and shrill, arguing and swearing. ‘What’re they up to?’ He waited patiently. Then, eventually, just like that, silence: they’d gone their separate ways. He was about to leave when suddenly a door opened with a great racket on to the stairs on the floor below and someone started going down, humming a tune. ‘How noisy they all are!’ flashed through his mind. He shut the door again and waited. Finally, everything went quiet – not a soul. He was just about to step onto the stairs when once again he suddenly heard footsteps; different ones.
These footsteps came from far away, right from the bottom of the stairwell, but he remembered very vividly and distinctly that somehow, from the very first sound, he suspected that their destination was here and nowhere else, the fourth floor, the old woman. Why? Were the sounds so very special, so very meaningful? The footsteps were heavy, even, unhurried. There: he had already reached the first floor and was carrying on up – louder and louder! Now came the sound of heavy breathing. Climbing up to the third . . . Coming here! He felt his whole body suddenly go rigid, as if this were a dream, the kind of dream where someone is chasing you, breathing down your neck, about to kill you, while you yourself seem rooted to the spot and can’t even move your hands.
Only when the visitor was already on his way up to the fourth floor did he suddenly rouse himself and somehow manage to slip quickly and nimbly back into the apartment and close the door behind him. Then he grabbed the latch and quietly, soundlessly placed the hook in the eye. Instinct was coming to his aid. Then, he crouched right there by the door, holding his breath. The unbidden guest was also already at the door. They were standing opposite one another now, just like before with the old woman, when they were separated by the door and he was the one listening in.
The visitor drew several heaving breaths. ‘Must be big and fat,’ thought Raskolnikov, his hand gripping the axe. Yes, all this really was like a dream. The visitor grabbed the bell and gave it a good ring.
No sooner did he hear the bell’s tinny sound than he had a sudden fancy that someone had stirred in the room. For a few seconds he even cocked an ear in earnest. The stranger rang once again, waited a bit more, then suddenly lost patience and began tugging on the door handle with all his strength. Horrified, Raskolnikov watched with dull terror as the hook of the latch twitched in the eye, and half-expected it to snap out at any moment. The way the handle was being tugged, it seemed more than likely. He thought of holding the latch in place, but then he might realize. Once again he felt his head begin to spin. ‘I’ll fall any moment!’ – but no sooner had he thought this than the stranger began speaking, and he immediately came to his senses.
‘What are they doing in there – dozing? Or has someone done them in? Damned women!’ he roared, as if from a barrel. ‘Oi! Alyona Ivanovna, my old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, my beauty! Open up! Fast asleep, are they?’
Working himself up into a frenzy, he tugged the little bell another ten times or so, as hard as he could. Evidently, he was used to getting his way around here.
At that very moment the sound of short, hurried steps suddenly carried up from close by on the stairs. Someone else was coming too. Raskolnikov hadn’t even heard at first.
‘Is there really no one in?’ shouted the new man, loudly and cheerfully addressing the first visitor, who was still tugging the bell. ‘Hello there, Kokh!’
‘Very young, going by his voice,’ Raskolnikov suddenly thought.
‘Hell knows, but I almost broke the lock,’ replied Kokh. ‘And how do you know me, may I ask?’
‘You having me on? Just the other day, playing billiards in “Gambrinus”, I took three games off you in a row!’
‘Ah . . .’
‘So they’re out? How strange. And how stupid. Where on earth could the old woman’ve got to? I’ve business with her.’
‘And I’ve business too, my friend!’