Crime and Punishment (60 page)

‘“Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

‘“Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.”’

She stressed the word ‘four’ with great energy.

‘“Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?

‘“Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

‘“And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

‘“And when he had thus spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth.

‘“
And he that was dead came forth
,”’ (she read loudly and ecstatically, shaking and shivering, as though she were seeing it in real life) ‘“bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

‘“
Then many of the Jews which came to Mary
,
and had seen the things which Jesus did
,
believed on him
.”’

Further she did not read, nor was she able to, closed the book and quickly got up from her chair.

‘That's all there is about the raising of Lazarus,’ she whispered sternly and abruptly, and stood unmoving, turned away to one side, not daring to raise her eyes to him, as though she were embarrassed. Her feverish shaking still continued. The stub of candle had long been guttering in its crooked candlestick within that wretched room, shedding its dim light on the murderer and the prostitute who had so strangely encountered each other in the reading of the eternal book. Some five minutes or more went by.

‘I've come to talk about some business with you,’ Raskolnikov suddenly said in a loud voice, frowning; he got up and went over to Sonya. Sonya raised her eyes to him without saying anything. His gaze was peculiarly stern, and it contained a kind of wild determination.

‘I deserted my family today,’ he said. ‘My mother and sister. I shan't see them any more. I've severed my links with them.’

‘Why?’ Sonya asked, as though stunned. Her recent meeting with his mother and sister had left a deep impression on her, though it was one she could not define. She greeted this news of a severing of links with something approaching horror.

‘You're all I've got now,’ he added. ‘Let's be off… I've come to you. We're cursed together, so let's take the road together!’

His eyes were glittering. ‘Like a man insane!’ Sonya thought, in her turn.

‘Where to?’ she asked, in fear, and took a step back in spite of herself.

‘How should I know? All I know is that it must be the same road – towards the same goal!’

She looked at him in total incomprehension. All she could see was that he was horribly, infinitely unhappy.

‘None of them would understand if you were to tell them,’ he went on. ‘But I've understood. You're necessary to me, and that's why I've come to you.’

‘I don't understand…’ Sonya whispered.

‘You'll understand later on. You've done the same thing, after all, haven't you? You've also stepped across… found it in yourself to step across. You've committed moral suicide, you've wrecked a life…
your own
. (It's all the same!) You might have lived a life of reason and the spirit, but you'll end up in the Haymarket… But you won't be able to endure it, and if you remain
alone
, you'll go mad, like me. You're like a madwoman, even now; that means we must go together, along the same road! Let's be off!’

‘Why? Why are you saying this?’ Sonya said, made strangely and restlessly uneasy by his words.

‘Why? Because you can't go on like this – that's why! You must finally confront things seriously and directly, and not weep and wail like a child about God not letting it happen. I mean, what would happen if you were to be carted off to hospital tomorrow? That mad, consumptive woman will die soon, and what will happen to the children? Do you think Polya won't go down the slippery slope? Haven't you seen the children on the street corners round here, those whose mothers have sent them out to beg for alms? I know the sort of places those mothers live in, and the sort of conditions they're surrounded by. In those places it's impossible for children to remain children. In those places a seven-year-old is a depraved thief. And yet children are the image of Christ: “for of such is the kingdom of heaven”. He commanded us to revere them and love them, they're the humanity of the future…’

‘But what then – what's to be done?’ Sonya said, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.

‘What's to be done? To break what has to be broken, once and for always, that's all: and to take the suffering upon oneself! What? You don't understand? You will, later on… Liberty and power, but above all power! Over all trembling mortals and over the whole antheap!
⁴
… There's your goal! Remember that! That's my parting message! This may be the last time I shall ever speak to you again. If I don't come back tomorrow, you'll hear about it all for yourself, and then I want you to remember those words I spoke to you just now. And perhaps some day, later on, after years of experience, you'll understand
what they mean. But if I do come back tomorrow, I'll tell you who murdered Lizaveta. Goodbye!’

Sonya shuddered with fright.

‘You mean you
know
who murdered her?’ she asked, going numb with horror and staring at him wildly.

‘I know and I'll tell you… You I'll tell, and you alone! I've singled you out. I won't come to ask you to forgive me, I'll simply tell you. I singled you out a long time ago as the person to tell this to, I thought of it back at the time when your father spoke about you and when Lizaveta was still alive. Goodbye. Don't give me your hand. Until tomorrow!’

He went out. Sonya watched him go as though he were a man insane; but she herself was like a woman insane, and she knew it. Her head was spinning. ‘Oh merciful Lord! How does he know who murdered Lizaveta? What was the meaning of those things he said? This is terrible!’ But at the same time
the thought
never entered her head. Not on any, any account!… Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!… He'd deserted his mother and sister. Why? What had happened? And what plans were in his head? What had he said to her? He'd kissed her foot and said… said (yes, he'd said it quite distinctly) that he couldn't live without her… Oh, merciful Lord!

Sonya spent the entire night with a high temperature and delirium. From time to time she would leap up, weeping and wringing her hands, and then relapse into a feverish slumber in which she dreamt of Polya, Katerina Ivanovna, Lizaveta, her reading from the New Testament and him… him, with his pale face, his burning eyes… He was kissing her feet, weeping… Oh, merciful Lord!

Behind the door on the right, the very same door that divided Sonya's room from the apartment of Gertruda Karlovna Resslich, was an intermediate room which had long stood empty, belonged to Mrs Resslich's apartment and was up for rent, a fact attested to by notices on the front gate and stickers in the windows that gave on to the Canal. Sonya had long been used to thinking of this room as unoccupied. Yet all this time, by the door of the empty room, Mr Svidrigailov had been standing, keeping quiet and listening. When Raskolnikov went out, he
stood for a moment, pondering, then tiptoed back to his own room, which adjoined the empty one, got a chair and carried it right up to the door that led into Sonya's room. The conversation had struck him as interesting and important, and he had enjoyed it very, very much – so much so, in fact, that he had brought in a chair, so that on any future occasion, such as tomorrow, for example, he would not have to sustain the rigours of standing up for a whole hour, but could make himself a little more comfortable, in order that his enjoyment might be complete in every respect.

When on the following morning, at eleven o'clock precisely, Raskolnikov entered the building of the — District Police Station, found his way up to the Criminal Investigation Department and requested that Porfiry Petrovich be informed of his arrival, he was rather surprised that it took so long for anyone to attend to him: at least ten minutes went by before his name was called. Somehow he had imagined that they would fall upon him instantly. Meanwhile, however, he stood in the waiting room, and people came and went, seeming not to take the slightest interest in him. In the next room, which resembled an office, a few scribes sat copying documents, and it was obvious that none of them had the slightest notion of who Raskolnikov might be. With a restless and suspicious gaze he looked around him to see if there might not be some guard, some secret eye being kept on him to see that he did not go away. But there was nothing of that sort: all he could see were office-workers going about their petty concerns, and a few other people of some description or other, and none of them could have cared less where he went. More and more resolutely the conviction formed in him that if that enigmatic man, that apparition who had yesterday materialized from nowhere, really had known and seen everything, then it was unlikely that he, Raskolnikov, would now be allowed to stand here like this, quietly waiting. It seemed unlikely, too, that they would have waited until eleven
o'clock for him to roll up and tender his greetings. It could mean only one of two things: either that man had not yet made any statement to the police, or… the plain fact was that he, too, knew nothing and had not actually seen anything with his own eyes (as indeed how could he have?), and that consequently all that had happened to him, Raskolnikov, the day before, had been an apparition, exaggerated by his own sick and overstimulated imagination. This hunch had even begun to dawn on him the day before, at the time of his most intense anxiety and despair. Having weighed all this over as he prepared for fresh combat, he suddenly felt himself trembling – and a sense of positive indignation seethed up in him at the thought that he was trembling with fear of the hated Porfiry Petrovich. The most horrible prospect he could think of was to encounter that man again; he hated him beyond all measure, beyond all bounds, to the point where he was actually afraid of somehow giving himself away by his hatred. So intense was that indignation that his trembling stopped at once; he prepared to enter with an air of cold insolence and made a vow to himself to say as little as possible, to keep his eyes and ears open and, on this occasion at least, concentrate the utmost effort on keeping his morbidly overstimulated temperament in check.

Porfiry Petrovich turned out to be alone in his chambers just at that moment. His ‘chambers’ were a room, neither large nor small; it contained a large writing desk with an oilcloth-covered sofa in front of it, a secretaire, a book-case in one corner and a few chairs – government furniture, all of it, made of yellow, polished wood. In the corner of the rear wall was a closed door, or partition, rather: there must, it appeared, be other rooms beyond this one. When Raskolnikov came in Porfiry immediately closed the door by which he had made his entrance, and they were alone together. He greeted his visitor with an apparently cordial and welcoming air, and it was only after several minutes had passed that Raskolnikov observed in him what seemed to be signs of embarrassment, as though he had suddenly been caught off his guard or discovered doing something very secret and private.

‘Ah, good sir! So here you are… in our neck of the woods…’
Porfiry began, stretching out both arms to him. ‘Well, sit down, my dear fellow! But perhaps you don't like to be called “good sir” and “my dear fellow” – as it were,
tout court
? Please don't think I'm being over-familiar, will you?… Yes, right here, on the sofa.’

Raskolnikov sat down, not taking his eyes off him.

Porfiry's phrase ‘in our neck of the woods’, his apologies and unduly familiar language, his use of the French expression
tout court
, and so on – all of this told him a great deal. ‘I notice that he stretched out both arms to me, but didn't let me shake his hand, withdrew it in time,’ flashed through his brain with suspicion. Both men were eyeing each other warily, but no sooner did their eyes meet than they would avert them with the swiftness of lightning.

‘I've brought you that application… about the watch… look, here it is. Have I written it correctly, or will I need to copy it out again?’

‘What? Oh, that letter… Yes, yes… have no fear, that will do perfectly,’ Porfiry Petrovich said, as though he were in some kind of haste, and, having said it, took the letter of application and read it through. ‘Yes, that will do perfectly, sir. No more than that is required,’ he said in the same rapid voice, and put the letter on his desk. Later, after a minute or two, by which time he was talking about something else, he picked it up again and transferred it to his secretaire.

‘I think you said yesterday that you wanted to ask me some… formal questions about how well I knew the woman who was murdered?’ Raskolnikov began again. ‘Oh, why did I say “I think”?’ flashed through his head like lightning. ‘And why am I so worried about having said it?’ flashed through it like lightning a split second later.

And suddenly he had a feeling that his over-anxiety had, from the merest contact with Porfiry, from the very first words they had uttered, from their very first sight of each other, in one instant grown to monstrous proportions… and that this was extremely dangerous: his nerves were on edge, and his agitation was increasing. ‘This is bad, bad!… I'm going to say the wrong thing again!’

‘Yes, yes, yes, now please don't let me put you to any bother, everything's perfectly all right. We've all the time in the world, sir, all the time in the world,’ Porfiry Petrovich muttered, waddling to and fro in the region of his desk, but seemingly without any aim, lurching now towards the window, now towards the secretaire, then back to the desk again, at one moment avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious gaze, at the next suddenly coming to a halt and looking straight at him, steadily. He made a thoroughly strange spectacle, his small, rather fat and rotund figure for all the world like a little ball rolling off in various directions and instantly bouncing back from the room's walls and corners.