VII. Mitya’s Great Secret. Hissed Down

“Gentlemen,” he began, still in the same agitation, “this money… I want to make a full confession… this money was mine.”

The prosecutor’s and the investigator’s faces actually fell; this was not at all what they had expected.

“How can it be yours,” Nikolai Parfenovich faltered, “when as late as five o’clock in the afternoon, by your own admission…”

“Eh, to the devil with five o’clock that afternoon and my own admission, that’s not the point now! This money was mine, mine, that is, stolen by me… not mine, that is, but stolen, stolen by me, and it came to fifteen hundred, and it was on me, on me the whole time…”

“But where did you get it from?”

“From my neck, gentlemen, I took it from my neck, from this very neck of mine… It was here, on my neck, sewn up in a rag and hanging on my neck, for a long time now, for a month now I’ve been wearing it on my neck in shame and disgrace!”

“But from whom did you… appropriate it?”

“You meant to say ‘steal’? Speak your words straight out now. Yes, I consider that I as good as stole it, or, if you like, I really did ‘appropriate’ it. But to my mind I stole it. And last night I stole it altogether.”

“Last night? But you just said it’s been a month since you… obtained it!”

“Yes, but not from my father, not from my father, don’t worry, I didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell it and don’t interrupt. It’s hard, you know. You see: a month ago Katerina Ivanovna Verkhovtseva, my former fiancée, summons me… Do you know her?”

“Why, of course, sir, how could we not.”

“I know you know her. The noblest soul, the noblest of the noble, but she has hated me for a long time now, oh, for a long time, a long time… and deservedly, deservedly she has hated me!”

“Katerina Ivanovna?” the investigator asked again in surprise. The prosecutor also stared terribly.

“Oh, do not take her name in vain! I am a scoundrel to drag her into this. Yes, I saw that she hated me… for a long time… from the very first time, from that very time at my lodgings, back there… But enough, enough, you are not even worthy to know about that, there is no need for it at all… All that matters is that she summoned me a month ago and gave me three thousand to send to her sister and another relative in Moscow (as if she couldn’t have sent it herself!), and I… this was precisely in that fatal hour of my life when I… well, in a word, when I had just fallen in love with another, with her, the present one, there she is, you’ve got her sitting downstairs now, Grushenka… I snatched her off then and brought her here to Mokroye, and here in two days I squandered half of that accursed three thousand on a spree, that is, fifteen hundred, and I kept the other half on me. Well, this fifteen hundred that I kept back I carried on me around my neck, like an amulet pouch, and yesterday I unsealed it and spent it on a spree. The change of eight hundred rubles that is now in your hands, Nikolai Parfenovich, is the change from yesterday’s fifteen hundred.”

“Excuse me, but how can that be? After all, a month ago here you squandered three thousand on a spree, and not fifteen hundred, everyone knows that.”

“And who is it that knows? Who counted? Whom did I let count it?”

“Good heavens, you yourself told everyone that you spent exactly three thousand then.”

“True, I said so, I said so to the whole town, and the whole town said so, and everyone reckoned it that way, and here in Mokroye too everyone reckoned it was three thousand. Only all the same what I squandered was not three thousand but fifteen hundred, and the remaining fifteen hundred went into the little pouch, sewn up; that’s how the matter stood, gentlemen, that’s where yesterday’s money came from…”

“This is almost miraculous…” Nikolai Parfenovich faltered.

“Allow me to ask,” the prosecutor said at last, “did you not announce this circumstance to anyone at all before… that is, that you had kept this fifteen hundred on you at that very time, a month ago?”

“I didn’t tell anyone.”

“That is strange. Really, absolutely no one at all?”

“Absolutely no one. No one, no one at all.”

“But why such silence? What induced you to make such a secret of it? I will explain myself more precisely: you have at last announced to us your secret, according to your words so ‘disgraceful,’ although in essence—that is, of course, only relatively speaking—this act, that is, precisely the appropriation of another person’s three thousand rubles, and, no doubt, only temporarily—this act is, in my view at least, merely an act in the highest degree frivolous, but not so disgraceful, taking into consideration, besides, your character… Well, let us suppose it was even a shameful act in the highest degree, I agree, but shameful is still not disgraceful… That is, what I am getting at, properly speaking, is that many people had already guessed during this month, even without your confession, about these three thousand of Miss Verkhovtseva’s that you squandered; I heard this legend myself… Mikhail Makarovich, for instance, heard it too. So that, in the end, it is almost no longer a legend, but the gossip of the whole town. Besides, there are traces that you yourself, if I am not mistaken, confessed this to someone, that is, precisely that this money came from Miss Verkhovtseva… And that is why I am too much surprised that until now, that is, until this very present minute, you have attached such extraordinary secrecy to this fifteen hundred that, according to you, you set aside, even linking some sort of horror with this secret of yours… It is incredible that such a secret could cost you so much torment to confess… because just now you were even shouting that you would sooner go to penal servitude than confess…”

The prosecutor fell silent. He had grown heated. He did not hide his vexation, almost his spite, and had poured out everything that had built up in him, without even caring about the elegance of his style, that is, incoherently and almost confusedly.

“The disgrace was not in the fifteen hundred, but in my having separated this fifteen hundred from the three thousand,” Mitya said firmly.

“But what of it,” the prosecutor grinned irritably, “what precisely is disgraceful in the fact that, out of three thousand already shamefully taken, or, if you yourself wish, disgracefully as well, you separated half at your own discretion? What matters more is that you appropriated the three thousand, not how you disposed of it. By the way, why did you dispose of it in precisely that way, that is, separate this half? For what, for what purpose did you do it, can you explain that to us?”

“Oh, gentlemen, but the whole point is in the purpose!” Mitya exclaimed. “I separated it out of baseness, that is, out of calculation, for calculation in this case is baseness… And this baseness went on for a whole month!”

“Incomprehensible.”

“You surprise me. However, I will explain further; really, perhaps it is incomprehensible. You see, follow me: I appropriate three thousand entrusted to my honor, I go on a spree with it, I squander it all, in the morning I come to her and say: ‘Katya, I’m guilty, I’ve squandered your three thousand’—well, is that good? No, it’s not good—it’s dishonorable and fainthearted, a beast, a man who can’t restrain himself to the point of bestiality, isn’t that so, isn’t it? But still not a thief? Not an outright thief, after all, not outright, you must agree! I squandered it, but I didn’t steal it! Now the second, still more advantageous case, follow me, or else I may lose the thread again—my head is spinning somehow—and so, the second case: here I squander only fifteen hundred of the three thousand, that is, half. The next day I come to her and bring her that half: ‘Katya, take this half from me, a vile wretch and a frivolous scoundrel, because I’ve squandered half, and so I’ll squander this too, so take it out of harm’s way!’ Well, how about that case? Anything you like, a beast and a scoundrel, but no longer a thief, decidedly not a thief, for if I were a thief I surely wouldn’t have brought back half of the change, but would have appropriated that too. And she sees at once that since I’ve brought back half, I’ll bring the rest too, that is, what I’ve squandered; I’ll search all my life, I’ll work, but I’ll find it and give it back. In this way, a scoundrel, but not a thief, not a thief, say what you like, not a thief!”

“Let us suppose there is a certain difference,” the prosecutor grinned coldly. “But it is strange all the same that you see such a fatal difference in it.”

“Yes, I do see such a fatal difference! Anyone may be a scoundrel, and maybe everyone is one, but not anyone may be a thief, only an arch-scoundrel. Well, I’m no good at these fine points… Only a thief is baser than a scoundrel, that’s my conviction. Listen: I carry the money on me for a whole month, I could make up my mind tomorrow to give it back, and then I’m no longer a scoundrel, but I can’t make up my mind, that’s the thing, though I make up my mind every day, though every day I prod myself: ‘Make up your mind, make up your mind, you scoundrel,’ and so for a whole month I can’t make up my mind, that’s the thing! What, is that good, in your opinion, is that good?”

“Let us suppose it is not so good; that I can understand perfectly well, and I do not dispute it,” the prosecutor answered with restraint. “But in general let us put off all wrangling over these fine points and distinctions, and, once again, if you would kindly get to the point. And the point is precisely that you have not yet deigned to explain to us, although we asked: why did you originally make such a division of these three thousand, that is, squander one half and hide away the other? Precisely why, properly speaking, did you hide it away, what, properly speaking, did you intend to use this separated fifteen hundred for? I insist on this question, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Ah, yes, that’s true!” Mitya cried, striking himself on the forehead. “Forgive me, I’m tormenting you and not explaining the main thing, or else you’d have understood in a flash, for it’s in the purpose, in that purpose, that the disgrace lies! You see, it was all that old man, the deceased, he kept tempting Agrafena Alexandrovna, and I was jealous, I thought then that she was wavering between me and him; and so I think every day: what if suddenly she decides, what if she gets tired of tormenting me and suddenly says to me: ‘It’s you I love, not him, take me away to the end of the world.’ And I’ve got only two twenty-kopeck pieces; what would I take her away with, what would I do then—I’d be lost. You see, I didn’t know her then and didn’t understand her, I thought she needed money and wouldn’t forgive me my poverty. And so I spitefully count off half of the three thousand and sew it up with a needle in cold blood, I sew it up with calculation, I sew it up before I start drinking, and then, once I’ve sewn it up, I go off drinking on the other half! No, sir, that’s baseness! Do you understand now?”

The prosecutor laughed loudly, and so did the investigator.

“To my mind it was even prudent and moral of you to restrain yourself and not squander it all,” Nikolai Parfenovich tittered, “because what is there so terrible in that, sir?”

“Why, that I stole, that’s what! Oh God, you horrify me with your lack of understanding! The whole time I was carrying that fifteen hundred sewn up on my breast, every day and every hour I kept telling myself: ‘You’re a thief, you’re a thief!’ Why, that’s why I raged all this month, that’s why I got into a fight in the tavern, that’s why I beat my father, because I felt I was a thief! I didn’t even dare, I didn’t have the courage, to tell Alyosha, my brother, about that fifteen hundred: that was how much I felt I was a scoundrel and a petty crook! But know that while I carried it, at the same time every day and every hour of mine I said to myself: ‘No, Dmitri Fyodorovich, perhaps you are not a thief yet.’ Why? Precisely because you can go tomorrow and give that fifteen hundred back to Katya. And only yesterday did I make up my mind to tear my pouch off my neck, on my way from Fenya’s to Perkhotin’s, and until that moment I couldn’t make up my mind, and the moment I tore it off, that very moment I became a final and indisputable thief, a thief and a dishonorable man for the rest of my life. Why? Because together with the pouch I tore up my dream too of going to Katya and telling her: ‘I’m a scoundrel, but I’m not a thief’! Do you understand now, do you understand!”

“But why precisely last night did you make up your mind to it?” Nikolai Parfenovich started to interrupt.

“Why? It’s ridiculous to ask: because I had sentenced myself to death, at five o’clock in the morning, here at dawn: ‘It’s all the same,’ I thought, ‘whether I die a scoundrel or a noble man!’ But no, it turned out not to be all the same! Would you believe it, gentlemen, it was not that, not that which tormented me most of all this night, that I had killed the old servant and that Siberia threatened me, and when?—when my love had been crowned and heaven had opened to me again! Oh, that tormented me, but not like this: still not like this accursed awareness that I had at last torn that accursed money off my breast and spent it, and that therefore now I was a thief once and for all! Oh, gentlemen, I repeat to you with my heart’s blood: I have learned much this night! I have learned that not only is it impossible to live a scoundrel, but it is impossible to die a scoundrel too… No, gentlemen, one must die honestly!…”

Mitya was pale. His face had a haggard and tormented look, in spite of his being heated to the extreme.

“I am beginning to understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor drawled softly and even, as it were, compassionately, “but all this, say what you will, is to my mind only nerves… your morbid nerves, that’s what it is, sir. And why, for instance, to spare yourself so much torment for almost a whole month, should you not go and give this fifteen hundred back to the person who had entrusted it to you, and, having explained yourself to her, why should you not, in view of your situation at the time, so terrible as you paint it, try the combination that so naturally presents itself to the mind, that is, after nobly confessing your mistakes to her, why should you not ask her for the sum you needed for your expenses, which she, with her generous heart and seeing your distress, would certainly not have refused you, especially if it was against a document, or, failing that, at least against the same security that you offered the merchant Samsonov and Mrs. Khokhlakova? After all, you still consider that security valuable even now, do you not?”

Mitya suddenly flushed:

“Do you really consider me so much of a scoundrel as that? You can’t be saying this seriously!…” he said indignantly, looking the prosecutor in the eye and as if not believing what he had heard from him.

“I assure you that I am serious… Why do you think I am not?” the prosecutor was surprised in his turn.

“Oh, how base that would have been! Gentlemen, do you know that you are tormenting me! As you please, I’ll tell you everything, so be it, now I’ll confess to you in all my infernality, but only to shame you, and you yourselves will be surprised at what baseness a combination of human feelings can reach. Know, then, that I had that combination myself already, that very one which you just spoke of, prosecutor! Yes, gentlemen, I too had that thought in this accursed month, so that I almost made up my mind to go to Katya, that is how base I was! But to go to her, to announce my betrayal to her, and for this same betrayal, for the carrying out of this same betrayal, for the expenses to come of this betrayal, to ask her, Katya herself, for money (to ask, do you hear, to ask!) and at once to run away from her with another woman, with her rival, with the woman who hated and had insulted her—good heavens, you are out of your mind, prosecutor!”

“Out of my mind or not, but, of course, in the heat of the moment I did not consider… about this very female jealousy… if there really could have been jealousy here, as you assert… yes, perhaps there is something of that sort here,” the prosecutor grinned.

“But that would have been such a foul thing,” Mitya fiercely struck the table with his fist, “it would have stunk so that I don’t even know what! Why, do you know that she could have given me that money, and she would have, surely she would have, she would have given it out of vengeance on me, out of the pleasure of vengeance, out of contempt for me she would have given it, because she too is an infernal soul and a woman of great wrath! And I would have taken the money, oh, I would have, I would have taken it, and then all my life… oh God! Forgive me, gentlemen, I am shouting like this because I had that thought so recently still, only the day before yesterday, precisely when I was struggling with Lyagavy that night, and then yesterday, yes, and yesterday, all day yesterday, I remember it, right up to that very incident…”

“Up to what incident?” Nikolai Parfenovich slipped in with curiosity, but Mitya did not hear him.

“I have made you a terrible confession,” he concluded gloomily. “So appraise it, gentlemen. And more than that, it’s not enough to appraise it, don’t appraise it, but prize it, and if not, if this too passes by your souls, then you simply do not respect me, gentlemen, that is what I tell you, and I shall die of shame at having confessed to such men as you! Oh, I’ll shoot myself! Why, I see already, I see that you don’t believe me! What, so you want to write this down too?” he cried, now in alarm.

“Why, what you just said,” Nikolai Parfenovich looked at him in surprise, “that is, that until the very last hour you were still intending to go to Miss Verkhovtseva to ask her for this sum… I assure you that this is very important testimony for us, Dmitri Fyodorovich, that is, about this whole incident… and especially for you, especially important for you.”

“Have mercy, gentlemen,” Mitya threw up his hands, “at least don’t write this down, have some shame! Why, I have, so to speak, torn my soul in half before you, and you have taken advantage of it and are poking your fingers into the torn place in both halves… Oh God!”

He covered his face with his hands in despair.

“Don’t be so upset, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor concluded. “Everything now written down you will listen to yourself afterward, and whatever you do not agree with we will change according to your words, but now I will repeat one more little question to you for the third time: is it really true that nobody, absolutely nobody at all, heard from you about this money you sewed into the pouch? That, I must tell you, is almost impossible to imagine.”

“Nobody, nobody, I told you, or else you haven’t understood anything! Leave me in peace.”

“As you please, sir; this matter is bound to be explained, and there is still plenty of time ahead for that, but meanwhile consider: we have, perhaps, dozens of testimonies that you yourself precisely spread about and even shouted everywhere about three thousand spent by you, about three thousand, not fifteen hundred, and now too, when yesterday’s money appeared, you managed to let many people know that you had again brought three thousand with you…”

“Not dozens, but hundreds of testimonies you have in your hands, two hundred testimonies, two hundred people heard it, a thousand heard it!” Mitya exclaimed.

“Well, there you see, sir: all, all testify to it. So the word all must mean something, mustn’t it?”

“It means nothing, I lied, and after me everyone started lying.”

“But why was it so necessary for you to ‘lie,’ as you put it?”

“The devil knows. Out of boasting, maybe… just so… that I’d squandered so much money… Maybe so as to forget about that sewn-up money… yes, that’s precisely why… devil… how many times are you going to ask that question? Well, I lied, and that’s the end of it; once I’d lied, I didn’t want to correct it. Why does a man sometimes lie?”

“That is very hard to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovich, why a man lies,” the prosecutor said impressively. “Tell me, however, was it large, this, as you call it, pouch on your neck?”

“No, not large.”

“And what size, for instance?”

“Fold a hundred-ruble note in half—that’s the size.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if you showed us the scraps? After all, you must have them somewhere on you.”

“Eh, devil… what nonsense… I don’t know where they are.”

“But allow me, however: where and when did you take it off your neck? After all, as you yourself testify, you did not go home?”

“Why, when I left Fenya’s and was going to Perkhotin’s, I tore it off my neck on the way and took out the money.”

“In the dark?”

“What would I need a candle for? I did it with my finger in a flash.”

“Without scissors, in the street?”

“In the square, I think; why scissors? A worn-out rag, it tore at once.”

“Where did you put it afterward?”

“I threw it away right there.”

“Where precisely?”

“Why, in the square, in the square somewhere! The devil knows where in the square. And what do you want it for?”

“This is extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovich: material evidence in your own favor, and how is it that you don’t want to understand that? Who helped you sew it up a month ago?”

“Nobody helped me, I sewed it up myself.”

“Can you sew?”

“A soldier has to know how to sew, and here no skill was needed at all.”

“Where did you get the material, that is, this rag in which you sewed it up?”

“Are you really not laughing?”

“Not in the least, and we are in no mood at all for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“I don’t remember where I got the rag, I got it somewhere.”

“One would think that is just the sort of thing one could hardly forget?”

“But by God, I don’t remember; maybe I tore up some piece of linen.”

“That is very interesting: in your lodgings tomorrow that item might turn up, a shirt, perhaps, from which you tore off a piece. What was the rag made of: canvas, linen?”

“The devil knows what of. Wait… I don’t think I tore it off anything. It was calico… I think I sewed it up in my landlady’s cap.”

“In your landlady’s cap?”

“Yes, I filched it from her.”

“How do you mean, filched it?”

“You see, I really do remember, I think, filching a cap one time for rags, or maybe to wipe my pen. I took it on the quiet, because it was a rag good for nothing, I had scraps lying about, and then there was that fifteen hundred, so I took it and sewed it up… I think it was precisely in those rags that I sewed it up. Old calico rubbish, washed a thousand times.”

“And you remember that firmly now?”

“I don’t know whether firmly. I think it was in the cap. Well, I spit on it!”

“In that case your landlady might at least remember that the item went missing?”

“Not at all, she never even missed it. An old rag, I’m telling you, an old rag, not worth half a kopeck.”

“And where did you get the needle, the thread?”

“I’m stopping, I won’t go on. Enough!” Mitya got angry at last.

“And again it is strange that you have so completely forgotten in what precise spot in the square you threw away this… pouch.”

“Why, give orders to have the square swept tomorrow, maybe you’ll find it,” Mitya grinned. “Enough, gentlemen, enough,” he concluded in an exhausted voice. “I see clearly: you didn’t believe me! Not in anything, not one kopeck’s worth! The fault is mine, not yours, I shouldn’t have poked my nose in. Why, why did I make myself loathsome by confessing my secret! And to you it’s a joke, I can see it in your eyes. It was you who brought me to this, prosecutor! Sing yourself a hymn, if you can… Be damned to you, torturers!”

He bowed his head and covered his face with his hands. The prosecutor and the investigator said nothing. After a minute he lifted his head and looked at them somehow without thought. His face now expressed a despair already accomplished, already irrevocable, and he somehow quietly fell silent, sat there, and seemed hardly aware of himself. Meanwhile the business had to be finished: they had to proceed without delay to the questioning of the witnesses. It was already about eight o’clock in the morning. The candles had long since been put out. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who had been coming in and going out of the room the whole time of the questioning, had this time both gone out again. The prosecutor and the investigator also looked extremely tired. The morning that had come was foul, the whole sky was overcast, and the rain was pouring down in buckets. Mitya looked at the windows without thought.

“May I look out of the window?” he suddenly asked Nikolai Parfenovich.

“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter answered.

Mitya got up and went to the window. The rain was simply lashing at the little greenish panes of the windows. Right under the window could be seen the muddy road, and farther off, in the rainy murk, black, poor, unsightly rows of cottages, which seemed still blacker and poorer from the rain. Mitya remembered “golden-haired Phoebus” and how he had meant to shoot himself at its first ray. “On such a morning it might even have been better,” he grinned, and suddenly, waving his hand from top to bottom, he turned to the “torturers”:

“Gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “I see, of course, that I am lost. But she? Tell me about her, I implore you, will she really be lost together with me? Why, she is innocent, why, yesterday she was out of her mind when she cried that she was ‘guilty of everything.’ She is not guilty of anything, of anything at all! I grieved all night, sitting here with you… Couldn’t you, can’t you tell me: what will you do with her now?”

“Set your mind entirely at rest on that score, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor answered at once and with visible haste. “We have as yet no significant motives to trouble in any way the person in whom you are so interested. In the further course of the case, I hope, the same will prove true… On the contrary, we will do everything in this respect that can possibly be done on our part. Be perfectly at ease.”

“Gentlemen, I thank you; I knew all along that you are, after all, honest and just men, in spite of everything. You have taken a burden from my soul… Well, what are we going to do now? I am ready.”

“Why, sir, we ought to hurry. We must proceed without delay to the questioning of the witnesses. All this must take place without fail in your presence, and therefore…”

“Shouldn’t we have a little tea first?” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted. “After all, I think we’ve earned it!”

They decided that if there was tea ready downstairs (in view of the fact that Mikhail Makarovich had surely gone off “to have his tea”), they would drink a glass each and then “go on and go on.” Real tea and “a little snack” they would put off to a freer hour. Tea was indeed found downstairs, and it was soon brought up. At first Mitya refused the glass that Nikolai Parfenovich amiably offered him, but then he asked for it himself and drank it greedily. In general he had a somehow even astonishingly exhausted look. One would have thought: with his giant’s strength, what could one night of carousing mean, even with the most violent sensations into the bargain? But he himself felt that he could barely sit up, and at times all the objects before his eyes began, as it were, to walk about and spin. “A little more, and I may start raving,” he thought to himself.