Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [best books to read for women TXT] 📗

with a pair of spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the bridle…. A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing in front. One of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on something lying close to the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, exclaiming; the coachman seemed at a loss and kept repeating:

‘What a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!’

Raskolnikov pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at last in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground a man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered with blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood was flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated and disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.

‘Merciful heaven!’ wailed the coachman, ‘what more could I do? If I’d been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going quietly, not in a hurry. Everyone could see I was going along just like everybody else. A 320 of 967

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drunken man can’t walk straight, we all know…. I saw him crossing the street, staggering and almost falling. I shouted again and a second and a third time, then I held the horses in, but he fell straight under their feet! Either he did it on purpose or he was very tipsy…. The horses are young and ready to take fright … they started, he screamed … that made them worse. That’s how it happened!’

‘That’s just how it was,’ a voice in the crowd confirmed.

‘He shouted, that’s true, he shouted three times,’

another voice declared.

‘Three times it was, we all heard it,’ shouted a third.

But the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person who was awaiting it

somewhere; the police, of course, were in no little anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do was to take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No one knew his name.

Meanwhile Raskolnikov had squeezed in and stooped closer over him. The lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man’s face. He recognised him.

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‘I know him! I know him!’ he shouted, pushing to the front. ‘It’s a government clerk retired from the service, Marmeladov. He lives close by in Kozel’s house…. Make haste for a doctor! I will pay, see?’ He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the policeman. He was in violent agitation.

The police were glad that they had found out who the man was. Raskolnikov gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if it had been his father, he besought the police to carry the unconscious Marmeladov to his lodging at once.

‘Just here, three houses away,’ he said eagerly, ‘the house belongs to Kozel, a rich German. He was going home, no doubt drunk. I know him, he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children, he has one daughter….

It will take time to take him to the hospital, and there is sure to be a doctor in the house. I’ll pay, I’ll pay! At least he will be looked after at home … they will help him at once. But he’ll die before you get him to the hospital.’ He managed to slip something unseen into the policeman’s hand. But the thing was straightforward and legitimate, and in any case help was closer here. They raised the injured man; people volunteered to help.

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Kozel’s house was thirty yards away. Raskolnikov walked behind, carefully holding Marmeladov’s head and showing the way.

‘This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn round! I’ll pay, I’ll make it worth your while,’ he muttered.

Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at every free moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever to her eldest girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who, though there was much she did not understand, understood very well that her mother needed her, and so always watched her with her big clever eyes and strove her utmost to appear to understand. This time Polenka was undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day and was going to bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt, which had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a chair, with a silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out straight before him —heels together and toes turned out.

He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister, sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-323 of 967

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open eyes, just as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than ever.

‘You wouldn’t believe, you can’t imagine, Polenka,’

she said, walking about the room, ‘what a happy luxurious life we had in my papa’s house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from being a governor; so that everyone who came to see him said, ‘We look upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our governor!’ When I …

when …’ she coughed violently, ‘oh, cursed life,’ she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her breast, ‘when I … when at the last ball … at the marshal’s

… Princess Bezzemelny saw me—who gave me the

blessing when your father and I were married, Polenka—

she asked at once ‘Isn’t that the pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the breaking-up?’ (You must mend that 324 of 967

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tear, you must take your needle and darn it as I showed you, or to-morrow—cough, cough, cough—he will make the hole bigger,’ she articulated with effort.) ‘Prince Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had just come from Petersburg then … he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day; but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart had long been another’s. That other was your father, Polya; papa was fearfully angry…. Is the water ready? Give me the shirt, and the stockings! Lida,’ said she to the youngest one, ‘you must manage without your chemise to-night …

and lay your stockings out with it … I’ll wash them together…. How is it that drunken vagabond doesn’t come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dish-clout, he has torn it to rags! I’d do it all together, so as not to have to work two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again! What’s this?’ she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men, who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. ‘What is it?

What are they bringing? Mercy on us!’

‘Where are we to put him?’ asked the policeman, looking round when Marmeladov, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in.

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‘On the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,’ Raskolnikov showed him.

‘Run over in the road! Drunk!’ someone shouted in the passage.

Katerina Ivanovna stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The children were terrified. Little Lida screamed, rushed to Polenka and clutched at her, trembling all over.

Having laid Marmeladov down, Raskolnikov flew to Katerina Ivanovna.

‘For God’s sake be calm, don’t be frightened!’ he said, speaking quickly, ‘he was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage, don’t be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here … I’ve been here already, you remember? He will come to; I’ll pay!’

‘He’s done it this time!’ Katerina Ivanovna cried despairingly and she rushed to her husband.

Raskolnikov noticed at once that she was not one of those women who swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man’s head a pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling lips and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her.

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Raskolnikov meanwhile induced someone to run for a doctor. There was a doctor, it appeared, next door but one.

‘I’ve sent for a doctor,’ he kept assuring Katerina Ivanovna, ‘don’t be uneasy, I’ll pay. Haven’t you water?

… and give me a napkin or a towel, anything, as quick as you can…. He is injured, but not killed, believe me….

We shall see what the doctor says!’

Katerina Ivanovna ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in readiness for washing her children’s and husband’s linen that night. This washing was done by Katerina Ivanovna at night at least twice a week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they were practically without change of linen, and Katerina Ivanovna could not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house, she preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her strength when the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on a line and dry by the morning. She took up the basin of water at Raskolnikov’s request, but almost fell down with her burden. But the latter had already succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and began washing the blood off Marmeladov’s face.

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Katerina Ivanovna stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her hands to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Raskolnikov began to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the injured man brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation.

‘Polenka,’ cried Katerina Ivanovna, ‘run to Sonia, make haste. If you don’t find her at home, leave word that her father has been run over and that she is to come here at once … when she comes in. Run, Polenka! there, put on the shawl.’

‘Run your fastest!’ cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.

Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn’t have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the stairs. Almost all Madame Lippevechsel’s lodgers had streamed in from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Katerina Ivanovna flew into a fury.

‘You might let him die in peace, at least,’ she shouted at the crowd, ‘is it a spectacle for you to gape at? With 328 of 967

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cigarettes! (Cough, cough, cough!) You might as well keep your hats on…. And there is one in his hat! … Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!’

Her cough choked her—but her reproaches were not without result. They evidently stood in some awe of Katerina Ivanovna. The lodgers, one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange inner feeling of satisfaction