
  "I know you have," he answered. "I've heard it. You looked for my
sock.... And you know Razumihin has lost his heart to you? He says
you've been with him to Luise Ivanovna's, you know the woman you tried
to befriend, for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he
would not understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to
understand- it was quite clear, wasn't it?"
  "What a hot head he is!"
  "The explosive one?"
  "No, your friend Razumihin."
  "You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov; entrance free to the
most agreeable places. Who's been pouring champagne into you just
now?"
  "We've just been... having a drink together.... You talk about
pouring it into me!"
  "By way of a fee! You profit by everything!" Raskolnikov laughed,
"it's all right, my dear boy," he added, slapping Zametov on the
shoulder. "I am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for
sport, as that workman of yours said when he was scuffling with
Dmitri, in the case of the old woman...."
  "How do you know about it?"
  "Perhaps I know more about it than you do."
  "How strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You
oughtn't to have come out."
  "Oh, do I seem strange to you?"
  "Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?"
  "Yes."
  "There's a lot about the fires."
  "No, I am not reading about the fires." Here he looked
mysteriously at Zametov; his lips were twisted again in a mocking
smile. "No, I am not reading about the fires," he went on, winking
at Zametov. "But confess now, my dear fellow, you're awfully anxious
to know what I am reading about?"
  "I am not in the least. Mayn't I ask a question? Why do you keep
on... ?"
  "Listen, you are a man of culture and education?"
  "I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium," said Zametov with
some dignity.
  "Sixth class! Ah, my cocksparrow! With your parting and your
rings- you are a gentleman of fortune. Foo, what a charming boy!" Here
Raskolnikov broke into a nervous laugh right in Zametov's face. The
latter drew back, more amazed than offended.
  "Foo, how strange you are!" Zametov repeated very seriously. "I
can't help thinking you are still delirious."
  "I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cocksparrow! So I am strange?
You find me curious, do you?"
  "Yes, curious."
  "Shall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking
for? See what a lot of papers I've made them bring me. Suspicious,
eh?"
  "Well, what is it?"
  "You prick up your ears?"
  "How do you mean- prick up my ears?"
  "I'll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to
you... no, better 'I confess'... No, that's not right either; 'I
make a deposition and you take it.' I depose that I was reading,
that I was looking and searching...." he screwed up his eyes and
paused. "I was searching- and came here on purpose to do it- for
news of the murder of the old pawnbroker woman," he articulated at
last, almost in a whisper, bringing his face exceedingly close to
the face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him steadily, without moving or
drawing his face away. What struck Zametov afterwards as the strangest
part of it all was that silence followed for exactly a minute, and
that they gazed at one another all the while.
  "What if you have been reading about it?" he cried at last,
perplexed and impatient. "That's no business of mine! What of it?"
  "The same old woman," Raskolnikov went on in the same whisper, not
heeding Zametov's explanation, "about whom you were talking in the
police office, you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand
now?"
  "What do you mean? Understand... what?" Zametov brought out,
almost alarmed.
  Raskolnikov's set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and
he suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as
though utterly unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he
recalled with extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the
recent past, that moment when he stood with the axe behind the door,
while the latch trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and
he had a sudden desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put
out his tongue at them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
  "You are either mad, or..." began Zametov, and he broke off, as
though stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
  "Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!"
  "Nothing," said Zametov, getting angry, "it's all nonsense!"
  Both were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Raskolnikov
became suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the
table and leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely
forgotten Zametov. The silence lasted for some time.
  "Why don't you drink your tea? It's getting cold," said Zametov.
  "What! Tea? Oh, yes..." Raskolnikov sipped the glass, put a morsel
of bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to
remember everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment
his face resumed its original mocking expression. He went on
drinking tea.
  "There have been a great many of these crimes lately," said Zametov.
"Only the other day I read in the Moscow News that a whole gang of
false coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society.
They used to forge tickets!"
  "Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,"
Raskolnikov answered calmly. "So you consider them criminals?" he
added smiling.
  "Of course they are criminals."
  "They? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a
hundred people meeting for such an object- what an idea! Three would
be too many, and then they want to have more faith in one other than
in themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all
collapses. Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the
notes- what a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us
suppose that these simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and
what follows for the rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the
others for the rest of his life! Better hang oneself at once! And they
did not know how to change the notes either; the man who changed the
notes took five thousand roubles, and his hands trembled. He counted
the first four thousand, but did not count the fifth thousand- he
was in such a hurry to get the money into his pocket and run away.
Of course he roused suspicion. And the whole thing came to a crash
through one fool! Is it possible?"
  "That his hands trembled?" observed Zametov, "yes, that's quite
possible. That I feel quite sure is possible. Sometimes one can't
stand things."
  "Can't stand that?"
  "Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn't. For the sake of a
hundred roubles to face such a terrible experience! To go with false
notes into a bank where it's their business to spot that sort of
thing! No, I should not have the face to do it. Would you?"
  Raskolnikov had an intense desire again "to put his tongue out."
Shivers kept running down his spine.
  "I should do it quite differently," Raskolnikov began. "This is
how I would change the notes: I'd count the first thousand three or
four times backwards and forwards, look at every note and then I'd set
to the second thousand; I'd count that half way through and then
hold some fifty rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it
to the light again- to see whether it was a good one? 'I am afraid,' I
would say. 'A relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other
day through a false note,' and then I'd tell them the whole story. And
after I began counting the third, 'no, excuse me,' I would say, 'I
fancy I made a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand,
I am not sure.' And so I would give up the third thousand and go
back to the second and so on to the end. And when I had finished,
I'd pick out one from the fifth and one from the second thousand and
take them again to the light and ask again 'change them, please,'
and put the clerk into such a stew that he would not know how to get
rid of me. When I'd finished and had gone out, I'd come back, 'No,
excuse me,' and ask for some explanation. That's how I'd do it."
  "Foo, what terrible things you say!" said Zametov, laughing. "But
all that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you'd make a
slip. I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always
reckon on himself, much less you and I. To take an example near
home- that old woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to
have been a desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight,
was saved by a miracle- but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed
in robbing the place, he' couldn't stand it. That was clear from
the..."
  Raskolnikov seemed offended.
  "Clear? Why don't you catch him then?" he cried, maliciously
gibing at Zametov.
  "Well, they will catch him."
  "Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You've a tough job! A
great point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he
had no money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that
any child can mislead you."
  "The fact is they always do that, though," answered Zametov. "A
man will commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at
once he goes drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money,
they are not all as cunning as you are. You wouldn't go to a tavern,
of course?"
  Raskolnikov frowned and looked steadily at Zametov.
  "You seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should
behave in that case, too?" he asked with displeasure.
  "I should like to," Zametov answered firmly and seriously.
Somewhat too much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks.
  "Very much?"
  "Very much!"
  "All right then. This is how I should behave," Raskolnikov began,
again bringing his face close to Zametov's, again staring at him and
speaking in a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered.
"This is what I should have done. I should have taken the money and
jewels, I should have walked out of there and have gone straight to
some deserted place with fences round it and scarcely any one to be
seen, some kitchen garden or place of that sort. I should have
looked out beforehand some stone weighing a hundredweight or more
which had been lying in the corner from the time the house was
built. I would lift that stone- there would be sure to be a hollow
under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that hole. Then
I'd roll the stone back so that it would look as before, would press
it down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two, three
maybe, I would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There'd
be no trace."
  "You are a madman," said Zametov, and for some reason he too spoke
in a whisper, and moved away from Raskolnikov, whose eyes were
glittering. He had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was
twitching and quivering. He bent down as close as possible to Zametov,
and his lips began to move without uttering a word. This lasted for
half a minute; he knew what he was doing, but could not restrain
himself. The terrible word trembled on his lips, like the latch on
that door; in another moment it will break out, in another moment he
will let it go, he will speak out.
  "And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?" he
said suddenly and- realised what he had done.
  Zametov looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His
face wore a contorted smile.
  "But is it possible?" he brought out faintly. Raskolnikov looked
wrathfully at him.
  "Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?"
  "Not a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now," Zametov cried
hastily.
  "I've caught my cocksparrow! So you did believe it before, if now
you believe less than ever?"
  "Not at all," cried Zametov, obviously embarrassed. "Have you been
frightening me so as to lead up to this?"
  "You don't believe it then? What were you talking about behind my
back when I went out of the police office? And why did the Explosive
Lieutenant question me after I fainted? Hey, there," he shouted to the
waiter, getting up and taking his cap, "how much?"
  "Thirty copecks," the latter replied, running up.
  "And there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!" he
held out his shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it. "Red notes
and blue, twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did
my new clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck. You've
cross-examined my landlady, I'll be bound.... Well, that's enough!
Assez cause! Till we meet again!"
  He went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical
sensation, in which there was an element of insufferable rapture.
Yet he was gloomy and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after
a fit. His fatigue increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating
sensation stimulated and revived his energies at once, but his
strength failed as quickly when the stimulus was removed.
  Zametov, left alone, sat for a long time in the same place,
plunged in thought. Raskolnikov had unwittingly worked a revolution in
his brain on a certain point and had made up his mind for him
conclusively.
  "Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead," he decided.
  Raskolnikov had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he
stumbled against Razumihin on the steps. They did not see each other
till they almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood
looking each other up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded,
then anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in his eyes.
  "So here you are!" he shouted at the top of his voice- "you ran away
from your bed! And here I've been looking for you under the sofa! We
went up to the garret. I almost beat Nastasya on your account. And
here he is after all. Rodya! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the
whole truth! Confess! Do you hear?"
  "It means that I'm sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,"
Raskolnikov answered calmly.
  "Alone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as
a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been
doing in the Palais de Crystal? Own up at once!"
  "Let me go!" said Raskolnikov and tried to pass him. This was too
much for Razumihin; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.
  "Let you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I'll
do with you directly? I'll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle,
carry you home under my arm and lock you up!"
  "Listen, Razumihin," Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm-
"can't you see that I don't want your benevolence? A strange desire
you have to shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels
them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of
my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die. Didn't I tell you plainly
enough to-day that you were torturing me, that I was... sick of you!
You seem to want to torture people! I assure you that all that is
seriously hindering my recovery, because it's continually irritating
me. You saw Zossimov went away just now to avoid irritating me. You
leave me alone too, for goodness' sake! What right have you, indeed,
to keep me by force? Don't you see that I am in possession of all my
faculties now? How, can I persuade you not to persecute me with your
kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for
God's sake, let me be! Let me be, let me be!"
  He began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he
was about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy,
as he had been with Luzhin.
  Razumihin stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop.
  "Well, go to hell then," he said gently and thoughtfully. "Stay," he
roared, as Raskolnikov was about to move. "Listen to me. Let me tell
you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you've
any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you
are plagiarists even in that! There isn't a sign of independent life
in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you've lymph in your
veins instead of blood. I don't believe in any one of you! In any
circumstances the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human
being! Stop!" he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that
Raskolnikov was again making a movement- "hear me out! You know I'm
having a house-warming this evening, I dare say they've arrived by
now, but I left my uncle there- I just ran in- to receive the
guests. And if you weren't a fool, a common fool, a perfect fool, if
you were an original instead of a translation... you see, Rodya, I
recognise you're a clever fellow, but you're a fool!- and if you
weren't a fool you'd come round to me this evening instead of
wearing out your boots in the street! Since you have gone out, there's
no help for it! I'd give you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one...
a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie on the sofa- any way you
would be with us.... Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?"
  "No."
  "R-rubbish!" Razumihin shouted, out of patience. "How do you know?
You can't answer for yourself! You don't know anything about it....
Thousands of times I've fought tooth and nail with people and run back
to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So
remember, Potchinkov's house on the third storey...."
  "Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you'd let anybody beat you from
sheer benevolence."
  "Beat? Whom? Me? I'd twist his nose off at the mere idea!
Potchinkov's house, 47, Babushkin's flat...."
  "I shall not come, Razumihin." Raskolnikov turned and walked away.
  "I bet you will," Razumihin shouted after him. "I refuse to know you
if you don't! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?"
  "Yes."
  "Did you see him?"
  "Yes."
  "Talked to him?"
  "Yes."
  "What about? Confound you, don't tell me then. Potchinkov's house,
47, Babushkin's flat, remember!"
  Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street.
Razumihin looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his
hand he went into the house but stopped short of the stairs.
  "Confound it," he went on almost aloud. "He talked sensibly but
yet... I am a fool! As if madmen didn't talk sensibly! And this was
just what Zossimov seemed afraid of." He struck his finger on his
forehead. "What if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown
himself.... Ach, what a blunder! I can't." And he ran back to overtake
Raskolnikov, but there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned
with rapid steps to the Palais de Crystal to question Zametov.
  Raskolnikov walked straight to X__ Bridge, stood in the middle,
and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On
parting with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could
scarcely reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in
the street. Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the
last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in
the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left
bank, flashing as though on fire in the last rays of the setting
sun, at the darkening water of the canal, and the water seemed to
catch his attention. At last red circles flashed before his eyes,
the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal banks, the
carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started, saved
again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He became
aware of some one standing on the right side of him; he looked and saw
a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow,
wasted face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him,
but obviously she saw nothing and recognized no one. Suddenly she
leaned her right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the
railing, then her left and threw herself into the canal. The filthy
water parted and swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an
instant later the drowning woman floated to the surface, moving slowly
with the current, her head and legs in the water, her skirt inflated
like a balloon over her back.
  "A woman drowning! A woman drowning!" shouted dozens of voices;
people ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge
people crowded about Raskolnikov, pressing up behind him.
  "Mercy on it! it's our Afrosinya!" a woman cried tearfully close by.
"Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!"
  "A boat, a boat" was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need
of a boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off
his great coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to
reach her; she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he
caught hold of her clothes with his right hand and with his left
seized a pole which a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman
was pulled out at once. They laid her on the granite pavement of the
embankment. She soon recovered consciousness, raised her head, sat
up and began sneezing and coughing, stupidly wiping her wet dress with
her hands. She said nothing.
  "She's drunk herself out of her senses," the same woman's voice
wailed at her side. "Out of her senses. The other day she tried to
hang herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my
little girl to look after her- and here she's in trouble again! A
neighbour, gentleman neighbour, we live close by, the second house
from the end, see yonder...."
  The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman,
some one mentioned the police station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a
strange sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted.
"No, that's loathsome... water... it's not good enough," he muttered
to himself. "Nothing will come of it," he added, "no use to wait. What
about the police office...? And why isn't Zametov at the police
office? The police office is open till ten o'clock...." He turned
his back to the railing and looked about him.
  "Very well then!" he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and
walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow
and empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed,
there was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out
"to make an end of it all." Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
  "Well, it's a way out of it," he thought, walking slowly and
listlessly along the canal bank. "Anyway I'll make an end, for I
want to.... But is it a way out? What does it matter! There'll be
the square yard of space- ha! But what an end! Is it really the end?
Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could
find somewhere to sit or lie down soon! What I am most ashamed of is
its being so stupid. But I don't care about that either! What
idiotic ideas come into one's head."
  To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take
the second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at
the first turning he stopped and, after a minute's thought, turned
into a side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly
without any object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He
walked, looking at the ground; suddenly some one seemed to whisper
in his ear; he lifted his head and saw that he was standing at the
very gate of the house. He had not passed it, he had not been near
it since that evening. An overwhelming unaccountable prompting drew
him on. He went into the house, passed through the gateway, then
into the first entrance on the right, and began mounting the
familiar staircase to the fourth storey. The narrow, steep staircase
was very dark. He stopped at each landing and looked round him with
curiosity; on the first landing the framework of the window had been
taken out. "That wasn't so then," he thought. Here was the flat on the
second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been working. "It's shut up
and the door newly painted. So it's to let." Then the third storey and
the fourth. "Here!" He was perplexed to find the door of the flat wide
open. There were men there, he could hear voices; he had not
expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last stairs and
went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were workmen
in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he would find
everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the same
places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed
strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window sill.
There were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger
than the other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper
covered with lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one.
Raskolnikov for some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked
at the new paper with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it
all so changed. The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and
now they were hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go
home. They took no notice of Raskolnikov's coming in; they were
talking. Raskolnikov folded his arms and listened.
  "She comes to me in the morning," said the elder to the younger,
"very early, all dressed up. 'Why are you preening and prinking?' says
I. 'I am ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!' That's a
way of going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!"
  "And what is a fashion book?" the younger one asked. He obviously
regarded the other as an authority.
  "A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the
tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how to
dress, the male sex as well as the female. They're pictures. The
gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies'
fluffles, they're beyond anything you can fancy."
  "There's nothing you can't find in Petersburg," the younger cried
enthusiastically, "except father and mother, there's everything!"
  "Except them, there's everything to be found, my boy," the elder
declared sententiously.
  Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other room where the strong
box, the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to
him very tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the
paper in the corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He
looked at it and went to the window. The elder workman looked at him
askance.
  "What do you want?" he asked suddenly.
  Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into the passage and pulled
the bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second
and a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and
agonisingly fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more
and more vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more
and more satisfaction.
  "Well, what do you want? Who are you?" the workman shouted, going
out to him. Raskolnikov went inside again.
  "I want to take a flat," he said. "I am looking round."
  "It's not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to
come up with the porter."
  "The floors have been washed, will they be painted?" Raskolnikov
went on. "Is there no blood?"
  "What blood?"
  "Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a
perfect pool there."
  "But who are you?" the workman cried, uneasy.
  "Who am I?"
  "Yes."
  "You want to know? Come to the police station, I'll tell you."
  The workmen looked at him in amazement.
  "It's time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We
must lock up," said the elder workman.
  "Very well, come along," said Raskolnikov indifferently, and going
out first, he went slowly downstairs. "Hey, porter," he cried in the
gateway.
  At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the
passers-by; the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and
a few others. Raskolnikov went straight up to them.
  "What do you want?" asked one of the porters.
  "Have you been to the police office?"
  "I've just been there. What do you want?"
  "Is it open?"
  "Of course."
  "Is the assistant there?"
  "He was there for a time. What do you want?"
  Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.
  "He's been to look at the flat," said the elder workman, coming
forward.
  "Which flat?"
  "Where we are at work. 'Why have you washed away the blood?' says
he. 'There has been a murder here,' says he, 'and I've come to take
it.' And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. 'Come to
the police station,' says he. 'I'll tell you everything there.' He
wouldn't leave us."
  The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning and perplexed.
  "Who are you?" he shouted as impressively as he could.
  "I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly a student, I live
in Shil's house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he
knows me." Raskolnikov said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not
turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street.
  "Why have you been to the flat?"
  "To look at it."
  "What is there to look at?"
  "Take him straight to the police station," the man in the long
coat jerked in abruptly.
  Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the
same slow, lazy tone:
  "Come along."
  "Yes, take him," the man went on more confidently. "Why was he going
into that, what's in his mind, eh?"
  "He's not drunk, but God knows what's the matter with him," muttered
the workman.
  "But what do you want?" the porter shouted again, beginning to get
angry in earnest- "Why are you hanging about?"
  "You funk the police station then?" said Raskolnikov jeeringly.
  "How funk it? Why are you hanging about?"
  "He's a rogue!" shouted the peasant woman.
  "Why waste time talking to him?" cried the other porter, a huge
peasant in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. "Get along!
He is a rogue and no mistake. Get along!"
  And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he flung him into the
street. He lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the
spectators in silence and walked away.
  "Strange man!" observed the workman.
  "There are strange folks about nowadays," said the woman.
  "You should have taken him to the police station all the same," said
the man in the long coat.
  "Better have nothing to do with him," decided the big porter. "A
regular rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take
him up, you won't get rid of him.... We know the sort!"
  "Shall I go there or not?" thought Raskolnikov, standing in the
middle of the thoroughfare at the cross roads, and he looked about
him, as though expecting from some one a decisive word. But no sound
came, all was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead
to him, to him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two
hundred yards away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard
talk and shouts. In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A
light gleamed in the middle of the street. "What is it?" Raskolnikov
turned to the right and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at
everything and smiled coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully
made up his mind to go to the police station and knew that it would
all soon be over.

CHAPTER_SEVEN
                            Chapter Seven
-
  AN ELEGANT carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of
spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got
off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the
bridle... A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing
in front. One of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on
something lying close to the wheels. Every one was talking,
shouting, exclaiming; the coachman seemed at a loss and kept
repeating:
  "What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!"
  Raskolnikov pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at
last in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground
a man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered
with blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood
was flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated
and disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.
  "Merciful heaven!" wailed the coachman, "what more could I do? If
I'd been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going
quietly, not in a hurry. Every one could see I was going along just
like everybody else. A drunken man can't walk straight, we all
know.... I saw him crossing the street, staggering and almost falling.
I shouted again and a second and a third time, then I held the
horses in, but he fell straight under their feet! Either he did it
on purpose or he was very tipsy.... The horses are young and ready
to take fright... they started, he screamed... that made them worse.
That's how it happened!"
  "That's just how it was," a voice in the crowd confirmed.
  "He shouted, that's true, he shouted three times," another voice
declared.
  "Three times it was, we all heard it," shouted a third.
  But the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was
evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person
who was awaiting it somewhere; the police, of course, were in no
little anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do
was to take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No
one knew his name.
  Meanwhile Raskolnikov had squeezed in and stooped closer over him.
The lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man's face. He
recognised him.
  "I know him! I know him!" he shouted, pushing to the front. "It's
a government clerk retired from the service, Marmeladov. He lives
close by in Kozel's house.... Make haste for a doctor! I will pay,
see." He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the
policeman. He was in violent agitation.
  The police were glad that they had found out who the man was.
Raskolnikov gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if
it had been his father, he besought the police to carry the
unconscious Marmeladov to his lodging at once.
  "Just here, three houses away," he said eagerly, "the house
belongs to Kozel, a rich German. He was going home, no doubt drunk.
I know him, he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children,
he has one daughter.... It will take time to take him to the hospital,
and there is sure to be a doctor in the house. I'll pay, I'll pay!
At least he will be looked after at home... they will help him at
once. But he'll die before you get him to the hospital." He managed to
slip something unseen into the policeman's hand. But the thing was
straightforward and legitimate, and in any case help was closer
here. They raised the injured man; people volunteered to help.
  Kozel's house was thirty yards away. Raskolnikov walked behind,
carefully holding Marmeladov's head and showing the way.
  "This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn
round! I'll pay, I'll make it worth your while," he muttered.
  Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at every free
moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and
back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to
herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever
to her eldest girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who, though there was
much she did not understand, understood very well that her mother
needed her, and so always watched her with her big clever eyes and
strove her utmost to appear to understand. This time Polenka was
undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day and was
going to bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt, which
had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a
chair, with a silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out
straight before him- heels together and toes turned out.
  He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister,
sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes, just
as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to
bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at
the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open
to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which
floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of
coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to
have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her
face was brighter than ever.
  "You wouldn't believe, you can't imagine, Polenka," she said,
walking about the room, "what a happy luxurious life we had in my
papa's house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring
you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from
being a governor; so that every one who came to see him said, 'We look
upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our governor!' When I... when..."
she coughed violently, "oh, cursed life," she cried, clearing her
throat and pressing her hands to her breast, "when I... when at the
last ball... at the marshal's... Princess Bezzemelny saw me- who
gave me the blessing when your father and I were married, Polenka- she
asked at once 'Isn't that the pretty girl who donced the shawl dance
at the breaking up?' (You must mend that tear, you must take your
needle and darn it as I showed you, or to-morrow- cough, cough, cough-
he will make the hole bigger," she articulated with effort.) "Prince
Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had just come from Petersburg then...
he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day;
but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart
had long been another's. That other was your father, Polya; papa was
fearfully angry.... Is the water ready? Give me the shirt, and the
stockings! Lida," said she to the youngest one, "you must manage
without your chemise to-night... and lay your stockings out with it...
I'll wash them together.... How is it that drunken vagabond doesn't
come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dishclout, he
has torn it to rags! I'd do it all together, so as not to have to work
two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again!
What's this?" she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men
who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. "What is it? What
are they bringing? Mercy on us!"
  "Where are we to put him?" asked the policeman, looking round when
Marmeladov, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in.
  "On the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,"
Raskolnikov showed him.
  "Run over in the road! Drunk!" some one shouted in the passage.
  Katerina Ivanovna stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The
children were terrified. Little Lida screamed, rushed to Polenka and
clutched at her, trembling all over.
  Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov flew to Katerina Ivanovna.
  "For God's sake be calm, don't be frightened!" he said, speaking
quickly, "he was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage,
don't be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here...
I've been here already, you remember? He will come to; I'll pay!"
  "He's done it this time!" Katerina Ivanovna cried despairingly and
she rushed to her husband.
  Raskolnikov noticed at once that she was not one of those women
who swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man's head a
pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining
him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling
lips and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her.
  Raskolnikov meanwhile induced some one to run for a doctor. There
was a doctor, it appeared, next door but one.
  "I've sent for a doctor," he kept assuring Katerina Ivanovna, "don't
be uneasy, I'll pay. Haven't you water?... and give me a napkin or a
towel, anything, as quick as you can.... He is injured, but not
killed, believe me.... We shall see what the doctor says!"
  Katerina Ivanovna ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the
corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in
readiness for washing her children's and husband's linen that night.
This washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna at night at least twice a
week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they
were practically without change of linen, and Katerina Ivanovna
could not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house,
she preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her
strength when the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on
a line and dry by the morning. She took up the basin of water at
Raskolnikov's request, but almost fell down with her burden. But the
latter had already succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and begun
washing the blood off Marmeladov's face.
  Katerina Ivanovna stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her
hands to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Raskolnikov
began to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the
injured man brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation.
  "Polenka," cried Katerina Ivanovna, "run to Sonia, make haste. If
you don't find her at home, leave word that her father has been run
over and that she is to come here at once... when she comes in. Run,
Polenka! there, put on the shawl."
  "Run your fastest!" cried the little boy on the chair suddenly,
after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round
eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.
  Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn't
have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained
for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the
stairs. Almost all Madame Lippevechsel's lodgers had streamed in
from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together
in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Katerina
Ivanovna flew into a fury.
  "You might let him die in peace, at least," she shouted at the
crowd, "is it a spectacle for you to gape at? With cigarettes! (Cough,
cough, cough!) You might as well keep your hats on.... And there is
one in his hat!... Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!"
  Her cough choked her- but her reproaches were not without result.
They evidently stood in some awe of Katerina Ivanovna. The lodgers,
one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange
inner feeling of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of
a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim,
from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest
sympathy and compassion.
  Voices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and
saying that they'd no business to make a disturbance here.
  "No business to die!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and she was rushing
to the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came
face to face with Madame Lippevechsel who had only just heard of the
accident and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly
quarrelsome and irresponsible German.
  "Ah, my God!" she cried, clasping her hands, "your husband drunken
horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!"
  "Amalia Ludwigovna, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,"
Katerina Ivanovna began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with
the landlady that she might "remember her place" and even now could
not deny herself this satisfaction). "Amalia Ludwigovna..."
  "I have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna
may not dare; I am Amalia Ivanovna."
  "You are not Amalia Ivanovna, but Amalia Ludwigovna, and as I am not
one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who's
laughing behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of 'they
are at it again' was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always
call you Amalia Ludwigovna, though I fail to understand why you
dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to
Semyon Zaharovitch; he is dying. I beg you to close that door at
once and to admit no one. Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you
the Governor-General, himself, shall be informed of your conduct
to-morrow. The prince knew me as a girl; he remembers Semyon
Zaharovitch well and has often been a benefactor to him. Every one
knows that Semyon Zaharovitch had many friends and protectors, whom he
abandoned himself from an honourable pride, knowing his unhappy
weakness, but now (she pointed to Raskolnikov) a generous young man
has come to our assistance, who has wealth and connections and whom
Semyon Zaharovitch has known from a child. You may rest assured,
Amalia Ludwigovna..."
  All this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and
quicker, but a cough suddenly cut short Katerina Ivanovna's eloquence.
At that instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a
groan; she ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without
recognition or understanding gazed at Raskolnikov who was bending over
him. He drew deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners
of his mouth and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not
recognising Raskolnikov, he began looking round uneasily. Katerina
Ivanovna looked at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled
from her eyes.
  "My God! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding," she said
in despair. "We must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Semyon
Zaharovitch, if you can," she cried to him.
  Marmeladov recognised her.
  "A priest," he articulated huskily.
  Katerina Ivanovna walked to the window, laid her head against the
window frame and exclaimed in despair:
  "Oh, cursed life!"
  "A priest," the dying man said again after a moment's silence.
  "They've gone for him," Katerina Ivanovna shouted to him, he
obeyed her shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for
her; she returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier
but not for long.
  Soon his eyes rested on little Lida, his favourite, who was
shaking in the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him
with her wondering childish eyes.
  "A-ah," he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something.
  "What now?" cried Katerina Ivanovna.
  "Barefoot, barefoot!" he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the
child's bare feet.
  "Be silent," Katerina Ivanovna cried irritably, "you know why she is
barefooted."
  "Thank God, the doctor," exclaimed Raskolnikov, relieved.
  The doctor came in, a precise little old man, a German, looking
about him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse,
carefully felt his head and with the help of Katerina Ivanovna he
unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man's chest.
It was gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side
were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large,
sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise- a cruel kick from the horse's
hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in
the wheel and turned round with it for thirty yards on the road.
  "It's wonderful that he has recovered consciousness," the doctor
whispered softly to Raskolnikov.
  "What do you think of him?" he asked.
  "He will die immediately."
  "Is there really no hope?"
  "Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp.... His head is badly
injured, too... Him... I could bleed him if you like, but... it
would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten
minutes."
  "Better bleed him then."
  "If you like.... But I warn you it will be perfectly useless."
  At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage
parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the
doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the
time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging
glances with him. Raskolnikov begged the doctor to remain a little
while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained.
  All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man
probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken
sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the
chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children
kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the
boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand
rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching
the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial
satisfaction. Katerina Ivanovna bit her lips and held back her
tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy's shirt,
and managed to cover the girl's bare shoulders with a kerchief,
which she took from the chest without rising from her knees or ceasing
to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened
inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all
the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not
venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the
scene.