Текст книги "Crime and Punishment"

Автор книги: Fyodor Dostoevsky

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

It pained Raskolnikov that this senseless delirium echoed so sadly and tormentingly in his memory, that the impression of these feverish dreams refused to go away for so long. It was already the second week after Holy Week; warm, clear spring days had set in; the windows in the convict ward were opened (barred windows, with a sentry pacing beneath them). Sonya had been able to visit him in the ward only twice during the whole period of his illness; each time she had to ask for permission, and that was difficult. But she had often come to the hospital courtyard, under the windows, especially towards evening, or sometimes just to stand in the yard for a short while and look at least from afar at the windows of the ward. Once, towards evening, Raskolnikov, then almost fully recovered, fell asleep; waking again, he chanced to go to the window and suddenly saw Sonya far away, by the hospital gate. She stood as if she were waiting for something. At that moment, something seemed to pierce his heart; he started and quickly stepped away from the window. The next day Sonya did not come, nor the day after; he noticed that he was waiting worriedly for her. At last he was discharged. When he came to the prison, he learned from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna was sick in bed at home and not going out anywhere.

He was very worried and sent to inquire after her. Soon he learned that her illness was not dangerous. Having learned in her turn that he missed her and was so concerned about her, Sonya sent him a penciled note informing him that she was feeling much better, that she had a slight, insignificant cold, and that soon, very soon, she would come to see him at work. His heart was beating heavily and painfully as he read this note.

Again it was a clear, warm day. Early in the morning, at about six o'clock, he went to work in a shed on the riverbank, where gypsum was baked in a kiln and afterwards ground. Only three workers went there. One of them took a guard and went back to the fortress to get some tool; the second began splitting firewood and putting it into the kiln. Raskolnikov walked out of the shed and right to the bank, sat down on some logs piled near the shed, and began looking at the wide, desolate river. From the high bank a wide view of the surrounding countryside opened out. A barely audible song came from the far bank opposite. There, on the boundless, sun-bathed steppe, nomadic yurts could be seen, like barely visible black specks. There was freedom, there a different people lived, quite unlike those here, there time itself seemed to stop, as if the centuries of Abraham and his flocks had not passed. Raskolnikov sat and stared fixedly, not tearing his eyes away; his thought turned to reverie, to contemplation; he was not thinking of anything, but some anguish troubled and tormented him.

Suddenly Sonya was beside him. She came up almost inaudibly and sat down next to him. It was still very early; the morning chill had not softened yet. She was wearing her poor old wrap and the green shawl. Her face still bore signs of illness; it had become thinner, paler, more pinched. She smiled to him amiably and joyfully, but gave him her hand as timidly as ever.

She always gave him her hand timidly; sometimes she even did not give it at all, as if fearing he might push it away. He always took her hand as if with loathing, always met her as if with vexation, was sometimes obstinately silent during the whole time of her visit. There were occasions when she trembled before him and went away in deep grief. But this time their hands did not separate; he glanced at her quickly and fleetingly, said nothing, and lowered his eyes to the ground. They were alone; no one saw them. The guard had his back turned at the moment.

How it happened he himself did not know, but suddenly it was as if something lifted him and flung him down at her feet. He wept and embraced her knees. For the first moment she was terribly frightened, and her whole face went numb. She jumped up and looked at him, trembling. But all at once, in that same moment, she understood everything. Infinite happiness lit up in her eyes; she understood, and for her there was no longer any doubt that he loved her, loved her infinitely, and that at last the moment had come . . .

They wanted to speak but could not. Tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin, but in those pale, sick faces there already shone the dawn of a renewed future, of a complete resurrection into a new life. They were resurrected by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

They resolved to wait and endure. They still had seven years more, and until then so much unbearable suffering and so much infinite happiness! But he was risen and he knew it, he felt it fully with the whole of his renewed being, and she—she lived just by his life alone!

In the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked, Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. It had even seemed to him that day as if all the convicts, his former enemies, already looked at him differently. He had even addressed them himself and been answered amiably. He recalled it all now, but that was how it had to be: did not everything have to change now?

He was thinking of her. He remembered how he had constantly tormented her and torn her heart; remembered her poor, thin little face; but he was almost not even tormented by these memories: he knew by what infinite love he would now redeem all her sufferings.

And what were they, all, allthose torments of the past! Everything, even his crime, even his sentence and exile, seemed to him now, in the first impulse, to be some strange, external fact, as if it had not even happened to him. However, that evening he could not think long or continuously of anything, could not concentrate his mind on anything; besides, he would have been unable to resolve anything consciously just then; he could only feel. Instead of dialectics, there was life, and something completely different had to work itself out in his consciousness.

Under his pillow lay the Gospels. He took the book out mechanically. It belonged to her, it was the same one from which she had read to him about the raising of Lazarus. At the beginning of his hard labor he had thought she would hound him with religion, would be forever talking about the Gospels and forcing books on him. But to his greatest amazement, she never once spoke of it, never once even offered him the Gospels. He had asked her for it himself not long before his illness, and she had silently brought him the book. He had not even opened it yet.

Nor did he open it now, but a thought flashed in him: “Can her convictions not be my convictions now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least . . .”

She, too, had been greatly excited all that day, and during the night even fell ill again. But she was so happy that she almost became frightened of her happiness. Seven years, onlyseven years! At the beginning of their happiness there were moments when they were both ready to look at those seven years as if they were seven days. He did not even know that a new life would not be given him for nothing, that it still had to be dearly bought, to be paid for with a great future deed . . .

But here begins a new account, the account of a man's gradual renewal, the account of his gradual regeneration, his gradual transition from one world to another, his acquaintance with a new, hitherto completely unknown reality. It might make the subject of a new story—but our present story is ended.