<p>“It was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you, but
because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that’s true,”
he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed
and betrayed yourself <i>for nothing</i>. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it
fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the
same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are
not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,” he
went on almost in a frenzy, “how this shame and degradation can exist in
you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better,
a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!”</p>
<p>“But what would become of them?” Sonia asked faintly, gazing at him with
eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.</p>
<p>Raskolnikov looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face; so she
must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and earnestly she
had thought out in her despair how to end it and so earnestly, that now
she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed the
cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his peculiar
attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either, and that,
too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought of her
disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long tortured
her. “What, what,” he thought, “could hitherto have hindered her from
putting an end to it?” Only then he realised what those poor little orphan
children and that pitiful half-crazy Katerina Ivanovna, knocking her head
against the wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.</p>
<p>But, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character and
the amount of education she had after all received, she could not in any
case remain so. He was still confronted by the question, how could she
have remained so long in that position without going out of her mind,
since she could not bring herself to jump into the water? Of course he
knew that Sonia’s position was an exceptional case, though unhappily not
unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that very exceptionalness, her
tinge of education, her previous life might, one would have thought, have
killed her at the first step on that revolting path. What held her up—surely
not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched her
mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart;
he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him....</p>
<p>“There are three ways before her,” he thought, “the canal, the madhouse,
or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns the
heart to stone.”</p>
<p>The last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was young,
abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help believing that the
last end was the most likely.</p>
<p>“But can that be true?” he cried to himself. “Can that creature who has
still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last into
that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have begun? Can
it be that she has only been able to bear it till now, because vice has
begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot be!” he cried, as
Sonia had just before. “No, what has kept her from the canal till now is
the idea of sin and they, the children.... And if she has not gone out of
her mind... but who says she has not gone out of her mind? Is she in her
senses? Can one talk, can one reason as she does? How can she sit on the
edge of the abyss of loathsomeness into which she is slipping and refuse
to listen when she is told of danger? Does she expect a miracle? No doubt
she does. Doesn’t that all mean madness?”</p>
<p>He stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation indeed
better than any other. He began looking more intently at her.</p>
<p>“So you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?” he asked her.</p>
<p>Sonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.</p>
<p>“What should I be without God?” she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing
at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.</p>
<p>“Ah, so that is it!” he thought.</p>
<p>“And what does God do for you?” he asked, probing her further.</p>
<p>Sonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak
chest kept heaving with emotion.</p>
<p>“Be silent! Don’t ask! You don’t deserve!” she cried suddenly, looking
sternly and wrathfully at him.</p>
<p>“That’s it, that’s it,” he repeated to himself.</p>
<p>“He does everything,” she whispered quickly, looking down again.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Where did you get that?” he called to her across the room.</p>
<p>She was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.</p>
<p>“It was brought me,” she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking at
him.</p>
<p>“Who brought it?”</p>
<p>“Lizaveta, I asked her for it.”</p>
<p>“Lizaveta! strange!” he thought.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Where is the story of Lazarus?” he asked suddenly.</p>
<p>Sonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was
standing sideways to the table.</p>
<p>“Where is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia.”</p>
<p>She stole a glance at him.</p>
<p>“You are not looking in the right place.... It’s in the fourth gospel,”
she whispered sternly, without looking at him.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Sonia heard Raskolnikov’s request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly to
the table. She took the book however.</p>
<p>“Haven’t you read it?” she asked, looking up at him across the table.</p>
<p>Her voice became sterner and sterner.</p>
<p>“Long ago.... When I was at school. Read!”</p>
<p>“And haven’t you heard it in church?”</p>
<p>“I... haven’t been. Do you often go?”</p>
<p>“N-no,” whispered Sonia.</p>
<p>Raskolnikov smiled.</p>
<p>“I understand.... And you won’t go to your father’s funeral to-morrow?”</p>
<p>“Yes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem service.”</p>
<p>“For whom?”</p>
<p>“For Lizaveta. She was killed with an axe.”</p>
<p>His nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round.</p>
<p>“Were you friends with Lizaveta?”</p>
<p>“Yes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she couldn’t....
We used to read together and... talk. She will see God.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“I shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It’s infectious!”</p>
<p>“Read!” he cried irritably and insistently.</p>
<p>Sonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read
to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the “unhappy lunatic.”</p>
<p>“What for? You don’t believe?...” she whispered softly and as it were
breathlessly.</p>
<p>“Read! I want you to,” he persisted. “You used to read to Lizaveta.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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 <i>own</i>. He understood that these
feelings really were her <i>secret treasure</i>, 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 <i>him</i>
that he might hear it, and to read <i>now</i> 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:</p>
<p>“And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning
their brother.</p>
<p>“Then Martha as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming went and met Him:
but Mary sat still in the house.</p>
<p>“Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother
had not died.</p>
<p>“But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give
it Thee....”</p>
<p>Then she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would
quiver and break again.</p>
<p>“Jesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.</p>
<p>“Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection, at the last day.</p>
<p>“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live.</p>
<p>“And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou
this?</p>
<p>“She saith unto Him,”</p>
<p>(And drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as
though she were making a public confession of faith.)</p>
<p>“Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which
should come into the world.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which
came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled,</p>
<p>“And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see.</p>
<p>“Jesus wept.</p>
<p>“Then said the Jews, behold how He loved him!</p>
<p>“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?”</p>
<p>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 <i>he, he</i>—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.</p>
<p>“Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a
cave, and a stone lay upon it.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>She laid emphasis on the word <i>four</i>.</p>
<p>“Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe,
thou shouldest see the glory of God?</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come
forth.</p>
<p>“And he that was dead came forth.”</p>
<p>(She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were
seeing it before her eyes.)</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“Then many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things which
Jesus did believed on Him.”</p>
<p>She could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair quickly.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>His eyes glittered “as though he were mad,” Sonia thought, in her turn.</p>
<p>“Go where?” she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.</p>
<p>“How do I know? I only know it’s the same road, I know that and nothing
more. It’s the same goal!”</p>
<p>She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was
terribly, infinitely unhappy.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>“I don’t understand,” whispered Sonia.</p>
<p>“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... <i>your own</i> (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!”</p>
<p>“What for? What’s all this for?” said Sonia, strangely and violently
agitated by his words.</p>
<p>“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....”</p>
<p>“What’s to be done, what’s to be done?” repeated Sonia, weeping
hysterically and wringing her hands.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>Sonia started with terror.</p>
<p>“Why, do you know who killed her?” she asked, chilled with horror, looking
wildly at him.</p>
<p>“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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those words
mean? It’s awful!” But at the same time <i>the idea</i> 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!”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. Svidrigaïlov 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.</p>
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