The Brothers Karamazov (89 page)

“What about my shirt? You want me to take it off too?” he asked sharply. But neither the prosecutor nor Nelyudov answered him, for they were both busy examining Mitya’s jacket, trousers, waistcoat, and cap. They were completely engrossed in what they were doing. “They’ve lost all restraint now. They don’t even bother to observe the most elementary rules of courtesy,” flashed through Mitya’s head.

“I’m asking you for the second time: do I have to take my shirt off too, yes or no?” he asked in an even sharper and more irritated tone.

“Don’t worry, we’ll let you know,” Nelyudov answered in what sounded, to Mitya at least, like a superior and supercilious tone.

All that time a lively conference had been going on in hushed tones between the two interrogators. They were examining large bloodstains on the back of the coat, especially down the left side. The blood had dried, but not to the point of becoming hard and crumbling. There were bloodstains on the back of the trousers too. Then Nelyudov, in the presence of the witnesses, ran his fingers along the lapels, the cuffs, and all the seams of the jacket and trousers, as though looking for something—money, of course. They did not even try to conceal from him that they suspected him of sewing money into his clothes. “They’re treating me like a petty thief now, not like an officer,” Mitya snarled under his breath. And all the time they kept exchanging observations with a surprising lack of concern for whether he could hear them or not. At one point the clerk, who had followed them behind the curtain too, and who was fussing around his superiors, suddenly called Nelyudov’s attention to Mitya’s cap, which was also being felt and fingered.

“Remember Gridenko, the rural clerk, sir? That fellow who, last summer, went to town to collect the wages for the whole office and later claimed that he had got drunk and lost the money—remember him, sir? Well, where did they find the money in the end? It was in the piping of his cap; all those hundred-ruble bills were tightly rolled up and sewn into the piping . . .”

The prosecutor and the examining magistrate remembered Gridenko’s trick very well and it was precisely for that reason that they had put Mitya’s cap aside, having decided that they would have to have it and the rest of Mitya’s clothes subjected to an even more thorough scrutiny later.

“Excuse me, what’s this?” Nelyudov suddenly exclaimed, noticing that the right cuff of Mitya’s shirt was turned up and soaked with blood. “What is it? Blood?”

“Certainly,” Mitya snapped.

“But what blood is it? And why was the cuff turned back?”

Mitya told him that his cuff had got soaked with blood while he was fussing over Gregory and that later he had decided to turn it back when he was washing at Perkhotin’s.

“Then you’ll have to take your shirt off too. That’s very important material evidence.”

The blood rushed to Mitya’s head. He turned red with fury.

“Do you want me to stand here naked, then?” he shouted.

“Don’t worry, we’ll do something about that. But in the meantime we would like you to remove your socks too.”

“You must be joking! Is that really necessary?” Mitya’s eyes flashed with fury.

“We have other things to do than joke with you,” Nelyudov snapped back.

“Well, if it’s really indispensable, I suppose . . .”

Mitya sat down on the bed and started pulling off his socks. He felt terribly ill at ease, naked in front of all these dressed men. In a strange way, being undressed somehow made him feel guilty before them and, what was even worse, he felt that now he had become their inferior and they had the right to despise him. “If everyone was undressed, it would be all right, but if it’s just me and they’re all looking on, it’s an insult.” These words flashed again and again through his mind. “It’s just like a dream—I’ve often been in this degrading position in dreams . . .” It was even more painful to him to take off his socks, because they were very dirty. So were his underclothes. And they all noticed it. What made it even more awful was that all his life he had somehow hated the sight of his feet, particularly his big toes, which he found absolutely hideous, and on the big toe of his right foot there was that horrible, rough flat nail that insisted on curling downward . . . And now all these people were going to see it all! The unbearable embarrassment caused him to become even more defiantly rude. He tore off his shirt impatiently.

“Anything else you would like to search? Please don’t let your discretion stop you.”

“No thanks. That’s all for the time being.”

“And, for the time being, am I supposed to wait naked?” Mitya said, his voice quivering with rage.

“Yes, for the moment, you will have to put up with it . . . Please sit down; if you wish, you may take the blanket off the bed and cover yourself with that . . . I’ll see what I can do.”

All the things were then examined by witnesses, and after that they drew up a report on the search. Finally Nelyudov left and Mitya’s clothes were carried out after him. The prosecutor left too. Mitya was now alone with the men guarding him. They stood there silently without taking their eyes off him. Feeling cold, he wrapped himself in the blanket. His bare feet would not stay under the blanket and kept peeping out, despite all Mitya’s efforts to keep them inside. It took Nelyudov a terribly long time to come back. “He’s doing it deliberately . . . like giving me a whipping . . . he’s treating me like a little dog,” Mitya muttered, gnashing his teeth. “And that other wretch, the prosecutor—he walked out because he felt it was sickening to look at me without clothes . . .” Mitya still hoped, however, that when they were through examining his clothes they would bring them back to him. But Nelyudov returned with a man who handed Mitya some strange clothes.

“Here are some clothes for you,” the examining magistrate said in a casual tone; “this is a suit that Mr. Kalganov is willing to sacrifice on this memorable occasion and he sends you a clean shirt too. By luck he had this change of clothes in his suitcase. And you can have back your own socks and underwear.”

Mitya was outraged.

“I don’t want someone else’s clothes!” he shouted threateningly. “Give me back my own things at once!”

“That’s impossible.”

“Give me my clothes, do you hear? To hell with Kalganov and his clothes!”

They reasoned with him for a long time and finally succeeded in calming him down. They explained to him at great length that the bloodstains on his clothes made them “material evidence,” that they could be presented as an “exhibit,” and that, indeed, even if they wanted to, they did not have the right to allow Mitya to keep them, for no one knew yet “what the results of the preliminary investigation will show.” Mitya finally accepted their explanations, stopped protesting, and gloomily began to dress. As he huriedly put on the unfamiliar clothes, he commented, however, that they were more expensive than his own clothes and that he did not want to “derive any personal profit” from the substitution. Besides, he found Kalganov’s clothes looked “humiliatingly tight” on him and asked whether he was supposed “to clown in them so you two can laugh at me.”

Again, they assured him that, although Mr. Kalganov was a little taller and somewhat slighter, he was exaggerating the difference in their builds, that the clothes fitted well enough, except perhaps the trousers, which were a bit too long. However, when Mitya put the jacket on, it was much too narrow in the shoulders.

“God damn it, men! Can’t you see that I can’t even button it!” Mitya grumbled. “And please go at once and tell Kalganov that it was not my idea to ask him for his clothes and that I look like a clown in them!”

“I’m sure he fully appreciates that and, besides, he asked me to tell you how sorry he is . . . No, not about the clothes not fitting you—he meant about the whole business . . .” Nelyudov said gently.

“He feels sorry for me, ha! You can tell him from me what he can do with his feelings! So where do we go now? Or am I to stay here?”

They asked him to come back “into the other room.” Mitya’s face was grim when he emerged from behind the curtain; he was shaking with indignation and tried not to look at anyone. In those clothes that did not belong to him, he felt completely disgraced and dishonored and was even ashamed before the uncouth men guarding him and before a vulgar peasant like Trifon, whose face suddenly appeared in the doorway, only to vanish at once. “He just wanted to have a peep at the clown,” the thought occurred to Mitya.

He sat down in the same chair that he had occupied before. He now had a strong feeling that everything was absurd and nightmarish and that he had gone insane.

“Why, I suppose the next step will be to order that I be flogged, for what else is there left?” he snarled, glaring at the prosecutor. He turned away from Nelyudov altogether, as if he had decided not even to address him. “He examined my socks so eagerly; the pig even ordered my underwear to be turned inside out for everyone to see how dirty it was—that’s too much . . .”

“Well, now we will have to proceed with the examination of the witnesses,” Nelyudov said, as though answering the question Mitya had addressed to the prosecutor.

“Hm . . . yes,” the prosecutor said, as if trying to work out something.

“You see, Mr. Karamazov,” Nelyudov went on, “we’ve done everything within our power to help you clear yourself. Since, however, you categorically refuse to tell us anything about where you obtained the sum found in your possession, we are now forced . . .”

“What stone is that in your ring?” Mitya asked him dreamily, pointing at one of the large rings on Nelyudov’s right hand.

“The ring?” the magistrate asked, surprised.

“This one here, on your middle finger, this stone with the little yellow veins, what’s it called?” Mitya insisted in the irritated tone of a child about to have a temper tantrum.

“That’s a smoky topaz,” Nelyudov said with a smile. “Would you like to have a look at it? Shall I take it off?”

“No, no, don’t take it off!” Mitya shouted fiercely, as if suddenly awakened; he was furious with himself. “I don’t want your damned ring . . . You know, you have defiled my soul, the two of you! How can you people imagine for a second that, if I had really killed my father, I would have denied it and told all these lies just to get away with it? No, that is not the kind of man Dmitry Karamazov is! If I had killed him, I swear I would not have waited for you to come here, nor would I have waited for sunrise as I was doing—I would have destroyed myself at once, then and there! I can feel it now inside, for I have learned more about life during this horrible night than in the last twenty years. And do you think that I would have behaved this way throughout the night, and right now, at this moment, as I face you, that I would have looked at you as I am doing, at you and at the whole world, if I were really a parricide? Why, the very idea that I had accidentally killed Gregory gave me no rest all night! And, believe me, it was not because I was afraid of your punishment! You should be ashamed! And how can you expect me to reveal another shame and disgrace to blind moles like you, sneering and distrusting moles! No, I would rather be sent to Siberia than let you in on that secret! It was the person who opened the door to the house who killed and robbed my father! Who is he? That question tortures me and torments me, but I can tell you that it was not Dmitry Karamazov, and that is all I can tell you. That’s enough now. Don’t pester me. Leave me alone . . . Send me wherever you wish, punish me, do anything, but stop pestering me. I won’t say anything anymore. Call your witnesses!”

Mitya delivered himself of this tirade, and it looked as if he had definitely decided not to answer any more questions. The prosecutor had been watching him all the time he was talking and when he had finished he remarked in a cold, detached tone, almost casually:

“Now, speaking of that open door you just mentioned, it just so happens that we can now tell you about a very curious bit of the testimony of old Gregory, whom you wounded—something that is quite important both for you and for us. As soon as he recovered and could answer our questions, he declared most categorically that when he walked out onto the porch of the servants’ cottage, he heard a noise and decided to enter the garden through the gate, which had been left unlocked. Entering the garden, even before he caught sight of you running away from the window through which you’d seen your father—according to your own testimony—he glanced to his left and saw that, indeed, the window was open just as you said. But at the same time he also noticed that the door, which was much closer to him than the window, was also wide open. He was, of course, referring to the door that you insist was closed all the time that you were in the garden. Now, I see no reason to conceal from you that Gregory himself says that he concluded that you must have just come out of that door, although he did not actually see you do so, since he first caught sight of you when you were already in the middle of the garden, running toward the fence . . .”

Mitya was on his feet well before the prosecutor had finished his speech.

“Not true!” he screamed like a madman. “It’s a damn lie, an impudent lie! He couldn’t have seen the door open, because it was closed! He’s lying!”

“I must repeat that Gregory testified that he is absolutely sure about it. He has no doubt on that point whatsoever. He insists that the door was open. We asked him about it again and again.”

“But it isn’t true! It is either deliberate slander or the hallucination of a madman,” Mitya shouted again; “he must have imagined it—he was bleeding. He had that wound. He could have been delirious when he came to . . . So he was raving, that’s all . . .”

“But he didn’t see the open door when he regained consciousness after being wounded, but before he was struck; he saw it just after he came out of the cottage . . .”

“But it’s not true! It’s just not true. It’s impossible! He must be saying it out of spite, because he’s angry with me. He couldn’t have seen it . . . I didn’t come through that door . . .”

Mitya was choking.

The prosecutor turned to the examining magistrate and in a gravely decisive tone told him: