Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,” he called out, shaken to and fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead. The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was shaking like a leaf.

      “He’s drunk it! he’s drunk it all,” the poor woman screamed in despair—“and his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!”—and wringing her hands she pointed to the children. “Oh, accursed life! And you, are you not ashamed?”—she pounced all at once upon Raskolnikov—“from the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have been drinking with him, too! Go away!”

      The young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door 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