Chapter 6 of 41

VI

Raskolnikov later happened to learn why exactly the tradesman and his wife had invited Lizaveta to their place. It was a most ordinary matter and contained nothing particularly special. A visiting family that had fallen on hard times was selling things—clothing and so forth, all women's items. Since it was unprofitable to sell at the market, they were looking for a dealer, and Lizaveta was engaged in this: she took commissions, went about on business, and had an extensive practice, because she was very honest and always quoted her final price: whatever price she named, so it would be. She spoke little in general, and as already mentioned, was so meek and timid...

But Raskolnikov had recently become superstitious. Traces of superstition remained in him for a long time afterward, almost indelibly. And in all this affair he was always inclined afterward to see something strange, mysterious, as if the presence of some special influences and coincidences. Back in winter, a student acquaintance of his, Pokorev, while leaving for Kharkov, had mentioned to him in passing the address of the old woman Alena Ivanovna, in case he should need to pawn something. For a long time he didn't go to her, because he had lessons and somehow managed to get by. About six weeks ago he remembered the address; he had two items suitable for pawning: his father's old silver watch and a small gold ring with three red stones of some kind, given to him by his sister at parting, as a keepsake. He decided to take the ring; having found the old woman, at first glance, still knowing nothing particular about her, he felt an insurmountable revulsion toward her, took two "tickets" from her, and on the way stopped at a wretched little tavern. He ordered tea, sat down, and fell into deep thought. A strange thought was hatching in his head, like a chick from an egg, and occupied him very, very much.

Almost beside him at another table sat a student whom he didn't know at all and didn't remember, and a young officer. They had played billiards and began drinking tea. Suddenly he heard the student telling the officer about the moneylender, Alena Ivanovna, collegiate secretary's wife, and giving him her address. This alone seemed somehow strange to Raskolnikov: he had just come from there, and here they were talking about her. Of course, it was a coincidence, but he couldn't shake off a very peculiar impression, and here it was as if someone was doing him a service: the student suddenly began telling his companion various details about this Alena Ivanovna.

"She's splendid," he said, "you can always get money from her. She's rich as a Jew, can give out five thousand at once, and doesn't turn up her nose at a ruble pledge either. Lots of our fellows have been to her. Only she's an awful bitch..."

And he began describing how wicked and capricious she was, how if you were just one day late redeeming a pledge, the item was lost. She gave a quarter of what things were worth, charged five and even seven percent interest per month, and so on. The student warmed to his subject and reported, in addition, that the old woman had a sister, Lizaveta, whom she, being so small and vile, beat constantly and kept in complete bondage like a small child, whereas Lizaveta was at least seven feet tall...

"Now there's a phenomenon for you!" exclaimed the student and burst out laughing.

They began talking about Lizaveta. The student spoke about her with some particular pleasure and kept laughing, while the officer listened with great interest and asked the student to send him this Lizaveta to mend linen. Raskolnikov didn't miss a single word and learned everything at once: Lizaveta was the younger, half sister (by different mothers) of the old woman, and was already thirty-five years old. She worked for her sister day and night, was cook and laundress in the house, and besides that, sewed for sale, even hired herself out to wash floors, and gave everything to her sister. She dared not take any order or any work without the old woman's permission. The old woman had already made her will, which was known to Lizaveta herself, who by the will would not get a kopeck except for movables, chairs and such; the money was all designated for a certain monastery in N—— province, for the eternal remembrance of her soul. Lizaveta was of the petty bourgeois class, not an official's wife, unmarried, and frightfully ungainly, remarkably tall, with long feet seemingly twisted outward, always in worn-down goatskin shoes, and kept herself clean. But what surprised and amused the student most was that Lizaveta was constantly pregnant...

"But you say she's a monster?" remarked the officer.

"Yes, so dark, like a soldier in disguise, but you know, not a monster at all. She has such a kind face and eyes. Very much so. The proof is that many people like her. She's so quiet, gentle, meek, agreeable, agreeable to everything. And she even has a very nice smile."

"So you like her too?" laughed the officer.

"For her strangeness. No, but here's what I'll tell you. I could kill and rob that damned old woman, and I assure you, without any qualms of conscience," the student added heatedly.

The officer laughed again, but Raskolnikov shuddered. How strange it was!

"Allow me, I want to ask you a serious question," said the student, getting heated. "I was joking just now, of course, but look: on the one hand, a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, sick old woman, no good to anyone and, on the contrary, harmful to everyone, who doesn't know herself what she's living for, and who will die of her own accord tomorrow anyway. You understand? You understand?"

"Well, I understand," answered the officer, staring intently at his heated companion.

"Listen further. On the other hand, young, fresh forces going to waste without support, and this by the thousands, and this everywhere! A hundred, a thousand good deeds and undertakings that could be arranged and set right with the old woman's money, destined for a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps of existences set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from decay, from ruin, from depravity, from venereal hospitals—and all this with her money. Kill her and take her money, so that afterward with its help you can devote yourself to the service of all mankind and the common cause: what do you think, won't one tiny crime be effaced by thousands of good deeds? For one life—thousands of lives saved from decay and corruption. One death and a hundred lives in exchange—why, it's arithmetic! And what does the life of that consumptive, stupid, and spiteful old woman mean on the common scale? No more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and not even that much, because the old woman is harmful. She's eating up someone else's life: the other day she bit Lizaveta's finger out of spite; it nearly had to be amputated!"

"Of course, she doesn't deserve to live," remarked the officer, "but there's nature."

"Ah, brother, but we correct and direct nature, and without this we'd drown in prejudices. Without this there wouldn't be a single great man. They say: 'duty, conscience'—I don't want to say anything against duty and conscience—but how do we understand them? Wait, I'll ask you another question. Listen!"

"No, you wait; I'll ask you a question. Listen!"

"Well?"

"Here you are now talking and speechifying, but tell me: will you kill the old woman yourself or not?"

"Of course not! I'm for justice... It's not about me here..."

"And in my opinion, if you won't do it yourself, there's no justice in it! Let's play another game!"

Raskolnikov was in extreme agitation. Of course, all this was the most ordinary and most frequent sort of talk and thought, heard many times before by him in other forms and on other themes—young people's conversations and thoughts. But why did he have to hear precisely such a conversation and such thoughts now, when in his own head there had just been born... precisely the same thoughts? And why precisely now, just as he had carried away the germ of his thought from the old woman, did he happen upon a conversation about the old woman?.. This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This insignificant tavern conversation had an extraordinary influence on him in the subsequent development of the affair: as if there really was some predestination in it, some indication...

Returning from Sennaya, he threw himself on the sofa and sat for a whole hour without moving. Meanwhile it grew dark; he had no candle, and it didn't occur to him to light one. He could never recall afterward whether he had thought about anything during that time. Finally he felt his earlier fever and chill, and realized with pleasure that he could lie down on the sofa. Soon a heavy, leaden sleep fell upon him, as if crushing him.

He slept an unusually long time and without dreams. Nastasya, who came to him at ten o'clock the next morning, could barely rouse him. She brought him tea and bread. The tea was stale again, and again in her own teapot.

"My, how he sleeps!" she cried indignantly, "he's always sleeping!"

He raised himself with effort. His head ached; he tried to stand on his feet, turned around in his closet, and fell back on the sofa.

"Sleeping again!" cried Nastasya, "are you sick or what?"

He didn't answer.

"Do you want tea?"

"Later," he said with effort, closing his eyes again and turning to the wall. Nastasya stood over him.

"Maybe he really is sick," she said, turned, and left.

She came in again at two o'clock with soup. He was lying as before. The tea stood untouched. Nastasya was even offended and began shaking him angrily.

"Why are you sleeping!" she cried, looking at him with disgust. He raised himself and sat up, but said nothing to her and stared at the floor.

"Are you sick or not?" asked Nastasya, and again received no answer.

"You should go out," she said after a pause, "get some air at least. Are you going to eat or what?"

"Later," he said weakly, "go away!" and waved his hand.

She stood a little longer, looked at him with compassion, and left.

A few minutes later he raised his eyes and looked for a long time at the tea and soup. Then he took the bread, took the spoon, and began to eat.

He ate a little, without appetite, three or four spoonfuls, as if mechanically. His head ached less. Having eaten, he stretched out on the sofa again, but couldn't fall asleep, and lay motionless, face down, his face buried in the pillow. He kept dreaming, and all such strange dreams: most often he imagined he was somewhere in Africa, in Egypt, in some oasis. A caravan is resting, the camels lie peacefully; palm trees grow all around in a circle; everyone is dining. But he keeps drinking water, straight from a stream that flows and murmurs right there beside him. And it's so cool, and such wonderful, wonderful blue water, cold, running over multicolored stones and such clean sand with golden sparkles... Suddenly he clearly heard a clock striking. He started, came to, raised his head, looked at the window, calculated the time, and suddenly jumped up, completely alert, as if someone had torn him from the sofa. On tiptoe he approached the door, opened it quietly, and began listening down the stairway. His heart was beating terribly. But all was quiet on the stairway, as if everyone were asleep... It seemed wild and strange to him that he could have slept in such oblivion since yesterday and had done nothing yet, prepared nothing... And meanwhile, perhaps six o'clock had struck... And an extraordinary feverish and somehow confused bustle suddenly seized him, in place of sleep and stupor. The preparations, however, were few. He strained all his efforts to think everything through and forget nothing; but his heart kept beating, pounding so hard that it became difficult to breathe. First of all, he had to make a loop and sew it to his coat—a matter of minutes. He reached under the pillow and searched among the linen stuffed under it for one of his old, completely worn-out, unwashed shirts. From its tatters he tore a strip an inch wide and about eight inches long. He folded this strip in half, took off his wide, sturdy summer coat of some thick cotton material (his only outer garment), and began sewing both ends of the strip under his left armpit on the inside. His hands trembled as he sewed, but he managed, and nothing was visible from outside when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread had been prepared long ago and lay on the table in a piece of paper. As for the loop, it was a very clever invention of his own: the loop was intended for the axe. He couldn't carry the axe through the streets in his hands. And if he hid it under his coat, he would still have to hold it with his hand, which would be noticeable. Now, with the loop, he only had to insert the blade of the axe into it, and it would hang peacefully under his arm on the inside, all the way. By putting his hand in the side pocket of his coat, he could also hold the end of the axe handle to keep it from swinging; and since the coat was very wide, a real sack, it couldn't be noticeable from outside that he was holding something with his hand through the pocket. He had thought up this loop two weeks ago as well.

Having finished with this, he thrust his fingers into the small crack between his "Turkish" sofa and the floor, felt around near the left corner, and pulled out the pledge he had long ago prepared and hidden there. This pledge, however, was not really a pledge at all, but simply a smooth planed wooden block, no bigger or thicker than a silver cigarette case might be. He had found this block by chance during one of his walks, in a yard where some workshop was located in a wing. Later he added to the block a smooth thin iron strip—probably a fragment of something—which he had also found on the street at the same time. Placing the two pieces together, the iron one being smaller than the wooden one, he tied them firmly together, crosswise, with thread; then neatly and smartly wrapped them in clean white paper and tied them with a thin ribbon, also crosswise, and arranged the knot so it would be more difficult to untie. This was to distract the old woman's attention for a time when she began fussing with the knot, and thus to seize the moment. The iron strip was added for weight, so the old woman wouldn't guess, at least at first, that the "thing" was wooden. All this had been stored under the sofa until the time came. He had just retrieved the pledge when suddenly somewhere in the yard someone's cry rang out:

"It's past seven o'clock!"

"Past! My God!"

He rushed to the door, listened, grabbed his hat, and began descending his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. The most important thing still lay ahead—stealing the axe from the kitchen. That the deed had to be done with an axe had been decided by him long ago. He also had a folding garden knife, but he didn't trust the knife, and especially his own strength, and so settled on the axe definitively. Let us note in passing one peculiarity regarding all the definitive decisions he had already made in this matter. They had one strange property: the more definitive they became, the more hideous and absurd they immediately became in his eyes. Despite all his agonizing inner struggle, he could never, not for a single moment, believe in the feasibility of his schemes, all this time.

And if it had ever happened that everything had been analyzed and decided by him down to the last point definitively, and no doubts remained anymore—then it seems he would have renounced it all as absurd, monstrous, and impossible. But a whole abyss of unresolved points and doubts still remained. As for where to get the axe, this trifle didn't worry him at all, because nothing was easier. The fact was that Nastasya, especially in the evenings, was constantly away from home: she would run off to the neighbors or to the shop, and always left the door wide open. The landlady quarreled with her only because of this. So all he had to do was quietly enter the kitchen when the time came and take the axe, and then, in an hour (when everything was finished), go in and put it back. But there were doubts: suppose he came in an hour to put it back, and Nastasya was there, back home. Of course, he'd have to pass by and wait until she went out again. But what if in the meantime she noticed the axe was missing, started looking for it, raised an outcry—there's suspicion, or at least grounds for suspicion.

But these were still trifles he hadn't even begun to think about, and there was no time. He thought about the main thing, and put off the trifles until he could convince himself of everything. But the latter seemed decidedly unfeasible. So at least it seemed to him. He couldn't imagine, for example, that sometime he would stop thinking, get up, and—simply go there... Even his recent trial (that is, his visit with the intention of making a final survey of the place) he had only tried to do, but far from in earnest, but like this: "let me go and try it out, why just dream about it!"—and immediately couldn't bear it, spat, and ran away, furious with himself. And yet it would seem that all his analysis, in the sense of a moral resolution of the question, was already finished: his casuistry had sharpened like a razor, and he could no longer find conscious objections within himself. But in the final analysis he simply didn't believe himself and stubbornly, slavishly sought objections on all sides, groping about, as if someone were forcing and dragging him to it. This last day, which had arrived so unexpectedly and decided everything at once, affected him almost entirely mechanically: as if someone had taken him by the hand and pulled him along, irresistibly, blindly, with unnatural force, without objections. As if he had caught a piece of his clothing in the wheel of a machine, and it had begun to draw him in.

At first—though long before—he had been occupied by one question: why are almost all crimes so easily discovered and exposed, and the traces of almost all criminals so clearly marked? He gradually came to various and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the main cause lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime as in the criminal himself: the criminal himself, almost every one, at the moment of the crime, suffers a kind of failure of will and reason, replaced, on the contrary, by a childish phenomenal frivolity, and precisely at the moment when reason and caution are most necessary. In his conviction, it turned out that this eclipse of reason and failure of will seize a person like an illness, develop gradually, and reach their highest moment shortly before the commission of the crime; continue in the same form at the very moment of the crime and for some time afterward, depending on the individual; then pass just as any illness passes. The question whether the illness itself generates the crime, or whether the crime itself, somehow by its special nature, is always accompanied by something like illness—he didn't yet feel capable of resolving.

Having arrived at such conclusions, he decided that with him personally, in his case, there could be no such morbid upheavals, that his reason and will would remain with him, inalienably, throughout the execution of what he had conceived, for the sole reason that what he had conceived was "not a crime"... We omit the whole process by which he arrived at this final decision; we have already run too far ahead... Let us only add that the actual, purely material difficulties of the matter generally played the most secondary role in his mind. "One need only preserve all one's will and reason over them, and they will all be overcome in due time, when it becomes necessary to become acquainted with all the details of the matter down to the finest point..." But the matter didn't begin. He continued to believe least of all in his final decisions, and when the hour struck, everything turned out quite differently—even somehow accidentally, almost unexpectedly.

One most trivial circumstance confounded him even before he descended the stairs. Drawing level with the landlady's kitchen, which as always stood wide open, he cautiously glanced into it to make sure in advance: was the landlady herself there, in Nastasya's absence, and if not, were the doors to her room properly closed, so she wouldn't peek out from there somehow when he went in for the axe? But what was his astonishment when he suddenly saw that Nastasya was not only home this time, in her kitchen, but was even occupied with something: taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on lines! Seeing him, she stopped hanging, turned to him, and kept looking at him the whole time he passed. He averted his eyes and passed as if noticing nothing. But it was finished: no axe! He was struck with horror.

"And where did I get the idea," he thought, going out under the gateway, "where did I get the idea that she definitely wouldn't be home at this moment? Why, why, why was I so certain of this?" He was crushed, even somehow humiliated. He wanted to laugh at himself with malice... Dull, bestial rage boiled up in him.

He stopped under the gateway in indecision. To go out on the street, just for show, to walk around, was repulsive to him; to return home—even more repulsive. "And what a chance lost forever!" he muttered, standing aimlessly under the gateway, directly opposite the dark closet of the dvornik, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the dvornik's closet, two paces away from him, from under the bench on the right, something flashed in his eyes... He looked around—no one. On tiptoe he approached the dvornik's quarters, went down two steps, and called the dvornik in a weak voice. "Just as I thought, he's not home! Somewhere nearby, though, in the courtyard, because the door's wide open." He threw himself headlong at the axe (it was an axe) and pulled it out from under the bench where it lay between two logs; right there, without leaving, he attached it to the loop, thrust both hands in his pockets, and came out of the dvornik's quarters; no one noticed! "Not reason, but the devil!" he thought, smiling strangely. This incident emboldened him extraordinarily.

He walked quietly and sedately, without hurrying, so as not to arouse any suspicions. He looked little at passersby, even tried not to look at faces at all and to be as inconspicuous as possible. Then he remembered his hat. "My God! I had money the day before yesterday, and couldn't change it for a cap!" A curse tore from his soul.

Glancing by chance, with one eye, into a shop, he saw by the wall clock that it was already ten past seven. He had to hurry, and at the same time make a detour: to approach the house roundabout, from the other side...

Before, when he happened to imagine all this, he sometimes thought he would be very afraid. But he wasn't very afraid now, wasn't afraid at all. At this moment he was even occupied by certain extraneous thoughts, only all very briefly. Passing by the Yusupov Garden, he even became very occupied with the thought of arranging high fountains and how well they would refresh the air in all the squares. Gradually he passed to the conviction that if the Summer Garden were extended over all the Field of Mars and even joined with the palace Mikhailovsky Garden, it would be a splendid and most useful thing for the city. Then he was suddenly interested in why, in all large cities, people are inclined not just by necessity alone, but somehow especially to live and settle precisely in those parts of the city where there are neither gardens nor fountains, where there's filth and stench and all sorts of nastiness. Then he remembered his own walks along Sennaya, and he came to for a moment. "What nonsense," he thought. "No, better not to think at all!"

"So it must be with those who are led to execution, they cling with their thoughts to all the objects they meet on the way," flashed through his head, but only flashed like lightning; he himself quickly extinguished this thought... But now it was close, here was the house, here was the gateway. Somewhere suddenly a clock struck once. "What, can it be half past seven? Impossible, it must be fast!"

Luckily for him, everything went well at the gateway again. Moreover, as if on purpose, at that very moment a huge hay cart drove into the gateway just ahead of him, completely screening him the whole time he was passing through the archway, and as soon as the cart managed to emerge from the gateway into the courtyard, he instantly slipped to the right. On the other side of the cart several voices could be heard shouting and arguing, but no one noticed him and no one came toward him. Many windows looking out onto this huge square courtyard were open at that moment, but he didn't raise his head—he hadn't the strength. The stairway to the old woman's was close, immediately to the right from the gateway. He was already on the stairs...

Catching his breath and pressing with his hand against his pounding heart, feeling for and adjusting the axe once more, he began carefully and quietly to climb the stairs, listening constantly. But the stairway at that hour stood completely empty; all the doors were closed; no one was encountered. On the second floor, true, one empty apartment stood wide open, and painters were working in it, but they didn't even look. He stopped, thought, and went on. "Of course, it would be better if they weren't here at all, but... there are still two floors above them."

But here was the fourth floor, here was the door, here was the apartment opposite; the empty one. On the third floor, by all signs, the apartment directly below the old woman's was also empty: the visiting card nailed to the door had been removed—they'd moved out!.. He was gasping for breath. For one instant the thought flashed through his mind: "Shouldn't I leave?" But he gave himself no answer and began listening at the old woman's apartment: dead silence. Then he listened down the stairway again, listened long, attentively... Then he looked around one last time, drew himself together, straightened up, and tried the axe in the loop once more. "Am I not pale... very? Am I not in a special state of agitation? She's mistrustful... Shouldn't I wait a little longer... until my heart stops?..."

But his heart didn't stop. On the contrary, as if on purpose, it pounded harder, harder, harder... He couldn't bear it, slowly extended his hand to the bell, and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, louder.

No answer. There was no point in ringing for nothing, and it wasn't his style. The old woman was certainly home, but she was suspicious and alone. He knew her habits to some extent... and once more pressed his ear tightly to the door. Either his senses were so sharpened (which is generally difficult to suppose), or it really was very audible, but suddenly he distinguished something like the careful touch of a hand on the lock handle and the rustle of a dress against the door itself. Someone was standing imperceptibly right by the lock and just as he was here, outside, was listening, hiding inside, and also, it seemed, with an ear pressed to the door...

He deliberately stirred and muttered something rather loudly, so as not to give the appearance of hiding; then rang a third time, but quietly, solidly, and without any impatience. Remembering this afterward, vividly, clearly—this minute was stamped in him forever—he couldn't understand where he got so much cunning, especially since his mind seemed to dim at moments, and he almost didn't feel his body... An instant later came the sound of the bolt being removed.