Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Соавторы: Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Текущая страница: 43 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

Epilogue

I

Siberia. On the bank of a wide, desolate river stands a town, one of the administrative centers of Russia; in the town there is a fortress; in the fortress, a prison. <sup>[161]161
  The setting and conditions of Raskolnikov's hard labor are drawn from Dostoevsky's own experiences as a convict. The four years he spent in prison at Omsk, on the Irtysh River, are described in Notes from the Dead House.


[Закрыть]</sup> In the prison, already confined for nine months, is exiled convict of the second class Rodion Raskolnikov. Almost a year and a half has passed since the day of his crime.

The court proceedings in his case went without great difficulties. The criminal firmly, precisely, and clearly supported his statement, without confusing the circumstances, without softening them in his favor, without distorting the facts, without forgetting the slightest detail. He recounted the whole process of the murder to the last trace: explained the mystery of the pledge(the piece of wood with the metal strip), which had been found in the murdered woman's hand; told in detail how he had taken the keys from the old woman, described the keys, described the trunk and what it was filled with, even enumerated some of the particular objects that were in it; explained the riddle of Lizaveta's murder; told how Koch had come and knocked, and the student after him, and repeated everything they had said between themselves; told how he, the criminal, had then run down the stairs and heard the shrieks of Mikolka and Mitka; how he had hidden in the empty apartment, then gone home; and in conclusion he pointed them to the stone in the courtyard on Voznesensky Prospect, near the gateway, under which the articles and purse were found. In short, it turned out to be a clear case. The investigators and judges were very surprised, incidentally, that he had hidden the purse and articles under the stone without making any use of them, and most of all that he not only did not remember in detail all the things he had actually carried off, but was even mistaken as to their number. Indeed, the circumstance that he had not once opened the purse and did not even know exactly how much money was in it appeared incredible (there turned out to be three hundred and seventeen silver roubles and three twenty-kopeck pieces in the purse; from lying so long under the stone, some of the topmost bills, the largest, had become quite damaged). For a long time they strove to discover why the accused would lie precisely about this one circumstance, when he had confessed voluntarily and truthfully to everything else. Finally, some of them (especially from among the psychologists) even admitted the possibility that he had indeed not looked into the purse and therefore did not know what was in it, and thus, without knowing, had gone and put it under the stone, but from this they concluded at once that the crime itself could not have occurred otherwise than in some sort of temporary insanity, including, so to speak, a morbid monomania of murder and robbery, with no further aim or calculation of profit. This fell in opportunely with the latest fashionable theory of temporary insanity, which in our time they so often try to apply to certain criminals. Furthermore, Raskolnikov's long-standing hypochondriac state of mind was attested to with precision by many witnesses, by Dr. Zossimov, former friends, the landlady, the maid. All this contributed greatly to the conclusion that Raskolnikov was not quite like the ordinary murderer, outlaw, and robber, but that something else was involved. To the great annoyance of those who defended this opinion, the criminal did almost nothing to defend himself; to the ultimate questions of precisely what had inclined him to homicide and what had prompted him to commit robbery, he answered quite clearly, with the crudest exactitude, that the cause of it all lay in his bad situation, his poverty and helplessness, his wish to fortify the first steps of his life's career with the help of the three thousand roubles, at least, that he counted on finding at the murdered woman's. He had resolved on the murder as a result of his frivolous and fainthearted nature, further exasperated by hardship and failure. And to the question of what precisely had prompted him to come and confess his guilt, he answered directly that it was sincere repentance. There was something almost crude about it all . . .

The sentence nevertheless turned out to be more merciful than might have been expected, given the crime committed, perhaps precisely because the criminal not only did not try to justify himself, but even seemed to show a desire to inculpate himself still more. All the strange and particular circumstances of the case were taken into consideration. The criminal's illness and distress prior to committing the crime were not subject to the least doubt. That he had not made use of what he had stolen was attributed partly to the influence of awakened repentance, partly to the not quite sound state of his mental capacities at the time the murder was committed. The circumstance of the accidental killing of Lizaveta even served as an example in support of the latter suggestion: the man commits two murders, and at the same time forgets that the door is standing open! Finally, the confession of his guilt, at the very time when the case had become extraordinarily tangled as a result of the false self-accusation of a dispirited fanatic (Nikolai), and when, moreover, there was not only no clear evidence against the real criminal, but hardly even any suspicion (Porfiry Petrovich had fully kept his word)—all this contributed in the end to mitigating the accused man's sentence.

Besides which, other circumstances quite unexpectedly came out that greatly favored the accused. The former student Razumikhin dug up information somewhere and presented proofs that the criminal Raskolnikov, while at the university, had used his last resources to help a poor and consumptive fellow student, and had practically supported him for half a year. And when the student died, he had looked after his surviving old and paralytic father (whom his dead friend had fed and supported by his own efforts almost since the age of thirteen), finally placed the old man in a hospital, and when he died as well, buried him. All this information had a certain favorable influence on the deciding of Raskolnikov's fate. His former landlady, the mother of Raskolnikov's late fiancée, the widow Zarnitsyn, also testified that while they were still living in the other house, at Five Corners, Raskolnikov, during a fire one night, had carried two small children out of an apartment already in flames and had been burned in the process. This fact was carefully investigated and quite well attested to by many witnesses. In short, the outcome was that the criminal was sentenced to penal servitude of the second class for a term of only eight years, in consideration of his having come to confess his guilt and other mitigating circumstances.

At the very beginning of the proceedings, Raskolnikov's mother became ill. Dunya and Razumikhin found it possible to take her away from Petersburg for the whole time of the trial. Razumikhin chose a town on a railway line, and only a short distance from Petersburg, so that he could follow regularly all the circumstances of the proceedings and at the same time see Avdotya Romanovna as often as possible. Pulcheria Alexandrovna's illness was of some strange, nervous sort, and was accompanied by something like madness, at least partial, if not complete. Dunya, on coming home from her last meeting with her brother, had found her mother already quite ill, in fever and delirium. That same evening she arranged with Razumikhin how precisely to answer her mother's questions about her brother, and they even invented a whole story for her mother about Raskolnikov going somewhere far away, to the Russian border, on some private mission that would finally bring him both money and fame. But they were struck that Pulcheria Alexandrovna never asked them anything about any of it, either then or later. On the contrary, she turned out to have a whole story of her own about her son's sudden departure; she would tell with tears of how he had come to say good-bye to her; she would let it be known by hints that she alone was informed of many quite important and mysterious circumstances, and that Rodya had many quite powerful enemies, so that he had even been forced to go into hiding. As for his future career, to her it also seemed unquestionable and brilliant, once certain hostile circumstances passed; she assured Razumikhin that in time her son would even be a statesman, as was proved by his article and by his brilliant literary talent. She read this article incessantly, sometimes even aloud; she all but slept with it; yet she hardly ever asked precisely where Rodya was at present, in spite of the fact that people obviously avoided talking to her about it—which in itself might have aroused her suspicions. Finally, they began to be frightened by Pulcheria Alexandrovna's strange silence on certain issues. She did not even complain, for instance, that there were no letters from him, whereas before, when she was living in her little town, she had lived only in the hope and expectation of soon receiving a letter from her beloved Rodya. This last circumstance was all too inexplicable, and greatly troubled Dunya; the thought kept occurring to her that her mother had perhaps sensed something terrible in her son's fate and was afraid to ask questions lest she find out something still more terrible. In any event, Dunya saw clearly that Pulcheria Alexandrovna was not in her right mind.

A couple of times, however, it happened that she herself led the conversation in such a way that it was impossible in answering her not to mention precisely where Rodya was then; and when, willy-nilly, the answers came out unsatisfactory and suspicious, she would all at once turn extremely sad, gloomy, and silent, and would remain so for quite a long time. Dunya saw at last that it was hard to go on lying and inventing, and came to a final conclusion that it was better to be completely silent on certain issues; but it was becoming more and more clear, to the point of obviousness, that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dunya incidentally remembered her brother saying that their mother had listened to her raving on the eve of that last, fatal day, after her scene with Svidrigailov: had she managed to hear something then? Often, sometimes after several days or even weeks of gloomy, sullen silence and wordless tears, the sick woman would become somehow hysterically animated and begin suddenly to talk aloud, almost without stop, about her son, about her hopes, about the future...Her fantasies were sometimes very strange. They humored her, yessed her (she herself perhaps saw clearly that they yessed her only to humor her), but she still went on talking . . .

The sentence came five months after the criminal went and confessed. Razumikhin saw him in prison whenever he possibly could. So did Sonya. Finally it came time to part. Dunya swore to her brother that the parting was not forever; so did Razumikhin. A project had firmly shaped itself in Razumikhin's young and ardent head, to lay, as far as possible, over the next three or four years, at least the foundations of a future fortune, to save at least some money, and move to Siberia, where the soil was rich in all respects, and workers, people, and capital were scarce; to settle there in the same town where Rodya was, and...begin a new life together. On saying farewell, they all wept. Raskolnikov had been very pensive during those last days, inquired often about his mother, was constantly worried about her. He even suffered too much over her, which alarmed Dunya. Having learned in detail of his mother's ailing spirits, he became very gloomy. With Sonya he was for some reason especially taciturn the whole time. Sonya had long since made her preparations, with the help of the money left her by Svidrigailov, and was ready to follow the party of convicts with which he would be sent. No word had been spoken of it between her and Raskolnikov, but they both knew it would be so. During the last farewell, he kept smiling strangely at the fervent assurances of his sister and Razumikhin about their happy future when he would be done with hard labor, and foretold that his mother's ailing condition would soon end in grief. He and Sonya finally set off.

Two months later Dunechka married Razumikhin. The wedding was sad and quiet. Among those invited, by the way, were Porfiry Petrovich and Zossimov. All the time recently, Razumikhin had had the look of a man who has firmly made up his mind. Dunya believed blindly that he would carry out all his intentions, and could not but believe it: an iron will could be seen in the man. Incidentally, he began attending university lectures again, to complete his studies. They were both constantly making plans for the future; both firmly counted on moving to Siberia without fail in five years' time. Until then they relied on Sonya being there . . .

Pulcheria Alexandrovna gladly blessed her daughter's marriage to Razumikhin; but after the marriage she seemed to become still more sad and preoccupied. To give her a moment's pleasure, Razumikhin incidentally told her the fact about the student and his decrepit father, and how Rodya had been burned and was even laid up after saving two little children from death the year before. This news sent Pulcheria Alexandrovna, whose mind was unsettled to begin with, almost into a state of ecstasy. She talked of it incessantly, even got into conversations in the street (though Dunya always accompanied her). In public carriages, in shops, having caught hold of at least some listener, she would bring the conversation around to her son, his article, how he had helped the student, had been burned in the fire, and so on. Dunechka simply did not know how to restrain her. Besides the danger of such an ecstatic, morbid state of mind, there could also have been trouble if someone had remembered Raskolnikov's name in connection with the recent trial and happened to mention it. Pulcheria Alexandrovna even found out the address of the mother of the two children saved from the fire and was absolutely set on going to see her. In the end her anxiety grew beyond limits. She sometimes suddenly started to cry, often fell ill and raved feverishly. One morning she announced outright that by her calculations Rodya was soon to arrive, that she remembered how he himself had mentioned, as he was saying goodbye to her, that they should expect him in exactly nine months. She began tidying up everything in the apartment and preparing to meet him, began decorating the room where he was to live (her own), cleaned the furniture, washed and hung up new curtains, and so on. Dunya was worried but said nothing, and even helped her arrange the room for her brother's reception. After a troubled day spent in ceaseless fantasies, in joyful dreams and tears, she fell ill during the night, and by morning was in a fever and raving. She became delirious. Two weeks later she died. In her raving certain words escaped her from which it could be concluded that she had a far greater suspicion of her son's terrible fate than had even been supposed.

Raskolnikov did not learn of his mother's death for a long time, though a correspondence with Petersburg had been established from the very beginning of his installation in Siberia. It was arranged through Sonya, who wrote regularly every month to the name of Razumikhin in Petersburg, and from Petersburg regularly received an answer every month. To Dunya and Razumikhin, Sonya's letters at first seemed somehow dry and unsatisfactory; but in the end they both found that they even could not have been written better, because as a result these letters gave a most complete and precise idea of their unfortunate brother's lot. Sonya's letters were filled with the most ordinary actuality, the most simple and clear description of all the circumstances of Raskolnikov's life at hard labor. They contained no account of her own hopes, no guessing about the future, no descriptions of her own feelings. In place of attempts to explain the state of his soul, or the whole of his inner life generally, there stood only facts—that is, his own words, detailed reports of the condition of his health, of what he had wanted at their meeting on such-and-such a day, what he had asked her, what he had told her to do, and so on. All this news was given in great detail. In the end the image of their unfortunate brother stood forth of itself, clearly and precisely drawn; no mistake was possible here, because these were all true facts.

But Dunya and her husband could derive little joy from this news, especially at the beginning. Sonya ceaselessly reported that he was constantly sullen, taciturn, and even almost uninterested in the news she brought him each time from the letters she received; that he sometimes asked about his mother; and that when, seeing he had begun to guess the truth, she finally told him of her death, to her surprise even the news of his mother's death seemed not to affect him too greatly, or so at least it appeared to her from the outside. She told them, among other things, that although he seemed so immersed in himself, as if he had closed himself off from everyone, his attitude towards his new life was very direct and simple; that he understood his position clearly, expected nothing better in the near future, had no frivolous hopes (so natural in his position), and was surprised at almost nothing amid his new surroundings, so little resembling anything previous. She reported that his health was satisfactory. He went to work, neither volunteering nor trying to avoid it. Was almost indifferent to food, but the food was so bad, except on Sundays and feast days, that in the end he had eagerly accepted a little money from her, Sonya, so that he could have tea every day; as for all the rest, he asked her not to worry, insisting that all this concern for him only annoyed him. Sonya wrote further that he had been placed together with all the others in prison; that she had not seen the inside of the barracks, but assumed it was crowded, ugly, and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a piece of felt under him and did not want to make any other arrangements for himself. But that he lived so poorly and crudely not at all from some preconceived plan or purpose, but simply from inattention and outward indifference to his lot. Sonya wrote directly that, especially at the beginning, he not only was not interested in her visits, but was even almost vexed with her, spoke reluctantly, and was even rude to her, but that in the end their meetings became a habit for him and even almost a necessity, so that he even grieved very much when she was sick for a few days and unable to visit him. And that she saw him on feast days by the prison gates or in the guardroom, where he would be summoned to see her for a few minutes; and on weekdays at work, where she came to see him either in the workshops, at the brick factory, or in the sheds on the banks of the Irtysh. About herself Sonya reported that she had managed to acquire some acquaintances and patrons in town; that she did sewing, and since there were almost no dressmakers in town, she had even become indispensable in many homes; only she did not mention that through her Raskolnikov had also come under the patronage of the authorities, that his work had been lightened, and so on. Finally came the news (Dunya had even noticed some special anxiety and alarm in her latest letters) that he shunned everyone, that the convicts in the prison did not like him; that he kept silent for whole days at a time and was becoming very pale. Suddenly, in her latest letter, Sonya wrote that he was quite seriously ill, and was in the hospital, in the convict ward . . .

II

He had been sick for some time; but it was not the horrors of convict life, or the work, or the food, or the shaved head, or the patchwork clothes that broke him: oh, what did he care about all these pains and torments! On the contrary, he was even glad of the work: by wearing himself out physically at work, he at least earned himself several hours of peaceful sleep. And what did the food—that watery cabbage soup with cockroaches—matter to him? In his former life as a student, he often had not had even that. His clothes were warm and adapted to his way of life. He did not even feel the chains on him. Was he to be ashamed of his shaved head and two-colored jacket? But before whom? Sonya? Sonya was afraid of him, and should he be ashamed before her?

But what, then? He was indeed ashamed even before Sonya, whom he tormented because of it with his contemptuous and rude treatment. But he was ashamed not of a shaved head and chains: his pride was badly wounded; and it was from wounded pride that he fell ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have condemned himself! He could have endured everything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his hardened conscience did not find any especially terrible guilt in his past, except perhaps a simple blunderthat could have happened to anyone. He was ashamed precisely because he, Raskolnikov, had perished so blindly, hopelessly, vainly, and stupidly, by some sort of decree of blind fate, and had to reconcile himself and submit to the “meaninglessness” of such a decree if he wanted to find at least some peace for himself.

Pointless and purposeless anxiety in the present, and in the future one endless sacrifice by which nothing would be gained—that was what he had to look forward to in this world. And what matter that in eight years he would be only thirty-two and could still begin to live again! Why should he live? With what in mind? Striving for what? To live in order to exist? But even before, he had been ready to give his existence a thousand times over for an idea, a hope, even a fantasy. Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others.

If only fate had sent him repentance—burning repentance, that breaks the heart, that drives sleep away, such repentance as torments one into dreaming of the noose or the watery deeps! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Torments and tears—that, too, was life. But he did not repent of his crime.

He might at least have raged at his own stupidity, as he had once raged at the hideous and utterly stupid actions that had brought him to prison. But now that he was in prison, and at liberty,he reconsidered and reflected upon all his former actions and did not find them at all as stupid and hideous as they had seemed to him once, at that fatal time.

“How,” he pondered, “how was my thought any stupider than all the other thoughts and theories that have been swarming and colliding in the world, ever since the world began? It's enough simply to take a broad, completely independent view of the matter, free of all common influences, and then my thought will surely not seem so...strange. Oh, nay-sayers and penny philosophers, why do you stop halfway!

“Now, what do they find so hideous in my action?” he kept saying to himself. “That it was an evildoing? What does the word 'evildoing' mean? My conscience is clear. Of course, a criminal act was committed; of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed; well, then, have my head for the letter of the law...and enough! Of course, in that case even many benefactors of mankind, who did not inherit power but seized it for themselves, ought to have been executed at their very first steps. But those men endured their steps, and therefore they were right,while I did not endure, and so I had no right to permit myself that step.”

This alone he recognized as his crime: that he had not endured it, but had gone and confessed.

And he suffered from another thought: why had he not killed himself then? Why, when he was standing over the river then, had he preferred to go and confess? Was there really such force in this desire to live, and was it so difficult to overcome it? Had not Svidrigailov, who was afraid of death, overcome it?

In torment he asked himself this question, and could not understand that even then, when he was standing over the river, he may have sensed a profound lie in himself and in his convictions. He did not understand that this sense might herald a future break in his life, his future resurrection, his future new vision of life.

Instead he allowed only for the dull burden of instinct here, which it was not for him to break through, and which (again owing to weakness and worthlessness) he had been unable to step over. He looked at his fellow convicts and was amazed: how they, too, all loved life, how they valued it! It precisely seemed to him that in prison they loved and valued it even more, cherished it even more than in freedom. What terrible pains and torments had some of them not endured—the tramps, for instance! Could some one ray of sunlight mean so much to them, a deep forest, a cool spring somewhere in the untrodden wilderness, noticed two years before, to meet which the tramp dreams as he dreams of meeting his mistress, sees it in his sleep, green grass growing around it, a bird singing in a bush? Looking further, he found examples still more inexplicable.

In prison, in his surroundings, he did not notice much, of course, and really did not want to notice. He lived somehow with lowered eyes: it was repulsive and unbearable to look. But in the end many things began to surprise him, and he somehow involuntarily began to notice what he had not even suspected before. But, generally, he came to be surprised most of all by the terrible and impassable abyss that lay between him and all these people. It was as if he and they belonged to different nations. He and they looked at each other with mistrust and hostility. He knew and understood the general reasons for such disunion; but he had never before assumed that these reasons were in fact so deep and strong. There were also exiled Poles there, political prisoners. They simply regarded all these people as ignorant slaves and haughtily disdained them; but Raskolnikov could not take such a view: he saw clearly that these ignorant men were in many respects much smarter than the Poles themselves. There were also Russians who all too readily despised these people—a former officer and two seminarians; Raskolnikov clearly saw their mistake as well.

As for him, he was disliked and avoided by everyone. In the end they even began to hate him—why, he did not know. Men far more criminal than he despised him, laughed at him, laughed at his crime.

“You're a gentleman!” they said to him. “What did you take up an axe for; it's no business for a gentleman.”

During the second week of the Great Lent, it was his turn to fast and go to services together with his barracks. <sup>[162]162
  Special services are held on weekdays during the Great Lent (in the Orthodox Church, the forty-day fast preceding Holy Week, which in turn precedes Easter Sunday). The prisoners probably took turns attending these services because the church was too small to accommodate all of them at once.


[Закрыть]</sup> He went to church and prayed together with the others. For some reason unknown to him, a quarrel broke out one day; they all fell on him at once with ferocity.

“You're godless! You don't believe in God!” they shouted. “You ought to be killed!”

He had never talked with them about God or belief, but they wanted to kill him for being godless; he kept silent and did not argue with them. One convict flew at him in a perfect frenzy; Raskolnikov waited for him calmly and silently: his eyebrows did not move, not a feature of his face trembled. A guard managed to step between him and the murderer just in time—otherwise blood would have been shed.

Still another question remained insoluble for him: why had they all come to love Sonya so much? She had not tried to win them over; they met her only rarely, at work now and then, when she would come for a moment to see him. And yet they all knew her, knew also that she had followed after him,knew how she lived and where she lived. She had never given them money or done them any special favors. Only once, at Christmas, she brought alms for the whole prison: pies and kalatchi. <sup>[163]163
  Kalatchi: plural of kalatch, a very fine white bread shaped like a purse with a looped handle.


[Закрыть]</sup> But, little by little, certain closer relations sprang up between them and Sonya. She wrote letters for them to their families, and posted them. When their male or female relations came to town, they would instruct them to leave things and even money for them in Sonya's hands. Their wives and mistresses knew her and visited her. And when she came to see Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of convicts on the way to work, they would all take their hats off, they would all bow to her: “Little mother, Sofya Semyonovna, our tender, fond little mother!”—so the coarse, branded convicts would say to this small and frail being. She would smile and bow in return, and they all liked it when she smiled to them. They even liked the way she walked; they would turn and follow her with their eyes to see how she walked, and praise her; they even praised her for being so small; they were even at a loss what not to praise her for. They even came to her with their ailments.

He lay in the hospital all through the end of Lent and Holy Week. As he began to recover, he remembered his dreams from when he was still lying in feverish delirium. In his illness he had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown and unseen pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men's bodies. But these creatures were spirits, endowed with reason and will. Those who received them into themselves immediately became possessed and mad. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakeable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakeable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good. They did not know whom to accuse, whom to vindicate. People killed each other in some sort of meaningless spite. They gathered into whole armies against each other, but, already on the march, the armies would suddenly begin destroying themselves, the ranks would break up, the soldiers would fall upon one another, stabbing and cutting, biting and eating one another. In the cities the bells rang all day long: everyone was being summoned, but no one knew who was summoning them or why, and everyone felt anxious. The most ordinary trades ceased, because everyone offered his own ideas, his own corrections, and no one could agree. Agriculture ceased. Here and there people would band together, agree among themselves to do something, swear never to part—but immediately begin something completely different from what they themselves had just suggested, begin accusing one another, fighting, stabbing. Fires broke out; famine broke out. Everyone and everything was perishing. The pestilence grew and spread further and further. Only a few people in the whole world could be saved; they were pure and chosen, destined to begin a new generation of people and a new life, to renew and purify the earth; but no one had seen these people anywhere, no one had heard their words or voices.