The Brothers Karamazov (90 page)

“Show it to him, then.”

“Do you recognize this?” Nelyudov placed on the table a large envelope made of thick paper, the kind used in government offices. It still bore three seals. It was, however, empty; the contents must have been removed; it had been torn open at one end. Mitya’s eyes almost popped out as he stared at it.

“That’s my father’s . . . it must be the envelope that he put that three thousand in . . . If it has that thing written on it . . . here it is, ‘to my darling . . .’ and here it says ‘three thousand’ . . . See, it says so!”

“Of course, we’ve seen that. But it was empty when we found it. The money was gone, and the envelope was on the floor by the bed, behind the screen.”

For a few seconds Mitya was like a man stunned.

“I know, it’s Smerdyakov!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “It’s he who killed father and stole the money! He was the only one who knew where father had hidden that envelope . . . Now I know it was he who did it—it’s obvious!”

“But, then, you yourself also knew about the envelope and that your father kept it under his pillow, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t know that. I’ve never seen this envelope before; this is the first time I’ve set eyes on it. But Smerdyakov told me about it and he knew where father had hidden it, while I didn’t . . .”

“So how is it that you testified earlier that you knew your father kept the envelope under his pillow? That’s exactly what you told us—under his pillow. So you knew very well where the envelope was hidden.”

“Yes, we have it written down,” Nelyudov confirmed.

“That’s absurd! I had no idea it was under his pillow! Besides, I’m not so sure that it was under the pillow. I must have just said the first thing that came into my head. What does Smerdyakov say? Did you ask him where the envelope was? That is the most important point. I just said it was under the pillow the way I might have said anything . . . A man can blurt out anything . . . No, Smerdyakov is the only one who really knew. So now I’m absolutely certain that he is the murderer; it’s as clear as daylight now!” Mitya shouted in tremendous excitement, stubbornly repeating himself, losing patience. “Try to understand! You must arrest him, arrest him right away! . . . He killed father after I’d run away, while Gregory was lying unconscious. I see it all clearly . . . He tapped the signal, father opened the door for him, and . . . Remember, he was the only one who knew the signals, and without the proper signals father would never have let anybody in . . .”

“But, once again, you disregard the fact that there was no need for anyone to tap any signals since the door was already wide open, even while you were still in the garden,” the prosecutor remarked, still quietly but with a note of triumph already detectable in his voice.

“The door . . . the door,” Mitya mumbled, staring blankly at the prosecutor, and he sank back into his chair in utter exhaustion. There was a general silence. “The door . . . It was a ghost . . . God is against me!” he cried. His eyes were completely empty of thought now.

“So you see, Mr. Karamazov—judge for yourself,” the prosecutor said in an important tone; “on the one hand, there is testimony that the door was open and that you must have come through it, which we feel is damning for you. And, on the other hand, we are faced with your incomprehensible, stubborn, almost obdurate refusal to reveal the source of the money that suddenly appeared in your hands when only three hours earlier you had had to pawn your pistols to obtain ten rubles—by your own admission! In view of these facts, you can judge for yourself what we are likely to believe and what our conclusion may be. And please do not accuse us of being cold, sarcastic cynics, incapable of appreciating the generous impulses of your heart or putting unlimited faith in your truthfulness. Please try instead to understand us, in our position.”

Mitya was in a state of unimaginable agitation. He turned white.

“All right,” he said, “I will reveal my secret to you and tell you where the money came from; I will expose myself to shame and disgrace so that later I can’t accuse either myself or you . . .”

“And believe me, Mr. Karamazov,” Nelyudov said in a peculiarly affectionate and joyful voice, “every frank admission you make now, at this critical moment, could be tremendously helpful later in making the outcome much easier, and even, perhaps . . .”

But the prosecutor kicked him lightly under the table and the young examining magistrate stopped just in time. However, it made very little difference really, for Mitya was not listening to him anyway.

Chapter 7: Mitya Reveals His Secret And Is Heckled

GENTLEMEN,” MITYA started, still in the same state of great agitation, “that money, gentlemen—I’ll make a clean breast of it—well, that money belonged to 
me
.”

The faces of the two interrogators dropped—that was not at all what they had expected.

“What do you mean when you say it was your money?” Nelyudov muttered. “Why, then, at five p.m. of that same day, by your own admission, you . . .”

“To hell with five p.m. of that same day and my own admission—that has nothing to do with it! That money was mine. That is, I had stolen it. It was stolen money—about fifteen hundred rubles—and I had it on me all the time.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I took it from around my neck, right here! The money was sewn up in a rag and I wore it hanging around my neck. I had been carrying it around for a long time, for a whole month, carrying it around to my terrible shame.”

“But from whom did you . . . you take it?”

“You were going to say stole it, weren’t you? Don’t be squeamish, use the proper words. For it is just the same as if I had stolen it, or, if you wish, misappropriated it. But the right word for it, I think, is stolen. And after last night, it became an unmitigated theft.”

“Last night? But you just told us that you got that money a month ago!”

“Yes, but I didn’t get it from my father. Don’t worry—I didn’t steal it from him. I stole it from her. Let me tell you, and don’t interrupt me. It is very painful for me to talk about it. Listen—a month ago Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtsev, to whom I was formerly engaged, sent for me . . . Do you know her, by the way?”

“Of course, of course . . .”

“I know you’ve met her. Well, she is the most generous and the most honorable person, but she hates me and has hated me for a very long time, and deservedly so . . .”

“Who, Miss Katerina Verkhovtsev?” the examining magistrate asked in great surprise. The prosecutor also looked at him in bewilderment.

“Don’t you pronounce her name! I feel like a pig as is, dragging her into this sordid story. Yes, I realized that she hated me, had hated me for a long time, ever since that first time in my lodgings . . . But that’s enough on that subject—it has nothing to do with you anyway. All you need to know is that, about a month ago, she sent for me and gave me three thousand rubles that she wanted me to mail to Moscow, to her sister and some other relative of hers . . . As if she couldn’t have gone herself and sent it! And it happened just at that fateful moment in my life when I—well, to make a long story short—when I’d just fallen in love with another woman, 
her,
 the one whom you sent downstairs, Grushenka . . . And so I took Grushenka to Mokroye and we had a party right here, in this very inn, a party that went on for two days and two nights and on which I spent half of that stinking money, that is, about fifteen hundred rubles. And the rest I kept for myself. So the money I had is the balance of that three thousand, and I wore it around my neck like a medallion. But yesterday, I tore open the rag, took out the bills, and spent them. That is, spent all except the eight hundred-odd rubles that I had on me and that you now have. That’s what is left of the fifteen hundred rubles, Mr. Nelyudov.”

“Just a minute, please. Everybody knows that a month ago you spent not just fifteen hundred rubles, but rather three thousand, here.”

“Who knows that? Who counted the money? Whom did I give it to to count?”

“But you yourself went around town telling everyone who would listen to you that you had gone through all of three thousand rubles that time, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. I told everyone in town that, the whole town repeated it, and everyone in Mokroye thought I had thrown away three thousand here. Nevertheless, the truth is that, in actual fact, I only spent fifteen hundred and I sewed the other fifteen hundred up in that rag. So that’s where the money I had yesterday came from, gentleman.”

“It sounds almost miraculous,” Nelyudov murmured.

“Allow me to ask you this,” the prosecutor intervened at last. “Is there anyone at all to whom you have told this fact before? I mean the fact that you kept fifteen hundred rubles and carried them about with you for a month after that?”

“No, I never told anybody.”

“Strange. You are sure—no one at all?”

“No one at all, ever.”

“But why did you make such a mystery of it? Why all this secrecy? Let me put it this way: you have finally consented to let us in on your secret, which, you told us, would bring disgrace and dishonor down on you once and for all. But I see it turns out to be, relatively speaking, only a minor misappropriation of three thousand rubles, and moreover, probably only a temporary misappropriation, which I suppose could be considered simply an irresponsible act, but certainly not something that would disgrace a man once and for all . . . What I’m trying to say is that, for a month, even without this present confession of yours, many people in town have suspected that you were spending Miss Verkhovtsev’s three thousand rubles. I, for one, have heard the story, and I happen to know that Inspector Makarov has too. So finally it was really hardly a suspicion anymore; it was gossip going around town. Besides, if I am not mistaken, you have already told it to other people. So it is quite beyond me why you have made such a mystery of the fifteen hundred rubles that you supposedly put aside from the three thousand you had misappropriated earlier. It is quite unbelievable that it should cause you such profound suffering to reveal a secret of that sort to us! When you were telling us earlier that you would rather be sent to Siberia than reveal that mystery, we were quite puzzled . . .”

The prosecutor fell silent. As he was talking, he had become heated. He had not tried to hide his annoyance, almost spite, and he had given vent to the irritation against Mitya that had accumulated within him. He had even forgotten his elegant formulation and enunciation and sounded almost unclear and inarticulate.

“The disgrace lies not in the fifteen hundred rubles,” Mitya said firmly, “but in the fact that I had put them aside from the three thousand.”

“Why?” the prosecutor asked, letting out an exasperated laugh. “What makes it so particularly disgraceful to separate fifteen hundred from three thousand that you had anyway appropriated rather shamefully, even disgracefully? The important thing here is the fact that you misappropriated three thousand rubles and not how you decided to spend them later. But while we’re at it, would you tell us why you put half the sum aside? What was your purpose? Can you explain now?”

“Ah, gentlemen, don’t you understand that precisely the purpose makes the whole difference?” Mitya cried. “I separated the sum into halves because I am a low creature, because I calculated that it would be more to my advantage, and it is the fact that I was calculating under those circumstances that constitutes the baseness of the act . . . And then that unspeakable act was prolonged for a whole month!”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I’m surprised at you. But perhaps I didn’t express myself well. I’ll try again. Now try to follow this: I misappropriate three thousand rubles that she has entrusted to my honor, go and have a wild time with it, spend every kopek of it, and in the morning go and see her and say: ‘I’m sorry, Katya, I’ve just thrown away your three thousand!’ Is that a decent way to act? It certainly isn’t—it’s dishonest and cowardly. It’s the act of an animal who is unable to control his animal impulses. Right. But still a man doing that is not necessarily a thief, not a downright thief at least—you must see that! He’s spent the money, thrown it all away, but he hasn’t stolen it. That was one alternative. Now here’s another, even more favorable one. But please follow me closely in case I get mixed up, for I feel a bit dizzy . . . In the second alternative I spend only fifteen hundred of the three thousand rubles—that is only half the sum. The next day I bring her back the remaining half and say: ‘Here, Katya, please accept from me, irresponsible scoundrel that I am, these fifteen hundred rubles, for I have spent the other fifteen hundred and I’m afraid I won’t be able to prevent myself from spending this as well. Take it back so I won’t be tempted!’ Well, what do you say about a situation like that? Of course, I’m still a low scoundrel and an outright animal, but in this case, I’m definitely not a thief, because a thief wouldn’t have brought her back what was left—he would have kept it. And she would understand, then, that since this time I was bringing back half the sum she had entrusted to me, I would pay her back the rest too—I mean the money I squandered, even if it took me my whole lifetime to earn it or to raise it. In that case, I am not a thief. I’m anything you like, but not a thief . . .”

“Fine, I grant you that there is some difference,” the prosecutor said with an icy smile. “But I still find it rather peculiar that the difference should appear so crucial to you.”

“But I do feel there is a crucial difference! Anyone can act despicably. I even believe that everyone does so occasionally. But far from everyone is a thief—only a most despicable arch-scoundrel would stoop to stealing. I’m not too good at explaining all these subtleties, but one thing I’m sure of—a thief is viler than an ordinary vile scoundrel. Now, imagine this: Understand that I carry the money on me for a month, and that, if I decide to, I can give it back tomorrow and I will no longer be such a low scoundrel. But that’s just it—I cannot make up my mind to do it, although every day I think to myself, ‘Go on, do it, you scoundrel!’ But a month has gone by and I still haven’t decided. Well, what do you think of that—is it nice?”