Crime and Punishment | Page 7

on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was
brightly lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.
"So the sun will shine like this then too!" flashed as it were by chance
through Raskolnikov's mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned
everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and
remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room.
The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with
a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a
dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,
chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow
frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands--that
was all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon.

Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly
polished; everything shone.
"Lizaveta's work," thought the young man. There was not a speck of
dust to be seen in the whole flat.
"It's in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such
cleanliness," Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance
at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in
which stood the old woman's bed and chest of drawers and into which
he had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.
"What do you want?" the old woman said severely, coming into the
room and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight
in the face.
"I've brought something to pawn here," and he drew out of his pocket
an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a
globe; the chain was of steel.
"But the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day
before yesterday."
"I will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little."
"But that's for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell your
pledge at once."
"How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?"
"You come with such trifles, my good sir, it's scarcely worth anything.
I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it
quite new at a jeweler's for a rouble and a half."
"Give me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father's. I shall
be getting some money soon."
"A rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!"

"A rouble and a half!" cried the young man.
"Please yourself"--and the old woman handed him back the watch. The
young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going
away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was
nowhere else he could go, and that he had had another object also in
coming.
"Hand it over," he said roughly.
The old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared
behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing
alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He
could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers.
"It must be the top drawer," he reflected. "So she carries the keys in a
pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring. . . . And there's
one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches;
that can't be the key of the chest of drawers . . . then there must be some
other chest or strong-box . . . that's worth knowing. Strong-boxes
always have keys like that . . . but how degrading it all is."
The old woman came back.
"Here, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take
fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But
for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks
on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks
altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the
watch. Here it is."
"What! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!"
"Just so."
The young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the
old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still
something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know

what.
"I may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Alyona
Ivanovna --a valuable thing--silver--a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it
back from a friend . . ." he broke off in confusion.
"Well, we will talk about it then,