Crime and Punishment (95 page)

At the very least he would have been able to feel anger at his stupidity, just as he had earlier felt anger at the stupid and outrageous actions that had brought him to the prison. But now, in prison,
in freedom
, he had once again considered and gone over all the things he had done and had found them to be not nearly as stupid and outrageous as they had seemed to him earlier, during that fateful time.

‘In what way,’ he thought, ‘in what way was my idea any more stupid than the other ideas and theories that have swarmed in conflict with one another ever since this world was born? All one needs to do is take a broad, entirely independent view of the matter, a view that is shorn of ordinary prejudices, and then my idea will not seem half so… strange. Oh gainsayers and five-copeck sages, why do you stop half way?

‘After all, why does what I did seem so outrageous to them?’ he said to himself. ‘Because it was an act of wickedness? But what do they mean, those words: “an act of wickednes”? My conscience is easy. Of course, from a legal point of view a crime was committed; of course, the letter of the law was violated and blood was spilt, well then, here is my head, take it in exchange for the letter of the law… and let that be that! Though of course in that case a great many of mankind's benefactors who did not inherit power but took it for themselves ought to have
been executed at their very first steps. But those people had the courage of their convictions, and so
they were right
, while I didn't, and consequently had no right to take the step I did.’

This was the one respect in which he admitted to any crime: in not having had the courage of his convictions and in having turned himself in.

He also suffered from the thought of why he had not killed himself that day. Why had he stood gazing down at the river and decided that he would prefer to turn himself in? Did this desire for life really have such power, and was it really so hard to overcome it? Svidrigailov had overcome it, had he not, he who was so afraid of death?

He kept tormenting himself with this question and was unable to grasp that even that day, as he had stood looking down at the river, he had quite possibly sensed in himself and in his convictions a profound lie. He did not understand that this sense might have been the harbinger of the future crisis in his life, of his future recovery, his new vision of life.

He preferred to admit only to a certain blunting of his instincts, something he had been unable to break with or step across (out of weakness and personal insignificance). He looked at his companions in penal servitude and marvelled: how much all they, too, loved life, how they treasured it! It seemed to him that in prison it was loved and valued and treasured more than in freedom. What terrible sufferings and tortures some of them had endured – the vagrants, for example! Was it really possible that there could be such significance for them in a mere ray of sunlight, a dense forest, a cold spring somewhere in the mysterious depths of the woods, noticed some three years ago, and of the rendezvous which the vagrant dreamed as of a tryst with his beloved, seeing it in his dreams, the green grass around it, a bird singing in a bush? Observing further, he saw examples even more unfathomable.

In the prison, in the environment that surrounded him, there was of course much that he did not observe and did not at all wish to observe. It was as if he lived with his eyes forever lowered; what there was to see he found loathsome and unendurable. Eventually, however, many things began to fill
him with wonder, and almost in spite of himself he began to observe things that before he had not suspected. His most general and inescapable wonder was, however, occasioned by the terrible and impassable abyss that lay between himself and all these people. He and they seemed to belong to quite different nations. He and they viewed one another with suspicion and hostility. He knew and understood the general causes of this separation; but never before had he believed it possible that those causes could be so deep-rooted and powerful. In the prison there were also some exiled Poles, political criminals. They simply viewed all these people as ignoramuses and peasants and looked down on them from above; but Raskolnikov was unable to do the same: he clearly perceived that these ignoramuses were in many respects more intelligent than those very Poles. There were also Russians who thoroughly despised the common prisoners – one former officer and two seminarists; Raskolnikov clearly observed their error, too.

As for himself, all the other convicts disliked him and avoided him. Eventually they even grew to hate him – why? He could not find the answer. He was despised and laughed at, laughed at for his crime by men who had done far worse things than he.

‘You're a toff!’ they would say to him. ‘What business did you have going around with an axe? That's not the sort of thing toffs do.’

In the second week of Lent his turn arrived to fast and attend holy communion together with the other men from his barrack. He entered the church and prayed together with the others. On one occasion, he himself did not know the reason, there was a quarrel; all the men attacked him in a frenzy of rage.

‘You're an unbeliever! You don't believe in God!’ they shouted at him. ‘We ought to kill you.’

Never once had he mentioned the subject of God and faith in their company, yet they wanted to kill him as an unbeliever; he said nothing and did not try to protest. One of the convicts prepared to hurl himself at him in a state of rabid fury; Raskolnikov awaited his attack in silent calm: he did not turn a hair, not a single feature of his face quivered. The guard managed to
interpose himself between him and his would-be murderer – if he had not done so, blood would have been spilt.

There was one more question that remained unsolved by him: why had they all taken such a liking to Sonya? She had not tried to ingratiate herself with them; they encountered her seldom, only sometimes they were at their work when she would come out to them for a moment in order to see him. Yet all of them knew her, knew that she had
followed him
, knew how and where she lived. It was not as if she had given them money or performed any special services for them. Only on one occasion, at Christmas, had she brought alms for every man in the prison: pies and kalatches.
²
Little by little, however, they came to be on rather closer terms with Sonya: she would write letters for them to their families and post the letters at the post-office. Their kinsfolk, male and female, who visited the town, would leave, according to their instructions, items of personal use and even money for them, which they entrusted to Sonya's hands. Their wives and girlfriends knew her and would go to visit her. And when she appeared at their workplace in order to see Raskolnikov, or met a gang of convicts going to work – they would all take off their caps, and all would greet her. ‘Little mother, Sofya Semyonovna, you're our mother, our kind, soft-hearted one!’ they would say, those branded convicts to that small, thin creature. She would smile and greet them back, and they all loved it when she smiled at them. They were even fond of her manner of walking, and would turn round to look after her as she went on her way, passing appreciative comments about her; they often made such comments in connection with her being so small, and indeed could not find enough good things to say about her. They went to see her when they were ill, and she would tend to them.

He remained in hospital throughout all the end of Lent and Holy Week. As he got better, he remembered the dreams he had had as he lay there in fever and delirium. In his illness he had dreamt that the entire world had fallen victim to some strange, unheard of and unprecedented plague that was spreading from the depths of Asia into Europe. Everyone was to perish, apart from a chosen few, a very few. Some new kind of trichinae
had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in people's bodies. But these creatures were spirits, gifted with will and intelligence. People who absorbed them into their systems instantly became rabid and insane. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and in unswerving possession of the truth as did those who became infected. Never had they believed so unswervingly in the correctness of their judgements, their scientific deductions, their moral convictions and beliefs. Entire centres of population, entire cities and peoples became smitten and went mad. All were in a state of anxiety and no one could understand anyone else, each person thought that he alone possessed the truth and suffered agony as he looked at the others, beating his breast, weeping and wringing his hands. No one knew who to make the subject of judgement, or how to go about it, no one could agree about what should be considered evil and what good. No one knew who to blame or who to acquit. People killed one another in a kind of senseless anger. Whole armies were ranged against one another, but no sooner had these armies been mobilized than they suddenly began to tear themselves to pieces, their ranks falling apart and their soldiers hurling themselves at one another, gashing and stabbing, biting and eating one another. All day in the cities the alarm was sounded: everyone was being summoned together, but who was calling them and for what reason no one knew, but all were in a state of anxiety. They abandoned the most common trades, because each person wanted to offer his ideas, his improvements, and no agreement could be reached; agriculture came to a halt. In this place and that people would gather into groups, agree on something together, swear to stick together – but would instantly begin doing something completely different from what had been proposed, start blaming one another, fighting and murdering. Fires began, a famine broke out. Everyone and everything perished. The plague grew worse, spreading further and further. Only a few people in the whole world managed to escape: they were the pure and chosen, who had been predestined to begin a new species of mankind and usher in a new life, to renew the earth and render it pure, but no one had seen these people anywhere, no one had heard their words and voices.

Raskolnikov was tormented by the fact that this senseless delirium should linger so sadly and so agonizingly in his memories, that the aftermath of those fevered dreams should be taking so long to clear. They were already in the second week after Holy Week; the days were warm, clear and springlike; the windows of the convicts’ ward had been opened (they were covered by an iron grille and a sentry patrolled the ground beneath them). Throughout the whole duration of his illness Sonya had been able to visit him in the ward only twice; each time she had had to obtain permission, and this had been difficult. But she had often come into the courtyard of the hospital and stood under the windows, especially towards evening, and sometimes merely in order to stand in the yard for a moment and look at the windows of the ward from afar. One afternoon, towards evening, the now almost completely recovered Raskolnikov fell asleep; on waking up he chanced to go over to the window and suddenly saw in the distance, by the hospital gate, Sonya. She was standing there, looking as though she were waiting for something. In that moment something seemed to transfix his heart; he shuddered and quickly drew away from the window. On the following day Sonya did not come, nor did she on the day after; he noticed that he was waiting for her with anxious concern. At last he was discharged. Arriving back at the prison, he discovered from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna had fallen ill and was lying in bed in her quarters, unable to go anywhere.

He was very concerned, and sent someone over to find out how she was. Soon he found out that her illness was not a dangerous one. Having learned, in her turn, that he was so dejected and worried for her sake, Sonya sent him a note written in pencil, informing him that she was much better and that soon, very soon, she would come and see him at his work again. As he read this note his heart beat violently and painfully.

It was another clear, warm day. Early that morning, at about six o'clock, he set off for his work on the bank of the river, where a kiln for the baking of alabaster had been set up in a shed, and where they pounded it. Only three men had been sent there to work. One of the convicts went off with the guard to
the fortress for some implement or other; the other man began to chop firewood and put it in the kiln. Raskolnikov went out of the shed right down to the bank, sat down on the logs that were piled near the shed and began to look out at the wide, lonely river. From the high river-bank a broad panorama opened out. From the far-off opposite bank he could just make out the sound of someone singing. Over there, in the boundless steppe awash with sunlight, he could see the yurts of the nomad tribesmen like barely perceptible black dots. Over there was freedom, over there lived other people, quite different from those who lived here, over there time itself seemed to have stopped, as though the days of Abraham and his flocks had never passed. Raskolnikov sat gazing motionlessly, without cease; his thoughts moved away into dreams, into contemplation; he had not a thought in his head, but a sense of weariness disturbed him and tormented him.

All of a sudden, Sonya was next to him. She had made her approach almost inaudibly and had sat down beside him. It was still very early, the chill of morning had not yet relented. She was wearing her old, threadbare ‘burnous’ cape and her green shawl. Her face still bore the signs of her illness, it had grown thin and pale and sunken. She gave him a pleased, friendly smile, but, following her habit, extended her hand to him timidly.

This was the way she had always proffered her hand to him – timidly, sometimes not even proffering it at all, as though she were afraid he would refuse it. He had invariably taken her hand with a kind of revulsion, invariably greeted her with something akin to annoyance, on occasion remaining stubbornly silent throughout the entire duration of her visit. Sometimes she had feared him, and had gone away in deep sorrow. But now their hands were not disjoined; he gave her a quick, fleeting glance, uttered no word and lowered his gaze to the ground. They were alone; no one could see them. At this moment the guard had his back turned.