Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

prostitutes, petty clerks and the like. People kept darting in and out of both entrances and through both courtyards. Here three or four yardkeepers were usually on duty. The young man was mostrelieved not to run into any of them, and he immediately slipped unnoticed through the front entrance and up a staircase to the right. The staircase was dark and narrow, a ‘back stair’, but he was already familiar with all this, had studied it, and on the whole the setting appealed to him: in darkness like this even an inquisitive glance would hold no risk. ‘If I'm as scared as this now, what would I be like if I were really to go ahead with my plan?’ he found himself thinking as he reached the fourth floor. Here his way was barred by some loaders in soldiers’ uniforms who were carrying the furniture out of one of the apartments. He knew from earlier observation that a German government clerk and his family were living in this apartment: ‘This means that that German's moving out now, and it also means that for a while now, on this staircase and this landing, the old woman's apartment is the only one that's going to be occupied. That's just as well… you never know…’ he thought again, and rang the old woman's doorbell. The bell clanked faintly, as though it were made of tin rather than brass. The doorbells of the small apartments in buildings such as this nearly always make that kind of noise. He had forgotten what it sounded like, and the strange clanking suddenly appeared to remind him of something that came to his mind with great clarity… He gave a terrible shudder; on this occasion his nerves were simply not up to it. After a while the door opened the merest slit: through it the occupant was scrutinizing the newcomer with evident suspicion, and all that could be seen of her in the darkness was her small, glittering eyes. Observing all the people on the landing, however, she took courage and opened the door the whole way. The young man stepped over the threshold into a dark hallway divided by a partition, behind which there was a tiny kitchen. The old woman stood in front of him, looking at him questioningly. She was a tiny, dried-up little old woman of about sixty, with sharp, hostile eyes, a small, sharp nose and no headcovering. Her whitish hair, which had not much grey in it, was abundantly smeared with oil. Wound round her long, thin neck, which resembled the leg of a chicken, was an old flannel rag of some description, and from her shoulders, the heat notwithstanding, hung an utterly yellowed and motheaten fur jacket.Every moment or so the old woman coughed and groaned. The young man must have glanced at her in some special way, for her eyes suddenly flickered again with their erstwhile suspicion.
    ‘My name's Raskolnikov, I'm a student, I came to see you about a month ago,’ the young man muttered hastily, bowing slightly because he had recalled that he must be as courteous as possible.
    ‘I remember, dearie; I remember your visit very well,’ the old woman said distinctly, without removing her earlier, questioning gaze from his features.
    ‘So you see… I'm here again, about the same thing…’ Raskolnikov went on, feeling slightly put out, taken off his guard by the old woman's suspicious attitude.
    ‘I suppose she must always be like this, and I simply didn't notice it last time,’ he thought, with an unpleasant sensation.
    The old woman was silent for a moment, as though she were deliberating; then she moved to one side and said, pointing to the door of a room as she admitted her visitor ahead of her: ‘In you go, dearie.’
    The little room into which the young man passed, with its yellow wallpaper, its geraniums and its muslin curtains, was at that moment brightly illuminated by the setting sun. ‘So the sun will be shining like this then , too!…’ was the thought that flickered almost unexpectedly through Raskolnikov's mind, and with a swift glance he took in everything in the room, in