Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Read Free Book Online Page A

was situated right under the roof of a tall, five-storey tenement, 3 and sooner resembled a closet than a place of habitation. His landlady, from whom he rented this room with dinner and a maid, lived on the floor below in a separate apartment, and each time he wanted to go down to the street he had to pass his landlady's kitchen, the door of which was nearly always wide-open on to the stairs. And each time, as he passed it, the young man had a morbid sensation of fear, of which he was ashamed and which caused him to frown. He was heavily in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of running into her.
    Not that he was particularly timid or cowed – quite the opposite, indeed; but for some time now he had been in a tense, irritable state of mind that verged upon hypochondria. So absorbed in himself had he grown, so isolated from everyone else, that he was actually afraid of meeting anyone at all, not simply his landlady. He had been crushed by poverty; but even his reduced circumstances had of late ceased to be a burden to him. His vital interests no longer concerned him; he did not even wish to think about them. As a matter of fact, no landlady onearth had the power to make him afraid, whatever she might be plotting against him. But to have to stop on the stairs and listen to all that mediocre rubbish that had nothing whatsoever to do with him, all those pestering demands for payment, those threats and complaints, and be compelled in response to shift his ground, make excuses, tell lies – no, it was better to slink down the stairs like a cat and steal away unseen by anyone.
    As he emerged on to the street on this occasion, however, his terror of meeting his creditress shocked even him.
    ‘I plan to attempt a thing like this, yet I allow that kind of rubbish to scare me!’ he thought with a strange smile. ‘Hm… yes… Everything lies in a man's hands, and if he lets it all slip past his nose it's purely out of cowardice… that's an axiom. It's a curious reflection: what are people most afraid of? Of doing something new, saying a new word of their own that hasn't been said before – that's what scares them most. But I'm rambling. That's why I never do anything – because I ramble on to myself like that. Or perhaps it's the other way round; I ramble because I never do anything. It's during this past month that I've picked up this habit of rambling, lying on my back for whole days and nights on end in my room and thinking… about Cloud-cuckoo-land. Well, why am I on my feet now? Am I really capable of this ? Is this a serious matter? Of course it isn't. It's just a fantasy to amuse myself with: it's just pretty pictures! Yes, I do believe that's all it is – pretty pictures!’
    Outside the heat was terrible, with humidity to make it worse; and the crowds of people, the slaked lime everywhere, the scaffolding, the bricks, the dust and that distinctive summer aroma, so familiar to every inhabitant of St Petersburg who has not the means to rent a dacha in the country – all these things had a shattering effect on the young man's already jangled nerves. The unbearable stench from the drinking dens, of which there are in this quarter of the city inordinately many, and the drunks he kept running into every moment or two, even though it was still working hours, completed the sad and loathsome colouring of the scene. An emotion of the most profound repugnance flickered for a moment in the young man's features. It may be worth observing that he was remarkably handsome,with beautiful dark eyes and dark, chestnut-coloured hair; he was taller than average, slim and well-built. But soon he appeared to fall into a deep brooding, which might more correctly have been described as a kind of oblivion, and now, as he walked along, he ceased to be aware of his surroundings, nor had he any desire to be aware of them. Only occasionally did he mutter something to himself – a consequence of that addiction to monologues that he himself had