Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (book club recommendations TXT) 📖

“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.”

“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?”

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 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 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 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’s boozed,” a youth near him observed.

There was a roar of laughter.

“He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He’s 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’s 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,