Crime and Punishment (75 page)

‘Well, what should I do now? Tell me that!’ he asked, lifting his head suddenly and looking at her with a face that was hideously distorted with despair.

‘What should you do?’ she exclaimed, leaping up from her chair, and her eyes, hitherto filled with tears, suddenly began to flash. ‘Get up!’ (She gripped him by the shoulder; slowly he began to get up, staring at her in near-amazement.) ‘Go immediately, this very moment, go and stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the ground that you've desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, to all four points of the compass and tell everyone, out loud: “I have killed!” Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you?’ she demanded, quivering all over, as though she were in the throes of a seizure, gripping him by both hands, clenching them hard in her own and staring at him with a gaze of fire.

He was amazed and even shocked by her sudden ecstatic outburst.

‘Is it penal servitude you mean, Sonya? Must I give myself up?’ he asked, blackly.

‘You must accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that's what.’

‘No! I won't go to them, Sonya.’

‘But how will you live, how will you live? What will keep you
alive?’ Sonya exclaimed. ‘How will life be possible for you now? I mean, what will you tell your mother? (Oh, what will happen to them now?) But what am I saying? Why, you've already deserted your mother and sister. Yes, you've deserted them, deserted them, O merciful Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes, he knows it all himself! But how can you live without anyone, without anyone at all? What will happen to you now?’

‘Don't behave like a child, Sonya,’ he said softly. ‘In what way am I guilty in their regard? Why should I go to them? What would I tell them? All that's just ghosts… They themselves slaughter people in their millions, and they consider it a virtue, too. They're scoundrels and villains, Sonya!… I won't go to them. What would I say: that I'd killed her, but hadn't dared to take her money, had hidden it under a building-block?’ he added with a caustic and ironic smile. ‘I mean, they'd laugh at me, they'd say: you were a fool not to take it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn't understand any of it, Sonya, not any of it, and they're not worthy of attaining such understanding. Why should I go to them? I won't. Don't behave like a child, Sonya…’

‘Oh, how you'll suffer, how you'll suffer!’ she kept saying, stretching out her arms to him in a desperate act of imploring.

‘Perhaps I haven't
yet
done myself justice,’ he observed blackly, as though in reflection. ‘Perhaps I'm still a human being, perhaps I'm not a louse
yet
, and have been in too much of a hurry to condemn myself… I'll struggle a bit more
yet
.’

An arrogant smile was forcing itself to his lips.

‘To bear suffering like that! For your whole life, your whole life!…’

‘I'll get accustomed to it…’ he said, bleakly and reflectively. ‘Look,’ he began a moment later, ‘you've done enough crying, it's time we got down to business: I came to tell you that they're on my trail now, trying to ensnare me…’

‘No!’ Sonya screamed in fear.

‘What are you screaming for? I thought you wanted me to go and do penal servitude, yet now you're terrified! But look: I'm not going to let them get me. I'll struggle a bit more with them yet, and they won't be able to lay a finger on me. They have no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and thought the
game was up, but today things are better. All their evidence is mere conjecture, and that means I can turn their accusations to my advantage, don't you see? And turn them I shall, because now I've learnt a lesson or two… There's no way I can avoid them putting me in jail. If it hadn't been for a certain incident, they'd have put me in jail this very day, and it's still quite probable that they will do just
that
… But that's nothing, Sonya: I'll do a little time, and then they'll let me out again… because they haven't got one piece of genuine proof, and they're not going to get one, believe you me. With what they've got they could never put a man on trial. Well, that's enough of that… I just wanted you to know… I'll do what I can to reassure my mother and sister and not frighten them… In any case, I think my sister's all right for the future now… and if that's so, my mother is too. Well, that's all. But be careful. Will you come and visit me in jail when I'm there?’

‘Oh, yes, yes!’

They both sat there together, sad and depressed, as though they had been thrown up on to some empty seashore after a tempest, alone. He looked at Sonya and felt how intensely her love was concentrated on him, and it was strange, but he suddenly experienced a sense of pain and aggrievement that anyone should love him as much as that. Yes, it was a strange and terrible sensation! As he had been walking to Sonya's, he had felt that in her lay his only hope and salvation; he had intended to unload at least a portion of his torments, and now suddenly, when the whole of her heart had directed itself towards him, he knew and felt that he was now inexpressibly more unhappy than he had been earlier.

‘Sonya,’ he said. ‘I think it might be better if you don't come and visit me when I'm in jail.’

Instead of replying, Sonya wept. Several minutes went by.

‘Are you wearing a crucifix?’ she suddenly asked, unprompted, as though she had just remembered something.

At first the question did not register with him.

‘You're not, are you? Well, here you are, take this one, it's made of cypress wood. I have another one, made of copper, it belonged to Lizaveta. Lizaveta and I swapped crucifixes, she
gave me hers and I gave her mine, the one with the little icon on it. I shall wear Lizaveta's from now on, and this one's for you. Take it… I mean, it's my own! It's my own!’ she implored him. ‘We shall go and suffer together, and we shall bear our crosses together!…’

‘All right then, give me it,’ Raskolnikov said. He was reluctant to upset her. But suddenly he drew back his hand.

‘Not now, Sonya. Later,’ he added, in order to calm her.

‘Yes, yes, later, later,’ she agreed, enthusiastically. ‘When you go to your sufferings, that's when you must put it on. You will come to me, I'll put it around your neck, and we'll pray and take the road together.’

Just then someone knocked at the door three times.

‘Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in and see you?’ a very familiar voice said in polite tones.

Sonya raced towards the door in alarm. The blond physiognomy of Lebezyatnikov peered into the room.

Lebezyatnikov had a look of alarmed concern.

‘I must see you for a moment, Sofya Semyonovna. Please forgive me… I somehow thought I should find you here,’ he said, turning to Raskolnikov suddenly. ‘That's to say, I didn't think… in that sort of way… but I merely thought… Katerina Ivanovna has gone insane,’ he blurted out suddenly to Sonya, transferring his attention away from Raskolnikov.

Sonya gave a little scream.

‘At least, I think she has. Anyway… we don't know what to do with her, and that's a fact, miss! She came back, having apparently been thrown out of some house or other, and even possibly having been beaten… that's the way it looked, anyway… She'd gone to see Semyon Zakharych's boss, but he wasn't in; he was dining with some other general… Would you believe it – she went running off to where they were dining… to the house of this other general, and imagine – she really insisted on seeing Semyon Zakharych's boss, she actually had him called
away from the dinner table. I expect you can picture what happened. She was thrown out of the house; and she says that she returned the abuse and threw something at him. That's not too hard to credit… How she wasn't arrested, I shall never understand! Now she's trying to describe it all to everyone, even Amalia Ivanovna, but you can't make out what she's saying, she keeps shouting and beating her head… Oh yes, and she keeps telling everyone and shouting it out loud that since everyone has abandoned her, she's going to take her children out to the street and be a street musician, and the children will sing and dance, and so will she, and they'll get money that way, and every day they'll go and perform under the general's window… “Let them see how the well-brought-up children of a high-ranking father have taken to the streets to beg!” She keeps hitting the children, and they cry. She's teaching Lyonya to sing “The Little Homestead”, the boy to dance, and Polina Mikhailovna, too, and she's been tearing up her clothes; she's made little caps for them to wear, like actors; she says she'll carry a metal basin and bang it instead of playing the hurdy-gurdy… She won't listen to anyone… I mean, what kind of behaviour is that? It simply can't go on!’

Lebezyatnikov would have continued, but Sonya, who had been listening to him, scarcely able to draw breath, suddenly snatched up her mantilla and hat and rushed out of the room, putting them on as she went. Raskolnikov went out after her, and Lebezyatnikov followed.

‘She really has gone insane!’ he said to Raskolnikov, coming out into the street with him. ‘I didn't want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said “I think she has”, but there can be no possible doubt. There are these tubercles that grow on the brain in cases of consumption; it's a pity I don't know any medicine.
¹
Actually, I did try to reason with her, but she won't listen.’

‘Did you tell her about the tubercles?’

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, I said nothing about that. In any case, she wouldn't have been able to understand. No, what I mean is that if you can reason with a person logically and show him that he really has nothing to cry about, then he'll stop crying. It's simple. But I expect your view is that he won't?’

‘Life would be too easy then,’ Raskolnikov replied.

‘As you please, as you please; of course, Katerina Ivanovna would have some difficulty in understanding; but are you aware that in Paris there have already been some serious experiments relating to the possibility of treating the insane by means of the simple influence of logical reasoning? There was a certain professor there who died not so long ago, a serious scientist who believed that such a treatment was possible. His basic idea was that there is nothing particularly wrong with the organism of the insane person, and that insanity is, as it were, a logical error, an error of judgement, a mistaken view of things. He would refute the arguments of his patient step by step and, would you believe it, it's said he achieved results that way! But in view of the fact that he accompanied this treatment with cold baths, those results should, of course, be viewed with some scepticism… At least, I think they should…’

Raskolnikov had stopped listening long ago. As he drew level with the building in which he lived he gave Lebezyatnikov a nod and turned in through the gateway. Lebezyatnikov snapped out of his reverie, looked around him and went running on his way.

Raskolnikov went into his closet of a room and stood in the centre of it. Why had he returned here? He looked at that yellowish, scraped wallpaper, at the dust, at his little couch… From the courtyard below there was a sharp, incessant banging sound; someone seemed to be driving something into some object somewhere, a nail, perhaps… He went over to the window, raised himself on tiptoe and for a long time, with an air of extreme and concentrated attention, searched the courtyard with his eyes. But the yard was deserted, and no hammerers could be seen. On the left, in the outhouse, a few open windows were visible; on their windowsills stood pots of straggling geraniums. Washing was hung up outside the windows… All this he knew by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.

Never, never before had he felt so horribly alone!

He felt yet again that perhaps he really did hate Sonya, and particularly now that he had made her even more unhappy. Why had he gone to her to ask her for her tears? Why was it so
essential for him to make her life a misery? Oh, what vileness!

‘I shall stay as I am, on my own!’ he said suddenly, in a decisive tone of voice. ‘And she's not going to visit me in jail, either!’

About five minutes later he raised his head and gave a strange smile. He had had a strange thought. ‘Life might really be better in penal servitude,’ he suddenly reflected.

He could not remember how long he had sat in his room, with all those vague thoughts crowding his head. The door opened suddenly, and in walked Avdotya Romanovna. At first she stood still and looked at him from the threshold, as he had looked at Sonya earlier that day; then she came inside and sat down on the chair opposite him, in the place she had sat the day before. He looked at her in silence and somehow without any thought.

‘Don't be angry, brother, I've only come to see you for a moment,’ Dunya said. The expression on her face was one of thoughtfulness, but it contained no severity. Her gaze was clear and calm. He saw that this woman, too, had come to him with love.

‘Brother, I know everything,
everything
now. Dmitry Prokofich has told me about the whole affair, and has explained it to me. You are being persecuted and tormented because of a stupid and infamous suspicion… Dmitry Prokofich has told me that you're not in any danger and that there's really no need for you to react to it all with such horror. I see the matter differently, and
fully understand
the anger you must feel, and the fact that this indignation may leave its mark on you for the rest of your life. That is what I'm afraid of. As for your having abandoned us, I do not condemn you for that and would not dare to do so, and please forgive me for having reproached you earlier. I can feel only, well, that if I had a great unhappiness like that, I too would want to go away from everyone. I will never tell mother
about this
, but I will mention you to her constantly and tell her on your behalf that you will be coming to see us very shortly. Please don't worry about her;
I
shall calm her down; but don't you be a source of worry to her, either – come and see us at least once; remember that she's your mother! But the reason I've
come to you just now is simply to say’ (Dunya began to get up from her chair) ‘that if I can be of any help to you, if there is anything that you require, even if it's… my whole life, or something… then call to me, and I shall come to your side. Goodbye!’