Part Two · II

“And what if there’s already been a search? What if I walk in and find them right there in my room?”

But here was his room. Nothing and no one; nobody had looked in. Even Nastasya hadn’t touched anything. But, Lord! How could he have left all those things in that hole earlier?

He rushed to the corner, thrust his hand under the wallpaper, and began pulling the things out and loading his pockets with them. There turned out to be eight pieces in all: two little boxes with earrings or something of the kind—he didn’t look closely; then four small morocco cases. One chain was simply wrapped in newspaper. Something else in newspaper, a decoration, it seemed…

He put everything into different pockets, into his coat and into the remaining right-hand pocket of his trousers, trying to make it less noticeable. He took the purse too, along with the things. Then he went out of the room, this time even leaving it wide open.

He walked quickly and firmly, and though he felt he was broken all over, his wits were with him. He was afraid of pursuit, afraid that in half an hour, in a quarter of an hour, orders might already be issued to keep watch on him; and so, whatever happened, he had to bury the traces before then. He had to get it done while he still had at least some strength left and at least some power of reasoning… Where should he go?

That had been decided long ago: “Throw it all in the canal, and the traces in the water, and that’s the end of it.” He had settled it that way back in the night, in delirium, in those moments when, he remembered, he had several times tried to get up and go: “quick, quick, and throw it all away.” But throwing it away turned out to be very hard.

He had been wandering along the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal for half an hour already, maybe more, and several times he had looked at the steps down to the water wherever he came upon them. But carrying out his intention was not even to be thought of: either rafts stood right by the steps, with washerwomen on them doing laundry, or boats were moored there, and everywhere people were simply swarming, and from everywhere, from the embankments, from all sides, anyone could see, could notice: it was suspicious that a man had deliberately gone down, stopped, and was throwing something into the water. And what if the cases didn’t sink but floated? And of course they would. Anyone would see. As it was, everyone was staring at him, looking him over as they passed, as if he were their only business. “Why should that be, or maybe it only seems so to me,” he thought.

At last it occurred to him: wouldn’t it be better to go somewhere on the Neva? There were fewer people there, and it was less conspicuous, and in any case more convenient, and above all farther from these parts. And suddenly he was amazed: how could he have wandered a whole half hour in anguish and alarm, and in dangerous places, and not have thought of this before! And he had killed a whole half hour on a senseless business only because it had once been decided that way, in sleep, in delirium! He was becoming extremely absentminded and forgetful, and he knew it. He absolutely had to hurry!

He set off for the Neva along V—— Avenue; but on the way another thought suddenly came to him: “Why the Neva? Why the water? Wouldn’t it be better to go somewhere very far away, to the Islands again, say, and there somewhere, in a lonely place, in the woods, under a bush—bury it all and mark the tree, perhaps?” And though he felt he was in no state at that moment to think everything through clearly and soundly, the idea seemed to him infallible.

But he was not fated to reach the Islands either; something else happened: coming out of V—— Avenue onto the square, he suddenly saw on his left an entrance into a yard enclosed by completely blank walls. On the right, immediately inside the gate, the blank unwhitewashed wall of the neighboring four-story building stretched far back into the yard. On the left, parallel to the blank wall and also starting right at the gate, ran a wooden fence, some twenty paces deep into the yard, and then it broke off to the left. This was a blind, fenced-off spot where some sort of materials were lying. Farther on, in the depths of the yard, the corner of a low, sooty stone shed peeped out from behind the fence, evidently part of some workshop. There was probably some sort of establishment here, a carriage maker’s or a locksmith’s or something of the kind; everywhere, almost from the gate itself, there was a lot of black coal dust. “Now that’s the place to toss it and go!” it suddenly occurred to him. Noticing no one in the yard, he stepped through the gate and at once saw, right by the gate, a gutter fitted against the fence (as is often arranged in buildings where there are a lot of factory hands, artel workers, cabmen, and so on), and above the gutter, right there on the fence, the usual witticism for such places had been chalked: “Standin heer is for bidden.” So that was good in itself: there could be no suspicion about his having come in and stopped. “Just dump it all here at once somewhere in a little heap and go!”

Looking around once more, he had already put his hand into his pocket when suddenly, right against the outer wall, between the gate and the gutter, where the whole space was no more than an arshin wide, he noticed a big rough-hewn stone, weighing maybe a pood and a half,¹ lying right up against the stone wall on the street side. Beyond that wall was the street, the sidewalk; he could hear the passersby scurrying back and forth, and there were always plenty of them here; but behind the gate no one could see him, unless someone came in from the street, which, by the way, could very well happen, and so he had to hurry.

He bent down to the stone, gripped its top hard with both hands, gathered all his strength, and turned the stone over. Under the stone there was a small hollow; at once he began throwing everything from his pockets into it. The purse ended up on the very top, and still there was room left in the hollow. Then he gripped the stone again, turned it back over in one motion, and it fitted exactly into its old place, except that it seemed a little, just a tiny bit, higher. But he raked up some earth and pressed it down around the edges with his foot. Nothing could be seen.

Then he went out and headed for the square. Again a powerful, barely endurable joy, as earlier at the police station, took hold of him for an instant. “The traces are buried! And who, who could ever think of looking under that stone? Maybe it’s been lying here since the building went up, and it’ll lie here as long again. And even if they found it: who would think of me? It’s all over! No evidence!”—and he laughed. Yes, he remembered afterward that he laughed a nervous, small, inaudible, long laugh, and kept on laughing, all the while he was crossing the square. But when he stepped onto K—— Boulevard, where two days before he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly passed. Other thoughts crept into his head. It suddenly seemed to him, too, that it would be terribly repulsive now to walk past that bench where he had sat and pondered then, after the girl had gone, and terribly hard, too, to meet that mustached fellow again to whom he had given the twenty kopecks: “The devil take him!”

He walked on, looking around absently and spitefully. All his thoughts were circling now around some one main point—and he felt himself that this really was the main point and that now, precisely now, he was left alone, face to face with this main point—and that this was even the first time in these two months.

“Oh, the devil take it all!” he thought suddenly in a fit of inexhaustible spite. “Well, it’s begun, so it’s begun, to hell with her and with the new life! Lord, how stupid it is!… And how much lying and dirty work I did today! How vilely I fawned and played up to that loathsome Ilya Petrovich earlier! But that’s nonsense too! I don’t give a damn for any of them, or for my fawning and playing up either! That’s not it at all! Not it at all!…”

Suddenly he stopped; a new, completely unexpected, and extremely simple question at once threw him off and bitterly astonished him:

“If this whole business really was done consciously, and not like a fool, if you really had a definite and firm purpose, then how is it that so far you haven’t even looked into the purse, and don’t know what you got, for the sake of which you took on all that torment and consciously went through with such a base, vile, low business? Why, just now you wanted to throw it in the water, the purse, together with all the things, which you also haven’t seen yet… How is that?”

Yes, that was so; all of it was so. He had known it before, by the way, and it was not at all a new question for him; and when it had been decided in the night to throw everything in the water, it had been decided without any hesitation or objection, but simply as though that was how it ought to be, as though it could not possibly be otherwise… Yes, he knew all that and remembered all of it; why, it had all but been decided yesterday, at the very moment when he was sitting over the trunk and pulling the cases out of it… And that’s how it was!…

“It’s because I’m very ill,” he decided grimly at last. “I’ve worn myself out and tormented myself, and I don’t know myself what I’m doing… Yesterday, and the day before, and all this time I’ve been tormenting myself… I’ll get well and… I won’t torment myself… And what if I never get well at all? Lord! How sick I am of all this!…” He walked on without stopping. He wanted terribly to distract himself somehow, but he didn’t know what to do or what to undertake. One new, irresistible sensation was taking hold of him more and more, almost with every minute: it was a kind of endless, almost physical loathing for everything he met and everything around him, stubborn, spiteful, hateful. He found everyone he met disgusting—their faces, their walk, their movements were disgusting. He would simply have spat on someone, would have bitten him, it seemed, if anyone had spoken to him…

He stopped suddenly when he came out onto the embankment of the Little Neva, on Vasilyevsky Island, near the bridge. “This is where he lives, in that building,” he thought. “What’s this, why, I seem to have come to Razumikhin’s on my own! The same story again as that time… Very curious, though: did I come on my own, or was I just walking and wandered in here? Doesn’t matter; I said… two days ago… that I’d go to him the day after that, well, so I’ll go! As if I couldn’t drop in now…”

He climbed up to Razumikhin’s on the fifth floor.

Razumikhin was at home, in his little cubbyhole, and at that moment was working, writing, and he opened the door himself. They had not seen each other for about four months. Razumikhin sat there in a dressing gown worn to rags, in slippers on his bare feet, disheveled, unshaven, and unwashed. Surprise showed on his face.

“What’s the matter with you?” he shouted, looking his comrade over from head to foot as he came in; then he paused and whistled.

“Is it really that bad? Why, brother, you’ve outdone the lot of us,” he added, looking at Raskolnikov’s rags. “Sit down, then, you must be tired!” And when Raskolnikov collapsed onto the oilcloth-covered Turkish sofa, which was even worse than his own, Razumikhin suddenly saw that his guest was ill.

“Why, you’re seriously ill, do you know that?” He began feeling his pulse; Raskolnikov tore his hand away.

“Don’t,” he said. “I came… here’s the thing: I don’t have any lessons… I wanted… but actually I don’t need lessons at all…”

“You know what? You’re delirious!” remarked Razumikhin, who was watching him intently.

“No, I’m not delirious…” Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he was climbing the stairs to Razumikhin’s he had not thought about having, therefore, to meet him face to face. But now, in a single instant, he guessed, from experience already, that he was less inclined than anything, at that moment, to meet anyone at all face to face in the whole wide world. All his bile rose in him. He almost choked with spite against himself the moment he crossed Razumikhin’s threshold.

“Goodbye!” he said suddenly and went to the door.

“Hold on, hold on, you oddball!”

“Don’t!…” Raskolnikov repeated, again tearing his hand away.

“Then why the devil did you come, after that! Have you gone off your head or what? It’s… practically an insult. I won’t let you go like this.”

“Well, listen: I came to you because, apart from you, I don’t know anyone who could help… to start… because you’re kinder than all of them, that is, smarter, and you can think things through… And now I see that I don’t need anything, do you hear, nothing at all… nobody’s services or sympathy… I myself… alone… Well, that’s enough! Leave me in peace!”

“Hold on a minute, you chimney sweep! Completely crazy! Suit yourself, as far as I’m concerned. See here: I don’t have lessons either, and the hell with them, but there’s a bookseller at the flea market, Kherubimov, and he’s a lesson in himself, in his own way. I wouldn’t swap him now for five lessons at merchants’ houses. He puts out these little editions and brings out little natural-science books—and how they sell! The titles alone are worth the price! You always used to insist I was stupid; by God, brother, there are people stupider than me! Now he’s taken to having an ideological line too; he doesn’t understand a blessed thing about it himself, but I, naturally, encourage him. Here are two and a bit printer’s sheets of German text—the stupidest charlatanism, in my opinion: in a word, it examines whether woman is a human being or not a human being. Well, and naturally it solemnly proves that she is a human being. Kherubimov is getting it ready as his contribution to the woman question; I’m translating; he’ll stretch these two and a half sheets out to six or so, we’ll make up a magnificent title half a page long, and put it out at fifty kopecks. It’ll go! For the translation I get six roubles a sheet, which means about fifteen roubles for the whole thing, and I took six roubles in advance. When we’ve finished this, we’ll start translating something about whales, and then we’ve marked some of the dullest gossip in the second part of the Confessions, and we’ll be translating that; somebody told Kherubimov that Rousseau is a sort of Radishchev in his own way. I, naturally, don’t contradict him, the devil take him! Well, do you want to translate the second sheet of ‘Is Woman a Human Being?’ If you do, then take the text right now, take pens, paper—all that’s on the house—and take three roubles: since I took the advance for the whole translation, for the first and second sheets, three roubles comes out exactly as your share. And when you finish the sheet you’ll get another three roubles. And one more thing, please don’t consider it some kind of favor on my part. On the contrary, the minute you walked in I was already figuring out how you’d be useful to me. In the first place, I’m bad at spelling, and in the second, my German is sometimes just plain rotten, so I mostly make things up myself, and my only consolation is that it comes out even better that way. Though who knows, maybe it doesn’t come out better, but worse… Will you take it or not?”

Raskolnikov silently took the German pages of the article, took the three roubles, and went out without saying a word. Razumikhin looked after him in surprise. But having got as far as the First Line, Raskolnikov suddenly turned back, climbed up to Razumikhin’s again, and, laying both the German pages and the three roubles on the table, again without saying a word, walked out.

“Have you got the d.t.’s or what!” roared Razumikhin, enraged at last. “What’s this comedy you’re putting on! You’ve even got me confused… Why did you come at all, after that, you devil?”

“Don’t need… translations…” muttered Raskolnikov, already going down the stairs.

“Then what the devil do you need?” Razumikhin shouted from above. Raskolnikov went on down in silence.

“Hey, you! Where do you live?”

There was no answer.

“Well, the dev-v-vil take you, then!…”

But Raskolnikov was already going out into the street. On Nikolaevsky Bridge he was brought fully to his senses once more as a result of an incident that was very unpleasant for him. The driver of a carriage gave him a hard lash across the back with his whip, because he had very nearly fallen under the horses, even though the driver had shouted at him three or four times. The blow of the whip made him so furious that, jumping back to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking right down the middle of the bridge, where people drive, not walk), he spitefully ground and clacked his teeth. Around him, naturally, there was laughter.

“Serves him right!”

“Some swindler.”

“Sure, he’ll play drunk and crawl under the wheels on purpose; and then you answer for him.”

“That’s their trade, my good sir, that’s their trade…”

But at the moment when he was standing by the railing, still senselessly and spitefully staring after the departing carriage and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone pushing money into his hand. He looked: an elderly merchant’s wife in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, and with her a girl in a little hat and with a green parasol, probably her daughter. “Take it, dear, for Christ’s sake.” He took it, and they passed by. The money was a twenty-kopeck piece. From his clothes and his look they could very well have taken him for a beggar, for a real collector of pennies on the street, and he no doubt owed the gift of a whole twenty kopecks to the lash of the whip, which had moved them to pity.

He clenched the twenty-kopeck piece in his hand, walked some ten paces, and turned to face the Neva, in the direction of the palace. The sky was without the slightest cloud, and the water almost blue, which happens so rarely on the Neva. The dome of the cathedral, which is not outlined better from any point than when you look at it from here, from the bridge, some twenty paces short of the chapel, was simply shining, and through the clear air you could make out distinctly even each of its ornaments. The pain from the whip had died down, and Raskolnikov forgot about the blow; one uneasy and not entirely clear thought now occupied him exclusively. He stood and looked into the distance long and intently; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he had been attending the university, it used to happen that usually—most often on his way home—he would stop, maybe a hundred times, at precisely this same spot, gaze intently at this truly magnificent panorama, and each time be almost surprised by one unclear and unresolvable impression of his. An inexplicable chill always breathed on him from this magnificent panorama; for him this splendid picture was full of a mute and deaf spirit… He marveled each time at his gloomy and enigmatic impression and, not trusting himself, put off solving it for the future. Now suddenly he sharply recalled those former questions and perplexities of his, and it seemed to him that it was not by chance that he recalled them now. This alone struck him as wild and strange, that he had stopped at the very same spot as before, as though he had actually imagined he could think about the same things now as before, and be interested in the same former themes and pictures he had been interested in… so very recently. It almost made him laugh, and at the same time it squeezed his chest till it hurt. In some depth, down below, somewhere barely visible under his feet, all this former past now appeared to him, and the former thoughts, and the former problems, and the former themes, and the former impressions, and this whole panorama, and himself, and everything, everything… It seemed he was flying off somewhere upward, and everything was vanishing from his eyes… Making one involuntary movement with his hand, he suddenly felt the twenty-kopeck piece clenched in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, swung his arm, and threw it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him that he had cut himself off from everyone and everything at that moment, as if with scissors.

He got home only toward evening, which meant he had been walking for about six hours in all. Where and how he had walked back, he remembered nothing of it. Undressing, and shivering all over like a horse that has been driven too hard, he lay down on the sofa, pulled his greatcoat over himself, and at once sank into oblivion…

He came to in full dusk from a terrible screaming. God, what screaming it was! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears, blows, and curses he had never yet heard or seen. He could not even have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In horror he raised himself and sat up on his bed, every moment freezing and in torment. But the fighting, the wails, and the curses grew louder and louder. And then, to his utter amazement, he suddenly made out the voice of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking, and lamenting, hurrying, rushing, letting the words out so that it was impossible to tell what she was begging for—to stop beating her, of course, because she was being mercilessly beaten on the stairs. The voice of the one beating her had become so terrible with spite and fury that it only rasped, but still the one beating her was saying something too, and also quickly, unintelligibly, hurrying and choking. Suddenly Raskolnikov began to tremble like a leaf: he recognized that voice; it was the voice of Ilya Petrovich. Ilya Petrovich here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against the steps—that’s clear, you can hear it from the sounds, from the wails, from the blows! What is this, has the world turned upside down or what? You could hear a crowd gathering on all the floors, all along the stairway; you could hear voices, exclamations, people coming up, knocking, slamming doors, running together. “But what for, what for, and how can this be!” he kept repeating, seriously thinking he had gone completely mad. But no, he hears it too clearly!… But then, if so, they’ll come for him too in a minute, “because… it must all be over the same thing… over yesterday… Lord!” He wanted to fasten the hook on his door, but his hand would not rise… and it was useless anyway! Fear, like ice, encased his soul, tormented him, numbed him… But now at last all this din, which went on for a good ten minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning, Ilya Petrovich was still threatening and cursing… But now at last, it seemed, he too had quieted down; now he could no longer be heard; “has he really gone! Lord!” Yes, now the landlady is going too, still moaning and crying… now her door has slammed… Now the crowd is going from the stairs back to their apartments—exclaiming, arguing, calling to one another, now raising their voices to a shout, now lowering them to a whisper. There must have been a lot of them; almost the whole house had come running. “But, God, can all this be possible! And why, why did he come here!”

Raskolnikov fell back on the sofa in exhaustion, but he could no longer close his eyes; he lay for about half an hour in such suffering, in such an unbearable feeling of boundless horror, as he had never yet experienced. Suddenly a bright light lit up his room: Nastasya came in with a candle and a bowl of soup. Looking at him attentively and making out that he was not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began laying out what she had brought: bread, salt, a bowl, a spoon.

“I bet you haven’t eaten since yesterday. Gadding about the whole day, and him shaking with fever.”

“Nastasya… why were they beating the landlady?”

She looked at him intently.

“Who was beating the landlady?”

“Just now… half an hour ago, Ilya Petrovich, the assistant superintendent, on the stairs… Why did he beat her like that? and… what did he come for?…”

Nastasya studied him silently, frowning, and looked at him like that for a long time. This scrutiny made him feel very uncomfortable, even frightened.

“Nastasya, why don’t you say anything?” he finally said timidly, in a weak voice.

“It’s the blood,” she answered at last, quietly, and as if speaking to herself.

“Blood!… What blood?…” he muttered, turning pale and drawing back toward the wall. Nastasya went on looking at him in silence.

“Nobody was beating the landlady,” she said again in a stern and resolute voice. He looked at her, barely breathing.

“I heard it myself… I wasn’t asleep… I was sitting up,” he said still more timidly. “I listened for a long time… The assistant superintendent came… Everybody came running onto the stairs, from all the apartments…”

“Nobody came. It’s the blood crying out in you. When it’s got no way out and starts clotting up in your liver, that’s when you start seeing things… Are you going to eat or not?”

He did not answer. Nastasya kept standing over him, looking at him intently, and did not leave.

“Give me something to drink… Nastasyushka.”

She went downstairs and about two minutes later came back with water in a white earthenware mug; but he no longer remembered what happened after that. He remembered only how he took one sip of cold water and spilled some from the mug onto his chest. Then came unconsciousness.

Notes

1. 1. An arshin is about twenty-eight inches; a pood is about thirty-six pounds, so the stone weighed some fifty-five pounds.