The Brothers Karamazov

“That money tormented him,” Katya continued, hurrying convulsively, “he wanted to give it back to me, he wanted to, it’s true, but he also needed money for that creature. So he killed his father, but he still did not give me back the money, but went with her to that village where he was seized. There he again squandered the money he had stolen from his father, whom he had killed. And the day before he killed his father, he wrote me that letter, he was drunk when he wrote it, I saw that at once, he wrote it out of spite, and knowing, knowing for certain that I wouldn’t show the letter to anyone, even if he did kill him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written it. He knew I would not want to revenge myself and ruin him! But read it, read it closely, please, read it more closely and you’ll see that he described everything in the letter, everything beforehand: how he would kill his father, and where he kept his money. Look, please don’t miss this one phrase there: ‘I will kill him, if only Ivan goes away.’ So he thought it all out beforehand, how he was going to kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna went on, gloatingly, and insidiously prompting the court. Oh, one could see that she had thoroughly examined this fatal letter and studied every little detail of it. “If he hadn’t been drunk, he would never have written to me, but see how everything is described beforehand, everything exactly as he killed him afterwards, the whole program!”

So she went on exclaiming, beside herself, and, of course, heedless of all consequences for herself, though she had certainly foreseen them, perhaps as much as a month before, because even then, perhaps, shuddering with malice, she had imagined: “Why don’t I read it in court?” And now it was as if she had thrown herself off the mountain. I seem to recall the clerk reading the letter aloud precisely at that moment, and it made a tremendous impression. Mitya was asked if he acknowledged the letter.

“It’s mine, mine!” cried Mitya. “If I hadn’t been drunk, I’d never have written it...! We hated each other for many things, Katya, but I swear, I swear I loved you even as I hated you, and you—didn’t!”

He sank back on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the defense attorney began cross-examining her, mainly in one sense: “What prompted you to withhold such a document till now and to testify previously in a completely different spirit and tone?”

“Yes, yes, I was lying before, it was all lies, against my honor and conscience, but then I wanted to save him, because he hated me so, and despised me so,” Katya exclaimed wildly. “Oh, he despised me terribly, he despised me always, and you know, you know—he despised me from the very moment when I bowed at his feet for that money. I saw it ... I felt it right then, at once, but for a long time I didn’t believe myself. How many times I’ve read it in his eyes: ‘Still, it was you who came to me that time.’ Oh, he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand at all why I came running then, he can only imagine the basest reasons! He measured me by his own measure, he thought everyone was like him,” Katya snarled fiercely, now in an utter frenzy. “And he wanted to marry me only because of the inheritance I received, that’s why, that’s why, I’ve always suspected that was why! Oh, he’s a beast! He was sure I would go on trembling before him all my life out of shame for having come to him that time, and that he could despise me eternally and so hold himself above me— that’s why he wanted to marry me! It’s true, it’s true! I tried to win him over with my love, love without end, I was even willing to endure his betrayal, but he understood nothing, nothing! And how could he understand anything! He’s a monster! That letter I received only the next day, in the evening, they brought it to me from the tavern, and still that morning, still in the morning of that same day, I was willing to forgive him everything, everything, even his betrayal!”

The judge and the prosecutor tried, of course, to calm her down. I am sure that they were all, perhaps, ashamed to be taking advantage in such a way of her frenzy, and to be listening to such confessions. I remember hearing them say to her: “We understand how difficult it is for you, believe us. we are not unfeeling,” and so on, and so on—and yet they did extract evidence from the raving, hysterical woman. She finally described with extraordinary clarity, which often shines through briefly even in moments of such an overwrought condition, how for those two whole months Ivan Fyodorovich had been driving himself nearly out of his mind over saving “the monster and murderer,” his brother.