Two fellows from the crowd get two more whips and run to whip the horse from the side. Each takes a side.
“On the muzzle, on the eyes, lash her on the eyes!” shouts Mikolka.[39]
“Let's have a song, brothers!” someone shouts from the cart, and everyone in the cart joins in. A drunken song breaks out, a tambourine rattles, they whistle to the refrain. The peasant woman cracks nuts and giggles.
. . . He runs past the horse, runs ahead of her, sees how they are lashing her on the eyes, right on the eyes! He is crying. His heart is in his throat, the tears are flowing. One of the whips grazes his face, he does not feel it, he wrings his hands, he shouts, he rushes to the gray-bearded old man, who is shaking his head in disapproval of it all. A woman takes him by the hand and tries to lead him away; but he breaks free and runs back to the horse. She is already at her last gasp, but she starts kicking again.
“Ah, go to the hairy devil!” Mikolka cries out in a rage. He drops his whip, bends down, and pulls a long and stout shaft from the bottom of the cart, takes one end of it in both hands and, with an effort, swings it aloft over the gray horse.
“He'll strike her dead!” people cry.
“He'll kill her!”
“It's my goods!” shouts Mikolka, and with a full swing he brings the shaft down. There is a heavy thud.
“Whip her, whip her! Why did you stop!” voices cry from the crowd.
Mikolka takes another swing, and another blow lands full on the miserable nag's back. Her hind legs give way, but then she jumps up and pulls, pulls with all the strength she has left, pulls this way and that, trying to move the cart; but six whips come at her from all sides, and the shaft is raised again and falls for a third time, then a fourth, in heavy, rhythmic strokes. Mikolka is furious that he was unable to kill her with one blow.
“She's tough!” they shout.
“She'll drop this time, brothers; it's the end of her!” one enthusiast yells from the crowd.
“Take an axe to her! Finish her off fast,” shouts a third.
“Eh, let the fleas eat you! Step aside!” Mikolka cries out frenziedly, and he drops the shaft, bends down again, and pulls an iron crowbar from the bottom of the cart. “Look out!” he yells, and he swings it with all his might at the poor horse. The blow lands; the wretched mare staggers, sinks down, tries to pull, but another full swing of the crowbar lands on her back, and she falls to the ground as if all four legs had been cut from under her.
“Give her the final one!” shouts Mikolka, and he leaps from the cart as if beside himself. Several fellows, also red and drunk, seize whatever they can find—whips, sticks, the shaft—and run to the dying mare. Mikolka plants himself at her side and starts beating her pointlessly on the back with the crowbar. The nag stretches out her muzzle, heaves a deep sigh, and dies.
“He's done her in!” they shout from the crowd.
“But why wouldn't she gallop!”
“It's my goods!” Mikolka cries, holding the crowbar in his hands, his eyes bloodshot. He stands there as if he regretted having nothing else to beat.
“Really, you've got no fear of God in you!” many voices now shout from the crowd.
But the poor boy is beside himself. With a shout he tears through the crowd to the gray horse, throws his arms around her dead, bleeding muzzle, and kisses it, kisses her eyes and mouth...Then he suddenly jumps up and in a frenzy flies at Mikolka with his little fists. At this moment his father, who has been chasing after him all the while, finally seizes him and carries him out of the crowd.
“Come along, come along now!” he says to him. “Let's go home!”
“Papa! What did they...kill...the poor horse for!” he sobs, but his breath fails, and the words burst like cries from his straining chest.
“They're drunk, they're playing pranks, it's none of our business, come along!” his father says. He throws his arms around his father, but there is such strain, such strain in his chest. He tries to take a breath, to cry out, and wakes up.
He awoke panting, all in a sweat, his hair damp with sweat, and started up in terror.
“Thank God it was only a dream!” he said, leaning back against a tree and drawing a deep breath. “But what's wrong? Am I coming down with a fever? Such a hideous dream!”
His whole body was as if broken; his soul was dark and troubled. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his head in both hands.
“God!” he exclaimed, “but can it be, can it be that I will really take an axe and hit her on the head and smash her skull... slip in the sticky, warm blood, break the lock, steal, and tremble, and hide, all covered with blood...with the axe...Lord, can it be?”
He was trembling like a leaf as he said it.
“But what's wrong with me?” he went on, straightening up again, and as if in deep amazement. “I knew very well I could never endure it, so why have I been tormenting myself all this while? Even yesterday, yesterday, when I went to make that...trial, even yesterday I fully realized I could not endure it... So what is this now? Why have I doubted all along? Just yesterday, going down the stairs, I myself said it was mean, nasty, vile, vile...the mere thought of it made me vomit in reality and threw me into horror . . .
“No, I couldn't endure it, I couldn't endure it! Suppose, suppose there are even no doubts in all those calculations, suppose all that's been decided in this past month is clear as day, true as arithmetic. Lord! Even so, I wouldn't dare! I couldn't endure it, I couldn't! ... What, what has this been all along? . . .”
He got to his feet, looked around as if wondering how he had ended up there, and walked towards the T------v Bridge. He was pale, his eyes were burning, all his limbs felt exhausted, but he suddenly seemed to breathe more easily. He felt he had just thrown off the horrible burden that had been weighing him down for so long, and his soul suddenly became light and peaceful. “Lord!” he pleaded, “show me my way; I renounce this cursed...dream of mine!”
Walking across the bridge, he looked calmly and quietly at the Neva, at the bright setting of the bright, red sun. In spite of his weakness, he was not even aware of any fatigue in himself. It was as if an abscess in his heart, which had been forming all that month, had suddenly burst. Freedom, freedom! He was now free of that spell, magic, sorcery, obsession!
Later on, when he recalled this time and all that happened to him during these days, minute by minute, point by point, feature by feature, he was always struck to superstition by one circumstance which, though in fact not very unusual, afterwards constantly seemed to him as if it were a sort of predetermination of his fate.
Namely, he could in no way understand or explain to himself why he, for whom it would have been most profitable, tired and worn out as he was, to return home by the shortest and most direct way, instead returned home through the Haymarket, where he had no need at all to go. The detour was not a long one, but it was obvious and totally unnecessary. Of course, it had happened to him dozens of times that he would return home without remembering what streets he had taken. But why, he always asked, why had such an important, decisive, and at the same time highly accidental encounter in the Haymarket (where he did not even have any reason to go) come just then, at such an hour and such a moment in his life, to meet him precisely in such a state of mind and precisely in such circumstances as alone would enable it, this encounter, to produce the most decisive and final effect on his entire fate? As if it had been waiting for him there on purpose!
It was about nine o'clock when he walked through the Haymarket. All the merchants with tables or trays, in shops big and small, were locking up their establishments, removing or packing away their wares, and going home, as were their customers. Numbers of various traffickers and ragpickers of all sorts were crowding around the ground floor cook-shops, in the dirty and stinking courtyards of the houses on the Haymarket, and more especially near the taverns. Raskolnikov liked these places most, as well as all the neighboring side streets, in his aimless wanderings. Here his rags attracted no supercilious attention, and one could go about dressed in anything without scandalizing people. Just at ------ny Lane, on the corner, a tradesman and a woman, his wife, had been selling their wares from two tables: thread, trimmings, cotton handkerchiefs, and so on. They, too, were heading for home, but lingered, talking with a woman acquaintance who had come up to them. This woman was Lizaveta Ivanovna, or simply Lizaveta, as everyone called her, the younger sister of that same old woman, Alyona Ivanovna, widow of a collegiate registrar,[40] the money-lender whom Raskolnikov had visited the day before to pawn his watch and make his trial...He had long known all about this Lizaveta, and she even knew him slightly. She was a tall, awkward, timid, and humble wench of thirty-five, all but an idiot, and was a complete slave to her sister, worked for her day and night, trembled before her, and even suffered her beatings. She stood hesitantly before the tradesman and the woman, holding a bundle and listening to them attentively. They were explaining something to her with particular ardor. When Raskolnikov suddenly saw her, some strange sensation, akin to the deepest amazement, seized him, though there was nothing amazing in this encounter.
39
In his poem "Before Evening" from the cycle
40
Collegiate registrar was the fourteenth, or lowest, grade in the Russian civil service.