The Brothers Karamazov

“So, to go on, sir. I lay there and thought I heard the master cry out. And before that, Grigory Vasilievich suddenly got up and stepped out and suddenly shouted, and then all was still, dark. So I was lying there waiting, with my heart pounding, I could hardly stand it. Finally I got up and went, sir—I saw the master’s left window to the garden open, so I took another step to the left, sir, to listen whether he was alive in there or not, and I heard the master stirring about and groaning, which meant he was alive, sir. Ech, I thought! I went up to the window, called to the master: ‘It’s me,’ I said. And he called to me: ‘He was here, he was here, he ran away! ‘ That is, Dmitri Fyodorovich, sir. ‘He killed Grigory!’ ‘Where?’ I whispered to him. ‘There, in the corner,’ he pointed, also in a whisper. ‘Wait,’ I said. I went to have a look in the corner, and stumbled over Grigory Vasilievich, lying near the wall, all covered with blood, unconscious. ‘So it’s true, Dmitri Fyodorovich was here,’ jumped into my mind at once, and I at once decided to finish it all right then and there, sir, since even if Grigory Vasilievich was still alive, he wouldn’t see anything while he was unconscious. The only risk was that Marfa Ignatievna might suddenly wake up. I felt it at that moment, only this desire got such a hold on me, it even took my breath away. I went up to the master’s window again and said: ‘She’s here, she’s come, Agrafena Alexandrovna is here, she wants to get in.’ He got all startled, just like a baby. ‘Here where? Where?’ he kept gasping, and he still didn’t believe it. ‘She’s standing right here,’ I said, ‘open up! ‘ He looked at me through the window, believing it and not believing it, but he was afraid to open the door—it’s me he’s afraid of, I thought. And here’s a funny thing: I suddenly decided to knock those same signals on the window, right in front of his eyes, meaning Grushenka was there: he didn’t seem to believe words, but as soon as I knocked the signals, he ran at once to open the door. He opened it. I tried to go in, but he stood and blocked my way with his body. ‘Where is she, where is she?’ he looked at me and trembled. Well, I thought, that’s bad, if he’s so afraid of me! And my legs even went limp from fear that he wouldn’t let me in, or would shout, or else that Marfa Ignatievna would come running, or whatever, I don’t remember anymore, but I must have stood pale in front of him then. I whispered to him: ‘But she’s there, right there, under the window,’ I said, ‘how is it you didn’t see her? ‘ ‘Bring her here, bring her here! ‘ ‘But she’s afraid,’ I said, ‘she got scared by the shouting, she’s hiding in the bushes, go and call her yourself from the study,’ I said. He ran there, went up to the window, put a candle in the window. ‘Grushenka,’ he called, ‘Grushenka, are you here?’ He called her, but he didn’t want to lean out the window, he didn’t want to move away from me, from that same fear, because he was very afraid of me and therefore didn’t dare move away from me. ‘But there she is,’ I said (I went up to the window and leaned all the way out), ‘there she is in the bushes, smiling to you, see?’ He suddenly believed it, he just started shaking, because he really was very much in love with her, sir, and he leaned all the way out the window. Then I grabbed that same cast-iron, paperweight, the one on his desk—remember, sir?—it must weigh all of three pounds, and I swung and hit him from behind on the top of the head with the corner of it. He didn’t even cry out. He just sank down suddenly, and I hit him one more time, and then a third time. The third time I felt I smashed his skull. He suddenly fell on his back, face up, all bloody. I looked myself over: there was no blood on me, it didn’t splatter, I wiped the paperweight off, put it back, went behind the icons, took the money out of the envelope, dropped the envelope on the floor, and that pink ribbon next to it. I went out to the garden shaking all over. I went straight to that apple tree, the one with the hole in it—you know that hole, I’d chosen it long ago, there was already a rag and some paper in it, I’d prepared it long ago; I wrapped the whole sum in paper, then in the rag, and shoved it way down. And it stayed there for more than two weeks, that same sum, sir, I took it out later, after the hospital. I went back to my bed, lay down, and thought in fear: ‘Now if Grigory Vasilievich is killed altogether, things thereby could turn out very badly, but if he’s not killed and comes round again, then it will turn out really well, because he’ll be a witness that Dmitri Fyodorovich was there, and so it was he who killed him and took the money, sir.’ Then I began groaning, from doubt and impatience, in order to waken Marfa Ignatievna the sooner. She got up finally, was about to rush to me, but as soon as she suddenly saw that Grigory Vasilievich wasn’t there, she ran out, and I heard her screaming in the garden. So then, sir, that all started for the whole night, and I no longer worried about it all.”