Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

exercise-books (from the mere fact that they were covered in dust it could be seen that it was a long time since anyone had touched them), and a big, ungainly sofa, which took up practically the whole of one wall and half the width of the room, had at one time had an upholstering of chintz, but was now in rags, and served as Raskolnikov's bed. He often slept on it as he was, without bothering to undress, without a sheet, covering himself with his old, threadbare student's coat and resting his head on a single small pillow beneath which he put all the linen he possessed, clean and soiled, to give some extra height. In front of the sofa there was a little table.
    It would have been hard to go much further to seed or to sink to a lower level of personal neglect; but to Raskolnikov, in his present state of mind, this was actually gratifying. He had, in no uncertain terms, withdrawn from everyone, like a tortoise into its shell, and even the face of the maidservant whose task it was to wait upon him and who sometimes peeped into his room irritated him to the point of bile and convulsions. This is often the case with a certain kind of monomaniac who spends all his time thinking too much about something. It was now two weeks since his landlady had stopped supplying him with meals, yet he would never have dreamed of going down to argue with her, even though he went without his dinner. As a matter of fact, Nastasya, the landlady's cook and only servant, was reallysomewhat pleased by this attitude on the part of the lodger, and had completely given up tidying and sweeping his quarters, except for the odd occasion, roughly once a week, when she poked her broom into them almost by accident. She it had been who just now had woken him up.
    ‘What, are you still sleeping? It's time to get up!’ she shouted, standing over him. ‘It's nearly gone ten. I've brought you some tea; do you want it? Or are you just going to waste away to nothing?’
    The lodger opened his eyes, gave a start and recognized Nastasya.
    ‘What's this? Tea from the landlady?’ he asked, slowly and painfully raising himself on the sofa.
    ‘You've got a hope!’
    She set before him her own cracked teapot, containing a weak brew of tea made with used leaves, and placed beside it two yellow lumps of sugar.
    ‘Here, Nastasya, take this, please,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket (he had been sleeping in his clothes) and pulling from it a small handful of copper change. ‘Go out and buy me a roll. And get me a bit of sausage at the sausage-dealer's, the cheapest they have.’
    ‘I'll get you the roll in a minute, but won't you have some cabbage-soup instead of the sausage? It's good stuff, I made it yesterday. I left some for you yesterday, but you were too late. It's good stuff.’
    When the cabbage soup had been brought in and he had set to work on it, Nastasya seated herself beside him on the sofa and began to chatter away. She was a country girl, and a very indiscreet one, too.
    ‘Praskovya Pavlovna says she's going to complain about you to the police,’ she said.
    He frowned hard.
    ‘To the police? What's bothering her?’
    ‘You don't pay your rent but you don't quit the room. It's easy to see what's bothering her.’
    ‘The devil, that's all I needed,’ he muttered, gritting his teeth. ‘No, this isn't the right time… not now… She's a fool,’ headded, loudly. ‘I'll go and see her today, have a word with her.’
    ‘Fool she may be, just the same as me, but what's a clever fellow like you doing lying there like a lump, with never a sound or a sight of you? You said before you used to go and give lessons to children, but now you don't do anything – why?’
    ‘Oh, but I do do something…’ Raskolnikov said, sternly and reluctantly.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Work…’
    ‘What sort of work?’
    ‘Thinking,’ he replied seriously, after a brief silence.
    Nastasya fairly rolled with laughter. She was a giggly sort of girl, and when anything set her off