The Brothers Karamazov

Mitya asked for a rest. It was politely granted. Having rested, he began to go on. But it was obviously difficult for him. He was worn out, insulted, and morally shaken. Besides, the prosecutor, now quite intentionally, began irritating him every moment by pestering him with “details.” As soon as Mitya described how, sitting astride the fence, he had hit Grigory, who was clutching his left leg, on the head with the pestle, and then jumped down at once to the stricken man, the prosecutor stopped him and asked him to describe in greater detail how he was sitting on the fence. Mitya was surprised.

“Well, like this, astride it, one leg here, the other there...”

“And the pestle?”

“The pestle was in my hand.” “Not in your pocket? You remember such a detail? So, then you must have swung hard?”

“I must have swung hard—but what do you need that for?”

“Why don’t you sit on the chair exactly as you were sitting on the fence then, and act out for us visually, for the sake of clarification, how and where you swung, in what direction?”

“You’re not mocking me, are you?” Mitya asked, glancing haughtily at his interrogator, but the latter did not even bat an eye. Mitya turned convulsively, sat astride the chair, and swung his arm:

“That’s how I hit him! That’s how I killed him! Anything else?”

“Thank you. Now may I trouble you to explain why, in fact, you jumped down, with what purpose, and what, in fact, you had in mind?”

“Ah, the devil ... I jumped down to the stricken man ... I don’t know why!”

“Even though you were so agitated? And running away?”

“Yes, agitated and running away.”

“Did you want to help him?”

“Help him, hah...! Well, maybe also to help him, I forget.”

“You forgot yourself? That is, you were even somehow unconscious?”

“Oh, no, not unconscious at all, I remember everything. To the last shred. I jumped down to look at him and wiped the blood off with my handkerchief. “

“We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to bring the man you struck back to life?”

“I don’t know if I hoped anything. I simply wanted to make sure if he was alive or not.”

“Ah, you wanted to make sure? Well, and so?”

“I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t tell. I ran away thinking I’d killed him, but he recovered.”

“Wonderful, sir,” the prosecutor concluded. “Thank you. That is just what I wanted. Be so good as to continue.”

Alas, it did not even occur to Mitya to tell them, though he remembered it, that he had jumped down out of pity, and that standing over the murdered man he had even uttered a few pathetic words: “You came a cropper, old man—there’s no help for it—now lie there.” But the prosecutor drew just one conclusion, that the man would only have jumped down “at such a moment and in such agitation,” with the purpose of making completely sure whether the sole witness to his crime was alive or not. And what strength, consequently, what resolution, cold-bloodedness, and calculation the man possessed even at such a moment ... and so on and so forth. The prosecutor was pleased: “I irritated the morbid fellow with ‘details’ and he gave himself away.”

Painfully, Mitya went on. But again he was stopped at once, this time by Nikolai Parfenovich:

“How could you have run to the servant, Fedosya Markov, with your hands and, as it turned out later, your face so covered with blood?”

“But I didn’t notice at the time that there was any blood on me!” Mitya answered.

“That’s plausible, it does happen that way,” the prosecutor exchanged looks with Nikolai Parfenovich.

“I precisely didn’t notice—beautiful, prosecutor,” Mitya, too, suddenly approved. But next came the story of Mitya’s sudden decision “to remove himself” and “ make way for the happy ones. “ And now it was quite impossible for him to bring himself to lay bare his heart, as before, and tell them about “the queen of his soul.” It sickened him in the face of these cold people, who “bit at him like bedbugs.” Therefore, to their repeated questions, he declared briefly and sharply:

“So I decided to kill myself. Why should I go on living? Naturally that jumped into the picture. Her offender arrived, the former, indisputable one, and he came riding to her with love, after five years, to end the offense with legal marriage. So I realized that it was all over for me ... And behind me was disgrace, and that blood, Grigory’s blood ... Why live? So I went to redeem the pawned pistols, to load them, and to put a bullet into my sconce at dawn ...”

“And feast the night before?”