Crime and Punishment | Page 5

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.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became
acutely aware of his fears.
"I want to attempt a thing like that 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 _that_? Is that serious? It
is not serious at all. It's simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything!
Yes, maybe it is a plaything."
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.
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.
"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. . . ."
He had not