“I came to speak of something,” Raskolnikov said aloud, frowning. He got up and went to Sonia. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His face was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage determination in it.
“I have abandoned my family to-day,” he said, “my mother and sister. I am not going to see them. I’ve broken with them completely.”
“What for?” asked Sonia amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother and sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse. She heard his news almost with horror.
“I have only you now,” he added. “Let us go together. … I’ve come to you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!”
His eyes glittered “as though he were mad,” Sonia thought, in her turn.
“Go where?” she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.
“How do I know? I only know it’s the same road, I know that and nothing more. It’s the same goal!”
She looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy.
“No one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you.”
“I don’t understand,” whispered Sonia.
“You’ll understand later. Haven’t you done the same? You, too, have transgressed … have had the strength to transgress. You have laid hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life … your own (it’s all the same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding, but you’ll end in the Hay Market. … But you won’t be able to stand it, and if you remain alone you’ll go out of your mind like me. You are like a mad creature already. So we must go together on the same road! Let us go!”
“What for? What’s all this for?” said Sonia, strangely and violently agitated by his words.
“What for? Because you can’t remain like this, that’s why! You must look things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a child and cry that God won’t allow it. What will happen, if you should really be taken to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in consumption, she’ll soon die and the children? Do you mean to tell me Polenka won’t come to grief? Haven’t you seen children here at the street corners sent out by their mothers to beg? I’ve found out where those mothers live and in what surroundings. Children can’t remain children there! At seven the child is vicious and a thief. Yet children, you know, are the image of Christ: ‘theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.’ He bade us honour and love them, they are the humanity of the future. …”
“What’s to be done, what’s to be done?” repeated Sonia, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.
“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that’s all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don’t understand? You’ll understand later. … Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap! … That’s the goal, remember that! That’s my farewell message. Perhaps it’s the last time I shall speak to you. If I don’t come to-morrow, you’ll hear of it all, and then remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you’ll understand perhaps what they meant. If I come to-morrow, I’ll tell you who killed Lizaveta. … Good-bye.”
Sonia started with terror.
“Why, do you know who killed her?” she asked, chilled with horror, looking wildly at him.
“I know and will tell … you, only you. I have chosen you out. I’m not coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I chose you out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when Lizaveta was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don’t shake hands. To-morrow!”
He went out. Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like one insane and felt it. Her head was going round.
“Good heavens, how does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those words mean? It’s awful!” But at the same time the idea did not enter her head, not for a moment! “Oh, he must be terribly unhappy! … He has abandoned his mother and sister. … What for? What has happened? And what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He had kissed her foot and said … said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live without her. … Oh, merciful heavens!”
Sonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up from time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish sleep and dreamt of Polenka, Katerina Ivanovna and Lizaveta, of reading the gospel and him … him with pale face, with burning eyes … kissing her feet, weeping.
On the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia’s room from Madame Resslich’s flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the canal advertising it to let. Sonia had long been accustomed to the room’s being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidrigailov had been standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When Raskolnikov went out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it to the door that led to Sonia’s room. The conversation had struck him as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it—so much so that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but might listen in comfort.
