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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Chapter II
He was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships! he was even glad of the hard work. Physically1 exhausted2, he could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to him — the thin cabbage soup with beetles3 floating in it? In the past as a student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters4. Was he ashamed of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely5, and his exasperated6 conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except a simple blunder which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just because he, Raskolnikov, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through some decree of blind fate, and must humble7 himself and submit to “the idiocy” of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.
Vague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing — that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere9 existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible10 than to others.
And if only fate would have sent him repentance12 — burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent11 of his crime.
At least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he had raged at the grotesque13 blunders that had brought him to prison. But now in prison, in freedom, he thought over and criticised all his actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they had seemed at the fatal time.
“In what way,” he asked himself, “was my theory stupider than others that have swarmed14 and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so . . . strange. Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!”
“Why does my action strike them as so horrible?” he said to himself. “Is it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law . . . and that’s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefactors15 of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded and sothey were right, and I didn’t, and so I had no right to have taken that step.”
It was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.
He suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not Svidrigaïlov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?
In misery16 he asked himself this question, and could not understand that, at the very time he had been standing17 looking into the river, he had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions. He didn’t understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future resurrection.
He preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he saw still more inexplicable18 examples.
In prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome19 and unbearable20 for him to look. But in the end there was much that surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was the terrible impossible gulf21 that lay between him and all the rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at him with distrust and hostility22. He felt and knew the reasons of his isolation23, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as ignorant churls; but Raskolnikov could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two seminarists. Raskolnikov saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him at last — why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime.
“You’re a gentleman,” they used to say. “You shouldn’t hack24 about with an axe25; that’s not a gentleman’s work.”
The second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.
“You’re an infidel! You don’t believe in God,” they shouted. “You ought to be killed.”
He had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy26. Raskolnikov awaited him calmly and silently; his eyebrows27 did not quiver, his face did not flinch28. The guard succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would have been bloodshed.
There was another question he could not decide: why were they all so fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow him, knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited Raskolnikov at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. “Little mother Sofya Semyonovna, you are our dear, good little mother,” coarse branded criminals said to that frail29 little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her for help in their illnesses.
He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish30 and delirious31. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned32 to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung33 his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify34. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring35 each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations36 and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined37 to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.
Raskolnikov was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so miserably38, the impression of this feverish delirium39 persisted so long. The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring days; in the prison ward8 the grating windows under which the sentinel paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during his illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it was difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the ward.
One evening, when he was almost well again, Raskolnikov fell asleep. On waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered40 and moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that Sofya Semyonovna was lying ill at home and was unable to go out.
He was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her, Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better, that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and see him at his work. His heart throbbed41 painfully as he read it.
Again it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o’clock, he went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster42 and where there was a kiln43 for baking it in a shed. There were only three of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the fortress44 to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and laying it in the kiln. Raskolnikov came out of the shed on to the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the wide deserted45 river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before him, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black specks46, the nomads’ tents. There there was freedom, there other men were living, utterly47 unlike those here; there time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed. Raskolnikov sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, into contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It 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 joyful48 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 repel49 it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance50, always seemed vexed51 to meet her and was sometimes obstinately52 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 plank53 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 tormented54 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, allthe agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment55, 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 Testament56. 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 pester57 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 aspirations58 at least . . . .”
She too had been greatly agitated59 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 renewal60 of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation61 into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
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1
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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4
fetters
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| n.脚镣( fetter的名词复数 )；束缚v.给…上脚镣，束缚( fetter的第三人称单数 ) | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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8
ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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9
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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11
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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13
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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15
benefactors
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| n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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18
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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19
loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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21
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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22
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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23
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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26
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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27
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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flinch
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| v.畏缩，退缩 | |
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29
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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delirious
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| adj.不省人事的，神智昏迷的 | |
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32
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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33
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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34
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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35
devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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36
conflagrations
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| n.大火（灾）( conflagration的名词复数 ) | |
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37
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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38
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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39
delirium
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| n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋 | |
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40
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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41
throbbed
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| 抽痛( throb的过去式和过去分词 )； （心脏、脉搏等）跳动 | |
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42
alabaster
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| adj.雪白的；n.雪花石膏；条纹大理石 | |
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43
kiln
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| n.（砖、石灰等）窑，炉；v.烧窑 | |
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44
fortress
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| n.堡垒，防御工事 | |
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45
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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46
specks
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| n.眼镜；斑点，微粒，污点( speck的名词复数 ) | |
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47
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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48
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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49
repel
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| v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥 | |
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50
repugnance
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| n.嫌恶 | |
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51
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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52
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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53
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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54
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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55
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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56
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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57
pester
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| v.纠缠，强求 | |
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58
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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59
agitated
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| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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60
renewal
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| adj.(契约)延期，续订，更新，复活，重来 | |
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61
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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