III. The Soul’s Journey Through the Ordeals. The First Ordeal

And so Mitya sat looking around at those present with a wild gaze, not understanding what was being said to him. Suddenly he rose, flung up his arms, and shouted loudly:

“Not guilty! Of this blood I am not guilty! Of my father’s blood I am not guilty… I wanted to kill him, but I’m not guilty! Not I!”

But he had only just managed to shout this when Grushenka leaped out from behind the curtains and simply collapsed right at the district police chief’s feet.

“It’s me, me, accursed me, I’m the guilty one!” she cried, with a wail that tore the soul, all in tears, stretching out her arms to everyone. “It’s because of me that he killed!… It was I who tormented him and drove him to it! I tormented that poor little old dead man too, out of my spite, and drove him to it! I’m the guilty one, I’m the first, I’m the chief one, I’m the guilty one!”

“Yes, you’re the guilty one! You’re the chief criminal! You’re a wild one, a depraved one, you’re the chief guilty one,” the district police chief yelled, shaking his hand at her, but here he was quickly and decisively restrained. The prosecutor even threw his arms around him.

“This will be utter disorder, Mikhail Makarovich,” he cried, “you are positively hindering the investigation… you are spoiling the case…” He was almost choking.

“Measures must be taken, measures must be taken, measures must be taken!” Nikolai Parfenovich too boiled up terribly. “Otherwise it is positively impossible!…”

“Judge us together!” Grushenka went on exclaiming in a frenzy, still on her knees. “Execute us together; I’ll go with him now even to be executed!”

“Grusha, my life, my blood, my holy one!” Mitya too threw himself on his knees beside her and pressed her tight in his arms. “Don’t believe her,” he shouted, “she isn’t guilty of anything, of any blood, of anything at all!”

He remembered afterward that several people had dragged him away from her by force, that she had suddenly been led away, and that he came to his senses sitting at the table. The men with badges were standing beside him and behind him. Opposite him, across the table, on the sofa, sat Nikolai Parfenovich, the court investigator, who kept urging him to drink a little water from a glass that stood on the table: “It will refresh you, it will calm you, don’t be afraid, don’t be uneasy,” he kept adding, extraordinarily politely. And Mitya, he remembered it, suddenly became terribly curious about the man’s large rings, one of amethyst and the other of some bright yellow stone, transparent and of such a beautiful luster. And for a long time afterward he remembered with surprise that these rings had drawn his eyes irresistibly even through the whole of those terrible hours of interrogation, so that for some reason he could not tear himself away from them or forget them, as a thing utterly unsuited to his situation. To the left, at Mitya’s side, in the place where Maximov had sat at the beginning of the evening, the prosecutor had now taken his seat, and at Mitya’s right hand, in the place where Grushenka had been then, a ruddy young man had settled himself, in a sort of hunting jacket, as it were, and a very worn one, before whom an inkstand and paper had appeared. It turned out that this was the investigator’s clerk, whom he had brought with him. The district police chief now stood by the window, at the other end of the room, beside Kalganov, who had also seated himself on a chair by the same window.

“Drink some water!” the investigator repeated gently for the tenth time.

“I’ve drunk, gentlemen, I’ve drunk… but… well, gentlemen, crush me, execute me, decide my fate!” exclaimed Mitya, with a terribly fixed, goggling stare at the investigator.

“And so you positively assert that you are not guilty of the death of your father, Fyodor Pavlovich?” the investigator asked gently but insistently.

“Not guilty! I am guilty of other blood, of another old man’s blood, but not my father’s. And I mourn it! I killed, I killed the old man, I killed him and struck him down… But it’s hard to answer for that blood with other blood, with terrible blood of which I’m not guilty… A terrible accusation, gentlemen, like a blow on the forehead! But who killed my father, who killed him? Who could have killed him, if not I? A miracle, an absurdity, an impossibility!…”

“Yes, well, who could have killed him…” the investigator was about to begin, but the prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich (the assistant prosecutor, but we too will call him the prosecutor for short), exchanging glances with the investigator, said, addressing Mitya:

“You are troubling yourself needlessly about the old servant Grigory Vasilyev. Know that he is alive, he has come to, and in spite of the grievous blows inflicted on him by you, according to his testimony and to yours now, it seems that he will undoubtedly live, at least according to the doctor’s opinion.”

“Alive? So he’s alive!” Mitya suddenly yelled, throwing up his hands. His whole face lit up. “Lord, I thank you for the greatest miracle you have worked for me, a sinner and a villain, in answer to my prayer!… Yes, yes, it was in answer to my prayer, I prayed all night!…” and he crossed himself three times. He was almost choking.

“Well, it is from this very Grigory that we have received such significant testimony concerning you that…” the prosecutor began to continue, but Mitya suddenly jumped up from his chair.

“One minute, gentlemen, for God’s sake just one little minute; I’ll run to her…”

“Allow me! At this minute it is quite impossible!” Nikolai Parfenovich almost shrieked even, and jumped to his feet too. The men with badges on their chests seized Mitya, though in any case he sat down on the chair himself…

“Gentlemen, what a pity! I wanted to go to her for just one instant… I wanted to announce to her that it’s washed away, it’s vanished, this blood that has been sucking at my heart all night, and that I’m no longer a murderer! Gentlemen, why, she’s my bride!” he said suddenly, rapturously and reverently, looking around at them all. “Oh, I thank you, gentlemen! Oh, how you have regenerated me, how you have resurrected me in a single instant!… That old man—why, he carried me in his arms, gentlemen, he washed me in a tub when everyone abandoned me, a child of three; he was my own father to me!…”

“And so you…” the investigator was about to begin.

“Allow me, gentlemen, allow me one more little minute,” Mitya interrupted, putting both elbows on the table and covering his face with his palms. “Let me collect my thoughts a tiny bit, let me take a breath, gentlemen. All this is terribly shaking, terribly; a man isn’t a drumskin, after all, gentlemen!”

“You might have a little more water…” Nikolai Parfenovich babbled.

Mitya took his hands from his face and laughed. His look was cheerful; he seemed to have changed completely in a single instant. His whole tone had changed too: here sat once more a man equal to all these people, to all these old acquaintances of his, exactly as if they had all met yesterday, when nothing had happened yet, somewhere in society. Let us note, however, by the way, that Mitya, when he first arrived among us, had been cordially received at the district police chief’s, but afterward, in the last month especially, Mitya had hardly visited him, and the district police chief, when he met him, in the street for instance, frowned heavily and returned his bow only out of politeness, which Mitya had very well noticed. With the prosecutor he was acquainted still more distantly, but he did sometimes call on the prosecutor’s wife, a nervous and fantastical lady, with the most respectful visits, however, and without even quite understanding himself why he went to see her, and she always received him kindly, for some reason taking an interest in him until quite recently. With the investigator he had not yet had time to become acquainted, but he had, however, met him too and had even talked with him once or twice, both times about the fair sex.

“You, Nikolai Parfenych, are a most skillful investigator, I see,” Mitya suddenly laughed gaily, “but now I’ll help you myself. Oh, gentlemen, I’m resurrected… and don’t hold it against me that I address you so simply and so directly. Besides, I’m a little drunk, I’ll tell you that frankly. I believe I’ve had the honor… the honor and the pleasure of meeting you, Nikolai Parfenych, at my relation Miusov’s… Gentlemen, gentlemen, I don’t claim equality, I do understand, you know, who I am now, sitting before you. On me there lies… if only Grigory has given testimony against me… then there lies—oh, of course, it lies on me already—a terrible suspicion! Horror, horror—why, I do understand that! But to business, gentlemen, I’m ready, and we’ll finish it now in an instant, because, listen, listen, gentlemen. Why, if I know that I’m not guilty, then of course we’ll finish it in an instant! Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?”

Mitya was talking quickly and a great deal, nervously and expansively, and as if decidedly taking his listeners for his best friends.

“And so for the time being we will write down that you radically reject the accusation brought against you,” Nikolai Parfenovich said impressively and, turning to the clerk, dictated to him in an undertone what was to be written down.

“Write it down? You want to write this down? Well, write it down, I agree, I give my full consent, gentlemen… Only, you see… Wait, wait, write it like this: ‘Of violent conduct he is guilty, of grievous blows inflicted on a poor old man he is guilty.’ Well, and then, to myself, inside, in the depths of my heart, I’m guilty—but that mustn’t be written down,” he suddenly turned to the clerk, “that’s my private life, gentlemen, that doesn’t concern you anymore, these depths of the heart, I mean… But of the murder of my old father—not guilty! That is a wild idea! That is a completely wild idea!… I’ll prove it to you, and you’ll be convinced instantly. You’ll laugh, gentlemen, you yourselves will roar with laughter at your suspicion!…”

“Calm yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the investigator reminded him, evidently wishing, as it were, to overcome the frenzied man with his own calm. “Before we continue the interrogation, I should like, if only you will agree to answer, to hear from you a confirmation of the fact that, it seems, you did not love the late Fyodor Pavlovich, that you were in some sort of constant quarrel with him… Here, at least, a quarter of an hour ago, you were pleased, it seems, to say that you had even wanted to kill him: ‘I did not kill him,’ you exclaimed, ‘but I wanted to kill him!’”

“I exclaimed that? Oh, that may be, gentlemen! Yes, unfortunately I wanted to kill him, I wanted to many times… unfortunately, unfortunately!”

“You wanted to. Would you not agree to explain what, properly speaking, were the principles that guided you in such hatred for the person of your parent?”

“What’s there to explain, gentlemen!” Mitya shrugged his shoulders sullenly, lowering his eyes. “I never hid my feelings, the whole town knows about it—everyone in the tavern knows. Only recently, in the monastery, I declared it in the elder Zosima’s cell… The same day, in the evening, I beat my father and nearly killed him, and swore that I would come again and kill him, in front of witnesses… Oh, a thousand witnesses! For a whole month I shouted it, everyone’s a witness!… The fact is plain, the fact speaks, it shouts, but feelings, gentlemen, feelings, that’s another matter. You see, gentlemen,” Mitya scowled, “it seems to me you have no right to ask me about feelings. Though you are invested with authority, I understand that, still this is my affair, my inner affair, intimate, but… since I didn’t hide my feelings before… in the tavern, for instance, and told everyone and anyone, then… then I won’t make a secret of it now either. You see, gentlemen, I do understand that in this case the evidence against me is terrible: I told everyone I’d kill him, and suddenly he’s been killed: so how can it not be me in that case? Ha-ha! I excuse you, gentlemen, I excuse you completely. Why, I myself am struck to the epidermis, because who killed him, after all, in that case, if not I? Isn’t that true? If not I, then who, who? Gentlemen,” he suddenly exclaimed, “I want to know, I even demand it of you, gentlemen: where was he killed? How was he killed, with what, and how? Tell me,” he asked quickly, looking from the prosecutor to the investigator.

“We found him lying on the floor, on his back, in his study, with his head broken in,” said the prosecutor.

“That’s terrible, gentlemen!” Mitya suddenly shuddered and, leaning his elbows on the table, covered his face with his right hand.

“We will continue,” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted. “And so, what then guided you in your feelings of hatred? You declared publicly, it seems, that it was a feeling of jealousy?”

“Well, yes, jealousy, and not only jealousy.”

“Disputes over money?”

“Well, yes, over money too.”

“The dispute, it seems, was over three thousand, supposedly not paid out to you from your inheritance.”

“Three, what an idea! More, more,” Mitya flared up, “more than six, more than ten maybe. I told everyone, I shouted it to everyone! But I had resolved, so be it, to settle for three thousand. I needed that three thousand desperately… so that the packet with the three thousand, which I knew was under his pillow, set aside for Grushenka, I regarded positively as if it had been stolen from me, that’s what, gentlemen, I regarded it as mine, just as if it were my own property…”

The prosecutor exchanged a significant glance with the investigator and managed to wink at him unnoticed.

“We will come back to this subject,” the investigator said at once, “but you will allow us now to note and write down precisely this little point: that you regarded this money, in that envelope, as though it were your own property.”

“Write it down, gentlemen, I do understand that this is evidence against me again, but I’m not afraid of evidence and I testify against myself. Do you hear, against myself! You see, gentlemen, you seem to be taking me for quite a different man from what I am,” he added suddenly, gloomily and sadly. “It’s a noble man who is speaking with you, a most noble person, above all—don’t lose sight of this—a man who has done an abyss of base things, but who has always been and has remained a most noble being, as a being, inside, in the depths, well, in a word, I don’t know how to express myself… That is precisely what I’ve been tormented by all my life, that I thirsted for nobility, I was, so to speak, a martyr to nobility and a seeker after it with a lantern, with Diogenes’ lantern, and all the while all my life I’ve done nothing but filthy things, as we all do, gentlemen… that is, as I alone do, gentlemen, not all of us, I alone, I made a mistake, I alone, alone!… Gentlemen, my head aches,” he winced in suffering. “You see, gentlemen, I didn’t like his appearance, there was something dishonorable in it, the boasting and the trampling on everything sacred, the mockery and the unbelief, vile, vile! But now that he’s dead, I think differently.”

“Differently how?”

“Not differently, but I’m sorry I hated him so.”

“You feel remorse?”

“No, not remorse exactly, don’t write that down. I’m no good myself, gentlemen, that’s what, I’m not very handsome myself, and so I had no right to consider him repulsive, that’s what! That, perhaps, you may write down.”

Having said this, Mitya suddenly became extraordinarily sad. For a long time already, gradually, as he answered the investigator’s questions, he had been growing gloomier and gloomier. And suddenly, at precisely this instant, another unexpected scene broke out. The fact was that Grushenka, though she had been removed earlier, had not been taken very far, only to the third room from the blue room in which the interrogation was now going on. It was a little room with one window, just beyond the large room in which there had been dancing in the night and the feast had gone on in full swing. There she sat, and with her, for the time being, only Maximov, terribly shaken, terribly frightened, who had attached himself to her as if seeking salvation by her side. At their door stood some peasant with a badge on his chest. Grushenka was crying, and then suddenly, when grief had pressed too close upon her soul, she jumped up, threw up her hands, and, crying out with a loud wail, “Oh, my grief, my grief!” rushed out of the room to him, to her Mitya, and so unexpectedly that no one had time to stop her. And Mitya, hearing her wail, simply shook all over, jumped up, yelled, and rushed headlong to meet her, as if not knowing what he was doing. But again they were not allowed to come together, though they had already seen each other. His arms were seized tight: he struggled, he strained to break free; it took three or four men to hold him. She too was seized, and he saw how she stretched out her arms to him, crying out, as she was being carried off. When the scene was over, he came to his senses again in his former place, at the table, opposite the investigator, and kept shouting, addressing them:

“What do you want with her? Why are you tormenting her? She’s innocent, innocent!…”

The prosecutor and the investigator tried to talk him round. So some time passed, some ten minutes; at last Mikhail Makarovich, who had stepped out, came hurriedly into the room and said loudly, in excitement, to the prosecutor:

“She has been removed, she is downstairs; will you not allow me, gentlemen, to say just one word to this unfortunate man? In your presence, gentlemen, in your presence!”

“Do us the favor, Mikhail Makarovich,” answered the investigator. “In the present case we have nothing to say against it.”

“Dmitri Fyodorovich, listen, my dear fellow,” Mikhail Makarovich began, turning to Mitya, and his whole agitated face expressed an ardent, almost fatherly compassion for the unfortunate man, “I took your Agrafena Alexandrovna downstairs myself and handed her over to the innkeeper’s daughters, and that little old man Maximov is with her there now and won’t leave her, and I talked her round, do you hear? I talked her round and calmed her, I impressed on her that you have to clear yourself, so she mustn’t interfere, mustn’t make you heartsick, or else you might get confused and give the wrong testimony against yourself, you understand? Well, in a word, I talked, and she understood. She’s a clever one, brother, she’s kind, she even tried to kiss my hands, an old man’s hands, she begged for you. She herself sent me here to tell you not to worry about her, and I must, my dear fellow, I must go and tell her that you’re calm and comforted about her. So calm yourself, understand that. I’ve wronged her, she’s a Christian soul, yes, gentlemen, she’s a meek soul and not guilty of anything. So what am I to tell her, Dmitri Fyodorovich, will you sit quietly or not?”

The kindly man said a great deal that was unnecessary, but Grushenka’s grief, human grief, had penetrated his kind soul, and there were even tears standing in his eyes. Mitya jumped up and rushed to him.

“Forgive me, gentlemen, allow me, oh, allow me!” he cried. “An angelic, angelic soul you are, Mikhail Makarovich, I thank you for her! I will, I will be calm, I’ll be cheerful, tell her, out of the boundless kindness of your soul, that I’m cheerful, cheerful, I’ll even start laughing in a moment, knowing that she has such a guardian angel as you with her. I’ll finish everything at once, and as soon as I’m free, straight to her; she’ll see, let her wait! Gentlemen,” he suddenly turned to the prosecutor and the investigator, “now I’ll open my whole soul to you, I’ll pour it all out, we’ll finish this in a flash, finish it cheerfully—we’ll be laughing at the end, won’t we? But, gentlemen, that woman is the queen of my soul! Oh, allow me to say this, this much at least I will reveal to you… I can see, after all, that I’m with the noblest of men: she is my light, my holy one, and if only you knew! You heard her cries: ‘With you even to be executed!’ And what have I given her, I, a beggar, a man without a kopeck, why such love for me, am I worth it, a clumsy, disgraceful creature with a disgraceful face, worth such love that she should go to penal servitude with me? She was groveling at your feet for me just now, she, proud and not guilty of anything! How can I not adore her, not cry out, not rush to her, as I did just now? Oh, gentlemen, forgive me! But now, now I am comforted!”

And he fell onto the chair and, covering his face with both palms, sobbed aloud. But these were happy tears now. He came to himself in a moment. The old district police chief was very pleased, and so, it seems, were the lawyers: they sensed that the interrogation would now enter a new phase. Having seen the district police chief out, Mitya grew downright cheerful.

“Well, gentlemen, now I’m yours, wholly yours. And… if only it weren’t for all these petty details, we’d come to an agreement at once. There I go about the petty details again. I’m yours, gentlemen, but, I swear, there has to be mutual trust—yours in me and mine in you—otherwise we’ll never finish. I say it for your own sake. To business, gentlemen, to business, and above all don’t rummage so in my soul, don’t torment it with trifles, but ask only about the matter itself and the facts, and I’ll satisfy you at once. And to the devil with the petty details!”

So Mitya exclaimed. The interrogation began anew.