Chapter Text
“I confess.”
“Rodion Romanovich!” Porfiry loudly interrupted as Raskolnikov had barely begun to speak. He rose suddenly and moved almost at a jog to close the door behind Raskolnikov. “Do come in, sit down! Would you care for some tea?” As he said it, he gave Raskolnikov a look of terrible urgency and pressed his finger to his lips to silence him. Raskolnikov was at a loss.
“Did you hear me? I said—“
Porfiry was now standing uncomfortably close to Raskolnikov and spoke in a low murmur. “Keep your voice down if you want to live. Yes, I heard you. And I regret terribly that I have compelled you to make this confession under false pretenses. Though I did not know it at the time. Please, do sit.”
Raskolnikov did, heart thumping in his chest. Porfiry sat across from him.
“Nikolai Dementiev is facing the death penalty.”
“What?”
“Yes, I was shocked to hear it, shocked and dismayed. He has, of course, recanted his confession—one could hardly expect anything else! For my part, I have done all in my power to dissuade them of his guilt, that is, all except naming another suspect. But you see the terrible position that this places me in! For you see, I have grown fond of you, Rodion Romanovich—still more grave a fact than that, I made almost as much as a promise to you that a confession would bring a lighter sentence, which I was, to be certain, sure of at the time!” Porfiry paused here, seeming truly vexed and concerned. It unsettled Raskolnikov to see the normally self-assured man in such a state. Raskolnikov had turned pale and strangely numb at the news himself.
“It’s just as well,” he said, trembling. “It’s just as well. Who’s to say it’s not what I deserve? And I would deserve worse, if I were the sort of man to let another die in my place. Wouldn’t I?” He raised his voice here, anger beginning to come through. “Wouldn’t you, if you allowed such a terrible miscarriage of justice?”
“I would never let it come to that. There is still time, and I am going to give you all that there is left. Run. Run and hide. Make whatever preparations you must, but make them quickly.”
Raskolnikov was shocked to hear such a suggestion, from the mouth of the very official who had pursued his arrest. “Has he gone mad?” Raskolnikov thought, but he did not voice his confusion. Instead, he scoffed. “Where? And with what money?”
“I may be able to help with that. I have connections and resources which may—“
Raskolnikov stood abruptly. “I don’t want your help. Who do you think you are, my savior? The arbiter of my fate, of justice itself? We’re not even friends.” He turned to leave.
“What will you do?”
“That is not your business, nor is it mine what you do. Goodbye.”
—
Raskolnikov walked home in an aggravated state, moving quickly and roughly. “It’s just my luck,” he thought. “All that agonizing, for nothing! I have been robbed of even that which took so many hours of contemplation to accept as my fate.” He suddenly realized he’d passed his street, and turned around abruptly. “Is it execution, then? Well, why not? What right have I to retract my attempt at confession, merely because the law has determined a different fate for me? Is it not still just?
“And what right does Porfiry Petrovich have to offer his resources? Why would he do such a thing? If I do confess, I’ll be sure to tell them that he did so—that would show him. ‘Run,’ he says, ‘run and hide’. Does he think I'm such a coward?
“Perhaps I am, though,” he mused. “I have not yet turned myself in. Perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I’ll wait, and see what Porfiry does. Yes, let him stew.”
He turned around once more. For there was one he felt compelled to speak to, before he could return home. He only hoped she would not be out.
—
He rang the bell. He heard footsteps approaching immediately, and sighed in relief while somehow also tensing in anticipation.
“It is you!” Sonya exclaimed upon opening the door. Raskolnikov entered silently and sat on the bed.
“Oh, Rodya, say something, please. What happened? Did you confess?”
“Sweet Sonya. I come bearing awful news. I should rather like not to tell you at all, so we can imagine together that it were otherwise.”
“No, you must tell me,” she insisted at once. “I must know.”
“Must you?” Raskolnikov put his face in his hands. “I won’t be going to Siberia. That path, which I had resolved to take, has been cruelly taken from me.”
“What do you mean—cruelly taken? Please don’t speak so cryptically. What has happened?”
He rubbed his face wearily. “You are right, I am being melodramatic.” He laid his hands in his lap and looked at Sonya, standing before him with a look of such heartfelt concern. He was somehow irritated by it. “And why shouldn’t I be melodramatic?” I have found myself in a melodrama!” he exclaimed. “I have just been to the police station, as you compelled me.” He sighed. “Execution. Capital punishment. That is what awaits me there, should I find myself needing to atone for my crimes.” He smiled at the absurd hopelessness of his situation, though whether it was from a certain sincerely poignant quality it possessed or merely the most cynical sort of amusement, he could not say.” “Porfiry Petrovich himself has informed me.”
Sonya gave a slight gasp. “Oh, Rodya, no!”
“You had better not tell me “God would not allow it.” He has allowed far worse, as you well know.
“And yet—it is not death I am afraid of. Isn’t that funny? What I heard in that office today, what knowledge struck my heart, was not ‘you will die.’ It was ‘you will not be permitted to suffer.’ How I had longed for the freezing cold, for the hours that become years of back-breaking labor! How I longed to sleep on the hard ground, to eat gruel, to be without love and companionship—I had imagined these things many times over, and I believed that it was out of dread that the images came to me. No, Sonya, it was yearning.”
Sonya sat on the bed next to Raskolnikov. “You want to be punished,” she observed. Raskolnikov nodded. “Why?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I remember that night so vividly—the blood, the fear upon their faces. Their lifeless bodies. It comes back to me, unbidden. And I think of God.
“Suppose I do cheat death, and the law as well. Will there be no reckoning at all? No restoration of just order and balance?” He looked Sonya carefully in the eye.
“If God wishes you to suffer…” She trailed off and looked down at the floor before going on. “Then it will be done. And it will be righteous, and you will endure.”
“You have such faith in me, Sonya, and for what? For what reason, or for what good?”
She shook her head and took a shaky breath before answering in a low and quiet voice, ”I have faith in God alone.”
—
A few days later, there was a knock on Raskolnikov’s door.
Porfiry walked into his room to find him lying on the sofa, not even looking in Porfiry’s direction.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” he said to the ceiling.
“Good morning. I hope I’m not disturbing you?”
“I doubt that you truly care one way or the other.”
“On the contrary, I would much prefer not to intrude at an inopportune moment—if that option were available to me. However, time is running out, escaping us rapidly, indeed! And I see you are as unprepared as I feared.”
“Perhaps I am prepared, though not in the sense that you mean.”
“I see.” Porfiry sighed mournfully. “You are preparing for death, I take it?”
Raskolnikov snapped his head to look at Porfiry. “What is it to you? Why do you bother me with your questions, with your presence in my home? If you care about me so dearly, then leave. I have no use for you.”
“I regret that I can’t do that, not when I may yet be able to persuade you to live. Perhaps you believe the life of a fugitive is not worth living? Or is it that to flee would anger your conscience? That pest which has ailed you so deeply, eh?”
“Conscience, conscience…” muttered Raskolnikov.
“If you are not yet ready to run, then at least hide, for a time. What rush is there? Give yourself a moment to decide what you truly want. I don’t believe it is death, not in your heart.”
“What I want has been denied me. When I walked into your office, I was prepared for years, decades even, of hard labor in Siberia. A fate some would rather die than face, but to me it was my salvation, a beacon of hope. Death is much less poetic.”
“We only have the options that God has granted us, and yours are quite simple: flee, or die. There is no use dwelling on anything else, no use in the slightest. I know you have refused my help once already, but perhaps I can tempt you with a temporary option—I know of a place you can hide, right here in town, while you decide. You would be safe there.”
“Where is that?”
“In my home.”
Raskolnikov laughed in disbelief. “You truly are desperate to save me! To think, an upstanding man of justice such as yourself, harboring a fugitive as a house guest!”
Raskolnikov suddenly turned serious and sat up on the sofa. “Why? Why? What is it with you? You are acting as though infatuated with me!” He stood up and began pacing.
“Sometimes we are compelled by a person, as though our very soul knew the other’s. Your death…” he trailed off, as though realizing he’d said too much. “Perhaps you are right. I go too far, against my better judgment.”
Raskolnikov stopped suddenly, lost in thought. “His home…he would hide me in plain sight, as a prisoner in all but name.” The thought suddenly excited him, and an idea began to form. “A prisoner, yes! But that’s not enough, not nearly enough. I would need to suffer not just confinement, but pain. Pain…at Porfiry’s hands? Look, look! He is vulnerable, he has been caught in his fascination with me. Could he be persuaded?”
Raskolnikov spoke carefully. “No, you are right. We have a special connection, don’t we?”
Porfiry looked as though he suspected Raskolnikov’s manipulation immediately. Nevertheless, he responded, “Yes, I believe so.”
“At his hands…” Raskolnikov silently repeated. “Ha! How repulsive, and yet how perfect! Has he not tormented me so in the past? Trapped in his very home, subject to his every demand…I wonder, though, if he is capable of true cruelty?”
“But I am a murderer, a foul criminal,” he said to Porfiry. “Should I not suffer for my crimes?”
“Suffer, indeed. But not die—no, death is entirely the wrong punishment for you.”
“So you do suppose you know what is right for me! Not death? Then what? Pain? Corporal punishment, hard labor, these are tried and true, don’t you think? But what do you know of those—your job ends with arrest. You leave the rest to judge, jury, and prison warden. What if it were not so? Have you ever dreamed of delivering justice yourself? Perhaps to the most foul of criminals, those who have committed the unspeakable—would you not like to have your hands on them?”
“On them, you say? Speaking hypothetically, I suppose,” Porfiry smiled, but looked somewhat disquieted by the implications of what Raskolnikov was asking.
“He is evading the question,” thought Raskolnikov. “Perhaps it is so, then. He can at least be cunning and dastardly in his interrogations.
“Dear God above, what am I contemplating? To think, my concern is that he may not torment me enough? Have I no sense of self-interest? What hell am I about to request? ‘Cunning and dastardly’, yes, those are the words—not cruelty precisely. He would be clever, methodical. Perhaps tear me down by pieces, humiliate me, provoke me.” Images began to flash through Raskolnikov’s mind, of beatings, of degrading tasks he might be set to, but above all of Porfiry himself, left bare of the disguise of his usual unassuming manner.
“My very dread,” Raskolnikov thought, “My very dread is the thing. If I were not frightened, if I did not resist, it would not be right. Porfiry, this man I have despised, who understands me, though I am loath to admit it, to an infuriating degree—could there be a more fitting punisher?”
“No, I am not speaking in the hypothetical,” he said finally. “I am offering myself for such an exercise.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If you would have me in your home, you would be in the perfect position to deliver my punishment. You would, in fact, be the only person in such a position. The duty would fall to you, and who better to take it on?”
“And you believe that I would do so out of malice? Some grudge against the criminal class?” Porfiry shook his head. “Why, you do not understand me in the slightest!”
“Don’t I? Haven’t you already declared yourself above the law? You have said that death is not the right punishment for me, and have taken it on yourself to prevent that outcome—at personal risk! Why not take it further—take my fate fully into your hands, give me exactly what you believe I deserve?”
“If you are attempting to appeal to my hubris, I can assure you there is little to appeal to! My offer of help was made quite humbly. No, I will not punish you, Rodion Romanovich. That is not my role.”
“Please,” he blurted out, as his desperation crept up from behind. “You don’t understand. I need this. I need to suffer, to bleed, to cry out in pain. I cannot go on living any other way.”
That seemed to give Porfiry pause. “Is that a threat?”
“It is the honest truth! Redemption or death, I will accept nothing else.”
Distress began to creep over Porfiry’s face. “I have gone too far already—I offered to keep you from justice, and now you ask me not only to do so indefinitely, but also to pervert the very notion of justice to relieve your guilt? It is ridiculous, pure folly!”
Raskolnikov got down on his knees before Porfiry, spurred on by sheer passion. “Please,” he whispered. “Please! You are my only hope. Punish me as you see fit, as you deem I deserve, and I will take it! Pain, humiliation, the loss of freedom and dignity—these I will bear, if only you would grant them!”
“Get up, please, and get a hold of yourself! The answer is no. If you choose to live, you may seek your own redemption, and I wish you the best of luck in that endeavor. You have twenty-four hours, after which I will tell my colleagues of your confession. Goodbye, Rodion Romanovich.”