CRIME
AND PUNISHMENT
Fyodor Mikhailovich
Dostoevsky
PART I
Chapter One
ON AN exceptionally hot evening early in July a
young man came out of the garret in which he lodged
in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation,
towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady
on the staircase.
His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied
house and was more like a cupboard than a room.
The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners,
and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every
time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen,
the door of which invariably stood open. And each
time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened
feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed.
He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was
afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject,
quite the contrary; but for some time past he had
been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging
on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed
in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he
dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but any
one at all. He was crushed
by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had
of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up
attending to matters of practical importance; he
had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady
could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped
on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial,
irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment,
threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for
excuses, to prevaricate, to lie- no, rather than
that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat
and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street,
he became acutely aware of his fears.
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