Crime and Punishment Page 17

'He can barely stand, and you . . . ,' Nikodim Fomich began.

  'Don't mind me!' said Ilya Petrovich in a very particular tone. Nikodim Fomich was about to say something else but, taking one glance at the head clerk, who was also staring hard at him, he fell silent. Everyone suddenly fell silent. It was strange.

  'Very well, sir,' Ilya Petrovich concluded. 'We aren't keeping you.'

  Raskolnikov left. But he could hear an animated conversation starting up once he'd gone, with the quizzical voice of Nikodim Fomich most audible of all . . . Outside, he came round fully.

  'A search, a search - now, now!' he repeated to himself as he hurried along. 'They suspect me, the rascals!' His old terror seized him once more, from top to toe.

  II

  'But what if the search has already happened? What if I find them in my room right now?'

  But here was his room. Nothing. No one. And no one had looked in. Even Nastasya hadn't touched it. Lord! How could he have gone and left all the items in that hole?

  He rushed to the corner, thrust his hand behind the wallpaper and started fishing the things out and cramming his pockets with them. There were eight items in all: two little boxes containing earrings or similar - he didn't look closely - and four small morocco leather cases. One chain was simply wrapped in newspaper. As was something else, a medal by the look of it . . .

  He stowed it all away in his various pockets - in his coat and in the remaining right pocket of his trousers - making sure that nothing stuck out too much. He took the purse as well, while he was at it. Then he went out, this time leaving the door wide open.

  He walked at a fast, decisive clip, and though he felt utterly broken, he remained alert and aware. He feared pursuit, he feared that in just half an hour's time, a quarter of an hour's time, the instruction would be given to have him followed; he had to cover his tracks at all costs, before it was too late. And he had to do so while he could still call on at least some of his strength, at least some of his wits . . . But where should he go?

  This had been decided long before: 'Throw everything in the Ditch, in the water. End of story.' He'd made up his mind about it the previous night, while raving, during those moments - he remembered them now - when he kept trying to get up and go: 'Quick, quick, get rid of it all!' But getting rid of everything proved extremely difficult.

  He'd been wandering along the Catherine Canal for about half an hour already, perhaps even longer, and he'd glanced more than once at the steps leading down to the Ditch,3 whenever he passed them. But there could be no question of him carrying out his intention: either there were rafts right by the steps, with washerwomen at work on them, or there were boats moored to the bank, and there were people everywhere; from anywhere on the embankments, from every side, people might see, might notice, the suspicious figure of a man purposely going down the steps, stopping and throwing something in the water. And if the cases floated instead of sinking? You could count on it. Everyone would see. He was getting strange looks as it was from everyone he passed, as if they had no care in the world but him. 'Why is that? Or am I just imagining it?' he wondered.

  Finally, the thought struck him: wouldn't the Neva be a better idea? Fewer people, less chance of being noticed, easier in every way, and above all - far away from here. How astonishing that he could wander about for a whole half hour in anguish and alarm, and in such a dangerous place, and not think of this sooner! And the only reason he'd wasted a whole half hour so senselessly was a decision taken while dreaming, while raving! He was becoming extraordinarily distracted and forgetful, and he knew it. He had to get a move on!

  He made for the Neva along V---- Prospect; but on the way another thought suddenly struck him: 'Why the Neva? Why water? Wouldn't it be better to go somewhere far, far away, maybe even back to the Islands again, and find some remote spot, in the woods, under a bush - to bury all this and perhaps mark a tree?' And though he could feel that he was in no fit state to weigh everything up clearly and soberly at this moment, the plan seemed flawless.

  But he wasn't fated to make it to the Islands either: coming out onto a square from V---- Prospect, he suddenly spotted an entrance on his left to a courtyard framed by completely blind walls. On the right, immediately after the gates, the unwhitewashed blind wall of the adjoining four-storey house extended deep into the yard. On the left, parallel to this blind wall and also just after the gates, a wooden fence stretched some twenty yards into the yard before veering abruptly to the left. This was a desolate, cut-off spot, strewn with what looked like building materials. Further on, in the depths of the courtyard, from behind the fence, the corner of a low, sooty stone shed poked out - evidently part of some workshop or other, probably a carriage-maker's or locksmith's or some such trade; the whole yard was black with coal dust stretching almost to the gates. 'Just the place to dump everything and walk away!' he suddenly thought. Finding the yard deserted, he stepped inside and immediately spotted, very close to the gates, a gutter fixed to the fence (the usual arrangement in such courtyards, home to many factory hands, craftsmen, cabbies and the like), and above the gutter, right there on the fence, someone had scrawled the obligatory witticism in chalk: 'No toiletering.' Good: no one would suspect him for coming in and loitering there. 'Just chuck it all in a heap somewhere and leave!'

  He looked around one more time and had already thrust a hand into his pocket when suddenly, right by the outer wall, between the gates and the gutter, which were separated by less than a yard, he noticed a big unhewn stone, weighing as much as fifty pounds and resting directly against the stone wall. On the other side of this wall were the street and the pavement, and he could hear the to and fro of passers-by, always plentiful hereabouts; but no one could see him this side of the gates, not unless someone came in off the street, which in fact was perfectly possible - so he had to hurry.

  He stooped, grabbed the top of the stone firmly with both hands, mustered all his strength and overturned it. A small hollow had formed beneath the stone, into which he immediately began tipping the contents of his pockets. The purse ended up on the very top, but there was still some space left. Then he grabbed the stone once more and turned it back over in one go; it rested snugly in its former position, if slightly raised. He raked up some earth and packed it in round the edges with his foot. No one would notice.

  He left the yard and made for the square. Once again he was overwhelmed momentarily by powerful, almost unbearable joy, as before in the bureau. 'My tracks are covered! Who would ever think of looking under there? I expect that stone's been lying there since the house was built and will remain there just as long. And even if the things were found, who would suspect me? It's over! No evidence!' - and he burst out laughing. Yes, he remembered this laughter later, nervous, shallow, inaudible laughter, and how long it had lasted - for as long as it took to cross the square. But when he set foot on K---- Boulevard, where he'd come across that girl two days before, his laughter suddenly ceased. Different thoughts crept into his mind. He also felt a terrible, sudden disgust at the prospect of walking past that bench now, the same one on which he'd sat and mused once the girl had gone, and thought how awful it would be to meet that man with the moustache again, the one he'd given a twenty-copeck coin to that time: 'To hell with him!'

  He walked along, looking around him in a distracted, spiteful way. All his thoughts now circled around a certain crucial point, and he himself could feel that this really was the crucial point, and that now, precisely now, he'd been left one on one with it - for the very first time, in fact, in these whole two months.

  'To hell with it all!' he suddenly thought in a spasm of unquenchable spite. 'It's started, so it's started - to hell with it, to hell with new life! God, how stupid this is! How I tricked and lied today! How sickeningly I fawned and flirted with that appalling Ilya Petrovich just now! But that's all rubbish, too! What do I care about any of them, or about my fawning and flirting! That's all neither here nor there!'

  Suddenly, he stopped; a new, quite unexpec
ted and extraordinarily simple question had knocked him off course and filled him with bitter astonishment:

  'If this whole thing really was done consciously and not stupidly, if you really did have a definite, fixed aim, then how is it you still haven't taken one look inside the purse and don't even know what you've got, the very reason you accepted all this agony and consciously set out on something so despicable, so vile, so low? Just now you even wanted to throw the purse in the water, along with all the items you haven't seen yet either . . . How come?'

  Yes, exactly. But he'd known that already and there was nothing new about this question; and when he'd decided, the previous night, to throw the stuff in the water, he'd done so without a moment's hesitation or a single reservation, as if that was exactly how it should be, as if there could be no other way . . . Yes, he knew all this already, remembered it all; and what was to say it hadn't been decided yesterday, at that very moment when he was sitting over the box and taking out the cases? . . . Exactly!

  'It's because I'm so ill,' he decided at last, sullenly. 'I've tormented myself, torn myself to pieces, and don't even know what I'm doing . . . Yesterday, the day before, all these days - one torment after another . . . I'll get better and . . . I won't torment myself . . . And if I don't get any better? God! I'm just so sick of it all!' He walked without stopping. He desperately wanted to distract himself, but he didn't know what to do, what to undertake. A new, overwhelming sensation was taking possession of him, growing stronger almost by the minute: some sort of infinite, almost physical disgust - stubborn, spiteful, hate-filled - towards everything that surrounded him. Everyone he met disgusted him - their faces, their gait, their gestures. Had anyone tried to talk to him, he'd probably have spat in his face, or bitten him . . .

  He suddenly stopped when he came out on the embankment of the Little Neva, on Vasilyevsky Island, by a bridge. 'This is where he lives, this is the house,' he thought. 'Don't tell me I've come to Razumikhin's again! Just like then . . . Fascinating, though: did I mean to come here or was I just walking by? Makes no odds; I did say . . . a couple of days ago . . . that I'd drop in the day after that, so that's what I'll do! What's to stop me . . . ?'

  He went up to the fifth floor.

  Razumikhin was at home, in his own little cell; he was busy working - writing - and opened the door himself. They hadn't seen each other for four months or so. Razumikhin was wearing a tattered dressing gown, and shoes on bare feet; he was unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face expressed surprise.

  'What's happened?' he cried, inspecting his friend from top to toe; then he fell silent and whistled.

  'That bad, eh? Just look at you! I feel positively underdressed,' - he added, staring at Raskolnikov's rags - 'but sit down, for heaven's sake, you look exhausted!' - and when Raskolnikov collapsed on the 'Turkish' oilcloth-covered couch, which was even shabbier than his own, Razumikhin suddenly saw that his guest was sick.

  'You're seriously ill, do you know that?' He started feeling his pulse. Raskolnikov tore his hand away.

  'Don't!' he said. 'I've come . . . here's what: I've no teaching at all . . . I was going to . . . though actually, I don't need any . . .'

  'Know what? You're raving!' remarked Razumikhin, observing him closely.

  'No I'm not . . . ,' said Raskolnikov, getting up from the couch. While climbing the stairs it hadn't occurred to him that he would, of course, end up face to face with Razumikhin. But now, in a flash, he had seen for himself that the very last thing he felt like doing, at this moment, was to come face to face with anyone at all in the whole world. He was turning yellow with bile. He'd all but choked with self-loathing the second he crossed Razumikhin's threshold.

  'See you!' he suddenly said, and made for the door.

  'Wait there, you mad dog!'

  'Don't!' the other repeated, tearing his hand away again.

  'So why the hell did you come in the first place? Are you off your head? I mean it's . . . almost insulting. I won't let you off so easily.'

  'All right. I came to you because I didn't know anyone else who could help me . . . start . . . because you're kinder than all of them, I mean cleverer, and you talk sense . . . But now I see that I don't need a thing, not a thing, do you hear? . . . No one's favours, no one's concern . . . Me . . . on my own . . . That'll do! Just leave me in peace!'

  'Now wait a minute, you chimneysweep! You're insane! You can do as you like, for all I care. You see, I'm not giving any lessons either, and so what? There's this bookseller at the flea market, Cherubimov by name, who's a lesson in himself. I wouldn't swap him for five merchant students. You should see the sort of books he puts out, tomes on natural science4 and what have you - all selling like hotcakes! The titles alone are priceless! You've always said I'm stupid. I tell you, my friend, I'm nothing compared to some! Now he's decided to go with the tide. It's all Greek to him and I egg him on, of course. Look, here's two and a bit printer's sheets of German text - low-grade quackery, if you ask me. And here's the topic in a nutshell: is a woman a human being5 or isn't she? No prizes for guessing: it's solemnly proven that she is. Cherubimov wants it for the debate on the Woman Question, and I'm translating it. He'll stretch two and a half printer's sheets to six, we'll think up some pompous title over half a page and flog it for half a rouble. All in a day's work! I'm paid six roubles a sheet, so I'll get fifteen for the lot, and I took six in advance. Once that's done, we'll start translating something on whales, then there's some ultra-tedious tittle-tattle we've marked up in the second part of the Confessions - we'll translate that too. Someone's told Cherubimov that Rousseau was the Radishchev of Geneva.6 I didn't tell him otherwise, of course - he can think what he likes! So, fancy translating the second sheet of "Are Women Human?"? If so, take the text now, take some pens and paper - I get given it all anyway - and take three roubles; my advance was for the whole translation, the first and second sheet combined, so your share is three roubles. Finish the thing and you'll get three more. By the way, please don't think I'm doing you a favour: I'd already worked out what you could do for me the moment you walked in. For one thing, my spelling's poor, and for another, my German's diabolical. I'm making up more and more as I go along and my only consolation is that it comes out better this way. Who knows, though? Perhaps it comes out worse . . . Well, what d'you say?'

  Raskolnikov silently took the pages of German text and the three roubles, and left without saying a word. Razumikhin watched incredulously. But having already reached the First Line,7 Raskolnikov suddenly turned back, went up to Razumikhin again and, placing both the German pages and the three roubles on the desk, went off again without saying a word.

  'Have you got the DTs or what?' Razumikhin roared, finally snapping. 'Why this song and dance? You've even confused me . . . Why the hell did you come in the first place?'

  'I don't want . . . any translations . . . ,' Raskolnikov muttered, already on his way down.

  'So what do you want?' Razumikhin yelled from above. Raskolnikov carried on down in silence.

  'Hey! Where do you live?'

  No reply.

  'To hell with you, then!'

  But Raskolnikov was already outside. On Nikolayevsky Bridge he was brought sharply to his senses once more by a nasty incident. A carriage-driver lashed him full on the back with his whip, as punishment for Raskolnikov very nearly getting himself run over by his horses, despite the driver shouting at him three or four times. The lash so enraged Raskolnikov that after jumping aside towards the railings (for some reason he'd been walking straight down the middle of the bridge, in the thick of the traffic) he began furiously grinding and gnashing his teeth. All around, needless to say, people laughed.

  'Had it coming!'

  'Con man!'

  'You know the score - makes out he's drunk and gets himself run over; and you're the one responsible.'

  'That's their game, dear man, that's their game . . .'

  But at that moment, as he stood by the railings and continued to stare blankly and
spitefully at the now distant carriage, rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone press money into his hand. He looked round: it was an elderly merchantwoman wearing a silk headband and goatskin shoes, accompanied by a girl in a hat, carrying a green parasol, probably her daughter. 'Take it, father, for the love of Christ.' He took it and they walked on. A twenty-copeck piece. His clothes and general appearance were such that they could very easily have taken him for a beggar, a real copeck collector, and he probably had the lash of the whip to thank for receiving twenty copecks all at once - they must have taken pity on him.

  He clenched the coin in his fist, walked on a few yards and turned to face the Neva, in the direction of the Palace. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water was almost blue, a great rarity on the Neva. The cathedral's dome - which stands out better from here, on the bridge, some twenty yards before the chapel,8 than from any other spot - simply shone, and through the pure air its every decoration was clearly discernible. The pain from the whip subsided and Raskolnikov forgot about the blow; one troubling and less than lucid thought was occupying his mind to the exclusion of all others. He stood and stared into the distance for a long while; he knew this spot particularly well. While attending university it often happened - a hundred times, perhaps, usually on his way home - that he would pause at precisely this spot, look intently at this truly magnificent panorama and every time be almost amazed by the obscure, irresolvable impression it made on him. An inexplicable chill came over him as he gazed at this magnificence; this gorgeous scene was filled for him by some dumb, deaf spirit9 . . . He marvelled every time at this sombre, mysterious impression and, distrusting himself, put off any attempt to explain it. Now, all of a sudden, those old questions of his, that old bewilderment, came back to him sharply, and it was no accident, he felt, that they'd come back now. The simple fact that he'd stopped at the very same spot as before seemed outlandish and bizarre, as if he really had imagined that now he could think the same old thoughts as before, take an interest in the same old subjects and scenes that had interested him . . . such a short while ago. He almost found it funny, yet his chest felt so tight it hurt. In the depths, down below, somewhere just visible beneath his feet, this old past appeared to him in its entirety, those old thoughts, old problems, old subjects, old impressions, and this whole panorama, and he himself, and everything, everything . . . It was as if he were flying off somewhere, higher and higher, and everything was vanishing before his eyes . . . Making an involuntary movement with his hand, he suddenly sensed the twenty-copeck piece in his fist. He unclenched his hand, stared hard at the coin, drew back his arm and hurled the coin into the water; then he turned round and set off home. It felt as if he'd taken a pair of scissors and cut himself off from everyone and everything, there and then.