On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret
in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards
K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret
was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard
than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and
attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to
pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he
passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and
feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting
her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for
some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on
hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated
from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all.
He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to
weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he
had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror
for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial,
irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and
to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie — no, rather than that, he
would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely
aware of his fears.
"I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles," he
thought, with an odd smile. "Hm . . . yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all
slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is
men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear
most. . . . But I am talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Orperhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter this last
month, lying for days together in my den thinking . . . of Jack the Giant-killer.
Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious
at all. It's simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a
plaything."
The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and the
plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Petersburg
stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer — all
worked painfully upon the young man's already overwrought nerves. The
insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that
part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was
a working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the
profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man's refined face. He
was, by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-
built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep
thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he
walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe it. From
time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to
which he had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that
his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he
had scarcely tasted food.
He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would
have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter of the
town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise.
Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad
character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population
crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so various
were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused
surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young
man's heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags
least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances
or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time.
And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being taken
somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at
him as he drove past: "Hey there, German hatter" bawling at the top of his voice and pointing at him — the young man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously
at his hat. It was a tall round hat from Zimmerman's, but completely worn out,
rusty with age, all torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most
unseemly fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror
had overtaken him.
"I knew it," he muttered in confusion, "I thought so! That's the worst of all!
Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might spoil the whole plan.
Yes, my hat is too noticeable. . . . It looks absurd and that makes it noticeable. . . .
With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque
thing. Nobody wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be
remembered. . . . What matters is that people would remember it, and that would
give them a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as possible.
. . . Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it's just such trifles that always ruin
everything . . ."
He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of
his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once
when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams
and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a
month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the
monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had
involuntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to be attempted,
although he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a
"rehearsal" of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more
violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house which
on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the street. This house was
let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by working people of all kinds —
tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as best they
could, petty clerks, etc. There was a continual coming and going through the two
gates and in the two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were
employed on the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them,
and at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the staircase.
It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and
knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
"If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I
were really going to do it?" he could not help asking himself as he reached the
fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters who were engaged in
moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied by a
German clerk in the civil service, and his family. This German was moving out
then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the
old woman. "That's a good thing anyway," he thought to himself, as he rang the
bell of the old woman's flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of
tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells that ring like
that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to
remind him of something and to bring it clearly before him. . . . He started, his
nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the door was opened a
tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack,
and nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But, seeing
a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide.
The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned off from the
tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at
him. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant
eyes and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly
smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck,
which looked like a hen's leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag, and, in spite of
the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow with age.
The old woman coughed and groaned at every instant. The young man must have
looked at her with a rather peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into
her eyes again.
"Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago," the young man made
haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more polite.
"I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here," the old
woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.
"And here . . . I am again on the same errand," Raskolnikov continued, a little
disconcerted and surprised at the old woman's mistrust. "Perhaps she is always
like that though, only I did not notice it the other time," he thought with an uneasy
feeling. The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side, and
pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass in front of her:
"Step in, my good sir."
The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on the
walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly lighted up at
that moment by the setting sun.
"So the sun will shine like this then too!" flashed as it were by chance through
Raskolnikov's mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned everything in the room,
trying as far as possible to notice and remember its arrangement. But there was
nothing special in the room. The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood,
consisted of a sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa,
a dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows, chairs along
the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow frames, representing
German damsels with birds in their hands — that was all. In the corner a light was
burning before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture
were brightly polished; everything shone.
"Lizaveta's work," thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust to be
seen in the whole flat.
"It's in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness,"
Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance at the cotton curtain over
the door leading into another tiny room, in which stood the old woman's bed and
chest of drawers and into which he had never looked before. These two rooms
made up the whole flat.
"What do you want?" the old woman said severely, coming into the room and,
as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in the face.
"I've brought something to pawn here," and he drew out of his pocket an old-
fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a globe; the chain
was of steel.
"But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day before
yesterday."
"I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little."
"But that's for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell your pledge at once."
"How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?"
"You come with such trifles, my good sir, it's scarcely worth anything. I gave
you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it quite new at a
jeweler's for a rouble and a half."
"Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father's. I shall be
getting some money soon."
"A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!"
"A rouble and a half!" cried the young man.
"Please yourself"— and the old woman handed him back the watch. The
young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going away; but
checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else he could go,
and that he had had another object also in coming.
"Hand it over," he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind
the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in the middle
of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her unlocking the chest
of drawers.
"It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the keys in a pocket
on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring. . . . And there's one key there, three
times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that can't be the key of the chest
of drawers . . . then there must be some other chest or strong-box . . . that's worth
knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that . . . but how degrading it all is."
The old woman came back.
"Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take fifteen
copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But for the two roubles
I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks on the same reckoning in
advance. That makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So I must give you a rouble
and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it is."
"What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!"
"Just so."
The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the old
woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still something he
wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know what.
"I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona Ivanovna — a
valuable thing — silver — a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it back from a friend …"
he broke off in confusion.
"Well, we will talk about it then, sir."
"Good-bye — are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with you?"
He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the passage.
"What business is she of yours, my good sir?"
"Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick. . . . Good-day,
Alyona Ivanovna."
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more
and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three
times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he
cried out, "Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly. . . . No, it's
nonsense, it's rubbish!" he added resolutely. "And how could such an atrocious
thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy
above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome! — and for a whole month I've been
. . . ." But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of
intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was
on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken such
a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to escape from his
wretchedness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken man, regardless of
the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he
was in the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a
tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At
that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting
one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov
went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern,
but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink
of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down
at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his thoughts became clear.
"All that's nonsense," he said hopefully, "and there is nothing in it all to worry
about! It's simply physical derangement. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread
— and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is
firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!"
But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful as
though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a
friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a dim
foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal.
There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken men
he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and a girl with a
concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure left the room quiet and
rather empty. The persons still in the tavern were a man who appeared to be an
artisan, drunk, but not extremely so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his
companion, a huge, stout man with a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He
was very drunk: and had dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he
began as though in his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and
the upper part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some
meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:
"His wife a year he fondly loved
His wife a — a year he — fondly loved."
Or suddenly waking up again:
"Walking along the crowded row
He met the one he used to know."
But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with positive
hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was another man in the
room who looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was sitting apart,
now and then sipping from his pot and looking round at the company. He, too,
appeared to be in some agitation.