Part Six · VII

That same day, but now in the evening, after six, Raskolnikov was approaching the lodgings of his mother and sister, the very lodgings in Bakaleyev’s house where Razumikhin had settled them. The entrance to the stairs was from the street. Raskolnikov was approaching, still holding back his step and as if hesitating: to go in or not? But he would not have turned back for anything; his decision had been taken. “Besides, it makes no difference, they don’t know anything yet,” he thought, “and they’re already used to regarding me as an eccentric…” His clothes were dreadful: everything dirty, out all night in the rain, torn, frayed. His face was almost disfigured by weariness, by the foul weather, by physical exhaustion, and by nearly twenty-four hours of struggle with himself. He had spent this whole night alone, God knows where. But at least he had made up his mind.

He knocked at the door; his mother opened it to him. Dunechka was not at home. Even the maid happened not to be there at the time. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was at first struck dumb with joyful amazement; then she seized him by the hand and pulled him into the room.

“Well, here you are!” she began, stammering with joy. “Don’t be angry with me, Rodya, for greeting you so foolishly, with tears: it’s that I’m laughing, not crying. You think I’m crying? No, it’s that I’m glad, it’s just a silly habit I have: the tears run. I’ve had it ever since your father died, I cry at everything. Sit down, my dear, you must be tired, I can see. Ah, how dirty you’ve got.”

“I was out in the rain yesterday, Mama…” Raskolnikov began.

“No, no, don’t!” Pulcheria Alexandrovna flared up, interrupting him. “You thought I was going to start questioning you right away, out of my old womanish habit, don’t worry. I understand, you know, I understand everything, I’ve learned how things are done here now and, really, I can see for myself that it’s wiser this way. I’ve decided once and for all: how can I understand your reasons and demand accounts of you? You may have God knows what affairs and plans in your head, or some kind of thoughts being born there; so am I to go jogging your elbow: what are you thinking about, say? Here I… Ah, Lord! Why am I darting this way and that like a madwoman… Here, Rodya, I’m reading your article in the journal for the third time already, Dmitry Prokofyich brought it to me. I simply gasped when I saw it: what a fool I am, I thought to myself, so this is what he’s busy with, here’s the answer to the riddle! He may have new ideas in his head, just at this time; he’s thinking them over, and I torment him and upset him. I read it, my dear, and of course there’s much I don’t understand; but then, that’s how it should be: how could I?”

“Show it to me, Mama.”

Raskolnikov took the paper and glanced at his article in passing. However much it contradicted his situation and his state, he felt that strange, stingingly sweet sensation that an author experiences seeing himself in print for the first time; besides, his twenty-three years told too. It lasted a single instant. Having read a few lines, he frowned, and a terrible anguish wrung his heart. All his inner struggle of the last months came back to him at once. With loathing and vexation he tossed the article onto the table.

“Only, Rodya, however foolish I am, I can still judge that you will very soon be one of the first men, if not the very first, in our learned world. And they dared to think you had gone mad. Ha-ha-ha! you don’t know: they really did think so! Ah, the low worms, how could they understand what intelligence is! And Dunechka, you know, almost believed it too, just imagine? Your late father sent things to the journals twice: first poems (I still keep the notebook, I’ll show you someday), and then a whole novella (I begged him myself to let me copy it out), and how we both prayed that they’d take it, and they didn’t! I, Rodya, six or seven days ago, was eating my heart out looking at your clothes, at how you live, what you eat, and what you go about in. And now I see that again I was foolish, because if you want to, you’ll get everything for yourself now all at once, by intelligence and talent. It means that for the time being you don’t want to, and are busy with much more important matters…”

“Dunya isn’t home, Mama?”

“No, Rodya. Very often I don’t see her at home, she leaves me alone. Dmitry Prokofyich, God bless him, comes to sit with me and keeps talking about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don’t say of your sister that she is so very disrespectful to me. I’m not complaining, you know. She has her character, I have mine; she has got some secrets of her own; well, I have no secrets at all from either of you. Of course, I am firmly convinced that Dunya is too intelligent, and besides, she loves both me and you… but I really don’t know what all this will lead to. Here you’ve made me happy now, Rodya, by coming, and she’s gone off walking; when she comes back I’ll tell her: your brother was here while you were out, and where were you pleased to be spending your time? Don’t spoil me too much, Rodya: if you can, come by; if you can’t, it can’t be helped, I’ll wait anyhow. I’ll know all the same that you love me, and that’s enough for me. I’ll read your writings, I’ll hear about you from everyone, and every so often you’ll come by yourself to see me, what could be better? Here you’ve come now, to comfort your mother, I can see that…”

Here Pulcheria Alexandrovna suddenly burst into tears.

“There I go again! Don’t look at me, the fool! Ah, Lord, why am I sitting here,” she cried, jumping up from her place, “there’s coffee, and I’m not even offering you any! That’s what an old woman’s selfishness means. Right away, right away!”

“Mama, leave that, I’ll be going in a moment. That’s not what I came for. Please, hear me out.”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna timidly went up to him.

“Mama, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you’re told about me, will you love me as you do now?” he asked suddenly, from the fullness of his heart, as if not thinking about his words and not weighing them.

“Rodya, Rodya, what’s the matter with you? How can you ask such a thing! Why, who would tell me anything about you? And I wouldn’t believe anyone, whoever came to me, I’d simply drive them away.”

“I came to assure you that I have always loved you, and I’m glad now that we’re alone, glad even that Dunechka isn’t here,” he went on with the same impulse. “I came to tell you straight out that, even though you will be unhappy, you should know all the same that your son loves you now more than himself, and that everything you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn’t love you, all that was untrue. I will never stop loving you… Well, and that’s enough; it seemed to me that this was what I had to do, and to begin with this…”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna silently embraced him, pressed him to her breast, and quietly wept.

“What’s the matter with you, Rodya, I don’t know,” she said at last. “All this time I thought we were simply boring you, and now I see from everything that a great sorrow is in store for you, and that’s why you’re so wretched. I’ve foreseen it for a long time, Rodya. Forgive me for speaking about it; I keep thinking about it and can’t sleep at night. Last night your sister too lay delirious the whole night through and kept calling you to mind. I made out something, but understood nothing. All morning I went about as if before an execution, waiting for something, sensing something, and now it has come! Rodya, Rodya, where are you going? Are you going away somewhere?”

“I am.”

“That’s just what I thought! But I can go with you, if you need me to. And Dunya; she loves you, she loves you very much, and Sofya Semyonovna, perhaps, let her come with us, if need be; you see, I’ll gladly even take her as a daughter. Dmitry Prokofyich will help us all get ready together… but… where are you… going?”

“Goodbye, Mama.”

“What! Today!” she cried out, as if she were losing him forever.

“I can’t stay, it’s time, I really must…”

“And I can’t go with you?”

“No, but you kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer may reach him.”

“Then let me make the sign of the cross over you, let me bless you! There, there. O God, what are we doing!”

Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that no one was there, that he and his mother were alone. It was as if, after the whole of this terrible time, his heart had softened all at once. He fell down before her, he kissed her feet, and both, embracing, wept. And she was not surprised and did not question him this time. She had long understood that something terrible was happening to her son, and that now some dreadful moment had come for him.

“Rodya, my dear, my firstborn,” she said, sobbing, “now you’re just as you were when you were little, you used to come to me just like this, and hug me and kiss me just like this; back when your father and I were living together and struggling, you comforted us just by being with us, and when I buried your father, how many times we wept on his grave, hugging each other just like this, as we are now. And if I’ve been crying for a long time, that’s a mother’s heart that foresaw trouble. The very first time I saw you then, that evening, remember, when we had only just arrived here, I guessed everything from your look alone, my heart simply quaked then, and today when I opened the door to you and looked, well, I thought, the fatal hour must have come. Rodya, Rodya, you’re not going right now, are you?”

“No.”

“You’ll come again?”

“Yes… I’ll come.”

“Rodya, don’t be angry, I don’t even dare to ask questions. I know I don’t dare, but just tell me, just two little words, are you going somewhere far?”

“Very far.”

“And what is it there, some post, a career for you, or what?”

“Whatever God sends… only pray for me…”

Raskolnikov went to the door, but she clutched at him and looked into his eyes with a despairing look. Her face was distorted with horror.

“Enough, Mama,” said Raskolnikov, deeply regretting that he had thought of coming.

“Not forever? It’s not forever yet? You’ll come, you’ll come tomorrow?”

“I’ll come, I’ll come, goodbye.”

He tore himself away at last.

The evening was fresh, warm, and clear; the weather had cleared up since morning. Raskolnikov was going to his room; he was hurrying. He wanted to finish everything before sunset. Until then he would rather not meet anyone. Going up to his room, he noticed that Nastasya, tearing herself away from the samovar, was watching him intently and following him with her eyes. “Can there be someone in my room?” he thought. With loathing he imagined Porfiry. But when he reached his room and opened it, he saw Dunechka. She was sitting all by herself, deep in thought, and, it seemed, had been waiting for him a long time. He stopped on the threshold. She half rose from the sofa in fright and drew herself up before him. Her gaze, fixed motionless on him, expressed horror and unappeasable grief. And from this gaze alone he understood at once that she knew everything.

“Well, should I come in to you or go away?” he asked mistrustfully.

“I sat all day at Sofya Semyonovna’s; we were both waiting for you. We thought you would be sure to go there.”

Raskolnikov came into the room and sat down on a chair, exhausted.

“I’m somehow weak, Dunya; I’m very tired; and I would like, at this moment at least, to be fully master of myself.”

He raised his eyes to her mistrustfully.

“Where were you all night?”

“I don’t remember well; you see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind once and for all, and many times I walked near the Neva; that I remember. I wanted to end it there, but… I couldn’t bring myself to…” he whispered, again glancing mistrustfully at Dunya.

“Thank God! And how we feared just that, Sofya Semyonovna and I! So you still believe in life: thank God, thank God!”

Raskolnikov grinned bitterly.

“I didn’t believe, and just now Mother and I wept together, in each other’s arms; I don’t believe, and I asked her to pray for me. God knows how it happens, Dunechka, and I don’t understand any of it.”

“You were at Mother’s? You told her too?” Dunya exclaimed in horror. “Can you really have brought yourself to tell her?”

“No, I didn’t tell her… in words; but she understood a great deal. She heard you raving in the night. I’m sure she understands half already. Perhaps I did wrong to go there. I don’t even know why I went at all. I’m a low man, Dunya.”

“A low man, and ready to go and suffer! You are going, aren’t you?”

“I am. Right now. Yes, it was to escape this shame that I wanted to drown myself, Dunya, but I thought, already standing over the water, that if I had considered myself strong up to now, then let me not be afraid of the shame now either,” he said, forestalling her. “Is that pride, Dunya?”

“It’s pride, Rodya.”

It was as if a fire flashed in his extinguished eyes; it seemed to please him that he was still proud.

“And you don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he asked with a hideous grin, peering into her face.

“Oh, Rodya, stop!” Dunya exclaimed bitterly.

The silence lasted about two minutes. He sat with his head lowered and looked at the floor; Dunechka stood at the other end of the table and looked at him in torment. Suddenly he stood up:

“It’s late, it’s time. I’m going now to give myself up. But I don’t know why I’m going to give myself up.”

Large tears were running down her cheeks.

“You’re crying, sister, but can you give me your hand?”

“Did you doubt it?”

She embraced him tightly.

“By going to suffer, aren’t you already washing away half your crime?” she cried, holding him in her arms and kissing him.

“Crime? What crime?” he cried suddenly, in a sort of sudden fury. “That I killed a vile, noxious louse, a little old moneylender woman, of no use to anyone, for whose killing forty sins would be forgiven, who sucked the juice out of the poor, and that is a crime? I don’t think about it, and I don’t think of washing it away. And why are they all poking it at me from every side: ‘crime, crime!’ Only now do I see clearly all the absurdity of my faintheartedness, now, when I’ve already decided to go to this unnecessary shame! I’m deciding simply out of my baseness and my mediocrity, or maybe for the advantage too, as that… Porfiry proposed!…”

“Brother, brother, what are you saying! But you shed blood!” Dunya cried in despair.

“Which everyone sheds,” he caught her up, almost in a frenzy, “which flows and has always flowed in the world like a waterfall, which is poured out like champagne, and for which men are crowned in the Capitol and called afterward benefactors of mankind. Just look more closely and see! I myself wanted good for people, and I would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds instead of this one stupidity, not even a stupidity, simply a clumsiness, since the whole idea was not at all as stupid as it seems now, after failure… (After failure everything seems stupid!) By this stupidity I only wanted to put myself in an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain the means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by a benefit that, comparatively, was immeasurable… But I, I could not even stand the first step, because I am a scoundrel! That’s the whole point! And all the same I will not look at it with your eyes: if I had succeeded, they would have crowned me, and now it’s into the trap!”

“But that’s not it, not it at all! Brother, what are you saying!”

“Ah! It’s not the right form, not such an aesthetically pleasing form! Well, I decidedly don’t understand: why is pelting people with bombs, by regular siege, a more respectable form? Fear of aesthetics is the first sign of impotence!… Never, never have I been more clearly aware of it than now, and more than ever I don’t understand my crime! Never, never was I stronger and more convinced than now!…”

Color even rushed into his pale, exhausted face. But as he uttered the last exclamation, his eyes accidentally met Dunya’s, and so much, so much torment for him did he meet in that look that he involuntarily came to his senses. He felt that, all the same, he had made these two poor women unhappy. All the same, he was the cause…

“Dunya, dear! If I am guilty, forgive me (though I can’t be forgiven, if I am guilty). Goodbye! Let’s not argue! It’s time, high time. Don’t follow me, I implore you, I still have to stop in at… But go now, and at once sit down beside Mother. I implore you to do it! It’s my last, my greatest request of you. Don’t leave her the whole time; I left her in an anxiety that she can hardly bear: she will either die or lose her mind. Be with her! Razumikhin will be with you; I told him… Don’t cry over me: I’ll try to be both manly and honest, all my life, even though I am a murderer. Perhaps someday you will hear my name. I won’t disgrace you, you’ll see; I’ll still prove… now for the time being goodbye,” he hastened to conclude, again noticing some strange expression in Dunya’s eyes at his last words and promises. “Why are you crying so? Don’t cry, don’t cry; we’re not parting for good!… Ah, yes! Wait, I forgot!…”

He went to the table, took up a thick, dusty book, opened it, and took out a little portrait, a watercolor on ivory, that had been laid between the pages. It was a portrait of the landlady’s daughter, his former fiancée, who had died of a fever, that same strange girl who had wanted to enter a convent. For a minute he gazed into that expressive and sickly little face, kissed the portrait, and handed it to Dunechka.

“With her I talked a great deal about this too, with her alone,” he said pensively. “I confided to her heart much of what afterward came true so hideously. Don’t worry,” he turned to Dunya, “she didn’t agree, any more than you, and I’m glad she is gone. The main thing, the main thing is that everything is going to be new now, it will break in two,” he cried suddenly, returning again to his anguish, “everything, everything, but am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself? They say it’s necessary as a trial for me! What for, what for, all these senseless trials? What for, will I understand better then, crushed by torments, by idiocy, in senile impotence after twenty years of penal servitude, than I understand now, and what will I live for then? Why do I agree now to live like that? Oh, I knew I was a scoundrel when I stood over the Neva today at dawn!”

At last they both went out. It was hard for Dunya, but she loved him! She walked off, but after some fifty paces she turned around to look at him once more. He could still be seen. But when he reached the corner, he too turned around; for the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him, he impatiently and even with vexation waved his hand for her to go on, and turned sharply around the corner himself.

“I am wicked, I can see that,” he thought to himself, ashamed a minute later of his vexed wave of the hand to Dunya. “But why do they love me so, if I’m not worth it! Oh, if I were alone and no one loved me, and I myself had never loved anyone! None of this would have happened! But I wonder, will my soul really grow so humble in these coming fifteen or twenty years that I’ll whimper reverently before people, calling myself a robber at every word? Yes, exactly, exactly! That’s what they’re exiling me for now, that’s what they want… There they are, all scurrying up and down the street, and every one of them is a scoundrel and a robber by his very nature; worse than that, an idiot! But just try to spare me exile, and they’ll all go mad with noble indignation! Oh, how I hate them all!”

He fell deep into thought about this: “By what process can it come about that he will at last humble himself before all of them without reasoning, humble himself out of conviction! And why not, why not indeed? Of course, that’s how it must be. Won’t twenty years of unceasing oppression finish him off completely? Water wears away stone. And why, why live after that, why am I going now, when I know myself that it will all be exactly so, as in a book, and not otherwise!”

He was asking himself this question for perhaps the hundredth time since the evening before, but he kept going all the same.