Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

Of course, even if he had waited years on end for a good opportunity, having his design in mind, he could not have counted with certainty on a more obvious step towards the success of this design than the one that had suddenly presented itself now. In any case, it would have been difficult to learn for certain, the day before, with greater precision, yet without the least risk, without any dangerous inquiries or investigations, that the next day at such-and-such an hour, such-and-such an old woman, on whose life an attempt was being prepared, would be at home as alone as could be.

VI

Later, Raskolnikov somehow happened to find out precisely why the tradesman and the woman had invited Lizaveta to come back. It was a most ordinary matter, and there was nothing very special about it. A family that had moved to the city and fallen into poverty was selling things off, dresses and so on, all women's things. Since it was not profitable to sell them in the market, they were looking for a middleman, and that was what Lizaveta did: she took a commission, handled the deals, and had a large clientele, because she was very honest and always named a final price: whatever she said, that the price would be. Generally she spoke little and, as has been mentioned, was humble and timid ...

But Raskolnikov had lately become superstitious. Traces of superstition remained in him for a long time afterwards, almost indelibly. And later on he was always inclined to see a certain strangeness, a mysteriousness, as it were, in this whole affair, the presence as of some peculiar influences and coincidences. The previous winter a student acquaintance of his, Pokorev, before leaving for Kharkov, had told him once in conversation the address of the old woman, Alyona Ivanovna, in case he might want to pawn something. For a long time he did not go to her, because he was giving lessons and getting by somehow. About a month and a half ago he had remembered the address; he had two things suitable for pawning: his father's old silver watch, and a small gold ring with three little red stones of some kind, given him as a keepsake by his sister when they parted. He decided to pawn the ring. Having located the old woman, who, from the very first glance, before he knew anything particular about her, filled him with insurmountable loathing, he took two “little bills” from her, and on his way back stopped at some wretched tavern. He asked for tea, sat down, and fell into deep thought. A strange idea was hatching in his head, like a chicken from an egg, and occupied him very, very much.

Almost next to him, at another table, sat a student he did not know or remember at all and a young officer. They had been playing billiards and were now drinking tea. Suddenly he heard the student talking with the officer about a money-lender, Alyona Ivanovna, widow of a collegiate secretary, and telling him her address. That in itself seemed somehow strange to Raskolnikov: he had just left her, and here they were talking about her. By chance, of course; but just then, when he could not rid himself of a certain quite extraordinary impression, it was as if someone had come to his service: the student suddenly began telling his friend various details about this Alyona Ivanovna.

“She's nice,” he was saying, “you can always get money from her. She's rich as a Jew, she could hand you over five thousand at once, but she's not above taking pledges for a rouble. A lot of us have gone to her. Only she's a terrible harpy . . .”

And he began telling how wicked she was, how capricious; how, if your payment was one day late, your pledge was lost. She gives four times less than the thing is worth, and takes five or even seven percent a month, and so on. The student went on chattering and said, among other things, that the old woman had a sister, Lizaveta, and that the disgusting little hag used to beat her all the time and kept her completely enslaved, like a little child, though Lizaveta was at least six feet tall . . .

“She's quite a phenomenon herself!” the student cried out, and guffawed.

They began talking about Lizaveta. The student spoke of her with some special pleasure and kept laughing, and the officer, who listened with great interest, asked the student to send this Lizaveta to him to mend his linen. Raskolnikov did not miss a word and at once learned everything: Lizaveta was the old woman's younger half sister (they had different mothers) and was thirty-five years old. She worked day and night for her sister, was cook and laundress in the house, and besides that sewed things for sale, and even hired herself out to wash floors, and gave everything to her sister. She did not dare take any orders or any work without the old woman's permission. Meanwhile, the old woman had already made her will, a fact known to Lizaveta, who, apart from moveable property, chairs and so forth, did not stand to get a penny from this will; all the money was to go to a monastery in N–y province, for the eternal remembrance of her soul. Lizaveta was a tradeswoman, not of official rank; she was unmarried and of terribly awkward build, remarkably tall, with long, somehow twisted legs, always wore down-at-heel goatskin shoes, but kept herself neat. Above all the student was surprised and laughed at the fact that Lizaveta was constantly pregnant . . .

“But you say she's ugly?” the officer remarked.

“Well, yes, she's dark-skinned, looks like a soldier in disguise, but, you know, she's not ugly at all. She has such a kind face and eyes. Very much so. A lot of men like her—there's the proof. She's so quiet, meek, uncomplaining, agreeable—she agrees to everything. And she does have a very nice smile.”

“Ah, so you like her, too!” the officer laughed.

“For the strangeness of it. No, but I'll tell you one thing: I could kill and rob that cursed old woman, and that, I assure you, without any remorse,” the student added hotly.

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

“Excuse me, I want to ask you a serious question,” the student began ardently. “I was joking just now, but look: on the one hand you have a stupid, meaningless, worthless, wicked, sick old crone, no good to anyone and, on the contrary, harmful to everyone, who doesn't know herself why she's alive, and who will die on her own tomorrow. Understand? Understand?'

“So, I understand,” the officer replied, looking fixedly at his ardent friend.

“Listen, now. On the other hand, you have fresh, young faces that are being wasted for lack of support, and that by the thousands, and that everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and undertakings that could be arranged and set going by the money that old woman has doomed to the monastery! Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives put right; dozens of families saved from destitution, from decay, from ruin, from depravity, from the venereal hospitals—all on her money. Kill her and take her money, so that afterwards with its help you can devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause: what do you think, wouldn't thousands of good deeds make up for one tiny little crime? For one life, thousands of lives saved from decay and corruption. One death for hundreds of lives—it's simple arithmetic! And what does the life of this stupid, consumptive, and wicked old crone mean in the general balance? No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and not even that much, because the old crone is harmful. She's eating up someone else's life: the other day she got so angry that she bit Lizaveta's finger; they almost had to cut it off!”

“Of course, she doesn't deserve to be alive,” the officer remarked, “but that's nature.”

“Eh, brother, but nature has to be corrected and guided, otherwise we'd all drown in prejudices. Without that there wouldn't be even a single great man. 'Duty, conscience,' they say—I'm not going to speak against duty and conscience, but how do we really understand them? Wait, I'll ask you one more question. Listen!”

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

“Well?”

“You're talking and making speeches now, but tell me: would you yourselfkill the old woman, or not?”

“Of course not! It's for the sake of justice that I... I'm not the point here . . .”

“Well, in my opinion, if you yourself don't dare, then there's no justice in it at all! Let's shoot another round!”

Raskolnikov was greatly agitated. Of course, it was all the most common and ordinary youthful talk and thinking, he had heard it many times before, only in different forms and on different subjects. But why precisely now did he have to hear precisely such talk and thinking, when... exactly the same thoughtshad just been conceived in his own head? And why precisely now, as he was coming from the old woman's bearing the germ of his thought, should he chance upon a conversation about the same old woman?...This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This negligible tavern conversation had an extreme influence on him in the further development of the affair; as though there were indeed some predestination, some indication in it . . .

Having returned from the Haymarket, he threw himself on the sofa and sat there for a whole hour without moving. Meanwhile it grew dark; he had no candle, and besides it did not occur to him to make a light. He was never able to recall whether he thought about anything during that time. In the end he became aware that he was still feverish, chilled, and realized with delight that it was also possible to lie down on the sofa. Soon a deep, leaden sleep, like a heavy weight, came over him.

He slept unusually long and without dreaming. Nastasya, who came into his room at ten o'clock the next morning, had difficulty shaking him out of it. She brought him tea and bread. It was re-used tea again, and again in her own teapot.

“Look at him sleeping there!” she cried indignantly. “All he does is sleep!”

He raised himself with an effort. His head ached; he got to his feet, took a turn around his closet, and dropped back on the sofa.

“hailing asleep again!” Nastasya cried. “Are you sick, or what?”

He made no reply.

“Want some tea?”

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

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

She came in again at two o'clock with soup. He lay as before. The tea remained untouched. Nastasya even got offended and began shaking him angrily.

“You're still snoring away!” she cried, looking at him with disgust. He raised himself slightly and sat up, but said nothing and stared at the ground.

“Are you sick or aren't you?” Nastasya asked, and again got no reply.

“You'd better go out at least,” she said, after a pause, “you'd at least have some wind blowing on you. Are you going to eat, or what?”

“Later,” he uttered faintly. “Go!” And he waved his hand.

She stood there a while longer, looking at him with compassion, and went out.

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

He ate a little, three or four spoonfuls, without appetite, as if mechanically. His head ached less. Having finished his dinner, he stretched out on the sofa again, but could not sleep now: he lay motionless, on his stomach, his face buried in the pillow. He kept daydreaming, and his dreams were all quite strange: most often he imagined he was somewhere in Africa, in Egypt, in some oasis. The caravan is resting, the camels are peacefully lying down; palm trees stand in a full circle around; everyone is having dinner. And he keeps drinking water right from the stream, which is there just beside him, flowing and bubbling. And the air is so fresh, and the wonderful, wonderful water is so blue, cold, running over the many-colored stones and over such clean sand sparkling with gold...All at once he clearly heard the clock strike. He gave a start, came to, raised his head, looked at the window, realized what time it was, and suddenly jumped up, pulling himself together, as if someone had torn him from the sofa. He tiptoed to the door, quietly opened it a little, and began listening down the stairs. His heart was pounding terribly. It was all quiet on the stairs, as if everyone were asleep...It seemed wild and strange to him that he could have slept so obliviously since the day before and still have done nothing, prepared nothing...And meanwhile it might just have struck six o'clock...In place of sleep and torpor, an extraordinary, feverish, and somehow confused bustle came over him. The preparations, incidentally, were not many. He strained all his energies to figure everything out and not forget anything, and his heart kept beating, pounding, so that it was even hard for him to breathe. First he had to make a loop and sew it into his coat—a moment's work. He felt beneath his pillow and found one of his shirts among the linen stuffed under it, old, unwashed, completely fallen to pieces. From its tatters he tore a strip about two inches wide and fifteen inches long. He folded the strip in two, took off his sturdy, loose-fitting summer coat, made from some heavy cotton material (the only outer garment he owned), and began sewing the two ends inside it, under the left armhole. His hands trembled as he sewed, but he managed it so that nothing could be seen when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread had been made ready long ago and lay in the table drawer wrapped in a piece of paper. As for the loop itself, this was a very clever invention of his own: the loop was to hold the axe. He could not go through the streets carrying an axe in his hands. And if he were to hide it under his coat, he would still have to keep it in place with his hand, which would be noticeable. But now, with the loop, he had only to slip the axe-head into it, and the axe would hang quietly under his arm all the way. And with his hand in the side pocket of his coat, he could also hold the end of the axe handle to keep it from swinging; and since the coat was very loose, a real bag, it could not be noticed from the outside that he was holding something through the pocket with his hand. This loop he had also thought up two weeks ago.

Having finished that, he thrust his fingers into the small space between his “Turkish” sofa and the floor, felt near the left corner, and pulled out the pledgehe had prepared long before and hidden there. This pledge was, incidentally, not a pledge at all, but simply a smoothly planed little piece of wood, about the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case. He had found this piece of wood by chance during one of his walks, in a courtyard, where there was some sort of workshop in one of the wings. Later he added to the piece of wood a thin and smooth strip of iron—probably a fragment of something– which he had also found in the street at the same time. Having put the two pieces together, of which the iron one was smaller than the wooden one, he tied them tightly, crisscross, with a thread, after which he wrapped them neatly and elegantly in clean, white paper, tied round with a thin ribbon, also crosswise, and with a little knot that would be rather tricky to untie. This was to distract the old woman's attention for a while, as she began fumbling with the knot, and thereby catch the right moment. And the iron strip was added for weight, so that at least for the first moment the old woman would not guess that the “article” was made of wood. All this had been kept for the time being under the sofa. He had no sooner taken out the pledge than someone shouted somewhere in the courtyard:

“It's long past six!”

“Long past! My God!”

He rushed to the door, listened, snatched his hat, and started down his thirteen steps, cautiously, inaudibly, like a cat. He was now faced with the most important thing—stealing the axe from the kitchen. That the deed was to be done with an axe he had already decided long ago. He also had a folding pruning knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and therefore finally decided on the axe. We may note, incidentally, one peculiarity with regard to all the final decisions he came to in this affair. They had one strange property: the more final they became, the more hideous and absurd they at once appeared in his own eyes. In spite of all his tormenting inner struggle, never for a single moment during the whole time could he believe in the feasibility of his designs.

If he had ever once managed to analyze and finally decide everything down to the last detail, and there were no longer any doubts left—at that point he would most likely have renounced it all as absurd, monstrous, and impossible. But there remained a whole abyss of doubts and unresolved details. As for where to get the axe, this trifle did not worry him in the least, because nothing could have been simpler. It so happened that Nastasya was constantly in and out of the house, especially during the evening: she would run to see the neighbors or to do some shopping, and would always leave the door wide open. That was the landlady's only quarrel with her. All one had to do, then, was go quietly into the kitchen when the time came, take the axe, and an hour later (when it was all over) go and put it back. But doubts also presented themselves: suppose he comes in an hour to put it back and there is Nastasya. Of course, he would have to pass by and wait until she went out again. But what if meanwhile she misses the axe, looks for it, starts shouting—there is suspicion for you, or at least the grounds for suspicion.

But these were still trifles he had not even begun to think about, nor did he have time. He had thought about the main thing, and put the trifles off until he himself was convinced of everything.But this last seemed decidedly unrealizable. At least it seemed so to him. He could in no way imagine, for example, that one day he would finish thinking, get up, and—simply go there...Even his recent trial(that is, his visit with the intention of making a final survey of the place) was only a trying outand far from the real thing, as if he had said to himself: “Why not go and try it—enough of this dreaming!” and he was immediately unable to endure it, spat, and fled, furious with himself. And yet it would seem he had already concluded the whole analysis, in terms of a moral resolution of the question: his casuistry was sharp as a razor, and he no longer found any conscious objections. But in the final instance he simply did not believe himself, and stubbornly, slavishly, sought objections on all sides, gropingly, as if someone were forcing him and drawing him to it. This last day, which had come so much by chance and resolved everything at once, affected him almost wholly mechanically: as if someone had taken him by the hand and pulled him along irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural force, without objections. As if a piece of his clothing had been caught in the cogs of a machine and he were being dragged into it.

At first—even long before—he had been occupied with one question: why almost all crimes are so easily detected and solved, and why almost all criminals leave such an obviously marked trail. He came gradually to various and curious conclusions, the chief reason lying, in his opinion, not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime as in the criminal himself; the criminal himself, almost any criminal, experiences at the moment of the crime a sort of failure of will and reason, which, on the contrary, are replaced by a phenomenal, childish thoughtlessness, just at the moment when reason and prudence are most necessary. According to his conviction, it turned out that this darkening of reason and failure of will take hold of a man like a disease, develop gradually, and reach their height shortly before the crime is committed; they continue unabated during the moment of the crime itself and for some time after it, depending on the individual; then they pass in the same way as any disease passes. But the question whether the disease generates the crime, or the crime somehow by its peculiar nature is always accompanied by something akin to disease, he did not yet feel able to resolve.

Having come to such conclusions, he decided that in his own personal case there would be no such morbid revolutions, that reason and will would remain with him inalienably throughout the fulfillment of what he had plotted, for the sole reason that what he had plotted—was “not a crime”...We omit the whole process by means of which he arrived at this latter decision; we have run too far ahead of ourselves as it is . .. We will only add that the factual, purely material difficulties of the affair generally played a most secondary role in his mind. “Since I will have kept all my will and reason over them, they, too, will be defeated in due time, once I have acquainted myself to the minutest point with all the details of the affair...” But the affair would not get started. He went on believing least of all in his final decisions, and when the hour struck, everything came out not that way at all, but somehow accidentally, even almost unexpectedly.

One quite negligible circumstance already nonplussed him even before he got down the stairs. Having reached the landlady's kitchen, wide open as always, he cautiously took a sidelong glance to see if the landlady herself might be there in Nastasya's absence, and, if not, whether the door to her room was tightly shut, so that she could not somehow peek out as he went in to take the axe. How great was his amazement when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not only at home this time, in her kitchen, but was even doing something: taking laundry from a basket and hanging it on a line! Seeing him, she stopped hanging, turned towards him, and looked at him all the while he was passing by. He turned away and walked past as if noticing nothing. But the affair was finished: no axe! He was terribly struck.

“And where did I get the idea,” he was thinking, as he went down to the gateway, “where did I get the idea that she was sure to be away right now? Why, why, why was I so certain of it?” He was crushed, even somehow humiliated. He wanted to laugh at himself in his anger...Dull, brutal rage was seething in him.

He stopped in the gateway, reflecting. To go out, to walk around the streets just for the sake of appearances, was revolting to him; to return home—even more revolting. “To lose such an opportunity forever!” he muttered, standing aimlessly in the gateway, directly opposite the caretaker's dark closet, which was also open. Suddenly he gave a start. From the caretaker's closet, which was two steps away from him, from under the bench to the right, the gleam of something caught his eye...He looked around—nobody. On tiptoe he approached the caretaker's room, went down the two steps, and called the caretaker in a faint voice. “Sure enough, he's not home! Must be nearby, though, somewhere in the yard, since the door is wide open.” He rushed headlong for the axe (it was an axe) and pulled it from under the bench, where it lay between two logs; he slipped it into the loop at once, before going out, put both hands into his pockets, and walked out of the caretaker's room; no one noticed! “If not reason, then the devil!” he thought, grinning strangely. The incident encouraged him enormously.

He went quietly and sedatelyon his way, without hurrying, so as not to arouse any suspicions. He barely looked at the passers-by, even tried not to look at their faces at all and to be as inconspicuous as possible. Then he suddenly remembered his hat. “My God! I had money two days ago, and couldn't even change it for a cap!” A curse rose up in his soul.

Glancing into a shop by chance, out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the clock on the wall already showed ten minutes past seven. He had to hurry, and at the same time he had to make a detour, to get to the house from the other side ...

Earlier, when he had happened to picture it all in his imagination, he sometimes thought he would be very afraid. But he was not very afraid now, even not afraid at all. He was even occupied at that moment with certain unrelated thoughts, though not for long. Passing the Yusupov Garden, he even became much absorbed in the notion of setting up tall fountains, and of how they would freshen the air in all the public squares. Gradually he arrived at the conviction that if the Summer Garden were expanded across the entire Field of Mars and even joined with the garden of the Mikhailovsky Palace, it would be a wonderful and most useful thing for the city. At which point he suddenly became interested in precisely why the people of all big cities are somehow especially inclined, not really out of necessity alone, to live and settle in precisely those parts of the city where there are neither gardens nor fountains, where there is filth and stench and all sorts of squalor. At which point he recalled his own walks through the Haymarket and came to himself for a moment. “What nonsense,” he thought. “No, better not to think anything at all.

“It must be the same for men being led out to execution—their thoughts must cling to every object they meet on the way,” flashed through his head, but only flashed, like lightning; he hastened to extinguish the thought...But he was already close, here was the house, here were the gates. Somewhere a clock suddenly struck once. “What, can it be half past seven? Impossible; it must be fast!”

Luckily for him, everything again went well at the gates. Moreover, as if by design, a huge hay-wagon drove through the gates at that very moment, just ahead of him, concealing him completely all the while he was passing under the archway, and as soon as the wagon entered the courtyard, he slipped quickly to the right. On the other side of the wagon, several voices could be heard shouting and arguing, but no one noticed him, and he met no one coming his way. Many of the windows looking out onto the huge, square yard were open at that moment, but he did not raise his head—he had no strength. The stairway to the old woman's was close by, immediately to the right of the gates. He was already on the stairs . . .

Having caught his breath and pressed his hand to his pounding heart, at the same time feeling for the axe and straightening it once again, he began cautiously and quietly climbing the stairs, pausing every moment to listen. But the stairway also happened to be quite empty at the time; all the doors were shut; he met no one. True, one empty apartment on the second floor stood wide open, and painters were working in it, but they did not even look. He paused, thought for a moment, and went on. “Of course, it would be better if they weren't there at all, but...there are two more flights above them.”

But here was the fourth floor, here was the door, here was the apartment opposite—the empty one. On the third floor, by all tokens, the apartment just under the old woman's was also empty: the calling card nailed to the door with little nails was gone—they had moved out! ... He was gasping for breath. A thought raced momentarily through his mind: “Shouldn't I go away?” But he gave himself no reply and began listening at the old woman's door: dead silence. Then he listened down the stairs again, listened long, attentively...Then he took a last look around, pulled himself together, straightened himself up, and once more felt the axe in its loop. “Am I not pale...too pale?” he thought. “Am I not too excited? She's mistrustful...Shouldn't I wait a little longer...until my heart stops this...?”

But his heart would not stop. On the contrary, as though on purpose, it pounded harder, harder, harder...He could not stand it, slowly reached for the bell, and rang. In half a minute he rang again, louder.

No answer. To go on ringing in vain was pointless, and it did not suit him. The old woman was certainly at home, but she was alone and suspicious. He was somewhat familiar with her habits...and once again pressed his ear to the door. Either his senses were extremely sharp (which in fact is difficult to suppose), or it was indeed quite audible, but he suddenly discerned something like the cautious sound of a hand on the door-latch and something like the rustle of a dress against the door itself. Someone was standing silently just at the latch, hiding inside and listening, in the same way as he was outside, and also, it seemed, with an ear to the door . . .

He purposely stirred and muttered something aloud, so as not to make it seem he was hiding; then he rang for the third time, but quietly, seriously, and without any impatience. Recalling it later, vividly, distinctly—for this moment was etched in him forever—he could not understand where he got so much cunning, especially since his reason seemed clouded at moments, and as for his body, he almost did not feel it on him. . . A second later came the sound of the latch being lifted.