The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
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something.”
“It means nothing. I talked rot, and everyone began repeating it.”
“But what need had you to ‘talk rot,’ as you call it?”
“The devil knows. From bravado perhaps… at having wasted so much
money…. To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps…
yes, that was why… damn it… how often will you ask me that
question? Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it; once I’d
said it, I didn’t care to correct it. What does a man tell lies for
sometimes?”
“That’s very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what
makes a man tell lies,” observed the prosecutor impressively. “Tell
me, though, was that ‘amulet,’ as you call it, on your neck, a big
thing?”
“No, not big.”
“How big, for instance?”
“If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be the
size.”
“You’d better show us the remains of it. You must have them
somewhere.”
“Damnation, what nonsense! I don’t know where they are.”
“But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck?
According to your own evidence you didn’t go home.”
“When I was going from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s, on the way I tore it
off my neck and took out the money.”
“In the dark?”
“What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one
minute.”
“Without scissors, in the street?”
“In the marketplace I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old
rag. It was torn in a minute.”
“Where did you put it afterwards?”
“I dropped it there.”
“Where was it, exactly?”
“In the marketplace, in the marketplace! The devil knows
whereabouts. What do you want to know for?”
“That’s extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be
material evidence in your favour. How is it you don’t understand that?
Who helped you to sew it up a month ago?”
“No one helped me. I did it myself.”
“Can you sew?”
“A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do
that.”
“Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you
sewed the money?”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch.”
“I don’t know where I got the rag from-somewhere, I suppose.”
“I should have thought you couldn’t have forgotten it?”
“Upon my word, I don’t remember. I might have torn a bit off my
linen.”
“That’s very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to-morrow
the shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort
of rag was it, cloth or linen?”
“Goodness only knows what it was. Wait a bit… I believe I didn’t
tear it off anything. It was a bit of calico…. I believe I sewed
it up in a cap of my landlady’s.”
“In your landlady’s cap?”
“Yes. I took it from her.”
“How did you get it?”
“You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to
wipe my pen on. I took it without asking, because it was a worthless
rag. I tore it up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I
believe it was in that very rag I sewed them. An old piece of
calico, washed a thousand times.”
“And you remember that for certain now?”
“I don’t know whether for certain. I think it was in the cap. But,
hang it, what does it matter?”
“In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was
lost?”
“No, she won’t, she didn’t miss it. It was an old rag, I tell you,
an old rag not worth a farthing.”
“And where did you get the needle and thread?”
“I’ll stop now. I won’t say any more. Enough of it!” said Mitya,
losing his temper at last.
“It’s strange that you should have so completely forgotten where
you threw the pieces in the marketplace.”
“Give orders for the marketplace to be swept to-morrow, and
perhaps you’ll find it,” said Mitya sneering. “Enough, gentlemen,
enough!” he decided, in an exhausted voice. “I see you don’t believe
me! Not for a moment! It’s my fault, not yours. I ought not to have
been so ready. Why, why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret
to you? it’s a joke to you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on
to it, prosecutor! Sing a hymn of triumph if you can…. Damn you, you
torturers!”
He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands. The lawyers
were silent. A minute later he raised his head and looked at them
almost vacantly. His face now expressed complete, hopeless despair,
and he sat mute and passive as though hardly conscious of what was
happening. In the meantime they had to finish what they were about.
They had immediately to begin examining the witnesses. It was by now
eight o’clock in the morning. The lights had been extinguished long
ago. Mihail Makarovitch and Kalganov, who had been continually in
and out of the room all the while the interrogation had been going on,
had now both gone out again. The lawyers, too, looked very tired. It
was a wretched morning, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain
streamed down in bucketfuls. Mitya gazed blankly out of window.
“May I look out of window?” he asked Nikolay Parfenovitch,
suddenly.
“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.
Mitya got up and went to the window…. The rain lashed against
its little greenish panes. He could see the muddy road just below
the house, and farther away, in the rain and mist, a row of poor,
black, dismal huts, looking even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya
thought of “Phoebus the golden-haired, and how he had meant to shoot
himself at his first ray. “Perhaps it would be even better on a
morning like this,” he thought with a smile, and suddenly, flinging
his hand downwards, he turned to his “torturers.”
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “I see that I am lost! But she? Tell me
about her, I beseech you. Surely she need not be ruined with me? She’s
innocent, you know, she was out of her mind when she cried last
night ‘It’s all my fault!’ She’s done nothing, nothing! I’ve been
grieving over her all night as I sat with you…. Can’t you, won’t you
tell me what you are going to do with her now?”
“You can set your mind quite at rest on that score, Dmitri
Fyodorovitch,” the prosecutor answered at once, with evident alacrity.
“We have, so far, no grounds for interfering with the lady in whom you
are so interested. I trust that it may be the same in the later
development of the case…. On the contrary, we’ll do everything
that lies in our power in that matter. Set your mind completely at
rest.”
“Gentlemen, I thank you. I knew that you were honest,
straightforward people in spite of everything. You’ve taken a load off
my heart…. Well, what are we to do now? I’m ready.”
“Well, we ought to make haste. We must pass to examining the
witnesses without delay. That must be done in your presence and
therefore-”
“Shouldn’t we have some tea first?” interposed Nikolay
Parfenovitch, “I think we’ve deserved it!”
They decided that if tea were ready downstairs (Mihail Makarovitch
had, no doubt, gone down to get some) they would have a glass and then
“go on and on,” putting off their proper breakfast until a more
favourable opportunity. Tea really was ready below, and was soon
brought up. Mitya at first refused the glass that Nikolay Parfenovitch
politely offered him, but afterwards he asked for it himself and drank
it greedily. He looked surprisingly exhausted. It might have been
supposed from his Herculean strength that one night of carousing, even
accompanied by the most violent emotions, could have had little effect
on him. But he felt that he could hardly hold his head up, and from
time to time all the objects about him seemed heaving and dancing
before his eyes. “A little more and I shall begin raving,” he said
to himself.
The Evidences of the Witnesses. The Babe
THE examination of the witnesses began. But we will not continue
our story in such detail as before. And so we will not dwell on how
Nikolay Parfenovitch impressed on every witness called that he must
give his evidence in accordance with truth and conscience, and that he
would afterwards have to repeat his evidence on oath, how every
witness was called upon to sign the protocol of his evidence, and so
on. We will only note that the point principally insisted upon in
the examination was the question of the three thousand roubles; that
is, was the sum spent here, at Mokroe, by Mitya on the first occasion,
a month before, three thousand or fifteen hundred? And again had he
spent three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday? Alas, all the
evidence given by everyone turned out to be against Mitya. There was
not one in his favour, and some witnesses introduced new, almost
crushing facts, in contradiction of his, Mitya’s, story.
The first witness examined was Trifon Borissovitch. He was not
in the least abashed as he stood before the lawyers. He had, on the
contrary, an air of stern and severe indignation with the accused,
which gave him an appearance of truthfulness and personal dignity.
He spoke little, and with reserve, waited to be questioned, answered
precisely and deliberately. Firmly and unhesitatingly he bore
witness that the sum spent a month before could not have been less
than three thousand, that all the peasants about here would testify
that they had heard the sum of three thousand mentioned by Dmitri
Fyodorovitch himself. “What a lot of money he flung away on the
Gypsy girls alone! He wasted a thousand, I daresay, on them alone.”
“I don’t believe I gave them five hundred,” was Mitya’s gloomy
comment on this. “It’s a pity I didn’t count the money at the time,
but I was drunk…”
Mitya was sitting sideways with his back to the curtains. He
listened gloomily, with a melancholy and exhausted air, as though he
would say:
“Oh, say what you like. It makes no difference now.”
“More than a thousand went on them, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” retorted
Trifon Borissovitch firmly. “You flung it about at random and they
picked it up. They were a rascally, thievish lot, horse-stealers,
they’ve been driven away from here, or maybe they’d bear witness
themselves how much they got from you. I saw the sum in your hands,
myself-count it I didn’t, you didn’t let me, that’s true enough-but by the look of it I should say it was far more than fifteen
hundred… fifteen hundred, indeed! We’ve seen money too. We can judge
of amounts…”
As for the sum spent yesterday he asserted that Dmitri
Fyodorovitch had told him, as soon as he arrived, that he had
brought three thousand with him.
“Come now, is that so, Trifon Borissovitch?” replied Mitya.
“Surely I didn’t declare so positively that I’d brought three
thousand?”
“You did say so, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. You said it before Andrey.
Andrey himself is still here. Send for him. And in the hall, when
you were treating the chorus, you shouted straight out that you
would leave your sixth thousand here-that is, with what you spent
before, we must understand. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr
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