Crime and Punishment
the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate
acquaintance.
At this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the
stairs. Someone else was approaching. Raskolnikov had not heard them at
first.
“You don’t say there’s no one at home,” the new-comer cried in a
cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still went on
pulling the bell. “Good evening, Koch.”
“From his voice he must be quite young,” thought Raskolnikov.
“Who the devil can tell? I’ve almost broken the lock,” answered Koch.
“But how do you come to know me?”
“Why! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at
billiards at Gambrinus’.”
“Oh!”
“So they are not at home? That’s queer. It’s awfully stupid though.
Where could the old woman have gone? I’ve come on business.”
“Yes; and I have business with her, too.”
“Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Aie--aie! And I was hoping to
get some money!” cried the young man.
“We must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The
old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It’s out of my way.
And where the devil she can have got to, I can’t make out. She sits here
from year’s end to year’s end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet
here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!”
“Hadn’t we better ask the porter?”
“What?”
“Where she’s gone and when she’ll be back.”
“Hm.... Damn it all!... We might ask.... But you know she never does go
anywhere.”
And he once more tugged at the door-handle.
“Damn it all. There’s nothing to be done, we must go!”
“Stay!” cried the young man suddenly. “Do you see how the door shakes if
you pull it?”
“Well?”
“That shows it’s not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear how
the hook clanks?”
“Well?”
“Why, don’t you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If they
were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside with the
key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how the hook
is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at home,
don’t you see? So there they are sitting inside and don’t open the
door!”
“Well! And so they must be!” cried Koch, astonished. “What are they
about in there?” And he began furiously shaking the door.
“Stay!” cried the young man again. “Don’t pull at it! There must be
something wrong.... Here, you’ve been ringing and pulling at the door
and still they don’t open! So either they’ve both fainted or...”
“What?”
“I tell you what. Let’s go fetch the porter, let him wake them up.”
“All right.”
Both were going down.
“Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.”
“What for?”
“Well, you’d better.”
“All right.”
“I’m studying the law you see! It’s evident, e-vi-dent there’s something
wrong here!” the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs.
Koch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one
tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began
touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once
more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting he
bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock
on the inside and so nothing could be seen.
Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of
delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in.
While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times
occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the
door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them,
while they could not open the door! “Only make haste!” was the thought
that flashed through his mind.
“But what the devil is he about?...” Time was passing, one minute, and
another--no one came. Koch began to be restless.
“What the devil?” he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his
sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy
boots on the stairs. The steps died away.
“Good heavens! What am I to do?”
Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door--there was no sound.
Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as
thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.
He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice
below--where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going
back to the flat.
“Hey there! Catch the brute!”
Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran
down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.
“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!”
The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all was
still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began
noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them. He
distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. “Hey!”
Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling “come what
must!” If they stopped him--all was lost; if they let him pass--all was
lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only
a flight from him--and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the
right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the
second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though
for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just
run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle
of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes. In one
instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall
and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing.
Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He
waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs.
No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through
the gateway and turned to the left in the street.
He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the
flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as
the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the
bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and
completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had
succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would
guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were
going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though
the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. “Should he
slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No,
hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless,
hopeless!”
At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive.
Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky
because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a
grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could
scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet.
“My word, he has been going it!” someone shouted at him when he came out
on the canal bank.
He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the
worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal
bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more
conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost
falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from
quite a different direction.
He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his
house! He was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe.
And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to
escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course
incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to
restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s yard. But
it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter’s room was closed
but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at
home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he
walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him,
“What do you want?” he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe. But
again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe
back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as
before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room;
the landlady’s door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself
on the sofa just as he was--he did not sleep, but sank into blank
forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have
jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were
simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could
not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts....
PART II
CHAPTER I
So he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at
such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not
occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get
light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion.
Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he
heard every night, indeed, under his window after two o’clock. They woke
him up now.
“Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns,” he thought, “it’s
past two o’clock,” and at once he leaped up, as though someone had
pulled him from the sofa.
“What! Past two o’clock!”
He sat down on the sofa--and instantly recollected everything! All at
once, in one flash, he recollected everything.
For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill came
over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long before in
his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his
teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door and
began listening--everything in the house was asleep. With amazement he
gazed at himself and everything in the room around him, wondering how he
could have come in the night before without fastening the door, and have
flung himself on the sofa without undressing, without even taking his
hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow.
“If anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That I’m drunk
but...”
He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began hurriedly
looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes; were there
no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering with cold, he
began taking off everything and looking over again. He turned everything
over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through
his search three times.
But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where
some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge
of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed
threads. There seemed to be nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken out of
the old woman’s box were still in his pockets! He had not thought till
then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even thought of them
while he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed
to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had pulled out
everything, and turned the pocket inside out to be sure there was
nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the corner. The paper had
come off the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters. He began
stuffing all the things into the hole under the paper: “They’re in! All
out of sight, and the purse too!” he thought gleefully, getting up and
gazing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever. Suddenly