Crime And Punishment / Преступление и наказание

And please don’t think I am doing you a service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it’s bound to be a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it’s sometimes for the worse. Will you take it?”

Raskolnikov took the German sheets in silence, took the three roubles and without a word went out.

Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment. But when Raskolnikov was in the next street, he turned back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin’s again and laying on the table the German article and the three roubles, went out again, still without uttering a word.

“Are you raving, or what?” Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at last. “What farce is this? You’ll drive me crazy too… what did you come to see me for, damn you?”

“I don’t want… translation,” muttered Raskolnikov from the stairs.

“Then what the devil do you want?” shouted Razumihin from above. Raskolnikov continued descending the staircase in silence.

“Hey, there! Where are you living?”

No answer.

“Well, confound you then!”

But Raskolnikov was already stepping into the street. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having almost fallen under his horses’ hoofs.

The lash so infuriated him that he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.

“Serves him right!”

“A pickpocket I dare say.”

“Pretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on purpose; and you have to answer for him.”

“It’s a regular profession, that’s what it is.

”

But while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.

“Take it, my good man, in Christ’s name.”

He took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks.