Part II
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Chapter I
S
o he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to
wake up, and at such moments he noticed that it was far
into the night, but it did not occur to him to get up. At last
he noticed that it was beginning to get light. He was lying
on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion. Fearful,
despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which
he heard every night, indeed, under his window after two
o’clock. They woke him up now.
‘Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns,’ he
thought, ‘it’s past two o’clock,’ and at once he leaped up, as
though someone had pulled him from the sofa.
‘What! Past two o’clock!’
He sat down on the sofa—and instantly recollected
everything! All at once, in one flash, he recollected every-
thing.
For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A
dreadful chill came over him; but the chill was from the
fever that had begun long before in his sleep. Now he was
suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his teeth chat-
tered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door
and began listening—everything in the house was asleep.
With amazement he gazed at himself and everything in the
room around him, wondering how he could have come in
the night before without fastening the door, and have flung
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himself on the sofa without undressing, without even tak-
ing his hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor
near his pillow.
‘If anyone had come in, what would he have thought?
That I’m drunk but …’
He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and
he began hurriedly looking himself all over from head to
foot, all his clothes; were there no traces? But there was no
doing it like that; shivering with cold, he began taking off
everything and looking over again. He turned everything
over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself,
went through his search three times.
But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one
place, where some thick drops of congealed blood were
clinging to the frayed edge of his trousers. He picked up a
big claspknife and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed
to be nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things
he had taken out of the old woman’s box were still in his
pockets! He had not thought till then of taking them out
and hiding them! He had not even thought of them while he
was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed
to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had
pulled out everything, and turned the pocket inside out to
be sure there was nothing left, he carried the whole heap to
the corner. The paper had come off the bottom of the wall
and hung there in tatters. He began stuffing all the things
into the hole under the paper: ‘They’re in! All out of sight,
and the purse too!’ he thought gleefully, getting up and gaz-
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ing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever.
Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror; ‘My God!’ he
whispered in despair: ‘what’s the matter with me? Is that
hidden? Is that the way to hide things?’
He had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had
only thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-
place.
‘But now, now, what am I glad of?’ he thought, ‘Is that
hiding things? My reason’s deserting me—simply!’
He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once
shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanical-
ly he drew from a chair beside him his old student’s winter
coat, which was still warm though almost in rags, covered
himself up with it and once more sank into drowsiness and
delirium. He lost consciousness.
Not more than five minutes had passed when he jumped
up a second time, and at once pounced in a frenzy on his
clothes again.
‘How could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes,
yes; I have not taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, for-
got a thing like that! Such a piece of evidence!’
He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and
threw the bits among his linen under the pillow.
‘Pieces of torn linen couldn’t rouse suspicion, whatever
happened; I think not, I think not, any way!’ he repeated,
standing in the middle of the room, and with painful con-
centration he fell to gazing about him again, at the floor and
everywhere, trying to make sure he had not forgotten any-
thing. The conviction that all his faculties, even memory,
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and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began
to be an insufferable torture.
‘Surely it isn’t beginning already! Surely it isn’t my pun-
ishment coming upon me? It is!’
The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually
lying on the floor in the middle of the room, where anyone
coming in would see them!
‘What is the matter with me!’ he cried again, like one dis-
traught.
Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all
his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there
were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did
not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were
going to pieces … his reason was clouded…. Suddenly he
remembered that there had been blood on the purse too.
‘Ah! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I put
the wet purse in my pocket!’
In a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes!—
there were traces, stains on the lining of the pocket!
‘So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have
some sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself,’ he
thought triumphantly, with a deep sigh of relief; ‘it’s simply
the weakness of fever, a moment’s delirium,’ and he tore the
whole lining out of the left pocket of his trousers. At that
instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock which
poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He
flung off his boots; ‘traces indeed! The tip of the sock was
soaked with blood;’ he must have unwarily stepped into
that pool…. ‘But what am I to do with this now? Where am
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I to put the sock and rags and pocket?’
He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the
middle of the room.
‘In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of
all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are
no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away
somewhere. Yes, better throw it away,’ he repeated, sitting
down on the sofa again, ‘and at once, this minute, without
lingering …’
But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the un-
bearable icy shivering came over him; again he drew his
coat over him.
And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by
the impulse to ‘go off somewhere at once, this moment, and
fling it all away, so that it may be out of sight and done with,
at once, at once!’ Several times he tried to rise from the sofa,
but could not.
He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knock-
ing at his door.
‘Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!’
shouted Nastasya, banging with her fist on the door. ‘For
whole days together he’s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is
too. Open I tell you. It’s past ten.’
‘Maybe he’s not at home,’ said a man’s voice.
‘Ha! that’s the porter’s voice…. What does he want?’
He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his
heart was a positive pain.
‘Then who can have latched the door?’ retorted Nastasya.
‘He’s taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth steal-
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ing! Open, you stupid, wake up!’
‘What do they want? Why the porter? All’s discovered.
Resist or open? Come what may! …’
He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.
His room was so small that he could undo the latch
without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter and Nastasya were
standing there.
Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with
a defiant and desperate air at the porter, who without a word
held out a grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.
‘A notice from the office,’ he announced, as he gave him
the paper.
‘From what office?’
‘A summons to the police office, of course. You know
which office.’
‘To the police? … What for? …’
‘How can I tell? You’re sent for, so you go.’
The man looked at him attentively, looked round the
room and turned to go away.
‘He’s downright ill!’ observed Nastasya, not taking her
eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. ‘He’s
been in a fever since yesterday,’ she added.
Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in his
hands, without opening it. ‘Don’t you get up then,’ Nastasya
went on compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet
down from the sofa. ‘You’re ill, and so don’t go; there’s no
such hurry. What have you got there?’
He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had
cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket.
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So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards
reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in
his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so
fallen asleep again.
‘Look at the rags he’s collected and sleeps with them, as
though he has got hold of a treasure …’
And Nastasya went off into her hysterical giggle.
Instantly he thrust them all under his great coat and
fixed his eyes intently upon her. Far as he was from being
capable of rational reflection at that moment, he felt that no
one would behave like that with a person who was going to
be arrested. ‘But … the police?’
‘You’d better have some tea! Yes? I’ll bring it, there’s
some left.’
‘No … I’m going; I’ll go at once,’ he muttered, getting on
to his feet.
‘Why, you’ll never get downstairs!’
‘Yes, I’ll go.’
‘As you please.’
She followed the porter out.
At once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and
the rags.
‘There are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with
dirt, and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had
no suspicion could distinguish anything. Nastasya from a
distance could not have noticed, thank God!’ Then with a
tremor he broke the seal of the notice and began reading; he
was a long while reading, before he understood. It was an
ordinary summons from the district police-station to ap-
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pear that day at half-past nine at the office of the district
superintendent.
‘But when has such a thing happened? I never have
anything to do with the police! And why just to-day?’ he
thought in agonising bewilderment. ‘Good God, only get
it over soon!’
He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke
into laughter —not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
He began, hurriedly dressing. ‘If I’m lost, I am lost, I
don’t care! Shall I put the sock on?’ he suddenly wondered,
‘it will get dustier still and the traces will be gone.’
But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again
in loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that
he had no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again—
and again he laughed.
‘That’s all conventional, that’s all relative, merely a way
of looking at it,’ he thought in a flash, but only on the top
surface of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, ‘there,
I’ve got it on! I have finished by getting it on!’
But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.
‘No, it’s too much for me …’ he thought. His legs shook.
‘From fear,’ he muttered. His head swam and ached with fe-
ver. ‘It’s a trick! They want to decoy me there and confound
me over everything,’ he mused, as he went out on to the
stairs—‘the worst of it is I’m almost light-headed … I may
blurt out something stupid …’
On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the
things just as they were in the hole in the wall, ‘and very
likely, it’s on purpose to search when I’m out,’ he thought,
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and stopped short. But he was possessed by such despair,
such cynicism of misery, if one may so call it, that with a
wave of his hand he went on. ‘Only to get it over!’
In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop
of rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and
mortar, again the stench from the shops and pot-houses,
again the drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-bro-
ken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes, so that
it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going
round—as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out
into the street on a bright sunny day.
When he reached the turning into the street, in an agony
of trepidation he looked down it … at the house … and at
once averted his eyes.
‘If they question me, perhaps I’ll simply tell,’ he thought,
as he drew near the police-station.
The police-station was about a quarter of a mile off. It
had lately been moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a
new house. He had been once for a moment in the old office
but long ago. Turning in at the gateway, he saw on the right
a flight of stairs which a peasant was mounting with a book
in his hand. ‘A house-porter, no doubt; so then, the office is
here,’ and he began ascending the stairs on the chance. He
did not want to ask questions of anyone.
‘I’ll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything …’ he
thought, as he reached the fourth floor.
The staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty
water. The kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and
stood open almost the whole day. So there was a fearful
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smell and heat. The staircase was crowded with porters
going up and down with their books under their arms, po-
licemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The door
of the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood wait-
ing within. There, too, the heat was stifling and there was
a sickening smell of fresh paint and stale oil from the newly
decorated rooms.
After waiting a little, he decided to move forward into
the next room. All the rooms were small and low-pitched.
A fearful impatience drew him on and on. No one paid at-
tention to him. In the second room some clerks sat writing,
dressed hardly better than he was, and rather a queer-look-
ing set. He went up to one of them.
‘What is it?’
He showed the notice he had received.
‘You are a student?’ the man asked, glancing at the no-
tice.
‘Yes, formerly a student.’
The clerk looked at him, but without the slightest inter-
est. He was a particularly unkempt person with the look of
a fixed idea in his eye.
‘There would be no getting anything out of him, because
he has no interest in anything,’ thought Raskolnikov.
‘Go in there to the head clerk,’ said the clerk, pointing to-
wards the furthest room.
He went into that room—the fourth in order; it was a
small room and packed full of people, rather better dressed
than in the outer rooms. Among them were two ladies. One,
poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the table opposite the
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chief clerk, writing something at his dictation. The other, a
very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face,
excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as
big as a saucer, was standing on one side, apparently wait-
ing for something. Raskolnikov thrust his notice upon the
head clerk. The latter glanced at it, said: ‘Wait a minute,’ and
went on attending to the lady in mourning.
He breathed more freely. ‘It can’t be that!’
By degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging
himself to have courage and be calm.
‘Some foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may
betray myself! Hm … it’s a pity there’s no air here,’ he add-
ed, ‘it’s stifling…. It makes one’s head dizzier than ever …
and one’s mind too …’
He was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was
afraid of losing his self-control; he tried to catch at some-
thing and fix his mind on it, something quite irrelevant, but
he could not succeed in this at all. Yet the head clerk great-
ly interested him, he kept hoping to see through him and
guess something from his face.
He was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a
dark mobile face that looked older than his years. He was
fashionably dressed and foppish, with his hair parted in the
middle, well combed and pomaded, and wore a number of
rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a gold chain on his
waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to a foreigner
who was in the room, and said them fairly correctly.
‘Luise Ivanovna, you can sit down,’ he said casually to the
gaily- dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as
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though not venturing to sit down, though there was a chair
beside her.
‘Ich danke,’ said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk
she sank into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with
white lace floated about the table like an air-balloon and
filled almost half the room. She smelt of scent. But she was
obviously embarrassed at filling half the room and smelling
so strongly of scent; and though her smile was impudent as
well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness.
The lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All
at once, with some noise, an officer walked in very jaun-
tily, with a peculiar swing of his shoulders at each step. He
tossed his cockaded cap on the table and sat down in an
easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her seat
on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy;
but the officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she
did not venture to sit down again in his presence. He was
the assistant superintendent. He had a reddish moustache
that stood out horizontally on each side of his face, and ex-
tremely small features, expressive of nothing much except a
certain insolence. He looked askance and rather indignant-
ly at Raskolnikov; he was so very badly dressed, and in spite
of his humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in
keeping with his clothes. Raskolnikov had unwarily fixed a
very long and direct look on him, so that he felt positively
affronted.
‘What do you want?’ he shouted, apparently astonished
that such a ragged fellow was not annihilated by the maj-
esty of his glance.
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‘I was summoned … by a notice …’ Raskolnikov fal-
tered.
‘For the recovery of money due, from the student ’ the
head clerk interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his
papers. ‘Here!’ and he flung Raskolnikov a document and
pointed out the place. ‘Read that!’
‘Money? What money?’ thought Raskolnikov, ‘but …
then … it’s certainly not that. ’
And he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense inde-
scribable relief. A load was lifted from his back.
‘And pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?’
shouted the assistant superintendent, seeming for some un-
known reason more and more aggrieved. ‘You are told to
come at nine, and now it’s twelve!’
‘The notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour
ago,’ Raskolnikov answered loudly over his shoulder. To his
own surprise he, too, grew suddenly angry and found a cer-
tain pleasure in it. ‘And it’s enough that I have come here ill
with fever.’
‘Kindly refrain from shouting!’
‘I’m not shouting, I’m speaking very quietly, it’s you who
are shouting at me. I’m a student, and allow no one to shout
at me.’
The assistant superintendent was so furious that for the
first minute he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped
up from his seat.
‘Be silent! You are in a government office. Don’t be im-
pudent, sir!’
‘You’re in a government office, too,’ cried Raskolnikov,
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‘and you’re smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you
are showing disrespect to all of us.’
He felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.
The head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry as-
sistant superintendent was obviously disconcerted.
‘That’s not your business!’ he shouted at last with un-
natural loudness. ‘Kindly make the declaration demanded
of you. Show him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a com-
plaint against you! You don’t pay your debts! You’re a fine
bird!’
But Raskolnikov was not listening now; he had eagerly
clutched at the paper, in haste to find an explanation. He
read it once, and a second time, and still did not under-
stand.
‘What is this?’ he asked the head clerk.
‘It is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You
must either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give
a written declaration when you can pay it, and at the same
time an undertaking not to leave the capital without pay-
ment, and nor to sell or conceal your property. The creditor
is at liberty to sell your property, and proceed against you
according to the law.’
‘But I … am not in debt to anyone!’
‘That’s not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred
and fifteen roubles, legally attested, and due for payment,
has been brought us for recovery, given by you to the widow
of the assessor Zarnitsyn, nine months ago, and paid over
by the widow Zarnitsyn to one Mr. Tchebarov. We therefore
summon you, hereupon.’
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‘But she is my landlady!’
‘And what if she is your landlady?’
The head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile
of compassion, and at the same time with a certain triumph,
as at a novice under fire for the first time—as though he
would say: ‘Well, how do you feel now?’ But what did he
care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery! Was that worth
worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He stood,
he read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions
himself, but all mechanically. The triumphant sense of se-
curity, of deliverance from overwhelming danger, that was
what filled his whole soul that moment without thought for
the future, without analysis, without suppositions or sur-
mises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an
instant of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very
moment something like a thunderstorm took place in the
office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken by Raskol-
nikov’s disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to
keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate
smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever since he came
in with an exceedingly silly smile.
‘You shameful hussy!’ he shouted suddenly at the top of
his voice. (The lady in mourning had left the office.) ‘What
was going on at your house last night? Eh! A disgrace again,
you’re a scandal to the whole street. Fighting and drinking
again. Do you want the house of correction? Why, I have
warned you ten times over that I would not let you off the
eleventh! And here you are again, again, you … you … !’
The paper fell out of Raskolnikov’s hands, and he looked
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wildly at the smart lady who was so unceremoniously treat-
ed. But he soon saw what it meant, and at once began to find
positive amusement in the scandal. He listened with plea-
sure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh … all his nerves
were on edge.
‘Ilya Petrovitch!’ the head clerk was beginning anxiously,
but stopped short, for he knew from experience that the en-
raged assistant could not be stopped except by force.
As for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled be-
fore the storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and
violent the terms of abuse became, the more amiable she
looked, and the more seductive the smiles she lavished on
the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and curtsied in-
cessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in her
word: and at last she found it.
‘There was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr.
Captain,’ she pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speak-
ing Russian confidently, though with a strong German
accent, ‘and no sort of scandal, and his honour came drunk,
and it’s the whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain, and I am
not to blame…. Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain,
and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, al-
ways dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy,
and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one
leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and
that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz
broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I
said so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone
with it. And then I called the porter, and Karl came, and he
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took Karl and hit him in the eye; and he hit Henriette in the
eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the cheek. And it was so
ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and I
screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and
stood in the window, squealing like a little pig; it was a dis-
grace. The idea of squealing like a little pig at the window
into the street! Fie upon him! And Karl pulled him away
from the window by his coat, and it is true, Mr. Captain, he
tore sein rock. And then he shouted that man muss pay him
fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain,
five roubles for sein rock. And he is an ungentlemanly visi-
tor and caused all the scandal. ‘I will show you up,’ he said,
‘for I can write to all the papers about you.’’
‘Then he was an author?’
‘Yes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in
an honourable house….’
‘Now then! Enough! I have told you already …’
‘Ilya Petrovitch!’ the head clerk repeated significantly.
The assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk
slightly shook his head.
‘… So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Ivanovna,
and I tell it you for the last time,’ the assistant went on. ‘If
there is a scandal in your honourable house once again, I
will put you yourself in the lock-up, as it is called in polite
society. Do you hear? So a literary man, an author took five
roubles for his coat-tail in an ‘honourable house’? A nice set,
these authors!’
And he cast a contemptuous glance at Raskolnikov.
‘There was a scandal the other day in a restaurant, too. An
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author had eaten his dinner and would not pay; ‘I’ll write
a satire on you,’ says he. And there was another of them
on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful language
to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and
daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a con-
fectioner’s shop the other day. They are like that, authors,
literary men, students, town-criers…. Pfoo! You get along! I
shall look in upon you myself one day. Then you had better
be careful! Do you hear?’
With hurried deference, Luise Ivanovna fell to curtsying
in all directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at
the door, she stumbled backwards against a good-looking
officer with a fresh, open face and splendid thick fair whis-
kers. This was the superintendent of the district himself,
Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Ivanovna made haste to curtsy
almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she
fluttered out of the office.
‘Again thunder and lightning—a hurricane!’ said
Nikodim Fomitch to Ilya Petrovitch in a civil and friendly
tone. ‘You are aroused again, you are fuming again! I heard
it on the stairs!’
‘Well, what then!’ Ilya Petrovitch drawled with gentle-
manly nonchalance; and he walked with some papers to
another table, with a jaunty swing of his shoulders at each
step. ‘Here, if you will kindly look: an author, or a student,
has been one at least, does not pay his debts, has given an I O
U, won’t clear out of his room, and complaints are constant-
ly being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased to
make a protest against my smoking in his presence! He be-
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haves like a cad himself, and just look at him, please. Here’s
the gentleman, and very attractive he is!’
‘Poverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off
like powder, you can’t bear a slight, I daresay you took of-
fence at something and went too far yourself,’ continued
Nikodim Fomitch, turning affably to Raskolnikov. ‘But you
were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I assure you, but ex-
plosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no
stopping him! And then it’s all over! And at the bottom he’s
a heart of gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Ex-
plosive Lieutenant….’
‘And what a regiment it was, too,’ cried Ilya Petrovitch,
much gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.
Raskolnikov had a sudden desire to say something ex-
ceptionally pleasant to them all. ‘Excuse me, Captain,’ he
began easily, suddenly addressing Nikodim Fomitch, ‘will
you enter into my position? … I am ready to ask pardon, if I
have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick and shat-
tered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not
studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get
money…. I have a mother and sister in the province of X.
They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-
hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost
my lessons, and not paying her for the last four months, that
she does not even send up my dinner … and I don’t under-
stand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this I
O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves! …’
‘But that is not our business, you know,’ the head clerk
was observing.
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1
‘Yes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to ex-
plain …’ Raskolnikov put in again, still addressing Nikodim
Fomitch, but trying his best to address Ilya Petrovitch also,
though the latter persistently appeared to be rummag-
ing among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious
of him. ‘Allow me to explain that I have been living with
her for nearly three years and at first … at first … for why
should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to
marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given …
she was a girl … indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love
with her … a youthful affair in fact … that is, I mean to say,
that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I
led a life of … I was very heedless …’
‘Nobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we’ve
no time to waste,’ Ilya Petrovitch interposed roughly and
with a note of triumph; but Raskolnikov stopped him hotly,
though he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to speak.
‘But excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain … how
it all happened … In my turn … though I agree with you
… it is unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus.
I remained lodging there as before, and when my landlady
moved into her present quarters, she said to me … and in a
friendly way … that she had complete trust in me, but still,
would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen
roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her
that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that
she would never, never—those were her own words—make
use of that I O U till I could pay of myself … and now, when
I have lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes ac-
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tion against me. What am I to say to that?’
‘All these affecting details are no business of ours.’ Ilya
Petrovitch interrupted rudely. ‘You must give a written un-
dertaking but as for your love affairs and all these tragic
events, we have nothing to do with that.’
‘Come now … you are harsh,’ muttered Nikodim Fomi-
tch, sitting down at the table and also beginning to write.
He looked a little ashamed.
‘Write!’ said the head clerk to Raskolnikov.
‘Write what?’ the latter asked, gruffly.
‘I will dictate to you.’
Raskolnikov fancied that the head clerk treated him more
casually and contemptuously after his speech, but strange
to say he suddenly felt completely indifferent to anyone’s
opinion, and this revulsion took place in a flash, in one in-
stant. If he had cared to think a little, he would have been
amazed indeed that he could have talked to them like that
a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where
had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had
been filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest
and dearest to him, he would not have found one human
word for them, so empty was his heart. A gloomy sensa-
tion of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took
conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness of his
sentimental effusions before Ilya Petrovitch, nor the mean-
ness of the latter’s triumph over him that had caused this
sudden revulsion in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now
with his own baseness, with all these petty vanities, offi-
cers, German women, debts, police- offices? If he had been
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1
sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have
stirred, would hardly have heard the sentence to the end.
Something was happening to him entirely new, sudden and
unknown. It was not that he understood, but he felt clearly
with all the intensity of sensation that he could never more
appeal to these people in the police-office with sentimental
effusions like his recent outburst, or with anything what-
ever; and that if they had been his own brothers and sisters
and not police-officers, it would have been utterly out of the
question to appeal to them in any circumstance of life. He
had never experienced such a strange and awful sensation.
And what was most agonising—it was more a sensation than
a conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonising
of all the sensations he had known in his life.
The head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of
declaration, that he could not pay, that he undertook to do
so at a future date, that he would not leave the town, nor sell
his property, and so on.
‘But you can’t write, you can hardly hold the pen,’ ob-
served the head clerk, looking with curiosity at Raskolnikov.
‘Are you ill?’
‘Yes, I am giddy. Go on!’
‘That’s all. Sign it.’
The head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to
others.
Raskolnikov gave back the pen; but instead of getting up
and going away, he put his elbows on the table and pressed
his head in his hands. He felt as if a nail were being driven
into his skull. A strange idea suddenly occurred to him, to
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get up at once, to go up to Nikodim Fomitch, and tell him
everything that had happened yesterday, and then to go
with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in the
hole in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up
from his seat to carry it out. ‘Hadn’t I better think a minute?’
flashed through his mind. ‘No, better cast off the burden
without thinking.’ But all at once he stood still, rooted to
the spot. Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly with Ilya
Petrovitch, and the words reached him:
‘It’s impossible, they’ll both be released. To begin with,
the whole story contradicts itself. Why should they have
called the porter, if it had been their doing? To inform
against themselves? Or as a blind? No, that would be too
cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student, was seen at the
gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He
was walking with three friends, who left him only at the
gate, and he asked the porters to direct him, in the pres-
ence of the friends. Now, would he have asked his way if he
had been going with such an object? As for Koch, he spent
half an hour at the silversmith’s below, before he went up to
the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to eight.
Now just consider …’
‘But excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction?
They state themselves that they knocked and the door was
locked; yet three minutes later when they went up with the
porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.’
‘That’s just it; the murderer must have been there and
bolted himself in; and they’d have caught him for a certain-
ty if Koch had not been an ass and gone to look for the porter
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too. He must have seized the interval to get downstairs and
slip by them somehow. Koch keeps crossing himself and
saying: ‘If I had been there, he would have jumped out and
killed me with his axe.’ He is going to have a thanksgiving
service—ha, ha!’
‘And no one saw the murderer?’
‘They might well not see him; the house is a regular No-
ah’s Ark,’ said the head clerk, who was listening.
‘It’s clear, quite clear,’ Nikodim Fomitch repeated warm-
ly.
‘No, it is anything but clear,’ Ilya Petrovitch maintained.
Raskolnikov picked up his hat and walked towards the
door, but he did not reach it….
When he recovered consciousness, he found himself
sitting in a chair, supported by someone on the right side,
while someone else was standing on the left, holding a yel-
lowish glass filled with yellow water, and Nikodim Fomitch
standing before him, looking intently at him. He got up
from the chair.
‘What’s this? Are you ill?’ Nikodim Fomitch asked, rath-
er sharply.
‘He could hardly hold his pen when he was signing,’ said
the head clerk, settling back in his place, and taking up his
work again.
‘Have you been ill long?’ cried Ilya Petrovitch from his
place, where he, too, was looking through papers. He had,
of course, come to look at the sick man when he fainted, but
retired at once when he recovered.
‘Since yesterday,’ muttered Raskolnikov in reply.
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‘Did you go out yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Though you were ill?’
‘Yes.’
‘At what time?’
‘About seven.’
‘And where did you go, my I ask?’
‘Along the street.’
‘Short and clear.’
Raskolnikov, white as a handkerchief, had answered
sharply, jerkily, without dropping his black feverish eyes
before Ilya Petrovitch’s stare.
‘He can scarcely stand upright. And you …’ Nikodim
Fomitch was beginning.
‘No matter,’ Ilya Petrovitch pronounced rather peculiar-
ly.
Nikodim Fomitch would have made some further pro-
test, but glancing at the head clerk who was looking very
hard at him, he did not speak. There was a sudden silence.
It was strange.
‘Very well, then,’ concluded Ilya Petrovitch, ‘we will not
detain you.’
Raskolnikov went out. He caught the sound of eager
conversation on his departure, and above the rest rose the
questioning voice of Nikodim Fomitch. In the street, his
faintness passed off completely.
‘A search—there will be a search at once,’ he repeated to
himself, hurrying home. ‘The brutes! they suspect.’
His former terror mastered him completely again.
Crime and Punishment
1
Chapter II
‘A
nd what if there has been a search already? What if I
find them in my room?’
But here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one
had peeped in. Even Nastasya had not touched it. But heav-
ens! how could he have left all those things in the hole?
He rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the pa-
per, pulled the things out and lined his pockets with them.
There were eight articles in all: two little boxes with ear-rings
or something of the sort, he hardly looked to see; then four
small leather cases. There was a chain, too, merely wrapped
in newspaper and something else in newspaper, that looked
like a decoration…. He put them all in the different pockets
of his overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his trousers,
trying to conceal them as much as possible. He took the
purse, too. Then he went out of his room, leaving the door
open. He walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt
shattered, he had his senses about him. He was afraid of
pursuit, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another
quarter of an hour perhaps, instructions would be issued
for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all traces
before then. He must clear everything up while he still had
some strength, some reasoning power left him…. Where
was he to go?
That had long been settled: ‘Fling them into the canal,
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and all traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an
end.’ So he had decided in the night of his delirium when
several times he had had the impulse to get up and go away,
to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get rid of it, turned
out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank
of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and
looked several times at the steps running down to the wa-
ter, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either
rafts stood at the steps’ edge, and women were washing
clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people
were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and
noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look suspi-
cious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw
something into the water. And what if the boxes were to
float instead of sinking? And of course they would. Even as
it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as
if they had nothing to do but to watch him. ‘Why is it, or
can it be my fancy?’ he thought.
At last the thought struck him that it might be better to
go to the Neva. There were not so many people there, he
would be less observed, and it would be more convenient
in every way, above all it was further off. He wondered how
he could have been wandering for a good half- hour, wor-
ried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking
of it before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irratio-
nal plan, simply because he had thought of it in delirium!
He had become extremely absent and forgetful and he was
aware of it. He certainly must make haste.
He walked towards the Neva along V—— Prospect, but
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10
on the way another idea struck him. ‘Why to the Neva?
Would it not be better to go somewhere far off, to the Is-
lands again, and there hide the things in some solitary place,
in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot perhaps?’ And
though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the idea seemed
to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there.
For coming out of V—— Prospect towards the square, he
saw on the left a passage leading between two blank walls to
a courtyard. On the right hand, the blank unwhitewashed
wall of a four-storied house stretched far into the court; on
the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with it for twen-
ty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the left.
Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of dif-
ferent sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of
a low, smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some work-
shop, peeped from behind the hoarding. It was probably a
carriage builder’s or carpenter’s shed; the whole place from
the entrance was black with coal dust. Here would be the
place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard,
he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a sink, such as
is often put in yards where there are many workmen or cab-
drivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in
chalk the time-honoured witticism, ‘Standing here strictly
forbidden.’ This was all the better, for there would be noth-
ing suspicious about his going in. ‘Here I could throw it all
in a heap and get away!’
Looking round once more, with his hand already in his
pocket, he noticed against the outer wall, between the en-
trance and the sink, a big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps
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sixty pounds. The other side of the wall was a street. He
could hear passers-by, always numerous in that part, but
he could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone
came in from the street, which might well happen indeed,
so there was need of haste.
He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in
both hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under
the stone was a small hollow in the ground, and he immedi-
ately emptied his pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and
yet the hollow was not filled up. Then he seized the stone
again and with one twist turned it back, so that it was in the
same position again, though it stood a very little higher. But
he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the edges with
his foot. Nothing could be noticed.
Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an
intense, almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an in-
stant, as it had in the police-office. ‘I have buried my tracks!
And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has
been lying there most likely ever since the house was built,
and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who
would think of me? It is all over! No clue!’ And he laughed.
Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous
noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was
crossing the square. But when he reached the K—— Bou-
levard where two days before he had come upon that girl,
his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas crept into his
mind. He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to pass
that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and
pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that
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1
whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty co-
pecks: ‘Damn him!’
He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly.
All his ideas now seemed to be circling round some single
point, and he felt that there really was such a point, and that
now, now, he was left facing that point—and for the first
time, indeed, during the last two months.
‘Damn it all!’ he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovern-
able fury. ‘If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new
life! Good Lord, how stupid it is! … And what lies I told
to-day! How despicably I fawned upon that wretched Ilya
Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What do I care for them all,
and my fawning upon them! It is not that at all! It is not
that at all!’
Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and
exceedingly simple question perplexed and bitterly con-
founded him.
‘If it all has really been done deliberately and not idioti-
cally, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it
I did not even glance into the purse and don’t know what I
had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and
have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading
business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the water
the purse together with all the things which I had not seen
either … how’s that?’
Yes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all
before, and it was not a new question for him, even when
it was decided in the night without hesitation and con-
sideration, as though so it must be, as though it could not
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possibly be otherwise…. Yes, he had known it all, and un-
derstood it all; it surely had all been settled even yesterday
at the moment when he was bending over the box and pull-
ing the jewel-cases out of it…. Yes, so it was.
‘It is because I am very ill,’ he decided grimly at last, ‘I
have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know
what I am doing…. Yesterday and the day before yesterday
and all this time I have been worrying myself…. I shall get
well and I shall not worry…. But what if I don’t get well at
all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!’
He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing
for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what
to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining
more and more mastery over him every moment; this was
an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything
surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred.
All who met him were loathsome to him—he loathed their
faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had ad-
dressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten
him….
He stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the
Little Neva, near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. ‘Why,
he lives here, in that house,’ he thought, ‘why, I have not
come to Razumihin of my own accord! Here it’s the same
thing over again…. Very interesting to know, though; have
I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance?
Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go
and see him the day after; well, and so I will! Besides I really
cannot go further now.’
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1
He went up to Razumihin’s room on the fifth floor.
The latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at
the moment, and he opened the door himself. It was four
months since they had seen each other. Razumihin was sit-
ting in a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare
feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face showed
surprise.
‘Is it you?’ he cried. He looked his comrade up and down;
then after a brief pause, he whistled. ‘As hard up as all that!
Why, brother, you’ve cut me out!’ he added, looking at
Raskolnikov’s rags. ‘Come sit down, you are tired, I’ll be
bound.’
And when he had sunk down on the American leather
sofa, which was in even worse condition than his own, Ra-
zumihin saw at once that his visitor was ill.
‘Why, you are seriously ill, do you know that?’ He began
feeling his pulse. Raskolnikov pulled away his hand.
‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I have come for this: I have no les-
sons…. I wanted, … but I don’t really want lessons….’
‘But I say! You are delirious, you know!’ Razumihin ob-
served, watching him carefully.
‘No, I am not.’
Raskolnikov got up from the sofa. As he had mounted
the stairs to Razumihin’s, he had not realised that he would
be meeting his friend face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew,
that what he was least of all disposed for at that moment
was to be face to face with anyone in the wide world. His
spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at him-
self as soon as he crossed Razumihin’s threshold.
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‘Good-bye,’ he said abruptly, and walked to the door.
‘Stop, stop! You queer fish.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said the other, again pulling away his
hand.
‘Then why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or
what? Why, this is … almost insulting! I won’t let you go
like that.’
‘Well, then, I came to you because I know no one but
you who could help … to begin … because you are kinder
than anyone— cleverer, I mean, and can judge … and now
I see that I want nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all … no
one’s services … no one’s sympathy. I am by myself … alone.
Come, that’s enough. Leave me alone.’
‘Stay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As
you like for all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I
don’t care about that, but there’s a bookseller, Heruvimov—
and he takes the place of a lesson. I would not exchange him
for five lessons. He’s doing publishing of a kind, and issuing
natural science manuals and what a circulation they have!
The very titles are worth the money! You always maintained
that I was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater fools
than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that
he has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage
him. Here are two signatures of the German text—in my
opinion, the crudest charlatanism; it discusses the question,
‘Is woman a human being?’ And, of course, triumphantly
proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to bring out this
work as a contribution to the woman question; I am trans-
lating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures
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1
into six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long
and bring it out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six
roubles the signature, it works out to about fifteen roubles
for the job, and I’ve had six already in advance. When we
have finished this, we are going to begin a translation about
whales, and then some of the dullest scandals out of the sec-
ond part of Les Confessions we have marked for translation;
somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind of
Radishchev. You may be sure I don’t contradict him, hang
him! Well, would you like to do the second signature of ‘Is
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