Prestuplenie i nakazanie. English

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  II

  He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, notthe hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothesthat crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships!he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could atleast reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food tohim--the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as astudent he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suitedto his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamedof his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia?Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet hewas ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it withhis contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and hisfetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It waswounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if hecould have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, evenshame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperatedconscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, excepta simple _blunder_ which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed justbecause he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to griefthrough some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to"the idiocy" of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.

  Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future acontinual sacrifice leading to nothing--that was all that lay beforehim. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years hewould only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he tolive for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To livein order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before togive up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy.Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wantedmore. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that hehad thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.

  And if only fate would have sent him repentance--burning repentance thatwould have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, theawful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he wouldhave been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life.But he did not repent of his crime.

  At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as hehad raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison.But now in prison, _in freedom_, he thought over and criticised all hisactions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesqueas they had seemed at the fatal time.

  "In what way," he asked himself, "was my theory stupider than othersthat have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One hasonly to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluencedby commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange.Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!

  "Why does my action strike them as so horrible?" he said to himself. "Isit because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is atrest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the lawwas broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of thelaw... and that's enough. Of course, in that case many of thebenefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead ofinheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. Butthose men succeeded and so _they were right_, and I didn't, and so Ihad no right to have taken that step."

  It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the factthat he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.

  He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Whyhad he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was thedesire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had notSvidrigailov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?

  In misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that,at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he hadperhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself andhis convictions. He didn't understand that that consciousness might bethe promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his futureresurrection.

  He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which hecould not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked athis fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life andprized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more inprison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some ofthem, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much fora ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden awayin some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, andlonged to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of thegreen grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on hesaw still more inexplicable examples.

  In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did notwant to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsomeand unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much thatsurprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice muchthat he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all wasthe terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. Theyseemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they athim with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of hisisolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasonswere so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, politicalprisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest asignorant churls; but Raskolnikov could not look upon them like that.He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than thePoles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a formerofficer and two seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly.He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him atlast--why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despisedand laughed at his crime.

  "You're a gentleman," they used to say. "You shouldn't hack about withan axe; that's not a gentleman's work."

  The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with hisgang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke outone day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.

  "You're an infidel! You don't believe in God," they shouted. "You oughtto be killed."

  He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted tokill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed athim in a perfect frenzy. Raskolnikov awaited him calmly and silently;his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guardsucceeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there wouldhave been bloodshed.

  There was another question he could not decide: why were they all sofond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely metthem, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yeteverybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow _him_,knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them noparticular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presentsof pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up betweenthem and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to theirrelations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at theirinstructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wivesand sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visitedRaskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, theyall took off their hats to her. "Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, youare our dear, good little mother," coarse branded criminals said to thatfrail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone wasdelighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned roundto watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, infact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to herfor help in their illnesses.

  He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. Whenhe was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverishand delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to aterrible
new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths ofAsia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sortsof microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes wereendowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at oncemad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectualand so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, neverhad they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, theirmoral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peopleswent mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understandone another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretchedlooking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrunghis hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what toconsider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whomto justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. Theygathered together in armies against one another, but even on the marchthe armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be brokenand the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, bitingand devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long inthe towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who wassummoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned,because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and theycould not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreedon something, swore to keep together, but at once began on somethingquite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another,fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. Allmen and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread andmoved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the wholeworld. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race anda new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen thesemen, no one had heard their words and their voices.

  Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory somiserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long.The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright springdays; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinelpaced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice duringhis illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it wasdifficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especiallyin the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at thewindows of the ward.

  One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. Onwaking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in thedistance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone.Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered andmoved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the dayafter; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he wasdischarged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts thatSofya Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to go out.

  He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt thather illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her,Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better,that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come andsee him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.

  Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o'clock, hewent off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabasterand where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were onlythree of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to thefortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready andlaying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on to the riverbank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at thewide deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened beforehim, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank.In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like blackspecks, the nomads' tents. There there was freedom, there other men wereliving, utterly unlike those here; there time itself seemed to standstill, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed.Raskolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, intocontemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excitedand troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come upnoiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; themorning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and thegreen shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner andpaler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her handwith her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her handto him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he wouldrepel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, alwaysseemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughouther visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeplygrieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glanceat her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They werealone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.

  How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed toseize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms roundher knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and sheturned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the samemoment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into hereyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything andthat at last the moment had come....

  They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. Theywere both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with thedawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They wererenewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for theheart of the other.

  They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years towait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness beforethem! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all hisbeing, while she--she only lived in his life.

  On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fanciedthat day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at himdifferently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answeredhim in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was boundto be so. Wasn't everything now bound to be changed?

  He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented herand wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face.But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with whatinfinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all,_all_ the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentenceand imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling anexternal, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could notthink for long together of anything that evening, and he could not haveanalysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had steppedinto the place of theory and something quite different would work itselfout in his mind.

  Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically.The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read theraising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worryhim about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him withbooks. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subjectand had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for ithimself not long before his illness and she brought him the book withouta word. Till now he had not opened it.

  He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: "Canher convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations atleast...."

  She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was takenill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she wasalmost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, _only_ seven years! Atthe beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both readyto look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did notknow that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he wouldhave to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, greatsuffering.

  But that is the beginni
ng of a new story--the story of the gradualrenewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passingfrom one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life.That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story isended.