Crime and Punishment | Page 6

far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the
gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had
counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had
put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their
hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to
look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he
jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come
to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to be attempted, although
he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a
"rehearsal" of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more
and more violent.
With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house
which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the

street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by
working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of
sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.
There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in
the two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were
employed on the building. The young man was very glad to meet none
of them, and at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right,
and up the staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he
was familiar with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these
surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not
to be dreaded.
"If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass
that I were really going to do it?" he could not help asking himself as
he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some
porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew
that the flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service,
and his family. This German was moving out then, and so the fourth
floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman.
"That's a good thing anyway," he thought to himself, as he rang the bell
of the old woman's flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were
made of tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always
have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and
now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring
it clearly before him. . . . He started, his nerves were terribly
overstrained by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack:
the old woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack,
and nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness.
But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and
opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry,
which was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood
facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a
diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes
and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was
thickly smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her
thin long neck, which looked like a hen's leg, was knotted some sort of
flannel rag, and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her

shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed
and groaned at every instant. The young man must have looked at her
with a rather peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her
eyes again.
"Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago," the young man
made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be
more polite.
"I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,"
the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his
face.
"And here . . . I am again on the same errand," Raskolnikov continued,
a little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman's mistrust. "Perhaps
she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other time,"
he thought with an uneasy feeling.
The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side,
and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass in
front of her:
"Step in, my good sir."
The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper