“Why? Why do you say that?” Sonya said, strangely and rebelliously stirred by his words.
“Why? Because it's impossible to remain like this—that's why! It's necessary finally to reason seriously and directly, and not weep and cry like a child that God will not allow it! What if you are indeed taken to the hospital tomorrow? That woman is out of her mind and consumptive, she'll die soon, and the children? Won't Polechka be destroyed? Haven't you seen children here on the street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I've learned where these mothers live, and in what circumstances. Children cannot remain children there. There a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. But children are the image of Christ: 'Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' [99] He taught us to honor and love them, they are the future mankind . . .”
“But what, what can be done, then?” Sonya repeated, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.
“What can be done? Smash what needs to be smashed, once and for all, and that's it—and take the suffering upon ourselves! What? You don't understand? You'll understand later...Freedom and power, but above all, power! Over all trembling creatures, over the whole ant-heap! ... That is the goal! Remember it! This is my parting word to you! I may be talking to you for the last time. If I don't come tomorrow, you'll hear about everything yourself, and then remember these present words. And sometime later, years later, as life goes on, maybe you'll understand what they meant. But if I come tomorrow, I'll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Good-bye!”
Sonya shuddered all over with fear.
“You mean you know who killed her?” she asked, frozen in horror and looking at him wildly.
“I know and I'll tell...you, you alone! I've chosen you. I won't come asking forgiveness, I'll simply tell you. I chose you long ago to tell it to, back when your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, I thought of it then. Good-bye. Don't give me your hand. Tomorrow!”
He went out. Sonya looked at him as at a madman; but she herself was as if insane, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. “Lord! How does he know who killed Lizaveta? What did those words mean? It's frightening!” But at the same time the thoughtwould not enter her mind. No, no, it would not! ... ”Oh, he must be terribly unhappy! ... He's left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what are his intentions? What was it he had said to her? He had kissed her foot and said...said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he now could not live without her...Oh, Lord!”
Sonya spent the whole night in fever and delirium. She jumped up every now and then, wept, wrung her hands, then dropped into feverish sleep again, and dreamed of Polechka, of Katerina Ivanovna, of Lizaveta, of reading the Gospel, and of him...him, with his pale face, his burning eyes...He was kissing her feet, weeping...Oh, Lord!
Beyond the door to the right, the door that separated Sonya's apartment from the apartment of Gertrude Karlovna Resslich, there was an intervening room, long empty, which belonged to Mrs. Resslich's apartment and was up for rent, as signs on the gates and notices pasted to the windows facing the canal announced. Sonya had long been used to considering this room uninhabited. And meanwhile, all that time, Mr. Svidrigailov had been standing by the door in the empty room and stealthily listening. When Raskolnikov left, he stood for a while, thought, then went on tiptoe into his room, adjacent to the empty room, took a chair, and inaudibly brought it close to the door leading to Sonya's room. He had found the conversation amusing and bemusing, and he had liked it very, very much—so much that he even brought a chair, in order not to be subjected again in the future, tomorrow, for instance, to the unpleasantness of standing on his feet for a whole hour, but to settle himself more comfortably and thus treat himself to a pleasure that was full in all respects.
V
When, at exactly eleven o'clock the next morning, Raskolnikov entered the building that housed the —y police station, went to the department of the commissioner of investigations, and asked to be announced to Porfiry Petrovich, he was even surprised at how long they kept him waiting: at least ten minutes went by before he was summoned. Whereas, according to his calculations, it seemed they ought to have pounced on him at once. Meanwhile he stood in the waiting room, and people came and went who apparently were not interested in him at all. In the next room, which looked like an office, several scriveners sat writing, and it was obvious that none of them had any idea who or what Raskolnikov was. With an uneasy and mistrustful look he glanced around, trying to see if there were not at least some guard, some mysterious eyes, appointed to watch that he not go away. But there was nothing of the kind: all he saw were some pettily occupied office faces, then some other people, and none of them had any need of him: he could have gone four ways at once. A thought was becoming more and more firmly established in him: if that mysterious man yesterday, that ghost who had come from under the ground, indeed knew everything and had seen everything—would they let him, Raskolnikov, stand here like this and wait quietly? And would they have waited for him here until eleven o'clock, until he himself saw fit to come? It followed that the man either had not denounced him yet, or...or simply did not know anything, had not seen anything himself, with his own eyes (and how could he have?), and, consequently, the whole thing that he, Raskolnikov, had gone through yesterday was again a phantom, exaggerated by his troubled and sick imagination. This surmise had begun to strengthen in him even yesterday, during the most intense anxiety and despair. As he thought it all over now and made ready for a new battle, he suddenly felt himself trembling—and indignation even boiled up in him at the thought that he was trembling with fear before the hateful Porfiry Petrovich. It was most terrible for him to meet this man again; he hated him beyond measure, infinitely, and was even afraid of somehow giving himself away by his hatred. And so strong was this indignation that it immediately stopped his trembling; he made ready to go in with a cold and insolent air, and vowed to be silent as much as possible, to look and listen attentively, and, if only this once at least, to overcome his morbidly irritated nature, cost what it might. Just then he was called in to see Porfiry Petrovich.
It turned out that Porfiry Petrovich was alone in his office at the moment. His office was a room neither large nor small; in it stood a big writing desk in front of a sofa upholstered in oilcloth, a bureau, a cabinet in the corner, and a few chairs—all institutional furniture, of yellow polished wood. In the corner of the back wall—or, better, partition—was a closed door; beyond it, behind the partition, there must consequently have been other rooms. When Raskolnikov came in, Porfiry Petrovich immediately closed the door through which he had come, and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently quite cheerful and affable air, and only several minutes later did Raskolnikov notice in him the signs of something like embarrassment—as if he had suddenly been put out, or caught doing something very solitary and secretive.
“Ah, my esteemed sir! Here you are...in our parts . . .” Porfiry began, reaching out both hands to him. “Well, do sit down, my dear! Or perhaps you don't like being called esteemed and...dear—so, tout court? [100] Please don't regard it as familiarity...Over here, sir, on the sofa.”
Raskolnikov sat down without taking his eyes off him.
“In our parts,” the apology for being familiar, the French phrase “ tout court,“ and so on—these were all typical signs. “He reached out both hands to me, and yet he didn't give me either, he drew them back in time,” flashed in him suspiciously. Each of them was watching the other, but as soon as their eyes met, quick as lightning they would look away.
“I've brought you this little paper...about the watch...here, sir. Is that all right, or shall I copy it over?”