Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky [best books to read for women TXT] 📗

But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word that I am a criminal? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, that’s what they are sending me there for, that’s what they want. Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they’d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!’

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He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately—humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but still he went.

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Chapter VIII

When he went into Sonia’s room, it was already getting dark. All day Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering Svidrigaïlov’s words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became. Dounia gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Sonia, first with his confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it; she would go with him wherever fate might send him.

Dounia did not ask, but she knew it was so. She looked at Sonia almost with reverence and at first almost embarrassed her by it. Sonia was almost on the point of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to look at Dounia. Dounia’s gracious image when she had bowed to her so attentively and respectfully at their first meeting in Raskolnikov’s room had remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her life.

Dounia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her brother’s room to await him there; she kept 920 of 967

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thinking that he would come there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the dread of his committing suicide, and Dounia too feared it. But they had spent the day trying to persuade each other that that could not be, and both were less anxious while they were together. As soon as they parted, each thought of nothing else. Sonia remembered how Svidrigaïlov had said to her the day before that Raskolnikov had two alternatives—

Siberia or … Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and his lack of faith.

‘Is it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to make him live?’ she thought at last in despair.

Meanwhile the sun was setting. Sonia was standing in dejection, looking intently out of the window, but from it she could see nothing but the unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last when she began to feel sure of his death—he walked into the room.

She gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned pale.

‘Yes,’ said Raskolnikov, smiling. ‘I have come for your cross, Sonia. It was you told me to go to the cross-roads; why is it you are frightened now it’s come to that?’

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Sonia gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone and the words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though to avoid meeting her eyes.

‘You see, Sonia, I’ve decided that it will be better so.

There is one fact…. But it’s a long story and there’s no need to discuss it. But do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid brutish faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their stupid questions, which I shall have to answer—they’ll point their fingers at me…. Tfoo! You know I am not going to Porfiry, I am sick of him. I’d rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how I shall surprise him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be cooler; I’ve become too irritable of late. You know I was nearly shaking my fist at my sister just now, because she turned to take a last look at me. It’s a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming to! Well, where are the crosses?’

He seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay still or concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to gallop after one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled slightly.

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Without a word Sonia took out of the drawer two crosses, one of cypress wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over herself and over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck.

‘It’s the symbol of my taking up the cross,’ he laughed.

‘As though I had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the peasant one; the copper one, that is Lizaveta’s—you will wear yourself, show me! So she had it on … at that moment? I remember two things like these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw them back on the old woman’s neck. Those would be appropriate now, really, those are what I ought to put on now…. But I am talking nonsense and forgetting what matters; I’m somehow forgetful…. You see I have come to warn you, Sonia, so that you might know … that’s all— that’s all I came for. But I thought I had more to say. You wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I am going to prison and you’ll have your wish. Well, what are you crying for? You too? Don’t. Leave off! Oh, how I hate it all!’

But his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her. ‘Why is she grieving too?’ he thought to himself.

‘What am I to her? Why does she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or Dounia? She’ll be my nurse.’

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‘Cross yourself, say at least one prayer,’ Sonia begged in a timid broken voice.

‘Oh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Sonia, sincerely….’

But he wanted to say something quite different.

He crossed himself several times. Sonia took up her shawl and put it over her head. It was the green drap de dames shawl of which Marmeladov had spoken, ‘the family shawl.’ Raskolnikov thought of that looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He was frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that Sonia meant to go with him.

‘What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I’ll go alone,’ he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he moved towards the door. ‘What’s the use of going in procession?’ he muttered going out.

Sonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said good-bye to her; he had forgotten her.

A poignant and rebellious doubt surged in his heart.

‘Was it right, was it right, all this?’ he thought again as he went down the stairs. ‘Couldn’t he stop and retract it all … and not go?’

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But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn’t ask himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the middle of the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had shouted at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike him then.

‘Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her—on business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I was going; but where was the need?

Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I’ve sunk! No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!’

He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it went to the Hay Market.

He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. ‘In another week, another month 925 of 967

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I shall be driven in a prison van over this bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember this!’

slipped into his mind. ‘Look at this sign! How shall I read those letters then? It’s written here ‘Campany,’ that’s a thing to remember, that letter a and to look at it again in a month—how shall I look at it then? What shall I be feeling and thinking then? … How trivial it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be interesting … in its way … (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how people shove!

that fat man—a German he must be—who pushed against me, does he know whom he pushed? There’s a peasant woman with a baby, begging. It’s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here’s a five copeck piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here … take it, my good woman!’

‘God bless you,’ the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.

He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to be in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he would not 926 of 967

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have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There was a ring round him.

Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.

He suddenly recalled Sonia’s words, ‘Go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world, ‘I am a murderer.’’ He trembled, remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a