Part One · VII

The door, as before, opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and mistrustful eyes fixed on him from the darkness. Here Raskolnikov lost his head and nearly made a serious mistake.

Fearing that the old woman would be frightened at their being alone, and not hoping that the sight of him would reassure her, he took hold of the door and pulled it toward himself, so that the old woman would not somehow think of locking herself in again. Seeing this, she did not jerk the door back toward herself, but she did not let go of the handle of the lock either, so that he nearly pulled her out onto the stairs together with the door. Seeing, however, that she was standing across the doorway and would not let him pass, he walked straight at her. She sprang back in fright, tried to say something, but seemed unable to, and stared at him wide-eyed.

“Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began as casually as he could, but his voice would not obey him, broke off, and trembled, “I’ve… brought you a thing… but here, let’s go over here… to the light…” And, leaving her, he walked straight into the room, without being invited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue was loosened.

“Lord! What do you want?… Who is it? What can I do for you?”

“For pity’s sake, Alyona Ivanovna… someone you know… Raskolnikov… here, I’ve brought the pledge I promised the other day…” And he held the pledge out to her.

The old woman glanced at the pledge, but at once fixed her eyes straight on the eyes of her uninvited guest. She looked attentively, spitefully, and mistrustfully. A minute or so passed; he even thought he saw something like mockery in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened that it seemed if she went on looking like that, without saying a word, for another half minute, he would have run away from her.

“But why are you looking at me like that, as if you didn’t recognize me?” he said suddenly, also with spite. “Take it if you want, and if not, I’ll go to someone else, I haven’t got time.”

He had not even meant to say it; it just said itself, suddenly.

The old woman came to herself, and her visitor’s resolute tone evidently encouraged her.

“But why so sudden, my dear… what is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge.

“A silver cigarette case: I told you last time, didn’t I?”

She held out her hand.

“But why are you so pale? And look, your hands are shaking! Have you been bathing or something, my dear?”

“Fever,” he answered curtly. “You can’t help turning pale… when you’ve nothing to eat,” he added, barely able to get the words out. His strength was leaving him again. But the answer seemed plausible; the old woman took the pledge.

“What is it?” she asked, once more looking Raskolnikov over intently and weighing the pledge in her hand.

“A thing… a cigarette case… silver… have a look.”

“Why, it doesn’t seem to be silver, somehow… My, how he’s wrapped it up.”

Trying to untie the string and turning toward the window, toward the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stuffiness), she left him entirely for a few seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the ax from the loop, but did not take it all the way out yet; he only held it with his right hand under his clothes. His hands were horribly weak; he could feel them himself growing more numb and wooden with every moment. He was afraid he would let go of the ax and drop it… suddenly his head seemed to spin.

“Now what has he gone and wrapped it up like that for!” the old woman cried in vexation, and made a movement toward him.

There was not another instant to lose. He took the ax all the way out, swung it up with both hands, barely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the butt of it down on her head. It was as if his own strength had no part in it. But as soon as he had brought the ax down once, the strength was born in him.

The old woman, as always, had nothing on her head. Her thin, fair, graying hair, greased thickly with oil as usual, was plaited in a rat’s tail of a braid and pinned up under a broken bit of horn comb that stuck out at the back of her head. The blow fell right on the crown of her head, which her small height made easy. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank in a heap to the floor, though she still managed to raise both hands to her head. In one hand she still went on holding the “pledge.” Then with all his strength he struck once and again, each time with the butt, each time on the crown. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, and the body toppled over onto its back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent down to her face; she was already dead. Her eyes were bulging as though they wanted to jump out, and her forehead and her whole face were wrinkled and distorted in a convulsion.

He laid the ax on the floor beside the dead woman and at once reached into her pocket, trying not to get smeared with the flowing blood—that same right-hand pocket from which she had taken out the keys last time. He was in his full senses, there were no more blackouts or dizziness, but his hands were still trembling. He remembered later that he had even been very attentive, careful, and kept trying not to get stained… He took out the keys at once; they were all, as before, in one bunch, on one steel ring. At once he ran with them into the bedroom. It was a very small room, with a huge icon case full of icons. Against another wall stood a big bed, very clean, with a quilted silk patchwork coverlet. Against the third wall was a chest of drawers. A strange thing: no sooner had he begun fitting the keys to the chest of drawers, no sooner had he heard them jingle, than a sort of convulsion passed through him. Suddenly he wanted again to drop everything and go away. But it was only for an instant; it was too late to go away. He even grinned at himself, when suddenly another alarming thought struck his head. It suddenly seemed to him that the old woman was perhaps still alive and might yet come to. Leaving the keys, and the chest of drawers, he ran back to the body, seized the ax, and swung it up once more over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending down and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was smashed and even twisted a little to one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but he jerked his hand back; it could be seen without that. Meanwhile a whole pool of blood had already run out. Suddenly he noticed a cord on her neck and tugged at it, but the cord was strong and would not break; besides, it was soaked in blood. He tried to pull it out as it was, from the bosom of her dress, but something was in the way, had got caught. In his impatience he swung the ax up again to slash through the cord right there, on the body, from above, but he did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hands and the ax, after two minutes of fumbling, he cut the cord without touching the body with the ax, and took it off; he had not been mistaken—a purse. On the cord there were two crosses, one of cypress wood and one of copper, and besides them a little enamel icon; and there with them hung a small, greasy chamois purse with a steel rim and a ring. The purse was stuffed very tight; Raskolnikov thrust it into his pocket without examining it, threw the crosses down on the old woman’s breast, and, taking the ax with him this time, rushed back into the bedroom.

He was in a terrible hurry, seized the keys, and began fumbling with them again. But somehow nothing worked: they would not go into the locks. It was not that his hands were trembling so much, but he kept making mistakes: he would see, for instance, that a key was the wrong one, did not fit, and still keep pushing it in. Suddenly he remembered and realized that this big key, with the toothed bit, dangling there with the other small ones, must certainly belong not to the chest of drawers at all (as had occurred to him last time too) but to some trunk, and that in this trunk, perhaps, everything was hidden away. He left the chest of drawers and at once crawled under the bed, knowing that old women usually keep their trunks under their beds. Just so: there stood a sizable trunk, more than an arshin long, with a domed lid, covered in red morocco and studded with steel tacks. The toothed key fitted exactly and opened it. On top, under a white sheet, lay a short hare-fur coat covered in red twill; under it was a silk dress, then a shawl, and farther down, deep inside, everything seemed to be nothing but rags. First of all he began wiping his bloodstained hands on the red twill. “It’s red, and blood’s less noticeable on red,” he reasoned, and suddenly he came to himself: “Lord! Am I going out of my mind?” he thought in fright.

But no sooner had he stirred these rags than suddenly a gold watch slipped out from under the fur coat. He rushed to turn everything over. Indeed, mixed in among the rags were gold things—probably all pledges, redeemed and unredeemed—bracelets, chains, earrings, pins, and so on. Some were in cases, others were simply wrapped in newspaper, but neatly and carefully, in double sheets, and tied around with tape. Without the least delay he began stuffing them into the pockets of his trousers and his coat, without sorting them or opening the packets and cases; but he did not have time to take many…

Suddenly he heard someone walking in the room where the old woman was. He stopped and went still, like a dead man. But everything was quiet, so he must have imagined it. Suddenly he distinctly heard a faint cry, or as if someone had moaned softly and brokenly and fallen silent. Then dead silence again, for a minute or two. He was squatting by the trunk and waiting, barely breathing, but suddenly he jumped up, seized the ax, and ran out of the bedroom.

In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta, with a big bundle in her hands, staring numbly at her murdered sister, all white as a sheet and as though unable to cry out. Seeing him run out, she began trembling like a leaf, with a fine trembling, and spasms ran over her whole face; she raised her hand a little, opened her mouth, but still did not cry out, and slowly, backward, began to edge away from him into the corner, gazing at him intently, point-blank, but still not crying out, as if she had not enough air to cry out. He rushed at her with the ax; her lips twisted so piteously, as very small children’s lips do when they begin to be frightened of something, stare fixedly at the thing that frightens them, and are about to scream. And this unhappy Lizaveta was so simple, so downtrodden, and so frightened once and for all that she did not even raise a hand to protect her face, though that was the most necessary and natural gesture at that moment, because the ax was raised right over her face. She only lifted her free left hand a little, nowhere near her face, and slowly stretched it out toward him, as though warding him off. The blow fell straight on the skull, with the edge, and at once split open the whole upper part of the forehead, almost to the crown. She simply crashed down. Raskolnikov completely lost his head, seized her bundle, threw it down again, and ran into the entry.

Fear was taking hold of him more and more, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He wanted to run away from there as fast as possible. And if at that minute he had been capable of seeing and reasoning more clearly; if he could only have grasped all the difficulties of his position, all the despair, all the hideousness and all the absurdity of it, and understood besides how many obstacles, and perhaps even atrocities, still remained for him to overcome and commit in order to tear himself out of there and get home, it is very possible that he would have dropped everything and gone at once to give himself up, and not even out of fear for himself, but from sheer horror and loathing at what he had done. The loathing rose and grew in him especially with every minute. Not for anything in the world would he have gone back to the trunk now, or even into the rooms.

But a kind of absentmindedness, even a sort of pensiveness, began little by little to take possession of him: at moments he seemed to forget himself, or, better to say, to forget the main thing and fasten on trifles. However, glancing into the kitchen and seeing on the bench a bucket half full of water, he thought of washing his hands and the ax. His hands were bloody and sticky. He lowered the ax blade first straight into the water, seized a bit of soap that lay on the windowsill on a cracked saucer, and began washing his hands right in the bucket. When he had washed them, he pulled out the ax too, washed the iron, and for a long time, some three minutes, washed the wood where it had got bloody, even trying the blood with soap. Then he wiped everything off with linen that was drying right there on a line stretched across the kitchen, and then for a long time, attentively, examined the ax at the window. There were no traces left, only the handle was still damp. He carefully slipped the ax into the loop, under his coat. Then, as far as the light in the dim kitchen allowed, he examined his coat, his trousers, his boots. On the outside, at first glance, there seemed to be nothing; only there were spots on the boots. He wet a rag and wiped the boots. He knew, though, that he was not looking properly, that there might be something glaring that he was not noticing. He stood lost in thought in the middle of the room. A tormenting, dark thought was rising in him—the thought that he was going mad and that at this minute he was incapable either of reasoning or of protecting himself, that perhaps what he was doing now was not at all what needed doing… “My God! I must run, run!” he muttered, and rushed into the entry. But here such a horror awaited him as he had certainly never yet experienced.

He stood, looked, and did not believe his eyes: the door, the outer door, from the entry to the stairs, the same one at which he had rung and come in earlier, stood unlocked, even a whole hand’s breadth ajar: no lock, no bolt, all the time, during all that time! The old woman had not locked it behind him, perhaps out of caution. But God! He had seen Lizaveta afterward, after all! And how could he, how could he not have guessed that she must have come in from somewhere! Not through the wall.

He rushed to the door and put the bolt on.

“But no, that’s wrong again! I must go, go…”

He took the bolt off, opened the door, and began listening on the stairs.

He listened for a long time. Somewhere far off, below, probably under the gateway, two voices were shouting loudly and shrilly, arguing and swearing. “What are they doing?…” He waited patiently. At last everything grew still all at once, as if cut off; they had gone their ways. He was about to go out, when suddenly, one floor below, a door onto the stairs was flung open noisily, and someone started down, humming some tune. “Why are they all making so much noise!” flashed through his head. He pulled the door to behind him again and waited. At last all was silent, not a soul. He had already taken a step onto the stairs when suddenly new footsteps were heard again.

These footsteps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs, but he remembered very well and distinctly that from the very first sound he had then and there begun to suspect, for some reason, that they were coming here, to the fourth floor, to the old woman’s, without fail. Why? Were the sounds so peculiar, so significant? The steps were heavy, even, unhurried. Now he had passed the first floor, now he was coming up farther; louder and louder! The heavy panting of the man coming up could be heard. Now the third floor had begun… Here! And suddenly it seemed to him that he had turned to stone, that it was just like a dream, when you dream that they are chasing you, are close, want to kill you, and you are rooted to the spot and cannot even move your arms.

And at last, when the visitor had already begun to climb to the fourth floor, only then did he suddenly start all over and still manage, quickly and deftly, to slip back from the landing into the apartment and pull the door to behind him. Then he seized the bolt and quietly, inaudibly, slipped it into its loop. Instinct helped him. Having done all this, he crouched without breathing, right by the door. The uninvited visitor was already at the door too. They were now standing opposite each other, as he and the old woman had stood earlier, when the door divided them and he was listening.

The visitor took several heavy breaths. “Fat and big, he must be,” thought Raskolnikov, squeezing the ax in his hand. Truly, it was all just like a dream. The visitor seized the bell and rang hard.

As soon as the tinny sound of the bell jingled, it suddenly seemed to him as if something had stirred in the room. For a few seconds he even listened seriously. The stranger rang once more, waited some more, and suddenly, in impatience, began tugging at the door handle with all his strength. In horror Raskolnikov watched the hook of the bolt jumping in its loop and waited in dull fear for the bolt to jump out any second now. Indeed, it seemed possible: they were tugging so hard. He thought of holding the bolt with his hand, but the man might guess. His head seemed to be starting to spin again. “I’m going to fall!” flashed through him, but the stranger began to speak, and he came to himself at once.

“What are they doing in there, snoring, or has somebody strangled them? Thrrrice-damned women!” he roared as if from inside a barrel. “Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, you old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, you indescribable beauty! Open up! Ugh, damn them, are they asleep or what?”

And again, in a frenzy, he yanked at the bell some ten times running, with all his might. He was surely a man of some authority and on intimate terms with the household.

At that very moment, suddenly, quick light footsteps were heard not far off on the stairs. Someone else was coming up. Raskolnikov did not even hear him at first.

“Can it be there’s nobody in?” the newcomer cried loudly and cheerfully, addressing himself straight to the first visitor, who was still tugging at the bell. “Good evening, Koch!”

“Judging by the voice, he must be very young,” Raskolnikov suddenly thought.

“Devil knows, I nearly broke the lock,” answered Koch. “And how do you happen to know me?”

“Well, really! Why, the day before yesterday, at the Gambrinus, I took three games of billiards running off you!”

“A-a-ah…”

“So they’re not in? Strange. Terribly stupid, though. Where could the old woman have gone? I have business with her.”

“So have I, my dear fellow, business!”

“Well, what can you do? Back we go, then. E-eh! And I was counting on getting some money!” the young man exclaimed.

“Back we go, of course, but why make an appointment? She set the time for me herself, the witch. It’s out of my way, you know. And where the devil could she be gadding about, I don’t understand? All year round the witch sits there and stews, her legs hurt, and now all of a sudden she’s off on an outing!”

“Shouldn’t we ask the caretaker?”

“Ask what?”

“Where she went and when she’ll be back?”

“Hm… the devil… ask… But she never goes anywhere…” and he tugged at the door handle once more. “Devil take it, nothing to be done, let’s go!”

“Wait!” the young man suddenly shouted. “Look: do you see how the door gives when you pull?”

“Well?”

“That means it isn’t locked, it’s bolted, on the hook, I mean! Hear the bolt rattle?”

“Well?”

“But how can you not understand? It means one of them is at home. If they’d all gone out, they’d have locked it from outside with the key, not bolted it from inside. But here—hear the bolt rattle? That means they’re sitting at home and not opening!”

“Bah! So they are!” cried Koch in surprise. “So what are they doing in there!” And he began tugging at the door furiously.

“Wait!” the young man shouted again. “Don’t pull! There’s something wrong here… you’ve rung, you’ve pulled, they don’t open; that means either they’ve both fainted, or…”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you what: let’s go get the caretaker; let him wake them up himself.”

“Right!” Both started down.

“Wait! You stay here, and I’ll run down for the caretaker.”

“Why stay?”

“Well, you never know?…”

“All right…”

“I’m studying to be an examining magistrate, you see! It’s obvious, ob-vi-vi-ous that something’s wrong here!” the young man cried hotly, and he set off at a run down the stairs.

Koch stayed, gave the bell another quiet pull, and it jingled once; then quietly, as though reflecting and examining, he began to move the door handle, pulling it toward him and letting it go, to make sure once again that the door was held only by the bolt. Then, puffing, he bent down and began looking through the keyhole; but the key was sticking in it from inside, so nothing could be seen.

Raskolnikov stood clutching the ax. He was as if in delirium. He was even preparing to fight them when they came in. While they were knocking and talking it over, the thought had suddenly come to him several times to end it all at once and shout to them from behind the door. At times he wanted to start swearing at them, taunting them, until they got the door open. “If only it were over quickly!” flashed through his head.

“But what the devil is he…”

Time was passing, one minute, another—no one came. Koch began to fidget.

“What the devil!…” he shouted suddenly, and in impatience, abandoning his watch, he too set off downstairs, hurrying and clattering his boots on the stairs. The footsteps died away.

“Lord, what am I to do!”

Raskolnikov took off the bolt, opened the door a little—nothing to be heard, and suddenly, now without thinking at all, he went out, pulled the door shut behind him as tightly as he could, and started down.

He had already gone down three flights when suddenly a loud noise was heard below—where could he go! There was nowhere at all to hide. He started to run back, to the apartment again.

“Hey, you devil, damn you! Catch him!”

With a shout someone burst out of some apartment below and did not so much run as fall down the stairs, shouting at the top of his lungs:

“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Devil take you-u-u!”

The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the courtyard by now; everything grew still. But at that same instant several men, talking loudly and rapidly, began noisily coming up the stairs. There were three or four of them. He made out the ringing voice of the young one. “It’s them!”

In utter despair he walked straight toward them: come what may! If they stop him, all is lost; if they let him pass, all is lost too: they’ll remember him. They were already drawing close; only one flight remained between them—and suddenly, salvation! A few steps from him, on the right, an empty apartment, wide open, the same apartment on the second floor where the workmen had been painting, and now, as if on purpose, they had gone. It must have been they who ran out just now with such shouting. The floors had just been painted; in the middle of the room stood a small tub and a crock with paint and a brush. In an instant he slipped in through the open door and hid behind the wall, and just in time: they were already standing on the landing itself. Then they turned up and went past, to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, came out on tiptoe, and ran downstairs.

No one on the stairs! Nor under the gateway. Quickly he passed through the gateway and turned left along the street.

He knew very well, he knew perfectly well that at this moment they were already in the apartment, that they had been very surprised to see that it was open when it had just been shut, that they were already looking at the bodies, and that not more than a minute would pass before they guessed and fully realized that the murderer had just been there and had managed to hide somewhere, to slip past them, to run away; they would perhaps guess too that he had been sitting in the empty apartment while they went up. And meanwhile on no account did he dare to quicken his pace much, though there were some hundred steps left to the first turning. “Shouldn’t I slip into some gateway and wait it out somewhere on a strange staircase? No, that’s trouble! Shouldn’t I throw the ax away somewhere? Shouldn’t I take a cab? Trouble! trouble!”

At last, here was the lane; he turned into it half-dead; here he was already half saved, and he understood it: less suspicion, and besides, there were a lot of people bustling about here, and he was lost among them like a grain of sand. But all these torments had so drained him that he could barely move. Sweat was coming out of him in drops; his neck was all wet. “Look how plastered he is!” somebody shouted at him when he came out onto the canal.

He hardly knew himself now; the farther he went, the worse it was. He remembered, though, how suddenly, coming out onto the canal, he had taken fright that there were too few people and he was more noticeable here, and had wanted to turn back into the lane. Though he was almost falling, he nevertheless made a detour and came home from quite the other side.

He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gate of his own house either; at any rate, he was already on the stairs before he remembered the ax. And yet a very important task lay before him: to put it back, and as unnoticeably as possible. Of course, he was no longer capable of realizing that it might perhaps be much better for him not to put the ax back in its former place at all, but to plant it, even later, somewhere in a stranger’s courtyard.

But everything went off well. The door of the caretaker’s room was closed but not locked, so most likely the caretaker was in. But he had so far lost the capacity to reason about anything that he walked straight up to the caretaker’s room and opened the door. If the caretaker had asked him, “What do you want?” he might perhaps have simply handed him the ax. But again the caretaker was not there, and he managed to put the ax back in its former place under the bench; he even covered it with a log as before. He met no one, not a single soul, afterward, all the way to his room; the landlady’s door was shut. Going into his room, he threw himself on the sofa just as he was. He did not sleep, but was in a kind of oblivion. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and fragments of some thoughts simply swarmed in his head; but he could not grasp a single one, could not dwell on a single one, in spite of all his efforts…