The Brothers Karamazov

“And have you always been in the habit of taking some weapon with you when going out at night, since you are so afraid of the dark?”

“Agh, the devil, pah! Gentlemen, it’s literally impossible to talk to you!” Mitya cried out in the utmost annoyance, and turning to the clerk, all red with anger, with a sort of frenzied note in his voice, quickly said to him:

“Take this down right now ... right now ... ‘that I grabbed the pestle in order to run and kill my father, Fyodor Pavlovich ... by hitting him on the head’! Well, are you content now, gentlemen? Does that ease your hearts?” he said, staring defiantly at the prosecutor and the district attorney.

“We realize only too well that you have given such evidence just now because you are annoyed with us and vexed by the questions we put to you, which you regard as petty, and which in essence are quite essential,” the prosecutor answered him drily.

“But for pity’s sake, gentlemen! So I took the pestle ... So, what does one pick things up for in such cases? I don’t know. I snatched it and ran. That’s all. Shame on you, gentlemen—passons, or I swear I won’t say anything more!”

He leaned his elbow on the table and propped his head in his hand. He was sitting sideways to them, looking at the wall, and trying to overcome the bad feeling inside him. In fact, he really had a terrible urge to stand up and declare that he was not going to say another word, “even if you should take me out and hang me.” “You see, gentlemen,” he suddenly spoke, overcoming himself with difficulty, “you see. I’m listening to you and imagining ... You see, sometimes I dream a dream in my sleep ... one particular dream, and I often dream it, it keeps repeating itself, that someone is chasing me, someone I’m terribly afraid of is chasing me in the darkness, at night, looking for me, and I’m hiding from him somewhere behind a door or a wardrobe, hiding in a humiliating way, and moreover he knows perfectly well where I’m hiding, but he seems to pretend not to know where I am on purpose, in order to torment me longer, in order to revel in my fear ... That’s what you are doing now! It’s just the same!”

“Is that the sort of dreams you have?” the prosecutor inquired.

“Yes, I have such dreams ... Why, do you want to write it down?” Mitya grinned crookedly.

“No, sir, I do not want to write it down, but still you do have curious dreams.”

“This time it’s not a dream! Realism, gentlemen, the realism of actual life! I’m the wolf, you’re the hunters—so hunt the wolf down.”

“You shouldn’t make such comparisons ... ,” Nikolai Parfenovich began very gently.

“Why shouldn’t I, gentlemen, why shouldn’t I!” Mitya boiled up again, though he had apparently unburdened his soul with this outburst of sudden anger and was growing kinder again with every word. “You may disbelieve a criminal or a prisoner in the dock whom you’re tormenting with your questions, but to disbelieve the noblest man, gentlemen, the noblest impulses of the soul (I cry it boldly!)—no! that you cannot do ... you even have no right to ... but—

. . . heart, hold thy peace, Be patient, humble, hold thy peace!

Well, shall I go on?” he broke off gloomily.

“Of course, if you’d be so good,” replied Nikolai Parfenovich.

Chapter 5: The Third Torment

Though Mitya began speaking sternly, he apparently was trying all the more not to forget or skip over the least detail in his account. He told how he had jumped over the fence into his father’s garden, how he went up to the window, and, finally, everything that took place under the window. Clearly, precisely, as though hammering it out, he spoke of the feelings that had troubled him during those moments in the garden, when he had wanted so terribly to know whether Grushenka was with his father or not. But, strangely, this time both the prosecutor and the district attorney somehow listened with terrible reserve, looked at him drily, asked far fewer questions. Mitya could gather nothing from their faces. “They’re angry and offended,” he thought, “well, devil take them!” When he told how he finally made up his mind to give his father the signal that Grushenka had come, so that he would open the window, the prosecutor and the district attorney paid no attention to the word “signal,” as if they had no idea at all of the word’s significance here; Mitya even noticed it. When he finally came to the moment when, seeing his father leaning out of the window, hatred boiled up in him and he snatched the pestle from his pocket, he suddenly stopped as if on purpose. He sat and looked at the wall, knowing they both had their eyes glued to him.

“Well, sir,” said the district attorney, “so you snatched out the weapon and ... and what then?”

“Then? Oh, then I killed him ... smashed him on the head and split his skull. That’s your version, is it!” he suddenly flashed his eyes. All the wrath that had almost died out in him suddenly rose up in his soul with extraordinary force.