And who made me the judge here? T.5 crime and punishment

“And now it’s time for me! - thought Raskolnikov. “Come on, Sofya Semyonovna, let’s see what you’re going to say now!”

And he went to Sonya’s apartment.

IV

Raskolnikov was an active and cheerful lawyer for Sonya against Luzhin, despite the fact that he himself carried so much of his own horror and suffering in his soul. But, having suffered so much in the morning, he was definitely glad for the opportunity to change his impressions, which were becoming unbearable, not to mention how personal and heartfelt his desire to intercede for Sonya was. In addition, he had in mind and was terribly worried, especially at moments, about the upcoming meeting with Sonya: he had tell her who killed Lizaveta, and had a presentiment of terrible torment, and seemed to wave it off with his hands. And therefore, when he exclaimed, leaving Katerina Ivanovna: “Well, what do you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?”, he was obviously still in some outwardly excited state of vivacity, challenge and recent victory over Luzhin. But something strange happened to him. When he reached Kapernaumov’s apartment, he felt sudden exhaustion and fear. Thoughtfully, he stopped in front of the door with a strange question: “Do I need to say who killed Lizaveta?” The question was strange, because he suddenly, at the same time, felt that it was not only impossible not to say, but even to postpone this minute, although for a while, it was impossible. He did not yet know why it was impossible; he just felt this, and this painful consciousness of his powerlessness in the face of necessity almost crushed him. So as not to reason and suffer, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands, but when she saw Raskolnikov, she quickly stood up and walked towards him, as if she had been waiting for him.

What would happen to me without you? - she said quickly, meeting with him in the middle of the room. Obviously, that was all she wanted to tell him as quickly as possible. Then I waited.

Raskolnikov walked to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had just risen. She stood two steps in front of him, exactly like yesterday.

What, Sonya? - he said and suddenly felt that his voice was trembling, - after all, the whole matter rested on “social status and the habits associated with it.” Did you understand this just now?

Suffering was expressed in her face.

Just don't talk to me like yesterday! - she interrupted him. - Please don't start. And so there is enough torment...

She smiled quickly, afraid that perhaps he would not like the reproach.

I stupidly left there. What's there now? Now I wanted to go, but I kept thinking that... you’ll come in.

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was driving them out of the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run somewhere “to look for the truth.”

Oh my god! - Sonya jumped up, - let's go quickly...

And she grabbed her mantle.

Always the same! - Raskolnikov cried irritably. - All you can think about is what they are! Stay with me.

And... Katerina Ivanovna?

And Katerina Ivanovna, of course, will not pass you by, she will come to you herself, since she has already run out of the house,” he added grumpily. - If it doesn’t catch you, you’ll still be to blame...

Sonya sat down on a chair in painful indecision. Raskolnikov was silent, looking at the ground and thinking about something.

Let’s suppose that Luzhin didn’t want to now,” he began, without looking at Sonya. - Well, if he wanted to, or somehow it was part of the calculations, he would have put you in prison if me and Lebezyatnikov had not happened here! A?

But I really could not have happened! And Lebezyatnikov turned up quite by accident.

Sonya was silent.

Well, if I went to prison, what then? Remember what I said yesterday?

She didn't answer again. He waited it out.

And I thought you would shout again: “Oh, don’t talk, stop it!” - Raskolnikov laughed, but somehow with an effort. - Well, silence again? - he asked after a minute. - Surely we need to talk about something? What I would be interested in is how you would now resolve one “issue,” as Lebezyatnikov says. (He seemed to be starting to get confused.) No, really, I'm serious. Imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin’s intentions in advance, you knew (that is, probably) that through them Katerina Ivanovna, and even the children, would have died completely; you too, in addition (since you consider yourself for nothing, so in addition). Polechka too... that’s why she cares the same. Well, sir; So: if suddenly all this was now left up to your decision: to live in this world or that, that is, should Luzhin live and do abominations, or should Katerina Ivanovna die? How would you decide: which one should die? I'm asking you.

Sonya looked at him with concern: she heard something special in this unsteady and suitable speech for something from afar.

“I already had a presentiment that you would ask something like that,” she said, looking at him inquisitively.

Okay, so be it; but, however, how to decide?

Why do you ask what is impossible to be? - Sonya said with disgust.

Therefore, it is better for Luzhin to live and do abominations! You didn’t dare to decide this either?

But I can’t know God’s providence... And why are you asking what you shouldn’t ask? Why such empty questions? How can it happen that this depends on my decision? And who made me the judge here: who should live and who should not live?

Once God’s providence gets involved, nothing can be done about it,” Raskolnikov grumbled gloomily.

You better say directly what you want! - Sonya cried out with suffering, - again you are pointing to something... Have you really come just to torment!

"Crime and Punishment - 05 PART FIVE"

The morning that followed the fatal explanation for Pyotr Petrovich with Dunechka and Pulcheria Alexandrovna brought its sobering effect on Pyotr Petrovich as well. To his greatest discomfort, he was gradually forced to accept as a fact, accomplished and irrevocable, what only yesterday seemed to him an almost fantastic incident and, although it had come true, it still seemed impossible. The black snake of stung pride sucked his heart all night. Getting out of bed, Pyotr Petrovich immediately looked in the mirror. He was afraid that bile had spilled inside him during the night? However, from this side everything was fine for now, and, looking at his noble, white and slightly obese face, Lately appearance, Pyotr Petrovich even consoled himself for a moment, in the complete conviction to find himself a bride somewhere else, and, perhaps, even cleaner; but he immediately came to his senses and energetically spat to the side, which evoked a silent but sarcastic smile in his young friend and roommate Andrei Semenovich Lebezyatnikov. Pyotr Petrovich noticed this smile and to himself he immediately put it on his young friend’s account. He has already managed to score a lot for him lately. His anger doubled when he suddenly realized that he should not have reported yesterday’s results to Andrei Semenovich. This was the second mistake yesterday, made by him in the heat of the moment, from excessive expansiveness, in irritation... Then, all this morning, as if on purpose, trouble after trouble followed. Even in the Senate some kind of failure awaited him in the matter about which he was working there. He was especially irritated by the owner of the apartment, which he had rented in anticipation of his imminent marriage and was finishing at his own expense: this owner, some rich German artisan, would never agree to violate the contract he had just made and demanded the full penalty specified in the contract, despite the fact that that Pyotr Petrovich was returning the apartment to him, almost redecorated. In the same way, the furniture store never wanted to return a single ruble from the deposit for furniture purchased but not yet transported to the apartment. “I don’t want to marry for furniture on purpose!” - Pyotr Petrovich rasped to himself, and at the same time desperate hope flashed through him once again: “Is it really all so irretrievably lost and over? Is it really impossible to try again?” The thought of Dounia once again temptingly pricked his heart. He endured this moment with agony, and, of course, if it were possible now, with desire alone, to kill Raskolnikov, then Pyotr Petrovich would immediately utter this desire.

“The mistake was also that I didn’t give them any money at all,” he thought, sadly returning to Lebezyatnikov’s closet, “and why the hell did I expect so much? There wasn’t even any calculation here! I thought to hold them in a black body and bring them so that they would look at me as if I were providence, but there they are!.. Ugh!.. No, if I had given them, for example, fifteen hundred thousand for a dowry during all this time, yes for gifts, for various boxes, travel bags, carnelians, cloth and all this rubbish from Knop and from the English store, so it would be cleaner and... stronger! They wouldn’t refuse me so easily now! These are people of such a type that in case of refusal, they would certainly consider it an obligation to return both the gifts and the money, but to return it would be difficult and pitiful! And it would tickle your conscience: how, they say, to suddenly drive away a person who until now has been so generous and quite delicate "?.. Hm! I screwed up!" And, grinding again, Pyotr Petrovich immediately called himself a fool - to himself, of course.

Having come to this conclusion, he returned home twice as angry and irritable as he had been when he left. Preparations for the wake in Katerina Ivanovna’s room partly attracted his curiosity. He had heard something about these commemorations yesterday; I even remembered that it was as if he had been invited; but due to his own troubles, he ignored all this else. Having hastened to inquire from Mrs. Lippewechsel, who was busy in the absence of Katerina Ivanovna (who was in the cemetery) near the table that was being set, he learned that the wake would be solemn, that almost all the residents had been invited, some of them even strangers to the deceased, that even Andrei Semenovich Lebezyatnikov had been invited, despite his former quarrel with Katerina Ivanovna, and, finally, he himself, Pyotr Petrovich, is not only invited, but is even awaited with great impatience, since he is almost the most important guest of all the residents. Amalia Ivanovna herself was also invited with great honor, despite all the previous troubles, and therefore she was in charge and busy now, almost feeling pleasure from this, and besides, she was all dressed up, albeit in mourning, but in everything new, in silk, in fluff and ashes, and was proud of it. All these facts and information gave Pyotr Petrovich some thought, and he went to his room, that is, to the room of Andrei Semenovich Lebezyatnikov, in some thoughtfulness. The fact is that he also found out that Raskolnikov was among those invited.

For some reason, Andrei Semenovich sat at home all this morning. With this gentleman, Pyotr Petrovich established some kind of strange, however, partly natural relationship: Pyotr Petrovich despised and hated him even beyond measure, almost from the very day he settled with him, but at the same time seemed to be somewhat afraid of him . He stayed with him upon his arrival in St. Petersburg not only out of stingy economy, although this was almost the main reason, but there was also another reason. While still in the provinces, he heard about Andrei Semenovich, his former pupil, as one of the most advanced young progressives and even as playing a significant role in other curious and fabulous circles. This amazed Pyotr Petrovich. These powerful, all-knowing, despising and denouncing circles had long frightened Pyotr Petrovich with some kind of special fear, completely, however, indefinite. Of course, he himself, and even in the provinces, could not formulate an accurate concept of anything of this kind. He, like everyone else, heard that there were, especially in St. Petersburg, some progressives, nihilists, denouncers, etc., etc., but, like many, he exaggerated and distorted the meaning and significance of these names to the point of absurdity. What he feared most for several years now was exposure, and this was the main reason for his constant, exaggerated anxiety, especially when he dreamed of transferring his activities to St. Petersburg. In this regard, he was, as they say, frightened, as small children are sometimes frightened. Several years ago, in the provinces, when he was just beginning to organize his career, he encountered two cases of cruelly denouncing rather significant provincial persons, to whom he had hitherto clung and who patronized him. One case ended in a particularly scandalous way for the accused person, and the other almost ended in a very troublesome way. That is why Pyotr Petrovich decided, upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, to immediately find out what was going on, and if necessary, then, just in case, to run ahead and curry favor with “our younger generations.” In this case, “he relied on Andrei Semenovich and when visiting, for example, Raskolnikov, he had already learned to somehow round off well-known phrases from someone else’s voice...

Of course, he quickly managed to discern in Andrei Semenovich an extremely vulgar and simple-minded person. But this did not dissuade or encourage Pyotr Petrovich at all. Even if he were convinced that all progressives were just as fools, then even then his anxiety would not have subsided. Actually, he had nothing to do with all these teachings, thoughts, systems (with which Andrei Semenovich attacked him like that). He had his own goal. He just needed to quickly and immediately find out: what happened here and how? Are these people strong or not? Is there anything for him to be afraid of, or not? Will they reprove him if he does something like this, or will they not reprove him? And if they denounce you, then for what exactly, and for what exactly are they now denouncing you? Moreover: is it not possible to somehow tamper with them and immediately trick them, if they are really strong? Is this necessary or not? Is it not possible, for example, to arrange something in your career through them? In short, there were hundreds of questions ahead.

This Andrei Semyonovich was a thin and scrofulous little man, of small stature, who had served somewhere and was strangely blond, with cutlet-shaped sideburns, of which he was very proud. Moreover, his eyes almost constantly hurt. His heart was rather soft, but his speech was very self-confident, and sometimes even extremely arrogant - which, in comparison with his figure, almost always came out funny. At Amalia Ivanovna’s place, however, he was considered one of the rather honorable tenants, that is, he did not drink and paid the rent regularly. Despite all these qualities, Andrei Semenovich was really stupid. He was assigned to progress and to “our younger generations” - out of passion. This was one of that countless and varied legion of vulgarities, dead idiots and half-educated tyrants who instantly pester the most fashionable current idea in order to immediately vulgarize it, in order to instantly caricature everything that they sometimes most sincerely serve.

However, Lebezyatnikov, despite the fact that he was very kind, was also beginning to somewhat dislike his roommate and former guardian Pyotr Petrovich. This happened on both sides somehow by chance and mutually. No matter how simple-minded Andrei Semyonovich was, he still began to see little by little that Pyotr Petrovich was deceiving him and secretly despising him and that “this man is not like that at all.” He tried to explain to him the Fourier system and Darwin's theory, but Pyotr Petrovich, especially lately, began to listen somehow too sarcastically, and most recently he even began to scold. The fact is that, by instinct, he began to understand that Lebezyatnikov is not only a vulgar and stupid little man, but, perhaps, a liar, and that he has no significant connections at all, even in his circle, but has only heard something from the third voice; Moreover, maybe he doesn’t know much about his own propaganda work, because something is too confused, and why should he be an accuser? By the way, let us note in passing that Pyotr Petrovich, during these week and a half, willingly accepted (especially at the beginning) even very strange praise from Andrei Semenovich, that is, he did not object, for example, and kept silent if Andrei Semenovich ascribed to him a readiness to contribute to the future and rapid establishment of a new " commune" somewhere in Meshchanskaya Street; or, for example, not to interfere with Dounia if she, in the very first month of marriage, decides to take a lover; or not to baptize your future children, etc., etc. - everything like that. Pyotr Petrovich, as usual, did not object to such qualities attributed to him and allowed himself to be praised even in this way - so pleasant was any praise to him.

Pyotr Petrovich, who for some reason had exchanged several five-percent notes that morning, sat at the table and counted stacks of credit cards and series. Andrei Semenovich, who almost never had any money, walked around the room and pretended to himself that he was looking at all these bundles with indifference and even disdain. Pyotr Petrovich would never, for example, have believed that Andrei Semenovich could really look at that kind of money with indifference; Andrei Semenovich, in turn, thought with bitterness that Pyotr Petrovich might actually be capable of thinking so about him, and he was also glad, perhaps, for the opportunity to tickle and tease his young friend with the stacks of banknotes laid out, reminding him of his insignificance and all the difference that supposedly exists between them both.

This time he found him incredibly irritable and inattentive, despite the fact that he, Andrei Semyonovich, began to develop before him his favorite topic about the establishment of a new, special “commune”. The brief objections and remarks that escaped from Pyotr Petrovich in the intervals between the ticking of the dominoes on the abacus breathed with the most obvious and deliberately impolite ridicule. But the “humane” Andrei Semenovich attributed Pyotr Petrovich’s mood to the impression of yesterday’s break with Dunechka and was eager to talk about this topic as quickly as possible: he had something progressive and propaganda to say on this subject that could console his venerable friend and “undoubtedly” benefit its further development.

What kind of wake is this... this widow having? - Pyotr Petrovich suddenly asked, interrupting Andrei Semenovich at the most interesting place.

As if you don’t know; Yesterday I talked to you about this same topic and developed the idea about all these rituals... But she invited you too, I heard. You spoke to her yourself yesterday...

I never expected that this poor fool would spend all the money she received from this other fool... Raskolnikov at the wake. I even marveled now, as I passed by: such preparations there, wine!.. Several people were invited - the devil knows what it is! - Pyotr Petrovich continued, questioning and leading to this conversation as if with some purpose. - What? Are you saying that you invited me too?” he suddenly added, raising his head. - When is this? I don't remember, sir. However, I won't go. What am I doing there? Yesterday I spoke only to her, in passing, about the possibility of her, as a poor widow of an official, receiving an annual salary in the form of a lump sum. Isn’t that why she’s inviting me? Hehe!

“I don’t intend to go either,” Lebezyatnikov said.

Still would! They beat it off with their own hands. It’s clear that I’m ashamed, he-he-he!

Who beat it? Whom? - Lebezyatnikov suddenly became alarmed and even blushed.

Yes, you, Katerina Ivanovna, about a month ago or something! I heard, sir, yesterday... Those are the beliefs!.. And the women's issue has gone wrong. Hehehehe!

And Pyotr Petrovich, as if consoled, began to click on the abacus again.

This is all nonsense and slander! - Lebezyatnikov, who was constantly afraid of reminders of this story, flushed, - and it wasn’t like that at all! It was different... You heard it wrong; gossip! I was just defending myself then. She was the first to rush at me with her claws... She plucked out my entire sideburn... Every person is allowed, I hope, to protect his personality. Besides, I won’t allow anyone to force me on me... As a matter of principle. Because this is almost despotism. What could I do: just stand in front of her? I just pushed her away.

Hehehehe! - Luzhin continued to laugh evilly.

You are bullying because you yourself are angry and angry... But this is nonsense and does not concern women’s issues at all! You misunderstand; I even thought that if it is already accepted that a woman is equal to a man in everything, even in strength (which is already being asserted), then, therefore, there must be equality here too. Of course, I later reasoned that such a question, in essence, should not exist, because there should not be a fight, and that cases of fighting in a future society are unthinkable... and that it is strange, of course, to seek equality in a fight. I'm not so stupid... although there is a fight, however... that is, there won't be any later, but now there is still... ugh! crap! You'll get confused! I’m not going to the funeral because of this trouble. I simply won’t go on principle, so as not to participate in the vile prejudice of the wake, that’s what! However, it would be possible to go, just to laugh... But it’s a pity that there will be no priests. Otherwise I would definitely go.

That is, sit down at someone else’s bread and salt and immediately don’t give a damn about her, equally about those who invited you. So, what?

Not to give a damn at all, but to protest. I am with a useful purpose. I can indirectly contribute to development and propaganda. Every person is obliged to develop and propagate and, perhaps, the more sharply, the better. I can throw in an idea, a seed... From this seed a fact will grow. How do I offend them? At first they will be offended, and then they will see for themselves that I have brought them benefit. Over there they accused Terebyeva (that’s what’s happening in the commune now) that when she left the family and... gave herself up, she wrote to her mother and father that she didn’t want to live among prejudices and was entering into a civil marriage, and that it was supposedly too rude, with fathers, that they could have been spared, written more softly. In my opinion, all this is nonsense, and there is no need to be gentler at all; on the contrary, on the contrary, this is where we should protest. Vaughn Varents lived with her husband for seven years, abandoned two children, and at once snapped at her husband in a letter: “I realized that I could not be happy with you. I will never forgive you for deceiving me by hiding from me that there is a different structure of society, through communes. I recently learned all this from one generous man, to whom I gave myself up, and with him I am starting a commune. I am speaking directly because I consider it dishonest to deceive you. Stay as you wish. Don’t expect to get me back, you are too late. I wish to be happy." This is how these kinds of letters are written!

And this Terebyeva, after all, this is the same one about whom you said then that she was in her third civil marriage?

Only in the second, if you really judge! Yes, even in the fourth, even in the fifteenth, all this is nonsense! And if I ever regretted that my father and mother died, then, of course, now. Several times I even dreamed that if they were still alive, how I would hit them with a protest! I would let you down like that on purpose... Is this some kind of “cut off piece”, ugh! I would show them! I would surprise them! Really, it’s a pity that there is no one!

To surprise something? Hehe! Well, let it be as you please,” interrupted Pyotr Petrovich, “but tell me this: you know this dead man’s daughter, she’s so puny!” It’s absolutely true what they say about her, huh?

What is it? In my opinion, that is, in my personal conviction, this is the most normal state of a woman. Why not? That is distinguons. 1 In today's society it is, of course, not entirely normal, because it is forced, but in the future it is completely normal, because it is free. And now she had the right: she suffered, and this was her fund, so to speak capital, which she had every right to dispose of. Of course, in the future society there will be no need for funds; but its role will be designated in a different meaning, determined harmoniously and rationally. As for Sofia Semyonovna personally, at present I look at her actions as an energetic and personified protest against the structure of society and deeply respect her for this; Even looking at her makes me happy!

1 we will distinguish (French).

But they told me that you were the one who got her out of here from the rooms!

Lebezyatnikov even became furious.

This is another gossip! - he yelled. - That’s not how it was at all! This is not true! It was Katerina Ivanovna who lied then because she didn’t understand anything! And I didn’t try to approach Sofya Semyonovna at all! I simply developed her, completely disinterestedly, trying to arouse a protest in her... I only needed a protest, and Sofya Semyonovna herself could no longer stay here in the rooms!

Did you call me to the commune?

You keep laughing and it’s very unfortunate, let me point out to you. You don't understand anything! There are no such roles in the commune. The commune is organized so that such roles do not exist. In a commune, this role will change its entire present essence, and what is stupid here will become smart there, what is unnatural here, under current circumstances, will become completely natural there. It all depends on what situation and environment a person is in. Everything comes from the environment, but man himself is nothing. And I’m on good terms with Sofia Semyonovna even now, which can serve as proof to you that she never considered me her enemy and offender. Yes! I am now seducing her into the commune, but only on completely, completely different grounds! Why do you find it funny? We want to start our own commune, a special one, but only on broader grounds than the previous ones. We have gone further in our beliefs. We are in denial no more! If Dobrolyubov had risen from his grave, I would have argued with him. And Belinsky would have been killed! In the meantime, I continue to develop Sofya Semyonovna. This is a wonderful, wonderful nature!

Well, you take advantage of your beautiful nature, huh? Hehe!

No no! Oh no! Against!

Well, quite the opposite! Hehehehe! Ek said!

Yes, believe me! Yes, for what reasons would I hide in front of you, please tell me? On the contrary, even to me it’s strange: with me she’s somehow intensely, somehow fearfully chaste and bashful!

And you, of course, develop... hehe! are you proving to her that all this shyness is nonsense?..

Not at all! Not at all! Oh, how rudely, how stupidly - forgive me - you understand the word: development! Y-you don’t understand anything! Oh my God, how are you still... not ready! We are looking for the freedom of a woman, but you have only one thing on your mind... Completely bypassing the question of chastity and female modesty, as things in themselves that are useless and even prejudiced, I fully, completely accept her chastity with me, because in this - all her will, all her right. Of course, if she herself told me: “I want to have you,” then I would consider myself very lucky, because I really like the girl; but now, now at least, of course, no one has ever treated her more politely and courteously than I, with more respect for her dignity... I wait and hope - and that’s all!

You better give her something. I bet you haven't thought about this.

Y-you don’t understand anything, I told you! Of course, this is her position, but that’s another question! completely different! You just despise her. Seeing a fact that you mistakenly consider worthy of contempt, you are already denying a human being a humane view of him. You don’t yet know what kind of nature this is! I’m just very annoyed that recently she’s somehow completely stopped reading and doesn’t take anything from me anymore. more books. I took it before. It’s also a pity that with all her energy and determination to protest, which she has already proven once, she still seems to have little independence, so to speak, independence, not enough denial to completely break away from other prejudices and... stupidities. Despite the fact that she understands other issues very well. She perfectly, for example, understood the question of kissing hands, that is, that a man insults a woman with inequality if he kisses her hand. This question was discussed between us, and I immediately conveyed it to her. She also listened carefully to workers' associations in France. Now I am explaining to her the issue of free entry into rooms in the future society.

What is this?

The question has been debated recently: does a member of a commune have the right to enter another member’s room, a man or a woman, at any time... well, it has been decided that he has...

Well, how is this or that busy at that moment with necessary needs, hehe!

Andrei Semenovich even got angry.

And you are all about this, about these damned “needs”! - he cried with hatred, - ugh, how angry and annoyed I am that, while presenting the system, I mentioned to you prematurely about these damned needs! Damn it! This is a stumbling block for everyone like you, and most of all, they pick it up before they know what’s going on! And you’re definitely right! They're definitely proud of something! Ugh! I have argued several times that this whole question can only be presented to beginners at the very end, when he is already convinced of the system, when the person is already developed and directed. And what, please tell me, what do you find so shameful and despicable, even in garbage pits? I'm the first, I'm ready to clean out whatever garbage pits you want! There's not even any self-sacrifice here! This is simply work, a noble, useful activity for society, which is worth any other, and already much higher, for example, the activities of some Raphael or Pushkin, because it is more useful!

And more noble, more noble - he-he-he!

What is "nobler"? I do not understand such expressions in the sense of definition human activity. “More noble”, “more generous” - all this is nonsense, absurdity, old prejudiced words, which I deny! Everything that is useful to humanity is noble!

I understand only one word: useful! Giggle all you want, but this is how it is!

Pyotr Petrovich laughed a lot. He had already finished counting and hid the money. However, for some reason some of them still remained on the table. This “question about garbage pits” has already served several times, despite all its vulgarity, as a reason for rupture and disagreement between Pyotr Petrovich and his young friend. The stupidity was that Andrei Semenovich was really angry. Luzhin took his soul away from this, and at the present moment he especially wanted to annoy Lebezyatnikov.

It’s because of your failure yesterday that you are so angry and attached,” Lebezyatnikov finally broke through, who, generally speaking, despite all his “independence” and all the “protests,” somehow did not dare to oppose Pyotr Petrovich and generally still watched in front of him some kind of usual, from previous years, respectfulness.

But you’d better tell me this,” Pyotr Petrovich interrupted arrogantly and with annoyance, “can you, sir... or better say: are you really and how short are you with the above-mentioned young lady to ask her now, for a minute, here, in this room? It seems they've all returned there, from the cemetery... I hear a rush of people... I should see her, sir, that special one.

Why do you need it? - Lebezyatnikov asked in surprise.

And so, sir, it is necessary, sir. Today or tomorrow I will be moving out of here, and therefore I would like to inform her... However, perhaps, be here during the explanation. Even better. Otherwise you, perhaps, God knows what you’ll think.

I won’t think of anything at all... I just asked, and if you have a business, then there is nothing easier than calling her. I'll go now. And rest assured, I won’t interfere with you.

Indeed, about five minutes later Lebezyatnikov returned with Sonechka. She entered in extreme surprise and, as usual, timid. She was always timid similar cases and she was very afraid of new faces and new acquaintances, she had been afraid before, since childhood, and now even more so... Pyotr Petrovich met her “affectionately and politely,” however, with a certain shade of some kind of cheerful familiarity, decent, however, according to the opinion of Pyotr Petrovich, such a respectable and respectable person as he, in relation to such a young and in some sense interesting creature. He hurried to “encourage” her and seated her at the table opposite him. Sonya sat down, looked around - at Lebezyatnikov, at the money lying on the table, and then suddenly again at Pyotr Petrovich, and no longer took her eyes off him, as if she were riveted to him. Lebezyatnikov headed towards the door. Pyotr Petrovich stood up, motioned for Sonya to sit and stopped Lebezyatnikov at the door.

Is this Raskolnikov there? Has he come? - he asked him in a whisper.

Raskolnikov? There. And what? Yes, there... I just came in, I saw... What?

Well, then I especially ask you to stay here with us, and not leave me alone with this... girl. It’s a trivial matter, but God knows what they’ll get out of it. I don’t want Raskolnikov to convey it there... Do you understand what I’m talking about?

Oh, I understand, I understand! - Lebezyatnikov suddenly realized. - Yes, you have the right... It is, of course, in my personal conviction that you are too far in your fears, but... you still have the right. Please, I'll stay. I’ll stand here by the window and won’t disturb you... In my opinion, you have the right...

Pyotr Petrovich returned to the sofa, sat down opposite Sonya, looked at her carefully and suddenly assumed an extremely respectable, even somewhat stern look: “They say, don’t you think of anything yourself, madam.” Sonya was completely embarrassed.

First of all, please excuse me, Sofya Semyonovna, to your dear mother... So, it seems? Instead of your mother, is Katerina Ivanovna? - Pyotr Petrovich began very respectably, but, however, quite affectionately. It was clear that he had the most friendly intentions.

That's right, sir, that's right; “instead of your mother,” Sonya answered hastily and timidly.

Well, then, excuse me to her that, due to circumstances beyond my control, I am forced to skimp and will not be at your pancakes... that is, at the wake, despite your mother’s sweet call.

Yes, sir; I’ll say, sir; now, sir,” and Sonechka hastily jumped up from her chair.

“That’s not all, sir,” Pyotr Petrovich stopped her, smiling at her simplicity and ignorance of decency, “and you don’t know me enough, dear Sofya Semyonovna, if you thought that because of this unimportant reason that concerns only me, I would bother you personally and call upon a person like you. My goal is different, sir.

Sonya hurriedly sat down. Gray and rainbow banknotes, not removed from the table, again flashed in her eyes, but she quickly took her face away from them and raised it to Pyotr Petrovich: it suddenly seemed terribly indecent to her, especially to her, to look at other people’s money. She was staring at the golden lorgnette of Pyotr Petrovich, which he held in his left hand, and at the same time at the large, massive, extremely beautiful ring with a yellow stone, which was on the middle finger of this hand, but suddenly she took her eyes away from him and, not knowing where to go, she ended up staring straight into Pyotr Petrovich’s eyes again. After a pause even more respectable than before, he continued:

Yesterday I happened to exchange a few words in passing with the unfortunate Katerina Ivanovna. Two words were enough to find out that she was in a state - unnatural, so to speak...

Yes, sir... in the unnatural, sir,” Sonya hastily assented.

Or it’s simpler and clearer to say - in the patient.

Yes, sir, it’s simpler and more understandable... yes, sir, I’m sick.

Yes, sir. So, out of a sense of humanity and, so to speak, compassion, I would like to be, for my part, something useful, foreseeing her inevitably unhappy fate. It seems that the entire poor family is now solely dependent on you.

Let me ask,” Sonya suddenly stood up, “what did you deign to tell her yesterday about the possibility of a pension?” That’s why she told me yesterday that you had decided to get her a pension. Is this true, sir?

Not at all, sir, and even in some sense absurd. I only hinted about temporary assistance to the widow of an official who died in the service - if only there would be patronage - but it seems that your late parent not only did not serve his term, but did not even serve at all recently. In a word, although there could be hope, it is very ephemeral, therefore, in essence, no rights to assistance, in this case, exist, and even on the contrary... And she’s already thinking about a pension, he-he-he ! Lively lady!

Yes, sir, about the pension... That's why she is gullible and kind, and out of kindness she believes everything, and... and... and... she has such a mind... Yes, sir... excuse me, sir, - Sonya said and got up to leave again.

Excuse me, you haven’t listened to the end yet, sir.

“Yes, sir, I didn’t listen to the end,” Sonya muttered.

So sit down, sir.

Sonya was terribly embarrassed and sat down again, for the third time.

Seeing her situation like this, with the unfortunate minors, I would like, as I already said, to be useful in some way, to the best of my ability, that is, what is called to the best of my ability, sir, no more. It would be possible, for example, to arrange a subscription in her favor, or, so to speak, a lottery... or something like that - as is always the case in such cases, arranged by relatives or even strangers who generally want to help people. This is what I intended to tell you about. It would be possible, sir.

Yes, sir, good, sir... God thank you for this, sir... - Sonya babbled, looking intently at Pyotr Petrovich.

It’s possible, sir, but... we’ll do that later, sir... that is, we could start today. We'll see each other in the evening, come to an agreement and lay, so to speak, the foundation. Come see me here around seven o'clock. Andrei Semenovich, I hope, will also participate with us... But... there is one circumstance here that should be mentioned first and carefully. That’s why I bothered you, Sofya Semyonovna, by calling you here. Exactly, sir, my opinion is that it is impossible, and even dangerous, to give money into the hands of Katerina Ivanovna herself; The proof of this is this very commemoration today. Lacking, so to speak, one crust of daily food for tomorrow and... well, and shoes, and everything, today they buy Jamaican rum and even, it seems, Madeira and-and-and coffee. I saw it while passing. Tomorrow everything will fall on you again, down to the last piece of bread; This is already ridiculous, sir. And therefore, in my personal opinion, the subscription should happen in such a way that the unfortunate widow, so to speak, does not know about the money, but, for example, only you would know. Is that what I'm saying?

I don't know, sir. It’s just her today, sir... this is once in a lifetime... she really wanted to remember, to honor, to remember... and she is very smart, sir. But however, as you wish, sir, and I will very, very, very much... they will all be for you... and God for you, sir... and orphans, sir...

Sonya didn’t finish and started crying.

Yes, sir. Well, sir, keep this in mind; and now please accept, for the interests of your relative, in the first case, a feasible amount from me personally. I very, very much wish that my name was not mentioned in this regard. That's it... having, so to speak, worries myself, I am no longer able...

And Pyotr Petrovich handed Sonya a ten-ruble credit note, carefully unfolding it. Sonya took it, flushed, jumped up, muttered something and quickly began to take her leave. Pyotr Petrovich solemnly escorted her to the door. She finally jumped out of the room, all agitated and exhausted, and returned to Katerina Ivanovna in extreme embarrassment.

Throughout this scene, Andrei Semenovich either stood at the window or walked around the room, not wanting to interrupt the conversation; when Sonya left, he suddenly approached Pyotr Petrovich and solemnly extended his hand to him:

“I heard everything and saw everything,” he said, especially emphasizing the last word. - This is noble, that is, I wanted to say, humane! You wanted to avoid gratitude, I saw! And although, I confess to you, I cannot sympathize, on principle, with private charity, because not only does it not radically eradicate evil, but even feeds it even more, nevertheless I cannot help but admit that I looked at your act with pleasure, - yes, yes, I like it.

Eh, all this is nonsense! - Pyotr Petrovich muttered, somewhat nervously and somehow looking closely at Lebezyatnikov.

No, not nonsense! A person who is offended and annoyed, like you, by yesterday's incident and at the same time capable of thinking about the misfortune of others - such a person... although he makes a social mistake with his actions, is nevertheless... worthy of respect! I didn’t even expect it from you, Pyotr Petrovich, especially since according to your concepts, oh! how your concepts still hinder you! How, for example, does this yesterday’s failure worry you,” exclaimed the kind Andrei Semenovich, again feeling an increased affection for Pyotr Petrovich, “and why, why do you absolutely need this marriage, this legal marriage, most noble, most kind Pyotr Petrovich?” Why do you absolutely need this legality in marriage? Well, if you want, then beat me, but I’m glad, I’m glad that it didn’t succeed, that you are free, that you haven’t completely died for humanity, I’m glad... You see: I spoke out!

Because in your civil marriage I don’t want to wear horns and separate other people’s children, that’s why I need a legal marriage,” said Luzhin, in order to answer something. He was especially busy and thoughtful about something.

Children? Have you touched children? - Andrei Semenovich shuddered, like a war horse that heard a military trumpet, - children are a social issue and a matter of the first importance, I agree; but the issue of children will be resolved differently. Some even completely deny children, like any hint of family. We'll talk about kids after, but now let's get to the antlers! I confess to you, this is my weak point. This nasty, hussar, Pushkin expression is even unthinkable in the future lexicon. And what are horns? Oh, what a delusion! What horns? Why horns? What nonsense! On the contrary, in a civil marriage they will not exist! Horns are only a natural consequence of any legal marriage, so to speak, an amendment to it, a protest, so in this sense they are not even at all humiliating... And if I ever, assuming an absurdity, will be in a legal marriage, then I I will even be glad to see your disheveled horns; I will then say to my wife: “My friend, until now I only loved you, but now I respect you, because you were able to protest!” Are you laughing? This is because you are unable to break away from prejudice! Damn it, I understand exactly what the trouble is when you cheat in a legal way; but this is only a vile consequence of a vile fact, where both are humiliated. When horns are placed openly, as in a civil marriage, then they no longer exist, they are unthinkable and even lose the name horns. On the contrary, your wife will only prove to you how much she respects you, considering you incapable of resisting her happiness and so developed as not to take revenge on her for her new husband. Damn it, I sometimes dream that if I were married off, ugh! If I had gotten married (whether civilly or legally, it doesn’t matter), I would, it seems, have brought a lover to my wife, if she hadn’t taken him for a long time. “My friend,” I would tell her, “I love you, but more than that, I want you to respect me - here!” Is that so, is that what I say?..

Pyotr Petrovich chuckled as he listened, but without much enthusiasm. He didn't even listen much. He was really thinking about something else, and even Lebezyatnikov finally noticed it. Pyotr Petrovich was even excited, rubbing his hands and thinking. Andrei Semenovich later realized and remembered all this...

It would be difficult to pinpoint exactly the reasons why the idea of ​​this stupid wake arose in Katerina Ivanovna’s upset head. Indeed, almost ten rubles out of the twenty-odd they received from Raskolnikov for Marmeladov’s funeral were spent on them. Perhaps Katerina Ivanovna considered herself obligated to the deceased to honor his memory “properly,” so that all the residents and Amalia Ivanovna in particular would know that he was “not only no worse than them, but perhaps even much better, sir.” “and that none of them has the right to “turn up their noses” in front of him. Perhaps what had the most influence here was that special pride of the poor, as a result of which, during certain social rituals that are obligatory in our everyday life for everyone, many poor people stare with all their might and spend their last saved penny just to be “no worse than others.” and so that those others do not “condemn” them in some way. It is also very likely that Katerina Ivanovna wanted, precisely on this occasion, precisely at that moment when she, it would seem, was abandoned by everyone in the world, to show all these “insignificant and nasty tenants” that she not only “knows how to live and knows how to accept,” but that she was not even brought up for such a lot, but was brought up in a “noble, one might even say, in an aristocratic colonel’s house,” and was certainly not prepared to sweep the floor herself and wash children’s rags at night . These paroxysms of pride and vanity sometimes visit the poorest and most downtrodden people and, at times, turn into an irritable, uncontrollable need. And Katerina Ivanovna was, moreover, not one of the downtrodden: it was possible to completely kill her by circumstances, but it was impossible to kill her morally, or to intimidate her and subjugate her will. Moreover, Sonechka said very thoroughly about her that her mind was in the way. True, this could not yet be said positively and definitively, but indeed lately, throughout the last year, her poor head had been too exhausted not to be at least partially damaged. The strong development of consumption, as doctors say, also contributes to mental insanity.

There were no plural wines and many different varieties, neither Madeira: this was exaggerated, but there was wine. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon, all of the worst quality, but in sufficient quantity. Of the food, besides kutya, there were three or four dishes (including pancakes, by the way), all from Amalia Ivanovna’s kitchen, and in addition to that, two samovars were set up at once for tea and punch to be had after dinner. Katerina Ivanovna herself managed the purchases, with the help of one tenant, some pitiful Pole, God knows why, who lived with Mrs. Lippewechsel, who was immediately assigned to send parcels to Katerina Ivanovna and ran around all yesterday and all this morning, headlong and with his tongue hanging out, It seems that he is especially trying to make this last circumstance noticeable. For every trifle, he constantly resorted to Katerina Ivanovna herself, even ran to look for her in Gostiny Dvor , called her incessantly: “Mrs. Khorunzhina,” and finally got tired of her like a radish, although at first she said that without this “helpful and generous” man she would have been completely lost. It was part of Katerina Ivanovna’s character to quickly dress up the first person she came across in the best and brightest colors, to praise him so that others even felt ashamed, to invent various circumstances in his praise that did not exist at all, to completely sincerely and sincerely believe in them herself. reality and then suddenly, all at once, become disappointed, cut off, spit on and kick out the man whom she, just a few hours ago, literally worshiped. By nature she had a humorous, cheerful and peace-loving character, but due to continuous misfortunes and failures, she so fiercely began to desire and demand that everyone live in peace and joy and not dare to live differently, that the slightest dissonance in life, the slightest failure became almost immediately drove her into a frenzy, and in an instant, after the most vivid hopes and fantasies, she began to curse fate, tear and throw everything that came to hand, and bang her head against the wall. Amalia Ivanovna, for some reason, also suddenly acquired extraordinary importance and extraordinary respect from Katerina Ivanovna, solely because, perhaps, this wake was started and that Amalia Ivanovna decided with all her heart to participate in all the troubles: she undertook to set the table, deliver linen, dishes, etc. . and prepare food in your kitchen. Katerina Ivanovna authorized her in everything and left her alone, going to the cemetery herself. Indeed, everything was prepared to perfection: the table was even set quite cleanly, dishes, forks, knives, glasses, glasses, cups - all of this, of course, was prefabricated, of different styles and sizes, from different residents, but everything was there by a certain hour. in their place, and Amalia Ivanovna, feeling that she had done the job perfectly, greeted those returning even with some pride, all dressed up, in a cap with new mourning ribbons and in a black dress. This pride, although well-deserved, for some reason did not please Katerina Ivanovna: “in fact, it’s as if they wouldn’t have been able to set the table without Amalia Ivanovna!” She also didn’t like the cap with the new ribbons: “Isn’t this stupid German woman really proud that she is a housewife and out of mercy she agreed to help the poor residents? Out of mercy! I humbly ask! Katerina Ivanovna’s dad, who was a colonel and almost a governor, the table was sometimes set for forty people, so that some Amalia Ivanovna, or better yet, Lyudvigovna, would not have been allowed into the kitchen. ..” However, Katerina Ivanovna decided not to express her feelings for the time being, although she decided in her heart that Amalia Ivanovna would certainly have to be reined in today and reminded of her real place, otherwise she would, God knows, dream about herself in the meantime treated her only coldly. Another unpleasantness also partly contributed to Katerina Ivanovna’s irritation: at the funeral, of the residents invited to the funeral, except for the Pole, who managed to run into the cemetery, almost no one was there; but for the wake, that is, for the snack, All of them were the most insignificant and poor, many of them were not even in their proper form, so, some kind of rubbish. Those of them who were older and more respectable, all of them, as if on purpose, as if by agreement, skimped. Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, for example, the most, one might say, the most respectable of all the tenants did not show up, and yet just yesterday evening Katerina Ivanovna had already managed to tell everyone in the world, that is, Amalia Ivanovna, Polechka, Sonya and the Pole, that he was the noblest, most generous man, with enormous connections and with the condition, ex-friend her first husband, received into her father's house and who promised to use all means to obtain for her a significant pension. Let us note here that if Katerina Ivanovna boasted about someone’s connections and fortune, it was without any interest, without any personal calculation, completely disinterestedly, so to speak, from the fullness of her heart, out of the sheer pleasure of praising and giving even more value to the person being praised. After Luzhin, and probably “taking his example”, “that nasty bastard Lebezyatnikov” did not appear. “What does this guy think about himself? They invited him only out of mercy, and only because he and Pyotr Petrovich are in the same room and he knows him, it was so awkward not to invite.” Neither did one tall lady with her “overripe maiden,” her daughter, who, although they only lived for about two weeks in Amalia Ivanovna’s rooms, had already complained several times about the noise and screaming that rose from the Marmeladovs’ room, especially when the deceased returned home drunk, which, of course, became known to Katerina Ivanovna through Amalia Ivanovna, when she, arguing with Katerina Ivanovna and threatening to drive away the whole family, screamed at the top of her lungs that they were bothering “noble tenants who are not worth their feet.” Katerina Ivanovna now deliberately decided to invite this lady and her daughter, whom “she supposedly wasn’t worth a leg,” especially since until now, with chance encounters, she arrogantly turned away - so that she would know that here “they think and feel more nobly, and invite without remembering evil,” and so that they would see that Katerina Ivanovna was not accustomed to living in such a lot. It was certainly necessary to explain this to them at the table, as well as about the governorship of their late father, and at the same time indirectly note that there was no point in turning away during meetings and that it was extremely stupid. The fat lieutenant colonel (essentially a retired staff captain) also did not come, but it turned out that he had been “without his hind legs” since yesterday morning. In a word, only a Polish boy appeared, then one little clerical clerk without speeches, in a greasy tailcoat, covered in acne and with a nasty smell; then another deaf and almost completely blind old man, who once served in some post office and whom someone, from time immemorial and for some unknown reason, kept with Amalia Ivanovna. One drunken retired lieutenant also appeared, essentially a provision official, with the most indecent and loud laughter and, “imagine”, without a vest! One person sat down right at the table, without even bowing to Katerina Ivanovna, and, finally, one person, for lack of a dress, appeared in a dressing gown, but this was so indecent that, through the efforts of Amalia Ivanovna and the Pole, they managed to withdraw. The Pole, however, brought with him two other Poles who had never lived with Amalia Ivanovna at all and whom no one had ever seen in their rooms. All this irritated Katerina Ivanovna extremely unpleasantly. “For whom were all the preparations made after this?” Even the children, in order to gain a place, were not seated at the table, which already occupied the entire room, but were laid out on a chest in the back corner, and both little ones were seated on a bench, and Polechka, like the big one, had to look after them, feed them and wipe their noses “like noble children.” In a word, Katerina Ivanovna inevitably had to greet everyone with double importance and even arrogance. She looked at some of them especially sternly and haughtily invited them to sit at the table. Believing for some reason that Amalia Ivanovna should be responsible for all those who did not show up, she suddenly began treating her with extreme carelessness, which she immediately noticed and was extremely offended by this. This start was not expected have a good ending. Finally we sat down.

Raskolnikov entered almost at the very moment they returned from the cemetery. Katerina Ivanovna was terribly happy with him, firstly, because he was the only “educated guest” of all the guests and, “as you know, in two years he was preparing to take a professorial chair at the local university,” and secondly, because he He immediately and respectfully apologized to her that, despite all his wishes, he could not be at the funeral. She pounced on him like that, seated him at the table next to her on her left (Amalia Ivanovna sat on her right) and, despite the continuous bustle and troubles to ensure that the food was served correctly and that everyone got it, despite the painful cough that constantly interrupted and smothered her and, it seems, became especially entrenched in these last two days, constantly turning to Raskolnikov and in a half-whisper hurried to pour out before him all the feelings that had accumulated in her and all her just indignation at the failed wake; Moreover, indignation was often replaced by the most cheerful, most uncontrollable laughter at the assembled guests, but mainly at the hostess herself.

This cuckoo is to blame for everything. You understand who I’m talking about: about her, about her! - and Katerina Ivanovna nodded at the hostess. - Look at her: her eyes are wide open, she feels that we are talking about her, but she can’t understand, and her eyes are wide open. Ew, owl! ha-ha-ha!.. Cough-khi-khi! And what does she want to show with her cap! Khi-khi-khi! Have you noticed that she still wants everyone to think that she is patronizing and that she is doing me an honor by being present. I asked her, as a decent person, to invite better people and precisely the acquaintances of the deceased, but look who she brought: some kind of buffoons! freaks! Look at this one with an unclean face: this is some kind of snot on two legs! And these Poles... ha ha ha! Khi-khi-khi! No one, no one has ever seen them here, and I have never seen them; Well, why did they come, I ask you? They sit decorously side by side. Pan, gay! - she suddenly shouted to one of them, - did you take the pancakes? Take more! Have a beer, beer! Would you like some vodka? Look: he jumped up, bowed, look, look: they must be completely hungry, poor people! No problem, let them eat. They don’t make noise, at least, only... only, really, I’m afraid for the master’s silver spoons!.. Amalia Ivanovna! - she suddenly turned to her, almost out loud, - if in case your spoons are stolen, then I am not responsible for them, I warn you in advance! Ha ha ha! - she burst out, turning again to Raskolnikov, again nodding to him at the hostess and rejoicing at her outburst. - I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand again! He sits with his mouth open, look: an owl, a real one, an owl in new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!

Here the laughter again turned into an unbearable cough that lasted five minutes. There was some blood left on the handkerchief, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. She silently showed the blood to Raskolnikov and, barely resting, immediately whispered to him again with extreme animation and with red spots on her cheeks:

Look, I gave her the most subtle, one might say, instruction to invite this lady and her daughter, do you understand who I’m talking about? Here you have to behave in the most delicate manner, act in the most skillful way, but she did it in such a way that this visiting fool, this arrogant creature, this insignificant provincial, was only because she was some kind of widow of a major and came to ask for a pension and to upholster the hem. according to official places, that at fifty-five years old she is looking surreal, whitening and blushing (this is known) ... and such and such a creature not only did not deign to appear, but did not even send an apology, if she could not come, as in such cases the most ordinary politeness is required! I can’t understand why Pyotr Petrovich didn’t come too? But where is Sonya? Where did you go? Ah, here she is at last! What, Sonya, where have you been? It’s strange that you are so careless even at your father’s funeral. Rodion Romanovich, let her be with you. Here is your place, Sonechka... take whatever you want. Take the aspic, it's better. The pancakes will be brought now. Did they give it to the children? Polechka, do you have everything there? Khi-khi-khi! OK then. Be smart, Lenya, and you, Kolya, don’t dangle your legs; sit as a noble child should sit. What are you saying, Sonechka?

Sonya hastened to immediately convey to her Pyotr Petrovich's apology, trying to speak out loud so that everyone could hear, and using the most selectively respectful expressions, even deliberately composed on behalf of Pyotr Petrovich and embellished by her. She added that Pyotr Petrovich especially ordered that it be conveyed that he would arrive immediately as soon as possible to talk about matters in private and agree on what could be done and undertaken in the future, and so on, and so on.

Sonya knew that this would pacify and calm Katerina Ivanovna, flatter her, and most importantly, her pride would be satisfied. She sat down next to Raskolnikov, to whom she quickly bowed, and glanced at him briefly, curiously. However, the rest of the time I somehow avoided looking at him and talking to him. She seemed even absent-minded, although she looked into Katerina Ivanovna’s face in order to please her. Neither she nor Katerina Ivanovna were in mourning, for lack of dresses; Sonya was wearing something darker brown, and Katerina Ivanovna was wearing her only dress, a dark cotton one with stripes. The news about Pyotr Petrovich went like clockwork. After listening to Sonya importantly, Katerina Ivanovna inquired with the same importance: how is Pyotr Petrovich’s health? Then, immediately and almost out loud, she whispered to Raskolnikov that it would really be strange for a respected and respectable person like Pyotr Petrovich to find himself in such an “extraordinary company,” despite all his devotion to her family and his old friendship with her daddy.

That is why I am especially grateful to you, Rodion Romanych, that you did not disdain my bread and salt, even in such a situation,” she added almost out loud, “however, I am sure that only your special friendship for my poor deceased prompted you to keep your word .

Then she once again proudly and with dignity looked at her guests and suddenly, with particular solicitude, inquired loudly and across the table from the deaf old man: “Would he like some more roast and did they give him Lisbon?” The old man did not answer and for a long time could not understand what he was being asked about, although the neighbors even began to push him aside to laugh. He just looked around with his mouth open, which further inflamed the general merriment.

What a fool! Look, look! And what was he brought to? As for Pyotr Petrovich, I have always been confident in him,” Katerina Ivanovna continued to Raskolnikova, “and, of course, he doesn’t look like...” she turned sharply and loudly and with an extremely stern look to Amalia Ivanovna, which is why she I even felt shy - not like those dressed-up slap-tailed girls of yours, whom daddy wouldn’t have hired as cooks in the kitchen, and the deceased husband, of course, would have done them an honor by accepting them, and then only out of his inexhaustible kindness.

Yes, sir, I liked to drink; They loved it, they drank it! - the retired caterer suddenly shouted, draining his twelfth glass of vodka.

The deceased husband, indeed, had this weakness, and everyone knows it,” and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly clung to him, “but he was a kind and noble man, who loved and respected his family; The only bad thing is that, out of his kindness, he trusted too much in all sorts of depraved people, and God knows who he didn’t drink with, with those who weren’t even worth his soles! Imagine, Rodion Romanovich, they found a gingerbread cockerel in his pocket: he’s walking dead drunk, but he remembers about the children.

Pe-tush-ka? Did you deign to say: pe-tush-ka? - the provision master shouted.

Katerina Ivanovna did not deign to answer him. She thought about something and sighed.

“You probably think, like everyone else, that I was too strict with him,” she continued, turning to Raskolnikov. - But this is not so! He respected me, he respected me very, very much! He was a kind soul! And sometimes I felt so sorry for him! He used to sit and look at me from the corner, he would feel so sorry for him, I would like to pet him, and then you think to yourself: “If you pet him, he’ll get drunk again,” only some degree of severity could be used to deter him.

Yes, sir, it happened, sir, it happened, sir, it happened, sir, more than once, sir,” the provision man roared again and poured another glass of vodka into himself.

It would be useful not only to tug at the cowlicks, but even with a broom to deal with other fools. I'm not talking about a dead man now! - Katerina Ivanovna snapped at the provision man.

The red spots on her cheeks grew more and more red, her chest heaved. Another minute and she was ready to begin the story. Many giggled, many apparently enjoyed it. They began to push the provision man and whisper something to him. They obviously wanted to play them off.

And if you please ask, what are you talking about, sir,” the provision man began, “that is, at whose... noble expense... did you deign to do now... But by the way, don’t! Nonsense! Widow! Widow! I forgive you... Pass! - and he tapped the vodka again.

Raskolnikov sat and listened in silence and disgust. He ate, only out of politeness, touching the pieces that Katerina Ivanovna constantly put on his plate, and then only so as not to offend her. He looked closely at Sonya. But Sonya became more and more anxious and preoccupied; She also had a presentiment that the wake would not end peacefully, and watched with fear Katerina Ivanovna’s growing irritation. She, by the way, knew that the main reason why both visiting ladies treated Katerina Ivanovna’s invitation so contemptuously was she, Sonya. She heard from Amalia Ivanovna herself that her mother was even offended by the invitation and suggested the question: “How could she seat her daughter next to this girl?” Sonya had a presentiment that Katerina Ivanovna somehow already knew this, and the insult to her, Sonya, meant more to Katerina Ivanovna than the insult to her personally, her children, her daddy, in a word, it was a mortal insult, and Sonya knew that Katerina Ivanovna will not calm down now, “until she proves to these slap-tails that they are both,” etc., etc. etc. As if on purpose, someone sent Sonya a plate from the other end of the table with two hearts pierced by an arrow sculpted on it from black bread. Katerina Ivanovna flushed and immediately remarked loudly across the table that the person who sent it was, of course, a “drunk ass.” Amalia Ivanovna, who also had a presentiment of something unkind, and at the same time offended to the depths of her soul by Katerina Ivanovna’s arrogance, in order to divert the unpleasant mood of society in another direction and, by the way, in order to raise herself in general opinion, began suddenly, out of nowhere this, to tell that some acquaintance of hers, “Karl from the pharmacy,” drove a cab at night and that “the cabby wanted to kill him and that Karl begged him so much that he would not kill him, and cried, and folded his hands, and frightened him, and fear pierced his heart.” Although Katerina Ivanovna smiled, she immediately noticed that Amalia Ivanovna should not tell jokes in Russian. She was even more offended and objected that her “Vater aus Berlin bul oshen, oshen are important shelovek and went all the way to her pockets.” The laughing Katerina Ivanovna could not bear it and laughed terribly, so that Amalia Ivanovna began to lose her last patience and could barely hold on.

That's an owl! - Katerina Ivanovna immediately whispered again to Raskolnikov, almost amused, - I wanted to say: he wore his hands in his pockets, but it turned out that he was going through his pockets, cough-cough! And have you noticed, Rodion Romanovich, once and for all, that all these St. Petersburg foreigners, that is, most importantly, the Germans who come to us from somewhere, are all more stupid than us! Well, you must agree, is it possible to talk about how “Karl from the pharmacy pierced his heart with fear” and that he (the brat!), instead of tying up the cab driver, “folded his hands, and cried, and begged for money.” Oh, you fool! And she thinks that this is very touching, and does not suspect how stupid she is! In my opinion, this drunken provisioner is much smarter than her; at least it’s clear that he’s a drunkard, he’s drunk his last mind, but these are all so decorous, serious... Look, he’s sitting there, his eyes wide open. Angry! Angry! Ha ha ha! Khi-khi-khi!

Having cheered up, Katerina Ivanovna immediately got carried away into various details and suddenly started talking about how, with the help of the pension she had secured, she would certainly open a boarding house for noble maidens in her hometown of T.... Katerina Ivanovna herself had not yet informed Raskolnikov about this, and she was immediately carried away into the most tempting details. It is unknown how the very “letter of commendation” that the deceased Marmeladov had notified Raskolnikov of, explaining to him in the tavern that Katerina Ivanovna, his wife, upon graduating from the institute, danced with a shawl “in front of the governor and other persons”, suddenly ended up in her hands ". This letter of commendation, obviously, was now supposed to serve as evidence of Katerina Ivanovna’s right to start a boarding house herself; but most importantly, it was reserved for the purpose of finally cutting off “both overdressed slut-tailed girls,” in case they came to the wake, and to clearly prove to them that Katerina Ivanovna is from the most noble, “one might even say, aristocratic house, the colonel’s daughter and “probably better than other adventurers, of which there have been so many of them lately.” The letter of commendation immediately went into the hands of the drunken guests, which Katerina Ivanovna did not interfere with, because it really indicated, en toutes lettres, [in black and white - French] that she was the daughter of a court councilor and gentleman, and therefore, in the very in fact, almost a colonel's daughter. Inflamed, Katerina Ivanovna immediately spread about all the details of the future wonderful and calm life in T...; about the gymnasium teachers whom she would invite for lessons at her boarding school; about one venerable old man, the Frenchman Mango, who taught Katerina Ivanovna in French at the institute and who is still living out his life in T... and will probably go to her for the most reasonable price. Finally, the matter came to Sonya, “who will go to T... together with Katerina Ivanovna and will help her in everything there.” But then suddenly someone snorted at the end of the table. Although Katerina Ivanovna immediately tried to pretend that she did not notice with disdain the laughter that arose at the end of the table, she immediately, deliberately raising her voice, began to speak with animation about Sofia Semyonovna’s undoubted abilities to serve as her assistant, “about her meekness, patience, self-sacrifice , nobility and education,” she patted Sonya on the cheek and, standing up, kissed her warmly twice. Sonya flushed, and Katerina Ivanovna suddenly burst into tears, immediately noticing to herself that “she is a weak-hearted fool and that she is too upset, that it is time to finish, and since the snack is already over, she should serve the tea.” At that very moment Amalia Ivanovna, already completely offended by the fact that she did not take the slightest part in the entire conversation and that they were not even listening to her at all, suddenly took a chance on last try and, with secret melancholy, she dared to tell Katerina Ivanovna one extremely sensible and thoughtful remark that in the future boarding house it is necessary to pay special attention to the clean linen of the girls (di veshe) and that “there must certainly be one such good lady (di dame), so that Karasho looks at underwear,” and secondly, “so that all young girls don’t read any novel quietly at night.” Katerina Ivanovna, who was really upset and very tired and who was already completely tired of the wake, immediately “cut off” Amalia Ivanovna that she was “talking nonsense” and did not understand anything; that taking care of the lady is the job of the wardrobemaid, and not the headmistress of the noble boarding house; and as for reading novels, it’s simply even indecent, and she asks her to shut up. Amalia Ivanovna flared up and, embittered, remarked that she only “wished well” and that she “wished a lot of good things”, and that “Geld had not paid her for the apartment for a long time.” Katerina Ivanovna immediately “besieged” her, saying that she was lying, saying that “she wished well,” because just yesterday, when the dead man was still lying on the table, she was tormenting her for the apartment. To this, Amalia Ivanovna very consistently noted that she “invited those ladies, but that those ladies were not invited, because those ladies were noble ladies and could not be invited to ignoble ladies.” Katerina Ivanovna immediately “emphasized” to her that since she was a freak, she could not judge what true nobility was. Amalia Ivanovna couldn’t bear it and immediately declared that her “Vater aus Berlin was a big ochen, osen important man, and he went to his pocket with both hands and did everything like that: poof! poof!”, and in order to really introduce her Vater, Amalia Ivanovna jumped up with chair, put both her hands in her pockets, puffed out her cheeks and began to make some vague sounds with her mouth, similar to poof-poof, with loud laughter from all the residents, who deliberately encouraged Amalia Ivanovna with their approval, anticipating a fight. But Katerina Ivanovna could no longer endure this and immediately, publicly, “minted out” that Amalia Ivanovna, perhaps, had never even had a father, and that Amalia Ivanovna was simply a drunken little girl from St. Petersburg and, probably, somewhere before I lived as a cook, and perhaps even worse. Amalia Ivanovna blushed like a lobster and squealed that maybe it was Katerina Ivanovna’s “vater not boul at all; but hers was boul Vater aus Berlin, and yet she wore a long frock coat, and did everything: poof, poof, poof!” Katerina Ivanovna noted with contempt that her origins were known to everyone and that in this very commendable sheet it was indicated in block letters that her father was a colonel; and that Amalia Ivanovna’s father (if only she had any father), probably some Chukhonian from St. Petersburg, sold milk; and most likely, there was no father at all, because it is still unknown what Amalia Ivanovna’s name is according to her father: Ivanovna or Lyudvigovna? Here Amalia Ivanovna, completely enraged and hitting the table with her fist, began to squeal that she was Amal-Ivan, and not Lyudvigovna, that her father’s name was “Johan and that he was a boule burmeister,” and that Katerina Ivanovna’s father “was never a boule burmeister at all.” Katerina Ivanovna stood up from her chair and sternly, apparently in a calm voice(albeit all pale and with a deeply heaving chest), she noticed that if she even once again dared to “compare her crappy little father with her daddy, then she, Katerina Ivanovna, would rip off her cap and trample it under her feet.” . Hearing this, Amalia Ivanovna ran around the room, shouting with all her might that she was the landlady and that Katerina Ivanovna should “move out of the apartment this minute”; then she rushed for some reason to rob the silver spoons from the table. There was a din and noise; the children began to cry. Sonya rushed to hold Katerina Ivanovna; but when Amalia Ivanovna suddenly shouted something about a yellow ticket, Katerina Ivanovna pushed Sonya away and ran towards Amalia Ivanovna to immediately carry out her threat about the cap. At that moment the door opened, and Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin suddenly appeared on the threshold of the room. He stood and looked at the whole company with a stern, attentive gaze. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to him.

Pyotr Petrovich! - she shouted, “at least protect me!” Inspire this stupid creature that she does not dare treat a noble lady in misfortune like that, that there is a court for this... I’m going to the Governor-General himself... She will answer... Remembering my father’s bread and salt, protect the orphans.

Excuse me, madam... Excuse me, excuse me, madam,” Pyotr Petrovich waved him off, “your daddy, as you know, I didn’t have the honor of knowing at all... excuse me, madam!” (someone laughed loudly), but I don’t intend to participate in your continuous quarrels with Amalia Ivanovna, sir... I am out of necessity... and I want to explain myself, immediately, to your stepdaughter, Sofia... Ivanovna... It seems so, sir? Let me pass...

And Pyotr Petrovich, sidestepping Katerina Ivanovna, headed to the opposite corner, where Sonya was.

Katerina Ivanovna stood still and remained as if struck by thunder. She couldn’t understand how Pyotr Petrovich could renounce her daddy’s bread and salt. Having once invented this bread and salt, she already sacredly believed it herself. She was also struck by Pyotr Petrovich’s businesslike, dry, even full of some kind of contemptuous threat tone. And everyone somehow became quiet little by little when he appeared. Besides the fact that this “businesslike and serious” man was too sharply out of harmony with the whole company, in addition, it was clear that he had come for something important, that, probably, some extraordinary reason could have attracted him to such a company and that, therefore, now something will happen, something will happen. Raskolnikov, standing next to Sonya, stepped aside to let him through; Pyotr Petrovich seemed not to notice him at all. A minute later Lebezyatnikov appeared on the threshold; he did not enter the room, but also stopped with some special curiosity, almost with surprise; I listened, but it seemed that for a long time I could not understand something.

Sorry that I may be interrupting, but the matter is quite important, sir,” Pyotr Petrovich remarked somehow in general and without addressing anyone in particular, “I’m even glad in public.” Amalia Ivanovna, I humbly ask you, as the owner of the apartment, to pay attention to my subsequent conversation with Sofia Ivanovna. Sofya Ivanovna,” he continued, turning directly to the extremely surprised and already frightened Sonya, “from my table, in the room of my friend, Andrei Semenovich Lebezyatnikov, immediately following your visit, a hundred-ruble state credit card that belonged to me disappeared. If in any way you know and show us where he is now, then, I assure you with my word of honor, and I take everyone as witnesses, that the matter will only end there. Otherwise, I will be forced to resort to very serious measures, then... blame yourself, sir!

Complete silence reigned in the room. Even the crying children fell silent. Sonya stood deathly pale, looked at Luzhin and could not answer. She didn't seem to understand yet. Several seconds passed.

Well, sir, so what? - asked Luzhin, looking intently at her.

I don’t know... I don’t know anything... - Sonya finally said in a weak voice.

No? Do not know? - Luzhin asked again and was silent for a few more seconds. “Think, mademoiselle,” he began sternly, but still as if exhorting, “discuss, I agree to give you more time to think.” Please see, sir: if I were not so sure, then, of course, with my experience, I would not have risked accusing you so directly; for for such a direct and public, but false or even erroneous accusation, I, in a sense, myself am responsible. I know that, sir. This morning, for my needs, I exchanged several five-percent notes for a nominal amount of three thousand rubles. I have the calculation written down in my wallet. Arriving home, I - witness Andrei Semenovich - began to count the money and, having counted two thousand three hundred rubles, hid them in my wallet, and the wallet in the side pocket of my coat. There were about five hundred rubles left on the table, in credit tickets, and between them three tickets, worth a hundred rubles each. At that moment you arrived (at my call) - and all the time I was in extreme embarrassment, so that even three times, in the middle of the conversation, you got up and for some reason hurried to leave, although our conversation was not yet over. Andrey Semenovich can testify to all this. Probably you yourself, mademoiselle, will not refuse to confirm and declare that I called you, through Andrei Semenovich, solely in order to talk with you about the orphan and helpless situation of your relative, Katerina Ivanovna (whom I could not come to the funeral ), and how useful it would be to arrange something like a subscription, lottery or the like in her favor. You thanked me and even shed tears (I am telling everything as it happened in order, firstly, to remind you, and secondly, to show you that not the slightest feature has been erased from my memory). Then I took a ten-ruble credit note from the table and handed it to you, on my behalf, for the interests of your relative and as a form of first aid. Andrei Semenovich saw all this. Then I walked you to the door - still in the same embarrassment on your part - after which, being left alone with Andrei Semenovich and talking with him for about ten minutes, Andrei Semenovich left, and I again turned to the table with those lying on with money, with the goal of counting them and putting them aside, as I had previously assumed, separately. To my surprise, one hundred-ruble ticket, among others, was missing. Please judge: I really can’t suspect Andrei Semyonovich, sir; I’m ashamed to even make assumptions. I also could not have made a mistake in the calculation, because a minute before your arrival, having finished all the calculations, I found the result to be correct. Agree yourself that remembering your embarrassment, your haste to leave and the fact that you kept your hands on the table for some time; Having finally taken into account your social position and the habits associated with it, I, so to speak, with horror, and even against my will, was forced to dwell on suspicion - of course, cruel, but - fair, sir! I will also add and repeat that, despite all my obvious confidence, I understand that, nevertheless, in my current accusation, there is some risk for me. But, as you can see, I did not leave in vain; I rebelled and I’ll tell you why: solely, madam, solely because of your blackest ingratitude! How? I invite you in the interests of your poorest relative, I give you my feasible alms of ten rubles, and you, right there, right now, pay me for all this with a similar act! No, sir, this is really not good! A lesson is needed, sir. Consider; Moreover, as your true friend, I ask you (for you cannot have a better friend at this moment), come to your senses! Otherwise, I will be relentless! Well, sir, so?

“I didn’t take anything from you,” Sonya whispered in horror, “you gave me ten rubles, here, take them.” - Sonya took a handkerchief out of her pocket, found a knot, untied it, took out a ten-ruble note and extended her hand to Luzhin.

And you still won’t admit the remaining hundred rubles? - he said reproachfully and persistently, without accepting the ticket.

Sonya looked around. Everyone looked at her with such terrible, stern, mocking, hateful faces. She looked at Raskolnikov... he stood against the wall, folded his arms, and looked at her with a fiery gaze.

Oh my God! - Sonya burst out.

Amalia Ivanovna, we will need to let the police know, and therefore I humbly ask you to send for the janitor in the meantime,” Luzhin said quietly and even affectionately.

Got der Barmherzige! I knew she was a thief! - Amalia Ivanovna clasped her hands.

Did you know that? - Luzhin picked up, - therefore, they already had at least some grounds for concluding this way. I ask you, most respected Amalia Ivanovna, to remember your words, spoken, however, in front of witnesses.

Suddenly a loud noise arose from all sides. Everyone began to stir.

Ka-a-k! - Katerina Ivanovna suddenly cried out, having come to her senses and - as if she had lost her nerve - she rushed to Luzhin, - what! Are you accusing her of theft? Is this Sonya? Ah, scoundrels, scoundrels! - And rushing to Sonya, she, as if in a vice, hugged her with withered arms.

Sonya! How dare you take ten rubles from him! Oh, stupid! Give it here! Give me these ten rubles now - here!

And, snatching the piece of paper from Sonya, Katerina Ivanovna crumpled it in her hands and threw it straight into Luzhin’s face. The pellet hit the eye and bounced onto the floor. Amalia Ivanovna rushed to pick up the money. Pyotr Petrovich got angry.

Stop this crazy girl! - he shouted.

At that moment, several more faces appeared in the doorway next to Lebezyatnikov, between whom the two visiting ladies also looked out.

How! Crazy? Am I crazy? Fool-cancer! - Katerina Ivanovna squealed. - You yourself are a fool, judge's hook, low man! Sonya, Sonya will take his money! This is Sonya the thief! Yes, she will give it to you, you fool! - And Katerina Ivanovna laughed hysterically. -Have you seen the fool? - she rushed in all directions, pointing to Luzhin to everyone. - How! And you too? - she saw the hostess, - and you, sausage maker, confirm that she was a “stealer,” you vile Prussian chicken leg in a crinoline! Oh you! Oh you! Yes, she didn’t even leave the room and, as soon as she came from you, the scoundrel, she sat down right next to Rodion Romanovich!.. Search her! Since she didn’t go out anywhere, then the money must be with her! Seek, search, search! Only if you don’t find it, then excuse me, my dear, you’ll answer! I will run to the sovereign, to the sovereign, to the merciful king himself, I will throw myself at his feet, now, today! I am an orphan! They'll let me in! Do you think they won't let you in? You're lying, I'll get there! I'll get there! Did you count on her being meek? Is that what you hoped for? Yes, brother, but I’m lively! You'll break off! Look for it! Search, search, well, search!!

And Katerina Ivanovna, in a frenzy, fiddled with Luzhin, dragging him to Sonya.

I’m ready, sir, and I’m answering... but calm down, madam, calm down! I see too much that you are lively!.. This... this... how is this, sir? - muttered Luzhin, - this should be in front of the police, sir... although, however, even now there are too many witnesses... I’m ready, sir... But in any case, it’s difficult for a man... because of gender... If only with the help of Amalia Ivanovna... although, however, this is not how things are done... How is that possible, sir?

Who do you want? Let whoever wants to search! - Katerina Ivanovna shouted, - Sonya, empty their pockets! Exactly! Look, the monster, it’s empty, the handkerchief was lying here, the pocket is empty, you see! Here's another pocket, here, here! See! See!

And Katerina Ivanovna not only turned it inside out, but even snatched both pockets, one after the other, outward. But a piece of paper suddenly jumped out of the second, right, pocket and, describing a parabola in the air, fell at Luzhin’s feet. Everyone saw it; many screamed. Pyotr Petrovich bent down, took the piece of paper from the floor with two fingers, raised it for everyone to see and unfolded it. It was a hundred-ruble credit note folded into eighths. Pyotr Petrovich circled his hand, showing everyone the ticket.

Thief! Get out of the apartments! Polis, polis! - Amalia Ivanovna screamed, - they need to be driven out of Siberia! Out!

Exclamations flew from all sides. Raskolnikov was silent, not taking his eyes off Sonya, occasionally but quickly turning them to Luzhin. Sonya stood in the same place, as if without memory: she was almost not even surprised. Suddenly color flooded her entire face; she screamed and covered herself with her hands.

No, it's not me! I didn't take it! I don't know! - she screamed, with a heart-breaking scream, and rushed to Katerina Ivanovna. She grabbed her and hugged her tightly, as if with her chest she wanted to protect her from everyone.

Sonya! Sonya! I don't believe! See, I don't believe it! - Katerina Ivanovna shouted (despite all the obviousness), shaking her in her arms like a child, kissing her countlessly, catching her hands and biting and kissing them. - May you take it! What kind of stupid people are these! Oh my God! You are stupid, stupid,” she shouted, turning to everyone, “but you still don’t know, you don’t know what kind of heart this is, what kind of girl this is!” She'll take it, she will! Yes, she will take off her last dress, sell it, go barefoot, and give it to you if you need it, that’s what she is like! She even received a yellow ticket, because my children were dying of hunger, she sold herself for us!.. Oh, dead man, dead man! Oh, dead man, dead man! Do you see? Do you see? Here's your wake! God! Yes, protect her, why are you all worth it! Rodion Romanovich! Why don't you intercede? Do you believe it too? You're not worth her little finger, that's it, that's it, that's it, that's it! God! Yes, protect me, finally!

The crying of poor, consumptive, orphaned Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have a strong effect on the audience. There was so much pitiful, so much suffering in this pain-contorted, withered, consumptive face, in these withered, blood-dried lips, in this hoarsely screaming voice, in this sobbing sobbing, like a child’s cry, in this trusting, childish and at the same time desperate plea protect that everyone seemed to feel sorry for the unfortunate woman. At least, Pyotr Petrovich immediately regretted it.

Madam! Madam! - he exclaimed in an impressive voice, - this fact does not concern you! No one will dare to accuse you of intent or agreement, especially since you discovered it by turning your pocket out: therefore, you didn’t assume anything. I am very, very ready to regret if, so to speak, poverty motivated Sofya Semyonovna, but why, mademoiselle, did you not want to confess? Are you afraid of shame? First step? Lost, maybe? The matter is clear, sir; very understandable, sir... But, however, why indulge in such qualities! Gentlemen! - he addressed everyone present, - gentlemen! Regretting and, so to speak, condoling, I am perhaps ready to forgive, even now, despite the personal insults received. “Let this present shame serve as a lesson to you for the future, mademoiselle,” he turned to Sonya, “and I will leave the rest in vain and, so be it, I will stop.” Enough!

Pyotr Petrovich looked sideways at Raskolnikov. Their gazes met. Raskolnikov's burning gaze was ready to incinerate him. Meanwhile, Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have heard nothing else: she hugged and kissed Sonya like crazy. The children also wrapped their little arms around Sonya on all sides, and Polechka, who didn’t quite understand what was going on, seemed to be drowning in tears, bursting with sobs and hiding her pretty face, swollen from crying, on Sonya’s shoulder.

How low is that! - suddenly a loud voice was heard in the doorway.

Pyotr Petrovich quickly looked around.

What baseness! - Lebezyatnikov repeated, looking intently into his eyes.

Pyotr Petrovich even seemed to shudder. Everyone noticed this. (Later they remembered this). Lebezyatnikov stepped into the room.

And you dared to put me as a witness? - he said, approaching Pyotr Petrovich.

What does this mean, Andrey Semenovich? What are you talking about? - Luzhin muttered.

That means that you are... a slanderer, that’s what my words mean! - Lebezyatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his weak-sighted eyes. He was terribly angry. Raskolnikov stared at him with his eyes, as if picking up and weighing every word. Silence reigned again. Pyotr Petrovich almost even got lost, especially at the first moment.

If you’re the one telling me... - he began, stuttering, - what’s the matter with you? Are you sane?

I’m in my right mind, sir, but here you are... a swindler! Oh, how low this is! I listened to everything, I deliberately waited to understand everything, because, I admit, even until now it is not entirely logical... But why did you do all this - I don’t understand.

What did I do? Will you stop talking in your nonsense riddles! Or maybe you're drunk?

It is you, low man, who may be drinking, not me! I never drink vodka at all, because it’s not in my beliefs! Imagine, he, he himself, with his own hands gave this hundred-ruble ticket to Sofya Semyonovna - I saw, I am a witness, I will take the oath! He, he! - Lebezyatnikov repeated, addressing everyone.

Are you crazy or not, little sucker? - Luzhin squealed, - she is here in front of you, it is obvious - she herself, here, now, in front of everyone, confirmed that she did not receive anything from me except ten rubles. How could I tell her after this?

I saw, I saw! - Lebezyatnikov shouted and confirmed, “and although this is against my convictions, I am ready this very hour to take any oath in court, because I saw how you quietly slipped it in!” Only I, a fool, thought that you slipped it out of a good deed! At the door, saying goodbye to her, when she turned around and when you shook her hand with one hand, the other, the left, you quietly put a piece of paper in her pocket. I have seen! Saw!

Luzhin turned pale.

Why are you lying! - he cried impudently, - and how could you, standing at the window, see the piece of paper? You imagined it... through your blind eyes. You're delusional!

No, it’s not my imagination! And even though I was standing far away, I saw everything, everything, and even though it’s really difficult to see the piece of paper from the window - you’re telling the truth - but I, special occasion, probably knew that it was a hundred-ruble ticket, because when you began to give Sofya Semyonovna a ten-ruble note - I saw it myself - you then took a hundred-ruble ticket from the table (I saw this because I was standing close then, and so As one thought immediately appeared to me, that’s why I didn’t forget that you had a ticket in your hands). You folded it and held it in your hand the entire time. Then I forgot about it again, but when you started to get up, you moved it from the right to the left and almost dropped it; I remembered again, because the same thought came to me again, namely, that you want me to quietly do a favor for her. You can imagine how I started watching, and I saw how you managed to slip it into her pocket. I saw, I saw, I will take the oath!

Lebezyatnikov almost choked. Various exclamations began to be heard from all sides, most of all indicating surprise; but exclamations were heard that also took on a menacing tone. Everyone crowded towards Pyotr Petrovich. Katerina Ivanovna rushed to Lebezyatnikov.

Andrey Semenovich! I was wrong about you! Protect her! You are the only one for her! She is an orphan, God sent you! Andrei Semenovich, my dear, father!

And Katerina Ivanovna, almost not remembering what she was doing, threw herself on her knees in front of him.

Game! - Luzhin screamed, enraged to the point of rage, - you are still grinding game, sir. “Forgot, remembered, forgot” - what is it! So I put it on her on purpose? For what? For what purpose? What do I have in common with this...

For what? This is something I myself don’t understand, but that I am telling a true fact is true! I’m so not mistaken, you vile, criminal person, that I remember exactly how a question immediately came to my mind about this, precisely at the time when I thanked you and shook your hand. Why exactly did you secretly put it in her pocket? That is, why stealthily? Is it really because they wanted to hide it from me, knowing that I have opposite beliefs and deny private charity, which does not radically heal anything? Well, I decided that you really are ashamed to give such sums in front of me, and besides, maybe, I thought, he wants to surprise her, to surprise her when she finds a whole hundred rubles in her pocket. (Because some philanthropists really like to smear their good deeds this way; I know). Then I also thought that you wanted to test her, that is, would she, having found her, come and thank her? Then, that you want to avoid gratitude and so that, well, as they say there: so that right hand, or something, I didn’t know... in a word, something like that... Well, a lot of thoughts came into my head then, so I decided to think about it all later, but still I considered it indelicate to reveal to you that I know the secret. But, however, another question immediately came to my mind: that Sofya Semyonovna, perhaps, before she notices what’s wrong, will lose money; That’s why I decided to go here, call her and notify her that a hundred rubles had been put in her pocket. Yes, I casually went into the room of the Mrs. Kobylyatnikovs to bring them " General conclusion positive method" and especially recommend Piderit's article (and, incidentally, also Wagner's); then I come here, and what a story! Well, could I, could I have had all these thoughts and reasoning if I really hadn't seen that you put a hundred rubles in her pocket?

When Andrei Semenovich finished his verbose arguments, with such a logical conclusion at the end of his speech, he was terribly tired, and even sweat rolled off his face. Alas, he didn’t even know how to communicate properly in Russian (not knowing, however, any other language), so he was all at once exhausted, even as if he had lost weight after his feat as a lawyer. Nevertheless, his speech produced an extraordinary effect. He spoke with such passion, with such conviction that everyone apparently believed him. Pyotr Petrovich felt that things were bad.

“What do I care if some stupid questions came into your head,” he cried. - This is not proof, sir! You could have dreamed all this up in your sleep, that’s all! And I tell you that you are lying, sir! You lie and slander me out of some kind of malice, and precisely out of spite because I did not agree to your free-thinking and godless social proposals, that’s what!

But this twist did not bring any benefit to Pyotr Petrovich. On the contrary, murmurs were heard from all sides.

Oh, this is where you went! - Lebezyatnikov shouted. - You're lying! Call the police, and I will take the oath! I just can’t understand one thing: why did he risk such a base act! O pitiful, vile man!

I can explain why he risked such an act, and, if necessary, I will take the oath myself! - Raskolnikov finally said in a firm voice and stepped forward.

He was apparently firm and calm. It somehow became clear to everyone, just by looking at him, that he really knew what was going on, and that it had come to a conclusion.

“Now I have completely understood everything,” Raskolnikov continued, turning directly to Lebezyatnikov. - From the very beginning of the story, I already began to suspect that there was some kind of nasty trick here; I began to suspect due to some special circumstances, known only to me, which I will now explain to everyone: they are the whole point! You, Andrei Semenovich, with your precious testimony finally clarified everything to me. I ask everyone, everyone to listen: this gentleman (he pointed to Luzhin) recently wooed a girl, and it was my sister, Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnikova. But, having arrived in St. Petersburg, on the third day, at our first meeting, he quarreled with me, and I drove him away from me, to which there are two witnesses. This man is very angry... The day before yesterday, I didn’t even know that he was standing here in your rooms, Andrei Semenovich, and that, therefore, on the same day that we quarreled, that is, the day before, he witnessed how I, as a friend of the late Mr. Marmeladov, gave his wife Katerina Ivanovna some money for the funeral. He immediately wrote a note to my mother and notified her that I had given all the money not to Katerina Ivanovna, but to Sofya Semyonovna, and at the same time, in the most vile terms, he mentioned... about the character of Sofia Semyonovna, that is, he hinted at the nature of my relationship with Sofya Semyonovna. All this, as you understand, is intended to quarrel me with my mother and sister, inspiring them that I am squandering, for ignoble purposes, their last money, with which they help me. Last night, in front of my mother and sister, and in his presence, I restored the truth, proving that I gave the money to Katerina Ivanovna for the funeral, and not Sofya Semyonovna, and that I had not even met Sofia Semyonovna the day before, or even in person. haven't seen her yet. At the same time, I added that he, Pyotr Petrovich Luzhin, with all his merits, is not worth one little finger of Sofia Semyonovna, about whom he speaks so badly. To his own question: would I have seated Sofya Semyonovna next to my sister? - I replied that I had already done this, the same day. Angry that his mother and sister did not want, according to his slander, to quarrel with me, he, word for word, began to say unforgivable insolence to them. There was a final break and he was kicked out of the house. All this happened last night. Now I ask for special attention: imagine that if he could now prove that Sofya Semyonovna is a thief, then, firstly, he would prove to my sister and mother that he was almost right in his suspicions; that he was rightly angry because I put my sister and Sofya Semyonovna on the same level; that by attacking me, he was defending, and therefore preserving the honor of my sister, and his bride. In a word, through all this he could even put me at odds with my family again and, of course, hoped to again be in their favor. Not to mention the fact that he took revenge on me personally, because he has reason to assume that Sofia Semyonovna’s honor and happiness are very dear to me. That's his whole calculation! That's how I understand this matter! That's the whole reason, and there can be no other!

This is how, or almost this, Raskolnikov finished his speech, which was often interrupted by exclamations from the audience, who, however, listened very attentively. But, despite all the interruptions, he spoke sharply, calmly, precisely, clearly, firmly. His sharp voice, his convinced tone and stern face produced an extraordinary effect on everyone.

Yes, yes, yes! - Lebezyatnikov confirmed in delight. - This must be so, because he asked me exactly as soon as Sofya Semyonovna entered our room, “Are you here? Have I seen you among Katerina Ivanovna’s guests?” To do this, he called me to the window and quietly asked me. Therefore, he definitely needed you to be here! This is so, this is all true!

Luzhin was silent and smiled contemptuously. However, he was very pale. It seemed that he was considering how he could get out. Maybe he would gladly give up everything and leave, but at the moment it was almost impossible; this meant directly admitting the justice of the accusations brought against him and that he had indeed slandered Sofya Semyonovna. In addition, the audience, already drunk, was too worried. Proviantsky, although, however, did not understand everything, shouted more than anyone and proposed some very unpleasant measures for Luzhin. But there were also those who were not drunk; they came together and gathered from all the rooms. All three Polish girls were terribly excited and shouted to him incessantly: “Mr. Laidak!”, and muttered some other threats in Polish. Sonya listened with tension, but as if she didn’t understand everything either, as if she was waking up from fainting. She just did not take her eyes off Raskolnikov, feeling that all her protection lay in him. Katerina Ivanovna was breathing heavily and hoarsely and seemed to be in terrible exhaustion. Amalia Ivanovna stood the most stupid of all, her mouth open and understanding absolutely nothing. She only saw that Pyotr Petrovich somehow got caught. Raskolnikov asked to speak again, but he was not allowed to finish: everyone was shouting and crowding around Luzhin with curses and threats. But Pyotr Petrovich did not chicken out. Seeing that the case against Sonya had already been completely lost, he directly resorted to impudence.

Allow me, gentlemen, allow me; don't crowd, let me pass! - he said, making his way through the crowd, - and do me a favor, don’t threaten; I assure you that nothing will happen, you won’t do anything, you won’t be timid, sir, but on the contrary, you, gentlemen, will answer that you covered up the criminal case with violence. The thief has been more than exposed, and I will pursue, sir. In court they are not so blind and... not drunk, sir, and they will not believe two notorious atheists, troublemakers and freethinkers who accuse me out of personal revenge, which they themselves, in their stupidity, admit... Yes, sir, allow me -With!

So that your spirit will not be in my room immediately; If you please, move out, and everything between us is over! And when I thought that I was beating myself out of my skin, I told him... for two whole weeks!..

But I myself, Andrei Semenovich, told you just now that I was moving out, when you were still holding me back; Now I’ll just add that you’re a fool, sir. I wish you to cure your mind and your blind eyes. Allow me, gentlemen!

He pushed his way; but the caterer didn’t want to let him out so easily, with only curses: he grabbed a glass from the table, swung it and threw it at Pyotr Petrovich; but the glass flew straight at Amalia Ivanovna. She squealed, and the caterer, losing his balance from the swing, fell heavily under the table. Pyotr Petrovich went to his room, and half an hour later he was no longer in the house. Sonya, timid by nature, already knew that it was easier to destroy her than anyone else, and anyone could offend her with almost impunity. But still, until that very moment, it seemed to her that she could somehow avoid trouble - by caution, meekness, submission to everyone and everyone. Her disappointment was too heavy. She, of course, could endure everything with patience and almost resignedly - even this. But in the first minute it became too hard. Despite her triumph and her justification - when the first fear and the first tetanus passed, when she understood and understood everything clearly - a feeling of helplessness and resentment painfully oppressed her heart. She started to get hysterical. Finally, unable to bear it anymore, she rushed out of the room and ran home. It was almost immediately after Luzhin left. Amalia Ivanovna, when a glass hit her amid the loud laughter of those present, also could not stand the hangover at someone else’s feast. Screaming like mad, she rushed to Katerina Ivanovna, considering her to be to blame for everything:

Out of the apartments! Now! March! - And with these words she began to grab everything that Katerina Ivanovna could get her hands on and throw it on the floor. Almost already killed, almost fainting, out of breath, pale, Katerina Ivanovna jumped out of bed (on which she had fallen in exhaustion) and rushed at Amalia Ivanovna. But the fight was too unequal; she pushed her away like a feather.

How! Not only were they shamelessly slandered, but this creature is against me! How! On the day of the funeral, my husband is driven out of the apartment, after my bread and salt, into the street with the orphans! Where will I go? - screamed the poor woman, sobbing and gasping for breath. - God! - she suddenly shouted, her eyes sparkling, - is there really no justice! Who should you protect if not us, the orphans? Well, we'll see! There is justice in the world and there is truth, I will find it! Now, wait, you godless creature! Polechka, stay with the children, I’m tossing and turning. Wait for me, even on the street! Let's see if there is truth in the world?

And, throwing over her head that same green draped shawl that the late Marmeladov mentioned in his story, Katerina Ivanovna pushed her way through the disorderly drunken crowd of tenants still crowded in the room, and with a scream and tears ran out into the street - with an uncertain goal somewhere... then now, immediately and at all costs, find justice. Polechka, in fear, hid with the children in a corner on a chest, where, hugging both little ones, trembling, she began to wait for the mother to arrive. Amalia Ivanovna rushed around the room, screamed, wailed, threw everything she came across on the floor and raged. The residents were bawling, some into the forest, some for firewood - others talked as best they could about the event that had happened; others quarreled and swore; others started singing...

“And now it’s time for me!” thought Raskolnikov. “Well, Sofya Semyonovna, let’s see what you’re going to say now!”

And he went to Sonya’s apartment.

Raskolnikov was an active and cheerful lawyer for Sonya against Luzhin, despite the fact that he himself carried so much of his own horror and suffering in his soul. But, having suffered so much in the morning, he was definitely glad for the opportunity to change his impressions, which were becoming unbearable, not to mention how personal and heartfelt his desire to intercede for Sonya was. In addition, he had in mind and terribly worried him, especially at moments, about the upcoming meeting with Sonya: he had to tell her who killed Lizaveta, and he had a presentiment of terrible torment, and seemed to be brushing it off with his hands. And therefore, when he exclaimed, leaving Katerina Ivanovna: “Well, what do you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?”, he was obviously still in some outwardly excited state of vivacity, challenge and recent victory over Luzhin. But something strange happened to him. When he reached Kapernaumov’s apartment, he felt sudden exhaustion and fear. Thoughtfully, he stopped in front of the door with a strange question: “Do I need to say who killed Lizaveta?” The question was strange, because he suddenly, at the same time, felt that it was not only impossible not to say, but even to postpone this minute, although for a while, it was impossible. He did not yet know why it was impossible; he just felt it, and this painful consciousness of his powerlessness in the face of necessity almost crushed him. So as not to reason and suffer, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands, but when she saw Raskolnikov, she quickly stood up and walked towards him, as if she had been waiting for him.

What would happen to me without you? - she said quickly, meeting with him in the middle of the room. Obviously, that was all she wanted to tell him as quickly as possible. Then I waited.

Raskolnikov walked to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had just risen. She stood two steps in front of him, exactly like yesterday.

What, Sonya? - he said and suddenly felt that his voice was trembling, - after all, the whole matter rested on “social status and the habits associated with it.” Did you understand this just now?

Suffering was expressed in her face.

Just don't talk to me like yesterday! - she interrupted him. - Please don't start. And that's enough torment...

She smiled quickly, afraid that perhaps he would not like the reproach.

I stupidly left there. What's there now? Now I wanted to go, but I kept thinking that... you would come in.

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was driving them out of the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run somewhere “to look for the truth.”

Oh my god! - Sonya jumped up, - let's go quickly...

And she grabbed her mantle.

Always the same! - Raskolnikov cried irritably. - All you can think about is what they are! Stay with me.

And... Katerina Ivanovna?

And Katerina Ivanovna, of course, will not pass you by, she will come to you herself, since she has already run out of the house,” he added grumpily. - If it doesn’t catch you, you’ll still be to blame...

Sonya sat down on a chair in painful indecision. Raskolnikov was silent, looking at the ground and thinking about something.

Let’s suppose that Luzhin didn’t want to now,” he began, without looking at Sonya. - Well, if he wanted to, or somehow it was part of the calculations, he would have put you in prison if me and Lebezyatnikov had not happened here! A?

But I really could not have happened! And Lebezyatnikov turned up quite by accident.

Sonya was silent.

Well, if I went to prison, what then? Remember what I said yesterday?

She didn't answer again. He waited it out.

And I thought you would shout again: “Oh, don’t talk, stop it!” - Raskolnikov laughed, but somehow with an effort. - Well, silence again? - he asked after a minute. - Surely we need to talk about something? What I would be interested in is how you would now resolve one “issue,” as Lebezyatnikov says. (He seemed to be starting to get confused.) No, really, I'm serious. Imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin’s intentions in advance, you knew (that is, probably) that through them Katerina Ivanovna, and even the children, would have died completely; you too, in addition (since you consider yourself for nothing, so in addition). Polechka too... that's why she cares the same. Well, sir; So: if suddenly all this was now left up to your decision: to live in this world or that, that is, should Luzhin live and do abominations, or should Katerina Ivanovna die? How would you decide: which one should die? I'm asking you.

Sonya looked at him with concern: she heard something special in this unsteady and suitable speech for something from afar.

“I already had a presentiment that you would ask something like that,” she said, looking at him inquisitively.

Okay, so be it; but, however, how to decide?

Why do you ask what is impossible to be? - Sonya said with disgust.

Therefore, it is better for Luzhin to live and do abominations! You didn’t dare to decide this either?

But I can’t know God’s providence... And why are you asking what you shouldn’t ask? Why such empty questions? How can it happen that this depends on my decision? And who made me the judge here: who should live and who should not live?

Once God’s providence gets involved, nothing can be done about it,” Raskolnikov grumbled gloomily.

You better say directly what you want! - Sonya cried out with suffering, - you are pointing at something again... Have you really come just to torment!

She could not stand it and suddenly began to cry bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy anguish. Five minutes passed.

But you’re right, Sonya,” he finally said quietly. He suddenly changed; his affectedly impudent and impotently defiant tone disappeared. Even his voice suddenly weakened. “I myself told you yesterday that I wasn’t coming to ask for forgiveness, but I almost started by asking for forgiveness... I was talking about Luzhin and the providence for myself... I asked for forgiveness, Sonya...”

He wanted to smile, but something powerless and unfinished was reflected in his pale smile. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.

And suddenly a strange, unexpected feeling of some caustic hatred for Sonya passed through his heart. As if surprised and frightened by this sensation, he suddenly raised his head and looked at her intently; but he met her restless and painfully caring gaze; there was love here; his hatred disappeared like a ghost. This was not it; he mistook one feeling for another. It only meant that that moment had come.

Again he covered his face with his hands and bowed his head down. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from the chair, looked at Sonya and, without saying anything, mechanically moved to her bed.

This moment was terribly similar, in his sensation, to the one when he stood behind the old woman, having already freed the ax from the noose, and felt that “not a moment could be lost anymore.”

What's wrong with you? - asked Sonya, terribly timid.

He couldn't say anything. This was not at all what he had intended to announce, and he himself did not understand what was now happening to him. She quietly approached him, sat down on the bed next to him and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and sank. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face towards her; his lips curled helplessly, trying to utter something. Horror passed through Sonya's heart.

What's wrong with you? - she repeated, moving away from him slightly.

Nothing, Sonya. Don't be scared... Nonsense! Really, if you think about it, it’s nonsense,” he muttered with the air of a delirious man who doesn’t remember himself. - Why did I come to torment you? - he added suddenly, looking at her. - Right. For what? I keep asking myself this question, Sonya...

He may have asked himself this question a quarter of an hour ago, but now he spoke in complete powerlessness, barely conscious of himself and feeling a continuous trembling throughout his whole body.

Oh, how you suffer! - she said with suffering, peering at him.

It’s all nonsense!.. That’s what, Sonya (he suddenly smiled for some reason, somehow pale and powerless, for about two seconds), - do you remember what I wanted to tell you yesterday?

Sonya waited restlessly.

I said as I was leaving that maybe I was saying goodbye to you forever, but that if I come today, I’ll tell you... who killed Lizaveta.

She suddenly trembled all over.

Well, that's what I came to say.

So it was really yesterday... - she whispered with difficulty, - why do you know? - she asked quickly, as if suddenly coming to her senses.

Sonya began to breathe with difficulty. The face became paler and paler.

She was silent for a minute.

Have you found him? - she asked timidly.

No, they didn't find it.

So how do you know about this? - she asked again, barely audibly, and again after almost a minute of silence.

He turned to her and looked at her intently.

“Guess,” he said with the same twisted and powerless smile.

Convulsions seemed to run through her entire body.

Yes, you... me... why are you so... scaring me? - she said, smiling like a child.

So, I’m a great friend with him... since I know,” Raskolnikov continued, relentlessly continuing to look into her face, as if he was no longer able to take his eyes off, “he didn’t want to kill this Lizaveta... He didn’t want to kill her... He did her. .. killed by accident... He wanted to kill the old woman... when she was alone... and he came... And then Lizaveta came in... He was here... and he killed her.

Another terrible minute passed. Both kept looking at each other.

So you can’t guess? - he asked suddenly, with that feeling as if he was throwing himself down from a bell tower.

N-no,” Sonya whispered barely audibly.

Take a good look.

And as soon as he said this, again one of the old, familiar sensations suddenly froze his soul: he looked at her and suddenly, in her face, he seemed to see Lizaveta’s face. He vividly remembered the expression on Lizaveta’s face when he was approaching her with an ax, and she was moving away from him towards the wall, putting her hand forward, with a completely childish fear in her face, just like little children when they suddenly start doing something. to get scared, look motionless and restless at the object that frightens them, pull back and, holding out their little hand, prepare to cry. Almost the same thing now happened to Sonya: just as helplessly, with the same fear, she looked at him for some time and suddenly, putting her left hand forward, lightly, slightly, rested her fingers on his chest and slowly began to rise from the bed , moving away more and more from him, and her gaze at him became more and more motionless. Her horror was suddenly communicated to him: exactly the same fear appeared in his face, and he began to look at her in exactly the same way, and almost even with the same childish smile.

Did you guess right? - he finally whispered.

God! - a terrible scream burst from her chest. She fell helplessly onto the bed, face down into the pillows. But after a moment she quickly stood up, quickly moved towards him, grabbed him by both hands and, squeezing them tightly, as if in a vice, with her thin fingers, began again motionless, as if glued, to look into his face. With this last, desperate look, she wanted to look out and catch at least some last hope for herself. But there was no hope; there was no doubt left; everything was like that! Even then, later, when she recalled this moment, she felt both strange and wonderful: why exactly did she see so immediately then that there was no longer any doubt? Surely she couldn’t say, for example, that she had a presentiment of something like that? And yet, now, as soon as he told her this, it suddenly seemed to her that she really seemed to have had a presentiment of this very thing.

Enough, Sonya, that's enough! Don't torture me! - he asked painfully.

This is not at all what he thought of opening up to her, but it turned out that way.

As if not remembering herself, she jumped up and, wringing her hands, reached the middle of the room; but she quickly returned and sat down next to him again, almost touching him shoulder to shoulder. Suddenly, as if pierced, she shuddered, screamed and threw herself, without knowing why, on her knees in front of him.

What are you doing, what have you done to yourself! - she said desperately and, jumping up from her knees, threw herself on his neck, hugged him and squeezed him tightly with her hands.

Raskolnikov recoiled and looked at her with a sad smile:

How strange you are, Sonya, you hug and kiss when I told you about it. You don't remember yourself.

No, there is no one more unhappy than you in the whole world now! - she exclaimed, as if in a frenzy, not having heard his remark, and suddenly began to cry bitterly, as if in hysterics.

A feeling that had long been unfamiliar to him surged into his soul and immediately softened it. He did not resist him: two tears rolled out of his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.

So won't you leave me, Sonya? - he said, looking at her almost hopefully.

No no; never and nowhere! - Sonya screamed, “I’ll follow you, I’ll follow you everywhere!” Oh my God!.. Oh, I’m miserable!.. And why, why didn’t I know you before! Why didn't you come before? Oh my God!

So he came.

Now! Oh, what to do now!.. Together, together! - she repeated as if in oblivion and hugged him again, “I’ll go to hard labor with you!” - He seemed to suddenly shudder, the old, hateful and almost arrogant smile squeezed out on his lips.

“I, Sonya, may not even want to go to hard labor,” he said.

Sonya looked at him quickly.

After the first, passionate and painful sympathy for the unfortunate man, the terrible idea of ​​murder again struck her. In the changed tone of his words she suddenly thought she heard the murderer. She looked at him in amazement. She didn’t know anything yet, neither why, nor how, nor what it was for. Now all these questions flashed into her mind at once. And again she didn’t believe it: “He, he’s a murderer! Is that really possible?”

What is this! Where am I standing? - she said in deep bewilderment, as if she had not yet come to her senses, - how could you, you, such... could decide to do this?.. What is this!

Well, yes, to rob. Stop it, Sonya! - he answered somehow tiredly and even as if with annoyance.

Sonya stood as if stunned, but suddenly cried out:

You were hungry! you... to help your mother? Yes?

No, Sonya, no,” he muttered, turning away and hanging his head, “I wasn’t that hungry... I really wanted to help my mother, but... and this is not entirely true... don’t torture me, Sonya!”

Sonya clasped her hands.

But really, really, is this all for real! Lord, how true this is! Who can believe this?.. And how, how come you yourself are giving away your last, but you killed to rob! Ah!.. - she suddenly screamed, - that money that they gave to Katerina Ivanovna... that money... Lord, is it really that money...

No, Sonya,” he hastily interrupted, “this money was not the same, calm down!” My mother sent me this money through a merchant, and I received it sick, on the same day I gave it... Razumikhin saw... he also received it for me... this money is mine, my own, real mine .

Sonya listened to him in bewilderment and tried her best to figure something out.

And that money... I don’t even know if there was any money there,” he added quietly and as if thoughtfully, “I then took the wallet from her neck, suede... full, tight such a wallet... but I didn’t look into it; I probably didn’t have time... Well, as for the things, some cufflinks and chains, I buried all these things and a wallet in someone else’s yard, on V Avenue, under a stone, the next morning. Everything is there now.

Sonya listened with all her might.

Well, then why... how did you say: to rob, but you didn’t take anything? - she asked quickly, clutching at straws.

I don’t know... I haven’t decided yet whether I will take this money or not,” he said, again as if in thought, and suddenly, coming to his senses, he quickly and briefly smiled. - Eh, what stupidity have I just said, huh?

Sonya had a thought: “Aren’t you crazy?” But she immediately left her: no, this is different. She didn’t understand anything, she didn’t understand anything!

You know, Sonya,” he said suddenly with some inspiration, “you know what I’ll tell you: if only I had killed because I was hungry,” he continued, emphasizing every word and looking at her mysteriously but sincerely , - then I would now... be happy! Know this!

And what does it matter to you, what does it matter to you,” he cried out a moment later with some kind of despair, “well, what does it matter to you if I confessed now that I had done something wrong? Well, what do you want in this stupid triumph over me? Oh, Sonya, is that why I came to you now!

Sonya again wanted to say something, but remained silent.

That’s why I called you with me yesterday, because you’re the only one left with me.

Where did you call? - Sonya asked timidly.

Don’t steal and don’t kill, don’t worry, that’s not why,” he grinned caustically, “we are different people... And you know, Sonya, I only now, only now I realized: where did I call you yesterday? And yesterday, when I called, I didn’t even understand where. He called for one thing, and came for one thing: don’t leave me. Won't you leave me, Sonya?

She squeezed his hand.

And why, why did I tell her, why did I open it to her! - he exclaimed in despair a minute later, looking at her with endless torment, - here you are waiting for an explanation from me, Sonya, you are sitting and waiting, I see it; what can I tell you? You won’t understand anything about this, but you’ll just suffer all... because of me! Well, you cry and hug me again - well, why are you hugging me? Because I couldn’t bear it myself and came to blame it on someone else: “You too suffer, it will be easier for me!” And can you love such a scoundrel?

Aren't you suffering too? - Sonya cried.

Again the same feeling rushed into his soul like a wave and again softened it for a moment.

Sonya, I have an evil heart, mind you: this can explain a lot. That's why I came because I'm angry. There are those who would not come. And I am a coward and... a scoundrel! But... let it be! all this is not the same... Now I need to talk, but I don’t know how to start...

He stopped and thought.

Eh, we are different people! - he cried again, - not a couple. And why, why did I come! I will never forgive myself for this!

No, no, it's good that you came! - Sonya exclaimed, “it’s better that I know!” Much better! He looked at her with pain.

And indeed! - he said, as if having thought it over, - after all, that’s how it was! Here's what: I wanted to become Napoleon, that's why I killed... Well, do you understand now?

N-no,” Sonya whispered naively and timidly, “just... speak, speak!” I will understand, I will understand everything about myself! - she begged him.

Do you understand? Well, okay, let's see!

He fell silent and thought for a long time.

The thing is: I once asked myself this question: what if, for example, Napoleon had happened in my place and he would have had neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the crossing of Mont Blanc to start his career, but instead of everyone these beautiful and monumental things are simply some funny old woman, a register clerk, who, in addition, must be killed in order to steal money from her chest (for a career, you know?), well, would he have decided to do this, what if there was no other way out? Wouldn’t you cringe because it’s too unmonumental and... and sinful? Well, I’m telling you that I tormented myself with this “question” for an terribly long time, so that I felt terribly ashamed when I finally guessed (suddenly somehow) that not only would it not have bothered him, but it would have even gone to his head It didn’t occur to him that this was not monumental... and he wouldn’t even have understood at all: why bother? And if only there was no other way for him, he would have strangled him so that he would not have given a word, without any thoughtfulness!.. Well, I... came out of my reverie... strangled... following the example of authority... And this is exactly how it was! Do you find it funny? Yes, Sonya, the funniest thing about this is that maybe that’s exactly what happened...

Sonya didn't find it funny at all.

“You better tell me directly... without examples,” she asked even more timidly and barely audibly.

He turned to her, looked at her sadly and took her hands.

You're right again, Sonya. This is all nonsense, almost just chatter! You see: you know that my mother has almost nothing. My sister received her upbringing by accident and was condemned to being a governess. All their hopes were on me alone. I studied, but I could not support myself at the university and was forced to leave for a while. Even if it had dragged on like this, then in ten, twelve years (if circumstances had turned out well), I could still hope to become some kind of teacher or official, with a salary of a thousand rubles... (He spoke as if he had learned it by rote). And by that time my mother would have dried up from worries and grief, and I still wouldn’t have been able to calm her down, and my sister... well, even worse could have happened to my sister! to go through everything and turn away from everything, forget about your mother, and, for example, respectfully endure your sister’s insult? For what? Is it so that, having buried them, he can acquire new ones - a wife and children, and then also be left penniless and without a piece? Well... well, so I decided, having taken possession of the old woman’s money, to use it for my first years, without tormenting my mother, to support myself at the university, for my first steps after university - and to do all this widely, radically, so that to set up a completely new career and take a new, independent path... Well... well, that's all... Well, of course, I killed the old woman - I did it badly... well, that's enough!

In some kind of helplessness, he dragged himself to the end of the story and hung his head.

Oh, that’s not it, that’s not it,” Sonya exclaimed in anguish, “and is it really possible... no, it’s not like that, not like that!”

You see for yourself what’s wrong!.. But I sincerely told the truth!

Yes, how true this is! Oh my God!

I just killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, nasty, harmful one.

This man is a louse!

“But I know that I’m not a louse,” he answered, looking at her strangely. “But I’m lying, Sonya,” he added, “I’ve been lying for a long time... It’s not the same; what you say is true. There are completely, completely, completely different reasons!.. I haven’t talked to anyone for a long time, Sonya... My head hurts a lot now.

His eyes burned with a feverish fire. He was almost beginning to become delirious; a restless smile wandered on his lips. A terrible powerlessness was already visible through the excited state of mind. Sonya understood how he was suffering. She was also starting to feel dizzy. And it was strange how he spoke: as if something was clear, but... “but how! How! Oh my God!” And she wrung her hands in despair.

No, Sonya, that's not it! - he began again, suddenly raising his head, as if a sudden turn of thoughts had struck and aroused him again, - this is not it! Or better yet... suppose (yes! this is really better!), suppose that I am proud, envious, angry, disgusting, vindictive, well... and, perhaps, also prone to madness. (Let it all happen at once! They talked about madness before, I noticed!) I told you just now that I couldn’t support myself at the university. Did you know that maybe I could? Mother would have sent me to bring in what was needed, and I would have earned money for boots, clothes and bread myself; maybe! Lessons were coming out; They offered fifty dollars. Razumikhin is working! Yes, I got angry and didn’t want to. Exactly angry (that’s a good word!). Then, like a spider, I hid in my corner. You were in my kennel, you saw... Do you know, Sonya, that low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp the soul and mind! Oh, how I hated this kennel! But still I didn’t want to leave it. I didn't mean to on purpose! I didn’t go out for days, I didn’t want to work, I didn’t even want to eat, I just lay there. If Nastasya brings it, we’ll eat it; if she doesn’t bring it, the day will pass; I didn’t ask on purpose out of malice! There is no light at night, I lie in the dark, but I don’t want to earn money for candles. I had to study, I sold out my books; and on my table, on notes and notebooks, there’s even dust lying on my fingertips. I preferred to lie and think. And I kept thinking... And I kept having such dreams, strange, different dreams, there’s no need to say what they were! But only then did I also begin to imagine that... No, it’s not so! I'm telling it wrong again! You see, then I kept asking myself: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid and if I know for sure that they are stupid, then I myself don’t want to be smarter? Then I learned, Sonya, that if you wait until everyone becomes smart, it will take too long... Then I also learned that this will never happen, that people will not change, and no one can change them, and it’s not worth the effort spend! Yes it is! This is their law... The law, Sonya! This is so!.. And now I know, Sonya, that whoever is strong and strong in mind and spirit is the ruler over them! Those who dare a lot are right. Whoever can spit on the most is their legislator, and whoever can dare the most is rightest! This is how it has been done until now and this is how it will always be! Only a blind man can't see it!

Raskolnikov, saying this, although he looked at Sonya, did not care anymore whether she would understand or not. The fever completely seized him. He was in some kind of gloomy delight. (Indeed, he had not spoken to anyone for too long!) Sonya realized that this gloomy catechism had become his faith and law.

“I guessed then, Sonya,” he continued enthusiastically, “that power is given only to those who dare to bend down and take it.” There is only one thing, one thing: you just have to dare! Then I had a thought, for the first time in my life, that no one had ever thought of before me! Nobody! It suddenly occurred to me, clear as the sun, that how come no one has dared or dares, passing by all this absurdity, to simply take everything by the tail and shake it to hell! I... I wanted to dare and killed... I just wanted to dare, Sonya, that’s the whole reason!

Oh, be silent, be silent! - Sonya screamed, throwing up her hands. “You walked away from God, and God struck you down and handed you over to the devil!”

By the way, Sonya, when I was lying in the dark and everything seemed to me, it was the devil who confused me? A?

Keep quiet! Don’t laugh, blasphemer, you don’t understand anything, nothing! Oh my God! He won’t understand anything, nothing!

Shut up, Sonya, I’m not laughing at all, I myself know that the devil was dragging me. Shut up, Sonya, shut up! - he repeated gloomily and persistently. - I know everything. I had already changed my mind about all this and whispered to myself when I was lying in the dark then... I argued all this with myself, down to the last smallest detail, and I know everything, everything! And I was so tired, so tired of all this chatter! I wanted to forget everything and start again, Sonya, and stop chatting! And do you really think that I went headlong like a fool? I acted like a smart guy, and that’s what ruined me! And do you really think that I didn’t know, for example, that if I had already begun to ask and interrogate myself: do I have the right to have power? - then, therefore, I have no right to have power. Or what if I ask the question: is a person a louse? - then, therefore, a person is no longer a louse for me, but a louse for someone who doesn’t even think about it and who goes straight ahead without asking questions... If I’ve been tormented for so many days: would Napoleon go or not? - so I clearly felt that I was not Napoleon... I endured all, all the torment of all this chatter, Sonya, and wanted to shake it all off my shoulders: I wanted, Sonya, to kill without casuistry, to kill for myself, for myself alone ! I didn’t want to lie to myself about this! I didn’t kill to help my mother - nonsense! I did not kill so that, having received funds and power, I could become a benefactor of humanity. Nonsense! I just killed; I killed for myself, for myself alone: ​​and whether I would have become someone’s benefactor or spent my whole life, like a spider, catching everyone in a web and sucking the living juices out of everyone, at that moment I still had to have it! And it wasn’t money, the main thing, that I needed, Sonya, when I killed; It wasn’t so much the money that was needed, but something else... I know all this now... Understand me: maybe, walking the same road, I would never repeat the murder again. I needed to know something else, something else was pushing me under my arms: I needed to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like everyone else, or a human being? Will I be able to cross or not! Do I dare to bend down and take it or not? Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right...

Kill? Do you have the right to kill? - Sonya clasped her hands.

Eh, Sonya! - he cried out irritably, he wanted to object to her something, but fell silent contemptuously. - Don't interrupt me, Sonya! I wanted to prove to you only one thing: that the devil dragged me then, and after that he explained to me that I had no right to go there, because I was just as much a louse as everyone else! He laughed at me, so I have come to you now! Welcome a guest! If I were not a louse, would I have come to you? Listen: when I went to the old woman then, I just went to try... So you know!

And they killed! Killed!

But how did he kill? Is this how they kill? Is it really possible to go kill like I did then? Someday I'll tell you how I walked... Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself, not the old woman! And then, all at once, he killed himself forever!.. And it was the devil who killed that old woman, not me... Enough, enough, Sonya, enough! Leave me,” he suddenly cried out in convulsive anguish, “leave me!”

He leaned his elbows on his knees and, as if in pincers, squeezed his head with his palms.

What suffering! - Sonya let out a painful cry.

Well, what to do now, speak up! - he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with his face hideously distorted with despair.

What to do! - she exclaimed, suddenly jumping up from her seat, and her eyes, hitherto full of tears, suddenly sparkled. - Get up! (She grabbed him by the shoulder; he sat up, looking at her almost in amazement.) Go now, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow, first kiss the ground that you have desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and say to everyone, out loud: “I killed!” Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you go? - she asked him, trembling all over, as if in a fit, grabbing him by both hands, squeezing them tightly in her hands and looking at him with a fiery gaze.

He was amazed and even amazed at her sudden delight.

Are you talking about hard labor, or what, Sonya? Do you need to report something on yourself? - he asked gloomily.

Accept suffering and redeem yourself with it, that’s what you need.

No! I won't go to them, Sonya.

How will you live, how will you live? What will you live with? - Sonya exclaimed. - Is this possible now? Well, how are you going to talk to your mother? (Oh, what will happen to them, what will happen to them now!) What am I saying! After all, you already abandoned your mother and sister. Well, he’s already given up, he’s given up. Oh my God! - she screamed, - he already knows all this himself! Well, how, how can one live without a person! What will happen to you now!

“Don’t be a child, Sonya,” he said quietly. - What am I guilty of before them? Why am I going? What will I tell them? All this is just a ghost... They themselves harass millions of people, and even consider them to be virtues. They are cheats and scoundrels, Sonya!.. I won’t go. And what will I say: what did I kill, but didn’t dare take the money, hid it under a stone? - he added with a caustic grin. - But they themselves will laugh at me, they will say: I’m a fool for not taking it. A coward and a fool! They won’t understand anything, Sonya, and they are not worthy to understand. Why am I going? Will not go. Don't be a child, Sonya...

You will be tortured, you will be tortured,” she repeated, stretching out her hands to him in desperate prayer.

“I may still have slandered myself,” he remarked gloomily, as if thoughtfully, “maybe I’m still a man, and not a louse, and I hastened to condemn myself... I’ll still fight.”

An arrogant grin squeezed out on his lips.

What a torment to bear! But a whole life, a whole life!..

“I’ll get used to it...” he said gloomily and thoughtfully. “Listen,” he began a minute later, “it’s enough to cry, it’s time to get down to business: I came to tell you that they are now looking for me, catching me...

Oh! - Sonya screamed in fear.

Well, why did you scream! You yourself want me to go to hard labor, but now you’re scared? Just this: I won’t give in to them. I’ll still fight with them, and they won’t do anything. They have no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and thought that I was already dead; Today things got better. All their evidence is double-edged, that is, I can turn their accusations to my advantage, you know? and I will convert; That’s why I’ve learned now... But they’ll probably put me in prison. If it weren’t for one incident, then maybe they would have been imprisoned today, probably even, maybe even they will be imprisoned today... But it’s nothing, Sonya: I’ll sit in prison and they’ll release me... that’s why they don’t have a single real proof and it won’t happen, I give you my word. And with what they have, you can’t kill a person. Well, that’s enough... Just so you know... I’ll try to do something like this with my sister and mother so as to dissuade them and not frighten them... My sister now, however, seems to be well off... therefore , and mother... Well, that's all. Be careful, though. Will you come to my prison when I’m in prison?

Oh, I will! Will!

Both sat next to each other, sad and defeated, as if after a storm they had been thrown onto an empty shore alone. He looked at Sonya and felt how much of her love was on him, and strangely, it suddenly became hard and painful for him that he was loved so much. Yes, it was a strange and terrible feeling! Going to Sonya, he felt that all his hope and all the outcome lay in her; he thought of laying down at least part of his torment, and suddenly, now that her whole heart had turned to him, he suddenly felt and realized that he had become unparalleledly more unhappy than he had been before.

Sonya,” he said, “it’s better not to come to me when I’m sitting in prison.”

Sonya did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.

Do you have a cross on you? - she suddenly asked unexpectedly, as if she had suddenly remembered.

He didn't understand the question at first.

No, really? Here, take this one, the cypress one. I still have another one, a copper one, Lizavetin. Lizaveta and I exchanged crosses, she gave me her cross, and I gave her my icon. Now I will wear Lizavetin, and this one is for you. Take it... it's mine! After all, mine! - she begged. - Together we will go to suffer, together we will bear the cross!..

Give! - said Raskolnikov. He didn't want to upset her. But he immediately withdrew the hand extended behind the cross.

Not now, Sonya. “It’s better later,” he added to calm her down.

Yes, yes, better, better,” she picked up with enthusiasm, “when you go to suffer, then you’ll put it on.” Come to me, I’ll put it on you, let’s pray and let’s go.

At that moment someone knocked on the door three times.

Sofya Semyonovna, can I come to you? - someone’s very familiar polite voice was heard.

Sonya rushed to the door in fright. The blond face of Mr. Lebezyatnikov looked into the room.

Lebezyatnikov looked alarmed.

I'm coming to you, Sofya Semyonovna. Sorry... I thought I’d find you,” he suddenly turned to Raskolnikov, “that is, I didn’t think anything... like that... but that’s exactly what I thought... Katerina Ivanovna is crazy over there.” she’s gone,” he suddenly snapped at Sonya, abandoning Raskolnikov.

Sonya screamed.

That is, at least that's what it seems like. However... We don’t know what to do there, that’s what! She returned - she seemed to have been kicked out from somewhere, maybe beaten... at least, that’s what it seems... She ran to see Semyon Zakharych’s boss, but didn’t find him at home; he was having lunch with some general too... Imagine, she waved to where they were having lunch... to this other general, and, imagine, she insisted, called the boss Semyon Zakharych, and, it seems, from behind the table. You can imagine what happened there. She was, of course, kicked out; and she says that she herself scolded him and threw something at him. This can even be assumed... how was she not taken? - I don't understand! Now she’s telling everyone, including Amalia Ivanovna, but it’s hard to understand, she’s screaming and thrashing... Oh yes: she’s talking and shouting that since everyone has abandoned her now, she’ll take the children and go out into the street, carry a barrel organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and go to the general’s window every day... “Let them, he says, see how the noble children of an official father walk the streets as beggars!” He hits all the children, they cry. Lenya teaches him to sing “Khutorok”, teaches the boy to dance, Polina Mikhailovna too, tears all her dresses; makes them some kind of hats, like actors; she herself wants to carry the basin to pound, instead of music... She doesn’t listen to anything... Imagine how this is? This is simply not possible!

Lebezyatnikov would have continued further, but Sonya, who was listening to him barely catching her breath, suddenly grabbed her mantle and hat and ran out of the room, getting dressed as she ran. Raskolnikov followed her out, Lebezyatnikov behind him.

I'm definitely going crazy! - he said to Raskolnikov, going out into the street with him, - I just didn’t want to frighten Sofya Semyonovna and said: “it seems,” but there is no doubt. These, they say, are the kind of tubercles that jump up on the brain in consumption; It's a pity that I don't know medicine. However, I tried to convince her, but she doesn’t listen to anything.

Have you told her about the tubercles?

That is, not really about the tubercles. Moreover, she would not have understood anything. But I’m talking about this: if you convince a person logically that, in essence, he has nothing to cry about, then he will stop crying. It is clear. What about your belief that it won’t stop?

It would be too easy to live then,” Raskolnikov answered.

Let me, let me; of course, it’s quite difficult for Katerina Ivanovna to understand; but do you know that serious experiments have already taken place in Paris regarding the possibility of curing crazy people, acting only by logical conviction? One professor there, who recently died, a serious scientist, imagined that this could be treated. His main idea is that crazy people do not have any special disorder in their bodies, but that madness is, so to speak, logical error, an error in judgment, a wrong way of looking at things. He gradually refuted the patient and, imagine, he achieved, they say, results! But since he also used souls, the results of this treatment are, of course, questioned... At least, it seems so...

Raskolnikov has not listened for a long time. Having reached his house, he nodded his head to Lebezyatnikov and turned into the gateway. Lebezyatnikov woke up, looked around and ran on.

Raskolnikov entered his closet and stood in the middle of it. "Why did he come back here?" He looked around at this yellowish, shabby wallpaper, this dust, his couch... Some kind of sharp, continuous knocking came from the yard; something somewhere seemed to be hammered in, a nail of some kind... He went to the window, stood on tiptoe and for a long time, with an air of extreme attention, looked out into the yard. But the yard was empty, and no one was visible who was knocking. To the left, in the outbuilding, open windows could be seen here and there; There were pots of thin geraniums on the windowsills. Linen was hung outside the windows... He knew all this by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.

Never, never before had he felt so terribly alone!

Yes, he felt once again that perhaps he would really hate Sonya, and precisely now that he had made her more unhappy. "Why did he go to her to ask for her tears? Why does he need to eat up her life? Oh, meanness!"

I'll be left alone! - he said suddenly decisively, - and she will not go to prison!

About five minutes later he raised his head and smiled strangely. It was a strange thought: “Maybe it really is better in hard labor,” he suddenly thought.

He did not remember how long he sat in his room, with vague thoughts crowding his head. Suddenly the door opened and Avdotya Romanovna entered. She first stopped and looked at him from the threshold, as he had looked at Sonya earlier; then she walked over and sat down opposite him on the chair, in her place yesterday. He looked at her silently and somehow without thought.

Don’t be angry, brother, I’m only here for a minute,” said Dunya. The expression on her face was thoughtful, but not stern. The look was clear and quiet. He saw that this one also came to him with love.

Brother, now I know everything, everything. Dmitry Prokofich explained and told me everything. You are being persecuted and tortured on a stupid and vile suspicion... Dmitry Prokofich told me that there is no danger and that it is in vain that you accept this with such horror. I don’t think so and I fully understand how indignant everything is in you and that this indignation can leave traces forever. This is what I'm afraid of. Because you abandoned us, I do not judge you and do not dare to judge you, and forgive me for reproaching you before. I feel for myself that if I had such great grief, I would also leave everyone. I won’t tell my mother anything about this, but I will talk about you continuously and say on your behalf that you will come very soon. Don't worry about her; I will calm her down; but don’t torture her either - come at least once; remember that she is a mother! And now I just came to say (Dunya began to get up from her seat) that if, in case you need me for anything or need me... my whole life, or something... then call me, I’ll come. Goodbye!

She turned sharply and walked towards the door.

Dunya! - Raskolnikov stopped her, stood up and approached her, - this Razumikhin, Dmitry Prokofich, is a very good person.

Dunya blushed a little.

Well! - she asked after waiting a minute.

He is a business man, hardworking, honest and capable of loving deeply... Farewell, Dunya.

Dunya flushed all over, then suddenly became alarmed:

What is this, brother, are we really parting forever, why are you... making such wills to me?

Anyway... goodbye.

He turned away and walked away from her to the window. She stood there, looked at him worriedly, and left in alarm.

No, he was not cold towards her. There was one moment (the very last) when he terribly wanted to hug her tightly and say goodbye to her, and even say, but he did not even dare to shake her hand:

“Then, perhaps, she will shudder when she remembers that I was hugging her now, and will say that I stole her kiss!”

“Will this one stand it or not?” he added a few minutes later to himself. “No, it won’t stand it; they can’t stand it! They never stand it...”

And he thought about Sonya.

There was a breath of freshness from the window. The light in the yard was no longer shining so brightly. He suddenly took his cap and went out.

He, of course, could not and did not want to take care of his painful condition. But all this continuous anxiety and all this mental horror could not pass without consequences. And if he was not yet lying in a real fever, then perhaps it was precisely because this internal, continuous anxiety still kept him on his feet and conscious, but somehow artificially, for a time.

He wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. Some kind of special melancholy began to affect him lately. There was nothing particularly caustic or burning in it; but from her there was a sense of something constant, eternal, a premonition of the hopeless years of this cold, deadening melancholy, a premonition of some kind of eternity at the “yard of space.” In the evening hour this feeling usually began to torment him even more strongly.

With these stupid, purely physical infirmities, depending on some setting of the sun, and refrain from doing something stupid! Not just to Sonya, but to Dunya! - he muttered hatefully.

They called out to him. He looked back; Lebezyatnikov rushed to him.

Imagine, I was at your place, looking for you. Imagine, she fulfilled her intention and took the children away! Sofia Semyonovna and I found them with great effort. She hits the frying pan herself and makes the children sing and dance. Children are crying. They stop at intersections and at benches. Stupid people are running after them. Let's go.

And Sonya?.. - Raskolnikov asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebezyatnikov.

Just in a frenzy. That is, not Sofya Semyonovna in a frenzy, but Katerina Ivanovna; and by the way, Sofya Semyonovna is in a frenzy. And Katerina Ivanovna is completely in a frenzy. I'm telling you, I'm completely crazy. They will be taken to the police. You can imagine how this will affect... They are now on the ditch near the bridge, very close to Sofia Semyonovna. Close.

On a ditch, not very far from the bridge and not two houses away from the house where Sonya lived, a group of people crowded together. Boys and girls especially came running. Katerina Ivanovna’s hoarse, torn voice could be heard from the bridge. Indeed, it was a strange spectacle that could interest the street audience. Katerina Ivanovna, in her old dress, in her draped shawl and in her broken straw hat, knocked down in an ugly lump on the side, was truly in a real frenzy. She was tired and out of breath. Her exhausted, consumptive face looked more suffering than ever (besides, on the street, in the sun, a consumptive always seems sicker and more disfigured than at home); but her excited state did not stop, and she became even more irritated every minute. She rushed to the children, shouted at them, persuaded them, taught them right there in front of the people how to dance and what to sing, began to explain to them what this was for, came into despair at their lack of understanding, beat them... Then, without finishing, rushed towards the audience; If she noticed a slightly well-dressed person who stopped to look, she immediately began to explain to him that this is, they say, what children “from a noble, one might even say, an aristocratic house” have been reduced to. If she heard laughter or some bullying word in the crowd, she immediately pounced on the daring ones and began to scold them. Some actually laughed, others shook their heads; Everyone was generally curious to look at the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying pan Lebezyatnikov spoke about did not exist; at least I didn’t see Raskolnikov; but instead of knocking on the frying pan, Katerina Ivanovna began clapping her dry palms to the beat when she made Polechka sing and Lenya and Kolya dance; and she even started to sing along, but each time she broke off on the second note from a painful cough, which made her fall into despair again, curse her cough, and even cry. What drove her crazy the most was the crying and fear of Kolya and Leni. Indeed, there was an attempt to dress up children in costume, like street singers and singers dress up. The boy was wearing a turban made of something red and white so that he could pretend to be a Turk. There weren’t enough suits for Lenya; All she had done was put on her head a red cap (or, better said, cap) of the late Semyon Zakharych, knitted from garus, and stuck into the cap was a piece of a white ostrich feather that had belonged to Katerina Ivanovna’s grandmother and had hitherto been preserved in the chest as a family rarity. Polechka was in her ordinary dress. She looked at her mother timidly and lost, did not leave her side, hid her tears, guessed about her mother’s insanity and restlessly looked around. The street and the crowd scared her terribly. Sonya constantly followed Katerina Ivanovna, crying and begging her every minute to return home. But Katerina Ivanovna was inexorable.

Stop it, Sonya, stop it! - she shouted quickly, hurrying, choking and coughing. - You don’t know what you’re asking for, like a child! I already told you that I’m not going back to this drunken German woman. Let everyone, all of St. Petersburg, see how the children of a noble father, who served faithfully and truly all his life and, one might say, died in service, beg for alms. (Katerina Ivanovna has already managed to create this fantasy for herself and believe it blindly). Let him, let this worthless general see it. Yes, and you are stupid, Sonya: what is there now, tell me? We've tormented you enough, I don't want any more! Ah, Rodion Romanych, it’s you! - she screamed, seeing Raskolnikov and rushing to him, - please explain to this fool that nothing smarter can be done! Even the organ grinders make money, and everyone will immediately recognize us, they will know that we are a poor noble family of orphans reduced to poverty, and this general will lose his job, you will see! We will go to his window every day, and the Emperor will pass by, I will kneel down, I will put them all forward and point to them: “Protect, father!” He is the father of orphans, he is merciful, he will protect, you will see, and this general... Lenya! Tenez-vous droite! 1 You, Kolya, are going to dance again now. Why are you whining? Whining again! Well, what are you afraid of, you fool! God! What should I do with them, Rodion Romanych! If only you knew how stupid they are! Well, what can you do with these!..

1 stay straight! (French).

And she, almost crying herself (which did not interfere with her continuous and incessant patter), pointed out to him the whining children. Raskolnikov tried to convince her to come back and even said, thinking to affect her pride, that it was indecent for her to walk the streets like organ grinders walk, because she was preparing herself to be the headmistress of a noble boarding school for girls...

Boarding house, ha ha ha! Glorious are the tambourines beyond the mountains! - Katerina Ivanovna cried, immediately bursting into cough after laughing, - no, Rodion Romanych, the dream has passed! Everyone abandoned us!.. And this general... You know, Rodion Romanych, I threw an inkwell at him - here, in the footman’s room, by the way, it stood on the table, next to the sheet on which they were signing, and I signed, let him in, and ran away . Oh, vile, vile. I don't care; Now I will feed these myself, I will not bow to anyone! We tormented her enough! (She pointed to Sonya). Polechka, how much have you collected? Can you show me? How? Just two kopecks? Oh, vile ones! They don’t give us anything, they just run after us with their tongues hanging out! Why is this idiot laughing? (she pointed to one of the crowd). This is all because this Kolka is so slow-witted, there’s a lot of fuss with him! What do you want, Polechka? Speak to me in French, parlez-moi français. 1 After all, I taught you, you know a few phrases!.. Otherwise, how can you tell that you are from a noble family, well-mannered children and not at all like all the organ grinders; We’re not presenting some kind of “Petrushka” on the streets, but we’ll sing a noble romance... Oh yes! What should we sing? You keep interrupting me, and we... you see, we stopped here, Rodion Romanych, to choose what to sing - so that Kolya could dance... because, you can imagine, we have all this, without preparation; we need to come to an agreement so that everything is completely rehearsed, and then we will go to Nevsky, where there are many more people of high society and they will immediately notice us: Lenya knows “Khutorok”... Only everything is “Khutorok” and “Khutorok”, and that’s all his sing! We should sing something much more noble... Well, what did you come up with, Polya, at least you could help your mother! I have no memory, I would remember! It’s not really “Hussar leaning on a saber” to sing! Oh, let's sing "Cinq sous" in French! 2 I taught you, I taught you. And most importantly, since it is in French, they will immediately see that you are the children of nobles, and it will be much more touching... One could even: “Malborough s"en va-t-en guerre", since this is a completely children's song and is used in all aristocratic houses when children are lulled to sleep.

1 speak to me in French (French).

2 Five groschen" (French).

Malborough s"en va-t-en guerre,

Ne sait quand reviendra... 1 -

She started to sing... - But no, “Cinq sous” is better! Well, Kolya, put your hands on your sides, quickly, and you, Lenya, also turn in the opposite direction, and Polechka and I will sing along and clap!

Cinq sous, cinq sous,

Pour monter notre menage...2

1 Malbrug prepared to go on a campaign,

God knows when he will return... (French).

2 Five pennies, five pennies,

To our establishment... (French).

Khi-khi-khi! (And she coughed). Straighten your dress, Polechka, the shoulders are down,” she noticed through her cough, resting. “Now you especially need to behave decently and on fine footing, so that everyone can see that you are the children of nobles.” I said then that the bra should be cut longer and, moreover, in two panels. It was you then, Sonya, with your advice: “In short, in short,” so it turned out that the child was completely disfigured... Well, again you are all crying! Why are you stupid! Well, Kolya, start quickly, quickly, quickly - oh, what an obnoxious child he is!..

Cinq sous, cinq sous...

Soldier again! Well, what do you want?

Indeed, a policeman was pushing his way through the crowd. But at the same time, one gentleman in a uniform and an overcoat, a respectable official of about fifty, with an order around his neck (the latter was very pleasant for Katerina Ivanovna and influenced the policeman), approached and silently handed Katerina Ivanovna a three-ruble green credit card. His face expressed sincere compassion. Katerina Ivanovna accepted and politely, even ceremoniously, bowed to him.

“Thank you, dear sir,” she began haughtily, “the reasons that prompted us... take the money, Polechka.” You see, there are noble and generous people who are immediately ready to help a poor noblewoman in misfortune. You see, dear sir, noble orphans, one might even say, with the most aristocratic connections... And this general sat and ate hazel grouse... stamped with his feet that I bothered him... “Your Excellency, I say, protect the orphans, very knowing, I say, the late Semyon Zakharych, and since his own daughter was slandered by the meanest of scoundrels on the day of his death...” Again this soldier! Protect! - she shouted to the official, - why is this soldier bothering me? We already ran away from one here from Meshchanskaya... well, what do you care, you fool!

That’s why it’s prohibited on the streets, sir. Don't be disgraceful.

You yourself are a disgrace! I’m still walking around like a barrel organ, what do you care?

Regarding the barrel organ, you need to have permission, but you yourself, sir, confuse people in this manner. Where would you like to lodge?

How, permission! - Katerina Ivanovna screamed. - I buried my husband today, what permission is there!

Madam, madam, calm down,” the official began, “come on, I’ll get you there... It’s indecent here in the crowd... you’re unwell...

Dear sir, dear sir, you know nothing! - Katerina Ivanovna shouted, - we’ll go to Nevsky, - Sonya, Sonya! Where is she? She's crying too! What's wrong with you all!.. Kolya, Lenya, where are you going? - she suddenly screamed in fright, - oh stupid children! Kolya, Lenya, where are they going!..

It so happened that Kolya and Lenya, frightened to the last degree by the street crowd and the antics of their crazy mother, finally seeing a soldier who wanted to take them and lead them somewhere, suddenly, as if by agreement, grabbed each other by the arms and rushed to run. Screaming and crying, poor Katerina Ivanovna rushed to catch up with them. It was ugly and pathetic to look at her running, crying, gasping for breath. Sonya and Polechka rushed after her.

Turn them in, turn them in, Sonya! O stupid, ungrateful children!.. Fields! catch them... For you I...

She stumbled while running and fell.

Broken into blood! Oh my God! - Sonya screamed, bending over her.

Everyone came running, everyone crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov were the first to run up; The official also hurried, followed by the policeman, grumbling: “Eh-ma!” and waving his hand, anticipating that things would turn out to be troublesome.

Let's go! let's go! - he dispersed the people crowded around.

Dying! - someone shouted.

Lost her mind! - said another.

Lord, save me! - said one woman, crossing herself. - Were the girl and the boy angry? There they go, the eldest one intercepted... Look, they're crazy!

But when they took a good look at Katerina Ivanovna, they saw that she had not broken into a stone at all, as Sonya thought, but that the blood that had stained the pavement was gushing from her chest in her throat.

“I know this, I saw it,” the official muttered to Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov, “this is consumption, sir; blood will gush out and crush you. With one of my relatives, just recently I was a witness, and that’s a glass and a half... suddenly, sir... What, however, should I do, now he’s going to die?

Here, here, to me! - Sonya begged, - this is where I live!.. This is the house, the second from here... Come to me, quickly, quickly!.. - she rushed to everyone. - Send for the doctor... Oh my God!

Through the efforts of the official, this matter was settled; even the policeman helped carry Katerina Ivanovna. They brought her to Sonya almost dead and laid her on the bed. The bleeding still continued, but she seemed to be beginning to come to her senses. In addition to Sonya, Raskolnikov and Lebezyatnikov, an official and a policeman entered the room at once, having first dispersed the crowd, some of whom were escorted to the very doors. Polechka led in, holding hands, Kolya and Lenya, who were trembling and crying. They also agreed from the Kapernaumovs: he himself, lame and crooked, a strange-looking man with bristly, erect hair and sideburns; his wife, who had a once-for-ever-frightened look, and several of their children, with faces stiff from constant surprise and with open mouths. Among this entire audience, Svidrigailov suddenly appeared. Raskolnikov looked at him in surprise, not understanding where he came from and not remembering him in the crowd.

They talked about the doctor and the priest. Although the official whispered to Raskolnikov that it seemed that the doctor was now unnecessary, he ordered to send. Kapernaumov himself ran.

Meanwhile, Katerina Ivanovna caught her breath and the blood drained away for a while. She looked with a painful, but intent and penetrating gaze at the pale and trembling Sonya, who was wiping drops of sweat from her forehead with a handkerchief; Finally, she asked me to lift myself up. They sat her on the bed, holding her on both sides.

Blood still covered her dry lips. She rolled her eyes around, looking around:

So this is how you live, Sonya! I’ve never been to see you... it just happened...

She looked at her with suffering:

We have sucked you dry, Sonya... Polya, Lenya, Kolya, come here... Well, here they are, Sonya, that's it, take them... from hand to hand... and that's enough for me!.. The ball is over! G"a!.. Put me down, at least let me die in peace...

She was lowered back onto the pillow.

What? A priest?.. No need... Where do you have an extra ruble?.. I have no sins!.. God must forgive anyway... He himself knows how I suffered!.. But if he doesn’t forgive, then there’s no need !..

Restless delirium overcame her more and more. Sometimes she shuddered, looked around, recognized everyone for a minute; but immediately consciousness was again replaced by delirium. She was breathing hoarsely and difficultly, as if something was bubbling in her throat.

I tell him: “Your Excellency!..” - she shouted, resting after each word, - this Amalia Ludvigovna... ah! Lenya, Kolya! hands on your sides, hurry, hurry, glissé-glissé, pas de basque! Knock your feet... Be a graceful child.

Du hast Diamanten und Perlen... 1

1 You have diamonds and pearls (German).

Du hast die schonsten Augen,

Madchen, was willst du mehr? 1

1 You have the most beautiful eyes,

Girl, what else do you want? (German)

Well, yes, how could it not be! was willst du mehr, - he’ll make it up, you idiot!.. Oh yes, here’s another thing:

In the midday heat, in the valley of Dagestan...

Oh, how I loved... I loved this romance to the point of adoration, Polechka!.. you know, your father... used to sing when he was a groom... Oh, the days!.. If only we could sing! Well, how, how... I forgot... but remind me, how? “She was extremely excited and tried to get up. Finally, in a terrible, hoarse, breaking voice, she began, screaming and gasping for breath on every word, with an air of increasing fear:

In the midday heat!.. in the valley!.. Dagestan!..

With lead in my chest!..

Your Excellency! - she suddenly screamed with a tearing scream and bursting into tears, - protect the orphans! Knowing the bread and salt of the late Semyon Zakharych!.. You can even say aristocratic! and tenderly, as if surprised that he sees her in front of him, “Sonya, dear, are you here too?”

They lifted her up again.

Enough!.. It's time!.. Goodbye, wretched man!.. The nag has gone away!.. It's torn! - she screamed desperately and hatefully and slammed her head onto the pillow.

She forgot herself again, but this last oblivion did not last long. Her pale yellow, withered face was thrown back, her mouth opened, her legs stretched out convulsively. She took a deep, deep breath and died.

Sonya fell on her corpse, wrapped her arms around her and froze, pressing her head to the withered chest of the deceased. Polechka fell at her mother’s feet and kissed them, crying bitterly. Kolya and Lenya, not yet understanding what had happened, but anticipating something very terrible, grabbed each other by the shoulders with both hands and, staring at each other with their eyes, suddenly together, at once, opened their mouths and began to scream. Both were still in suits: one in a turban, the other in a skull cap with an ostrich feather.

And how did this “letter of commendation” suddenly end up on the bed, next to Katerina Ivanovna? He was lying right there, by the pillow; Raskolnikov saw him.

He went to the window. Lebezyatnikov ran up to him.

She died! - said Lebezyatnikov.

Rodion Romanovich, I have two necessary words to convey to you,” Svidrigailov approached. Lebezyatnikov immediately gave way and delicately concealed himself. Svidrigailov took the surprised Raskolnikov further away into the corner.

I take care of all this fuss, that is, funerals and so on. You know, if I had money, but I told you that I have extra. I will place these two chicks and this Polechka in some better orphanage institutions and put one thousand five hundred rubles in capital for each until they reach adulthood, so that Sofya Semyonovna will be completely at peace. Yes, and I’ll pull her out of the pool, because good girl, is not it? Well, then tell Avdotya Romanovna that I used her ten thousand just like that.

For what purpose have you become so disinterested? - asked Raskolnikov.

Eh! The man is incredulous! - Svidrigailov laughed. - After all, I said that I have extra money. Well, because of humanity, you simply don’t allow it, or what? After all, she was not a “louse” (he pointed his finger at the corner where the deceased was), like some old woman pawnbroker. Well, you must agree, well, “Should Luzhin really live and do abominations, or should she die?” And if I didn’t help, “Polechka, for example, will go there, along the same road...”

He said this with an air of some winking, cheerful roguishness, without taking his eyes off Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov turned pale and cold, hearing his own expressions spoken to Sonya. He quickly recoiled and looked wildly at Svidrigailov.

Why... do you know? - he whispered, barely catching his breath.

Why, I’m standing here, across the wall, at Madame Resslich’s. Here is Kapernaumov, and there is Madame Resslich, an old and most devoted friend. Neighbor, sir.

“I,” continued Svidrigailov, shaking with laughter, “and I can with honor assure you, dear Rodion Romanovich, that you surprisingly interested me. After all, I said that we would get together, I predicted this for you, and so we got along. And you will see what a flexible person I am. You will see that you can still live with me...

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment - 05 PART FIVE, read the text

See also Dostoevsky Fyodor - Prose (stories, poems, novels...):

Crime and Punishment - 06 PART SIX
I A strange time had come for Raskolnikov: as if fog had suddenly fallen...

Crime and Punishment - 07 EPILOGUE
I Siberia. On the banks of a wide, deserted river stands a city, one of the administrative...

Raskolnikov was an active and cheerful lawyer for Sonya against Luzhin, despite the fact that he himself carried so much of his own horror and suffering in his soul. But, having suffered so much in the morning, he was definitely glad for the opportunity to change his impressions, which were becoming unbearable, not to mention how personal and heartfelt his desire to intercede for Sonya was. In addition, he had in mind and terribly worried him, especially at moments, about the upcoming meeting with Sonya: he had to tell her who killed Lizaveta, and he had a presentiment of terrible torment, and seemed to be brushing it off with his hands. And therefore, when he exclaimed, leaving Katerina Ivanovna: “Well, what do you say now, Sofya Semyonovna?”, he was obviously still in some outwardly excited state of vivacity, challenge and recent victory over Luzhin. But something strange happened to him. When he reached Kapernaumov’s apartment, he felt sudden exhaustion and fear. Thoughtfully, he stopped in front of the door with a strange question: “Do I need to say who killed Lizaveta?” The question was strange, because he suddenly, at the same time, felt that it was not only impossible not to say, but even to postpone this minute, although for a while, it was impossible. He did not yet know why it was impossible; he just felt it, and this painful consciousness of his powerlessness in the face of necessity almost crushed him. So as not to reason and suffer, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonya from the threshold. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and covering her face with her hands, but when she saw Raskolnikov, she quickly stood up and walked towards him, as if she had been waiting for him.

What would happen to me without you? - she said quickly, meeting with him in the middle of the room. Obviously, that was all she wanted to tell him as quickly as possible. Then I waited.

Raskolnikov walked to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had just risen. She stood two steps in front of him, exactly like yesterday.

What, Sonya? - he said and suddenly felt that his voice was trembling, - after all, the whole matter rested on “social status and the habits associated with it.” Did you understand this just now?

Suffering was expressed in her face.

Just don't talk to me like yesterday! - she interrupted him. - Please don't start. And so there is enough torment...

She smiled quickly, afraid that perhaps he would not like the reproach.

I stupidly left there. What's there now? Now I wanted to go, but I kept thinking that... you’ll come in.

He told her that Amalia Ivanovna was driving them out of the apartment and that Katerina Ivanovna had run somewhere “to look for the truth.”

Oh my god! - Sonya jumped up, - let's go quickly...

And she grabbed her mantle.

Always the same! - Raskolnikov cried irritably. - All you can think about is what they are! Stay with me.

And... Katerina Ivanovna?

And Katerina Ivanovna, of course, will not pass you by, she will come to you herself, since she has already run out of the house,” he added grumpily. - If it doesn’t catch you, you’ll still be to blame...

Sonya sat down on a chair in painful indecision. Raskolnikov was silent, looking at the ground and thinking about something.

Let’s suppose that Luzhin didn’t want to now,” he began, without looking at Sonya. - Well, if he wanted or something was included in the calculations, he would have put you in prison if me and Lebezyatnikov had not happened here! A?

But I really could not have happened! And Lebezyatnikov turned up quite by accident.

Sonya was silent.

Well, if I went to prison, what then? Remember what I said yesterday?

She didn't answer again. He waited it out.

And I thought you would shout again: “Oh, don’t talk, stop it!” - Raskolnikov laughed, but somehow with an effort. - Well, silence again? - he asked again after a minute. - Surely we need to talk about something? What I would be interested in is how you would now resolve one “issue,” as Lebezyatnikov says. (He seemed to be starting to get confused.) No, really, I'm serious. Imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin’s intentions in advance, you knew (that is, probably) that through them Katerina Ivanovna, and even the children, would have died completely; you too, to boot (since you don’t consider yourself worth anything, so to boot). Polechka too... that’s why she cares the same. Well, sir; So: if suddenly all this was now left up to your decision: to live in this world or that, that is, should Luzhin live and do abominations, or should Katerina Ivanovna die? How would you decide: which one should die? I'm asking you.

Sonya looked at him with concern: she heard something special in this unsteady and suitable speech for something from afar.

“I already had a presentiment that you would ask something like that,” she said, looking at him inquisitively.

Okay, so be it; but, however, how to decide?

Why do you ask what is impossible to be? - Sonya said with disgust.

Therefore, it is better for Luzhin to live and do abominations! You didn’t dare to decide this either?

But I can’t know God’s providence... And why are you asking what you shouldn’t ask? Why such empty questions? How can it happen that this depends on my decision? And who made me the judge here: who should live and who should not live?

Once God’s providence gets involved, nothing can be done about it,” Raskolnikov grumbled gloomily.

You better say directly what you want! - Sonya cried out with suffering, - again you are pointing to something... Have you really come just to torment!

She could not stand it and suddenly began to cry bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy anguish. Five minutes passed.

But you’re right, Sonya,” he finally said quietly. He suddenly changed; his affectedly impudent and impotently defiant tone disappeared. Even his voice suddenly weakened. “I myself told you yesterday that I’m not coming to ask for forgiveness, but I almost started by saying that I’m asking for forgiveness... I was talking about Luzhin and the providence for myself... I asked for forgiveness, Sonya... He wanted to smile, but something- something powerless and unfinished was reflected in his pale smile. He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands.

And suddenly a strange, unexpected feeling of some caustic hatred for Sonya passed through his heart. As if surprised and frightened by this sensation, he suddenly raised his head and looked at her intently; but he met her restless and painfully caring gaze; there was love here; his hatred disappeared like a ghost. This was not it; he mistook one feeling for another. It only meant that that minute had passed.

Again he covered his face with his hands and bowed his head down. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from the chair, looked at Sonya and, without saying anything, moved to her bed.

This moment was terribly similar, in his feeling, to the one when he stood behind the old woman, having already freed the ax from the noose, and felt that “not a moment could be lost anymore.”

What's wrong with you? - asked Sonya, terribly timid.

He couldn't say anything. This was not at all what he had intended to announce, and he himself did not understand what was now happening to him. She quietly approached him, sat down on the bed next to him and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and sank. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face towards her; his lips curled helplessly, trying to utter something. Horror passed through Sonya's heart.

What's wrong with you? - she repeated, moving away from him slightly.

Nothing, Sonya. Don't be scared... Nonsense! Really, if you think about it, it’s nonsense,” he muttered with the air of a delirious man who doesn’t remember himself. - Why did I come to torment you? - he added suddenly, looking at her. - Right. For what? I keep asking myself this question, Sonya...

He may have asked himself this question a quarter of an hour ago, but now he spoke in complete powerlessness, barely conscious of himself and feeling a continuous trembling throughout his whole body.

Oh, how you suffer! - she said with suffering, peering at him.

It’s all nonsense!.. That’s what, Sonya (he suddenly smiled for some reason, somehow pale and powerless, for about two seconds), - do you remember what I wanted to tell you yesterday?

Sonya waited restlessly.

I said as I was leaving that maybe I was saying goodbye to you forever, but that if I come today, I’ll tell you... who killed Lizaveta.

She suddenly trembled all over.

Well, that's what I came to say.

So it was really yesterday... - she whispered with difficulty, - why do you know? - she asked quickly, as if suddenly coming to her senses.

Sonya began to breathe with difficulty. The face became paler and paler.

She was silent for a minute.

Have you found him? - she asked timidly.

No, they didn't find it.

So how do you know about this? - she asked again, barely audibly, and again after almost a minute of silence.

He turned to her and looked at her intently.

“Guess,” he said with the same twisted and powerless smile.

Convulsions seemed to run through her entire body.

Yes, you... me... why are you so... scaring me? - she said, smiling like a child.

Therefore, I’m a great friend with him... since I know,” Raskolnikov continued, relentlessly continuing to look into her face, as if he was no longer able to take his eyes off, “he didn’t want to kill this Lizaveta... He killed her... by accident... He killed the old woman wanted... when she was alone... and came... And then Lizaveta came in... He was there... and killed her.

Another terrible minute passed. Both kept looking at each other.

So you can’t guess? - he asked suddenly, with that feeling as if he was throwing himself down from a bell tower.

N-no,” Sonya whispered barely audibly.

Take a good look.

And as soon as he said this, again one of the old, familiar sensations suddenly froze his soul: he looked at her and suddenly, in her face, he seemed to see Lizaveta’s face. He vividly remembered the expression on Lizaveta’s face when he was approaching her with an ax, and she was moving away from him towards the wall, putting her hand forward, with a completely childish fear in her face, just like little children when they suddenly start doing something. to get scared, look motionless and restless at the object that frightens them, pull back and, holding out their little hand, prepare to cry. Almost the same thing now happened to Sonya: just as helplessly, with the same fear, she looked at him for some time and suddenly, putting her left hand forward, lightly, slightly, rested her fingers on his chest and slowly began to rise from the bed , moving away more and more from him, and her gaze at him became more and more motionless. Her horror was suddenly communicated to him: exactly the same fear appeared in his face, and he began to look at her in exactly the same way, and almost even with the same childish smile.

Did you guess right? - he finally whispered.

God! - a terrible scream burst from her chest. She fell helplessly onto the bed, face down into the pillows. But after a moment she quickly stood up, quickly moved towards him, grabbed him by both hands and, squeezing them tightly, as if in a vice, with her thin fingers, began again motionless, as if glued, to look into his face. With this last, desperate look, she wanted to look out and catch at least some last hope for herself. But there was no hope; there was no doubt left; everything was like that! Even then, later, when she recalled this moment, she felt both strange and wonderful: why exactly did she see so immediately then that there was no longer any doubt? Surely she couldn’t say, for example, that she had a presentiment of something like that? And yet, now, as soon as he told her this, it suddenly seemed to her that she really seemed to have had a presentiment of this very thing.

Enough, Sonya, that's enough! Don't torture me! - he asked painfully.

This is not at all what he thought of opening up to her, but it turned out that way.

As if not remembering herself, she jumped up and, wringing her hands, reached the middle of the room; but she quickly returned and sat down next to him again, almost touching him shoulder to shoulder. Suddenly, as if pierced, she shuddered, screamed and threw herself, not knowing why, on her knees in front of him.

What are you doing, what have you done to yourself! - she said desperately and, jumping up from her knees, threw herself on his neck, hugged him and squeezed him tightly with her hands.

Raskolnikov recoiled and looked at her with a sad smile:

How strange you are, Sonya, you hug and kiss when I told you about it. You don't remember yourself.

No, there is no one more unhappy than you in the whole world now! - she exclaimed, as if in a frenzy, not having heard his remark, and suddenly began to cry bitterly, as if in hysterics.

A feeling that had long been unfamiliar to him surged into his soul and immediately softened it. He did not resist him: two tears rolled out of his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.

So won't you leave me, Sonya? - he said, looking at her almost hopefully.

No no; never and nowhere! - Sonya screamed, “I’ll follow you, I’ll follow you everywhere!” Oh my God!.. Oh, I’m miserable!.. And why, why didn’t I know you before! Why didn't you come before? Oh my God!

So he came.

Now! Oh, what to do now!.. Together, together! - she repeated as if in oblivion and hugged him again, “I’ll go to hard labor with you!” - He seemed to suddenly shudder, the old, hateful and almost arrogant smile squeezed out on his lips.

“I, Sonya, may not even want to go to hard labor,” he said.

Sonya looked at him quickly.

After the first, passionate and painful sympathy for the unfortunate man, the terrible idea of ​​murder again struck her. In the changed tone of his words she suddenly thought she heard the murderer. She looked at him in amazement. She didn’t know anything yet, neither why, nor how, nor what it was for. Now all these questions flashed into her mind at once. And again she didn’t believe it: “He, he’s a murderer! Is this really possible?

What is this! Where am I standing? - she said in deep bewilderment, as if she had not yet come to her senses, - how could you, you, such... could decide to do this?.. But what is this!

Well, yes, to rob. Stop it, Sonya! - he answered somehow tiredly and even as if with annoyance.

Sonya stood as if stunned, but suddenly cried out:

You were hungry! you... to help your mother? Yes?

No, Sonya, no,” he muttered, turning away and hanging his head, “I wasn’t that hungry... I really wanted to help my mother, but... and this is not entirely true... don’t torture me, Sonya!”

Sonya clasped her hands.

But really, really, is this all for real! Lord, how true this is! Who can believe this?.. And how, how come you yourself are giving away your last, but you killed to rob! Ah!.. - she suddenly screamed, - that money that they gave to Katerina Ivanovna... that money... Lord, is it really that money...

No, Sonya,” he hastily interrupted, “this money was not the same, calm down!” My mother sent me this money through a merchant, and I received it sick, on the same day as I gave it... Razumikhin saw... he also received for me... this money is mine, my own, real mine.

Sonya listened to him in bewilderment and tried her best to figure something out.

And that money... I don’t even know if there was any money there,” he added quietly and as if thoughtfully, “I then took the wallet from her neck, a suede one... a full, tight wallet... yes I didn't look into it; I probably didn’t have time... Well, as for the things, some cufflinks and chains - I buried all these things and a wallet in someone else’s yard, on V Avenue, under a stone, and the next morning... Everything is still there...

Sonya listened with all her might.

Well, then why... how did you say: to rob, but you didn’t take anything? - she asked quickly, clutching at straws.

I don’t know... I haven’t decided yet whether I will take this money or not,” he said, again as if in thought, and suddenly, coming to his senses, he quickly and briefly grinned. - Eh, what stupidity have I just said, huh?

Sonya had a thought: “Aren’t you crazy?” But she immediately left her: no, this is different. She didn’t understand anything, she didn’t understand anything!

You know, Sonya,” he said suddenly with some inspiration, “you know what I’ll tell you: if only I had killed because I was hungry,” he continued, emphasizing every word and looking at her mysteriously but sincerely , - then I would now... be happy! Know this!

And what does it matter to you, what does it matter to you,” he cried out a moment later with some kind of despair, “well, what does it matter to you if I confessed now that I had done something wrong? Well, what do you want in this stupid triumph over me? Oh, Sonya, is that why I came to you now!

Sonya again wanted to say something, but remained silent.

That’s why I called you with me yesterday, because you’re the only one left with me.

Where did you call? - Sonya asked timidly.

Don’t steal and don’t kill, don’t worry, that’s not the reason,” he grinned caustically, “we are different people... And you know, Sonya, I only now, only now I realized: where did I call you yesterday? And yesterday, when I called, I didn’t even understand where. He called for one thing, and came for one thing: don’t leave me. Won't you leave me, Sonya?

She squeezed his hand.

And why, why did I tell her, why did I open it to her! - he exclaimed in despair a minute later, looking at her with endless torment, - here you are waiting for an explanation from me, Sonya, you are sitting and waiting, I see it; what can I tell you? You won’t understand anything about this, but you’ll just suffer all... because of me! Well, you cry and hug me again - well, why are you hugging me? Because I couldn’t bear it myself and came to blame it on someone else: “You too suffer, it will be easier for me!” And can you love such a scoundrel?

Aren't you suffering too? - Sonya cried.

Again the same feeling rushed into his soul like a wave and again softened it for a moment.

Sonya, I have an evil heart, mind you: this can explain a lot. That's why I came because I'm angry. There are those who would not come. And I’m a coward and... a scoundrel! But... let it be! all this is not the same... Now I need to talk, but I don’t know how to start...

He stopped and thought.

Eh, we are different people! - he cried again, - not a couple. And why, why did I come! I will never forgive myself for this!

No, no, it's good that you came! - Sonya exclaimed, “it’s better that I know!” Much better!

He looked at her with pain.

And indeed! - he said, as if having thought it over, - after all, that’s how it was! Here's what: I wanted to become Napoleon, that's why I killed... Well, do you understand now?

N-no,” Sonya whispered naively and timidly, “just... speak, speak!” I will understand, I will understand everything about myself! - she begged him. - Do you understand? Well, okay, let's see!

He fell silent and thought for a long time.

The thing is: I once asked myself this question: what if, for example, Napoleon had happened in my place and he would have had neither Toulon, nor Egypt, nor the crossing of Mont Blanc to start his career, but instead of these beautiful and monumental things, just some funny old woman, a register clerk, who, in addition, needs to be killed in order to steal money from her chest (for a career, you understand?), well, would he have decided to do this if Was there no other way out? Wouldn’t you cringe because it’s too unmonumental and... and sinful? Well, I’m telling you that I tormented myself with this “question” for an terribly long time, so that I felt terribly ashamed when I finally guessed (suddenly somehow) that not only would it not have bothered him, but it would have even gone to his head It didn’t occur to him that this was not monumental... and he wouldn’t even have understood at all: why bother? And if only there was no other way for him, he would have strangled him so that he wouldn’t have given a word, without any thoughtfulness!.. Well, I... came out of my reverie... strangled... following the example of authority... And this is exactly the same so it was! Do you find it funny? Yes, Sonya, the funniest thing about this is that maybe that’s exactly what happened...

Sonya didn't find it funny at all.

“You better tell me directly... without examples,” she asked even more timidly and barely audibly.

He turned to her, looked at her sadly and took her hands.

You're right again, Sonya. This is all nonsense, almost just chatter! You see: you know that my mother has almost nothing. My sister received her upbringing by accident and was condemned to being a governess. All their hopes were on me alone. I studied, but I could not support myself at the university and was forced to leave for a while. Even if it had dragged on like this, then in ten, twelve years (if circumstances had turned out well), I could still hope to become some kind of teacher or official, with a salary of a thousand rubles... (He spoke as if he had learned it by heart.) And to By that time, my mother would have dried up from worries and grief, and I still would not have been able to calm her down, and my sister... well, even worse could have happened to my sister! just turn away, forget about your mother, and, for example, respectfully endure your sister’s insult? For what? Is it so that, having buried them, he can acquire new ones - a wife and children, and then also be left penniless and without a piece? Well... well, so I decided, having taken possession of the old woman’s money, to use it for my first years, without tormenting my mother, to support myself at the university, for my first steps after university - and to do all this widely, radically, so that absolutely all to establish a new career and take a new, independent path... Well... well, that's all... Well, of course, I killed the old woman - I did it badly... well, that's enough!

In some kind of helplessness, he dragged himself to the end of the story and hung his head.

Oh, that’s not it, that’s not it,” Sonya exclaimed in anguish, “and is it really possible... no, it’s not like that, it’s not like that!”

You see for yourself what’s wrong!.. But I sincerely told the truth!

Yes, how true this is! Oh my God!

I just killed a louse, Sonya, a useless, nasty, harmful one.

This man is a louse!

“But I know that I’m not a louse,” he answered, looking at her strangely. “But I’m lying, Sonya,” he added, “I’ve been lying for a long time... It’s not the same; what you say is true. There are completely, completely, completely different reasons!.. I haven’t spoken to anyone for a long time, Sonya... My head hurts a lot now.

His eyes burned with a feverish fire. He was almost beginning to become delirious; a restless smile wandered on his lips. A terrible powerlessness was already visible through the excited state of mind. Sonya understood how he was suffering. She was also starting to feel dizzy. And it was strange how he spoke: as if something was clear, but... “but how! Why! Oh my God!" And she wrung her hands in despair.

No, Sonya, that's not it! - he began again, suddenly raising his head, as if a sudden turn of thoughts had struck and aroused him again, - this is not it! Or better yet... suppose (yes! this is really better!), suppose that I am proud, envious, angry, disgusting, vengeful, well... and, perhaps, also prone to madness. (Let it all happen at once! They’ve talked about madness before, I noticed!) I told you just now that I couldn’t support myself at the university. Did you know that maybe I could? Mother would have sent me to bring in what was needed, and I would have earned money for boots, clothes and bread myself; maybe! Lessons were coming out; They offered fifty dollars. Razumikhin is working! Yes, I got angry and didn’t want to. Exactly angry (that’s a good word!). Then, like a spider, I hid in my corner. You were in my kennel, you saw... Do you know, Sonya, that low ceilings and cramped rooms cramp the soul and mind! Oh, how I hated this kennel! But still I didn’t want to leave it. I didn't mean to on purpose! I didn’t go out for days, I didn’t want to work, I didn’t even want to eat, I just lay there. If Nastasya brings it, we’ll eat it; if she doesn’t bring it, the day will pass; I didn’t ask on purpose out of malice! There is no light at night, I lie in the dark, but I don’t want to earn money for candles. I had to study, I sold out my books; and on my table, on notes and notebooks, there’s even dust lying on my fingertips. I preferred to lie and think. And I kept thinking... And I had all these dreams, strange, different dreams, there’s no need to say what kind! But only then did I begin to imagine that... No, it’s not so! I'm telling it wrong again! You see, I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid and if I know for sure that they are stupid, then I myself don’t want to be smarter? Then I learned, Sonya, that if you wait until everyone becomes smart, it will take too long... Then I also learned that this will never happen, that people will not change, and no one can change them, and it’s not worth the effort! Yes it is! This is their law... The law, Sonya! This is so!.. And now I know, Sonya, that whoever is strong and strong in mind and spirit is the ruler over them! Those who dare a lot are right. Whoever can spit on the most is their legislator, and whoever can dare the most is rightest! This is how it has been done until now and this is how it will always be! Only a blind man can't see it!

Raskolnikov, saying this, although he looked at Sonya, did not care anymore whether she would understand or not. The fever completely seized him. He was in some kind of gloomy delight. (Indeed, he had not spoken to anyone for too long!) Sonya realized that this gloomy catechism had become his faith and law.

“I guessed then, Sonya,” he continued enthusiastically, “that power is given only to those who dare to bend down and take it.” There is only one thing, one thing: you just have to dare! Then I had a thought, for the first time in my life, that no one had ever thought of before me! Nobody! It suddenly occurred to me, as clear as the sun, that how come no one has dared or dares, passing by all this absurdity, to simply take everything by the tail and shake it to hell! I... I wanted to dare and killed... I just wanted to dare, Sonya, that’s the whole reason!

Oh, be silent, be silent! - Sonya screamed, throwing up her hands. “You left God, and God struck you down and handed you over to the devil!”

By the way, Sonya, when I was lying in the dark and everything seemed to me, it was the devil who was confusing me? A?

Keep quiet! Don’t laugh, blasphemer, you don’t understand anything, nothing! Oh my God! He won’t understand anything, nothing!

Shut up, Sonya, I’m not laughing at all, I myself know that the devil was dragging me. Shut up, Sonya, shut up! - he repeated gloomily and persistently. - I know everything. I had already changed my mind about all this and whispered to myself when I was lying in the dark then... I argued with myself all this, to the last smallest detail, and I know everything, everything! And I was so tired, so tired of all this chatter! I wanted to forget everything and start again, Sonya, and stop chatting! And do you really think that I went headlong like a fool? I acted like a smart guy, and that’s what ruined me! And do you really think that I didn’t know, for example, that if I had already begun to ask and interrogate myself: do I have the right to have power? - then, therefore, I have no right to have power. Or what if I ask the question: is a person a louse? - then, therefore, a person is no longer a louse for me, but a louse for someone who doesn’t even think about it and who goes straight without asking questions... If I’ve been tormented for so many days: would Napoleon go or not? - so I clearly felt that I was not Napoleon... I endured all, all the torment of all this chatter, Sonya, and wanted to shake it all off my shoulders: I wanted, Sonya, to kill without casuistry, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn’t want to lie to myself about this! I didn’t kill to help my mother - nonsense! I did not kill so that, having received funds and power, I could become a benefactor of humanity. Nonsense! I just killed; I killed for myself, for myself alone: ​​and whether I would have become someone’s benefactor or spent my whole life, like a spider, catching everyone in a web and sucking out their living juices, at that moment I still had to have it! And it wasn’t money, the main thing, that I needed, Sonya, when I killed; It wasn’t so much the money that was needed, but something else... I know all this now... Understand me: maybe, walking the same road, I would never repeat the murder again. I needed to know something else, something else was pushing me under my arms: I needed to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a louse like everyone else, or a human being? Will I be able to cross or not! Do I dare to bend down and take it or not? Am I a trembling creature or do I have the right...

Kill? Do you have the right to kill? - Sonya clasped her hands.

Eh, Sonya! - he cried out irritably, he wanted to object to her something, but fell silent contemptuously. - Don't interrupt me, Sonya! I wanted to prove to you only one thing: that the devil dragged me then, and after that he explained to me that I had no right to go there, because I was just as much a louse as everyone else! He laughed at me, so I have come to you now! Welcome a guest! If I were not a louse, would I have come to you? Listen, when I went to the old woman then, I just went to try... So you know!

And they killed! Killed!

But how did he kill? Is this how they kill? Is it really possible to go kill like I did then? Someday I will tell you how I walked... Did I kill the old woman? I killed myself, not the old woman! And then, all at once, he killed himself, forever!.. And it was the devil who killed this old woman, not me... Enough, enough, Sonya, enough! Leave me,” he suddenly cried out in convulsive anguish, “leave me!”

He leaned his elbows on his knees and, as if in pincers, squeezed his head with his palms.

What suffering! - Sonya let out a painful cry.

Well, what to do now, speak up! - he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with his face hideously distorted with despair.

What to do! - she exclaimed, suddenly jumping up from her seat, and her eyes, hitherto full of tears, suddenly sparkled. - Get up! (She grabbed him by the shoulder; he stood up, looking at her almost in amazement.) Go now, this very minute, stand at the crossroads, bow, first kiss the ground that you have desecrated, and then bow to the whole world, on all four sides, and tell everyone, out loud: “I killed!” Then God will send you life again. Will you go? Will you go? - she asked him, trembling all over, as if in a fit, grabbing him by both hands, squeezing them tightly in her hands and looking at him with a fiery gaze.

He was amazed and even amazed at her sudden delight.

Are you talking about hard labor, or what, Sonya? Do you need to report something on yourself? - he asked gloomily.

Accept suffering and redeem yourself with it, that’s what you need.

No! I won't go to them, Sonya.

How will you live, how will you live? What will you live with? - Sonya exclaimed. - Is this possible now? Well, how are you going to talk to your mother? (Oh, what will happen to them, what will happen to them now!) What am I saying! After all, you already abandoned your mother and sister. Well, he’s already given up, he’s given up. Oh my God! - she screamed, - he already knows all this himself! Well, how, how can one live without a person! What will happen to you now!

“Don’t be a child, Sonya,” he said quietly. - What am I guilty of before them? Why am I going? What will I tell them? All this is just a ghost... They themselves harass millions of people, and even consider them to be virtues. They are cheats and scoundrels, Sonya!.. I won’t go. And what will I say: what did I kill, but didn’t dare take the money, hid it under a stone? - he added with a caustic grin. - But they themselves will laugh at me, they will say: I’m a fool for not taking it. A coward and a fool! They won’t understand anything, Sonya, and they are not worthy to understand. Why am I going? Will not go. Don't be a child, Sonya...

You will be tortured, you will be tortured,” she repeated, stretching out her hands to him in desperate prayer.

“I may have slandered myself,” he remarked gloomily, as if thoughtfully, “maybe I’m still a man, and not a louse, and I’m hasty in condemning myself... I’ll still fight.”

An arrogant grin squeezed out on his lips.

What a torment to bear! But a whole life, a whole life!..

“I’ll get used to it...” he said gloomily and thoughtfully. “Listen,” he began a minute later, “stop crying, it’s time to get down to business: I came to tell you that they are now looking for me, catching me...

“Oh,” Sonya cried out in fear.

Well, why did you scream! You yourself want me to go to hard labor, but now you’re scared? Just this: I won’t give in to them. I’ll still fight with them, and they won’t do anything. They have no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and thought that I was already dead; Today things got better. All their evidence is double-edged, that is, I can turn their accusations to my advantage, you know? and I will convert; That’s why I’ve learned now... But they’ll probably put me in prison. If it weren’t for one incident, then maybe they would have been imprisoned today, probably even, maybe they will also be imprisoned today... But it’s nothing, Sonya: I’ll serve time and they’ll release me... that’s why they don’t have a single real proof and won’t, word I give. And with what they have, you can’t kill a person. Well, that’s enough... Just so you know... I’ll try to do something like this with my sister and mother, so as to dissuade them and not frighten them... My sister now, however, seems to be well off... therefore, so is my mother... Well, that’s all . Be careful, though. Will you come to my prison when I’m in prison?

Oh, I will! Will!

Both sat next to each other, sad and defeated, as if after a storm they had been thrown onto an empty shore alone. He looked at Sonya and felt how much of her love was on him, and strangely, it suddenly became hard and painful for him that he was loved so much. Yes, it was a strange and terrible feeling! Going to Sonya, he felt that all his hope and all the outcome lay in her; he was thinking of laying down at least part of his torment, and suddenly, now that her whole heart had turned to him, he suddenly felt and realized that he had become incomparably more unhappy than he had been before.

Sonya,” he said, “it’s better not to come to me when I’m sitting in prison.”

Sonya did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.

Do you have a cross on you? - she suddenly asked unexpectedly, as if she had suddenly remembered.

He didn't understand the question at first.

No, really? Here, take this one, the cypress one. I still have another one, a copper one, Lizavetin. Lizaveta and I exchanged crosses, she gave me her cross, and I gave her my icon. Now I will wear Lizavetin, and this one is for you. Take it... it's mine! After all, mine! - she begged. - Together we will go to suffer, together we will bear the cross!..

Give! - said Raskolnikov. He didn't want to upset her. But he immediately withdrew the hand extended behind the cross.

Not now, Sonya. “It’s better later,” he added to calm her down.

Yes, yes, better, better,” she picked up with enthusiasm, “when you go to suffer, then you’ll put it on.” Come to me, I’ll put it on you, let’s pray and let’s go.

At that moment someone knocked on the door three times.

Sofya Semyonovna, can I come to you? - someone’s very familiar polite voice was heard.

Sonya rushed to the door in fright. The blond face of Mr. Lebezyatnikov looked into the room.

Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky - three luminaries of the Russian novel. Goncharov is no lower than them, but on the sidelines, and we should talk about him separately.

Turgenev is an artist par excellence; This is its strength and at the same time some one-sidedness. The enjoyment of beauty too easily reconciles him with life. Turgenev looked into the soul of nature with a deeper and more penetrating gaze than into the soul of people. He is less a psychologist than Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. But what an understanding of the life of the whole world, in which people are only a small part, what purity of lines, what music his speech! When you admire this reconciling poetry for a long time, it seems that life itself exists only so that you can enjoy its beauty.

Leo Tolstoy is a huge elemental force. The harmony is broken; there is no contemplative, serene pleasure - this is life in all its grandeur, in primitive fullness, in a somewhat wild, but powerful freshness. He retired from our society:

I sprinkled ashes on my head,
I fled the cities as a beggar...

But mere mortals, not prophets, are just as cold from this inexorable denial of a culture created over centuries, as from Turgenev’s dispassionate contemplation of beauty... Both writers look at life from the outside: one from a quiet artistic workshop, the other from the heights of abstract morality.

Dostoevsky is dearer, closer to us. He lived among us, in our sad, cold city; he wasn't afraid of complexity modern life and its insoluble problems, did not run away from our torment, from the infection of the century. He loves us simply, as a friend, as an equal - not in a poetic distance, like Turgenev, and with the arrogance of a preacher, like Leo Tolstoy. He is ours, with all his thoughts, with all his sufferings. "He is with we drank from the common cup, as we do, it is poisoned and great.” Tolstoy despises the “rotten” intelligent society too much, feels too deep an aversion to the weaknesses of sinful people. He repels, frightens with his contempt, his rudeness in his judgment that everything will still remain dear and sacred to people, despite any attacks. Dostoevsky at some moments is closer to us than those with whom we live and whom we love - closer than family and friends. He is a comrade in illness, an accomplice not only in good, but also in evil, and nothing brings people closer together than common shortcomings. He knows our most secret thoughts, our most the criminal desires of our hearts. Often, when you read him, you feel fear from his omniscience, from this deep penetration into someone else’s conscience. You come across secret thoughts in him that you wouldn’t dare express not only to a friend, but also to yourself. And when such a person, who has confessed our heart, nevertheless forgives us, when he says: “believe in goodness, in God, in yourself,” this is more than an aesthetic delight in beauty; more than the arrogant preaching of an alien prophet.

Dostoevsky does not have harmony, the ancient proportionality of parts - this legacy of Pushkin's beauty - everything that the author is so rich in Fathers and sons. He also does not have elemental power, a direct connection with nature, like Leo Tolstoy. This is a man who has just left life, who has just suffered and cried. The tears have not yet dried in his eyes, they are felt in his voice; my hand is still shaking with excitement. Dostoevsky’s books cannot be read: they must be experienced, suffered through, in order to understand. And then they are no longer forgotten.

___________________

If the reader, whoever he may be, happens to actually experience only one of these countless shades of mood, he will certainly remember the moment your personal life, him again will survive- and this is all the author needs: the next moment will again not be a depiction of the poet, but the reader’s own feeling, because it is only an inevitable psychological consequence of the first, etc. Dostoevsky captured the heart and will not let it go until he draws him into the very depths of the mood hero, will not draw the soul into his life, like a whirlpool draws a weak blade of grass into a pool. Little by little, the reader’s personality is transformed into the hero’s personality, consciousness merges with his consciousness, passions become his passions.

While you are reading Dostoevsky’s book, you cannot live a separate life from the main ones. characters story: it’s as if the border between fiction and reality disappears. This is more than sympathy for the hero, it is - merging with him. When Porfiry does not dare to shake hands with the criminal, you feel indignation at the investigator, as if personal hatred for his suspicions. When Raskolnikov runs up the stairs with a bloody ax and hides in an empty apartment where painters are working, you experience all his horror, and painfully want him to saved himself he quickly ran away from the just punishment of the law, so that Koch and his comrade would somehow not notice him, so that the crime could not be discovered. The reader does it together with the hero criminal psychological experience, and then, when you leave the book, for a long time you still don’t have the strength to free yourself from its terrible charm. Harmony, beauty, pleasure in poetry - all this can pass, disappear from memory, be forgotten over time, but criminal experience of the soul never forgotten. Dostoevsky leaves marks on the heart as indelible as suffering.

Introduction to the hero's life through the depiction of the subtlest, elusive transitions in his mood is one of Dostoevsky's artistic techniques; the other is in comparisons, in sharp contrasts touching and terrible, mystical and real.

Before his death, Marmeladov, already in a semi-conscious state, looks at his poor children. His gaze settled on little Lidochka (his favorite), looking at him “with her surprised, childish gaze.” “Ah...ah...” he pointed at her with concern. He wanted to say something. - What else? - Katerina Ivanovna shouted. - Bosenka! Bosenka! - he muttered, pointing with a crazy look at the girl’s bare feet. “A priest came in with spare gifts, a gray-haired old man. Everyone retreated. The confession lasted very short.” Katerina Ivanovna knelt down with the children. They prayed. At that moment, “a girl pushed her way out of the crowd, silently and timidly, and it was strange for her sudden appearance in this room, among poverty, rags, death and despair. She was also in rags: her outfit was a penny, but decorated in a street style, according to the tastes and rules that had developed in their own special world with a brightly and shamefully prominent purpose "... Sonya, Marmeladov's daughter, was "in silk, indecent here, a colored dress with a long and funny tail, in light shoes, in a funny round straw hat with a bright, fiery-colored feather." After this description, the author immediately moves on to the dying man, talking about confession and communion.

Also common in Dostoevsky's novels comparison of the real and the mystical. Tight alleys near Sennaya; summer Petersburg, smelly and dusty; police station with quarters; poverty, debauchery, that same gray and vulgar atmosphere big city, which we are accustomed to seeing every day - all of this suddenly becomes ghostly, like a dream. The author is imbued with a sense of the dark, mysterious and fatal that lurks in the depths of life. He deliberately introduces a tragic element into the story Rock through constant coincidences of small accidents.

Before deciding to commit a crime, Raskolnikov hears in a tavern behind the billiards a conversation between two unknown persons about an old woman pawnbroker, his future victim: the entire murder plan, all the moral motives to the last detail were suggested to him as if by fate. A minor fact, but it has a huge impact on Raskolnikov's determination; This - fatal accident. Around the same time, tired and exhausted, wanting to return home as quickly as possible, but, unknown why, making a long unnecessary detour, he unexpectedly ends up on Sennaya and hears a conversation between a tradesman and Lizaveta, the old woman’s live-in wife: the tradesman makes an appointment on business: “in seven o'clock tomorrow." Therefore, the old woman will be left alone. With his whole being, he felt “that he no longer had freedom of mind or will,” that the murder was finally decided. Another fatal accident. In his apartment, he makes the final preparations, hanging the ax in a loop sewn inside his coat. Just at that moment, “somewhere in the yard someone shouted: sem an hour ago!"- “It’s been a long time, my God!” - and he rushes into the street. The author directly notes: “Raskolnikov has recently become superstitious... And in this whole matter, he was always inclined to see some kind of strangeness, mystery, as if the presence of some special influences and coincidences.” Fatal accidents involve his crime, “It was as if he had gotten a piece of clothing into the wheel of a car and was being pulled into it.”

A great realist and at the same time a great mystic, Dostoevsky feels the illusory nature of the real: for him life is only a phenomenon, only a cover behind which lurks the incomprehensible and forever hidden from the human mind. It’s as if he’s deliberately destroying the boundary between sleep and reality. Some figures, later bright and lively, appear at first as if from fog, from a dream: for example, an unfamiliar tradesman who on the street says “murderer” to Raskolnikov. The next day, this tradesman seems to him like a ghost, a hallucination, and then again turns into a living person. The same thing happens when Svidrigailov first appears. This semi-fantastic figure seeming subsequently the most real type, arises from a dream, from the vague painful dreams of Raskolnikov, who believes in its reality as little as in the reality of the mysterious tradesman. He asks his friend, student Razumikhin, about Svidrigailov: “Did you really see him? Did you see him clearly? - Well, yes, I remember clearly; I know from a thousand, I remember faces... - Hm... that’s it... - muttered Raskolnikov. - And you know... I thought... it still seems to me... that this, maybe a fantasy... Maybe I really am crazy and only - I saw a ghost."

These creative features give Dostoevsky’s paintings, despite their everyday setting, a gloomy, heavy and at the same time charming flavor - like thunderstorm lighting. In the ordinary little things of life, such depths and secrets are revealed that we never suspected.

It is not only the presence of fate in events that gives Dostoevsky’s story tragic pathos in the ancient sense of the word - this impression is also facilitated by unity of time(also in the ancient sense). In the span of one day, sometimes several hours, events and disasters pile up in large numbers. Dostoevsky's novel is not a calm, smoothly developing epic, but a collection of the fifth acts of many tragedies. There is no slow development: everything is done almost instantly, striving uncontrollably and passionately towards one goal - the end.

The speed of action and the predominance of the dramatic element is the reason why Dostoevsky has much less cultural and everyday details than calmer, epic poets, such as Cervantes and Goncharov. External culture, the everyday side of life, the everyday moods of people - in Spain according to Don Quixote, in pre-reform Russia - according to Oblomov can be reproduced with much greater accuracy and completeness than our sixties based on Crimes and punishments.

It is impossible not to mention Dostoevsky’s city landscapes. He paints them very superficially, with light strokes, and does not give the picture itself, but only the mood of the picture. Sometimes it only takes two or three words, a hint of stuffiness, mortar, forests, brick, dust, that special summer smell known to every Petersburger, for the impression of a big city to arise in us with amazing clarity. Without any descriptions, St. Petersburg is felt behind every scene of the novel.

Only occasionally does the author sketch a few features when it is necessary to define and highlight the background: “the sky was without the slightest cloud, and the water was almost blue, which is so rare on the Neva. The dome of the cathedral... was shining, and through the clear air one could clearly see even his every decoration... An inexplicable coldness always blew over him from this magnificent panorama: for him this magnificent picture was full of a dumb and deaf spirit.” Here's another tune: "I love how they sing to a barrel organ in a cold, dark and damp autumn evening, certainly in the damp, when all passers-by have pale green and sick faces; or, even better, when the wet snow falls completely straight without the wind... and through it the gas lamps shine." Sometimes on a clear summer evening this prosaic, sad city has moments of tenderness, quiet and meek thoughtfulness; in just such a evening Raskolnikov looked “at the last pink glow of the sunset, at a row of houses darkening in the deepening twilight, at one distant window, somewhere in the attic, along the left embankment, shining, as if in a flame, from the last sunbeam, which struck him for a moment, onto the darkened water of the ditch." Often in Dostoevsky’s descriptions one comes across amazingly artistic details. So, for example, Raskolnikov enters the apartment where he committed the murder: “A huge, round, copper-red moon looked straight into the windows . "It's been so quiet for a month"- he thought."

Dostoevsky understands the poetry of the city. In the noise of the capital, he finds the same charm and mystery as other poets in the murmur of the ocean; they run away from people into the “wide, noisy oak forests” - he wanders, alone, through the streets of the big city; they look with a question at the starry sky - he looks thoughtfully at the autumn fogs of St. Petersburg, illuminated by countless lights. In the forests, on the ocean shore, under open air everyone saw the mystery, everyone felt the abysses of nature, but in our dull prosaic cities no one except Dostoevsky felt so deeply secrets of human life. He was the first to show that the poetry of cities is no less great and mysterious than the poetry of the forest, ocean and starry sky.

“Kill her and take her money, so that with their help you can then devote yourself to serving all of humanity and the common cause: what do you think - won’t one tiny crime be atone for with thousands of good deeds? In one life - thousands of lives saved from rotting and decomposition. One death - and a hundred lives in return: but this is arithmetic! And what does the life of this consumptive, stupid and evil old woman mean on the general scale? Nothing more than the life of a louse, a cockroach, and even that is not worth it, because the old woman is harmful. She eats up someone else's life." These are the words with which fate itself, in the person of an unfamiliar student, tempted Raskolnikov in his fatal moment of hesitation. “The old woman is nonsense,” he thinks later, “the old woman is perhaps a mistake... just an illness... I I wanted to cross as quickly as possible... I didn’t kill a person, I killed a principle!”

His crime is ideological, i.e. stems not from personal goals, not from selfishness, as is the more common type of violation of the law, but from some theoretical and disinterested idea, whatever its qualities.

The smart Porfiry, the forensic investigator, understands this very well: “here is a fantastic, gloomy case, a modern case, a case of our time, sir, when the human heart has become clouded... Here are bookish dreams, sir, here is a theoretically irritated heart; they killed according to theory."

In this theoreticality The crime is where all the horror, all the tragedy of Raskolnikov’s situation lies. For him, the final outcome of sinners is closed - repentance; for him there is no repentance, because even after the murder, when remorse burns him, he continues to believe in what justifies his murder. - “That’s one thing he admitted his crime, only that couldn't stand it and turned himself in." He killed the principle, and his crime is so much deeper, more complex and irreparable than an ordinary egoistic violation of the law, for example, robbery, that he dreams of the latter as happiness. “You know what I’ll tell you,” he confesses to Sonya , - if only I had killed because I was hungry, then I would now... happy was! Know this!"

The most abstract, insatiable and destructive of passions is fanaticism, the passion of an idea. It creates great ascetics, invulnerable to any temptations, it tempers the soul, gives it almost supernatural powers. The instant fire of other passions before the slow but invincible heat of fanaticism is like burning straw before red-hot metal. Reality is unable to give the fanatic a single minute of not only satiety, but even temporary satisfaction, because he pursues an unattainable goal - to realize theoretical ideal. The more aware he is of the impossibility of his goal, the insatiable nature of his passion, the more severe his passion becomes. There is something truly terrifying and almost inhuman in such fanatics of ideas as Robespierre and Calvin. Sending thousands of innocents to the stake for God or to the guillotine for freedom, shedding blood like a river, they sincerely consider themselves benefactors of the human race and great righteous people. The life and suffering of people is nothing to them; theory, logical formula - everything. They pave their bloody path through humanity as inexorably and dispassionately as a blade of clear steel cuts into a living body.

Raskolnikov also belongs to this type of idea fanatics, to the Robespierres, Calvins, Torquemadas, but not entirely, but only in one of the aspects of his being.

He would like to be one of the great fanatics - this is his ideal. He undoubtedly has common features with them: the same arrogance and contempt for people, the same inexorable cruelty of logical conclusions and the readiness to implement them at any cost, the same ascetic fervor and gloomy delight of fanaticism, the same strength will and faith. After the crime, exhausted, almost defeated, he still believes in his idea, he is intoxicated by its greatness and beauty: “I then had one thought for the first time in my life, which no one had ever thought up before me! No one! Me Suddenly, as clear as the sun, it seemed to me that how come no one had dared or dares, passing by all this absurdity, to simply take everything by the tail and shake it to hell! I... I wanted dare, and killed... I just wanted to dare... that's the whole reason!.." "And it wasn't the money, the main thing I needed. I needed to know something else, something else was pushing me under my arms: I needed to find out then, and quickly find out, whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a human being. Will I be able to transgress or will I not be able to? Do I dare to bend down and take it, or not? Am I a trembling creature, or right have?.." Dostoevsky directly notes in Raskolnikov this ruthlessness and callousness of theory, characteristic of fanatics: “his casuistry,” says the author, “has been sharpened like a razor.” Even the mother, despite her love for her son, feels in Raskolnikov this all-destroying power of passion , which can only be ignited in him by an abstract idea: “I could never trust his character, even when he was only fifteen years old. I am sure that even now he can suddenly do something to himself that no person would ever think of doing." "Do you think that my tears, my requests, my illness, my death, maybe, would have stopped him? out of sadness, our poverty? I would calmly step over all obstacles. But really, really, doesn’t he love us?”

But the fanaticism of the idea only one side his character. It contains tenderness, love, pity for people, and tears of tenderness.

This is his weakness, this is what destroys him.

Razumikhin speaks the truth: in Raskolnikov, “as if two opposite characters alternately replace each other.” Two souls live and fight in it. He kills and cries, is moved over his victims; if not over the old woman, then over Lizaveta with “meek and quiet” eyes. But real heroes, great criminals of the law do not cry and are not moved. Calvin, Robespierre, Torquemada did not feel the suffering of others - this is their strength, their integrity; they seem to be carved from one block of granite, and in Dostoevsky’s hero there is already an eternal source of weakness - duality, split will. He himself is aware of this weakness that destroyed him: “no, those people are not made like that; the real lord, to whom everything is permitted, destroys Toulon, commits massacres in Paris, mines army in Egypt spends half a million people on the Moscow campaign and get away with a pun in Vilna, and after his death they put up idols for him, and therefore All allowed. No, on these people, it’s clear that it’s not a body, but bronze!”

After the crime, Raskolnikov shuddered, not because he had blood on his hands, that he was a criminal, but because he admitted doubt: “is he not a criminal?” This doubt is a sign of weakness, and those who have the right to break the law are incapable of it. “Because I... am a louse,” he added, gnashing his teeth, “because I myself, perhaps, are even nastier and nastier than a killed louse, and in advance had a presentiment I'll tell myself this already after how I’ll kill!.. But can anything compare with such horror? Oh, vulgarity! Oh, meanness! Oh, how I understand the “prophet”: with a saber, on a horse, Allah commands, and obey, “trembling creature”! The “prophet” is right, right, when he places a great battery somewhere across the street and blows at the right and the wrong, without even deigning to explain himself! Obey, trembling creature, and - don't wish because it’s none of your business!.. Oh, I will never, never forgive the old woman!”

Woe to the great criminals of the law, if in their souls, burned by the passion of an idea, at least something human remains! Woe to the people of bronze if even one corner of their heart remains alive! A weak cry of conscience is enough for them to wake up, understand and die.

Byron created a new man, a new heroic soul - in the Corsair, Childe Harold, Cain, Manfred. At that time, there were seeds in the air, the embryos of those moods that the poet was able to express.

Julien Sorel, the hero of the great, but, unfortunately, little known in Russia novel by Stendhal Le Rouge el le Noir["Red and Black" (French)] - in spirit brother Byron's heroes, although he was created completely independently, in addition to the influence of Byron.

Manfred and Julien Sorel - the ancestors of the heroes who filled the literature of the 19th century - the distant offspring of their complex family tree stretches to our time.

Here are the characteristic features of these heroes: they are all exiles from society, they live in irreconcilable discord with it, they despise people because people are slaves. The crowd hates these exiles, but they are proud of the curse of the crowd. There's something about them predatory, unsociable and at the same time regal. Just as eagles build their nests on inaccessible rocks, so they live far from people, at a lonely height.

Starting from selfless participation towards the oppressed, they often end in the shedding of innocent blood. Julien Sorel kills the woman he loves. Human blood and crime weigh on the conscience of the Corsair, Manfred, and Cain. All of these are criminals, unrecognized heroes, “who allowed themselves to bleed out of conscience.”

I don't see any connection between Byron's creations and Dostoevsky's novel. There can be no talk of the most distant influence here. But just as Hamlet is a great prototype of types that are found in our time, in our society, so in both Manfred and Raskolnikov there is something worldly, eternal, connected with the foundations of human nature and, as a result, repeated in the most diverse situations.

In Dostoevsky's hero there is the same hatred of the crowd, the same passionate protest against society, as in Byron's types. He also despises people, sees them as insects that the “lord” has the right to crush. Having shed blood, he also considers himself not guilty, but only misunderstood. When Sonya convinces him to repent, “accept suffering” and confess everything, he answers her arrogantly: “Don’t be a child, Sonya... What am I guilty of before them? Why will I go? What will I tell them? All this is just a ghost... . They themselves harass millions of people, and even consider them to be virtues. They are cheats and scoundrels, Sonya!.. I won’t go. And what can I say? - that I killed, but didn’t dare take the money? But they themselves will laugh at me ", they will say: you are a fool for not taking it. A coward and a fool! They will not understand anything, Sonya, and they are not worthy to understand. Why am I going?.., I won’t go" What is conventional morality for heroes, when people’s whole life is pure cruelty and untruth?

“A crime?.. What crime?.. The fact that I killed a nasty, harmful louse, an old pawnbroker, who killed forty sins to forgive, who sucked the juice out of the poor - and this is a crime? I don’t think about it and wash it away I don’t think so..." - “Brother, brother, why are you saying this? But you shed blood!.." Dunya (Raskolnikov’s sister) cried out in despair. - “Which everyone pours!” he picked up almost in a frenzy, “which flows and has always flowed in the world like a waterfall; which is poured like champagne, and for which they are crowned in the Capitol and called the benefactor of humanity... I absolutely do not understand, Why is hitting people with bombs, a proper siege is a more respectable form? Fear of aesthetics is the first sign of powerlessness." His murder is not as beautiful, but also not as criminal as those legal murders that society allows itself. And this dirty crowd, this vile mob dares to judge the hero who could crush them all if luck were on his side. “Is it really,” he exclaims in rage, “in these next fifteen to twenty years, my soul will be so humbled that I will whine with reverence before people, calling myself, to every word, a robber? Yes, exactly, exactly! They are exiling me now, this is what they need... So they are all scurrying up and down the street, because every one of them is a scoundrel and a robber by nature, worse than that- idiot! But try to bypass me with a link, and they will all go berserk with noble indignation! Oh, how I hate them!"

The predatory and proud element of his nature is indignant. In concentrated hatred of people, he surpassed even Byron's heroes.

And yet, like them, Raskolnikov also sometimes imagines that he loves people, that his tenderness is rejected and misunderstood. His love is bookish, abstract, cold - the same love as that of Manfred and Julien Sorel. He “he only wants freedom for himself.” Like Byron's heroes, he is an aristocrat to the core, despite his poverty and humiliation. His striking beauty also has a sign of “power”.

This thin and slender young man, with fiery black eyes and a pale face, inspires them with respect or even superstitious fear. Ordinary people see something in him "demonic". Sonya directly says that “God handed him over to the devil.” A man from the crowd, Razumikhin, realizing that he was wrong, bows and almost trembles before him. Like Byron's heroes, he has enormous power, but spends it uselessly, because he is also too much of a dreamer, there is nothing practical in him either, he despises reality.

He loves loneliness: “I then, like a spider, huddled in my corner... Oh, how I hated that kennel! But still I didn’t want to leave it. I didn’t want to on purpose!”

Even after defeat he does not consider himself defeated. When everything is against him, when there is no salvation and he is ready to go to the police to turn himself in, his old proud faith awakens in him, and he exclaims with terrible force convictions: “More than ever, I don’t understand my crime! Never, never have I been stronger and more convinced than now!” To his sister’s consolations and her tears, he responds arrogantly: “Don’t cry for me - I will try to be both courageous and honest all my life, even though I am a murderer. Maybe someday you will hear my name. I will not disgrace you.. .you'll see; I more I'll prove..."

But there is nothing romantic in Raskolnikov anymore: his soul is illuminated to the depths by the inexorable psychological analysis. There can be no talk of idealization here. Instead of a winged spirit, a corsair, or at least a lord, we have before us a poor student who left the university due to lack of funds, almost a beggar.

The author does not think to hide or embellish his weaknesses. He shows that Raskolnikov’s pride, loneliness, and crime do not come from his strength and superiority over people, but rather from a lack of love and knowledge of life. The former grandiose and gloomy hero has been brought down from his pedestal and debunked. Corsair and Julien are constantly portrayed as if they were playing a role, naively believing in their rightness and strength. And Dostoevsky’s hero already doubts whether he is right. They die irreconcilable, but for him this state of proud loneliness and break with people is only a temporary crisis, transition to a different worldview.

He laughs at religious feelings and, however, with tears of tenderness, asks Polichka to pray for him, and to remember “slave Rodion.” With what tenderness he remembers his former bride, whom he fell in love with, as only very selfless people are capable of loving - out of compassion. “The ugly girl is so... herself. Really, I don’t know why I became attached to her then, it seems, because she was always sick... If she were still lame or hunchbacked, I think I would have loved her even more. .. So... there was some kind of spring delirium..." In Raskolnikov's dream, which reflects childhood memories, there is the same compassion for an unfortunate and oppressed creature: drunken men flog a poor nag harnessed to a huge, heavy cart. The boy “runs next to the horse, he runs ahead, he sees how she is being whipped in the eyes, right in the eyes! He cries; his heart rises in him, tears flow. One of the whippers hits him in the face; he does not feel, he breaks his hands , screams, rushes to the gray-haired old man, who shakes his head and condemns all this." Finally, the little horse was pinched to death. She falls. “The poor boy no longer remembers himself. With screams, he makes his way through the crowd to Savraska, grabs her dead, bloody muzzle and kisses her on the eyes, on the lips”...

Embittered and proud, Raskolnikov is sometimes capable of the greatest humility. He goes to the police to make a confession. He has no remorse in his soul; There is only horror and a feeling of loneliness in it. He suddenly remembers Sonya’s words: “Go to the crossroads, bow to the people, kiss the ground, because you have sinned against it, too, and tell the whole world out loud: “I am a murderer!” He trembled all over, remembering all this... He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed to the ground and kissed this dirty earth with pleasure and happiness."

In Raskolnikov, the extreme development of the individual, lonely, rebellious and rebelling against society, reached the final limit - the line beyond which either death or a transition to a different worldview. Through fierce protest he reached the point of denying moral laws, to the point where he finally cast off all the obligations of duty as an unnecessary burden, as a prejudice. He's on conscience allowed himself to bleed." He looks at people not even as slaves, but as disgusting insects that should be crushed if they interfere with the hero. At this icy theoretical height, in this loneliness, all life ends. And Raskolnikov would inevitably die, if another principle had not been hidden in his soul. Dostoevsky brought him to the moment when a suppressed, but not killed, religious feeling awakens in him.

Dostoevsky connects Raskolnikov’s crime with the contemporary mood of society and with the prevailing ideas of that era. Regarding the dispute about whether the murder of an old pawnbroker should be justified from a moral point of view in view of the benefits that can be brought through her money, the author notes: “all of these were the most ordinary and most frequent, he had already heard more than once, in only other forms and on other topics, young conversations and thoughts." Raskolnikov participates in the literary movement of the era in which the novel takes place, i.e. sixties. He expresses his cherished thoughts in the article About the crime printed in Periodic speech.

“In my opinion, if Keplerian and Newtonian discoveries, as a result of some combinations, could in no way become known to people except with the sacrifice of the lives of one, ten, a hundred, and so on, people who interfered with this discovery or stood in the way as an obstacle, then Newton would have the right and even the obligation... to eliminate these ten or one hundred people in order to make his discoveries known to all mankind." Here are Raskolnikov's convictions in all their harsh, theoretical nakedness.

This question comes down to another, deeper and more important: what exactly is the criterion of good and evil - is it science, which, through the discovery of unchangeable laws, determines common benefit and through it gives an assessment of our actions, or the inner voice of conscience, a sense of duty invested in us by the Creator, divine instinct, infallible, not needing the help of reason? Science or religion?

What is higher - the happiness of people or the fulfillment of the laws prescribed by our conscience? Is it possible in private cases to violate moral rules to achieve the common good? How to fight evil and violence - only ideas, or ideas and too violence?- in these questions there is pain and melancholy of our time, and they form the main axis of Dostoevsky’s novel. Thus, this work becomes the embodiment of one of the great diseases of modern life: it is a Gordian knot, which only the heroes of future times are destined to cut.

Sonya is outraged when Raskolnikov asks her an abstract logical question about the comparative value of two lives, the scoundrel Luzhin and the poor, honest woman Katerina Ivanovna Marmeladova.

“Why ask what is impossible?” Sonya said with disgust.

So, it’s better for Luzhin to live and do abominations? You didn’t dare to decide this either?

But I can’t know God’s Providence... And why are you asking what you shouldn’t ask? Why such empty questions? How can it happen that this depends on my decision? And who made me the judge here: who should live and who should not live?”

Sonya feels the endless difficulty and complexity of life; she knows that such issues cannot be resolved solely on theoretical grounds, drowning out the voice of conscience, because one corner of reality can present millions of the most unexpected concrete cases that will confuse, confuse the abstract solution, turn it into absurdity: “with only logic, - exclaims Razumikhin, “You can’t jump over nature! Logic predicts three cases, and there are a million of them!”

But the infidelity and absurdity of Raskolnikov’s moral “arithmetic” is especially clearly revealed in the unforeseen consequences of the crime for the people around him. Could Raskolnikov really think that, together with the old woman, he would have to kill the innocent Lizaveta, who was, in Sonya’s words, “just and will see God.” He “rushed at her with an ax”... Poor Lizaveta dies because the hero made a small mistake in his arithmetic calculation.

Morally, he will have to destroy Sonya in exactly the same way the minute he confesses everything to her. The same unexpected consequence of the crime is the attempted suicide of a man who was accidentally suspected of murder. Dunya, whom he hoped to save from Svidrigailov with the old woman’s money, finds herself precisely thanks to the crime in the hands of Svidrigailov: the latter found out that Raskolnikov is a murderer, and the discovery of the secret gave him terrible power over Dunya. Finally, could he have foreseen that his mother would die from the unbearable knowledge that her son was a murderer?

In theory, the old woman’s existence is useless and even harmful - one could, apparently, just as easily and calmly cross it out as one crosses out unnecessary words in a written phrase. But in reality, the life of a creature that no one needed was connected with thousands of invisible and inaccessible threads to the lives of people completely alien to it, starting from the painter Nikolka and ending with Raskolnikov’s mother. This means that the voice of conscience that told him: “Thou shalt not kill!” was not entirely wrong. - the voice of the heart, which he despised from the heights of his abstract theories; This means that one cannot completely surrender to reason and logic when deciding moral question. Justification of the divine instinct of the heart, which is denied by a proud and darkened reason, and not by true knowledge, is one of the great ideas of the novel.

_________________________

The most terrible thing in life is not evil, not even the victory of evil over good, because one can hope that this victory is temporary, but that fatal law according to which evil and good are sometimes so mixed in the same act, in the same soul , merged, tangled and intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from each other. Evil and vice possess not only the enormous power of temptation in our sensual nature, but also the enormous power of sophistry in our mind. The primitive spirits of evil, despite their monstrous attributes, are not as terrible as Mephistopheles, who takes from humanity the most dangerous and subtle weapon - laughter, like Lufitzer, who takes from the sky the purest and brightest ray - beauty.

The eternal dispute between Angel and Demon takes place in our own conscience, and the worst thing is that sometimes we don’t know which of them we love more, who we want to win more. Not only does the Demon attract with pleasures, but also the temptation of being right: we doubt whether it is not a misunderstood part, an unrecognized side of the truth. A weak, proud heart cannot help but respond to the indignation, disobedience and freedom of Lucifer.

All three main, parallel developing plots of the novel - the drama of Raskolnikov, Sonya and Dunya, essentially strive for the same goal - to show the mysterious, fatal mixture of good and evil in life.

Raskolnikov strives for good through evil, transgresses the moral law in the name of the common good. But isn’t his sister Dunya doing the same thing? She sells herself to Luzhin to save her brother. Just as Raskolnikov sacrifices someone else’s life in the name of love for people, so she sacrifices her conscience in the name of love for him. “The point is clear,” Raskolnikov exclaims indignantly, “he won’t sell it for himself, for his comfort, even to save himself from death, but he will sell it for someone else! For a dear, for an adored person, he will sell it! That’s what our whole joke is.” and it consists: for a brother, for a mother, he will sell! He will sell everything! Oh, here, on occasion, we will crush our moral sense: freedom, tranquility, even conscience - everything, we will take everything to the Tolkuchy Market. Lose your life!.. Moreover, your own We’ll invent casuistry, we’ll learn from the Jesuits and for a while, perhaps, we’ll calm ourselves down, we’ll convince ourselves that this is how it should be, really, it’s necessary for a good purpose." Raskolnikov clearly sees Dunya's mistake, but he does not notice that it is and his own mistake, that he too for a good purpose decided to do something bad. “This marriage is meanness,” he says to Dunya. “Even if I’m a scoundrel, but you shouldn’t... one person... and even though I’m a scoundrel, I won’t consider such a sister a sister. Either me or Luzhin! .."

He calls himself a scoundrel, and Porfiry sees in him a martyr who has not yet found God for whom to die. Raskolnikov also reproaches Dunya for meanness. Maybe he is right, but high heroism is mixed with this meanness: she, like a brother, is half criminal, half saint.“You know,” says Svidrigailov, who is not at all prone to idealism, “I was always sorry from the very beginning that fate did not allow your sister to be born in the second or third century AD, somewhere the daughter of a sovereign prince or some ruler or proconsul in Asia Minor. She, no doubt, would have been one of those who suffered martyrdom and, of course, she would smile when they burned her chest with red-hot tongs. She would have done this on purpose herself, and in the fourth and fifth centuries she would have gone to the Egyptian desert and lived there for thirty years, feeding on roots, delights and visions. She herself only yearns for this, and demands that she quickly accept torment for someone, and if you don’t give her this torment, she’ll probably jump out the window.”

Sonya Marmeladova is also a martyr. She sells herself to save her family. Like Raskolnikov and Dunya, she “broke the law”, sinned in the name of love, she also wants evil to achieve good.“You are a great sinner,” Raskolnikov tells her, “most of all you are a sinner because you killed and betrayed yourself in vain. If only it weren’t a horror! It wouldn’t be a horror that you live in this filth, which you hate so much, and at the same time time you know yourself (you just have to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone and are not saving anyone from anything! But tell me, finally,” he said almost in a frenzy, “how such a shame and such baseness is in you next to others opposite and holy feelings are combined?"

And again, in this verdict over Sonya, he pronounces a verdict on himself - and it’s also in vain killed his conscience and he lives in the filth and meanness of crime, and in him “shame” is combined with “holy feelings.”

Raskolnikov realizes that he and Sonya essentially have a common guilt: “let’s go together,” he tells her enthusiastically, “we are cursed together, we’ll go together!”... “Where to go?” she asked in fear and involuntarily stepped back ". - “Why do I know? I only know that one road I probably know, and that’s all. One goal!" - that is, to atone for the crime. "Didn't you do the same thing?- he continued, - you also transgressed... were able to transgress. You committed suicide, you ruined your life... my(it does not matter!). You could live in spirit and mind, but you will end up on the Sennaya... But you can’t stand it, and if you stay one, you'll go crazy like me. You are already like crazy; Therefore, we must walk together along the same road! Let's go to!"

Sonya is a criminal, but she also has holy, as in Duna there is a martyr, in Raskolnikov - ascetic. No wonder the convicts in Siberia looked at Sonya as a mother, as a savior; she appears to him in a halo of almost supernatural beauty, pale, weak, meek, with blue, quiet eyes.

There is one more person in the novel, adjacent to the main idea, the most artistic and profound person of all, not excluding Raskolnikov, this is Svidrigailov. His character is created from striking contrasts, from the sharpest contradictions, and, despite this, or perhaps because of this, he is so alive that one cannot escape the strange impression that Svidrigailov is more than the face of the novel, that once knew him, saw him, heard the sound of his voice.

He is a cynic to the core.

When Raskolnikov shouts, unconscious with indignation, feeling that Svidrigailov will now insult his sister: “Leave, leave your vile, low jokes, you depraved, low, voluptuous man!” - Svidrigailov exclaims joyfully: “Schiller, Schiller- then ours, Schiller! La vertu, ouva-t-elle se nicher? [Where does virtue not nest? (French)] And you know, I will tell you these things on purpose so that I can hear your screams. Pleasure." He admits to Raskolnikov that in the village he was “tormented to death by memories of all these mysterious places and places in which, who knows, he can find a lot, damn it!" Svidrigailov's past turns out to be "a criminal case with an admixture of brutal and, so to speak, fantastic murder, for which he could very well go to Siberia."

And the same Svidrigailov capable of knightly generosity. For a vile purpose, he lured Dunya into his room, whom he loved with a strange, boundless love, where there was so much rude and sensual and, perhaps, even more lofty and selfless. The doors are locked; the key is in Svidrigailov's pocket. She is in his complete power. Then Dunya takes out a revolver. "He took a step and the shot rang out. But the bullet only grazed him."

“Well, well, a miss! Shoot again, I’m waiting,” Svidrigailov said quietly, still grinning, but somehow gloomily, “this way I’ll have time to grab you before you cock the trigger!”

Leave me! - she said in despair, - I swear, I’ll shoot again... I’ll kill...

Well... in three steps you can't help but kill. Well, if you don’t kill me... then...

His eyes sparkled and he took two more steps. Dunechka fired - it misfired!

Charged sloppily! Nothing! You still have a capsule there. Correct me, I'll wait. But she suddenly dropped the revolver.

Let me go! - Dunya said begging. Svidrigailov shuddered...

Don't you like it? - he asked quietly. Dunya shook her head negatively. “And... you can’t?.. Never?..” he whispered with despair.

Never!..

A moment of terrible silent struggle passed in Svidrigailov's soul... Suddenly he quickly walked away to the window and stood in front of it. Another moment passed.

Here is the key!.. Take it; leave quickly! - He stubbornly looked out the window. Dunya went to the table and took the key. - Hurry! Hurry! - Svidrigailov repeated, still not moving or turning around.

But in this “quickly” there apparently sounded some kind of terrible note. Dunya understood her, grabbed the key, rushed to the doors, quickly unlocked them and burst out of the room... When she left, a strange smile twisted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of despair.”

The next day, at dawn, he killed himself.

Raskolnikov deliberately broke the law in the name of an idea. Svidrigailov also deliberately breaks the law, but not for an idea, but for pleasure. Raskolnikov is carried away by the sophistry of evil, Svidrigailov by its temptations. “In this debauchery,” he says, “there is something permanent, based even on nature and not subject to fantasy, something that always remains like a kindled coal in the blood, eternally igniting, which may not be quenched so quickly with age.” .

“It still seems to me,” he assures Raskolnikov, “that there is something in you that suits mine.” Svidrigailov even directly sympathizes with his theory that one can break the law in the name of the common good. After a long conversation with Raskolnikov, he joyfully exclaims: “Well, it wasn’t true when I said that we are birds of a feather!” Both of them are criminals, both have enormous willpower, courage and the consciousness that they were born for something better, and not for crime; both are alone in the crowd, both are dreamers, both are thrown out of ordinary living conditions - one by an insane passion, the other by an insane idea.

In the pure and holy girl - Duna, the possibility of evil and crime opens up: she is ready to sell herself, like Sonya. In a depraved dead person- in Svidrigailovo, the possibility of goodness and achievement opens up. The main motive of the novel is the same here: the eternal mystery of life, the mixture of good and evil.

Retired official Marmeladov is a bitter drunkard. His daughter Sonya goes out into the street and gives herself to the first person she meets in order to receive several tens of rubles to feed her family, which would otherwise be in danger of starvation. “Yes, sir... and I... was lying drunk, sir...” says Marmeladov. He drinks away the last pennies that his daughter earned through debauchery, and with some terrible inspiration of cynicism, in a tavern among drunken revelers mocking him, he tells an almost stranger about Sonichika’s “yellow ticket.” “He will take pity on us,” says Marmeladov, “Who took pity on everyone and Who understood everyone and everything, He is the only One, He is the Judge. He will come on that day and ask: “Where is the daughter, that the stepmother is evil and consumptive, that the children of strangers and minors betrayed yourself? Where is the daughter who took pity on her earthly father, an obscene drunkard, without being horrified by his atrocities?” And she will say: “When I come...” and will forgive my Sonya, she will forgive, I already know that she will forgive... And she will judge and forgive everyone: and good, and evil, and wise, and meek... And when he has finished with everyone, then he will say to us: “Come out,” he will say, “you too!” Come out, you drunkards, come out, you weaklings, come out, you drunkards!" And we will all come out, not ashamed, and stand. And he will say: "You are pigs. The image of the beast and its seal, but come too!" And the wise will exclaim, the wise will say: “Lord! Why did you accept them?” And he will say: “That is why I accept them, the wise ones, because I accept them, the wise ones, because not one of these himself considered himself worthy of this.” And He will stretch out His hands to us, and we will fall... and weep... and we will understand everything! Then we will understand everything... and everyone will understand... Lord, Thy kingdom come!”

If so much faith and love is hidden in a person who has fallen so low, who would dare to say about his neighbor: “he is a criminal.”

Dunya, Raskolnikov, Sonya, Marmeladov, Svidrigailov - how to decide who they are: good or evil? What follows from this fatal law of life, from the necessary mixing good and evil? When you know people like the author of Crime and Punishment, is it possible to judge them, is it possible to say: “This one is sinful, and this one is righteous”? Are not crime and holiness merged in the living soul of man into one living soul? unsolvable mystery? You cannot love people because they are righteous, because no one is righteous except God: both in a pure soul, like Dunya’s, and in great self-sacrifice, like Sonya’s, there is a grain of crime hidden. You cannot hate people because they are vicious, because there is no such fall in which the human soul would not retain a reflection of divine beauty. Not “measure for measure”, not justice is the basis of our life, but love of God and mercy.

Dostoevsky - this one greatest realist, who measured the abyss of human suffering, madness and vice, at the same time the greatest poet of gospel love. His entire book breathes with love, love is its fire, its soul and poetry.

He understood that our justification before the Supreme Being is not in deeds, not in deeds, but in faith and love. Are there many people whose life would not be crime, worthy punishments? The righteous is not the one who is proud of his strength, intelligence, knowledge, exploits, purity, because all this can be combined with contempt and hatred of people, but the righteous is the one who is most aware of his human weakness and depravity, and therefore pities and loves people most of all. For each of us - equally for the good and the evil, for the stupid painter Mikolka, looking for something to “suffer” for, and for the depraved Svidrigailov, for the nihilist Raskolnikov and for the harlot Sonya - for all of us somewhere out there, sometimes far from life , in the very depths of the soul, lurks one impulse, one prayer that will justify humanity before God.

This is the prayer of the drunkard Marmeladov: “Thy kingdom come!”

Dmitry Sergeevich Merezhkovsky (1865 - 1941) Russian writer, poet, critic, translator, historian, religious philosopher, public figure. Husband of the poetess Zinaida Gippius.