The Brothers Karamazov
“Don’t worry yourself so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” observed the
prosecutor, “everything that is written down will be read over to you
afterwards, and what you don’t agree to we’ll alter as you like. But
now I’ll ask you one little question for the second time. Has no one,
absolutely no one, heard from you of that money you sewed up? That, I
must tell you, is almost impossible to believe.”
“No one, no one, I told you so before, or you’ve not understood
anything! Let me alone!”
“Very well, this matter is bound to be explained, and there’s plenty of
time for it, but meantime, consider; we have perhaps a dozen witnesses
that you yourself spread it abroad, and even shouted almost everywhere
about the three thousand you’d spent here; three thousand, not fifteen
hundred. And now, too, when you got hold of the money you had
yesterday, you gave many people to understand that you had brought
three thousand with you.”
“You’ve got not dozens, but hundreds of witnesses, two hundred
witnesses, two hundred have heard it, thousands have heard it!” cried
Mitya.
“Well, you see, all bear witness to it. And the word _all_ means
something.”
“It means nothing. I talked rot, and every one began repeating it.”
“But what need had you to ‘talk rot,’ as you call it?”
“The devil knows. From bravado perhaps ... at having wasted so much
money.... To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps ... yes,
that was why ... damn it ... how often will you ask me that question?
Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I’d said it, I
didn’t care to correct it. What does a man tell lies for sometimes?”
“That’s very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what makes a man
tell lies,” observed the prosecutor impressively. “Tell me, though, was
that ‘amulet,’ as you call it, on your neck, a big thing?”
“No, not big.”
“How big, for instance?”
“If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be the size.”
“You’d better show us the remains of it. You must have them somewhere.”
“Damnation, what nonsense! I don’t know where they are.”
“But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck? According
to your own evidence you didn’t go home.”
“When I was going from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s, on the way I tore it off
my neck and took out the money.”
“In the dark?”
“What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one
minute.”
“Without scissors, in the street?”
“In the market-place I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old rag.
It was torn in a minute.”
“Where did you put it afterwards?”
“I dropped it there.”
“Where was it, exactly?”
“In the market-place, in the market-place! The devil knows whereabouts.
What do you want to know for?”
“That’s extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material
evidence in your favor. How is it you don’t understand that? Who helped
you to sew it up a month ago?”
“No one helped me. I did it myself.”
“Can you sew?”
“A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that.”
“Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed
the money?”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”
“I don’t know where I got the rag from—somewhere, I suppose.”
“I should have thought you couldn’t have forgotten it?”
“Upon my word, I don’t remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen.”
“That’s very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to-morrow the
shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort of rag
was it, cloth or linen?”
“Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit.... I believe I didn’t
tear it off anything. It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it
up in a cap of my landlady’s.”
“In your landlady’s cap?”
“Yes. I took it from her.”
“How did you get it?”
“You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my
pen on. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I
tore it up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it
was in that very rag I sewed them. An old piece of calico, washed a
thousand times.”
“And you remember that for certain now?”
“I don’t know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But, hang
it, what does it matter?”
“In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?”
“No, she won’t, she didn’t miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an
old rag not worth a farthing.”
“And where did you get the needle and thread?”
“I’ll stop now. I won’t say any more. Enough of it!” said Mitya, losing
his temper at last.
“It’s strange that you should have so completely forgotten where you
threw the pieces in the market-place.”
“Give orders for the market-place to be swept to-morrow, and perhaps
you’ll find it,” said Mitya, sneering. “Enough, gentlemen, enough!” he
decided, in an exhausted voice. “I see you don’t believe me! Not for a
moment! It’s my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready.
Why, why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? It’s a
joke to you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it,
prosecutor? Sing a hymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you
torturers!”
He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The lawyers were
silent. A minute later he raised his head and looked at them almost
vacantly. His face now expressed complete, hopeless despair, and he sat
mute and passive as though hardly conscious of what was happening. In
the meantime they had to finish what they were about. They had
immediately to begin examining the witnesses. It was by now eight
o’clock in the morning. The lights had been extinguished long ago.
Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been continually in and out of
the room all the while the interrogation had been going on, had now
both gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very tired. It was a
wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain streamed
down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out of the window.
“May I look out of the window?” he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch,
suddenly.
“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.
Mitya got up and went to the window.... The rain lashed against its
little greenish panes. He could see the muddy road just below the
house, and farther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor, black,
dismal huts, looking even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya thought
of “Phœbus the golden-haired,” and how he had meant to shoot himself at
his first ray. “Perhaps it would be even better on a morning like
this,” he thought with a smile, and suddenly, flinging his hand
downwards, he turned to his “torturers.”
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “I see that I am lost! But she? Tell me about
her, I beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me? She’s
innocent, you know, she was out of her mind when she cried last night
‘It’s all my fault!’ She’s done nothing, nothing! I’ve been grieving
over her all night as I sat with you.... Can’t you, won’t you tell me
what you are going to do with her now?”
“You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch,” the prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity.
“We have, so far, no grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you
are so interested. I trust that it may be the same in the later
development of the case.... On the contrary, we’ll do everything that
lies in our power in that matter. Set your mind completely at rest.”
“Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest, straight-forward
people in spite of everything. You’ve taken a load off my heart....
Well, what are we to do now? I’m ready.”
“Well, we ought to make haste. We must pass to examining the witnesses
without delay. That must be done in your presence and therefore—”
“Shouldn’t we have some tea first?” interposed Nikolay Parfenovitch, “I
think we’ve deserved it!”
They decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch had,
no doubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then “go
on and on,” putting off their proper breakfast until a more favorable
opportunity. Tea really was ready below, and was soon brought up. Mitya
at first refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch politely offered
him, but afterwards he asked for it himself and drank it greedily. He
looked surprisingly exhausted. It might have been supposed from his
Herculean strength that one night of carousing, even accompanied by the
most violent emotions, could have had little effect on him. But he felt
that he could hardly hold his head up, and from time to time all the
objects about him seemed heaving and dancing before his eyes. “A little
more and I shall begin raving,” he said to himself.
Chapter VIII.
The Evidence Of The Witnesses. The Babe
The examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue our
story in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how Nikolay
Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must give his
evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he would
afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every witness was
called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so on. We will
only note that the point principally insisted upon in the examination
was the question of the three thousand roubles, that is, was the sum
spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion, a month before,
three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he spent three
thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday? Alas, all the evidence given by
every one turned out to be against Mitya. There was not one in his
favor, and some witnesses introduced new, almost crushing facts, in
contradiction of his, Mitya’s, story.
The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not in the
least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the contrary,
an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused, which gave him
an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little,
and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered precisely and
deliberately. Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore witness that the sum
spent a month before could not have been less than three thousand, that
all the peasants about here would testify that they had heard the sum
of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri Fyodorovitch himself. “What a lot
of money he flung away on the gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand,
I daresay, on them alone.”
“I don’t believe I gave them five hundred,” was Mitya’s gloomy comment
on this. “It’s a pity I didn’t count the money at the time, but I was
drunk....”
Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He listened
gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he would say:
“Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now.”
“More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” retorted
Trifon Borissovitch firmly. “You flung it about at random and they
picked it up. They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers,
they’ve been driven away from here, or maybe they’d bear witness
themselves how much they got from you. I saw the sum in your hands,
myself—count it I didn’t, you didn’t let me, that’s true enough—but by
the look of it I should say it was far more than fifteen hundred ...
fifteen hundred, indeed! We’ve seen money too. We can judge of
amounts....”
As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri Fyodorovitch had
told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had brought three thousand
with him.
“Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?” replied Mitya. “Surely I
didn’t declare so positively that I’d brought three thousand?”
“You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey. Andrey
himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when you were