Part One · VI

Later Raskolnikov somehow happened to learn why exactly the townsman and the woman had invited Lizaveta to their place. The matter was the most ordinary one and had nothing particularly special about it. A family that had come to town and fallen on hard times was selling some things, dresses and so on, all women’s things. Since selling at the market was unprofitable, they were looking for a dealer, and Lizaveta did this sort of thing: she took commissions, went around on business, and had a large practice, because she was very honest and always named her lowest price: whatever price she named, so it would be. She spoke little in general, and, as has already been said, she was so meek and timid…

But lately Raskolnikov had become superstitious. Traces of superstition remained in him long afterward, almost indelibly. And in this whole affair he was always inclined afterward to see something strange, as it were, something mysterious, as though there had been the presence of some special influences and coincidences. Back in the winter a student he knew, Pokorev, on leaving for Kharkov, had somehow told him in conversation the address of the old woman Alyona Ivanovna, in case he ever had anything to pawn. For a long time he did not go to her, because he had lessons and was managing to get by somehow. Six weeks or so ago he had remembered the address; he had two things fit to pawn: his father’s old silver watch and a small gold ring with three little red stones of some kind, which his sister had given him as a keepsake when they parted. He decided to take the ring; having found the old woman, at the very first glance, knowing nothing particular about her yet, he felt an irresistible loathing for her, took two “little notes” from her, and on the way home went into a wretched little tavern. He asked for tea, sat down, and sank deep in thought. A strange idea was pecking its way out in his head, like a chick from an egg, and it very, very much absorbed him.

Almost beside him, at another table, sat a student whom he did not know at all and did not remember, and a young officer. They had played a game of billiards and begun drinking tea. Suddenly he heard the student telling the officer about the moneylender Alyona Ivanovna, a collegiate secretary’s widow, and giving him her address. This alone struck Raskolnikov as somehow strange: he had just come from there, and here they were talking about her. Of course it was chance, but here he was, unable to shake off one very extraordinary impression, and here, just then, someone seemed to be doing him a service: the student suddenly began telling his friend various details about this Alyona Ivanovna.

“She’s a fine one,” he was saying, “you can always get money from her. She’s as rich as a Jew, she could hand out five thousand at one go, and yet she doesn’t turn up her nose at a one-rouble pledge. Lots of our fellows have been to her. Only she’s a horrible bitch…”

And he began telling how spiteful she was, how capricious, how you had only to be one day late redeeming a pledge and the thing was lost. She gave a quarter of what a thing was worth and took five and even seven percent a month in interest, and so on. The student had got talkative and told him, besides, that the old woman had a sister, Lizaveta, whom she, so tiny and nasty herself, beat every minute and kept in complete subjection, like a small child, whereas Lizaveta was at least eight vershoks tall…

“There’s a phenomenon for you!” the student cried, and burst out laughing.

They began to talk about Lizaveta. The student talked about her with a sort of peculiar pleasure and kept laughing, and the officer listened with great interest and asked the student to send this Lizaveta to him to mend his linen. Raskolnikov did not miss a single word and learned everything at once: Lizaveta was the old woman’s younger half sister (by different mothers), and she was already thirty-five. She worked for her sister day and night, served in the house as cook and laundress, and besides that sewed things for sale, even hired herself out to wash floors, and gave everything to her sister. She dared not take any order or any work without the old woman’s permission. The old woman had already made her will, which Lizaveta herself knew, and by the will she was not to get a single kopeck, apart from the movables, the chairs and so on; all the money was left to a monastery in N—— Province, for prayers for her soul in perpetuity. Lizaveta was of the townsman class, not of a civil servant’s family, a spinster, and terribly ungainly in looks, remarkably tall, with long, splayed-looking great feet, always in worn-down goatskin shoes, and she kept herself clean. But the main thing that surprised the student and made him laugh was that Lizaveta was perpetually pregnant…

“But you say she’s a freak?” the officer remarked.

“Yes, she’s so swarthy, like a soldier in disguise, but you know, she’s not a freak at all. She has such a kind face and eyes. Very much so, even. The proof is, lots of men like her. She’s so quiet, so meek, never answers back, agreeable, agrees to anything. And her smile is even very nice.”

“Why, you like her yourself?” the officer laughed.

“It’s a quirk of mine. No, I’ll tell you what. I would kill that damned old woman and rob her, and I assure you, without the slightest twinge of conscience,” the student added hotly.

The officer guffawed again, and Raskolnikov gave a start. How strange this was!

“Let me ask you a serious question,” the student said, growing heated. “I was joking just now, of course, but look: on one side a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, sick old crone, no use to anyone and, on the contrary, harmful to everyone, who doesn’t know herself what she lives for, and who will die on her own tomorrow anyway. You understand? You understand?”

“Well, I understand,” the officer answered, gazing attentively at his overheated friend.

“Listen further. On the other side, young, fresh forces going to waste for lack of support, and by the thousands, and everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and undertakings that could be set going and set right with the old woman’s money, which is doomed to a monastery! Hundreds, thousands, perhaps, of lives set on the right road; dozens of families saved from destitution, from decay, from ruin, from depravity, from the venereal hospitals—and all with her money. Kill her and take her money, so that with its help you can afterward devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause: what do you think, wouldn’t one tiny little crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life, thousands of lives saved from rot and decay. One death and a hundred lives in exchange—why, it’s arithmetic! And what does the life of this consumptive, stupid, spiteful old crone weigh on the general scales? No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and not even that, because the old crone is harmful. She’s eating up other people’s lives: the other day she bit Lizaveta’s finger out of spite; they very nearly had to cut it off!”

“Of course, she isn’t worthy to live,” the officer remarked, “but there’s nature, after all.”

“Eh, brother, but nature gets corrected and directed, and without that we’d have to drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn’t be a single great man. They say ‘duty, conscience’—I don’t want to say anything against duty and conscience—but how do we understand them? Wait, I’ll ask you one more question. Listen!”

“No, you wait; I’ll ask you a question. Listen!”

“Well!”

“Here you are talking and orating, but tell me: would you kill the old woman yourself or not?”

“Of course not! I’m talking about justice… It’s not about me…”

“Well, the way I see it, if you won’t bring yourself to do it, then there’s no justice in it at all! Let’s have another game!”

Raskolnikov was in extraordinary agitation. Of course, these were all the most ordinary and most frequent youthful conversations and thoughts, which he had heard more than once, only in other forms and on other subjects. But why precisely now did he have to hear precisely such a conversation and such thoughts, when exactly the same thoughts had only just been born… in his own head? And why precisely now, the moment he had carried away the germ of his idea from the old woman, should he happen on a conversation about the old woman?… This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial tavern conversation had an extraordinary influence on him in the further development of the affair: as though there really had been some predestination in it, some sign… . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Coming back from the Haymarket, he threw himself on the sofa and sat for a whole hour without moving. Meanwhile it had grown dark; he had no candle, and it did not even enter his head to light one. He could never recall whether he had been thinking about anything at that time. At last he felt the fever of earlier, the chill, and realized with delight that he could lie down on the sofa as well. Soon a heavy, leaden sleep weighed down on him, as if crushing him.

He slept an extraordinarily long time and without dreams. Nastasya, who came into his room at ten o’clock the next morning, could barely shake him awake. She had brought him tea and bread. The tea was once again made from used leaves, and once again in her own teapot.

“My, how he sleeps!” she cried indignantly. “He’s forever sleeping!”

He raised himself with an effort. His head ached; he got up on his feet, turned around in his little room, and dropped back onto the sofa.

“Sleeping again!” cried Nastasya. “Are you sick or something?”

He made no answer.

“Want some tea?”

“Later,” he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and turning toward the wall. Nastasya stood over him a while.

“Maybe he really is sick,” she said, turned, and left.

She came in again at two o’clock, with soup. He was lying as before. The tea stood untouched. Nastasya even took offense and began shoving him angrily.

“What are you snoring away for!” she cried, looking at him with disgust. He raised himself and sat up, but said nothing to her and stared at the floor.

“Are you sick or not?” Nastasya asked, and again got no answer.

“You ought at least to go out in the street,” she said after a silence, “at least get some air blown over you. Are you going to eat or what?”

“Later,” he said weakly, “go away!” and waved his hand.

She stood a little longer, looked at him with compassion, and went out.

A few minutes later he raised his eyes and looked for a long time at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took the spoon, and began to eat.

He ate a little, without appetite, three or four spoonfuls, as if mechanically. His head ached less. Having eaten, he stretched out on the sofa again, but he could no longer fall asleep and lay without moving, face down, his face buried in the pillow. He kept daydreaming, and such strange daydreams they all were: most often he imagined he was somewhere in Africa, in Egypt, in some oasis. The caravan is resting, the camels are lying quietly; all around, palms grow in a whole circle; everyone is having dinner. But he keeps drinking water, straight from a stream that flows and babbles right there beside him. And it is so cool, and such wonderful, wonderful blue water, cold, runs over stones of many colors and over such clean sand with gold glints in it… Suddenly he heard clearly a clock striking. He gave a start, came to, raised his head, looked at the window, worked out the time, and suddenly jumped up, completely himself again, as if someone had torn him off the sofa. On tiptoe he went to the door, opened it a crack very quietly, and began listening down the stairs. His heart was beating terribly. But on the stairs everything was quiet, as if everyone were asleep… It seemed wild and strange to him that he could have slept in such oblivion since yesterday and had not yet done anything, had not prepared anything… And meanwhile, perhaps, it had already struck six… And instead of sleep and stupor an extraordinary, feverish, and somehow bewildered bustle suddenly seized him. There were not many preparations, however. He strained every effort to think of everything and forget nothing; and his heart kept beating, thudding so that he found it hard to breathe. First, he had to make a loop and sew it to his coat—a minute’s work. He reached under his pillow and found, among the linen stuffed under it, one old unwashed shirt of his, completely falling apart. From its rags he tore a strip, a vershok wide and about eight vershoks long. He folded this strip double, took off his wide, sturdy summer coat of some thick cotton stuff (his only outer garment), and began sewing both ends of the strip under the left armpit, on the inside. His hands were shaking as he sewed, but he managed it, and so that nothing could be seen from outside when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread had been ready for a long time and were lying in the little table, in a piece of paper. As for the loop, it was a very clever invention of his own: the loop was meant for the ax. He could not carry an ax through the street in his hands, after all. And if he hid it under his coat, he would still have to hold it with his hand, which would be noticeable. But now, with the loop, he had only to set the blade of the ax in it, and it would hang quietly, under his arm on the inside, the whole way. And by putting his hand into the side pocket of his coat, he could also hold the end of the ax handle so that it would not swing; and since the coat was very wide, a real sack, it could not be noticed from outside that he was holding something with his hand, through the pocket. He had thought up this loop two weeks ago too.

Having finished with this, he pushed his fingers into a little crack between his “Turkish” sofa and the floor, felt around near the left corner, and pulled out the pledge he had prepared long ago and hidden there. This pledge, however, was no pledge at all, but simply a smoothly planed little piece of wood, no bigger or thicker than a silver cigarette case might be. He had found this piece of wood by chance on one of his walks, in a courtyard where some sort of workshop was housed in the wing. Afterward he had added to the wooden piece a smooth, thin strip of iron—probably broken off from something—which he had also found in the street that same time. Putting the two pieces together, of which the iron one was smaller than the wooden one, he tied them tightly together, crosswise, with thread; then neatly and elegantly wrapped them in clean white paper and tied it up with a thin little tape, also crosswise, and fixed the knot so that it would be tricky to untie. This was in order to distract the old woman’s attention for a time, when she started fiddling with the knot, and so to seize a moment. The iron plate had been added for weight, so that the old woman would not guess, at least for the first minute, that the “thing” was made of wood. He had been keeping all this under the sofa till the time came. He had only just taken out the pledge when suddenly somewhere in the courtyard someone shouted:

“It’s long past six!”

“Long past! My God!”

He rushed to the door, listened, seized his hat, and began going down his thirteen steps, cautiously, inaudibly, like a cat. The most important thing lay ahead—to steal the ax from the kitchen. That the thing had to be done with an ax he had decided long ago. He also had a folding garden knife; but he had no faith in a knife, and especially not in his own strength, and so he had finally settled on the ax. Let us note in passing one peculiarity regarding all the final decisions he had already made in this affair. They had one strange property: the more final they became, the more hideous and absurd they at once became in his own eyes too. In spite of all his tormenting inner struggle, he could never, not for a single instant, all this time, believe that his plans could be carried out.

And even if it had ever somehow happened that everything had been analyzed by him to the last point and finally decided, and no doubts at all remained any longer, then at that very point, it seems, he would have renounced it all as an absurdity, a monstrosity, and an impossibility. But a whole abyss of unresolved points and doubts still remained. As to where to get an ax, that trifle did not trouble him in the least, because nothing was easier. The thing was that Nastasya, and especially in the evenings, was forever out: she would run off to the neighbors or to the shop, and she always left the door wide open. That was the only thing the landlady quarreled with her about. And so he had only to go quietly into the kitchen when the time came and take the ax, and then, an hour later (when everything was already over), go in and put it back. But doubts presented themselves too: suppose he came back an hour later to put it back, and there was Nastasya, right on the spot, back again. Of course, he would have to walk past and wait until she went out again. But what if in the meantime she missed the ax, began looking for it, raised an outcry—and there was suspicion, or at least grounds for suspicion.

But these were still trifles, which he had not even begun to think about, and anyway there was no time. He was thinking about the main thing and putting off the trifles until he himself was convinced of everything. But that last seemed decidedly unrealizable. So, at least, it seemed to him himself. He could never imagine, for instance, that some day he would stop thinking, get up, and—simply go there… Even his recent rehearsal (that is, the visit with the intention of making a final survey of the place) he had only tried to make, and far from in earnest, but just like that: “Why don’t I go and try it, instead of dreaming!”—and at once he could not stand it, spat, and ran away, in a fury at himself. And yet, one would think, the whole analysis, in the sense of a moral resolution of the question, was already completed: his casuistry had been honed like a razor, and he could no longer find any conscious objections in himself. But in this last respect he simply did not trust himself, and stubbornly, slavishly, he searched for objections on every side and gropingly, as though someone were compelling him and drawing him to it. This last day, though, which had come so unexpectedly and settled everything at once, had affected him almost entirely mechanically: as though someone had taken him by the hand and pulled him along, irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural force, without objections. As though he had caught a bit of his clothing in the wheel of a machine and it had begun to draw him in.

At first—long before, actually—one question had occupied him: why are almost all crimes so easily traced and exposed, and why are the traces of almost all criminals so plainly marked? Little by little he had come to manifold and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime as in the criminal himself; the criminal himself, and almost every criminal, at the moment of the crime suffers a kind of failure of will and reason, which are replaced, on the contrary, by a childish, phenomenal heedlessness, and precisely at the moment when reason and caution are most needed. According to his conviction, it turned out that this eclipse of reason and failure of will seize a man like a disease, develop gradually, and reach their highest point shortly before the crime is committed; continue in the same form at the very moment of the crime and for some time after it, depending on the individual; then pass, just as any disease passes. The question, though, whether the disease gives rise to the crime itself, or whether the crime itself, somehow by its peculiar nature, is always accompanied by something like a disease, he did not yet feel strong enough to resolve.

Having reached such conclusions, he decided that in his own case, in his affair, there could be no such morbid upheavals, that reason and will would remain with him, inalienably, throughout the carrying out of what he had planned, for the sole reason that what he had planned was “not a crime”… We omit the whole process by which he arrived at this last decision; we have run too far ahead as it is… We will add only that the factual, purely material difficulties of the affair in general played the most secondary role in his mind. “One has only to keep all one’s will and all one’s reason over them, and they will all, in their time, be overcome, when one has to acquaint oneself to the finest detail with all the particulars of the affair…” But the affair did not begin. He went on believing least of all in his final decisions, and when the hour struck, everything came out quite differently, somehow by accident, even almost unexpectedly.

One most trivial circumstance stumped him even before he had got down the stairs. On drawing level with the landlady’s kitchen, open wide as always, he cautiously cast a sidelong glance into it to check beforehand: was the landlady herself there, in Nastasya’s absence, and if not, were the doors to her room shut tight, so that she too would not somehow look out from there when he went in for the ax? But what was his amazement when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not only at home this time, in her kitchen, but was busy besides: taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on lines! Seeing him, she stopped hanging, turned toward him, and looked at him the whole time he was passing. He looked away and walked past as if noticing nothing. But it was over: no ax! He was thunderstruck.

“And what made me think,” he thought, going down under the gateway, “what made me think she was sure not to be home at this minute? Why, why, why did I decide it so certainly?” He was crushed, even somehow humiliated. He wanted to laugh at himself out of spite… A dull, bestial rage boiled up in him.

He stopped under the gateway, irresolute. To go out into the street, just for show, for a walk, was repugnant to him; to go back home was more repugnant still. “And what a chance I’ve lost forever!” he muttered, standing aimlessly under the gateway, directly opposite the caretaker’s dark little room, which was also open. Suddenly he gave a start. From the caretaker’s little room, two steps away from him, from under the bench on the right, something flashed in his eyes… He looked around—no one. On tiptoe he went to the caretaker’s room, went down two little steps, and in a weak voice called the caretaker. “Just so, he’s not in! Somewhere close by, though, in the yard, because the door is wide open.” He threw himself headlong at the ax (it was an ax) and dragged it out from under the bench, where it lay between two logs; right there, without going out, he fastened it in the loop, thrust both hands into his pockets, and walked out of the caretaker’s room; nobody had noticed! “If not reason, then the devil!” he thought, smiling strangely. This chance encouraged him extraordinarily.

He walked along quietly and sedately, without hurrying, so as not to give rise to any suspicion. He looked little at the passersby, even tried not to look at faces at all and to be as inconspicuous as possible. Here he remembered his hat. “My God! I even had the money the day before yesterday, and couldn’t change it for a cap!” A curse burst from his soul.

Glancing by chance, with one eye, into a shop, he saw that there, on the wall clock, it was already ten minutes past seven. He had to hurry and at the same time make a detour: come up to the house the roundabout way, from the other side…

Before, when he had happened to picture all this in his imagination, he had sometimes thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much afraid now, was not even afraid at all. At this moment he was even occupied by some extraneous thoughts, only none of them for long. Passing the Yusupov Garden, he even became quite absorbed in the thought of building tall fountains and of how well they would freshen the air in all the squares. Little by little he came to the conviction that if the Summer Garden were extended over the whole of the Field of Mars and even joined to the palace garden of the Mikhailovsky, it would be a splendid and most useful thing for the city. Here he suddenly became interested in why exactly, in all big cities, people are not simply out of necessity, but somehow especially inclined to live and settle precisely in those parts of the city where there are no gardens, no fountains, where there is dirt and stench and every kind of filth. Here he recalled his own walks on the Haymarket, and for a moment he came to. “What nonsense,” he thought. “No, better not to think about anything at all!”

“That must be how people being led to execution fasten their thoughts on every object they meet on the way,” flashed through his head, but only flashed, like lightning; he himself quickly extinguished the thought… But here it was, close now, here was the house, here was the gate. Somewhere suddenly a clock struck once.

“What, can it be half past seven? It can’t be, it must be fast!”

Luckily for him, it went off well again at the gate. More than that, as if on purpose, at that very moment a huge load of hay had just driven in at the gate just ahead of him, screening him completely the whole time he was passing through the gateway, and the moment the load had come out of the gateway into the courtyard, he slipped instantly to the right. There, on the other side of the load, several voices could be heard shouting and arguing, but no one noticed him and no one came toward him. Many windows looking onto that huge square courtyard were open at that moment, but he did not raise his head—he had no strength. The stairs to the old woman’s were close by, immediately to the right of the gate. He was already on the stairs…

Catching his breath and pressing his hand to his pounding heart, and at the same time feeling for the ax and setting it straight once more, he began to climb the stairs cautiously and quietly, listening every minute. But the stairs too were quite empty at that time; all the doors were shut; he met no one at all. On the second floor one empty apartment was, true, wide open, and painters were working in it, but they did not even glance at him. He stood, thought, and went on. “Of course it would be better if they weren’t here at all, but… there are two more floors above them.”

But here was the fourth floor, here was the door, here was the apartment opposite; that one, the empty one. On the third floor, by all the signs, the apartment directly under the old woman’s was empty too: the visiting card that had been tacked to the door with little nails was gone—they had moved out!… He was gasping. For one instant the thought flew through his mind: “Shouldn’t I go away?” But he gave himself no answer and began listening at the old woman’s apartment: dead silence. Then he listened once more down the stairs, listened long, attentively… Then he looked around for the last time, pulled himself together, straightened himself, and tried the ax in the loop once more. “Am I pale… very?” he wondered. “Am I especially agitated? She’s mistrustful… Shouldn’t I wait a bit longer… till my heart stops?…”

But his heart did not stop. On the contrary, as if on purpose, it pounded harder, harder, harder… He could not stand it, slowly reached his hand out to the bell, and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, louder.

No answer. There was no point in ringing for nothing, and it was not in his character anyway. The old woman was at home, of course, but she was suspicious and alone. He knew her habits in part… and once more he pressed his ear close to the door. Whether his senses were so sharpened (which is hard to suppose in general), or whether it really was quite audible, suddenly he made out what seemed a cautious rustle of a hand at the door handle and what seemed the rustle of a dress against the door itself. Someone was standing unnoticed right at the lock and, just as he was here, outside, was listening, hiding inside and, it seemed, also with an ear pressed to the door…

He moved on purpose and muttered something rather loudly, so as not to give any sign that he was hiding; then he rang a third time, but quietly, solidly, and without any impatience. Recalling this later, vividly, clearly—that minute was stamped in him forever—he could not understand where he had got so much cunning, all the more since his mind was, as it were, growing dim at moments, and he could hardly feel his own body… An instant later he heard the bolt being drawn.