VIII. The Testimony of the Witnesses. The Babe

The questioning of the witnesses began. But we shall no longer continue our story in such detail as we have kept up until now. And so we shall leave out how Nikolai Parfenovich impressed upon each witness who was called that he must testify according to truth and conscience and that later he would have to repeat this testimony of his under oath. How, finally, each witness was required to sign the record of his testimony, and so on, and so on. We shall note only one thing: that the chief point on which all the attention of the questioners was turned was, above all, still the very same question of the three thousand, that is, whether there had been three thousand or fifteen hundred the first time, that is, at Dmitri Fyodorovich’s first spree here in Mokroye a month ago, and whether there had been three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday, at Dmitri Fyodorovich’s second spree. Alas, all the testimonies, every last one of them, turned out to be against Mitya, and not one in his favor, and some of the testimonies even brought in new, almost staggering facts in refutation of his statements. The first to be questioned was Trifon Borisych. He came before the questioners without the slightest fear; on the contrary, with an air of stern and severe indignation against the accused, and by this he undoubtedly gave himself an air of extraordinary truthfulness and personal dignity. He spoke little, with restraint, waited for the questions, answered precisely and deliberately. Firmly and without beating about the bush he testified that a month ago no less than three thousand could have been spent, that all the peasants here would testify that they had heard about the three thousand from “Mitri Fyodorych” himself: “How much money he flung at the Gypsy girls alone! For them alone it must have gone over a thousand, I’ll be bound.”

“I maybe didn’t give them even five hundred,” Mitya remarked gloomily to this. “Only I didn’t count it then, I was drunk, more’s the pity…”

Mitya was sitting to one side this time, his back to the curtains; he listened gloomily, and had a sad and tired look, which seemed to say: “Eh, testify what you like, it’s all the same now!”

“More than a thousand went on them, Mitri Fyodorovich,” Trifon Borisovich refuted him firmly. “You flung it about for nothing, and they picked it up. That lot, you know, are thieves and swindlers, horse thieves they are; they’ve been driven away from hereabouts, or else maybe they’d testify themselves how much they profited off you. I saw the sum in your hands myself then—count it I didn’t, you didn’t let me, that’s fair, but by eye, I remember, it was a good deal more than fifteen hundred… Fifteen hundred, nothing of the kind! We’ve seen money too, we can judge…”

As for yesterday’s sum, Trifon Borisovich testified flatly that Dmitri Fyodorovich himself, the moment he got out of the carriage, had announced to him that he had brought three thousand.

“Come now, is that so, Trifon Borisych?” Mitya started to object. “Did I really announce positively that I had brought three thousand?”

“You said it, Mitri Fyodorovich. You said it in front of Andrei. Here’s Andrei himself, he hasn’t left yet, call him. And in there in the big room, while you were treating the chorus, you came right out and shouted that you were leaving your sixth thousand here—together with the earlier ones, that is, that’s how it’s to be understood. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomich Kalganov was standing next to you then, maybe he remembers too…”

The testimony about the sixth thousand made an extraordinary impression on the questioners. They liked the new version: three and three makes six, so it meant three thousand then and three thousand now, and there were all six of them; it came out clearly.

They questioned all the peasants Trifon Borisovich had named, Stepan and Semyon, the coachman Andrei, and Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. The peasants and the coachman confirmed Trifon Borisych’s testimony without beating about the bush. Besides that, they made a special note, from Andrei’s words, of his conversation with Mitya on the road about “where, you know, I, Dmitri Fyodorovich, will end up: in heaven or in hell, and will I be forgiven in the next world or not?” The “psychologist” Ippolit Kirillovich listened to all this with a subtle smile and ended by recommending that this testimony too, about where Dmitri Fyodorovich would end up, should be “added to the case.”

Kalganov, when he was questioned, came in reluctantly, frowning and peevish, and talked to the prosecutor and to Nikolai Parfenovich as though he were seeing them for the first time in his life, whereas he was an old and daily acquaintance of theirs. He began by saying that he “knows nothing about any of this and doesn’t want to know.” But it turned out that he too had heard about the sixth thousand; he admitted that he had been standing nearby at that moment. In his opinion, the money in Mitya’s hands came to “I don’t know how much.” As to the Poles having cheated at cards, he testified in the affirmative. He also explained, on repeated questioning, that after the Poles had been driven out Mitya’s affairs with Agrafena Alexandrovna had indeed improved and that she had said herself that she loved him. He spoke of Agrafena Alexandrovna with restraint and respect, as though she were a lady of the very best society, and not once did he even allow himself to call her “Grushenka.” In spite of the visible reluctance of the young man to testify, Ippolit Kirillovich questioned him for a long time, and only from him learned all the details of what constituted, so to speak, Mitya’s “romance” that night. Mitya did not once stop Kalganov. At last the youth was released, and he withdrew with undisguised indignation.

The Poles were questioned too. Although they had lain down to sleep in their little room, they had not slept all night, and with the arrival of the authorities they had hastily dressed and tidied themselves, understanding themselves that they would certainly be sent for. They appeared with dignity, though not without a certain fear. The chief one, that is, the little pan, proved to be an official of the twelfth class, retired, who had served as a veterinarian in Siberia, and his surname was Pan Mussyalovich. Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be a dentist in private practice, in Russian a tooth doctor. As soon as they came into the room, both of them, in spite of Nikolai Parfenovich’s questions, at once began addressing their answers to Mikhail Makarovich, who was standing to one side, taking him in their ignorance for the chief official and the person in command here, and calling him with every word “panie pułkowniku” (Mr. Colonel). And only after several such times, and on the instruction of Mikhail Makarovich himself, did they grasp that they must address their answers only to Nikolai Parfenovich. It turned out that they could speak Russian even very, very correctly, except perhaps for the pronunciation of certain words. About his relations with Grushenka, former and present, Pan Mussyalovich began to make declarations hotly and proudly, so that Mitya at once lost his temper and shouted that he would not allow a “scoundrel” to talk like that in his presence. Pan Mussyalovich at once fixed his attention on the word “scoundrel” and asked that it be entered in the record. Mitya boiled with fury.

“A scoundrel, and a scoundrel! Enter that, and enter as well that in spite of the record I still shout that he’s a scoundrel!” he shouted.

Although Nikolai Parfenovich entered it in the record, on this unpleasant occasion he displayed the most praiseworthy efficiency and skill in management: after a stern admonition to Mitya he himself at once put a stop to all further questions concerning the romantic side of the affair and hastened to pass on to what was essential. And in what was essential there appeared one piece of testimony from the pans that aroused the investigators’ extraordinary curiosity: precisely about how Mitya, in that little room, had tried to buy off Pan Mussyalovich and had offered him three thousand to withdraw, seven hundred rubles in hand, and the remaining two thousand three hundred “tomorrow morning in town,” swearing on his word of honor, declaring that here, in Mokroye, he did not have such money with him at present, but that the money was in town. Mitya remarked in the heat of the moment that he had not said he would surely pay it tomorrow in town, but Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the testimony, and Mitya himself, after thinking for a minute, agreed with a frown that it must have been as the pans said, that he had been heated then, and so might really have said so. The prosecutor fairly fastened on the testimony: it was becoming clear to the investigation (as indeed was later concluded) that half, or part, of the three thousand that had come into Mitya’s hands really might have remained hidden away somewhere in town, or perhaps even somewhere right here in Mokroye, so that in this way that ticklish circumstance for the investigation was also cleared up, namely that only eight hundred rubles in all had been found in Mitya’s hands—a circumstance which until now had been some evidence in Mitya’s favor all the same, though the only one, and rather insignificant. But now even this single piece of evidence in his favor was being destroyed. To the prosecutor’s question: where would he have got the remaining two thousand three hundred to give the pan tomorrow, if he himself maintained that he had had only fifteen hundred in all, and yet had assured the pan on his word of honor, Mitya answered firmly that he had meant to offer the “little Polack” for the next day not money, but a formal deed to his rights to the Chermashnya estate, the same rights he had offered to Samsonov and Mrs. Khokhlakova. The prosecutor even grinned at “the innocence of the dodge.”

“And you think he would have agreed to take these ‘rights’ instead of two thousand three hundred rubles in cash?”

“He would certainly have agreed,” Mitya snapped hotly. “Good heavens, he could have grabbed not just two thousand here, but four, but even six thousand out of it! He’d have rounded up his pettifogging lawyers at once, his Polacks and little Yids, and they’d have wrangled out of the old man not just three thousand, but the whole of Chermashnya.”

Of course, Pan Mussyalovich’s testimony was entered in the record in the fullest detail. With that the pans were released. The fact of the cheating at cards was almost not mentioned at all; Nikolai Parfenovich was too grateful to them as it was and did not want to trouble them with trifles, especially since all that was an empty drunken quarrel over cards and nothing more. As if there hadn’t been plenty of carousing and outrage that night… So the money, the two hundred rubles, stayed in the pans’ pockets after all.

Then they called the little old man Maximov. He appeared timidly, came up with small steps, looked disheveled and very sad. The whole time he had been huddling downstairs beside Grushenka, sitting with her in silence, and “every so often he’d start whimpering over her, and wipe his eyes with a blue checked handkerchief,” as Mikhail Makarovich told afterward. So that it was she who now quieted and comforted him. The little old man at once and with tears confessed that he was guilty, that he had borrowed from Dmitri Fyodorovich “ten rubles, sir, on account of my poverty, sir,” and that he was ready to return them… To Nikolai Parfenovich’s direct question whether he had not noticed how much money exactly there had been in Dmitri Fyodorovich’s hands, since he, more than anyone, could have seen the money in his hands when he was getting the loan from him, Maximov answered in the most decided manner that there had been “twenty thousand, sir.”

“And have you ever seen twenty thousand anywhere before?” Nikolai Parfenovich asked with a smile.

“Why, of course, sir, I have, sir, only not twenty, sir, but seven, sir, when my spouse mortgaged my little estate. She let me just look at it from a distance, she was showing off in front of me. A very big wad it was, sir, all rainbow notes. And Dmitri Fyodorovich had all rainbow notes too…”

He was soon released. At last it was Grushenka’s turn. The investigators were evidently apprehensive about the impression her appearance might make on Dmitri Fyodorovich, and Nikolai Parfenovich even muttered a few words of admonition to him, but Mitya, in answer, silently bowed his head, letting him know by this that “there will be no disorder.” Mikhail Makarovich himself brought Grushenka in. She came in with a stern and sullen face, outwardly almost calm, and quietly sat down on the chair she was shown, opposite Nikolai Parfenovich. She was very pale; she seemed to be cold, and she wrapped herself tightly in her beautiful black shawl. In fact a slight feverish chill was beginning in her then—the beginning of a long illness which she went through afterward, from that night on. Her stern look, her direct and serious gaze, and her calm manner made a very favorable impression on everyone. Nikolai Parfenovich was even at once somewhat “carried away.” He admitted himself, when telling of it here and there afterward, that only from that time did he comprehend how “good-looking” this woman was, while before, though he had seen her now and then, he had always considered her something like a “district hetaera.” “She has the manners of the very highest society,” he once blurted out rapturously in a certain ladies’ circle. But he was heard out with the most complete indignation and was at once called a “tease” for it, which left him very pleased. On coming into the room Grushenka glanced only as if in passing at Mitya, who in his turn looked at her uneasily, but the look of her at once set him at ease too. After the first necessary questions and admonitions Nikolai Parfenovich, though stumbling a little, yet preserving, however, the most polite air, asked her: “In what relations did she stand to the retired lieutenant Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov?” To which Grushenka pronounced quietly and firmly:

“He was an acquaintance of mine; I received him as an acquaintance this last month.”

To further curious questions she declared directly and with complete frankness that although at “times” she had liked him, she had not loved him, but had lured him on out of “my vile spite,” just as she had that “little old man”; she had seen that Mitya was very jealous of her over Fyodor Pavlovich and over everyone, but had only amused herself with it. As for Fyodor Pavlovich, she had never meant to go to him at all, but had only laughed at him. “That whole month I had no time for either of them; I was waiting for another man, one who had wronged me… Only I think,” she concluded, “that you have no business being curious about that, and I have no business answering you, because that’s my own particular affair.”

And so Nikolai Parfenovich immediately did just that: he again stopped insisting on the “romantic” points and passed straight on to the serious one, that is, still the same and most important question of the three thousand. Grushenka confirmed that in Mokroye, a month ago, three thousand rubles had indeed been spent, and though she had not done the counting herself, she had heard from Dmitri Fyodorovich himself that it was three thousand rubles.

“Did he tell you this in private, or in someone’s presence, or did you only hear him talking about it with others in your presence?” the prosecutor at once inquired.

To which Grushenka announced that she had heard it in front of people too, had heard him talking about it with others too, and had heard it from him himself in private too.

“Did you hear it from him in private once, or more than once?” the prosecutor inquired again, and learned that Grushenka had heard it more than once.

Ippolit Kirillych was very pleased with this testimony. From further questions it also came out that Grushenka knew where this money came from and that Dmitri Fyodorovich had, so she said, taken it from Katerina Ivanovna.

“And did you never hear, even once, that not three thousand but less had been squandered a month ago, and that Dmitri Fyodorovich had kept back a whole half of it for himself?”

“No, I never heard that,” Grushenka testified.

It further came out even that Mitya, on the contrary, had often told her during this whole month that he did not have a kopeck. “He kept waiting to get it out of his parent,” Grushenka concluded.

“And did he never say in your presence… either somehow in passing, or in irritation,” Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly blurted out, “that he intended to make an attempt on his father’s life?”

“Oh, he did!” Grushenka sighed.

“Once, or several times?”

“He mentioned it several times, always in a temper.”

“And did you believe he would carry it out?”

“No, I never believed it!” she answered firmly. “I trusted in his nobility.”

“Gentlemen, allow me,” Mitya suddenly cried, “allow me to say only one single word to Agrafena Alexandrovna in your presence.”

“Say it,” Nikolai Parfenovich permitted.

“Agrafena Alexandrovna,” Mitya rose a little from his chair, “believe God and me: I am not guilty of the blood of my father, who was killed yesterday!”

Having said this, Mitya sat down on his chair again. Grushenka rose a little and devoutly crossed herself before the icon.

“Glory to you, O Lord!” she said in an ardent, heartfelt voice, and, before sitting down again, turning to Nikolai Parfenovich, she added: “What he said just now, believe that! I know him: he’ll blurt out whatever he blurts out, either for a laugh or out of stubbornness, but if it’s against his conscience he will never deceive. He’ll tell the truth straight out, believe that!”

“Thank you, Agrafena Alexandrovna, you’ve given my soul strength!” Mitya responded in a trembling voice.

To the questions about yesterday’s money she declared that she did not know how much there had been, but had heard him tell people many times yesterday that he had brought three thousand with him. And as to where he had got the money, he had told her alone that he had “stolen” it from Katerina Ivanovna, and she had answered him that he had not stolen it and that the money must be given back the very next day. To the prosecutor’s insistent question as to which money he had said he stole from Katerina Ivanovna—yesterday’s, or that three thousand which had been spent here a month ago—she declared that he had spoken of the money of a month ago, and that that was how she had understood him.

At last Grushenka was released, and Nikolai Parfenovich impetuously declared to her that she might go back to town even right away, and that if he on his part could be of any assistance, for instance with regard to horses, or if, for instance, she wished an escort, then he… on his part…

“I humbly thank you,” Grushenka bowed to him. “I’ll set off with that little old man, the landowner, I’ll take him home, and meanwhile I’ll wait downstairs, if you’ll allow me, until you decide here about Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

She went out. Mitya was calm and even looked quite heartened, but only for a minute. A sort of strange physical weakness kept overpowering him more and more the further it went. His eyes were closing with fatigue. The questioning of the witnesses ended at last. They set about the final wording of the record. Mitya got up and went over from his chair to the corner, by the curtain, stretched out on a big chest that belonged to the landlord and was covered with a rug, and instantly fell asleep. He dreamed some strange dream, somehow quite out of place and out of season. Here he is, it seems, driving somewhere in the steppe, there where he served long ago, before, and a peasant is driving him through the slush in a cart, with a pair of horses. Only it seems that Mitya is cold; it is early November, and the snow is falling in big wet flakes, and as it falls on the ground it melts at once. And the peasant drives him briskly, he flicks the whip smartly, he has a fair, long beard, such a long one, and he is not exactly old, but maybe fifty or so, and he wears a gray peasant’s coat, a poor little one. And here, not far off, is a village; the cottages can be seen, black, black as black can be, and half the cottages have burned down, only charred beams stick up. And at the edge of the village, women are lined up along the road, many women, a whole row, all thin, worn out, their faces somehow brown. And there is one especially, at the end of the row, so bony, tall, she seems to be forty, but perhaps she is only twenty, her face long and thin, and in her arms a little babe is crying, and her breasts must be so dried up, and not a drop of milk in them. And the babe cries and cries and holds out its little arms, bare little arms, with little fists, somehow quite blue from the cold.

“Why are they crying? What are they crying for?” Mitya asks as he dashes past them at a gallop.

“The babe,” the coachman answers him, “the babe is crying.” And it strikes Mitya that he said it in his own way, the peasant way: “the babe,” and not “the child.” And he likes it that the peasant said “the babe”: there seems to be more pity in it.

“But why is it crying?” Mitya persists, like a fool. “Why are its little arms naked, why doesn’t anyone wrap it up?”

“The babe’s chilled through, its bits of clothes are frozen, so they don’t warm it.”

“But why is that so? Why?” foolish Mitya still will not leave off.

“They’re poor, burned out, they’ve no bread at all, they’re begging for their burned-out homes.”

“No, no,” Mitya still seems not to understand, “you tell me: why are the burned-out mothers standing there, why are the people poor, why is the babe poor, why is the steppe bare, why don’t they embrace each other, why don’t they kiss, why don’t they sing joyful songs, why have they turned so black from black misfortune, why don’t they feed the babe?”

And he feels in himself that though he is asking madly and senselessly, he wants without fail to ask precisely so, and that precisely so it must be asked. And he feels besides that a sort of tenderness such as he has never known before is rising in his heart, that he wants to weep, that he wants to do something for everyone, such that the babe will cry no more, and the black, dried-up mother of the babe will cry no more, so that there will be no tears at all from this moment on in anyone, and that it must be done at once, at once, without putting it off and in spite of everything, with all the Karamazov unrestraint.

“And I am with you, I won’t leave you now, I’ll go with you all my life,” beside him sound Grushenka’s dear words, full of feeling. And now his whole heart blazes up and strains toward some light, and he wants to live and live, to go and go on some path, toward a new, beckoning light, and quickly, quickly, now, right now!

“What? Where?” he exclaimed, opening his eyes and sitting up on his chest, exactly as though he had come to from a faint, and yet smiling brightly. Over him stood Nikolai Parfenovich, inviting him to hear the record read and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had slept an hour or more, but he was not listening to Nikolai Parfenovich. He was suddenly struck that there was a pillow under his head, which, however, had not been there when he had sunk down helplessly on the chest.

“Who brought a pillow and put it under my head? Who was so kind!” he exclaimed with a sort of rapturous, grateful feeling and in a sort of weeping voice, as though God knows what kindness had been done him. The kind man remained unknown afterward; one of the attesting witnesses, or perhaps Nikolai Parfenovich’s little clerk, had seen to it that a pillow was put under his head out of compassion; but his whole soul seemed to shake with tears. He went up to the table and announced that he would sign anything they liked.

“I have had a good dream, gentlemen,” he said somehow strangely, with a sort of new face, as if lit up with joy.