The Brothers Karamazov (93 page)

“And did you expect,” the prosecutor asked, “that he would be willing to accept that deed instead of twenty-three hundred rubles in cash?”

“Of course he would!” Mitya cried heatedly. “Don’t you understand—that way he’d get, not twenty-three hundred rubles, but four thousand; he might even have made six thousand on the deal! As soon as he had the deed in his hand, he would at once have mobilized a whole army of Polish and Jewish lawyers and they’d have managed to get him not just three thousand—they’d have stripped my father of the whole estate!”

It goes without saying that every detail of Musijalowicz’s testimony was carefully recorded.

The Poles were excused and their cheating at cards was not mentioned again. The examining magistrate was much too grateful to them and did not wish to complicate matters with such trifles, especially since the whole thing seemed to be just an ordinary argument between people who were drunk. Besides, there had been so many other scandalous goings-on that night. So the Poles went off, keeping the two hundred rubles in their pockets.

Maximov was next. He approached shyly, with mincing steps, disheveled, and looking very sad. All that time he had been sitting quietly by Grushenka’s side. Later Inspector Makarov said that from time to time Maximov had started whimpering, looking at Grushenka and wiping his eyes with a blue-and-white checked handkerchief, and that she had tried to calm and console him. Maximov at once admitted, with tears in his eyes, that, being “so poor,” he had accepted ten rubles from Mr. Karamazov, but, he said, he was prepared to give it back. When Nelyudov asked him directly whether he had noticed how much money Mr. Karamazov had on him, since he had had a better chance than anybody else to see it when Dmitry was giving him the ten rubles, Maximov declared without the slightest hesitation: “There was twenty thousand there, sir.”

“Tell me, had you ever seen twenty thousand rubles before?” Nelyudov asked him with a smile.

“I certainly had, sir—when my wife mortgaged my little estate. To be precise, though, it was not actually twenty, but seven. She showed me the money from a distance, even boasting about it. It was a very big bundle of bills, and every one of them a rainbow-colored hundred-ruble bill . . .”

They excused him very quickly, and then it was Grushenka’s turn. The interrogators were obviously worried about the effect her appearance would have on Mitya, and Nelyudov even muttered a brief admonition to him, to which Mitya responded by slightly inclining his head, thus reassuring him that he would behave. Inspector Makarov himself went to fetch Grushenka. She entered with a hard and distant expression on her face, looking almost composed, and silently sat down in the chair indicated to her, facing the examining magistrate. She was very pale and seemed to be cold, for she kept her beautiful black shawl tightly wrapped about herself. Indeed, she was having the first chills, which were the beginning of a long illness that started that night. Her severe expression, the straightforward, serious look in her eyes, and her composure impressed everyone present; the examining magistrate was even somewhat taken by her. Later, he would tell his friends that it was only then that he fully realized how beautiful she was, for, although he had seen her a few times before, he had thought of her as just another provincial 
femme fatale
. “She has the bearing of a lady of the highest society,” he once blurted out in the presence of some ladies. They were quite indignant at his remark and called him “a naughty tease,” which pleased him no end.

When she came in, Grushenka threw only a quick glance at Mitya, who was watching her in great alarm. But her appearance at once reassured him. After the admonitions and the first routine questions, Nelyudov, somewhat hesitatingly, trying to be as gentlemanly as possible under the circumstances, asked her to describe her relations “with Retired Army Lieutenant Dmitry Karamazov,” to which she replied in a quiet, firm voice:

“He was an acquaintance. And it was as an acquaintance that I received him during the past month.”

To further probing questions about their relations, she answered plainly and frankly that, although there were moments when she had felt strongly attracted to him, she had not been in love with him, that she was “teasing” him, just like “that poor old man,” out of “vile spite,” that she knew how desperately jealous Mitya was of his father but that it just “amused” her. She also said that she had never really intended to go to old Karamazov and was only laughing at him.

“This past month I really had no time to be bothered much about either of them; I was waiting for someone else, someone who had once deserted me . . . But I don’t think there is any need for you to go into that any further, or any obligation for me to answer such questions, because it is all my private concern.”

And the examining magistrate apparently agreed, for once more he dropped his line of questioning and did not insist on the “romantic aspects” of the case. And so he passed directly to the main point—the three thousand rubles. Grushenka confirmed that a month before Mitya had spent three thousand rubles in Mokroye, according to his own admission, although she pointed out that she had not actually counted the money.

“Did he tell you that when you were alone or in the presence of witnesses? Or perhaps you simply heard him tell it to others?” the prosecutor butted in.

Grushenka said he had told it to her, both in the presence of witnesses and when they were alone.

“When you were alone, did he tell it to you once or many times?” the prosecutor wanted to know further. She told him, many times.

The prosecutor was highly pleased with her answers. From further questioning, it transpired that Grushenka knew Dmitry had taken the money from Katerina.

“Now, did you ever hear, during this past month, that he had actually spent only fifteen hundred rubles of the money and kept the other fifteen hundred to himself?”

“No, I never heard that.”

Further it was elicited from her that during the past month Mitya had often told her he did not have a kopek to his name but that he expected to get some money from his father.

“And did he ever mention in your presence, even if only vaguely or when he was irritated, that he . . . that he might make an attempt on his father’s life?” Nelyudov suddenly let out.

“Oh . . . yes, he did,” Grushenka said with a sigh.

“Did he say it once or several times?”

“Several times, when he was angry.”

“And did you believe that he would do it?”

“No, I never believed it,” Grushenka said firmly; “I knew he was an honorable man.”

“Gentlemen!” Mitya suddenly intervened; “I would like permission to say something to Miss Svetlov, right here in your presence.”

“Please go ahead,” the examining magistrate consented.

“Grushenka,” Mitya said, getting up from his chair, “I am not guilty of my father’s murder.”

As Mitya sat down, Grushenka stood up, turned toward the icon in the corner of the room, and crossed herself devoutly.

“Thank God!” she said in a voice trembling with emotion and, without resuming her seat, turned toward Nelyudov: “You must believe what he has just said. I know him. He can tell a lie sometimes, just for the fun of it or out of stubbornness, but he would never lie against his conscience. When he says something like that, it is always the truth. Believe it!”

“Thank you, Grushenka, you’ve restored my faith in myself,” Mitya said in a quivering voice.

When questioned about how much money he had had on him the previous night, she said she did not know but that she had heard him tell others that he had brought three thousand with him. And as to where that money had come from, he had told her and her alone that he had “stolen” it from Katerina, to which she had answered that he had not stolen it since he would pay it back the next day. But when the prosecutor asked her to specify which money he had had in mind—what he had that night or the three thousand that had been spent on the previous occasion, a month before, she said that she had understood him to mean the money spent on the first occasion.

Finally Grushenka was excused. Nelyudov impulsively announced to her that she was free to return to town any time she liked, that if he could be of any assistance in getting horses or an escort for her, he would do his utmost; he, for his part . . .

“Thank you very much,” Grushenka interrupted him with a bow. “I think I’ll take Mr. Maximov with me and drop him off at his house. But I’d like to wait here for a while first and find out what you decide about Mr. Karamazov.”

She left the room. For a minute or so Mitya looked calm and almost cheerful. But it didn’t last. A strange physical weakness came over him, which increased with every moment. In his fatigue, his eyes kept closing. Finally the interrogation of the witnesses came to an end and they began to work on the final draft of the testimony. Mitya got up from his chair, went over to the corner of the room where there was a large trunk covered with a rug, sprawled out on it, and within a second was asleep. He had a peculiar dream, completely inappropriate to the circumstances, time, and place. In his dream he was crossing the steppe, where he had served once long ago in the army, in a cart drawn by a pair of horses and driven by a peasant. The ground was muddy. Mitya was cold. It was early November; it was snowing and the large flakes melted as soon as they touched the ground. The peasant was driving briskly, waving his whip in the air. He was not really old, maybe fifty or so; he had a long, light-brown beard and wore a gray, homespun peasant coat. They came in sight of a village, and as they drew closer he saw that half the huts had been burnt down and there were only charred beams sticking up into the sky. As they entered the village, they had to drive past a long row of peasant women, all of them thin and haggard, with strangely black faces. One especially, at the end of the row, caught his attention. She was bony and very tall; she looked about forty, although she might have been only twenty; and she was holding a baby in her arms, who was crying, probably because the woman’s breasts were completely dried up and did not have a drop of milk in them. The baby was crying and crying and stretching out its tiny bare arms, its little fists quite blue from cold.

“What are they crying about? What’s the matter?” Mitya inquired as they drove past.

“The babe,” the coachman said to him, and it struck Mitya that he said “babe” instead of “baby.” It pleased Mitya that this peasant had said “babe” the way peasants do, because it seemed to him there was more warmth and human pity in it.

“But why is it crying?” Mitya insisted stupidly. “Why are its arms bare? Why doesn’t she cover them?”

“Because the babe is frozen through and his clothes are frozen, so they can’t give him any more warmth now.”

“But why, why?” Mitya stupidly persisted in asking.

“The poor people have been burnt out. They have no bread, and they’re going about begging for their poor, burnt-out village . . .”

“No, no,” Mitya, who still couldn’t understand, insisted. “I want you to explain to me why these burnt-out mothers are standing here, why there have to be poor people, why the poor babe must suffer, why the steppe is barren, why people don’t embrace and kiss one another, why they don’t sing joyful songs, why they look blackened from that black misfortune, why there is nothing to feed the babe.”

And although Mitya realized that it was stupid of him to keep on asking like that and that no good would come of it, he felt he had to ask and he had to ask just that way. He also felt a new, unknown fervor welling up in his heart; he felt like weeping; he longed to do something to stop the baby and its blackened, dried-up mother from crying, to stop all tears forever and ever, and he wanted to do it now, right now, without delay, regardless of everything; he wanted it with all the unrestrained passion of a Karamazov.

“And I’m coming with you. I’ll never leave you again. We’ll walk together all our lives,” he heard Grushenka’s voice nearby, full of deep emotion.

And his heart caught fire and turned toward a light; he wanted to live now, to live and to walk on and on toward that unknown light that was beckoning to him; he had to start quickly, quickly, right away!

*

“What? Where?” Mitya cried, opening his eyes, sitting up on the trunk as if he had come to after a fainting fit, and smiling brightly.

The examining magistrate was standing over him, asking him to listen to the final draft of the testimony and to sign it. Mitya realized that he had been asleep for an hour or more. He did not listen to Nelyudov, though; he was wondering how it happened that there was a pillow under his head. He knew it had not been there when he had sunk exhausted onto the trunk.

“Who put this pillow under my head? Who was so kind as to do that?” he exclaimed in rapt gratitude, his voice quivering, as if some extraordinary favor had been granted him.

The kind person was never to be identified. It might have been one of the witnesses, or perhaps the clerk Nelyudov had brought along, who, out of compassion, had placed the pillow under Mitya’s tired head. It was as if Mitya’s whole soul was shaken by sobs. He got up, walked over to the table, and told them that he would sign anything they wanted.

“I had a good dream,” he said in a strange voice. His face looked changed—it was radiant with joy.

Chapter 9: They Take Him Away

AFTER MITYA had signed the deposition, the examining magistrate turned to him and solemnly read out to him the Decision: he, the accused, was to be taken into custody pending trial. The Decision read that at such and such a place, on such and such a date, the examining magistrate of such and such a district court, having examined the accused, who was charged with such and such crimes (all the charges were carefully listed), and taking into account the fact that, although he denied the charges, the accused could offer no evidence in his defense, whereas the witnesses (such and such) and the circumstances (such and such) pointed sufficiently to his guilt (in accordance with articles such and such of the Criminal Code), had decided to confine the accused to such and such a prison, to prevent him from evading further investigation, of which decision the accused was notified, with a copy of the notification to be communicated to the district assistant public prosecutor, etc., etc. In short, Mitya was told that, from then on, he was a prisoner and would be taken at once to town to be locked up in a rather unpleasant establishment. Mitya listened to them attentively, then simply shrugged.