Crime and Punishment (43 page)

Raskolnikov turned to face her and looked at her in excitement: yes, just as he thought! She was already shaking all over with real, genuine fever. He'd been expecting this. She was drawing closer to the words describing the very greatest, utterly unprecedented miracle and great rapture had seized her. Her voice rang as clear as metal, strengthened by audible exultation and joy. The lines ran together in front of her – her eyes had gone dark – but she knew it all by heart. On reaching the last verse, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man...', she conveyed, in lowered, fervent, passionate tones, all the doubts, reproaches and abuse of the disbelieving blind Jews, who now, in a minute's time, as if thunder-struck, would fall, start sobbing and believe . . . ‘And
he
,
he
 – also blinded and disbelieving – he, too, will now hear, he too will believe, yes, yes! Right here, now,' she dreamt, and shook in joyful anticipation.

‘Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odour, for he has been dead
four
days.”'

She vigorously stressed that word:
four
.

‘Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.”
And the dead man came out
,'

(she read loudly and rapturously, and she shook with cold, as if seeing it all with her own eyes)

‘his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”

‘
Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him.
'

She did not and could not read any further, closed the book and rose swiftly from her chair.

‘It's all about the raising of Lazarus,' she whispered curtly and sternly and stood motionless, turning away from him, seemingly ashamed to lift her eyes towards him. Her feverish shaking had still not passed. The candle-end had been guttering for some time in the crooked holder, shedding a dull light, in this beggarly room, on the murderer and the harlot, who'd come together so strangely to read the eternal book. Five minutes passed, if not more.

‘I haven't come just to talk,' said Raskolnikov loudly all of a sudden. Frowning, he got to his feet and walked over to Sonya. Silently, she lifted her eyes towards him. His gaze was particularly stern, expressing some wild determination.

‘I left my family today,' he said, ‘my mother and sister. I won't go back to them now. It's a clean break.'

‘But why?' asked Sonya, as though stunned. The recent meeting with his mother and sister had made an extraordinary, if indistinct, impression on her. It was with a kind of horror that she heard the news of the rift.

‘Now I have only you,' he added. ‘We'll go together . . . I've come to you. Together we're damned, together we'll go!'

His eyes blazed. ‘Like a madman!' Sonya thought in her turn.

‘Go where?' she asked in fright, automatically taking a step back.

‘How should I know? All I know is that there's one road before us. One aim!'

She looked at him, understanding nothing. All she understood was that he was dreadfully, infinitely unhappy.

‘None of them will understand a thing, if you tell them,' he went on, ‘but I understood. I need you, that's why I've come to you.'

‘I don't understand . . . ,' whispered Sonya.

‘You'll understand later. Haven't you done the same thing? You also managed to take that step . . . transgress. You've laid hands on yourself, ruined a life . . .
your own
(it's all the same!). You could have lived the life of the spirit, the life of reason, yet you'll end up on Haymarket
Square . . . But it's too much for you, and if you're left
alone
, you'll go mad, just like me. There's something crazy about you even now. So we've one road ahead of us. We'll walk it together! Let's go!'

‘But why? Why are you saying this?' said Sonya, strangely restless and agitated.

‘Why? Because something has to change – that's why! It's time to think about things seriously, head-on, instead of childish crying and yelling about God not allowing it! I mean, what will happen if you really are taken off to hospital tomorrow? She's consumptive and out of her mind, she'll soon die, but the children? You think Polechka won't go to rack and ruin? You mean you haven't seen the children around here, on street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I've seen where these mothers live, the conditions they live in. Children can't remain children there, it's impossible. There, a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. Yet children are the image of Christ: “Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
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He commanded that they be honoured and loved. They're humanity's future . . .'

‘But what's to be done? What?' repeated Sonya, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.

‘What's to be done? Break what must be broken, once and for all, and take suffering upon yourself! You don't understand? You'll understand later . . . Freedom and power, especially power! Over all quivering creatures, over the whole ant heap! . . . This is the aim! Remember that! My parting words! Who knows? I may be speaking to you for the last time. If I don't come tomorrow, you'll hear about everything yourself. When you do, recall these words of mine. And some day, later, years later, as life goes by, perhaps you'll understand what they meant. But if I do come tomorrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Goodbye!'

Sonya's whole body shuddered.

‘You mean you know who did it?' she asked, frozen with horror and looking at him wildly.

‘I know and I'll say . . . To you, only to you! I've chosen you. I won't come to ask your forgiveness, I'll just say it. I chose you a long time ago so as to tell you this, back when your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, that's when the thought came to me. Goodbye. Don't give me your hand. Tomorrow!'

He left. Sonya had been looking at him as if he were crazy, but she, too, seemed almost mad, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. ‘Lord!
How does he know who murdered Lizaveta? What did those words mean? How awful!' But at the same time the
thought
never entered her head. Never! Never! . . . ‘Oh, he must be dreadfully unhappy! . . . Left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what is he planning?' What was it he'd told her? He'd kissed her foot and said . . . said (yes, he'd said it clearly) that he could no longer live without her . . . O Lord!

Sonya was feverish and delirious all night long. Every now and again she'd leap up in her bed, cry, wring her hands, then lose herself again in a feverish sleep, and she'd dream of Polechka, Katerina Ivanovna, Lizaveta, Gospel readings, and him . . . him, with his pale face, his burning eyes . . . He was kissing her feet, he was crying . . . O Lord!

On the other side of the door – that same door on the right which divided Sonya's apartment from that of Gertruda Karlovna Resslich – there was an in-between room, long empty, which was part of Mrs Resslich's apartment and was rented out by her, hence the little notices on the gates and the bits of paper stuck to the panes of the windows that gave onto the Ditch. Sonya had long assumed that the room was unused. Yet all the while, standing quietly by the door in the empty room, Mr Svidrigailov had been listening in. When Raskolnikov left, he stood and thought for a while, tiptoed off to his own room adjoining the empty one, took a chair and carried it noiselessly right up to the door leading to Sonya's room. He found the conversation both diverting and revealing, and enjoyed it very, very much; in fact, he'd brought the chair in so that in future, say tomorrow, he would no longer have to suffer the inconvenience of spending a whole hour on his feet, but could make himself comfortable and derive every possible pleasure from the experience.

When, the next morning at eleven o'clock sharp, Raskolnikov walked into the Criminal Investigations department of ——y District Police Station and asked to be announced to Porfiry Petrovich, he was astonished to be kept waiting so long: at least ten minutes passed before he was called. According to his own calculations someone should have pounced on him straight away. Instead, he just stood there in the reception room, utterly ignored by the people walking past him in both directions. Several clerks were sitting and writing in the next room,
which looked like an office, and it was obvious that none of them had even the faintest idea who Raskolnikov was. He scanned the area around him with an anxious, suspicious gaze: wasn't there at least some guard or other, some secret pair of eyes, charged with keeping tabs on him in case he wandered off? But there was nothing of the kind: all he saw were bureaucratic, trivially preoccupied faces, plus a few other people, and no one took the slightest interest in him: he could do what he liked for all they cared. He became ever more convinced that if the mysterious man from yesterday, the phantom from out of the ground, really did know everything, really had seen everything, then would he, Raskolnikov, have been left standing here now, calmly waiting? And would they really have waited for him here until eleven o‘clock, when he himself saw fit to drop by? Either that man had not yet reported anything or . . . or he simply didn't know anything either, hadn't seen anything with his own eyes (and how could he have done?), so all of that, from yesterday, was, once again, a phantom, exaggerated by his own, Raskolnikov's, sick and overwrought imagination. Even yesterday, during the worst of his panic and despair, this conjecture had begun to take root in his mind. Going over it all again now and readying himself for a new fight, he suddenly realized that he was shaking – and even began seething with indignation at the thought that he was shaking with fear before someone as loathsome as Porfiry Petrovich. To meet this man again was for him the most dreadful thing of all: he loathed him beyond measure, infinitely, and was even afraid lest his loathing betray him. So great was his indignation, in fact, that it instantly put a stop to his shaking; he prepared to walk in with a cool and insolent air and promised himself to say as little as possible, to look and listen hard and, at least for this once, to overcome at all costs his morbidly excitable character. At that very moment he was called in to see Porfiry Petrovich.

Porfiry Petrovich, it turned out, was alone. His office was neither large nor small; it contained a big desk in front of an oilcloth-covered couch, a bureau, a cupboard in the corner and several chairs – all government property and made of yellow, polished wood. In the corner, in the far wall – or rather, in a partition – there was a locked door: so over there, beyond the partition, there must have been some other rooms, too. When Raskolnikov entered, Porfiry Petrovich immediately closed the door behind him; the two men were alone. Porfiry received his guest with what seemed to be the most cheerful and
cordial of welcomes, and only several minutes later did Raskolnikov detect certain vague signs of embarrassment – as if Porfiry had suddenly been thrown into confusion or surprised in the middle of some particularly private and secret business.

‘Ah, my good chap! You too . . . in our neck of the woods . . . ,' Porfiry began, holding out both hands. ‘Well, have a seat then, father! Or perhaps you don't like being called good chap and . . . father – just like that,
tout court
? Please don't think I'm being too familiar, sir . . . This way, please, to my little couch.'

Raskolnikov sat down, never taking his eyes off him.

‘In our neck of the woods', apologies for excessive familiarity, that bit of French and everything else – they were all characteristic traits. ‘Still, he held out both hands, but withdrew them before offering either one,' flashed across his suspicious mind. Each was observing the other, but the moment their eyes met, both averted their gaze with lightning speed.

‘I've brought you that little note . . . about the watch . . . Here you go, sir. Will it do or should I rewrite it?'

‘What? A little note? Yes indeedy . . . worry not, all in order, sir,' said Porfiry Petrovich, as if he were hurrying off somewhere, and only then did he take the document and look it over. ‘Yes, all in order. Nothing else needed,' he confirmed, still pattering away, and placed the document on the desk. Then, a minute later, while talking about something else, he picked it up again and transferred it to the bureau.

‘I believe you said yesterday that you would like to ask me . . . formally . . . about my acquaintance with that . . . murdered woman?' Raskolnikov began again. ‘Why did I say
I believe
?' flashed across his mind like lightning. ‘Why am I so worried about having said
I believe
?' came another flash, like lightning.

And he suddenly sensed that his mistrust had, from the very first contact with Porfiry, the first two words, the first two looks, instantly swelled to monstrous dimensions . . . and that this was terribly dangerous: his nerves were on edge, his agitation was mounting. ‘Watch out! Watch out! . . . I'll give myself away again.'

‘Yes, yes! Worry not! That can wait, sir, that can wait,' muttered Porfiry Petrovich, walking back and forth in the vicinity of the desk, but to no apparent purpose, as if in a hurry to reach the window or the bureau or the desk again, now avoiding Raskolnikov's suspicious gaze, now suddenly stopping in his tracks and staring right at him. As
he did so, his tubby, round little figure seemed extraordinarily strange, like a little ball rolling off in various directions before bouncing off every wall or corner.

‘Plenty of time for that, sir, plenty of time! . . . Do you smoke? Got your own? Have a papirosa on me . . . ,' he went on, proffering a papirosa to his guest. ‘You know, I'm receiving you here, but my own apartment's right there, behind the partition – grace and favour, sir, though I've got my own place, too, for the meantime. There were a few little improvements to be made here first. Now it's nearly ready . . . A grace-and-favour apartment, you know, is a splendid thing – eh? What do you reckon?'

‘Yes, a splendid thing,' answered Raskolnikov, looking at him almost mockingly.

‘Splendid, splendid . . . ,' Porfiry Petrovich kept saying, as if suddenly absorbed by quite different thoughts. ‘Yes! A splendid thing!' he fairly shrieked by the end, suddenly flashing a glance at Raskolnikov and halting just a couple of paces away from him. The silly way he was banging on about a grace-and-favour apartment
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being a splendid thing contrasted far too much in its petty vulgarity with the serious, thoughtful and enigmatic gaze he was now directing at his guest.

But this merely stoked Raskolnikov's anger even more, and he could not resist throwing down a mocking and fairly reckless challenge.

‘You know,' he suddenly said, looking at him almost insolently and deriving a kind of pleasure from his insolence, ‘I believe a certain principle exists in legal practice, a certain legal technique – to be used by every conceivable investigator – whereby one begins from a long way off, with trifles or even with something serious, but completely irrelevant, in order, as it were, to reassure, or rather distract, the man being questioned, to lull his vigilance, before all of a sudden, in quite the most unexpected way, clubbing him smack on the crown with the most fateful and dangerous question. Isn't that right? I believe that to this day it receives reverent mention in all the rulebooks and manuals.'

‘Yes indeedy . . . So you think that by mentioning the apartment I was . . . eh?' Saying this, Porfiry Petrovich squinted and winked; something merry and sly flitted across his face, the wrinkles on his brow smoothed out, his little eyes narrowed, his features lengthened and he suddenly broke into a bout of nervous, prolonged laughter, his whole body swaying with excitement while he continued to look straight into Raskolnikov's eyes. The latter also began to laugh, not
without effort, but when Porfiry, seeing that he, too, was laughing, became so overcome with mirth that he very nearly turned purple, Raskolnikov's disgust suddenly got the better of his caution; he stopped laughing, frowned and looked for a long while and with loathing at Porfiry, keeping his eyes fixed on him for the entire duration of his lengthy and, it seemed, intentionally unceasing laughter. A lack of caution, though, was in evidence on both sides: Porfiry Petrovich seemed to be laughing at his guest quite openly, to the latter's utter disgust, and to be quite unembarrassed by this circumstance. For Raskolnikov, this last point was highly significant: he realized that earlier, too, Porfiry Petrovich had probably not been in the least embarrassed, and he, Raskolnikov, must have fallen into a trap; there was something afoot here of which he was ignorant, some purpose or other; everything, perhaps, was already in place, and any minute now would be unveiled and unleashed . . .

He got straight to the point, rising from his seat and grabbing his cap.

‘Porfiry Petrovich,' he began decisively, if rather too irritably, ‘yesterday you expressed the wish that I present myself here for some sort of interrogation.' (He laid particular stress on the word
interrogation
.) ‘Well, here I am, so if there's anything you need to ask, ask; otherwise please permit me to leave. I've no time, there's something I have to do . . . I need to attend the funeral of the civil servant who was trampled by horses, the very one you . . . also know about . . . ,' he added, and was immediately angry with himself for having done so, which immediately irritated him even more, ‘and I'm fed up with all this – do you hear? – and have been for some time . . . and that's partly why I fell ill . . . and, in short,' he all but shrieked, sensing that the phrase about his illness was even more misjudged, ‘in short, be so kind either to question me or let me go this minute . . . and if you are going to question me, you had better do so formally, sir. I won't have it any other way. Goodbye for now, then, seeing as we are merely wasting each other's time.'

‘Heavens above! What are you saying? Question you about what?' Porfiry Petrovich suddenly cackled, immediately changing both his tone and his appearance and instantly ceasing to laugh. ‘Worry not, please,' he fussed, now tearing off again to the four ends of the room, now trying to sit Raskolnikov down. ‘That can wait, sir, that can wait, and these are all mere trifles! You know, I'm simply delighted to see you here at last . . . and welcome you as a guest. And as for this
wretched laughter of mine, please forgive me, Rodion Romanovich, father. It is Roman, is it not? Your father's name, I mean . . . I'm highly strung, sir, and you had me in fits there with the wittiness of your remark; believe me, there are times when I start quivering like India rubber and I won't stop for half an hour . . . I'm the laughing sort. I even fear a stroke, sir, considering my constitution. Now do take a seat, eh? . . . Please, father, or else I shall think you're cross . . .'

Raskolnikov kept silent, listened and watched, still frowning angrily. Nevertheless, he sat down, but without letting go of his cap.

‘I should tell you something about myself, Rodion Romanovich, father, by way of an explanation, as it were, of my character,' Porfiry Petrovich continued, bustling about the room and appearing to avoid, as before, the gaze of his guest. ‘I'm a bachelor, you see, no airs or graces, no fame or name, and, as if that's not enough, I'm finished, sir, I've frozen over, I've gone to seed and . . . and . . . Have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, that here, here in Russia, I mean, and most especially in our Petersburg circles, whenever two intelligent people, who don't yet know each other all that well but, as it were, respect one another, just like you and me, come together, they are quite incapable, for at least half an hour, of finding a single topic of conversation? They just freeze in each other's presence and sit around feeling awkward. Everyone else has things to discuss . . . ladies, say, or high-society types . . . they can always find a topic,
c'est de rigueur
, but middling people like us are awkward and untalkative . . . thinking people, I mean. Now why, father, should this be so? Is there really no topic of public interest for us to discuss, or are we too honest for our own good and unwilling to deceive each other? Eh? What do you think? Do put away that cap, sir, one might think you were about to leave – makes me quite uncomfortable . . . You know, I'm simply delighted . . .'

Raskolnikov put down his cap, keeping silent and continuing to listen with a serious, frowning face to Porfiry's idle and muddled chatter. ‘Is he really trying to distract me with his silly talk?'

‘I won't offer you coffee, sir, this isn't the place. But where's the harm in sitting down with a friend for five minutes and relaxing a little?' Porfiry prattled on. ‘And you know, sir, all these official duties . . . Now, please don't be offended by all my walking around, back and forth. Forgive me, father, the last thing I want to do is offend you, but I just can't get by without regular exercise. I'm always at my desk and
five minutes on my feet is sheer delight . . . Piles, sir . . . I keep meaning to try gymnastics. I'm told that state counsellors, actual state counsellors and even privy
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counsellors are fond of the skipping rope, sir; the wonders of modern science, eh? . . . Yes indeedy . . . And as for duties, interrogations and all these formalities . . . you yourself, dear man, saw fit to mention interrogations just now . . . well, let me tell you, Rodion Romanovich, father, these interrogations sometimes confuse the man who's asking the questions even more than the man who's answering them . . . Your witty comment about that just now was spot on, sir.' (Raskolnikov had made no such comment.) ‘You can get tied up in knots! Really you can! And it's always the same thing, again and again, like a drum! Now there are reforms afoot,
20
so at least we'll get different titles, heh-heh-heh! And as for those legal techniques of ours – as you so wittily put it – well, I couldn't agree with you more, sir. Just try finding a suspect, even the most rustic peasant, who doesn't know, for example, that first he'll be lulled with irrelevant questions (in your felicitous phrase) before being suddenly clubbed smack on the crown, sir, butt-first, heh-heh-heh! Yes, smack on the crown, in your felicitous comparison, heh-heh! And you really thought that was why I mentioned the apartment . . . heh-heh! What an ironical fellow you are. All right, I'll stop! Oh, yes, while I'm at it, since one word, one thought beckons another: earlier on you also saw fit to mention matters of form, concerning, you know, interrogations, as it were . . . But why such a fuss about form? Form, you know, is often just a lot of hot air, sir. Sometimes a friendly chat gets you a great deal further. There's no running away from form, don't you worry about that. But ultimately, sir, what is it? An investigation can't be inhibited by form every step of the way. An investigation needs, so to speak, the freedom of art, sir, or something like that . . . heh-heh-heh!'