been difficult to establish just the day before, with greater precision or smaller risk, without the need for any dangerous enquiries or searches, that the very next day, at such-and-such a time, such-and-such a woman – the object of an intended murder – would be home all alone.
VI
Later, Raskolnikov happened to find out why exactly the tradesman and his wife had invited Lizaveta round. It was a perfectly run-of-the-mill affair. A newly arrived, impoverished family was selling off various things – clothing and so on, all women’s stuff. It was hard to make anything much at the market, so they were looking for a dealer – Lizaveta’s line: she took a commission, got around and had plenty of experience, being very honest and always naming her lowest price: there was no shifting her after that. She didn’t talk much in any case and, as has already been said, she was as meek and shy as they come . . .
Recently, though, Raskolnikov had become superstitious. Traces of superstition would remain in him for a long time yet, almost indelibly. In fact, he would always be prone to find something rather strange about this whole business, something mysterious, the presence, as it were, of some special influences and coincidences. Back in winter a student he knew, Pokoryov, who was leaving for Kharkov, mentioned in passing the address of old Alyona Ivanovna, should he ever need to pawn anything. For a long time he stayed away: he had some teaching and could just about make ends meet. He’d remembered about the address six weeks or so ago; he had two things fit for pawning: his father’s old silver watch and a small gold ring with three red stones, a farewell gift from his sister, to remember her by. He’d decided on the ring; and the moment he found and clapped eyes on the old woman, not yet knowing anything much about her, he felt overcome by disgust, took two ‘nice little notes’ off her and on his way back stopped off in a shabby little tavern. He ordered tea, took a seat and plunged deep in thought. A strange idea was tapping away in his head, like a chick in its egg, occupying him body and soul.
At another small table, very close to his, sat a student he neither knew nor remembered, and a young officer. They were drinking tea after a game of billiards. Suddenly he’d overheard the student telling the officer about the moneylender, Alyona Ivanovna, a collegiate secretary’s widow, and giving him her address. This in itself had struck Raskolnikov as strange: he’d only just come from seeing her. Sheer chance, of course, but there he was unable to rid himself of one highly unusual impression only to see someone bend over backwards (or so it seemed) to oblige him: the student suddenly started telling his friend all manner of details about this Alyona Ivanovna.
‘A splendid woman,’ he said. ‘You can always get money from her. Rich as a Yid. She can hand over five thousand just like that, and she won’t turn her nose up at trifles either. Plenty of our lot have called on her. She’s a right bitch, mind . . .’
He set about describing what a nasty and capricious woman she was, how you only had to be a day late paying and your item would disappear. She gave four times less than the thing was worth, charged five or even seven per cent interest a month, etcetera. Letting his tongue run away with him, the student also mentioned that the old woman had a sister, Lizaveta, whom she, so little and so horrid, never stopped beating and kept in utter servitude, like a little child, when in fact Lizaveta was a whole foot taller, at the very least . . .
‘Just try explaining that!’ the student exclaimed and roared with laughter.
The conversation turned to Lizaveta. The student took particular pleasure in talking about her and couldn’t stop laughing, while the officer listened with the keenest interest and asked the student to send him this Lizaveta to mend his linen. Raskolnikov caught every word, and learned everything there and then: Lizaveta was the old woman’s younger half-sister (by a different mother), and she was already thirty-five years old. She worked for her sister day and night, doing all the cooking and the laundry; on