Though Raskolnikov was looking at Sonya as he said this, he was no longer concerned with whether she understood or not. The fever had him wholly in its grip. He was in some sort of gloomy ecstasy. (Indeed, he had not talked with anyone for a very long time!) Sonya understood that this gloomy catechism had become his faith and law.
“Then I realized, Sonya,” he went on ecstatically, “that power is given only to the one who dares to reach down and take it. Here there is one thing, one thing only: one has only to dare! And then a thought took shape in me, for the first time in my life, one that nobody had ever thought before me! Nobody! It suddenly came to me as bright as the sun: how is it that no man before now has dared or dares yet, while passing by all this absurdity, quite simply to take the whole thing by the tail and whisk it off to the devil! I... I wanted to dare, and I killed...I just wanted to dare, Sonya, that's the whole reason!”
“Oh, be still, be still!” cried Sonya, clasping her hands. “You deserted God, and God has stricken you, and given you over to the devil! . . .”
“By the way, Sonya, when I was lying in the dark and imagining it all, was it the devil confounding me, eh?”
“Be still! Don't laugh, blasphemer, you understand nothing, simply nothing! Oh, Lord! Nothing, he understands nothing!”
“Be still, Sonya, I'm not laughing at all, I know myself that a devil was dragging me. Be still, Sonya, be still!” he repeated gloomily and insistently. “I know everything. I thought it all out and whispered it all out when I was lying there in the dark...I argued it all out with myself, to the last little trace, and I know everything, everything! And I was so sick, so sick of all this babble then! I wanted to forget everything and start anew, Sonya, and to stop babbling. Do you really think I went into it headlong, like a fool? No, I went into it like a bright boy, and that's what ruined me! And do you really think I didn't at least know, for example, that since I'd begun questioning and querying myself: do I have the right to have power?—it meant that I do not have the right to have power? Or that if I pose the question: is man a louse?—it means that for me man is not a louse, but that he is a louse for the one to whom it never occurs, who goes straight ahead without any questions...Because, if I tormented myself for so many days: would Napoleon have gone ahead or not?—it means I must already have felt clearly that I was not Napoleon...I endured all, all the torment of all this babble, Sonya, and I longed to shake it all off my back: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it even to myself! It was not to help my mother that I killed—nonsense! I did not kill so that, having obtained means and power, I could become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply killed—killed for myself, for myself alone—and whether I would later become anyone's benefactor, or would spend my life like a spider, catching everyone in my web and sucking the life-sap out of everyone, should at that moment have made no difference to me! ... And it was not money above all that I wanted when I killed, Sonya; not money so much as something else...I know all this now...Understand me: perhaps, continuing on that same path, I would never again repeat the murder. There was something else I wanted to know; something else was nudging my arm. I wanted to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like all the rest, or a man? Would I be able to step over, or not! Would I dare to reach down and take, or not? Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right...”
“To kill? The right to kill?” Sonya clasped her hands.
“Ahh, Sonya!” he cried irritably, and was about to make some objection to her, but remained scornfully silent. “Don't interrupt me, Sonya! I wanted to prove only one thing to you: that the devil did drag me there then, but afterwards he explained to me that I had no right to go there, because I'm exactly the same louse as all the rest! He made a mockery of me, and so I've come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I weren't a louse, would I have come to you? Listen: when I went to the old woman that time, I went only to try...You should know that!”
“And you killed! Killed!”
“But how did I kill, really? Is that any way to kill? Is that how one goes about killing, the way I went about it then? Some day I'll tell you how I went about it. . . Was it the old crone I killed? I killed myself, not the old crone! Whopped myself right then and there, forever! ... And it was the devil killed the old crone, not me...Enough, enough, Sonya, enough! Let me be,” he suddenly cried out in convulsive anguish, “let me be!”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and pressed his head with his palms as with a pincers.
“Such suffering!” burst in a painful wail from Sonya.
“Well, what to do now, tell me!” he said, suddenly raising his head and looking at her, his face hideously distorted by despair.
“What to do!” she exclaimed, suddenly jumping up from her place, and her eyes, still full of tears, suddenly flashed. “Stand up!” (She seized him by the shoulder; he rose, looking at her almost in amazement.) “Go now, this minute, stand in the crossroads, bow down, and first kiss the earth you've defiled, then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and say aloud to everyone: 'I have killed!' Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you go?” she kept asking him, all trembling as if in a fit, seizing both his hands, squeezing them tightly in her own, and looking at him with fiery eyes.
He was amazed and even struck by her sudden ecstasy.
“So it's hard labor, is it, Sonya? I must go and denounce myself?” he asked gloomily.
“Accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that's what you must do.”
“No! I won't go to them, Sonya.”
“And live, how will you live? What will you live with?” Sonya exclaimed. “Is it possible now? How will you talk to your mother? (Oh, and them, what will become of them now!) But what am I saying! You've already abandoned your mother and sister. You have, you've already abandoned them. Oh, Lord!” she cried, “he already knows it all himself! But how, how can one live with no human being! What will become of you now!”
“Don't be a child, Sonya,” he said softly. “How am I guilty before them? Why should I go? What should I tell them? It's all just a phantom...They expend people by the million themselves, and what's more they consider it a virtue. They're cheats and scoundrels, Sonya! ... I won't go. And what should I say: that I killed but didn't dare take the money, that I hid it under a stone?” he added, with a caustic grin. “They'll just laugh at me; they'll say I was a fool not to take it. A coward and a fool! They won't understand a thing, Sonya, not a thing—and they're not worthy to understand. Why should I go? I won't go. Don't be a child, Sonya . . .”
“You'll suffer too much, too much,” she repeated, stretching out her hands to him in desperate supplication.
“Still, maybe I've slapped myself with it,” he remarked gloomily, as if deep in thought, “maybe I'm still a man and not a louse, and was being too quick to condemn myself...I'll still fight.”
A haughty smile was forcing itself to his lips.
“To bear such suffering! And for your whole life, your whole life! . . .”
“I'll get used to it . . .” he said, grimly and pensively. “Listen,” he began after a moment, “enough tears; it's time for business: I came to tell you that they're after me now, trying to catch me . . .”
“Ah!” Sonya cried fearfully.
“So you cry out! You yourself want me to go to hard labor, and now you're afraid? Only here's what: I'm not going to let them get me. I'll still fight them; they won't be able to do anything. They don't have any real evidence. I was in great danger yesterday, I thought I was already ruined, but things got better today. All their evidence is double-ended; I mean, I can turn their accusations in my own favor, understand? And I will, because now I know how it's done...But they'll certainly put me in jail. If it weren't for one incident, they might have put me in today; certainly, they may still even do it today...Only it's nothing, Sonya: I'll sit there, and then they'll let me go...because they don't have one real proof, and they never will, I promise you. And they can't keep anyone behind bars with what they have. Well, enough...I just wanted you to know...I'll try to manage things with my mother and sister somehow so as to reassure them and not frighten them...My sister now seems provided for...so my mother is, too...Well, that's all. Be careful, though. Will you come and visit me when I'm in jail?”