The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

Chapter 3

The Sufferings of a Soul

 

The First Ordeal

 

AND so Mitya sat looking wildly at the people round him, not

understanding what was said to him. Suddenly he got up, flung up his

hands, and shouted aloud:

 

“I’m not guilty! I’m not guilty of that blood! I’m not guilty of

my father’s blood…. I meant to kill him. But I’m not guilty. Not I.”

 

But he had hardly said this, before Grushenka rushed from behind

the curtain and flung herself at the police captain’s feet.

 

“It was my fault! Mine! My wickedness!” she cried, in a

heart-rending voice, bathed in tears, stretching out her clasped hands

towards them. “He did it through me. I tortured him and drove him to

it. I tortured that poor old man that’s dead, too, in my wickedness,

and brought him to this! It’s my fault, mine first, mine most, my

fault!”

 

“Yes, it’s your fault! You’re the chief criminal! You fury! You

harlot! You’re the most to blame!” shouted the police captain,

threatening her with his hand. But he was quickly and resolutely

suppressed. The prosecutor positively seized hold of him.

 

“This is absolutely irregular, Mihail Makarovitch!” he cried. “You

are positively hindering the inquiry…. You’re ruining the case.”

he almost gasped.

 

“Follow the regular course! Follow the regular course!” cried

Nikolay Parfenovitch, fearfully excited too, “otherwise it’s

absolutely impossible!…”

 

“Judge us together!” Grushenka cried frantically, still

kneeling. “Punish us together. I will go with him now, if it’s to

death!”

 

“Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!” Mitya fell on his

knees beside her and held her tight in his arms. “Don’t believe

her,” he cried, “she’s not guilty of anything, of any blood, of

anything!”

 

He remembered afterwards that he was forcibly dragged away from

her by several men, and that she was led out, and that when he

recovered himself he was sitting at the table. Beside him and behind

him stood the men with metal plates. Facing him on the other side of

the table sat Nikolay Parfenovitch, the investigating lawyer. He

kept persuading him to drink a little water out of a glass that

stood on the table.

 

“That will refresh you, that will calm you. Be calm, don’t be

frightened,” he added, extremely politely. Mitya (he remembered it

afterwards) became suddenly intensely interested in his big rings, one

with an amethyst, and another with a transparent bright yellow

stone, of great brilliance. And long afterwards he remembered with

wonder how those rings had riveted his attention through all those

terrible hours of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to tear

himself away from them and dismiss them, as things that had nothing to

do with his position. On Mitya’s left side, in the place where Maximov

had been sitting at the beginning of the evening, the prosecutor was

now seated, and on Mitya’s right hand, where Grushenka had been, was a

rosy-cheeked young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket, with ink

and paper before him. This was the secretary of the investigating

lawyer, who had brought him with him. The police captain was now

standing by the window at the other end of the room, beside

Kalganov, who was sitting there.

 

“Drink some water,” said the investigating lawyer softly, for

the tenth time.

 

“I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have… but come gentlemen, crush

me, punish me, decide my fate!” cried Mitya, staring with terribly

fixed wide-open eyes at the investigating lawyer.

 

“So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the death of

your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch?” asked the investigating lawyer,

softly but insistently.

 

“I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old man, but

not of my father’s. And I weep for it! I killed, I killed the old

man and knocked him down…. But it’s hard to have to answer for

that murder with another, a terrible murder of which I am not

guilty….It’s a terrible accusation, gentlemen, a knockdown blow. But

who has killed my father, who has killed him? Who can have killed

him if I didn’t? It’s marvellous, extraordinary, impossible.”

 

“Yes, who can have killed him?” the investigating lawyer was

beginning, but Ippolit Kirillovitch, the prosecutor, glancing at

him, addressed Mitya.

 

“You need not worry yourself about the old servant, Grigory

Vasilyevitch. He is alive, he has recovered, and in spite of the

terrible blows inflicted, according to his own and your evidence, by

you, there seems no doubt that he will live, so the doctor says, at

least.”

 

“Alive? He’s alive?” cried Mitya, flinging up his hands. His

face beamed. “Lord, I thank Thee for the miracle Thou has wrought

for me, a sinner and evildoer. That’s an answer to my prayer. I’ve

been praying all night.” And he crossed himself three times. He was

almost breathless.

 

“So from this Grigory we have received such important evidence

concerning you, that-” The prosecutor would have continued, but

Mitya suddenly jumped up from his chair.

 

“One minute, gentlemen, for God’s sake, one minute; I will run

to her-”

 

“Excuse me, at this moment it’s quite impossible,” Nikolay

Parfenovitch almost shrieked. He, too, leapt to his feet. Mitya was

seized by the men with the metal plates, but he sat down of his own

accord….

 

“Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to see her for one minute

only; I wanted to tell her that it has been washed away, it has

gone, that blood that was weighing on my heart all night, and that I

am not a murderer now! Gentlemen, she is my betrothed!” he said

ecstatically and reverently, looking round at them all. “Oh, thank

you, gentlemen! Oh, in one minute you have given me new life, new

heart!… That old man used to carry me in his arms, gentlemen. He

used to wash me in the tub when I was a baby three years old,

abandoned by everyone, he was like a father to me!…”

 

“And so you-” the investigating lawyer began.

 

“Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one minute more,” interposed Mitya,

putting his elbows on the table and covering his face with his

hands. “Let me have a moment to think, let me breathe, gentlemen.

All this is horribly upsetting, horribly. A man is not a drum,

gentlemen!”

 

“Drink a little more water,” murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.

Mitya took his hands from his face and laughed. His eyes were

confident. He seemed completely transformed in a moment. His whole

bearing was changed; he was once more the equal of these men, with all

of whom he was acquainted, as though they had all met the day

before, when nothing had happened, at some social gathering. We may

note in passing that, on his first arrival, Mitya had been made very

welcome at the police captain’s, but later, during the last month

especially, Mitya had hardly called at all, and when the police

captain met him, in the street, for instance, Mitya noticed that he

frowned and only bowed out of politeness. His acquaintance with the

prosecutor was less intimate, though he sometimes paid his wife, a

nervous and fanciful lady, visits of politeness, without quite knowing

why, and she always received him graciously and had, for some

reason, taken an interest in him up to the last. He had not had time

to get to know the investigating lawyer, though he had met him and

talked to him twice, each time about the fair sex.

 

“You’re a most skilful lawyer, I see, Nikolay Parfenovitch,” cried

Mitya, laughing gaily, “but I can help you now. Oh, gentlemen, I

feel like a new man, and don’t be offended at my addressing you so

simply and directly. I’m rather drunk, too, I’ll tell you that

frankly. I believe I’ve had the honour and pleasure of meeting you,

Nikolay Parfenovitch, at my kinsman Miusov’s. Gentlemen, gentlemen,

I don’t pretend to be on equal terms with you. I understand, of

course, in what character I am sitting before you. Oh, of course,

there’s a horrible suspicion… hanging over me… if Grigory has

given evidence…. A horrible suspicion! It’s awful, awful, I

understand that! But to business, gentlemen, I am ready, and we will

make an end of it in one moment; for, listen, listen, gentlemen! Since

I know I’m innocent, we can put an end to it in a minute. Can’t we?

Can’t we?”

 

Mitya spoke much and quickly, nervously and effusively, as

though he positively took his listeners to be his best friends.

 

“So, for the present, we will write that you absolutely deny the

charge brought against you,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch,

impressively, and bending down to the secretary he dictated to him

in an undertone what to write.

 

“Write it down? You want to write that down? Well, write it; I

consent, I give my full consent, gentlemen, only… do you see?…

Stay, stay, write this. Of disorderly conduct I am guilty, of violence

on a poor old man I am guilty. And there is something else at the

bottom of my heart, of which I am guilty, too but that you need not

write down” (he turned suddenly to the secretary); “that’s my personal

life, gentlemen, that doesn’t concern you, the bottom of my heart,

that’s to say…. But of the murder of my old father I’m not guilty.

That’s a wild idea. It’s quite a wild idea!… I will prove you that

and you’ll be convinced directly…. You will laugh, gentlemen. You’ll

laugh yourselves at your suspicion!…”

 

“Be calm, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” said the investigating lawyer

evidently trying to allay Mitya’s excitement by his own composure.

“Before we go on with our inquiry, I should like, if you will

consent to answer, to hear you confirm the statement that you disliked

your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, that you were involved in continual

disputes with him. Here at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you

exclaimed that you wanted to kill him: ‘I didn’t kill him,’ you

said,‘but I wanted to kill him.’”

 

“Did I exclaim that? Ach, that may be so, gentlemen! Yes,

unhappily, I did want to kill him… many times I wanted to…

unhappily, unhappily!”

 

“You wanted to. Would you consent to explain what motives

precisely led you to such a sentiment of hatred for your parent?”

 

“What is there to explain, gentlemen?” Mitya shrugged his

shoulders sullenly, looking down. “I have never concealed my feelings.

All the town knows about it-everyone knows in the tavern. Only lately

I declared them in Father Zossima’s cell. And the very same day, in

the evening I beat my father. I nearly killed him, and I swore I’d

come again and kill him, before witnesses…. Oh, a thousand

witnesses! I’ve been shouting it aloud for the last month, anyone

can tell you that!… The fact stares you in the face, it speaks for

itself, it cries aloud, but feelings, gentlemen, feelings are

another matter. You see, gentlemen”- Mitya frowned- “it