Crime and Punishment
by
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Part 3 out of 12




"What do you want?" he shouted, apparently astonished that such a
ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.

"I was summoned . . . by a notice . . ." Raskolnikov faltered.

"For the recovery of money due, from /the student/," the head clerk
interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. "Here!" and he
flung Raskolnikov a document and pointed out the place. "Read that!"

"Money? What money?" thought Raskolnikov, "but . . . then . . . it's
certainly not /that/."

And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable relief.
A load was lifted from his back.

"And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?" shouted the
assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and
more aggrieved. "You are told to come at nine, and now it's twelve!"

"The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago," Raskolnikov
answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he, too, grew
suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. "And it's enough
that I have come here ill with fever."

"Kindly refrain from shouting!"

"I'm not shouting, I'm speaking very quietly, it's you who are
shouting at me. I'm a student, and allow no one to shout at me."

The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first minute
he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat.

"Be silent! You are in a government office. Don't be impudent, sir!"

"You're in a government office, too," cried Raskolnikov, "and you're
smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect
to all of us."

He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.

The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant
superintendent was obviously disconcerted.

"That's not your business!" he shouted at last with unnatural
loudness. "Kindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him.
Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don't
pay your debts! You're a fine bird!"

But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at the
paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a second
time, and still did not understand.

"What is this?" he asked the head clerk.

"It is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You must either
pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written
declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking
not to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal
your property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and
proceed against you according to the law."

"But I . . . am not in debt to anyone!"

"That's not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred and fifteen
roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been brought us
for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor Zarnitsyn,
nine months ago, and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to one Mr.
Tchebarov. We therefore summon you, hereupon."

"But she is my landlady!"

"And what if she is your landlady?"

The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of compassion,
and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a novice under fire
for the first time--as though he would say: "Well, how do you feel
now?" But what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery!
Was that worth worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He
stood, he read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions
himself, but all mechanically. The triumphant sense of security, of
deliverance from overwhelming danger, that was what filled his whole
soul that moment without thought for the future, without analysis,
without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and without
questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely instinctive
joy. But at that very moment something like a thunderstorm took place
in the office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken by
Raskolnikov's disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to keep
up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate smart lady, who had
been gazing at him ever since he came in with an exceedingly silly
smile.

"You shameful hussy!" he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice.
(The lady in mourning had left the office.) "What was going on at your
house last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you're a scandal to the whole
street. Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of
correction? Why, I have warned you ten times over that I would not let
you off the eleventh! And here you are again, again, you . . .
you . . . !"

The paper fell out of Raskolnikov's hands, and he looked wildly at the
smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw what it
meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the scandal. He
listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh . . . all
his nerves were on edge.

"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but stopped
short, for he knew from experience that the enraged assistant could
not be stopped except by force.

As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the
storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms of
abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive the
smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and
curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in
her word: and at last she found it.

"There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain," she
pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian
confidently, though with a strong German accent, "and no sort of
scandal, and his honour came drunk, and it's the whole truth I am
telling, Mr. Captain, and I am not to blame. . . . Mine is an
honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain,
and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite
tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one
leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not
at all right in an honourable house, and he /ganz/ broke the piano,
and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took up a
bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then I called the
porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the eye; and he
hit Henriette in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the cheek.
And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and I
screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in the
window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of
squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon
him! And Karl pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is
true, Mr. Captain, he tore /sein rock/. And then he shouted that /man
muss/ pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain,
five roubles for /sein rock/. And he is an ungentlemanly visitor and
caused all the scandal. 'I will show you up,' he said, 'for I can
write to all the papers about you.'"

"Then he was an author?"

"Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable
house. . . ."

"Now then! Enough! I have told you already . . ."

"Ilya Petrovitch!" the head clerk repeated significantly.

The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook
his head.

". . . So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna, and I tell
it you for the last time," the assistant went on. "If there is a
scandal in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself
in the lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a
literary man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an
'honourable house'? A nice set, these authors!"

And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov. "There was a scandal
the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner and
would not pay; 'I'll write a satire on you,' says he. And there was
another of them on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful
language to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and
daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a confectioner's
shop the other day. They are like that, authors, literary men,
students, town-criers. . . . Pfoo! You get along! I shall look in upon
you myself one day. Then you had better be careful! Do you hear?"

With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell to curtsying in all
directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she
stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open
face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of
the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Ivanovna made haste to
curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she
fluttered out of the office.

"Again thunder and lightning--a hurricane!" said Nikodim Fomitch to
Ilya Petrovitch in a civil and friendly tone. "You are aroused again,
you are fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!"

"Well, what then!" Ilya Petrovitch drawled with gentlemanly
nonchalance; and he walked with some papers to another table, with a
jaunty swing of his shoulders at each step. "Here, if you will kindly
look: an author, or a student, has been one at least, does not pay his
debts, has given an I O U, won't clear out of his room, and complaints
are constantly being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased
to make a protest against my smoking in his presence! He behaves like
a cad himself, and just look at him, please. Here's the gentleman, and
very attractive he is!"

"Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like powder,
you can't bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at something and
went too far yourself," continued Nikodim Fomitch, turning affably to
Raskolnikov. "But you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I
assure you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils
over, and no stopping him! And then it's all over! And at the bottom
he's a heart of gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Explosive
Lieutenant. . . ."

"And what a regiment it was, too," cried Ilya Petrovitch, much
gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.

Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally
pleasant to them all. "Excuse me, Captain," he began easily, suddenly
addressing Nikodim Fomitch, "will you enter into my position? . . . I
am ready to ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor
student, sick and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by
poverty. I am not studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I
shall get money. . . . I have a mother and sister in the province of
X. They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-
hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost my lessons,
and not paying her for the last four months, that she does not even
send up my dinner . . . and I don't understand this I O U at all. She
is asking me to pay her on this I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for
yourselves! . . ."

"But that is not our business, you know," the head clerk was
observing.

"Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain . . ."
Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying
his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also, though the latter
persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be
contemptuously oblivious of him. "Allow me to explain that I have been
living with her for nearly three years and at first . . . at first
. . . for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I
promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given
. . . she was a girl . . . indeed, I liked her, though I was not in
love with her . . . a youthful affair in fact . . . that is, I mean to
say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a
life of . . . I was very heedless . . ."

"Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we've no time to
waste," Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph;
but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it
exceedingly difficult to speak.

"But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain . . . how it all
happened . . . In my turn . . . though I agree with you . . . it is
unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained
lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present
quarters, she said to me . . . and in a friendly way . . . that she
had complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I O U for
one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if
only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked,
and that she would never, never--those were her own words--make use of
that I O U till I could pay of myself . . . and now, when I have lost
my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What
am I to say to that?"

"All these affecting details are no business of ours." Ilya Petrovitch
interrupted rudely. "You must give a written undertaking but as for
your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do
with that."

"Come now . . . you are harsh," muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down
at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.

"Write!" said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.

"Write what?" the latter asked, gruffly.

"I will dictate to you."

Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually and
contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly felt
completely indifferent to anyone's opinion, and this revulsion took
place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a little,
he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked to them
like that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where
had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled,
not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him,
he would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his
heart. A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and
remoteness, took conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness
of his sentimental effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor the meanness
of the latter's triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion
in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now with his own baseness, with
all these petty vanities, officers, German women, debts, police-
offices? If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would
not have stirred, would hardly have heard the sentence to the end.
Something was happening to him entirely new, sudden and unknown. It
was not that he understood, but he felt clearly with all the intensity
of sensation that he could never more appeal to these people in the
police-office with sentimental effusions like his recent outburst, or
with anything whatever; and that if they had been his own brothers and
sisters and not police-officers, it would have been utterly out of the
question to appeal to them in any circumstance of life. He had never
experienced such a strange and awful sensation. And what was most
agonising--it was more a sensation than a conception or idea, a direct
sensation, the most agonising of all the sensations he had known in
his life.

The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration,
that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date,
that he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on.

"But you can't write, you can hardly hold the pen," observed the head
clerk, looking with curiosity at Raskolnikov. "Are you ill?"

"Yes, I am giddy. Go on!"

"That's all. Sign it."

The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others.

Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going
away, he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his
hands. He felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A
strange idea suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up to
Nikodim Fomitch, and tell him everything that had happened yesterday,
and then to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in
the hole in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up from
his seat to carry it out. "Hadn't I better think a minute?" flashed
through his mind. "No, better cast off the burden without thinking."
But all at once he stood still, rooted to the spot. Nikodim Fomitch
was talking eagerly with Ilya Petrovitch, and the words reached him:

"It's impossible, they'll both be released. To begin with, the whole
story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if
it had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a blind?
No, that would be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student, was
seen at the gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He was
walking with three friends, who left him only at the gate, and he
asked the porters to direct him, in the presence of the friends. Now,
would he have asked his way if he had been going with such an object?
As for Koch, he spent half an hour at the silversmith's below, before
he went up to the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to
eight. Now just consider . . ."

"But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state
themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three
minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the
door was unfastened."

"That's just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted himself
in; and they'd have caught him for a certainty if Koch had not been an
ass and gone to look for the porter too. /He/ must have seized the
interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch keeps
crossing himself and saying: 'If I had been there, he would have
jumped out and killed me with his axe.' He is going to have a
thanksgiving service--ha, ha!"

"And no one saw the murderer?"

"They might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah's Ark," said
the head clerk, who was listening.

"It's clear, quite clear," Nikodim Fomitch repeated warmly.

"No, it is anything but clear," Ilya Petrovitch maintained.

Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he did
not reach it. . . .

When he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a chair,
supported by someone on the right side, while someone else was
standing on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow
water, and Nikodim Fomitch standing before him, looking intently at
him. He got up from the chair.

"What's this? Are you ill?" Nikodim Fomitch asked, rather sharply.

"He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing," said the head
clerk, settling back in his place, and taking up his work again.

"Have you been ill long?" cried Ilya Petrovitch from his place, where
he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come to look
at the sick man when he fainted, but retired at once when he
recovered.

"Since yesterday," muttered Raskolnikov in reply.

"Did you go out yesterday?"

"Yes."

"Though you were ill?"

"Yes."

"At what time?"

"About seven."

"And where did you go, my I ask?"

"Along the street."

"Short and clear."

Raskolnikov, white as a handkerchief, had answered sharply, jerkily,
without dropping his black feverish eyes before Ilya Petrovitch's
stare.

"He can scarcely stand upright. And you . . ." Nikodim Fomitch was
beginning.

"No matter," Ilya Petrovitch pronounced rather peculiarly.

Nikodim Fomitch would have made some further protest, but glancing at
the head clerk who was looking very hard at him, he did not speak.
There was a sudden silence. It was strange.

"Very well, then," concluded Ilya Petrovitch, "we will not detain
you."

Raskolnikov went out. He caught the sound of eager conversation on his
departure, and above the rest rose the questioning voice of Nikodim
Fomitch. In the street, his faintness passed off completely.

"A search--there will be a search at once," he repeated to himself,
hurrying home. "The brutes! they suspect."

His former terror mastered him completely again.



CHAPTER II

"And what if there has been a search already? What if I find them in
my room?"

But here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one had peeped in.
Even Nastasya had not touched it. But heavens! how could he have left
all those things in the hole?

He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the paper, pulled the
things out and lined his pockets with them. There were eight articles
in all: two little boxes with ear-rings or something of the sort, he
hardly looked to see; then four small leather cases. There was a
chain, too, merely wrapped in newspaper and something else in
newspaper, that looked like a decoration. . . . He put them all in the
different pockets of his overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his
trousers, trying to conceal them as much as possible. He took the
purse, too. Then he went out of his room, leaving the door open. He
walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt shattered, he had
his senses about him. He was afraid of pursuit, he was afraid that in
another half-hour, another quarter of an hour perhaps, instructions
would be issued for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all
traces before then. He must clear everything up while he still had
some strength, some reasoning power left him. . . . Where was he to
go?

That had long been settled: "Fling them into the canal, and all traces
hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end." So he had decided
in the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse
to get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to
get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered
along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and
looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he
could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the
steps' edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were
moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could
be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look
suspicious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw something
into the water. And what if the boxes were to float instead of
sinking? And of course they would. Even as it was, everyone he met
seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to do but to
watch him. "Why is it, or can it be my fancy?" he thought.

At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the
Neva. There were not so many people there, he would be less observed,
and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further
off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-
hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of
it before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan,
simply because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become
extremely absent and forgetful and he was aware of it. He certainly
must make haste.

He walked towards the Neva along V---- Prospect, but on the way
another idea struck him. "Why to the Neva? Would it not be better to
go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the things
in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot
perhaps?" And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the idea
seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there. For
coming out of V---- Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left a
passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right
hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched
far into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with
it for twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the
left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of different
sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a low, smutty,
stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from behind the
hoarding. It was probably a carriage builder's or carpenter's shed;
the whole place from the entrance was black with coal dust. Here would
be the place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard,
he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a sink, such as is often
put in yards where there are many workmen or cab-drivers; and on the
hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured
witticism, "Standing here strictly forbidden." This was all the
better, for there would be nothing suspicious about his going in.
"Here I could throw it all in a heap and get away!"

Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he
noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a
big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the
wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that
part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone came
in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was need
of haste.

He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both
hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone was
a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his pocket
into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled
up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it back,
so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a very
little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the
edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed.

Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense, almost
unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the
police-office. "I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of
looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever
since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it
were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!" And he
laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous
noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the
square. But when he reached the K---- Boulevard where two days before
he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas
crept into his mind. He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to
pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and
pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered
policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: "Damn him!"

He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas
now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that
there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing
that point--and for the first time, indeed, during the last two
months.

"Damn it all!" he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury. "If
it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how
stupid it is! . . . And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I
fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What
do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at
all! It is not that at all!"

Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple
question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.

"If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I
really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even
glance into the purse and don't know what I had there, for which I
have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this
base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw
into the water the purse together with all the things which I had not
seen either . . . how's that?"

Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before, and
it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the
night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be,
as though it could not possibly be otherwise. . . . Yes, he had known
it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even
yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling
the jewel-cases out of it. . . . Yes, so it was.

"It is because I am very ill," he decided grimly at last, "I have been
worrying and fretting myself, and I don't know what I am doing. . . .
Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been
worrying myself. . . . I shall get well and I shall not worry. . . .
But what if I don't get well at all? Good God, how sick I am of it
all!"

He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some
distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new
overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him
every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for
everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred.
All who met him were loathsome to him--he loathed their faces, their
movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that
he might have spat at him or bitten him. . . .

He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Neva,
near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. "Why, he lives here, in that
house," he thought, "why, I have not come to Razumihin of my own
accord! Here it's the same thing over again. . . . Very interesting to
know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by
chance? Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go
and see him the day /after/; well, and so I will! Besides I really
cannot go further now."

He went up to Razumihin's room on the fifth floor.

The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the moment,
and he opened the door himself. It was four months since they had seen
each other. Razumihin was sitting in a ragged dressing-gown, with
slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face
showed surprise.

"Is it you?" he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after a
brief pause, he whistled. "As hard up as all that! Why, brother,
you've cut me out!" he added, looking at Raskolnikov's rags. "Come sit
down, you are tired, I'll be bound."

And when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was in
even worse condition than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his
visitor was ill.

"Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?" He began feeling his
pulse. Raskolnikov pulled away his hand.

"Never mind," he said, "I have come for this: I have no lessons. . . .
I wanted, . . . but I don't really want lessons. . . ."

"But I say! You are delirious, you know!" Razumihin observed, watching
him carefully.

"No, I am not."

Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to
Razumihin's, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend
face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of all
disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with anyone in the
wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at
himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin's threshold.

"Good-bye," he said abruptly, and walked to the door.

"Stop, stop! You queer fish."

"I don't want to," said the other, again pulling away his hand.

"Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this is
. . . almost insulting! I won't let you go like that."

"Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could
help . . . to begin . . . because you are kinder than anyone--
cleverer, I mean, and can judge . . . and now I see that I want
nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all . . . no one's services . . . no
one's sympathy. I am by myself . . . alone. Come, that's enough. Leave
me alone."

"Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for
all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don't care about
that, but there's a bookseller, Heruvimov--and he takes the place of a
lesson. I would not exchange him for five lessons. He's doing
publishing of a kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a
circulation they have! The very titles are worth the money! You always
maintained that I was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater
fools than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that he
has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here are
two signatures of the German text--in my opinion, the crudest
charlatanism; it discusses the question, 'Is woman a human being?'
And, of course, triumphantly proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to
bring out this work as a contribution to the woman question; I am
translating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures into
six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long and bring it
out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six roubles the
signature, it works out to about fifteen roubles for the job, and I've
had six already in advance. When we have finished this, we are going
to begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest
scandals out of the second part of /Les Confessions/ we have marked
for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind
of Radishchev. You may be sure I don't contradict him, hang him! Well,
would you like to do the second signature of '/Is woman a human
being?/' If you would, take the German and pens and paper--all those
are provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in
advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your share.
And when you have finished the signature there will be another three
roubles for you. And please don't think I am doing you a service;
quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help
me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes
utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go along for the
most part. The only comfort is, that it's bound to be a change for the
better. Though who can tell, maybe it's sometimes for the worse. Will
you take it?"

Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took the three roubles
and without a word went out. Razumihin gazed after him in
astonishment. But when Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned
back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin's again and laying on the table
the German article and the three roubles, went out again, still
without uttering a word.

"Are you raving, or what?" Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at last.
"What farce is this? You'll drive me crazy too . . . what did you come
to see me for, damn you?"

"I don't want . . . translation," muttered Raskolnikov from the
stairs.

"Then what the devil do you want?" shouted Razumihin from above.
Raskolnikov continued descending the staircase in silence.

"Hey, there! Where are you living?"

No answer.

"Well, confound you then!"

But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the
Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an
unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three
times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having
almost fallen under his horses' hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that
he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been
walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily
clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.

"Serves him right!"

"A pickpocket I dare say."

"Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on
purpose; and you have to answer for him."

"It's a regular profession, that's what it is."

But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered
after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt
someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman
in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter
wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.

"Take it, my good man, in Christ's name."

He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks. From
his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a beggar
asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty copecks he
doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry for him.

He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and
turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was
without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare
in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best
from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the
sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly
distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot
about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now
completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the
distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was
attending the university, he had hundreds of times--generally on his
way home--stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent
spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious
emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous
picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his
sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off
finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts
and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that
he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he
should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually
imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same
theories and pictures that had interested him . . . so short a time
ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down,
hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now--all his old
past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old
impressions and that picture and himself and all, all. . . . He felt
as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from
his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly
became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand,
stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the
water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut
himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.

Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been
walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not
remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay
down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into
oblivion. . . .

It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what a
scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears,
blows and curses he had never heard.

He could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In terror he
sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting, wailing
and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense amazement
he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking and
wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he could not make
out what she was talking about; she was beseeching, no doubt, not to
be beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on the stairs. The
voice of her assailant was so horrible from spite and rage that it was
almost a croak; but he, too, was saying something, and just as quickly
and indistinctly, hurrying and spluttering. All at once Raskolnikov
trembled; he recognised the voice--it was the voice of Ilya
Petrovitch. Ilya Petrovitch here and beating the landlady! He is
kicking her, banging her head against the steps--that's clear, that
can be told from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it,
is the world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from
all the storeys and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations,
knocking, doors banging. "But why, why, and how could it be?" he
repeated, thinking seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard
too distinctly! And they would come to him then next, "for no doubt
. . . it's all about that . . . about yesterday. . . . Good God!" He
would have fastened his door with the latch, but he could not lift his
hand . . . besides, it would be useless. Terror gripped his heart like
ice, tortured him and numbed him. . . . But at last all this uproar,
after continuing about ten minutes, began gradually to subside. The
landlady was moaning and groaning; Ilya Petrovitch was still uttering
threats and curses. . . . But at last he, too, seemed to be silent,
and now he could not be heard. "Can he have gone away? Good Lord!"
Yes, and now the landlady is going too, still weeping and moaning
. . . and then her door slammed. . . . Now the crowd was going from
the stairs to their rooms, exclaiming, disputing, calling to one
another, raising their voices to a shout, dropping them to a whisper.
There must have been numbers of them--almost all the inmates of the
block. "But, good God, how could it be! And why, why had he come
here!"

Raskolnikov sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes.
He lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation
of infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a
bright light flashed into his room. Nastasya came in with a candle and
a plate of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was
not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out what
she had brought--bread, salt, a plate, a spoon.

"You've eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You've been trudging
about all day, and you're shaking with fever."

"Nastasya . . . what were they beating the landlady for?"

She looked intently at him.

"Who beat the landlady?"

"Just now . . . half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovitch, the assistant
superintendent, on the stairs. . . . Why was he ill-treating her like
that, and . . . why was he here?"

Nastasya scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny lasted
a long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching eyes.

"Nastasya, why don't you speak?" he said timidly at last in a weak
voice.

"It's the blood," she answered at last softly, as though speaking to
herself.

"Blood? What blood?" he muttered, growing white and turning towards
the wall.

Nastasya still looked at him without speaking.

"Nobody has been beating the landlady," she declared at last in a
firm, resolute voice.

He gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.

"I heard it myself. . . . I was not asleep . . . I was sitting up," he
said still more timidly. "I listened a long while. The assistant
superintendent came. . . . Everyone ran out on to the stairs from all
the flats."

"No one has been here. That's the blood crying in your ears. When
there's no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying
things. . . . Will you eat something?"

He made no answer. Nastasya still stood over him, watching him.

"Give me something to drink . . . Nastasya."

She went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of
water. He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and
spilling some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.



CHAPTER III

He was not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill;
he was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half
conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it seemed
as though there were a number of people round him; they wanted to take
him away somewhere, there was a great deal of squabbling and
discussing about him. Then he would be alone in the room; they had all
gone away afraid of him, and only now and then opened the door a crack
to look at him; they threatened him, plotted something together,
laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered Nastasya often at his
bedside; he distinguished another person, too, whom he seemed to know
very well, though he could not remember who he was, and this fretted
him, even made him cry. Sometimes he fancied he had been lying there a
month; at other times it all seemed part of the same day. But of
/that/--of /that/ he had no recollection, and yet every minute he felt
that he had forgotten something he ought to remember. He worried and
tormented himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into a rage, or
sank into awful, intolerable terror. Then he struggled to get up,
would have run away, but someone always prevented him by force, and
he sank back into impotence and forgetfulness. At last he returned to
complete consciousness.

It happened at ten o'clock in the morning. On fine days the sun shone
into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the right
wall and the corner near the door. Nastasya was standing beside him
with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking at him very
inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing a full, short-
waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The landlady was peeping in
at the half-opened door. Raskolnikov sat up.

"Who is this, Nastasya?" he asked, pointing to the young man.

"I say, he's himself again!" she said.

"He is himself," echoed the man.

Concluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed the
door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations or
discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking, fat and
buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness and
laziness, and absurdly bashful.

"Who . . . are you?" he went on, addressing the man. But at that
moment the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so
tall, Razumihin came in.

"What a cabin it is!" he cried. "I am always knocking my head. You
call this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I've just heard
the news from Pashenka."

"He has just come to," said Nastasya.

"Just come to," echoed the man again, with a smile.

"And who are you?" Razumihin asked, suddenly addressing him. "My name
is Vrazumihin, at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always called,
but Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman; and he is my friend. And who
are you?"

"I am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Shelopaev, and
I've come on business."

"Please sit down." Razumihin seated himself on the other side of the
table. "It's a good thing you've come to, brother," he went on to
Raskolnikov. "For the last four days you have scarcely eaten or drunk
anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought Zossimov to
see you twice. You remember Zossimov? He examined you carefully and
said at once it was nothing serious--something seemed to have gone to
your head. Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad feeding, he says
you have not had enough beer and radish, but it's nothing much, it
will pass and you will be all right. Zossimov is a first-rate fellow!
He is making quite a name. Come, I won't keep you," he said,
addressing the man again. "Will you explain what you want? You must
know, Rodya, this is the second time they have sent from the office;
but it was another man last time, and I talked to him. Who was it came
before?"

"That was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please,
sir. That was Alexey Semyonovitch; he is in our office, too."

"He was more intelligent than you, don't you think so?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am."

"Quite so; go on."

"At your mamma's request, through Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of
whom I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent to
you from our office," the man began, addressing Raskolnikov. "If you
are in an intelligible condition, I've thirty-five roubles to remit to
you, as Semyon Semyonovitch has received from Afanasy Ivanovitch at
your mamma's request instructions to that effect, as on previous
occasions. Do you know him, sir?"

"Yes, I remember . . . Vahrushin," Raskolnikov said dreamily.

"You hear, he knows Vahrushin," cried Razumihin. "He is in 'an
intelligible condition'! And I see you are an intelligent man too.
Well, it's always pleasant to hear words of wisdom."

"That's the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy Ivanovitch. And at the
request of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in
the same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and
sent instructions to Semyon Semyonovitch some days since to hand you
thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come."

"That 'hoping for better to come' is the best thing you've said,
though 'your mamma' is not bad either. Come then, what do you say? Is
he fully conscious, eh?"

"That's all right. If only he can sign this little paper."

"He can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?"

"Yes, here's the book."

"Give it to me. Here, Rodya, sit up. I'll hold you. Take the pen and
scribble 'Raskolnikov' for him. For just now, brother, money is
sweeter to us than treacle."

"I don't want it," said Raskolnikov, pushing away the pen.

"Not want it?"

"I won't sign it."

"How the devil can you do without signing it?"

"I don't want . . . the money."

"Don't want the money! Come, brother, that's nonsense, I bear witness.
Don't trouble, please, it's only that he is on his travels again. But
that's pretty common with him at all times though. . . . You are a man
of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more simply, take
his hand and he will sign it. Here."

"But I can come another time."

"No, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment. . . .
Now, Rodya, don't keep your visitor, you see he is waiting," and he
made ready to hold Raskolnikov's hand in earnest.

"Stop, I'll do it alone," said the latter, taking the pen and signing
his name.

The messenger took out the money and went away.

"Bravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?"

"Yes," answered Raskolnikov.

"Is there any soup?"

"Some of yesterday's," answered Nastasya, who was still standing
there.

"With potatoes and rice in it?"

"Yes."

"I know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea."

"Very well."

Raskolnikov looked at all this with profound astonishment and a dull,
unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see what
would happen. "I believe I am not wandering. I believe it's reality,"
he thought.

In a couple of minutes Nastasya returned with the soup, and announced
that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she brought two
spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef, and so on. The
table was set as it had not been for a long time. The cloth was clean.

"It would not be amiss, Nastasya, if Praskovya Pavlovna were to send
us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them."

"Well, you are a cool hand," muttered Nastasya, and she departed to
carry out his orders.

Raskolnikov still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile
Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put
his left arm round Raskolnikov's head, although he was able to sit up,
and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it
that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm.
Raskolnikov swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a
third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin
suddenly stopped, and said that he must ask Zossimov whether he ought
to have more.

Nastasya came in with two bottles of beer.

"And will you have tea?"

"Yes."

"Cut along, Nastasya, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture on
without the faculty. But here is the beer!" He moved back to his
chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as
though he had not touched food for three days.

"I must tell you, Rodya, I dine like this here every day now," he
mumbled with his mouth full of beef, "and it's all Pashenka, your dear
little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me. I
don't ask for it, but, of course, I don't object. And here's Nastasya
with the tea. She is a quick girl. Nastasya, my dear, won't you have
some beer?"

"Get along with your nonsense!"

"A cup of tea, then?"

"A cup of tea, maybe."

"Pour it out. Stay, I'll pour it out myself. Sit down."

He poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa again. As
before, he put his left arm round the sick man's head, raised him up
and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each spoonful steadily
and earnestly, as though this process was the principal and most
effective means towards his friend's recovery. Raskolnikov said
nothing and made no resistance, though he felt quite strong enough to
sit up on the sofa without support and could not merely have held a
cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have walked about. But from
some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his
strength and lying low for a time, pretending if necessary not to be
yet in full possession of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to
find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of
repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly
released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back
on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now,
down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took note of
it.

"Pashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some
raspberry tea," said Razumihin, going back to his chair and attacking
his soup and beer again.

"And where is she to get raspberries for you?" asked Nastasya,
balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea
through a lump of sugar.

"She'll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Rodya, all sorts of
things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you
decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so
angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work
that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This lodging
of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it, indeed,
because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I could only
remember it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov's house. I kept trying
to find that Harlamov's house, and afterwards it turned out that it
was not Harlamov's, but Buch's. How one muddles up sound sometimes! So
I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the address bureau next
day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked you up! Your name is
down there."

"My name!"

"I should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find
while I was there. Well, it's a long story. But as soon as I did land
on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs--all, all, brother,
I know everything; Nastasya here will tell you. I made the
acquaintance of Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, and the house-
porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the head clerk in the
police office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka; Nastasya here
knows. . . ."

"He's got round her," Nastasya murmured, smiling slyly.

"Why don't you put the sugar in your tea, Nastasya Nikiforovna?"

"You are a one!" Nastasya cried suddenly, going off into a giggle. "I
am not Nikiforovna, but Petrovna," she added suddenly, recovering from
her mirth.

"I'll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story short, I
was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all malignant
influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I had not
expected, brother, to find her so . . . prepossessing. Eh, what do you
think?"

Raskolnikov did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon him,
full of alarm.

"And all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect," Razumihin
went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.

"Ah, the sly dog!" Nastasya shrieked again. This conversation afforded
her unspeakable delight.

"It's a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way
at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so to
speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her
character later. . . . How could you let things come to such a pass
that she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I O U? You must
have been mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of marriage when her
daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive? . . . I know all about it! But
I see that's a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But,
talking of foolishness, do you know Praskovya Pavlovna is not nearly
so foolish as you would think at first sight?"

"No," mumbled Raskolnikov, looking away, but feeling that it was
better to keep up the conversation.

"She isn't, is she?" cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out
of him. "But she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially,
essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a
loss, I assure you. . . . She must be forty; she says she is thirty-
six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge
her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there
is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what
not! I don't understand it! Well, that's all nonsense. Only, seeing
that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your
clothes, and that through the young lady's death she has no need to
treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in
your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to
get rid of you. And she's been cherishing that design a long time, but
was sorry to lose the I O U, for you assured her yourself that your
mother would pay."

"It was base of me to say that. . . . My mother herself is almost a
beggar . . . and I told a lie to keep my lodging . . . and be fed,"
Raskolnikov said loudly and distinctly.

"Yes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point
Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never have
thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but
the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the
question, 'Is there any hope of realising the I O U?' Answer: there
is, because he has a mother who would save her Rodya with her hundred
and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a
sister, too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That's what he
was building upon. . . . Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs
of your affairs now, my dear boy--it's not for nothing that you were
so open with Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I
say all this as a friend. . . . But I tell you what it is; an honest
and sensitive man is open; and a business man 'listens and goes on
eating' you up. Well, then she gave the I O U by way of payment to
this Tchebarov, and without hesitation he made a formal demand for
payment. When I heard of all this I wanted to blow him up, too, to
clear my conscience, but by that time harmony reigned between me and
Pashenka, and I insisted on stopping the whole affair, engaging that
you would pay. I went security for you, brother. Do you understand? We
called Tchebarov, flung him ten roubles and got the I O U back from
him, and here I have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts
your word now. Here, take it, you see I have torn it."

Razumihin put the note on the table. Raskolnikov looked at him and
turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a
twinge.

"I see, brother," he said a moment later, "that I have been playing
the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my chatter, and I
believe I have only made you cross."

"Was it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?" Raskolnikov
asked, after a moment's pause without turning his head.

"Yes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought
Zametov one day."

"Zametov? The head clerk? What for?" Raskolnikov turned round quickly
and fixed his eyes on Razumihin.

"What's the matter with you? . . . What are you upset about? He wanted
to make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about you.
. . . How could I have found out so much except from him? He is a
capital fellow, brother, first-rate . . . in his own way, of course.
Now we are friends--see each other almost every day. I have moved into
this part, you know. I have only just moved. I've been with him to
Luise Ivanovna once or twice. . . . Do you remember Luise, Luise
Ivanovna?

"Did I say anything in delirium?"

"I should think so! You were beside yourself."

"What did I rave about?"

"What next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about. . . .
Well, brother, now I must not lose time. To work." He got up from the
table and took up his cap.

"What did I rave about?"

"How he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret? Don't
worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you said a lot
about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and about Krestovsky
Island, and some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Ilya Petrovitch, the
assistant superintendent. And another thing that was of special
interest to you was your own sock. You whined, 'Give me my sock.'
Zametov hunted all about your room for your socks, and with his own
scented, ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And only then were
you comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you held the
wretched thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It is most
likely somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you asked
so piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find out what
sort of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to business! Here
are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and shall give you an
account of them in an hour or two. I will let Zossimov know at the
same time, though he ought to have been here long ago, for it is
nearly twelve. And you, Nastasya, look in pretty often while I am
away, to see whether he wants a drink or anything else. And I will
tell Pashenka what is wanted myself. Good-bye!"

"He calls her Pashenka! Ah, he's a deep one!" said Nastasya as he went
out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could not
resist running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear what
he would say to the landlady. She was evidently quite fascinated by
Razumihin.

No sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the
bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, twitching
impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to
work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.

"Good God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not? What
if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am laid
up, and then they will come in and tell me that it's been discovered
long ago and that they have only . . . What am I to do now? That's
what I've forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I
remembered a minute ago."

He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable bewilderment
about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened; but that was
not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling something, he rushed
to the corner where there was a hole under the paper, began examining
it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled--but that was not it. He went
to the stove, opened it and began rummaging in the ashes; the frayed
edges of his trousers and the rags cut off his pocket were lying there
just as he had thrown them. No one had looked, then! Then he
remembered the sock about which Razumihin had just been telling him.
Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the quilt, but it was so covered
with dust and grime that Zametov could not have seen anything on it.

"Bah, Zametov! The police office! And why am I sent for to the police
office? Where's the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I
looked at my sock then, too, but now . . . now I have been ill. But
what did Zametov come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?" he muttered,
helplessly sitting on the sofa again. "What does it mean? Am I still
in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real. . . . Ah, I
remember; I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must
escape! Yes . . . but where? And where are my clothes? I've no boots.
They've taken them away! They've hidden them! I understand! Ah, here
is my coat--they passed that over! And here is money on the table,
thank God! And here's the I O U . . . I'll take the money and go and
take another lodging. They won't find me! . . . Yes, but the address
bureau? They'll find me, Razumihin will find me. Better escape
altogether . . . far away . . . to America, and let them do their
worst! And take the I O U . . . it would be of use there. . . . What
else shall I take? They think I am ill! They don't know that I can
walk, ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it!
If only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch
there--policemen! What's this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a
bottle, cold!"

He snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer,
and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his
breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a
faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and
pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more
and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon
him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head into the pillow,
wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had
replaced the old, ragged greatcoat, sighed softly and sank into a
deep, sound, refreshing sleep.

He woke up, hearing someone come in. He opened his eyes and saw
Razumihin standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or
not. Raskolnikov sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as
though trying to recall something.

"Ah, you are not asleep! Here I am! Nastasya, bring in the parcel!"
Razumihin shouted down the stairs. "You shall have the account
directly."

"What time is it?" asked Raskolnikov, looking round uneasily.

"Yes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it's almost evening, it will be
six o'clock directly. You have slept more than six hours."

"Good heavens! Have I?"

"And why not? It will do you good. What's the hurry? A tryst, is it?
We've all time before us. I've been waiting for the last three hours
for you; I've been up twice and found you asleep. I've called on
Zossimov twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn
up. And I've been out on my own business, too. You know I've been
moving to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me
now. But that's no matter, to business. Give me the parcel, Nastasya.
We will open it directly. And how do you feel now, brother?"

"I am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin, have you been here long?"

"I tell you I've been waiting for the last three hours."

"No, before."

"How do you mean?"

"How long have you been coming here?"

"Why I told you all about it this morning. Don't you remember?"

Raskolnikov pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He could
not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.

"Hm!" said the latter, "he has forgotten. I fancied then that you were
not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep. . . . You
really look much better. First-rate! Well, to business. Look here, my
dear boy."

He began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him.

"Believe me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For
we must make a man of you. Let's begin from the top. Do you see this
cap?" he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good though cheap and
ordinary cap. "Let me try it on."

"Presently, afterwards," said Raskolnikov, waving it off pettishly.

"Come, Rodya, my boy, don't oppose it, afterwards will be too late;
and I shan't sleep all night, for I bought it by guess, without
measure. Just right!" he cried triumphantly, fitting it on, "just your
size! A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress and a
recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always
obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public
place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does
it from slavish politeness, but it's simply because he is ashamed of
his bird's nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Nastasya, here
are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston"--he took from the
corner Raskolnikov's old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason,
he called a Palmerston--"or this jewel! Guess the price, Rodya, what
do you suppose I paid for it, Nastasya!" he said, turning to her,
seeing that Raskolnikov did not speak.

"Twenty copecks, no more, I dare say," answered Nastasya.

"Twenty copecks, silly!" he cried, offended. "Why, nowadays you would
cost more than that--eighty copecks! And that only because it has been
worn. And it's bought on condition that when's it's worn out, they
will give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let us
pass to the United States of America, as they called them at school. I
assure you I am proud of these breeches," and he exhibited to
Raskolnikov a pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen material.
"No holes, no spots, and quite respectable, although a little worn;
and a waistcoat to match, quite in the fashion. And its being worn
really is an improvement, it's softer, smoother. . . . You see, Rodya,
to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the world is always
to keep to the seasons; if you don't insist on having asparagus in
January, you keep your money in your purse; and it's the same with
this purchase. It's summer now, so I've been buying summer things--
warmer materials will be wanted for autumn, so you will have to throw
these away in any case . . . especially as they will be done for by
then from their own lack of coherence if not your higher standard of
luxury. Come, price them! What do you say? Two roubles twenty-five
copecks! And remember the condition: if you wear these out, you will
have another suit for nothing! They only do business on that system at
Fedyaev's; if you've bought a thing once, you are satisfied for life,
for you will never go there again of your own free will. Now for the
boots. What do you say? You see that they are a bit worn, but they'll
last a couple of months, for it's foreign work and foreign leather;
the secretary of the English Embassy sold them last week--he had only
worn them six days, but he was very short of cash. Price--a rouble and
a half. A bargain?"

"But perhaps they won't fit," observed Nastasya.

"Not fit? Just look!" and he pulled out of his pocket Raskolnikov's
old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. "I did not go empty-
handed--they took the size from this monster. We all did our best. And
as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin with
are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front. . . . Well now
then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the
suit--together three roubles five copecks--a rouble and a half for the
boots--for, you see, they are very good--and that makes four roubles
fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the underclothes--they were
bought in the lo-- which makes exactly nine roubles fifty-five
copecks. Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will you take it? And
so, Rodya, you are set up with a complete new rig-out, for your
overcoat will serve, and even has a style of its own. That comes from
getting one's clothes from Sharmer's! As for your socks and other
things, I leave them to you; we've twenty-five roubles left. And as
for Pashenka and paying for your lodging, don't you worry. I tell you
she'll trust you for anything. And now, brother, let me change your
linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness with your shirt."

"Let me be! I don't want to!" Raskolnikov waved him off. He had
listened with disgust to Razumihin's efforts to be playful about his
purchases.

"Come, brother, don't tell me I've been trudging around for nothing,"
Razumihin insisted. "Nastasya, don't be bashful, but help me--that's
it," and in spite of Raskolnikov's resistance he changed his linen.
The latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two said
nothing.

"It will be long before I get rid of them," he thought. "What money
was all that bought with?" he asked at last, gazing at the wall.

"Money? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Vahrushin, your
mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?"

"I remember now," said Raskolnikov after a long, sullen silence.
Razumihin looked at him, frowning and uneasy.

The door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed familiar
to Raskolnikov came in.



CHAPTER IV

Zossimov was a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven
face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring
on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey
fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about
him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was
irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow
and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and
easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was
apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious,
but said he was clever at his work.

"I've been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he's come to
himself," cried Razumihin.

"I see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?" said Zossimov to
Raskolnikov, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of
the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could.

"He is still depressed," Razumihin went on. "We've just changed his
linen and he almost cried."

"That's very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish it.
. . . His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?"

"I am well, I am perfectly well!" Raskolnikov declared positively and
irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with
glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned to
the wall. Zossimov watched him intently.

"Very good. . . . Going on all right," he said lazily. "Has he eaten
anything?"

They told him, and asked what he might have.

"He may have anything . . . soup, tea . . . mushrooms and cucumbers,
of course, you must not give him; he'd better not have meat either,
and . . . but no need to tell you that!" Razumihin and he looked at
each other. "No more medicine or anything. I'll look at him again
to-morrow. Perhaps, to-day even . . . but never mind . . ."

"To-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk," said Razumihin. "We
are going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de 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 to-night; it's
only a step from here. Couldn't he come? He could lie on the sofa. You
are coming?" Razumihin said to Zossimov. "Don't forget, you promised."

"All right, only rather later. What are you going to do?"

"Oh, nothing--tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie . . . just our
friends."

"And who?"

"All neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle, and
he is new too--he only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see to some
business of his. We meet once in five years."

"What is he?"

"He's been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets a
little pension. He is sixty-five--not worth talking about. . . . But I
am fond of him. Porfiry Petrovitch, the head of the Investigation
Department here . . . But you know him."

"Is he a relation of yours, too?"

"A very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you quarrelled
once, won't you come then?"

"I don't care a damn for him."

"So much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a
government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zametov."

"Do tell me, please, what you or he"--Zossimov nodded at Raskolnikov--
"can have in common with this Zametov?"

"Oh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by
principles, as it were by springs; you won't venture to turn round on
your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that's the only principle
I go upon. Zametov is a delightful person."

"Though he does take bribes."

"Well, he does! and what of it? I don't care if he does take bribes,"
Razumihin cried with unnatural irritability. "I don't praise him for
taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one
looks at men in all ways--are there many good ones left? Why, I am
sure I shouldn't be worth a baked onion myself . . . perhaps with you
thrown in."

"That's too little; I'd give two for you."

"And I wouldn't give more than one for you. No more of your jokes!
Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw
him not repel him. You'll never improve a man by repelling him,
especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you
progressive dullards! You don't understand. You harm yourselves
running another man down. . . . But if you want to know, we really
have something in common."

"I should like to know what."

"Why, it's all about a house-painter. . . . We are getting him out of
a mess! Though indeed there's nothing to fear now. The matter is
absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam."

"A painter?"

"Why, haven't I told you about it? I only told you the beginning then
about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter is
mixed up in it . . ."

"Oh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in it
. . . partly . . . for one reason. . . . I read about it in the
papers, too. . . ."

"Lizaveta was murdered, too," Nastasya blurted out, suddenly
addressing Raskolnikov. She remained in the room all the time,
standing by the door listening.

"Lizaveta," murmured Raskolnikov hardly audibly.

"Lizaveta, who sold old clothes. Didn't you know her? She used to come
here. She mended a shirt for you, too."

Raskolnikov turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he
picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began
examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the
petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as
lifeless as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to move,
but stared obstinately at the flower.

"But what about the painter?" Zossimov interrupted Nastasya's chatter
with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent.

"Why, he was accused of the murder," Razumihin went on hotly.

"Was there evidence against him then?"

"Evidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that's what we
have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Koch and
Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly it's all done, it makes one
sick, though it's not one's business! Pestryakov may be coming
to-night. . . . By the way, Rodya, you've heard about the business
already; it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted
at the police office while they were talking about it."

Zossimov looked curiously at Raskolnikov. He did not stir.

"But I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!"
Zossimov observed.

"Maybe I am, but we will get him off anyway," shouted Razumihin,
bringing his fist down on the table. "What's the most offensive is not
their lying--one can always forgive lying--lying is a delightful
thing, for it leads to truth--what is offensive is that they lie and
worship their own lying. . . . I respect Porfiry, but . . . What threw
them out at first? The door was locked, and when they came back with
the porter it was open. So it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were
the murderers--that was their logic!"

"But don't excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could not
help that. . . . And, by the way, I've met that man Koch. He used to
buy unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?"

"Yes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a
profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me angry?
It's their sickening rotten, petrified routine. . . . And this case
might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from the
psychological data alone how to get on the track of the real man. 'We
have facts,' they say. But facts are not everything--at least half the
business lies in how you interpret them!"

"Can you interpret them, then?"

"Anyway, one can't hold one's tongue when one has a feeling, a
tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only. . . . Eh! Do you
know the details of the case?"

"I am waiting to hear about the painter."

"Oh, yes! Well, here's the story. Early on the third day after the
murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov--though they
accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff-
an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a
dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a jeweller's
case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long rigamarole. 'The
day before yesterday, just after eight o'clock'--mark the day and the
hour!--'a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had been in to see me
already that day, brought me this box of gold ear-rings and stones,
and asked me to give him two roubles for them. When I asked him where
he got them, he said that he picked them up in the street. I did not
ask him anything more.' I am telling you Dushkin's story. 'I gave him
a note'--a rouble that is--'for I thought if he did not pawn it with
me he would with another. It would all come to the same thing--he'd
spend it on drink, so the thing had better be with me. The further you
hide it the quicker you will find it, and if anything turns up, if I
hear any rumours, I'll take it to the police.' Of course, that's all
taradiddle; he lies like a horse, for I know this Dushkin, he is a
pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen goods, and he did not cheat
Nikolay out of a thirty-rouble trinket in order to give it to the
police. He was simply afraid. But no matter, to return to Dushkin's
story. 'I've known this peasant, Nikolay Dementyev, from a child; he
comes from the same province and district of Zaraïsk, we are both
Ryazan men. And though Nikolay is not a drunkard, he drinks, and I
knew he had a job in that house, painting work with Dmitri, who comes
from the same village, too. As soon as he got the rouble he changed
it, had a couple of glasses, took his change and went out. But I did
not see Dmitri with him then. And the next day I heard that someone
had murdered Alyona Ivanovna and her sister, Lizaveta Ivanovna, with
an axe. I knew them, and I felt suspicious about the ear-rings at
once, for I knew the murdered woman lent money on pledges. I went to
the house, and began to make careful inquiries without saying a word
to anyone. First of all I asked, "Is Nikolay here?" Dmitri told me
that Nikolay had gone off on the spree; he had come home at daybreak
drunk, stayed in the house about ten minutes, and went out again.
Dmitri didn't see him again and is finishing the job alone. And their
job is on the same staircase as the murder, on the second floor. When
I heard all that I did not say a word to anyone'--that's Dushkin's
tale--'but I found out what I could about the murder, and went home
feeling as suspicious as ever. And at eight o'clock this morning'--
that was the third day, you understand--'I saw Nikolay coming in, not
sober, though not to say very drunk--he could understand what was said
to him. He sat down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one
stranger in the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two
boys. "Have you seen Dmitri?" said I. "No, I haven't," said he. "And
you've not been here either?" "Not since the day before yesterday,"
said he. "And where did you sleep last night?" "In Peski, with the
Kolomensky men." "And where did you get those ear-rings?" I asked. "I
found them in the street," and the way he said it was a bit queer; he
did not look at me. "Did you hear what happened that very evening, at
that very hour, on that same staircase?" said I. "No," said he, "I had
not heard," and all the while he was listening, his eyes were staring
out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I told him all about
it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted to keep him.
"Wait a bit, Nikolay," said I, "won't you have a drink?" And I signed
to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the bar; but
he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run. I have not
seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end--it was his doing, as
clear as could be. . . .'"

"I should think so," said Zossimov.

"Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay;
they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was
arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the day
before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of the
town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and asked
for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards the
woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in
the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam,
stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose.
The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. 'So that's what you
are up to!' 'Take me,' he says, 'to such-and-such a police officer;
I'll confess everything.' Well, they took him to that police station--
that is here--with a suitable escort. So they asked him this and that,
how old he is, 'twenty-two,' and so on. At the question, 'When you
were working with Dmitri, didn't you see anyone on the staircase at
such-and-such a time?'--answer: 'To be sure folks may have gone up and
down, but I did not notice them.' 'And didn't you hear anything, any
noise, and so on?' 'We heard nothing special.' 'And did you hear,
Nikolay, that on the same day Widow So-and-so and her sister were
murdered and robbed?' 'I never knew a thing about it. The first I
heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch the day before yesterday.'
'And where did you find the ear-rings?' 'I found them on the pavement.'
'Why didn't you go to work with Dmitri the other day?' 'Because I was
drinking.' 'And where were you drinking?' 'Oh, in such-and-such a
place.' 'Why did you run away from Dushkin's?' 'Because I was awfully
frightened.' 'What were you frightened of?' 'That I should be
accused.' 'How could you be frightened, if you felt free from guilt?'
Now, Zossimov, you may not believe me, that question was put literally
in those words. I know it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly!
What do you say to that?"

"Well, anyway, there's the evidence."

"I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that
question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed and
squeezed him and he confessed: 'I did not find it in the street, but
in the flat where I was painting with Dmitri.' 'And how was that?'
'Why, Dmitri and I were painting there all day, and we were just
getting ready to go, and Dmitri took a brush and painted my face, and
he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my hardest, and
at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the porter and some
gentlemen--and how many gentlemen were there I don't remember. And the
porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too, and the porter's
wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a gentleman came into the
entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too, for Dmitri and I lay right
across the way. I got hold of Dmitri's hair and knocked him down and
began beating him. And Dmitri, too, caught me by the hair and began
beating me. But we did it all not for temper but in a friendly way,
for sport. And then Dmitri escaped and ran into the street, and I ran
after him; but I did not catch him, and went back to the flat alone; I
had to clear up my things. I began putting them together, expecting
Dmitri to come, and there in the passage, in the corner by the door, I
stepped on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped up in paper. I took
off the paper, saw some little hooks, undid them, and in the box were
the ear-rings. . . .'"

"Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?" Raskolnikov
cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at Razumihin, and
he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.

"Yes . . . why? What's the matter? What's wrong?" Razumihin, too, got
up from his seat.

"Nothing," Raskolnikov answered faintly, turning to the wall. All were
silent for a while.

"He must have waked from a dream," Razumihin said at last, looking
inquiringly at Zossimov. The latter slightly shook his head.

"Well, go on," said Zossimov. "What next?"

"What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Dmitri and
everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got
a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street,
and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the
murder: 'I know nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before
yesterday.' 'And why didn't you come to the police till now?' 'I was
frightened.' 'And why did you try to hang yourself?' 'From anxiety.'
'What anxiety?' 'That I should be accused of it.' Well, that's the
whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?"

"Why, there's no supposing. There's a clue, such as it is, a fact. You
wouldn't have your painter set free?"

"Now they've simply taken him for the murderer. They haven't a shadow
of doubt."

"That's nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You
must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the
old woman's box have come into Nikolay's hands, they must have come
there somehow. That's a good deal in such a case."

"How did they get there? How did they get there?" cried Razumihin.
"How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more
opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature--how can you
fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don't you see
at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the holy
truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us--he stepped
on the box and picked it up."

"The holy truth! But didn't he own himself that he told a lie at
first?"

"Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and Pestryakov
and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and the woman
who was sitting in the porter's lodge and the man Kryukov, who had
just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the entry with a
lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Nikolay
had Dmitri on the ground, was lying on him beating him, while Dmitri
hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way,
blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they
'like children' (the very words of the witnesses) were falling over
one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces,
and, chasing one another like children, they ran into the street. Now
take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm, you understand, warm
when they found them! If they, or Nikolay alone, had murdered them and
broken open the boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me
to ask you one question: do their state of mind, their squeals and
giggles and childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes,
bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They'd just killed them, not
five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and at
once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go there at
once, flinging away their booty, they rolled about like children,
laughing and attracting general attention. And there are a dozen
witnesses to swear to that!"

"Of course it is strange! It's impossible, indeed, but . . ."

"No, brother, no /buts/. And if the ear-rings being found in Nikolay's
hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important
piece of circumstantial evidence against him--although the explanation
given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously
against him--one must take into consideration the facts which prove
him innocent, especially as they are facts that /cannot be denied/.
And do you suppose, from the character of our legal system, that they
will accept, or that they are in a position to accept, this fact--
resting simply on a psychological impossibility--as irrefutable and
conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence for the
prosecution? No, they won't accept it, they certainly won't, because
they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself, 'which he
could not have done if he hadn't felt guilty.' That's the point,
that's what excites me, you must understand!"

"Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what
proof is there that the box came from the old woman?"

"That's been proved," said Razumihin with apparent reluctance,
frowning. "Koch recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the
owner, who proved conclusively that it was his."

"That's bad. Now another point. Did anyone see Nikolay at the time
that Koch and Pestryakov were going upstairs at first, and is there no
evidence about that?"

"Nobody did see him," Razumihin answered with vexation. "That's the
worst of it. Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them on their way
upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth
much. They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be
work going on in it, but they took no special notice and could not
remember whether there actually were men at work in it."

"Hm! . . . So the only evidence for the defence is that they were
beating one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong
presumption, but . . . How do you explain the facts yourself?"

"How do I explain them? What is there to explain? It's clear. At any
rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and
the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those ear-
rings. The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and Pestryakov
knocked at the door. Koch, like an ass, did not stay at the door; so
the murderer popped out and ran down, too; for he had no other way of
escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in the flat when
Nikolay and Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped there while the
porter and others were going upstairs, waited till they were out of
hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the very minute when
Dmitri and Nikolay ran out into the street and there was no one in the
entry; possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There are lots of people
going in and out. He must have dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket
when he stood behind the door, and did not notice he dropped them,
because he had other things to think of. The jewel-case is a
conclusive proof that he did stand there. . . . That's how I explain
it."

"Too clever! No, my boy, you're too clever. That beats everything."

"But, why, why?"

"Why, because everything fits too well . . . it's too melodramatic."

"A-ach!" Razumihin was exclaiming, but at that moment the door opened
and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present.



CHAPTER V

This was a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly
appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by stopping
short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and undisguised
astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of place he had come
to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being alarmed and almost
affronted, he scanned Raskolnikov's low and narrow "cabin." With the
same amazement he stared at Raskolnikov, who lay undressed,
dishevelled, unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa, looking fixedly at
him. Then with the same deliberation he scrutinised the uncouth,
unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly
and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A
constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might
be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from
certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this
"cabin" by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened
somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising every
syllable of his question, addressed Zossimov:

"Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, a student, or formerly a student?"

Zossimov made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not
Razumihin anticipated him.

"Here he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?"

This familiar "what do you want" seemed to cut the ground from the
feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but
checked himself in time and turned to Zossimov again.

"This is Raskolnikov," mumbled Zossimov, nodding towards him. Then he
gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible. Then he
lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a huge gold
watch in a round hunter's case, opened it, looked at it and as slowly
and lazily proceeded to put it back.

Raskolnikov himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing
persistently, though without understanding, at the stranger. Now that
his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it was
extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just
undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But
the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his
wonder, then suspicion and even alarm. When Zossimov said "This is
Raskolnikov" he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an almost
defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated:

"Yes, I am Raskolnikov! What do you want?"

The visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively:

"Pyotr Petrovitch Luzhin. I believe I have reason to hope that my name
is not wholly unknown to you?"

But Raskolnikov, who had expected something quite different, gazed
blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the
name of Pyotr Petrovitch for the first time.

"Is it possible that you can up to the present have received no
information?" asked Pyotr Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.

In reply Raskolnikov sank languidly back on the pillow, put his hands
behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay came into
Luzhin's face. Zossimov and Razumihin stared at him more inquisitively
than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of embarrassment.

"I had presumed and calculated," he faltered, "that a letter posted
more than ten days, if not a fortnight ago . . ."

"I say, why are you standing in the doorway?" Razumihin interrupted
suddenly. "If you've something to say, sit down. Nastasya and you are
so crowded. Nastasya, make room. Here's a chair, thread your way in!"

He moved his chair back from the table, made a little space between
the table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped position for
the visitor to "thread his way in." The minute was so chosen that it
was impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed his way through,
hurrying and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat down, looking
suspiciously at Razumihin.



 


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