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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A few words about Dostoevsky himself may help the
English reader to understand his work.
Dostoevsky was the son of a doctor. His parents were
very hard- working and deeply religious people, but so
poor that they lived with their five children in only two
rooms. The father and mother spent their evenings in
reading aloud to their children, generally from books of a
serious character.
Though always sickly and delicate Dostoevsky came
out third in the final examination of the Petersburg school
of Engineering. There he had already begun his first work,
‘Poor Folk.’
This story was published by the poet Nekrassov in his
review and was received with acclamations. The shy,
unknown youth found himself instantly something of a
celebrity.
before him, but those hopes were soon dashed. In 1849 he
was arrested.
Though neither by temperament nor conviction a
revolutionist, Dostoevsky was one of a little group of
young men who met together to read Fourier and
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Proudhon. He was accused of ‘taking part in conversations
against the censorship, of reading a letter from Byelinsky
to Gogol, and of knowing of the intention to set up a
printing press.’ Under Nicholas I. (that ‘stern and just
man,’ as Maurice Baring calls him) this was enough, and
he was condemned to death. After eight months’
imprisonment he was with twenty-one others taken out to
the Semyonovsky Square to be shot. Writing to his
brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: ‘They snapped words
over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts
worn by persons condemned to death. Thereupon we
were bound in threes to stakes, to suffer execution. Being
the third in the row, I concluded I had only a few minutes
of life before me. I thought of you and your dear ones and
I contrived to kiss Plestcheiev and Dourov, who were
next to me, and to bid them farewell. Suddenly the troops
beat a tattoo, we were unbound, brought back upon the
scaffold, and informed that his Majesty had spared us our
lives.’ The sentence was commuted to hard labour.
One of the prisoners, Grigoryev, went mad as soon as
he was untied, and never regained his sanity.
The intense suffering of this experience left a lasting
stamp on Dostoevsky’s mind. Though his religious temper
led him in the end to accept every suffering with
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resignation and to regard it as a blessing in his own case,
he constantly recurs to the subject in his writings. He
describes the awful agony of the condemned man and
insists on the cruelty of inflicting such torture. Then
followed four years of penal servitude, spent in the
company of common criminals in Siberia, where he began
the ‘Dead House,’ and some years of service in a
disciplinary battalion.
He had shown signs of some obscure nervous disease
before his arrest and this now developed into violent
attacks of epilepsy, from which he suffered for the rest of
his life. The fits occurred three or four times a year and
were more frequent in periods of great strain. In 1859 he
was allowed to return to Russia. He started a journal—
‘Vremya,’ which was forbidden by the Censorship
through a misunderstanding. In 1864 he lost his first wife
and his brother Mihail. He was in terrible poverty, yet he
took upon himself the payment of his brother’s debts. He
started another journal—‘The Epoch,’ which within a few
months was also prohibited. He was weighed down by
debt, his brother’s family was dependent on him, he was
forced to write at heart-breaking speed, and is said never
to have corrected his work. The later years of his life were
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much softened by the tenderness and devotion of his
second wife.
In June 1880 he made his famous speech at the
unveiling of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow and he
was received with extraordinary demonstrations of love
and honour.
A few months later Dostoevsky died. He was followed
to the grave by a vast multitude of mourners, who ‘gave
the hapless man the funeral of a king.’ He is still probably
the most widely read writer in Russia.
In the words of a Russian critic, who seeks to explain
the feeling inspired by Dostoevsky: ‘He was one of
ourselves, a man of our blood and our bone, but one who
has suffered and has seen so much more deeply than we
have his insight impresses us as wisdom … that wisdom of
the heart which we seek that we may learn from it how to
live. All his other gifts came to him from nature, this he
won for himself and through it he became great.’
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PART I
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Chapter I
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young
man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place
and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K.
bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on
the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, fivestoried
house and was more like a cupboard than a room.
The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and
attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he
went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of
which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the
young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him
scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his
landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite
the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an
overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria.
He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and
isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only
his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty,
but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh
upon him. He had given up attending to matters of
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practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so.
Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for
him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen
to her trivial, 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
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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 pothouses,
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
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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
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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 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.
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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
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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
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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 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
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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 halfpenny
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.
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‘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
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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. Strongboxes
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.’
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‘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 cigarettebox,
as soon as I get it back from a friend …’ he broke off
in confusion.
‘Well, we will talk about it then, sir.’
‘Good-bye—are you always at home alone, your sister
is not here with you?’ He asked her as casually as possible
as he went out into the passage.
‘What business is she of yours, my good sir?’
‘Oh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too
quick…. Good-day, Alyona Ivanovna.’
Raskolnikov went out in complete confusion. This
confusion became more and more intense. As he went
down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times,
as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was
in the street he cried out, ‘Oh, God, how loathsome it all
is! and can I, can I possibly…. No, it’s nonsense, it’s
rubbish!’ he added resolutely. ‘And how could such an
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atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my
heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting,
loathsome, loathsome!—and for a whole month I’ve
been….’ But no words, no exclamations, could express his
agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion, which had
begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was on his
way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch
and had taken such a definite form that he did not know
what to do with himself to escape from his wretchedness.
He walked along the pavement like a drunken man,
regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and
only came to his senses when he was in the next street.
Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a
tavern which was entered by steps leading from the
pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken
men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting
one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to
think, Raskolnikov went down the steps at once. Till that
moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt
giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed
for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his sudden
weakness to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky
little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer,
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and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt
easier; and his thoughts became clear.
‘All that’s nonsense,’ he said hopefully, ‘and there is
nothing in it all to worry about! It’s simply physical
derangement. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread—
and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is
clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all
is!’
But in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now
looking cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from
a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a friendly way at
the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a
dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also
not normal.
There were few people at the time in the tavern.
Besides the two drunken men he had met on the steps, a
group consisting of about five men and a girl with a
concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure
left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in
the tavern were a man who appeared to be an artisan,
drunk, but not extremely so, sitting before a pot of beer,
and his companion, a huge, stout man with a grey beard,
in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had
dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he
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began as though in his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his
arms wide apart and the upper part of his body bounding
about on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless
refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:
His wife a year he fondly loved
His wife a—a year he—fondly loved.
Or suddenly waking up again:
Walking along the crowded row
He met the one he used to know.
But no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion
looked with positive hostility and mistrust at all these
manifestations. There was another man in the room who
looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was
sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and
looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in
some agitation.
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Chapter II
Raskolnikov was not used to crowds, and, as we said
before, he avoided society of every sort, more especially of
late. But now all at once he felt a desire to be with other
people. Something new seemed to be taking place within
him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He
was so weary after a whole month of concentrated
wretchedness and gloomy excitement that he longed to
rest, if only for a moment, in some other world, whatever
it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the
surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern.
The master of the establishment was in another room,
but he frequently came down some steps into the main
room, his jaunty, tarred boots with red turn-over tops
coming into view each time before the rest of his person.
He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin
waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face seemed
smeared with oil like an iron lock. At the counter stood a
boy of about fourteen, and there was another boy
somewhat younger who handed whatever was wanted.
On the counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of
dried black bread, and some fish, chopped up small, all
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smelling very bad. It was insufferably close, and so heavy
with the fumes of spirits that five minutes in such an
atmosphere might well make a man drunk.
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest
us from the first moment, before a word is spoken. Such
was the impression made on Raskolnikov by the person
sitting a little distance from him, who looked like a retired
clerk. The young man often recalled this impression
afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He
looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the
latter was staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to
enter into conversation. At the other persons in the room,
including the tavern- keeper, the clerk looked as though
he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing a
shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of
station and culture inferior to his own, with whom it
would be useless for him to converse. He was a man over
fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly
built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of a
yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of
which keen reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But
there was something very strange in him; there was a light
in his eyes as though of intense feeling—perhaps there
were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time
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there was a gleam of something like madness. He was
wearing an old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat,
with all its buttons missing except one, and that one he
had buttoned, evidently clinging to this last trace of
respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots
and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a
clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache, but had been so
long unshaven that his chin looked like a stiff greyish
brush. And there was something respectable and like an
official about his manner too. But he was restless; he
ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head drop
into his hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the
stained and sticky table. At last he looked straight at
Raskolnikov, and said loudly and resolutely:
‘May I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite
conversation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would
not command respect, my experience admonishes me that
you are a man of education and not accustomed to
drinking. I have always respected education when in
conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a
titular counsellor in rank. Marmeladov—such is my name;
titular counsellor. I make bold to inquire—have you been
in the service?’
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‘No, I am studying,’ answered the young man,
somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the
speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of
the momentary desire he had just been feeling for
company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt
immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for
any stranger who approached or attempted to approach
him.
‘A student then, or formerly a student,’ cried the clerk.
‘Just what I thought! I’m a man of experience, immense
experience, sir,’ and he tapped his forehead with his
fingers in self-approval. ‘You’ve been a student or have
attended some learned institution! … But allow me….’ He
got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down
beside the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was
drunk, but spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally
losing the thread of his sentences and drawling his words.
He pounced upon Raskolnikov as greedily as though he
too had not spoken to a soul for a month.
‘Honoured sir,’ he began almost with solemnity,
‘poverty is not a vice, that’s a true saying. Yet I know too
that drunkenness is not a virtue, and that that’s even truer.
But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty
you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in
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beggary—never—no one. For beggary a man is not chased
out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a
broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and
quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary I am ready to be
the first to humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house!
Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my
wife a beating, and my wife is a very different matter from
me! Do you understand? Allow me to ask you another
question out of simple curiosity: have you ever spent a
night on a hay barge, on the Neva?’
‘No, I have not happened to,’ answered Raskolnikov.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve just come from one and it’s the fifth night
I’ve slept so….’ He filled his glass, emptied it and paused.
Bits of hay were in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking
to his hair. It seemed quite probable that he had not
undressed or washed for the last five days. His hands,
particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red, with black
nails.
His conversation seemed to excite a general though
languid interest. The boys at the counter fell to sniggering.
The innkeeper came down from the upper room,
apparently on purpose to listen to the ‘funny fellow’ and
sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with
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dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here,
and he had most likely acquired his weakness for highflown
speeches from the habit of frequently entering into
conversation with strangers of all sorts in the tavern. This
habit develops into a necessity in some drunkards, and
especially in those who are looked after sharply and kept
in order at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers
they try to justify themselves and even if possible obtain
consideration.
‘Funny fellow!’ pronounced the innkeeper. ‘And why
don’t you work, why aren’t you at your duty, if you are in
the service?’
‘Why am I not at my duty, honoured sir,’ Marmeladov
went on, addressing himself exclusively to Raskolnikov, as
though it had been he who put that question to him.
‘Why am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache to
think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr.
Lebeziatnikov beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay
drunk, didn’t I suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever
happened to you … hm … well, to petition hopelessly for
a loan?’
‘Yes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?’
‘Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know
beforehand that you will get nothing by it. You know, for
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instance, beforehand with positive certainty that this man,
this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no
consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why
should he? For he knows of course that I shan’t pay it
back. From compassion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who
keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day that
compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and
that that’s what is done now in England, where there is
political economy. Why, I ask you, should he give it to
me? And yet though I know beforehand that he won’t, I
set off to him and …’
‘Why do you go?’ put in Raskolnikov.
‘Well, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go!
For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there
are times when one absolutely must go somewhere! When
my own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket, then
I had to go … (for my daughter has a yellow passport),’ he
added in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at
the young man. ‘No matter, sir, no matter!’ he went on
hurriedly and with apparent composure when both the
boys at the counter guffawed and even the innkeeper
smiled—‘No matter, I am not confounded by the wagging
of their heads; for everyone knows everything about it
already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it
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all, not with contempt, but with humility. So be it! So be
it! ‘Behold the man!’ Excuse me, young man, can you….
No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not can
you but dare you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a
pig?’
The young man did not answer a word.
‘Well,’ the orator began again stolidly and with even
increased dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the
room to subside. ‘Well, so be it, I am a pig, but she is a
lady! I have the semblance of a beast, but Katerina
Ivanovna, my spouse, is a person of education and an
officer’s daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but
she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined
by education. And yet … oh, if only she felt for me!
Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man ought
to have at least one place where people feel for him! But
Katerina Ivanovna, though she is magnanimous, she is
unjust…. And yet, although I realise that when she pulls
my hair she only does it out of pity—for I repeat without
being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young man,’ he declared
with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again—
‘but, my God, if she would but once…. But no, no! It’s all
in vain and it’s no use talking! No use talking! For more
than once, my wish did come true and more than once
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she has felt for me but … such is my fate and I am a beast
by nature!’
‘Rather!’ assented the innkeeper yawning. Marmeladov
struck his fist resolutely on the table.
‘Such is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I
have sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes—
that would be more or less in the order of things, but her
stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair
shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own
property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she
caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and
spitting blood too. We have three little children and
Katerina Ivanovna is at work from morning till night; she
is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for
she’s been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is
weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it!
Do you suppose I don’t feel it? And the more I drink the
more I feel it. That’s why I drink too. I try to find
sympathy and feeling in drink…. I drink so that I may
suffer twice as much!’ And as though in despair he laid his
head down on the table.
‘Young man,’ he went on, raising his head again, ‘in
your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you
came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at
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once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do
not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle
listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am
looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then
that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the
daughters of noblemen, and on leaving she danced the
shawl dance before the governor and other personages for
which she was presented with a gold medal and a
certificate of merit. The medal … well, the medal of
course was sold—long ago, hm … but the certificate of
merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it
to our landlady. And although she is most continually on
bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell
someone or other of her past honours and of the happy
days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it, I don’t
blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the
past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady
of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors
herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t
allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That’s why she
would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s rudeness to her,
and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her
bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the
blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three
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children, one smaller than the other. She married her first
husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with
him from her father’s house. She was exceedingly fond of
her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble
and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and
although she paid him back, of which I have authentic
documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with
tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am
glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of
herself as having once been happy…. And she was left at
his death with three children in a wild and remote district
where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in
such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups
and downs of all sort, I don’t feel equal to describing it
even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And she was
proud, too, excessively proud…. And then, honoured sir,
and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter
of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand,
for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can
judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of
education and culture and distinguished family, should
have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and
sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she
had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you
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understand what it means when you have absolutely
nowhere to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet….
And for a whole year, I performed my duties
conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this’ (he
tapped the jug with his finger), ‘for I have feelings. But
even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place
too, and that through no fault of mine but through
changes in the office; and then I did touch it! … It will be
a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last
after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this
magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable
monuments. Here I obtained a situation…. I obtained it
and I lost it again. Do you understand? This time it was
through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come
out…. We have now part of a room at Amalia
Fyodorovna Lippevechsel’s; and what we live upon and
what we pay our rent with, I could not say. There are a
lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and
disorder, a perfect Bedlam … hm … yes … And
meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up;
and what my daughter has had to put up with from her
step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won’t speak of.
For, though Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings,
she is a spirited lady, irritable and short—tempered…. Yes.
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But it’s no use going over that! Sonia, as you may well
fancy, has had no education. I did make an effort four
years ago to give her a course of geography and universal
history, but as I was not very well up in those subjects
myself and we had no suitable books, and what books we
had … hm, anyway we have not even those now, so all
our instruction came to an end. We stopped at Cyrus of
Persia. Since she has attained years of maturity, she has
read other books of romantic tendency and of late she had
read with great interest a book she got through Mr.
Lebeziatnikov, Lewes’ Physiology—do you know it?—
and even recounted extracts from it to us: and that’s the
whole of her education. And now may I venture to
address you, honoured sir, on my own account with a
private question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor
girl can earn much by honest work? Not fifteen farthings a
day can she earn, if she is respectable and has no special
talent and that without putting her work down for an
instant! And what’s more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the
civil counsellor—have you heard of him?—has not to this
day paid her for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him
and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on
the pretext that the shirt collars were not made like the
pattern and were put in askew. And there are the little
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ones hungry…. And Katerina Ivanovna walking up and
down and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed red, as
they always are in that disease: ‘Here you live with us,’
says she, ‘you eat and drink and are kept warm and you do
nothing to help.’ And much she gets to eat and drink
when there is not a crust for the little ones for three days! I
was lying at the time … well, what of it! I was lying drunk
and I heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle creature
with a soft little voice … fair hair and such a pale, thin
little face). She said: ‘Katerina Ivanovna, am I really to do
a thing like that?’ And Darya Frantsovna, a woman of evil
character and very well known to the police, had two or
three times tried to get at her through the landlady. ‘And
why not?’ said Katerina Ivanovna with a jeer, ‘you are
something mighty precious to be so careful of!’ But don’t
blame her, don’t blame her, honoured sir, don’t blame
her! She was not herself when she spoke, but driven to
distraction by her illness and the crying of the hungry
children; and it was said more to wound her than anything
else…. For that’s Katerina Ivanovna’s character, and when
children cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them
at once. At six o’clock I saw Sonia get up, put on her
kerchief and her cape, and go out of the room and about
nine o’clock she came back. She walked straight up to
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