Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Here Pulcheria Alexandrovna began to cry.

“Here I am again! Don’t mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I sitting here?” she cried, jumping up. “There is coffee and I don’t offer you any. Ah, that’s the selfishness of old age. I’ll get it at once!”

“Mother, don’t trouble, I am going at once. I haven’t come for that. Please listen to me.”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna went up to him timidly.

“Mother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you are told about me, will you always love me as you do now?” he asked suddenly from the fullness of his heart, as though not thinking of his words and not weighing them.

“Rodya, Rodya, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a question? Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I shouldn’t believe anyone, I should refuse to listen.”

“I’ve come to assure you that I’ve always loved you and I am glad that we are alone, even glad Dounia is out,” he went on with the same impulse. “I have come to tell you that though you will be unhappy, you must believe that your son loves you now more than himself, and that all you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn’t care about you, was all a mistake. I shall never cease to love you. . . . Well, that’s enough: I thought I must do this and begin with this. . . .”

Pulcheria Alexandrovna embraced him in silence, pressing him to her bosom and weeping gently.

“I don’t know what is wrong with you, Rodya,” she said at last. “I’ve been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and now I see that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that’s why you are miserable. I’ve foreseen it a long time, Rodya. Forgive me for speaking about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at nights. Your sister lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking of nothing but you. I caught something, but I couldn’t make it out. I felt all the morning as though I were going to be hanged, waiting for something, expecting something, and now it has come! Rodya, Rodya, where are you going? You are going away somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need me. And Dounia, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly–and Sofya Semyonovna may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look upon her as a daughter even . . . Dmitri Prokofitch will help us to go together. But . . . where . . . are you going?”

“Good-bye, mother.”

“What, to-day?” she cried, as though losing him for ever.

“I can’t stay, I must go now. . . .”

“And can’t I come with you?”

“No, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will reach Him.”

“Let me bless you and sign you with the cross. That’s right, that’s right. Oh, God, what are we doing?”

Yes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed her feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did not question him this time. For some days she had realised that something awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible minute had come for him.

“Rodya, my darling, my first born,” she said sobbing, “now you are just as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me and kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us simply by being with us and when I buried your father, how often we wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if I’ve been crying lately, it’s that my mother’s heart had a foreboding of trouble. The first time I saw you, that evening, you remember, as soon as we arrived here, I guessed simply from your eyes. My heart sank at once, and to-day when I opened the door and looked at you, I thought the fatal hour had come. Rodya, Rodya, you are not going away to-day?”

“No!”

“You’ll come again?”

“Yes . . . I’ll come.”

“Rodya, don’t be angry, I don’t dare to question you. I know I mustn’t. Only say two words to me–is it far where you are going?”

“Very far.”

“What is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?”

“What God sends . . . only pray for me.” Raskolnikov went to the door, but she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her face worked with terror.

“Enough, mother,” said Raskolnikov, deeply regretting that he had come.

“Not for ever, it’s not yet for ever? You’ll come, you’ll come to-morrow?”

“I will, I will, good-bye.” He tore himself away at last.

It was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the morning. Raskolnikov went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to finish all before sunset. He did not want to meet anyone till then. Going up the stairs he noticed that Nastasya rushed from the samovar to watch him intently. “Can anyone have come to see me?” he wondered. He had a disgusted vision of Porfiry. But opening his door he saw Dounia. She was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked as though she had been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the doorway. She rose from the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her eyes, fixed upon him, betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from those eyes alone he saw at once that she knew.

“Am I to come in or go away?” he asked uncertainly.

“I’ve been all day with Sofya Semyonovna. We were both waiting for you. We thought that you would be sure to come there.”

Raskolnikov went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair.

“I feel weak, Dounia, I am very tired; and I should have liked at this moment to be able to control myself.”

He glanced at her mistrustfully.

“Where were you all night?”

“I don’t remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind once for all, and several times I walked by the Neva, I remember that I wanted to end it all there, but . . . I couldn’t make up my mind,” he whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again.

“Thank God! That was just what we were afraid of, Sofya Semyonovna and I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!”

Raskolnikov smiled bitterly.

“I haven’t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother’s arms; I haven’t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don’t know how it is, Dounia, I don’t understand it.”

“Have you been at mother’s? Have you told her?” cried Dounia, horror- stricken. “Surely you haven’t done that?”

“No, I didn’t tell her . . . in words; but she understood a great deal. She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don’t know why I did go. I am a contemptible person, Dounia.”

“A contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of drowning myself, Dounia, but as I looked into the water, I thought that if I had considered myself strong till now I’d better not be afraid of disgrace,” he said, hurrying on. “It’s pride, Dounia.”

“Pride, Rodya.”

There was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad to think that he was still proud.

“You don’t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?” he asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.

“Oh, Rodya, hush!” cried Dounia bitterly. Silence lasted for two minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at the other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he got up.

“It’s late, it’s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I don’t know why I am going to give myself up.”

Big tears fell down her cheeks.

“You are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?”

“You doubted it?”

She threw her arms round him.

“Aren’t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?” she cried, holding him close and kissing him.

“Crime? What crime?” he cried in sudden fury. “That I killed a vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one! . . . Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? ‘A crime! a crime!’ Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice, now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It’s simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to, perhaps too for my advantage, as that . . . Porfiry . . . suggested!”