Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page A

order as far as possible to study and remember its position. But the room contained nothing very much in particular. The furniture, all of it very old and made of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with an enormous curved back, an oval table that stood in front of it, a mirrored dressing-table standing in between the two windows, chairs along the walls and one or two cheap prints in yellow frames depicting German girls with birds in their hands – and that was all. In one corner a lamp burned in front of a small icon. Everything was very clean; both furniture and floors had been rubbed until they shone. ‘That's Lizaveta's work,’ the young man thought to himself. There was not a speck of dust to be found in the whole apartment. ‘It's the sort of cleanliness you generally find in the homes of sour old widows,’ Raskolnikovreflected, continuing his train of thought as he cast a dubious and inquisitive look at the chintz curtain that masked the door into a second tiny room; this accommodated the old woman's bed and chest of drawers, and he had never yet glimpsed its interior. The entire apartment consisted of these two rooms.
    ‘What's your business?’ snapped the little old woman, coming into the room and positioning herself in front of him as before, in order to be able to look him straight in the face.
    ‘I've got something I want to pawn. Here, look!’ And from his pocket he produced an old, flat, silver watch. Its back bore an engraving of a globe. The chain was of steel.
    ‘But you haven't redeemed the thing you pawned last time, yet. Your time-limit ran out two days ago.’
    ‘I'll pay you another month's interest; be patient.’
    ‘Dearie, it's up to me whether I'm patient or whether I sell what you pawned this very day.’
    ‘How much will you give me for the watch, Alyona Ivanovna?’
    ‘Well, dearie, you come to me with such rubbish, it's practically worthless. I let you have two tickets for that ring last time, and you could buy one new at a jeweller's for a rouble fifty.’
    ‘Let me have four, I promise I'll redeem it – it belonged to my father. I'm expecting some money soon.’
    ‘A rouble fifty, and the interest in advance, that's the best I can do.’
    ‘A rouble fifty?’ the young man exclaimed.
    ‘It's up to you.’ And the old woman handed his watch back to him. The young man took it, so angry that he nearly stormed out of the apartment; he at once had second thoughts, however, remembering that there was nowhere else he could try, and that in any case he had another purpose for his visit.
    ‘All right, go on then!’ he said, roughly.
    The old woman reached into her pocket for her keys and went behind the curtain into the other room. Left alone in the middle of the room, the young man listened curiously, trying to work out what she was doing. He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers. ‘It must be the top drawer,’ he thought. ‘So she keeps her keys in her right-hand pocket… All in one bunch,on a steel ring… And there's one key there that's bigger than all the others, three times the size, with a notched bit, it can't be the one to the chest drawers, obviously… So there must be some kind of box or chest in there, too… That's interesting. Chests often have keys like that… God, how dishonourable all this is…’
    The old woman returned.
    ‘Now then, dearie: the interest's ten per cent a month, so on a rouble fifty you owe me fifteen copecks, payable in advance. You also owe me twenty copecks on the two roubles you had before. That comes to thirty-five copecks. So what you get for your watch is a rouble fifteen. Here you are.’
    ‘What? It's down to a rouble fifteen, now, is it?’
    ‘That's right, dearie.’
    The young man did not attempt to argue, and took the money. He looked at the old woman and made no sign of being in a hurry to leave, as though there were something else he wanted to say or do, but did not himself quite know what it was…
    ‘I may bring you