Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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“Well, like this, astride it, one leg here, the other there...”

“And the pestle?”

“The pestle was in my hand.” “Not in your pocket? You remember such a detail? So, then you must have swung hard?”

“I must have swung hard—but what do you need that for?”

“Why don’t you sit on the chair exactly as you were sitting on the fence then, and act out for us visually, for the sake of clarification, how and where you swung, in what direction?”

“You’re not mocking me, are you?” Mitya asked, glancing haughtily at his interrogator, but the latter did not even bat an eye. Mitya turned convulsively, sat astride the chair, and swung his arm:

“That’s how I hit him! That’s how I killed him! Anything else?”

“Thank you. Now may I trouble you to explain why, in fact, you jumped down, with what purpose, and what, in fact, you had in mind?”

“Ah, the devil ... I jumped down to the stricken man ... I don’t know why!”

“Even though you were so agitated? And running away?”

“Yes, agitated and running away.”

“Did you want to help him?”

“Help him, hah...! Well, maybe also to help him, I forget.”

“You forgot yourself? That is, you were even somehow unconscious?”

“Oh, no, not unconscious at all, I remember everything. To the last shred. I jumped down to look at him and wiped the blood off with my handkerchief. “

“We have seen your handkerchief. Did you hope to bring the man you struck back to life?”

“I don’t know if I hoped anything. I simply wanted to make sure if he was alive or not.”

“Ah, you wanted to make sure? Well, and so?”

“I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t tell. I ran away thinking I’d killed him, but he recovered.”

“Wonderful, sir,” the prosecutor concluded. “Thank you. That is just what I wanted. Be so good as to continue.”

Alas, it did not even occur to Mitya to tell them, though he remembered it, that he had jumped down out of pity, and that standing over the murdered man he had even uttered a few pathetic words: “You came a cropper, old man—there’s no help for it—now lie there.” But the prosecutor drew just one conclusion, that the man would only have jumped down “at such a moment and in such agitation,” with the purpose of making completely sure whether the sole witness to his crime was alive or not. And what strength, consequently, what resolution, cold-bloodedness, and calculation the man possessed even at such a moment ... and so on and so forth. The prosecutor was pleased: “I irritated the morbid fellow with ‘details’ and he gave himself away.”

Painfully, Mitya went on. But again he was stopped at once, this time by Nikolai Parfenovich:

“How could you have run to the servant, Fedosya Markov, with your hands and, as it turned out later, your face so covered with blood?”

“But I didn’t notice at the time that there was any blood on me!” Mitya answered.

“That’s plausible, it does happen that way,” the prosecutor exchanged looks with Nikolai Parfenovich.

“I precisely didn’t notice—beautiful, prosecutor,” Mitya, too, suddenly approved. But next came the story of Mitya’s sudden decision “to remove himself” and “ make way for the happy ones. “ And now it was quite impossible for him to bring himself to lay bare his heart, as before, and tell them about “the queen of his soul.” It sickened him in the face of these cold people, who “bit at him like bedbugs.” Therefore, to their repeated questions, he declared briefly and sharply:

“So I decided to kill myself. Why should I go on living? Naturally that jumped into the picture. Her offender arrived, the former, indisputable one, and he came riding to her with love, after five years, to end the offense with legal marriage. So I realized that it was all over for me ... And behind me was disgrace, and that blood, Grigory’s blood ... Why live? So I went to redeem the pawned pistols, to load them, and to put a bullet into my sconce at dawn ...”

“And feast the night before?”

“And feast the night before. Eh, the devil, let’s get it over with quicker, gentlemen. I was certainly going to shoot myself, not far from here, just outside town, and I would have disposed of myself at about five o’clock in the morning—I had a note all prepared in my pocket, I wrote it at Perkhotin’s when I loaded the pistol. Here it is, read it. I’m not telling it for you!” he suddenly added contemptuously. He threw the piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket onto the table in front of them; the investigators read it with curiosity, and, as is customary, filed it away,

“And you still did not think of washing your hands even as you entered Mr. Perkhotin’s? In other words, you were not afraid of arousing suspicion?”

“What suspicion? Suspicion or not, all the same I’d have driven here and shot myself at five o’clock, and there would have been no time to do anything about it. If it weren’t for what happened to my father, you wouldn’t have found anything out and come here. Oh, the devil did it, the devil killed my father, and the devil let you find out so soon! How on earth did you get here so soon? It’s a wonder, fantastic!”

“Mr. Perkhotin told us that when you came to him, you were holding your money ... a lot of money ... a wad of hundred-rouble bills ... in your hands ... your blood-stained hands, and that the servant boy also saw it!”

“Yes, gentlemen, that’s true, I remember.”

“Now one little question arises. Would you mind informing us,” Nikolai Parfenovich began with extreme gentleness, “as to where you suddenly got so much money, when it appears from the evidence, even from the simple reckoning of time, that you did not stop at your own lodgings?”

The prosecutor winced slightly at the bluntness with which the question had been put, but he did not interrupt Nikolai Parfenovich.

“No, I didn’t stop at my lodgings,” Mitya replied, apparently very calmly, but dropping his eyes.

“Allow me, in that case, to repeat the question,” Nikolai Parfenovich continued, somehow creeping up. “Where could you have gotten such a sum all at once, when, by your own admission, at five o’clock that same afternoon you...”

“Needed ten roubles, and pawned my pistols to Perkhotin, then went to Khokhlakov for three thousand, which she didn’t give me, and so on, and all the rest of it,” Mitya interrupted sharply. “So, yes, gentlemen, I needed money, and then suddenly thousands appeared, eh? You know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid now: what if he won’t tell us where he got it? And so it is: I won’t tell you, gentlemen, you’ve guessed right, you’ll never know,” Mitya suddenly hammered out with great determination. The investigators fell silent for a moment.

“Understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is an essential necessity that we know this,” Nikolai Parfenovich said softly and humbly.

“I understand, but I still won’t tell you.”

The prosecutor intervened and again reminded him that a man under interrogation was of course at liberty not to answer questions if he thought it more beneficial, and so on, but in view of the harm the suspect might do himself by keeping silent, and especially in view of questions of such importance as . . .

“And so on, gentlemen, and so on! Enough, I’ve heard the whole harangue before!” Mitya again interrupted. “I myself understand the importance of the matter and what the most essential point is, and I still won’t tell you.”

“What is it to us, sir? It’s not our business, but yours. You will only be harming yourself,” Nikolai Parfenovich remarked nervously. “You see, gentlemen, joking aside,” Mitya raised his eyes and looked at them both steadily, “from the very beginning I had a feeling we would be at loggerheads on this point. But when I first started giving evidence today, that was all in a fog of things to come, it was all floating out there, and I was even so naive as to make a suggestion of ‘mutual trust between us.’ Now I see for myself that there could be no such trust, because we were bound to come to this cursed fence! Well, so we’ve come to it! It’s impossible, that’s all! I don’t blame you, by the way, it’s also impossible for you to take my word for it, I quite understand that.”

He fell gloomily silent.

“But could you not, without in the least violating your determination to keep silent on this main point, could you not at the same time give us at least some slight hint as to precisely what sort of compelling motives might force you to keep silent at a moment so dangerous for you in your evidence?”

Mitya smiled sadly and somehow pensively.

“I am much kinder than you think, gentlemen, and I will tell you my reasons, and give you that hint, though you’re not worthy of it. I keep silent, gentlemen, because it involves a disgrace for me. The answer to the question of where I got this money contains such a disgrace for me as could not be compared even with killing and robbing my father, if I had killed and robbed him. That is why I cannot speak. Because of the disgrace. What, gentlemen, are you going to write that down?”

“Yes, we shall write it down,” Nikolai Parfenovich muttered.

“You shouldn’t be writing it down—about the ‘disgrace,’ I mean. I only gave you that evidence out of the goodness of my soul, but I didn’t have to do it, I gave it to you as a gift, so to speak, but you pick up every stitch. Well, write, write whatever you want,” he concluded contemptuously and with distaste. “I’m not afraid of you, and ... I’m proud before you.”

“And would you tell us what sort of disgrace it might be? “ muttered Nikolai Parfenovich.

The prosecutor winced terribly.

“No, no, c’est fini,don’t bother. There’s no need dirtying myself. I’ve already dirtied myself enough on you. You’re not worthy, you or anyone else ... Enough, gentlemen, drop it.”

This was said all too resolutely. Nikolai Parfenovich stopped insisting, but he saw at once from the glance of Ippolit Kirillovich that he had not yet lost hope.

“Could you not at least state how much money was in your hands when you came with it to Mr. Perkhotin’s—that is, exactly how many roubles?”

“I cannot state that either.” “I believe you made some statement to Mr. Perkhotin about three thousand that you supposedly got from Madame Khokhlakov?”

“Maybe I did. Enough, gentlemen, I won’t tell you how much.”

“In that case, will you kindly describe how you came here and all that you did when you came?”

“Oh, ask the local people about that. Or, no, maybe I will tell you.”

He told them, but we shall not give his story here. It was dry, brief. He did not speak at all about the raptures of his love. He did tell, however, how the resolve to shoot himself abandoned him “in the face of new facts.” He told it without giving motives, without going into details. And this time the investigators did not bother him much: it was clear that for them the main point now lay elsewhere.

“We shall check all that, we shall come back to everything when we question the witnesses, which will be done, of course, in your presence,” Nikolai Parfenovich concluded the interrogation. “And now allow me to make a request of you, that you lay out here on the table all the things you have in your possession, especially all the money you now have.”

“Money, gentlemen? By all means, I understand the need for it. I’m even surprised you didn’t ask sooner. True, I wasn’t going anywhere, I’m sitting in plain sight of everyone. Well, here it is, my money, here, count it, take it, that’s all, I think.”

He took everything out of his pockets, even the change; he pulled two twenty-kopeck pieces from the side pocket of his waistcoat. They counted the money, which came to eight hundred and thirty-six roubles and forty kopecks.

“And that’s all?” asked the district attorney.

“All.”

“You were so good as to tell us, giving your evidence just now, that you spent three hundred roubles at Plotnikov’s shop, gave ten to Perkhotin, twenty to the coachman, lost two hundred in a card game here, so then ...”

Nikolai Parfenovich totaled it all up. Mitya willingly helped. They remembered every kopeck and added it to the reckoning. Nikolai Parfenovich made a quick calculation.

“It follows that you originally had about fifteen hundred roubles, if we include this eight hundred.”

“It follows,” Mitya snapped.

“Why, then, does everyone claim there was much more?”

“Let them claim it.”

“But you also claimed it yourself.”

“I also claimed it.” “We shall still check it against the evidence of other persons who have not yet been questioned; don’t worry about your money, it will be kept in a proper place and will be at your disposal at the end of ... of what is now beginning ... if it proves, or rather if we prove, so to speak, that you have an undisputed right to it. Well, sir, and now...”

Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly got up and firmly announced to Mitya that he was “obliged and duty-bound” to conduct a most thorough and minute examination “of your clothes and everything else...”

“As you wish, gentlemen, I’ll turn all my pockets out, if you like.”

And indeed he began turning his pockets out.

“It will even be necessary for you to take off your clothes.”

“What? Undress? Pah, the devil! You can search me like this, isn’t that possible?”

“Utterly impossible, Dmitri Fyodorovich. You must take your clothes off.”

“As you will,” Mitya gloomily submitted, “only, please, not here—behind the curtains. Who will do the examining?”

“Behind the curtains, of course,” Nikolai Parfenovich inclined his head in a token of consent. His little face even wore an expression of unusual importance.

Chapter 6: The Prosecutor Catches Mitya

There began something quite unexpected and astonishing for Mitya. He could not at all have supposed, even a moment before, that anyone could treat him, Mitya Karamazov, like that! Above all there was something humiliating in it, and something “haughty and contemptuous towards him” on their part. To take off his coat would be nothing, but they asked him to undress further. And they did not merely ask, but, in fact, they ordered; he understood it perfectly. Out of pride and contempt he submitted completely, without a word. Along with Nikolai Parfenovich, the prosecutor also went behind the curtains, and there were several peasants as well, “for strength, of course,” thought Mitya, “and maybe for something else.”

“What, must I take my shirt off, too?” he asked sharply, but Nikolai Parfenovich did not answer: together with the prosecutor, he was absorbed in examining the coat, the trousers, the waistcoat, and the cap, and one could see that they were both very interested in examining them. “They don’t stand on any ceremony,” flashed through Mitya’s mind, “they don’t even observe the necessary politeness.”

“I’m asking you for the second time: must I take my shirt off or not?” he said even more sharply and irritably.

“Don’t worry, we’ll let you know,” Nikolai Parfenovich replied somehow even overbearingly. At least it seemed so to Mitya.

Meanwhile between the district attorney and the prosecutor a solicitous debate was going on in half whispers. Huge spots of blood, dry, stiff, and not softened very much yet, were found on the coat, especially on the left flap at the back. Also on the trousers. Furthermore, Nikolai Parfenovich, with his own hands, in the presence of witnesses, felt along the collar, cuffs, and all the seams of the coat and trousers with his fingers, evidently looking for something—money, of course. Above all, they did not conceal from Mitya the suspicion that he could and would have sewn money into his clothes. “As if they really were dealing with a thief, not an officer,” Mitya growled to himself. And they were telling each other their thoughts in his presence, with a frankness that verged on strangeness. For example, the clerk, who also ended up behind the curtains, fussing about and assisting, drew Nikolai Parfenovich’s attention to the cap, which was also felt over: “Do you remember Gridenko the scrivener, sir,” he remarked, “who came in the summer to pick up the wages for the whole office, and announced when he got back that he had lost the money while drunk—and where did they find it? In this same piping, in his cap, sir—the hundred-rouble bills were rolled up and sewn into the piping.” The fact about Gridenko was remembered very well by both the district attorney and the prosecutor, and therefore Mitya’s cap, too, was set aside, and it was decided that all of that would have to be seriously reexamined later, and all the clothes as well.

“I beg your pardon,” Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly cried, noticing the tucked-under right cuff of Mitya’s right shirt sleeve, all stained with blood, “I beg your pardon, sir—is that blood?”

“Blood,” snapped Mitya.

“That is, whose blood, sir ... and why is it tucked under?”

Mitya told him how he had stained the cuff fussing over Grigory, and how he had tucked it under when he washed his hands at Perkhotin’s.

“We shall have to take your shirt, too, it’s very important ... as material evidence.” Mitya flushed and became furious.

“What, am I to stay naked?” he cried.

“Don’t worry ... We’ll do something about it ... and meanwhile may I also trouble you to take off your socks?” “You must be joking! Is it really so necessary?” Mitya flashed his eyes.

“This is no time for joking,” Nikolai Parfenovich parried sternly.

“Well, if you need it ... I ... ,” Mitya muttered, and having sat down on the bed, he began taking his socks off. He felt unbearably awkward: everyone else was dressed, and he was undressed, and—strangely—undressed, he himself seemed to feel guilty before them, and, above all, he was almost ready to agree that he had indeed suddenly become lower than all of them, and that they now had every right to despise him. “If everyone is undressed, it’s not shameful, but when only one is undressed and the others are all looking—it’s a disgrace!” flashed again and again through his mind. “It’s like a dream, I’ve dreamed of being disgraced like this.” But to take his socks off was even painful for him: they were not very clean, nor were his underclothes, and now everyone could see it. And above all he did not like his own feet; all his life for some reason he had found both his big toes ugly, especially the right one with its crude, flat toenail, somehow curved under, and now they would all see it. This unbearable shame suddenly made him, deliberately now, even more rude. He tore his shirt off.

“Would you like to look anywhere else, if you’re not ashamed to?”

“No, sir, not just now.”

“So, what, am I to stay naked like this?” he added fiercely.

“Yes, it is necessary just now ... May I trouble you to sit down here for now, you can take a blanket from the bed and wrap yourself, and I ... I’ll see to everything.”

All the articles were shown to the witnesses, the report of the examination was drawn up, and Nikolai Parfenovich finally went out, and the clothes were taken out after him. Ippolit Kirillovich also went out. Only the peasants remained with Mitya, and stood silently, not taking their eyes off him. Mitya wrapped himself in a blanket; he was cold. His bare feet stuck out, and he kept trying unsuccessfully to pull the blanket over them so as to cover them. Nikolai Parfenovich did not come back for a long time, “painfully long.” “He treats me like a pup,” Mitya ground his teeth. “That rotten prosecutor left, too, must be from contempt, he got disgusted looking at a naked man.” Mitya still supposed that his clothes would be examined elsewhere and then brought back. How great was his indignation when Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly returned with quite different clothes, brought in after him by a peasant.

“Well, here are some clothes for you,” he said casually, apparently quite pleased with the success of his expedition. “Mr. Kalganov has donated them for this curious occasion, as well as a clean shirt for you. Fortunately, he happened to have it all in his suitcase. You may keep your own underwear and socks.” Mitya boiled over.

“I don’t want other people’s clothes!” he thundered. “Give me mine!”

“Impossible.”

“Give me mine! Devil take Kalganov, him and his clothes!”

They reasoned with him for a long time. Anyway, they somehow calmed him down. They convinced him that his own clothes, being stained with blood, must “join the collection of material evidence,” and to leave them on him “no longer even fell within their rights ... in view of how the case might end.” Mitya somehow finally understood this. He lapsed into a gloomy silence and began hurriedly getting dressed. He merely observed, as he was putting the clothes on, that they were more costly than his old ones, and that he did not want “to gain by it.” And besides, “they’re embarrassingly tight. Shall I play the buffoon in them ... for your pleasure?”

Again he was convinced that here, too, he was exaggerating, that Mr. Kalganov, though taller than he, was only slightly taller, so that only the trousers might be a trifle long. But the coat did turn out to be narrow in the shoulders.

“Devil take it, I can hardly even button it,” Mitya growled again. “Do me a favor, please tell Mr. Kalganov right now that I did not ask him for his clothes, and that I’ve been gotten up like a buffoon.”

“He understands that very well, and he is sorry ... not sorry about his clothes, that is, but, as a matter of fact, about this whole case ... ,” Nikolai Parfenovich mumbled.

“I spit on his ‘sorry’! Well, where to now? Or do I go on sitting here?”

He was asked to go back to “that room.” He went back, sullen with anger, trying not to look at anyone. He felt himself utterly disgraced in another man’s clothes, even before those peasants and Trifon Borisovich, whose face lor some reason flashed in the doorway and disappeared. “He came to have a look at the mummer,” thought Mitya. He sat down on his former chair. He had the illusion of something nightmarish and absurd; it seemed to him he was not in his right mind.

“Well, what now, do you start flogging me with a birch, or what? There’s nothing else left,” he gnashed out, addressing the prosecutor. He no longer wanted even to turn towards Nikolai Parfenovich, as though he did not deign to speak with him. “He examined my socks too closely, and had them turned inside out, the scoundrel—he did it on purpose, to show everyone how dirty my underwear is!”

“Well, now we’ll have to proceed to the interrogation of the witnesses,” said Nikolai Parfenovich, as if in answer to Dmitri Fyodorovich’s question.

“Yes,” the prosecutor said thoughtfully, as if he, too, was pondering something. “We have done all we could in your interest, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” Nikolai Parfenovich continued, “but having received such a radical refusal on your part to give us any explanation concerning the sources of the sum found in your possession, we, at this point...”

“What’s the stone in that ring?” Mitya suddenly interrupted, as if coming out of some sort of reverie, pointing to one of the three large rings that adorned Nikolai Parfenovich’s right hand.

“Ring?” Nikolai Parfenovich repeated in surprise.

“Yes, that one ... with the little veins in it, on your middle finger—what stone is that?” Mitya insisted somehow irritably, like a stubborn child.

“It’s a smoky topaz,” Nikolai Parfenovich smiled, “would you like to look at it? I’ll take it off...”

“No, no, don’t take it off,” Mitya cried fiercely, suddenly coming to his senses, and angry with himself. “Don’t take it off, there’s no need ... Ah, the devil ... Gentlemen, you’ve befouled my soul! Can you possibly think I’d conceal it from you if I really killed my father? That I’d hedge, and lie, and hide? No, Dmitri Karamazov is not like that, he couldn’t bear it, and if I were guilty, I swear, I wouldn’t have waited for you to come here, or for the sun to rise, as I originally intended, I’d have destroyed myself even before, without waiting for dawn! I feel that in myself now. I’ve found out more in this one cursed night than I’d have learned in twenty years of living . . .! And would I have been this way, would I have been this way on this night, and at this moment, sitting with you now, would I be talking like this, would I be moving like this, would I look at you and at the world like this, if I really were a parricide, when even the inadvertent killing of Grigory gave me no rest all night—not from fear, oh! not just from fear of your punishment! The disgrace of it! And you want me to reveal and tell about yet another new meanness of mine, yet another new disgrace, to such scoffers as you, who do not see anything and do not believe anything, blind moles and scoffers, even if it would save me from your accusation? Better penal servitude! The one who opened the door to my father’s room and went in through that door is the one who killed him, he is the one who robbed him. Who he is, I am at a loss and at pains to say, but he is not Dmitri Karamazov, know that—and that is all I can tell you, and enough, stop badgering me ... Exile me, hang me, but don’t irritate me any more. I am silent. Call your witnesses!”

Mitya spoke his sudden monologue as if he were fully and finally determined to keep silent from then on. The prosecutor was watching him the whole time, and, as soon as he fell silent, suddenly said with the coldest and calmest air, as if it were the most ordinary thing:

“Incidentally, it is precisely with regard to that open door you have just mentioned that we can inform you, precisely now, of a highly curious piece of evidence, of the greatest importance for you and for us, supplied by Grigory Vasiliev, the old man you injured. On regaining consciousness, he clearly and emphatically told us, in answer to our inquiries, that when, coming out on the porch and hearing some noise in the garden, he decided to go into the garden through the gate, which was standing open; having gone into the garden, but before he noticed you running in the darkness, as you have told us already, away from the open window in which you saw your father, he, Grigory, glancing to the left and indeed noticing the open window, noticed at the same time that the door, much closer to him, was also wide open, that door of which you have stated that it remained shut all the while you were in the garden. I shall not conceal from you that Vasiliev himself firmly concludes and testifies that you must have run out of that door, though of course he did not see you run out with his own eyes, but noticed you for the first time when you were some distance away, in the middle of the garden, running in the direction of the fence...”

Mitya had already leaped from his chair halfway through the speech.

“Nonsense!”he suddenly yelled in frenzy, “a bold-faced lie! He could not have seen the door open then, because it was shut ... He’s lying . . .!”

“I consider it my duty to repeat to you that his testimony is firm. He has no hesitation. He stands upon it. We asked him several more times.”

“Precisely, I asked him several more times!” Nikolai Parfenovich hotly confirmed.

“Not true, not true! It’s either a slander against me or a madman’s hallucination,” Mitya went on shouting. “He simply imagined it in his delirium, all bloody, wounded, on regaining consciousness ... So he’s raving.”

“Yes, sir, but he noticed the open door not when he regained consciousness from his wound, but already before then, when he was just going into the garden from the cottage.”

“But it’s not true, not true, it cannot be! He’s slandering me out of malice

. He couldn’t have seen it ... I didn’t run out the door,” Mitya was gasping lor breath.

The prosecutor turned to Nikolai Parfenovich and said imposingly:

“Show him.”

“Is this object familiar to you?” Nikolai Parfenovich suddenly placed on the table a large, official-sized envelope of thick paper, on which three intact seals could still be seen. The envelope itself was empty and torn open at one end. Mitya stared wide-eyed at it.

“That ... that should be father’s envelope,” he muttered, “the one with the three thousand roubles ... and it should have ‘for my chicky’ written on it ... allow me ... yes, look: three thousand,” he cried out, “three thousand, you see?”

“Of course we see, sir, but we did not find the money in it, it was empty and lying on the floor, near the bed, behind the screen.”

For a few seconds Mitya stood as if stunned.

“Gentlemen, it’s Smerdyakov!” he suddenly shouted with all his might. “He killed him, he robbed him! He’s the only one who knew where the old man hid the envelope ... It’s him, it’s clear now!”

“But you also knew about the envelope and that it was under the pillow.”

“I never knew: I’ve never seen it before, I’m seeing it now for the first time, I just heard about it from Smerdyakov ... He’s the only one who knew where the old man kept it hidden, I didn’t know ... ,” Mitya was completely breathless.

“And yet you yourself told us just now that the envelope was under your deceased father’s pillow. You precisely said under the pillow, which means you did know where it was.”

“We have it written down!” Nikolai Parfenovich confirmed.

“Nonsense, absurdity! I had no idea it was under the pillow. And maybe it wasn’t under the pillow at all ... It was a random guess that it was under the pillow ... What does Smerdyakov say? Did you ask him where it was? What does Smerdyakov say? That’s the most important thing ... And I deliberately told lies against myself... I lied to you that it was under the pillow, without thinking, and now you ... Ah, you know, something just comes out of your mouth, and you tell a lie. But only Smerdyakov knew, just Smerdyakov alone, and no one else . . .! He didn’t even reveal to me where it was! So it’s him, it’s him; there’s no question he killed him, it’s clear as day to me now,” Mitya kept exclaiming more and more frenziedly, repeating himself incoherently, growing impassioned and bitter. “You must understand that and arrest him quickly, quickly ... Precisely he killed him, after I ran away and while Grigory was lying unconscious, it’s clear now ... He gave the signals, and father opened the door for him ... Because he alone knew the signals, and without the signals father wouldn’t have opened the door for anyone...”