Crime and Punishment
his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes
full of fire.
He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.
“You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?” he asked gloomily.
“Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that’s what you must do.”
“No! I am not going to them, Sonia!”
“But how will you go on living? What will you live for?” cried Sonia,
“how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what
will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your
mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh,
God!” she cried, “why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by
himself! What will become of you now?”
“Don’t be a child, Sonia,” he said softly. “What wrong have I done
them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That’s only a
phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a
virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them.
And what should I say to them--that I murdered her, but did not dare to
take the money and hid it under a stone?” he added with a bitter smile.
“Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting
it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn’t understand and they don’t deserve
to understand. Why should I go to them? I won’t. Don’t be a child,
Sonia....”
“It will be too much for you to bear, too much!” she repeated, holding
out her hands in despairing supplication.
“Perhaps I’ve been unfair to myself,” he observed gloomily, pondering,
“perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I’ve been in too great
a hurry to condemn myself. I’ll make another fight for it.”
A haughty smile appeared on his lips.
“What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!”
“I shall get used to it,” he said grimly and thoughtfully. “Listen,” he
began a minute later, “stop crying, it’s time to talk of the facts: I’ve
come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track....”
“Ach!” Sonia cried in terror.
“Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Siberia and now you are
frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shall
make a struggle for it and they won’t do anything to me. They’ve no real
evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but
to-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explained
two ways, that’s to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do
you understand? And I shall, for I’ve learnt my lesson. But they will
certainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened,
they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will
arrest me to-day.... But that’s no matter, Sonia; they’ll let me out
again... for there isn’t any real proof against me, and there won’t be,
I give you my word for it. And they can’t convict a man on what they
have against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I will
try to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that they
won’t be frightened.... My sister’s future is secure, however, now, I
believe... and my mother’s must be too.... Well, that’s all. Be careful,
though. Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?”
“Oh, I will, I will.”
They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had
been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked at
Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he
felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a
strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt that
all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least part
of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, he
suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before.
“Sonia,” he said, “you’d better not come and see me when I am in
prison.”
Sonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.
“Have you a cross on you?” she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it.
He did not at first understand the question.
“No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have
another, a copper one that belonged to Lizaveta. I changed with
Lizaveta: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I will
wear Lizaveta’s now and give you this. Take it... it’s mine! It’s mine,
you know,” she begged him. “We will go to suffer together, and together
we will bear our cross!”
“Give it me,” said Raskolnikov.
He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back the
hand he held out for the cross.
“Not now, Sonia. Better later,” he added to comfort her.
“Yes, yes, better,” she repeated with conviction, “when you go to meet
your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I’ll put it on you,
we will pray and go together.”
At that moment someone knocked three times at the door.
“Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?” they heard in a very familiar and
polite voice.
Sonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr.
Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.
CHAPTER V
Lebeziatnikov looked perturbed.
“I’ve come to you, Sofya Semyonovna,” he began. “Excuse me... I thought
I should find you,” he said, addressing Raskolnikov suddenly, “that is,
I didn’t mean anything... of that sort... But I just thought... Katerina
Ivanovna has gone out of her mind,” he blurted out suddenly, turning
from Raskolnikov to Sonia.
Sonia screamed.
“At least it seems so. But... we don’t know what to do, you see! She
came back--she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps
beaten.... So it seems at least.... She had run to your father’s former
chief, she didn’t find him at home: he was dining at some other
general’s.... Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other general’s,
and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to
see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine what
happened. She was turned out, of course; but, according to her own
story, she abused him and threw something at him. One may well believe
it.... How it is she wasn’t taken up, I can’t understand! Now she is
telling everyone, including Amalia Ivanovna; but it’s difficult to
understand her, she is screaming and flinging herself about.... Oh yes,
she shouts that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take the
children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children
will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and will go every
day under the general’s window... ‘to let everyone see well-born
children, whose father was an official, begging in the street.’ She
keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida
to sing ‘My Village,’ the boy to dance, Polenka the same. She is tearing
up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors; she means
to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of music.... She won’t
listen to anything.... Imagine the state of things! It’s beyond
anything!”
Lebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost
breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room,
putting on her things as she went. Raskolnikov followed her and
Lebeziatnikov came after him.
“She has certainly gone mad!” he said to Raskolnikov, as they went out
into the street. “I didn’t want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said
‘it seemed like it,’ but there isn’t a doubt of it. They say that in
consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it’s a pity I
know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn’t
listen.”
“Did you talk to her about the tubercles?”
“Not precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn’t have understood!
But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he
has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. That’s clear. Is it your
conviction that he won’t?”
“Life would be too easy if it were so,” answered Raskolnikov.
“Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for
Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have
been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the
insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific
man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such
treatment. His idea was that there’s nothing really wrong with the
physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a
logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He
gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they
say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far
success was due to that treatment remains uncertain.... So it seems at
least.”
Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he
lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov
woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on.
Raskolnikov went into his little room and stood still in the middle
of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered
paper, at the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud continuous
knocking; someone seemed to be hammering... He went to the window, rose
on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of
absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was
hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the
window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out
of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down
on the sofa.
Never, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!
Yes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now
that he had made her more miserable.
“Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison
her life? Oh, the meanness of it!”
“I will remain alone,” he said resolutely, “and she shall not come to
the prison!”
Five minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a
strange thought.
“Perhaps it really would be better in Siberia,” he thought suddenly.
He could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging
through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia came in. At
first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he
had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place
as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost
vacantly at her.
“Don’t be angry, brother; I’ve only come for one minute,” said Dounia.
Her face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft.
He saw that she too had come to him with love.
“Brother, now I know all, _all_. Dmitri Prokofitch has explained and
told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a
stupid and contemptible suspicion.... Dmitri Prokofitch told me that
there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such
horror. I don’t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must
be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That’s
what I am afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off from us, I don’t
judge you, I don’t venture to judge you, and forgive me for having
blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I had so great a trouble,
should keep away from everyone. I shall tell mother nothing _of this_,
but I shall talk about you continually and shall tell her from you that
you will come very soon. Don’t worry about her; _I_ will set her mind at
rest; but don’t you try her too much--come once at least; remember that
she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say” (Dounia began
to get up) “that if you should need me or should need... all my life or
anything... call me, and I’ll come. Good-bye!”
She turned abruptly and went towards the door.