Crime and Punishment
he had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going into
the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no
further notice of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it
and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the
doorway.
“Ah!” she cried out in a frenzy, “he has come back! The criminal! the
monster!... And where is the money? What’s in your pocket, show me! And
your clothes are all different! Where are your clothes? Where is the
money! Speak!”
And she fell to searching him. Marmeladov submissively and obediently
held up both arms to facilitate the search. Not a farthing was there.
“Where is the money?” she cried--“Mercy on us, can he have drunk it all?
There were twelve silver roubles left in the chest!” and in a fury
she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room. Marmeladov
seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees.
“And this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a
positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,” he called out, shaken to and
fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead.
The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the
corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed
to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was
shaking like a leaf.
“He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,” the poor woman screamed in
despair--“and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!”--and
wringing her hands she pointed to the children. “Oh, accursed life!
And you, are you not ashamed?”--she pounced all at once upon
Raskolnikov--“from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have
been drinking with him, too! Go away!”
The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door
was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse
laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust
themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in
dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of
them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when
Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation
to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill
outcry was heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her
way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and
for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her
with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out,
Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the
coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to
lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed
his mind and would have gone back.
“What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he thought to himself, “they have Sonia
and I want it myself.” But reflecting that it would be impossible to
take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he
dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back to his lodging.
“Sonia wants pomatum too,” he said as he walked along the street, and he
laughed malignantly--“such smartness costs money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia
herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always a risk, hunting
big game... digging for gold... then they would all be without a crust
to-morrow except for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they’ve dug
there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most
of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to
everything, the scoundrel!”
He sank into thought.
“And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought.
“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the
whole race of mankind--then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial
terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”
CHAPTER III
He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not
refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked
with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six
paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty
yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man
of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment
that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in
keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a
painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books;
the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long
untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and
half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but
was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep
on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old
student’s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he
heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A
little table stood in front of the sofa.
It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but to
Raskolnikov in his present state of mind this was positively agreeable.
He had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell,
and even the sight of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked
sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous irritation. He was
in the condition that overtakes some monomaniacs entirely concentrated
upon one thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending
him in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with her,
though he went without his dinner. Nastasya, the cook and only servant,
was rather pleased at the lodger’s mood and had entirely given up
sweeping and doing his room, only once a week or so she would stray into
his room with a broom. She waked him up that day.
“Get up, why are you asleep?” she called to him. “It’s past nine, I have
brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think you’re fairly
starving?”
Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognised Nastasya.
“From the landlady, eh?” he asked, slowly and with a sickly face sitting
up on the sofa.
“From the landlady, indeed!”
She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea and
laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it.
“Here, Nastasya, take it please,” he said, fumbling in his pocket (for
he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers--“run
and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest, at the
pork-butcher’s.”
“The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn’t you rather have
some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It’s capital soup, yesterday’s. I
saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late. It’s fine soup.”
When the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Nastasya
sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a country
peasant-woman and a very talkative one.
“Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to the police about you,” she
said.
He scowled.
“To the police? What does she want?”
“You don’t pay her money and you won’t turn out of the room. That’s what
she wants, to be sure.”
“The devil, that’s the last straw,” he muttered, grinding his teeth,
“no, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,” he added aloud.
“I’ll go and talk to her to-day.”
“Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so
clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One
time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you
do nothing now?”
“I am doing...” Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly.
“What are you doing?”
“Work...”
“What sort of work?”
“I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause.
Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to laughter
and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering and
shaking all over till she felt ill.
“And have you made much money by your thinking?” she managed to
articulate at last.
“One can’t go out to give lessons without boots. And I’m sick of it.”
“Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.”
“They pay so little for lessons. What’s the use of a few coppers?” he
answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought.
“And you want to get a fortune all at once?”
He looked at her strangely.
“Yes, I want a fortune,” he answered firmly, after a brief pause.
“Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you the
loaf or not?”
“As you please.”
“Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out.”
“A letter? for me! from whom?”
“I can’t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for it. Will
you pay me back?”
“Then bring it to me, for God’s sake, bring it,” cried Raskolnikov
greatly excited--“good God!”
A minute later the letter was brought him. That was it: from his mother,
from the province of R----. He turned pale when he took it. It was a
long while since he had received a letter, but another feeling also
suddenly stabbed his heart.
“Nastasya, leave me alone, for goodness’ sake; here are your three
copecks, but for goodness’ sake, make haste and go!”
The letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want to open it in her
presence; he wanted to be left _alone_ with this letter. When Nastasya
had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it; then he
gazed intently at the address, the small, sloping handwriting, so dear
and familiar, of the mother who had once taught him to read and write.
He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last he opened it;
it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two ounces, two large sheets
of note paper were covered with very small handwriting.
“My dear Rodya,” wrote his mother--“it’s two months since I last had a
talk with you by letter which has distressed me and even kept me
awake at night, thinking. But I am sure you will not blame me for my
inevitable silence. You know how I love you; you are all we have to look
to, Dounia and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What a
grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the university
some months ago, for want of means to keep yourself and that you had
lost your lessons and your other work! How could I help you out of my
hundred and twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen roubles I sent
you four months ago I borrowed, as you know, on security of my pension,
from Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant of this town. He is a
kind-hearted man and was a friend of your father’s too. But having given
him the right to receive the pension, I had to wait till the debt was
paid off and that is only just done, so that I’ve been unable to send
you anything all this time. But now, thank God, I believe I shall
be able to send you something more and in fact we may congratulate
ourselves on our good fortune now, of which I hasten to inform you. In
the first place, would you have guessed, dear Rodya, that your sister
has been living with me for the last six weeks and we shall not be
separated in the future. Thank God, her sufferings are over, but I will
tell you everything in order, so that you may know just how everything
has happened and all that we have hitherto concealed from you. When you
wrote to me two months ago that you had heard that Dounia had a great
deal to put up with in the Svidrigaïlovs’ house, when you wrote that
and asked me to tell you all about it--what could I write in answer to
you? If I had written the whole truth to you, I dare say you would have
thrown up everything and have come to us, even if you had to walk all