Crime and Punishment - Noyemi

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

was still quite early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore her
poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still showed signs of
illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of
welcome, but held out her hand with her usual timidity. She was always
timid of holding out her hand to him and sometimes did not offer it at
all, as though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand as
though with repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet her and was
sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit. Sometimes she
trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But now their hands
did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and dropped his eyes on
the ground without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen them.
The guard had turned away for the time.

How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to
seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round
her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she
turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the
same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came
into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond
everything and that at last the moment had come. . . .

They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They
were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with
the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They
were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life
for the heart of the other.

They resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to
wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before
them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his
being, while she--she only lived in his life.

On the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked,
Raskolnikov lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even
fancied that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked
at him differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they
answered him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it
was bound to be so. Wasn't everything now bound to be changed?

He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her
and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face.
But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what
infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were
all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his
sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of
feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he
could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he
could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling.
Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite
different would work itself out in his mind.

Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically.
The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the
raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry
him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with
books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the
subject and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her
for it himself not long before his illness and she brought him the
book without a word. Till now he had not opened it.

He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: "Can
her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at
least. . . ."

She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken
ill again. But she was so happy--and so unexpectedly happy--that she
was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, only seven
years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were
both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven
days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for
nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost
him great striving, great suffering.

But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual
renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his
passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new
unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our
present story is ended.

-226-

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