‘It’s wonderful that he has recovered consciousness,’ the doctor whispered softly to Raskolnikov.
‘What do you think of him?’ he asked. ‘He will die immediately.’
‘Is there really no hope?’
‘Not the faintest! He is at the last gasp…. His head is bad-ly injured, too … Hm … I could bleed him if you like, but … it would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten minutes.’
‘Better bleed him then.’
‘If you like…. But I warn you it will be perfectly useless.’ At that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the
passage parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, ap-peared in the doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging glances with him. Raskolnikov begged the doctor to remain a little while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained.
All stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man probably understood little; he could only ut-ter indistinct broken sounds. Katerina Ivanovna took little Lida, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt down in the cor-ner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial sat-isfaction. Katerina Ivanovna bit her lips and held back her tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy’s shirt, and managed to cover the girl’s bare shoulders with a kerchief, which she took from the chest without ris-ing from her knees or ceasing to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the scene.
At that moment Polenka forced her way through the crowd at the door. She came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief, looked for her mother, went up to her and said, ‘She’s coming, I met her in the street.’ Her mother made her kneel beside her.
Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably
betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her im-mense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rak-ishly-tilted hat was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror. Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.
The service was over. Katerina Ivanovna went up to her husband again. The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of admonition and consolation to Katerina Iva-novna on leaving.
‘What am I to do with these?’ she interrupted sharply and irritably, pointing to the little ones.
‘God is merciful; look to the Most High for succour,’ the priest began.
‘Ach! He is merciful, but not to us.’
‘That’s a sin, a sin, madam,’ observed the priest, shaking his head.
‘And isn’t that a sin?’ cried Katerina Ivanovna, pointing to the dying man.
‘Perhaps those who have involuntarily caused the acci-dent will agree to compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings.’
‘You don’t understand!’ cried Katerina Ivanovna angrily waving her hand. ‘And why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank God he’s dying! One less to keep!’
‘You must forgive in the hour of death, that’s a sin, mad-am, such feelings are a great sin.’
Katerina Ivanovna was busy with the dying man; she was giving him water, wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow straight, and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the priest. Now she flew at him almost in a frenzy.
‘Ah, father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. That’s how I spend my nights! … What’s the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!’
A terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her handkerchief to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her other hand to her aching chest. The handker-
chief was covered with blood. The priest bowed his head and said nothing.
Marmeladov was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Katerina Ivanovna, who was bending over him again. He kept trying to say something to her; he began moving his tongue with dificulty and articulating indistinctly, but Katerina Ivanovna, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, called peremptorily to him:
‘Be silent! No need! I know what you want to say!’ And the sick man was silent, but at the same instant his wander-ing eyes strayed to the doorway and he saw Sonia.
Till then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow in a corner.
‘Who’s that? Who’s that?’ he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice, in agitation, turning his eyes in horror to-wards the door where his daughter was standing, and trying to sit up.
‘Lie down! Lie do-own!’ cried Katerina Ivanovna.
With unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on his elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter, as though not recognising her. He had never seen her before in such attire. Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dy-ing father. His face showed intense suffering.
‘Sonia! Daughter! Forgive!’ he cried, and he tried to hold out his hand to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face downwards on the floor. They rushed to pick him up, they put him on the sofa; but he was dying. Sonia with
a faint cry ran up, embraced him and remained so without moving. He died in her arms.
‘He’s got what he wanted,’ Katerina Ivanovna cried, see-ing her husband’s dead body. ‘Well, what’s to be done now? How am I to bury him! What can I give them to-morrow to eat?’
Raskolnikov went up to Katerina Ivanovna.
‘Katerina Ivanovna,’ he began, ‘last week your husband told me all his life and circumstances…. Believe me, he spoke of you with passionate reverence. From that evening, when I learnt how devoted he was to you all and how he loved and respected you especially, Katerina Ivanovna, in spite of his unfortunate weakness, from that evening we be-came friends…. Allow me now … to do something … to repay my debt to my dead friend. Here are twenty roubles, I think—and if that can be of any assistance to you, then … I
… in short, I will come again, I will be sure to come again … I shall, perhaps, come again to-morrow…. Good-bye!’
And he went quickly out of the room, squeezing his way through the crowd to the stairs. But in the crowd he sud-denly jostled against Nikodim Fomitch, who had heard of the accident and had come to give instructions in person. They had not met since the scene at the police station, but Nikodim Fomitch knew him instantly.
‘Ah, is that you?’ he asked him.
‘He’s dead,’ answered Raskolnikov. ‘The doctor and the priest have been, all as it should have been. Don’t worry the poor woman too much, she is in consumption as it is. Try and cheer her up, if possible … you are a kind-hearted man,
I know …’ he added with a smile, looking straight in his face.
‘But you are spattered with blood,’ observed Nikodim Fomitch, noticing in the lamplight some fresh stains on Raskolnikov’s waistcoat.
‘Yes … I’m covered with blood,’ Raskolnikov said with a peculiar air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs.
He walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelm-ing sensation of life and strength that surged up suddenly within him. This sensation might be compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been pardoned. Halfway down the staircase he was overtaken by the priest on his way home; Raskolnikov let him pass, exchanging a silent greeting with him.
