What?
I tell you what. Lets go fetch the porter, let him wake them up. All right.
Both were going down.
Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.
What for?
Well, youd better.
All right.
Im studying the law you see! Its evident, e-vi-dent theres something wrong here! the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs.
Koch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting he bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock on the inside and so nothing could be seen.
Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them, while they could not open the door! Only make haste! was the thought that flashed through his mind.
But what the devil is he about? Time was passing, one minute, and another no one came. Koch began to be restless.
What the devil? he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy boots on the stairs. The steps died away.
Good heavens! What am I to do?
Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door there was no sound. Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.
He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice below where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going back to the flat.
Hey there! Catch the brute!
Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.
Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!
The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard;
all was still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them. He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. They!
Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling come what must! If they stopped him all was lost; if they let him pass all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only a flight from him and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes. In one instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs.
No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through the gateway and turned to the left in the street.
He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!
At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive. Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet. My word, he has been going it! someone shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank.
He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from quite a different direction.
He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his house! he was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebodys yard. But it all happened fortunately, the door of the porters room was closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him, What do you want? he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe. But again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room; the landladys door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts
PART II
CHAPTER I
So he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he heard every night, indeed, under his window after two oclock. They woke him up now.
Ah! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns, he thought, its past two oclock, and at once he leaped up, as though someone had pulled him from the sofa.
What! Past two oclock!
He sat down on the sofa and instantly recollected everything! All at once, in one flash, he recollected everything.
For the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill came over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long before in his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door and began listening everything in the house was asleep. With amazement he gazed at himself and everything in the room around him, wondering how he could have come in the night before without fastening the door, and have flung himself on the sofa without undressing, without even taking his hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow.
If anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That Im drunk but
He rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began hurriedly looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes; were there no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering with cold, he began taking off everything and looking over again. He turned everything over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through his search three times.
But there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed to be nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken out of the old womans box were still in his pockets! He had not thought till then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even thought of them while he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had pulled out everything, and turned the pocket inside out to be sure there was nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the corner. The paper had come off the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters. He began stuffing all the things into the hole under the paper: Theyre in! All out of sight, and the purse too! he thought gleefully, getting up and gazing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever. Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror; My God! he whispered in despair: whats the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide things?
He had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had only thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place.
But now, now, what am I glad of? he thought, Is that hiding things? My reasons deserting me simply!
He sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a chair beside him his old students winter coat, which was still warm though almost in rags, covered himself up with it and once more sank into drowsiness and delirium. He lost consciousness.
Not more than five minutes had passed when he jumped up a second time, and at once pounced in a frenzy on his clothes again.
How could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes, yes; I have not taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing like that! Such a piece of evidence!
He pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and threw the bits among his linen under the pillow.
Pieces of torn linen couldnt rouse suspicion, whatever happened; I think not, I think not, any way! he repeated, standing in the middle of the room, and with painful concentration he fell to gazing about him again, at the floor and everywhere, trying to make sure he had not forgotten anything. The conviction that all his faculties, even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began to be an insufferable torture.
Surely it isnt beginning already! Surely it isnt my punishment coming upon me? It is!
The frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually lying on the floor in the middle of the room, where anyone coming in would see them!
What is the matter with me! he cried again, like one distraught.
Then a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces his reason was clouded Suddenly he remembered that there had been blood on the purse too. Ah! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I put the wet purse in my pocket!
In a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes! there were traces, stains on the lining of the pocket!
So my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself, he thought triumphantly, with a deep sigh of relief; its simply the weakness of fever, a moments delirium, and he tore the whole lining out of the left pocket of his trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He flung off his boots; traces indeed! The tip of the sock was soaked with blood; he must have unwarily stepped into that pool But what am I to do with this now? Where am I to put the sock and rags and pocket?
He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of the room.
In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away, he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, and at once, this minute, without lingering
But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him.
And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the impulse to go off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all away, so that it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once! Several times he tried to rise from the sofa, but could not.
He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his door.
Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here! shouted Nastasya, banging with her fist on the door. For whole days together hes snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell you. Its past ten.
Maybe hes not at home, said a mans voice.
Ha! thats the porters voice What does he want?
He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a positive pain.
Then who can have latched the door? retorted Nastasya. Hes taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!
What do they want? Why the porter? Alls discovered. Resist or open? Come what may!
He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.
His room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter and Nastasya were standing there.
Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant and desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.
A notice from the office, he announced, as he gave him the paper.
From what office?
A summons to the police office, of course. You know which office.
To the police? What for?
How can I tell? Youre sent for, so you go.
The man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and turned to go away.
Hes downright ill! observed Nastasya, not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. Hes been in a fever since yesterday, she added.
Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in his hands, without opening it. Dont you get up then, Nastasya went on compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet down from the sofa. Youre ill, and so dont go; theres no such hurry. What have you got there?
He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so fallen asleep again.
Look at the rags hes collected and sleeps with them, as though he has got hold of a treasure
And Nastasya went off into her hysterical giggle.