七月初，天气特别热的时候①，傍晚时分，有个年轻人走出他在C胡同向二房东租来的那间斗室，来到街上，然后慢腾腾地，仿佛犹豫不决地往K桥那边走去。
他顺利地避开了在楼梯上与自己的女房东相遇。他那间斗室是一幢高高的五层楼房②的顶间，就在房顶底下，与其说像间住房，倒不如说更像个大橱。他向女房东租了这间供给伙食、而且有女仆侍候的斗室，女房东就住在他楼下一套单独的住房里，他每次外出，都一定得打女房东的厨房门前经过，而厨房门几乎总是冲着楼梯大敞着。每次这个年轻人从一旁走过的时候，都有一种病态的胆怯的感觉，他为此感到羞愧，于是皱起眉头。他欠了女房东一身债，怕和她见面。
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①据作者说，小说中的故事发生在一八六五年，小说中没有明确说明年份，但有些地方曾有所暗示，这句话就是其中之一——一八六五年夏天天气特别热。
②一八六六年作者写这部小说的时候，自己就住在小市民街、木匠胡同一幢类似的房子里。
倒不是说他是那么胆小和怯懦，甚至完全相反；但从某个时期以来，他一直处于一种很容易激动和紧张的状态。患了多疑症。他是那样经常陷入沉思，离群索居，甚至害怕见到任何人，而不单单是怕与女房东见面。他让贫穷给压垮了；但最近一个时期就连窘迫的处境也已不再使他感到苦恼。绝对必须的事情他已经不再去做，也不想做。其实，什么女房东他都不怕，不管她打算怎样跟他过不去。然而站在楼梯上，听这些与他毫不相干的日常生活中鸡毛蒜皮之类琐事的种种废话，听所有这些纠缠不休的讨债，威胁，抱怨，自己却要尽力设法摆脱，道歉，撒谎，——不，最好还是想个办法像猫儿样从楼梯上悄悄地过去，偷偷溜掉，让谁也别看见他。
可是这一次，到了街上以后，那种怕遇到女债主的恐惧心理，就连他自己也感到惊讶。
“我正要下决心做一件什么样的事情啊，但却害怕一些微不足道的琐事！”他想，脸上露出奇怪的微笑。“嗯……是的……事在人为嘛，他却仅仅由于胆怯而错过一切……这可是明显的道理……真有意思，人们最害怕什么呢？他们最害怕迈出新的一步，最害怕自己的新想法……不过，我说空话说得太多了。因为我尽说空话，所以什么也不做。不过，大概也可能是这样：由于我什么也不做，所以才尽说空话。我是在最近一个月里学会说空话的，整天躺在一个角落里，想啊……想入非非。嗯，现在我去干什么？难道我能去干这个吗？难道这是当真？绝对不是当真的。就是这样，为了梦想，自己在哄自己；儿戏！对了，大概是儿戏！”
街上热得可怕，而且气闷，拥挤不堪，到处都是石灰浆、脚手架、砖头，灰尘，还有那种夏天的特殊臭气。每个无法租一座别墅的彼得堡人都那么熟悉的那种臭气，——所有这一切一下子就令人不快地震撼了这个青年人本已很不正常的神经。在城市的这一部分，小酒馆特别多，从这些小酒馆里冒出的臭气，还有那些尽管是在工作时间，却不断碰到的醉鬼，给这幅街景添上了最后一笔令人厌恶的忧郁色彩。有一瞬间，极端厌恶的神情在这个青年人清秀的面庞上忽然一闪。顺便说一声，他生得很美，有一双漂亮的黑眼睛，一头褐色的头发，比中等身材还高一些，消瘦而身材匀称。但不久他就仿佛陷入沉思，甚至，说得更确切些，似乎是想出了神，他往前走去，已经不注意周围的一切，而且也不想注意。他只是偶尔喃喃自语，这是由于他有自言自语的习惯，对这一习惯，现在他已经暗自承认了。这时他自己也意识到，他的思想有时是混乱的，而且他十分虚弱：已经有一天多他几乎什么也没吃了。
他穿得那么差，如果换一个人，即使是对此已经习以为常的人，衣衫如此褴褛，白天上街也会感到不好意思。不过这街区就是这样的，在这儿衣著很难让人感到惊讶。这儿靠近干草广场①，妓院比比皆是，而且麇集在彼得堡市中心这些大街小巷里的居民，主要是那些在车间干活的工人和手工业工匠，因此有时在这儿就是会遇到这样一些人，使这儿的街景显得更加丰富多采，如果碰到一个这样的人就感到惊讶，那倒反而是怪事了。这个年轻人心里已经积聚了那么多愤懑不平的怒火，他蔑视一切，所以尽管他有青年人特有的爱面子心理，有时非常注意细节，可是穿着这身破烂儿外出，却丝毫也不觉得不好意思。要是遇见他根本就不愿碰到的某些熟人和以前的同学，那就是另一回事了……然而有个喝得醉醺醺的人，不知为什么在这时候坐在一辆大车上打街上经过，车上套着一匹拉车的高头大马，也不知是要把他送往哪里去，这醉鬼从一旁驶过的时候，突然对着他大喊一声：“嗳，你呀，德国做帽子的工人！”那人用手指着他，扯着嗓子大喊，年轻人突然站住，急忙抓住了自己的帽子。这顶高筒圆帽是从齐梅尔曼②帽店里买的，不过已经戴得十分破旧，颜色都褪尽了，到处都是破洞和污迹，没有宽帽檐，帽筒歪到了一边，上面折出一个怪难看的角来。但不是羞愧，而完全是另一种，甚至是一种类似恐惧的感觉突然向他袭来。
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①彼得堡最大的市场就在干草广场上。
②齐梅尔曼是当时彼得堡一家制帽工厂和涅瓦大街上一家帽店的老板。
“我就知道！”他惊恐不安地喃喃说，“我就这么考虑过！这可是最糟糕的了！真的，不管什么样的蠢事，不管什么不起眼的细节，都会破坏整个计划！是啊，帽子太容易让人记住了……可笑，因此就容易让人记住……我这身破烂儿一定得配一顶制帽，哪怕是一顶煎饼式的旧帽子也行，可不能戴这个难看的怪玩意儿。谁也不戴这样的帽子，一俄里①以外就会让人注意到，就会记住的……主要的是，以后会想起来，瞧，这就是罪证。这儿需要尽可能不惹人注意……细节，主要是细节！……就是这些细节，总是会出问题，毁掉一切……”
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①一俄里等于一·○六公里。
他用不着走多远；他甚至知道，从他那幢房子的大门出来要走多少步：整整七百三十步。有一次他幻想得完全出了神的时候，曾经数过。那时他还不相信自己的这些幻想，他所幻想的这些虽说是没有道理，然而却是十分诱人的大胆计划，只是会惹他生气。现在，过了一个月以后，他已经开始以另一种眼光来看待这一切了，尽管他总是自言自语，嘲笑自己无能和优柔寡断，却不知怎么甚至不由自主地已经习惯于把这“没有道理”的幻想看作一项事业了，虽说他仍然不相信自己。现在他甚至要去为完成自己的这一事业进行试探，每走一步，他的激动不安也越来越强烈了。
他心情紧张，神经颤栗，走到一幢很大的大房子前，房子的一堵墙对着运河，另一面墙冲着×街。这幢大房子分作一套套不大的住宅，里面住满了各行各业的手艺人——裁缝、小炉匠、厨娘，形形色色的德国人，妓女，小官吏，以及其他行业的人。进进出出的人就这样在房子的两道大门和两个院子里匆匆走过。这儿有三个、要么是四个管院子的。那个年轻人没碰到他们当中的任何一个，立刻无人察觉地溜进大门，往右一拐，溜上了楼梯，因此他感到非常满意。楼梯又暗，又窄，是“后楼梯”，但是他对这一切都已经了解，而且察看过了，对这整个环境他都十分喜欢：在这样的黑暗中，就连好奇的目光也并不危险。“要是这时候我就这么害怕，说不定什么时候，如果真的要去干那件事的话，又会怎样呢？……”上四楼的时候，他不由得想。几个当搬运工的退伍士兵在这里挡住了他的路，他们正从一套住宅里往外搬家具。以前他已经知道，这套住宅里住着一个带家眷的德国人，是个官吏：“这么说，这个德国人现在搬走了，因而四层楼上，这道楼梯和这个楼梯平台上，在一段时间里就只剩下老太婆的住宅里还住着人。这好极了……以防万一……”他又想，并且拉了拉老太婆住房的门铃。门铃响声很轻，好像铃不是铜的，而是用白铁做的。这样的楼房中一套套这种不大的住宅里，几乎都是装着这样的门铃。他已经忘记了这小铃铛的响声，现在这很特别的响声突然让他想起了什么，并清清楚楚地想象……他猛地颤栗了一下，这一次神经真是太脆弱了。稍过了一会儿，房门开了很小一道缝：住在里面的那个女人带着明显不信任的神情从门缝里细细打量来人，只能看到她那双在黑暗中闪闪发亮的小眼睛。但是看到楼梯平台上有不少人，她胆壮起来，于是把房门完全打开了。年轻人跨过门坎，走进用隔板隔开的前室，隔板后面是一间很小的厨房。老太婆默默地站在他面前，疑问地注视着他。这是一个干瘪的小老太婆，六十来岁，有一双目光锐利、神情凶恶的小眼睛，尖尖的小鼻子，光着头，没包头巾。她那像鸡腿样细长的脖子上缠着一块法兰绒破围巾，别看天热，肩上还披着一件穿得十分破旧、已经发黄的毛皮女短上衣。老太婆一刻不停地咳嗽，发出呼哧呼哧的声音。想必是年轻人用异样的眼光看了她一眼，因而先前那种不信任的神情突然又在她眼睛里忽地一闪。
“拉斯科利尼科夫，大学生，一个月以前来过您这儿，”年轻人急忙含含糊糊地说，并且微微鞠躬行礼，因为他想起，应该客气一些。
“我记得，先生，记得很清楚，您来过，”老太婆清清楚楚地说，仍然没把自己疑问的目光从他脸上移开。
“那么……又是为这事来的……”拉斯科利尼科夫接着说，稍有点儿窘，并且为老太婆的不信任感到诧异。
“不过，也许她一向都是这样，我那一次却没有注意，”他怀着不愉快的心情想。
老太婆沉默了一会儿，仿佛在考虑，随后退到一边，指指房间的门，让客人到前面去，并且说：
“请进，先生。”
年轻人进去的那间房间并不大，墙上糊着黄色的墙纸，屋里摆着天竺葵，窗上挂着细纱窗帘，这时落日的余晖把屋里照得亮堂堂的。“这么说，那时候，太阳也会像这样照着！……”这想法仿佛无意中掠过拉斯科利尼科夫的脑海，于是他用目光匆匆打量了一下屋里的一切，想尽可能了解并记住屋里的布局。不过屋里并没有任何特殊的东西。家具都很旧了，都是黄木做的：一张有老大的弯木靠背的沙发，沙发前摆一张椭圆形的圆桌，窗和门之间的墙上有个带镜子的梳妆台，沿墙放着几把椅子，还有两三幅毫无价值的图画，都装在黄色的画框里，上面画着几个手里拿着小鸟的德国小姐，——这就是全部家具。墙角落里，不大的神像前点着神灯。一切都很干净：家具和地板都擦得发亮；一切都闪闪发光。“莉扎薇塔做的，”年轻人想。整套住宅里纤尘不染。“凶恶的老寡妇家里才会这么干净，”拉斯科利尼科夫继续暗自思忖，并且好奇地斜着眼睛瞟了瞟第二间小房间门前的印花布门帘，那间屋里摆着老太婆的床和一个抽屉柜，他还一次也没朝那屋里看过。整套住宅就只有这两间房间。
“有什么事啊？”老太婆走进屋来，严厉地说，仍然正对着他站着，这样可以直瞅着他的脸。
“我拿了一件抵押品来，您瞧，这就是！”说着他从衣袋里掏出一块扁平的旧银表。表的背面刻着一个地球仪。表链是钢的。
“要知道，上次抵押的东西已经到期了。还在前天就超过一个月了。”
“我再给您一个月的利息；请您宽限一下。”
“先生，宽限几天，还是这会儿就把您的东西卖掉，这都得由我决定。”
“表可以当多少钱，阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜？”
“先生，你尽拿些不值钱的东西来，差不多一文不值。上次那个戒指给了您两个卢布，可在首饰商那儿，花一个半卢布就能买个新的。”
“请给我四个卢布吧，我一定来赎，是我父亲的。我很快就会得到钱了。”
“一个半卢布，利息先付，要是您愿意的话。”
“一个半卢布！”年轻人叫了起来。
“随您便。”说着老太婆把表递还给他。年轻人接过表来，感到那样气愤，已经想要走了；但立刻又改了主意，因为他想起，再也无处可去，而且他来这儿还有旁的目的。
“拿来吧！”他粗暴地说。
老太婆伸手到衣袋里去掏钥匙，然后走进门帘后面另一间屋里。只剩下年轻人独自一人站在房屋中间，好奇地侧耳谛听，暗自猜测。可以听到她打开了抽屉柜。“大概是上面的抽屉，”他猜测。“这么说，她是把钥匙装在右边口袋里……全都串成一串，串在一个钢圈儿上……那儿有一把最大的钥匙，有旁的三倍大，带锯齿，当然不是开抽屉柜的……可见还有一个小匣子，要么是个小箱子……瞧，这真有意思。小箱子都是用这样的钥匙……不过，这一切多么卑鄙……”
老太婆回来了。
“您瞧，先生：既然一个卢布一个月的利息是十个戈比，那么一个半卢布该收您十五个戈比，先付一个月的利息。上次那两个卢布也照这样计算，该先收您二十戈比。这么说，总共是三十五戈比。现在您这块表，总共还该给您一卢布十五戈比。这不是，请收下吧。”
“怎么！现在就只有一卢布十五戈比了！”
“正是这样。”
年轻人没有争论，接过了钱。他瞅着老太婆，并不急于出去，似乎他还想说点儿什么，要么是做点儿什么，但好像他自己也不知道，到底要干什么……
“阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜，也许，就在这几天里，我还要给您拿一样东西来……银的……很精致的……烟盒……只等我从朋友那里取回来……”他发窘了，于是住了声。
“好，到那时再说吧，先生。”
“再见……您总是一个人在家？妹妹不在吗？”他到前室去的时候，尽可能随随便便地问。
“先生，您问她干什么？”
“啊，没什么。我不过这么问问。您现在真是……阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜！”
拉斯科利尼科夫从屋里出来时已经十分心慌意乱。这不安的心情越来越强烈了。下楼时他甚至有好几次停了下来，仿佛有什么事情使他突然吃了一惊。最后，已经到了街上的时候，他激动地说：
“噢，天哪！这一切多么令人厌恶！难道，难道我……不！这是无稽之谈，这是荒谬绝伦！”他毅然决然地加上几句。
“难道我的头脑里会出现这样可怕的想法？我的良心竟能允许干这种肮脏的事情！主要的是：肮脏，卑污，恶劣，恶劣！……
而我，整整一个月……”
但是他既不能用言词、也不能用感叹来表达自己的激动与不安。还在他刚刚去老太婆那儿的时候就开始使他感到压抑和不安的极端厌恶的心情，现在已经达到这种程度，而且变得十分明显，以致他不知该躲到哪里去，才能逃避自己的忧愁。他像喝醉了似地在人行道上走着，看不见路上的行人，老是会撞到他们，清醒过来的时候，已经到了另一条街上。他环顾四周，发觉自己站在一家小酒馆旁，要进酒馆，得从人行道顺着楼梯往下，到地下室去。就在这时，恰好从门里走出两个醉醺醺的人来，他们互相搀扶着，嘴里不干不净地骂着，顺着楼梯爬到街上。拉斯科利尼科夫没想多久，立刻就下去了。在此以前他从未进过酒馆，但是现在他感到头昏，加以火烧火燎的干渴正在折磨着他。他想喝点儿冰冷的啤酒，而且他把自己突然感到的虚弱归咎于饥饿。他坐到又暗又脏的角落里一张发黏的小桌旁边，要了啤酒，贪婪地喝干了第一杯。立刻一切都消失了，他的思想也清晰了。“这一切都是胡说八道，”他满怀希望地说，“这儿没有什么可以感到不安的！只不过是身体不舒服，是一种病态！只要一杯啤酒，一小块干面包，——瞧，转瞬间就变得坚强起来，思想清楚了，意向也坚定了！呸！这一切是多么微不足道！……”但尽管他轻蔑地啐了一口唾沫，他却已经高兴起来，仿佛突然摆脱了某种可怕的沉重负担，并且目光友好地扫视了一下在座的人。不过就是在这时候，他也隐隐约约预感到，这种一切都往好处想的乐观态度也是一种病态。
这时小酒馆里剩下的人已经不多了。除了在楼梯上碰到过的那两个醉鬼，又有吵吵嚷嚷的一群人跟着他们走了出去，他们这一伙约摸有五、六个人，其中有一个姑娘，还带着一架手风琴。他们走了以后，变得静悄悄、空荡荡的。剩下的人中有一个已经醉了，不过醉得并不厉害，坐在摆着啤酒的桌边，看样子是个小市民；他的同伴是个胖子，身材魁梧，穿一件竖领打褶的细腰短呢上衣，蓄一部花白的大胡子，已经喝得酩酊大醉，正坐在长凳上打瞌睡，有时突然似乎半睡半醒，伸开双手，开始用手指打榧子，他并没有从长凳上站起来，上身却不时往上动一动，而且在胡乱哼着一首什么歌曲，竭力想记起歌词，好像是：
整整一年我和妻子亲亲热热，
整——整一年我和妻——子亲亲——热热……
要么是突然醒来，又唱道：
我去波季亚契大街闲逛，
找到了自己从前的婆娘……
但谁也不分享他的幸福；他那个沉默寡言的伙伴对这些感情爆发甚至抱有敌意，而且持怀疑态度。那儿还有一个人，看样子好像是个退职的官吏。他面对自己的酒杯，单独坐在一张桌子旁边，有时喝一口酒，并向四周看看。他似乎也有点儿激动不安。
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 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 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 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 pot- houses, 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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.
他顺利地避开了在楼梯上与自己的女房东相遇。他那间斗室是一幢高高的五层楼房②的顶间，就在房顶底下，与其说像间住房，倒不如说更像个大橱。他向女房东租了这间供给伙食、而且有女仆侍候的斗室，女房东就住在他楼下一套单独的住房里，他每次外出，都一定得打女房东的厨房门前经过，而厨房门几乎总是冲着楼梯大敞着。每次这个年轻人从一旁走过的时候，都有一种病态的胆怯的感觉，他为此感到羞愧，于是皱起眉头。他欠了女房东一身债，怕和她见面。
--------
①据作者说，小说中的故事发生在一八六五年，小说中没有明确说明年份，但有些地方曾有所暗示，这句话就是其中之一——一八六五年夏天天气特别热。
②一八六六年作者写这部小说的时候，自己就住在小市民街、木匠胡同一幢类似的房子里。
倒不是说他是那么胆小和怯懦，甚至完全相反；但从某个时期以来，他一直处于一种很容易激动和紧张的状态。患了多疑症。他是那样经常陷入沉思，离群索居，甚至害怕见到任何人，而不单单是怕与女房东见面。他让贫穷给压垮了；但最近一个时期就连窘迫的处境也已不再使他感到苦恼。绝对必须的事情他已经不再去做，也不想做。其实，什么女房东他都不怕，不管她打算怎样跟他过不去。然而站在楼梯上，听这些与他毫不相干的日常生活中鸡毛蒜皮之类琐事的种种废话，听所有这些纠缠不休的讨债，威胁，抱怨，自己却要尽力设法摆脱，道歉，撒谎，——不，最好还是想个办法像猫儿样从楼梯上悄悄地过去，偷偷溜掉，让谁也别看见他。
可是这一次，到了街上以后，那种怕遇到女债主的恐惧心理，就连他自己也感到惊讶。
“我正要下决心做一件什么样的事情啊，但却害怕一些微不足道的琐事！”他想，脸上露出奇怪的微笑。“嗯……是的……事在人为嘛，他却仅仅由于胆怯而错过一切……这可是明显的道理……真有意思，人们最害怕什么呢？他们最害怕迈出新的一步，最害怕自己的新想法……不过，我说空话说得太多了。因为我尽说空话，所以什么也不做。不过，大概也可能是这样：由于我什么也不做，所以才尽说空话。我是在最近一个月里学会说空话的，整天躺在一个角落里，想啊……想入非非。嗯，现在我去干什么？难道我能去干这个吗？难道这是当真？绝对不是当真的。就是这样，为了梦想，自己在哄自己；儿戏！对了，大概是儿戏！”
街上热得可怕，而且气闷，拥挤不堪，到处都是石灰浆、脚手架、砖头，灰尘，还有那种夏天的特殊臭气。每个无法租一座别墅的彼得堡人都那么熟悉的那种臭气，——所有这一切一下子就令人不快地震撼了这个青年人本已很不正常的神经。在城市的这一部分，小酒馆特别多，从这些小酒馆里冒出的臭气，还有那些尽管是在工作时间，却不断碰到的醉鬼，给这幅街景添上了最后一笔令人厌恶的忧郁色彩。有一瞬间，极端厌恶的神情在这个青年人清秀的面庞上忽然一闪。顺便说一声，他生得很美，有一双漂亮的黑眼睛，一头褐色的头发，比中等身材还高一些，消瘦而身材匀称。但不久他就仿佛陷入沉思，甚至，说得更确切些，似乎是想出了神，他往前走去，已经不注意周围的一切，而且也不想注意。他只是偶尔喃喃自语，这是由于他有自言自语的习惯，对这一习惯，现在他已经暗自承认了。这时他自己也意识到，他的思想有时是混乱的，而且他十分虚弱：已经有一天多他几乎什么也没吃了。
他穿得那么差，如果换一个人，即使是对此已经习以为常的人，衣衫如此褴褛，白天上街也会感到不好意思。不过这街区就是这样的，在这儿衣著很难让人感到惊讶。这儿靠近干草广场①，妓院比比皆是，而且麇集在彼得堡市中心这些大街小巷里的居民，主要是那些在车间干活的工人和手工业工匠，因此有时在这儿就是会遇到这样一些人，使这儿的街景显得更加丰富多采，如果碰到一个这样的人就感到惊讶，那倒反而是怪事了。这个年轻人心里已经积聚了那么多愤懑不平的怒火，他蔑视一切，所以尽管他有青年人特有的爱面子心理，有时非常注意细节，可是穿着这身破烂儿外出，却丝毫也不觉得不好意思。要是遇见他根本就不愿碰到的某些熟人和以前的同学，那就是另一回事了……然而有个喝得醉醺醺的人，不知为什么在这时候坐在一辆大车上打街上经过，车上套着一匹拉车的高头大马，也不知是要把他送往哪里去，这醉鬼从一旁驶过的时候，突然对着他大喊一声：“嗳，你呀，德国做帽子的工人！”那人用手指着他，扯着嗓子大喊，年轻人突然站住，急忙抓住了自己的帽子。这顶高筒圆帽是从齐梅尔曼②帽店里买的，不过已经戴得十分破旧，颜色都褪尽了，到处都是破洞和污迹，没有宽帽檐，帽筒歪到了一边，上面折出一个怪难看的角来。但不是羞愧，而完全是另一种，甚至是一种类似恐惧的感觉突然向他袭来。
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①彼得堡最大的市场就在干草广场上。
②齐梅尔曼是当时彼得堡一家制帽工厂和涅瓦大街上一家帽店的老板。
“我就知道！”他惊恐不安地喃喃说，“我就这么考虑过！这可是最糟糕的了！真的，不管什么样的蠢事，不管什么不起眼的细节，都会破坏整个计划！是啊，帽子太容易让人记住了……可笑，因此就容易让人记住……我这身破烂儿一定得配一顶制帽，哪怕是一顶煎饼式的旧帽子也行，可不能戴这个难看的怪玩意儿。谁也不戴这样的帽子，一俄里①以外就会让人注意到，就会记住的……主要的是，以后会想起来，瞧，这就是罪证。这儿需要尽可能不惹人注意……细节，主要是细节！……就是这些细节，总是会出问题，毁掉一切……”
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①一俄里等于一·○六公里。
他用不着走多远；他甚至知道，从他那幢房子的大门出来要走多少步：整整七百三十步。有一次他幻想得完全出了神的时候，曾经数过。那时他还不相信自己的这些幻想，他所幻想的这些虽说是没有道理，然而却是十分诱人的大胆计划，只是会惹他生气。现在，过了一个月以后，他已经开始以另一种眼光来看待这一切了，尽管他总是自言自语，嘲笑自己无能和优柔寡断，却不知怎么甚至不由自主地已经习惯于把这“没有道理”的幻想看作一项事业了，虽说他仍然不相信自己。现在他甚至要去为完成自己的这一事业进行试探，每走一步，他的激动不安也越来越强烈了。
他心情紧张，神经颤栗，走到一幢很大的大房子前，房子的一堵墙对着运河，另一面墙冲着×街。这幢大房子分作一套套不大的住宅，里面住满了各行各业的手艺人——裁缝、小炉匠、厨娘，形形色色的德国人，妓女，小官吏，以及其他行业的人。进进出出的人就这样在房子的两道大门和两个院子里匆匆走过。这儿有三个、要么是四个管院子的。那个年轻人没碰到他们当中的任何一个，立刻无人察觉地溜进大门，往右一拐，溜上了楼梯，因此他感到非常满意。楼梯又暗，又窄，是“后楼梯”，但是他对这一切都已经了解，而且察看过了，对这整个环境他都十分喜欢：在这样的黑暗中，就连好奇的目光也并不危险。“要是这时候我就这么害怕，说不定什么时候，如果真的要去干那件事的话，又会怎样呢？……”上四楼的时候，他不由得想。几个当搬运工的退伍士兵在这里挡住了他的路，他们正从一套住宅里往外搬家具。以前他已经知道，这套住宅里住着一个带家眷的德国人，是个官吏：“这么说，这个德国人现在搬走了，因而四层楼上，这道楼梯和这个楼梯平台上，在一段时间里就只剩下老太婆的住宅里还住着人。这好极了……以防万一……”他又想，并且拉了拉老太婆住房的门铃。门铃响声很轻，好像铃不是铜的，而是用白铁做的。这样的楼房中一套套这种不大的住宅里，几乎都是装着这样的门铃。他已经忘记了这小铃铛的响声，现在这很特别的响声突然让他想起了什么，并清清楚楚地想象……他猛地颤栗了一下，这一次神经真是太脆弱了。稍过了一会儿，房门开了很小一道缝：住在里面的那个女人带着明显不信任的神情从门缝里细细打量来人，只能看到她那双在黑暗中闪闪发亮的小眼睛。但是看到楼梯平台上有不少人，她胆壮起来，于是把房门完全打开了。年轻人跨过门坎，走进用隔板隔开的前室，隔板后面是一间很小的厨房。老太婆默默地站在他面前，疑问地注视着他。这是一个干瘪的小老太婆，六十来岁，有一双目光锐利、神情凶恶的小眼睛，尖尖的小鼻子，光着头，没包头巾。她那像鸡腿样细长的脖子上缠着一块法兰绒破围巾，别看天热，肩上还披着一件穿得十分破旧、已经发黄的毛皮女短上衣。老太婆一刻不停地咳嗽，发出呼哧呼哧的声音。想必是年轻人用异样的眼光看了她一眼，因而先前那种不信任的神情突然又在她眼睛里忽地一闪。
“拉斯科利尼科夫，大学生，一个月以前来过您这儿，”年轻人急忙含含糊糊地说，并且微微鞠躬行礼，因为他想起，应该客气一些。
“我记得，先生，记得很清楚，您来过，”老太婆清清楚楚地说，仍然没把自己疑问的目光从他脸上移开。
“那么……又是为这事来的……”拉斯科利尼科夫接着说，稍有点儿窘，并且为老太婆的不信任感到诧异。
“不过，也许她一向都是这样，我那一次却没有注意，”他怀着不愉快的心情想。
老太婆沉默了一会儿，仿佛在考虑，随后退到一边，指指房间的门，让客人到前面去，并且说：
“请进，先生。”
年轻人进去的那间房间并不大，墙上糊着黄色的墙纸，屋里摆着天竺葵，窗上挂着细纱窗帘，这时落日的余晖把屋里照得亮堂堂的。“这么说，那时候，太阳也会像这样照着！……”这想法仿佛无意中掠过拉斯科利尼科夫的脑海，于是他用目光匆匆打量了一下屋里的一切，想尽可能了解并记住屋里的布局。不过屋里并没有任何特殊的东西。家具都很旧了，都是黄木做的：一张有老大的弯木靠背的沙发，沙发前摆一张椭圆形的圆桌，窗和门之间的墙上有个带镜子的梳妆台，沿墙放着几把椅子，还有两三幅毫无价值的图画，都装在黄色的画框里，上面画着几个手里拿着小鸟的德国小姐，——这就是全部家具。墙角落里，不大的神像前点着神灯。一切都很干净：家具和地板都擦得发亮；一切都闪闪发光。“莉扎薇塔做的，”年轻人想。整套住宅里纤尘不染。“凶恶的老寡妇家里才会这么干净，”拉斯科利尼科夫继续暗自思忖，并且好奇地斜着眼睛瞟了瞟第二间小房间门前的印花布门帘，那间屋里摆着老太婆的床和一个抽屉柜，他还一次也没朝那屋里看过。整套住宅就只有这两间房间。
“有什么事啊？”老太婆走进屋来，严厉地说，仍然正对着他站着，这样可以直瞅着他的脸。
“我拿了一件抵押品来，您瞧，这就是！”说着他从衣袋里掏出一块扁平的旧银表。表的背面刻着一个地球仪。表链是钢的。
“要知道，上次抵押的东西已经到期了。还在前天就超过一个月了。”
“我再给您一个月的利息；请您宽限一下。”
“先生，宽限几天，还是这会儿就把您的东西卖掉，这都得由我决定。”
“表可以当多少钱，阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜？”
“先生，你尽拿些不值钱的东西来，差不多一文不值。上次那个戒指给了您两个卢布，可在首饰商那儿，花一个半卢布就能买个新的。”
“请给我四个卢布吧，我一定来赎，是我父亲的。我很快就会得到钱了。”
“一个半卢布，利息先付，要是您愿意的话。”
“一个半卢布！”年轻人叫了起来。
“随您便。”说着老太婆把表递还给他。年轻人接过表来，感到那样气愤，已经想要走了；但立刻又改了主意，因为他想起，再也无处可去，而且他来这儿还有旁的目的。
“拿来吧！”他粗暴地说。
老太婆伸手到衣袋里去掏钥匙，然后走进门帘后面另一间屋里。只剩下年轻人独自一人站在房屋中间，好奇地侧耳谛听，暗自猜测。可以听到她打开了抽屉柜。“大概是上面的抽屉，”他猜测。“这么说，她是把钥匙装在右边口袋里……全都串成一串，串在一个钢圈儿上……那儿有一把最大的钥匙，有旁的三倍大，带锯齿，当然不是开抽屉柜的……可见还有一个小匣子，要么是个小箱子……瞧，这真有意思。小箱子都是用这样的钥匙……不过，这一切多么卑鄙……”
老太婆回来了。
“您瞧，先生：既然一个卢布一个月的利息是十个戈比，那么一个半卢布该收您十五个戈比，先付一个月的利息。上次那两个卢布也照这样计算，该先收您二十戈比。这么说，总共是三十五戈比。现在您这块表，总共还该给您一卢布十五戈比。这不是，请收下吧。”
“怎么！现在就只有一卢布十五戈比了！”
“正是这样。”
年轻人没有争论，接过了钱。他瞅着老太婆，并不急于出去，似乎他还想说点儿什么，要么是做点儿什么，但好像他自己也不知道，到底要干什么……
“阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜，也许，就在这几天里，我还要给您拿一样东西来……银的……很精致的……烟盒……只等我从朋友那里取回来……”他发窘了，于是住了声。
“好，到那时再说吧，先生。”
“再见……您总是一个人在家？妹妹不在吗？”他到前室去的时候，尽可能随随便便地问。
“先生，您问她干什么？”
“啊，没什么。我不过这么问问。您现在真是……阿廖娜·伊万诺芙娜！”
拉斯科利尼科夫从屋里出来时已经十分心慌意乱。这不安的心情越来越强烈了。下楼时他甚至有好几次停了下来，仿佛有什么事情使他突然吃了一惊。最后，已经到了街上的时候，他激动地说：
“噢，天哪！这一切多么令人厌恶！难道，难道我……不！这是无稽之谈，这是荒谬绝伦！”他毅然决然地加上几句。
“难道我的头脑里会出现这样可怕的想法？我的良心竟能允许干这种肮脏的事情！主要的是：肮脏，卑污，恶劣，恶劣！……
而我，整整一个月……”
但是他既不能用言词、也不能用感叹来表达自己的激动与不安。还在他刚刚去老太婆那儿的时候就开始使他感到压抑和不安的极端厌恶的心情，现在已经达到这种程度，而且变得十分明显，以致他不知该躲到哪里去，才能逃避自己的忧愁。他像喝醉了似地在人行道上走着，看不见路上的行人，老是会撞到他们，清醒过来的时候，已经到了另一条街上。他环顾四周，发觉自己站在一家小酒馆旁，要进酒馆，得从人行道顺着楼梯往下，到地下室去。就在这时，恰好从门里走出两个醉醺醺的人来，他们互相搀扶着，嘴里不干不净地骂着，顺着楼梯爬到街上。拉斯科利尼科夫没想多久，立刻就下去了。在此以前他从未进过酒馆，但是现在他感到头昏，加以火烧火燎的干渴正在折磨着他。他想喝点儿冰冷的啤酒，而且他把自己突然感到的虚弱归咎于饥饿。他坐到又暗又脏的角落里一张发黏的小桌旁边，要了啤酒，贪婪地喝干了第一杯。立刻一切都消失了，他的思想也清晰了。“这一切都是胡说八道，”他满怀希望地说，“这儿没有什么可以感到不安的！只不过是身体不舒服，是一种病态！只要一杯啤酒，一小块干面包，——瞧，转瞬间就变得坚强起来，思想清楚了，意向也坚定了！呸！这一切是多么微不足道！……”但尽管他轻蔑地啐了一口唾沫，他却已经高兴起来，仿佛突然摆脱了某种可怕的沉重负担，并且目光友好地扫视了一下在座的人。不过就是在这时候，他也隐隐约约预感到，这种一切都往好处想的乐观态度也是一种病态。
这时小酒馆里剩下的人已经不多了。除了在楼梯上碰到过的那两个醉鬼，又有吵吵嚷嚷的一群人跟着他们走了出去，他们这一伙约摸有五、六个人，其中有一个姑娘，还带着一架手风琴。他们走了以后，变得静悄悄、空荡荡的。剩下的人中有一个已经醉了，不过醉得并不厉害，坐在摆着啤酒的桌边，看样子是个小市民；他的同伴是个胖子，身材魁梧，穿一件竖领打褶的细腰短呢上衣，蓄一部花白的大胡子，已经喝得酩酊大醉，正坐在长凳上打瞌睡，有时突然似乎半睡半醒，伸开双手，开始用手指打榧子，他并没有从长凳上站起来，上身却不时往上动一动，而且在胡乱哼着一首什么歌曲，竭力想记起歌词，好像是：
整整一年我和妻子亲亲热热，
整——整一年我和妻——子亲亲——热热……
要么是突然醒来，又唱道：
我去波季亚契大街闲逛，
找到了自己从前的婆娘……
但谁也不分享他的幸福；他那个沉默寡言的伙伴对这些感情爆发甚至抱有敌意，而且持怀疑态度。那儿还有一个人，看样子好像是个退职的官吏。他面对自己的酒杯，单独坐在一张桌子旁边，有时喝一口酒，并向四周看看。他似乎也有点儿激动不安。
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 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 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 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 pot- houses, 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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.
拉斯科利尼科夫不惯于与人来往，而且正像已经说过的，他总是逃避一切交际应酬，特别是最近一个时期。但现在不知是什么突然使他想跟人接触了。他心里似乎产生了某种新想法，同时感到渴望与人交往。整整一个月独自忍受强烈的忧愁，经受心情忧郁紧张的折磨，他已经感到如此疲倦，因此希望，哪怕只是一分钟也好，能在另一个世界里喘一口气，随便在什么样的环境里都可以，因此尽管这里肮脏不堪，现在他还是很高兴待在小酒馆里。
酒馆的老板待在另一间屋里，不过常从那儿走下几级台阶，进入这间主要的店堂，而且首先让人看到的总是他那双有红色大翻口、搽了一层油的时髦靴子。他穿一件腰部打褶的长外衣和一件油迹斑驳的黑缎子坎肩，没打领带，满脸上似乎都搽了油，就像给铁锁上油一样。柜台后站着一个十三、四岁的小男孩，还有个年纪更小的男孩子，有人要酒时，他就给送去。摆着切碎的黄瓜，黑面包干，切成一块块的鱼；这一切都有一股难闻的气味。又闷又热，坐在这里简直让人受不了，而且一切都渗透了酒味，似乎单闻闻这儿的空气，不消五分钟就会给熏得醺醺大醉。
有时会碰到这样一些人，我们和他们甚至素不相识，但不知怎的，连一句话都还没说，却突然一下子，刚一见面就引起我们的兴趣。那个坐得稍远、好像退职官吏的客人，就正是让拉斯科利尼科夫产生了这样的印象。以后这年轻人不止一次回想起这第一次印象，甚至认为这是由预感造成的。他不断地打量那个官吏，当然，这也是因为那人也在一个劲儿地瞅着他，而且看得出来，那人很想开口跟他说话。对酒馆里其余的人，包括老板在内，那官吏却不知怎地似乎早已经看惯了，甚至感到无聊，而且带有某种傲慢的藐视意味，就像对待社会地位和文化程度都很低的人们那样，觉得跟他们根本无话可谈。这是一个已经年过半百的人，中等身材，体格健壮，鬓有白发，头顶上秃了老大一块，由于经常酗酒，浮肿的黄脸甚至有点儿发绿，稍微肿胀的眼皮底下，一双细得像两条细缝、然而很有精神、微微发红的小眼睛炯炯发光。但他身上有某种很奇怪的现象；他的目光里流露出甚至仿佛是兴高采烈的神情，——看来，既有理性，又有智慧，——但同时又隐约显示出疯狂的迹象。他穿一件已经完全破破烂烂的黑色旧燕尾服，钮扣几乎都掉光了。只有一颗还勉强连在上面，他就是用这颗钮扣把衣服扣上，看来是希望保持体面。黄土布坎肩下露出皱得不像样子、污迹斑斑的脏胸衣。和所有官员一样，他没留胡子，不过脸已经刮过很久了，所以已经开始长出了浓密的、灰蓝色的胡子茬。而且他的行为举止当真都有一种官员们所特有的庄重风度。但是他显得烦躁不安，把头发弄得乱蓬蓬的，有时神情忧郁，把袖子已经磨破的胳膊肘撑在很脏而且黏搭搭的桌子上，用双手托着脑袋。最后，他直对着拉斯科利尼科夫看了一眼，高声而坚决地说：
“我的先生，恕我冒昧，不知能否与您攀谈几句？因为虽然您衣著并不考究，但凭我的经验却能看出，您是一位受过教育的人，也不常喝酒。我一向尊重受过教育而且真心诚意的人，除此而外，我还是个九等文官①呢。马尔梅拉多夫——这是我的姓；九等文官。恕我冒昧，请问您在工作吗？”
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①一七二二年彼得大帝制订“等级表”，所有文武官员分为十四等，一等最高，十四等最低。九等文官相当于大尉。
“不，我在求学……”青年人回答。他感到惊讶，这有一部分是由于对方说话的语气特别矫揉造作，也由于他竟是那么直截了当地和他说话。尽管不久前有那么短暂的瞬间他想与人交往，不管是什么样的交往都好，但当真有人和他说话时，才听到第一句话，他就又突然感到厌恶和恼怒了，——对所有与他接触、或想要和他接触的人，通常他都会产生这种厌恶和恼怒的心情。
“那么说，是大学生了，或者以前是大学生！”官吏高声说，“我就是这样想的！经验嘛，先生，屡试不爽的经验了！”并且自我吹嘘地把一根手指按在前额上。“以前是大学生，或者搞过学术研究！对不起……”他欠起身来，摇晃了一下，拿起自己的酒壶和酒杯，坐到青年人旁边，稍有点儿斜对着他。他喝醉了，不过仍然健谈，说话也很流利，只是偶尔有的地方前言不搭后语，而且罗里罗唆。他甚至那样急切地渴望与拉斯科利尼科夫交谈，好像有整整一个月没跟人说过话似的。
“先生，”他几乎是郑重其事地开始说，“贫穷不是罪恶，这是真理。我知道，酗酒不是美德，这更是真理。可是赤贫，先生，赤贫却是罪恶。贫穷的时候，您还能保持自己天生感情的高尚气度，在赤贫的情况下，却无论什么时候，无论什么人都做不到。为了赤贫，甚至不是把人用棍子赶走，而是拿扫帚把他从人类社会里清扫出去，让他受更大的；而且这是公正的，因为在赤贫的情况下，我自己首先就准备自己。于是就找到了酒！先生，一个月以前，我太太让列别贾特尼科夫先生痛打了一顿，不过我太太可不是我这种人！您明白吗？对不起，我还要问您一声，即使只是出于一般的好奇心：您在涅瓦河上的干草船①里过过夜吗？”
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①十九世纪六十年代，那里是彼得堡无家可归者过夜的地方。
“没有，没有过过夜，”拉斯科利尼科夫回答。“这是什么意思？”
“唉，我就是从那儿来的，已经是第五夜了……”
他斟了一杯酒，喝干了，于是陷入沉思。真的，他的衣服上，甚至连他的头发里，有些地方还可以看到粘在上面的一根根干草。很有可能，他已经五天没脱衣服，也没洗脸了。尤其是一双手脏得要命，满手油垢，发红，指甲里嵌满黑色的污泥。
他的话好像引起了大家的注意。虽说这注意也是无精打采的。柜台后面的两个男孩子吃吃地笑起来。老板好像故意从上面的房间里下来，好来听听这个“逗乐的家伙”在说什么。他坐到稍远一点儿的地方，懒洋洋地、但神气十足地打着呵欠。显然，马尔梅拉多夫早已是这儿大家都熟悉的人了。而且他爱用矫揉造作的语气说话，大概是由于他习惯经常和酒馆里形形色色素不相识的人谈话。这种习惯对有些酒鬼已经变成了一种需要，主要是他们当中那些在家里严受管束、经常受到压制的人。因此他们在同样嗜酒如命的这伙人中间，才总是力图为自己表白，仿佛是设法给自己辩解，如果可能的话，甚至试图博得别人的尊敬。
“逗乐的家伙！”老板高声说。“可你干吗不去工作，干吗不去办公，既然你是个官员？”
“我为什么不去办公吗，先生，”马尔梅拉多夫接住话茬说，这话是单对着拉斯科利尼科夫说的，仿佛这是他向他提出了这个问题。“为什么不去办公吗？难道我自轻自贱、徒然降低自己的身份，自己不觉得心痛吗？一个月以前，当列别贾特尼科夫先生动手打我妻子的时候，我喝得醉醺醺地躺在床上，难道我不感到痛苦吗？对不起，年轻人，您是不是有过……嗯哼……虽然明知毫无希望，可还是不得不开口向人借钱？”
“有过……毫无希望是什么意思？”
“就是完全没有希望，事先就知道这绝不会有什么结果。喏，譬如说吧，您早就知道，而且有充分根据，知道这个人，这个心地最善良、对社会最有益的公民无论如何也不会把钱借给您。因为，请问，他为什么要给呢？不是吗，他明明知道，这不会还给他。出于同情心吗？可是列别贾特尼科夫先生，这个经常留心各种新思想的人，不久前解释说，在我们这个时代，就连科学也不允许有同情心，在有了经济学的英国就是这样①请问，他为什么要给钱呢？瞧，您事先就知道，他绝不会借给您，可您还是去了……”
“为什么要去呢？”拉斯科利尼科夫追问一句。
“如果没有别人可找，如果再也无处可去呢！不是吗，得让每个人至少有个什么可以去的地方啊。因为常常有这样的时候，一定得至少有个可以去的地方！我的独生女儿头一次去拉生意的时候，我也去了……（因为我女儿靠黄色执照②生活……）”他附带加上了一句，同时有点儿神色不安地看了看青年人。“没什么，先生，没什么！”柜台后面的两个男孩噗嗤一声笑了出来，老板也微微一笑，这时他立刻匆匆忙忙地说，看来神情是安详的。“没什么！这些人摇头我不会感到不好意思，因为这一切大家都已经知道了，一切秘密都公开了；而且我不是以蔑视的态度，而是怀着恭顺的心情来对待这一切的。由它去吧！让他们笑吧！‘你们看这个人！’③对不起，年轻人：您能不能……可是，不，用一种更加有力、更富有表现力的方式，说得更清楚些：您能不能，您敢不敢现在看着我肯定地说，“我不是猪猡？”
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①指英国哲学家、经济学家约·斯·米利（一八○六——一八七三）的《经济学原理），该书的俄译本是一八六五年出版的。米利认为，人的行为、愿望乃至苦难都是由他们的经济地位事先决定的。陀思妥耶夫斯基不同意这种观点。
②指作妓女。帝俄时，妓女要在局领黄色执照。
③引自《新约全书·约翰福音》第十九章第五节：“耶稣出来，戴着荆棘冠冕，穿着紫袍，彼拉多对他们说，你们看这个人。”
年轻人什么也没有回答。
“嗯，”等到屋里随之而来的吃吃的笑声停下来以后，这位演说家又庄重地，这一回甚至是更加尊严地接着说：“嗯，就算我是猪猡吧，可她是一位太太！我的形象像畜生，而卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜，我的妻子，是个受过教育的人，是位校级军官的女儿。就算，就算我是个下流坯吧，她却有一颗高尚的心，受过教育，满怀崇高的感情。然而，……噢，如果她怜悯我的话！先生，先生，要知道，得让每个人至少有个能怜悯他的地方啊！而卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜虽然是一位宽洪大量的太太，可是她不公正……虽然我自己也知道，她揪我头发的时候，只不过是出于她的怜悯心，因为，我反复说，她揪我的头发，我并不感到难为情，年轻人，”他又听见一阵吃吃的笑声，怀着加倍的自尊承认道，“不过，天哪，如果她哪怕是仅仅有一次……可是，不！不！这一切都是徒然的，没什么好说的！没什么好说的了！……因为我所希望的已经不止一次成为现实，已经不止一次怜悯过我了，可是……
我就是这么个德性，我是个天生的畜生！”
“可不是！”老板打着呵欠说。
马尔梅拉多夫坚决地用拳头捶了捶桌子。
“我就是这么个德性！您知道吗，先生，我连她的长袜都拿去卖掉，喝光了？不是鞋子，因为这至少还多少合乎情理。可是长袜，把她的长袜卖掉，喝光了！她的一条山羊毛头巾也让我卖掉，喝光了，是人家从前送给她的，是她自己的，而不是我的；可我们住在半间寒冷的房屋里，这个冬天她着了凉，咳嗽起来，已经吐血了。我们有三个小孩子，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜从早到晚忙个不停，擦啊，洗啊，给孩子们洗澡，因为她从小就爱干净，可她的胸部不健康，很可能害了痨病，这我也感觉到了。难道我感觉不到吗？酒喝得越多，越感觉得出来。就是为此我才喝酒的，想在酒中寻找同情和爱情……我喝酒，是因为我想得到加倍的痛苦！”说着，他仿佛绝望地朝桌子垂下了头。
“年轻人，”他又挺直了腰，接着说，“我从您脸上看出，您好像有什么不幸的事情。您一进来，我就看出来了，所以立刻就跟您交谈起来。因为，我把自己的生活故事告诉您，并不是想在这些游手好闲的家伙面前作践自己，这一切，我不说他们也都知道，我说这些，是为了寻找一个富有同情心和受过教育的人。您听我说，我的妻子在省里一所贵族高等女子学校里受过教育，毕业的时候，省长和其他社会名流都在座，她跳了披巾舞①，为此得了一枚金质奖章和一张奖状。奖章嘛……奖章让我卖掉换酒喝光了……已经很久了……嗯，……奖状到现在还放在她的箱子里，不久前她还拿给女房东看过。虽然她跟房东经常不断地争吵，不过还是想在人前夸耀一番，把过去的幸福日子告诉人家，不管他是什么人都行。我并不指责她，我并不责备她，因为这是她记忆里剩下的最后一点安慰，其余的全都烟消云散了。是啊，是啊；是一位性情急躁，高傲而又倔强的太太。自己擦洗地板，啃黑面包，可是绝不让人不尊重自己。正是因此她不肯原谅列别贾特尼科夫先生的无礼行为，列别贾特尼科夫先生为这打了她以后，她躺倒在床上，这与其说是因为挨了打，倒不如说是因为伤了她的心。我娶她的时候，她已经是个寡妇，带着三个孩子，一个比一个小。她嫁的第一个丈夫是个步兵军官，她爱他，跟他离家私奔了。她别提多爱自己的丈夫了，可是他玩上了牌，落得出庭受审，就这么死了。最后他还打她，虽然她不原谅他，这我确实知道，而且有可靠的证据，但是直到现在她还经常眼泪汪汪地想起他来，用他来教训我，而我却感到高兴，我所以高兴，是因为，至少在她想象中，她认为自己有一个时期是幸福的……他死了以后，她和三个年龄很小的孩子留在一个极其偏远的县城里，当时我正好也在那儿，她生活极端贫困，几乎陷于绝境，虽说我见过许许多多各式各样不同寻常的事情，可就连我也无法描绘她的处境。亲戚都不认她了。而且她高傲得很，高傲得太过分了……而那时候，先生，那时候我也成了鳏夫，有个前妻留下的十四岁的女儿，于是我向她求婚了，因为我不忍心看到她受这样的苦。一个受过教育、又有教养、出身名门的女人，竟同意下嫁给我，单凭这点您就可以想见，她的苦难已经达到了什么地步！可是她嫁给了我！她痛哭流涕，悲痛欲绝，——可是嫁给了我！因为走投无路啊。您可明白，您可明白，先生，当一个人已经走投无路的时候意味着什么吗？不！这一点您还不明白……整整一年，我虔诚、严格地履行自己的义务，从未碰过这玩意儿（他伸出一只手指碰了碰那个能装半什托夫②的酒壶），因为我有感情。不过就是这样，我也没能赢得她的欢心；而这时候我失业了，也不是因为我有什么过错，而是因为人事变动，于是我喝起酒来！……一年半以前，经过长途跋涉和数不尽的灾难之后，我们终于来到了这宏伟壮丽、用无数纪念碑装饰起来的首都。在这儿我又找到了工作……找到了，又丢掉了。您明白吗？这次可是由于我自己的过错，丢掉了差事，因为我的劣根性暴露了……目前我们住在半间房屋里，住在女房东阿玛莉娅·费多罗芙娜·利佩韦赫泽尔那儿，我们靠什么过活，拿什么付房租，我自己也不知道。那儿住着很多人，除了我们……简直是所多玛③，混乱极了……嗯……是的……就在这时候，我前妻生的女儿长大了，她，我女儿，在那长大成人的这段时间里受过继母多少，这我就不说了。因为卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜虽然宽洪大量，却是一位性情急躁、很容易生气的太太，而且不让别人说话……是啊！唉，这些都没什么好回忆的！索尼娅没受过教育，这您可以想象得出来。四年前我曾尝试教她地理和世界通史；不过我自己懂得的也不多，而且没有适当的教科书，因为仅有的一些书籍……嗯！……唉，这些书现在已经没有了，所以全部教育就这样结束了。我们只读到了波斯的居鲁士大帝④。后来，她已经成年以后，看过几本爱情小说，不久以前，通过列别贾特尼科夫先生，还看过一本刘易士的《生理学》⑤，——您知道这本书吗？——她怀着很大的兴趣看完了，甚至还给我们念过其中的几个片断：这就是她所受的全部教育。现在我问您，我的先生，我以我自己的名义向您提出一个非正式的问题：照您看，一个贫穷、然而清白无瑕的姑娘，靠自己诚实的劳动能挣到很多钱吗？……先生，如果她清清白白，又没有特殊才能，即使双手一刻不停地干活，一天也挣不到十五个戈比！而且五等文官克洛普什托克，伊万·伊万诺维奇，——这个人您听说过吗？——借口她做的衬衣领子尺寸不对，而且缝歪了，不仅那半打荷兰衬衣的工钱到现在还没给，甚至仗势欺人，跺跺脚，用很难听的话破口大骂，把她赶了出来。可是这时候几个孩子都在挨饿……这时候卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜痛苦地搓着手，在屋里走来走去，脸上泛出红晕，——害这种病的人总是这样：‘你，这个好吃懒做的家伙，’她说，‘住在我们这儿，又吃，又喝，还要取暖，’可这儿有什么好喝、好吃的呢，既然孩子们已经三天没见到面了！当时我正躺着……唉，有什么好说的呢？我醉醺醺地躺着，听到我的索尼娅说（她性情温和，说话的声音也是那么柔和……一头淡黄色的头发，小脸蛋儿苍白，消瘦），她说，‘怎么，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜，难道我非得去干这种事情吗？’而达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜，这个居心不良的女人，局里对她也熟悉得很，她已经通过女房东来过三次了。‘有什么呢？’。卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜嘲笑地回答，‘爱护贞节干什么？嘿，这可真是个宝贝啊！’不过请别责备她，请别责备她，先生，请别责备她！她说这话是在失去理性的时候，精神已经不正常了，是在感情激动而且有病的情况下，是在听到挨饿的孩子哭声的时候，而且她说这话与其说是真有这个意思，不如说是为了侮辱她……因为卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜就是这样的性格，只要孩子们一哭，哪怕是因为饿得慌，她也立刻动手去打他们。我看到，大约五点多钟的时候，索涅奇卡起来，包上头巾，披上斗篷，从屋里走了出去，到八点多钟回来了。她一回来，径直走到卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜跟前，一声不响地把三十个卢布摆到她面前的桌子上。这么做的时候她一句话也没有说，哪怕看她一眼也好，可连看都没看，只是拿了我们那块绿色德拉德达姆呢的大头巾（我们有这么一块公用的头巾，是德拉德达姆呢的），用它把头和脸全都蒙起来，躺到床上，脸冲着墙，只看见瘦小的肩膀和全身一个劲儿地抖个不停……而我，还是像不久以前那样躺着……当时我看到，年轻人，我看见，在这以后，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜也是那样一言不发，走到索涅奇卡床前，在她脚边跪了整整一夜，吻她的脚，不想起来，后来，她俩抱在一起，就这样睡着了……
两人一道……两人一道……而我……却醉醺醺地躺着。”
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①在毕业晚会上跳披巾舞是成绩优异的毕业生的特权。
②容量单位，一什托夫约等于一·二公升。
③见《旧约·创世纪》十九章二十四节：所多玛和蛾摩拉两城因罪孽深重被耶和华用硫磺和火烧毁。
④居鲁士，前五五八——前五二九年的波斯国王。
⑤指英国实证主义哲学家和生理学家乔治·刘易士（一八一七——一八七八）的《日常生活的生理学》，十九世纪六十年代，在具有唯物主义观点的青年人中，这本书很受欢迎。
马尔梅拉多夫沉默了，仿佛他的声音突然断了。随后，他忽然匆匆斟了一杯酒，一口喝干，清了清嗓子。
“从那时候起，我的先生，”沉默了一会儿以后，他接着说，“由于发生了一件不幸的事，也由于有些居心不良的人告发，——特别是达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜起了一定作用，仿佛是为了没对她表示应有的尊敬，——从那时候起，我的女儿，索菲娅·谢苗诺芙娜，就领了黄色执照，因此不能和我们住在一起了。因为我们的女房东阿玛莉娅·费多罗芙娜不愿意让她住在这里（可是以前她倒帮过达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜的忙），再说列别贾特尼科夫先生……嗯……正是为了索尼娅，他和卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜之间才发生了那件不愉快的事。起初是他自己要跟索尼娅来往，这时却突然变得高傲自大了：‘怎么，’他说，‘我，一个这么有文化的人，竟要跟这样一个女人住在一幢房子里吗？’卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜不服气，为她辩解……于是就吵了起来……现在索涅奇卡多半是在黄昏来我们这里，给卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜帮帮忙，力所能及地给送点儿钱来……她住在裁缝卡佩尔纳乌莫夫的房子里，向他们租了一间住房，卡佩尔纳乌莫夫是个跛子，说话发音不清楚，他那一大家子人个个说话也都口齿不清。连他老婆说话发音也不清楚……他们都住在一间屋里，我的索尼娅另有一间屋子，是用隔板隔开的……嗯，是啊……是些最穷苦的穷人，话都说不清楚……是啊……不过那一天清早我起来了，穿上我的破衣烂衫，举起双手向上天祈祷，然后去见伊万·阿凡纳西耶维奇大人。请问您认识伊万·阿凡纳西耶维奇大人吗？……不认识？这样一位道德高尚的人，您竟会不认识！心肠像蜡一样软……上帝面前的蜡；会像蜡一样融化！……听完我的话，他甚至掉下泪来。‘唉，’他说，‘马尔梅拉多夫，有一次你已经辜负了我的期望……我就再任用你一次吧，这完全由我个人负责，’他这么说，‘你可要记住，’他说，‘回去吧！’我吻了吻他脚上的灰尘，不过是在想象之中，因为他身为显贵，有治国的新思想、新文化，是不允许当真这么做的；我回到家里，刚一说出，我又被录用，又会领到薪俸了，天哪，那时候大家那个高兴劲儿啊……”
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 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 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?"
"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 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 dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at her, she simply picked up our big green /drap de dames/ shawl (we have a shawl, made of /drap de dames/), put it over her head and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her body kept shuddering. . . . And I went on lying there, just as before. . . . And then I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna, in the same silence go up to Sonia's little bed; she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia's feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other's arms . . . together, together . . . yes . . . and I . . . lay drunk."
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.
"Since then, sir," he went on after a brief pause--"Since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by evil- intentioned persons--in all which Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect--since then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too . . . hm. . . . All the trouble between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on Sonia's account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: 'how,' said he, 'can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?' And Katerina Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for her . . . and so that's how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can. . . . She has a room at the Kapernaumovs' the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off. . . . Hm . . . yes . . . very poor people and all with cleft palates . . . yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know him? No? Well, then, it's a man of God you don't know. He is wax . . . wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth! . . . His eyes were dim when he heard my story. 'Marmeladov, once already you have deceived my expectations . . . I'll take you once more on my own responsibility'--that's what he said, 'remember,' he said, 'and now you can go.' I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I announced that I'd been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was . . .!"
酒馆的老板待在另一间屋里，不过常从那儿走下几级台阶，进入这间主要的店堂，而且首先让人看到的总是他那双有红色大翻口、搽了一层油的时髦靴子。他穿一件腰部打褶的长外衣和一件油迹斑驳的黑缎子坎肩，没打领带，满脸上似乎都搽了油，就像给铁锁上油一样。柜台后站着一个十三、四岁的小男孩，还有个年纪更小的男孩子，有人要酒时，他就给送去。摆着切碎的黄瓜，黑面包干，切成一块块的鱼；这一切都有一股难闻的气味。又闷又热，坐在这里简直让人受不了，而且一切都渗透了酒味，似乎单闻闻这儿的空气，不消五分钟就会给熏得醺醺大醉。
有时会碰到这样一些人，我们和他们甚至素不相识，但不知怎的，连一句话都还没说，却突然一下子，刚一见面就引起我们的兴趣。那个坐得稍远、好像退职官吏的客人，就正是让拉斯科利尼科夫产生了这样的印象。以后这年轻人不止一次回想起这第一次印象，甚至认为这是由预感造成的。他不断地打量那个官吏，当然，这也是因为那人也在一个劲儿地瞅着他，而且看得出来，那人很想开口跟他说话。对酒馆里其余的人，包括老板在内，那官吏却不知怎地似乎早已经看惯了，甚至感到无聊，而且带有某种傲慢的藐视意味，就像对待社会地位和文化程度都很低的人们那样，觉得跟他们根本无话可谈。这是一个已经年过半百的人，中等身材，体格健壮，鬓有白发，头顶上秃了老大一块，由于经常酗酒，浮肿的黄脸甚至有点儿发绿，稍微肿胀的眼皮底下，一双细得像两条细缝、然而很有精神、微微发红的小眼睛炯炯发光。但他身上有某种很奇怪的现象；他的目光里流露出甚至仿佛是兴高采烈的神情，——看来，既有理性，又有智慧，——但同时又隐约显示出疯狂的迹象。他穿一件已经完全破破烂烂的黑色旧燕尾服，钮扣几乎都掉光了。只有一颗还勉强连在上面，他就是用这颗钮扣把衣服扣上，看来是希望保持体面。黄土布坎肩下露出皱得不像样子、污迹斑斑的脏胸衣。和所有官员一样，他没留胡子，不过脸已经刮过很久了，所以已经开始长出了浓密的、灰蓝色的胡子茬。而且他的行为举止当真都有一种官员们所特有的庄重风度。但是他显得烦躁不安，把头发弄得乱蓬蓬的，有时神情忧郁，把袖子已经磨破的胳膊肘撑在很脏而且黏搭搭的桌子上，用双手托着脑袋。最后，他直对着拉斯科利尼科夫看了一眼，高声而坚决地说：
“我的先生，恕我冒昧，不知能否与您攀谈几句？因为虽然您衣著并不考究，但凭我的经验却能看出，您是一位受过教育的人，也不常喝酒。我一向尊重受过教育而且真心诚意的人，除此而外，我还是个九等文官①呢。马尔梅拉多夫——这是我的姓；九等文官。恕我冒昧，请问您在工作吗？”
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①一七二二年彼得大帝制订“等级表”，所有文武官员分为十四等，一等最高，十四等最低。九等文官相当于大尉。
“不，我在求学……”青年人回答。他感到惊讶，这有一部分是由于对方说话的语气特别矫揉造作，也由于他竟是那么直截了当地和他说话。尽管不久前有那么短暂的瞬间他想与人交往，不管是什么样的交往都好，但当真有人和他说话时，才听到第一句话，他就又突然感到厌恶和恼怒了，——对所有与他接触、或想要和他接触的人，通常他都会产生这种厌恶和恼怒的心情。
“那么说，是大学生了，或者以前是大学生！”官吏高声说，“我就是这样想的！经验嘛，先生，屡试不爽的经验了！”并且自我吹嘘地把一根手指按在前额上。“以前是大学生，或者搞过学术研究！对不起……”他欠起身来，摇晃了一下，拿起自己的酒壶和酒杯，坐到青年人旁边，稍有点儿斜对着他。他喝醉了，不过仍然健谈，说话也很流利，只是偶尔有的地方前言不搭后语，而且罗里罗唆。他甚至那样急切地渴望与拉斯科利尼科夫交谈，好像有整整一个月没跟人说过话似的。
“先生，”他几乎是郑重其事地开始说，“贫穷不是罪恶，这是真理。我知道，酗酒不是美德，这更是真理。可是赤贫，先生，赤贫却是罪恶。贫穷的时候，您还能保持自己天生感情的高尚气度，在赤贫的情况下，却无论什么时候，无论什么人都做不到。为了赤贫，甚至不是把人用棍子赶走，而是拿扫帚把他从人类社会里清扫出去，让他受更大的；而且这是公正的，因为在赤贫的情况下，我自己首先就准备自己。于是就找到了酒！先生，一个月以前，我太太让列别贾特尼科夫先生痛打了一顿，不过我太太可不是我这种人！您明白吗？对不起，我还要问您一声，即使只是出于一般的好奇心：您在涅瓦河上的干草船①里过过夜吗？”
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①十九世纪六十年代，那里是彼得堡无家可归者过夜的地方。
“没有，没有过过夜，”拉斯科利尼科夫回答。“这是什么意思？”
“唉，我就是从那儿来的，已经是第五夜了……”
他斟了一杯酒，喝干了，于是陷入沉思。真的，他的衣服上，甚至连他的头发里，有些地方还可以看到粘在上面的一根根干草。很有可能，他已经五天没脱衣服，也没洗脸了。尤其是一双手脏得要命，满手油垢，发红，指甲里嵌满黑色的污泥。
他的话好像引起了大家的注意。虽说这注意也是无精打采的。柜台后面的两个男孩子吃吃地笑起来。老板好像故意从上面的房间里下来，好来听听这个“逗乐的家伙”在说什么。他坐到稍远一点儿的地方，懒洋洋地、但神气十足地打着呵欠。显然，马尔梅拉多夫早已是这儿大家都熟悉的人了。而且他爱用矫揉造作的语气说话，大概是由于他习惯经常和酒馆里形形色色素不相识的人谈话。这种习惯对有些酒鬼已经变成了一种需要，主要是他们当中那些在家里严受管束、经常受到压制的人。因此他们在同样嗜酒如命的这伙人中间，才总是力图为自己表白，仿佛是设法给自己辩解，如果可能的话，甚至试图博得别人的尊敬。
“逗乐的家伙！”老板高声说。“可你干吗不去工作，干吗不去办公，既然你是个官员？”
“我为什么不去办公吗，先生，”马尔梅拉多夫接住话茬说，这话是单对着拉斯科利尼科夫说的，仿佛这是他向他提出了这个问题。“为什么不去办公吗？难道我自轻自贱、徒然降低自己的身份，自己不觉得心痛吗？一个月以前，当列别贾特尼科夫先生动手打我妻子的时候，我喝得醉醺醺地躺在床上，难道我不感到痛苦吗？对不起，年轻人，您是不是有过……嗯哼……虽然明知毫无希望，可还是不得不开口向人借钱？”
“有过……毫无希望是什么意思？”
“就是完全没有希望，事先就知道这绝不会有什么结果。喏，譬如说吧，您早就知道，而且有充分根据，知道这个人，这个心地最善良、对社会最有益的公民无论如何也不会把钱借给您。因为，请问，他为什么要给呢？不是吗，他明明知道，这不会还给他。出于同情心吗？可是列别贾特尼科夫先生，这个经常留心各种新思想的人，不久前解释说，在我们这个时代，就连科学也不允许有同情心，在有了经济学的英国就是这样①请问，他为什么要给钱呢？瞧，您事先就知道，他绝不会借给您，可您还是去了……”
“为什么要去呢？”拉斯科利尼科夫追问一句。
“如果没有别人可找，如果再也无处可去呢！不是吗，得让每个人至少有个什么可以去的地方啊。因为常常有这样的时候，一定得至少有个可以去的地方！我的独生女儿头一次去拉生意的时候，我也去了……（因为我女儿靠黄色执照②生活……）”他附带加上了一句，同时有点儿神色不安地看了看青年人。“没什么，先生，没什么！”柜台后面的两个男孩噗嗤一声笑了出来，老板也微微一笑，这时他立刻匆匆忙忙地说，看来神情是安详的。“没什么！这些人摇头我不会感到不好意思，因为这一切大家都已经知道了，一切秘密都公开了；而且我不是以蔑视的态度，而是怀着恭顺的心情来对待这一切的。由它去吧！让他们笑吧！‘你们看这个人！’③对不起，年轻人：您能不能……可是，不，用一种更加有力、更富有表现力的方式，说得更清楚些：您能不能，您敢不敢现在看着我肯定地说，“我不是猪猡？”
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①指英国哲学家、经济学家约·斯·米利（一八○六——一八七三）的《经济学原理），该书的俄译本是一八六五年出版的。米利认为，人的行为、愿望乃至苦难都是由他们的经济地位事先决定的。陀思妥耶夫斯基不同意这种观点。
②指作妓女。帝俄时，妓女要在局领黄色执照。
③引自《新约全书·约翰福音》第十九章第五节：“耶稣出来，戴着荆棘冠冕，穿着紫袍，彼拉多对他们说，你们看这个人。”
年轻人什么也没有回答。
“嗯，”等到屋里随之而来的吃吃的笑声停下来以后，这位演说家又庄重地，这一回甚至是更加尊严地接着说：“嗯，就算我是猪猡吧，可她是一位太太！我的形象像畜生，而卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜，我的妻子，是个受过教育的人，是位校级军官的女儿。就算，就算我是个下流坯吧，她却有一颗高尚的心，受过教育，满怀崇高的感情。然而，……噢，如果她怜悯我的话！先生，先生，要知道，得让每个人至少有个能怜悯他的地方啊！而卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜虽然是一位宽洪大量的太太，可是她不公正……虽然我自己也知道，她揪我头发的时候，只不过是出于她的怜悯心，因为，我反复说，她揪我的头发，我并不感到难为情，年轻人，”他又听见一阵吃吃的笑声，怀着加倍的自尊承认道，“不过，天哪，如果她哪怕是仅仅有一次……可是，不！不！这一切都是徒然的，没什么好说的！没什么好说的了！……因为我所希望的已经不止一次成为现实，已经不止一次怜悯过我了，可是……
我就是这么个德性，我是个天生的畜生！”
“可不是！”老板打着呵欠说。
马尔梅拉多夫坚决地用拳头捶了捶桌子。
“我就是这么个德性！您知道吗，先生，我连她的长袜都拿去卖掉，喝光了？不是鞋子，因为这至少还多少合乎情理。可是长袜，把她的长袜卖掉，喝光了！她的一条山羊毛头巾也让我卖掉，喝光了，是人家从前送给她的，是她自己的，而不是我的；可我们住在半间寒冷的房屋里，这个冬天她着了凉，咳嗽起来，已经吐血了。我们有三个小孩子，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜从早到晚忙个不停，擦啊，洗啊，给孩子们洗澡，因为她从小就爱干净，可她的胸部不健康，很可能害了痨病，这我也感觉到了。难道我感觉不到吗？酒喝得越多，越感觉得出来。就是为此我才喝酒的，想在酒中寻找同情和爱情……我喝酒，是因为我想得到加倍的痛苦！”说着，他仿佛绝望地朝桌子垂下了头。
“年轻人，”他又挺直了腰，接着说，“我从您脸上看出，您好像有什么不幸的事情。您一进来，我就看出来了，所以立刻就跟您交谈起来。因为，我把自己的生活故事告诉您，并不是想在这些游手好闲的家伙面前作践自己，这一切，我不说他们也都知道，我说这些，是为了寻找一个富有同情心和受过教育的人。您听我说，我的妻子在省里一所贵族高等女子学校里受过教育，毕业的时候，省长和其他社会名流都在座，她跳了披巾舞①，为此得了一枚金质奖章和一张奖状。奖章嘛……奖章让我卖掉换酒喝光了……已经很久了……嗯，……奖状到现在还放在她的箱子里，不久前她还拿给女房东看过。虽然她跟房东经常不断地争吵，不过还是想在人前夸耀一番，把过去的幸福日子告诉人家，不管他是什么人都行。我并不指责她，我并不责备她，因为这是她记忆里剩下的最后一点安慰，其余的全都烟消云散了。是啊，是啊；是一位性情急躁，高傲而又倔强的太太。自己擦洗地板，啃黑面包，可是绝不让人不尊重自己。正是因此她不肯原谅列别贾特尼科夫先生的无礼行为，列别贾特尼科夫先生为这打了她以后，她躺倒在床上，这与其说是因为挨了打，倒不如说是因为伤了她的心。我娶她的时候，她已经是个寡妇，带着三个孩子，一个比一个小。她嫁的第一个丈夫是个步兵军官，她爱他，跟他离家私奔了。她别提多爱自己的丈夫了，可是他玩上了牌，落得出庭受审，就这么死了。最后他还打她，虽然她不原谅他，这我确实知道，而且有可靠的证据，但是直到现在她还经常眼泪汪汪地想起他来，用他来教训我，而我却感到高兴，我所以高兴，是因为，至少在她想象中，她认为自己有一个时期是幸福的……他死了以后，她和三个年龄很小的孩子留在一个极其偏远的县城里，当时我正好也在那儿，她生活极端贫困，几乎陷于绝境，虽说我见过许许多多各式各样不同寻常的事情，可就连我也无法描绘她的处境。亲戚都不认她了。而且她高傲得很，高傲得太过分了……而那时候，先生，那时候我也成了鳏夫，有个前妻留下的十四岁的女儿，于是我向她求婚了，因为我不忍心看到她受这样的苦。一个受过教育、又有教养、出身名门的女人，竟同意下嫁给我，单凭这点您就可以想见，她的苦难已经达到了什么地步！可是她嫁给了我！她痛哭流涕，悲痛欲绝，——可是嫁给了我！因为走投无路啊。您可明白，您可明白，先生，当一个人已经走投无路的时候意味着什么吗？不！这一点您还不明白……整整一年，我虔诚、严格地履行自己的义务，从未碰过这玩意儿（他伸出一只手指碰了碰那个能装半什托夫②的酒壶），因为我有感情。不过就是这样，我也没能赢得她的欢心；而这时候我失业了，也不是因为我有什么过错，而是因为人事变动，于是我喝起酒来！……一年半以前，经过长途跋涉和数不尽的灾难之后，我们终于来到了这宏伟壮丽、用无数纪念碑装饰起来的首都。在这儿我又找到了工作……找到了，又丢掉了。您明白吗？这次可是由于我自己的过错，丢掉了差事，因为我的劣根性暴露了……目前我们住在半间房屋里，住在女房东阿玛莉娅·费多罗芙娜·利佩韦赫泽尔那儿，我们靠什么过活，拿什么付房租，我自己也不知道。那儿住着很多人，除了我们……简直是所多玛③，混乱极了……嗯……是的……就在这时候，我前妻生的女儿长大了，她，我女儿，在那长大成人的这段时间里受过继母多少，这我就不说了。因为卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜虽然宽洪大量，却是一位性情急躁、很容易生气的太太，而且不让别人说话……是啊！唉，这些都没什么好回忆的！索尼娅没受过教育，这您可以想象得出来。四年前我曾尝试教她地理和世界通史；不过我自己懂得的也不多，而且没有适当的教科书，因为仅有的一些书籍……嗯！……唉，这些书现在已经没有了，所以全部教育就这样结束了。我们只读到了波斯的居鲁士大帝④。后来，她已经成年以后，看过几本爱情小说，不久以前，通过列别贾特尼科夫先生，还看过一本刘易士的《生理学》⑤，——您知道这本书吗？——她怀着很大的兴趣看完了，甚至还给我们念过其中的几个片断：这就是她所受的全部教育。现在我问您，我的先生，我以我自己的名义向您提出一个非正式的问题：照您看，一个贫穷、然而清白无瑕的姑娘，靠自己诚实的劳动能挣到很多钱吗？……先生，如果她清清白白，又没有特殊才能，即使双手一刻不停地干活，一天也挣不到十五个戈比！而且五等文官克洛普什托克，伊万·伊万诺维奇，——这个人您听说过吗？——借口她做的衬衣领子尺寸不对，而且缝歪了，不仅那半打荷兰衬衣的工钱到现在还没给，甚至仗势欺人，跺跺脚，用很难听的话破口大骂，把她赶了出来。可是这时候几个孩子都在挨饿……这时候卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜痛苦地搓着手，在屋里走来走去，脸上泛出红晕，——害这种病的人总是这样：‘你，这个好吃懒做的家伙，’她说，‘住在我们这儿，又吃，又喝，还要取暖，’可这儿有什么好喝、好吃的呢，既然孩子们已经三天没见到面了！当时我正躺着……唉，有什么好说的呢？我醉醺醺地躺着，听到我的索尼娅说（她性情温和，说话的声音也是那么柔和……一头淡黄色的头发，小脸蛋儿苍白，消瘦），她说，‘怎么，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜，难道我非得去干这种事情吗？’而达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜，这个居心不良的女人，局里对她也熟悉得很，她已经通过女房东来过三次了。‘有什么呢？’。卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜嘲笑地回答，‘爱护贞节干什么？嘿，这可真是个宝贝啊！’不过请别责备她，请别责备她，先生，请别责备她！她说这话是在失去理性的时候，精神已经不正常了，是在感情激动而且有病的情况下，是在听到挨饿的孩子哭声的时候，而且她说这话与其说是真有这个意思，不如说是为了侮辱她……因为卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜就是这样的性格，只要孩子们一哭，哪怕是因为饿得慌，她也立刻动手去打他们。我看到，大约五点多钟的时候，索涅奇卡起来，包上头巾，披上斗篷，从屋里走了出去，到八点多钟回来了。她一回来，径直走到卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜跟前，一声不响地把三十个卢布摆到她面前的桌子上。这么做的时候她一句话也没有说，哪怕看她一眼也好，可连看都没看，只是拿了我们那块绿色德拉德达姆呢的大头巾（我们有这么一块公用的头巾，是德拉德达姆呢的），用它把头和脸全都蒙起来，躺到床上，脸冲着墙，只看见瘦小的肩膀和全身一个劲儿地抖个不停……而我，还是像不久以前那样躺着……当时我看到，年轻人，我看见，在这以后，卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜也是那样一言不发，走到索涅奇卡床前，在她脚边跪了整整一夜，吻她的脚，不想起来，后来，她俩抱在一起，就这样睡着了……
两人一道……两人一道……而我……却醉醺醺地躺着。”
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①在毕业晚会上跳披巾舞是成绩优异的毕业生的特权。
②容量单位，一什托夫约等于一·二公升。
③见《旧约·创世纪》十九章二十四节：所多玛和蛾摩拉两城因罪孽深重被耶和华用硫磺和火烧毁。
④居鲁士，前五五八——前五二九年的波斯国王。
⑤指英国实证主义哲学家和生理学家乔治·刘易士（一八一七——一八七八）的《日常生活的生理学》，十九世纪六十年代，在具有唯物主义观点的青年人中，这本书很受欢迎。
马尔梅拉多夫沉默了，仿佛他的声音突然断了。随后，他忽然匆匆斟了一杯酒，一口喝干，清了清嗓子。
“从那时候起，我的先生，”沉默了一会儿以后，他接着说，“由于发生了一件不幸的事，也由于有些居心不良的人告发，——特别是达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜起了一定作用，仿佛是为了没对她表示应有的尊敬，——从那时候起，我的女儿，索菲娅·谢苗诺芙娜，就领了黄色执照，因此不能和我们住在一起了。因为我们的女房东阿玛莉娅·费多罗芙娜不愿意让她住在这里（可是以前她倒帮过达里娅·弗兰佐芙娜的忙），再说列别贾特尼科夫先生……嗯……正是为了索尼娅，他和卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜之间才发生了那件不愉快的事。起初是他自己要跟索尼娅来往，这时却突然变得高傲自大了：‘怎么，’他说，‘我，一个这么有文化的人，竟要跟这样一个女人住在一幢房子里吗？’卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜不服气，为她辩解……于是就吵了起来……现在索涅奇卡多半是在黄昏来我们这里，给卡捷琳娜·伊万诺芙娜帮帮忙，力所能及地给送点儿钱来……她住在裁缝卡佩尔纳乌莫夫的房子里，向他们租了一间住房，卡佩尔纳乌莫夫是个跛子，说话发音不清楚，他那一大家子人个个说话也都口齿不清。连他老婆说话发音也不清楚……他们都住在一间屋里，我的索尼娅另有一间屋子，是用隔板隔开的……嗯，是啊……是些最穷苦的穷人，话都说不清楚……是啊……不过那一天清早我起来了，穿上我的破衣烂衫，举起双手向上天祈祷，然后去见伊万·阿凡纳西耶维奇大人。请问您认识伊万·阿凡纳西耶维奇大人吗？……不认识？这样一位道德高尚的人，您竟会不认识！心肠像蜡一样软……上帝面前的蜡；会像蜡一样融化！……听完我的话，他甚至掉下泪来。‘唉，’他说，‘马尔梅拉多夫，有一次你已经辜负了我的期望……我就再任用你一次吧，这完全由我个人负责，’他这么说，‘你可要记住，’他说，‘回去吧！’我吻了吻他脚上的灰尘，不过是在想象之中，因为他身为显贵，有治国的新思想、新文化，是不允许当真这么做的；我回到家里，刚一说出，我又被录用，又会领到薪俸了，天哪，那时候大家那个高兴劲儿啊……”
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 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 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?"
"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 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 dignity. Evidently Marmeladov was a familiar figure here, and he had most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 Katerina Ivanovna and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at her, she simply picked up our big green /drap de dames/ shawl (we have a shawl, made of /drap de dames/), put it over her head and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her body kept shuddering. . . . And I went on lying there, just as before. . . . And then I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna, in the same silence go up to Sonia's little bed; she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia's feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other's arms . . . together, together . . . yes . . . and I . . . lay drunk."
Marmeladov stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.
"Since then, sir," he went on after a brief pause--"Since then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by evil- intentioned persons--in all which Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect--since then my daughter Sofya Semyonovna has been forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too . . . hm. . . . All the trouble between him and Katerina Ivanovna was on Sonia's account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: 'how,' said he, 'can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?' And Katerina Ivanovna would not let it pass, she stood up for her . . . and so that's how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Katerina Ivanovna and gives her all she can. . . . She has a room at the Kapernaumovs' the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off. . . . Hm . . . yes . . . very poor people and all with cleft palates . . . yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know him? No? Well, then, it's a man of God you don't know. He is wax . . . wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth! . . . His eyes were dim when he heard my story. 'Marmeladov, once already you have deceived my expectations . . . I'll take you once more on my own responsibility'--that's what he said, 'remember,' he said, 'and now you can go.' I kissed the dust at his feet--in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I announced that I'd been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was . . .!"