Crime and Punishment (16 page)

Sitting almost side by side with him, at another table, were a student whom he did not know at all and whose face he did not remember, and a young officer. They had been playing billiards, and were now drinking tea. Suddenly he heard the student telling the officer about ‘the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna, the collegiate secretary's widow’ and giving him her address. This alone seemed somehow strange to Raskolnikov: there he was, having just come from there, and now the first people he met were talking about her. It was merely a coincidence, of course, but even so he was now unable to get rid of a certain very peculiar feeling, and now it was as if someone were doing his best to worm himself into his favour: the student had suddenly begun to tell his companion all sorts of details about this Alyona Ivanovna.

‘She's amazing,’ he was saying. ‘You can always get money out of her. She's as wealthy as a Jew, she could let you have five thousand straight off, yet she won't turn her nose up even at a rouble pledge. A lot of us have been to see her. Only she's a horrible old cow…’

And he began to relate how mean and capricious she was, how one needed only to be one day late in redeeming one's pledge for the thing to be lost. She would give one a quarter of the item's value, and take monthly interest of five and even seven
per cent, and so on. The student got carried away and informed his companion, moreover, that the old woman had a sister called Lizaveta whom she, small and repulsive, beat every minute of the day and kept in total bondage, like a little child, while Lizaveta, at least six feet tall…

‘I mean, it's a real phenomenon!’ the student exclaimed, and burst into laughter.

They began to discuss Lizaveta. The student talked about her with a peculiar satisfaction, and kept laughing, while the officer listened with great interest and asked the student to send this Lizaveta over to mend some linen for him. Raskolnikov did not miss a single word and learned everything in one go: Lizaveta was the old woman's younger half-sister (they had had different mothers), and she was thirty-five years old. She worked for her sister day and night, performed the functions of cook and washerwoman in the household, and, in addition, did sewing which she sold, and even hired herself out to scrub floors, giving all that she earned to her sister. She did not dare to take a single order or accept a single job of work without the old woman's consent. Another thing was that the old woman had already made her will, a fact that was known to Lizaveta, who did not stand to inherit a single copeck, just the old woman's personal effects, some chairs and so forth; all the money had been earmarked for distribution to a certain monastery in the province of N—, in return for the eternal remembrance of her soul. Lizaveta had retained her petty-bourgeois origins, unlike her sister, who had married into the civil service; she had not married, and was terribly awkward, of remarkable height, with great long, almost bandy-looking legs, always with down-at-heel goatskin shoes on her feet, and she paid especial attention to her personal cleanliness. The thing that the student found astonishing and that made him laugh, however, was that Lizaveta was constantly pregnant…

‘But I thought you said she was a freak?’

‘Well, she's sort of swarthy, like a soldier dressed up, pretending to be a woman, but you know she's not at all a freak. She has such a kind face, such kind eyes. Yes, really, she has. And the proof of it is that a lot of men find her attractive.
She's a quiet sort, meek, mild, compliant, she'll go along with anything. And she has a really nice smile.’

‘I say, do you find her attractive, too?’ the officer laughed.

‘Oh, only because she's so strange. No, but I'll tell you this: I'd murder that old woman and rob her of all her money, and I swear to you, I'd do it without the slightest twinge of conscience,’ the student added with heat.

The officer burst out laughing again, and Raskolnikov started. How strange this was!

‘If you'll permit me, I'd like to ask you a serious question,’ the student said, growing excited. ‘I was joking just now, of course, but look: on the one hand you have a nasty, stupid, worthless, meaningless, sick old woman who's no use to anyone and is, indeed, actually harmful to people, who doesn't even know herself why she's alive, and who's going to kick the bucket of her own accord tomorrow. Do you get my meaning? Do you?’

‘Yes, I think I do,’ the officer replied, fixing his eyes on his excited companion.

‘Listen to this, then. There, on the other hand you have young, fresh energies that are going to waste for want of backing – thousands of people are involved, and it's happening everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and undertakings that could be arranged and expedited with that old woman's money, which is doomed to go to a monastery! Hundreds, possibly even thousands of lives that could be set on the right road; dozens of families saved from poverty, breakup, ruin, depravity, the venereal hospitals – and all of that with her money. If one were to kill her and take her money, in order with its help to devote oneself to the service of all mankind and the common cause: what do you think – wouldn't one petty little crime like that be atoned for by all those thousands of good deeds? Instead of one life – thousands of lives rescued from corruption and decay. One death to a hundred lives – I mean, there's arithmetic for you! And anyway, what does the life of that horrible, stupid, consumptive old woman count for when weighed in the common balance? No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and it's not even worth that, because the old
woman is harmful. She's wearing another person's life out: she's mean: she bit Lizaveta's finger out of meanness the other day; she very nearly severed it!’

‘Of course she doesn't deserve to live,’ the officer observed. ‘But then that's nature.’

‘Ah, but it's possible to correct and channel nature, you know, old man – otherwise we would all just drown in a sea of prejudice. If it weren't for that, there would never have been a single great man. People say: “duty, conscience” – well, I won't say a word against duty and conscience – but after all, what do we mean by them? Wait, I want to ask you another question. Listen!’

‘No, I want to ask you a question, first.
You
listen!’

‘Well?’

‘Well, here you are talking and holding forth in that oratorical way of yours, but tell me: are
you
going to kill the old woman?’

‘Of course not! I merely thought it would be her just deserts… It's no business of mine…’

‘Well, the way I see it is that there are no just deserts in it at all unless you're prepared to do it yourself. Let's go and have another game.’

Raskolnikov was in a state of extreme excitement. All this was, of course, the most commonplace and the most frequently encountered kind of conversation; many times before he had heard the same ideas expressed by young people in other forms and in relation to other subjects. But why had he chanced to hit upon such talk and such ideas precisely now, when inside his own head there had just been engendered…
precisely those very same thoughts
? And why precisely now, when he had only just come away from the old woman with the embryo of his idea, should he immediately have happened upon a conversation about her?… This coincidence always seemed to him a strange one. This trivial, eating-house conversation had an extremely strong influence on him during the subsequent development of the affair: as though here some form of predestination, of augury had been at work…

Returning from the Haymarket, he threw himself on the sofa and sat there for a whole hour with no movement. Meanwhile it grew dark; he had no candle, and indeed the notion of lighting one never entered his head. Later, he could never remember whether he had been thinking about anything during that time. At last he felt a return of his earlier fever and shivering, and realized with pleasure that it was possible to lie down on the sofa, too. Before long a sound, leaden sleep descended on him, seeming to press him down.

He slept for an unusually long time, and had no dreams. Nastasya, when she came into his room at ten o'clock the next morning, was hardly able to rouse him. She had brought him tea and bread. The tea was again weak stuff, made with used leaves, and was again served in her own teapot.

‘Ugh, the way he sleeps!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘He does nothing
but
sleep, either!’

With an effort, he raised himself. His head was aching; he got to his feet, turned round once in his room, and fell back on the sofa again.

‘Sleeping again!’ Nastasya exclaimed. ‘Are you ill, or what?’

He made no reply.

‘Do you want your tea?’

‘Later,’ he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and turning his face to the wall. Nastasya went on standing over him for a bit.

‘Maybe he really is ill,’ she said, turned away and went out of the room.

She came back again at two o'clock with some soup. He was lying as he had been earlier. The tea stood untouched. Nastasya actually took offence, and began to push him and shove him with spite.

‘What are you snoozing away there for?’ she exclaimed, looking at him with revulsion. He raised himself on one elbow and sat up, but said nothing to her and merely looked at the floor.

‘Are you ill or aren't you?’ Nastasya asked, but again she received no reply. ‘You want to get out for a bit,’ she said, after a pause. ‘It would do you good to get some fresh air. Are you going to have this food, or what?’

‘Later,’ he said weakly. ‘Go away!’ And he made a motion with his hand.

She stood there a bit longer, looked at him compassionately, and then went out.

A few moments later he raised his eyes and gave the tea and the soup a long stare. Then he took the bread, and the spoon, and began to eat.

He hardly touched the food, had no appetite, took only three or four spoonfuls, in an absent-minded sort of way. His head was aching less now. Having had all he wanted, he stretched out on the sofa again, but was unable to get back to sleep, and lay there without moving, on his front, with his face thrust into the pillow. He kept having waking fantasies, and they were all such strange ones: most frequently of all he fancied he was somewhere in Africa, in some kind of Egyptian oasis. A caravan was resting, the camels were lying down peacefully; all around there were palm trees, an entire circle of them; everyone was eating their evening meal. He, however, kept drinking water, straight from the spring that flowed murmuring right by his side. It was so cool, and the water was so wonderfully, wonderfully cold and blue, hurrying over various-coloured stones, and sand that was so pure, with spangles of gold… Suddenly he distinctly heard the sound of a clock striking. He started, snapped out of his trance, raised his head, looked out of the window, figured what time it was and suddenly leapt up, in full possession of his senses now, as though someone had hauled him off the sofa. He went over to the door on tiptoe, softly opened it a little way, and began to listen on the stairs. His heart was beating terribly. But on the staircase all was quiet, as if everyone were asleep… It seemed wild and improbable to him that he could have spent since yesterday in such oblivion, without yet having done anything or made any preparations… And that might have been six o'clock striking just now… And suddenly an extraordinary, feverish and somehow helpless turmoil seized hold of him, in place of his slumber and torpor. There were, in fact, few preparations to be made. He strained all his energies in order to think of everything and leave nothing out; but his heart kept beating and beating, thumping so badly
that he began to find it difficult to breathe. The first thing he had to do was make a loop and sew it to his coat – the work of a moment. He felt under his pillow and retrieved from the pile of linen he had stuffed underneath it one of his shirts, which was practically falling apart, old and unwashed. From its rags he tore off a ribbon-like strip about two inches wide and sixteen inches long. He folded this strip in two, took off his wide, tough-fabric summer coat (the only outdoor garment he possessed) and began to sew both ends of the strip to the inside of its left armpit. His hands shook as he sewed, but he managed to do it, and in such a way that from the outside nothing was visible when he put the coat back on. The needle and thread he had procured long ago, and he kept them in his bedside table, wrapped up in a piece of paper. As for the loop, this was a very ingenious device of his own design; the loop was intended to hold an axe. It was out of the question to go around in the streets with an axe in one's hand. Even if one were to hide it under one's coat, one would still have to keep it in place with one's arm, which would be noticeable. Now, with the loop, however, all he had to do was to put the head of the axe through it and it would hang conveniently under his arm, on the inside of the coat, all the way there. And, by putting his hand in one of the side pockets, he could hold on to the handle of the axe to stop it from dangling about; and since, too, the coat was a very roomy one, a veritable sack, no one would be able to see from the outside that he was holding on to something through the lining of his pocket. This loop was also something he had devised earlier, some two weeks previously.