Capítulo 40 de 41

I

Siberia. On the bank of a broad, desolate river stands a town, one of the administrative centers of Russia; in the town there is a fortress, and in the fortress a prison. In the prison, for nine months now, has been confined the convict of the second class, exile Rodion Raskolnikov. Almost a year and a half had passed since the day of his crime.

The proceedings in his case went off without any great difficulty. The criminal upheld his confession firmly, precisely, and clearly, tangling none of the circumstances, softening none of them in his own favor, distorting no facts, forgetting not the smallest detail. He recounted the whole process of the murder down to its last line: he explained the mystery of the pledge (that little wooden board with a strip of metal) which had been found in the murdered old woman's hand; he told in detail how he had taken the keys from the dead woman, described those keys, described the chest and what it had held; he even enumerated some of the separate articles that lay within it; he cleared up the riddle of Lizaveta's murder; he told how Koch had come and knocked, and after him the student, and repeated all that they had said to one another; how he, the criminal, had then fled down the stairs and heard the shrieking of Mikolka and Mitka; how he had hidden himself in the empty flat, come home, and, in conclusion, pointed out the stone in the courtyard on Voznesensky Prospect, beneath the gateway, under which the things and the purse had been found. In a word, the case turned out to be a clear one. The investigators and the judges were greatly astonished, among other things, that he had hidden the purse and the things under a stone without making any use of them, and, above all, that he not only could not remember in detail all the very articles he had stolen but had even mistaken their number. That one circumstance, in particular—that he had never once opened the purse and did not even know exactly how much money lay in it—seemed incredible (the purse proved to contain three hundred and seventeen rubles in silver and three twenty-kopeck pieces; from lying so long beneath the stone, some of the uppermost, the largest notes, had been badly spoiled). They labored long to find out why precisely the accused should lie about this one circumstance, while confessing to everything else voluntarily and truthfully. At last certain of them (particularly among the psychologists) even admitted the possibility that he really had not looked into the purse, and had therefore not known what was in it, and, not knowing, had so carried it off under the stone; but from this they at once concluded that the very crime could not have been committed except in some temporary derangement of the mind, in a morbid monomania, so to speak, of murder and robbery, with no further aims or calculations of profit. Here, as it happened, the newest fashionable theory of temporary insanity came in most opportunely—the theory so often applied in our day to certain criminals. Moreover, Raskolnikov's long-standing hypochondriac condition was attested with precision by many witnesses, by Dr. Zosimov, by his former comrades, by his landlady, by the servant. All this contributed powerfully to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not altogether like an ordinary murderer, brigand, and robber, but that there was something else at work here. To the extreme vexation of those who maintained this opinion, the criminal himself scarcely attempted to defend himself; to the final questions—what precisely could have inclined him to murder, and what had prompted him to commit the robbery—he answered very clearly, with the crudest exactness, that the cause of it all had been his wretched position, his poverty and helplessness, his desire to secure the first steps of his career in life with the aid of at least the three thousand rubles he had reckoned on finding at the murdered woman's. He had resolved upon the murder as a consequence of his frivolous and faint-hearted character, exasperated, besides, by privations and failures. To the question of what precisely had prompted him to give himself up, he answered directly that it was sincere repentance. All this was already almost crude…

The sentence, however, proved more merciful than might have been expected, considering the crime committed, and perhaps precisely because the criminal not only did not wish to justify himself, but even seemed to express a desire to accuse himself still further. All the strange and peculiar circumstances of the case were taken into consideration. The morbid and destitute state of the criminal before he committed the crime was not subject to the slightest doubt. That he had not made use of what he had stolen was set down partly to the workings of awakened remorse, partly to an imperfectly sound condition of his mental faculties at the time the crime was committed. The circumstance of the unpremeditated murder of Lizaveta even served as an example corroborating this last supposition: a man commits two murders and at the same time forgets that the door is standing open! Finally, his giving himself up, at the very time when the case had become extraordinarily entangled owing to the false self-accusation of a dispirited fanatic (Nikolai), and, moreover, when against the real criminal there existed not only no clear evidence but scarcely even any suspicion (Porfiry Petrovich had kept his word to the full)—all this contributed in the end to a mitigation of the accused man's fate.

Besides this, quite unexpectedly, other circumstances came to light that were strongly in the prisoner's favor. The former student Razumikhin unearthed from somewhere information and produced proof that the criminal Raskolnikov, during his time at the university, had, out of his last resources, helped a poor and consumptive fellow student, and had all but kept him for half a year. And when that student died, he had looked after the surviving old and infirm father of his dead comrade (who had supported and fed his own father by his own labor from almost the age of thirteen), had at last placed this old man in a hospital, and, when he too died, had buried him. All this information had a certain favorable influence on the deciding of Raskolnikov's fate. His own former landlady, the mother of Raskolnikov's dead betrothed, the widow Zarnitsyna, also testified that when they were still living in another house, at the Five Corners, Raskolnikov, during a fire, at night, had dragged two small children out of an apartment that was already ablaze, and had been burned in doing so. This fact was carefully investigated and rather well attested by many witnesses. In a word, it ended with the criminal being sentenced to penal servitude of the second class for a term of only eight years, in consideration of his having given himself up and of certain extenuating circumstances.

At the very beginning of the trial Raskolnikov's mother had fallen ill. Dunya and Razumikhin found it possible to take her away from Petersburg for the whole duration of the proceedings. Razumikhin chose a town on the railway and at no great distance from Petersburg, so as to be able to follow all the circumstances of the trial regularly and at the same time to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna's illness was of a strange, nervous kind, and was accompanied by something like derangement, if not wholly, at least in part. Dunya, returning from her last interview with her brother, had found her mother already quite ill, in fever and delirium. That same evening she agreed with Razumikhin what precisely they should answer their mother to her questions about her brother, and even, together with him, made up for the mother's benefit a whole story about Raskolnikov's having gone away somewhere far off, to the frontier of Russia, on some private commission that would at last bring him both money and fame. But it struck them that Pulcheria Alexandrovna herself asked nothing about any of this, neither then nor afterward. On the contrary, she herself had a whole story of her own about her son's sudden departure; she told, with tears, how he had come to say good-bye to her; she gave to understand, by hints, that she alone was privy to many very grave and mysterious circumstances, and that Rodya had a great many very powerful enemies, so that he must even keep himself in hiding. As for his future career, that too seemed to her beyond doubt and brilliant, once certain hostile circumstances had passed; she assured Razumikhin that her son would in time even become a statesman, as was proved by his article and his brilliant literary talent. This article she read incessantly, sometimes even read it aloud, all but slept with it, and yet she scarcely ever asked where precisely Rodya was now, even though it was evident that they avoided speaking of it with her—which alone might have aroused her suspicions. At last they began to be afraid of this strange silence of Pulcheria Alexandrovna's on certain points. She did not, for instance, even complain that there were no letters from him, whereas before, living in her little town, she had lived on nothing but the one hope and the one expectation of soon receiving a letter from her beloved Rodya. This last circumstance was altogether too inexplicable and troubled Dunya greatly; the thought came to her that her mother, perhaps, had a foreboding of something terrible in her son's fate and was afraid to ask questions lest she learn something still more terrible. In any case, Dunya saw clearly that Pulcheria Alexandrovna was not in a sound state of mind.

Twice, however, it happened that she herself so led the conversation that, in answering her, it was impossible not to mention where precisely Rodya now was; and when the answers were bound to come out unsatisfactory and suspicious, she suddenly became extremely sad, gloomy, and silent, and this lasted for a very long time. Dunya saw at last that it was hard to lie and invent, and came to the final conclusion that it was better to keep completely silent on certain points; but it became ever more and more clear, to the point of obviousness, that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dunya recalled, among other things, her brother's words, that their mother had listened to her raving on the night before that last fateful day, after her scene with Svidrigailov: had she not overheard something then? Often, sometimes after several days and even weeks of gloomy, dark silence and mute tears, the sick woman would grow somehow hysterically animated and would suddenly begin to talk aloud, almost without ceasing, of her son, of her hopes, of the future… Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humored her, they agreed with her (she herself, perhaps, saw clearly that they were agreeing with her and only humoring her), yet she went on talking all the same…

Five months after the criminal gave himself up, his sentence was pronounced. Razumikhin visited him in prison whenever it was possible. Sonya too. At last came the parting; Dunya swore to her brother that the parting was not forever; Razumikhin swore it too. In Razumikhin's young and ardent head there had firmly taken root a plan to lay, over the next three or four years, at least the beginnings of a future fortune, to save up at least a little money, and to move to Siberia, where the soil is rich in every respect, while laborers, men, and capital are scarce; to settle there in the very town where Rodya would be, and… all together to begin a new life. At the parting they all wept. Raskolnikov, during those very last days, was very pensive, asked a great deal about his mother, was constantly anxious about her. He even fretted over her too much, which troubled Dunya. Having learned in detail of his mother's morbid state of mind, he grew very gloomy. With Sonya, for some reason, he was particularly uncommunicative all the while. Sonya, with the help of the money Svidrigailov had left her, had long since made ready and prepared to follow the party of convicts in which he too would be dispatched. Not a word of this was ever spoken between her and Raskolnikov; but both knew that it would be so. At the very last farewell he smiled strangely at the fervent assurances of his sister and Razumikhin about their happy future when he should come out of penal servitude, and foretold that his mother's morbid condition would soon end in disaster. He and Sonya set off at last.

Two months later Dunechka married Razumikhin. The wedding was mournful and quiet. Among those invited, however, were Porfiry Petrovich and Zosimov. Throughout all this latter time Razumikhin had the air of a man of firm resolve. Dunya believed blindly that he would carry out all his intentions, and indeed she could not but believe: in this man there was visible an iron will. Among other things, he began attending university lectures again in order to finish his course. The two of them were forever making plans for the future; both firmly reckoned on migrating to Siberia within five years for certain. Until then they placed their hopes there on Sonya…

Pulcheria Alexandrovna gladly gave her blessing to her daughter's marriage with Razumikhin; but after this marriage she seemed to grow still sadder and more careworn. To afford her a pleasant moment, Razumikhin told her, among other things, the fact about the student and his decrepit father, and how Rodya had been burned and had even fallen ill in saving two little children from death the year before. Both pieces of news brought Pulcheria Alexandrovna, already deranged in mind, almost to a state of rapture. She talked of it incessantly, striking up conversations even in the street (though Dunya constantly accompanied her). In public carriages, in shops, catching hold of any listener at all, she would lead the conversation round to her son, to his article, to how he had helped a student, been burned at a fire, and so on. Dunechka did not even know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of such a rapturous, morbid state of mind, there was this one further threat of disaster: that someone might recall the name Raskolnikov from the recent trial and begin speaking of it. Pulcheria Alexandrovna even learned the address of the mother of the two children saved from the fire, and was bent on going to her. At last her agitation grew to the utmost limits. She would sometimes suddenly begin to weep, often fell ill, and raved in her fever. One morning she declared outright that, by her reckoning, Rodya must soon arrive, that she remembered how, when saying good-bye to her, he had himself mentioned that he was to be expected in exactly nine months. She began to set everything in the apartment in order and to prepare for his coming, began to do up the room that was to be his (her own), to clean the furniture, to wash and hang new curtains, and so on. Dunya was alarmed, but held her peace and even helped her arrange the room to receive her brother. After an agitated day spent in unbroken fancies, in joyous reveries and tears, in the night she fell ill, and by morning was already in a fever and delirious. A high fever set in. In a fortnight she was dead. In her delirium words escaped her from which it could be concluded that she suspected far more of her son's terrible fate than had even been supposed.

Raskolnikov did not learn of his mother's death for a long time, though a correspondence with Petersburg had been established from the very beginning of his settling in Siberia. It was arranged through Sonya, who punctually, every month, wrote to Petersburg addressed to Razumikhin, and punctually, every month, received a reply from Petersburg. At first Sonya's letters struck Dunya and Razumikhin as somehow dry and unsatisfying; but in the end they both found that better letters could not be written, for from them there resulted, after all, the fullest and most exact picture of their unhappy brother's fate. Sonya's letters were filled with the most everyday reality, with the simplest and clearest description of the whole setting of Raskolnikov's convict life. There was in them no account of her own hopes, no riddles about the future, no descriptions of her own feelings. In place of attempts to explain his state of mind, and his inner life in general, there stood only facts—that is, his own words, detailed news of the state of his health, of what he had wished at such and such a meeting, what he had asked of her, what he had charged her to do, and so on. All this news was communicated with extraordinary particularity. The image of the unhappy brother emerged of itself in the end, drawn precisely and clearly; there could be no error here, because it was all sound fact.

But little that was cheering could Dunya and her husband draw from these tidings, especially at first. Sonya reported without pause that he was constantly gloomy, unwilling to talk, and even took almost no interest at all in the news she gave him each time from the letters she received; that he asked sometimes about his mother; and that when she, seeing that he already divined the truth, at last told him of her death, then, to her surprise, even the news of his mother's death seemed not to affect him very strongly—at least so it appeared to her from his outward look. She reported, among other things, that although he seemed so absorbed in himself and as if shut away from everyone, he had taken up his new life very directly and simply; that he clearly understood his position, expected nothing better in the near future, cherished no frivolous hopes (so natural in his situation), and was surprised at almost nothing amid the new surroundings that so little resembled anything of the past. She reported that his health was satisfactory. He went to his work, from which he neither shrank nor for which he begged. To food he was almost indifferent, but that this food, except on Sundays and holidays, was so bad that in the end he willingly accepted from her, Sonya, a little money to set himself up with tea every day; as for everything else, he asked her not to trouble herself, assuring her that all this concern for him only vexed him. Further, Sonya reported that his quarters in the prison were shared with all the rest; the interior of their barracks she had not seen, but she concluded that it was cramped, ugly, and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a piece of felt spread beneath him, and did not wish to arrange anything else for himself. But that he lived so roughly and poorly not from any preconceived plan or intention, but simply out of inattention and outward indifference to his fate. Sonya wrote plainly that he, especially at first, not only took no interest in her visits, but was even almost vexed by her, unwilling to talk, and even rude to her; but that in the end these meetings had become a habit with him, and even almost a necessity, so that he was quite miserable when for a few days she was ill and could not visit him. She saw him on holidays at the prison gates or in the guardroom, where he was summoned to her for a few minutes; on weekdays, at the workplaces, where she came to him—in the workshops, or at the brickworks, or in the sheds on the bank of the Irtysh. About herself Sonya let it be known that she had even managed to make some acquaintances and win some patronage in the town; that she took in sewing, and since there was hardly a dressmaker in the town, she had made herself indispensable in many households; she did not mention only that through her Raskolnikov too had gained the patronage of the authorities, that his work had been made lighter for him, and so on. At last came the news (Dunya even noticed a certain peculiar agitation and alarm in her latest letters) that he shunned everyone, that the convicts in the prison had taken a dislike to him; that he was silent for whole days together and had grown very pale. Then suddenly, in her last letter, Sonya wrote that he had fallen seriously ill and was lying in the hospital, in the prisoners' ward…