Crime and Punishment (74 page)

‘But you
are
suffering, aren't you?’ Sonya cried.

Again the feeling flooded into his soul like a wave and again for an instant softened it.

‘Sonya, I have a spiteful heart, take note of that: that may explain a lot of things. I came here because I'm full of spite. There are some who would not have. But I'm a coward and… a villain! Anyway… never mind that! All that's not important… I must speak now, yet I don't know how to begin…’

He paused and reflected.

‘Damn it, we're too different from each other!’ he exclaimed
again. ‘We'd never make a couple. Oh, why, why did I ever come here! I'll never forgive myself for this!’

‘No, no, it's good that you came!’ Sonya cried. ‘It's better that I should know! Far better!’

He looked at her in pain.

‘It really was that!’ he said, as though he had made up his mind. ‘I mean, it really happened! You see, I wanted to become a Napoleon, and that's why I killed… Well, now do you understand?’

‘N-no,’ Sonya whispered, naïvely and timidly. ‘But… go on, go on! I
will
understand, I'll understand it all
in my own way
,’ she said, imploring him.

‘You will? Very well, then – we shall see!’

He fell silent and thought for a long time.

‘It was like this: I once asked myself the question: what if Napoleon, for example, had been in my position, and instead of having a Toulon, and an Egypt, and a crossing of Mont Blanc to begin his career with, what if instead of all those beautiful and monumental things he had quite simply had nothing but an absurd old woman, a petty bureaucrat's widow, whom he was also going to have to murder, so he could steal all the money out of her chest (to help his career, do you see?) – well, would he have been able to bring himself to do it, if there had been no other way out? Would not the lack of monumentality in such an action have jarred upon him to such an extent that he would have viewed it as… positively sinful? Well, let me tell you that I spent a horribly long time agonizing over that question, and that I really felt horribly ashamed of myself when I finally realized (it came to me all of a sudden) that not only would the lack of monumentality not have jarred on him – it wouldn't even have entered his head: what was so jarring about it? And if there had been no other way out for him, he'd have strangled her without letting her utter a sound, without a moment's thought!… Well, that's what I did, too… I gave up my thinking… and strangled her… following the example of an authority on such matters… And that's how the whole thing came to happen! Don't you think that's amusing? Yes, Sonya,
the most amusing thing of all is that that may really be how it came to happen…’

Sonya did not find it amusing at all.

‘I'd rather you told me in a straightforward way… without examples,’ she asked him, even more timidly and in a voice that was barely audible.

He turned to face her, looked at her sadly and took her hands.

‘Once again, you're right, Sonya. Actually, all of what I've been telling you is nonsense, almost pure drivel! Look: you know, don't you, that my mother has almost nothing. My sister obtained an education of sorts, and was then condemned to go wandering about as a governess. I was the focus of all their hopes. I went to university, but I couldn't manage to support myself, and I had to give up my course. Even if I'd stuck at it, the most I could have hoped for would have been to have become some kind of teacher or civil servant on a salary of a thousand roubles a year (if things worked out favourably)…’ (He was talking as though this were something he had learnt by rote.) ‘And by then my mother would have wasted away with care and unhappiness, and I still wouldn't have been able to put her mind at rest, and my sister… well, my sister might suffer an even worse fate! And in any case, who wants to let life pass him by and turn away from everything, forget about his mother and endure the insults piled upon his sister in dutiful silence? Where's the point in it? Is the point to bury them and then acquire a new family – a wife and children, only to desert them, too, without a copeck or a crust of bread? Well… well, and so I decided that once I'd got my hands on the old woman's money I'd use it to meet my requirements during my first years at the university, without being a burden on my mother, and for my first steps after university – and do it all on a grand scale, in true radical style, in order to build a completely new career for myself and set out on a new and independent path… Well… well, and that's all. Of course, my killing the old woman was an evil thing to do… but enough of that!’

He dragged himself to the end of his story with a kind of helplessness, and lowered his head.

‘No, that's wrong, that's wrong,’ Sonya exclaimed in anguish.
‘And in any case, people are not allowed to behave like that… No, it's wrong, wrong!’

‘You can see for yourself that it is!… Yet I mean, I was quite sincere in what I told you, and it's the truth!’

‘What kind of truth is that? O merciful Lord!’

‘Look, Sonya, all I killed was a louse – a loathsome, useless, harmful louse!’

‘But that louse was a human being!’

‘Oh, I too know that she wasn't really a louse,’ he replied, looking at her strangely. ‘Actually, I'm talking nonsense, Sonya,’ he added. ‘I've been doing that for a long time now… All that's wrong; you're quite correct. The real reasons involved are quite, quite, quite different!… I haven't spoken to anyone for such a long time, Sonya… My head's aching very badly now.’

His eyes were burning with a feverish light. He was almost beginning to rave; a restless smile flickered on his lips. Through his excited state of mind a terrible helplessness could now be glimpsed. Sonya understood the agony he was in. Her head was also beginning to go round. What strange things he had said: she thought she had understood some of them, but… ‘But how can it be? How can it be? O merciful Lord!’ And she wrung her hands in despair.

‘Yes, Sonya, it's wrong!’ he began again, suddenly raising his head as though an unexpected turn of thought had occurred to him and roused him to excitement again. ‘It's wrong! Yes, you'd do better to suppose (yes, this is really much better!) that I'm vain, envious, spiteful, nasty and vindictive, well… and, if you like, also with a leaning towards insanity. ( You may as well have it all at once! People have spoken of insanity before now, I've observed!) Look, I told you just now that I was unable to support myself while I was at the university. But you know, I might very well have been able to. My mother would have sent me the money to pay the fees, and I could have earned enough by myself for boots, clothes and bread: I know I could have! There was private teaching to be had; they were offering fifty copecks an hour. Razumikhin works, you know. But I turned spiteful and refused. Yes,
spiteful
(that's the right word for it!). And then like a spider I crept away and hid in my corner. I
mean, you've been in my rat-hole, you've seen it… And you know, Sonya, low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp the soul and the mind, too! Oh, how I hated that rat-hole! Yet even though I hated it, I didn't want to leave it. I made a special point of not wanting to! I stayed in it for days on end, unwilling to work, unwilling even to eat, just lying there. If Nastasya brought me food I'd eat it, if she didn't I'd let the day go by without eating; I wouldn't ask for anything, out of spite! I had no light at night, I just lay there in the darkness, I refused to earn money to buy candles. I was supposed to be studying, but I'd sold all my books; there's a finger's thickness of dust lying on the papers and exercise-books on my table now. I preferred simply to lie there thinking. And I went on thinking and thinking… And what dreams I had, such strange and diverse dreams, there'd be no point in trying to tell you them! The thing was, though, that I also began to imagine… No, that's not right! I'm not telling you correctly again! You see, I kept asking myself: “Why am I so stupid? Why is it that if others are stupid and I know for a certain fact that they're stupid, I don't want to be cleverer?” Then, Sonya, I realized that if I were to wait until everyone else had grown cleverer, I'd have to wait for a very long time… Then I also realized that that was never going to happen, that people aren't going to change and that no one can make them any different from what they are, and that it's not worth the effort to try! Yes, that's how it is! That's the law they operate by… It's a law, Sonya! It really is true!… And now I know, Sonya, that whoever is strong and powerful in mind and spirit is their lord and master! Whoever takes a lot of liberties is right in their eyes. Whoever is able to spit on most things, they consider their law-giver, and the person who takes the most liberties of all is the one who is most in the right! That's how it's been in the past, and that's how it will always be! Only a blind person could fail to perceive it!’

Although he was looking at Sonya as he said this, Raskolnikov was no longer concerned about whether she understood what he was saying or not. His fever had completely taken hold of him. He was in a kind of black ecstasy. (It was true – he really had not spoken to anyone for a very long time!) Sonya
realized that this black catechesis had become his creed and his law.

‘And then it was, Sonya, that I understood,’ he went on ecstatically, ‘that power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing: to be able to dare! It was then that I conceived a certain idea, for the first time in my life, an idea that has never occurred to anyone before me! Not anyone! I suddenly saw, as clearly as the sun, that in the past no one has ever dared, and still does not dare, quite simply to pick up all that absurd nonsense by the tail in passing and toss it to the devil! I… I wanted to
make the dare
, and so I killed someone… To make the dare – that was the only reason for it, Sonya!’

‘Oh, stop it, stop it, don't say any more!’ Sonya exclaimed, clasping her hands in dismay. ‘You've strayed away from God, and God has laid His hand upon you and given you up to the Devil!…’

‘Come to think of it, Sonya – when I was lying there in the darkness imagining all those things, was that the Devil stirring me up? Eh?’

‘Stop it! Don't laugh, you blasphemer – you understand—nothing! O merciful Lord! He'll never, never understand!’

‘Be quiet, Sonya. I'm not laughing at all; I mean, I know it was the Devil who led me to do it. Be quiet, Sonya, be quiet!’ he repeated blackly and insistently. ‘I know it all. All of that passed through my mind, and I whispered it to myself as I lay there in the darkness… I argued it all through with myself, right down to the last, most insignificant detail, and I know it all, all of it! And I got so sick, so sick of all that drivel! I kept wanting to forget it all and make a fresh start, Sonya, to stop uttering drivel! Do you really think I went into it like a fool, head first? No, I went into it like a fellow with some brains, and that was my undoing. Do you really think I didn't know, for example, that the very fact that I'd started to search my conscience and ask myself whether I had any right to assume power over someone else like that meant that I didn't have any such right? Or that the fact I was asking myself the question: “Is man a louse?”
meant that man wasn't a louse
for me
, but might very well be for someone to whom the question would never occur and who would go straight into action at once… Or, finally, that the fact I'd spent so many days agonizing over the question of whether I was a Napoleon or not meant that I knew beyond all shadow of doubt that I wasn't one… I endured the whole, the whole of the torment that drivel caused me, Sonya, and I tried to shake it off: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for my own sake, for no one but myself! I didn't want to lie about that even to myself! I didn't kill in order to help my mother – that's rubbish! I didn't kill in order to get money and power and thus be able to become a benefactor of mankind. That's rubbish, too! I simply killed; I killed for my own sake, for no one but myself, and the question of whether I'd become someone's benefactor or spend all my life like a spider, drawing people into my web and sucking the vital juices from them, was a matter of complete indifference to me at that moment!… And above all, it wasn't the money I wanted as a result of killing; at least, it wasn't so much the money as something else… I know all this now… You must understand me: in taking the path that I did, I might very well never have committed another murder again. It was something else I needed to find out, it was something else that was forcing my hand: what I needed to know, and know quickly, was whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a man. Whether I could take the step across, or whether I couldn't. Whether I could dare to lower myself and pick up what was lying there, or not. Whether I was a quivering knave, or whether I had a
right
…’

‘To kill? Whether you had a right to kill?’ Sonya cried, her hands still clasped in dismay.

‘Oh, for God's sake, Sonya!’ he exclaimed in irritation, seemed on the point of delivering some retort, but then fell contemptuously silent. ‘Stop interrupting me! I was simply trying to prove one thing to you: that the Devil led me to do what I did and only afterwards explained that I had no right to do it, because I'm just a louse like everyone else! He mocked at me, and so I came here to you! Receive your guest! If I weren't a louse, would I have come to you? Listen: when I went to see the
old woman that day I only intended to conduct a
rehearsal
… You may as well be aware of that!’

‘And you killed her! You killed her!’

‘But I mean, what sort of killing was it? Is that the way people kill? Do they go about it as I did that day? Some time I'll tell you how I went about it… Did I really kill the old woman? No, it was myself I killed, not the old woman! I bumped myself off, in one go, for ever!… And as for the old woman, it was the Devil who killed her, not I… Enough, enough, Sonya, enough! Let me alone!’ he cried suddenly in a convulsion of anguish. ‘Let me alone!’

Placing his elbows on his knees, he jabbed the palms of his hands against his head like pincers.

‘Oh, what suffering!’ The words broke from Sonya in a tormented wail.