V. Третье мытарство

He told how he had scrambled over the fence into his father's garden, how he had walked up to the window, and at last about everything that had happened beneath it.

Clearly, precisely, as if stamping each word out, he conveyed the feelings that had stirred him in those moments in the garden, when he so terribly longed to learn whether Grushenka was at his father's or not.

But this was strange: both the prosecutor and the investigator listened this time with a peculiar, terrible reserve, watched him drily, and asked far fewer questions.

Mitya could conclude nothing from their faces.

"They've taken offense and turned sour," he thought, "well, the devil with them!"

When he came to telling how he had at last resolved to give his father a "sign" that Grushenka had come, so that the old man would open the window, the prosecutor and the investigator paid no attention at all to the word "sign," as though they had failed entirely to grasp what significance the word carried here — so much so that Mitya even noticed it.

Coming at last to the moment when, seeing his father lean out of the window, he had boiled over with hatred and snatched the pestle from his pocket, he suddenly stopped, as if on purpose.

He sat staring at the wall, knowing that the two of them had fastened their eyes on him.

"Well, sir," said the investigator, "you snatched out the weapon, and... and what happened next?"

"Next? Why, next I killed him... struck him on the crown and split his skull open... Isn't that so, the way you'd have it, isn't it!" — his eyes suddenly flashed.

All his anger, which had nearly died down, suddenly rose up again in his soul with extraordinary force.

"The way we'd have it," Nikolai Parfenovich rejoined, "well, and the way you'd have it?"

Mitya lowered his eyes and was silent for a long time.

"The way I'd have it, gentlemen, the way I'd have it, here is how it was," he began softly. "Whether it was someone's tears, or my mother praying to God for me, or a spirit of light that kissed me in that instant — I don't know, but the devil was overcome.

I flung myself away from the window and ran toward the fence...

My father took fright and, catching sight of me there for the first time, cried out and sprang back from the window — I remember that very well.

And I went through the garden toward the fence... and it was right there that Grigory caught up with me, just as I was already astride the fence..."

Here at last he raised his eyes to his listeners.

They, it seemed, were watching him with perfectly untroubled attention.

Some spasm of indignation passed through Mitya's soul.

"You know, gentlemen, at this very minute you are laughing at me!" he suddenly broke off.

"What makes you conclude that?" remarked Nikolai Parfenovich.

"You don't believe a single word, that's what!

Why, I understand that I've reached the crucial point: the old man is lying there now with his skull broken in, and I — having described in tragic terms how I wanted to kill him and how I'd already snatched out the pestle — I suddenly run away from the window...

A poem! In verse!

One can take the fine fellow at his word! Ha-ha!

You're mockers, gentlemen!"

And he turned his whole body on the chair, so that the chair creaked.

"And did you not notice," the prosecutor suddenly began, as though paying no attention at all to Mitya's agitation, "did you not notice, when you were running from the window, whether the door into the garden — the one at the far end of the lodge — was open or not?"

"No, it wasn't open."

"It wasn't?"

"On the contrary, it was locked, and who could have opened it?

Wait — the door, hold on!" he seemed suddenly to come to himself, and nearly gave a start. "Why, did you find the door open?"

"Open."

"Then who could have opened it, if you yourselves did not?" Mitya was suddenly seized with astonishment.

"The door stood open, and the murderer of your parent undoubtedly went in by that door and, having committed the murder, went out again by that same door," the prosecutor pronounced slowly and distinctly, as if stamping out each word. "This is perfectly clear to us.

The murder took place, evidently, in the room, and not through the window — which is plainly clear from the report of the inspection, from the position of the body, and from everything.

There can be no doubt whatever on this point."

Mitya was utterly thunderstruck.

"But that's impossible, gentlemen!" he cried, completely at a loss. "I... I didn't go in... I tell you positively, I tell you with certainty, that the door was locked the whole time I was in the garden and when I ran out of it.

I only stood beneath the window and saw him through the window, that's all, that's all... I remember it to the very last minute.

And even if I didn't remember, I'd know it all the same, because the signs were known only to me and to Smerdyakov, and to him, the dead man — and without the signs he'd not have opened the door to a soul in all the world!"

"Signs? What sort of signs are these?" said the prosecutor with greedy, almost hysterical curiosity, instantly losing all his reserved bearing.

He asked it as though creeping up timidly.

He had scented an important fact, one still unknown to him, and at once felt a tremendous dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it fully.

"So you didn't even know!" Mitya winked at him, smiling mockingly and spitefully. "And what if I don't tell you?

From whom would you learn it then?

Why, the only ones who knew about the signs were the dead man, myself, and Smerdyakov — that's all, and heaven besides, but heaven won't tell you.

But it's a curious little fact — the devil knows what one could build on it, ha-ha!

Set your minds at rest, gentlemen, I'll tell you — you've got nonsense in your heads.

You don't know whom you're dealing with!

You're dealing with a defendant who testifies against himself, who gives evidence to his own harm!

Yes, sir, for I am a knight of honor, and you — are not!"

The prosecutor swallowed all these pills; he was simply quivering with impatience to learn the new fact.

Mitya laid out for them precisely and at length everything that concerned the signs Fyodor Pavlovich had devised for Smerdyakov, told them just what each knock at the window meant, even tapped out the signs on the table, and to Nikolai Parfenovich's question — whether, then, when he, Mitya, had knocked at the old man's window, he had tapped out exactly the sign meaning "Grushenka has come" — he answered with precision that he had tapped out exactly that, namely "Grushenka has come."

"There you are, now build your tower!" Mitya cut himself off and turned away from them again in contempt.

"And these signs were known only to your late parent, to you, and to the servant Smerdyakov? And to no one else?" Nikolai Parfenovich inquired once more.

"Yes, the servant Smerdyakov, and heaven too.

Write down 'heaven' as well; it won't be amiss to record it.

And you yourselves will have need of God too."

And of course they began to write it down, but as they were writing, the prosecutor suddenly, as though he had quite unexpectedly stumbled on a new idea, said:

"But if Smerdyakov also knew about these signs, and you radically reject any accusation against yourself in the death of your parent, then might it not have been he who, tapping out the agreed-upon signs, made your father open up for him, and then... committed the crime?"

Mitya looked at him with a deeply mocking, yet at the same time terribly hateful, gaze.

He looked long and in silence, until the prosecutor's eyes began to blink.

"You've caught the fox again!" Mitya said at last. "Pinched the wretch by the tail, heh-heh!

I see right through you, prosecutor!

You thought, didn't you, that I'd jump up at once, grab hold of what you're prompting me with, and bawl at the top of my lungs: 'Aha, it's Smerdyakov, there's the murderer!'

Admit that you thought it — admit it, and then I'll go on."

But the prosecutor did not admit it.

He kept silent and waited.

"You were mistaken, I won't cry out against Smerdyakov!" said Mitya.

"And you don't even suspect him at all?"

"And do you suspect him?"

"We have suspected him too."

Mitya fixed his eyes on the floor.

"Joking aside," he said gloomily. "Listen: from the very beginning, almost from the moment I burst out to you a while ago from behind that curtain, this thought already flickered through my mind: 'Smerdyakov!'

Here I sat at the table and shouted that I was innocent of the blood, yet all the while I kept thinking: 'Smerdyakov!'

And Smerdyakov would not leave my mind.

Even now, at last, I suddenly thought the same thing: 'Smerdyakov' — but only for a second: at once, alongside it, I thought: 'No, not Smerdyakov!'

This is not his doing, gentlemen!"

"In that case, do you not suspect some other person?" Nikolai Parfenovich asked cautiously.

"I don't know who, or what person — the hand of heaven or Satan — but... not Smerdyakov!" Mitya cut in decisively.