Crime and Punishment (15 page)

He lifted the latch, opened the door on to the stairs and began listening.

He listened long and hard. Somewhere far away, down below, probably at the gates, two voices were shouting loud and shrill, arguing and swearing. ‘What're they up to?' He waited patiently. Then, eventually, just like that, silence: they'd gone their separate ways. He was about to leave when suddenly a door opened with a great racket on to the stairs on the floor below and someone started going down, humming a tune. ‘How noisy they all are!' flashed through his mind. He shut the door again and waited. Finally, everything went quiet – not a soul. He was just about to step onto the stairs when once again he suddenly heard footsteps; different ones.

These footsteps came from far away, right from the bottom of the stairwell, but he remembered very vividly and distinctly that somehow, from the very first sound, he suspected that their destination was
here
and nowhere else, the fourth floor, the old woman. Why? Were the sounds so very special, so very meaningful? The footsteps were heavy, even, unhurried. There:
he
had already reached the first floor and was carrying on up – louder and louder! Now came the sound of heavy breathing. Climbing up to the third . . . Coming here! He felt his whole body suddenly go rigid, as if this were a dream, the kind of dream where someone is chasing you, breathing down your neck, about to kill you, while you yourself seem rooted to the spot and can't even move your hands.

Only when the visitor was already on his way up to the fourth floor did he suddenly rouse himself and somehow manage to slip quickly
and nimbly back into the apartment and close the door behind him. Then he grabbed the latch and quietly, soundlessly placed the hook in the eye. Instinct was coming to his aid. Then, he crouched right there by the door, holding his breath. The unbidden guest was also already at the door. They were standing opposite one another now, just like before with the old woman, when they were separated by the door and he was the one listening in.

The visitor drew several heaving breaths. ‘Must be big and fat,' thought Raskolnikov, his hand gripping the axe. Yes, all this really was like a dream. The visitor grabbed the bell and gave it a good ring.

No sooner did he hear the bell's tinny sound than he had a sudden fancy that someone had stirred in the room. For a few seconds he even cocked an ear in earnest. The stranger rang once again, waited a bit more, then suddenly lost patience and began tugging on the door handle with all his strength. Horrified, Raskolnikov watched with dull terror as the hook of the latch twitched in the eye, and half-expected it to snap out at any moment. The way the handle was being tugged, it seemed more than likely. He thought of holding the latch in place, but then
he
might realize. Once again he felt his head begin to spin. ‘I'll fall any moment!' – but no sooner had he thought this than the stranger began speaking, and he immediately came to his senses.

‘What are they doing in there – dozing? Or has someone done them in? Damned women!' he roared, as if from a barrel. ‘Oi! Alyona Ivanovna, my old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, my beauty! Open up! Fast asleep, are they?'

Working himself up into a frenzy, he tugged the little bell another ten times or so, as hard as he could. Evidently, he was used to getting his way around here.

At that very moment the sound of short, hurried steps suddenly carried up from close by on the stairs. Someone else was coming too. Raskolnikov hadn't even heard at first.

‘Is there really no one in?' shouted the new man, loudly and cheerfully addressing the first visitor, who was still tugging the bell. ‘Hello there, Kokh!'

‘Very young, going by his voice,' Raskolnikov suddenly thought.

‘Hell knows, but I almost broke the lock,' replied Kokh. ‘And how do you know me, may I ask?'

‘You having me on? Just the other day, playing billiards in “Gambrinus”, I took three games off you in a row!'

‘Ah . . .'

‘So they're out? How strange. And how stupid. Where on earth could the old woman've got to? I've business with her.'

‘And I've business too, my friend!'

‘Well, what's to be done? Back down, I suppose. And there was I expecting some cash!' cried the young man.

‘Down we go, then, but why fix a time? She's the one who told me to come at this time. Plus it was out of my way. And where the devil has she wandered off to? That's what I don't understand! The old witch spends the whole year stewing at home, nursing her gammy legs, and now look – out and about all of a sudden!'

‘How about asking the caretaker?'

‘Asking him what?'

‘Where she went and when she's back.'

‘H'm . . . what's the use? . . . I mean, she never goes anywhere . . .' He gave the door handle another tug. ‘There's nothing for it – I'm off!'

‘Wait!' the young man suddenly cried. ‘Look: see the gap when you pull the door?'

‘Well?'

‘So it's not locked, it's latched – on the hook, I mean! Hear how it rattles?'

‘Well?'

‘But don't you see? It means one of them must be in. If they were both out, they'd have locked it with a key from the outside, not latched it from inside, like now. Hear it rattling? To latch it from the inside, you have to be in, don't you see? So they must be in – they're just not opening!'

‘Ha – you're right!' Kokh exclaimed in astonishment. ‘So what can they be doing in there?' And he began furiously tugging the handle.

‘Wait!' cried the young man once again. ‘Stop pulling! There's something amiss here . . . After all, you've been ringing, tugging – and they're not opening; so either they've both fainted, or . . .'

‘What?'

‘Here's what: we'll fetch the caretaker. Let him wake them up.'

‘Agreed!'

They set off down together.

‘Wait! You stay put, I'll run and get the caretaker.'

‘Why should I stay?'

‘Well, you never know . . .'

‘I suppose . . .'

‘I'm training to be an examining magistrate,
52
as it happens! And it's quite obvious – blindingly obvious – that something's amiss here!' the young man cried out enthusiastically, before tearing off down the stairs.

Kokh remained where he was and gently fiddled a bit more with the bell, which tinkled once; then, in a studious, thoughtful kind of way, he began fiddling softly with the door handle, pulling it and letting it go, so as to make doubly certain that the door was only on the hook. Puffing and panting, he bent down and began looking through the keyhole; but the key was in the lock on the other side, so there was nothing to see.

Raskolnikov stood gripping the axe. He was in a kind of delirium. He was even ready to fight when they came in. While they were knocking and conferring, the idea occurred to him more than once to have done with it all and shout something out to them from behind the door. At times he suddenly felt like arguing with them, teasing them, until they finally got it open. ‘The sooner the better!' flashed through his mind.

‘Where's he got to, damn it . . . ?'

Time passed, whole minutes passed – no one came. Kokh became restless.

‘Damn it all!' he suddenly yelled, quitting his post in a fit of impatience and setting off down the stairs in a hurry, boots clattering. Silence.

‘God, now what?'

Raskolnikov lifted the latch, opened the door a little – he couldn't hear a thing – and suddenly, without a thought in his head, stepped out, shut the door behind him as firmly as he could, and set off down the stairs.

He was already three flights down when he suddenly heard a loud noise below. Now what? There was simply nowhere to hide. He was even about to run back into the apartment.

‘Oi! Wait there, you devil! Wait there!'

With a cry someone came tearing out of one of the apartments, not so much running as plummeting down the stairs and yelling at the top of his voice:

‘Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! I'll have you, you devil!'

The cry ended in a squeal, a few last noises came in from outside,
and everything went quiet. But at that very instant several men, speaking loud and fast, began tramping up the stairs. There were three or four of them. He recognized the young lad's booming voice. ‘It's them!'

In total despair he made straight for them: ‘What will be, will be! I'm ruined if they stop me, ruined if they let me pass: they'll remember.' They were about to meet; just one flight of stairs between them – when suddenly, salvation! A few steps away from him, to the right, an apartment stood empty and open, that same second-floor apartment which the workmen had been painting and which, as if on purpose, they'd now vacated. So that was them running out just now with such a hue and cry. The floors had just been painted; in the middle of the room stood a vat and a pot with paint and a brush. He darted through the open door in a flash and hid on the other side of the wall, in the very nick of time: they were already on the landing. Then they turned to carry on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited for them to go past, walked out on tiptoe and ran off down.

No one on the stairs! Or at the gates. He passed quickly under the arch and turned left down the street.

He knew full well that they were already in the apartment, right now, that they were astonished to find it open when it had just been closed, that they were already looking at the bodies, and that it would take no more than a minute for them to work out beyond any shadow of a doubt that the murderer had been there just moments before and had managed to hide somewhere, slip past them, run off; and they might also work out that he'd been waiting in the empty apartment as they climbed up. Still, for the life of him he dared not quicken his stride more than a little, even though it was another hundred paces or so to the next turning. ‘Perhaps I should duck under one of these arches and wait it out in some stairwell? No, no good! Or chuck away the axe somewhere? Or hail a cab? No good! No good!'

At last, the lane. He turned into it more dead than alive. He was already halfway to safety and he understood this: there'd be less reason for suspicion, not to mention a bustling crowd in which to lose himself like a grain of sand. But all these agonies had left him so feeble he could barely move. Sweat was dripping off him; his neck was all wet. ‘Drunk as a lord!' someone yelled out to him when he came out by the Ditch.

He was in a state of near-oblivion, and it was only getting worse.
But he did remember how frightened he was when he came out by the Ditch and saw how few people there were and how conspicuous he was, and he almost turned back into the lane. But even though he could barely stay on his feet, he still made a detour and returned home from a completely different direction.

He still hadn't recovered his wits when he passed through the gates to his building; at any rate, he was already on the stairs by the time he remembered the axe. Yet the task facing him was of the utmost importance: to put it back, and as discreetly as possible. Of course, he was in no fit state by now to realize that he might have been far better off not returning the axe to its former place at all, but sneaking it into some other courtyard, later if need be, and leaving it there.

But everything turned out well. The door of the lodge was shut but not locked, so the caretaker was probably in. Incapable by now of thinking straight about anything, he walked right up to the lodge and opened the door. Had the caretaker asked him, ‘What do you want?', he might very well have simply handed over the axe. But the caretaker was out again, and he managed to put the axe back in its former place beneath the bench; he even covered it with a log, as before. He met no one, not a single soul, all the way back to his room; the landlady's door was shut. Entering his room, he threw himself on the couch, just as he was. He wasn't asleep, he was in a trance. If someone had come into his room just then, he'd have leapt to his feet at once and screamed. His mind was aswarm with shreds and scraps of thought; but try as he might, he couldn't catch hold of any of them, nor focus on a single one . . .

He lay like that for a very long time. Occasionally, he even seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that night had long since fallen, but the thought of getting up did not occur to him. Eventually, he noticed it was already as bright as day. He lay supine on the couch, still dazed after his recent trance. The rasping sounds of terrible, desperate screams from the street reached his ears, the same sounds, in fact, that he listened out for beneath his window every night between two and three. It was this that had woken him up. ‘Ah! The drunks are pouring out of the dens,' he thought, ‘so it's gone two,' and he suddenly jumped to his feet, as though someone had yanked him off the couch. ‘What? Gone two already?' He sat down on the couch – and everything came back to him! Suddenly, all at once!

For a second or two he thought he'd go mad. He felt freezing cold; but the cold came from the fever as well, which had set in while he was sleeping, some time before. Now he was suddenly struck by a fit of shivering so violent that his teeth almost leapt from his mouth and his insides were thrown this way and that. He opened the door and listened: the whole house was fast asleep. He looked at himself and everything else in the room in complete astonishment: how on earth could he have just walked in yesterday, left the door off the latch and flung himself on the couch, without even taking off his hat, never mind his clothes: the hat had slid down to the floor, not far from the pillow. ‘If someone had walked in, what would they have thought? That I was drunk, but . . .' He rushed over to the little window. There was enough light and he hastily set about inspecting himself, all over, from top to toe, every item of clothing: any traces? But that was no way to do it: shaking uncontrollably, he started taking everything off and inspecting it all over again. He turned everything inside out, down to the last thread and scrap of cloth, and, not trusting himself, repeated the inspection another two or three times. But there didn't seem to be anything, not a single trace; only where his trousers were frayed at the ends did thick traces of caked blood still remain. He grabbed his big
folding knife and cut off the frayed ends. That seemed to be it. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the items from the old woman's box were still in his pockets! It hadn't even crossed his mind to take them out and hide them! He hadn't even remembered them now, while inspecting his clothes! Why on earth not? Quick as a flash, he began taking them out and flinging them down on the table. After emptying his pockets and even turning them inside out to check he hadn't missed anything, he carried the whole pile over to the corner. There, right in the corner, near the floor, the peeling wallpaper was torn in one place: he immediately started stuffing everything into this hole, behind the paper: ‘Done it! Out of sight, out of mind, and the purse too!' he thought with a sense of joy, half-rising and looking dully at the corner, at the hole bulging even more than before. Suddenly, his whole body shuddered with horror: ‘God,' he whispered in despair, ‘what's the matter with me? Call that hidden? Call that hiding?'

True, he hadn't reckoned on the items. He'd only expected to find money, which was why he hadn't prepared anywhere in advance. ‘But now what have I got to be so happy about?' he thought. ‘Call that hiding? My wits really are deserting me!' He sat down on the couch in complete exhaustion and was immediately shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. He reached without thinking for the winter coat lying next to him on the chair, his old student one, warm but now almost in shreds, covered himself with it, and sleep and delirium seized him once more. Oblivion came over him.

Less than five minutes later he was back on his feet and set about his clothes once more in a kind of frenzy. ‘How could I fall asleep again, when nothing's been done? See, see: I haven't even taken the loop off the armpit! To forget a thing like that! A clue like that!' He ripped out the loop and set about hurriedly tearing it to pieces, then stuffing it under the pillow, in amongst the linen. ‘Torn bits of old cloth can't arouse anyone's suspicion; surely they can't, surely they can't!' he repeated, standing in the middle of the room. In an agony of concentration, he began looking around again, on the floor and all around – anything else he might have forgotten? The conviction that everything was deserting him – even his memory, even the ability to put two and two together – was becoming an unbearable torment: ‘What, is this it already, my punishment? Yes, that's it, that's it!' The frayed ends he'd cut off from his trousers really did lie strewn across the floor, in the middle of the room, for anyone to see! ‘What on earth's the matter with me!' he cried out once more, as if lost.

Here, a strange thought occurred to him: what if there was blood all over his clothes, what if there were lots of stains, only he couldn't see them, didn't notice them, because his ability to think had been shot to pieces? . . . His mind had gone dark . . . Suddenly, he remembered: there was blood on the purse as well. ‘Ha! So there must be blood in the pocket, too – the purse was still wet when I put it there!' In a flash, he turned out the pocket and there they were – traces and stains on the lining! ‘So my wits haven't deserted me completely yet, nor my memory, and I can still put two and two together, if I caught myself in time!' he exulted, breathing a deep and joyful sigh. ‘This is just weakness brought on by fever, a moment's delirium' – and he ripped out the entire lining from his left trouser pocket. At that moment a ray of sunlight fell on his left boot: the sock poking out of it seemed to have some kind of marks on it. He kicked off the boot: ‘Yes, marks! Look, the toe's all soaked in blood'; he must have stepped in that puddle of blood by mistake . . . ‘Now what? What do I do with this sock, the trouser ends, the pocket?'

He gathered it all up in one hand and stood in the middle of the room. ‘Bung it all in the stove? But that's the first place they'll look! Burn it? What with? I haven't even got matches. No, I'm better off going out and getting rid of the whole lot somewhere. Yes! Get rid of it!' he repeated, sitting down on the couch again. ‘And do it now, this very minute, without delay!' But no: once again, his head sank back onto the pillow; once again an unbearable fit of shivering turned him to ice; once again he reached for his greatcoat. And for a long time, for several hours, the words kept coming back to him in waves: ‘Just go somewhere, right now, don't put it off, get rid of it all, out of sight, the sooner the better!' Several times he made as if to get up from the couch, but he was no longer able to. Not until there was a loud knock on the door did he wake up fully.

‘Open up if you're still alive! Won't he ever stop snoozing?' shouted Nastasya, banging on the door with her fist. ‘Snoozes all day long, like a dog! A dog – that's what he is! Open up. It's gone ten.'

‘What if he's out?' came a man's voice.

(‘Ha! The caretaker . . . What does he want?')

He sat up with a jerk. His heart was thumping so hard it even hurt.

‘Who put the door on the hook, then?' Nastasya objected. ‘So he's locking himself in now, eh? Scared of being stolen, I s'pose. Open up, egghead, wakey, wakey!'

(‘What do they want? Why's the caretaker come? The story's out. Resist or open? Ah, to hell with it . . .')

He leant forward and lifted the hook.

The dimensions of his room were such that he could lift the hook without getting up from his bed.

Just as he thought: the caretaker and Nastasya.

There was something strange about the way Nastasya looked him up and down. He threw a defiant and desperate glance at the caretaker. The latter silently handed over a grey piece of paper folded in two and sealed with bottle wax.

‘A summons, from the bureau,' he said, giving him the piece of paper.

‘What bureau . . . ?'

‘The police want to see you, that's what, in the bureau.
1
You know which bureau.'

‘The police? . . . What for?'

‘How should I know? They're asking, so you'd better go.' He looked at him closely, glanced around the room and turned to leave.

‘Sick as a parrot, aren't you?' Nastasya remarked, never taking her eyes off him. The caretaker also glanced back before leaving. ‘Running a fever since yesterday,' she added.

He made no reply and held the piece of paper, still sealed, in his hands.

‘You'd best stay in bed,' Nastasya went on, taking pity as she watched him lower his feet to the floor. ‘Stay put if you're sick: that can wait. What's that in your hand?'

He looked down: his right hand held the snipped-off trouser ends, the sock and the shreds of the ripped-out pocket. He'd slept with them like that. Later on, turning all this over in his mind, he recalled how, half-waking with fever, he'd clench it all fiercely in his hand and fall asleep again.

‘A regular scrap collector – he even sleeps with 'em, like hidden treasure . . .' And Nastasya went into fits of her unhealthy, nervous laughter. Quick as a flash, he stuffed everything under his greatcoat and fastened his eyes on her. Though he could barely think straight, he sensed that this was not how a man being taken away would be treated. ‘But . . . the police?'

‘What about that tea, then? I can bring what's left . . .'

‘No . . . I'm going. I'll go right now,' he muttered, getting to his feet.

‘You'll not even get down the stairs.'

‘I'll go . . .'

‘Please yourself.'

She followed the caretaker out. He rushed over to the window to inspect the sock and trouser ends. ‘There are stains, but not very noticeable ones; it's all mixed up with dirt, all rubbed and faded. You'd never spot anything unless you knew. So Nastasya, thank God, couldn't have seen anything from where she was!' Then, in trepidation, he unsealed the summons and began reading; he read for a long time before he could understand what he was reading. It was an ordinary summons from the local police bureau to present himself that very same day, at half past nine, to the district superintendent.

‘It's unheard of! What business have I ever had with the police? And why today of all days?' he thought, racked with confusion. ‘Lord, the sooner the better!' He was about to fall to his knees in prayer, only to burst out laughing – at himself, not the prayer. He began hurriedly getting dressed. ‘If I'm done for, I'm done for – so be it! The sock! Put it on!' suddenly occurred to him. ‘It'll get even dustier and dirtier, and the traces will vanish.' But no sooner had he put it on than he immediately pulled it off in disgust and horror. He pulled it off and then, realizing it was the only one he had, put it back on again – and again burst out laughing. ‘This is all mere convention, merely relative, mere form,' came a passing thought, glimpsed at the very edge of his mind, while his whole body shook. ‘Look, I still put it on! In the end, I still put it on!' But laughter instantly gave way to despair. ‘No, I'm not up to it . . .' His legs were shaking. ‘With fear,' he muttered to himself. His head was spinning and aching from the fever. ‘It's a trick! They want to lure me in, then trip me up,' he went on to himself, walking out onto the landing. ‘Too bad I'm almost raving . . . I might come out with something stupid . . .'

On the stairs he remembered he'd left all the items where they were, in the hole in the wallpaper – ‘Now, when I'm out, would be just the time for a search' – remembered and stopped. But he was suddenly overwhelmed by such despair, by what one can only call the cynicism of doom, that he dismissed the thought and carried on.

‘The sooner the better!'

Outside, it was unbearably hot again; all these days and not a drop of rain. Again the dust, bricks and mortar, again the stink from the shops and drinking dens, again the drunks at every corner, the Finnish pedlars, the decrepit cabs. The sun shone brightly into his eyes, to
the point that it became painful to look and his head spun round and round – as usually happens when you suddenly step outside with a fever on a bright sunny day.

Reaching the turn to
yesterday's
street, he glanced down it at
that
house with excruciating anxiety . . . and immediately looked away.

‘If they ask, I might just tell them,' he thought, approaching the bureau.

It was a few hundred yards from where he lived to the bureau. It had just moved to new premises, a new building, the fourth floor. He'd passed by the old premises once, but a long time ago now. Going under the arch, he noticed stairs on his right and a man walking down with a book in his hands: ‘Must be the caretaker; so the bureau must be here,' and he started climbing up, following his nose. He was in no mood to ask anyone about anything.

‘I'll go in, fall to my knees and tell them everything,' he thought, on reaching the fourth floor.

It was a tight, steep staircase, covered in slops. All the kitchens of all the apartments on all four floors opened on to these stairs and stayed open nearly all day long. That was why it was so terribly stuffy. Up and down the stairs went caretakers with registers tucked under their arms, police errand boys, and assorted men and women – the visitors. The door to the bureau itself was also wide open. He went in and stopped in the anteroom. Some peasant types were standing around waiting. It was exceptionally stuffy here, too, not to mention the nauseatingly strong smell from the freshly coated walls: damp paint made with rancid oil. After waiting a short while, he decided to press on to the next room. They were all so tiny and low. A terrible impatience drew him on. No one noticed him. Some clerks – a strange-looking lot, dressed only marginally better than he was – were sat writing in the second room. He turned to one of them.

‘Well?'

He presented the summons from the bureau.