IV
As for Raskolnikov, he made straight for the house on the Ditch where Sonya lived. It was an old three-storey building painted green. He managed to find the caretaker, who gave him vague directions to Kapernaumov, the tailor. Having eventually located, in a corner of the yard, an entrance to a narrow and dark stairwell, he went up to the second floor, coming out on the gallery that skirted it on the yard-facing side. As he groped about in the dark – he couldn’t see an entrance to the Kapernaumovs’ anywhere – a door suddenly opened three paces away. He automatically grabbed it. ‘Who’s there?’ asked an anxious female voice. ‘It’s me . . . come to see you,’ Raskolnikov replied, stepping into the tiny entrance hall. There, on a sunken chair, in a twisted copper holder, stood a candle. ‘It’s you! Goodness!’ cried Sonya weakly, rooted to the
spot. ‘Which way to your place? This way?’ Trying not to look at her, Raskolnikov hurried on through to her room.
A minute later Sonya came in with the candle, set it down and stood before him in utter confusion, lost for words and visibly frightened by his unexpected visit. The colour suddenly rushed to her pale face and tears even appeared in her eyes . . . She felt sick and ashamed, and happy . . . Raskolnikov turned away sharply and sat down on a chair facing the table. With a quick glance he took in the entire room.
The room was large, but exceptionally low, the only one let by the Kapernaumovs, the locked door to whom lay along the left-hand wall. On the opposite side, along the right-hand wall, was yet another door, permanently sealed.
That connected with a completely separate apartment, which had a different number. There was something shed- like about Sonya’s room, something grotesque about its highly irregular oblong shape. A wall with three windows faced the Ditch and cut across the room at a slant, meaning that one horribly sharp corner tapered off into the distance, barely even visible in the weak light, while the angle of the other corner was monstrously obtuse. This large room was almost entirely unfurnished. In the corner, on the right, was a bed; next to it, nearer the door, a chair. Along the same wall where the bed was, right by the door to the neighbouring apartment, stood a simple plank table covered with a blue cloth; around the table, two wicker chairs. Next, by the opposite wall, not far from the sharp corner, was a small chest of drawers made of ordinary wood, seemingly lost in space. And that was all. The yellowish, glossy, frayed wallpaper had turned black at every corner; it must have been damp and smoky in here during the winter. The poverty was unmistakable; there were no curtains even by the bed.
Sonya looked silently at her guest, who was examining her room so attentively and unceremoniously; in the end, she even began to shake with fear, as though she were standing before the judge who would decide her fate. ‘It’s late, I know . . . Is it eleven yet?’ he asked, still not lifting his eyes to her. ‘Yes,’ mumbled Sonya. ‘Oh yes, it is!’ she suddenly rushed, as though for her everything depended on it. ‘The landlord’s clock struck just now . . . I heard it myself . . .
Yes, it is.’ ‘I’ve come to you for the last time,’ Raskolnikov went on sullenly, though this was only his first. ‘I may not see you
again . . .’ ‘You’re . . . going somewhere?’ ‘Don’t know . . . tomorrow it’ll all . . .’
‘So you won’t be coming to Katerina Ivanovna’s tomorrow?’ asked Sonya in a quavering voice. ‘Don’t know. Tomorrow morning it’ll all . . . But that’s not why I’m here: I came to say something . . .’ He lifted his pensive gaze to her face and suddenly noticed that he was seated while she was still standing before him. ‘But why are you standing? Have a seat,’ he said suddenly in a changed voice that was soft and warm.
She sat down. He looked at her for a minute or so with a friendly, almost pitying gaze. ‘How skinny you are! Just look at your hand! You can see right through it. A dead woman’s fingers.’
He took her hand. Sonya smiled weakly.
‘But I’ve always been like that.’
‘Even when you were still at home?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But of course!’ he said curtly, and his facial expression and tone of voice suddenly changed again. He took another
look round the room.
‘So you’re renting from Kapernaumov?’
‘Yes, sir . . .’
‘They’re there, behind the door?’
‘Yes . . . Their room’s just the same.’
‘All in one room?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘I’d be afraid in your room at night,’ he sullenly remarked. ‘The landlord’s very kind, very warm,’ replied Sonya, as if she were still coming to her senses and unable to think straight, ‘and all the furniture and everything else . . . it’s all theirs. And they’re very kind and their children often
come round to see me . . .’ ‘The tongue-tied ones?’ ‘Yes, sir . . . He’s got a stammer and he’s lame. And his wife, too . . . Though she doesn’t stammer exactly, she just
can’t seem to get her words out. She’s kind, very kind. He used to be a house-serf. Seven children . . . only the eldest stammers, the rest are just sick . . . and don’t stammer . . .
But how do you know about them?’ she added with a certain astonishment. ‘Your father told me everything then. He told me everything about you . . . Told me how you went off at six o’clock and were back before nine, told me about Katerina
Ivanovna kneeling by your bed.’ Sonya was embarrassed. ‘I was sure I saw him today,’ she whispered indecisively. ‘Who?’ ‘Father. I was out walking, around there, on the corner of the street, between nine and ten, and thought I saw him walking ahead of me. Looked just like him. I was even
about to call on Katerina Ivanovna.’ ‘You were walking the streets, then?’ ‘Yes,’ Sonya hurriedly whispered, embarrassed again and looking down at the floor. ‘Katerina Ivanovna used to beat you, didn’t she, at your father’s place?’ ‘No, no! What are you saying? Not at all!’ Sonya glanced up at him with a kind of terror. ‘You love her, then?’ ‘Her? Of course I do!’ wailed Sonya, suddenly clasping her hands in pain. ‘Oh! You . . . If you only knew. She’s just like a child . . . She’s almost lost her mind . . . from grief. To think how clever she was . . . how generous . . . how kind!
You don’t know anything, anything . . . oh!’ Sonya said this in a kind of despair, in turmoil and pain, wringing her hands. Again, her pale cheeks flushed; torment was in her eyes. One could see how deeply everything had affected her, how unbearable was her desire to express something, to speak, to intercede. Some kind ofinsatiable compassion, if one can put it like that, was suddenly etched in every feature of her face.
‘Beat me? What are you saying? Beat me, indeed! And even if she did, so what? Well, what? You don’t know anything about it, not a thing . . . She’s so unhappy, oh, so unhappy! And sick . . . Justice, that’s what she seeks . . .
She is pure. She really believes there should always be justice. She demands it . . . Torture her if you like, but she won’t do anything that’s not just. She can’t see that it’s simply not possible, that there will never be justice among people, so she gets annoyed . . . Like a child, a child! She is
just!’
‘And what will happen to you?’ Sonya looked mystified. ‘They’ve only got you now. Though it was the same before, of course, and it was you the deceased used to visit for his hair of the dog. So what’ll happen now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sonya sadly. ‘They’ll stay there?’ ‘I don’t know, they’re behind with their rent. Apparently, the landlady told her today that she wants her out, and Katerina Ivanovna is saying she won’t stay a minute longer either.’ ‘Why such bravado? Is she counting on you?’ ‘Oh, no, don’t talk like that! . . . We’re one, we live as one,’ replied Sonya, getting suddenly worked up again and even annoyed, like an angry canary or some other little bird. ‘What’s she supposed to do? Well, what? What?’ she asked, agitated and upset. ‘How she cried today! How she cried! She’s unhinged, or haven’t you noticed? Yes, she is.
One minute she’s fretting like a little girl about getting everything right for tomorrow, the food and all the rest . . . the next she’s wringing her hands, coughing up blood, crying, suddenly banging her head against the wall, in complete despair. Then she calms down again and it’s you she always counts on: she says you’re her helper now and she’ll borrow some money somewhere and go off to her town, with me, and set up a boarding school for girls of
noble birth and put me in charge, and we’ll begin a completely new and beautiful life; and she kisses me, hugs me and comforts me; and she truly believes in these fantasies of hers – yes she does! And how could anyone contradict her? And what did she do today except scrub, clean, mend, drag the washing tub into the room with her feeble arms, puff and pant and collapse on her bed? Never mind that we went to the market in the morning to buy 11 shoes for Polechka and Lenya,because theirs have fallen apart, only we didn’t have enough money for them, nowhere near enough, and she’d chosen such a sweet pair of boots – you’ve no idea what good taste she has . . . She started crying there and then, in the shop, right in front of the merchants . . . How pitiful she looked!’ ‘Well, now it makes sense why you . . . live like this,’ said Raskolnikov with a sour grin. ‘But don’t you pity her, too? Don’t you?’ Sonya flung back at him. ‘After all, you gave away all you had, I know you did, without having even seen anything. But if you had seen it all – O Lord! And how many times I’ve made her cry! How many! Even only last week! Shame on me! Only a week before his death. How cruel that was! And how many times have I done that? So many! And how painful it’s been to spend all day remembering!’ Sonya even wrung her hands as she spoke, from the pain
of the recollection. ‘You – cruel?’ ‘Me, me! I’d just come in,’ she continued, crying, ‘and Father said: “Read to me, Sonya, I’ve got a bit of a headache, read to me . . . There’s the book,” – he had some book or other, he’d got it from Andrei Semyonych, from Lebezyatnikov, who lives right here and was always getting these funny little books. And I said, “I have to go” – I just didn’t want to read and I’d come by mainly to show Katerina Ivanovna some collars; Lizaveta, the clothes-
dealer, had brought me some collars and cuffs on the cheap, nice, new embroidered ones. Katerina Ivanovna took a fancy to them, tried them on and looked at herself in the mirror, and liked them even more: “Give them to me, Sonya,” she said. “Please.”Please, she said, that’s how much she wanted them. But what would she do with them?
She’d remembered happier days, that’s all! There she was looking at herself in the mirror and admiring herself, but she’s not had one dress to call her own, not a single thing, for how many years now? And you won’t catch her asking anyone for anything. She’s proud. She’d sooner give away the last thing she has, but here she was asking – that’s how much she liked them! But I was sorry to give them away.
“What good are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna?” That’s what I said: “What good?” That was the last thing I should ever have said to her! What a look she gave me; how miserable she was when I refused her and how pitiful it was to see her like that! Miserable not because of the collars, but because I’d refused. I could see. Oh, what I’d do to take all those words back . . . Shame on me . . . But
anyway . . . it’s all the same to you!’ ‘You knew this Lizaveta?’ ‘Yes . . . Why, did you?’ Sonya asked in return, with some surprise. ‘Katerina Ivanovna’s consumptive – a bad case; she’ll be dead soon,’ said Raskolnikov after a pause, ignoring the question. ‘Oh, no, no, no!’ And Sonya, making an unconscious movement, grabbed him by both hands, as if pleading that
it be no. ‘But it’s better if she does die.’ ‘No, not better, not better, not better at all!’ she mechanically repeated in horror. ‘And what about the children? What will you do with them, unless you take them in yourself?’
‘Oh, how do I know?’ cried Sonya in near despair and clutched her head. Evidently, the thought had already crossed her mind, too, many a time, and all he’d done was startle it back to life. ‘And what if now, while Katerina Ivanovna’s still alive, you get sick and are taken off to hospital, what then?’ he persisted mercilessly. ‘But what are you saying? That’s just not possible!’ – and Sonya’s face twisted with terror. ‘Why’s it not possible?’ Raskolnikov went on with a harsh grin. ‘You’re not insured, are you? So what’ll become of them? They’ll end up on the streets together, the whole lot of them; she’ll be coughing and begging and banging her head against a wall somewhere, like today, and the children will be crying . . . Then she’ll collapse, be taken off to the police station, then the hospital, and die, while the children . . .’ ‘Oh, no! . . . God won’t allow it!’ was all that escaped Sonya’s constricted chest. She listened, looking at him beseechingly and folding her arms in dumb entreaty, as if everything depended on him.
Raskolnikov got up and began pacing the room. A minute or so passed. Sonya stood there with her arms and head hanging down, in terrible anguish. ‘Can’t you save a bit? Put something aside for a rainy day?’ he asked, suddenly halting in front of her. ‘No,’ whispered Sonya. ‘Of course not! But have you tried?’ he added, almost
mockingly. ‘Yes.’ ‘And it didn’t last! Well, of course! Why even ask?’ He started pacing the room again. Another minute
passed. ‘You don’t earn every day, I suppose?’ Sonya became even more embarrassed and the colour rushed to her face once more.
‘No,’ she whispered with excruciating effort. ‘Polechka will go the same way, I expect,’ he suddenly said. ‘No, no! That’s impossible! No!’ shrieked Sonya in desperation, as if she’d been stabbed. ‘God would never
allow anything so dreadful!’ ‘But He often does.’ ‘No, no! God will protect her, God!’ she kept saying, beside herself. ‘But what if there is no God?’ replied Raskolnikov, almost with a sort of malicious glee, then laughed and looked at her.
An awful change had suddenly come over Sonya’s face: it began twitching convulsively. She glanced at him with unspeakable reproach. She was on the point of saying something, but couldn’t get her words out and merely dissolved into bitter sobs, covering her face with her hands. ‘You say Katerina Ivanovna is unhinged – the same thing’s happening to you,’ he said after a pause.
Some five minutes passed. He was still walking back and forth, in silence and without so much as a glance in her direction. Eventually, he walked up to her, eyes flashing. He grabbed her shoulders with both hands and looked straight into her weeping face. His gaze was dry, inflamed, piercing; his lips trembled violently . . . Suddenly he bent right down and, falling to the floor, kissed her foot. Sonya recoiled in horror, as from a madman. And, indeed, a madman was just what he resembled. ‘Please, what are you doing? Before me?’ she muttered, turning white, and her heart clenched with pain.
He immediately got to his feet. ‘I bowed not to you, but to all human suffering,’ he uttered almost wildly and moved off to the window. ‘Listen,’ he added, returning to her a minute later, ‘I told one offensive individual earlier on that he wasn’t worth your
little finger . . . and that I did my sister an honour today by seating her next to you.’ ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have said that to him! And she heard it?’ Sonya shrieked in fright. ‘Sit with me? An honour? But I . . . have no honour . . . I’m a great, great sinner! Oh, you should never have said that!’ ‘It wasn’t your dishonour or your sin that made me say it, but your great suffering. You are a great sinner, it’s true,’ he added in near ecstasy, ‘and above all you are a sinner for having destroyed and betrayed yourselffor nothing. If that’s not a horror, what is? To live in this filth, which you loathe so much, and at the same time to know yourself (if you only open your eyes) that no one is being helped by your actions and no one is being saved! But what I’d really like to know,’ he said in near frenzy, ‘is how your saintly feelings can abide the contrast of something so shameful and abject? It would be more just, a thousand times more just and more reasonable, to throw yourself off a bridge and end it all!’ ‘And what will become of them?’ asked Sonya feebly, with a look full of suffering, and yet, it seemed, quite unsurprised by his suggestion. Raskolnikov looked at her strangely.
Her eyes alone told him everything. It was true, then: this thought had occurred to her, too. Perhaps, in her despair, she’d considered it many times, how to end it all, and so seriously that now she was barely surprised by his suggestion. She didn’t even notice the cruelty of his words (nor, of course, did she notice the meaning of his reproaches or the particular view he took of her shame – he could see that). But he understood perfectly well what monstrous pain the thought of her dishonourable and shameful plight had caused her, and not just now. What on earth, he wondered, could have kept her from ending it all?
Only then did he fully grasp what these poor little orphaned children meant to her, and this pitiful, half-crazed,
consumptive Katerina Ivanovna, forever banging her head against the wall.
Yet nor could he fail to see that Sonya, with the character she had and with that bit of education she’d somehow received, could never remain as she was. He couldn’t help wondering: how, if throwing herself off a bridge was beyond her strength, could she have remained in this plight for so long, far too long, and not gone mad? He understood, of course, that Sonya’s plight was a random social phenomenon, albeit, sadly, a far from isolated or exceptional one. But this very randomness, together with her smattering of education and her whole previous life, might well have killed her the moment she set out on this disgusting path. What had sustained her? Not depravity, surely? It was obvious that disgrace had touched her in a purely mechanical way; real depravity had not yet penetrated her heart, not even a drop. He could see it: here she was standing before him . . . ‘She can take one of three paths,’ he thought. ‘She can throw herself into the Ditch, end up in the madhouse or . . . or finally, plunge into the depravity that stupefies the mind and petrifies the heart.’ He found this last thought more disgusting than anything, but he was already a sceptic, he was young, theoretical and, by that token, cruel, so it was impossible for him not to believe that the third path – depravity – was the most likely. ‘But can this really be true?’ he exclaimed to himself. ‘Can this creature, who still retains her purity of spirit, eventually allow herself to be sucked into this foul, stinking pit? Can this process really have already begun, and can it be that the only reason she has held out until now is that she no longer finds vice so disgusting? No, no, that’s just impossible!’ he exclaimed, like Sonya before. ‘No, it’s the thought of sin that’s kept her from the Ditch until now, and that lot . . . And if she still hasn’t gone mad . . . But who’s to say she hasn’t? Is she really in her right mind? To talk the
way she talks? To reason the way she reasons? To perch above her ruin, right over the stinking pit that’s already sucking her in, and wave her hands, and stop up her ears when she’s being warned of danger? What is she expecting, a miracle? Yes, that must be it. Aren’t these all signs of insanity?’ He paused stubbornly on this thought. This solution pleased him more than any other. He began to study her more closely. ‘So you pray to God a lot, Sonya?’ he asked.
Sonya said nothing. He stood next to her, waiting for an answer. ‘What would I be without God?’ she whispered quickly and vigorously, glancing at him with a sudden flash of her eyes, then squeezing his hand firmly in hers. ‘Just as I thought!’ Raskolnikov said to himself. ‘And what does God do for you?’ he asked, probing further.
Sonya was silent for a long time, as if unable to reply.
Her weak little chest heaved with emotion. ‘Be quiet! Don’t ask! You aren’t worthy!’ she suddenly shrieked, with a stern and angry look. ‘Just as I thought!’ he kept saying to himself. ‘He does everything!’ she whispered quickly, lowering her eyes once more. ‘So that’s the solution! And that’s how to explain it!’ he decided to himself, examining her with avid curiosity.
With a new, strange, almost sick feeling he studied this pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, these meek, pale- blue eyes capable of blazing with such fire, with such stern and vigorous feeling, this little body, still quivering with indignation and anger, and all this struck him as more and 12more strange, almost impossible. ‘Holy fool! Holy fool!’ he kept saying to himself.
There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He noticed it every time he paced the room; now he picked it up and looked at it. It was the New Testament in Russian 13 translation.It was an old book, well-thumbed, bound in leather. ‘Where did you get this?’ he shouted to her across the room. She was still standing in the same place, three paces away from the table. ‘I was brought it,’ she replied, with apparent reluctance
and without looking at him.
‘Who brought it?’ ‘Lizaveta. I asked her to.’ ‘Lizaveta? How strange!’ he thought. Everything about Sonya was becoming stranger and more wondrous to him with each minute that passed. He brought the book into the candlelight and began leafing through it. ‘Where’s the bit about Lazarus?’ he suddenly asked.
Sonya looked doggedly at the floor and didn’t reply. She stood at a slight angle to the table. ‘You know, the raising of Lazarus – where is it? Look it up for me, Sonya.’ She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘You’re looking in the wrong place . . . It’s the fourth Gospel . . . ,’ she whispered sternly, still not moving towards him. ‘Find it and read it to me.’ He sat down, rested his elbows on the table, propped his head in his hand and sullenly stared off to the side, preparing to listen. ‘Another three weeks,’ he muttered to himself, ‘and they’ll be showing her round the asylum! I’ll be there, too, if nothing worse happens first.’ Sonya took a hesitant step towards the table, having listened with mistrust to Raskolnikov’s strange request. But she still took the book.
‘You mean you’ve never read it?’ she asked, glancing at him across the table from beneath her brow. Her voice was becoming sterner and sterner. ‘Ages ago . . . back at school! Read it!’
‘And you never heard it in church?’
‘I . . . didn’t go. Do you go often?’
‘N-no,’ whispered Sonya.
Raskolnikov grinned. ‘I see . . . So I suppose you won’t be going to bury your father tomorrow?’ ‘I will. I went last week, too . . . for a memorial service.’ ‘Whose?’ ‘Lizaveta’s. She was murdered with an axe.’ His nerves were on edge. His head began to spin. ‘Were you friendly with Lizaveta?’ ‘Yes . . . She was a just person . . . She came by . . . not often . . . She couldn’t. We read together and . . . talked.
14She will see God.’ They sounded strange to him, these bookish words, and now another surprise: mysterious meetings with Lizaveta, one holy fool and another. ‘Watch you don’t become one yourself! It’s catching!’ he thought. ‘Read!’ he suddenly exclaimed in an insistent, irritated tone.
Sonya still wavered. Her heart was thumping. Somehow she didn’t dare read to him. In near agony he watched the ‘wretched lunatic’. ‘Why are you asking? You’re not a believer, are you?’ she whispered softly, even gasping.
15 ‘Read! I want you to!’he insisted. ‘You read to Lizaveta, didn’t you?’ Sonya opened the book and found the place. Her hands were trembling and her voice failing. Twice she began, but not one syllable came out.
16‘Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany . . . ,’ she eventually uttered, with great difficulty, but suddenly, from the third word, her voice twanged and then snapped, like a string stretched too far. She couldn’t breathe and her chest tightened.
Raskolnikov partly understood why Sonya could not bring herself to read to him, and the more he understood it, the more rudely and irritably he seemed to insist on the reading. He understood far too well how painful it was for her now to disclose and display what washers. He realized that these feelings really did constitute, as it were, her true and perhaps already long-heldsecret, perhaps ever since her girlhood, in that family, with that unhappy father and grief-crazed stepmother, amid hungry children and hideous shouting and scolding. But he had also now learned, beyond any doubt, that though she was distressed and terribly scared of something as she prepared to read, she herself had an excruciating desire to do so, despite all her distress and apprehension, and precisely tohim, for him to hearright now – ‘come what may!’ . . . He read this in her eyes, understood it from her rapturous excitement . . . She mastered herself, suppressed the guttural spasm that cut her short at the beginning of the verse, and continued reading from John, Chapter 11. Eventually, she reached verse 19: ‘And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”’ She stopped again at this point, in shame-faced anticipation that her voice might once again quiver and snap . . .
‘Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him,’ (catching her breath, as if in pain, Sonya read on in a clear and forceful voice, as though confessing her faith for all to hear) ‘“Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.”’ She was about to stop and steal a glanceat him, but hastily pulled herself together and carried on reading.
Raskolnikov sat and listened, without moving or turning around, resting his elbows on the table and looking off to the side. She read as far as verse 32. ‘Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”’ Raskolnikov turned to face her and looked at her in excitement: yes, just as he thought! She was already shaking all over with real, genuine fever. He’d been expecting this. She was drawing closer to the words describing the very greatest, utterly unprecedented miracle and great rapture had seized her. Her voice rang as clear as metal, strengthened by audible exultation and joy. The lines ran together in front of her – her eyes had gone dark – but she knew it all by heart. On reaching the last verse, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man...’, she conveyed, in lowered, fervent, passionate tones, all the
doubts, reproaches and abuse of the disbelieving blind Jews, who now, in a minute’s time, as if thunder-struck, would fall, start sobbing and believe . . . ‘Andhe,he – also blinded and disbelieving – he, too, will now hear, he too will believe, yes, yes! Right here, now,’ she dreamt, and shook in joyful anticipation. ‘Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odour, for he has been
deadfour days.”’ She vigorously stressed that word:four. ‘Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”And the dead man came out,’ (she read loudly and rapturously, and she shook with cold, as if seeing it all with her own eyes) ‘his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.” ‘Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.’ She did not and could not read any further, closed the book and rose swiftly from her chair. ‘It’s all about the raising of Lazarus,’ she whispered curtly and sternly and stood motionless, turning away from him, seemingly ashamed to lift her eyes towards him. Her feverish shaking had still not passed. The candle-end had been guttering for some time in the crooked holder, shedding a dull light, in this beggarly room, on the
murderer and the harlot, who’d come together so strangely to read the eternal book. Five minutes passed, if not more. ‘I haven’t come just to talk,’ said Raskolnikov loudly all of a sudden. Frowning, he got to his feet and walked over to Sonya. Silently, she lifted her eyes towards him. His gaze was particularly stern, expressing some wild determination. ‘I left my family today,’ he said, ‘my mother and sister. I won’t go back to them now. It’s a clean break.’ ‘But why?’ asked Sonya, as though stunned. The recent meeting with his mother and sister had made an extraordinary, if indistinct, impression on her. It was with a kind of horror that she heard the news of the rift. ‘Now I have only you,’ he added. ‘We’ll go together . . .
I’ve come to you. Together we’re damned, together we’ll go!’ His eyes blazed. ‘Like a madman!’ Sonya thought in her turn. ‘Go where?’ she asked in fright, automatically taking a step back. ‘How should I know? All I know is that there’s one road before us. One aim!’ She looked at him, understanding nothing. All she understood was that he was dreadfully, infinitely unhappy. ‘None of them will understand a thing, if you tell them,’ he went on, ‘but I understood. I need you, that’s why I’ve come to you.’ ‘I don’t understand . . . ,’ whispered Sonya. ‘You’ll understand later. Haven’t you done the same thing? You also managed to take that step . . . transgress.
You’ve laid hands on yourself, ruined a life . . .your own (it’s all the same!). You could have lived the life of the spirit, the life of reason, yet you’ll end up on Haymarket Square . . . But it’s too much for you, and if you’re left alone, you’ll go mad, just like me. There’s something crazy about you even now. So we’ve one road ahead of us. We’ll walk it together! Let’s go!’
‘But why? Why are you saying this?’ said Sonya, strangely restless and agitated. ‘Why? Because something has to change – that’s why!
It’s time to think about things seriously, head-on, instead of childish crying and yelling about God not allowing it! I mean, what will happen if you really are taken off to hospital tomorrow? She’s consumptive and out of her mind, she’ll soon die, but the children? You think Polechka won’t go to rack and ruin? You mean you haven’t seen the children around here, on street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I’ve seen where these mothers live, the conditions they live in. Children can’t remain children there, it’s impossible. There, a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. Yet children are the image of Christ: “Theirs is 17 the Kingdom of Heaven.”He commanded that they be honoured and loved. They’re humanity’s future . . .’ ‘But what’s to be done? What?’ repeated Sonya, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands. ‘What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once and for all, and take suffering upon yourself! You don’t understand? You’ll understand later . . . Freedom and power, especially power! Over all quivering creatures, over the whole ant heap! . . . This is the aim! Remember that!
My parting words! Who knows? I may be speaking to you for the last time. If I don’t come tomorrow, you’ll hear about everything yourself. When you do, recall these words of mine. And some day, later, years later, as life goes by, perhaps you’ll understand what they meant. But if I do come tomorrow, I’ll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Goodbye!’ Sonya’s whole body shuddered. ‘You mean you know who did it?’ she asked, frozen with horror and looking at him wildly. ‘I know and I’ll say . . . To you, only to you! I’ve chosen you. I won’t come to ask your forgiveness, I’ll just say it. I chose you a long time ago so as to tell you this, back when
your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, that’s when the thought came to me. Goodbye. Don’t give me your hand. Tomorrow!’ He left. Sonya had been looking at him as if he were crazy, but she, too, seemed almost mad, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. ‘Lord! How does he know who murdered Lizaveta? What did those words mean? How awful!’ But at the same time thethought never entered her head. Never! Never! . . . ‘Oh, he must be dreadfully unhappy! . . . Left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what is he planning?’ What was it he’d told her? He’d kissed her foot and said . . . said (yes, he’d said it clearly) that he could no longer live without her . . . O Lord!
Sonya was feverish and delirious all night long. Every now and again she’d leap up in her bed, cry, wring her hands, then lose herself again in a feverish sleep, and she’d dream of Polechka, Katerina Ivanovna, Lizaveta, Gospel readings, and him . . . him, with his pale face, his burning eyes . . . He was kissing her feet, he was crying . . . O Lord!
On the other side of the door – that same door on the right which divided Sonya’s apartment from that of Gertruda Karlovna Resslich – there was an in-between room, long empty, which was part of Mrs Resslich’s apartment and was rented out by her, hence the little notices on the gates and the bits of paper stuck to the panes of the windows that gave onto the Ditch. Sonya had long assumed that the room was unused. Yet all the while, standing quietly by the door in the empty room, Mr Svidrigailov had been listening in. When Raskolnikov left, he stood and thought for a while, tiptoed off to his own room adjoining the empty one, took a chair and carried it noiselessly right up to the door leading to Sonya’s room. He found the conversation both diverting and revealing, and enjoyed it very, very much; in fact, he’d brought the chair in so that in future, say tomorrow, he would no longer have to suffer the inconvenience of spending a whole hour on his
feet, but could make himself comfortable and derive every possible pleasure from the experience.
