CHAPTER VI

<h2><a id="link2HCH0013"/>
  CHAPTER VI
</h2>
<p>
  But as soon as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid the parcel
  which Razumihin had brought in that evening and had tied up again and
  began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to have become
  perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor of the panic fear
  that had haunted him of late. It was the first moment of a strange sudden
  calm. His movements were precise and definite; a firm purpose was evident
  in them. “To-day, to-day,” he muttered to himself. He understood that he
  was still weak, but his intense spiritual concentration gave him strength
  and self-confidence. He hoped, moreover, that he would not fall down in
  the street. When he had dressed in entirely new clothes, he looked at the
  money lying on the table, and after a moment’s thought put it in his
  pocket. It was twenty-five roubles. He took also all the copper change
  from the ten roubles spent by Razumihin on the clothes. Then he softly
  unlatched the door, went out, slipped downstairs and glanced in at the
  open kitchen door. Nastasya was standing with her back to him, blowing up
  the landlady’s samovar. She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed of his
  going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the street.
</p>
<p>
  It was nearly eight o’clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling as
  before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His head
  felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in his
  feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not know and
  did not think where he was going, he had one thought only: “that all <i>this</i>
  must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that he would not return
  home without it, because he <i>would not go on living like that</i>.” How,
  with what to make an end? He had not an idea about it, he did not even
  want to think of it. He drove away thought; thought tortured him. All he
  knew, all he felt was that everything must be changed “one way or
  another,” he repeated with desperate and immovable self-confidence and
  determination.
</p>
<p>
  From old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay Market.
  A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in the road in
  front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very sentimental
  song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood on the pavement in
  front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline, a mantle and a straw hat
  with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very old and shabby. In a strong
  and rather agreeable voice, cracked and coarsened by street singing, she
  sang in hope of getting a copper from the shop. Raskolnikov joined two or
  three listeners, took out a five copeck piece and put it in the girl’s
  hand. She broke off abruptly on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply
  to the organ grinder “Come on,” and both moved on to the next shop.
</p>
<p>
  “Do you like street music?” said Raskolnikov, addressing a middle-aged man
  standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.
</p>
<p>
  “I love to hear singing to a street organ,” said Raskolnikov, and his
  manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject—“I like it
  on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings—they must be damp—when all
  the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet
  snow is falling straight down, when there’s no wind—you know what I
  mean?—and the street lamps shine through it...”
 </p>
<p>
  “I don’t know.... Excuse me...” muttered the stranger, frightened by the
  question and Raskolnikov’s strange manner, and he crossed over to the
  other side of the street.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay
  Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Lizaveta; but they
  were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked round and
  addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping before a corn
  chandler’s shop.
</p>
<p>
  “Isn’t there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?”
 </p>
<p>
  “All sorts of people keep booths here,” answered the young man, glancing
  superciliously at Raskolnikov.
</p>
<p>
  “What’s his name?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What he was christened.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Aren’t you a Zaraïsky man, too? Which province?”
 </p>
<p>
  The young man looked at Raskolnikov again.
</p>
<p>
  “It’s not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously forgive
  me, your excellency!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Is that a tavern at the top there?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, it’s an eating-house and there’s a billiard-room and you’ll find
  princesses there too.... La-la!”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense crowd of
  peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it, looking at the
  faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter into conversation
  with people. But the peasants took no notice of him; they were all
  shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a little and took a
  turning to the right in the direction of V.
</p>
<p>
  He had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle, leading
  from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often felt drawn to
  wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that he might feel
  more so.
</p>
<p>
  Now he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a great
  block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and eating-houses;
  women were continually running in and out, bare-headed and in their indoor
  clothes. Here and there they gathered in groups, on the pavement,
  especially about the entrances to various festive establishments in the
  lower storeys. From one of these a loud din, sounds of singing, the
  tinkling of a guitar and shouts of merriment, floated into the street. A
  crowd of women were thronging round the door; some were sitting on the
  steps, others on the pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken
  soldier, smoking a cigarette, was walking near them in the road, swearing;
  he seemed to be trying to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten where.
  One beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead drunk was lying
  right across the road. Raskolnikov joined the throng of women, who were
  talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore cotton dresses and
  goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some not more than
  seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.
</p>
<p>
  He felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and uproar in
  the saloon below.... someone could be heard within dancing frantically,
  marking time with his heels to the sounds of the guitar and of a thin
  falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently, gloomily and
  dreamily, bending down at the entrance and peeping inquisitively in from
  the pavement.
</p>

  <p class="poem">
    “Oh, my handsome soldier<br/>
    Don’t beat me for nothing,”
   </p>

<p class="noindent">
  trilled the thin voice of the singer. Raskolnikov felt a great desire to
  make out what he was singing, as though everything depended on that.
</p>
<p>
  “Shall I go in?” he thought. “They are laughing. From drink. Shall I get
  drunk?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Won’t you come in?” one of the women asked him. Her voice was still
  musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not repulsive—the
  only one of the group.
</p>
<p>
  “Why, she’s pretty,” he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.
</p>
<p>
  She smiled, much pleased at the compliment.
</p>
<p>
  “You’re very nice looking yourself,” she said.
</p>
<p>
  “Isn’t he thin though!” observed another woman in a deep bass. “Have you
  just come out of a hospital?”
 </p>
<p>
  “They’re all generals’ daughters, it seems, but they have all snub noses,”
   interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face, wearing a loose
  coat. “See how jolly they are.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Go along with you!”
 </p>
<p>
  “I’ll go, sweetie!”
 </p>
<p>
  And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.
</p>
<p>
  “I say, sir,” the girl shouted after him.
</p>
<p>
  “What is it?”
 </p>
<p>
  She hesitated.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but now
  I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there’s a nice young man!”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov gave her what came first—fifteen copecks.
</p>
<p>
  “Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!”
 </p>
<p>
  “What’s your name?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Ask for Duclida.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Well, that’s too much,” one of the women observed, shaking her head at
  Duclida. “I don’t know how you can ask like that. I believe I should drop
  with shame....”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked wench
  of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made her
  criticism quietly and earnestly. “Where is it,” thought Raskolnikov.
  “Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an
  hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a
  narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting
  darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had
  to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand
  years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to
  live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!... How true it is! Good
  God, how true! Man is a vile creature!... And vile is he who calls him
  vile for that,” he added a moment later.
</p>
<p>
  He went into another street. “Bah, the Palais de Cristal! Razumihin was
  just talking of the Palais de Cristal. But what on earth was it I wanted?
  Yes, the newspapers.... Zossimov said he’d read it in the papers. Have you
  the papers?” he asked, going into a very spacious and positively clean
  restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which were, however, rather
  empty. Two or three people were drinking tea, and in a room further away
  were sitting four men drinking champagne. Raskolnikov fancied that Zametov
  was one of them, but he could not be sure at that distance. “What if it
  is?” he thought.
</p>
<p>
  “Will you have vodka?” asked the waiter.
</p>
<p>
  “Give me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last five
  days, and I’ll give you something.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, sir, here’s to-day’s. No vodka?”
 </p>
<p>
  The old newspapers and the tea were brought. Raskolnikov sat down and
  began to look through them.
</p>
<p>
  “Oh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a
  staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire in
  Peski... a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another fire in the
  Petersburg quarter... and another fire in the Petersburg quarter.... Ah,
  here it is!” He found at last what he was seeking and began to read it.
  The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and began eagerly
  seeking later additions in the following numbers. His hands shook with
  nervous impatience as he turned the sheets. Suddenly someone sat down
  beside him at his table. He looked up, it was the head clerk Zametov,
  looking just the same, with the rings on his fingers and the watch-chain,
  with the curly, black hair, parted and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat,
  rather shabby coat and doubtful linen. He was in a good humour, at least
  he was smiling very gaily and good-humouredly. His dark face was rather
  flushed from the champagne he had drunk.
</p>
<p>
  “What, you here?” he began in surprise, speaking as though he’d known him
  all his life. “Why, Razumihin told me only yesterday you were unconscious.
  How strange! And do you know I’ve been to see you?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers and
  turned to Zametov. There was a smile on his lips, and a new shade of
  irritable impatience was apparent in that smile.
</p>
<p>
  “I know you have,” he answered. “I’ve heard it. You looked for my sock....
  And you know Razumihin has lost his heart to you? He says you’ve been with
  him to Luise Ivanovna’s—you know, the woman you tried to befriend,
  for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he would not
  understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to understand—it was
  quite clear, wasn’t it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What a hot head he is!”
 </p>
<p>
  “The explosive one?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, your friend Razumihin.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov; entrance free to the most
  agreeable places. Who’s been pouring champagne into you just now?”
 </p>
<p>
  “We’ve just been... having a drink together.... You talk about pouring it
  into me!”
 </p>
<p>
  “By way of a fee! You profit by everything!” Raskolnikov laughed, “it’s
  all right, my dear boy,” he added, slapping Zametov on the shoulder. “I am
  not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for sport, as that
  workman of yours said when he was scuffling with Dmitri, in the case of
  the old woman....”
 </p>
<p>
  “How do you know about it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Perhaps I know more about it than you do.”
 </p>
<p>
  “How strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You oughtn’t
  to have come out.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, do I seem strange to you?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes. What are you doing, reading the papers?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “There’s a lot about the fires.”
 </p>
<p>
  “No, I am not reading about the fires.” Here he looked mysteriously at
  Zametov; his lips were twisted again in a mocking smile. “No, I am not
  reading about the fires,” he went on, winking at Zametov. “But confess
  now, my dear fellow, you’re awfully anxious to know what I am reading
  about?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I am not in the least. Mayn’t I ask a question? Why do you keep on...?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Listen, you are a man of culture and education?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I was in the sixth class at the gymnasium,” said Zametov with some
  dignity.
</p>
<p>
  “Sixth class! Ah, my cock-sparrow! With your parting and your rings—you
  are a gentleman of fortune. Foo! what a charming boy!” Here Raskolnikov
  broke into a nervous laugh right in Zametov’s face. The latter drew back,
  more amazed than offended.
</p>
<p>
  “Foo! how strange you are!” Zametov repeated very seriously. “I can’t help
  thinking you are still delirious.”
 </p>
<p>
  “I am delirious? You are fibbing, my cock-sparrow! So I am strange? You
  find me curious, do you?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, curious.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Shall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking for? See
  what a lot of papers I’ve made them bring me. Suspicious, eh?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Well, what is it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You prick up your ears?”
 </p>
<p>
  “How do you mean—‘prick up my ears’?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I’ll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to you... no,
  better ‘I confess’... No, that’s not right either; ‘I make a deposition
  and you take it.’ I depose that I was reading, that I was looking and
  searching....” he screwed up his eyes and paused. “I was searching—and
  came here on purpose to do it—for news of the murder of the old
  pawnbroker woman,” he articulated at last, almost in a whisper, bringing
  his face exceedingly close to the face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him
  steadily, without moving or drawing his face away. What struck Zametov
  afterwards as the strangest part of it all was that silence followed for
  exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one another all the while.
</p>
<p>
  “What if you have been reading about it?” he cried at last, perplexed and
  impatient. “That’s no business of mine! What of it?”
 </p>
<p>
  “The same old woman,” Raskolnikov went on in the same whisper, not heeding
  Zametov’s explanation, “about whom you were talking in the police-office,
  you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand now?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What do you mean? Understand... what?” Zametov brought out, almost
  alarmed.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov’s set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and he
  suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as though utterly
  unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he recalled with
  extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the recent past, that
  moment when he stood with the axe behind the door, while the latch
  trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and he had a sudden
  desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put out his tongue at them,
  to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!
</p>
<p>
  “You are either mad, or...” began Zametov, and he broke off, as though
  stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.
</p>
<p>
  “Or? Or what? What? Come, tell me!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Nothing,” said Zametov, getting angry, “it’s all nonsense!”
 </p>
<p>
  Both were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Raskolnikov became
  suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the table and
  leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely forgotten
  Zametov. The silence lasted for some time.
</p>
<p>
  “Why don’t you drink your tea? It’s getting cold,” said Zametov.
</p>
<p>
  “What! Tea? Oh, yes....” Raskolnikov sipped the glass, put a morsel of
  bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to remember
  everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment his face
  resumed its original mocking expression. He went on drinking tea.
</p>
<p>
  “There have been a great many of these crimes lately,” said Zametov. “Only
  the other day I read in the <i>Moscow News</i> that a whole gang of false
  coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society. They used to
  forge tickets!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Oh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,” Raskolnikov
  answered calmly. “So you consider them criminals?” he added, smiling.
</p>
<p>
  “Of course they are criminals.”
 </p>
<p>
  “They? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a hundred
  people meeting for such an object—what an idea! Three would be too
  many, and then they want to have more faith in one another than in
  themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses.
  Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the notes—what
  a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose that these
  simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and what follows for the rest
  of their lives? Each is dependent on the others for the rest of his life!
  Better hang oneself at once! And they did not know how to change the notes
  either; the man who changed the notes took five thousand roubles, and his
  hands trembled. He counted the first four thousand, but did not count the
  fifth thousand—he was in such a hurry to get the money into his
  pocket and run away. Of course he roused suspicion. And the whole thing
  came to a crash through one fool! Is it possible?”
 </p>
<p>
  “That his hands trembled?” observed Zametov, “yes, that’s quite possible.
  That, I feel quite sure, is possible. Sometimes one can’t stand things.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Can’t stand that?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, could you stand it then? No, I couldn’t. For the sake of a hundred
  roubles to face such a terrible experience? To go with false notes into a
  bank where it’s their business to spot that sort of thing! No, I should
  not have the face to do it. Would you?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov had an intense desire again “to put his tongue out.” Shivers
  kept running down his spine.
</p>
<p>
  “I should do it quite differently,” Raskolnikov began. “This is how I
  would change the notes: I’d count the first thousand three or four times
  backwards and forwards, looking at every note and then I’d set to the
  second thousand; I’d count that half-way through and then hold some
  fifty-rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it to the light
  again—to see whether it was a good one. ‘I am afraid,’ I would say,
  ‘a relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other day through a false
  note,’ and then I’d tell them the whole story. And after I began counting
  the third, ‘No, excuse me,’ I would say, ‘I fancy I made a mistake in the
  seventh hundred in that second thousand, I am not sure.’ And so I would
  give up the third thousand and go back to the second and so on to the end.
  And when I had finished, I’d pick out one from the fifth and one from the
  second thousand and take them again to the light and ask again, ‘Change
  them, please,’ and put the clerk into such a stew that he would not know
  how to get rid of me. When I’d finished and had gone out, I’d come back,
  ‘No, excuse me,’ and ask for some explanation. That’s how I’d do it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Foo! what terrible things you say!” said Zametov, laughing. “But all that
  is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you’d make a slip. I
  believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always reckon on
  himself, much less you and I. To take an example near home—that old
  woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to have been a
  desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight, was saved by a
  miracle—but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed in robbing the
  place, he couldn’t stand it. That was clear from the...”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov seemed offended.
</p>
<p>
  “Clear? Why don’t you catch him then?” he cried, maliciously gibing at
  Zametov.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, they will catch him.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Who? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You’ve a tough job! A great
  point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he had no
  money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that any child
  can mislead you.”
 </p>
<p>
  “The fact is they always do that, though,” answered Zametov. “A man will
  commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at once he goes
  drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money, they are not all as
  cunning as you are. You wouldn’t go to a tavern, of course?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov frowned and looked steadily at Zametov.
</p>
<p>
  “You seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should behave
  in that case, too?” he asked with displeasure.
</p>
<p>
  “I should like to,” Zametov answered firmly and seriously. Somewhat too
  much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks.
</p>
<p>
  “Very much?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Very much!”
 </p>
<p>
  “All right then. This is how I should behave,” Raskolnikov began, again
  bringing his face close to Zametov’s, again staring at him and speaking in
  a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered. “This is what I should
  have done. I should have taken the money and jewels, I should have walked
  out of there and have gone straight to some deserted place with fences
  round it and scarcely anyone to be seen, some kitchen garden or place of
  that sort. I should have looked out beforehand some stone weighing a
  hundredweight or more which had been lying in the corner from the time the
  house was built. I would lift that stone—there would sure to be a
  hollow under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that hole. Then
  I’d roll the stone back so that it would look as before, would press it
  down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two, three maybe, I
  would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There’d be no trace.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You are a madman,” said Zametov, and for some reason he too spoke in a
  whisper, and moved away from Raskolnikov, whose eyes were glittering. He
  had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was twitching and quivering.
  He bent down as close as possible to Zametov, and his lips began to move
  without uttering a word. This lasted for half a minute; he knew what he
  was doing, but could not restrain himself. The terrible word trembled on
  his lips, like the latch on that door; in another moment it will break
  out, in another moment he will let it go, he will speak out.
</p>
<p>
  “And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?” he said
  suddenly and—realised what he had done.
</p>
<p>
  Zametov looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His face
  wore a contorted smile.
</p>
<p>
  “But is it possible?” he brought out faintly. Raskolnikov looked
  wrathfully at him.
</p>
<p>
  “Own up that you believed it, yes, you did?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Not a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now,” Zametov cried hastily.
</p>
<p>
  “I’ve caught my cock-sparrow! So you did believe it before, if now you
  believe less than ever?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Not at all,” cried Zametov, obviously embarrassed. “Have you been
  frightening me so as to lead up to this?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You don’t believe it then? What were you talking about behind my back
  when I went out of the police-office? And why did the explosive lieutenant
  question me after I fainted? Hey, there,” he shouted to the waiter,
  getting up and taking his cap, “how much?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Thirty copecks,” the latter replied, running up.
</p>
<p>
  “And there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!” he held
  out his shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it. “Red notes and blue,
  twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did my new clothes
  come from? You know I had not a copeck. You’ve cross-examined my landlady,
  I’ll be bound.... Well, that’s enough! <i>Assez causé!</i> Till we meet
  again!”
 </p>
<p>
  He went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical sensation,
  in which there was an element of insufferable rapture. Yet he was gloomy
  and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after a fit. His fatigue
  increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating sensation stimulated and
  revived his energies at once, but his strength failed as quickly when the
  stimulus was removed.
</p>
<p>
  Zametov, left alone, sat for a long time in the same place, plunged in
  thought. Raskolnikov had unwittingly worked a revolution in his brain on a
  certain point and had made up his mind for him conclusively.
</p>
<p>
  “Ilya Petrovitch is a blockhead,” he decided.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he stumbled
  against Razumihin on the steps. They did not see each other till they
  almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood looking each
  other up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded, then anger, real anger
  gleamed fiercely in his eyes.
</p>
<p>
  “So here you are!” he shouted at the top of his voice—“you ran away
  from your bed! And here I’ve been looking for you under the sofa! We went
  up to the garret. I almost beat Nastasya on your account. And here he is
  after all. Rodya! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the whole truth!
  Confess! Do you hear?”
 </p>
<p>
  “It means that I’m sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,”
   Raskolnikov answered calmly.
</p>
<p>
  “Alone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as a
  sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing
  in the Palais de Cristal? Own up at once!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Let me go!” said Raskolnikov and tried to pass him. This was too much for
  Razumihin; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.
</p>
<p>
  “Let you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I’ll do with
  you directly? I’ll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle, carry you home
  under my arm and lock you up!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Listen, Razumihin,” Raskolnikov began quietly, apparently calm—“can’t
  you see that I don’t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to
  shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels them a burden in
  fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was
  very glad to die. Didn’t I tell you plainly enough to-day that you were
  torturing me, that I was... sick of you! You seem to want to torture
  people! I assure you that all that is seriously hindering my recovery,
  because it’s continually irritating me. You saw Zossimov went away just
  now to avoid irritating me. You leave me alone too, for goodness’ sake!
  What right have you, indeed, to keep me by force? Don’t you see that I am
  in possession of all my faculties now? How, how can I persuade you not to
  persecute me with your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only
  let me be, for God’s sake, let me be! Let me be, let me be!”
 </p>
<p>
  He began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he was
  about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy, as he had
  been with Luzhin.
</p>
<p>
  Razumihin stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, go to hell then,” he said gently and thoughtfully. “Stay,” he
  roared, as Raskolnikov was about to move. “Listen to me. Let me tell you,
  that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you’ve any little
  trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you are plagiarists
  even in that! There isn’t a sign of independent life in you! You are made
  of spermaceti ointment and you’ve lymph in your veins instead of blood. I
  don’t believe in anyone of you! In any circumstances the first thing for
  all of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!” he cried with redoubled
  fury, noticing that Raskolnikov was again making a movement—“hear me
  out! You know I’m having a house-warming this evening, I dare say they’ve
  arrived by now, but I left my uncle there—I just ran in—to
  receive the guests. And if you weren’t a fool, a common fool, a perfect
  fool, if you were an original instead of a translation... you see, Rodya,
  I recognise you’re a clever fellow, but you’re a fool!—and if you
  weren’t a fool you’d come round to me this evening instead of wearing out
  your boots in the street! Since you have gone out, there’s no help for it!
  I’d give you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one... a cup of tea,
  company.... Or you could lie on the sofa—any way you would be with
  us.... Zossimov will be there too. Will you come?”
 </p>
<p>
  “No.”
 </p>
<p>
  “R-rubbish!” Razumihin shouted, out of patience. “How do you know? You
  can’t answer for yourself! You don’t know anything about it.... Thousands
  of times I’ve fought tooth and nail with people and run back to them
  afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So remember,
  Potchinkov’s house on the third storey....”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you’d let anybody beat you from sheer
  benevolence.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Beat? Whom? Me? I’d twist his nose off at the mere idea! Potchinkov’s
  house, 47, Babushkin’s flat....”
 </p>
<p>
  “I shall not come, Razumihin.” Raskolnikov turned and walked away.
</p>
<p>
  “I bet you will,” Razumihin shouted after him. “I refuse to know you if
  you don’t! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Did you see him?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Talked to him?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What about? Confound you, don’t tell me then. Potchinkov’s house, 47,
  Babushkin’s flat, remember!”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street. Razumihin
  looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his hand he went into
  the house but stopped short of the stairs.
</p>
<p>
  “Confound it,” he went on almost aloud. “He talked sensibly but yet... I
  am a fool! As if madmen didn’t talk sensibly! And this was just what
  Zossimov seemed afraid of.” He struck his finger on his forehead. “What
  if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown himself.... Ach, what
  a blunder! I can’t.” And he ran back to overtake Raskolnikov, but there
  was no trace of him. With a curse he returned with rapid steps to the
  Palais de Cristal to question Zametov.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov walked straight to X—— Bridge, stood in the
  middle, and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On
  parting with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely
  reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street.
  Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of
  the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight,
  at one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire
  in the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal,
  and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed
  before his eyes, the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal
  banks, the carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started,
  saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He
  became aware of someone standing on the right side of him; he looked and
  saw a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow, wasted
  face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him, but obviously
  she saw nothing and recognised no one. Suddenly she leaned her right hand
  on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the railing, then her left and
  threw herself into the canal. The filthy water parted and swallowed up its
  victim for a moment, but an instant later the drowning woman floated to
  the surface, moving slowly with the current, her head and legs in the
  water, her skirt inflated like a balloon over her back.
</p>
<p>
  “A woman drowning! A woman drowning!” shouted dozens of voices; people ran
  up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge people crowded
  about Raskolnikov, pressing up behind him.
</p>
<p>
  “Mercy on it! it’s our Afrosinya!” a woman cried tearfully close by.
  “Mercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!”
 </p>
<p>
  “A boat, a boat” was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need of a
  boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off his great
  coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to reach her:
  she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he caught hold of her
  clothes with his right hand and with his left seized a pole which a
  comrade held out to him; the drowning woman was pulled out at once. They
  laid her on the granite pavement of the embankment. She soon recovered
  consciousness, raised her head, sat up and began sneezing and coughing,
  stupidly wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing.
</p>
<p>
  “She’s drunk herself out of her senses,” the same woman’s voice wailed at
  her side. “Out of her senses. The other day she tried to hang herself, we
  cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my little girl to look
  after her—and here she’s in trouble again! A neighbour, gentleman, a
  neighbour, we live close by, the second house from the end, see
  yonder....”
 </p>
<p>
  The crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone
  mentioned the police station.... Raskolnikov looked on with a strange
  sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted. “No, that’s
  loathsome... water... it’s not good enough,” he muttered to himself.
  “Nothing will come of it,” he added, “no use to wait. What about the
  police office...? And why isn’t Zametov at the police office? The police
  office is open till ten o’clock....” He turned his back to the railing and
  looked about him.
</p>
<p>
  “Very well then!” he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and walked
  in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and empty. He
  did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there was not a
  trace now of the energy with which he had set out “to make an end of it
  all.” Complete apathy had succeeded to it.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, it’s a way out of it,” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly
  along the canal bank. “Anyway I’ll make an end, for I want to.... But is
  it a way out? What does it matter! There’ll be the square yard of space—ha!
  But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or not? Ah...
  damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie down soon!
  What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don’t care about
  that either! What idiotic ideas come into one’s head.”
 </p>
<p>
  To reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the
  second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the first
  turning he stopped and, after a minute’s thought, turned into a side
  street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any object,
  or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking at the
  ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted his head
  and saw that he was standing at the very gate of <i>the</i> house. He had
  not passed it, he had not been near it since <i>that</i> evening. An
  overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the house,
  passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the right, and
  began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey. The narrow,
  steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing and looked round
  him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework of the window had
  been taken out. “That wasn’t so then,” he thought. Here was the flat on
  the second storey where Nikolay and Dmitri had been working. “It’s shut up
  and the door newly painted. So it’s to let.” Then the third storey and the
  fourth. “Here!” He was perplexed to find the door of the flat wide open.
  There were men there, he could hear voices; he had not expected that.
  After brief hesitation he mounted the last stairs and went into the flat.
  It, too, was being done up; there were workmen in it. This seemed to amaze
  him; he somehow fancied that he would find everything as he left it, even
  perhaps the corpses in the same places on the floor. And now, bare walls,
  no furniture; it seemed strange. He walked to the window and sat down on
  the window-sill. There were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much
  younger than the other. They were papering the walls with a new white
  paper covered with lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one.
  Raskolnikov for some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked at
  the new paper with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it all so
  changed. The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and now they
  were hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go home. They
  took no notice of Raskolnikov’s coming in; they were talking. Raskolnikov
  folded his arms and listened.
</p>
<p>
  “She comes to me in the morning,” said the elder to the younger, “very
  early, all dressed up. ‘Why are you preening and prinking?’ says I. ‘I am
  ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!’ That’s a way of going
  on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!”
 </p>
<p>
  “And what is a fashion book?” the younger one asked. He obviously regarded
  the other as an authority.
</p>
<p>
  “A fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the
  tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how to
  dress, the male sex as well as the female. They’re pictures. The gentlemen
  are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies’ fluffles, they’re
  beyond anything you can fancy.”
 </p>
<p>
  “There’s nothing you can’t find in Petersburg,” the younger cried
  enthusiastically, “except father and mother, there’s everything!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Except them, there’s everything to be found, my boy,” the elder declared
  sententiously.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov got up and walked into the other room where the strong box,
  the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to him very
  tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the paper in the
  corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He looked at it and went
  to the window. The elder workman looked at him askance.
</p>
<p>
  “What do you want?” he asked suddenly.
</p>
<p>
  Instead of answering Raskolnikov went into the passage and pulled the
  bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second and a
  third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and agonisingly
  fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more and more
  vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more and more
  satisfaction.
</p>
<p>
  “Well, what do you want? Who are you?” the workman shouted, going out to
  him. Raskolnikov went inside again.
</p>
<p>
  “I want to take a flat,” he said. “I am looking round.”
 </p>
<p>
  “It’s not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to come up
  with the porter.”
 </p>
<p>
  “The floors have been washed, will they be painted?” Raskolnikov went on.
  “Is there no blood?”
 </p>
<p>
  “What blood?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Why, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a perfect
  pool there.”
 </p>
<p>
  “But who are you?” the workman cried, uneasy.
</p>
<p>
  “Who am I?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes.”
 </p>
<p>
  “You want to know? Come to the police station, I’ll tell you.”
 </p>
<p>
  The workmen looked at him in amazement.
</p>
<p>
  “It’s time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We must lock
  up,” said the elder workman.
</p>
<p>
  “Very well, come along,” said Raskolnikov indifferently, and going out
  first, he went slowly downstairs. “Hey, porter,” he cried in the gateway.
</p>
<p>
  At the entrance several people were standing, staring at the passers-by;
  the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and a few others.
  Raskolnikov went straight up to them.
</p>
<p>
  “What do you want?” asked one of the porters.
</p>
<p>
  “Have you been to the police office?”
 </p>
<p>
  “I’ve just been there. What do you want?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Is it open?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Of course.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Is the assistant there?”
 </p>
<p>
  “He was there for a time. What do you want?”
 </p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.
</p>
<p>
  “He’s been to look at the flat,” said the elder workman, coming forward.
</p>
<p>
  “Which flat?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Where we are at work. ‘Why have you washed away the blood?’ says he.
  ‘There has been a murder here,’ says he, ‘and I’ve come to take it.’ And
  he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. ‘Come to the police
  station,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you everything there.’ He wouldn’t leave
  us.”
 </p>
<p>
  The porter looked at Raskolnikov, frowning and perplexed.
</p>
<p>
  “Who are you?” he shouted as impressively as he could.
</p>
<p>
  “I am Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov, formerly a student, I live in Shil’s
  house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he knows me.”
   Raskolnikov said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not turning round, but
  looking intently into the darkening street.
</p>
<p>
  “Why have you been to the flat?”
 </p>
<p>
  “To look at it.”
 </p>
<p>
  “What is there to look at?”
 </p>
<p>
  “Take him straight to the police station,” the man in the long coat jerked
  in abruptly.
</p>
<p>
  Raskolnikov looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the same
  slow, lazy tones:
</p>
<p>
  “Come along.”
 </p>
<p>
  “Yes, take him,” the man went on more confidently. “Why was he going into
  <i>that</i>, what’s in his mind, eh?”
 </p>
<p>
  “He’s not drunk, but God knows what’s the matter with him,” muttered the
  workman.
</p>
<p>
  “But what do you want?” the porter shouted again, beginning to get angry
  in earnest—“Why are you hanging about?”
 </p>
<p>
  “You funk the police station then?” said Raskolnikov jeeringly.
</p>
<p>
  “How funk it? Why are you hanging about?”
 </p>
<p>
  “He’s a rogue!” shouted the peasant woman.
</p>
<p>
  “Why waste time talking to him?” cried the other porter, a huge peasant in
  a full open coat and with keys on his belt. “Get along! He is a rogue and
  no mistake. Get along!”
 </p>
<p>
  And seizing Raskolnikov by the shoulder he flung him into the street. He
  lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators in
  silence and walked away.
</p>
<p>
  “Strange man!” observed the workman.
</p>
<p>
  “There are strange folks about nowadays,” said the woman.
</p>
<p>
  “You should have taken him to the police station all the same,” said the
  man in the long coat.
</p>
<p>
  “Better have nothing to do with him,” decided the big porter. “A regular
  rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take him up, you
  won’t get rid of him.... We know the sort!”
 </p>
<p>
  “Shall I go there or not?” thought Raskolnikov, standing in the middle of
  the thoroughfare at the cross-roads, and he looked about him, as though
  expecting from someone a decisive word. But no sound came, all was dead
  and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead to him, to him
  alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two hundred yards away, in
  the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard talk and shouts. In the middle
  of the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed in the middle of the
  street. “What is it?” Raskolnikov turned to the right and went up to the
  crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything and smiled coldly when he
  recognised it, for he had fully made up his mind to go to the police
  station and knew that it would all soon be over.
</p>