IV
Raskolnikov had been energetic and animated in his defence of Sonya against Luzhin, despite the fact that he himself was carrying so much dread and suffering in his soul. But, having been through so much that morning, he’d felt a kind of joy at the chance to experience different impressions, to say nothing of the very personal and heartfelt nature of his urge to plead Sonya’s case. Aside from that, there lay before him the prospect – which at moments he found quite terrifying – of seeing Sonya: he had to tell her who killed Lizaveta, and sensed in advance how agonizing this would be; it was as if he were trying to fend it off. And so, when he exclaimed, on leaving Katerina Ivanovna’s, ‘What will you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?’, he was still in a state of outward excitement: animated, defiant and flushed with his recent victory over Luzhin. But something strange came over him. On reaching Kapernaumov’s apartment, he felt within himself a sudden weakening and fear. He stopped outside the door, hesitating over the strange question, ‘Must I say who killed Lizaveta?’ It was a strange question because he suddenly felt, at one and the same time, that not only did he have to tell her, but that even to postpone this moment, however briefly, was impossible. Why it was impossible he still did not know; he merelyfelt it, and this excruciating awareness of his impotence in the face of necessity all but crushed him. To cut short his deliberations and agony, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold.
She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, but on seeing Raskolnikov she hurriedly got up and went over to greet him, almost as if she’d been waiting for him.
‘What would have become of me, but for you?’ she said in a rush, meeting him in the middle of the room. Clearly, it was this she’d so wanted to tell him. It was this she’d been waiting for.
Raskolnikov walked over to the table and sat down on the chair from which she’d only just got up. She stood facing him, two steps away, just like yesterday. ‘Well, Sonya?’ he said and suddenly felt his voice tremble. ‘So, you see, everything hinged on “social status and the habits it implies”. Did you understand that just
now?’ Suffering was written on her face. ‘Just don’t talk to me as you did yesterday!’ she interrupted him. ‘Please don’t start. It’s bad enough as it is . . .’ She gave him a hurried smile, frightened he might have taken her criticism badly. ‘How stupid of me to leave. What’s happening there now? I was just about to go, but I kept thinking that you might just . . . come.’ He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was throwing them out of the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere, ‘seeking justice’. ‘O God!’ cried Sonya with a start. ‘Quick, off we go . . . !’ She grabbed her cape. ‘It’s always the same!’ Raskolnikov exclaimed in irritation. ‘All you ever think about is them! Stay with me a
while.’ ‘What about . . . Katerina Ivanovna?’ ‘You’ll see her soon enough, no doubt. She’ll come here herself, seeing as she’s already run away from home,’ he added peevishly. ‘And if she doesn’t find you in, you’ll be the one to blame . . .’ Sonya sat down, racked with indecision. Raskolnikov said nothing, staring at the floor and mulling something over.
‘Let’s suppose Luzhin wasn’t in the mood for that now,’ he began, without a glance in Sonya’s direction. ‘But if he had been, or if it had been part of his plans, then he’d have had you locked up, but for Lebezyatnikov and me happening to be there! Eh?’ ‘Yes,’ she said in a weak voice. ‘Yes!’ she repeated, distracted and alarmed. ‘But I might very easily not have been there! And as for Lebezyatnikov, it was pure chance that he showed up.’ Sonya said nothing. ‘And if prison, then what? Remember what I said yesterday?’ Once again she did not reply. He was waiting. ‘And I thought you’d start up again with your, “Oh, don’t, please stop!”’ laughed Raskolnikov, though not without a strain. ‘What, more silence?’ he asked a minute later. ‘Surely there must be something we can talk about? What I’d really like to know, for example, is how you’d set about solving a certain “question”, as Lebezyatnikov likes to say.’ (He seemed to be losing his thread). ‘No, really, I’m being serious. Just imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin’s intentions in advance, that you knew (for a fact) that they’d be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna, and the children, too – and of you, into the bargain (into the bargain seems about right, seeing as you think so little of yourself). Polechka, too . . . because she’ll go the same way. Well, miss, what if it were suddenly left up to you now who should survive? Him or them? I mean, should Luzhin live and commit his abominations or should Katerina Ivanovna die? Well, what would you decide? Which of them would die? I’m asking you.’ Sonya glanced at him anxiously: she caught a peculiar note of something in his uncertain, roundabout words. ‘I had a feeling you’d ask a question like that,’ she said, with a searching look. ‘As you wish. But still, what would you decide?’
‘Why do you ask about things that can’t happen?’ said Sonya with disgust. ‘So it’s better for Luzhin to live and commit his abominations? You don’t dare decide even about that?’ ‘But how can I know the ways of God . . . ? And why do you ask me what mustn’t be asked? Why all these empty questions? How could it ever depend on my decision? And who has made me the judge here about who should live and who shouldn’t?’ ‘Well, if you’re bringing the ways of God into it, there’s nothing more to be said,’ muttered Raskolnikov sullenly. ‘Just tell me what it is that you want!’ cried Sonya with suffering. ‘You’re hinting at something again . . . Surely you didn’t come here just to torment me!’ She could take it no longer and began sobbing bitterly.
He looked at her in dismal anguish. Some five minutes passed. ‘I suppose you’re right, Sonya,’ he said at last, softly.
There was a sudden change in him; his tone of affected insolence and feeble defiance was gone. Even his voice had suddenly become weak. ‘I told you myself, only yesterday, that I wouldn’t come to ask forgiveness, and I’ve begun by doing almost precisely that, asking forgiveness . . . All that about Luzhin and the ways of God was for myself . . . That was me asking forgiveness, Sonya . . .’ He made as if to smile, but his smile came out pale, feeble, unfinished. He bowed his head and covered his face in his hands.
Suddenly, a strange, unexpected sensation of almost caustic hatred towards Sonya crossed his heart. As though himself astonished and frightened by this sensation, he suddenly raised his head and fixed his eyes upon her; but he met a look of anxiety and tortured concern. There was love here; his hatred vanished, like a phantom. He’d got it wrong; mistaken one feeling for another. All it meant was thatthat moment had come.
Once again he covered his face in his hands and bowed his head. He suddenly turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonya and mechanically, without saying a word, moved over to her bed and sat down.
This moment was dreadfully similar, in sensation, to the moment when he was standing behind the old woman, having freed the axe from the loop, and felt ‘there wasn’t a second to lose’. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sonya with dreadful timidity.
He couldn’t say a word. This wasn’t how he’d imagined hisdeclaration, not at all, and he himself could not understand what was happening to him now. She walked over to him quietly, sat down next to him on the bed and waited, never once taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and froze, pounded and froze. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face towards her; his lips twisted feebly, straining to say something. Dread touched Sonya’s heart. ‘What’s the matter?’ she repeated, retreating from him slightly. ‘Nothing, Sonya. Don’t be frightened . . . What rubbish!
Really, it’s just rubbish when you think about it,’ he muttered, with the air of a man losing himself in his delirium. ‘But why does it have to be you I’ve come to torment?’ he added suddenly, looking at her. ‘Really. Why?
This is the question I keep asking myself, Sonya . . .’ Perhaps he really had been asking this question a quarter of an hour earlier, but now he was utterly enfeebled and scarcely aware of himself, his whole body trembling without pause. ‘You’re in such agony!’ she said with suffering, looking at him intently. ‘It’s all rubbish! . . . Here’s what, Sonya,’ (for some reason he suddenly smiled, in a pale, feeble kind of way, for a second or two) ‘do you remember what I wanted to say to you yesterday?’
Sonya waited anxiously. ‘I said as I was leaving that I might be saying goodbye to you forever, but that if I came today I’d tell you . . . who
killed Lizaveta.’ Her whole body suddenly began to shake. ‘Well, here I am: I’ve come to tell you.’ ‘So you really meant it yesterday . . . ,’ she whispered with difficulty. ‘But why would you know?’ she hurriedly asked, as if suddenly coming to her senses.
Sonya’s breathing became laboured. Her face turned
ever paler.
‘I know.’ She was silent for about a minute. ‘Hashe been found then?’ she timidly asked. ‘No, he hasn’t.’ ‘Then how come you know aboutthat?’ she asked, again barely audibly, and again after nearly a minute’s silence.
He turned towards her and fixed her with a steady, steady stare. ‘Guess,’ he said, with the same twisted and feeble smile as before.
Convulsions seemed to ripple through her body. ‘But you . . . Why . . . ? Why are you . . . frightening me like this?’ she said, smiling like a child. ‘He must be a great friend of mine, then . . . if I know,’ Raskolnikov went on, continuing to stare at her unrelentingly, as if he no longer had the strength to avert his gaze. ‘That Lizaveta . . . He didn’t want . . . to kill her . . . He killed her . . . without meaning to . . . It was the old woman he wanted to kill . . . when she was alone . . . and he came . . . Only for Lizaveta to walk in . . . So then . . . he killed her.’ Another dreadful minute passed. They were both still looking at each other. ‘So you can’t guess, then?’ he suddenly asked with the sensation of a man throwing himself from a bell tower.
‘N-no,’ whispered Sonya, barely audibly. ‘Well, take a good look.’ No sooner had he said this than once again an old, familiar sensation suddenly turned his soul to ice: he was looking at her and suddenly, in her face, he seemed to see the face of Lizaveta. He remembered vividly the expression on Lizaveta’s face when he was walking towards her then with the axe and she was retreating towards the wall, putting her arm out in front of her, with a quite childish look of fear on her face, just as little children have when something suddenly begins to frighten them, when they fix their gaze anxiously on the thing that’s frightening them, back away and, holding out a little hand, prepare to cry.
Almost exactly the same thing happened now to Sonya: she looked at him for a while just as feebly and just as fearfully, then suddenly, putting her left arm out in front of her, slightly, just barely, pressed her fingers into his chest and started rising slowly from the bed, backing away from him, further and further, her stare becoming ever more fixed.
Her dread suddenly conveyed itself to him as well: exactly the same fear appeared on his face, too, and he began to look at her in exactly the same way, even with almost the
samechildish smile. ‘Guessed?’ he whispered at last. ‘Lord!’ broke with a dreadful howl from her breast.
Enfeebled, Sonya collapsed onto the bed, face-down on the pillow. But the very next moment she hurriedly got up and moved towards him, grabbed him by both hands and, squeezing them vice-like in her slender fingers, fixed her gaze on his face once more, as if she were glued to it. With this last, desperate stare she wanted to seek out and catch some last hope for herself, however small. But there was no hope; not the slightest doubt remained.This was how it was! Even later, even afterwards, she felt something both strange and wondrous when she recalled this moment: why exactly had she seenstraight away that no doubts
remained? After all, she could hardly claim to have sensed that something of the kind would happen, could she? Yet now, no sooner had he said this than it suddenly seemed to her thatthat was precisely what she’d sensed. ‘Enough, Sonya, enough! Don’t torment me!’ he asked, in a voice full of suffering.
It wasn’t how he’d imagined telling her, far from it, but this was how it came out.
As if forgetting herself, she leapt to her feet and walked over to the middle of the room, wringing her hands; but she quickly came back and sat down next to him again, almost touching his shoulder with hers. Suddenly, as if transfixed, she shuddered, cried out and, without herself knowing why, fell to her knees before him. ‘Oh what have you done to yourself?’ she said in despair and, leaping to her feet, threw herself on his neck, hugged him and squeezed him tightly-tightly in her arms.
Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a sad smile: ‘You’re a strange one, Sonya – hugging and kissing me when I’ve just told youabout that. You barely know what you’re doing.’ ‘No, no, nobody in the whole world is unhappier than you 33 are now!’she exclaimed in a kind of frenzy, deaf to his remark, and began sobbing out loud, almost hysterically.
A long-unfamiliar feeling burst over his soul like a wave and softened it at once. He did not try to resist it: two tears rolled from his eyes and hung on his lashes. ‘So you won’t leave me, Sonya?’ he said, looking at her almost hopefully. ‘No, no. Never, nowhere!’ cried Sonya. ‘I’ll follow you, wherever! O Lord! . . . How unhappy I am! . . . Why, why didn’t I know you before? Why didn’t you come before? O
Lord!’ ‘Well I’ve come now.’
‘Now! What can be done now? . . . Together! Together!’ she repeated as if in a trance and hugged him again. ‘I’ll walk with you to Siberia!’ All of a sudden his body seemed to convulse and his old, hateful and almost haughty smile broke out across his face. ‘But I might not want to walk to Siberia yet, Sonya,’ he
said.
Sonya threw him a quick glance.
Her passionate, excruciating sympathy for the unhappy man gave way, suddenly, to the terrible idea of the murder.
In his altered tone she heard the voice of the murderer. She looked at him in astonishment. She didn’t know anything yet – why this had happened, how it had happened, for what reason. Now all these questions suddenly took fire in her mind. And again she could not believe it: ‘Him – a murderer? How is that possible?’ ‘What is this? Where am I?’ she said in the deepest bewilderment, as if she hadn’t quite come round yet. ‘How could you, aman like you . . . bring yourself to do that? . . .
What is all this?’ ‘To rob her, what else? Don’t, Sonya!’ came his weary, even irritated reply.
Sonya stood as if stunned, but suddenly she cried: ‘You were hungry! You . . . To help your mother. Yes?’ ‘No, Sonya, no,’ he mumbled, turning away and hanging his head. ‘I wasn’t that hungry . . . I really did want to help my mother, but . . . that’s not quite it either . . . Don’t
torment me, Sonya!’ Sonya threw up her hands. ‘How? How can this be true? Lord, what sort of truth is that? Who could believe it? . . . And how – how could you give away your last rouble, but kill to steal? Ah!’ she suddenly cried out. ‘That money you gave to Katerina Ivanovna . . . that money . . . Lord, surely that wasn’t the same . . . ?’
‘No, Sonya,’ he hastily interrupted, ‘that wasn’t the same money. Don’t worry! That was the money my mother sent me, through a merchant, and I got it when I was sick, the same day I gave it away . . . Razumikhin saw . . . He received it on my behalf . . . That money’s mine, it really is.’ Sonya listened to him in bewilderment, desperately trying to work something out. ‘As forthat money . . . actually, I don’t even know that there was any,’ he added quietly, almost hesitantly. ‘I took a purse from her neck, a suede one . . . It was full to bursting . . . but I didn’t look inside; there wasn’t time, I suppose . . .
As for the things, they were all cufflinks, chains and so on – I hid all the items and the purse under a stone in some courtyard, on V—— Prospect, the very next morning . . .
They’re still there now . . .’ Sonya was all ears. ‘In that case, why . . . if you say you did it to steal, did you not take anything?’ she hurriedly asked, clutching at a straw. ‘I don’t know . . . I still haven’t decided about taking the money,’ he said in the same almost hesitant way, and suddenly, coming to his senses, gave a quick grin. ‘What a stupid thing I just came out with, eh?’ The thought flashed across Sonya’s mind: ‘Is he mad?’ But it immediately vanished: no, this was something else.
She didn’t understand any of it, any of it! ‘You know, Sonya,’ he said, with sudden inspiration, ‘here’s what I’ll say to you: if I’d killed them just because I was hungry’ – he was stressing every word and looking at her with an enigmatic but sincere expression – ‘then I’d be . . .happy now! You’d better know that! ‘And anyway,’ he cried out a second later, almost despairingly, ‘even if I were to admit now that what I did was wrong, what good is that to you? Well, what? What good is it to you to claim this stupid victory over me? Ah, Sonya, as if that’s why I’ve come to you now!’
Again Sonya wanted to say something, but kept silent. ‘That’s why I asked you to come with me yesterday – you’re all I have left.’ ‘Come with you where?’ asked Sonya timidly. ‘Not to steal and not to kill – don’t worry, not for that,’ he said, with a caustic smile. ‘We’re chalk and cheese, you and I . . . You know, Sonya, it’s only now, just now, that I’ve understoodwhere it was I was asking you to go yesterday!
Yesterday, when I asked you, I didn’t know myself. I had one reason for asking, one reason for coming: don’t leave
me. You won’t, Sonya, will you?’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Why, why did I tell her, open up to her?’ he exclaimed in despair a minute later, looking at her with infinite torment. ‘Here you are, Sonya, waiting for me to explain myself, sitting and waiting. I can see it, but what can I tell you? It won’t make any sense to you anyway – you’ll just wear yourself out with suffering . . . because of me! There you go, crying and hugging me again – but why are you hugging me? Because I couldn’t bear it any longer and I’ve come here to unload my burden? “You suffer too and I’ll suffer less!” And you can love such a scoundrel?’ ‘But you’re in agony too!’ cried Sonya.
Again the same feeling burst like a wave over his soul and again softened it for an instant. ‘Sonya, I have an angry heart, remember that: it explains a great deal. That’s why I came here – because I’m angry.
There are those who wouldn’t have come. But I’m a coward and . . . a scoundrel! But . . . never mind! That’s all by the by . . . Now’s the time for speaking, and I can’t even start . .
.’ He paused, deep in thought. ‘Chalk and cheese, that’s us!’ he cried again. ‘And why, why have I come? I’ll never forgive myself!’ ‘No, no, it’s good you’ve come!’ exclaimed Sonya. ‘It’s better that I know! Far better!’
He looked at her in anguish. ‘But perhaps that’s just it!’ he said, as if he’d finally made his mind up. ‘That’s how it was! Listen: I wanted to become a Napoleon, that’s why I killed . . . Now do you understand?’ ‘N-no,’ whispered Sonya, guilelessly and timidly, ‘but . . . speak, speak! I’ll understand – I’ll understand everything
inside myself!’ she begged him.
‘You will? Fine – so let’s see!’ He fell silent and had a long think. ‘Here’s what: I once asked myself the following question: what if, say, Napoleon had found himself in my shoes and 34had neither Toulon nor Egypt nor the pass at Mont Blanc to get his career going, and instead of all those beautiful, grand things all he had was some ridiculous old hag, some pen-pusher’s widow, and what’s more he’d have to murder her to get his hands on the money she kept in her box (for his career, understand?); well, could he have brought himself to do that, if he had no other way out? Wouldn’t he have been put off by the fact that it was insufficiently grand, to say the least, and . . . and a sin? Well then, let me tell you that I agonized over this “question” for such a long time that I was horribly ashamed when it finally got through to me (all of a sudden) that not only would he not have been put off, it wouldn’t even have occurred to him that there was nothing grand about it . . . he wouldn’t even have understood the question: put off by what? And if there really were no other path open to him, he’d have throttled her before she could even squeak, with no second thoughts! . . . So I, too . . . put second thoughts aside . . . and throttled her . . . taking him as my authority . . . And that’s precisely what happened! You find it funny? Yes, Sonya, and the funniest thing about it is that perhaps this is exactly how it was . . .’ Sonya didn’t find it funny in the least.
‘Please speak plainly . . . without examples,’ she asked even more timidly, barely audibly.
He turned to face her, looked at her sadly and took her hands in his. ‘You’re right again, Sonya. That’s all rubbish; little more than empty talk! You see, my mother, as you know, has almost nothing. By chance, my sister received an education and now she has to go from one governess job to another.
They pinned all their hopes on me. I was at university, but I could no longer support myself and had to put my studies on hold. Still, even if things had gone on like that, in ten, maybe twelve years’ time (circumstances permitting) I’d have had every chance of finding a job in a school or in the civil service somewhere, on a thousand roubles a year . . .’ (He spoke as if he’d learned it all by heart.) ‘But by then mother would have wasted away with worry and grief, and there’d have been nothing I could have done to reassure her, while my sister . . . well, her plight might have been even worse! . . . And anyway, who wants to go through life walking past everything, turning your back on everything, forgetting about your mother and, for example, respectfully putting up with insults to your sister? What for? So that once they’re dead you can replace them with new ones – a wife and children, and then leave them, too, without a copeck or a crust of bread? So . . . so I decided I’d use the hag’s money on my first few years, on supporting myself at university and taking my first steps after that without pestering Mother – and I’d make a real go of it, setting up my new career in such a way that I could hardly fail, and launching myself on a new, independent path . . . And . . . well, that’s about it . . . Yes, of course, killing the old woman was a bad thing to do . . . but enough!’ He limped feebly to the end of his story and hung his head. ‘Oh, that’s not it,’ Sonya exclaimed in anguish. ‘How could it be . . . ? No, that’s not it, it’s not!’
‘You can see that yourself! . . . But I was being sincere. I
was telling the truth!’ ‘What sort of truth is that? O Lord!’ ‘I only killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, foul, noxious
louse.’ ‘A human being, not a louse!’ ‘I know that myself,’ he replied, giving her a strange look. ‘But I’m lying, Sonya,’ he added. ‘I’ve been lying for so long . . . That’s not it at all. You’re right. The real reasons are quite different – quite different! . . . I haven’t talked to anyone for so long, Sonya . . . My head’s aching terribly.’ His eyes blazed with fever and fire. He was on the verge of delirium and an anxious smile played on his lips. But his excitement could no longer conceal his complete enfeeblement. Sonya saw his suffering. Her head, too, was beginning to spin. And what a strange way he had of putting things: it almost seemed to make sense, but . . . ‘How on earth? How, Lord?’ And she wrung her hands in despair. ‘No, Sonya, that’s not it!’ he began again, suddenly lifting his head, as though a sudden, surprising change in the direction of his thoughts had aroused him again. ‘That’s not it! Better for you . . . to assume (yes! it really is better!) that I’m vain, envious, angry, loathsome, vindictive and . . . and – why not? – prone to madness as well. (Better to get it all out at once! There was talk of madness before – I noticed!) I told you just now that I couldn’t support myself at university. But . . . maybe I could. Mother would have sent me enough for my fees, and as for shoes, clothes and meals, I’d have earned what I needed myself. I’m sure of it!
There were lessons going, fifty copecks a time. Razumikhin works, doesn’t he? But I didn’t want to – out of spite. Yes, out of spite (a fine phrase!). So I crawled back into my little corner, like a spider. You’ve been in my hovel, you’ve seen what it’s like . . . Do you have any idea, Sonya, how small
rooms and low ceilings cramp the soul and the mind? Oh, how I hated that hovel! But I still didn’t want to leave it. On purpose! I was there day and night, didn’t want to work, didn’t even want to eat, just lay there. If Nastasya brought something, I’d eat a bit; if not – the day would just pass. I wouldn’t ask on purpose, from spite! At night, I just lay there in the dark – didn’t even want to earn enough for a candle. I should have been studying, but I’d sold my books; even now the dust on my desk, on my papers and notebooks, is half an inch deep. I preferred to lie on the couch and think. Think and think . . . And my dreams were always so strange, no two the same – I can’t begin to describe them! But that was when I also began imagining that . . . No, that’s not it! I’m still not telling it right! You see, at the time I couldn’t stop asking myself: why am I so stupid that even though others are stupid and I know for a fact that they’re stupid, I don’t want to be any cleverer?
Later, Sonya, I discovered that if you wait for everyone else to become cleverer, you’ll be waiting a very long time . . .
Later still I discovered that this will never happen anyway, that people will never change, and no one can reform them, and there’s no point trying! Yes, that’s it! That’s their law . . . Their law, Sonya! That’s it! . . . And now I know, Sonya, that he who is tough in mind and spirit will be their master!
For them, he who dares is right. He who cares least is their lawmaker, and he who dares most is most right! It’s always been the way and always will be! Only a blind man would fail to see it!’ Though Raskolnikov was looking at Sonya as he said this, he no longer worried whether or not she would understand.
The fever had him in its grip. Some dismal ecstasy had overcome him. (Yes, it had been far too long since he’d last spoken to anyone!) Sonya understood that this gloomy catechism had become his creed and law. ‘That, Sonya,’ he continued rapturously, ‘was when I realized that power is given only to the man who dares to
stoop and grab. One thing, just one: to dare! A certain thought came to me then, for the first time in my life; one which had never come to anyone, ever! Anyone! It suddenly dawned on me like the sun: how come not a single person, walking past all these absurdities, has ever dared, not now, not ever, to grab everything by the tail and shake it to hell?
I . . . I felt like trying . . . I killedfor a dare, Sonya, and that’s the whole reason!’ ‘Oh, be quiet, be quiet!’ cried Sonya, throwing up her arms. ‘You walked away from God and God struck you and gave you away to the devil!’ ‘By the way, Sonya – when I was lying in the dark and all 35 this was dawning on me,was that the devil playing with my mind? Eh?’ ‘Be quiet! Don’t you dare laugh, you blasphemous man.
You don’t understand a thing, not a thing! O Lord! He’ll never understand, never!’ ‘Hush, Sonya, I’m not laughing at all. I know myself that it was the devil dragging me along. Hush, Sonya, hush!’ he repeated dismally and insistently. ‘I know everything. I thought and whispered my way through it all while lying on my own in the dark back then . . . Argued my way through every point, down to the last little mark, the last little jot, and I know everything, everything! How sick and tired I was of all this empty talk! I wanted to forget it all and start again, Sonya, and stop wittering! Surely you don’t think I went there like some idiot, without a moment’s thought? I went there like a man with brains, and that was my downfall! Can’t you see that I must have known that if I’d already started asking myself the question, “Do I have a right to power?”, then it already meant I didn’t. Or that if I asked, “Is a human being a louse?”, then man was certainly no lousefor me, only for someone to whom the question never occurs, and who sets off without asking questions . . .
And if I’d already tormented myself for so many days
wondering, “Would Napoleon have gone or wouldn’t he?”, then I obviously knew that I was no Napoleon . . . I endured all the agony of this empty talk, Sonya, all of it, and now I just wanted to shake it off. I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie about it, not even to myself! It wasn’t to help mother that I killed – nonsense! It wasn’t to acquire funds and power that I killed, so as to make myself a benefactor of humanity. Nonsense! I just killed. I killed for myself, for myself alone; and whether I’d become anyone’s benefactor or spend my entire life as a spider, catching everyone in my web and sucking out their vital juices, shouldn’t have mattered to me one jot at that moment! . . . And it wasn’t so much money I needed, Sonya, when I killed; not so much money as something else . . . I know all this now . . . Try to understand: taking that same road again, I might never have repeated the murder. There was something else I needed to find out then, something else was nudging me along: what I needed to find out, and find out quickly, was whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a human being. Could I take that step or couldn’t I? Would I dare to stoop and grab or wouldn’t I? Was I a quivering creature or did I havethe right . . . ?’ ‘To murder? The right to murder?’ Sonya threw up her arms. ‘Oh, Sonya!’ he cried out in exasperation. He was about to answer back, but lapsed into scornful silence. ‘Don’t interrupt me, Sonya! I merely wanted to prove one thing to you: that it was the devil who dragged me along then, and only after did he explain to me that I had no right to go there, because I’m as much of a louse as everyone else! He had a good laugh at me then, so here I am! Make me welcome! Would I have come to you now if I weren’t a louse? Listen: when I went to the old woman that time, it was only as atest . . . You’d better know that!’ ‘And you killed! You killed!’
‘But just look how I did it! Who kills like that? Who goes off to kill the way I went off to kill? One day I’ll tell you what that was like . . . Was it really the hag I killed? It was myself I killed, not her! I murdered myself in one fell blow, for all time! . . . And the hag was killed by the devil, not me . . . Enough, Sonya. Enough! Enough! Leave me be!’ he suddenly cried, convulsed with anguish. ‘Leave me be!’ He rested his elbows on his knees, his head clamped between his palms. ‘Such suffering!’ came Sonya’s howl of torment. ‘So what’s to be done? Tell me!’ he asked, suddenly lifting his head and looking at her, his face disfigured by despair. ‘What’s to be done?’ she exclaimed, leaping from her seat, her tearful eyes suddenly ablaze. ‘Get up!’ (She grabbed him by the shoulder and he started getting to his feet, looking at her in near amazement.) ‘Off you go, right now, this minute, stand at the crossroads and bow down; 36 kiss the earth you’ve polluted,then bow down to the whole world, to all four corners, and tell everyone out loud: “I have killed!” Then God will send you life once more. Are you going? Are you going?’ she asked him, shaking all over as if in a fit, grabbing both his hands, squeezing them hard in her own and looking at him with fire in her eyes.
He was amazed and even shocked by this sudden ecstasy. ‘Do you mean Siberia, Sonya? What, do I have to turn myself in?’ he asked, dismally. ‘Accept suffering and through suffering redeem yourself –
that is what you must do.’ ‘No! I won’t go to them, Sonya.’ ‘Then how will you live? How on earth will you keep going?’ exclaimed Sonya. ‘How’s that even possible now?
How will you ever speak to your mother? (And what on earth will they do now?) But what am I saying? You’ve already abandoned your mother and sister, haven’t you? Of
course you have. O Lord!’ she cried. ‘But he already knows it all himself! How, how can you live your life without a single human being? What will become of you now?’ ‘Don’t be a child, Sonya,’ he said softly. ‘In what way am I guilty before them? Why should I go? What would I say to them? These are all just phantoms . . . They themselves wipe out millions and think it a virtue. They’re swindlers and scoundrels, Sonya! . . . I won’t go. What would I say?
That I killed, but didn’t dare take the money and hid it under a stone?’ he added with a caustic grin. ‘They’ll only laugh at me and say: “You’re an idiot for not taking it. A coward and an idiot!” They won’t understand anything, Sonya, anything, and they don’t deserve to understand.
Why should I go? I won’t go. Don’t be a child, Sonya . . .’ ‘The torment will be too much for you,’ she said, holding her arms out towards him in a despairing plea. ‘Maybe I’mstill slandering myself now,’ he remarked dismally, in a pensive kind of way. ‘Maybe I’mstill a human being, not a louse, and I was in too much of a hurry to condemn myself . . . Maybe I canstill fight.’ A haughty smile was forcing itself to his lips. ‘To bear such torment! And for a whole lifetime, a whole lifetime!’ ‘I’ll get used to it . . .’ he said sullenly, seriously. ‘Listen,’ he began a minute later, ‘enough crying, enough talking.
I’ve come to tell you that they’re after me, looking for me . .
.’ ‘Ah!’ shrieked Sonya in fright. ‘There’s no need to shriek! You yourself want me to go to Siberia and now you’re frightened? Only I won’t let them have their way. I’ve still got some fight left in me and they won’t get anywhere. They’ve no proper evidence. Yesterday I was in grave danger and thought I was done for; today things are looking up. All their evidence is double-edged. I can turn all their accusations to my advantage – understand? – and that’s precisely what I’ll do. Now I know
how . . . They’ll put me away, though, that’s for sure. But for one stroke of fortune, they’d probably have done so already today, and they mightstill do so . . . But that’s nothing, Sonya. They’ll keep me in a bit, then let me out . . . because they haven’t a scrap of solid proof and never will, I give you my word. And what they do have isn’t enough to lock anyone up. Well, enough of that . . . I just wanted you to know . . . As for my sister and mother, I’ll do what I can to put their minds at rest . . . Anyway, my sister seems to be out of harm’s way now . . . so mother is, too . . . Well, that’s about it. Be careful, though. Will you visit me, once I’m
inside?’ ‘Oh yes! Yes!’ They sat side by side, sad and broken, as if they’d been washed up, after a storm, alone on an empty shore. He looked at Sonya and felt all her love upon him. How strange: he suddenly found it hard and painful to be loved so much. Yes, a strange and dreadful feeling! Walking over to Sonya’s he’d felt that she was his one hope, his one way out; he’d expected to cast off at least some of his suffering, and now, all of a sudden, when her whole heart was turned towards him, he suddenly felt and realized that he was infinitely unhappier than before. ‘Actually, Sonya,’ he said, ‘you’d better not visit when I’m inside.’ Sonya did not reply; she was crying. Several minutes passed. ‘Are you wearing a cross?’ she unexpectedly asked, as if suddenly remembering.
At first, he failed to understand the question. ‘You aren’t, are you? Here, take this one, a cypress one.
I’ve got another, a copper one, Lizaveta’s. Lizaveta and I swapped crosses: she gave me hers, I gave her my little icon. Now I’ll start wearing Lizaveta’s and you take this one. Take it . . . It’s mine! Mine!’ she begged him. ‘Together we’ll suffer. Together we’ll carry the cross!’
‘Give it to me!’ said Raskolnikov. He didn’t want to upset her. But he immediately withdrew his hand. ‘Not now, Sonya. Better later,’ he added, to reassure her. ‘Yes, yes, better, better,’ she echoed enthusiastically. ‘When you go away to suffer, that’s when you’ll wear it.
You’ll come to me, I’ll put it on you, we’ll pray and we’ll go.’ There and then someone knocked three times on the door. ‘Sofya Semyonovna, may I?’ came a very familiar, courteous voice.
Sonya rushed to the door in alarm. Mr Lebezyatnikov’s blond head poked round it.
