Raskolnikov: Murder with an Axe

Chapter One Revulsion Raskolnikov woke up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with perspiration, and stood up in terror. “Thank God, that was only a dream,” he said, sitting down under a tree and drawing deep breaths. “But what is it? Is it some fever coming on? Such a hideous dream!” He felt utterly broken. Darkness and confusion were in his soul. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands. “Good God,” he cried, “can it be that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike the old woman on the head, split her skull open? That I shall tread in the sticky, warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble, hide, all spattered in the blood ... With the axe? Good God, can it be?” He was shaking like a leaf as he said this. Lying on my sofa and sweating like a pig. Darkness and confusion in my soul. Surveying my classroom full of students. Walking towards the bridge. Thinking about the sharpness of the axe. Lying on my sofa and shaking like a leaf. Wiping away the warm perspiration that is clinging to my neck like an oily film. Hours of wrestling with a phantom. Gasping for breath and clawing at my neck as I loosen my collar. Lying on my sofa and fighting against my thoughts . Alone with my ideas. Alone in a bleak room in a bleak building on a bleak street on a bleak day in St. Petersburg. The terror of being alone, cornered by a thousand unsettling thoughts. A peasant reading a book. A lady dressed in mourning clothes. Imagining a crime without any clues. Perhaps a teaching post at the university. A lectureship on current issues in society. An opportunity, say, to present a series of dissertations on topics which I consider to be of serious interest. Perhaps an early afternoon lecture, after a thoughtful discussion and a glass of wine over a pleasant, chatty dinner in the faculty club. Leaning on my lectern. A casual survey of the crowd of eager young students who fill my lecture room. “And now, gentlemen, allow me to introduce a topic which, of late, has come to occupy my thoughts.” “But why am I going on like this?” Raskolnikov continued, sitting up again, in profound amazement. “I knew that I could never bring myself to do it, so what have I been torturing myself for ‘til now? Yesterday, when I went to make that – experiment – I realized completely that I could never bear to do it. Why am I going over it again then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs yesterday, I said to myself that it was base... loathsome... vile... The very thought of it made me sick and filled me with horror.” Tossing and turning on my sofa. My hair becoming soaked in perspiration. Being cornered in a tiny room. Wondering why my skin is so sticky. The feeling that all of my clothes are covered in blood. Lying here on my sofa. Afraid of drifting into reverie again. Lost and alone in St. Petersburg. There is nothing that is so terrible as to find that there is more than one way that presents itself as one advances ever further in a darkening alley. Trying to think along one way while something in my mind constantly forces me to think in another direction. A teaching post at the university. The topic of the hypothetically-perfect crime. My students sitting at rapt attention. Their ears alert to an intriguing topic. Their thoughts focused on every word that leaves my lips. “It would be a very interesting exercise, gentlemen, if one were to contemplate the conditions which would be necessary to allow for the successful perpetration of the perfect crime. And let us make it even more interesting, gentlemen, by proposing that our hypothetically-perfect crime be the most extreme example of the entire field of prohibited human activity: the taking of another person’s life. Let us survey, then, the elements that one would deem essential to the commission of the quintessentially-perfect murder.” Writing a declaration. Mikolka picking up the whip. Standing behind the door with the kitchen-axe. Porfiry Petrovich haunts my dreams. A bloodhound sniffing in the hall outside my room. Waking up to a violent knocking at my door. Being told that I have been summoned to make an appearance at the police office. Wondering what the police want to see me about. Do they know what I have done? My head is swimming and aching with a fever. Believing that it is all a trick. An attempt to decoy me there and confound me over everything. The heat in the street is insufferable. Not a drop of rain has fallen all these days. Dust and bricks and mortar. The stench from the shops and the pot-houses. The drunken men, the Finish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shining straight into my eyes. My head going round. Fearing that I might blurt out something stupid. Feeling such misery that I only want to get it over. Feeling that all my clothes are covered in blood. Feeling that there are a great many blood-stains, so many that I cannot possibly see them. Feeling that I don’t notice them because my perceptions are failing. Feeling that my reason is becoming clouded. Worrying that if they question me, perhaps I will tell them everything that I know. The sound of the balalaika. Gazing calmly at the Neva as the sun is setting. Feeling the urge to show them the hole in the wallpaper. Tossing and turning on my sofa. A wide-awake delusion or a sweat-soaked nightmare? Knowing that I have done no wrong. Why, then, am I being summoned to appear? Adjusting my lecture notes on the lectern. The pause that focuses the attention of my students. The sunlight streaming through the window of the university classroom.