Crime & Punishment

Oliver Ready’s newly published translation of Crime and Punishment was short-listed for the prestigious Read Russia translation prize. (As it turns out, Ready’s translation of Vladimir Sharov’s Before and During took the top honor.) The work is fresh and yet true to the original, a work brilliantly done.

This scene is excerpted from Part 4, Chapter 4. Raskolnikov has committed his murder, and now seeks to convince Sonya, a prostitute, to run away with him.

“I haven’t come just to talk,” said Raskolnikov loudly all of a sudden. Frowning, he got to his feet and walked over to Sonya. Silently, she lifted her eyes towards him. His gaze was particularly stern, expressing some wild determination.

“I left my family today,” he said, “my mother and sister. I won’t go back to them now. It’s a clean break.”

“But why?” asked Sonya, as though stunned. The recent meeting with his mother and sister had made an extraordinary, if indistinct, impression on her. It was with a kind of horror that she heard the news of the rift.

“Now I have only you,” he added. “We’ll go together... I’ve come to you. Together we’re damned, together we’ll go!”

His eyes blazed. “Like a madman!” Sonya thought in her turn.

“Go where?” she asked in fright, automatically taking a step back.

“How should I know? All I know is that there’s one road before us. One aim!”

She looked at him, understanding nothing. All she understood was that he was dreadfully, infinitely unhappy.

“None of them will understand a thing, if you tell them,” he went on, “but I understood. I need you, that’s why I’ve come to you.”

“I don’t understand...,” whispered Sonya.

“You’ll understand later. Haven’t you done the same thing? You also managed to take that step... transgress. You’ve laid hands on yourself, ruined a life... your own (it’s all the same!). You could have lived the life of the spirit, the life of reason, yet you’ll end up on Haymarket Square... But it’s too much for you, and if you’re left alone, you’ll go mad, just like me. There’s something crazy about you even now. So we’ve one road ahead of us. We’ll walk it together! Let’s go!”

“But why? Why are you saying this?” said Sonya, strangely restless and agitated.

“Why? Because something has to change – that’s why! It’s time to think about things seriously, head-on, instead of childish crying and yelling about God not allowing it! I mean, what will happen if you really are taken off to hospital tomorrow? She’s consumptive and out of her mind, she’ll soon die, but the children? You think Polechka won’t go to rack and ruin? You mean you haven’t seen the children around here, on street corners, sent out by their mothers to beg? I’ve seen where these mothers live, the conditions they live in. Children can’t remain children there, it’s impossible. There, a seven-year-old is depraved and a thief. Yet children are the image of Christ: ‘Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ He commanded that they be honored and loved. They’re humanity’s future...”

“But what’s to be done? What?” repeated Sonya, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.

“What’s to be done? Break what must be broken, once and for all, and take suffering upon yourself! You don’t understand? You’ll understand later... Freedom and power, especially power! Over all quivering creatures, over the whole ant heap!... This is the aim! Remember that! My parting words! Who knows? I may be speaking to you for the last time. If I don’t come tomorrow, you’ll hear about everything yourself. When you do, recall these words of mine. And some day, later, years later, as life goes by, perhaps you’ll understand what they meant. But if I do come tomorrow, I’ll tell you who killed Lizaveta. Goodbye!”

Sonya’s whole body shuddered.

“You mean you know who did it?” she asked, frozen with horror and looking at him wildly.

“I know and I’ll say... To you, only to you! I’ve chosen you. I won’t come to ask your forgiveness, I’ll just say it. I chose you a long time ago so as to tell you this, back when your father was talking about you and Lizaveta was still alive, that’s when the thought came to me. Goodbye. Don’t give me your hand. Tomorrow!”

He left. Sonya had been looking at him as if he were crazy, but she, too, seemed almost mad, and she felt it. Her head was spinning. “Lord! How does he know who murdered Lizaveta? What did those words mean? How awful!” But at the same time the thought never entered her head. Never! Never!... “Oh, he must be dreadfully unhappy!... Left his mother and sister. Why? What happened? And what is he planning?” What was it he’d told her? He’d kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he’d said it clearly) that he could no longer live without her... O Lord!

Sonya was feverish and delirious all night long. Every now and again she’d leap up in her bed, cry, wring her hands, then lose herself again in a feverish sleep, and she’d dream of Polechka, Katerina Ivano- vna, Lizaveta, Gospel readings, and him... him, with his pale face, his burning eyes... He was kissing her feet, he was crying... O Lord!

On the other side of the door – that same door on the right which divided Sonya’s apartment from that of Gertruda Karlovna Resslich – there was an in-between room, long empty, which was part of Mrs Resslich’s apartment and was rented out by her, hence the little notices on the gates and the bits of paper stuck to the panes of the windows that gave onto the Ditch. Sonya had long assumed that the room was unused. Yet all the while, standing quietly by the door in the empty room, Mr. Svidrigailov had been listening in. When Raskolnikov left, he stood and thought for a while, tiptoed off to his own room adjoining the empty one, took a chair and carried it noiselessly right up to the door leading to Sonya’s room. He found the conversation both diverting and revealing, and enjoyed it very, very much; in fact, he’d brought the chair in so that in future, say tomorrow, he would no longer have to suffer the inconvenience of spending a whole hour on his feet, but could make himself comfortable and derive every possible pleasure from the experience.

From Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, published on July 14, 2015, by Penguin Classics, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Translation, introduction and commentary copyright by Oliver Ready, 2015. Reprinted with permission.