“What a stupid thing to have done,” he thought. “They have their Sonya, and I need it myself.” But realizing that it was now impossible to take it back, and that he would not take it back in any case, he waved his hand and went home to his own apartment. “Sonya needs a bit of pomade as well,” he went on, and grinned caustically as he strode along the street. “This cleanliness costs money...Hm! And maybe Sonechka will also go bankrupt today, because there's the same risk in it. . . trapping...prospecting for gold...and so tomorrow, without my money, they'd all be on dry beans...Bravo, Sonya! What a well they've dug for themselves, however! And they use it! They really do use it! And they got accustomed to it. Wept a bit and got accustomed. Man gets accustomed to everything, the scoundrel!”
He fell to thinking.
“But if that's a lie”,” he suddenly exclaimed involuntarily, “if man in fact is not a scoundrel—in general, that is, the whole human race—then the rest is all mere prejudice, instilled fear, and there are no barriers, and that's just how it should be! . . .”
III
He woke up late the next day, after a troubled sleep, but sleep had not fortified him. He woke up bilious, irritable, and angry, and looked with hatred at his little room. It was a tiny closet, about six paces long, of a most pathetic appearance, with yellow, dusty wallpaper coming off the walls everywhere, and with such a low ceiling that a man of any height at all felt creepy in it and kept thinking he might bump his head every moment. The furniture was in keeping with the place. There were three old chairs, not quite in good repair; a painted table in the corner, on which lay several books and notebooks (from the mere fact that they were so covered with dust, one could see that no hand had touched them for a long time); and finally a big, clumsy sofa, which occupied almost the entire wall and half the width of the room, and had once been upholstered in chintz but was now all ragged and served as Raskolnikov's bed. He often slept on it just as he was, without undressing, without a sheet, covering himself with his old, decrepit student's coat,[19] and with one small pillow under his head, beneath which he put whatever linen he had, clean or soiled, to bolster it. In front of the sofa stood a small table.
To become more degraded and slovenly would have been difficult; but Raskolnikov even enjoyed it in his present state of mind. He had decidedly withdrawn from everyone, like a turtle into its shell, and even the face of the maid who had the task of serving him, and who peeked into his room occasionally, drove him to bile and convulsions. This happens with certain monomaniacs when they concentrate too long on some one thing. It was two weeks since his landlady had stopped sending food up to him, but it had not yet occurred to him to go and have a talk with her, though he was left without dinner. Nastasya, the landlady's cook and only servant, was glad in a way that the tenant was in such a mood, and stopped tidying and sweeping his room altogether; only once a week, just by accident, she would sometimes take a besom to it. It was she who woke him now.
“Enough sleeping! Get up!” she shouted over him. “It's past nine. I've brought you tea; want some tea? You must be wasting away!”
The tenant opened his eyes, gave a start, and recognized Nastasya.
“Is it the landlady's tea, or what?” he asked, slowly and with a pained look raising himself a little on the sofa.
“The landlady's, hah!”
She placed in front of him her own cracked teapot, full of re-used tea, and two yellow lumps of sugar.
“Here, Nastasya, please take this,” he said, feeling in his pocket (he had slept in his clothes) and pulling out a handful of copper coins, “and go and buy me a roll. And a bit of sausage, too, whatever's cheapest, at the pork butcher's.”
“I'll bring you a roll this minute, but don't you want some cabbage soup instead of the sausage? It's good cabbage soup, made yesterday. I saved some for you yesterday, but you came back late. Good cabbage soup.”
Once the soup was brought and he had begun on it, Nastasya sat down beside him on the sofa and started chattering. She was a village woman, and a very chattery one.
“And so Praskovya Pavlovna wants to make a complaint against you with the poliss,” she said.
He winced deeply.
“With the police? What does she want?”
“You don't pay her the money and you won't vacate the room. What do you think she wants?”
“Ah, the devil, that's all I need,” he muttered, grinding his teeth. “No, it's just the wrong time for that...now...She's a fool,” he added aloud. “I'll stop and have a talk with her today.”
“A fool she may be, the same as I am, and aren't you a smarty, lying around like a sack and no good to anybody! You say you used to go and teach children before, so why don't you do anything now?”
“I do something . . .” Raskolnikov said, reluctantly and sternly.
“What do you do?”
“Work . . .”
“Which work?”
“I think,” he replied seriously, after a pause.
Nastasya simply dissolved in laughter. She was the sort much given to laughter, and when something made her laugh, she laughed inaudibly, heaving and shaking her whole body, until she made herself sick.
“And a fat lot of money you've thought up, eh?” she was finally able to say.
“One can't teach children without boots. Anyway, I spit on it.”
“Don't go spitting in the well.”[20]
“They pay small change for children. What can one do with kopecks?” he went on reluctantly, as if answering his own thoughts.
“And you'd like a whole fortune at once?”
He gave her a strange look.
“Yes, a whole fortune,” he said firmly, after a pause.
“Hey, take it easy, don't scare a body; I'm scared as it is. Shall I get you a roll?”
“If you want.”
“Ah, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday while you were out.”
“A letter! For me! From whom?”
“I don't know from whom; I gave the mailman my own three kopecks. Will you pay me back?”
“But bring it here, for God's sake, bring it here!” Raskolnikov cried, all excited. “Oh, Lord!”
The letter appeared in a moment. Sure enough, it was from his mother, from R------province. He even turned pale as he took it. It was long since he had received any letters. But now something else, too, suddenly wrung his heart.
“Leave, Nastasya, for God's sake; here are your three kopecks, only for God's sake leave quickly.”
The letter trembled in his hands; he did not want to open it in front of her: he wished to be left alone with this letter. When Nastasya had gone, he quickly brought it to his lips and kissed it; then for a long time he gazed at the handwriting of the address, familiar and dear to him, the small and slanted handwriting of his mother, who had once taught him to read and write. He lingered; he even seemed afraid of something. Finally, he opened it: it was a big, thick letter, almost an ounce in weight; two big sheets of stationery covered with very small script.
19
Like civil servants, students in Russia wore uniforms, including a visored cap and a greatcoat.
20
The first half of a saying; the second half (obviously) is: "because you may have to drink from it."