The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 7

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