“No one did. I sewed it myself.”
“You know how to sew?”
“A soldier has to know how to sew. It didn’t take any special skill.”
“And where did you get the material, the rag, that is, into which you sewed it?”
“Are you joking?”
“By no means, Dmitri Fyodorovich. This is no time for joking.”
“I don’t remember where I got the rag, I got it somewhere.”
“I should think one would remember that.”
“By God, I don’t remember, maybe I tore some piece of my linen.”
“That is very interesting: the piece might be found tomorrow in your lodgings, perhaps a shirt with a bit torn off of it. What sort of rag was it, cotton or linen?”
“Devil knows what it was. Wait... I think I didn’t tear it off anything. It was calico ... I think I sewed it up in my landlady’s bonnet.”
“Your landlady’s bonnet?”
“Yes, I filched it from her.”
“What’s that? Filched?” “You see, I remember I did once filch a bonnet for a rag, or maybe to wipe a pen. I took it without asking, because it wasn’t good for anything, I had the scraps lying about, and then this fifteen hundred, so I went and sewed it ... I think I sewed it precisely in those rags. Worthless old calico, washed a thousand times.”
“And you remember that firmly now?” “I don’t know how firmly. I think it was a bonnet. But to hell with it!”
“In that case your landlady might at least remember finding it missing? “
“Not at all, she never missed it. It was an old rag, I tell you, an old rag, not worth a kopeck.”
“And the needle, where did you get the needle and thread?”
“I quit, I won’t go on! Enough!” Mitya finally got angry.
“Then, too, it’s strange that you should forget so completely just where you dropped this ... amulet in the square.”
“So, order them to sweep the square tomorrow, maybe you’ll find it,” Mitya smirked. “Enough, gentlemen, enough,” he finished in a weary voice. “I see very well that you don’t believe me! Not a word, not a bit! It’s my fault, not yours, I shouldn’t have stuck my neck out. Why, why did I defile myself by confessing my secret! And you think it’s funny, I can see by your eyes. You drove me to it, prosecutor! Sing your hymn, if you can ... Damn you, tormentors!”
He bent his head and covered his face with his hands. The prosecutor and the district attorney were silent. After a moment, he raised his head and looked at them somehow vacantly. His face expressed an already complete, already irreversible despair, and he, somehow gently, fell silent, sat, and seemed hardly aware of himself. Meanwhile they had to finish their business: it was urgent that they move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. It was already eight o’clock in the morning. The candles had long been extinguished. Mikhail Makarovich and Kalganov, who kept coming in and out of the room during the interrogation, now both went out. The prosecutor and the district attorney also looked extremely tired. The morning brought bad weather, the sky was all overcast and it was pouring rain. Mitya gazed vacantly at the windows.
“May I look out?” he suddenly asked Nikolai Parfenovich.
“Oh, as much as you like,” the latter replied.
Mitya rose and went over to the window. Rain was lashing the small greenish windowpanes. Just under the window a muddy road could be seen, and further off, in the rainy dimness, rows of black, poor, unsightly cottages, which seemed to have turned even blacker and poorer in the rain. Mitya remembered “golden-haired Phoebus” and how he had wanted to shoot himself at his first ray. “It might be better on a morning like this,” he grinned, and, suddenly, with a downward wave of his hand, turned to his “tormentors.”
“Gentlemen!” he exclaimed, “I’m lost, I can see that. But she? Tell me about her, I beg you, can it be that she, too, will be lost with me? She’s innocent, she was out of her mind when she shouted last night about being ‘guilty of everything.’ She is guilty of nothing, nothing! All this night, sitting with you, I’ve been grieving ... Won’t you, can’t you tell me what you’re going to do with her now?”
“You can be decidedly reassured in that regard, Dmitri Fyodorovich,” the prosecutor replied at once, and with obvious haste. “So far we have no significant motives for troubling in any way the person in whom you are so interested. It will turn out the same, I hope, as the case develops further ... On the contrary, for our part we shall do everything possible in that sense. Be completely reassured.”
“I thank you, gentlemen. I knew you were still honest and just men, in spite of everything. You’ve taken a burden from my soul ... Well, what do we do now? I’m ready.”
“Now, sir, we’ll have to speed things up. It’s urgent that we move on to the interrogation of the witnesses. This must all take place in your presence, to be sure, and therefore ...”
“Why don’t we have some tea first?” Nikolai Parfenovich interrupted. “I think by now we deserve it. “
It was decided that if there was tea ready downstairs (for Mikhail Makarovich had certainly gone “for a cup of tea”), they would have some tea and then “carry on, carry on.” And they would put off real tea and “a little something” until they had a free moment. Tea was indeed found downstairs, and was quickly brought upstairs. Mitya at first refused the cup Nikolai Parfenovich kindly offered him, but then asked for it himself and greedily drank it. Generally he looked even somehow surprisingly worn out. What, one might have thought, would one night of carousing mean for a man of such strength, even coupled with the strongest sensations? Yet he himself felt that he could hardly hold himself upright, and at times everything seemed to start swimming and turning before his eyes. “A little more and I’ll probably start raving,” he thought to himself.
Chapter 8: The Evidence of the Witnesses. The Wee One
The interrogation of the witnesses began. But we shall not continue our story in the same detail as we have maintained up to now. And therefore we shall omit how Nikolai Parfenovich impressed upon each witness called that he should give evidence truthfully and conscientiously, and that later he would have to repeat his evidence under oath; and how, finally, each witness was required to sign the transcript of his evidence, and so on and so forth. We shall note only one thing, that the main point to which the interrogators directed all their attention was predominantly the same question of the three thousand roubles—that is, whether it had been three thousand or fifteen hundred the first time, when Dmitri Fyodorovich gave his first party there, at Mokroye, a month ago, and three thousand or fifteen hundred yesterday, when Dmitri Fyodorovich gave his second party. Alas, all the evidence from first to last turned out to be against Mitya, and none in his favor, and some of the evidence even introduced new, almost astounding facts in refutation of his evidence. The first to be interrogated was Trifon Borisich. He came before the interrogators without a trace of fear; on the contrary, with a look of stern and severe indignation at the accused, thereby undoubtedly imparting to himself an air of extreme truthfulness and self-respect. He spoke little and with reserve, waiting for each question, answering precisely and deliberately. He testified firmly and without hesitation that the amount spent a month ago could not possibly have been less than three thousand, that all the peasants there would testify to having heard about the three thousand from “Mitri Fyodorovich” himself: “Look how much he threw away on the gypsy girls alone. It must have been over a thousand just on them.”
“Probably not even five hundred,” Mitya observed gloomily in response, “only I wasn’t counting at the time, I was drunk, more’s the pity ...”
Mitya was now sitting to one side, his back to the curtains, listening gloomily, with a sad and tired look, as if to say: “Eh, tell them whatever you like, it makes no difference now!”