II
He’d been sick for some time; but it wasn’t the horror of convict life, the forced labour, the food, the shaven head or the patched-together clothes that broke him: oh, what were all these torments and hardships to him? In fact, he was glad to have work to do: exhausting himself physically, he at least earned himself a few hours’ untroubled sleep. And what did the food matter to him – this cabbage soup without meat, only cockroaches? Many times as a student, in his previous life, he hadn’t even had that. His clothing was warm and well suited to his way of life. He couldn’t even feel his shackles. Was he to be ashamed of his shaven 4 head and his half-and-half jacket?Before whom? Before Sonya? Sonya was afraid of him. Was he to feel ashamed beforeher?
And why not? He felt ashamed even before Sonya, whom he tormented in return with his rudeness and disdain. But it wasn’t his shaven head and his shackles he was ashamed of: it was his pride that had been badly wounded; it was this that had made him ill. Oh, if only he could have blamed himself, how happy he would have been! He could have put up with anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself harshly, and his hardened conscience failed to find any especially dreadful guilt in his past, except perhaps for the kind of simpleblunder that might have happened to anyone. What shamed him was precisely the fact that he, Raskolnikov, had come to grief so blindly, so hopelessly, so stupidly, by some decree of blind fate, and now he had to submit and resign himself to the ‘absurdity’ of such a decree, if he wanted to give himself any peace at all.
In the present: pointless, purposeless anxiety; in the future: an endless sacrifice by which nothing was to be gained – this was what the world had in store for him. And what did it matter that in eight years’ time he’d only be thirty-two and life could begin again? Why live? What would he have to live for? To aim for? Live to exist? But hadn’t he been prepared even before, on a thousand occasions, to give up his existence for an idea, a hope, even a fantasy? Existence alone had never been enough for him; he’d always wanted more. And perhaps the only reason he’d considered himself a man to whom more was permitted than to others was the very strength of his desires.
If only fate could bring him remorse – burning remorse that breaks the heart into pieces, that drives away sleep; the kind of remorse whose dreadful torments yield visions of the noose, the whirlpool! Oh, how glad he would have been! Torments and tears – that, too, is life. But he felt no remorse about his crime.
At least then he could have raged at his own stupidity, just as before he had raged at the hideous, idiotic deeds that brought him to prison. But now that he was here, in prison,at liberty, he reconsidered all his previous deeds, all over again, and found them not nearly as stupid and hideous as they had seemed to him during that fateful time, before. ‘How, how,’ he thought, ‘was my idea any more stupid than all the other ideas and theories that have swarmed around, colliding with one another, since the beginning of time? You need only take an independent, broad view of things, free from the usual influences, and my idea, needless to say, won’t seem remotely . . . strange. Oh, men 5 of wisdom, who deny everythingexcept money – why do you stop halfway?
‘Really, what is it about my deed that they find so hideous?’ he asked himself. ‘That it was evil? What does that mean – an “evil deed”? My conscience is untroubled.
Yes, of course, a criminal act has been committed; yes, of course, the letter of the law has been violated and blood’s been shed – so take my head for the letter of the law . . . and that’s your lot! And, of course, plenty of humanity’s benefactors, who never inherited power but grabbed it for themselves, should also have been executed after taking their very first step. But those people coped with the step that they took, which is whythey are right, but I couldn’t cope with mine, so I had no right to take it.’ That was the only crime he acknowledged: that he hadn’t coped and had turned himself in.
Another thought also brought him pain: why hadn’t he killed himself back then? Why had he stood over the river and preferred to turn himself in? Was the desire to live really so strong, was it really so hard to overcome? Hadn’t Svidrigailov overcome it, despite his fear of death?
He tormented himself with this question, incapable of understanding that even then, standing over the river, he might already have sensed a deep falsehood in himself and his convictions. He couldn’t understand that this premonition might have been the herald of a future breaking point in his existence, his future resurrection, his future view of life.
He was more inclined to see in all this only the dull yoke of instinct, which it was not for him to break, and over which he, yet again, was unable to step (being weak and worthless). Observing his fellow prisoners he was astonished at how much they, too, loved life, how they all cherished it! In fact, he had the impression that in prison life is loved, valued and cherished even more than at liberty. What dreadful hardships and torments some of them had endured – for instance, the tramps! Could one single ray of sunshine really mean so much to them, or a
thick forest, or a cold spring in the back of beyond, which the tramp spotted some two years before and which, like a lover, he yearns to see again and dreams about, with green grass all around, a bird singing in the bush? Looking deeper, he saw instances yet harder to explain.
In the prison, in his immediate surroundings, there was, of course, much that he failed to notice, and didn’t even wish to notice. He lived with eyes lowered: looking up seemed loathsome, unbearable. In the end, though, much began to astonish him, and almost against his will he began to notice things that previously he hadn’t even suspected.
In general, what astonished him most was the dreadful, unbridgeable gulf that lay between him and all these commoners. He and they seemed to belong to different nations. He and they looked at each other with mistrust and hostility. He knew and understood the general causes of this separation; but never before had he acknowledged that these causes might really be so deep, so potent. There 6 were Polish convicts,too; political criminals. They considered the commoners to be nothing more than ignoramuses and slaves, and looked down on them with contempt; but Raskolnikov could not: to him it was clear that these ignoramuses were in many ways far more intelligent than those very same Poles. There were Russians, too, whose contempt for the peasants knew no bounds – one former officer and two seminarians; their error did not escape Raskolnikov either.
He himself was disliked and shunned by everyone.
Eventually, he even began to be hated. Why? He did not know. The ones who looked down on him, who mocked him and mocked his crime, were far more criminal than he. ‘You’re gentry!’ they’d say to him. ‘What was a gentry 7boy like you doing with an axe?’ In the second week of Lent his turn came to prepare for the Sacraments, along with everyone else in his barracks.
8 They all went to the church together to pray.One day an argument flared up. Why? He himself did not know. But they fell on him all at once in a frenzy. ‘Atheist! You don’t believe in God!’ they shouted at him. ‘You should be killed!’ He’d never spoken with them about God or faith, but they wanted to kill him for his atheism; he said nothing in reply. One convict was on the point of throwing himself on him in sheer fury; Raskolnikov waited for him calmly and in silence: his eyebrows did not stir; not one muscle twitched on his face. A guard managed to put himself between him and the murderer just in time – or blood would have been shed.
There was one other question to which he could find no answer: why had they all become so fond of Sonya? She never sought their approval and they saw her rarely, sometimes only when they were out working, when she came to him for no more than a minute. And yet they all already knew her, knew that she’dfollowed him, knew how she lived and where she lived. She gave them no money, did them no special favours. Only once, at Christmas, did she bring alms for the entire prison: pies and white buns. But little by little closer ties began to form between them and Sonya: she wrote letters for them to their families and posted them. At their request these relatives, on arriving in town, would leave things for them with Sonya, even money.
Their wives and lovers knew her and called on her. And whenever she appeared at the place where Raskolnikov was working or met a party of convicts going out to work they all doffed their caps and bowed. ‘Dear Sofya Semyonovna, dear mother, gentle, merciful mother!’ these coarse, branded convicts would say to this skinny little creature. She smiled and returned their bows and they all liked it when she smiled at them. They even liked her gait, turned around to watch her walk away and praised her;
they even praised her for being so little, and could never praise her enough. Some even went to her to be treated when they were sick.
He spent the whole of the last period of Lent and Easter Sunday laid up in hospital. Recovering, he recalled what he’d dreamt while feverish and delirious. In his sickness he’d imagined the entire world condemned to some terrible, unheard-of pestilence, advancing on Europe from deepest Asia. Everyone was to die, apart from the few, very 9 few, who’d been chosen. New trichinaehad appeared, microscopic beings that were entering human bodies. But these beings were spirits, endowed with intelligence and will. People who took them into their bodies immediately became possessed and went mad. But never, ever had people thought themselves as intelligent and as certain of the truth as those who had been infected. Never had they considered their verdicts, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakeable. Entire villages, entire towns and peoples were being infected and driven to madness. Everyone was panicking and no one could understand anyone else; each man thought that he and he alone possessed the truth, and found the sight of others a torment; he beat his breast, wept and wrung his hands. No one knew whom to bring to justice and how, couldn’t agree what was bad and what was good, whom to charge and whom to acquit. People were killing one another out of meaningless spite. They mobilized entire armies, but no sooner did these armies set out than they began to tear themselves to pieces; breaking rank, the soldiers attacked, hacked, stabbed, bit and ate each other.
In towns, the tocsin was sounded from dawn till dusk: everyone was summoned, but who was doing the summoning and why? No one knew and everyone was panicking. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because every man had his own ideas, his own solutions,
and agreement was impossible; agriculture ceased. Here and there people gathered in groups, agreed on something, swore not to split up – then immediately embarked on something completely different from what they themselves had just proposed, began blaming, fighting and killing each other. Fires broke out; famine broke out. Everyone and 10 everything was perishing. The pestilencegrew and spread, further and further. In the whole world there were only a few survivors; these were the pure and the chosen, those destined to begin a new race of people and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one, anywhere, had seen these people, nor heard their words and voices.
Raskolnikov was tormented by the fact that this meaningless delirium echoed so sadly and so agonizingly in his memory; that the impression left by these fevered daydreams was taking so long to pass. It was already the second week after Easter, spring, the days warm and clear; in the prisoners’ ward the windows (barred, with a guard below them) stood open. For the entire duration of his illness, Sonya had only been able to visit him twice; each time she’d had to beg for permission. Nevertheless, she came often to the hospital courtyard, especially towards evening, sometimes just to stand in the yard for a minute or two and look up at the windows of the ward, if only from afar. Once, towards evening, when he’d almost completely recovered, Raskolnikov fell asleep; waking up, he happened to go to the window and suddenly caught sight of Sonya in the distance, by the hospital gates. She was standing there as though she were waiting for something. At that moment, something seemed to pierce his heart; he shuddered and hastily retreated from the window. Sonya did not come the next day, or the day after that. He noticed how anxiously he was waiting for her. Finally, he was discharged. Entering the prison, he learned from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna had fallen ill and was staying at home.
Deeply worried, he sent someone to find out how she was. Her illness, he was soon told, was not dangerous.
Learning in her turn of his concern and distress, Sonya sent him a note in pencil, telling him that she felt a great deal better, that it was just a bit of cold and that she would come to see him at work very, very soon. When he read this note, his heart throbbed with pain.
Another clear, warm day. Early that morning, at about six, he went out to work on the river bank, in a shed where a kiln was set up for baking and pounding alabaster. Only two other workers went out with him. One of the convicts took a guard and went back with him to the fortress to fetch a tool; the other began preparing firewood and loading the kiln. Raskolnikov went outside, sat down on the logs stacked up by the shed and looked out at the broad, deserted river. A wide vista opened up from the tall bank.
The sound of singing just reached him from the other side.
Over there, on the sun-drenched, boundless steppe, the black dots of nomadic yurts were faintly visible. Over there was freedom; over there lived people quite unlike the ones living here; over there time itself seemed to have stopped, as if the ages of Abraham and his flocks had not yet passed.
Raskolnikov sat and watched, neither moving nor looking away; his thoughts shaded into daydreams and contemplation; he wasn’t thinking about anything, yet something troubled and tormented him.
Suddenly, there was Sonya beside him. She’d approached with barely a sound and sat down next to him. It was still very early; the morning chill had not yet softened. She was 11wearing her wretched, old burnous and the green shawl.
Her face – thin, pale, pinched – still bore the signs of her illness. She gave him a warm, joyful smile but, as usual, offered her hand to him timidly.
She always offered her hand to him timidly and sometimes wouldn’t offer it at all, as if scared he might
reject it. He always took it with a kind of disgust, always greeted her with a kind of annoyance, and sometimes he remained stubbornly silent all the while she was with him.
On occasions, she trembled before him and left in deep sorrow. But now their hands did not part; he cast her a quick, fleeting glance, said nothing and lowered his eyes to the ground. They were alone; no one could see them. The guard had turned away.
How it happened he himself did not know, but suddenly something swept him up and hurled him at her feet. He wept, hugging her knees. At first she was terrified and her whole face went numb. She leapt to her feet and looked at him, shaking all over. But there and then, in that same instant, she understood everything. Her eyes lit up with endless happiness; she’d understood, and could no longer doubt, that he loved her, loved her endlessly, and that the moment had finally come . . .
They wanted to talk, but could not. Tears were in their eyes. They were pale and thin; but in these sick, pale faces there already shone the dawn of a renewed future, of full resurrection into new life. Love had resurrected them, and the heart of each contained inexhaustible springs of life for the heart of the other.
They resolved to wait and be patient. There were seven more years to go. How much unbearable torment still lay ahead of them? How much endless happiness? But he’d been raised to life and he knew it. He felt it fully with his whole renewed being, while she – well, what was her life but his?
That evening, when the barracks had been locked for the night, Raskolnikov lay on his bunk and thought of her.
During the day he even had the impression that all the convicts, his former enemies, were already looking at him differently. He even began talking to them himself, and they responded with affection. He recalled this now, but actually,
wasn’t it all as it should be? Shouldn’t everything be different now?
It was her he thought of. He remembered how he’d kept tearing and rending her heart; remembered her pale, thin face; yet now even these memories barely tormented him: he knew with what endless love he would now redeem all her sufferings.
And anyway, what were they, all these torments of the past? Yes,all of them! Everything, even his crime, even his sentence and exile, now seemed, in this first surge, somehow alien and strange, as if it were not even him they had happened to. But he was unable, that evening, to think long and hard, to focus his mind on any one thing; besides, he couldn’t have resolved anything now by conscious effort; he could only feel. Dialectics had given way to life, and something quite different had to work itself out in his conscious mind.
12 Under his pillow lay the Gospels.He picked the book up without thinking. It belonged to her, the very same book from which she had read to him about the raising of Lazarus. During his first days in prison he thought she would torture him with religion, keep on about the Gospels and ply him with books. But to his utter astonishment she hadn’t once mentioned it, hadn’t even offered him the Gospels. It was he who had asked her for the book not long before he fell sick, and she brought it to him without saying a word. He still had not opened it.
He didn’t open it now, either, but a thought flashed through him: ‘How can her beliefs not be my beliefs too now? Or at least her feelings, her strivings . . .’ She, too, had felt restless all day and she even fell ill again overnight. But she was so happy she was almost scared. Seven years,only seven years! At the beginning of their happiness, at certain moments, both were ready to 13 see these seven years as seven days.He didn’t even know
that his new life was not being given to him for free, that it would still cost him dear, that it would have to be paid for with a great, future deed . . .
But here a new story begins: the story of a man’s gradual renewal and gradual rebirth, of his gradual crossing from one world to another, of his acquaintance with a new, as yet unknown reality. That could be a subject for another tale – our present one has ended.
