“Well, so what if you were?” he suddenly cried out in perplexity and impatience. “Why should I care? What of it?”
“It's that same old woman,” Raskolnikov went on, still in a whisper, not moving at Zamyotov's exclamation, “the same one, remember, that you started telling about in the office, and I fainted. So, do you understand now?”
“But what do you mean? 'Understand'...what?” said Zamyotov, almost alarmed.
Raskolnikov's frozen and serious expression transformed in an instant, and he suddenly dissolved into the same nervous laughter as shortly before, apparently quite unable to restrain himself. And in a flash he recalled, with the extreme clarity of a sensation, that recent moment when he was standing with the axe behind the door, the hook was jumping up and down, the people outside the door were cursing and trying to force it, and he suddenly wanted to shout to them, curse at them, stick his tongue out, taunt them, and laugh loudly—laugh, laugh, laugh!
“You're either crazy, or . . .” Zamyotov said, and stopped, as if suddenly struck by a thought that flashed unexpectedly through his mind.
“Or? Or what? Well, what? Go on, say it!”
“Nothing!” replied Zamyotov, exasperated. “It's all nonsense!”
Both fell silent. After his unexpected burst into a fit of laughter, Raskolnikov all at once became pensive and sad. He leaned his elbow on the table and propped his head in his hand. He seemed to forget Zamyotov entirely. The silence lasted for quite some time.
“Why don't you drink your tea? It'll get cold,” said Zamyotov.
“Eh? What? Tea?...Maybe so . . .” Raskolnikov took a sip from the cup, put a piece of bread in his mouth, and, looking at Zamyotov, seemed suddenly to recall everything and rouse himself: at the same moment his face resumed its original mocking expression. He went on drinking tea.
“There's a lot of this crookedness around nowadays,” said Zamyotov. “Just recently I read in the Moscow Gazettethat they caught a whole gang of counterfeiters in Moscow. A whole organization. They were making bank notes.”
“Oh, that was way back! I read about it a month ago,” Raskolnikov replied calmly. “So they're crooks in your opinion?” he added, grinning.
“What else would you call them?”
“Them? They're children, greenhorns, not crooks! A full fifty of them went into such a thing together! How is it possible? Even three would be too many, and even then they'd have to be surer of each other than of themselves! Otherwise, if just one of them gets drunk and spills it out, the whole thing falls through. Greenhorns! They hire unreliable people to change the money in banks: trusting such a job to the first comer! Well, suppose the greenhorns even brought it off, suppose each one got a million changed—well, what then? For the rest of their lives? They have to depend on each other all the rest of their lives! No, better to hang oneself! But they couldn't even get it changed: one of them went to the bank, got five thousand changed, and his hands betrayed him. He counted through four thousand and then took the fifth without counting it, on faith, just to pocket it and run away quickly. So he aroused suspicion. And everything blew up because of one fool! How is it possible?” [62]
“That his hands betrayed him?” Zamyotov picked up. “No, that is possible, sir. No, I'm absolutely sure it's possible. Sometimes one just can't stand it.”
“A thing like that?”
“And you think you could stand it? No, I couldn't. To risk such horror for a hundred-rouble reward! To take a false bank note, and where?—to a banking house, where they do know a hawk from a handsaw—no, I'd get flustered. Wouldn't you?”
Again Raskolnikov suddenly felt a terrible urge to “stick his tongue out.” Shivers momentarily ran down his spine.
“I wouldn't do it that way,” he began, remotely. “This is how I would get it changed: I'd count the first thousand four times or so, backwards and forwards, examining every note, and then go on to the next thousand; I'd start counting, count half way through, pull out a fifty-rouble note and hold it up to the light, turn it over, and hold it up to the light again—is it false or not? 'I'm afraid,' I'd say, 'I have a relative, and the other day she lost twenty-five roubles that way,' and I'd tell them the story. Then, when I started counting the third thousand—'No, sorry, I think, back there in the second thousand, I counted the seventh hundred incorrectly; I'm not sure'—and I'd leave the third thousand and start over again on the second; and so on for the whole five thousand. And when I was done, I'd pull out a note from the fifth thousand and one from the second, hold them up to the light again, and say in a doubtful voice: 'Change them, please.' And I'd have the clerk in such a lather by then that he'd do anything to be rid of me! When I was finally done with it all, I'd go and open the door—'No, sorry,' and I'd come back again to ask about something, to get some explanation—that's how I would do it!”
“Pah, what awful things you say!” Zamyotov laughed. “Only it's all just talk; in reality you'd be sure to make a slip. Here, let me tell you, not only you and I, but in my opinion even a seasoned, desperate man cannot vouch for himself. But why go far? Take, for example, this old woman who was murdered in our precinct. It looks like the work of a real daredevil; he risked it all in broad daylight, got away only by a miracle—and even so his hands betrayed him: he wasn't able to steal, he couldn't stand it; that's clear from the evidence . . .”
Raskolnikov looked offended.
“Clear! Go and catch him then!” he cried, gloatingly egging Zamyotov on.
“Oh, they'll catch him all right!”
“Who? You? You're going to catch him? You'll run yourselves into the ground! What's the main thing for you—whether the man spends the money or not? First he has no money, then he suddenly starts spending—who else could it be? A child so high could hoodwink you with that if he wanted to!”
“That's precisely it; they all do it that way,” Zamyotov replied. “He kills cunningly, risks his life, and then immediately gets caught in some pot-house. They get caught spending. Not everyone is as cunning as you are. You wouldn't go to a pot-house, naturally?”
Raskolnikov frowned and looked fixedly at Zamyotov.
“It seems I've whetted your appetite. So, you want to know how I'd act in this case, too?” he asked with displeasure.
“Yes, I do,” the other answered firmly and seriously. He had begun to look and sound all too serious.
“Very much?”
“Very much.”
“All right. This is how I would act,” Raskolnikov began, again suddenly bringing his face close to Zamyotov's, again looking point-blank at him, again speaking in a whisper, so that this time Zamyotov even gave a start. “Here's what I would do: I would take the money and the things, and as soon as I left there, immediately, without stopping anywhere, I'd go to some out-of-the-way place where there were only fences and almost no people around—some kitchen garden or the like. There would be a stone in this yard, which I would have picked out beforehand, weighing thirty or forty pounds, somewhere in a corner near the fence, that might have been sitting there since the house was built; I'd lift this stone—of course there would be a shallow hole under it—and put all the money and things into the hole. I'd put them there and replace the stone just the way it had been before, tamp it down with my foot, and go away. And I wouldn't touch it for a year, or two, or three—so, look all you like. Now you see me, and now you don't!”
“You are a madman,” Zamyotov spoke for some reason also almost in a whisper, and for some reason suddenly drew back from Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov's eyes were flashing; he became terribly pale; his upper lip twitched and began to tremble. He leaned as close to Zamyotov as he could and began moving his lips without uttering anything; this went on for half a minute or so; he was aware of what he was doing, but could not stop himself. A terrible word was trembling on his lips, like the hook on that door: another moment and it would jump out; another moment and it would let go; another moment and it would be spoken!
62
This account of the nervous accomplice comes from an actual event reported in a Moscow newspaper in 1865.