I know everything. I thought and whispered my way through it all while lying on my own in the dark back then ... Argued my way through every point, down to the last little mark, the last little jot, and I know everything, everything! How sick and tired I was of all this empty talk! I wanted to forget it all and start again, Sonya, and stop wittering! Surely you don't think I went there like some idiot, without a moment's thought? I went there like a man with brains, and that was my downfall! Can't you see that I must have know that if I'd already started asking myself the question, "Do I have a right to power?", then it already meant I didn't. Or that if I asked, "Is a human being a louse?", then man was certainly no louse for me, only for someone to whom the question never occurs, and who sets off without asking questions ... And if I'd already tormented myself for so many days wondering, "Would Napoleon have gone or wouldn't he?", then I obviously knew that I was no Napoleon ... I endured all the agony of the empty talk, Sonya, all of it, and now I just wanted to shake it off. I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone! I didn't want to lie about it, not even to myself! It wasn't to help mother that I killed — nonsense! It wasn't to acquire funds and power that I killed, so as to make myself a benefactor of humanity. Nonsense! I just killed. I killed for myself, for myself alone; and whether I'd become anyone's benefactor or spend my entire life as a spider, catching everyone in my web and sucking out their vital juices, shouldn't have mattered to me one jot at that moment! ... And it wasn't so much money I needed, Sonya, when I killed; not so much money as something else ... I know all this now ... Try to understand: taking that same road again, I might never have repeated the murder. There was something else I needed to find out then, something else was nudging me along: what I needed to find out, and find out quickly, was whether I was a louse, like everyone else, or a human being. Could I take that step or couldn't I? Would I dare to stoop and grab or wouldn't I? Was I a quivering creature or did I have the right...?
annaxmalina
titsay
blakekathryn
stormborns
ellievsbear
