be something we can talk about? What I’d really like to know, for example, is how you’d set about solving a certain “question”, as Lebezyatnikov likes to say.’ (He seemed to be losing his thread). ‘No, really, I’m being serious. Just imagine, Sonya, that you knew all Luzhin’s intentions in advance, that you knew (for a fact) that they’d be the ruin of Katerina Ivanovna, and the children, too – and of you, into the bargain (into the bargain seems about right, seeing as you think so little of yourself). Polechka, too . . . because she’ll go the same way. Well, miss, what if it were suddenly left up to you now who should survive? Him or them? I mean, should Luzhin live and commit his abominations or should Katerina Ivanovna die? Well, what would you decide? Which of them would die? I’m asking you.’
Sonya glanced at him anxiously: she caught a peculiar note of something in his uncertain, roundabout words.
‘I had a feeling you’d ask a question like that,’ she said, with a searching look.
‘As you wish. But still, what would you decide?’
‘Why do you ask about things that can’t happen?’ said Sonya with disgust.
‘So it’s better for Luzhin to live and commit his abominations? You don’t dare decide even about that?’
‘But how can I know the ways of God . . . ? And why do you ask me what mustn’t be asked? Why all these empty questions? How could it ever depend on my decision? And who has made me the judge here about who should live and who shouldn’t?’
‘Well, if you’re bringing the ways of God into it, there’s nothing more to be said,’ muttered Raskolnikov sullenly.
‘Just tell me what it is that you want!’ cried Sonya with suffering. ‘You’re hinting at something again . . . Surely you didn’t come here just to torment me!’
She could take it no longer and began sobbing bitterly. He looked at her in dismal anguish. Some five minutes passed.
‘I suppose you’re right, Sonya,’ he said at last, softly. There was a sudden change in him; his tone of affected insolence and feeble defiance was gone. Even his voice had suddenly become weak. ‘I told you myself, only yesterday, that I wouldn’t come to ask forgiveness, and I’ve begun by doing almost precisely that, asking forgiveness . . . All that about Luzhin and the ways of God was for myself . . . That was me asking forgiveness, Sonya . . .’
He made as if to smile, but his smile came out pale, feeble, unfinished. He bowed his head and covered his face in his hands.
Suddenly, a strange, unexpected sensation of almost caustic hatred towards Sonya crossed his heart. As though himself astonished and frightened by this sensation, he suddenly raised his head and fixed his eyes upon her; but he met a look of anxiety and tortured concern. There was love here; his hatred vanished, like a phantom. He’d got it wrong; mistaken one feeling for another. All it meant was that that moment had come.
Once again he covered his face in his hands and bowed his head. He suddenly turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonya and mechanically, without saying a word, moved over to her bed and sat down.
This moment was dreadfully similar, in sensation, to the moment when he was standing behind the old woman, having freed the axe from the loop, and felt ‘there wasn’t a second to lose’.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Sonya with dreadful timidity.
He couldn’t say a word. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his declaration, not at all, and he himself could not understand what was happening to him now. She walked over to him quietly, sat down next to him on the bed and waited, never once taking her eyes off him. Her heart pounded and froze, pounded and froze. It became unbearable: he turned his deathly pale face towards her; his lips twisted feebly, straining to say something. Dread touched Sonya’s heart.
‘What’s the matter?’ she repeated, retreating from him slightly.
‘Nothing, Sonya. Don’t be frightened . . . What rubbish! Really, it’s just rubbish when you think about it,’ he muttered, with the