Crime and Punishment (53 page)

‘Excuse me, gentlemen, excuse me. Don't crowd around. Let me through!' he said, making his way through the throng. ‘And kindly desist from your threats. It'll get you nowhere, I assure you – I'm no shrinking violet, while you, gentlemen, shall have to answer for use of violence to cover up a criminal case. The thief has been amply exposed and I will prosecute. Judges are not so blind . . . or so drunk, and they won't believe two notorious atheists, disturbers of the peace and free-thinkers, who accuse me for no better reason than personal revenge, which they, in their idiocy, admit themselves . . . Now if you'll excuse me!'

‘I want no trace of you in my room. Kindly move out this minute – it's over between us! When I think of the tears I sweated, explaining everything to him . . . for an entire fortnight!'

‘Andrei Semyonovich, I told you myself that I was moving out, and you wouldn't let me leave. Now I shall merely add that you are an idiot, sir. May you succeed in curing your mind and your purblind eyes. Now if you'll excuse me, gentlemen!'

He squeezed past, but the quartermaster was reluctant to let him out just like that, with nothing but curses: he grabbed a glass from the table and hurled it with all his strength at Pyotr Petrovich; but the glass hit Amalia Ivanovna instead. She squealed and the quartermaster, losing his balance from the effort of throwing, collapsed beneath the table. Pyotr Petrovich went to his room and was gone in half an hour. Sonya, timid by nature, had always known that nobody could be destroyed more easily than her and that anyone could insult her with virtual impunity. But still, right until that moment, it seemed to her that disaster could somehow be avoided – by being careful, meek and obedient to all. Her disappointment was overwhelming. Of course, she could endure anything – even this – with patience and barely a murmur. But the first minute was just too painful. She had come out victorious and vindicated, yet, once the initial fright and shock had passed, once she'd understood and grasped everything clearly, an excruciating sense of helplessness and hurt pressed on her heart. She became hysterical. Eventually, she could bear it no longer, rushed from the room and ran off home. Luzhin had walked out just moments before. After being hit by the glass, to the riotous amusement of those present, Amalia Ivanovna had also had enough of being sober at someone else's party. Shrieking, as if possessed, she rushed over to Katerina Ivanovna, holding her responsible for everything:

‘Out of my premise! Now! Quick!' Saying this, she began grabbing
whichever of Katerina Ivanovna's things came to hand and throwing them on the floor. Katerina Ivanovna, more dead than alive, barely conscious, gasping and pale, leapt from her bed (onto which she'd fallen in exhaustion) and threw herself on Amalia Ivanovna. But the struggle was far too uneven and she was brushed away like a feather.

‘What? As if godless slanders weren't enough, this animal's started attacking me too! On the day of my husband's funeral I'm thrown out of our apartment, despite my bread and salt, out onto the streets, with the orphans! And where will I go?' the poor woman howled, sobbing and gasping. ‘Lord!' she suddenly shouted, eyes flashing. ‘Is there really no justice? Who will you protect, if not us orphans? Well, we'll see! There is judgement and justice on this earth – I'll find them! Just you wait, you godless animal! Polechka, you stay with the children, I'll be back. Wait for me – on the streets if you have to! We'll see if there's justice on this earth!'

Wrapping that same green
drap de dames
shawl around her head – the one the late Marmeladov had mentioned in the drinking den – Katerina Ivanovna squeezed through the drunk and disorderly throng of tenants still crowding the room and ran out, weeping and wailing, into the street, with the vague intention of finding justice somewhere, right now, come what may. Terrified, Polechka shrank into the corner with the children, sat on the trunk and there, hugging the two little ones and shaking all over, began waiting for her mother's return. Amalia Ivanovna stormed around the room, screeching and whining, hurling onto the floor whatever came her way and making a great din as she did so. The tenants became ever more rowdy: some drew what conclusions they could about these events; some argued and swore; others began singing . . .

‘Time for me, too!' thought Raskolnikov. ‘Well, Sofya Semyonovna, let's see what you say now!'

And he set off to visit Sonya.

Raskolnikov had been energetic and animated in his defence of Sonya against Luzhin, despite the fact that he himself was carrying so much dread and suffering in his soul. But, having been through so much that morning, he'd felt a kind of joy at the chance to experience different impressions, to say nothing of the very personal and heartfelt nature of
his urge to plead Sonya's case. Aside from that, there lay before him the prospect – which at moments he found quite terrifying – of seeing Sonya: he
had
to tell her who killed Lizaveta, and sensed in advance how agonizing this would be; it was as if he were trying to fend it off. And so, when he exclaimed, on leaving Katerina Ivanovna's, ‘What will you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?', he was still in a state of outward excitement: animated, defiant and flushed with his recent victory over Luzhin. But something strange came over him. On reaching Kapernaumov's apartment, he felt within himself a sudden weakening and fear. He stopped outside the door, hesitating over the strange question, ‘Must I say who killed Lizaveta?' It was a strange question because he suddenly felt, at one and the same time, that not only did he have to tell her, but that even to postpone this moment, however briefly, was impossible. Why it was impossible he still did not know; he merely
felt
it, and this excruciating awareness of his impotence in the face of necessity all but crushed him. To cut short his deliberations and agony, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, but on seeing Raskolnikov she hurriedly got up and went over to greet him, almost as if she'd been waiting for him.

‘What would have become of me, but for you?' she said in a rush, meeting him in the middle of the room. Clearly, it was this she'd so wanted to tell him. It was this she'd been waiting for.

Raskolnikov walked over to the table and sat down on the chair from which she'd only just got up. She stood facing him, two steps away, just like yesterday.

‘Well, Sonya?' he said and suddenly felt his voice tremble. ‘So, you see, everything hinged on “social status and the habits it implies”. Did you understand that just now?'

Suffering was written on her face.

‘Just don't talk to me as you did yesterday!' she interrupted him. ‘Please don't start. It's bad enough as it is . . .'

She gave him a hurried smile, frightened he might have taken her criticism badly.

‘How stupid of me to leave. What's happening there now? I was just about to go, but I kept thinking that you might just . . . come.'

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was throwing them out of the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere, ‘seeking justice'.

‘O God!' cried Sonya with a start. ‘Quick, off we go . . . !'

She grabbed her cape.

‘It's always the same!' Raskolnikov exclaimed in irritation. ‘All you ever think about is them! Stay with me a while.'

‘What about . . . Katerina Ivanovna?'

‘You'll see her soon enough, no doubt. She'll come here herself, seeing as she's already run away from home,' he added peevishly. ‘And if she doesn't find you in, you'll be the one to blame . . .'

Sonya sat down, racked with indecision. Raskolnikov said nothing, staring at the floor and mulling something over.

‘Let's suppose Luzhin wasn't in the mood for that now,' he began, without a glance in Sonya's direction. ‘But if he had been, or if it had been part of his plans, then he'd have had you locked up, but for Lebezyatnikov and me happening to be there! Eh?'

‘Yes,' she said in a weak voice. ‘Yes!' she repeated, distracted and alarmed.

‘But I might very easily not have been there! And as for Lebezyatnikov, it was pure chance that he showed up.'

Sonya said nothing.

‘And if prison, then what? Remember what I said yesterday?'

Once again she did not reply. He was waiting.

‘And I thought you'd start up again with your, “Oh, don't, please stop!”' laughed Raskolnikov, though not without a strain. ‘What, more silence?' he asked a minute later. ‘Surely there must be something we can talk about? What I'd really like to know, for example, is how you'd set about solving a certain “question”, as Lebezyatnikov likes to say.' (He seemed to be losing his thread). ‘No, really, I'm being serious. Just imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin's intentions in advance, that you knew (for a fact) that they'd be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna, and the children, too – and of you, into the bargain (
into the bargain
seems about right, seeing as you think so little of yourself). Polechka, too . . . because she'll go the same way. Well, miss, what if it were suddenly left up to you now who should survive? Him or them? I mean, should Luzhin live and commit his abominations or should Katerina Ivanovna die? Well, what would you decide? Which of them would die? I'm asking you.'

Sonya glanced at him anxiously: she caught a peculiar note of something in his uncertain, roundabout words.

‘I had a feeling you'd ask a question like that,' she said, with a searching look.

‘As you wish. But still, what would you decide?'

‘Why do you ask about things that can't happen?' said Sonya with disgust.

‘So it's better for Luzhin to live and commit his abominations? You don't dare decide even about that?'

‘But how can I know the ways of God . . . ? And why do you ask me what mustn't be asked? Why all these empty questions? How could it ever depend on my decision? And who has made me the judge here about who should live and who shouldn't?'

‘Well, if you're bringing the ways of God into it, there's nothing more to be said,' muttered Raskolnikov sullenly.

‘Just tell me what it is that you want!' cried Sonya with suffering. ‘You're hinting at something again . . . Surely you didn't come here just to torment me!'

She could take it no longer and began sobbing bitterly. He looked at her in dismal anguish. Some five minutes passed.

‘I suppose you're right, Sonya,' he said at last, softly. There was a sudden change in him; his tone of affected insolence and feeble defiance was gone. Even his voice had suddenly become weak. ‘I told you myself, only yesterday, that I wouldn't come to ask forgiveness, and I've begun by doing almost precisely that, asking forgiveness . . . All that about Luzhin and the ways of God was for myself . . . That was me asking forgiveness, Sonya . . .'

He made as if to smile, but his smile came out pale, feeble, unfinished. He bowed his head and covered his face in his hands.

Suddenly, a strange, unexpected sensation of almost caustic hatred towards Sonya crossed his heart. As though himself astonished and frightened by this sensation, he suddenly raised his head and fixed his eyes upon her; but he met a look of anxiety and tortured concern. There was love here; his hatred vanished, like a phantom. He'd got it wrong; mistaken one feeling for another. All it meant was that
that
moment had come.

Once again he covered his face in his hands and bowed his head. He suddenly turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonya and mechanically, without saying a word, moved over to her bed and sat down.

This moment was dreadfully similar, in sensation, to the moment when he was standing behind the old woman, having freed the axe from the loop, and felt ‘there wasn't a second to lose'.

‘What's the matter?' asked Sonya with dreadful timidity.

He couldn't say a word. This wasn't how he'd imagined his
declaration
, not at all, and he himself could not understand what was happening to him now. She walked over to him quietly, sat down next to him on the bed and waited, never once taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and froze, pounded and froze. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face towards her; his lips twisted feebly, straining to say something. Dread touched Sonya's heart.

‘What's the matter?' she repeated, retreating from him slightly.

‘Nothing, Sonya. Don't be frightened . . . What rubbish! Really, it's just rubbish when you think about it,' he muttered, with the air of a man losing himself in his delirium. ‘But why does it have to be you I've come to torment?' he added suddenly, looking at her. ‘Really. Why? This is the question I keep asking myself, Sonya . . .'

Perhaps he really had been asking this question a quarter of an hour earlier, but now he was utterly enfeebled and scarcely aware of himself, his whole body trembling without pause.

‘You're in such agony!' she said with suffering, looking at him intently.

‘It's all rubbish! . . . Here's what, Sonya,' (for some reason he suddenly smiled, in a pale, feeble kind of way, for a second or two) ‘do you remember what I wanted to say to you yesterday?'

Sonya waited anxiously.

‘I said as I was leaving that I might be saying goodbye to you forever, but that if I came today I'd tell you . . . who killed Lizaveta.'

Her whole body suddenly began to shake.

‘Well, here I am: I've come to tell you.'

‘So you really meant it yesterday . . . ,' she whispered with difficulty. ‘But why would you know?' she hurriedly asked, as if suddenly coming to her senses.

Sonya's breathing became laboured. Her face turned ever paler.

‘I know.'

She was silent for about a minute.

‘Has
he
been found then?' she timidly asked.

‘No, he hasn't.'

‘Then how come you know about
that
?' she asked, again barely audibly, and again after nearly a minute's silence.

He turned towards her and fixed her with a steady, steady stare.

‘Guess,' he said, with the same twisted and feeble smile as before.

Convulsions seemed to ripple through her body.

‘But you . . . Why . . . ? Why are you . . . frightening me like this?' she said, smiling like a child.

‘
He
must be a great friend of mine, then . . . if I know,' Raskolnikov went on, continuing to stare at her unrelentingly, as if he no longer had the strength to avert his gaze. ‘That Lizaveta . . . He didn't want . . . to kill her . . . He killed her . . . without meaning to . . . It was the old woman he wanted to kill . . . when she was alone . . . and he came . . . Only for Lizaveta to walk in . . . So then . . . he killed her.'

Another dreadful minute passed. They were both still looking at each other.

‘So you can't guess, then?' he suddenly asked with the sensation of a man throwing himself from a bell tower.

‘N-no,' whispered Sonya, barely audibly.

‘Well, take a good look.'

No sooner had he said this than once again an old, familiar sensation suddenly turned his soul to ice: he was looking at her and suddenly, in her face, he seemed to see the face of Lizaveta. He remembered vividly the expression on Lizaveta's face when he was walking towards her then with the axe and she was retreating towards the wall, putting her arm out in front of her, with a quite childish look of fear on her face, just as little children have when something suddenly begins to frighten them, when they fix their gaze anxiously on the thing that's frightening them, back away and, holding out a little hand, prepare to cry. Almost exactly the same thing happened now to Sonya: she looked at him for a while just as feebly and just as fearfully, then suddenly, putting her left arm out in front of her, slightly, just barely, pressed her fingers into his chest and started rising slowly from the bed, backing away from him, further and further, her stare becoming ever more fixed. Her dread suddenly conveyed itself to him as well: exactly the same fear appeared on his face, too, and he began to look at her in exactly the same way, even with almost the same
childish
smile.

‘Guessed?' he whispered at last.

‘Lord!' broke with a dreadful howl from her breast. Enfeebled, Sonya collapsed onto the bed, face-down on the pillow. But the very next moment she hurriedly got up and moved towards him, grabbed
him by both hands and, squeezing them vice-like in her slender fingers, fixed her gaze on his face once more, as if she were glued to it. With this last, desperate stare she wanted to seek out and catch some last hope for herself, however small. But there was no hope; not the slightest doubt remained.
This
was how it was! Even later, even afterwards, she felt something both strange and wondrous when she recalled this moment: why exactly had she seen
straight away
that no doubts remained? After all, she could hardly claim to have sensed that something of the kind would happen, could she? Yet now, no sooner had he said this than it suddenly seemed to her that
that
was precisely what she'd sensed.

‘Enough, Sonya, enough! Don't torment me!' he asked, in a voice full of suffering.

It wasn't how he'd imagined telling her, far from it, but
this
was how it came out.

As if forgetting herself, she leapt to her feet and walked over to the middle of the room, wringing her hands; but she quickly came back and sat down next to him again, almost touching his shoulder with hers. Suddenly, as if transfixed, she shuddered, cried out and, without herself knowing why, fell to her knees before him.

‘Oh what have you done to yourself?' she said in despair and, leaping to her feet, threw herself on his neck, hugged him and squeezed him tightly-tightly in her arms.

Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a sad smile:

‘You're a strange one, Sonya – hugging and kissing me when I've just told you
about that
. You barely know what you're doing.'

‘No, no, nobody in the whole world is unhappier than you are now!'
33
she exclaimed in a kind of frenzy, deaf to his remark, and began sobbing out loud, almost hysterically.