Глава 30 из 41

IV

Raskolnikov made an energetic and spirited advocate for Sonya against Luzhin, in spite of carrying so much of his own horror and suffering in his soul. But having endured so much that morning, he was almost glad of the chance to change impressions that had grown unbearable — to say nothing of how much that was personal and heartfelt lay in his urge to stand up for Sonya. Besides, there was something else in view that troubled him dreadfully, especially at certain moments: the meeting with Sonya that lay ahead. He had to reveal to her who had killed Lizaveta, and he foresaw a terrible torment in it, and seemed to be warding it off with his hands. And so, when he exclaimed on leaving Katerina Ivanovna's, "Well, what will you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?", he was evidently still in some outwardly excited state of high spirits, defiance, and his recent victory over Luzhin. But a strange thing happened to him. When he reached Kapernaumov's flat, he felt himself seized by a sudden weakness and dread. He stopped, lost in thought, before the door, with a strange question: "Must I tell her who killed Lizaveta?" The question was a strange one, because at that very moment he suddenly felt that not only was it impossible not to tell her, but that even to put the moment off, however briefly, was impossible too. He did not yet know why it was impossible; he only felt it, and this agonizing awareness of his powerlessness before the inevitable almost crushed him. To reason and torment himself no longer, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold. She was sitting with her elbows on the little table and her face buried in her hands, but seeing Raskolnikov, she rose at once and came to meet him, as if she had been waiting for him.

"What would have become of me without you!" she said quickly, meeting him in the middle of the room. Clearly this was the one thing she was eager to say to him. It was what she had been waiting to say.

Raskolnikov crossed to the table and sat down on the chair she had just risen from. She stood before him, two steps away, exactly as she had the day before.

"Well, Sonya?" he said, and suddenly felt that his voice was trembling. "The whole thing, you see, rested on 'social position and the habits that go along with it.' Did you take that in just now?"

Suffering showed in her face.

"Only don't talk to me the way you did yesterday!" she interrupted him. "Please, don't begin. There's misery enough as it is…"

She hurriedly smiled, afraid that perhaps he would not like the reproach.

"It was foolish of me to leave there. What's happening now? I meant to go back this minute, but I kept thinking that you… would come."

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was driving them out of the flat and that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere "in search of justice."

"Ah, my God!" cried Sonya, starting up. "Let us go quickly—"

And she snatched up her mantle.

"Always the same thing over and over!" Raskolnikov exclaimed irritably. "You've nothing in your head but them! Stay with me a while."

"But… Katerina Ivanovna?"

"Katerina Ivanovna won't overlook you, you may be sure; she'll come to you herself, since she's run out of the house," he added peevishly. "If she doesn't find you in, it's you who'll be to blame…"

In agonized indecision Sonya sat down on a chair. Raskolnikov was silent, gazing at the floor and pondering something.

"Suppose Luzhin didn't want to this time," he began, without looking at Sonya. "But if he had wanted to, or if it had suited his calculations somehow, he'd have shut you away in prison — if I and Lebezyatnikov hadn't happened to be there! Eh?"

"Yes," she said in a faint voice. "Yes!" she repeated, distracted and uneasy.

"And I really might not have been there! And as for Lebezyatnikov, he turned up quite by chance."

Sonya was silent.

"Well, and if it had been prison, what then? Do you remember what I said yesterday?"

Again she did not answer. He waited.

"I thought you'd cry out again, 'Oh, don't speak of it, stop!'" laughed Raskolnikov, but somehow with effort. "Well, silence again?" he asked after a minute. "We must talk about something, mustn't we? Now, what I'd really be curious to know is how you'd resolve one 'question,' as Lebezyatnikov calls them." (He seemed to be growing muddled.) "No, really, I'm in earnest. Imagine, Sonya, that you had known all Luzhin's intentions beforehand, known for certain that through them Katerina Ivanovna would be utterly ruined, and the children too; and you as well, thrown in for good measure — since you count yourself as nothing, let's say thrown in. Polechka too… for the same road awaits her. Well, then — here it is: if it were suddenly all left to your decision, which of them was to live, that is, whether Luzhin should live and go on committing his vile deeds, or Katerina Ivanovna should die — how would you decide it: which of them should die? I ask you."

Sonya looked at him uneasily: there was something peculiar she seemed to hear in this unsteady speech, approaching something from far off.

"I felt beforehand that you'd ask something of this kind," she said, looking searchingly at him.

"Very well, so be it; but how would you decide, all the same?"

"Why do you ask what cannot possibly be?" Sonya said with revulsion.

"Then it's better for Luzhin to live and commit his villainies! You didn't dare decide even that?"

"But I can't know the ways of Providence… And why do you ask what can't be asked? Why such idle questions? How could it ever happen that it should depend on my decision? And who set me up as a judge over who's to live and who's not to live?"

"Once you drag Providence into it, then of course there's nothing to be done," Raskolnikov muttered gloomily.

"You'd better say straight out what you want!" cried Sonya in anguish. "You're leading up to something again… Can it be you've only come to torment me!"

She could bear it no longer and suddenly burst into bitter weeping. He looked at her in dark misery. Some five minutes passed.

"And you're right, Sonya," he said softly at last. He had suddenly changed; his affected, insolent, feebly defiant tone was gone. Even his voice had grown weak all at once. "I told you myself yesterday that I wasn't coming to ask forgiveness, and yet I've begun almost by asking forgiveness… That was about Luzhin and Providence — I was speaking for myself… I was asking forgiveness, Sonya…"

He tried to smile, but something helpless and unfinished showed in his pale smile. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.

And suddenly a strange, unexpected sensation of a kind of caustic hatred for Sonya passed through his heart. As if surprised and frightened by the sensation himself, he suddenly raised his head and looked at her intently; but he met her anxious, achingly solicitous gaze fixed upon him; there was love in it; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It had not been that; he had mistaken one feeling for another. It only meant that the moment had come.

Again he covered his face with his hands and bowed his head. Suddenly he turned pale, rose from the chair, looked at Sonya, and, without uttering a word, moved mechanically to her bed and sat down on it.

This moment, in his sensation, was terribly like the one when he had stood behind the old woman, having already freed the axe from its loop, and had felt that "not another instant could be lost."

"What is the matter with you?" asked Sonya, dreadfully alarmed.

He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all how he had meant to tell her, and he himself did not understand what was now happening to him. She came softly to him, sat down on the bed beside him, and waited, never taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and stood still by turns. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face toward her; his lips twisted feebly, straining to say something. Terror passed through Sonya's heart.

"What is the matter with you?" she repeated, drawing back a little from him.

"Nothing, Sonya. Don't be frightened… Nonsense! Really, if you think about it — nonsense," he muttered with the air of a man beside himself, delirious. "Only why did I come to torment you, of all people?" he added suddenly, looking at her. "Really. Why? I keep asking myself that question, Sonya…"

He had perhaps asked himself that question a quarter of an hour before, but now he said it in utter helplessness, scarcely aware of himself and feeling an incessant trembling through his whole body.

"Oh, how you torment yourself!" she said with anguish, gazing at him.

"It's all nonsense!… Now then, Sonya" — he suddenly smiled, for some reason, palely and feebly, for a couple of seconds — "do you remember what I meant to tell you yesterday?"

Sonya waited uneasily.

"I said, as I was leaving, that perhaps I was saying goodbye to you forever, but that if I came today I'd tell you… who killed Lizaveta."

She suddenly began trembling all over.

"Well, so I've come to tell you."

"Then yesterday you really…" she whispered with difficulty. "But how do you know?" she asked quickly, as if suddenly coming to herself.

Sonya began to breathe with difficulty. Her face grew paler and paler.

"I know."

She was silent for a minute.

"Have they found him, then?" she asked timidly.

"No, they haven't found him."

"Then how do you know about it?" she asked again, barely audibly, and again after almost a minute's silence.

He turned to her and looked at her long, long, intently.

"Guess," he said, with the same twisted, feeble smile as before.

Something like convulsions ran through her whole body.

"But you… why do you… why do you frighten me so?" she said, smiling like a child.

"Then I must be a great friend of his… since I know," Raskolnikov went on, keeping his eyes relentlessly on her face, as though he no longer had the strength to look away. "This Lizaveta… he didn't mean to kill her… He killed her… by accident… He meant to kill the old woman… when she was alone… and he came… And then Lizaveta walked in… And he… killed her too."

Another dreadful minute passed. Both went on staring at each other.

"So you can't guess?" he asked suddenly, with the sensation of a man flinging himself from a bell tower.

"N-no," whispered Sonya, barely audibly.

"Take a good look."

And the moment he said it, again a familiar sensation of before turned his soul to ice: he looked at her and suddenly, in her face, seemed to see the face of Lizaveta. He vividly remembered the expression on Lizaveta's face when he had approached her with the axe and she had backed away from him toward the wall, thrusting out her hand, with a completely childish fright on her face, exactly like little children when they suddenly begin to be frightened of something, staring fixedly and uneasily at the object that frightens them, drawing back, and, stretching out their little hand, on the verge of tears. Almost the very same thing happened now with Sonya: just as helplessly, with the same fright, she looked at him for a while, then suddenly, thrusting out her left hand, she pressed her fingers lightly, ever so lightly, against his chest and slowly began to rise from the bed, drawing farther and farther away from him, while her gaze upon him grew more and more fixed. Her terror suddenly communicated itself to him too: the very same fright appeared in his face, and in just the same way he began to look at her, and almost even with the same childish smile.

"Have you guessed?" he whispered at last.

"Lord!" a terrible cry broke from her breast. Helplessly she fell back on the bed, her face in the pillows. But an instant later she raised herself swiftly, moved swiftly close to him, seized both his hands, and, gripping them tightly, as in a vise, with her thin fingers, again stared motionless into his face, as if glued to it. With this last, desperate look she wanted to search out and catch some last hope for herself. But there was no hope; not a doubt remained; it was all so! Even afterward, later, when she recalled that moment, it seemed strange and wonderful to her: why exactly had she seen so instantly that there could no longer be any doubt? Surely she could not have said, for instance, that she had had some presentiment of anything of the kind? And yet now, the moment he told her, it suddenly seemed to her that she had indeed had a presentiment of this very thing.

"Enough, Sonya, enough! Don't torment me!" he begged in anguish.

It was not at all, not at all how he had meant to reveal it to her, but so it had turned out.

As if beside herself, she leaped up and, wringing her hands, went to the middle of the room; but she quickly came back and sat down again beside him, almost touching him, shoulder to shoulder. Suddenly, as though pierced through, she shuddered, cried out, and, without knowing why herself, threw herself on her knees before him.

"What have you done, what have you done to yourself!" she said despairingly, and, springing up from her knees, flung herself on his neck, embraced him, and squeezed him tightly, tightly in her arms.

Raskolnikov recoiled and looked at her with a mournful smile.

"What a strange one you are, Sonya — you embrace and kiss me when I've just told you about that. You don't know what you're doing."

"No, there's no one, no one in the whole world more unhappy than you now!" she cried, as if in a frenzy, not hearing his remark, and suddenly she burst into sobs, as if in hysterics.

A feeling long unknown to him surged in a wave into his soul and softened it all at once. He did not 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 with hope.

"No, no; never and nowhere!" cried Sonya. "I'll follow you, I'll go everywhere! Oh, Lord!… Oh, how wretched I am!… And why, why did I not know you before! Why did you not come before? Oh, Lord!"

"Well, here I've come."

"Now! Oh, what's to be done now!… Together, together!" she repeated as if in a daze, and again embraced him. "I'll go to hard labor with you, together!" Something seemed suddenly to make him wince; the old, hateful, almost haughty smile forced itself onto his lips.

"Perhaps I don't want to go to hard labor yet, Sonya," he said.

Sonya looked at him quickly.

After the first passionate and agonized compassion for the unhappy man, the terrible idea of the murder struck her again. In the changed tone of his words she suddenly heard the murderer. She gazed at him in amazement. She still knew nothing — not why, nor how, nor for what this had been done. Now all these questions flared up at once in her consciousness. And again she could not believe it: "He, he a murderer! But is that possible?"

"What is this! Where am I standing!" she said in deep bewilderment, as if not yet come to herself. "How could you, you, such a man… bring yourself to it?… What is this!"

"Well, to rob her, of course. Stop it, Sonya!" he answered somehow wearily and even as if with vexation.

Sonya stood as if stunned, but suddenly cried out:

"You were hungry! You… to help your mother? Yes?"

"No, Sonya, no," he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. "I wasn't as hungry as all that… I did indeed want to help my mother, but… that's not quite it either… don't torment me, Sonya!"

Sonya threw up her hands.

"But can it be, can it really all be true! Lord, but what sort of truth is this! Who could ever believe it?… And how, how can you give away your last penny, and yet you killed to rob! Ah!…" she cried out suddenly, "that money you gave to Katerina Ivanovna… that money… Lord, can it be that money too…"

"No, Sonya," he broke in hurriedly, "that money was different, set your mind at rest! That money my mother sent me, through a merchant, and I received it while I was ill, the very day I gave it away… Razumikhin saw it… it was he who took delivery of it for me… that money was mine, my very own, truly mine."

Sonya listened to him in bewilderment, straining with all her might to make out something.

"And that money… though for that matter I don't even know whether there was any money there at all," he added quietly, as if in reflection. "I took a purse off her neck then, a chamois one… a full purse, a tight one it was… but I never looked inside; I hadn't time, most likely… Well, and the things, some cufflinks and little chains — all those things and the purse I hid under a stone in some strange courtyard, on V—— Prospect, the very next morning. They're all lying there still."

Sonya listened with all her might.

"Well, then why… how is it you said you did it to rob, if you took nothing yourself?" she asked quickly, clutching at a straw.

"I don't know… I haven't yet decided whether to take that money or not," he brought out, again as if reflecting, and suddenly, coming to himself, he laughed a short, quick laugh. "Ah, what a stupid thing I've just blurted out, eh?"

The thought flashed through Sonya's mind: "Is he mad?" But she abandoned it at once: no, it was something else. She understood nothing, nothing of it whatever!

"Do you know, Sonya," he said suddenly, with a kind of inspiration, "do you know what I'll tell you: if I had only murdered because I was hungry," he went on, pressing on every word and looking at her enigmatically but sincerely, "then now I should be… happy! Know that!"

"And what is it to you, what is it to you," he cried a moment later, almost in despair, "why, what is it to you if I did confess this instant that I'd done wrong? What do you want with this stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonya, is it for that I've come to you now!"

Sonya again wanted to say something, but held her peace.

"That's why I called you to come with me yesterday, because you're the only one I have left."

"Called me where?" Sonya asked timidly.

"Not to steal and not to murder, don't be alarmed, not for that," he smiled caustically, "we're different people… And do you know, Sonya, it's only now, only this very moment, that I've understood: where I was calling you yesterday? And yesterday, when I called you, I didn't understand myself where. I called you for one thing, I came for one thing: not to leave me. You won't leave me, Sonya?"

She pressed his hand.

"And why, why did I tell her, why did I reveal it to her!" he exclaimed in despair a minute later, looking at her with infinite anguish. "Here you sit waiting for explanations from me, Sonya, sitting and waiting, I can see it; and what am I to tell you? You'll understand nothing of it, you'll only wear yourself out with suffering… on my account! There, you're crying and embracing me again — well, what do you embrace me for? Because I couldn't bear it myself and have come to shift it onto another: 'suffer, you too, and it will be easier for me!' And can you love such a scoundrel?"

"But aren't you suffering too?" cried Sonya.

Again the same feeling surged in a wave over his soul, and again for an instant it softened it.

"Sonya, my heart is wicked, mark that: it explains a great deal. I came precisely because I am wicked. There are some who would not have come. But I am a coward and… a scoundrel! But… let it be! None of this is the point… I must speak now, and I don't know how to begin…"

He stopped and sank into thought.

"E-ech, we're different people!" he cried again. "No match. And why, why did I come! I'll never forgive myself for it!"

"No, no, it's a good thing you came!" Sonya exclaimed. "It's better that I should know! Far better!"

He looked at her with pain.

"Well, and after all!" he said, as if having thought it over, "for indeed that's just how it was! Here's the thing: I wanted to become a Napoleon — that's why I killed… Well, is it clear now?"

"N-no," Sonya whispered, naïve and timid, "only… speak, speak! I'll understand, I'll understand it all inwardly!" she implored him.

"You'll understand? Well, all right, let's see!"

He fell silent and pondered a long time.

"The point is this: I once put a certain question to myself — what if, for instance, Napoleon had chanced to be in my place, and had had, to launch his career, no Toulon, no Egypt, no crossing of Mont Blanc, but instead of all these fine and monumental things there had been simply some ridiculous old crone, a registrar's widow, whom he'd have to kill besides, to filch the money out of her trunk (for his career, you understand?) — well, would he have brought himself to it if there'd been no other way out? Wouldn't he have shrunk from it because it was altogether too unmonumental and… and sinful? Well, I tell you that over this 'question' I tormented myself horribly long, so that I felt horribly ashamed when at last I guessed (all at once, somehow) that not only would it not have made him shrink, but it would never even have entered his head that it wasn't monumental… and he wouldn't even have understood at all: what was there to shrink at? And if there'd truly been no other road for him, he'd have throttled her so that she couldn't have let out a squeak, without the slightest hesitation!… Well, and I… I stepped out of my hesitation… I throttled her… following the example of an authority… And that is exactly, precisely how it was! You find it funny? Yes, Sonya, the funniest thing here is that perhaps that's just how it was…"

Sonya did not find it in the least funny.

"You'd better tell me plainly… without examples," she begged, more timidly still and barely audibly.

He turned to her, looked at her sadly, and took her by the hands.

"You're right again, Sonya. All this is nonsense, almost mere chatter! You see: you know that my mother has next to nothing. My sister got an education, by chance, and is condemned to drudge as a governess. All their hopes rested on me alone. I was studying, but I couldn't keep myself at the university and had to leave it for a time. Even if things had dragged on so, then in ten years, in twelve (if circumstances turned out well) I might still have hoped to become some sort of teacher or clerk, with a salary of a thousand rubles…" (He spoke as if reciting a lesson learned by heart.) "And by that time my mother would have withered away with cares and grief, and I still wouldn't have managed to set her at ease, while my sister… well, with my sister things might have turned out even worse!… And what a joy it is to pass everything by all one's life and turn away from everything, to forget one's mother, and, for instance, to bear a sister's disgrace respectfully? What for? So that, having buried them, one may acquire new ones — a wife and children — and leave them too, in the end, without a farthing and without a crust? Well… well, so I resolved that, once I'd got hold of the old woman's money, I'd use it for my first years, without tormenting my mother, to keep myself at the university, for my first steps after the university — and to do all this on a broad, radical scale, so as to arrange a wholly new career and set myself on a new, independent road… Well… well, and that's all… Well, of course, that I killed the old woman — that I did wrong… well, and that's enough!"

In a kind of helplessness he dragged himself to the end of his story and let his head droop.

"Oh, that's not it, not it," Sonya exclaimed in anguish, "and can it be so… no, that's not it, not it!"

"You see for yourself that it's not!… And yet I've told it sincerely, the truth!"

"But what sort of truth is this! O Lord!"

"After all, I only killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, nasty, pernicious louse."

"That louse is a human being!"

"Why, I know myself it's not a louse," he answered, looking at her strangely. "But for that matter I'm lying, Sonya," he added, "I've been lying a long while… It's all not it; you speak truly. There are quite, quite, quite other reasons here!… I haven't talked to anyone for a long time, Sonya… My head aches badly now."

His eyes burned with a feverish fire. He was almost beginning to rave; a restless smile wandered on his lips. Through his excited state of mind a terrible helplessness was already showing itself. Sonya understood how he was suffering. Her head, too, was beginning to swim. And he spoke so strangely: as though something in it were even comprehensible, but… "but how! how! O Lord!" And she wrung her hands in despair.

"No, Sonya, that's not it!" he began again, suddenly raising his head, as though a sudden turn of thought had struck him and stirred him afresh. "That's not it! Better… suppose (yes! it's really better that way!), suppose that I'm vain, envious, wicked, base, vindictive, and… well, perhaps inclined to madness besides. (Let it all come at once! They spoke of madness before, I noticed!) I told you just now that I couldn't keep myself at the university. But do you know that perhaps I could have? My mother would have sent enough to cover the fees, and boots, clothes and bread I could have earned myself; surely! There were lessons to be had; they offered fifty kopecks. Razumikhin works, doesn't he! But I turned sullen and wouldn't. Sullen — that's just the word (a good word!). Then, like a spider, I hid myself away in my corner. You've been in my hole, you've seen it… And do you know, Sonya, that low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp the soul and the mind! Oh, how I hated that hole! And yet I wouldn't come out of it. On purpose I wouldn't! For days on end I wouldn't go out, and I wouldn't work, and I wouldn't even eat, I just lay there. If Nastasya brought me something, I ate it; if she didn't, the day went by so; out of spite I wouldn't ask, on purpose! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark, but I wouldn't earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I'd sold my books; and on my table, on my papers and notebooks, the dust lies a finger thick even now. I preferred to lie and think. And I kept thinking… And I kept having such dreams, strange dreams, all sorts, no matter what! But it was just then that it began to seem to me too that… No, that's not it! I'm telling it wrong again! You see, at that time I kept asking myself: why am I so stupid that, if others are stupid and I know for certain they are stupid, I refuse to be cleverer myself? Then I learned, Sonya, that if one waits for everyone to grow clever, it will take far too long… Then I learned besides that it would never come to pass, that people won't change, and no one can make them over, and it's not worth the trouble to try! Yes, that's so! That's their law… Their law, Sonya! It's so!… And I know now, Sonya, that whoever is firm and strong in mind and spirit is their master! Whoever dares much is right in their eyes. Whoever can spit on the most is their lawgiver, and whoever can dare the most of all is the most right of all! So it has been until now, and so it always will be! Only a blind man could fail to see it!"

Though Raskolnikov, as he said this, looked at Sonya, he no longer cared whether she understood or not. The fever had wholly gripped him. He was in a kind of gloomy ecstasy. (Truly, he had gone too long without speaking to anyone!) Sonya understood that this gloomy catechism had become his faith and his law.

"I guessed then, Sonya," he went on rapturously, "that power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it. Here there's only one thing, one: one need only dare! At that time an idea came to me that had never been conceived by anyone before me, in my whole life, for the first time! No one! It suddenly appeared to me, clear as the sun, that how is it that not a single man to this day has dared, and does not dare, passing by all this absurdity, simply to take the whole thing by the tail and shake it off to the devil! I… I wanted to dare, and I killed… I only wanted to dare, Sonya — that's the whole reason!"

"Oh, be silent, be silent!" cried Sonya, clasping her hands. "You've turned away from God, and God has smitten you, given you over to the devil!…"

"By the way, Sonya, when I lay there in the dark and it all kept rising before me, was that the devil tempting me? eh?"

"Be silent! Don't laugh, blasphemer, you understand nothing, nothing at all! O Lord! He'll understand nothing, nothing at all!"

"Be silent, Sonya, I'm not laughing at all, for I know myself that the devil dragged me. Be silent, Sonya, be silent!" he repeated grimly and insistently. "I know it all. I thought all this over and whispered it all to myself when I lay there in the dark… I argued it all out with myself, down to the last smallest point, and I know it all, all! And how sick I was, how sick I was then of all that chatter! I longed to forget it all and begin anew, Sonya, and to stop chattering! And do you suppose that I went into it like a fool, headlong? I went into it like a clever man, and that's just what ruined me! And do you suppose I didn't know, for instance, even this much — that if I'd once begun to ask and cross-question myself: have I the right to have power? — then it follows that I have not the right to have power. Or that if I put the question: is a man a louse? — then it follows that a man is not a louse for me, but is a louse for the one to whom it never even enters his head, who goes straight on without questions… If I tormented myself so many days over whether Napoleon would have gone into it or not — then I clearly felt already that I was no Napoleon… I bore the whole, the whole torment of all that chatter, Sonya, and I longed to shake it all off my shoulders: I wanted, Sonya, to kill without casuistry, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to myself! I didn't kill in order to help my mother — nonsense! I didn't kill in order that, having gained means and power, I might become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply killed; I killed for myself, for myself alone: and whether I would go on to become someone's benefactor, or spend my whole life like a spider catching everyone in my web and sucking the living juices out of them all, must, at that moment, have been all one to me!… And it wasn't money, above all, that I needed, Sonya, when I killed; it wasn't so much money I needed as something else… I know it all now… Understand me: perhaps, going by that same road, I would never have repeated the murder again. I needed to find out something else, something else was pushing me by the hand: I needed to find out then, and to find out quickly, whether I was a louse like everyone else, or a man? Whether I could step over or not! Whether I dared to stoop and take, or not! Am I a trembling creature, or have I the right…"

"To kill? To kill — have you the right?" Sonya threw up her hands.

"E-ech, Sonya!" he cried irritably, and was about to make her some retort, but fell contemptuously silent. "Don't interrupt me, Sonya! I only wanted to prove one thing to you: that the devil dragged me there then, and only afterward explained to me that I had no right to go there, because I'm exactly the same kind of louse as everyone else! He mocked me — and so here I am, come to you now! Receive your guest! If I weren't a louse, would I have come to you? Listen: when I went to the old woman that time, I only went to try… Know that much!"

"And you killed! You killed!"

"And how did I kill? Is that any way to kill? Is that how a man goes to kill, the way I went then? I'll tell you someday how I went… Was it the old woman I killed? I killed myself, not the old woman! There, in one stroke, I did away with myself, forever!.. And it was the devil who killed that old crone, not I… Enough, enough, Sonya, enough! Leave me be," he cried out suddenly in convulsive anguish, "leave me be!"

He leaned his elbows on his knees and gripped his head in his palms as though in a vise.

"What suffering!" a tormented cry burst from Sonya.

"Well, what am I to do now, tell me!" he asked, suddenly lifting his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.

"What to do!" she exclaimed, springing up all at once, and her eyes, till now brimming with tears, suddenly flashed. "Get up! (She seized him by the shoulder; he half rose, gazing at her almost in astonishment.) Go this very moment, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow down, first kiss the earth you have defiled, and then bow to the whole world, to all four quarters, and say to everyone, aloud: 'I have killed!' Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you go?" she asked him, trembling all over as if in a fit, clutching both his hands, gripping them tightly in her own, and looking at him with a fiery gaze.

He was astonished, even struck, by her sudden rapture.

"So you mean penal servitude, is that it, Sonya? I'm to give myself up, is that it?" he asked grimly.

"To take up suffering and redeem yourself by it, that is what you must do."

"No! I won't go to them, Sonya."

"But how will you live, how will you go on living? What will you live for?" cried Sonya. "How is it possible now? Why, how will you speak to your mother? (Oh, what will become of them, of them, now!) But what am I saying! You've already cast off your mother and sister. You've cast them off, cast them off already. O Lord!" she cried, "why, he knows all this himself already! How, how is a man to live with no other soul! What will become of you now!"

"Don't be a child, Sonya," he said quietly. "How am I guilty before them? Why should I go? What am I to say to them? All that is nothing but a phantom… They themselves destroy people by the million, and count it a virtue besides. They are rogues and scoundrels, Sonya!.. I won't go. And what would I say: that I killed but hadn't the courage to take the money, hid it under a stone?" he added with a caustic sneer. "Why, they'd only laugh at me themselves, they'd say: a fool, not to have taken it. A coward and a fool! They'd understand nothing, nothing, Sonya, and they aren't worthy to understand. Why should I go? I won't go. Don't be a child, Sonya…"

"You'll torment yourself to death, torment yourself to death," she repeated, stretching out her arms to him in desperate entreaty.

"Perhaps I've slandered myself even yet," he observed gloomily, as if musing, "perhaps I'm still a man and not a louse, and I was too hasty in condemning myself… I'll struggle yet."

An arrogant smile forced itself onto his lips.

"To bear such torment! And for a whole lifetime, a whole lifetime!.."

"I'll grow used to it…" he brought out, sullen and pensive. "Listen," he began after a minute, "enough of weeping, it's time to speak of business: I came to tell you that they're after me now, hunting me down…"

"Ah!" cried Sonya in fright.

"Well, why did you cry out! You wish yourself that I'd go to penal servitude, and now you take fright? Only here's the thing: I won't give myself up to them. I'll struggle with them yet, and they'll do nothing. They have no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and thought myself lost; today things have mended. All their evidence cuts both ways — that is, I can turn their very accusations to my own advantage, do you understand? and I will; because I've learned how now… But they'll put me in prison for certain. If not for one chance, they might even have jailed me today, and very likely they still may, even today… Only that's nothing, Sonya: I'll sit awhile, and then they'll let me out… because they haven't a single real proof, and won't have, I give you my word. And with what they have, a man can't be sent up. Well, enough… I only wanted you to know… With my sister and mother I'll try to arrange things somehow, so as to reassure them and not frighten them… My sister, though, seems to be provided for now… and so my mother too… Well, that's all. Be careful, though. Will you come to see me in prison when I'm shut up there?"

"Oh, I will! I will!"

They both sat side by side, mournful and crushed, as though cast up after a storm, alone on an empty shore. He looked at Sonya and felt how much of her love was upon him, and, strange to say, it suddenly weighed on him, grew painful, that he should be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and terrible sensation! Coming to Sonya, he had felt that in her lay all his hope and all his deliverance; he had thought to lay down at least part of his torment, and now, all at once, when her whole heart had turned toward him, he suddenly felt and knew that he had become incomparably more wretched than he had been before.

"Sonya," he said, "you'd best not come to me when I'm shut up in prison."

Sonya did not answer; she was weeping. Several minutes passed.

"Do you wear a cross?" she asked suddenly and unexpectedly, as though she had just remembered.

At first he did not understand the question.

"No, you don't, do you? Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have another left, a copper one, that was Lizaveta's. Lizaveta and I exchanged crosses; she gave me her cross and I gave her my little icon. Now I'll wear Lizaveta's, and this one is for you. Take it… it's mine! It's mine!" she pleaded. "We'll go to suffer together, and together we'll bear the cross!.."

"Give it here!" said Raskolnikov. He did not want to grieve her. But at once he drew back the hand he had stretched out for the cross.

"Not now, Sonya. Better later," he added, to soothe her.

"Yes, yes, better, better," she caught up eagerly, "when you go to your suffering, then you'll put it on. You'll come to me, I'll put it on you, we'll pray and then go."

At that moment someone knocked three times at the door.

"Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?" came a certain very familiar, polite voice.

Sonya rushed to the door in alarm. The flaxen-haired countenance of Mr. Lebezyatnikov peered into the room.