CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN 34 page

child.

"I must be a great friend of _his_... since I know," Raskolnikov went

on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyes

away. "He... did not mean to kill that Lizaveta... he... killed her

accidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone and

he went there... and then Lizaveta came in... he killed her too."

Another awful moment passed. Both still gazed at one another.

"You can't guess, then?" he asked suddenly, feeling as though he were

flinging himself down from a steeple.

"N-no..." whispered Sonia.

"Take a good look."

As soon as he had said this again, the same familiar sensation froze his

heart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her face the

face of Lizaveta. He remembered clearly the expression in Lizaveta's

face, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped back to the

wall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her face, looking

as little children do when they begin to be frightened of something,

looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them, shrinking back and

holding out their little hands on the point of crying. Almost the same

thing happened now to Sonia. With the same helplessness and the same

terror, she looked at him for a while and, suddenly putting out her left

hand, pressed her fingers faintly against his breast and slowly began to

get up from the bed, moving further from him and keeping her eyes fixed

even more immovably on him. Her terror infected him. The same fear

showed itself on his face. In the same way he stared at her and almost

with the same _childish_ smile.

"Have you guessed?" he whispered at last.

"Good God!" broke in an awful wail from her bosom.

She sank helplessly on the bed with her face in the pillows, but a

moment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his hands

and, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into his

face again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look she

tried to look into him and catch some last hope. But there was no hope;

there was no doubt remaining; it was all true! Later on, indeed, when

she recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why she

had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, for

instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort--and yet now, as

soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseen

this very thing.

"Stop, Sonia, enough! don't torture me," he begged her miserably.

It was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling her,

but this is how it happened.

She jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing her

hands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and sat

down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a sudden

she started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell on

her knees before him, she did not know why.

"What have you done--what have you done to yourself?" she said in

despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms

round him, and held him tightly.

Raskolnikov drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile.

"You are a strange girl, Sonia--you kiss me and hug me when I tell you

about that.... You don't think what you are doing."

"There is no one--no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!" she

cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into

violent hysterical weeping.

A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at

once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes

and hung on his eyelashes.

"Then you won't leave me, Sonia?" he said, looking at her almost with

hope.

"No, no, never, nowhere!" cried Sonia. "I will follow you, I will follow

you everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why didn't I

know you before! Why didn't you come before? Oh, dear!"

"Here I have come."

"Yes, now! What's to be done now?... Together, together!" she repeated

as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. "I'll follow you to

Siberia!"

He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came to

his lips.

"Perhaps I don't want to go to Siberia yet, Sonia," he said.

Sonia looked at him quickly.

Again after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy man

the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone she

seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She

knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all

these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not

believe it: "He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?"

"What's the meaning of it? Where am I?" she said in complete

bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. "How could you,

you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?... What does

it mean?"

"Oh, well--to plunder. Leave off, Sonia," he answered wearily, almost

with vexation.

Sonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:

"You were hungry! It was... to help your mother? Yes?"

"No, Sonia, no," he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. "I was

not so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother, but... that's

not the real thing either.... Don't torture me, Sonia."

Sonia clasped her hands.

"Could it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could

believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet

rob and murder! Ah," she cried suddenly, "that money you gave Katerina

Ivanovna... that money.... Can that money..."

"No, Sonia," he broke in hurriedly, "that money was not it. Don't worry

yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the

day I gave it to you.... Razumihin saw it... he received it for me....

That money was mine--my own."

Sonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend.

"And _that_ money.... I don't even know really whether there was any

money," he added softly, as though reflecting. "I took a purse off her

neck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of something...

but I didn't look in it; I suppose I hadn't time.... And the

things--chains and trinkets--I buried under a stone with the purse next

morning in a yard off the V---- Prospect. They are all there now...."

Sonia strained every nerve to listen.

"Then why... why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?" she

asked quickly, catching at a straw.

"I don't know.... I haven't yet decided whether to take that money or

not," he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he

gave a brief ironical smile. "Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?"

The thought flashed through Sonia's mind, wasn't he mad? But she

dismissed it at once. "No, it was something else." She could make

nothing of it, nothing.

"Do you know, Sonia," he said suddenly with conviction, "let me tell

you: if I'd simply killed because I was hungry," laying stress on

every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, "I should

be _happy_ now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you," he

cried a moment later with a sort of despair, "what would it matter to

you if I were to confess that I did wrong? What do you gain by such

a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonia, was it for that I've come to you

to-day?"

Again Sonia tried to say something, but did not speak.

"I asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left."

"Go where?" asked Sonia timidly.

"Not to steal and not to murder, don't be anxious," he smiled bitterly.

"We are so different.... And you know, Sonia, it's only now, only this

moment that I understand _where_ I asked you to go with me yesterday!

Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked you for one

thing, I came to you for one thing--not to leave me. You won't leave me,

Sonia?"

She squeezed his hand.

"And why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?" he cried a minute

later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. "Here you expect

an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I see

that. But what can I tell you? You won't understand and will only suffer

misery... on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again.

Why do you do it? Because I couldn't bear my burden and have come to

throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can

you love such a mean wretch?"

"But aren't you suffering, too?" cried Sonia.

Again a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an

instant softened it.

"Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a great

deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn't have

come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That's

not the point. I must speak now, but I don't know how to begin."

He paused and sank into thought.

"Ach, we are so different," he cried again, "we are not alike. And why,

why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that."

"No, no, it was a good thing you came," cried Sonia. "It's better I

should know, far better!"

He looked at her with anguish.

"What if it were really that?" he said, as though reaching a conclusion.

"Yes, that's what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I

killed her.... Do you understand now?"

"N-no," Sonia whispered naively and timidly. "Only speak, speak, I shall

understand, I shall understand _in myself_!" she kept begging him.

"You'll understand? Very well, we shall see!" He paused and was for some

time lost in meditation.

"It was like this: I asked myself one day this question--what if

Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had

not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his

career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things,

there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had

to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you

understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had

been no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang at its being so far

from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I

worried myself fearfully over that 'question' so that I was awfully

ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would

not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck

him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there

was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way,

he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it!

Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following

his example. And that's exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes,

Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that's just how it

was."

Sonia did not think it at all funny.

"You had better tell me straight out... without examples," she begged,

still more timidly and scarcely audibly.

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

"You are right again, Sonia. Of course that's all nonsense, it's almost

all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely

anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemned

to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a

student, but I couldn't keep myself at the university and was forced

for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten

or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or

clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles" (he repeated it as though it

were a lesson) "and by that time my mother would be worn out with grief

and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my

sister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it's a hard

thing to pass everything by all one's life, to turn one's back upon

everything, to forget one's mother and decorously accept the insults

inflicted on one's sister. Why should one? When one has buried them to

burden oneself with others--wife and children--and to leave them again

without a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman's

money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother,

to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving

it--and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up

a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence....

Well... that's all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did

wrong.... Well, that's enough."

He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head

sink.

"Oh, that's not it, that's not it," Sonia cried in distress. "How could

one... no, that's not right, not right."

"You see yourself that it's not right. But I've spoken truly, it's the

truth."

"As though that could be the truth! Good God!"

"I've only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful

creature."

"A human being--a louse!"

"I too know it wasn't a louse," he answered, looking strangely at

her. "But I am talking nonsense, Sonia," he added. "I've been talking

nonsense a long time.... That's not it, you are right there. There were

quite, quite other causes for it! I haven't talked to anyone for so

long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now."

His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an

uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen

through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too

was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow

comprehensible, but yet... "But how, how! Good God!" And she wrung her

hands in despair.

"No, Sonia, that's not it," he began again suddenly, raising his head,

as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were

roused him--"that's not it! Better... imagine--yes, it's certainly

better--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive

and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let's have it all out

at once! They've talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just

now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that

perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed

for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food,

no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I

turned sulky and wouldn't. (Yes, sulkiness, that's the right word for

it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You've been in my den, you've seen

it.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp

the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn't

go out of it! I wouldn't on purpose! I didn't go out for days together,

and I wouldn't work, I wouldn't even eat, I just lay there doing

nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn't, I

went all day without; I wouldn't ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At

night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn't earn money for

candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies

an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and

thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange

dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy

that... No, that's not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept

asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and I

know they are--yet I won't be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one

waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards I

understood that that would never come to pass, that men won't change and

that nobody can alter it and that it's not worth wasting effort over it.

Yes, that's so. That's the law of their nature, Sonia,... that's so!...

And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will

have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their

eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he

who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now

and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!"

Though Raskolnikov looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared

whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he

was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long without

talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his

faith and code.

"I divined then, Sonia," he went on eagerly, "that power is only

vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only

one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first

time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever

thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is

that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to

go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted

_to have the daring_... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the

daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!"

"Oh hush, hush," cried Sonia, clasping her hands. "You turned away from

God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!"

"Then Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this became

clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?"

"Hush, don't laugh, blasphemer! You don't understand, you don't

understand! Oh God! He won't understand!"

"Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil

leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!" he repeated with gloomy insistence. "I

know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all

over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I've argued it all over with

myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how

sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it

and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don't

suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a

wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn't suppose that

I didn't know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether

I had the right to gain power--I certainly hadn't the right--or that if

I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn't

so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his

goal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days,

wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly

of course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that

battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder

without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn't

want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn't to help my mother I did

the murder--that's nonsense--I didn't do the murder to gain wealth and

power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it;

I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a

benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in

my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn't have cared at that

moment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It

was not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all

now.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder

again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led

me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse

like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or

not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling

creature or whether I have the _right_..."

"To kill? Have the right to kill?" Sonia clasped her hands.

"Ach, Sonia!" he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort,

but was contemptuously silent. "Don't interrupt me, Sonia. I want to

prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me

since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such

a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I've come to you

now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to

you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman's I only went to

_try_.... You may be sure of that!"

"And you murdered her!"

"But how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to

commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went!

Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself

once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that old

woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!" he cried in a

sudden spasm of agony, "let me be!"

He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands as

in a vise.

"What suffering!" A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.

"Well, what am I to do now?" he asked, suddenly raising his head and

looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.

"What are you to do?" she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been

full of tears suddenly began to shine. "Stand up!" (She seized him by

the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) "Go at once,

this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the

earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say

to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!' Then God will send you life again.

Will you go, will you go?" she asked him, trembling all over, snatching

his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes

full of fire.

He was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.

"You mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?" he asked gloomily.

"Suffer and expiate your sin by it, that's what you must do."

"No! I am not going to them, Sonia!"

"But how will you go on living? What will you live for?" cried Sonia,

"how is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what

will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your

mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh,

God!" she cried, "why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by

himself! What will become of you now?"

"Don't be a child, Sonia," he said softly. "What wrong have I done

them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That's only a

phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a

virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them.

And what should I say to them--that I murdered her, but did not dare to

take the money and hid it under a stone?" he added with a bitter smile.

"Why, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting

it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn't understand and they don't deserve

to understand. Why should I go to them? I won't. Don't be a child,

Sonia...."

"It will be too much for you to bear, too much!" she repeated, holding

out her hands in despairing supplication.

"Perhaps I've been unfair to myself," he observed gloomily, pondering,

"perhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I've been in too great

a hurry to condemn myself. I'll make another fight for it."

A haughty smile appeared on his lips.

"What a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!"

"I shall get used to it," he said grimly and thoughtfully. "Listen," he

began a minute later, "stop crying, it's time to talk of the facts: I've

come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track...."

"Ach!" Sonia cried in terror.

"Well, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Siberia and now you are

frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shall

make a struggle for it and they won't do anything to me. They've no real

evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but

to-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explained

two ways, that's to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do

you understand? And I shall, for I've learnt my lesson. But they will

certainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened,

they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will

arrest me to-day.... But that's no matter, Sonia; they'll let me out

again... for there isn't any real proof against me, and there won't be,

I give you my word for it. And they can't convict a man on what they

have against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I will

try to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that they

won't be frightened.... My sister's future is secure, however, now, I

believe... and my mother's must be too.... Well, that's all. Be careful,

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 700