The Brothers Karamazov
footing of mutual confidence between educated, well-bred people, who
have the common bond of noble birth and honor. In any case, allow me to
look upon you as my best friends at this moment of my life, at this
moment when my honor is assailed. That’s no offense to you, gentlemen,
is it?”
“On the contrary. You’ve expressed all that so well, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch,” Nikolay Parfenovitch answered with dignified
approbation.
“And enough of those trivial questions, gentlemen, all those tricky
questions!” cried Mitya enthusiastically. “Or there’s simply no knowing
where we shall get to! Is there?”
“I will follow your sensible advice entirely,” the prosecutor
interposed, addressing Mitya. “I don’t withdraw my question, however.
It is now vitally important for us to know exactly why you needed that
sum, I mean precisely three thousand.”
“Why I needed it?... Oh, for one thing and another.... Well, it was to
pay a debt.”
“A debt to whom?”
“That I absolutely refuse to answer, gentlemen. Not because I couldn’t,
or because I shouldn’t dare, or because it would be damaging, for it’s
all a paltry matter and absolutely trifling, but—I won’t, because it’s
a matter of principle: that’s my private life, and I won’t allow any
intrusion into my private life. That’s my principle. Your question has
no bearing on the case, and whatever has nothing to do with the case is
my private affair. I wanted to pay a debt. I wanted to pay a debt of
honor but to whom I won’t say.”
“Allow me to make a note of that,” said the prosecutor.
“By all means. Write down that I won’t say, that I won’t. Write that I
should think it dishonorable to say. Ech! you can write it; you’ve
nothing else to do with your time.”
“Allow me to caution you, sir, and to remind you once more, if you are
unaware of it,” the prosecutor began, with a peculiar and stern
impressiveness, “that you have a perfect right not to answer the
questions put to you now, and we on our side have no right to extort an
answer from you, if you decline to give it for one reason or another.
That is entirely a matter for your personal decision. But it is our
duty, on the other hand, in such cases as the present, to explain and
set before you the degree of injury you will be doing yourself by
refusing to give this or that piece of evidence. After which I will beg
you to continue.”
“Gentlemen, I’m not angry ... I ...” Mitya muttered in a rather
disconcerted tone. “Well, gentlemen, you see, that Samsonov to whom I
went then ...”
We will, of course, not reproduce his account of what is known to the
reader already. Mitya was impatiently anxious not to omit the slightest
detail. At the same time he was in a hurry to get it over. But as he
gave his evidence it was written down, and therefore they had
continually to pull him up. Mitya disliked this, but submitted; got
angry, though still good-humoredly. He did, it is true, exclaim, from
time to time, “Gentlemen, that’s enough to make an angel out of
patience!” Or, “Gentlemen, it’s no good your irritating me.”
But even though he exclaimed he still preserved for a time his genially
expansive mood. So he told them how Samsonov had made a fool of him two
days before. (He had completely realized by now that he had been
fooled.) The sale of his watch for six roubles to obtain money for the
journey was something new to the lawyers. They were at once greatly
interested, and even, to Mitya’s intense indignation, thought it
necessary to write the fact down as a secondary confirmation of the
circumstance that he had hardly a farthing in his pocket at the time.
Little by little Mitya began to grow surly. Then, after describing his
journey to see Lyagavy, the night spent in the stifling hut, and so on,
he came to his return to the town. Here he began, without being
particularly urged, to give a minute account of the agonies of jealousy
he endured on Grushenka’s account.
He was heard with silent attention. They inquired particularly into the
circumstance of his having a place of ambush in Marya Kondratyevna’s
house at the back of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s garden to keep watch on
Grushenka, and of Smerdyakov’s bringing him information. They laid
particular stress on this, and noted it down. Of his jealousy he spoke
warmly and at length, and though inwardly ashamed at exposing his most
intimate feelings to “public ignominy,” so to speak, he evidently
overcame his shame in order to tell the truth. The frigid severity,
with which the investigating lawyer, and still more the prosecutor,
stared intently at him as he told his story, disconcerted him at last
considerably.
“That boy, Nikolay Parfenovitch, to whom I was talking nonsense about
women only a few days ago, and that sickly prosecutor are not worth my
telling this to,” he reflected mournfully. “It’s ignominious. ‘Be
patient, humble, hold thy peace.’” He wound up his reflections with
that line. But he pulled himself together to go on again. When he came
to telling of his visit to Madame Hohlakov, he regained his spirits and
even wished to tell a little anecdote of that lady which had nothing to
do with the case. But the investigating lawyer stopped him, and civilly
suggested that he should pass on to “more essential matters.” At last,
when he described his despair and told them how, when he left Madame
Hohlakov’s, he thought that he’d “get three thousand if he had to
murder some one to do it,” they stopped him again and noted down that
he had “meant to murder some one.” Mitya let them write it without
protest. At last he reached the point in his story when he learned that
Grushenka had deceived him and had returned from Samsonov’s as soon as
he left her there, though she had said that she would stay there till
midnight.
“If I didn’t kill Fenya then, gentlemen, it was only because I hadn’t
time,” broke from him suddenly at that point in his story. That, too,
was carefully written down. Mitya waited gloomily, and was beginning to
tell how he ran into his father’s garden when the investigating lawyer
suddenly stopped him, and opening the big portfolio that lay on the
sofa beside him he brought out the brass pestle.
“Do you recognize this object?” he asked, showing it to Mitya.
“Oh, yes,” he laughed gloomily. “Of course I recognize it. Let me have
a look at it.... Damn it, never mind!”
“You have forgotten to mention it,” observed the investigating lawyer.
“Hang it all, I shouldn’t have concealed it from you. Do you suppose I
could have managed without it? It simply escaped my memory.”
“Be so good as to tell us precisely how you came to arm yourself with
it.”
“Certainly I will be so good, gentlemen.”
And Mitya described how he took the pestle and ran.
“But what object had you in view in arming yourself with such a
weapon?”
“What object? No object. I just picked it up and ran off.”
“What for, if you had no object?”
Mitya’s wrath flared up. He looked intently at “the boy” and smiled
gloomily and malignantly. He was feeling more and more ashamed at
having told “such people” the story of his jealousy so sincerely and
spontaneously.
“Bother the pestle!” broke from him suddenly.
“But still—”
“Oh, to keep off dogs.... Oh, because it was dark.... In case anything
turned up.”
“But have you ever on previous occasions taken a weapon with you when
you went out, since you’re afraid of the dark?”
“Ugh! damn it all, gentlemen! There’s positively no talking to you!”
cried Mitya, exasperated beyond endurance, and turning to the
secretary, crimson with anger, he said quickly, with a note of fury in
his voice:
“Write down at once ... at once ... ‘that I snatched up the pestle to
go and kill my father ... Fyodor Pavlovitch ... by hitting him on the
head with it!’ Well, now are you satisfied, gentlemen? Are your minds
relieved?” he said, glaring defiantly at the lawyers.
“We quite understand that you made that statement just now through
exasperation with us and the questions we put to you, which you
consider trivial, though they are, in fact, essential,” the prosecutor
remarked dryly in reply.
“Well, upon my word, gentlemen! Yes, I took the pestle.... What does
one pick things up for at such moments? I don’t know what for. I
snatched it up and ran—that’s all. For to me, gentlemen, _passons_, or
I declare I won’t tell you any more.”
He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hand. He sat
sideways to them and gazed at the wall, struggling against a feeling of
nausea. He had, in fact, an awful inclination to get up and declare
that he wouldn’t say another word, “not if you hang me for it.”
“You see, gentlemen,” he said at last, with difficulty controlling
himself, “you see. I listen to you and am haunted by a dream.... It’s a
dream I have sometimes, you know.... I often dream it—it’s always the
same ... that some one is hunting me, some one I’m awfully afraid of
... that he’s hunting me in the dark, in the night ... tracking me, and
I hide somewhere from him, behind a door or cupboard, hide in a
degrading way, and the worst of it is, he always knows where I am, but
he pretends not to know where I am on purpose, to prolong my agony, to
enjoy my terror.... That’s just what you’re doing now. It’s just like
that!”
“Is that the sort of thing you dream about?” inquired the prosecutor.
“Yes, it is. Don’t you want to write it down?” said Mitya, with a
distorted smile.
“No; no need to write it down. But still you do have curious dreams.”
“It’s not a question of dreams now, gentlemen—this is realism, this is
real life! I’m a wolf and you’re the hunters. Well, hunt him down!”
“You are wrong to make such comparisons ...” began Nikolay
Parfenovitch, with extraordinary softness.
“No, I’m not wrong, not at all!” Mitya flared up again, though his
outburst of wrath had obviously relieved his heart. He grew more
good-humored at every word. “You may not trust a criminal or a man on trial
tortured by your questions, but an honorable man, the honorable
impulses of the heart (I say that boldly!)—no! That you must believe
you have no right indeed ... but—
Be silent, heart,
Be patient, humble, hold thy peace.
Well, shall I go on?” he broke off gloomily.
“If you’ll be so kind,” answered Nikolay Parfenovitch.
Chapter V.
The Third Ordeal
Though Mitya spoke sullenly, it was evident that he was trying more
than ever not to forget or miss a single detail of his story. He told
them how he had leapt over the fence into his father’s garden; how he
had gone up to the window; told them all that had passed under the
window. Clearly, precisely, distinctly, he described the feelings that
troubled him during those moments in the garden when he longed so
terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But,
strange to say, both the lawyers listened now with a sort of awful
reserve, looked coldly at him, asked few questions. Mitya could gather
nothing from their faces.
“They’re angry and offended,” he thought. “Well, bother them!”
When he described how he made up his mind at last to make the “signal”
to his father that Grushenka had come, so that he should open the
window, the lawyers paid no attention to the word “signal,” as though
they entirely failed to grasp the meaning of the word in this
connection: so much so, that Mitya noticed it. Coming at last to the
moment when, seeing his father peering out of the window, his hatred
flared up and he pulled the pestle out of his pocket, he suddenly, as
though of design, stopped short. He sat gazing at the wall and was
aware that their eyes were fixed upon him.
“Well?” said the investigating lawyer. “You pulled out the weapon and
... and what happened then?”
“Then? Why, then I murdered him ... hit him on the head and cracked his
skull.... I suppose that’s your story. That’s it!”