Crime and Punishment Page #9

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. It is the second of Dostoevsky's full-length novels following his return from ten years of exile in Siberia. Crime and Punishment is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in world literature.

• Fiction
• Novel

								

was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse
laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust
themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in
dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of
them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when
Marmeladov, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation
to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill
outcry was heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her
way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and
for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her
with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out,
Raskolnikov had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the
coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to
lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed
his mind and would have gone back.

“What a stupid thing I’ve done,” he thought to himself, “they have Sonia
and I want it myself.” But reflecting that it would be impossible to
take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he
dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back to his lodging.
“Sonia wants pomatum too,” he said as he walked along the street, and he
laughed malignantly--“such smartness costs money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia
herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always a risk, hunting
big game... digging for gold... then they would all be without a crust
to-morrow except for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they’ve dug
there! And they’re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most
of it! They’ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to
everything, the scoundrel!”

He sank into thought.

“And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought.
“What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the
whole race of mankind--then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial
terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”



CHAPTER III

He waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not
refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked
with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six
paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty
yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man
of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment
that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in
keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a
painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books;
the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long
untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and
half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but
was now in rags and served Raskolnikov as a bed. Often he went to sleep
on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old
student’s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he
heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A
little table stood in front of the sofa.

It would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but to
Raskolnikov in his present state of mind this was positively agreeable.
He had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell,
and even the sight of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked
sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous irritation. He was
in the condition that overtakes some monomaniacs entirely concentrated
upon one thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending
him in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with her,
though he went without his dinner. Nastasya, the cook and only servant,
was rather pleased at the lodger’s mood and had entirely given up
sweeping and doing his room, only once a week or so she would stray into
his room with a broom. She waked him up that day.

“Get up, why are you asleep?” she called to him. “It’s past nine, I have
brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think you’re fairly
starving?”

Raskolnikov opened his eyes, started and recognised Nastasya.

“From the landlady, eh?” he asked, slowly and with a sickly face sitting
up on the sofa.

“From the landlady, indeed!”

She set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea and
laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it.

“Here, Nastasya, take it please,” he said, fumbling in his pocket (for
he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers--“run
and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest, at the
pork-butcher’s.”

“The loaf I’ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn’t you rather have
some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It’s capital soup, yesterday’s. I
saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late. It’s fine soup.”

When the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Nastasya
sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a country
peasant-woman and a very talkative one.

“Praskovya Pavlovna means to complain to the police about you,” she
said.

He scowled.

“To the police? What does she want?”

“You don’t pay her money and you won’t turn out of the room. That’s what
she wants, to be sure.”

“The devil, that’s the last straw,” he muttered, grinding his teeth,
“no, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,” he added aloud.
“I’ll go and talk to her to-day.”

“Fool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so
clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One
time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you
do nothing now?”

“I am doing...” Raskolnikov began sullenly and reluctantly.

“What are you doing?”

“Work...”

“What sort of work?”

“I am thinking,” he answered seriously after a pause.

Nastasya was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to laughter
and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering and
shaking all over till she felt ill.

“And have you made much money by your thinking?” she managed to
articulate at last.

“One can’t go out to give lessons without boots. And I’m sick of it.”

“Don’t quarrel with your bread and butter.”

“They pay so little for lessons. What’s the use of a few coppers?” he
answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought.

“And you want to get a fortune all at once?”

He looked at her strangely.

“Yes, I want a fortune,” he answered firmly, after a brief pause.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you the
loaf or not?”

“As you please.”

“Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out.”

“A letter? for me! from whom?”

“I can’t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for it. Will
you pay me back?”

“Then bring it to me, for God’s sake, bring it,” cried Raskolnikov
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes