Crime and Punishment (58 page)

‘I'm sorry, it's late… It must be after eleven, isn't it?’ he asked, still without raising his eyes to her.

‘Yes,’ Sonya murmured. ‘Oh, yes, it is!’ she said, suddenly, in a hurry, as though this were for her the end of the matter. ‘The landlord's clock chimed just now… I heard it… It is past eleven.’

‘This is the last time I shall be visiting you,’ Raskolnikov went on, darkly, although this was actually the first time he had ever called on her. ‘I may not see you again…’

‘Are you… going somewhere?’

‘I don't know… I'll find out everything tomorrow…’

‘So you won't be at Katerina Ivanovna's tomorrow?’ Sonya said, with a quiver in her voice.

‘I don't know. I'll know it all tomorrow morning… That's not why I'm here; I've come to tell you something…’

He brought his thoughtful gaze up to meet hers and suddenly noticed that he was seated, while she continued to stand facing him.

‘Why are you standing up? Sit down,’ he said in a voice that had swiftly altered, a quiet, caressing voice.

She sat down. For a moment he gave her a friendly look that was almost one of compassion.

‘How thin you are! Look at that hand of yours! One can see right through it! Your fingers are like a corpse's.’

He took her hand. Sonya smiled faintly.

‘I've always been like this,’ she said.

‘Even when you lived at home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, I suppose you have!’ he said abruptly, and his facial
expression and tone of voice again swiftly altered. Again, he looked round him.

‘You rent this place from Kapernaumov?’

‘Yes, sir…’

‘What about the people through the door, do they rent from him, too?’

‘Yes… They have a room like this one.’

‘All of them in the same room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I'd be scared in here at nights,’ he observed, darkly.

‘The landlord and landlady are very good, very affectionate to me,’ Sonya replied, still somehow not quite with all her wits about her, and still unsure of the situation. ‘All the furniture, everything… it all belongs to them. Oh, they're very kind, and their children often come to see me…’

‘Are they the ones who can't speak properly?’

‘That's right, sir… He has a stammer, and he's lame, too. His wife's that way, as well… She hasn't actually got a stammer, but she can't get her words out properly. She's kind, very. And he's a former house-serf. They've got seven children… Only the eldest one has a stammer, and the others are simply ill… and they don't stammer… But how do you know about them?’ she added with some astonishment.

‘Your father told me all about them before he died. He told me all about you… About how you'd go out at six and come back at nine, and about how Katerina Ivanovna used to kneel beside your bed.’

Sonya was covered in embarrassment.

‘I thought I saw him today,’ she whispered, uncertainly.

‘Who?’

‘My father. I was walking along the street, down there, near this building, on the corner, and he seemed to be walking ahead of me. It really did look like him. I was just about to call on Katerina Ivanovna…’

‘You were off duty?’

‘Yes,’ Sonya whispered abruptly, again covered in embarrassment, and with her eyes lowered.

‘Katerina Ivanovna used to beat you when you lived with the family, didn't she?’

‘No! Why do you say that, why do you say that, no!’ Sonya said, looking at him with fright.

‘So you love her, do you?’

‘Love her? Of co-u-rse!’ Sonya said, drawing the word out piteously, and suddenly clasping her hands in suffering. ‘Oh, you don't know her… If only you knew her. I mean, she's just like a child… I mean, she's nearly gone insane… with unhappiness. And how clever she used to be… how magnanimous… how kind! You don't know anything, anything… oh-h!’

Sonya had said this as though she were in despair – frantic with suffering, and wringing her hands. Her pale cheeks had flared with colour again, and her eyes expressed torment. It was clear that a terrible number of things had been stirred up in her, that there was something she terribly wanted to express, to say out loud, to plead for. A kind of
voracious
compassion, if it might be put that way, was suddenly displayed in every feature of her face.

‘Beat me? But why do you say that? Beat me? Oh, merciful Lord! And what if she did beat me – what then? What does it matter? You don't know anything, anything… She's so unhappy, oh, so unhappy! And ill… She's looking for justice and truth… She's so pure… She believes there must be justice in everything, and she demands it… And even if you were to torture her, she wouldn't do something that was unjust. She herself simply isn't aware that it's impossible for there to be justice and truth among people, and she gets upset. Like a child, like a child! She's so, so truthful!’

‘And what's going to become of you?’

Sonya gave him a questioning look.

‘I mean, you're their main support, now. You were their support before, too, and your father used to come and ask you for money so he could treat his hangover. Well, what's going to happen now?’

‘I don't know,’ Sonya said sadly.

‘Will they stay where they are?’

‘I don't know. They're behind with the rent on that place; but apparently the landlady told them today that she's going to banish them from the doorstep, and Katerina Ivanovna herself says she doesn't want to stay there another minute.’

‘Why the pretence of bravery? Is she putting her hope in you?’

‘Oh, don't say such things!… We live as one, in harmony,’ Sonya said, growing frantic again, and even showing signs of irritation, for all the world in the way a canary or some other small bird might lose its temper, if it could. ‘I mean what, what is she to do?’ she asked, growing angry and excited. ‘And how she wept today, oh, how she wept! Her mind's growing confused, haven't you noticed? She's growing confused; at one moment she's worrying like a little girl about everything being just right tomorrow, with the proper snacks and everything… at the next she's wringing her hands, spitting blood and weeping, and suddenly she starts beating her head against the wall, as though she were in despair. And then she gets over it again, she puts all her hope in you: she says you're her helping hand now, and that she's going to borrow some money from somewhere and take me back to her home town with her, and start a boarding-school for girls from good families and hire me as one of the teachers, and a completely new and wonderful life will open up for us, and she kisses me, embraces me, consoles me, and, I mean, she really believes it! She really believes those fantasies of hers! Well, how can one contradict her? And all day today she's been washing, cleaning and mending; she dragged the wash-trough into the room herself, with her feeble energies, and collapsed on the bed, gasping for breath; and she and I went to the Row
²
this morning to buy shoes for Lena and Polechka, because their old ones are falling to pieces, only we'd underestimated the amount they would cost, underestimated it by a very long way, and she'd had her eye on such a lovely little pair of shoes, because she has taste, you simply don't know… She burst into tears right there in the shop, in front of the owners, because she didn't have enough… Oh, how pitiful it was to see her!’

‘Well now you've told me that, I can understand why you live like… this,’ Raskolnikov said with a bitter, ironic smile.

‘But don't you feel sorry for her? Don't you?’ Sonya said, hurling herself towards him again. ‘I mean, I know you gave her the last money you had, but you hadn't seen anything. If you had – oh, merciful Lord! Oh, how many, many times I've brought her to tears! And that evening last week, too! Oh, what could I have been thinking of? Only a week before his death. How cruelly I behaved! And how many, many times that has happened. Oh, and then, just as now, I would go through the agony of thinking about it all day!’

As she spoke, Sonya actually wrung her hands at the pain of the recollection.

‘You mean you're the one who was cruel?’

‘Yes, I was, I was! That evening, when I arrived,’ she continued, weeping, ‘my father said: “Read to me, Sonya, my head's aching, read to me… here, I've a book.” He had some book or other, he must have got it from Andrei Semyonych – that's Mr Lebezyatnikov who lives near here, he was always getting hold of such amusing books. But I told him it was late, I had to be going, so I couldn't read to him, I'd only dropped in to show Katerina Ivanovna some lace collars; Lizaveta, the market-woman, had brought me some lace collars and armlets at a low price, good ones they were, new, with patterns. Katerina Ivanovna thought they were marvellous, she put them on and looked at herself in the mirror, oh, she thought they were quite, quite wonderful: “Please let me have them, Sonya,” she said. She even said “please” – that's how much she wanted them. But what would she have done with them? It was simply that they reminded her of her earlier, happier days! She looked at herself in the mirror, admiring herself, and I mean, she doesn't have one single dress, not a single one, she hasn't had anything of her own for heaven knows how many years! And she'd never ask anyone for anything; she's proud, she'd rather give away the last she owned, and here she was asking – so wonderful did she think they were! But I was sorry to part with them – “What would you be doing with those, Katerina Ivanovna?” I asked. That was how I said it – “What would you be doing with those?” I shouldn't have said that to her! She gave me a terrible look, because it had really, really hurt her that I'd said no to her, and
it was so pitiful to see… I mean, it wasn't the collars she was hurt about, but the fact that I'd said no, I could see it. Oh, if only I could, I think I'd take it all back, undo it all, all of what I said that evening… Oh, what a miserable person I am!… But what's the use?… I mean, why should you care?’

‘Did you know that Lizaveta woman – the one who ran the market stall?’

‘Yes, I did… Did you?’ Sonya asked with a certain degree of surprise.

‘Katerina Ivanovna has incurable consumption: she's going to die soon,’ Raskolnikov said, after a moment's silence, and without answering her question.

‘Oh, no, no, no!’ Sonya cried, and with an unconscious gesture she seized him by both hands, as though begging him to say it was not true.

‘But I mean, it's better if she dies,’ he said.

‘No it's not, it's not better, it's not better at all!’ she kept repeating, frightened and without any control.

‘But what about the children? Where will you take them if not here, with you?’

‘Oh, I don't know!’ Sonya screamed, almost in despair, and she clutched at her head. It was evident that this thought had fleetingly occurred to her on many, many occasions, and that he had startled it to life again.

‘Well, and what if you were to fall ill even now, while Katerina Ivanovna is still alive, and you were taken to hospital, what would happen then?’ he said, pressing on without mercy.

‘Oh, stop it, stop it! That's not possible!’ Sonya shrieked, and her face was twisted with a terrible panic.

‘What do you mean, not possible?’ Raskolnikov continued with a hard, ironic smile. ‘You're not insured, are you? So what would happen to them? You'd all be out in the street, the whole gang of you, she'd be coughing and begging and beating her head against a wall somewhere, as she did today, and the children would be crying… And then she'd collapse, and be taken to the police station, the hospital, she'd die, and the children…’

‘No!… God won't let it happen!’ were the words that finally broke from Sonya's constricted chest. She was listening, looking
at him in supplication, looking at him and clasping her hands in a speechless plea, as though all depended on him.

Raskolnikov got up and began to pace about the room. About a minute went by. Sonya stood with her arms dropped and her head lowered, in terrible anguish.

‘Can't you save some money? Put something by for when you need it?’ he asked, stopping suddenly in front of her.

‘No,’ Sonya whispered.

‘I dare say not. But have you tried?’ he added, with something very close to mockery.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And it didn't work out! Well, that's that, I suppose. There's no point in my even asking, is there?’

And again he began to pace about the room. About another minute went by.

‘You don't earn every day, I hope?’

Sonya grew even more embarrassed than she had been previously, and the colour again rushed to her face.

‘No,’ she whispered with an agonized effort.

‘I expect the same thing will happen to Polya,’ he said, suddenly.

‘No! No! It's not possible! No!’ Sonya screamed, like a soul in despair, or as though someone had just stuck a knife into her. ‘God, God wouldn't let anything so dreadful happen!…’

‘He lets it happen to other people.’

‘No, no! God will look after her, he will!’ she said, beside herself.

‘But there may not be any God,’ Raskolnikov replied with a kind of malicious satisfaction, gave a laugh and looked at her.

Sonya's face suddenly changed in a most terrible manner; it was crossed by convulsive spasms. She glanced at him with a look of inexpressible reproach, made as if to say something, but could not get the words out, and instead suddenly began to sob with the utmost bitterness, covering her face with her hands.

‘You say that Katerina Ivanovna's mind's growing confused; it's your own that is,’ he said after a pause.

Some five minutes passed. He kept pacing to and fro, not saying a word and not looking at her. At last, he went over to
her; his eyes were glittering. He took her by the shoulders with both hands and looked straight into her weeping face. His gaze was dry, inflamed and sharp, his lips were quivering violently… With sudden rapidity he stooped and, getting down on the floor, kissed her foot. Sonya jerked back from him in horror, as from a madman. And indeed, he really did look like a man who was wholly insane.

‘Why are you doing that? Why are you doing it? In front of me!’ she muttered, her face now pale, and suddenly her heart was wrung with utter agony.

He immediately got up.

‘It wasn't you I was bowing to, but the whole of human suffering,’ he said almost savagely, and went over to the window. ‘Listen,’ he added, coming back to her after a moment or two, ‘I told an insulting fellow earlier today that he wasn't worth your little finger… and that I'd done my sister an honour by making her sit next to you.’