The Brothers Karamazov (87 page)

*

Be quiet my heart,

Resign yourself and suffer!

*

Well, shall I go on?” he suddenly interrupted himself, growing gloomy again.

“Please, we would appreciate it very much,” the examining magistrate said.

Chapter 5: The Third Ordeal

MITYA SOUNDED sullen, but he was visibly trying even harder not to leave out of his account even the minutest detail. He told them how he had climbed over the fence into his father’s garden, how he had stood under his father’s window, and all that had happened there. Very clearly and precisely, as if carefully choosing the right words, he described the great urge he had had to find out whether Grushenka was in there with his father or not.

Strangely enough, though, both the prosecutor and the examining magistrate now listened to him with apparent indifference, looking at him very coldly and hardly asking him any questions. Mitya looked in surprise at their faces, unable to make out what they were thinking. “They must be offended by something I said, and now they’re angry with me. But the hell with them. I don’t give a damn,” he said to himself. Even when he told them about his knocking on the window, the “signal” that would make his father believe that Grushenka had arrived, neither the examining magistrate nor the prosecutor seemed to pay any attention to the word “signal,” as if they didn’t understand the importance of it. Mitya was quite struck by this. When, after that, he described the moment when he had seen his father’s face peering out of the window and, overwhelmed by loathing, had pulled the pestle out of his pocket, he deliberately cut his story short and sat there staring at the wall, knowing that their eyes were still fixed on him.

“So,” Nelyudov said, “you pulled the weapon out of your pocket. What happened after that?”

“After that? After that I killed him . . . I whacked him on the top of the head and split his skull . . . Isn’t that what happened according to you?” Mitya looked at him with angrily flashing eyes. His anger, which had all but subsided, flared up with the utmost violence.

“According to us?” Nelyudov said. “Well, tell us what happened according to you.”

Mitya lowered his eyes. A long silence followed.

“This is what happened according to me,” he said in a very quiet voice. “Perhaps God was moved by the tears of someone praying for me, perhaps the entreaties of my late mother, perhaps a heavenly spirit who came to my rescue—I don’t know, but the devil was defeated. I rushed away from the window and started running toward the garden fence . . . My father was alarmed by the noise and must have caught sight of me, for he reeled away from the window—that, I remember clearly. As for me, I ran across the garden and was already sitting astride the fence when Gregory got to me . . .”

At last Mitya looked at his interrogators. They seemed to be listening to him with perfectly serene detachment. A paroxysm of rage seized Mitya.

“I’m sure that at this very minute you’re inwardly laughing at me,” he said suddenly.

“What makes you think so?” Nelyudov wanted to know.

“You don’t believe one word of what I’ve told you. I appreciate full well that I’ve reached the crucial point in my story. The old man is now lying there with his skull bashed in, but, having made the dramatic confession of my own urge to kill him and even of pulling the pestle out of my pocket, I’m now asking you to believe that I suddenly decided to run away from the window . . . It must sound like some crazy story to you, like some ballad in prose, and, of course, you’re not at all likely to believe a fellow! Ah, gentlemen, I’m sure you’re having a great deal of fun at my expense!”

And he swung around in his chair so violently that it cracked.

“Did you notice by any chance,” the prosecutor said, appearing to pay no attention to Mitya’s agitation, “as you were running away from the window, whether the door at the other end of the house, the one giving onto the garden, I mean, was open or closed?”

“It wasn’t open.”

“Did you say it wasn’t?”

“It was locked. Who could possibly have opened it? Wait, that door . . .” Mitya seemed to remember something. “Why, did you find it open?”

“It was open.”

“Who could have opened it then, unless it was you yourselves?” Mitya seemed extremely puzzled all of a sudden.

“The door was open and your father’s murderer must most certainly have entered the house through it and, when he had killed him, left by it,” the prosecutor said, letting the words roll slowly out of his mouth and pronouncing every syllable carefully. “We are absolutely satisfied that the victim was struck from inside the room and 
not from outside the window
. That is obvious from the investigation that was made on the premises; the position of the body, and everything, leads us to this conclusion. There is not the slightest doubt about it.”

Mitya seemed amazed by what he was hearing.

“But how is that possible?” he shouted, in confusion. “I . . . I never went in . . . I’m sure of what I said—that door was closed. It was closed all the time I was in the garden, up to the moment I ran away. I only stood under the window, and I only saw him through the window, that’s all, that’s all . . . I remember everything, up to the very last second. And if I didn’t remember seeing the door with my own eyes, I would still know that it was shut, because no one knew those ‘signals’ except for myself and Smerdyakov, and my father, of course. And you can be sure that my father would never have let anyone in without the signals.”

“What signals? What signals are you talking about?” the prosecutor said with sudden, almost hysterical eagerness, his dignified bearing dissolving before Mitya’s eyes.

“I see—this is something you didn’t know then.” Mitya winked at him sarcastically. “And what if I refuse to tell you? How would you ever find out then? Only the dead man, Smerdyakov, and I knew about those signals . . . Oh, God knew of them too, but I’m sure He wouldn’t tell you. And there’s no doubt about it—it’s quite a curious little detail; quite a few theories could be neatly constructed on it. Well, don’t despair, gentlemen—I’ll let you in on this little secret. I can see that you have all kinds of silly ideas about things. And you have somewhat underestimated the man you’re dealing with on this occasion. For you’re dealing with a suspect who is perfectly willing to give you evidence that will incriminate him! Simply because, unlike you, I happen to have a true sense of honor!”

The prosecutor swallowed all these bitter pills. He was trembling with impatience to learn about the new fact. So Mitya told them in great detail about the signals his father had devised for Smerdyakov; he explained the meaning of the various sequences of knocks, even demonstrated them by banging on the table. And when Nelyudov asked whether he himself had knocked on his father’s window, Mitya said he had used the signal signifying that Grushenka had arrived, and banged it out on the table again.

“So, take that and try to build your tower on it,” Mitya said, again turning contemptuously away from them.

“So only you, your late father, and Smerdyakov knew the signals? No one else?” Nelyudov asked again.

“Yes, the servant Smerdyakov and, besides him, only God. I would write down what I just said about God knowing it too. Besides, you will soon need God’s help yourselves.”

Of course, they wanted that noted down, but while the clerk was writing it, the prosecutor said, as if the thought had just occurred to him:

“Why, since Smerdyakov knew these signals too, and inasmuch as you categorically deny having anything to do with the death of your father, couldn’t it have been Smerdyakov who tapped out the agreed signal and, when your father opened the door, perpetrated the crime?”

Mitya gave him a deeply sarcastic look that immediately turned into one of infinite loathing.

“Bravo! Once again you’ve caught the fox by the tail! Ha-ha-ha! You know, I can hear you thinking, prosecutor! Now, for instance, you thought that I would clutch desperately at the straw you offered me, hold on to it, start shouting at the top of my voice, ‘It was Smerdyakov, it was Smerdyakov, he’s the murderer!’ Admit now, that that’s exactly what you expected, and if you do, I will continue.”

But the prosecutor would not admit anything; he waited in silence.

“Well, you’re wrong anyway. I’m not going to start accusing Smerdyakov.”

“And you don’t even suspect him?”

“Do you?”

“Suspicion has fallen on him too.”

Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor.

“Now let’s stop playing games,” he said grimly. “Listen to this. At the very start, indeed, almost the second I ran out from behind that curtain, when you arrived, the thought flashed through my mind, ‘It’s Smerdyakov!’ Then I sat here shouting that I was innocent of my father’s murder and thinking, ‘Smerdyakov, Smerdyakov.’ And I couldn’t get Smerdyakov out of my head. And just now I thought again, ‘Smerdyakov!’ but only for a second, for right after that I thought, ‘No, not Smerdyakov.’ He’s not a man to do a thing like that!”

“Is there someone else you suspect, then?” Nelyudov asked cautiously.

“I don’t know who did it or whether it was the work of God or of the devil, but it was not Smerdyakov,” Mitya said with conviction.

“What makes you so sure it couldn’t be Smerdyakov?”

“It’s an inner conviction, the feeling I have about the man. Smerdyakov is a man of the lowest human type and he’s a coward. He’s not just a coward: he is an essence and combination of all existing forms of cowardice that has been made to walk on two legs. He was born of a hen. Whenever he spoke to me, he trembled for fear I might kill him, although I never even raised my hand to him. He would fall at my feet and weep. You see these boots? Well, he would kiss them, begging me ‘not to frighten him’! What kind of talk is that for a man? In fact, all I ever did to him was to offer him money. He’s a chicken who suffers from the falling sickness and a weak mind; an eight-year-old boy could give him a beating. No, Smerdyakov is no killer! Besides, he wasn’t even interested in money. He wouldn’t accept presents from me . . . And why would he kill the old man? In fact, it’s very possible he was his illegitimate son. Did you know that, by the way?”

“Yes, we have heard that story. But it proves nothing: you too are your father’s son, and that never prevented you from telling everybody that you wanted to kill him.”

“Bang! You’ve scored a direct hit! But what a dirty blow that was! Still, I don’t really care. But, gentlemen, doesn’t it make you feel a little sick with yourselves to say a thing like that straight to my face? It’s despicable of you because I myself told you that in the first place. Well, I not only wanted to kill him, but I could have done it, and I’ve even volunteered the information that, in fact, I almost did do it. But I did not kill him. I was prevented by my guardian angel and that’s something you’ve forgotten to take into consideration . . . And so your behavior is pretty low and disgusting. For I did not kill him, I did not, I did not! Do you hear me, prosecutor, I did not kill him!”

Mitya was gasping for breath. During all the questioning, he had not reached such a peak of agitation before.

“But what did Smerdyakov say to you?” he asked them after a pause. “Am I allowed to ask you that question?”

“You may ask us anything you wish,” the prosecutor answered in a cold, stern tone, “as long as it has a bearing on the facts of the case. As a matter of fact, it is our duty to answer any questions you may ask. Now, we found your father’s servant Smerdyakov, about whom you are inquiring, lying unconscious in his bed in the midst of a very violent epileptic seizure, which was perhaps his tenth consecutive attack. The medical officer who accompanied us to your father’s house and who examined Smerdyakov while we were there told us that he may not even live till morning.”

“In that case it was the devil who killed my father!” Mitya blurted out. Despite everything, he had still, up to that very second, kept asking himself whether it might not be Smerdyakov.

“We shall come back to that later,” Nelyudov said after a moment’s hesitation, “but wouldn’t you like to go on with your statement in the meantime?”

Mitya said he would like a rest. His request was courteously granted. When he had rested, he resumed his statement. But he obviously felt depressed. He was tired and hurt, and felt morally degraded. Besides, the prosecutor, as if deliberately trying to annoy him, started picking on what Mitya considered irrelevancies. After Mitya had described how, sitting astride the fence, he had used the pestle to hit Gregory on the head when the old man had grabbed his left foot, and how, after hitting him, he had jumped back down into the garden to the wounded man, the prosecutor stopped him and asked him to describe the manner in which he had sat on the fence.

“Why, astride, like this . . . one leg here and the other there . . .”

“And what about the pestle?”

“The pestle was in my hand.”

“Wasn’t it in your pocket? Are you certain of that? Did you swing at him hard then?”

“I suppose it was pretty hard. But what are you getting at?”

“I wonder whether you would sit on your chair just as you sat on the fence and show us how you took your swing and in what direction.”

“What is all this? Are you trying to make a joke out of it?” Mitya said, looking scornfully at his interrogator, but the prosecutor did not bat an eye. Mitya then turned abruptly, sat astride his chair, and swung his arm: “Here, that’s how I hit him! That’s how I struck him down! Now, what else would you like to know?”

“Thank you. But would you be so kind as to explain to us what really prompted you to jump back into the garden? What did you actually have in mind when you did that?”

“Oh, hell . . . I jumped down to look at the man I’d struck. I don’t know why.”

“And you did so while in a state of tremendous agitation and while trying to escape?”

“Yes, while in a state of agitation and trying to escape.”

“Did you want to help him?”

“Who said anything about helping . . . Although, perhaps . . . I don’t know really.”

“You didn’t know very well what you were doing, then? Might we even say that you were acting unconsciously at the time?”