by Fyodor Dostoevsky

translated by Constance Garnett
CHAPTER_ONE
PART ONE
Chapter One
ON AN exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came outof 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, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him withgarret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and everytime he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of whichinvariably 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 any one 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 practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landladycould 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 pesteringdemands 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'shands 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. Takinga 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 perhapsit 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 Jackthe Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Isthat serious? It is not serious at all. It's simply a fantasy to amusemyself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything."
The heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustleand the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and thatspecial 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 thepot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was aworking day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. Anexpression 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 notcaring 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 ideaswere 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 thatquarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created 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 causedsurprise. 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 adifferent matter when he met with acquaintances or with formerfellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being takensomewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past: "Hey there, German hatter" bawling atthe 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 unseemlyfashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin toterror 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 most trivial detailmight spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looksabsurd and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear acap, 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 thatwould 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 himselfby their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he hadbegun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologuesin which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he hadinvoluntarily come to regard this "hideous" dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He waspositively 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, &c. There was a continual coming and going through thetwo 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 thedoor on the right, and up the staircase. It was a back staircase, darkand narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and knew his way, andhe 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 barredby some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. Heknew 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 thefourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the oldwoman. "That's a good thing anyway," he thought to himself, as he rangthe 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 suchhouses always have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him ofsomething 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 ofpeople on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide.
The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned offfrom the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence andlooking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose. Hercolourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil, andshe wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck, which lookedlike 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 furcape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every instant. The young man must have looked at her with a ratherpeculiar 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 bemore polite.
"I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,"the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on hisface.
"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 paperon 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 asofa 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 brightlypolished; everything shone.