Crime and Punishment (18 page)

Now here was the fourth floor, here was the door, and there was the apartment opposite: the empty one. To judge by all the signs, the apartment on the third floor, the one right underneath the old woman's, was also empty: the visiting card that had been fixed to the door with nails had been taken down – the other people had moved out!… He was panting. For a single instant there passed through his head the thought: ‘Shouldn't I just go away?’ But he left his own question unanswered and began listening at the old woman's door: dead silence. Then he listened on the stairs again, listened long and carefully… After that, he looked round one last time, pulled himself together, straightened himself up and again tested the axe in its loop. ‘Don't I look terribly… pale?’ he thought. ‘Don't I look awfully agitated? She's suspicious… Shouldn't I wait a bit more… until my heart has quietened down?…’

But his heart did not quieten down. On the contrary, as if by design, it proceeded to beat harder and harder and harder… He could not endure it; slowly he stretched out his hand to the bell and rang it. Half a minute later he rang it again, slightly louder this time.

No reply. It was pointless to go on ringing to no purpose, and besides, it might attract attention. The old woman was at home, of course, but she was suspicious and alone. He knew something of her habits… and again he put his ear firmly to the door. Whether it was that his senses were extraordinarily keen (which on the whole was unlikely) or whether each sound really was very audible, he suddenly thought he could make out the cautious whisper of a hand on the latch and the rustle of a dress immediately on the other side of the door. Someone was standing imperceptibly right by the lock and listening, just as he was out
here, keeping quiet inside and, apparently, also putting an ear to the door…

He purposely made a movement and muttered something in rather a loud voice, so as not to make it seem that he was acting furtively; then he rang a third time, but quietly, sedately, and without any hint of impatience. When he remembered it later, in clear and vivid detail, this moment was chiselled within him forever; he could not think where he had got so much cunning from, all the more so as his mind had been subject to momentary blackouts, and he had hardly been conscious of his body at all… A moment later the sound of someone undoing the bolt was heard.

As on the previous occasion, the door opened the merest slit, and again two sharp, suspicious eyes fastened him with their gaze out of the darkness. At that point Raskolnikov lost his head and almost made a fatal blunder.

Apprehensive lest the old woman be alarmed at the fact that they were alone, and lacking confidence that the sight of him would put her at her ease, he grabbed hold of the door and pulled it towards him, so that the old woman would not get the idea of locking herself in again. Aware of what he was doing, she did not jerk the door back towards herself, but did not let go of the lock either, with the result that he very nearly hauled her out on to the staircase along with the door. When he saw that she was standing in the doorway to block his entrance, he walked straight towards her. She jumped to one side in alarm, tried to say something but could not seem to manage it, and stared at him round-eyed.

‘Hello, Alyona Ivanovna,’ he began as familiarly as he could, though his voice would not obey him and kept breaking and trembling. ‘I’ve… brought you something… but look, we'd better go over there… where it's light…’ And, turning his back on her, without waiting for permission, he walked straight
into the room. The old woman came running after him; she had found her tongue at last.

‘Good Lord! What do you want?… Who are you? What's your business?’

‘For heaven's sake, Alyona Ivanovna… You know me… Raskolnikov… Look, I've brought something to pawn, the thing I said I'd bring the other day…’ And he held out the pledge to her.

The old woman glanced at it briefly, but immediately fastened her eyes on those of her uninvited guest. It was a nasty, attentive, suspicious look. About a minute passed: he even thought he could see in her eyes something akin to a mocking smile, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt he was losing his head, that he was almost on the point of terror, terror such that were she to have gone on looking at him like that without saying a word for another thirty seconds he would have run away from her.

‘What are you staring at me like that for, as if you didn't recognize me?’ he suddenly said, with malicious spite. ‘If you want it, take it, and if not – I'll go to someone else. I haven't the time for this.’

He had not meant to say this, it had suddenly escaped from him, somehow of its own accord.

The old woman came back to herself, her guest's resolute tone having evidently reassured her. ‘But why did you suddenly fly off the handle like that, dearie?… What have you got there?’ she asked, looking at the pledge.

‘A silver cigarette-case: you know – the one I told you about last time.’

She stretched out her hand.

‘But why are you so pale? Look, your hands are shaking! Have you come out of a bath, dearie?’

‘It's fever,’ he replied abruptly. ‘One can't help looking pale… if one doesn't get anything to eat,’ he added, barely able to get the words out. His strength was failing him again. But the reply had sounded convincing; the old woman took the pledge from him.

‘What is it?’ she asked, looking Raskolnikov up and down with her fixed stare and weighing the pledge in her hand.

‘Something I want to pawn… a cigarette-case… a silver one… take a look.’

‘Funny-shaped thing. Doesn't feel like silver to me, either… Wrapped it up well, haven't you?’

As she attempted to untie the ribbon she turned towards the window in search of more light (all the windows in her apartment were closed, in spite of the stifling heat), and for a few seconds she moved right away and stood with her back to him. He undid his coat and freed the axe from its loop, but did not take it right out, merely held it in place with his right hand under the garment. His hands were horribly weak; with each moment that passed he could feel them grow ever more numb and wooden. He was scared he would lose his grip on the axe and drop it… suddenly his head started to go round.

‘Why on earth has he wrapped it up like this?’ the old woman exclaimed in annoyance, and she moved a little way towards him.

There was not another second to be lost. He took the axe right out, swung it up in both hands, barely conscious of what he was doing, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the butt of it down on the old woman's head. At that moment he had had practically no strength left. But as soon as he brought the axe down, new strength was born within him.

The old woman was bareheaded, as always. Her scanty, light-coloured, greying hair, smeared thickly all over with oil as it always was, had been plaited into a rat's tail and gathered together under the remains of a horn comb which jutted out at the nape of her neck. The blow landed smack on the crown of her head, something made easy by her smallness. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank in a heap to the floor, though even then she managed to raise both arms to her head. In one hand she was still holding the ‘pledge’. At that point, with all his might, he landed her another blow, and another, each time with the butt and each time on the crown of the head. The blood gushed out as from an upturned glass, and her body collapsed backwards. He stepped back, allowed her to fall and at once
bent down over her face: she was dead. Her eyes were goggling out of her head as though they might burst from it, while her forehead and all the rest of her features were crumpled and distorted in a convulsive spasm.

He put the axe on the floor beside the dead woman, and at once began to feel inside her pocket, trying not to get the welling blood on his hand – the same right pocket from which she had taken her keys the last time he had been there. He was in full possession of his faculties, he had no blackouts or dizziness now, but his hands were still shaking. Later, he remembered that he had actually been very careful and thorough, doing his utmost not to get any blood on himself… He took the keys out at once; as on the previous occasion, they were all in one bunch, all on a single steel ring. He ran at once into the bedroom with them. It was a very small room, which contained an enormous case full of icons. Against a second wall there was a large bed, which looked extremely clean, with a quilted silk coverlet made up of patchwork. Against the third wall there was a chest of drawers. It was a strange thing: hardly had he begun to fit the keys to the lock of the chest of drawers, hardly had he heard their clinking, than a convulsive shiver seemed to run through him. Once again he suddenly felt like abandoning the whole undertaking and going away. But this only lasted for a moment: it was too late for him to go. He even smiled an ironic smile at himself; but then suddenly another, anxious thought hit him with the force of a blow. The notion had suddenly occurred to him that the old woman might still be alive, and that she might yet regain consciousness. Abandoning the keys and the chest of drawers, he ran back to the body, grabbed hold of the axe and swung it up yet again above the old woman, but did not bring it down. There could be no doubt that she was dead. Bending down and examining her again at close quarters, he saw quite clearly that her skull had been smashed, and was even dislocated slightly to one side. He moved as though to touch it with one finger, but then withdrew his hand quickly; he did not need to do that in order to see what was what. In the meantime a whole puddle of blood had come welling out. Suddenly he noticed that there was a thin piece of cord around her neck. He tugged at it,
but it was strong and did not break; it was, moreover, soaked in blood. He tried to pull it straight off her body, but something was holding it, preventing him from doing so. In his impatience he again swung the axe up in order to bring it down and cut the cord right there and then, on her body, but had not the courage to do it, and with difficulty, after some two minutes of fiddling about, in the course of which he got blood both on his hands and on the axe, he managed to sever the cord without touching the body with the axe, and pulled it out; he had not been mistaken – it was her purse. On the cord there were two crucifixes, one made of cypress and the other of copper, with, in addition, a small enamel icon; and right there together with them hung a small, grease-stained chamois-leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was filled very tightly; without examining it, Raskolnikov stuffed it in his pocket, flung the crucifixes on to the old woman's breast and, grabbing the axe this time, rushed back into the bedroom.

He was in a frantic hurry. He grabbed the keys and again began to fuss with them. But for some reason he met with no success: none of them would fit in any of the locks. It was not that his hands were shaking all that badly now, but rather that he kept making the wrong decisions: for example, he would see that a key was the wrong one and would not fit, yet would keep thrusting it in. Suddenly, doing some quick thinking, he remembered that this large key, the one with the serrated bit, which was dangling there along with all the smaller ones, could not possibly belong to the chest of drawers (the same thought had occurred to him on his previous visit) but must fit some small trunk or chest, and that possibly in that everything lay hidden. He abandoned the chest of drawers and got down under the bed, since he was aware that in old women's dwellings that is the place where such boxes are usually kept. So it was: he found a chest of considerable dimensions, nearly a yard in length, with a bulging lid, upholstered in red morocco and inlaid with steel studs. The serrated key fitted perfectly and opened it. On top, under a white sheet, lay a hare-skin coat covered with red packing material; underneath it was a silk dress, then a shawl, and finally, underneath that, there seemed to be nothing
but rags. The first thing he did was to start to rub his hands on the red-silk packing material. ‘It's red, so it won't show the blood so much,’ he found himself thinking, and then realized what he was about. ‘Good God! Am I going crazy, or what?’ he thought in fright.

As soon as he moved the pile of rags, however, a gold watch slipped out from under the hare-skin coat. He fell upon the things in a rush to turn them over. It really was so: intermingled with the rags there were objects made of gold, which were doubtless all the pledges, both redeemed and unredeemed – bracelets, chains, earrings, hatpins and the like. Some of them were in cases, others had merely been wrapped in newspaper, but neatly and carefully, in double thicknesses, and tied round with cloth tape. Wasting no time, he began to stuff them into the pockets of his trousers and overcoat, without investigating or opening any of the parcels and cases, but he did not manage to take many…

Suddenly, from the room where the old woman lay, came the sound of footsteps. He stopped what he was doing, and went as still as a corpse. But all was quiet, he must have imagined it. Then, without warning, there was a barely audible cry, or a sound like someone uttering a quiet, abrupt moan, and then breaking off. There followed another dead silence, which lasted a minute or two. He sat squatting by the chest and waited, scarcely breathing. Then he leapt up, grabbed the axe and ran from the bedroom.

In the middle of the room stood Lizaveta, with a large bundle in her hands, staring in rigid horror at her murdered sister; her face was as white as a handkerchief, and she was apparently unable to utter a sound. As she saw him run out she began to quiver like a leaf, with a mild shudder, and her features worked spasmodically; she raised one arm, began to open her mouth, but still could not get out a scream and began slowly to back away from him into the corner, staring at him fixedly, but still without uttering a sound, as though she had not sufficient breath to do so. He rushed at her with the axe; her lips grew contorted in the pitiful manner common to very young children when they begin to be afraid of something, stare fixedly at the thing that is
frightening them and prepare to cry out loud. Moreover, this unhappy Lizaveta was so simple, downtrodden and utterly intimidated that she did not even raise her hands to protect herself, even though this would have been a most natural, lifesaving gesture for her to make at that moment, as the axe was raised right above her face. She merely raised her unengaged left arm the tiniest distance, a long way from her face, and slowly extended it towards the axe, as though in an attempt to ward it off. The blow landed right on her skull, blade-first, and instantly split open the whole upper part of her forehead, almost to the crown of her head. She fairly crashed to the floor. Raskolnikov began to lose his nerve completely; he seized hold of her bundle, threw it down again and ran into the hallway.