Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [classic children's novels .TXT] 📗

lining out of the left pocket of his trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He flung off his boots; “traces indeed! The tip of the sock was soaked with blood;” he must have unwarily stepped into that pool.⁠ ⁠… “But what am I to do with this now? Where am I to put the sock and rags and pocket?”

He gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of the room.

“In the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away,” he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, “and at once, this minute, without lingering⁠ ⁠…”

But his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him.

And for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the impulse to “go off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all away, so that it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once!” Several times he tried to rise from the sofa, but could not.

He was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his door.

“Open, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!” shouted Nastasya, banging with her fist on the door. “For whole days together he’s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open, I tell you. It’s past ten.”

“Maybe he’s not at home,” said a man’s voice.

“Ha! that’s the porter’s voice.⁠ ⁠… What does he want?”

He jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a positive pain.

“Then who can have latched the door?” retorted Nastasya. “He’s taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!”

“What do they want? Why the porter? All’s discovered. Resist or open? Come what may!⁠ ⁠…”

He half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.

His room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter and Nastasya were standing there.

Nastasya stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant and desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.

“A notice from the office,” he announced, as he gave him the paper.

“From what office?”

“A summons to the police office, of course. You know which office.”

“To the police?⁠ ⁠… What for?⁠ ⁠…”

“How can I tell? You’re sent for, so you go.”

The man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and turned to go away.

“He’s downright ill!” observed Nastasya, not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. “He’s been in a fever since yesterday,” she added.

Raskolnikov made no response and held the paper in his hands, without opening it. “Don’t you get up then,” Nastasya went on compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet down from the sofa. “You’re ill, and so don’t go; there’s no such hurry. What have you got there?”

He looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so fallen asleep again.

“Look at the rags he’s collected and sleeps with them, as though he has got hold of a treasure⁠ ⁠…”

And Nastasya went off into her hysterical giggle.

Instantly he thrust them all under his great coat and fixed his eyes intently upon her. Far as he was from being capable of rational reflection at that moment, he felt that no one would behave like that with a person who was going to be arrested. “But⁠ ⁠… the police?”

“You’d better have some tea! Yes? I’ll bring it, there’s some left.”

“No⁠ ⁠… I’m going; I’ll go at once,” he muttered, getting on to his feet.

“Why, you’ll never get downstairs!”

“Yes, I’ll go.”

“As you please.”

She followed the porter out.

At once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and the rags.

“There are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with dirt, and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had no suspicion could distinguish anything. Nastasya from a distance could not have noticed, thank God!” Then with a tremor he broke the seal of the notice and began reading; he was a long while reading, before he understood. It was an ordinary summons from the district police-station to appear that day at half-past nine at the office of the district superintendent.

“But when has such a thing happened? I never have anything to do with the police! And why just today?” he thought in agonising bewilderment. “Good God, only get it over soon!”

He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into laughter⁠—not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.

He began, hurriedly dressing. “If I’m lost, I am lost, I don’t care! Shall I put the sock on?” he suddenly wondered, “it will get dustier still and the traces will be gone.”

But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again⁠—and again he laughed.

“That’s all conventional, that’s all relative, merely a way of looking at it,” he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, “there, I’ve got it on! I have finished by getting it on!”

But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.

“No, it’s too much for me⁠ ⁠…” he thought. His legs shook. “From fear,” he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever. “It’s a trick! They want to