The Brothers Karamazov

“And feast the night before. Eh, the devil, let’s get it over with quicker, gentlemen. I was certainly going to shoot myself, not far from here, just outside town, and I would have disposed of myself at about five o’clock in the morning—I had a note all prepared in my pocket, I wrote it at Perkhotin’s when I loaded the pistol. Here it is, read it. I’m not telling it for you!” he suddenly added contemptuously. He threw the piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket onto the table in front of them; the investigators read it with curiosity, and, as is customary, filed it away,

“And you still did not think of washing your hands even as you entered Mr. Perkhotin’s? In other words, you were not afraid of arousing suspicion?”

“What suspicion? Suspicion or not, all the same I’d have driven here and shot myself at five o’clock, and there would have been no time to do anything about it. If it weren’t for what happened to my father, you wouldn’t have found anything out and come here. Oh, the devil did it, the devil killed my father, and the devil let you find out so soon! How on earth did you get here so soon? It’s a wonder, fantastic!”

“Mr. Perkhotin told us that when you came to him, you were holding your money ... a lot of money ... a wad of hundred-rouble bills ... in your hands ... your blood-stained hands, and that the servant boy also saw it!”

“Yes, gentlemen, that’s true, I remember.”

“Now one little question arises. Would you mind informing us,” Nikolai Parfenovich began with extreme gentleness, “as to where you suddenly got so much money, when it appears from the evidence, even from the simple reckoning of time, that you did not stop at your own lodgings?”

The prosecutor winced slightly at the bluntness with which the question had been put, but he did not interrupt Nikolai Parfenovich.

“No, I didn’t stop at my lodgings,” Mitya replied, apparently very calmly, but dropping his eyes.

“Allow me, in that case, to repeat the question,” Nikolai Parfenovich continued, somehow creeping up. “Where could you have gotten such a sum all at once, when, by your own admission, at five o’clock that same afternoon you...”

“Needed ten roubles, and pawned my pistols to Perkhotin, then went to Khokhlakov for three thousand, which she didn’t give me, and so on, and all the rest of it,” Mitya interrupted sharply. “So, yes, gentlemen, I needed money, and then suddenly thousands appeared, eh? You know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid now: what if he won’t tell us where he got it? And so it is: I won’t tell you, gentlemen, you’ve guessed right, you’ll never know,” Mitya suddenly hammered out with great determination. The investigators fell silent for a moment.

“Understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is an essential necessity that we know this,” Nikolai Parfenovich said softly and humbly.

“I understand, but I still won’t tell you.”

The prosecutor intervened and again reminded him that a man under interrogation was of course at liberty not to answer questions if he thought it more beneficial, and so on, but in view of the harm the suspect might do himself by keeping silent, and especially in view of questions of such importance as . . .

“And so on, gentlemen, and so on! Enough, I’ve heard the whole harangue before!” Mitya again interrupted. “I myself understand the importance of the matter and what the most essential point is, and I still won’t tell you.”

“What is it to us, sir? It’s not our business, but yours. You will only be harming yourself,” Nikolai Parfenovich remarked nervously. “You see, gentlemen, joking aside,” Mitya raised his eyes and looked at them both steadily, “from the very beginning I had a feeling we would be at loggerheads on this point. But when I first started giving evidence today, that was all in a fog of things to come, it was all floating out there, and I was even so naive as to make a suggestion of ‘mutual trust between us.’ Now I see for myself that there could be no such trust, because we were bound to come to this cursed fence! Well, so we’ve come to it! It’s impossible, that’s all! I don’t blame you, by the way, it’s also impossible for you to take my word for it, I quite understand that.”

He fell gloomily silent.

“But could you not, without in the least violating your determination to keep silent on this main point, could you not at the same time give us at least some slight hint as to precisely what sort of compelling motives might force you to keep silent at a moment so dangerous for you in your evidence?”

Mitya smiled sadly and somehow pensively.

“I am much kinder than you think, gentlemen, and I will tell you my reasons, and give you that hint, though you’re not worthy of it. I keep silent, gentlemen, because it involves a disgrace for me. The answer to the question of where I got this money contains such a disgrace for me as could not be compared even with killing and robbing my father, if I had killed and robbed him. That is why I cannot speak. Because of the disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?”