The Brothers Karamazov (57 page)

“Looking at you, I decided to go through with it.”

I stared at him in surprise.

“Why? How could a minor incident like that make you decide to take such a fateful step?” I cried, throwing up my hands in bewilderment.

“My decision has been ripening within me for three years,” he told me, “and your duel has only provided the final impetus. Looking at you, I became envious,” he added grimly.

“They may not even believe you,” I said; “it’s been fourteen years, after all.”

“I have irrefutable proof,” he said, “which I will present.”

I wept then and put my arms around him and kissed him.

“Tell me, tell me,” he said then, as if everything were suddenly up to me, “what about my wife and children? My wife may die of grief and the children, although they will not lose their birthright and their estate, will always be the children of a convict serving a life sentence. What a picture of their father they will have to carry in their hearts forever!”

I had nothing to say to that.

“And leaving them forever? Because I’ll never come back, of course.”

I sat there and whispered a prayer under my breath. I got up. I was frightened.

“So what do you say?” he asked, looking at me.

“Go,” I said to him, “tell people what you did. Everything will pass and the truth alone will remain. Your children will understand when they grow up; they will appreciate the nobility of your great resolution.”

He left, and he seemed to have really made up his mind then. But he came back to me; and for two weeks after that, he kept coming back every evening, still preparing himself, still unable to make himself go through with it. It was terribly hard on me too. One day, for instance, he came in and said with great fervor:

“I know it will be heaven for me the moment I confess. For fourteen years it has been hell. I want to suffer for what I have done. I will accept that suffering and I will begin to live. In the world you can go far under false pretenses, but lies will never bring you back to the fold. For, as things are now, I don’t dare love my own children, let alone my fellow men. O Lord, I so hope that my children will understand the price I have paid in suffering for what I have done, and will not condemn me. God lies not in strength but in truth.”

“Everybody will understand your act of expiation,” I said, “and if they don’t do so right away, they will understand later, because you are obeying not man-made laws but supreme truth and justice.”

He left me then, looking reassured and calm, but the next day he appeared pale and irritated again and said sarcastically:

“Each time I come here, you stare at me with great curiosity and I can almost hear you thinking: ‘He still hasn’t done it!’ Wait, don’t be in such a hurry to despise me; it’s not as easy as you imagine. In fact, I may still decide not to do it at all. For I am pretty sure that you won’t denounce me in any case, or will you?”

I had never stared at him with curiosity; indeed, if anything, I was rather afraid to look into his face at all. I was in a state verging on exhaustion myself and my heart was full of sorrow. I did not sleep well, thinking of him at night.

“I have just left my wife,” he went on. “Do you have any idea what the word ‘wife’ means? As I was leaving, my children called out to me: ‘Come back soon, papa, and read us more from the 
Children’s Magazine
!’ No, I see that you cannot begin to imagine what it all feels like. We learn nothing from our neighbor’s afflictions.”

His eyes flashed, the corners of his lips quivered. He brought his fist down on the table so hard that the things on it jumped. It was the first time I had seen this self-controlled man let himself go like this.

“Must I really do it?” he cried. “Is it really indispensable? Why, no one has been condemned for my crime, no one has been sentenced to hard labor because of me. You know it was of natural causes that the servant died. And I have already paid with my suffering for the blood I shed. Besides, they won’t believe me, despite all the proofs I bring them. Must I really give myself up, even if I am willing to go on suffering all my life for the life I took? Can’t I avoid hurting my wife and children? Would it be fair to them to drag them to their perdition along with me? Perhaps we have been wrong, both of us? What is the right course? And if there is a right course, do people know which it is? Will they recognize it? Will they respect it?”

I thought to myself: “My God—here he is, at such a moment, worrying about whether people will respect him . . .” And I suddenly felt such infinite pity for him that I believe I would willingly have shared his predicament if only it could have made things a bit easier for him. I saw that he was on the brink of madness. I was horrified by what I saw, because now it was no longer with my reason alone that I realized what his decision meant to him, but with my whole living being.

“Go on, you decide!” he shouted.

“Tell them,” I whispered. My voice failed me, but I whispered the words firmly. I took the New Testament and made him read the Gospel of St. John, Chapter XII, Verse 24, which I had read just before he had come in: “Verily, verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

“That’s true,” he said with a smile, a bitter smile, though. “It’s quite incredible all the things that one comes across in that book. That makes it very convenient for thrusting under people’s noses on all sorts of occasions. I wonder who really wrote all those things? Were they written by men?”

“The Holy Spirit wrote them,” I said.

“It doesn’t cost you much to pay lip service.”

He smiled again, but now almost with hatred in his look.

I took the book out of his hand and opened it at another place: the Epistle to the Hebrews, Chapter X, Verse 31. I handed it to him.

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” he read and flung the book violently away. I saw that he was trembling.

“A frightening verse . . . Well, you certainly know how to pick them!” He got up.

“Good-by, then. Perhaps I won’t be back again—see you in heaven. So, fourteen years ago I fell ‘into the hands of the living God’—that’s how those fourteen years are to be described. And tomorrow I’ll beg those ‘hands of the living God’ to let me go . . .”

I felt like hugging and kissing him, but I didn’t dare—his face was all twisted and his gaze was somber.

He walked out of the room. “My God,” I thought, “the things this man will have to face now!” I hurried to the icon, went down on my knees, and wept before the image of the Mother of God, who so readily intercedes for us and comes to our rescue. I was still there, kneeling and praying, the tears rolling down my cheeks, when suddenly the door opened and there he was again. I was stunned to see him.

“Where have you been?” I asked him.

“I . . . I think I forgot something here,” he said, “my handkerchief or something . . . But even if I didn’t forget anything, let me sit down for a minute.”

He took a chair and sat down. “You sit down too,” he said, as I was standing in front of him. I did. So we sat there, both of us, for perhaps two whole minutes, he looking at me fixedly all the time. Suddenly, and I can still see the way he looked at that moment, half smiling, he got up, hugged me hard, and kissed me.

“Remember this, Zinovy,” he said, “my coming back to you for a second time. I want you to remember this; do you hear, Zinovy?”

It was the first time he had ever called me by my Christian name.

He left. “Tomorrow . . .” I thought.

And so it was. I did not know then that the next day was his birthday. I had not been out at all recently, so no one could have told me. Every year on that day there was a great reception at his house attended by practically the whole town. This year too, it was the same.

And then he did it. Immediately after dinner, he stepped into the middle of the room with a sheet of paper in his hand. He explained that it was an official statement addressed to the highest local authorities and that, since those highest authorities were present there in his house, he would read the document aloud for everyone to hear. And, as everybody listened, he read a full account of his crime, without omitting a single detail.

“I cast myself out from the company of men, for I am a monster. But God has visited me now and I want to suffer for what I have done,” were the final words of his statement.

Then he went and fetched all the evidence he had to prove his crime. He laid out on the table all the items he had preserved during those fourteen years: the gold ornaments he had taken from his victim’s drawer to avert suspicion from himself, her cross and the locket he had removed from her neck after he had killed her, with the portrait of the man she loved inside it, her notebook and two letters—one from that man to her, announcing his imminent return, and the other her unfinished answer to it, which she had left on her desk, obviously intending to finish it and mail it the next morning. But why had he kept these two letters for fourteen years, instead of destroying them as incriminating evidence?

Although everyone present was entirely bewildered and horrified by his story, listening to it with immense curiosity, they all absolutely refused to accept what he said as true, and they looked at him as though he were a sick man. And, in a few days, almost everyone in town had decided that, indeed, the poor man had gone mad. Of course, the police and the legal authorities could not ignore the confession altogether and had to start a criminal investigation, but it was soon dropped on the grounds that even if the evidence presented—the letters and other articles—could be proved authentic, it would still not be sufficient for a conviction. She could simply have entrusted him with those things herself, since it was known that they had been acquainted.

Later I heard that the items presented as evidence were identified by the victim’s friends and relatives and that there could be no doubt about their authenticity. But, again, nothing came of it for, five days later, the whole town learned that the wretched man had become seriously ill and that his life was in danger. What his sickness was I still cannot explain very well; some claimed that it was his heart, but then it was announced that, on his wife’s insistence, a group of doctors had examined him and had discovered early symptoms of mental disorder.

I did not tell anything of what I knew to anybody, although many people were quick to question me; but when I tried to go and visit my friend, they would not let me near him. His wife especially was adamant.

“It is you who brought it on,” she said. “He was always gloomy, but recently everybody noticed his strange excitement and the peculiarities in his behavior. The things you have been saying to him must have had something to do with it—he practically never left your house during the past month.”

And it was not just his wife; soon everyone in town was blaming me for the whole business. “It’s all your fault,” they said to me. I did not answer them. In fact, I rejoiced inwardly, because I felt that God had taken mercy on that man, who had risen up against himself and had asked for the punishment he deserved. I did not believe at all in his insanity. Eventually they did let me in to see him. He had asked for me himself, insisting that he wanted to say good-by to me. When I saw him, I realized immediately that it was not a matter of days, but of hours. He was weak, his face was yellow, his hands trembled, and he breathed with difficulty. But there was joy in his eyes and deep serenity in his expression.

“It’s done!” he told me. “I’ve been longing to see you all this time, Zinovy. Why didn’t you come before?”

I did not want to tell him that they had not let me come near him.

“God has taken pity on me and is calling me. I know I am dying, but I feel happy and at peace with the world for the first time in many years. As soon as I had done what I had to do, it was heaven. I feel I have the right now to love and to kiss my children. No one believed me—my wife, the judges—no one. Nor will my children ever believe what I did. I see in this a sign of God’s mercy to my children. When I die, my name will remain without stain for them. Now I feel the presence of God and my heart rejoices. I have done my duty.”

He could not speak anymore; he was gasping for breath. He just pressed my hand and looked at me with radiant eyes. We were not allowed long together anyway, for his wife kept looking in every minute. Still, he did manage to whisper to me:

“Do you remember my coming back for the second time that night, around midnight, when I told you to remember my second visit? Shall I tell you why I came back? I came back to kill you.”

I shuddered.

“After I left you the first time, I went out into the darkness and roamed the streets, a battle raging within me. And all of a sudden I hated you, hated you so much I couldn’t stand it. ‘He’s the only one in my way,’ I thought. ‘He is my judge and, since he knows everything, I cannot avoid my ordeal as long as he exists.’ It was not that I was afraid that you would denounce me to the authorities—that never even occurred to me. ‘But how,’ I thought, ‘can I ever face him if I don’t confess publicly now?’ Even if you had been at the other end of the earth, the mere thought that you were alive and judging me would have been absolutely unbearable. I hated you as though you were the cause of it all, as though everything had happened through your fault. I went back to your house, remembering that I had seen a dagger lying on your table. I sat down and asked you to sit down and then, for more than a minute, I deliberated. If I had killed you, that murder would have doomed me anyway, even if I had not confessed my other crime. But that was not what I was thinking during that minute; it didn’t even interest me. I only hated you so that every fiber in me yearned for vengeance. But God vanquished the devil in my heart. I want you to know, though, that you have never been so close to death.”

A week later, he died. The whole town accompanied his coffin to the grave, where the Bishop delivered a moving oration. People spoke with deep sympathy of the terrible sickness that had cut short his life. And after the funeral everyone in town turned against me. People stopped receiving me altogether. Eventually, though, at first a few individuals and then more and more people came to believe that the confession he had made was true. Then they started coming to me and questioning me with great eagerness and curiosity, for people enjoy witnessing the fall and disgrace of the upright. But I would not answer them, and soon afterward, I left the town for good.