Crime and Punishment (24 page)

‘It's because my health's not at all good,’ he decided morosely, at last. ‘I've worn myself out with all this worry, I don't know what I'm about… I was doing it yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and I've been doing it all these weeks – wearing myself out with worry… If I get better, I'll… stop doing it… But what if I don't get better at all? Lord, how sick of all this I am…!’ He continued to talk, never stopping once. He had a terrible desire to get his mind off the whole business altogether, but did not know how to go about it. A certain new, unmasterable sensation was gaining a stronger and stronger hold of him with practically every minute that passed; it was an infinite, almost physical revulsion to everything he encountered
and everything that surrounded him, an emotion that was insistent, hostile and full of hatred. He found all the people he met repulsive – their faces, their manner of walking, their movements were repulsive to him. He reflected that if anyone had said anything to him he would quite simply have spat at that person, or bitten him…

Suddenly, as he emerged on to the embankment of the Malaya Neva, on Vasily Island, beside the bridge, he stopped in his tracks. ‘This is where he lives, right here, in this building,’ he thought. ‘What on earth? I would never have come to see Razumikhin of my own accord! It's the same story as last time… But it really is very curious: did I come here of my own accord, or did I simply walk around and end up here? It doesn't make any difference: I said… the day before yesterday… that I'd go and see him the day after
it
– well, and so I shall! I can't really very well not go up and see him now, in any case…’

He climbed the stairs to the fifth floor, where Razumikhin lived.

His friend was at home, in his little room. At that moment he was at work, writing, and he let Raskolnikov in himself. It was some four months since they had seen each other. Razumikhin sat in his room wearing a dressing-gown that was worn to rags, with slippers on his bare feet, tousled, unshaven and unwashed. His face expressed astonishment.

‘Never!’ he cried, examining his newly arrived companion from head to toe; then he fell silent, and let out a whistle. ‘Are things really as bad as that? Well, brother, you've gone one better than I,’ he added, looking at Raskolnikov's rags. ‘Oh, sit down – you must be tired!’ he said. And at those words Raskolnikov subsided on to the oilcloth Turkish sofa, which was in an even worse state than his own. Razumikhin suddenly perceived that his visitor was ill.

‘I say, you're seriously ill, do you know that?’ He began to feel his pulse; Raskolnikov tore his hand free.

‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘I've come… look: I've got no teaching… I was going to… actually, I don't need any teaching at all…’

‘You know something? You're delirious!’ Razumikhin observed, studying him with fixed attention.

‘No, I'm not…’ Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. When he had been climbing the stairs to Razumikhin's room, it had not occurred to him that he might have to confront him face to face. Now, however, in a single instant, he knew from experience that what he felt least of all like doing just then was to confront anyone face to face, anyone in the whole wide world. All his spleen rose up within him. Hardly had he stepped across the threshold of Razumikhin's room than he nearly choked with venom at himself.

‘Goodbye!’ he said suddenly, and walked to the door.

‘What's this, you're off again? Wait, you strange fellow!’

‘Stop it…’ Raskolnikov said again, once more tugging his hand free.

‘What the devil did you come for, then? Have you gone crazy, or what? I mean, it's… almost insulting. I won't let you go just like that.’

‘Oh, listen: I came to you because I don't know anyone else who could have helped me… to get started… because you're kinder than all the rest of them, more intelligent, I mean, and you're able to take an objective view of things… But now I realize that I don't need anything, do you hear, nothing at all… need no help or sympathy from anyone… I'll manage by myself… on my own… Well, I've said enough! Now leave me alone!’

‘Wait a minute, chimney-sweep! You're completely mad! I mean, as far as I'm concerned you can do as you please. You see, I haven't any teaching worth a spit, but down at the fleamarket there's a bookseller by the name of Kheruvimov who's a whole lesson in himself. I wouldn't exchange him now for five hours’ teaching in a merchant's house. He does these special editions and publishes miserable little books on natural science – but my, don't they sell! The titles alone are worth something! You always used to say I was stupid, but my God, brother, there are folk more stupid than I am! Now he's started going in for the radical stuff, too; not that he has an ounce of sympathy for the cause himself, but I encourage him all the same. Look, here are two and a bit printer's sheets of some German text – if you ask me, it's the most inane charlatanry: what it discusses, in short,
is the question of whether a woman is a human being or not.
²
Well, needless to say, the author solemnly manages to prove that she is. Kheruvimov's going to bring it out as one of those woman-question books; I'm the translator: he'll spin out these two and a bit sheets into six, we'll dream up the most lavish title you've ever seen, half a page long, and put it on the market at fifty copecks a throw. It'll do very nicely. I'm being paid six roubles a sheet, that means I'll get about fifteen roubles for the whole thing, and I've taken six in advance. When we've finished this one, we'll start translating a thing about whales, and then there are some really boring spicy bits from the second part of the
Confessions
that we've marked out, we'll translate them, too; someone told Kheruvimov that Rousseau was a sort of Radishchev.
³
Who am I to argue? Let him go to the devil. Well, how would you like to translate the second sheet of
Is Woman Human?
If you like, you can take the text with you right now, take some pens and paper – it's all government stuff – and have three roubles: since my advance was for the whole translation, for the first sheet and the second sheet, three roubles is about right for your share. And when you finish the sheet, you'll get another three roubles. And there's one other thing: please don't think I'm doing you a favour. On the contrary – as soon as you walked in, I figured you could be of use to me. For one thing, my spelling is terrible, and for another my German is quite simply
schwach
, so what I write is mostly just my own invention, and I like to think it's even better than the original. Well, but who knows, perhaps it isn't, perhaps it's worse… Will you do it, or won't you?’

Raskolnikov silently took the sheets containing the German text of the article, accepted the three roubles and went out, not saying a word. Razumikhin stared after him in astonishment. Having got as far as the First Line,
⁴
however, Raskolnikov suddenly turned back, went back up to Razumikhin's room, placed both sheets and money on the table and left again, still without saying a word.

‘I think you must have the DTs!’ Razumikhin roared at last, frantic with rage. ‘What kind of playacting is this? You've got me so I don't know whether I'm coming or going… What did you come here for, damn it?’

‘I don't need any… translations…’ Raskolnikov muttered, already on his way downstairs.

‘Well, what
do
you need then, damn it?’ Razumikhin shouted from above. Raskolnikov silently continued his descent.

‘Hey! Where are you living?’

There was no answer.

‘Well, then, to the de-e-evil with you!…’

But by this time Raskolnikov was already out on the street. At the Nicholas Bridge he was once again forced wide awake by something extremely unpleasant that happened to him. The driver of a carriage gave him a solid blow across the back with his knout for having very nearly ended up under the horses’ hooves, even though the driver had shouted to him some three or four times. This blow made Raskolnikov so angry that, having darted aside to the railings (for some reason he had been walking along the very middle part of the bridge, which is used by vehicles, not pedestrians), he began to gnash and grind his teeth in envenomed fury. It went without saying that laughter arose all around him:

‘Got what he deserved!’

‘Must be some kind of clever dick!’

‘That's an old one: they pretend to be drunk and fall under the wheels on purpose; and then you're responsible for them.’

‘That's how they make their living, my dear fellow, that's how they make their living.’

At that moment, however, as he was standing by the railings, still staring vacantly and in fury after the receding carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone shove a coin into his hand. He looked: it was an elderly merchant's wife, in a
golovka
⁵
and goat-skin shoes, accompanied by a girl, probably her daughter, in a bonnet, holding a green parasol. ‘Take it, dearie, for the love of Christ,’ the woman said. He took it, and they walked on by. It was a twenty-copeck piece. From his clothes and general appearance they might very well have concluded that he was a beggar, a genuine street-gatherer of small change, but this donation of a whole twenty-copeck piece was more likely due to the blow he had received from the knout, which had moved them to pity.

Clutching the twenty-copeck piece in his hand, he walked on about ten paces and turned round to face the Neva, looking towards the Palace. There was not the least trace of cloud in the sky, and the water was almost blue – something very rare for the Neva. The dome of the cathedral, which is in no other spot so clearly delineated as when viewed from here on the bridge, not twenty paces from the chapel, was fairly gleaming, and through the pure air it was possible to discern clearly each one of its adornments. The pain of the knout had died away, and Raskolnikov had forgotten about the blow; a certain restless and not quite limpid thought was preoccupying him now to the exclusion of all else. He stood looking into the distance fixedly, and for a long time; this place was particularly familiar to him. When he had been going to university, he had been in the habit – most often as he was returning home – of stopping (he must have done it at least a hundred times) at this very spot, peering fixedly at this indeed magnificent panorama and each time being almost astonished by a certain vague and enigmatic feeling it aroused in him. He always felt an inexplicable coldness drifting towards him from this magnificent panorama; for him, this lavish tableau was full of a tongueless, hollow spirit… Each time he had marvelled at his gloomy and mysterious emotion and had postponed its fathoming until some future date, not trusting his judgement. Now he suddenly had a vivid recollection of his earlier sense of wonder and bewilderment, and he thought it no accident that he should have remembered it now. The mere fact that he had stopped at the same place as before seemed to him amazing and outlandish, as though he actually imagined that he could think about the same things as before, and be carried away by the same ideas and images that had carried him away before… only such a short time ago. It very nearly made him laugh, but at the same time his chest felt constricted to the point of pain. In some deep space below him, scarcely visible beneath his feet, he now beheld the whole of his earlier past – his old thoughts, old problems, old preoccupations and old feelings, and this whole panorama, and himself, and everything, everything… He seemed to be flying somewhere into the heights, and everything seemed to vanish before his eyes…
Making an automatic movement with his hand, he suddenly felt the twenty-copeck piece that was clutched in it. He unclenched his fist, stared fixedly at the little coin and, with a swing of his arm, hurled it into the water; then he turned on his heel and went home. At that moment he felt as though, with a pair of scissors, he had cut himself off from everyone and everything.

It was getting on towards evening when he arrived back at his room; that meant he had been walking for some six hours altogether. By what route and in what manner he had returned – of that he had no memory. Taking off his coat and shivering all over like a horse that has been driven too hard, he lay down on the sofa, pulled the overcoat on top of him and sank into instant oblivion…

He awoke in deep twilight to the sound of a terrible clamour. God, what a clamour it was! Never had he heard or witnessed such unnatural sounds, such a wailing, such a howling, such a gnashing of teeth, such weeping, beating and cursing. He could not even imagine such savagery, such frenzy. In horror he raised himself on one elbow and sat on his bed, rigid, tormented with anxiety. But the fighting, the howling and cursing were getting louder and louder. And then, to his most profound amazement, he suddenly caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling, screeching and wailing, her words coming out in a hurried stream, so that it was impossible to decipher what she was pleading for – probably for whoever it was to stop beating her, for someone was mercilessly beating her on the staircase. The voice of the man who was doing the beating had become so terrible with spite and rabid fury that it was now little more than a wheeze, but even so he was also saying something, and also quickly, indecipherably, in a hurry, and choking. Suddenly Raskolnikov began to tremble like a leaf: he had recognized that voice – it belonged to Ilya Petrovich. Ilya Petrovich was beating his landlady! He was kicking her, drubbing her head against the steps – there was no doubt of it, one could tell it by the sounds, by the howls, by the blows! What was this? Had the world turned upside-down, or what? On every floor, all the length of the staircase, a crowd could be heard gathering, there were
voices, exclamations, people coming up the stairs, knocking at doors, banging them, grouping together. ‘But why, why… and how is it possible?’ he kept repeating, seriously believing that he had gone completely insane. But no – he could hear it all only too clearly!… And, if that were the case, they would be coming up to his room now, ‘because… all this is probably… connected with what happened yesterday… Oh Lord!’ He wanted to lock himself in by setting the door on the hook, but his arm would not lift… and anyway, it was no good! Fear enveloped his soul like ice, torturing him and turning him stiff and numb… But then, at last, all this commotion, which must have lasted all of ten minutes, began gradually to die away. His landlady continued to moan and groan, Ilya Petrovich still threatened and shouted abuse… But finally his voice, too, died away; there, he could be heard no longer. ‘Has he really gone? Oh Lord!’ Yes, there was his landlady going, too, still moaning and weeping… there was her door banging shut… There were the people who formed the crowd dispersing on the stairs and going back to their apartments – exclaiming, arguing, crying out to one another, now raising their voices to a shout, now lowering them to a whisper. There must have been a lot of them; practically the whole building had taken part. ‘Oh God, is this really possible?’ he thought. ‘And why, why did he come here?’