Crime and Punishment (54 page)

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, a
man
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 for
that
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 understood
where
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 had neither Toulon nor Egypt nor the pass at Mont Blanc
34
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.