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?”