“You would do better to forgive him in the hour of death. Such feelings are a sin, madam, a great sin!”
Katerina Ivanovna was bustling around the sick man, giving him water, wiping the sweat and blood from his head, straightening his pillow, as she talked with the priest, and only turned to him from time to time while doing other things. But now she suddenly fell upon him almost in a frenzy.
“Eh, father! Words, nothing but words! Forgive him! And what if he didn't get run over? He'd come home drunk, wearing his only shirt, all dirty and ragged, and flop down and snore, and I'd be sloshing in the water till dawn, washing his and the children's rags, and then I'd hang them out the window to dry, and as soon as it was dawn, I'd sit down right away to mend them—that's my night! ... So what's all this talk about forgiveness! As if I hadn't forgiven him!”
Deep, terrible coughing interrupted her words. She spat into her handkerchief and thrust it out for the priest to see, holding her other hand to her chest in pain. The handkerchief was all bloody . . .
The priest hung his head and said nothing.
Marmeladov was in his final agony; he would not take his eyes from the face of Katerina Ivanovna, who again bent over him. He kept wanting to say something to her; he tried to begin, moving his tongue with effort and uttering unintelligible words, but Katerina Ivanovna, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, at once shouted at him peremptorily:
“Be quiet! Don't! ... I know what you want to say! . . .” And the sick man fell silent; but at that same moment his wandering eyes rested on the doorway, and he saw Sonya . . .
He had not noticed her until then: she was standing in the corner, in the shadows.
“Who's there? Who's there?” he said suddenly, in a hoarse, breathless voice, all alarmed, in horror motioning with his eyes towards the doorway where his daughter stood, and making an effort to raise himself.
“Lie down! Lie do-o-own!” cried Katerina Ivanovna.
But with an unnatural effort he managed to prop himself on one arm. He gazed wildly and fixedly at his daughter for some time, as though he did not recognize her. And indeed he had never seen her in such attire. All at once he recognized her—humiliated, crushed, bedizened, and ashamed, humbly waiting her turn to take leave of her dying father. Infinite suffering showed in his face.
“Sonya! Daughter! Forgive me!” he cried, and tried to hold out his hand to her, but without its support he slipped from the sofa and went crashing face down on the floor; they rushed to pick him up, laid him out again, but by then he was almost gone. Sonya cried out weakly, ran and embraced him, and remained so in that embrace. He died in her arms.
“So he got it!” Katerina Ivanovna cried, looking at her husband's corpse. “Well, what now? How am I going to bury him! And how am I going to feed them tomorrow, all of them?”
Raskolnikov went up to Katerina Ivanovna.
“Katerina Ivanovna,” he began, “last week your deceased husband told me all about his life and his circumstances...You may be sure that he spoke of you with rapturous respect. Since that evening, when I learned how devoted he was to all of you, and how he respected and loved you especially, Katerina Ivanovna, in spite of his unfortunate weakness, since that evening we became friends...Permit me now...to assist...to pay what is due to my deceased friend. Here are...twenty roubles, I think—and if this can serve to help you, then...I...in short, I'll come again—I'll be sure to come...maybe even tomorrow...Good-bye!”
And he quickly left the room, hastening to squeeze through the crowd and reach the stairs; but in the crowd he suddenly ran into Nikodim Fomich, who had learned of the accident and wished to take a personal hand in the arrangements. They had not seen each other since that scene in the office, but Nikodim Fomich recognized him instantly.
“Ah, it's you?” he asked.
“He's dead,” Raskolnikov answered. “The doctor was here, a priest was here, everything's in order. Don't trouble the poor woman too much, she's consumptive as it is. Cheer her up with something, if you can...You're a kind man, I know . ..” he added with a smirk, looking him straight in the eye.
“But, really, you're all soaked with blood,” Nikodim Fomich remarked, making out by the light of the lantern several fresh spots of blood on Raskolnikov's waistcoat.
“Soaked, yes...I've got blood all over me!” Raskolnikov said, with some peculiar look; then he smiled, nodded his head, and went down the stairs.
He went down slowly, unhurriedly, all in a fever, and filled, though he was not aware of it, with the new, boundless sensation of a sudden influx of full and powerful life. This sensation might be likened to the sensation of a man condemned to death who is suddenly and unexpectedly granted a pardon. [68] Halfway down he was overtaken by the priest on his way home. Raskolnikov silently let him pass, exchanging wordless bows with him. But as he was going down the last few steps, he suddenly heard hurried footsteps behind him. Someone was running after him. It was Polenka; she was running after him and calling: “Listen! Listen!”
He turned to her. She ran down the last flight and stopped very close to him, just one step higher. A dim light came from the courtyard. Raskolnikov made out the girl's thin but dear little face, smiling and looking at him with childish cheerfulness. She had come running with an errand, which apparently pleased her very much.
“Listen, what is your name?...and also, where do you live?” she asked hurriedly, in a breathless little voice.
He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked at her with something like happiness. It gave him such pleasure to look at her—he did not know why himself.
“Who sent you?”
“My sister Sonya sent me,” the girl replied, smiling even more cheerfully.
“I just knew it was your sister Sonya.”
“Mama sent me, too. When my sister Sonya was sending me, mama also came over and said: 'Run quickly, Polenka!’”
“Do you love your sister Sonya?”
“I love her most of all!” Polenka said with some special firmness, and her smile suddenly became more serious.
“And will you love me?”
Instead of an answer, he saw the girl's little face coming towards him, her full little lips naively puckered to kiss him. Suddenly her arms, thin as matchsticks, held him hard, her head bent to his shoulder, and the girl began crying softly, pressing her face harder and harder against him.
“I'm sorry for papa!” she said after a minute, raising her tear-stained face and wiping away the tears with her hands. “We've had so many misfortunes lately,” she added unexpectedly, with that especially solemn look children try so hard to assume when they suddenly want to talk like “big people.”
“And did papa love you?”
“He loved Lidochka most of all,” she went on, very seriously and no longer smiling, just the way big people speak, “he loved her because she's little, and because she's sick, and he always brought her treats, and us he taught to read, and me he taught grammar and catechism,” she added with dignity, “and mama didn't say anything, but we still knew she liked that, and papa knew it, and mama wants to teach me French, because it's time I got my education.”
“And do you know how to pray?”
“Oh, of course we do, since long ago! I pray to myself, because I'm big now, and Kolya and Lidochka pray out loud with mother; first they recite the 'Hail, Mary' and then another prayer: 'God forgive and bless our sister Sonya,' and then 'God forgive and bless our other papa,' because our old papa died already and this one is the other one, but we pray for that one, too.”
“Polechka, my name is Rodion; pray for me, too, sometimes: 'and for the servant of God, Rodion'—that's all.”
“I'll pray for you all the rest of my life,” the girl said ardently, and suddenly laughed again, rushed to him, and again held him hard.
Raskolnikov told her his name, gave her the address, and promised to come the next day without fail. The girl went away completely delighted with him. It was past ten when he walked out to the street. Five minutes later he was standing on the bridge, in exactly the same spot from which the woman had thrown herself not long before.
“Enough!” he said resolutely and solemnly. “Away with mirages, away with false fears, away with spectres! ... There is life! Was I not alive just now? My life hasn't died with the old crone! May the Lord remember her in His kingdom, and—enough, my dear, it's time to go! Now is the kingdom of reason and light and . .. and will and strength...and now we shall see! Now we shall cross swords!” he added presumptuously, as if addressing some dark force and challenging it. “And I had already consented to live on a square foot of space!
68
Dostoevsky himself underwent such a sentencing and pardon in 1849, after being arrested for subversive activities. He often uses the experience metaphorically.