CHAPTER IV
Raskolnikov had been a vigorous and active champion of Sonia againstLuzhin, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his ownheart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sortof relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personalfeeling which impelled him to defend Sonia. He was agitated too,especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching interviewwith Sonia: he _had_ to tell her who had killed Lizaveta. He knew theterrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were, brushed away thethought of it. So when he cried as he left Katerina Ivanovna's, "Well,Sofya Semyonovna, we shall see what you'll say now!" he was stillsuperficially excited, still vigorous and defiant from his triumph overLuzhin. But, strange to say, by the time he reached Sonia's lodging, hefelt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood still in hesitation at thedoor, asking himself the strange question: "Must he tell her who killedLizaveta?" It was a strange question because he felt at the very timenot only that he could not help telling her, but also that he couldnot put off the telling. He did not yet know why it must be so, heonly _felt_ it, and the agonising sense of his impotence beforethe inevitable almost crushed him. To cut short his hesitation andsuffering, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonia from thedoorway. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face inher hands, but seeing Raskolnikov she got up at once and came to meethim as though she were expecting him.
"What would have become of me but for you?" she said quickly, meetinghim in the middle of the room.
Evidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had beenwaiting for.
Raskolnikov went to the table and sat down on the chair from which shehad only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as shehad done the day before.
"Well, Sonia?" he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, "it wasall due to 'your social position and the habits associated with it.' Didyou understand that just now?"
Her face showed her distress.
"Only don't talk to me as you did yesterday," she interrupted him."Please don't begin it. There is misery enough without that."
She made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach.
"I was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? Iwanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would come."
He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was turning them out of their lodgingand that Katerina Ivanovna had run off somewhere "to seek justice."
"My God!" cried Sonia, "let's go at once...."
And she snatched up her cape.
"It's everlastingly the same thing!" said Raskolnikov, irritably."You've no thought except for them! Stay a little with me."
"But... Katerina Ivanovna?"
"You won't lose Katerina Ivanovna, you may be sure, she'll come to youherself since she has run out," he added peevishly. "If she doesn't findyou here, you'll be blamed for it...."
Sonia sat down in painful suspense. Raskolnikov was silent, gazing atthe floor and deliberating.
"This time Luzhin did not want to prosecute you," he began, not lookingat Sonia, "but if he had wanted to, if it had suited his plans, he wouldhave sent you to prison if it had not been for Lebeziatnikov and me.Ah?"
"Yes," she assented in a faint voice. "Yes," she repeated, preoccupiedand distressed.
"But I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an accidentLebeziatnikov's turning up."
Sonia was silent.
"And if you'd gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I saidyesterday?"
Again she did not answer. He waited.
"I thought you would cry out again 'don't speak of it, leave off.'"Raskolnikov gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. "What, silenceagain?" he asked a minute later. "We must talk about something, youknow. It would be interesting for me to know how you would decide acertain 'problem' as Lebeziatnikov would say." (He was beginning to losethe thread.) "No, really, I am serious. Imagine, Sonia, that you hadknown all Luzhin's intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact,that they would be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna and the children andyourself thrown in--since you don't count yourself for anything--Polenkatoo... for she'll go the same way. Well, if suddenly it all depended onyour decision whether he or they should go on living, that is whetherLuzhin should go on living and doing wicked things, or Katerina Ivanovnashould die? How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?"
Sonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in thishesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a roundaboutway.
"I felt that you were going to ask some question like that," she said,looking inquisitively at him.
"I dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?"
"Why do you ask about what could not happen?" said Sonia reluctantly.
"Then it would be better for Luzhin to go on living and doing wickedthings? You haven't dared to decide even that!"
"But I can't know the Divine Providence.... And why do you ask whatcan't be answered? What's the use of such foolish questions? How couldit happen that it should depend on my decision--who has made me a judgeto decide who is to live and who is not to live?"
"Oh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no doinganything," Raskolnikov grumbled morosely.
"You'd better say straight out what you want!" Sonia cried in distress."You are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply totorture me?"
She could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked ather in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.
"Of course you're right, Sonia," he said softly at last. He was suddenlychanged. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone.Even his voice was suddenly weak. "I told you yesterday that I was notcoming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I've said is to askforgiveness.... I said that about Luzhin and Providence for my own sake.I was asking forgiveness, Sonia...."
He tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete inhis pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.
And suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatredfor Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightenedof this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but hemet her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there waslove in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the realfeeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that_that_ minute had come.
He hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly heturned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and withoututtering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.
His sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he hadstood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that "he mustnot lose another minute."
"What's the matter?" asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.
He could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way hehad intended to "tell" and he did not understand what was happening tohim now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him andwaited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. Itwas unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked,helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror passedthrough Sonia's heart.
"What's the matter?" she repeated, drawing a little away from him.
"Nothing, Sonia, don't be frightened.... It's nonsense. It really isnonsense, if you think of it," he muttered, like a man in delirium. "Whyhave I come to torture you?" he added suddenly, looking at her. "Why,really? I keep asking myself that question, Sonia...."
He had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an hourbefore, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he said andfeeling a continual tremor all over.
"Oh, how you are suffering!" she muttered in distress, looking intentlyat him.
"It's all nonsense.... Listen, Sonia." He suddenly smiled, a palehelpless smile for two seconds. "You remember wh
at I meant to tell youyesterday?"
Sonia waited uneasily.
"I said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for ever, butthat if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed Lizaveta."
She began trembling all over.
"Well, here I've come to tell you."
"Then you really meant it yesterday?" she whispered with difficulty."How do you know?" she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining herreason.
Sonia's face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully.
"I know."
She paused a minute.
"Have they found him?" she asked timidly.
"No."
"Then how do you know about _it_?" she asked again, hardly audibly andagain after a minute's pause.
He turned to her and looked very intently at her.
"Guess," he said, with the same distorted helpless smile.
A shudder passed over her.
"But you... why do you frighten me like this?" she said, smiling like achild.
"I must be a great friend of _his_... since I know," Raskolnikov wenton, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyesaway. "He... did not mean to kill that Lizaveta... he... killed heraccidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone andhe 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 wereflinging 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 hisheart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her face theface of Lizaveta. He remembered clearly the expression in Lizaveta'sface, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped back to thewall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her face, lookingas little children do when they begin to be frightened of something,looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them, shrinking back andholding out their little hands on the point of crying. Almost the samething happened now to Sonia. With the same helplessness and the sameterror, she looked at him for a while and, suddenly putting out her lefthand, pressed her fingers faintly against his breast and slowly began toget up from the bed, moving further from him and keeping her eyes fixedeven more immovably on him. Her terror infected him. The same fearshowed itself on his face. In the same way he stared at her and almostwith 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 amoment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his handsand, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into hisface again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look shetried 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, whenshe recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why shehad seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, forinstance, that she had foreseen something of the sort--and yet now, assoon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseenthis 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 herhands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and satdown again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a suddenshe started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell onher knees before him, she did not know why.
"What have you done--what have you done to yourself?" she said indespair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her armsround 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 youabout that.... You don't think what you are doing."
"There is no one--no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!" shecried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke intoviolent hysterical weeping.
A feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it atonce. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyesand hung on his eyelashes.
"Then you won't leave me, Sonia?" he said, looking at her almost withhope.
"No, no, never, nowhere!" cried Sonia. "I will follow you, I will followyou everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why didn't Iknow 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 repeatedas it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. "I'll follow you toSiberia!"
He recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came tohis 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 manthe terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone sheseemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. Sheknew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now allthese questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could notbelieve it: "He, he is a murderer! Could it be true?"
"What's the meaning of it? Where am I?" she said in completebewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. "How could you,you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?... What doesit mean?"
"Oh, well--to plunder. Leave off, Sonia," he answered wearily, almostwith 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 wasnot so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother, but... that'snot 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 couldbelieve it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yetrob and murder! Ah," she cried suddenly, "that money you gave KaterinaIvanovna... that money.... Can that money..."
"No, Sonia," he broke in hurriedly, "that money was not it. Don't worryyourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, theday 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 anymoney," he added softly, as though reflecting. "I took a purse off herneck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of something...but I didn't look in it; I suppose I hadn't time.... And thethings--chains and trinkets--I buried under a stone with the purse nextmorning 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?" sheasked quickly, catching at a straw.
"I don't know.... I haven't yet decided whether to take that money ornot," he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, hegave a brief ironical smile. "Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?"
The thought flashed through Sonia's mind, wasn't he mad? But shedismissed it at once. "No, it was something else." She could makenothing of it, nothing.
"Do you know, Sonia," he said suddenly with conviction, "let me tellyou: if I'd simply killed because I was hungry," laying stress onevery word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, "I shouldbe _happy_ now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you," hecried a moment later with a sort of despair, "what would it matter toyou 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 youto-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 thismoment 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 onething, 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 minutelater in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. "Here you expectan explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I seethat. But what can I tell you? You won't understand and will only suffermisery... 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 tothrow it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And canyou 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 aninstant softened it.
"Sonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a greatdeal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn't havecome. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That'snot 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 Ishould 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 Ikilled her.... Do you understand now?"
"N-no," Sonia whispered naively and timidly. "Only speak, speak, I shallunderstand, I shall understand _in myself_!" she kept begging him.
"You'll understand? Very well, we shall see!" He paused and was for sometime lost in meditation.
"It was like this: I asked myself one day this question--what ifNapoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he hadnot had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin hiscareer with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things,there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who hadto be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, youunderstand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there hadbeen no other means? Wouldn't he have felt a pang at its being so farfrom monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that Iworried myself fearfully over that 'question' so that I was awfullyashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it wouldnot have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struckhim that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that therewas 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, followinghis 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 itwas."
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 almostall talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcelyanything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemnedto drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was astudent, but I couldn't keep myself at the university and was forcedfor a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in tenor twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher orclerk with a salary of a thousand roubles" (he repeated it as though itwere a lesson) "and by that time my mother would be worn out with griefand anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while mysister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it's a hardthing to pass everything by all one's life, to turn one's back uponeverything, to forget one's mother and decorously accept the insultsinflicted on one's sister. Why should one? When one has buried them toburden oneself with others--wife and children--and to leave them againwithout a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman'smoney and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother,to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leavingit--and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build upa completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence....Well... that's all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I didwrong.... Well, that's enough."
He struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his headsink.
"Oh, that's not it, that's not it," Sonia cried in distress. "How couldone... no, that's not right, not right."
"You see yourself that it's not right. But I've spoken truly, it's thetruth."
"As though that could be the truth! Good God!"
"I've only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmfulcreature."
"A human being--a louse!"
"I too know it wasn't a louse," he answered, looking strangely ather. "But I am talking nonsense, Sonia," he added. "I've been talkingnonsense a long time.... That's not it, you are right there. There werequite, quite other causes for it! I haven't talked to anyone for solong, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now."
His eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; anuneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seenthrough his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She toowas growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehowcomprehensible, but yet... "But how, how! Good God!" And she wrung herhands 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 wereroused him--"that's not it! Better... imagine--yes, it's certainlybetter--imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictiveand... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let's have it all outat once! They've talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you justnow I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know thatperhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I neededfor 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 Iturned sulky and wouldn't. (Yes, sulkiness, that's the right word forit!) I sat in my room like a spider. You've been in my den, you've seenit.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms crampthe soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn'tgo 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 doingnothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn't, Iwent all day without; I wouldn't ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! Atnight I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn't earn money forcandles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust liesan inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still andthinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strangedreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancythat... No, that's not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I keptasking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid--and Iknow they are--yet I won't be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if onewaits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards Iunderstood that that would never come to pass, that men won't change andthat 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 willhave po
wer over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in theireyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and hewho dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till nowand 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 caredwhether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; hewas in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long withouttalking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become hisfaith and code.
"I divined then, Sonia," he went on eagerly, "that power is onlyvouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is onlyone thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the firsttime in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had everthought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it isthat not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring togo 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 thedaring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!"
"Oh hush, hush," cried Sonia, clasping her hands. "You turned away fromGod 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 becameclear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?"
"Hush, don't laugh, blasphemer! You don't understand, you don'tunderstand! Oh God! He won't understand!"
"Hush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devilleading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!" he repeated with gloomy insistence. "Iknow it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it allover to myself, lying there in the dark.... I've argued it all over withmyself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, howsick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget itand make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don'tsuppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like awise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn't suppose thatI didn't know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whetherI had the right to gain power--I certainly hadn't the right--or that ifI asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn'tso for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to hisgoal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days,wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearlyof course that I wasn't Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of thatbattle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murderwithout casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn'twant to lie about it even to myself. It wasn't to help my mother I didthe murder--that's nonsense--I didn't do the murder to gain wealth andpower 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 abenefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men inmy web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn't have cared at thatmoment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. Itwas not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it allnow.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murderagain. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else ledme on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louselike everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers ornot, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a tremblingcreature 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 toprove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown mesince that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just sucha louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I've come to younow! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come toyou? 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 tocommit 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 myselfonce for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that oldwoman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!" he cried in asudden spasm of agony, "let me be!"
He leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands asin a vise.
"What suffering!" A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.
"Well, what am I to do now?" he asked, suddenly raising his head andlooking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.
"What are you to do?" she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had beenfull of tears suddenly began to shine. "Stand up!" (She seized him bythe shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) "Go at once,this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss theearth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and sayto 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, snatchinghis two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyesfull 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, whatwill become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned yourmother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh,God!" she cried, "why, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live byhimself! What will become of you now?"
"Don't be a child, Sonia," he said softly. "What wrong have I donethem? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That's only aphantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as avirtue. 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 totake 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 gettingit. A coward and a fool! They wouldn't understand and they don't deserveto 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, holdingout 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 greata 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," hebegan a minute later, "stop crying, it's time to talk of the facts: I'vecome 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 arefrightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shallmake a struggle for it and they won't do anything to me. They've no realevidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; butto-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explainedtwo ways, that's to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, doyou understand? And I shall, for I've learnt my lesson. But they willcertainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened,they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they willarrest me to-day.... But that's no matter, Sonia; they'll let me outagain... 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 theyhave against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I willtry to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that theywon't be frightened.... My sister's future is secure, however, now, Ibelieve... and m
y mother's must be too.... Well, that's all. Be careful,though. Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?"
"Oh, I will, I will."
They sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they hadbeen cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked atSonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say hefelt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was astrange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt thatall his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least partof his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, hesuddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before.
"Sonia," he said, "you'd better not come and see me when I am inprison."
Sonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.
"Have you a cross on you?" she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it.
He did not at first understand the question.
"No, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I haveanother, a copper one that belonged to Lizaveta. I changed withLizaveta: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I willwear Lizaveta's now and give you this. Take it... it's mine! It's mine,you know," she begged him. "We will go to suffer together, and togetherwe will bear our cross!"
"Give it me," said Raskolnikov.
He did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back thehand he held out for the cross.
"Not now, Sonia. Better later," he added to comfort her.
"Yes, yes, better," she repeated with conviction, "when you go to meetyour suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I'll put it on you,we will pray and go together."
At that moment someone knocked three times at the door.
"Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?" they heard in a very familiar andpolite voice.
Sonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr.Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.