The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Here he finally looked up at his listeners. They appeared to be eyeing him perfectly calmly and attentively. Mitya was smitten with indignation.

  ‘I’m sure you’re laughing at me at this moment, gentlemen, aren’t you?’ he interjected suddenly.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ enquired Nikolai Parfenovich.

  ‘You don’t believe a word, that’s why! Look, I’ve reached the crucial point: the old man is lying there now, with a fractured skull, and you’re supposed to believe that I—who have just given you a dramatic description of how I wanted to kill him and how I was already holding the pestle in my hand—that I suddenly ran away from the window… A likely tale! The fellow can be taken at his word! Ha-ha! You’re a funny lot, gentlemen!’

  And he swung right round on his chair, so that it creaked under him.

  ‘Did you, by any chance, notice,’ the prosecutor began suddenly, as though he had not even noticed Mitya’s agitation, ‘did you by any chance notice, as you were running away from the window, whether the garden door at the far end of the house was open or not?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t open.’

  ‘It wasn’t?’

  ‘On the contrary, it was shut; and anyway, who could have opened it? Hey, just a second, the door!’ he seemed suddenly to have been reminded of something, and he almost shuddered. ‘Did you say you found the door open?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So who could have opened it, apart from yourselves?’ asked Mitya in utter amazement.

  ‘The door was open, and your father’s killer undoubtedly entered through that door and, having committed the murder, left by the same door,’ said the prosecutor, enunciating every word slowly and deliberately. ‘It is perfectly clear to us. The murder was obviously committed inside the room, not from outside the window; this is borne out positively by the investigation, by the position of the body and everything else. There can be no doubt whatsoever on this score.’

  Mitya was thunderstruck.

  ‘But that’s impossible, gentlemen!’ he yelled out, utterly at a loss, ‘I… I didn’t even enter the room… I’m positive, I categorically assure you the door was shut all the time I was in the garden and when I was running away from the window. I was standing just by his window and I saw him through it, and that’s all, that’s all… I remember it down to the last split second. And even if I didn’t remember it, I’d know it all the same, because the only people who knew the signal were Smerdyakov, myself, and my father, and he would never have opened the door to anyone in the world unless the signal had been given!’

  ‘ “Signal”? What signal?’ The prosecutor spoke with an eager, almost hysterical curiosity, abruptly abandoning his posture of detachment and sidling up to Mitya. He sensed that there was something important that he still did not know, and was immediately gripped by a terrible apprehension in case Mitya refused to reveal it in full.

  ‘So you didn’t know!’ said Mitya with a wink, flashing him a derisive, angry smile. ‘And what if I don’t tell you? Who else are you going to turn to? My late father, Smerdyakov, and I were the only ones who knew about the signal, no one else—the heavens knew too, but you’re hardly likely to get an answer from there. So there’s a certain intriguing little fact which one could make a hell of a lot of, ha-ha! Relax, gentlemen, I shall reveal it. You’ve got me all wrong, you’ve no idea who you’re dealing with! You’re dealing with a defendant who testifies against himself! Yes indeed, you’re dealing with a man of honour—but what would you know about that!’

  The prosecutor swallowed his pride; he was seething with impatience to learn about this new fact. Accurately and at length, Mitya described everything relating to the signal that Fyodor Pavlovich had devised for Smerdyakov; he explained the significance of each particular tap on the window, and he even tapped out the signal on the table himself; furthermore, in answer to Nikolai Parfenovich’s question—whether, when he was tapping on the window, he had in fact used the signal that meant ‘Grushenka’s here’—Mitya answered in the affirmative, confirming that that was the precise signal he had given: ‘Grushenka’s here’.

  ‘Go ahead now, and build your fairy-tale castle!’ Mitya broke off abruptly and turned away contemptuously.

  ‘So, only your late father, you, and the servant Smerdyakov knew of the signal? And no one else?’ Nikolai Parfenovich enquired once more.

  ‘Yes, the servant Smerdyakov and the heavens. Make sure you write down the heavens; it won’t do any harm to bring them in. You too may want to have God on your side one day.’

  And, of course, this was recorded, but while the clerk was actually writing it down the prosecutor as though quite by chance happened to hit on a new thought.

  ‘But surely, if Smerdyakov knew about this signal as well—and since you yourself categorically deny any involvement in your father’s death—could it not be that it was he who, after tapping out the agreed signal, persuaded your father to open the door for him and then… murdered him?’

  Mitya looked at him with utter hatred and derision. He continued to stare hard, without saying a word, till the prosecutor began to blink.

  ‘You’ve cornered the fox again!’ said Mitya at last. ‘You’ve caught the sly one by her tail, ha-ha! I can see right through you, Mr Prosecutor! You really expected me to jump up at once, to clutch at that straw, and to yell out at the top of my voice: “Aha, it’s Smerdyakov, he’s the murderer!” Admit it, that’s what you were thinking, admit it, then I’ll continue.’

  But the prosecutor would not admit it. He remained silent, and waited.

  ‘You’re wrong, I shan’t denounce Smerdyakov!’ said Mitya.

  ‘And you don’t even suspect him?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘We did suspect him, too.’

  Mitya fixed his eyes on the ground.

  ‘Joking aside,’ he said gloomily, ‘listen to me. Right at the beginning, almost from when I first encountered you from behind that curtain, the thought occurred to me: “Smerdyakov!” I sat here at this table, shouting that I wasn’t guilty of his blood, and I kept thinking: “Smerdyakov!” Smerdyakov haunted me. Just now I thought again, “Smerdyakov”, but only for a second—almost straight away I said to myself: “No, not Smerdyakov!” He’s not the murderer, gentlemen!’

  ‘In that case, perhaps you suspect some other person?’ enquired Nikolai Parfenovich cagily.

  ‘I don’t know who it was, some other person, or the hand of heaven or of Satan, but… but it wasn’t Smerdyakov!’ Mitya said categorically.

  ‘Why are you so adamant, why are you so certain that it wasn’t him?’

  ‘I’m absolutely sure. It’s the way he behaves—and because Smerdyakov’s a coward and the lowest of creatures. He’s not just a coward, he’s all the cowards that ever trod the earth rolled into one. That’s all he is, an absolute coward. He used to shake every time he spoke to me, he begged me not to kill him, when I hadn’t even lifted a finger against him. He used to grovel at my feet and literally lick these very boots of mine, begging me “not to frighten him”. Did you hear that: “frighten”—what kind of talk is that? And I’d even given him presents. He’s a disease-ridden, brainless epileptic whom any eight-year-old would make mincemeat of. He’s pathetic. It wasn’t Smerdyakov, gentlemen, and he’s not after money either, he used to refuse everything I offered him… And why would he want to kill the old devil? He’s very likely his son, his illegitimate son, did you know that?’

  ‘We’ve heard that story. But you’re also his son, and it didn’t stop you telling everyone you wanted to kill him.’

  ‘I know what you’re getting at! And it’s reprehensible and despicable of you! But I’m not afraid! Gentlemen, it’s a dirty trick of yours to say it to my face now! It’s reprehensible, because I told you about it myself. Not only did I want to kill him, but I could have; what’s more, I went around telling people that I would kill him! But the fact remains I didn’t kill him, I was saved by my guardian angel—that’s what
you’ve failed to take into account… And it’s that that makes it underhand and downright mean of you! Because I didn’t kill him, I didn’t, I didn’t! Do you hear me, Mr Prosecutor, I didn’t kill him!’

  He was gasping for breath. At no time during the interrogation had he felt so agitated.

  ‘And so, what did Smerdyakov tell you then, gentlemen,’ he enquired after a short pause, ‘if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘You may ask us anything you wish,’ the prosecutor replied with cold severity, ‘anything you wish as regards the factual details of the case, and we, I repeat, are obliged to answer all your questions. We found the servant Smerdyakov, whom you were enquiring about, lying unconscious on his bed, having recurrent violent epileptic fits, a dozen or so in succession. The doctor who examined him told us that he might not even survive till the morning.

  ‘Well, in that case, it was the devil who killed father,’ Mitya suddenly blurted out, as though right up to the very last moment he had been asking himself: was it Smerdyakov or not?

  ‘We’ll come back to this point again,’ Nikolai Parfenovich decided. ‘As for now, perhaps you would kindly continue with your statement.’

  Mitya asked if he could have a rest. This was conceded willingly. Having rested, he continued. But he clearly found it difficult. He was exhausted, demeaned, and spiritually shattered. In addition to everything, as though deliberately trying to rattle him, the prosecutor now began to pester him with ‘trivialities’. He had barely finished describing how, sitting astride the fence, he had hit Grigory on the head with the pestle while the latter was holding on to his left leg, and how he had then jumped down immediately to attend to the injured man, when the prosecutor stopped him and asked for a more detailed description of his exact position on the fence. Mitya was surprised.

  ‘Well, I sat like this, astride, one leg here, the other there…’

  ‘And the pestle?’

  ‘The pestle was in my hand.’

  ‘Not in your pocket? You remember that clearly? Did you, in fact, take a hard swing?’

  ‘Probably yes, why do you need to know that?’

  ‘Would you mind sitting on the chair precisely as you sat on the fence? Show us clearly, for our information, how you swung your arm and in what direction.’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ asked Mitya, with a supercilious glance at the magistrate, who did not even bat an eyelid. Mitya turned abruptly, sat astride the chair, and swung his arm.

  ‘That’s how I hit him! That’s how I felled him! Is that enough for you?’

  ‘Thank you. Would you mind informing us precisely why you took the trouble to jump down, what your intention was, what in fact you had in mind?’

  ‘Oh, damn you… the man was hurt and I jumped down… I don’t know why!’

  ‘When you were in a panic? And trying to get away?’

  ‘Yes, in a panic and trying to get away.’

  ‘You wanted to help him?’

  ‘Help, my foot… Yes, perhaps it was to help, too, I don’t remember.’

  ‘You didn’t know what you were doing? You were confused?’

  ‘Not at all, I wasn’t confused, I remember it all. Everything, down to the minutest detail. I jumped down to have a look, I wiped the blood off with a handkerchief.’

  ‘We saw your handkerchief. Were you hoping to resuscitate your victim?’

  ‘Don’t know about hoping. I just wanted to find out for sure if he was alive or not.’

  ‘Ah, so you wanted to find out? And did you?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t be sure. I ran off thinking I’d killed him, but he regained consciousness.’

  ‘Splendid,’ the prosecutor concluded. ‘Thank you very much. That’s all what I wanted to know. Please be so good as to continue.’

  Alas, although he remembered it clearly, it did not even occur to Mitya to say that he had jumped down out of pity and that, standing over Grigory, he had even uttered a few compassionate words: ‘That’s the way it goes, old man, can’t be helped.’ The prosecutor, however, came to only one conclusion, that he had jumped down ‘at such a moment, when he was in such a panic’, merely in order to verify for certain whether the only witness of his crime was still alive or not, and, therefore, how pitiless, determined, cold-blooded, and calculating he must have been, even at such a moment… and so on and so forth. The prosecutor was well satisfied: ‘The nervous fellow is easily rattled, I’ve confused him with trivialities and caught him off guard.’

  Painful though it was for him now, Mitya continued. However, he was immediately interrupted again, this time by Nikolai Parfenovich:

  ‘How on earth could you run to the servant Fedosya Markovna when your hands and face were covered in blood?’

  ‘I didn’t even notice at the time that I was covered in blood!’ replied Mitya.

  ‘That makes sense, it’s not unusual,’ the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfenovich exchanged glances.

  ‘That’s right, I didn’t notice, you’re so right, Mr Prosecutor,’ Mitya agreed. The interrogation then turned to Mitya’s sudden decision to ‘step aside’ and to ‘make way for the lucky ones’. He now found it quite impossible to begin to bare his soul again, as he had done before, and to talk about ‘the queen of his heart’. He felt revolted by these cold people, who were ‘sucking his blood like bedbugs’. And thus, in reply to repeated questions, he merely answered briefly and curtly.

  ‘Well, I decided to kill myself. What was the point of carrying on—the question was absolutely inevitable and inescapable. Her former and undisputed one had reappeared; he’d wronged her, but he’d rushed back full of love, even after five years, to make up for the injustice by asking her to marry him. I could see at once I didn’t stand a chance… And then there was the infamy, the blood, Grigory’s blood… What was the point of living? So I decided to redeem my pistols, load them, and put a bullet through my head before dawn…’

  ‘And to have a final fling?’

  ‘Yes, to have a final fling. Dammit, gentlemen, let’s get this over. I really did mean to shoot myself, somewhere near here, outside the town, and I planned to do it at about five in the morning—in my pocket I already had the note I’d written at Perkhotin’s after I’d loaded the pistol. Here it is, this piece of paper, read it. It’s not for your sakes I’m telling you this,’ he added contemptuously. He took a piece of paper out of his waistcoat-pocket and flung it on the table before them; his interrogators read it with interest and, as is customary, added it to the file.

  ‘And it still hadn’t occurred to you to wash your hands, even when you went to see Mr Perkhotin? So, then, you weren’t bothered about being suspected?’

  ‘Suspected of what? No matter what I was going to be suspected of, I’d still have rushed down here and shot myself at five, and you wouldn’t have been able to do anything. If it hadn’t been for what happened to my father, you wouldn’t have found out anything and you’d never have come here. It was the devil, it was the devil who killed my father; it was from the devil you found out everything so quickly! How did you manage to get here so soon? I can’t believe it, it’s amazing!’

  ‘Mr Perkhotin told us that when you came to him you had money in your hands… in your bloodstained hands… money… a large sum… a wad of hundred-rouble notes, and his servant boy also saw it.’

  ‘That’s right, gentlemen, I seem to remember that’s how it was.’

  ‘And now we have another small question to put to you,’ Nikolai Parfenovich began very softly. ‘Would you care to inform us how you suddenly got hold of so much money, because, from what we’ve ascertained, you couldn’t have had time to go home first.’

  The prosecutor winced a little at the bluntness of the question, but he did not interrupt Nikolai Parfenovich.

  ‘No, I didn’t go home,’ replied Mitya with apparent calm, continuing to stare at the ground.

  ‘Let me repeat my question once more, therefore,’ continued Nikolai Parfenovich, stalking round him.
‘Where could you possibly have got hold of such a sum so quickly, since, according to your own testimony, at five o’clock that day, you still…’

  ‘I needed ten roubles and took my pistols to Perkhotin, then I went to Khokhlakova to get the three thousand, but she wouldn’t give it to me, and so on and so on, and all that irrelevant trivia,’ Mitya interrupted harshly, ‘yes, there you are gentlemen, I was destitute, and suddenly—thousands, how about that? You know, gentlemen, you’re both scared now: what if he doesn’t tell us where he got it from? You’re dead right: I won’t, gentlemen, you’re right, you won’t find out,’ Mitya spelled out with extraordinary determination. The interrogators paused for a moment.

  ‘Please understand, Mr Karamazov,’ Nikolai Parfenovich said in a soft, conciliatory tone, ‘it is vitally important for us to know this.’

  ‘I understand, but I shan’t tell you all the same.’

  The prosecutor joined in now, too, repeating once more that, of course, the suspect could refuse to answer the questions if he considered it to be in his best interests, and so on, but that in view of the damage his silence could do to his case, and especially in view of the gravity of the questions…

  ‘And so on and so forth, gentlemen! Enough, I’ve heard this sermon before!’ Mitya interrupted again. ‘I can see the seriousness of the situation for myself, and that it is the key question, but I won’t tell you all the same.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter to us, it’s your business, not ours, you’ll only damage your case.’

  ‘Well, let’s stop playing games now,’ Mitya’s eyes glinted suddenly, and he looked hard at them both. ‘I anticipated right from the start that we’d clash over this issue. But at the start, when I first began my statement, all this seemed in the dim and distant future, everything was vague, and I was even naïve enough to suggest that we trust one another. Now I can see for myself that there was never any possibility of such trust, because, one way or another, we’d have come up against this damned hurdle! And we have! I can’t tell you, and that is the end of it! Still, I don’t blame you, I know you can’t take me at my word, either, I’m well aware of that!’