CHAPTER I

<h2><a id="link2HCH0001"/>
  CHAPTER I
</h2>
<p>
  On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the
  garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in
  hesitation, towards K. bridge.
</p>
<p>
  He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His
  garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like
  a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret,
  dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went
  out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood
  open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened
  feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt
  to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
</p>
<p>
  This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but
  for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition,
  verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself,
  and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his
  landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties
  of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up
  attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do
  so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to
  be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial,
  irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and
  complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no,
  rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out
  unseen.
</p>
<p>
  This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely
  aware of his fears.
</p>
<p>
  “I want to attempt a thing <i>like that</i> and am frightened by these
  trifles,” he thought, with an odd smile. “Hm... yes, all is in a man’s
  hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be
  interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step,
  uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking too much.
  It’s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter
  because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for
  days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I
  going there now? Am I capable of <i>that</i>? Is <i>that</i> serious? It
  is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything!
  Yes, maybe it is a plaything.”
 </p>
<p>
  The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and
  the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special
  Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in
  summer—all worked painfully upon the young man’s already overwrought
  nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are
  particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom
  he met continually, although it was a working day, completed the revolting
  misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed
  for a moment in the young man’s refined face. He was, by the way,
  exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built,
  with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep
  thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he
  walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe
  it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of
  talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these moments he
  would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that
  he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food.
</p>
<p>
  He was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would
  have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter
  of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created
  surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of
  establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and
  working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart
  of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets that no
  figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such
  accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man’s heart, that, in
  spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least of all
  in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or
  with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any
  time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being
  taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly
  shouted at him as he drove past: “Hey there, German hatter” bawling at the
  top of his voice and pointing at him—the young man stopped suddenly
  and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round hat from
  Zimmerman’s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all torn and
  bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly fashion. Not
  shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror had overtaken
  him.
</p>
<p>
  “I knew it,” he muttered in confusion, “I thought so! That’s the worst of
  all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might spoil
  the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd and that
  makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of
  old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such a hat, it
  would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What matters is
  that people would remember it, and that would give them a clue. For this
  business one should be as little conspicuous as possible.... Trifles,
  trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such trifles that always ruin
  everything....”
 </p>
<p>
  He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate
  of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted
  them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith
  in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but
  daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them
  differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own
  impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this
  “hideous” dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not
  realise this himself. He was positively going now for a “rehearsal” of his
  project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent.
</p>
<p>
  With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house
  which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the
  street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by
  working people of all kinds—tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of
  sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.
  There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the
  two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on
  the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and at
  once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the
  staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar
  with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings: in
  such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
</p>
<p>
  “If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I
  were really going to do it?” he could not help asking himself as he
  reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters
  who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the flat
  had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and his family.
  This German was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase
  would be untenanted except by the old woman. “That’s a good thing anyway,”
   he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old woman’s flat. The
  bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of tin and not of copper.
  The little flats in such houses always have bells that ring like that. He
  had forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to
  remind him of something and to bring it clearly before him.... He started,
  his nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the door
  was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with evident
  distrust through the crack, and nothing could be seen but her little eyes,
  glittering in the darkness. But, seeing a number of people on the landing,
  she grew bolder, and opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the
  dark entry, which was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman
  stood facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a
  diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and
  a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly
  smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long
  neck, which looked like a hen’s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag,
  and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy
  fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every
  instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar
  expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.
</p>
<p>
  “Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young man made
  haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more
  polite.
</p>
<p>
  “I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,” the old
  woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.
</p>
<p>
  “And here... I am again on the same errand,” Raskolnikov continued, a
  little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust. “Perhaps
  she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other time,”
   he thought with an uneasy feeling.
</p>
<p>
  The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side, and
  pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass in
  front of her:
</p>
<p>
  “Step in, my good sir.”
 </p>
<p>
  The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on the
  walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly lighted
  up at that moment by the setting sun.
</p>
<p>
  “So the sun will shine like this <i>then</i> too!” flashed as it were by
  chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned
  everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and remember
  its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The furniture,
  all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with a huge bent
  wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a dressing-table with a
  looking-glass fixed on it between the windows, chairs along the walls and
  two or three half-penny prints in yellow frames, representing German
  damsels with birds in their hands—that was all. In the corner a
  light was burning before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the
  floor and the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone.
</p>
<p>
  “Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust to
  be seen in the whole flat.
</p>
<p>
  “It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such
  cleanliness,” Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance at
  the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in which
  stood the old woman’s bed and chest of drawers and into which he had never
  looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.
</p>
<p>
  “What do you want?” the old woman said severely, coming into the room and,
  as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in the
  face.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ve brought something to pawn here,” and he drew out of his pocket an
  old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a
  globe; the chain was of steel.
</p>
<p>
  “But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day before
  yesterday.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.”
 </p>
<p>
  “But that’s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell your
  pledge at once.”
 </p>
<p>
  “How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You come with such trifles, my good sir, it’s scarcely worth anything. I
  gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it quite
  new at a jeweler’s for a rouble and a half.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father’s. I
  shall be getting some money soon.”
 </p>
<p>
  “A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!”
 </p>
<p>
  “A rouble and a half!” cried the young man.
</p>
<p>
  “Please yourself”—and the old woman handed him back the watch. The
  young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going
  away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else
  he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming.
</p>
<p>
  “Hand it over,” he said roughly.
</p>
<p>
  The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind
  the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in the
  middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her
  unlocking the chest of drawers.
</p>
<p>
  “It must be the top drawer,” he reflected. “So she carries the keys in a
  pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring.... And there’s one
  key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that
  can’t be the key of the chest of drawers... then there must be some other
  chest or strong-box... that’s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys
  like that... but how degrading it all is.”
 </p>
<p>
  The old woman came back.
</p>
<p>
  “Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take
  fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But for
  the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks on the
  same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So I
  must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it is.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Just so.”
 </p>
<p>
  The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the old
  woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still
  something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know
  what.
</p>
<p>
  “I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona Ivanovna—a
  valuable thing—silver—a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it
  back from a friend...” he broke off in confusion.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, we will talk about it then, sir.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Good-bye—are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with
  you?” He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the
  passage.
</p>
<p>
  “What business is she of yours, my good sir?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick.... Good-day,
  Alyona Ivanovna.”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more and
  more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or
  three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the
  street he cried out, “Oh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I
  possibly.... No, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish!” he added resolutely. “And
  how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my
  heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome,
  loathsome!—and for a whole month I’ve been....” But no words, no
  exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of intense
  repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was
  on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken
  such a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to
  escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken
  man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only
  came to his senses when he was in the next street. Looking round, he
  noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps
  leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men
  came out at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted
  the steps. Without stopping to think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at
  once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt
  giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold
  beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down
  at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer,
  and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his
  thoughts became clear.
</p>
<p>
  “All that’s nonsense,” he said hopefully, “and there is nothing in it all
  to worry about! It’s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of beer, a
  piece of dry bread—and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind
  is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!”
 </p>
<p>
  But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful
  as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed
  round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that moment
  he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not
  normal.
</p>
<p>
  There were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken
  men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and a
  girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure left
  the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern were a
  man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so, sitting
  before a pot of beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with a grey
  beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had dropped
  asleep on the bench; every now and then, he began as though in his sleep,
  cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper part of his
  body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless
  refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:
</p>

  <p class="poem">
    “His wife a year he fondly loved<br/>
    His wife a—a year he—fondly loved.”
   </p>

<p class="noindent">
  Or suddenly waking up again:
</p>

  <p class="poem">
    “Walking along the crowded row<br/>
    He met the one he used to know.”
   </p>

<p class="noindent">
  But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with positive
  hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was another man
  in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was
  sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and looking round at the
  company. He, too, appeared to be in some agitation.
</p>