Crime and Punishment Read online

  Still, these were trivialities which he had not even begun to think about, and had had no time to think about. He was thinking about the main thing, postponing the minor details until he himself was fully convinced. This prospect, however, was utterly remote. Or so, at least, it seemed to him. He simply could not imagine, for example, that at some point he would stop thinking, get up and - just go . . . Even his recent test (that's to say: his visit with the intention of making a definitive survey of the location) was itself no more than a test of a test and very far from the real thing, as if to say, 'I have to do something - there's no use just dreaming about it!' - and he'd immediately cracked, given it up as a bad job and run away, disgusted with himself. Meanwhile, his entire analysis, in terms of a moral solution to the question, appeared complete: his casuistry was now as sharp as a razor blade and he could no longer find within himself a single conscious objection. But he simply did not believe himself on this score and stubbornly, slavishly sought objections, groping for them and going off on tangents, as if someone were forcing him to do so, dragging him this way and that. This last day, which had arrived out of the blue and solved everything at once, had affected him in an almost entirely mechanical way: as if someone had grabbed his hand and dragged him along, irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural strength, without objections. As if a scrap of his clothing had caught in the wheel of a machine that was now pulling him in.

  At first - though this was a long time ago - one particular question had absorbed him: why are almost all crimes so easy to trace and so poorly concealed, and why do almost all criminals leave such an obvious trail? The conclusions at which he had arrived, little by little, were varied and intriguing: the most important reason, in his view, lay less in the physical impossibility of concealing the crime than in the criminal himself; for criminals, almost without exception, succumb at the moment of the crime to a weakening of the faculties of reason and will, which are replaced, in stark contrast, by thoughtlessness of a childish and quite extraordinary kind, at precisely the moment when reason and caution are most essential. As he saw it, the eclipse of reason and the weakening of the will consume a person like a sickness, progressing steadily to their furthest point shortly before the crime is committed; they continue in that same form at the very moment of the crime and for a little while thereafter, depending on the individual; then they pass, like any other sickness. As to whether it is sickness that gives rise to crime or crime itself which somehow, by its special nature, is always accompanied by something akin to sickness - this was a question he did not yet feel capable of resolving.

  Reaching these conclusions, he decided that morbid reversals of this kind could not befall him personally in his venture; that his reason and will would not and could not desert him at any moment during the execution of his plan, for the simple reason that his plan was 'not a crime' . . . We omit the entire process by which he arrived at this final decision; we've run too far ahead of ourselves already . . . We will merely add that the actual, material obstacles thrown up by his venture played only the most ancillary of roles in his mind. 'It is enough to preserve all my faculties of will and reason, and those obstacles, in their turn, will all be defeated when the time comes to familiarize myself with the finer details of the venture . . .' But the venture would not get started. He continued to believe in his definitive decisions least of all, and when the hour struck, nothing went to plan - there was a randomness about it all that almost took him by surprise.

  He was stymied by a circumstance of the most trivial kind even before he'd reached the bottom of the stairwell. Drawing level with the landlady's kitchen, the door of which was open, as always, he cast a wary glance inside: what if the landlady were in while Nastasya was out, and, if not, were all the doors to her room well closed, lest she happened to poke her head round when he went in for the axe? But he was simply astounded when he suddenly saw that not only was Nastasya in the kitchen, she was busy working as well: taking laundry out of a basket and hanging it on washing lines! Catching sight of him, she stopped what she was doing, turned towards him and kept her eyes fixed on him until he passed. He averted his gaze and walked on, as though nothing had happened. But the game was up: no axe! He was devastated.

  'And why on earth,' he thought, as he went under the arch leading out of the courtyard, 'why on earth was I so sure that at this precise moment she would definitely be out? Why, why, why was I so certain?' He felt crushed, even mortified. He wanted to laugh at himself from spite . . . Dull, brutish anger boiled up inside him.

  He stopped in hesitation beneath the arch. The thought of going out for a walk, just for show, repelled him; the thought of returning home was even worse. 'Such a chance, gone forever!' he muttered as he stood aimlessly under the arch, directly opposite the caretaker's dark little lodge, the door of which was also open. Suddenly, he gave a start. In the caretaker's lodge, just a few steps away from him, something caught his eye, glinting at him from beneath a bench, to the right . . . He looked around - not a soul! He walked up to the lodge on tiptoe, went down two steps and called out to the caretaker in a weak voice. 'He's out, just as I thought! He can't have gone far, though - the door's wide open!' He made a dash for the axe (for that's what it was) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it lay between two logs; he secured it in the loop there and then, thrust both his hands into his pockets and left the lodge; no one had noticed! 'Better the devil than the best-laid plans!' he thought, grinning strangely. This chance event had cheered him up no end.

  To avoid suspicion he walked along the street with soft, measured steps and without hurrying. He rarely glanced at passers-by; in fact, he tried not to look at anyone at all and to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. Then he remembered about his hat. 'Good God! To think I even had some money a couple of days ago and still didn't get myself a cap!' His soul let fly a curse.

  Happening to glance out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he caught sight of a clock: ten past seven already. He had to get a move on, but he also had to make a detour to approach the building from the other side . . .

  Previously, when he pictured all this in his mind, he sometimes imagined he'd be very afraid. But he wasn't. In fact, he wasn't afraid at all. In fact, his mind was occupied at that moment by various irrelevant thoughts, none of which lasted for long. Walking past the Yusupov Gardens, he was even getting carried away by the notion of introducing tall fountains there - how marvellously they'd freshen the air on every square. Little by little he came to the conclusion that extending the Summer Garden into the Field of Mars and even joining it to the gardens of Mikhailovsky Palace would be a wonderful and most beneficial thing for the city. He suddenly wondered why it is that in every large city, man - out of some particular inclination as much as actual need - lives and makes his home in precisely those parts of town where there are neither gardens nor fountains, where there is filth and stench and every unpleasantness. Then he remembered his wanders around Haymarket and briefly came to his senses. 'What drivel,' he thought. 'No, I'm better off not thinking at all!

  'That's how it must be for men on their way to the scaffold, clinging to every object they pass.'51 The thought flashed through him like lightning, but it was no more than a flash; he was quick to snuff it out . . . Almost there now: here was the house, here were the gates. Suddenly, somewhere, a clock struck once. 'What, half past seven already? Impossible - the clock must be fast!'

  His luck held: this archway proved straightforward, too. In fact, at that very instant, as if on purpose, a massive hay cart entered the gates just in front of him, shielding him completely as he passed under the arch, and as soon as the cart emerged into the courtyard he instantly slipped off to the right. Over there, on the other side of the cart, several voices could be heard shouting and arguing, but no one noticed him and no one crossed his path. Many of the windows that looked down on this enormous square courtyard were open at that moment, but he didn't lift his head - he hadn't the strength. The old woman's staircase was
close by, directly off to the right after the arch. Here he was, already on the stairs . . .

  After catching his breath and pressing his hand to his thumping heart, after feeling for the axe and adjusting it one more time, he began climbing the stairs, warily and softly, constantly straining his ears. But the staircase, too, was completely deserted at that moment. All the doors were shut. He met precisely no one. True, there was one empty apartment on the second floor with the doors flung open and decorators working inside, but they didn't so much as glance in his direction. He stood still for a moment, pondered and walked on. 'Of course, it would be better if they weren't here at all, but . . . there's another two floors to go.'

  And here it was: the fourth floor, the door, the apartment opposite - the empty one. To all appearances, the third-floor apartment right under the old woman's was also empty: the visiting card nailed to the door was gone - they'd moved! . . . He was struggling to breathe. 'Perhaps I should leave?' suddenly occurred to him. But he left his own question unanswered and put his ear to the door of the old woman's apartment: dead silence. Then he listened out again for noises below him, listened long and hard . . . He looked about one last time, straightened and tidied himself up, and tested the axe in the loop once more. Various thoughts crossed his mind. 'Hope I'm not too pale? Not overexcited? She's mistrustful . . . Perhaps I should wait a bit . . . for my heart to stop?'

  But his heart did not stop. Quite the opposite: as if on purpose, it beat harder, harder and harder . . . He couldn't resist, slowly stretched his arm out towards the bell and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, louder.

  No reply. It was pointless ringing for the sake of it, and unseemly. The old woman, needless to say, was in, but she was suspicious and she was alone. He knew her habits . . . and once again he pressed his ear flush against the door. Whether it was the keenness of his senses (which is rather hard to imagine) or whether it really was very audible, but he suddenly heard what sounded like a hand cautiously feathering the lock and a dress rustling against the door itself. Someone was lurking right by the lock and, just like him here on the outside, was listening hard, crouching, and also, it seemed, pressing an ear to the door . . .

  He made a deliberate movement and muttered something rather too loudly, to make it clear he wasn't hiding; then he rang a third time, but softly, calmly and without the slightest haste. Recalling this afterwards, vividly, clearly - that moment was imprinted on him for all time - he simply could not understand where he'd found such guile, not least because there were moments when his mind seemed to go dark, and as for his body, he could barely feel it . . . Seconds later, someone could be heard lifting the latch.

  VII

  The tiniest of chinks appeared in the doorway, just like the last time, and two sharp and mistrustful eyes stared out at him once again from the dark. Here Raskolnikov became flustered and nearly made a serious mistake.

  Fearing that the old woman would take fright at finding herself alone with him, and far from confident that his appearance would reassure her, he grabbed hold of the door and pulled it towards him, just in case she should think of locking herself in again. Seeing this, she did not yank the door back towards her, but nor did she let go of the handle, and he very nearly ended up dragging her out onto the stairs, together with the door. When he saw that she was blocking the doorway and not letting him pass, he walked straight at her. She leapt back in alarm and was on the point of saying something, but didn't seem able to and stared at him wide-eyed.

  'Hello, Alyona Ivanovna,' he began as casually as he could, but his voice refused to obey him, broke off and began to quiver. 'I've . . . brought you . . . the thing . . . but why don't we go over here . . . towards the light . . . ?' Leaving her there, and without any invitation, he walked straight through into the main room. The old woman ran after him. She'd recovered her voice.

  'Good Lord! What is it? . . . Who are you? What do you want?'

  'For pity's sake, Alyona Ivanovna . . . we've met before . . . Raskolnikov . . . Here, I've brought the pledge I promised you the other day . . .' And he proffered her the pledge.

  The old woman took one glance at the pledge before immediately fixing her eyes on those of her unbidden guest. She looked at him attentively, with malice and mistrust. A minute or so passed. He even thought he detected a hint of mockery in her eyes, as though she'd already worked everything out. He sensed that he was becoming flustered, that he was almost terrified, so terrified that another half-minute of her wordless stare would have been enough to send him running.

  'But why are you staring like this, as if you don't recognize me?' he suddenly said, also with malice. 'If you want it, take it. If not, I'll take it elsewhere. I've no time for this.'

  He hadn't meant to say this; the words just came out.

  The old woman collected herself, evidently taking heart from her visitor's decisive tone.

  'Why all the hurry, sir? . . . What is it?' she asked, looking at the pledge.

  'A silver cigarette case: I told you last time.'

  She stretched out her hand.

  'Why are you so very pale? And look at those trembling hands! You've not been for a dip, have you, father?'

  'Fever,' he replied curtly. 'Hard not to grow pale . . . when you've nothing to eat,' he added, barely getting the words out. His strength was deserting him once more. But the reply seemed credible; the old woman took the pledge.

  'What is it?' she asked, fixing her gaze on Raskolnikov once again and weighing the pledge in her hand.

  'An item . . . cigarette case . . . silver . . . take a look.'

  'Funny kind of silver . . . Just look how he's wrapped it up.'

  Trying to untie the string and turning towards the window, to the light (she kept all her windows shut, despite the closeness), she left him to himself for a few seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the loop, but he didn't take it out fully yet, merely supporting it with his right hand beneath his clothing. His arms were terribly weak; he could feel them grow number and stiffer with each passing second. He was afraid he'd let the axe slip and fall . . . and suddenly felt his head begin to spin.

  'What has he done with the thing?' the old woman cried in vexation, taking half a step towards him.

  There wasn't a moment to lose. He took the axe out fully, lifted it up high with both hands, barely feeling a thing, and, almost effortlessly, almost mechanically, brought the butt down on her head. As if he were not even using his strength. But just as soon as he brought the axe down once, his strength was born.

  The old woman, as always, was bare-headed. Her light, greying, thin hair, thickly greased as usual, was plaited in a pigtail and tucked up with a fragment of a tortoiseshell comb, which stuck out from the back of her head. The blow landed smack on the crown - she was very short, after all. She cried out, though very feebly, and suddenly sank to the floor, managing only to raise both hands to her head. In one hand she was still holding the 'pledge'. Then he struck again with all his strength, and again, always with the butt and always on the crown. The blood poured out, as from a toppled glass, and the body fell back. He stepped back to let it fall, and immediately bent over her face; she was already dead. The eyes goggled, as if wanting to leap out, while the forehead and entire face were furrowed and twisted by spasms.

  He laid the axe on the floor, next to the dead woman, and, trying not to stain himself with the flowing blood, set about rummaging in her pocket - the same right pocket she'd taken her keys from the previous time. He had his wits about him - his mind did not go dark again, nor did his head spin - but his hands still shook. He later recalled how very meticulous and cautious he'd been, trying not to get himself dirty . . . He pulled the keys out right away; just like before, they were all in one bunch, on a single steel ring. He immediately ran off with them to the bedroom. This was a very small room with an enormous icon cabinet. By another wall stood a large bed, immaculately clean, with a silk patchwork quilt. Next to the third w
all was the chest of drawers. How strange: no sooner did he try to fit the keys to the chest of drawers, and no sooner did he hear them jangle, than he felt a kind of spasm go through him. Once again he had a sudden urge to drop everything and leave. But this passed in a flash; it was too late for that. He even grinned at himself, before he was suddenly struck by another disturbing thought. He had a sudden fancy that the old woman might still be alive and might still come round. Abandoning the keys and the chest of drawers, he ran back to the body, grabbed the axe and brandished it once more over the old woman, but without bringing it down. There was no doubting that she was dead. Leaning over again and examining her at close quarters, he saw clearly that the skull had been crushed and was even slightly lop-sided. He was about to feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand. There was really no need. Meanwhile, a whole puddle of blood had now formed. Suddenly, he noticed a string around her neck and gave it a tug, but it was strong and refused to break; besides, it was soaked in blood. He had a go at pulling the string straight from her bosom, but something got in the way. Losing patience, he was on the point of raising the axe again, so as to chop through the string and the body from above and have done with it, but he didn't dare, and after struggling for two minutes and getting the axe and his hands all stained he finally cut the string, without the axe touching the body, and removed it; he was right - a purse. There were two crosses on the string, one of cypress and one of copper, and a little enamel icon as well; and right there alongside them hung a small, greasy suede purse with a steel rim and clasp. The purse was stuffed full. Raskolnikov shoved it in his pocket without looking inside, dropped the crosses on the old woman's breast and, taking the axe with him this time, rushed back to the bedroom.