Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

be anxious, I won’t let him have her,” the policeman said resolutely, and he set off after them.

      “Ah, the vice one sees nowadays!” he repeated aloud, sighing.

      At that moment something seemed to sting Raskolnikov; in an instant a complete revulsion of feeling came over him.

      “Hey, here!” he shouted after the policeman.

      The latter turned round.

      “Let them be! What is it to do with you? Let her go! Let him amuse himself.” He pointed at the dandy, “What is it to do with you?”

      The policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Raskolnikov laughed.

      “Well!” ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Raskolnikov for a madman or something even worse.

      “He has carried off my twenty copecks,” Raskolnikov murmured angrily when he was left alone. “Well, let him take as much from the other fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did I want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let them devour each other alive—what is to me? How did I dare to give him twenty copecks? Were they mine?”

      In spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on the deserted seat. His thoughts strayed aimlessly…. He found it hard to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin life anew….

      “Poor girl!” he said, looking at the empty corner where she had sat—“She will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find out…. She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and then maybe, turn her out of doors…. And even if she does not, the Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the hospital directly (that’s always the luck of those girls with respectable mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then… again the hospital… drink… the taverns… and more hospital, in two or three years—a wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen…. Have not I seen cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why, they’ve all come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That’s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go… that way… to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory…. Once you’ve said ‘percentage’ there’s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word… maybe we might feel more uneasy…. But what if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?

      “But where am I going?” he thought suddenly. “Strange, I came out for something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out…. I was going to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin. That’s what it was… now I remember. What for, though? And what put the idea of going to Razumihin into my head just now? That’s curious.”

      He wondered at himself. Razumihin was one of his old comrades at the university. It was remarkable that Raskolnikov had hardly any friends at the university; he kept aloof from everyone, went to see no one, and did not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon gave him up. He took no part in the students’ gatherings, amusements or conversations. He worked with great intensity without sparing himself, and he was respected for this, but no one liked him. He was very poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in development, knowledge and convictions, as though their beliefs and interests were beneath him.

      With Razumihin he had got on, or, at least, he was more unreserved and communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any other terms with Razumihin. He was an exceptionally good-humoured and candid youth, good-natured to the point of simplicity, though both depth and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of his comrades understood this, and all were fond of him. He was extremely intelligent, though he was certainly rather a simpleton at times. He was of striking appearance—tall, thin, blackhaired and always badly shaved. He was sometimes uproarious and was reputed to be of great physical strength. One night, when out in a festive company, he had with one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his back. There was no limit to his drinking powers, but he could abstain from drink altogether; he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but he could do without pranks altogether. Another thing striking about Razumihin, no failure distressed him, and it seemed as though no unfavourable circumstances could crush him. He could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and kept himself entirely on what he could earn by work of one sort or another. He knew of no end of resources by which to earn money. He spent one whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to declare that he liked it better, because one slept more soundly in the cold. For the present he, too, had been obliged to give up the university, but it was only for a time, and he was working with all his might to save enough to return to his studies again. Raskolnikov had not been to see him for the last four months, and Razumihin did not even know his address. About two months before, they had met in the street, but Raskolnikov had turned away and even crossed to the other side that he might not be observed. And though Razumihin noticed him, he passed him by, as he did not want to annoy him.

      CHAPTER V

      “Of course, I’ve been meaning lately to go to Razumihin’s to ask for work, to ask him to get me lessons or something…” Raskolnikov thought, “but what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself tidy enough to give lessons… hm… Well and what then? What shall I do with the few coppers I earn? That’s not what I want now. It’s really absurd for me to go to Razumihin….”

      The question why he was now going to Razumihin agitated him even more than he was himself aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some sinister significance in this apparently ordinary action.

      “Could I have expected to set it all straight and to find a way out by means of Razumihin alone?” he asked himself in perplexity.

      He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic thought came into his head.

      “Hm… to Razumihin’s,” he said all at once, calmly, as though he had reached a final determination. “I shall go to Razumihin’s of course, but… not now. I shall go to him… on the next day after It, when It will be over and everything will begin afresh….”

      And suddenly he realised what he was thinking.

      “After It,” he shouted, jumping up from the seat, “but is It really going to happen? Is it possible it really will happen?” He left the seat, and went off almost at a run; he meant to turn back, homewards, but the thought of going home suddenly filled him with intense loathing; in that hole, in that awful little cupboard of his, all this had for a month past been growing up in him; and he walked on at random.

      His nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he began almost unconsciously, from some inner craving, to stare at all the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept dropping every moment into brooding. When with a start he lifted his head again and looked round, he forgot at once what he had just been thinking about and even where he was going. In this way he walked right across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came out on to the Lesser Neva, crossed the bridge and turned towards the islands. The greenness and freshness were at first restful to his weary eyes after the dust of the town and the huge houses that hemmed him in and weighed upon him. Here there were no taverns, no stifling closeness, no stench. But soon these new pleasant sensations passed into morbid irritability. Sometimes he stood still before a brightly painted summer villa standing among green foliage, he gazed through the fence, he saw in the distance smartly dressed women on the verandahs