Crime and Punishment
stupidly wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing.
“She’s drunk herself out of her senses,” the same woman’s voice wailed
at her side. “Out of her senses. The other day she tried to hang
herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my little
girl to look after her--and here she’s in trouble again! A neighbour,
gentleman, a neighbour, we live close by, the second house from the end,
see yonder....”
The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone
mentioned the police station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a strange
sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted. “No, that’s
loathsome... water... it’s not good enough,” he muttered to himself.
“Nothing will come of it,” he added, “no use to wait. What about the
police office...? And why isn’t Zametov at the police office? The police
office is open till ten o’clock....” He turned his back to the railing
and looked about him.
“Very well then!” he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and
walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and
empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there
was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out “to make an
end of it all.” Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
“Well, it’s a way out of it,” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly
along the canal bank. “Anyway, I’ll make an end, for I want to.... But
is it a way out? What does it matter! There’ll be the square yard of
space--ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or
not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie
down soon! What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don’t
care about that either! What idiotic ideas come into one’s head.”
To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the
second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the
first turning he stopped and, after a minute’s thought, turned into a
side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any
object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking
at the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted
his head and saw that he was standing at the very gate of _the_ house.
He had not passed it, he had not been near it since _that_ evening.
An overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the
house, passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the
right, and began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey.
The narrow, steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing
and looked round him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework
of the window had been taken out. “That wasn’t so then,” he thought.
Here was the flat on the second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been
working. “It’s shut up and the door newly painted. So it’s to let.” Then
the third storey and the fourth. “Here!” He was perplexed to find the
door of the flat wide open. There were men there, he could hear voices;
he had not expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last
stairs and went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were
workmen in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he
would find everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the
same places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed
strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window-sill. There
were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger than the
other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper covered with
lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one. Raskolnikov for
some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked at the new paper
with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it all so changed.
The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and now they were
hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go home. They took
no notice of Raskolnikov’s coming in; they were talking. Raskolnikov
folded his arms and listened.
“She comes to me in the morning,” said the elder to the younger, “very
early, all dressed up. ‘Why are you preening and prinking?’ says I. ‘I
am ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!’ That’s a way of
going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!”
“And what is a fashion book?” the younger one asked. He obviously
regarded the other as an authority.
“A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the
tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how
to dress, the male sex as well as the female. They’re pictures. The
gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies’ fluffles,
they’re beyond anything you can fancy.”
“There’s nothing you can’t find in Petersburg,” the younger cried
enthusiastically, “except father and mother, there’s everything!”
“Except them, there’s everything to be found, my boy,” the elder
declared sententiously.
Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other room where the strong box,
the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to him very
tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the paper in the
corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He looked at it and
went to the window. The elder workman looked at him askance.
“What do you want?” he asked suddenly.
Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into the passage and pulled the
bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second and
a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and agonisingly
fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more and more
vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more and more
satisfaction.
“Well, what do you want? Who are you?” the workman shouted, going out to
him. Raskolnikov went inside again.
“I want to take a flat,” he said. “I am looking round.”
“It’s not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to come up
with the porter.”
“The floors have been washed, will they be painted?” Raskolnikov went
on. “Is there no blood?”
“What blood?”
“Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a
perfect pool there.”
“But who are you?” the workman cried, uneasy.
“Who am I?”
“Yes.”
“You want to know? Come to the police station, I’ll tell you.”
The workmen looked at him in amazement.
“It’s time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We must lock
up,” said the elder workman.
“Very well, come along,” said Raskolnikov indifferently, and going
out first, he went slowly downstairs. “Hey, porter,” he cried in the
gateway.
At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the passers-by;
the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and a few others.
Raskolnikov went straight up to them.
“What do you want?” asked one of the porters.
“Have you been to the police office?”
“I’ve just been there. What do you want?”
“Is it open?”
“Of course.”
“Is the assistant there?”
“He was there for a time. What do you want?”
Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.
“He’s been to look at the flat,” said the elder workman, coming forward.
“Which flat?”
“Where we are at work. ‘Why have you washed away the blood?’ says he.
‘There has been a murder here,’ says he, ‘and I’ve come to take it.’
And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. ‘Come to the police
station,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you everything there.’ He wouldn’t leave
us.”
The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning and perplexed.
“Who are you?” he shouted as impressively as he could.
“I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly a student, I live in
Shil’s house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he
knows me.” Raskolnikov said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not
turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street.
“Why have you been to the flat?”
“To look at it.”
“What is there to look at?”
“Take him straight to the police station,” the man in the long coat
jerked in abruptly.
Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the
same slow, lazy tones:
“Come along.”
“Yes, take him,” the man went on more confidently. “Why was he going
into _that_, what’s in his mind, eh?”
“He’s not drunk, but God knows what’s the matter with him,” muttered the
workman.
“But what do you want?” the porter shouted again, beginning to get angry
in earnest--“Why are you hanging about?”
“You funk the police station then?” said Raskolnikov jeeringly.
“How funk it? Why are you hanging about?”
“He’s a rogue!” shouted the peasant woman.
“Why waste time talking to him?” cried the other porter, a huge peasant
in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. “Get along! He is a rogue
and no mistake. Get along!”
And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he flung him into the street. He
lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators in
silence and walked away.
“Strange man!” observed the workman.
“There are strange folks about nowadays,” said the woman.
“You should have taken him to the police station all the same,” said the
man in the long coat.
“Better have nothing to do with him,” decided the big porter. “A regular
rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take him up, you
won’t get rid of him.... We know the sort!”
“Shall I go there or not?” thought Raskolnikov, standing in the middle
of the thoroughfare at the cross-roads, and he looked about him, as
though expecting from someone a decisive word. But no sound came, all
was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead to him, to
him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two hundred yards
away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard talk and shouts.
In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed in the
middle of the street. “What is it?” Raskolnikov turned to the right
and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything and smiled
coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully made up his mind to go to
the police station and knew that it would all soon be over.
CHAPTER VII
An elegant carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of
spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got
off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the bridle....
A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing in front. One
of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on something lying
close to the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, exclaiming; the
coachman seemed at a loss and kept repeating:
“What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!”
Raskolnikov pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at last
in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground a
man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered with
blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood was
flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated and
disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.
“Merciful heaven!” wailed the coachman, “what more could I do? If I’d
been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going quietly,
not in a hurry. Everyone could see I was going along just like everybody
else. A drunken man can’t walk straight, we all know.... I saw him
crossing the street, staggering and almost falling. I shouted again
and a second and a third time, then I held the horses in, but he fell
straight under their feet! Either he did it on purpose or he was very
tipsy.... The horses are young and ready to take fright... they started,
he screamed... that made them worse. That’s how it happened!”
“That’s just how it was,” a voice in the crowd confirmed.