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: 632
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