The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕
"Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor," he used to say afterwards, with his loathsome snigger. In a man so depraved this might, of course, mean no more than sensual attraction. As he had received no dowry with his wife, and had, so to speak, taken her "from the halter," he did not stand on ceremony with her. Making her feel that she had "wronged" him, he took advantage of her phenomenal meekness and submissiveness to trample on the elemen
Read free book «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Performer: 0140449248
Read book online «The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕». Author - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
know…” Mitya was completely breathless.
“But you told us yourself that the envelope was under your
deceased father’s pillow. You especially stated that it was under
the pillow, so you must have known it.”
“We’ve got it written down,” confirmed Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“Nonsense! It’s absurd! I’d no idea it was under the pillow. And
perhaps it wasn’t under the pillow at all…. It was just a chance
guess that it was under the pillow. What does Smerdyakov say? Have you
asked him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? That’s the chief
point…. And I went out of my way to tell lies against myself…. I
told you without thinking that it was under the pillow, and now you-Oh, you know how one says the wrong thing, without meaning it. No
one knew but Smerdyakov, only Smerdyakov, and no one else…. He
didn’t even tell me where it was! But it’s his doing, his doing;
there’s no doubt about it, he murdered him, that’s as clear as
daylight now,” Mitya exclaimed more and more frantically, repeating
himself incoherently, and growing more and more exasperated and
excited. “You must understand that, and arrest him at once…. He must
have killed him while I was running away and while Grigory was
unconscious, that’s clear now…. He gave the signal and father opened
to him… for no one but he knew the signal, and without the signal
father would never have opened the door….”
“But you’re again forgetting the circumstance,” the prosecutor
observed, still speaking with the same restraint, though with a note
of triumph, “that there was no need to give the signal if the door
already stood open when you were there, while you were in the
garden…”
“The door, the door,” muttered Mitya, and he stared speechless
at the prosecutor. He sank back helpless in his chair. All were
silent.
“Yes, the door!… It’s a nightmare! God is against me!” he
exclaimed, staring before him in complete stupefaction.
“Come, you see,” the prosecutor went on with dignity, “and you can
judge for yourself, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. On the one hand, we have
the evidence of the open door from which you ran out, a fact which
overwhelms you and us. On the other side, your incomprehensible,
persistent, and, so to speak, obdurate silence with regard to the
source from which you obtained the money which was so suddenly seen in
your hands, when only three hours earlier, on your own showing, you
pledged your pistols for the sake of ten roubles! In view of all these
facts, judge for yourself. What are we to believe, and what can we
depend upon? And don’t accuse us of being ‘frigid, cynical, scoffing
people,’ who are incapable of believing in the generous impulses of
your heart…. Try to enter into our position…”
Mitya was indescribably agitated. He turned pale.
“Very well!” he exclaimed suddenly, “I will tell you my secret.
I’ll tell you where I got the money!… I’ll reveal my shame, that I
may not have to blame myself or you hereafter.”
“And believe me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch,” put in Nikolay
Parfenovitch, in a voice of almost pathetic delight, “that every
sincere and complete confession on your part at this moment may, later
on, have an immense influence in your favour, and may, indeed,
moreover-”
But the prosecutor gave him a slight shove under the table, and he
checked himself in time. Mitya, it is true, had not heard him.
Mitya’s Great Secret Received with Hisses
“GENTLEMEN,” he began, still in the same agitation, “I want to
make a full confession: that money was my own.”
The lawyer’s faces lengthened. That was not at all what they
expected.
“How do you mean?” faltered Nikolay Parfenovitch, “when at five
o’clock on the same day, from your own confession-”
“Damn five o’clock on the same day and my own confession! That’s
nothing to do with it now! That money was my own, my own, that is,
stolen by me…not mine, I mean, but stolen by me, and it was
fifteen hundred roubles, and I had it on me all the time, all the
time…”
“But where did you get it?”
“I took it off my neck, gentlemen, off this very neck… it was
here, round my neck, sewn up in a rag, and I’d had it round my neck
a long time, it’s a month since I put it round my neck… to my
shame and disgrace!”
“And from whom did you… appropriate it?”
“You mean, ‘steal it’? Speak out plainly now. Yes, I consider that
I practically stole it, but, if you prefer, I ‘appropriated it.’ I
consider I stole it. And last night I stole it finally.”
“Last night? But you said that it’s a month since you…
obtained it?…”
“Yes. But not from my father. Not from my father, don’t be uneasy.
I didn’t steal it from my father, but from her. Let me tell you
without interrupting. It’s hard to do, you know. You see, a month ago,
I was sent for by Katerina Ivanovna, formerly my betrothed. Do you
know her?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I know you know her. She’s a noble creature, noblest of the
noble. But she has hated me ever so long, oh, ever so long… and
hated me with good reason, good reason!”
“Katerina Ivanovna!” Nikolay Parfenovitch exclaimed with wonder.
The prosecutor, too, stared.
“Oh, don’t take her name in vain! I’m a scoundrel to bring her
into it. Yes, I’ve seen that she hated me… a long while…. From the
very first, even that evening at my lodging… but enough, enough.
You’re unworthy even to know of that. No need of that at all…. I
need only tell you that she sent for me a month ago, gave me three
thousand roubles to send off to her sister and another relation in
Moscow (as though she couldn’t have sent it off herself!) and I…
it was just at that fatal moment in my life when I… well, in fact,
when I’d just come to love another, her, she’s sitting down below now,
Grushenka. I carried her off here to Mokroe then, and wasted here in
two days half that damned three thousand, but the other half I kept on
me. Well, I’ve kept that other half, that fifteen hundred, like a
locket round my neck, but yesterday I undid it, and spent it. What’s
left of it, eight hundred roubles, is in your hands now, Nikolay
Parfenovitch. That’s the change out of the fifteen hundred I had
yesterday.”
“Excuse me. How’s that? Why, when you were here a month ago you
spent three thousand, not fifteen hundred, everybody knows that.”
“Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let anyone count it?”
“Why, you told everyone yourself that you’d spent exactly three
thousand.”
“It’s true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole town
said so. And here, at Mokroe, too, everyone reckoned it was three
thousand. Yet I didn’t spend three thousand, but fifteen hundred.
And the other fifteen hundred I sewed into a little bag. That’s how it
was, gentlemen. That’s where I got that money yesterday….”
“This is almost miraculous,” murmured Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“Allow me to inquire,” observed the prosecutor at last, “have
you informed anyone whatever of this circumstance before; I mean
that you had fifteen hundred left about you a month ago?”
“I told no one.”
“That’s strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?”
“Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.”
“What was your reason for this reticence? What was your motive for
making such a secret of it? To be more precise: You have told us at
last your secret, in your words, so ‘disgraceful,’ though in
reality-that is, of course, comparatively speaking-this action, that
is, the appropriation of three thousand roubles belonging to someone
else, and, of course, only for a time is, in my view at least, only an
act of the greatest recklessness and not so disgraceful, when one
takes into consideration your character…. Even admitting that it was
an action in the highest degree discreditable, still, discreditable is
not ‘disgraceful.’… Many people have already guessed, during this
last month, about the three thousand of Katerina Ivanovna’s that you
have spent, and I heard the legend myself, apart from your
confession…. Mihail Makarovitch, for instance, had heard it, too, so
that indeed, it was scarcely a legend, but the gossip of the whole
town. There are indications, too, if I am not mistaken, that you
confessed this yourself to someone, I mean that the money was Katerina
Ivanovna’s, and so, it’s extremely surprising to me that hitherto,
that is, up to the present moment, you have made such an extraordinary
secret of the fifteen hundred you say you put by, apparently
connecting a feeling of positive horror with that secret…. It’s
not easy to believe that it could cost you such distress to confess
such a secret…. You cried out, just now, that Siberia would be
better than confessing it…”
The prosecutor ceased speaking. He was provoked. He did not
conceal his vexation, which was almost anger, and gave vent to all his
accumulated spleen, disconnectedly and incoherently, without
choosing words.
“It’s not the fifteen hundred that’s the disgrace, but that I
put it apart from the rest of the three thousand,” said Mitya firmly.
“Why?” smiled the prosecutor irritably. “What is there
disgraceful, to your thinking, in your having set aside half of the
three thousand you had discreditably, if you prefer,
‘disgracefully,’ appropriated? Your taking the three thousand is
more important than what you did with it. And by the way, why did
you do that-why did you set apart that half, for what purpose, for
what object did you do it? Can you explain that to us?”
“Oh, gentlemen, the purpose is the whole point!” cried Mitya. “I
put it aside because I was vile, that is, because I was calculating,
and to be calculating in such a case is vile… and that vileness
has been going on a whole month.”
“It’s incomprehensible.”
“I wonder at you. But I’ll make it clearer. Perhaps it really is
incomprehensible. You see, attend to what I say. I appropriate three
thousand entrusted to my honour; I spend it on a spree, say I spend it
all, and next morning I go to her and say, ‘Katya, I’ve done wrong,
I’ve squandered your three thousand’; well, is that right? No, it’s
not right-it’s dishonest and cowardly; I’m a beast, with no more
self-control than a beast, that’s so, isn’t it? But still I’m not a
thief? Not a downright thief, you’ll admit! I squandered it, but I
didn’t steal it. Now a second, rather more favourable alternative:
follow me carefully, or I may get confused again-my head’s going
round-and so, for the second alternative: I spend here only fifteen
hundred out of the three thousand, that is, only half. Next day I go
and take that half to her: ‘Katya, take this fifteen hundred from
me, I’m a low beast, and an untrustworthy scoundrel, for I’ve wasted
half the money, and I shall waste this, too, so keep me from
temptation!’ Well, what of that alternative? I should be a beast and a
scoundrel, and whatever you like; but not a thief, not altogether a
thief, or I should not have brought back what was left, but have
kept that, too. She would see at once that since I brought back
half, I should pay back what I’d spent, that I should never give up
trying to, that I should work to get it and pay it back. So in that
case I should be
Comments (0)