Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

VII

The door, as before, was opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp, mistrustful eyes stared at him from the darkness. Here Raskolnikov became flustered and made a serious mistake.

Fearing the old woman would be frightened that they were alone, and with no hope that his looks would reassure her, he took hold of the door and pulled it towards him so that the old woman should not somehow decide to lock herself in. Seeing this, she did not pull the door back towards her, but did not let go of the handle either, so that he almost pulled her out onto the stairway together with the door. Then, seeing that she was blocking the doorway and not letting him in, he went straight at her. The woman jumped aside in fear, was about to say something, but seemed unable to and only stared at him.

“Good evening, Alyona Ivanovna,” he began, as casually as he could, but his voice would not obey him, it faltered and started trembling. “I've brought you...an article...but we'd better go over there...near the light...” And leaving her, he walked straight into the room uninvited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue came untied.

“Lord! What is it?...Who are you? What's your business?”

“For pity's sake, Alyona Ivanovna...you know me...Raskolnikov...here, I've brought you that pledge...the one I promised you the other day...” He was holding the pledge out to her.

The old woman glanced at the pledge, then at once fixed her eyes directly on the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked at him intently, spitefully, mistrustfully. A minute or so passed; he even thought he saw something like mockery in her eyes, as if she had already guessed everything. He felt himself becoming flustered, almost frightened, so frightened that it seemed if she were to look at him like that, without saying a word, for another half minute, he would run away from her.

“But why are you looking at me like that, as if you didn't recognize me?” he suddenly asked, also with spite. “If you want it, take it– otherwise I'll go somewhere else. I have no time.”

He had not even intended to say this, but it suddenly got said, just so, by itself.

The old woman came to her senses, and her visitor's resolute tone seemed to encourage her.

“But what's the matter, dearie, so suddenly...what is it?” she asked, looking at the pledge.

“A silver cigarette case—I told you last time.”

She held out her hand.

“But why are you so pale? Look, your hands are trembling! Did you go for a swim, dearie, or what?”

“Fever,” he answered abruptly. “You can't help getting pale...when you have nothing to eat,” he added, barely able to articulate the words. His strength was abandoning him again. But the answer sounded plausible; the old woman took the pledge.

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

“An article...a cigarette case...silver...take a look.”

“But it doesn't seem like silver...Ehh, it's all wrapped up.”

Trying to untie the string and going to the window, to the light (all her windows were closed, despite the stuffiness), she left him completely for a few seconds and turned her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the loop but did not quite take it out yet; he just held it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were terribly weak; he felt them growing more and more numb and stiff every moment. He was afraid he would let go and drop the axe...suddenly his head seemed to spin.

“Look how he's wrapped it up!” the old woman exclaimed in vexation, and made a move towards him.

He could not waste even one more moment. He took the axe all the way out, swung it with both hands, scarcely aware of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the butt-end down on her head. His own strength seemed to have no part in it. But the moment he brought the axe down, strength was born in him.

The old woman was bareheaded as always. Her thin hair, pale and streaked with gray, was thickly greased as usual, plaited into a ratty braid and tucked under a piece of horn comb that stuck up at the back of her head. Because she was short, the blow happened to land right on the crown of her head. She cried out, but very faintly, and her whole body suddenly sank to the floor, though she still managed to raise both hands to her head. In one hand she was still holding the “pledge.” Then he struck her again and yet again with all his strength, both times with the butt-end, both times on the crown of the head. Blood poured out as from an overturned glass, and the body fell backwards. He stepped aside, letting it fall, and immediately bent down to her face; she was already dead. Her eyes bulged as if they were about to pop out, and her forehead and her whole face were contracted and distorted in convulsion.

He set the axe down on the floor by the dead woman, and immediately put his hand into her pocket, trying not to smear himself with the flowing blood—that same right pocket from which she had taken her keys the last time. He was in full possession of his reason, the clouding and dizziness had ceased, but his hands were still trembling. He recalled afterwards that he was even very attentive, careful, tried to be sure not to stain himself... He immediately pulled out the keys; they were all in one bunch, as before, on a steel ring. He immediately ran to the bedroom with them. This was a very small room; there was a huge stand with icons and, against the opposite wall, a large bed, quite clean, covered with a silk patchwork quilt. Against the third wall stood a chest of drawers. Strangely, as soon as he began applying the keys to the drawers, as soon as he heard their jingling, it was as if a convulsion ran through him. He again wanted suddenly to drop everything and leave. But only for a moment; it was too late to leave. He even grinned to himself, but then another anxious thought struck his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might still be alive, and might still recover her senses. Abandoning both the keys and the chest of drawers, he ran back to the body, seized the axe and raised it one more time over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending over and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was shattered and even displaced a little to one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but jerked his hand back; it was obvious enough without that. Meanwhile a whole pool of blood had already formed. Suddenly he noticed a string around her neck; he tugged at it, but the string was strong and refused to snap; besides, it was soaked with blood. He tried simply pulling it out from her bodice, but something was in the way and it got stuck. Impatiently, he raised the axe again to cut the string where it lay on the body, but he did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing both his hands and the axe, after two minutes of fussing over it, he cut the string without touching the body with the axe, and took it off; he was not mistaken—a purse. There were two crosses on the string, one of cypress and the other of brass, besides a little enamel icon; hanging right there with them was a small, greasy suede purse with a steel frame and ring. The purse was stuffed full; Raskolnikov shoved it into his pocket without looking, dropped the crosses on the old woman's chest, and, taking the axe with him this time, rushed back to the bedroom.

He was terribly hurried, snatched up the keys, and began fumbling with them again. But somehow he had no luck: they would not go into the keyholes. It was not so much that his hands were trembling as that he kept making mistakes: he could even see, for instance, that the key was the wrong one, that it would not fit, and he still kept putting it in. Suddenly he recalled and realized that the big key with the toothed bit, which was dangling right there with the other, smaller ones, must certainly not be for the chest of drawers at all (as had also occurred to him the last time) but for some other trunk, and that it was in this trunk that everything was probably hidden. He abandoned the chest of drawers and immediately looked under the bed, knowing that old women usually keep their trunks under their beds. Sure enough, there stood a sizeable trunk, about two and a half feet long, with a bowed lid, upholstered in red morocco, studded with little steel nails. The toothed key fitted perfectly and opened it. On top, under a white sheet, lay a red silk coat lined with rabbit fur; beneath it was a silk dress, then a shawl, and then, deeper down, there seemed to be nothing but old clothes. First of all he began wiping his blood-stained hands on the red silk. “It's red; blood won't be so noticeable on red,” he began to reason, but suddenly came to his senses: “Lord! Am I losing my mind?” he thought fearfully.

But no sooner had he disturbed these old clothes than a gold watch suddenly slipped out from under the fur coat. He hastened to turn everything over. Indeed, various gold objects were stuffed in among the rags—all of them probably pledges, redeemed and unredeemed– bracelets, chains, earrings, pins, and so on. Some were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, but neatly and carefully, in double sheets, and tied with cloth bands. Without the least delay, he began stuffing them into the pockets of his trousers and coat, not choosing or opening the packages and cases; but he did not have time to take much . . .

Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped, still as death. But everything was quiet; he must have imagined it. Suddenly there came a slight but distinct cry, or more as if someone softly and abruptly moaned and then fell silent. Again there was a dead silence for a minute or two. He sat crouched by the trunk and waited, barely breathing, then suddenly jumped up, seized the axe, and ran out of the bedroom.

Lizaveta was standing in the middle of the room, with a big bundle in her hands, frozen, staring at her murdered sister, white as a sheet, and as if unable to utter a cry. Seeing him run in, she trembled like a leaf, with a faint quivering, and spasms ran across her whole face; she raised her hand, opened her mouth, yet still did not utter a cry, and began slowly backing away from him into the corner, staring at him fixedly, point-blank, but still not uttering a sound, as if she did not have breath enough to cry out. He rushed at her with the axe; she twisted her lips pitifully, as very small children do when they begin to be afraid of something, stare at the thing that frightens them, and are on the point of crying out. And this wretched Lizaveta was so simple, so downtrodden, and so permanently frightened that she did not even raise a hand to protect her face, though it would have been the most necessary and natural gesture at that moment, because the axe was raised directly over her face. She brought her free left hand up very slightly, nowhere near her face, and slowly stretched it out towards him as if to keep him away. The blow landed directly on the skull, with the sharp edge, and immediately split the whole upper part of the forehead, almost to the crown. She collapsed. Raskolnikov, utterly at a loss, snatched up her bundle, dropped it again, and ran to the entryway.

Fear was taking hold of him more and more, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He wanted to run away from there as quickly as possible. And if he had been able at that moment to see and reason more properly, if he had only been able to realize all the difficulties of his situation, all the despair, all the hideousness, all the absurdity of it, and to understand, besides, how many more difficulties and perhaps evildoings he still had to overcome or commit in order to get out of there and reach home, he might very well have dropped everything and gone at once to denounce himself, and not even out of fear for himself, but solely out of horror and loathing for what he had done. Loathing especially was rising and growing in him every moment. Not for anything in the world would he have gone back to the trunk now, or even into the rooms.

But a sort of absentmindedness, even something like revery, began gradually to take possession of him: as if he forgot himself at moments or, better, forgot the main thing and clung to trifles. Nevertheless, glancing into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on a bench, it did occur to him to wash his hands and the axe. His blood-smeared hands were sticky. He plunged the axe blade straight into the water, grabbed a little piece of soap that was lying in a cracked saucer on the windowsill, and began washing his hands right in the bucket. When he had washed them clean, he also took the axe, washed the iron, and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood where blood had gotten on it, even using soap to try and wash the blood away. Then he wiped it all off with a piece of laundry that was drying there on a line stretched across the kitchen, and then examined the axe long and attentively at the window. There were no traces, only the wood was still damp. He carefully slipped the axe into the loop under his coat. Then, as well as the light in the dim kitchen allowed, he examined his coat, trousers, boots. Superficially, at first glance, there seemed to be nothing, apart from some spots on his boots. He wet the rag and wiped them off. He knew, however, that he was not examining himself well, that there might indeed be something eye-catching which he had failed to notice. He stood pensively in the middle of the room. A dark, tormenting thought was rising in him—the thought that he had fallen into madness and was unable at that moment either to reason or to protect himself, and that he was perhaps not doing at all what he should have been doing...”My God! I must run, run away!” he muttered, and rushed into the entryway. But there such horror awaited him as he had surely never experienced before.

He stood, looked, and could not believe his eyes: the door, the outside door, from the entryway to the stairs, the same door at which he had rung, and through which he had entered earlier, stood unlatched, even a good hand's-breadth ajar: no lock, no hook the whole time, during the whole time! The old woman had not locked it behind him, perhaps out of prudence. But, good God, had he not seen Lizaveta after that? How, how could he fail to realize that she must have come in from somewhere! And certainly not through the wall!.

He rushed to the door and hooked it.

“But no, again that's not it! I must go, go . . .”

He unhooked the door, opened it, and began listening on the stairs. He listened for a long time. Somewhere far away, downstairs, probably in the gateway, two voices were shouting loudly and shrilly, arguing and swearing. “What's that about?” He waited patiently. At last everything became quiet all at once, as though cut off; they went away. He was on the point of going out when suddenly, one floor below, the door to the stairs was noisily opened and someone started to go down humming a tune. “How is it they all make so much noise?” flashed through his head. He again closed the door behind him and waited. At last everything fell silent; there was not a soul. He had already stepped out to the stairs when again, suddenly, some new footsteps were heard.

The sound of these steps came from very far away, from the very bottom of the stairs, but he remembered quite well and distinctly how, right then, at the first sound, he had begun for some reason to suspect that they must be coming here,to the fourth floor, to the old woman's. Why? Could the sound have been somehow peculiar, portentous? The steps were heavy, regular, unhurried. Now hewas already past the first floor, now he was ascending further, his steps were getting louder and louder. The heavy, short-winded breathing of the approaching man became audible. Now he was starting up the third flight... Here! And it suddenly seemed to him as though he had turned to stone, as though he were in one of those dreams where the dreamer is being pursued, the pursuers are close, they are going to kill him, and he is as if rooted to the spot, unable even to move his arms.

At last, and then only when the visitor started climbing to the fourth floor, he roused himself suddenly and had just time enough to slip quickly and adroitly from the landing back into the apartment and close the door behind him. Then he grasped the hook and quietly, inaudibly placed it through the eye. Instinct was helping him. Having done all that, he cowered, without breathing, just at the door. By then the uninvited visitor was also at the door. They now stood opposite each other, as he and the old woman had done earlier, with the door between them, but it was he who was listening.

The visitor drew several heavy breaths. “He must be big and fat,” Raskolnikov thought, clutching the axe in his hand. Indeed, it was as if he were dreaming. The visitor grasped the bell-pull and rang firmly.

As soon as the bell gave its tinny clink, he suddenly seemed to fancy there was a stirring in the room. For a few seconds he even listened seriously. The stranger gave another clink of the bell, waited a bit, and suddenly began tugging impatiently at the door handle with all his might. Horrified, Raskolnikov watched the hook jumping about in the eye, and waited in dull fear for it to pop right out any moment. Indeed, it seemed possible: the door was being pulled so hard. It occurred to him to hold the hook in place, but then hemight suspect. His head seemed to start spinning again. “I'm passing out!” flashed through him, but the stranger spoke, and he immediately recovered himself.

“What's up in there, are they snoring, or has somebody wrung their necks? Cur-r-rse it!” he bellowed, as if from a barrel. “Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, you old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, you indescribable beauty! Open up! Ohh, curse it all! Are they asleep, or what?”

And again, enraged, he pulled the bell ten times in a row as hard as he could. He was certainly an imperious man, and a familiar of the house.

At that same moment there was a sound of rapid, hurrying footsteps close by, on the stairs. Someone else was coming up. Raskolnikov did not even hear him at first.

“What, nobody home?” the newcomer cried in a ringing and cheerful voice, directly addressing the first visitor, who was still pulling the bell. “How do you do, Koch!”

“He must be very young, judging by his voice,” Raskolnikov suddenly thought.

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

“Well, I like that! Didn't I just beat you three times straight at billiards, the day before yesterday, at Gambrinus's?”

“A-a-ah . . .”

“So they're not there? Strange. Terribly stupid, though. Where could the old woman have gone? I'm here on business.”

“I'm also here on business, my friend.”

“Well, what's there to do? Go home, I guess. Bah! And I was hoping to get some money!” the young man cried.

“Go home, of course—but then why make an appointment? The old witch told me when to come herself. It's far out of my way. And where the devil she can have taken herself is beyond me. The old witch sits rotting here all year round with her bad legs, and all of a sudden she goes for an outing!”

“Maybe we should ask the caretaker?”

“Ask him what?”

“Where she's gone and when she'll be back?”

“Hm...the devil... ask him...But she never goes anywhere...” and he tugged at the door handle again. “Ah, the devil, nothing to be done; let's go!”

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

“So?”

“That means it's not locked, it's just latched, I mean hooked! Hear the hook rattling?”

“So?”

“But don't you understand? That means one of them is home. If they'd all gone out, they would have locked it from outside with a key, and not hooked it from inside. There, can you hear the hook rattling? And in order to fasten the hook from inside, someone has to be home, understand? So they're sitting in there and not opening the door!”

“Hah! Why, of course!” the astonished Koch exclaimed. “But what are they up to in there!” And he began to tug violently at the door.

“Wait!” The young man shouted again. “Don't tug at it! Something's not right here...you rang, you pulled...they don't open the door; it means they've both fainted, or . . .”

“Or what?”

“Listen, let's go get the caretaker; let him wake them up.”

“Good idea!” They both started down the stairs.

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

“Why stay?”

“You never know . . .”

“Maybe . . .”

“I'm studying to be a public investigator! It's obvious, ob-vi-ous that something's not right here!” the young man cried hotly, and went running down the stairs.

Koch stayed. He gave one more little tug at the bell, and it clinked once; then quietly, as if examining and reflecting, he began to move the door handle, pulling it and letting it go, to make sure once more that it was only hooked. Then he bent down, puffing, and tried to look through the keyhole; but there was a key in it, on the inside, and therefore nothing could be seen.

Raskolnikov stood there clutching the axe. He was as if in delirium. He was even readying himself to fight with them when they came in. Several times, while they were knocking and discussing, the idea had suddenly occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them from behind the door. At times he wanted to start abusing them, taunting them, until they opened the door. “Just get it over with!” flashed through his head.

“Ah, the devil, he . . .”

Time was passing—one minute, two—no one came. Koch began to stir.

“Ah, the devil! ... ” he suddenly cried, and impatiently, abandoning his post, he, too, set off down the stairs, hurrying and stomping his feet as he went. His steps died away.

“Lord, what shall I do!”

Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door a little—not a sound. And suddenly, now without thinking at all, he went out, closed the door behind him as tightly as he could, and started down the stairs.

He had already gone three flights when a loud noise suddenly came from below—where could he go? There was nowhere to hide. He was turning to run back to the apartment again.

“Hey, you hairy devil! Stop him!”

With a shout, someone burst from one of the apartments below, and did not so much run as tumble down the stairs, shouting at the top of his lungs:

“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Damn your eyes!”

The cry ended in a shriek; the last sounds already came from outside; then it was quiet. But at the same moment, several men, talking loudly and quickly, began noisily climbing the stairs. There were three or four of them. He heard the ringing voice of the young one. “It's them!”

In utter despair he marched straight to meet them: come what may! If they stopped him, all was lost; if they let him pass, all was lost anyway—they would remember him. In a moment they would come face to face; there was only one flight between them—and suddenly, salvation! A few steps away from him, on the right, was an empty and wide open apartment, that same second-floor apartment where the painters had been working and which, as if by design, they had now left. Surely it was they who had just run out with so much shouting. The floors were freshly painted; in the middle of the room was a small bucket of paint and a potsherd with a brush on it. He slipped through the open door in an instant and cowered behind the wall, and not a moment too soon: they were already on that very landing. Then they passed by and headed upstairs to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, tiptoed out, and ran downstairs.

No one on the stairs! Nor in the gateway. He quickly walked through the gateway and turned left onto the street.

He knew very well, he knew perfectly well, that at that moment they were already in the apartment, that they were very surprised at finding it open, since it had just been locked, that they were already looking at the bodies, and that it would take them no more than a minute to realize and fully grasp that the murderer had just been there and had managed to hide somewhere, slip past them, get away; they would also realize, perhaps, that he had been there in the empty apartment while they were going upstairs. And yet by no means did he dare to quicken his pace, though there were about a hundred steps to go before the first turning. “Shouldn't I slip through some gate and wait somewhere on an unfamiliar stairway? No, no good. Shouldn't I throw the axe away somewhere? Shouldn't I take a cab? No good! No good!”

Here at last was the side street; he turned down it more dead than alive; now he was halfway to safety, and he knew it—not so suspicious; besides, there were many people shuttling along there, and he effaced himself among them like a grain of sand. But all these torments had weakened him so much that he could barely move. Sweat rolled off of him in drops; his whole neck was wet. “There's a potted one!” someone shouted at him as he walked out to the canal.

He was hardly aware of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it became. He remembered, however, that on coming out to the canal he had felt afraid because there were too few people and it was more conspicuous there, and had almost wanted to turn back to the side street. Though he was nearing collapse, he nevertheless made a detour and arrived home from the completely opposite side.

He was not fully conscious when he entered the gates of his house; at least he did not remember about the axe until he was already on the stairs. And yet a very important task was facing him: to put it back, and as inconspicuously as possible. Of course, he was no longer capable of realizing that it might be much better for him not to put the axe in its former place at all, but to leave it, later even, somewhere in an unfamiliar courtyard.

Yet everything worked out well. The caretaker's door was closed but not locked, meaning that the caretaker was most likely there. But by then he had so utterly lost the ability to understand anything that he went straight up to the door and opened it. If the caretaker had asked him, “What do you want?” he might simply have handed him the axe. But once again the caretaker was not there, and he had time to put the axe in its former place under the bench; he even covered it with a log, as before. He met no one, not a single soul, from then on all the way to his room; the landlady's door was shut. He went into his room and threw himself down on the sofa just as he was. He did not sleep, but was as if oblivious. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and shouted. Bits and scraps of various thoughts kept swarming in his head; but he could not grasp any one of them, could not rest on any one, hard as he tried . . .