gave it a tug, but it was strong and refused to break; besides, it was soaked in blood. He had a go at pulling the string straight from her bosom, but something got in the way. Losing patience, he was on the point of raising the axe again, so as to chop through the string and the body from above and have done with it, but he didn’t dare, and after struggling for two minutes and getting the axe and his hands all stained he finally cut the string, without the axe touching the body, and removed it; he was right – a purse. There were two crosses on the string, one of cypress and one of copper, and a little enamel icon as well; and right there alongside them hung a small, greasy suede purse with a steel rim and clasp. The purse was stuffed full. Raskolnikov shoved it in his pocket without looking inside, dropped the crosses on the old woman’s breast and, taking the axe with him this time, rushed back to the bedroom.
In a terrible hurry, he grabbed the keys and began fiddling with them again. But he was getting nowhere: they just wouldn’t go in. It wasn’t so much that his hands were shaking – he just couldn’t get it right: he could see, for instance, that he had the wrong key and that it didn’t fit, but still he kept jabbing away with it. Suddenly he remembered and realized that the big key with the jagged notches, dangling there with the smaller ones, couldn’t have been meant for the chest of drawers at all (this had occurred to him the previous time, too), but for some box or other, which was where everything might very well be hidden. He abandoned the chest of drawers and immediately crawled under the bed, knowing that that is where old women tend to keep their boxes. And there it was: a sizeable box, about three feet long, with a curved lid of red morocco leather studded with small steel nails. The jagged key went straight in and opened it. On top, beneath a white sheet, lay a red silk coat lined with rabbit fur; beneath that was a silk dress, then a shawl, while deeper in there seemed to be nothing but old rags. His first impulse was to wipe his blood-stained hands on the red silk. ‘Red – well, blood on red won’t show,’ he calculated, before suddenly coming to his senses. ‘God! Am I losing my mind?’ he thought in terror.
But he’d barely touched the rags when a gold watch suddenly fell out of the fur coat. He hastily ransacked the rest. Yes, there were gold things mixed up with the rags – probably all pledges: bracelets, chains, earrings, pins and so forth. Some were in cases, others just wrapped in newspaper, but neatly and carefully, the paper folded double and tied round with tape. Without a moment’s delay he set about stuffing the pockets of his trousers and coat, without sorting through or even opening the packages and boxes; but he soon ran out of time . . .
He suddenly heard someone moving about in the room where he’d left the old woman. He froze and fell silent, as if dead. But everything was quiet – he must have imagined it. Suddenly, unmistakably, there was a faint cry, or perhaps the sound of a soft, abrupt groan. Then: dead silence again, for a minute or perhaps two. He was squatting by the box, waiting, barely breathing, then he suddenly jumped up, grabbed the axe and ran out of the bedroom.
There, in the middle of the room, stood Lizaveta, holding a large bundle and gazing rigidly at her murdered sister, white as a sheet and seemingly unable to scream. Seeing him run in, she began quivering all over and her whole face went into spasm; she half-raised a hand and was about to open her mouth, but again she did not scream and slowly backed away from him into the corner, staring straight at him, but still without screaming, as if there was not enough air to scream. He rushed at her with the axe; her lips twisted as pitifully as those of very little children when something begins to scare them and they stare at the thing that’s frightening them and prepare to yell. And so very simple was this poor Lizaveta, so