Part Five 4 страница

“Ah, how could you say that to them! And she was there? ” Sonya cried fearfully. “To sit with me! An honor! But I'm... dishonorable... I'm a great, great sinner! Ah, how could you say that! ”

“I said it of you not for your dishonor and sin, but for your great suffering. But that you are a great sinner is true, ” he added, almost ecstatically, “and most of all you are a sinner because you destroyed yourself and betrayed yourself in vain. Isn't that a horror! Isn't it a horror that you live in this filth which you hate so much, and at the same time know yourself (you need only open your eyes) that you're not helping anyone by it, and not saving anyone from anything! But tell me, finally, ” he spoke almost in a frenzy, “how such shame and baseness can be combined in you beside other opposite and holy feelings? It would be more just, a thousand times more just and reasonable, to jump headfirst into the water and end it at once! ”

“And what would become of them? ” Sonya asked weakly, glancing at him with suffering, but at the same time as if she were not at all surprised at his question. Raskolnikov looked at her strangely.

He read everything in that one glance of hers. So she really had already thought of it herself. Perhaps many times, in despair, she had seriously considered how to end it all at once, so seriously, indeed, that now she was almost not surprised at his suggestion. She had not even noticed the cruelty of his words (nor had she noticed, of course, the meaning of his reproaches, or his special view of her shame—that was obvious to him). But he fully understood the monstrous pain she suffered, and had long been suffering, at the thought of her dishonorable and shameful position. What, he wondered, what could so far have kept her from deciding to end it all at once? And only here did he understand fully what these poor little orphaned children meant to her, and this pitiful, half-crazed Katerina Ivanovna, with her consumption, and her beating her head against the wall.

But then, too, it was clear to him that Sonya, with her character, and the education which, after all, she did have, could in no way remain as she was. It still stood as a question for him: how had she been able to remain for so much too long a time in such a position and not lose her mind, if it was beyond her strength to drown herself? Of course, he understood that Sonya's position was an accidental social phenomenon, though unfortunately a far from isolated and exceptional one. But it would seem that this very accident, this smattering of education, and the whole of her preceding life, should have killed her at once, with her first step onto that loathsome path. What sustained her? Surely not depravity? All this shame obviously touched her only mechanically; no true depravity, not even a drop of it, had yet penetrated her heart—he could see that; she stood before him in reality. . .

“Three ways are open to her, ” he thought, “to throw herself into the canal, to go to the madhouse, or... or, finally, to throw herself into a depravity that stupefies reason and petrifies the heart. ” This last thought was the most loathsome of all to him; but he was already a skeptic; he was young, abstract, and consequently cruel; and therefore he could not but believe that the last outcome—that is, depravity—was the most likely.

“But can it be true? ” he exclaimed to himself. “Can it be that this being, who has still kept her purity of spirit, in the end will be consciously pulled into this vile, stinking hole? Can it be that the pulling has already begun, and that she has been able to endure so far only because vice no longer seems so loathsome to her? No, no, it can't be! ” he kept exclaiming, like Sonya earlier. “No, what has so far kept her from the canal is the thought of sin, and of them, those ones... And if she hasn't lost her mind so far... But who says she hasn't lost her mind? Is she in her right mind? Is it possible to talk as she does? Is it possible for someone in her right mind to reason as she does? Is it possible to sit like that over perdition, right over the stinking hole that's already dragging her in, and wave her hands and stop her ears when she's being told of the danger? What does she expect, a miracle? No doubt. And isn't this all a sign of madness? ”

He stubbornly stayed at this thought. He liked this solution more than any other. He began studying her with greater attention.

“So you pray very much to God, Sonya? ” he asked her.

Sonya was silent; he stood beside her, waiting for an answer.

“And what would I be without God? ” she whispered quickly, energetically, glancing at him fleetingly with suddenly flashing eyes, and she pressed his hand firmly with her own.

“So that's it! ” he thought.

“And what does God do for you in return? ” he asked, testing her further.

Sonya was silent for a long time, as if she were unable to answer. Her frail chest was all heaving with agitation. . .

“Be still! Don't ask! You're not worthy! . . . ” she cried suddenly, looking at him sternly and wrathfully.

“That's it! That's it! ” he repeated insistently to himself.

“He does everything! ” she whispered quickly, looking down again.

“Here's the solution! Here's the explanation of the solution! ” he decided to himself, studying her with greedy curiosity.

With a new, strange, almost painful feeling, he peered at that pale, thin, irregular, and angular little face, those meek blue eyes, capable of flashing with such fire, such severe, energetic feeling, that small body still trembling with indignation and wrath, and it all seemed more and more strange to him, almost impossible. “A holy fool! A holy fool! ” he kept saying within himself. ^{^[95]}

There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it each time he paced the room; now he picked it up and looked. It was the New Testament, in Russian translation. ^{^[96]} The book was old, used, bound in leather.

“Where did this come from? ” he called to her across the room. She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.

“It was brought to me, ” she answered, as if reluctantly, and without glancing at him.

“Who brought it? ”

“Lizaveta. I asked her to. ”

“Lizaveta! How strange! ” he thought. Everything about Sonya was becoming more strange and wondrous for him with each passing minute. He took the book over to the candle and began leafing through it.

“Where is the part about Lazarus? ” he asked suddenly.

Sonya went on stubbornly looking down, and did not answer.

“Where is it about the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonya. ”

She gave him a sidelong glance.

“You're looking in the wrong place... it's in the fourth Gospel... ” she whispered sternly, without moving towards him.

“Find it and read it to me, ” he said. He sat down, leaned his elbow on the table, propped his head in his hand, and looked away sullenly, preparing to listen.

“About three weeks, and welcome to Bedlam! I'll probably be there myself, if nothing worse happens, ” he muttered to himself.

Sonya stepped hesitantly to the table, mistrusting Raskolnikov's strange wish. Nevertheless, she picked up the book.

“You've never read it? ” she asked, glancing at him loweringly across the table. Her voice was becoming more and more severe.

“Long ago... in school. Read it! ”

“You never heard it in church? ”

“I... haven't gone. Do you go often? ”

“N-no, ” whispered Sonya.

Raskolnikov grinned.

“I see... Then you won't go tomorrow to bury your father either? ”

“Yes, I will. And I went last week... for a memorial service. ”

“For whom? ”

“Lizaveta. She was killed with an axe. ”

His nerves were becoming more and more irritated. His head was beginning to spin.

“Were you friends with Lizaveta? ”

“Yes... She was a just woman... She came... rarely... she couldn't. She and I used to read and... talk. She will see God. ”^{^[97]}

How strange these bookish words sounded to him; and here was another new thing: some sort of mysterious get-togethers with Lizaveta—two holy fools.

“One might well become a holy fool oneself here! It's catching! ” he thought. “Read! ” he suddenly exclaimed insistently and irritably.

Sonya still hesitated. Her heart was pounding. She somehow did not dare read to him. He looked almost with pain at the “unfortunate madwoman. ”

“What is it to you? You don't believe, do you? . . . ” she whispered softly, somehow short of breath.

“Read! I want you to! ” he insisted. “You read to Lizaveta! ”

Sonya opened the book and found the place. Her hands were trembling; she did not have voice enough. She tried twice to begin, but kept failing to get the first syllable out.

“‘Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany. . . ' “^{^[98]}she uttered at last, with effort, but suddenly, at the third word, her voice rose and broke like an overtightened string. Her breath failed, and her chest contracted.

Raskolnikov partly understood why Sonya was hesitant to read to him, and the more he understood it, the more rudely and irritably he insisted on her reading. He understood only too well how hard it was for her now to betray and expose all that was hers. He understood that these feelings might indeed constitute her secret, as it were, real and long-standing, going back perhaps to her adolescence, when she was still in the family, with her unfortunate father and her grief-maddened stepmother, among the hungry children, the ugly shouts and reproaches. But at the same time he now knew, and knew for certain, that even though she was anguished and terribly afraid of something as she was starting out to read, she also had a tormenting desire to read, in spite of all her anguish and apprehension, and precisely for him, so that he would hear it, and precisely now —”whatever might come of it afterwards! ”... He read it in her eyes, understood it from her rapturous excitement... She mastered herself, suppressed the spasm in her throat that had made her voice break at the beginning of the verse, and continued her reading of the eleventh chapter of John's Gospel. Thus she read on to the nineteenth verse:

“‘And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. ’”

Here she stopped again, anticipating with shame that her voice was again about to tremble and break. . .

“‘Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him. . . ’”

(and catching her breath as if in pain, Sonya read strongly and distinctly, exactly as if she herself were confessing it for all to hear: )

“‘Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world. ’”

She stopped, quickly raised her eyes to him, but mastered herself at once and began to read further. Raskolnikov sat listening motionlessly, without turning, his elbow resting on the table, his eyes looking away.

They read to the thirty-second verse.

“‘Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? ’”

Raskolnikov turned and looked at her anxiously: yes, that was it! She was already trembling in a real, true fever. He had expected that. She was approaching the word about the greatest, the unheard-of miracle, and a feeling of great triumph took hold of her. There was an iron ring to her voice; joy and triumph sounded in it and strengthened it. The lines became confused on the page before her, because her sight was dimmed, but she knew by heart what she was reading. At the last verse: “Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind... ” she had lowered her voice, conveying ardently and passionately the doubt, reproach, and reviling of the blind, unbelieving Jews, who in another moment, as if thunderstruck, would fall down, weep, and believe... ”And he, he who is also blinded and unbelieving, he, too, will now hear, he, too, will believe—yes, yes! right now, this minute, ” she dreamed, and she was trembling with joyful expectation.

“‘Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone.

Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. ’”

She strongly emphasized the word four.

“‘Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth... ’”

(she read loudly and rapturously, trembling and growing cold, as if she were seeing it with her own eyes: )

“‘. . . bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

“‘Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him. ‘“

Beyond that she did not and could not read; she closed the book and got up quickly from her chair.

“That's all about the raising of Lazarus, ” she whispered abruptly and sternly, and stood motionless, turned away, not daring and as if ashamed to raise her eyes to him. Her feverish trembling continued. The candle-end had long been burning out in the bent candlestick, casting a dim light in this destitute room upon the murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.

“I came to talk about business, ” Raskolnikov suddenly spoke loudly, and, frowning, he rose and went to Sonya. She looked up at him silently. His face was especially stern, and some wild resolution was expressed in it.

“I left my family today, ” he said, “my mother and sister. I won't go to them now. I've broken with everything there. ”

“Why? ” Sonya asked, as if stunned. Her meeting earlier with his mother and sister had left an extraordinary impression on her, though one not yet clear to herself. She heard the news of the break almost with horror.

“I have only you now, ” he added. “Let's go together... I've come to you. We're cursed together, so let's go together! ”

His eyes were flashing. “He's crazy, ” Sonya thought in her turn.

“Go where? ” she asked in fear, and involuntarily stepped back.

“How do I know? I only know that it's on the same path, I know it for certain—that's all. One goal! ”

She went on looking at him, understanding nothing. She understood only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy.

“None of them will understand anything, if you start talking with them, ” he continued, “but I understand. I need you, and so I've come to you. ”

“I don't understand. . . ” Sonya whispered.

“You'll understand later... Haven't you done the same thing? You, too, have stepped over... were able to step over. You laid hands on yourself, you destroyed a life... your own (it's all the same! ). You might have lived by the spirit and reason, but you'll end up on the Haymarket... But you can't endure it, and if you remain alone, you'll lose your mind, like me. You're nearly crazy already; so we must go together, on the same path! Let's go! ”

“Why? Why do you say that? ” Sonya said, strangely and rebelliously stirred by his words.

“Why? Because it's impossible to remain like this—that's why! It's necessary finally to reason seriously and directly, and not weep and cry like a child that God will not allow it! What if you are indeed taken to the hospital tomorrow? That woman is out of her mind and consumptive, she'll die soon, and the children? Won't Polechka be destroyed? Haven't you seen children here on the street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I've learned where these mothers live, and in what circumstances. Children cannot remain children there. There a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. But children are the image of Christ: 'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. '^{^[99]} He taught us to honor and love them, they are the future mankind. . . ”

“But what, what can be done, then? ” Sonya repeated, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.

“What can be done? Smash what needs to be smashed, once and for all, and that's it—and take the suffering upon ourselves! What? You don't understand? You'll understand later... Freedom and power, but above all, power! Over all trembling creatures, over the whole ant-heap! ... That is the goal! Remember it! This is my parting word to you! I may be talking to you for the last time. If I don't come tomorrow, you'll hear about everything yourself, and then remember these present words. And sometime later, years later, as life goes on, maybe you'll understand what they meant. But if I come tomorrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Good-bye! ”

Sonya shuddered all over with fear.

“You mean you know who killed her? ” she asked, frozen in horror and looking at him wildly.

“I know and I'll tell... you, you alone! I've chosen you. I won't come asking forgiveness, I'll simply tell you. I chose you long ago to tell it to, back when your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, I thought of it then. Good-bye. Don't give me your hand. Tomorrow! ”

He went out. Sonya looked at him as at a madman; but she herself was as if insane, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. “Lord! How does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those words mean? It's frightening! ” But at the same time the thought would not enter her mind. No, no, it would not! ... ”Oh, he must be terribly unhappy! ... He's left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what are his intentions? What was it he had said to her? He had kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he now could not live without her... Oh, Lord! ”

Sonya spent the whole night in fever and delirium. She jumped up every now and then, wept, wrung her hands, then dropped into feverish sleep again, and dreamed of Polechka, of Katerina Ivanovna, of Lizaveta, of reading the Gospel, and of him... him, with his pale face, his burning eyes... He was kissing her feet, weeping... Oh, Lord!

Beyond the door to the right, the door that separated Sonya's apartment from the apartment of Gertrude Karlovna Resslich, there was an intervening room, long empty, which belonged to Mrs. Resslich's apartment and was up for rent, as signs on the gates and notices pasted to the windows facing the canal announced. Sonya had long been used to considering this room uninhabited. And meanwhile, all that time, Mr. Svidrigailov had been standing by the door in the empty room and stealthily listening. When Raskolnikov left, he stood for a while, thought, then went on tiptoe into his room, adjacent to the empty room, took a chair, and inaudibly brought it close to the door leading to Sonya's room. He had found the conversation amusing and bemusing, and he had liked it very, very much—so much that he even brought a chair, in order not to be subjected again in the future, tomorrow, for instance, to the unpleasantness of standing on his feet for a whole hour, but to settle himself more comfortably and thus treat himself to a pleasure that was full in all respects.

When, at exactly eleven o'clock the next morning, Raskolnikov entered the building that housed the —y police station, went to the department of the commissioner of investigations, and asked to be announced to Porfiry Petrovich, he was even surprised at how long they kept him waiting: at least ten minutes went by before he was summoned. Whereas, according to his calculations, it seemed they ought to have pounced on him at once. Meanwhile he stood in the waiting room, and people came and went who apparently were not interested in him at all. In the next room, which looked like an office, several scriveners sat writing, and it was obvious that none of them had any idea who or what Raskolnikov was. With an uneasy and mistrustful look he glanced around, trying to see if there were not at least some guard, some mysterious eyes, appointed to watch that he not go away. But there was nothing of the kind: all he saw were some pettily occupied office faces, then some other people, and none of them had any need of him: he could have gone four ways at once. A thought was becoming more and more firmly established in him: if that mysterious man yesterday, that ghost who had come from under the ground, indeed knew everything and had seen everything—would they let him, Raskolnikov, stand here like this and wait quietly? And would they have waited for him here until eleven o'clock, until he himself saw fit to come? It followed that the man either had not denounced him yet, or... or simply did not know anything, had not seen anything himself, with his own eyes (and how could he have? ), and, consequently, the whole thing that he, Raskolnikov, had gone through yesterday was again a phantom, exaggerated by his troubled and sick imagination. This surmise had begun to strengthen in him even yesterday, during the most intense anxiety and despair. As he thought it all over now and made ready for a new battle, he suddenly felt himself trembling—and indignation even boiled up in him at the thought that he was trembling with fear before the hateful Porfiry Petrovich. It was most terrible for him to meet this man again; he hated him beyond measure, infinitely, and was even afraid of somehow giving himself away by his hatred. And so strong was this indignation that it immediately stopped his trembling; he made ready to go in with a cold and insolent air, and vowed to be silent as much as possible, to look and listen attentively, and, if only this once at least, to overcome his morbidly irritated nature, cost what it might. Just then he was called in to see Porfiry Petrovich.

It turned out that Porfiry Petrovich was alone in his office at the moment. His office was a room neither large nor small; in it stood a big writing desk in front of a sofa upholstered in oilcloth, a bureau, a cabinet in the corner, and a few chairs—all institutional furniture, of yellow polished wood. In the corner of the back wall—or, better, partition—was a closed door; beyond it, behind the partition, there must consequently have been other rooms. When Raskolnikov came in, Porfiry Petrovich immediately closed the door through which he had come, and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently quite cheerful and affable air, and only several minutes later did Raskolnikov notice in him the signs of something like embarrassment—as if he had suddenly been put out, or caught doing something very solitary and secretive.

“Ah, my esteemed sir! Here you are... in our parts. . . ” Porfiry began, reaching out both hands to him. “Well, do sit down, my dear! Or perhaps you don't like being called esteemed and... dear—so, tout court? ^{^[100]} Please don't regard it as familiarity... Over here, sir, on the sofa. ”

Raskolnikov sat down without taking his eyes off him.

“In our parts, ” the apology for being familiar, the French phrase “tout court, “ and so on—these were all typical signs. “He reached out both hands to me, and yet he didn't give me either, he drew them back in time, ” flashed in him suspiciously. Each of them was watching the other, but as soon as their eyes met, quick as lightning they would look away.

“I've brought you this little paper... about the watch... here, sir. Is that all right, or shall I copy it over? ”

“What? A little paper? Right, right... don't worry, it's quite all right, sir, ” Porfiry Petrovich said, as if he were hurrying somewhere, and after saying it, he took the paper and looked it over. “Quite all right, sir. Nothing more is needed, ” he confirmed in the same patter, and put the paper on the desk. Then, a minute later, already speaking of something else, he took it up again and put it on the bureau.

“You seemed to be saying yesterday that you wished to ask me... formally... about my acquaintance with this... murdered woman? ” Raskolnikov tried to begin again. “Why did I put in that seemed? ” flashed in him like lightning. “And why am I so worried about having put in that seemed? ” a second thought immediately flashed in him like lightning.

And he suddenly felt that his insecurity, from the mere contact with Porfiry, from two words only, from two glances only, had bushed out to monstrous proportions in a moment... and that it was terribly dangerous—frayed nerves, mounting agitation. “It's bad! It's bad! ... I'll betray myself again. ”

“Yes, yes, yes! Don't worry! It will keep, it will keep, sir, ” Porfiry Petrovich muttered, moving back and forth by the desk, but somehow aimlessly, as if darting now to the window, now to the bureau, then back to the desk, first avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious eyes, then suddenly stopping dead and staring point-blank at him. His plump, round little figure gave it all an extremely strange effect, like a ball rolling in different directions and bouncing off all the walls and corners.

“We'll have time, sir, we'll have time! ... Do you smoke, by chance? Have you got your own? Here, sir, take a cigarette... ” he continued, offering his visitor a cigarette. “You know, I'm receiving you here, but my apartment is right there, behind the partition... government quarters, sir, but just now I'm renting another for a while. They've been doing a bit of renovating here. It's almost ready now... a government apartment is a fine thing, eh? What do you think? ”

“Yes, a fine thing, ” Raskolnikov answered, looking at him almost mockingly.

“A fine thing, a fine thing. . . ” Porfiry Petrovich kept repeating, as if he had suddenly begun thinking of something quite different; “yes, a fine thing! ” he all but shouted in the end, suddenly fixing his eyes on Raskolnikov and stopping two steps away from him. This silly, multiple repetition that a government apartment is a fine thing was too contradictory, in its triteness, to the serious, reflective, and enigmatic look that he now directed at his visitor.

But this only made Raskolnikov's anger boil the more, and he was no longer able to refrain from making a mocking and rather imprudent challenge.

“You know what, ” he suddenly asked, looking at him almost insolently, and as if enjoying his own insolence, “it seems there exists a certain legal rule, a certain legal technique—for all possible investigators—to begin from afar at first, with little trifles, or even with something serious but quite unrelated, in order to encourage, so to speak, or, better, to divert the person being interrogated, to lull his prudence, and then suddenly, in the most unexpected way, to stun him right on the head with the most fatal and dangerous question—is it so? I suppose it's mentioned religiously to this day in all the rule books and manuals? ”

“Well, well... so you think I've been using this government apartment to get you to... eh? ” And having said this, Porfiry Petrovich squinted, winked; something merry and sly ran across his face, the little wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out, his little eyes narrowed, his features stretched out, and he suddenly dissolved into prolonged, nervous laughter, heaving and swaying with his whole body, and looking straight into Raskolnikov's eyes. The latter began to laugh himself, somewhat forcedly; but when Porfiry, seeing that he was also laughing, went off into such gales of laughter that he almost turned purple, Raskolnikov's loathing suddenly went beyond all prudence; he stopped laughing, frowned, and stared at Porfiry long and hatefully, not taking his eyes off him during this whole long and as if deliberately unceasing fit of laughter. The imprudence, however, was obvious on both sides: it appeared that Porfiry Petrovich was laughing in the face of his visitor, who was meeting his laughter with hatred, and that he was hardly embarrassed by this circumstance. Raskolnikov found the last fact very portentous: he realized that Porfiry Petrovich had certainly also not been at all embarrassed earlier, but on the contrary, that he himself, Raskolnikov, had perhaps stepped into a trap; that evidently there was something here that he was unaware of, some goal; that everything was perhaps prepared already, and now, this minute, would be revealed and come crashing down. . .

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