Crime and Punishment (59 page)

‘Oh, why did you tell him that? And in her presence, too!’ Sonya exclaimed in fear. ‘Sitting with me? An honour? But I mean… I don't have any honour… Oh, why did you say that?’

‘I said it about you not because of your sin or your dishonour, but because of your great suffering. And as for your being a great sinner, that's simply a fact,’ he added, almost beside himself, ‘and you're even more of a sinner because you've mortified and betrayed yourself
for nothing
. Isn't that monstrous? Isn't it monstrous that you're living in this filth which you hate and loathe, while all the time you know (you have only to open your eyes) that you're neither helping nor saving anyone by it? And, I mean, tell me,’ he said, in a near frenzy, ‘how such turpitude and vileness can exist in you alongside these other, opposing and holy emotions? I mean, it would be more just, a thousand times more just, and more reasonable to throw yourself head first in the water and have done with it!’

‘But what would become of them?’ Sonya asked faintly, giving him a look of suffering, but at the same time apparently not at all taken aback by what he had suggested. Raskolnikov looked at her strangely.

From her gaze alone he surmised everything. So it was true: she really had had that idea. It was quite possible that she had seriously many times considered the best way of having done with it, so seriously that now she was not really astonished at his suggestion. She had not even noticed how cruel were the things he had been saying to her (neither, of course, had she realized the true meaning of his reproaches and of the peculiar view he took of her turpitude, and this was plain to him). But he fully understood the degree of monstrous agony with which, for a long time now, the thought of her dishonoured and shameful position had tormented her. What was it, he wondered, what was it that had until now reined in her determination to have done with it? And only now did he fully comprehend what those poor little orphaned children meant to her, and that pitiful, half-insane Katerina Ivanovna, with her consumption and her beating of her head against the wall.

Even so, it was obvious to him that Sonya, possessing the character she did, and with the education which, in spite of everything, she had managed to obtain, could not possibly stay like this. Yet the question would not go away: how could she have stayed in this untenable position for so very long without going mad, since she was unable to throw herself in the water? Of course, he was aware that the social position Sonya found herself in was one that depended on factors of chance, although, unfortunately, it was far from being unique or exceptional. He felt, however, that it was this very element of chance, this, together with a certain degree of education and the kind of life she had led in the past, which one might have supposed would have crushed her at the very first step she had taken along this loathsome road. What had preserved her? Not lust, surely? It was quite evident that all this turpitude affected her only mechanically; not one drop of genuine lust had as yet penetrated her heart: he could see this; she stood before him exposed in her reality…

‘There are three ways open to her,’ he thought: ‘she can either jump in the Canal, end up in a madhouse or… or throw herself at last into a life of depravity, which will stultify her mind and turn her heart to stone.’ He found this last notion the most
repugnant of the three; but by now he was a sceptic, he was young, detached and, therefore, cruel, and so he could not avoid concluding that the last way out – depravity, in other words – was the most probable one.

‘But can it really be true?’ he exclaimed to himself. ‘Can it really be that this creature, who still retains her purity of spirit, will at last be consciously drawn into that loathsome, stinking pit? Can it be that the process of induction has already begun, and can it also be that the only reason she has been able to hold out so long is because vice no longer seems repugnant to her? No, no, that's not possible!’ he exclaimed, as Sonya had done just then. ‘No, what has held her back from the Canal so long is her consciousness of sin, and
them
,
the others
… If for so long she has prevented herself from going mad… But who can be sure that she hasn't gone mad? Is she really in her right mind? Do people in their right minds talk the way she does? Do people in their right minds produce the kind of arguments she does? Is it acceptable for her to sit on the brink of ruin the way she does, right on the edge of the stinking pit into which she is already being drawn, fending one off and shutting her ears when one warns her of the danger she's in? What is she up to? Is it a miracle she's waiting for? Yes, that's probably what it is. Are these not the signs of madness?’

He seized stubbornly on this thought. It was the explanation that appealed to him more than any other. He began to study her more fixedly.

‘So you say a lot of prayers to God, do you, Sonya?’ he asked her.

Sonya said nothing. He stood next to her, waiting for a reply.

‘What would I be without God?’ she whispered quickly, with energy, hurling the gaze of her suddenly flashing eyes at him, and she gripped his hand tightly in her own.

‘Yes, I was right!’ he thought.

‘And what does God do for you in return?’ he asked, probing further.

For a long time Sonya said nothing, as if she were unable to reply. Her feeble chest was heaving with excitement.

‘That's enough! Don't ask such questions! You don't deserve
an answer!’ she exclaimed suddenly, looking at him severely and angrily.

‘Yes, I was right, I was right,’ he said emphatically to himself.

‘He does everything!’ she whispered quickly, lowering her eyes again.

‘So that's the way out she's chosen. And there's the explanation for it, too!’ he decided to himself, examining her with avid curiosity.

It was with a new, strange, almost morbid sensation that he studied this pale, thin and irregularly angular little face, these meek blue eyes that were able to flash with such fire, such severe energy and emotion, this little body that was still shivering with indignation and anger, and it all began to seem stranger and stranger to him, almost impossible. ‘She's a holy fool! A holy fool!’ he kept saying to himself over and over again.

On the chest of drawers lay a book. Each time he had paced up and down the room it had caught his attention; now he picked it up and looked at it. It was a New Testament, in Russian translation. The book was an old one, secondhand, in a leather binding.

‘And where did that come from?’ he called to her across the room. She was still standing in the same spot, some three paces from the table.

‘It was brought to me,’ she replied with seeming reluctance, not looking at him.

‘By whom?’

‘Lizaveta; I asked her to.’

‘Lizaveta! That's peculiar!’ he thought. He was beginning to find everything about Sonya more peculiar and more wonderful with every minute that passed. He took the book over to the candle and began to leaf through its pages.

‘Where's the bit about Lazarus?’ he asked suddenly.

Sonya was looking stubbornly at the floor, and did not answer. She was standing a little to one side of the table.

‘Where's the bit about the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonya.’

She gave him a sideways look.

‘You're looking in the wrong place… It's in the fourth
Gospel…’ she whispered severely, making no move towards him.

‘Find it and read it to me,’ he said. Then he sat down at the table, leaned on it with one elbow, propped his head on his hand, and stared gloomily to one side, preparing to listen.

‘Come to the seventh verst
³
in three weeks’ time, you'll be most welcome! I think I'll be there myself, if I'm not in an even worse place,’ he muttered to himself.

Sonya stepped uncertainly over to the table, having listened with suspicion to Raskolnikov's strange request.

‘Haven't you ever read it?’ she asked, glancing at him across the table without much trust.

‘A long time ago… When I was at school. Go on, read it!’

‘Haven't you heard it in church?’

‘I… don't go. Do you?’

‘N-no,’ Sonya whispered.

Raskolnikov gave her an ironic smile.

‘I understand… I suppose that means you won't be at your father's funeral tomorrow?’

‘Oh, I will. I went to church last week, as well… for another funeral.’

‘Whose?’

‘Lizaveta's. Someone murdered her with an axe.’

His nerves were growing more and more on edge. His head began to go round.

‘You were friendly with Lizaveta?’

‘Yes… She was a righteous woman… she used to come… seldom… it was difficult for her. She and I used to read… and talk. She will see God.’

These bookish words sounded strange to his ears, and here was another piece of news: there had been some sort of mysterious get-togethers with Lizaveta – holy fools, the two of them.

‘I'll be turning into a holy fool myself soon, it's catching!’ he thought. ‘Go on, read it!’ he exclaimed suddenly in a pressing, irritated voice.

Sonya was still wavering. Her heart was beating violently. For some reason she did not dare to read to him. In a state approaching agony he looked at the ‘wretched madwoman’.

‘What do you want me to read it for? I mean, you don't believe in God, do you?…’ she whispered quietly, almost panting.

‘Read it! I really want you to!’ he insisted. ‘You read it for Lizaveta, after all!’

Sonya opened the book and found the passage. Her hands were shaking, her voice was not up to it. Twice she began, yet could not articulate the first syllable.

‘“Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany…”’ she got out, at last, with an effort, but suddenly, when she reached the fourth word, her voice twanged and then broke like a string that has been stretched too taut. Her breathing was cut off, and her chest was constricted.

Raskolnikov partly understood why Sonya could not prevail on herself to read to him, and the more he understood, the more bluntly and irritably he insisted that she do so. He could imagine only too well how hard it was now for her to give away and reveal everything that was
her
. He knew that these feelings really did constitute, as it were, her most genuine and possibly oldest
secret
, one that she might have nurtured from her girlhood, from the time when she had still been living with her family, in the presence of her luckless father and her grief-crazed stepmother, among the hungry children, the hideous shrieks and the reprimands. At the same time, however, he knew now, and knew for a fact, that even though she was miserably unhappy and horribly afraid of something as she now began to read, at the same time she had an agonizing desire to read to him, in spite of all her misery and fear, and that it was
him
she wanted to read to, to make sure that he heard it, and that she wanted it to be
now
– ‘however things may turn out later on!’ This he read in her eyes, deduced from her rapturous excitement… She mastered herself, suppressed the spasm in her throat which had cut off her voice at the beginning of the verse, and continued to read the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to St John until she reached verse nineteen:

‘“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.”’

At this point she stopped again, sensing with embarrassment that her voice was going to tremble and break off again…

‘“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, 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, taking a new breath, apparently in pain, Sonya read distinctly and forcefully, as though she herself were confessing her creed for all to hear): ‘“Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”’

She made as if to stop, quickly raised her eyes to
him
, but soon mastered herself again and began to read on. Raskolnikov sat listening motionlessly, without turning round, propping his elbow on the table and looking to one side. They reached verse thirty-two.

‘“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 round to face her and looked at her in excitement: yes, he had been right! She was shaking all over in a real, genuine fever. He had been expecting this. She was approaching the description of the great and unprecedented miracle, and a sense of immense triumph had taken hold of her. Her voice had become as resonant as metal; triumph and joy sounded in it, giving it strength. The lines swam before her, for her eyes were growing dim, but she knew by heart what she was reading. At the verse she had just read – ‘Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind…’ – lowering her voice, she ardently and passionately conveyed the doubt, reproaches and abuse of the unbelievers, the unseeing Jews, who presently, in a moment, would fall as though struck by a thunderbolt, sobbing, and attaining belief… ‘And
he
,
he
– also blinded and unbelieving – he, too, will hear it in a moment, he too will come to believe, yes, yes! Now, this very minute,’ she thought in her dream, and she shook with joyful expectation.