Crime and Punishment (15 page)

‘He's going to kill her!’ the shout went round.

‘He's going to do her in!’

‘She belongs to me!’ Mikolka shouted, and swung the shaft down at full force. There was the sound of a heavy blow.

‘Take the whip, take the whip to her! Why have you stopped?’ voices shouted from the crowd.

But Mikolka was brandishing the cart-shaft for a second time, and another blow landed with full force on the back of the unfortunate jade. She sank right back on to her hindquarters, but then leapt up again and started tugging, tugging with all the strength she had left in various directions, in order to get going with her load; but whichever way she moved she was greeted by six knouts, and the cart-shaft rose and fell a third time, and then a fourth, in measured rhythm, with all its wielder's might. Mikolka was in a frenzy of rage because he was unable to kill her with one blow.

‘She's certainly got some life in her!’ the shout went round.

‘She'll fall down in a minute, lads, it's all over with her now!’ one versed in such matters called from the crowd.

‘Take an axe to her, for God's sake! Get it over with quickly!’ cried a third.

‘Ach, I'll make you eat those flies! Let me through!’ Mikolka shrieked violently. Throwing down the shaft, he leaned inside the cart once more and hauled out an iron crowbar. ‘Watch out!’ he cried, and with all his might he swung it down on his poor little beast. The blow thudded down; the little mare began to totter, sank down, tried to give another tug, but the crowbar again came down on her back, and she fell to the ground, as if all her four legs had been cut away from under her at once.

‘Finish her off!’ Mikolka shouted, leaping out of the cart as though he no longer knew what he was doing. A few of the lads, who were also red-faced and drunken, seized hold of whatever they could lay their hands on – knouts, sticks, the cart-shaft – and ran over to the dying mare. Mikolka stood to one side and began to beat her on the spine with the crowbar at random. The jade stretched her muzzle forwards, uttered a heavy sigh, and died.

‘That's the end of her!’ people shouted in the crowd.

‘She ought to have galloped.’

‘She belongs to me!’ Mikolka shouted, holding the crowbar, his eyes bloodshot. He stood there looking as though he were sorry there was no creature left to beat.

‘It's right enough: anyone can see you haven't got a Christian heart in you!’ many voices were now shouting from the crowd.

But the poor boy was now beside himself. With a howl he forced his way through the crowds towards the little grey mare, flung his arms round her dead, bloodied muzzle and kissed it, kissed her on the eyes, on the lips… then he suddenly leapt up and rushed at Mikolka, hammering at him with his little fists. At that point his father, who had been chasing after him for a long time, finally seized hold of him and carried him away from the crowd.

‘Come along, come along!’ his father said to him. ‘We're going home!’

‘Papa! The poor little horse… Why did they… kill it?’ he
sobbed, but his breathing was choked, and again those howls escaped from his constricted chest.

‘They're drunk, they're up to mischief, it's none of our business, come on!’ his father said. He flung his arms round his father, but his chest felt so tight, so tight. He felt he wanted to draw breath, to scream, and woke up.

He awoke panting, drenched in sweat, even his hair sweat-soaked, and sat up in horror.

‘Thank God, it was only a dream!’ he said, settling down under a tree and taking a deep breath. ‘But what is this? I must be catching a fever: what an ugly dream!’

His entire body felt paralysed; his soul was dark and troubled. He put his elbows on his knees and supported his head in both hands.

‘Oh God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Will I really do it, will I really take an axe and hit her on the head with it, smash her skull in?… Will I slip on her warm, sticky blood, break open the lock, steal the money and tremble; then hide myself, covered in blood… with the axe… Oh Lord, will I really?’

As he said this, he was trembling like a leaf.

‘But what's got into me?’ he went on, hunching up again, as if in deep amazement. ‘I mean, I did know that I'd never have the endurance for this, so why have I been torturing myself all this time? I mean, even yesterday, yesterday when I went to do that…
rehearsal
, I knew yesterday for certain that I'd never be able to go through with it… So what am I doing now? Why can I still not make up my mind about it? I mean, yesterday, when I was coming down the staircase, I told myself it was vile, loathsome, base, base… I mean, the very thought of it made me feel sick and gave me the horrors
in real life
…

‘No, I couldn't go through with it, I couldn't! Not even, not even if there were no uncertainties in all those calculations, not if everything I've determined to do this past month were as clear as daylight, as plain as arithmetic – Lord! Why, not even then could I do it! I mean, I simply couldn't go through with it, I couldn't, and that's it!… So why, why, even now…’

He rose to his feet, looked around him in astonishment as though he were wondering how he had got there, and set off
towards T—
v
Bridge. He was pale, his eyes were burning, he was suffering from exhaustion in every limb, but suddenly his breathing seemed to grow easier. He felt now that he had thrown off that terrible burden which had been weighing him down for so long, and his soul began suddenly to experience a sense of lightness and peace. ‘O Lord,’ he prayed, ‘show me my path, and I will renounce this accursed… dream of mine!’

As he crossed the bridge, he looked quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the brilliant going-down of the brilliant red sun. In spite of his debilitated condition he did not even feel tired. It was as though the abscess on his heart, which had been gathering to a head all month, had suddenly burst. Freedom, freedom! Now he was free from that sorcery, that witchcraft, that fascination, that infatuation!

Later on, when he remembered that time and all that had happened to him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, detail by detail, there was always one thing that struck him with an almost superstitious wonder, even though it was something that was in essence not really all that unusual; to him, however, it always seemed like some preordained announcement of his fate. Namely: he could not for the life of him understand or explain to himself why in his tired, exhausted state, when the best thing he could have done was to take the very shortest and most direct route home, he should have gone home by way of the Haymarket, which did not lie on his route at all. Even though it was a small detour, it was nevertheless an obvious and quite unnecessary one. Of course, it was true that he had gone home dozens of times without taking note of the streets he was walking along. But then why, he always wondered afterwards, why should he have had an encounter which was at one and the same time of such important, decisive consequence for him, and of such an extremely fortuitous nature in the Haymarket of all places (where he had not even any reason to be), and why should it have occurred at precisely that hour, that minute of his life, coinciding with precisely that colouring of his mood and with precisely those circumstances which made it quite inevitable that it, that encounter, should produce the most devastating and lasting influence on his entire personal
fate? As though it had been waiting for him there on purpose!

By the time he crossed the Haymarket, it was about nine o'clock. All the tradesmen with tables, trays, stalls and benches were closing up their establishments or taking down and clearing away their wares and dispersing to their homes, in the same way as their customers were doing. Next to the cookshops that occupied the lower floors of the Haymarket buildings, in the dirty and stinking courtyards, and most of all outside the drinking dens, there were jostling crowds of small manufacturers and ragpickers of every sort. Raskolnikov preferred these haunts, along with all the neighbouring lanes and alleyways, to any other part of town, whenever he went out walking with no purpose. Here his rags drew no snooty attention, and it was possible for him to go about looking any way he chose without scandalizing anyone. Right at the corner of K— Lane,
⁵
an artisan and a peasant woman, his wife, were selling goods at two tables: thread, braid, cotton headscarves and the like. They were also clearing up and making ready to go home, but were being rather slow about it, talking with an acquaintance of theirs who had approached them. This acquaintance was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or simply, as everyone called her, Lizaveta, the younger sister of that very same old woman Alyona Ivanovna, the collegiate registrar's widow and pawnbroker in whose home Raskolnikov had been the day before when he had gone there in order to pawn his watch and perform his
rehearsal
… He already knew all about Lizaveta, and she even knew him a little. She was a tall, ungainly, timid and submissive female of about thirty-five, practically an idiot, who lived in complete slavery to her sister and drudged for her day and night, going in fear of her and even enduring beatings from her. She was standing reflectively face to face with the artisan and the peasant woman, holding a bundle and listening to them attentively. They were explaining something to her with peculiar animation. When Raskolnikov suddenly caught sight of her, a strange sensation resembling the most profound amazement took hold of him, even though there was nothing extraordinary about this encounter.

‘You'd do best to settle the matter yourself, Lizaveta
Ivanovna,’ the artisan said loudly. ‘Come and see us tomorrow, at about seven. Those folk will be coming here then, too.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Lizaveta said in a slow, reflective voice, as though unable to make her mind up about something.

‘My, that Alyona Ivanovna's fairly got the wind up you!’ the tradesman's wife, a no-nonsense sort of woman, began to prattle. ‘Look at you, you're just like a little infant. She's not even your own kith and kin, just a half-sister, and look at the power she has over you!’

‘Oh, don't you say anything to Alyona Ivanovna about it this time, miss,’ said her husband, interrupting, ‘that's my advice – just come by and see us without asking. It's a good bargain you'll be getting. Your sister will be able to work it out for herself later on.’

‘You want me to come by?’

‘Tomorrow at seven; and there'll be some of those folk here, too, miss; you'll be able to settle the matter for yourself.’

‘And we'll have the samovar ready,’ his wife added.

‘Very well, I'll come,’ Lizaveta said, still reflecting, and slowly she began to move off down the street.

By this time Raskolnikov had passed where they were standing and heard no more. He had made his passage quietly, unobtrusively, trying not to miss a single word. His initial amazement had little by little given way to horror, as a cold chill ran down his spine. He had learned, he had suddenly, at a stroke, and quite unexpectedly learned that at seven o'clock tomorrow evening Lizaveta, the old woman's sister and her sole living-companion, would not be at home and that consequently at seven o'clock tomorrow evening the old woman
would be at home completely alone
.

He only had a few paces left to go to the entrance to his lodgings. He went up to his room like a man who has been condemned to death. His mind was completely empty, and he was quite incapable of filling it with anything; but with his whole being he suddenly felt that he no longer possessed any freedom of thought or of will, and that everything had suddenly been decided once and for all.

It went without saying that even had he spent years on end
waiting for a suitable occasion, not even then, assuming that he had still had the same plan, could he have counted on a more obvious step towards the successful realization of that plan than the one that had suddenly presented itself just then. At any rate, it would have been difficult to ascertain yesterday, with the greatest degree of exactitude and the smallest amount of risk, circumventing the need for all dangerous questions and inquiries, that tomorrow, at that particular time, that particular old woman, the one on whose life he was preparing to make an attempt, would be at home all on her very own.

Raskolnikov chanced subsequently to learn why the artisan and the peasant woman had invited Lizaveta to their home. The matter was of the most ordinary kind, and involved nothing particularly remarkable. A family from out of town who had landed in poverty were selling some of their belongings, clothes and the like, all of it women's stuff. Since selling things in the market never brought much profit, they were looking for a woman to do the selling for them elsewhere. This was the occupation Lizaveta had found for herself: she took commission, went here and there on business, and did a thriving trade as she was very honest and always asked the lowest price: whatever price she named, that was the one at which she sold. As a rule she said little and, as has already been remarked, was submissive and easily frightened…

Recently, however, Raskolnikov had become superstitious. The traces of superstition were to remain in him for a long time afterwards, and he never really got rid of them. Indeed, in this whole affair he was always subsequently inclined to perceive a certain strangeness and mystery, as if it involved the working of certain peculiar influences and coincidences. Back in the winter a certain student he knew, by the name of Pokorev, had at one point during a conversation they had had as the latter was about to depart for Kiev slipped him Alyona Ivanovna's – the old woman's – address, in case he should need to pawn anything.
For a long time he had held off from going to see her, as he had had his teaching and was managing to get by somehow. Some six weeks ago he had remembered about the address; he had two personal possessions that were suitable for pawning: one was the old silver watch he had inherited from his father, and the other was a small golden ring with three red stones of some description which his sister had given him at their parting as a keepsake. He decided to take the ring; having tracked the old woman down, he felt towards her, at first glance, without as yet knowing anything in particular about her, an unmasterable sense of revulsion, took two ‘tickets’ from her, and on his way looked in at a certain rather inferior little eating-house. He ordered tea, sat down and began to think very hard. A strange idea had popped up in his head, like a chicken broken from an egg, and he was finding it very, very absorbing.