‘Because I stole it, that’s what’s wrong! My God, your lack of understanding terrifies me. All the time I had those fifteen hundred roubles sewn up and hanging round my neck, not a day, not an hour went by but I said to myself: “You’re a thief, a thief!” That’s why I went on the rampage for a whole month, why I picked a fight in the tavern, why I punched and kicked my father, because I felt I was a thief! I couldn’t even bring myself to talk about the fifteen hundred to my brother Alyosha, because I felt I was such a cad, such a scoundrel! But I might as well tell you that while I was carrying the money about with me, I also said to myself every day, every hour: “No, Dmitry Fyodorovich, perhaps you’re not quite a thief yet. Why not? Because you can still go to Katya tomorrow and give her back the fifteen hundred.” And last night, on my way from Fenya to see Perkhotin, I finally resolved to tear the purse from my neck, something which right up to that moment I couldn’t bring myself to do, and as soon I had removed it, that very instant I became a complete and unquestionable thief, a thief and a man without honour for the rest of his life. Why? Because, in removing the purse from my neck, I’d destroyed my cherished hope of going to Katya and saying to her: “I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief”! Now do you understand?’
‘Just why did you decide to do it last night rather than at any other time?’ interjected Nikolai Parfenovich.
‘Why? That’s a stupid question to ask. Because I had condemned myself to death, to die here at dawn, at five o’clock in the morning. “It makes no difference”, I thought to myself, “whether I die an honourable man or a scoundrel!” But I was wrong, it does make a difference! Would you believe, gentlemen, that what tortured me most of the night wasn’t the thought that I had killed the old servant and that I was in danger of being sent to Siberia—just when my love had been requited and heaven had opened up to me again. Don’t misunderstand me, it did cause me suffering, but not half as much as the awareness that I had torn that accursed money from round my neck and squandered it, and that consequently I was plainly a thief! Oh, gentlemen, I assure you with all my heart, I have learned a lot during this night! I have learned that not only can one not live as a scoundrel, one cannot die a scoundrel either… No, gentlemen, one must die honourably!…’
Mitya was pale. Although he was extremely excited, he looked haggard and exhausted.
‘I’m beginning to understand you, Dmitry Fyodorovich,’ the prosecutor said with soft deliberation, almost with compassion, ‘but I would suggest, with respect, that all this is just your nerves… you’re suffering from nervous exhaustion, that’s all it is. Why didn’t you, for example, save yourself all this agony, which you’ve suffered for nearly a whole month in fact, by returning the fifteen hundred to the lady who had entrusted it to you, and why, in view of your circumstances—which as you yourself have indicated were dire at the time—didn’t you discuss the matter with her and attempt to come to some reasonable understanding; in other words, why didn’t you, after first making a clean and honourable breast of it, ask her for the necessary sum to cover your expenses, which she, with her characteristic magnanimity and seeing your distress, would surely not have denied you, especially if the agreement were backed up by a document or, come to that, by some pledge, like the one you offered to the merchant Samsonov and Mrs Khokhlakova? After all, you don’t regard that pledge as worthless now, do you?’
Mitya went red in the face.
‘Do you really take me for that much of a scoundrel?’ he said, looking the prosecutor in the eye, as though in disbelief at what he heard. ‘Surely you can’t be serious?…’
‘I assure you, I am… What makes you think I’m not serious?’ the prosecutor, in his turn, looked surprised.
‘Oh, it would have been dastardly! Gentlemen, do you realize, you’re torturing me! If you’ll bear with me, I’ll tell you everything; look, I’m now going to confess to you the full extent of my iniquity, so as to shame you, and you’ll be surprised when you see for yourselves what base scheming human emotions can lead to. Do you realize that I had already considered that idea, precisely the one you’ve just outlined, Mr Prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, that idea had also occurred to me during that confounded month, and I was almost on the point of going to Katya, wretch that I was! But to go to her, to announce my treachery, and in the name of that treachery, to ask her, Katya, to ask for money (to ask, do you hear, to ask!), in order to perpetrate and, what’s more, pay for that treachery and then to run off immediately with another woman, with her rival, the rival who detests and insults her—be sensible, you must be out of your mind, Mr Prosecutor!’
‘Out of my mind,’ smiled the prosecutor, ‘that’s as may be, but of course, in the heat of the moment I overlooked… the little matter of feminine jealousy… if it was a question of jealousy, as you maintain… yes, perhaps you have got a point there.’
‘But that would have been such a dastardly thing to do,’ Mitya struck his fist on the table in a frenzy, ‘it would have stunk to high heaven! Do you realize that she could in fact have given me the money, and she would have, I’m sure of it, she’d have given it simply out of contempt for me, out of revenge, glorying in revenge, because she too has an evil soul, she’s a woman of overpowering wrath! I’d have taken the money—oh, I would, indeed I would have—and then, all my life long… Oh God! I’m sorry, gentlemen, I keep shouting, because that very idea was still in my mind until recently, only the day before yesterday, even when I was going hammer and tongs at Lurcher that night, and then again yesterday, yes, yesterday, the whole day long, I remember it, right up to that incident…’
‘What incident?’ Nikolai Parfenovich butted in, full of curiosity, but Mitya didn’t hear him.
‘I’ve made a dreadful admission to you,’ he concluded despondently. ‘Recognize it, gentlemen, for what it’s worth. But that’s not enough, it’s not enough just to recognize it, you have to respect it. If that too leaves your souls unmoved, then, I tell you, gentlemen, you really haven’t a grain of respect for me, and I’ll die of shame that I confessed to the likes of you! I’ll shoot myself! No, you don’t believe me, I can see you don’t believe me! What, are you going to record that too?’ he yelled, frightened now.
‘Well, what you’ve just said,’ Nikolai Parfenovich regarded him in amazement, ‘namely, that right up to the last minute you still intended to go to Miss Verkhovtseva to ask her for that sum… I assure you, that is a very important piece of evidence for us, Dmitry Fyodorovich—I mean, your observations regarding the whole of this incident… and especially for you, it’s especially important for you.’
‘Have a heart, gentlemen!’ Mitya raised his hands in supplication. ‘Surely you don’t have to write that down; shame on you! After all, you could say I’ve bared my soul in front of you, and you’re taking advantage of the fact and are delving in the shattered remains… Oh God!’
He buried his face in his hands in despair.
‘Don’t upset yourself so, Dmitry Fyodorovich,’ the prosecutor remarked, ‘everything that’s been written down will be read to you later, and anything you don’t agree with we’ll alter according to your wishes, but just for now let me put to you one little question for the third time: do you really mean to say that you told no one, absolutely no one, about the money you had sewn into the purse? I must confess I find that almost impossible to believe.’
‘No one, absolutely no one! Haven’t you understood anything? Don’t go on about it.’
‘Very well then, there’s plenty of time to clear this matter up, but, meanwhile, think about this: we have maybe dozens of statements from witnesses stating that you yourself spread it around, shouted it from the rooftops in fact, that you spent three thousand last time—three thousand, not fifteen hundred—and even after this money turned up yesterday, you’ve managed to inform plenty of people that you brought three thousand with you this time too…’
‘Not just dozens, you’ve got hundreds of statements,’ exclaimed Mitya, ‘a couple of hundred statements, a coupl
e of hundred people heard me, a thousand heard me!’
‘Well, there you are; everyone, but everyone will testify. Surely the word everyone means something?’
‘It means nothing; I lied, and the rest of them just repeated what I said.’
‘But why on earth should you have “lied”, as you put it?’
‘Heaven only knows. To show off, perhaps… I don’t know… boasting… that I squandered so much money… To forget perhaps about the money round my neck… yes, that’s right… hell… how many times are you going to ask me that question? I lied, and that’s the end of the matter, I lied and didn’t want to retract it. Why does a man lie sometimes?’
‘It’s rather difficult to determine, Dmitry Fyodorovich, what makes a person lie,’ the prosecutor said thoughtfully. ‘Tell me, however: was it large, this purse, as you call it, round your neck?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Well, how large for example?’
‘A hundred-rouble note folded in half—that’s all.’
‘Wouldn’t it help if you showed us the bit of cloth? Surely you must have it on you somewhere.’
‘You must be joking… what nonsense… I don’t know where it is.’
‘Please try to remember: precisely where and when did you take it off? Didn’t you tell us yourself that you hadn’t been back home?’
‘It was after I’d left Fenya and was on my way to Perkhotin’s; I tore it from round my neck and took out the money.’
‘In the dark?’
‘What would I need a lamp for? It only took a second.’
‘Without scissors, on the street?’
‘On the square, I think; why should I need scissors? It was an old piece of cloth, it tore easily.’
‘What did you do with it then?’
‘I dropped it there.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘On the square, of course, somewhere on the square! Heaven only knows, somewhere on the square. Why do you need to know that?’
‘It’s extremely important, Dmitry Fyodorovich, it’s material evidence that can be helpful to you. Why don’t you try to understand that? Who helped you sew it up a month ago?’
‘Nobody helped me, I did it myself.’
‘You can sew?’
‘A soldier has to know how to sew; anyway, it’s not much of a skill.’
‘So where did you get the material from, I mean the piece of cloth you used?’
‘Are you being funny?’
‘Not at all, nothing could be further from our thoughts, Dmitry Fyodorovich.’
‘I can’t remember where I got the cloth from, must have got it from somewhere.’
‘Not something one would easily forget, I would have thought!’
‘Honest to God, I can’t remember, maybe I tore up some of my underwear.’
‘That’s very interesting: we could look for this item at your lodgings tomorrow—perhaps you tore a piece out of a shirt. What kind of fabric was it, cotton or linen?’
‘Who the devil knows. Wait… I don’t think I tore it off anything. It was calico… I think I used my landlady’s nightcap.’
‘Your landlady’s nightcap?’
‘Yes, I pinched it from her.’
‘You did what?’
‘Yes, I remember, I really did pinch a nightcap once, to use as a rag or perhaps to wipe my pen on. I took it without telling anyone, it wasn’t much good, there were bits of it all over my place, and then I suddenly had that fifteen hundred roubles, so I simply sewed it up… I think I sewed it up in a bit of that, a scrap of old calico that’d been washed thousands of times.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘I don’t know about sure. I think it was the nightcap. What the hell!’
‘In that case, wouldn’t your landlady at least remember that this item of hers had disappeared?’
‘Not at all, she didn’t even miss it. An old piece of cloth, I’m telling you, just an old piece of cloth, not worth a kopeck.’
‘And where did you get the needle and cotton from?’
‘For heaven’s sake! Enough is enough!’ Mitya finally lost his temper.
‘There again, it seems strange that you should have totally forgotten precisely where on the square you dropped this… er… purse.’
‘Why don’t you have the square swept tomorrow, perhaps you’ll find it,’ Mitya suggested sarcastically. ‘Enough, gentlemen, that’s enough,’ he declared in an exhausted voice. ‘I can see plainly that you don’t believe me, you haven’t believed a word I’ve said! It’s my fault, not yours, I wish I hadn’t said anything. Why, why did I have to demean myself by disclosing my secret! For you it’s just a joke, I can see it by the look in your eyes. It’s you, Mr Prosecutor, who has reduced me to this state! You can be proud of your efforts, that’s for sure… I hope you burn in hell, you bloodsuckers!’
He lowered his head and covered his face with his hands. Neither the prosecutor nor the magistrate said a word. A minute later he raised his head and cast them a glazed look. His face expressed absolute, irredeemable despair, and he appeared to be sinking into silence and oblivion. However, it was necessary to continue with the proceedings; the questioning of the witnesses couldn’t be delayed any longer. It was already about eight o’clock in the morning. The candles had long since been extinguished. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who had entered and left the room from time to time during the entire interrogation, now both left it again. Both the prosecutor and the magistrate looked extremely tired. The morning was dismal, the sky was clouded over, and it was pouring with rain. Mitya stared blankly at the windows.
‘May I look out of the window?’ he asked Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly.
‘Yes, of course,’ the latter replied.
Mitya got up and approached the window. The rain was beating heavily against the small, greenish panes. The muddy road ran right underneath the window, and further away in the distance, through the pall of rain, could be seen rows of black, dilapidated, unsightly huts, appearing even blacker and more dismal because of the rain. Mitya recalled the ‘golden-haired Phoebus’ in whose very first rays he had intended to shoot himself. ‘On a morning like this it would probably have been even better,’ he smiled, dropped his arms to his sides, and turned abruptly to face his tormentors.
‘Gentlemen!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can see very well I’ve had it. But what about her? Tell me about her, I beg you; is she also going to perish along with me? She’s innocent, I tell you, she was out of her mind when she shouted yesterday that she was “to blame for everything”. She’s completely and utterly innocent! I’ve been worrying about it all night long, ever since you started questioning me… Couldn’t you possibly tell me what you intend to do with her now?’
‘Have no fears whatsoever on that score, Dmitry Fyodorovich,’ the prosecutor replied immediately, with evident haste, ‘so far we’ve no cause to inconvenience in any way the lady for whom you express so much concern. I trust this will remain so… In fact, we’ll do everything we possibly can in this regard. You may rest absolutely assured of that.’
‘Gentlemen, thank you, I knew all along in spite of everything that you were fair and honest men. That’s taken a load off my mind… Well, what shall we do now? I’m ready.’
‘Right, well, we’d better get a move on. We must get down to questioning the witnesses without delay. We are duty-bound to do this in your presence, and therefore…’
‘How about some tea first?’ interrupted Nikolai Parfenovich. ‘I think we’ve earned it!’
It was decided that if there was some tea ready downstairs (Mikhail Makarovich had, in all probability, gone to have some), it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a glass and then continue with the proceedings and postpone a formal break for tea and snacks until there was a more convenient moment. Tea had in fact been made downstairs, and some was soon brought up to them. At first Mitya declined the glass of tea which Nikolai Parfenovich kindly offered him, but later he asked for one him
self and drank it eagerly. On the whole, he had a strangely exhausted look about him. One would have thought that, with his enormous physical stamina, he would have taken a night of revelry, even one filled with the most turbulent of emotions, in his stride. But he felt he could hardly sit straight, and at times everything appeared to sway in front of his eyes. ‘It won’t be long before I start raving,’ he thought to himself.
8
THE WITNESSES’ EVIDENCE. THE BAIRN
THE interrogation of the witnesses commenced. However, we shall not continue our story in as much detail as hitherto, and we shall therefore omit Nikolai Parfenovich’s instructions to each of the witnesses in turn to testify truly and conscientiously, and his warning that they would be required subsequently to repeat their testimony under oath; nor shall we describe how each witness was asked to sign a record of his testimony, and so on and so forth. We shall merely note one thing, namely, that the main point to which the attention of all the witnesses was directed was the matter of the three thousand roubles, that is, whether it was actually three thousand or fifteen hundred, on the first occasion a month ago, and whether it had been three thousand or fifteen hundred during Dmitry Fyodorovich’s second bout of revelry, on the night of the murder. Alas, all the statements without exception incriminated Mitya; not one was in his favour, and some even contained new, quite amazing evidence which contradicted his statements. The first person to be questioned was Trifon Borisych. He appeared before the interrogators without any trepidation; on the contrary, he wore an expression of uncompromising and severe indignation against the accused, which undoubtedly created an impression of absolute veracity and personal integrity. He testified in a restrained manner, spoke succinctly, waited until he was asked, and replied precisely and after due deliberation. He declared firmly and without hesitation that not less than three thousand must have been spent a month ago, and what’s more anyone present would confirm that he had heard about the three thousand from ‘Mitry Fyodorych’ himself: ‘The money that he squandered just on the gypsies! That alone would have been over a thousand, I shouldn’t wonder.’
The Karamazov Brothers Page 76