The Brothers Karamazov

“No, no, don’t take it off,” Mitya cried fiercely, suddenly coming to his senses, and angry with himself. “Don’t take it off, there’s no need ... Ah, the devil ... Gentlemen, you’ve befouled my soul! Can you possibly think I’d conceal it from you if I really killed my father? That I’d hedge, and lie, and hide? No, Dmitri Karamazov is not like that, he couldn’t bear it, and if I were guilty, I swear, I wouldn’t have waited for you to come here, or for the sun to rise, as I originally intended, I’d have destroyed myself even before, without waiting for dawn! I feel that in myself now. I’ve found out more in this one cursed night than I’d have learned in twenty years of living . . .! And would I have been this way, would I have been this way on this night, and at this moment, sitting with you now, would I be talking like this, would I be moving like this, would I look at you and at the world like this, if I really were a parricide, when even the inadvertent killing of Grigory gave me no rest all night—not from fear, oh! not just from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And you want me to reveal and tell about yet another new meanness of mine, yet another new disgrace, to such scoffers as you, who do not see anything and do not believe anything, blind moles and scoffers, even if it would save me from your accusation? Better penal servitude! The one who opened the door to my father’s room and went in through that door is the one who killed him, he is the one who robbed him. Who he is, I am at a loss and at pains to say, but he is not Dmitri Karamazov, know that—and that is all I can tell you, and enough, stop badgering me ... Exile me, hang me, but don’t irritate me any more. I am silent. Call your witnesses!”

Mitya spoke his sudden monologue as if he were fully and finally determined to keep silent from then on. The prosecutor was watching him the whole time, and, as soon as he fell silent, suddenly said with the coldest and calmest air, as if it were the most ordinary thing:

“Incidentally, it is precisely with regard to that open door you have just mentioned that we can inform you, precisely now, of a highly curious piece of evidence, of the greatest importance for you and for us, supplied by Grigory Vasiliev, the old man you injured. On regaining consciousness, he clearly and emphatically told us, in answer to our inquiries, that when, coming out on the porch and hearing some noise in the garden, he decided to go into the garden through the gate, which was standing open; having gone into the garden, but before he noticed you running in the darkness, as you have told us already, away from the open window in which you saw your father, he, Grigory, glancing to the left and indeed noticing the open window, noticed at the same time that the door, much closer to him, was also wide open, that door of which you have stated that it remained shut all the while you were in the garden. I shall not conceal from you that Vasiliev himself firmly concludes and testifies that you must have run out of that door, though of course he did not see you run out with his own eyes, but noticed you for the first time when you were some distance away, in the middle of the garden, running in the direction of the fence...”

Mitya had already leaped from his chair halfway through the speech.

“Nonsense!”he suddenly yelled in frenzy, “a bold-faced lie! He could not have seen the door open then, because it was shut ... He’s lying . . .!”

“I consider it my duty to repeat to you that his testimony is firm. He has no hesitation. He stands upon it. We asked him several more times.”

“Precisely, I asked him several more times!” Nikolai Parfenovich hotly confirmed.

“Not true, not true! It’s either a slander against me or a madman’s hallucination,” Mitya went on shouting. “He simply imagined it in his delirium, all bloody, wounded, on regaining consciousness ... So he’s raving.”

“Yes, sir, but he noticed the open door not when he regained consciousness from his wound, but already before then, when he was just going into the garden from the cottage.”

“But it’s not true, not true, it cannot be! He’s slandering me out of malice

. He couldn’t have seen it ... I didn’t run out the door,” Mitya was gasping lor breath.

The prosecutor turned to Nikolai Parfenovich and said imposingly:

“Show him.”

“Is this object familiar to you?” Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly placed on the table a large, official-sized envelope of thick paper, on which three intact seals could still be seen. The envelope itself was empty and torn open at one end. Mitya stared wide-eyed at it.

“That ... that should be father’s envelope,” he muttered, “the one with the three thousand roubles ... and it should have ‘for my chicky’ written on it ... allow me ... yes, look: three thousand,” he cried out, “three thousand, you see?”

“Of course we see, sir, but we did not find the money in it, it was empty and lying on the floor, near the bed, behind the screen.”

For a few seconds Mitya stood as if stunned.