‘What are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I’ll go alone,’ he cried in cowardly vexation, and al-most resentful, he moved towards the door. ‘What’s the use of going in procession?’ he muttered going out.
Sonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and rebellious doubt surged in his heart.
‘Was it right, was it right, all this?’ he thought again as he went down the stairs. ‘Couldn’t he stop and retract it all
… and not go?’
But still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn’t ask himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the middle of the room in her green shawl,
not daring to stir after he had shouted at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike him then.
‘Why, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her—on business; on what business? I had no sort of busi-ness! To tell her I was going; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I’ve sunk! No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!’
He walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it went to the Hay Market.
He looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. ‘In another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison van over this bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember this!’ slipped into his mind. ‘Look at this sign! How shall I read those letters then? It’s written here ‘Campany,’ that’s a thing to remember, that letter a and to look at it again in a month—how shall I look at it then? What shall I be feel-ing and thinking then? … How trivial it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be interest-ing … in its way … (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?)
I am becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how people shove! that fat man—a German he must be—who pushed against me, does he know whom he pushed? There’s a peasant woman with a baby, begging. It’s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here’s a five copeck piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here
… take it, my good woman!’
‘God bless you,’ the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.
He went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very dis-tasteful to be in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he would not have re-mained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There was a ring round him. Raskolnikov squeezed his way through the crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remem-bering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.
He suddenly recalled Sonia’s words, ‘Go to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world, ‘I am a murderer.’’ He trembled, remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especial-
ly of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the tears start-ed into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot….
He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rap-ture. He got up and bowed down a second time.
‘He’s boozed,’ a youth near him observed. There was a roar of laughter.
‘He’s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He’s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement,’ added a workman who was a little drunk.
‘Quite a young man, too!’ observed a third. ‘And a gentleman,’ someone observed soberly.
‘There’s no knowing who’s a gentleman and who isn’t nowadays.’
These exclamations and remarks checked Raskolnikov, and the words, ‘I am a murderer,’ which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police ofice. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She
had followed him then on his painful way! Raskolnikov at that moment felt and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart … but he was just reaching the fatal place.
He went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third storey. ‘I shall be some time going up,’ he thought. He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration.
Again the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them. Raskolnikov had not been here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to collect himself, so as to enter like a man. ‘But why? what for?’ he wondered, reflecting. ‘If I must drink the cup what difference does it make? The more revolting the better.’ He imagined for an instant the figure of the ‘explosive lieuten-ant,’ Ilya Petrovitch. Was he actually going to him? Couldn’t he go to someone else? To Nikodim Fomitch? Couldn’t he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch’s lodgings? At least then it would be done privately…. No, no! To the ‘ex-plosive lieutenant’! If he must drink it, drink it off at once.
Turning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the ofice. There were very few people in it this time— only a house porter and a peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen. Raskolnikov walked into the next room. ‘Perhaps I still need not speak,’ passed
through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner anoth-er clerk was seating himself. Zametov was not there, nor, of course, Nikodim Fomitch.
‘No one in?’ Raskolnikov asked, addressing the person at the bureau.
‘Whom do you want?’
‘A-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the Russian … how does it go on in the fairy tale … I’ve forgotten! ‘At your service!’’ a familiar voice cried sud-denly.
Raskolnikov shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He had just come in from the third room. ‘It is the hand of fate,’ thought Raskolnikov. ‘Why is he here?’
‘You’ve come to see us? What about?’ cried Ilya Petro-vitch. He was obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle exhilarated. ‘If it’s on business you are rather early.[] It’s only a chance that I am here … however I’ll do what I can. I must admit, I … what is it, what is it? Excuse me….’ [] Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after sunset, and that the last time Raskolnikov visited the police ofice at two in the afternoon he was reproached for coming too late.—TRANSLATOR.
‘Raskolnikov.’
‘Of course, Raskolnikov. You didn’t imagine I’d forgotten? Don’t think I am like that … Rodion Ro—Ro—Rodiono-vitch, that’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Rodion Romanovitch.’
‘Yes, yes, of course, Rodion
