Raskolnikov walked straight to the ------sky Bridge, stopped in the middle of it, leaned both elbows on the railing, and began to look along. After parting with Razumikhin he became so weak that he had barely been able to get there. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Leaning over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink gleams of the sunset, at the row of houses, dark in the thickening dusk, at one distant window, somewhere in a garret on the left bank, blazing as if aflame when the last ray of sunlight struck it for a moment, at the dark water of the canal—he stood as if peering intently into the water. Finally, red circles began spinning in his eyes, the houses began to sway, the passers-by, the embankments, the carriages—all began spinning and dancing around him. Suddenly he gave a start, perhaps saved from fainting again by a wild and ugly sight. He sensed that someone was standing next to him, to his right, close by; he looked— and saw a woman, tall, wearing a kerchief, with a long, yellow, wasted face and reddish, sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him, but obviously saw nothing and recognized no one. Suddenly she leaned her right forearm on the parapet, raised her right leg, swung it over the railing, then her left leg, and threw herself into the canal. The dirty water parted, swallowing its victim for a moment, but a minute later the drowning woman floated up and was gently carried downstream, her head and legs in the water, her back up, her skirt to one side and ballooning over the water like a pillow.

“She's drowned herself! Drowned herself!” dozens of voices were crying; people came running, both embankments were strung with spectators, people crowded around Raskolnikov on the bridge, pushing and pressing him from behind.

“Merciful God, it's our Afrosinyushka!” a woman's tearful cry came from somewhere nearby. “Merciful God, save her! Pull her out, dear people!”

“A boat! A boat!” shouts came from the crowd.

But by then there was no need for a boat; a policeman ran down the stairs, threw off his greatcoat and boots, and plunged into the water. It was not much of a task; the stream carried the drowning woman within two yards of the stairs; he seized her clothes with his right hand, with his left managed to get hold of the pole a fellow policeman held out to him, and the drowning woman was pulled out at once. They laid her on the granite slabs of the embankment. She quickly came around, raised herself a little, sat up, and began sneezing and snorting, senselessly wiping off her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing.

“Drank herself cockeyed, my dears, she drank herself cockeyed,” the same woman's voice went on howling, next to Afrosinyushka now. “The other day, too, she went and tried to hang herself; we took her out of the noose. And now I had to go to the store, and I left a girl to keep an eye on her, and it all came to grief! She's a tradeswoman, my dear, like us, we're neighbors, second house from the corner, right here . . .”

People began to disperse; the policemen were still fussing over the nearly drowned woman; someone shouted something about the police station...Raskolnikov looked upon it all with a strange feeling of indifference and detachment. It was disgusting to him. “No, it's vile . .. the water...better not,” he was muttering to himself. “Nothing'll come of it,” he added, “no point in waiting. What's that—the police station?...And why isn't Zamyotov there in his office? The office is open past nine...” He turned his back to the railing and looked around him.

“Well, after all, why not!” he said resolutely, left the bridge, and set off in the direction of the police station. His heart was empty and blank. He did not want to reflect. Even his anguish had gone; and not a trace remained of his former energy, when he had left the house determined to “end it all!” Total apathy had taken its place.

“After all, it's a way out!” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the embankment of the canal. “Anyway, I'll end it because I want to...Is it a way out, though? But what's the difference! There'll be a square foot of space—hah! What sort of an end, though? Can it really be the end? Shall I tell them or shall I not tell them? Ah...the devil! Besides, I'm tired; I wish I could lie or sit down somewhere soon! What's most shameful is that it's so stupid! But I spit on that, too. Pah, what stupid things come into one's head . . .”

To get to the police station he had to keep straight on and take the second turn to the left: it was there, two steps away. But having reached the first turn, he stopped, thought, went down the side street, and made a detour through two more streets—perhaps without any purpose, or perhaps to delay for at least another minute and gain time. He walked along looking down. Suddenly it was as if someone whispered something in his ear. He raised his head and saw that he was standing in front of that house, right by the gate. He had not gone there, or even passed by, since that evening.

An irresistible and inexplicable desire drew him on. He went in, passed all the way under the gateway, turned to the first door on the right, and begun going up the familiar stairs to the fourth floor. The narrow and steep stairway was very dark. He stopped on each landing and looked around with curiosity. The entire window frame on the first-floor landing had been taken out: “It wasn't like that then,” he thought. Here was the second-floor apartment where Nikolashka and Mitka had been working then: “Closed and the door has been painted; that must mean it's for rent.” Now it was the third floor...the fourth...”Here!” He was overcome with perplexity: the door to the apartment was wide open, there were people in it, voices could be heard; he had not expected that at all. After a short hesitation, he mounted the last steps and went into the apartment.

It, too, was being redecorated; workmen were there; he seemed to be struck by the fact. He had been imagining for some reason that he would find everything just as he had left it then, perhaps even the corpses in the same places on the floor. Instead, bare walls, no furniture—it was somehow strange! He walked over to the window and sat down on the sill.

There were two workmen, both young fellows, one on the older side, the other much younger. They were hanging fresh wallpaper, white with little purple flowers, in place of the former tattered and torn yellow paper. For some reason Raskolnikov was terribly displeased by this; he looked at the new wallpaper with animosity, as though he were sorry to see everything so changed.

The workmen were obviously late, and were now hastily rolling up their paper in preparation for going home. Raskolnikov's appearance drew almost no notice from them. They were talking about something. Raskolnikov crossed his arms and began to listen.

“So she comes to me in the morning,” the older one was saying to the younger one, “really early, and she's all gussied up. 'What are you doing,' I says, 'sugar-and-spicing in front of me like that?' 'From henceforth, Tit Vasilievich,' she says, 'I want to stay under your complete will.' So that's how it is! And all gussied up, like a magazine, just like a magazine!”

“What's a magazine, pops?” asked the young one. “Pops” was obviously giving him lessons.

“A magazine is pictures, brother, colored pictures, and they get sent here to local tailors, every Saturday, by mail, from abroad, to tell how everybody should dress, the male sex the same as the female. Drawings, I mean. The male sex is shown more in fancy suits, and in the female department, brother, there's such pompadours—give me all you've got and it won't be enough!”

“What you can't find here in Petersburg!” the young one exclaimed enthusiastically. “Except for your old granny, they've got everything!”

“Except for that, brother, there's everything to be found,” the older one concluded didactically.