 6. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Father Xyle of Detroit. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky Translated by Konstantz Garnet Part 6, Chapter 8 When he went into Sonia's room, it was already getting dark. All day Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dunia had been waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering Svidugailov's words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the conversation and tears of the two girls and how friendly they became. Dunia 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. Dunia 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 Dunia. Dunia'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. Dunia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her brother's room to wait him there. She kept thinking that he would come there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the dread of his committing suicide, and Dunia 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 Svidrigailov had said to her that 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. Even while 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 who told me to go to the crossroads. Why is it you are frightened now? It's come to that. 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. To see, Sonia, I've decided that it will be better so. There is one fact, but it's a long story, and there is 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, too. You know I am not going to porphyry. 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 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. 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 Liza Vetas. You will wear yourself, show me. So she had it on. At that moment, I remember two things like these two, a silver one and a little icon. 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 am 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, Ordunia? She'll be my nurse. Cross yourself. Say at least one prayer, Sonia, begged in a timid, broken voice. Well, 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 dam, shawl of which Marmaladov 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? 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, 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 he went to the hay market. He looked eagerly to the right and left, gazed intently at every object, and could not fix his attention on anything. Everything slipped away. In another week, another month, 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, company. 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. What am I thinking about? I am becoming a baby. I am showing off to myself. Why am I ashamed? Foo! People shove. That fat man, a Germany must be, who pushed against me. Does he know whom he pushed? There is 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 lacrimose 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 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 crossroads, 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 single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once, and the tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot. He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed down a second time. He is boozed, a youth near him observed. There was a roar of laughter. He is going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He is bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement, added a workman who was a little drunk. Quite a young man, too, observed a third, and a gentleman someone observed soberly. There's no knowing who is a gentleman and who isn't nowadays. These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, I am a murderer, which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and without looking round he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him. He had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the hay market he saw standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market place. She had followed him, then, on his painful way. Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew, once for all, that Sonia was with him forever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart, but he was just reaching the fatal place. He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third story. I shall be some time going up, he thought. He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration. Again, the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to collect himself, so as to enter like a man. But why, what for, he wondered, reflecting, if I must drink the cup, what difference does it make, the more revolting the better? He imagined for an instant the figure of the explosive lieutenant, Ilya Petrovich. Was he actually going to him? Couldn't he go to someone else? To Nikodim Fomich? Couldn't he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomich's lodgings? At least then it would be done privately. No, no, to the explosive lieutenant, if he must drink it, drink it off at once. Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office. There were very few people in it this time. Only a house porter and a peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen. Raskolnikov walked into the next room. Perhaps I still need not speak, passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner another clerk was seating himself. Zemitov was not there, nor of course Nikodim Fomich. No one in, Raskolnikov asked, addressing the person at the bureau. Whom do you want? Ah, not a sound was heard. Not a sight was seen, but I sent the Russian. How does it go in the fairy tale? I've forgotten. At your service! A familiar voice cried suddenly. Raskolnikov shuddered. The explosive lieutenant stood before him. He had just come in from the third room. Is it the hand of fate, thought Raskolnikov? Why is he here? You've come to see us! What about? cried Ilya Petrovich. He was obviously in an exceedingly good humor, and perhaps a trifle exhilarated. If it's on business, you are rather early. It's only a chance that I am here. However, I'll do what I can. I must admit, I... What is it? What is it? Excuse me. Footnote. Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after sunset, and that the last time Raskolnikov visited the police office at two in the afternoon, he was reproached for coming too late. Translator. Raskolnikov. Of course! Raskolnikov! You didn't imagine I'd forgotten! Don't think I'm like that! Rodion Rodionovich! That's it, isn't it? Rodion Romanovich. Yes, yes, of course. Rodion Romanovich. I was just getting at it. I made many inquiries about you. I assure you have been genuinely grieved since that, since I behaved like that. It was explained to me afterwards that you were a literary man, and a learned one too. It's so to say the first steps. Mercy on us. What literary or scientific man does not begin by some originality of conduct? My wife and I have the greatest respect for literature, and my wife, it's a genuine passion. Literature and art. If only a man is a gentleman, all the rest can be gained by talents, learning, good sense, genius. As for a hat, well, what does a hat matter? I can buy a hat as easily as I can a bun. It's under the hat. What the hat covers? I can't buy that. I was even meaning to come and apologize to you, but thought maybe you'd... But I am forgetting to ask you, is there anything you want, really? I hear your family have come. Yes, my mother and sister. I've even had the honor and happiness of meeting your sister, a highly cultivated and charming person. I confess, I was sorry I got so hot with you. There it is. What else for my looking suspiciously at your fainting fit? That affair has been cleared up splendidly. Bigotry and fanaticism. I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are changing or lodging on account of your family's arriving? No. I only looked in. I came to ask. I thought that I should find Zamatov here. Oh, yes, of course. You've made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zamatov is not here. Yes, we've lost Zamatov. He has not been here since yesterday. He quarreled with everyone on leaving, in the rudest way. He is a feather-headed youngster, that's all. One might have expected something from him, but there you know what they are, our brilliant young men. He wanted to go in for some examination, but it's only to talk and boast about it. It will go no further than that. Of course, it's a very different matter with you or Mr. Razumian. There, your friend. Your career is an intellectual one, and you won't be deterred by failure. For you, one may say, all the attractions of life, nihilest. You are an ascetic, a monk, a hermit, a book, a pen behind your ear, a learned researcher. That's where your spirit soars. I am the same way myself. Have you read Livingston's Travels? No. Oh, I have. There are a great many nihilists about nowadays. You know, and indeed, it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are they? I ask you, but we thought, you are not a nihilist, of course. Answer me openly. Openly. No. Believe me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself. Official duty is one thing, but you are thinking I am meant to say friendship is quite another? No, you're wrong. It's not friendship, but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of the love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound to feel myself a man and a citizen. You were asking about Zamatov. Zamatov will make a scandal in the French style in the house of bad reputation over a glass of champagne. That's all your Zamatov is good for. While I'm perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post, I am married and have children. I fulfill the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is he, may I ask, I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education, then these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous. Raskolnikov raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Ilya Petrovich, who had obviously been dining, were there for the most part a stream of empty sounds for him, but some of them he understood. He looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end. I mean those crop-headed wenches that talkative Ilya Petrovich continued. Midwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory one. They go to the academy, study anatomy, if I fall ill, am I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ilya Petrovich laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. It's an immoderate zeal for education, but once you're educated, that's enough. Why abuse it? Why insult honorable people as that scoundrel Zemitov does? Why did he insult me? I ask you. Look at these suicides, too. How common they are. You can't fancy. People spend their last half-penny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Still pavlich, I say. What was the name of that gentleman who shot himself? Svidr Gailov, someone answered from the other room with drowsy listlessness. Raskolnikov started. Svidr Gailov! Svidr Gailov has shot himself, he cried. What? Do you know Svidr Gailov? Yes, I knew him. He hadn't been here long. Yes, that's so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and all of a sudden shot himself in such a shocking way. He left in his notebook a few words, that he dies in full possession of his faculties, and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they say. How did you come to know him? I was acquainted. My sister was governess in his family, blah, blah, blah. Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had no suspicion? I saw him yesterday. He was drinking wine. I knew nothing. Raskolnikov felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling him. You've turned pale again. It's so stuffy here. Yes, I must go. Mother Raskolnikov, excuse my troubling you. Oh, not at all, as often as you like. It's a pleasure to see you, and I am glad to say so. Yevpetrovich held out his hand. I only wanted... I came to see Zemitov. I understand, I understand, and it's a pleasure to see you. I am very glad. Goodbye, Raskolnikov smiled. He went out. He reeled. He was overtaken with giddiness and did not know what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in the lower story kept up a shrill barking, and that a woman flung a rolling pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard. There not far from the entrance stood Sonya, pale and horror-stricken. She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of poignant agony, of despair in her face. She clashed her hands. His lips worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned, and went back to the police office. Ilya Petrovich had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs. Helloa, back again! Have you left something behind? What's the matter? Raskolnikov, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer. He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say something, but could not. Only incoherent sounds were audible. You are feeling ill! A chair! Here, sit down! Some water! Raskolnikov dropped onto a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the face of Ilya Petrovich, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought. It was I, began Raskolnikov, drink some water! Raskolnikov refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly, but distinctly said, It was I killed the old pawnbroker woman, and her sister, Liza Veta, with an ax, and robbed them. Ilya Petrovich opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides. Raskolnikov repeated his statement. End of Part 6, Chapter 8, Recording by Father Xile, D.M., Dr. Xile.net, D-R-Z-E-I-L-E.net. Crime and Punishment, Epilogue. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Anna Simon. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Translated by Konstantz Garnet. Epilogue. 1. Siberia. On the banks of a broad, solitary river stands a town, one of the administrative centres of Russia. In the town there is a fortress. In the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class convict, Rodion Raskolnikov, has been confined for nine months. Almost a year and a half has passed since his crime. There have been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered exactly, firmly and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the secret of the pledge, the piece of wood with a strip of metal, which was found in the murdered woman's hand. He described minutely how he had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its contents. He explained the mystery of Lizaveta's murder, described how Koch and after him the student knocked and repeated all they had said to one another, how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolai and Dmitry shouting, how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard of the Vostnichensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets in the purse under a stone without making use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the trinkets were like or even how many there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed incredible. That turned out to be in the purse three hundred and seventeen rubles and sixty copax. From being so long under the stone some of the most valuable notes lying up her most had suffered from the damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really not looked into the purse and so didn't know what was in it when he hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover, Raskolnikov's hypocondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by Dr Zosimov, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant. All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another element in the case. To the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand rubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost cause. The sentence, however, was more merciful than could have been expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself, but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration. There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally, the murder of Lisaveta served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis. A man commits two murders and forgets that the door is open. Finally, the confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by the false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanatism, and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal. No suspicions even. Parfere Petrovich fully kept his word. All this did much to soften the sentence. Of the circumstances, too, in the prisoner's favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow discovered and proved that while Raskolnikov was at the university, he had helped a poor, consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit old father whom he had been tamed almost from his thirteenth year, Raskolnikov had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral when he died. Raskolnikov's landlady bore witness, too, that when they had lived in another house at five corners, Raskolnikov had rescued two little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts made an impression in his favour. And in the end, the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a term of eight years only. At the very beginning of the trial, Raskolnikov's mother fell ill. Dunya and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during their trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg so as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time to see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna's illness was a strange, nervous one and was accompanied by a partial derangement of her intellect. When Dunya returned from her last interview with her brother, she had found her mother already ill in feverish delirium. That evening Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother's questions about Raskolnikov and made up a complete story for her mother's benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia on a business commission which would bring him in the end money and reputation. But they were struck by the fact that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the contrary, she had her own version of her son's sudden departure. She told them with tears how he had come to say goodbye to her, hinting that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts and that Razumihin had many very powerful enemies so that it was necessary for him to be in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured Razumihin that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was continually reading. She even read it aloud, almost took it to bed with her, but scarcely asked where Razumihin was, though the subject was obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken her suspicions. They began to be frightened at last that Pulcheria Alexandrovna's strange silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived on the hope of letters from her beloved Rodia. This was the cause of great uneasiness to Dunia. The idea occurred to her that her mother suspected that there was something terrible in her son's fate and was afraid to ask for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any case, Dunia saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of her faculties. It happened, once or twice, however, that Pulcheria Alexandrovna gave such a term to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her without mentioning where Rodia was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood lasted for a long time. Dunia saw at last that it was hard to receive her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely silent on certain points, but it became more and more evident that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dunia remembered her brothers telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her sleep on the night after her interview with Svirigailov and before the fatal day of the confession. Had not she made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his future. Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her, pretended to agree with her. She saw perhaps that they were pretending, but she still went on talking. Five months after Raskolnikov's confession he was sentenced. Razumihin and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last the moment of separation came. Razumihin swore to her brother that the separation should not be forever. Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years and saving up a certain sum to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every natural resource and in need of workers, active men, and capital. There they would settle in the town where Rudia was, and altogether would begin a new life. They all wept at parting. Raskolnikov had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great deal about his mother, and was constantly anxious about her. He worried so much about her that it alarmed Dunia. When he heard about his mother's illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia it was particularly reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by Svetogailov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to follow the party of convicts in which he was dispatched to Siberia. Not a word passed between Raskolnikov and her on the subject, but both knew it would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his sisters and Razumins fervent at the patience of their happy future together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their mother's illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he had last set off. Two months later Dunia was married to Razumin. It was a quiet and sorrowful wedding. Ravri Petrovich and Zosimov were invited, however. During all this period Razumin wore an air of resolute determination. Dunia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will. Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future. Both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Until then they rested their hopes on Sonia. Pulcheria Alexandrovna was delighted to give her blessing to Dunia's marriage with Razumin, but after the marriage she became even more melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumin told her how Raskolnikov had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father and how a year ago he had been burned and injured in rescuing two little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Pulcheria Alexandrovna's disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with strangers in the street, though Dunia always accompanied her. In public conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would begin the discourse about her son, his article, how it helped the student, how it had been burned at the fire, and so on. Dunia did not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid excitement, there was the risk of someone's recalling Raskolnikov's name and speaking of the recent trial. Pulcheria Alexandrovna found out the address of the mother of the two children, her son had saved, and insisted on going to see her. At last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes begin to cry suddenly, and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One morning she declared that by her reckoning Raja ought soon to be home, that she remembered when he said goodbye to her, he said that they must expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming, began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and put up new hangings, and so on. Dunia was anxious, but said nothing and helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual fancies, in joyful daydreams and tears, Pulcheria Alexandrovna was taken ill in the night, and by morning she was feverish and delirious. It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her son's terrible fate than they had supposed. For a long time Raskolnikov did not know of his mother's death, though her regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who rode every month to their Ozu means, and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At first they found Sonia's letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate brother's life. Sonia's letters were full of their most matter-of-fact detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Raskolnikov's surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts, that is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her, and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minute-ness. The picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but facts. But Dunia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news, especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly silent and not ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother, and that when, seeing that he'd guessed the truth, she told him at last of her death, he was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told him that, although he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off from everyone, he took a very direct and simple view of his new life, that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time, had no ill-founded hopes, as is so common in his position, and scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory. He did his work without shirking or seeking to do more. He was almost indifferent about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else, declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest that she had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy, that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him, and was unwilling to make any other arrangement, but that he lived so poorly and roughly not from any plan or design, but simply from inattention and indifference. Sonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits, had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and root to her, but that in the end these visits had become a habit and almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard room, to which he was brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to see him at work, either at the workshops or at the brick kilns or at the sheds on the banks of the Yurtish. About herself Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an indispensable person in many houses, but she did not mention that the authorities were, through her, interested in Raskolnikov, that his task was lightened and so on. At last the news came, Dunia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters, that he held aloof from every one, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of the hospital. II He was ill a long time, but it was not the horrors of prison life, not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships? He was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted he could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to him? The thin, cabbage soup with beetles floating in it. In the past as a student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head and party-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia was afraid of him. How could he be ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it, with his contemptuous, rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of. His pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself. He could have worn anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except a simple blunder which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just because he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through 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. A vague and objectless anxiety in the present and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life? What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive to live in order to exist? Why he had been ready a thousand times before to give 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 wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others. And if only fate would have sent him repentance, burning repentance that it would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning, oh, he would have 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 he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison. But now, in prison, in freedom, he thought over and criticized all his actions again, and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they had seen at the fatal time. In what way, he asked himself, was my theory stupider than others that has swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One is only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and my idea, will by no means seem so strange. Oh, skeptics and half-penny philosophers, why do you hold half way? Why does my action strike them as so horrible, he said to himself? Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime. Of course, the letter of the law was broken, and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law, and that's enough. Of course, in that case, many of the benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it, ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded, and so they were right, and I didn't, and so I had no right to have taken that step. It was only in that that he recognized his criminality, only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it. He suffered, too, from the question, why had he not killed himself? Why had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the desire to live so strong, and was it so hard to overcome it? Had Natsvili Gailov 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 had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions. He didn't understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future resurrection. He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than in freedom. But terrible agonies and privations, some of them, the tramps, for instance, had endured. Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine? For the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as he mighted to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass rounded and the birds singing in the bush. As he went on, he saw still more inexplicable examples. In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not want to see. He lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that surprised him, and he began, as it were, involuntarily, to notice much that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at him with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as ignorant Charles. But Raskolnikov could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two seminaries. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked and avoided by everyone. They even began to hate him at last. Why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime. Here a gentleman, they used to say. You shouldn't hack about with an axe. That's not a gentleman's work. The second week in Lent his turn came to take the sacrament with his gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A crawl broke out one 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 ought to be killed. He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy. Mr. Skolnikov awaited him calmly and silently. His eyebrows did not quiver. His face did not flinch. The guards succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would have been bloodshed. There was another question he could not decide. Why were they all so fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour. She rarely met them. Sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody knew her, and they knew that she'd come out to follow him. Knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents of pies and rolls. But by degrees, closer relations sprang up between them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations with the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. Little mother Sofia Semionovna, you're a dear, good little mother, calls branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them, and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round to watch her walking. They admired her too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her for help in their illnesses. She was in the hospital, from the middle of Lent, till after Easter. When it was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible, new, strange plague that had come to Europe from the deaths of Asia. All were to be destroyed, except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of man, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Man attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of their truth as these sufferers. Never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns, and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept and wrung his hand. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good. They did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other. The ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns. Men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land, too, was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were of pure chosen people, destined to find a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth. But no one had seen these men. No one had heard their words and their voices. Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so miserably. The impression of his feverish delirium persisted so long. The second week after Easter had come. There were warm, bright spring days. In the prison ward the grating windows and the which the sentinel paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during his illness. Each time she had to obtain permission, and it was difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the ward. One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. On waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day after. He noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was discharged. Upon reaching the prison he learned from the convict that Sophia Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to go out. He was very uneasy, and sent to inquire after her. He soon learned that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her, Sonia sent him a penciled note, telling him that she was much better, that she had a slight cold, and that she would soon, very soon come and see 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, he went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster, and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only three of them sent. One of the convicts went with regard to the fortress to fetch a tool. The other began getting the wood ready and laying it in the kiln. As Kolnikov came out of the shed onto the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed, and began gazing at the wide, deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before him. The sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black specks, the nomads tense. There there was freedom. There other men were living, utterly unlike those here. There time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed. As Kolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed into daydreams, into contemplation. He thought of nothing but a vague restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him. She had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early. The morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old bernouse and the green shawl. Her face still showed signs of illness. It was thinner and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to him, and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand as though it repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet her, and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him, and went away deeply grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her, and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, 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 to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened, and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him, trembling, but at the same moment she understood, and the light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew, and had no doubt, that he loved her beyond everything, and that at last the moment had come. They wanted to speak, but could not. Tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin, but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love. The heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other. They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before them. But he had risen again, and he knew it, and felt it in all his being, 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 fancied that day that all the convict who had been his enemies looked at him differently. He had even entered into talk with them, and they answered him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound to be so. Wasn't everything now bound to be changed? He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her, and wounded her hard. He remembered her pale and thin little face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now. He knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, all the agonies of the past? Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously. He was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory, and something quite different would work itself out 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 the raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the Gospel and pester him with books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject, and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it himself, not long before his illness, and she brought in the book without a word. Till now he had not opened it. He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind. Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings? Her aspirations at least? She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken ill again. But she was so happy, and so unexpectedly happy, that she was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, only seven years. At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready to look on those seven years as though there were seven days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story. The story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from 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 is ended. End of the epilogue. End of crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnet.