VI
Later, Raskolnikov happened to find out why exactly the tradesman and his wife had invited Lizaveta round. It was a perfectly run-of-the-mill affair. A newly arrived, impoverished family was selling off various things – clothing and so on, all women’s stuff. It was hard to make anything much at the market, so they were looking for a dealer – Lizaveta’s line: she took a commission, got around and had plenty of experience, being very honest and always naming her lowest price: there was no shifting her after that. She didn’t talk much in any case and, as has already been said, she was as meek and shy as they come . . .
Recently, though, Raskolnikov had become superstitious.
Traces of superstition would remain in him for a long time yet, almost indelibly. In fact, he would always be prone to find something rather strange about this whole business, something mysterious, the presence, as it were, of some special influences and coincidences. Back in winter a student he knew, Pokoryov, who was leaving for Kharkov, mentioned in passing the address of old Alyona Ivanovna, should he ever need to pawn anything. For a long time he stayed away: he had some teaching and could just about make ends meet. He’d remembered about the address six weeks or so ago; he had two things fit for pawning: his father’s old silver watch and a small gold ring with three red stones, a farewell gift from his sister, to remember her by. He’d decided on the ring; and the moment he found and clapped eyes on the old woman, not yet knowing anything much about her, he felt overcome by disgust, took two ‘nice little notes’ off her and on his way back stopped off in a shabby little tavern. He ordered tea, took a seat and plunged deep in thought. A strange idea was tapping away
in his head, like a chick in its egg, occupying him body and soul.
At another small table, very close to his, sat a student he neither knew nor remembered, and a young officer. They were drinking tea after a game of billiards. Suddenly he’d overheard the student telling the officer about the moneylender, Alyona Ivanovna, a collegiate secretary’s widow, and giving him her address. This in itself had struck Raskolnikov as strange: he’d only just come from seeing her. Sheer chance, of course, but there he was unable to rid himself of one highly unusual impression only to see someone bend over backwards (or so it seemed) to oblige him: the student suddenly started telling his friend all manner of details about this Alyona Ivanovna. ‘A splendid woman,’ he said. ‘You can always get money from her. Rich as a Yid. She can hand over five thousand just like that, and she won’t turn her nose up at trifles either. Plenty of our lot have called on her. She’s a right bitch, mind . . .’ He set about describing what a nasty and capricious woman she was, how you only had to be a day late paying and your item would disappear. She gave four times less than the thing was worth, charged five or even seven per cent interest a month, etcetera. Letting his tongue run away with him, the student also mentioned that the old woman had a sister, Lizaveta, whom she, so little and so horrid, never stopped beating and kept in utter servitude, like a little child, when in fact Lizaveta was a whole foot taller, at the very least . . . ‘Just try explaining that!’ the student exclaimed and roared with laughter.
The conversation turned to Lizaveta. The student took particular pleasure in talking about her and couldn’t stop laughing, while the officer listened with the keenest interest and asked the student to send him this Lizaveta to mend his linen. Raskolnikov caught every word, and
learned everything there and then: Lizaveta was the old woman’s younger half-sister (by a different mother), and she was already thirty-five years old. She worked for her sister day and night, doing all the cooking and the laundry; on top of that, she sewed to order and even washed other people’s floors, handing over all the earnings to her sister.
She didn’t dare accept a single order or a single job without the old woman’s say-so. The latter, meanwhile, had already made her own will, which was known to Lizaveta herself, who stood to receive not a penny, apart from chattels, chairs and so on; the money was to go to a certain monastery in N—— province, for the eternal remembrance of the old woman’s soul. Lizaveta, who was born into trade, not the civil service, was a spinster and frightful to look at: she was remarkably tall with long, twisted-looking feet and a single pair of down-at-heel goatskin shoes, and she always kept herself clean. But the main thing that surprised the student and made him laugh was the fact that Lizaveta was forever pregnant . . . ‘But you said she was hideous?’ the officer observed. ‘Well, she’s swarthy-looking, like a soldier in drag, but actually far from hideous. Her face and eyes are ever so nice. Really very nice. There’s proof – plenty of people like her. So quiet and meek, so tame and agreeable – she’ll agree to anything. And she’s got a lovely smile on her.’ ‘Sounds like you like her, too?’ the officer laughed. ‘For her strangeness. But what I really want to tell you is this: I could murder and rob this hag, and without the faintest pang of conscience, I assure you,’ the student added with fervour.
The officer guffawed once more and Raskolnikov shuddered. How very strange this was! ‘Let me ask you a serious question,’ the student continued. ‘I was joking just now, of course, but look: on the one hand a stupid, pointless, worthless, nasty, sick old hag who nobody needs and who is positively vicious to all
and sundry, who doesn’t know herself why she’s alive and who in any case will drop dead tomorrow or the day after.
Catch my drift?’ ‘Yes, I suppose,’ answered the officer, fixing an attentive gaze on his excited friend. ‘There’s more. On the other hand, fresh-faced youths going to waste for lack of support – thousands of them, everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and initiatives could be arranged and assisted with the money doomed for the monastery! Hundreds, possibly thousands of lives could be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from beggary, disintegration, ruin, depravity, the venereal hospital – and all this on her money. Kill her and take her money, so as to devote yourself afterwards to the service of all humanity and the common cause. What do you reckon? Won’t thousands of good deeds iron out one tiny little crime? For one life – thousands of lives saved from decay and ruin. One death and a hundred lives in return – it’s basic arithmetic! And anyway, what does the life of this consumptive, stupid, nasty hag weigh on the scales of the world? No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and it’s not even worth that, because the hag is vicious. She’ll eat you alive: just the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger out of pure spite. They nearly had to cut it off!’ ‘Of course she doesn’t deserve to live,’ remarked the officer, ‘but there’s nature to think about.’ ‘Nature, my dear chap, is forever being corrected and directed, otherwise by now we’d all have drowned in our preconceptions. Otherwise, no great man would ever have been born. People talk about “duty”, “conscience”, and I’ve nothing against duty and conscience, but what do we understand by them, that’s the thing? Hang on, I’ve another question for you. Now listen!’ ‘No, you hang on. I’ve a question for you. Now you listen!’
‘Well?’ ‘Here you are speaking and speechifying, but tell me: are you going to kill the old womanyourself or aren’t you?’ ‘Of course not! I’m talking about justice . . . It’s not about me . . .’ ‘Well, as I see it, if you don’t dare do it yourself, there’s no justice to speak of! Let’s have another game!’ Raskolnikov was in a state of extreme agitation. Of course, these were just the usual, everyday conversations and ideas of the young, such as he had heard many times before; only the form and topic varied. But why had it fallen to him, precisely then, to hear precisely this conversation and precisely these thoughts . . . at a time whenthose very same thoughts had just been conceived in his own mind?
And why precisely then – just when he had carried away from the old woman the embryo of his idea – had he chanced on a conversation about her and no one else? The coincidence would always strike him as strange. This trivial conversation in a tavern exerted the most radical influence on him in the subsequent course of events: as if there really were something preordained in it all, some sign . . .
• • •
Getting back from Haymarket, he collapsed on his couch and sat there without moving for a whole hour. Meanwhile it grew dark. He had no candles and in any case it didn’t cross his mind to light one. He could never remember: was he thinking about anything during all that time? Eventually he began to feel feverish and shivery, just like before, and realized with pleasure that the couch might also be used for lying on. A deep, leaden sleep soon descended, like some crushing weight.
He slept for an unusually long time, dreamlessly.
Nastasya came into his room at ten the next morning and had to give him a forceful shake. She’d brought tea and bread. Once again she’d used old leaves, and once again it came in her own pot. ‘What a sleepyhead!’ she cried indignantly. ‘Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping!’ He forced himself to sit up. His head ached. He tried to stand and turn around, but fell back down on the couch. ‘Back to sleep, I suppose!’ Nastasya cried. ‘Are you sick?’
He said nothing. ‘Fancy some tea?’ ‘Later,’ he said, forcing out a reply before closing his eyes again and turning towards the wall. Nastasya stood over him a while. ‘Maybe he really is sick,’ she said, then turned and walked out.
She came back at two with some soup. He hadn’t moved.
The tea hadn’t been touched. Nastasya took offence and set about shaking him furiously. ‘Enough snoozing!’ she cried, looking at him in disgust.
He sat himself up, but said nothing and gazed at the floor. ‘Are you sick or ain’t you?’ Nastasya asked and again received no reply. ‘Get yourself out a bit,’ she said after a pause. ‘Blow away them cobwebs. Are you or ain’t you eating?’ ‘Later,’ he said weakly, then, ‘Off you go now!’ – and waved her out.
She stood where she was a short while longer, looked at him with pity and went out.
A few minutes later he lifted up his eyes and stared for a long time at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took the spoon and started eating.
He reluctantly, almost mechanically, ate three or four spoonfuls, no more. His headache eased a little. After his meal, he stretched out again on the couch, but he could no
longer fall asleep, so he lay without moving, face down, his head buried in the pillow. One daydream followed another, all of them strange. In most of them he found himself somewhere in Africa, in Egypt, at some oasis or other. The caravan is at rest, the camels lie peaceably; palm trees grow around in a circle; everyone’s eating. As for him, he drinks and drinks from a stream which flows and bubbles right there beside him. How cool it is and how wonderfully blue the water, and how cold, racing over the many- coloured stones, over the bright clean sand sparkling like gold . . . Suddenly he heard a clock strike loud and clear.
He came round with a start, raised his head, looked out of the window, worked out the time and suddenly leapt to his feet, wide awake now, as though someone had yanked him off the couch. He walked up to the door on tiptoe, gently opened it a fraction and listened for noises on the stairs below. His heart was thumping uncontrollably. But only silence came from the stairs, as if everyone was asleep . . .
How bizarre to think that he could have slept through since the previous evening in such a trance and still hadn’t done anything, hadn’t prepared anything . . . Meanwhile, that clock was probably striking six . . . His sleepiness and torpor suddenly gave way to an unusually feverish and confused burst of activity. There wasn’t much to prepare, though. He was doing his utmost to think of everything and forget nothing, but his heart thumped so hard that it became difficult to breathe. First, he had to make a loop and sew it to his coat – a moment’s work. He rummaged beneath the pillow, where he’d stuffed his linen, and retrieved an old unwashed shirt that had all but fallen to pieces. From it he tore a strip about two inches wide and a good foot long. He folded this strip in two, took off his broad, sturdy, coarse-cotton summer coat (his only outer garment) and started sewing both ends of the strip to the inside, just below the left armpit. His hands shook, but he still managed to do it well enough that nothing was visible
from the outside when he put his coat back on. He’d had needle and thread to hand for a while, inside a scrap of paper in the little table. As for the loop, that was a crafty invention of his own: it was intended for the axe. After all, he could hardly walk along the street brandishing an axe.
Hiding it under his coat wouldn’t do either – he’d have to hold it in place, which would be conspicuous. But now that he had the loop, all he needed to do was place the blade in it and the axe would hang nicely, under his armpit inside the coat, all the way there. What was more, by thrusting a hand into the side pocket of his coat he was able to hold the end of the axe handle and stop it moving about; and since the coat was very broad – a real sack – there was no way of noticing from the outside that he was holding it through the pocket. The loop was another thing he’d thought up a couple of weeks before.
Having done this, he slid his fingers through the small gap between his ‘Turkish’ couch and the floor, fumbled around near the left-hand corner and extracted something he’d prepared and hidden there long before – apledge.
Pledge was hardly the word for it, though: it was a smoothly planed bit of wood, no bigger in size or thickness than a silver cigarette case. He’d found it by chance on one of his strolls, in a yard containing some kind of workshop housed in an outbuilding. Then he’d added to it a thin, smooth iron strip – a fragment of something, presumably – which he’d found in the street at the same time. Putting together the two pieces, of which the iron strip was the smaller, he tied them tightly with thread, making a cross; then he wrapped them neatly and daintily in clean white paper, tied a thin ribbon around it, also in a cross, and fixed the knot in such a way as to make it hard to untie. The point of it all was to distract the old woman as she fussed with the knot, and thus, to seize his chance. As for the iron strip, it had been added for weight, to keep the old woman from guessing right away that the ‘item’ was made of wood.
He’d kept it all under the couch until the time came. No sooner had he retrieved the pledge than there was a
sudden yell from somewhere outside:
‘It’s well past six!’ ‘Well past! Good God!’ He rushed to the door, listened, grabbed his hat and set off down his thirteen steps, warily, noiselessly, like a cat.
Ahead lay the crucial business of stealing the axe from the kitchen. That the deed was to be done with an axe had been decided by him long before. He also had a small folding gardener’s knife; but he had little faith in it, still less in his own strength, so he settled definitively on the axe. Let us note, by the way, one peculiarity of all the definitive decisions already taken by him in this venture.
They shared one strange quality: the more definitive they were, the more hideous and absurd they immediately became in his own eyes. Despite all his inner torment and strife, never, for a single moment, could he make himself believe in the prospect of his plans being carried out, not once in all this time.
And even if he should have reached the point some day, somehow, when everything had been analysed, down to the very last detail, and everything had been resolved, and not a single doubt remained – well then, it seemed, he would have rejected it all as an absurdity, a monstrosity, an impossibility. But unresolved details and doubts remained in abundance. As for the trivial matter of where to get an axe, this didn’t worry him in the slightest: nothing could have been simpler. It so happened that Nastasya was always popping out, especially in the evenings, whether to the neighbours or to the shop, and she’d always leave the door wide open. This was the cause of all her squabbles with the landlady. So all he had to do, when the time came, was slip into the kitchen, take the axe, and then, an hour later (when it was all over), go in and put it back. But doubts crept in here, too: what if he were to come by in an
hour to replace it and find Nastasya right there, back in the house? He’d have to walk past, of course, and wait for her to go out again. But suppose she noticed it was missing, started looking for it, raising a hue and cry – well, suspicions would be aroused, or at least cause for suspicion.
Still, these were trivialities which he had not even begun to think about, and had had no time to think about. He was thinking about the main thing, postponing the minor details until he himselfwas fully convinced. This prospect, however, was utterly remote. Or so, at least, it seemed to him. He simply could not imagine, for example, that at some point he would stop thinking, get up and – just go . . .
Even his recenttest (that’s to say: his visit with the intention of making a definitive survey of the location) was itself no more than a test of a test and very far from the real thing, as if to say, ‘I have to do something – there’s no use just dreaming about it!’ – and he’d immediately cracked, given it up as a bad job and run away, disgusted with himself. Meanwhile, his entire analysis, in terms of a moral solution to the question, appeared complete: his casuistry was now as sharp as a razor blade and he could no longer find within himself a single conscious objection.
But he simply did not believe himself on this score and stubbornly, slavishly sought objections, groping for them and going off on tangents, as if someone were forcing him to do so, dragging him this way and that. This last day, which had arrived out of the blue and solved everything at once, had affected him in an almost entirely mechanical way: as if someone had grabbed his hand and dragged him along, irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural strength, without objections. As if a scrap of his clothing had caught in the wheel of a machine that was now pulling him in.
At first – though this was a long time ago – one particular question had absorbed him: why are almost all crimes so easy to trace and so poorly concealed, and why do almost
all criminals leave such an obvious trail? The conclusions at which he had arrived, little by little, were varied and intriguing: the most important reason, in his view, lay less in the physical impossibility of concealing the crime than in the criminal himself; for criminals, almost without exception, succumb at the moment of the crime to a weakening of the faculties of reason and will, which are replaced, in stark contrast, by thoughtlessness of a childish and quite extraordinary kind, at precisely the moment when reason and caution are most essential. As he saw it, the eclipse of reason and the weakening of the will consume a person like a sickness, progressing steadily to their furthest point shortly before the crime is committed; they continue in that same form at the very moment of the crime and for a little while thereafter, depending on the individual; then they pass, like any other sickness. As to whether it is sickness that gives rise to crime or crime itself which somehow, by its special nature, is always accompanied by something akin to sickness – this was a question he did not yet feel capable of resolving.
Reaching these conclusions, he decided that morbid reversals of this kind could not befall him personally in his venture; that his reason and will would not and could not desert him at any moment during the execution of his plan, for the simple reason that his plan was ‘not a crime’ . . . We omit the entire process by which he arrived at this final decision; we’ve run too far ahead of ourselves already . . .
We will merely add that the actual, material obstacles thrown up by his venture played only the most ancillary of roles in his mind. ‘It is enough to preserve all my faculties of will and reason, and those obstacles, in their turn, will all be defeated when the time comes to familiarize myself with the finer details of the venture . . .’ But the venture would not get started. He continued to believe in his definitive decisions least of all, and when the hour struck, nothing
went to plan – there was a randomness about it all that almost took him by surprise.
He was stymied by a circumstance of the most trivial kind even before he’d reached the bottom of the stairwell.
Drawing level with the landlady’s kitchen, the door of which was open, as always, he cast a wary glance inside: what if the landlady were in while Nastasya was out, and, if not, were all the doors to her room well closed, lest she happened to poke her head round when he went in for the axe? But he was simply astounded when he suddenly saw that not only was Nastasya in the kitchen, she was busy working as well: taking laundry out of a basket and hanging it on washing lines! Catching sight of him, she stopped what she was doing, turned towards him and kept her eyes fixed on him until he passed. He averted his gaze and walked on, as though nothing had happened. But the game was up: no axe! He was devastated. ‘And why on earth,’ he thought, as he went under the arch leading out of the courtyard, ‘why on earth was I so sure that at this precise moment she would definitely be out? Why, why, why was I so certain?’ He felt crushed, even mortified. He wanted to laugh at himself from spite . . .
Dull, brutish anger boiled up inside him.
He stopped in hesitation beneath the arch. The thought of going out for a walk, just for show, repelled him; the thought of returning home was even worse. ‘Such a chance, gone forever!’ he muttered as he stood aimlessly under the arch, directly opposite the caretaker’s dark little lodge, the door of which was also open. Suddenly, he gave a start. In the caretaker’s lodge, just a few steps away from him, something caught his eye, glinting at him from beneath a bench, to the right . . . He looked around – not a soul! He walked up to the lodge on tiptoe, went down two steps and called out to the caretaker in a weak voice. ‘He’s out, just as I thought! He can’t have gone far, though – the door’s wide open!’ He made a dash for the axe (for that’s what it
was) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it lay between two logs; he secured it in the loop there and then, thrust both his hands into his pockets and left the lodge; no one had noticed! ‘Better the devil than the best-laid plans!’ he thought, grinning strangely. This chance event had cheered him up no end.
To avoid suspicion he walked along the street with soft, measured steps and without hurrying. He rarely glanced at passers-by; in fact, he tried not to look at anyone at all and to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. Then he remembered about his hat. ‘Good God! To think I even had some money a couple of days ago and still didn’t get myself a cap!’ His soul let fly a curse.
Happening to glance out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he caught sight of a clock: ten past seven already. He had to get a move on, but he also had to make a detour to approach the building from the other side . . .
Previously, when he pictured all this in his mind, he sometimes imagined he’d be very afraid. But he wasn’t. In fact, he wasn’t afraid at all. In fact, his mind was occupied at that moment by various irrelevant thoughts, none of which lasted for long. Walking past the Yusupov Gardens, he was even getting carried away by the notion of introducing tall fountains there – how marvellously they’d freshen the air on every square. Little by little he came to the conclusion that extending the Summer Garden into the Field of Mars and even joining it to the gardens of Mikhailovsky Palace would be a wonderful and most beneficial thing for the city. He suddenly wondered why it is that in every large city, man – out of some particular inclination as much as actual need – lives and makes his home in precisely those parts of town where there are neither gardens nor fountains, where there is filth and stench and every unpleasantness. Then he remembered his wanders around Haymarket and briefly came to his senses.
‘What drivel,’ he thought. ‘No, I’m better off not thinking at all! ‘That’s how it must be for men on their way to the 51 scaffold, clinging to every object they pass.’The thought flashed through him like lightning, but it was no more than a flash; he was quick to snuff it out . . . Almost there now: here was the house, here were the gates. Suddenly, somewhere, a clock struck once. ‘What, half past seven already? Impossible – the clock must be fast!’ His luck held: this archway proved straightforward, too.
In fact, at that very instant, as if on purpose, a massive hay cart entered the gates just in front of him, shielding him completely as he passed under the arch, and as soon as the cart emerged into the courtyard he instantly slipped off to the right. Over there, on the other side of the cart, several voices could be heard shouting and arguing, but no one noticed him and no one crossed his path. Many of the windows that looked down on this enormous square courtyard were open at that moment, but he didn’t lift his head – he hadn’t the strength. The old woman’s staircase was close by, directly off to the right after the arch. Here he was, already on the stairs . . .
After catching his breath and pressing his hand to his thumping heart, after feeling for the axe and adjusting it one more time, he began climbing the stairs, warily and softly, constantly straining his ears. But the staircase, too, was completely deserted at that moment. All the doors were shut. He met precisely no one. True, there was one empty apartment on the second floor with the doors flung open and decorators working inside, but they didn’t so much as glance in his direction. He stood still for a moment, pondered and walked on. ‘Of course, it would be better if they weren’t here at all, but . . . there’s another two floors to go.’
And here it was: the fourth floor, the door, the apartment opposite – the empty one. To all appearances, the third- floor apartment right under the old woman’s was also empty: the visiting card nailed to the door was gone – they’d moved! . . . He was struggling to breathe. ‘Perhaps I should leave?’ suddenly occurred to him. But he left his own question unanswered and put his ear to the door of the old woman’s apartment: dead silence. Then he listened out again for noises below him, listened long and hard . . . He looked about one last time, straightened and tidied himself up, and tested the axe in the loop once more. Various thoughts crossed his mind. ‘Hope I’m not too pale? Not overexcited? She’s mistrustful . . . Perhaps I should wait a bit . . . for my heart to stop?’ But his heart did not stop. Quite the opposite: as if on purpose, it beat harder, harder and harder . . . He couldn’t resist, slowly stretched his arm out towards the bell and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, louder.
No reply. It was pointless ringing for the sake of it, and unseemly. The old woman, needless to say, was in, but she was suspicious and she was alone. He knew her habits . . . and once again he pressed his ear flush against the door.
Whether it was the keenness of his senses (which is rather hard to imagine) or whether it really was very audible, but he suddenly heard what sounded like a hand cautiously feathering the lock and a dress rustling against the door itself. Someone was lurking right by the lock and, just like him here on the outside, was listening hard, crouching, and also, it seemed, pressing an ear to the door . . .
He made a deliberate movement and muttered something rather too loudly, to make it clear he wasn’t hiding; then he rang a third time, but softly, calmly and without the slightest haste. Recalling this afterwards, vividly, clearly – that moment was imprinted on him for all time – he simply could not understand where he’d found such guile, not least because there were moments when his
mind seemed to go dark, and as for his body, he could barely feel it . . . Seconds later, someone could be heard lifting the latch.
