The Brothers Karamazov (85 page)

“Please, Mr. Karamazov, calm yourself, please,” Nelyudov said very quietly, obviously trying to counteract Mitya’s agitation with his own cool detachment. “Before we continue, I would like you to tell us, if you are willing to, whether it is correct that you disliked your late father and that you were constantly quarreling with him . . . If I am right, you yourself said here just fifteen minutes ago that you wanted to kill him. You actually said, ‘I did not kill him, but I wanted to.’”

“Did I say that? Well, that’s very possible, gentlemen! Because I did want to kill him, many, many times; I did, alas I did . . .”

“So you did want to kill him? Now, would you be willing to tell us what actually caused you to hate your father so much?”

“What is there to explain?” Mitya said gloomily, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ve never hidden the way I felt about him—the whole town knows it; I’ve said it often enough in the tavern. And not so long ago I talked of how I felt about my father at Elder Zosima’s, in the monastery . . . And later that day I attacked and almost killed my father and then, before witnesses, promised to go back and kill him. For a whole month, I kept repeating it all over town. Oh, there are a thousand witnesses who will tell you that! That is a fact and it speaks, it shouts, for itself . . . but when it comes to inner feelings, that’s quite a different matter, gentlemen,” Mitya said frowning, “and I don’t really think you have the right to ask me about my feelings. Oh, I understand that you have the official authority to question me, but not about any intimate thoughts I may have had. But . . . but since I have never hidden my feelings and have revealed them to anyone who was interested, I won’t make a secret of them now. You see, I realize very well that there is overwhelming evidence against me: I went around telling everyone I was going to kill him and now that he has been killed, who else should be suspected but me? Ha-ha! I don’t blame you for suspecting me, gentlemen. I don’t blame you at all! In fact, I’m completely dumbfounded and bewildered myself, for I cannot imagine who but me could have killed him! Yes, that’s the truth—if I didn’t do it, who did? I want you to tell me—indeed, I demand that you tell me: Where was he killed? How was he killed and what weapon was used? Tell me!”

His eyes were darting back and forth from the examining magistrate to the prosecutor.

“We found him in his room, on the floor, lying on his back, with his skull broken,” the prosecutor said.

“How horrible, horrible!” Mitya shuddered and, leaning forward, covered his face with his hands.

“So let us continue,” Nelyudov said. “What, then, was the immediate reason for your hatred for your father? You did say publicly that it was jealousy, didn’t you?”

“There was jealousy too, but there were other things as well.”

“Arguments about money?”

“Yes, money came into it too.”

“Is it correct that you had an argument specifically about three thousand rubles that you claimed he still owed you as part of your inheritance?”

“Three!” Mitya cried indignantly. “Much, much more than that—more than six, perhaps more than ten thousand rubles! I have been screaming about that around town, too! But finally I decided to let him off if he would give me only three thousand. So the envelope with the three thousand rubles that he had prepared for Grushenka and was keeping under his pillow, which I knew about, I considered my property; it was just as if he’d stolen it from me—that’s exactly how I felt about it!”

The prosecutor and the examining magistrate exchanged significant glances. The prosecutor even winked discreetly.

“We’ll come back to that,” Magistrate Nelyudov said quickly; “in the meantime, I would like the clerk to write down this point, namely, that you considered the money in that envelope as your rightful property. Is that correct?”

“Go ahead, have it written down. Why, do you imagine that I can’t see that it is one more piece of evidence against me? I can, but I’m not afraid of any evidence or of telling you things that will further incriminate me in your eyes. I feel that you have completely misjudged me, gentlemen,” Mitya said sadly, sounding bitterly disappointed now. “I am an honorable man. A man who has done many vile, despicable things, but an honorable man nevertheless. I don’t know how to explain it to you, but most of the trouble in my life has come precisely from my yearning to be honorable. I have been—if I may put it this way—a martyr for honor, a kind of Diogenes going about with a lantern and looking for honor in the dark . . . But somehow I always ended up doing some terrible, unspeakable thing, just as we all do . . . No, no, I didn’t mean that—it’s only so for me, for me alone! . . . Gentlemen, I have a terrible headache,” he said, knitting his brows in pain. “Let me tell you this: I hated his looks—he looked false, conceited; he always sneered at sacred things; he believed in nothing; he was so horrible, disgusting . . . But now that he is dead, I feel differently.”

“In what way differently?”

“No, not really differently, but I’m sorry I hated him the way I did.”

“Do you repent it now?”

“No, repent isn’t the right word—don’t write it down. I’m no good myself, gentlemen. I’m pretty ugly too and so I really had no right to find him so revolting. That, I think, is true and you can write it down.”

Great sadness descended on Mitya. For some time a feeling of gloom had gradually been creeping over him as he answered the questions of the examining magistrate. And then, just at this moment, there was another unexpected interruption.

When they had torn Grushenka from his embrace and led her away, they had taken her only two rooms away from the blue room where Mitya was now being interrogated. It was a small room just beyond the largest room of the guest house, where they had been singing and dancing during the night. With her there was only the terribly frightened and bewildered Maximov, who clung to her as if looking to her for protection. A man with a brass badge on his chest stood by the door of their room. Grushenka, who until then had been sitting quietly crying, suddenly felt she could not stand it any longer. She jumped up and, with the shriek of a wounded animal, rushed out of the room so unexpectedly that no one had time to stop her, and dashed straight toward where Mitya was. Her shriek reached him. His whole body shook crazily. He leapt to his feet, and, with a wild responsive howl, not knowing what he was doing, rushed to meet her.

But they were stopped before they reached each other, although they did see each other. Mitya was grabbed by the arms, but he shook himself loose and it finally took three or four men to hold him. He watched helplessly as they dragged her away, crying and stretching out her hands to him. After the incident was over and Mitya was back at the table facing Nelyudov, he heard himself asking him in hoarse barks:

“What do you want with her? Why did you do that to her? She has nothing, nothing, to do with it!”

For ten minutes or so, Nelyudov and the prosecutor tried to calm him, but to no avail. Then Makarov, who had been out of the room for a moment, came back and announced to the prosecutor in a loud and excited voice:

“She’s been moved farther away. She’s downstairs now . . . But, gentlemen, would you please allow me to say something to this unhappy man? I’ll say it here, in your presence, gentlemen.”

“Please go ahead, Mr. Makarov; under the circumstances, we have no objection.”

“Listen, Dmitry, listen, my friend,” Inspector Makarov said, now looking at Mitya with warm, almost paternal compassion. “I took your friend Grushenka downstairs and put her in the care of the innkeeper’s daughters . . . And that old fellow Maximov is there with her, too. Listen, I have persuaded her to be quiet and explained to her that you have to clear yourself and that she must give you a chance to do so and not make it harder for you by making you even more miserable and wretched, since that will only cause you to say the wrong things and hurt your case. Well, in short, I explained it to her and she understood. You know, my boy, she’s such an intelligent girl and she’s really good too. She even wanted to kiss my old hands so that I’d help you, and it was she who asked me to tell you not to worry about her now. I want to be able to go back to her and tell her that you are not worrying about her, that you are all right. I was wrong about her—she is a good, true Christian. Yes, gentlemen, she is a good soul and she is not to blame for anything! So Dmitry, my boy, shall I tell her not to worry, that you’ll be calm now?”

The kind-hearted Inspector Makarov had said much more than he was supposed to, but he had been deeply moved by the human sorrow he had seen and he even had tears in his eyes. Mitya jumped up impulsively and moved toward him.

“Excuse me, gentlemen, please, just one second,” he cried, turning to Makarov. “Ah, you’re such a good, decent man, Mr. Makarov, so kind, a real angel! Thank you, thank you for her! I shall be calm. I shall even be happy now, and I beg you to tell her that. Yes, please tell her that I am gay and feel like laughing now that I know she has a guardian angel like you . . . And, as soon as I get through with this business here, I’ll hurry to her right away—she can count on it and she should wait for me! Gentlemen,” he said, turning to the prosecutor and the examining magistrate, “now I will open up my whole soul to you, so that we can finish it all in a second, and then we’ll all have a good laugh about that absurd suspicion . . . Gentlemen, that woman is the queen of my heart! Please let me tell you this secret of mine . . . because I see I am in the presence here of most honorable men. She is my light, the most sacred thing in my life! Didn’t you hear her cry that she would follow me to the gallows? Follow me, a penniless beggar, a clumsy, dishonored brute! How can I have deserved to be loved enough for her to follow me to my doom? She is proud, and completely innocent of everything, and she threw herself at your feet to beg for me! How could I help adoring her, how could I stop myself from shouting the way I just did and hurrying to her? Please forgive me for that, gentlemen. Oh, I feel very much better now.”

Dmitry sank into his chair, hid his face in his hands, and sobbed aloud. But these were happy sobs and he recovered quickly. The old inspector seemed pleased and so apparently were the others: they probably felt that the interrogation had entered a new phase. Mitya watched old Makarov leave the room and he seemed actually happy as he addressed his interrogators.

“And now, gentlemen, I am entirely at your disposal. I’m sure that, if it hadn’t been for all these little obstacles, we would have already come to an understanding. But I’m drifting off again . . . I’m all yours, gentlemen, but I swear there must be mutual trust between us—you must trust me as I trust you—for otherwise we will never finish with it. I say this for your own sakes—understand that! Now let’s get down to brass tacks, gentlemen, and, above all, stop digging into my soul—don’t lacerate it with irrelevancies. Ask me about facts and I will answer everything to your satisfaction. And to hell with the irrelevancies!”

And the interrogation was resumed.

Chapter 4: The Second Ordeal

YOU CAN hardly imagine how encouraging it is for us to see you so eager to cooperate,” Nelyudov said with evident pleasure reflected in his large, protruding, very short-sighted, light-gray eyes, from which a few seconds before he had removed his glasses. “And I think you were right in what you said about mutual trust, without which, sometimes, it is impossible to get anywhere in cases as important as this one, unless the suspect is really eager and able to clear himself. For our part, we will do everything in our power to help you, and I’m sure you must have seen by now how we’re handling it. Do you approve of what I say, sir?” he asked, suddenly turning to the prosecutor.

“Certainly,” the prosecutor said, although his answer was rather cool compared with the examining magistrate’s enthusiasm.

I will note at this point that Nelyudov, who had only recently arrived in our town, had from the outset felt tremendous respect for our assistant public prosecutor and also had become very attached to him. He was perhaps the only man in the world, besides the prosecutor himself, to be convinced of the man’s extraordinary psychological endowments and oratorical talents, and he shared his conviction that he had not been properly appreciated by his superiors. He had heard of him while he was himself still in Petersburg.

And, in turn, the young examining magistrate was the only man in the whole world for whom the prosecutor with “unrecognized talents” had a sincere affection. On the way to Mokroye they had discussed the case ahead of them and now, sitting at the table, Nelyudov’s keen senses caught and understood every movement on the face of his senior colleague, every wink, every sound he made.

“Gentlemen, give me a chance to tell you everything myself and do not interrupt me to ask irrelevant questions,” Mitya said excitedly.

“Very good. I greatly appreciate your willingness to cooperate. Before we hear your statement, however, I would like to go over one more fact. Yesterday, at about five o’clock, you borrowed ten rubles from your friend Mr. Perkhotin, using your pistols as security—is that right?”

“Yes, I did pawn my pistols to him for ten rubles, and so what? As soon as I got back to town, I went and pawned them.”

“Did you say you came back? Had you been out of town, then?”

“Yes, about thirty miles away. Why, didn’t you know?”

The prosecutor and Nelyudov exchanged glances.

“In general, I would like you to begin your story with a systematic account of all your movements, starting with yesterday morning. I would, for instance, like to know why you went out of town, at what time, exactly, you left, and at what time you came back—that kind of fact, you see . . .”

“You should have asked me that to begin with.” Mitya laughed loudly. “Actually, it would be even more useful if I began not with yesterday morning, but with the morning of the day before, for then you would understand where I went and why. So, then, two days ago, I went to see Samsonov, the local merchant, to borrow three thousand rubles against excellent security. I needed the money urgently. Something had come up and I had to have that sum quickly . . .”