“Oh, I will! I will!”
The two were sitting side by side, sad and crushed, as if they had been washed up alone on a deserted shore after a storm. He looked at Sonya and felt how much of her love was on him, and, strangely, he suddenly felt it heavy and painful to be loved like that. Yes, it was a strange and terrible feeling! On his way to see Sonya, he had felt she was his only hope and his only way out; he had thought he would be able to unload at least part of his torment; but now, suddenly, when her whole heart turned to him, he suddenly felt and realized that he was incomparably more unhappy than he had been before.
“Sonya,” he said, “you'd better not visit me when I'm in jail.”
Sonya did not reply; she was weeping. Several minutes passed.
“Do you have a cross on you?” she suddenly asked unexpectedly, as if suddenly remembering.
At first he did not understand the question.
“You don't, do you? Here, take this cypress one. I have another, a brass one, Lizaveta's. Lizaveta and I exchanged crosses; she gave me her cross, and I gave her my little icon. I'll wear Lizaveta's now, and you can have this one. Take it...it's mine! It's mine!” she insisted. “We'll go to suffer together, and we'll bear the cross together! . . .”
“Give it to me!” said Raskolnikov. He did not want to upset her. But he immediately drew back the hand he had held out to take the cross.
“Not now, Sonya. Better later,” he added, to reassure her.
“Yes, yes, that will be better, better,” she picked up enthusiastically. “When you go to your suffering, then you'll put it on. You'll come to me, I'll put it on you, we'll pray and go.”
At that moment someone knocked three times at the door.
“Sofya Semyonovna, may I come in?” someone's very familiar and polite voice was heard.
Sonya rushed to the door in fear. The blond physiognomy of Mr. Lebezyatnikov peeked into the room.
V
Lebezyatnikov looked alarmed. “I must see you, Sofya Semyonovna. Excuse me...I thought I'd find you here,” he turned suddenly to Raskolnikov, “that is, I thought nothing...of the sort... but I precisely thought... Katerina Ivanovna has gone out of her mind there at our place,” he suddenly said abruptly to Sonya, abandoning Raskolnikov.
Sonya gave a cry.
“That is, it seems so anyway. However...We don't know what to do, that's the thing! She came back...it seems she was thrown out of somewhere, maybe beaten as well... it seems so at least... She ran to see Semyon Zakharych's superior but didn't find him at home; he was out having dinner at some other general's...Imagine, she flew over to where this dinner was...to this other general's, and imagine—she really insisted, she called Semyon Zakharych's superior out and, it seems, away from the table at that. You can imagine what came of it. Naturally, she was chased away; and, according to her, she swore and threw something at him. Which is quite likely... How it happened that she wasn't arrested is beyond me! Now she's telling everyone about it, including Amalia Ivanovna, only it's hard to understand her, she's shouting and thrashing about... Ah, yes: she's saying and shouting that since everyone has abandoned her now, she'll take the children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and so will she, and collect money, and stand every day under the general's window...'Let them see,' she says, 'how the noble children of a civil servant are going about begging in the streets!' She beats all the children, and they cry. She's teaching Lenya to sing 'The Little Farm,' and the boy to dance, and Polina Mikhailovna as well; she's tearing up all the clothes, making them some sort of little hats like actors; and she herself is going to carry a basin and bang on it for music...She won't listen to anything...Imagine, you see? It's simply impossible.”
Lebezyatnikov would have gone on longer, but Sonya, who had been listening to him almost without breathing, suddenly snatched her cape and hat and ran out of the room, putting them on as she ran. Raskolnikov went out after her, and Lebezyatnikov after him.
“She's certainly gone mad!” he said to Raskolnikov, as they came out to the street. “I just didn't want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna, so I said 'it seems,' but there isn't any doubt. It's those little knobs they say come out on the brain in consumption; too bad I don't know any medicine. By the way, I tried to convince her, but she won't listen to anything.”
“You told her about the little knobs?”
“I mean, not exactly about the little knobs. Besides, she wouldn't have understood anything. But what I say is this: if one convinces a person logically that he essentially has nothing to cry about, he'll stop crying. That's clear. Or are you convinced that he won't?”
“Life would be too easy that way,” Raskolnikov replied.
“I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, of course it's quite hard for Katerina Ivanovna to understand, but do you know that in Paris serious experiments have already been performed with regard to the possibility of curing mad people by working through logical conviction alone? A professor there, who died recently, a serious scientist, fancied that such treatment should be possible. His basic idea is that there's no specific disorder in a mad person's organism, but that madness is, so to speak, a logical error, an error of judgment, a mistaken view of things. He would gradually prove his patient wrong, and imagine, they say he achieved results! But since he used showers at the same time, the results of the treatment are, of course, subject to doubt...Or so it seems.”
Raskolnikov had long since stopped listening. Having reached his house, he nodded to Lebezyatnikov and turned in at the gateway. Lebezyatnikov came to his senses, looked around, and ran on.
Raskolnikov walked into his closet and stood in the middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked around at the shabby, yellowish wallpaper, the dust, his sofa...Some sharp, incessant rapping was coming from the courtyard, as if something, some nail, was being hammered in somewhere...He went to the window, stood on tiptoe, and for a long time, with an extremely attentive look, peered down into the courtyard. But the courtyard was empty; whoever was doing the rapping could not be seen. In the wing to the left, open windows could be seen here and there; pots with scrawny geraniums. Laundry was hanging outside the windows...He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.
Never, never before had he felt himself so terribly lonely!
Yes, he felt once again that he might indeed come to hate Sonya, and precisely now, when he had made her more miserable. Why had he gone to her to beg for her tears? Why was it so necessary for him to eat up her life? Oh, meanness!
“I'll stay alone!” he suddenly said resolutely. “And she won't come to the jail!”
After about five minutes, he raised his head and smiled strangely. The thought was a strange one: “Perhaps hard labor would indeed be better,” it had suddenly occurred to him.
He did not remember how long he had been sitting in his room with vague thoughts crowding in his head. Suddenly the door opened and Avdotya Romanovna came in. She stopped first and looked at him from the threshold, as he had done earlier at Sonya's; then she went and sat down on a chair facing him, in the same place as yesterday. He looked at her silently and somehow unthinkingly.
“Don't be angry, brother, I've come only for a moment,” said Dunya. The expression of her face was thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were clear and gentle. He could see that this one, too, had come to him with love.
“Brother, I know everything now, everything. Dmitri Prokofych has explained and told me everything. You are being persecuted and tormented because of a stupid and odious suspicion...Dmitri Prokofych told me that there isn't any danger and that you needn't take it with such horror. I disagree. I fully understand all the resentment you must feel, and that this indignation may leave its mark forever. That is what I am afraid of. I do not judge and have no right to judge you for abandoning us, and forgive me if I reproached you before. I feel in myself that if I had such a great grief, I, too, would leave everyone. I won't tell mother about this, but I'll talk about you constantly, and I'll tell her, on your behalf, that you will come very soon. Don't suffer over her; I will set her at ease; but don't make her suffer either—come at least once; remember she's your mother! I've come now only to say” (Dunya began to get up) “that in case you should need me for something, or should need... my whole life, or...call me, and I'll come. Good-bye!”