CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN 27 page

"What should I be without God?" she whispered rapidly, forcibly,

glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.

"Ah, so that is it!" he thought.

"And what does God do for you?" he asked, probing her further.

Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak

chest kept heaving with emotion.

"Be silent! Don't ask! You don't deserve!" she cried suddenly, looking

sternly and wrathfully at him.

"That's it, that's it," he repeated to himself.

"He does everything," she whispered quickly, looking down again.

"That's the way out! That's the explanation," he decided, scrutinising

her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost morbid feeling.

He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft

blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that

little body still shaking with indignation and anger--and it all seemed

to him more and more strange, almost impossible. "She is a religious

maniac!" he repeated to himself.

There was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it every

time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked at it.

It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was bound in

leather, old and worn.

"Where did you get that?" he called to her across the room.

She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.

"It was brought me," she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking

at him.

"Who brought it?"

"Lizaveta, I asked her for it."

"Lizaveta! strange!" he thought.

Everything about Sonia seemed to him stranger and more wonderful every

moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over the

pages.

"Where is the story of Lazarus?" he asked suddenly.

Sonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was

standing sideways to the table.

"Where is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia."

She stole a glance at him.

"You are not looking in the right place.... It's in the fourth gospel,"

she whispered sternly, without looking at him.

"Find it and read it to me," he said. He sat down with his elbow on the

table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly, prepared to

listen.

"In three weeks' time they'll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be

there if I am not in a worse place," he muttered to himself.

Sonia heard Raskolnikov's request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly

to the table. She took the book however.

"Haven't you read it?" she asked, looking up at him across the table.

Her voice became sterner and sterner.

"Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!"

"And haven't you heard it in church?"

"I... haven't been. Do you often go?"

"N-no," whispered Sonia.

Raskolnikov smiled.

"I understand.... And you won't go to your father's funeral to-morrow?"

"Yes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem

service."

"For whom?"

"For Lizaveta. She was killed with an axe."

His nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round.

"Were you friends with Lizaveta?"

"Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she

couldn't.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see God."

The last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new

again: the mysterious meetings with Lizaveta and both of them--religious

maniacs.

"I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It's infectious!"

"Read!" he cried irritably and insistently.

Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read

to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the "unhappy lunatic."

"What for? You don't believe?..." she whispered softly and as it were

breathlessly.

"Read! I want you to," he persisted. "You used to read to Lizaveta."

Sonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her

voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the

first syllable.

"Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany..." she forced

herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an

overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.

Raskolnikov saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him

and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on

her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her

to betray and unveil all that was her _own_. He understood that these

feelings really were her _secret treasure_, which she had kept perhaps

for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy

father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of

starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same

time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with

dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read

to _him_ that he might hear it, and to read _now_ whatever might come of

it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion.

She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on

reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went 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...."

Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would

quiver and break again.

"Jesus said 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 drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as

though she were making a public confession of faith.)

"Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which

should come into the world."

She stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself went

on reading. Raskolnikov sat without moving, his elbows on the table and

his eyes turned away. She 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 with emotion. Yes, he had known it!

She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it. She was

getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense

triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy

gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she

was reading by heart. At the last verse "Could not this Man which opened

the eyes of the blind..." dropping her voice she passionately reproduced

the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving Jews, who

in another moment would fall at His feet as though struck by

thunder, sobbing and believing.... "And _he, he_--too, is blinded and

unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At

once, now," was what she was dreaming, and she was quivering with happy

anticipation.

"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 laid emphasis on 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, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were

seeing it before her 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."

She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair

quickly.

"That is all about the raising of Lazarus," she whispered severely and

abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise

her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was

flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the

poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely

been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.

"I came to speak of something," Raskolnikov said aloud, frowning. He got

up and went to Sonia. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His face

was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage determination in

it.

"I have abandoned my family to-day," he said, "my mother and sister. I

am not going to see them. I've broken with them completely."

"What for?" asked Sonia amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother and

sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse. She

heard his news almost with horror.

"I have only you now," he added. "Let us go together.... I've come to

you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!"

His eyes glittered "as though he were mad," Sonia thought, in her turn.

"Go where?" she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.

"How do I know? I only know it's the same road, I know that and nothing

more. It's the same goal!"

She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was

terribly, infinitely unhappy.

"No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have

understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you."

"I don't understand," whispered Sonia.

"You'll understand later. Haven't you done the same? You, too, have

transgressed... have had the strength to transgress. You have laid

hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life... _your own_ (it's all the

same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding, but you'll

end in the Hay Market.... But you won't be able to stand it, and if

you remain alone you'll go out of your mind like me. You are like a mad

creature already. So we must go together on the same road! Let us go!"

"What for? What's all this for?" said Sonia, strangely and violently

agitated by his words.

"What for? Because you can't remain like this, that's why! You must look

things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a child and cry

that God won't allow it. What will happen, if you should really be taken

to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in consumption, she'll soon

die and the children? Do you mean to tell me Polenka won't come to

grief? Haven't you seen children here at the street corners sent out

by their mothers to beg? I've found out where those mothers live and in

what surroundings. Children can't remain children there! At seven the

child is vicious and a thief. Yet children, you know, are the image of

Christ: 'theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.' He bade us honour and love

them, they are the humanity of the future...."

"What's to be done, what's to be done?" repeated Sonia, weeping

hysterically and wringing her hands.

"What's to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all,

and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don't understand? You'll

understand later.... Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all

trembling creation and all the ant-heap!... That's the goal, remember

that! That's my farewell message. Perhaps it's the last time I shall

speak to you. If I don't come to-morrow, you'll hear of it all, and then

remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you'll

understand perhaps what they meant. If I come to-morrow, I'll tell you

who killed Lizaveta.... Good-bye."

Sonia started with terror.

"Why, do you know who killed her?" she asked, chilled with horror,

looking wildly at him.

"I know and will tell... you, only you. I have chosen you out. I'm not

coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I chose you

out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when

Lizaveta was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don't shake hands.

To-morrow!"

He went out. Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like

one insane and felt it. Her head was going round.

"Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those

words mean? It's awful!" But at the same time _the idea_ did not enter

her head, not for a moment! "Oh, he must be terribly unhappy!... He has

abandoned his mother and sister.... What for? What has happened? And

what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He had kissed her foot

and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live

without her.... Oh, merciful heavens!"

Sonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up from

time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish

sleep and dreamt of Polenka, Katerina Ivanovna and Lizaveta, of reading

the gospel and him... him with pale face, with burning eyes... kissing

her feet, weeping.

On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia's room

from Madame Resslich's flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A

card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the

canal advertising it to let. Sonia had long been accustomed to the

room's being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidrigailov had been

standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When Raskolnikov went

out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room

which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it

to the door that led to Sonia's room. The conversation had struck him

as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it--so much so

that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for

instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but

might listen in comfort.

CHAPTER V

When next morning at eleven o'clock punctually Raskolnikov went into the

department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in

to Porfiry Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long:

it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned. He had expected

that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the waiting-room, and

people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually

passing to and fro before him. In the next room which looked like an

office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had

no notion who or what Raskolnikov might be. He looked uneasily and

suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some

mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape. But there was

nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty

details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him.

He might go where he liked for them. The conviction grew stronger in him

that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the

earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait

like that. And would they have waited till he elected to appear at

eleven? Either the man had not yet given information, or... or simply

he knew nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?)

and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom

exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This conjecture

had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of all his

alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a fresh

conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling--and he felt a

rush of indignation at the thought that he was trembling with fear at

facing that hateful Porfiry Petrovitch. What he dreaded above all was

meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense, unmitigated hatred

and was afraid his hatred might betray him. His indignation was such

that he ceased trembling at once; he made ready to go in with a cold and

arrogant bearing and vowed to himself to keep as silent as possible,

to watch and listen and for once at least to control his overstrained

nerves. At that moment he was summoned to Porfiry Petrovitch.

He found Porfiry Petrovitch alone in his study. His study was a room

neither large nor small, furnished with a large writing-table, that

stood before a sofa, upholstered in checked material, a bureau, a

bookcase in the corner and several chairs--all government furniture,

of polished yellow wood. In the further wall there was a closed door,

beyond it there were no doubt other rooms. On Raskolnikov's entrance

Porfiry Petrovitch had at once closed the door by which he had come in

and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently genial

and good-tempered air, and it was only after a few minutes that

Raskolnikov saw signs of a certain awkwardness in him, as though he had

been thrown out of his reckoning or caught in something very secret.

"Ah, my dear fellow! Here you are... in our domain"... began Porfiry,

holding out both hands to him. "Come, sit down, old man... or perhaps

you don't like to be called 'my dear fellow' and 'old man!'--_tout

court_? Please don't think it too familiar.... Here, on the sofa."

Raskolnikov sat down, keeping his eyes fixed on him. "In our domain,"

the apologies for familiarity, the French phrase _tout court_, were all

characteristic signs.

"He held out both hands to me, but he did not give me one--he drew it

back in time," struck him suspiciously. Both were watching each other,

but when their eyes met, quick as lightning they looked away.

"I brought you this paper... about the watch. Here it is. Is it all

right or shall I copy it again?"

"What? A paper? Yes, yes, don't be uneasy, it's all right," Porfiry

Petrovitch said as though in haste, and after he had said it he took the

paper and looked at it. "Yes, it's all right. Nothing more is needed,"

he declared with the same rapidity and he laid the paper on the table.

A minute later when he was talking of something else he took it from the

table and put it on his bureau.

"I believe you said yesterday you would like to question me...

formally... about my acquaintance with the murdered woman?" Raskolnikov

was beginning again. "Why did I put in 'I believe'" passed through

his mind in a flash. "Why am I so uneasy at having put in that '_I

believe_'?" came in a second flash. And he suddenly felt that his

uneasiness at the mere contact with Porfiry, at the first words, at the

first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions, and that

this was fearfully dangerous. His nerves were quivering, his emotion was

increasing. "It's bad, it's bad! I shall say too much again."

"Yes, yes, yes! There's no hurry, there's no hurry," muttered Porfiry

Petrovitch, moving to and fro about the table without any apparent aim,

as it were making dashes towards the window, the bureau and the table,

at one moment avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious glance, then again

standing still and looking him straight in the face.

His fat round little figure looked very strange, like a ball rolling

from one side to the other and rebounding back.

"We've plenty of time. Do you smoke? have you your own? Here, a

cigarette!" he went on, offering his visitor a cigarette. "You know I am

receiving you here, but my own quarters are through there, you know, my

government quarters. But I am living outside for the time, I had to

have some repairs done here. It's almost finished now.... Government

quarters, you know, are a capital thing. Eh, what do you think?"

"Yes, a capital thing," answered Raskolnikov, looking at him almost

ironically.

"A capital thing, a capital thing," repeated Porfiry Petrovitch, as

though he had just thought of something quite different. "Yes, a capital

thing," he almost shouted at last, suddenly staring at Raskolnikov and

stopping short two steps from him.

This stupid repetition was too incongruous in its ineptitude with the

serious, brooding and enigmatic glance he turned upon his visitor.

But this stirred Raskolnikov's spleen more than ever and he could not

resist an ironical and rather incautious challenge.

"Tell me, please," he asked suddenly, looking almost insolently at him

and taking a kind of pleasure in his own insolence. "I believe it's a

sort of legal rule, a sort of legal tradition--for all investigating

lawyers--to begin their attack from afar, with a trivial, or at least

an irrelevant subject, so as to encourage, or rather, to divert the man

they are cross-examining, to disarm his caution and then all at once to

give him an unexpected knock-down blow with some fatal question. Isn't

that so? It's a sacred tradition, mentioned, I fancy, in all the manuals

of the art?"

"Yes, yes.... Why, do you imagine that was why I spoke about government

quarters... eh?"

And as he said this Porfiry Petrovitch screwed up his eyes and winked;

a good-humoured, crafty look passed over his face. The wrinkles on his

forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his features broadened

and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged laugh, shaking all

over and looking Raskolnikov straight in the face. The latter forced

himself to laugh, too, but when Porfiry, seeing that he was laughing,

broke into such a guffaw that he turned almost crimson, Raskolnikov's

repulsion overcame all precaution; he left off laughing, scowled and

stared with hatred at Porfiry, keeping his eyes fixed on him while his

intentionally prolonged laughter lasted. There was lack of precaution on

both sides, however, for Porfiry Petrovitch seemed to be laughing in

his visitor's face and to be very little disturbed at the annoyance with

which the visitor received it. The latter fact was very significant

in Raskolnikov's eyes: he saw that Porfiry Petrovitch had not been

embarrassed just before either, but that he, Raskolnikov, had perhaps

fallen into a trap; that there must be something, some motive here

unknown to him; that, perhaps, everything was in readiness and in

another moment would break upon him...

He went straight to the point at once, rose from his seat and took his

cap.

"Porfiry Petrovitch," he began resolutely, though with considerable

irritation, "yesterday you expressed a desire that I should come to you

for some inquiries" (he laid special stress on the word "inquiries"). "I

have come and if you have anything to ask me, ask it, and if not, allow

me to withdraw. I have no time to spare.... I have to be at the funeral

of that man who was run over, of whom you... know also," he added,

feeling angry at once at having made this addition and more irritated at

his anger. "I am sick of it all, do you hear? and have long been. It's

partly what made me ill. In short," he shouted, feeling that the phrase

about his illness was still more out of place, "in short, kindly examine

me or let me go, at once. And if you must examine me, do so in the

proper form! I will not allow you to do so otherwise, and so meanwhile,

good-bye, as we have evidently nothing to keep us now."

"Good heavens! What do you mean? What shall I question you about?"

cackled Porfiry Petrovitch with a change of tone, instantly leaving off

laughing. "Please don't disturb yourself," he began fidgeting from place

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 593