The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  One would have thought that the most obvious thing for Pyotr Ilyich to do now would have been to go to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house to find out if anything had happened and, if so, what, and then to go to the chief of police only when he was sure of his facts, which indeed is what he proposed to do. However, the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovich’s gate was very sturdy and he would have to start banging again, and, moreover, as he was only slightly acquainted with Fyodor Pavlovich, what if someone heard him and let him in, and it finally transpired that nothing had happened: would not the sneering Fyodor Pavlovich go round the town the next day, describing how the civil servant Perkhotin, almost a total stranger, had forcibly attempted to enter his house late at night in order to find out if anybody had killed him? That would be a scandal! And there was nothing in the world that Pyotr Ilyich feared more than a scandal. Nevertheless, the feeling that gripped him was so strong that, cursing once more and stamping angrily, he immediately set off again, but for Mrs Khokhlakova’s rather than Fyodor Pavlovich’s. If, he thought, she denied giving Dmitry Fyodorovich three thousand roubles that evening, at such-and-such a time, he would go to the chief of police immediately, without calling on Fyodor Pavlovich; if, however, she confirmed that she had given him the money, he would put everything off till tomorrow and go home. It is quite clear at this point, of course, that the young man’s decision to go, at almost eleven o’clock at night, to the house of a respectable, completely unknown lady, and perhaps get her out of bed merely in order to ask her such a bizarre question was in itself more likely to lead to a scandal than if he had gone to Fyodor Pavlovich’s. But this is sometimes the case, particularly in circumstances such as this, with decisions made by even the most calculating and phlegmatic of people. And Pyotr Ilyich was anything but phlegmatic at that moment! All his life he was to remember the persistent anxiety which gradually welled up inside him until, eventually, it reached an unbearable pitch, urging him on even against his will. All the same, he kept cursing himself all the way to the house, but ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this, I will, I will!’ he repeated over and over, grinding his teeth, and he did get to the bottom of it—indeed he did.

  It was exactly eleven o’clock when he reached Mrs Khokhlakova’s house. He was let into the yard fairly promptly, but when he enquired whether the lady had already retired for the night, the janitor was unable to give a precise answer, only that she usually retired at about that time. ‘Go upstairs and announce yourself; if she’s prepared to see you, she will, if she’s not—she won’t.’ Pyotr Ilyich went upstairs, but there he encountered an unexpected difficulty. The butler refused to announce him and finally summoned a maid. Pyotr Ilyich firmly but very politely asked her to notify the lady that a local official, Perkhotin, had come about an important matter, and that were the matter not so important he would never have presumed to come—‘be sure to use those words exactly,’ he instructed the girl. She went away. He waited in the entrance hall. Mrs Khokhlakova herself, although she had not yet retired for the night, was already in her bedroom. Ever since Mitya’s visit she had been very upset and she already knew that tonight she would have one of her migraine attacks, which usually occurred on such occasions. She listened in vexed bewilderment to the girl’s announcement and instructed her to ask him to leave, although an unexpected visit by a mysterious town clerk at such an hour was highly intriguing to her feminine curiosity. This time, however, Pyotr Ilyich turned out to be as stubborn as a mule; having been told that she would not see him, he demanded to be announced once more, and that the maid should tell her ‘in exactly these words’ that he had come ‘about a very urgent matter, and the lady might regret it later if she doesn’t agree to see me’. ‘I felt I was being swept along,’ he recounted later. The maid looked at him in astonishment, and went to announce him the second time. Mrs Khokhlakova was flabbergasted, she thought awhile, asked what he looked like, and was informed that he was ‘very properly dressed, young, and ever so polite’. Let us add here, incidentally, that Pyotr Ilyich was quite a handsome young man and was well aware of this himself. Mrs Khokhlakova decided to see him. She was in her dressing-gown and slippers, but had wrapped a black shawl round her shoulders. The clerk was shown into the same drawing-room in which Mitya had been received earlier that day. The lady of the house came to meet her visitor with an imperious and stern air, and, without offering him a seat, came straight to the point: ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I have taken the liberty of disturbing you, madam, to ask you about something concerning our mutual acquaintance Dmitry Fyodorovich Karamazov,’ began Perkhotin, but no sooner had he uttered that name than the lady’s face registered total exasperation. She let out a near shriek and interrupted him angrily.

  ‘How long have I got to put up with being plagued by that awful man?’ she yelled furiously. ‘How dare you, my dear sir, what right have you to disturb a lady with whom you are not acquainted, in her own house, at such an hour… and to come to speak to her about a person who, on this very spot, in this very room, barely three hours ago, having come to kill me, stamped his feet and departed in a manner that is simply unbecoming in a visitor to a respectable house! You might as well know, sir, that I shall lodge a complaint against you, I shall not let this pass, please leave at once… I am a mother, I shall, this instant… I… I…’

  ‘Kill you! So he wanted to kill you, too?’

  ‘Has he killed someone already then?’ asked Mrs Khokhlakova eagerly.

  ‘Have the kindness to hear me out, my lady,’ Perkhotin replied firmly, ‘allow me half a minute, and I shall explain everything as briefly as possible. Today, at five o’clock in the afternoon, Mr Karamazov borrowed ten roubles from me as a friend, and I know for a fact that he had no money then, but later, at nine o’clock, he came to my room clutching a wad of hundred-rouble notes, two or even three thousand roubles in all. His face and hands were covered in blood and he seemed quite demented. In reply to my question as to where he had got so much money, he replied very distinctly that you had given it to him a short time before, and that in fact you had loaned him a sum of three thousand, apparently on condition that he would go prospecting for gold…’

  Mrs Khokhlakova’s face suddenly registered the utmost panic.

  ‘God! He’s killed his old father!’ she exclaimed, clasping her hands. ‘I did not give him any money, none at all! Oh, hurry, hurry!… Don’t say another word! Run and save the old man, run to his father, quickly!’

  ‘Just a minute, madam. So, you didn’t give him any money? You distinctly remember that you didn’t give him any money at all?’

  ‘I did not, I did not! I refused, because it would have been wasted on him. He stamped his feet and left in a fit of rage. He tried to attack me, and I had to take evasive action… And I’ll tell you something else, too, seeing as you’re the type of person I wouldn’t want to hide anything from—he even spat at me, can you imagine? Well, don’t just stand there! Oh, do sit down… I do apologize, I… Better still, hurry, hurry, you must run and save that unfortunate old man from a terrible death!’

  ‘But what if he’s already killed him?’

  ‘Oh my God, of course! So what are we going to do now? What do you think, what should we do now?’

  Having got Pyotr Ilyich to sit down, she herself sat down opposite him. Pyotr Ilyich gave her a brief but fairly lucid account of the day’s events, at least of those events which he himself had witnessed, and he also recounted the story of his visit to Fenya and what she had said about the pestle. All these details unbalanced the impressionable woman completely, who kept crying out and covering her eyes with her hands…

  ‘Imagine, I anticipated it all! I have this gift: whatever I anticipate, inevitably happens. How many, many times have I looked at that abominable man and thought: here’s someone who’ll end up murdering me. And that’s just what happened… If he didn’t murder me on this occasion, but merely his father, that’s probably because the hand of God is in all this, protecting me; anyway, he�
�d probably be ashamed to murder me, because I personally, on this very spot, hung around his neck a locket containing a relic of St Varvara, the martyr… And how close I was to death at that moment, I went right up to him, right up close to him, and he stretched his neck right out for me! Do you know, Pyotr Ilyich (I’m sorry, you did say your name was Pyotr Ilyich, didn’t you?)… do you know, I don’t really believe in miracles, but that little locket and now this undoubted miracle—my miraculous escape—has had a profound effect upon me, and now I’m ready to believe absolutely anything again. Have you heard about Starets Zosima?… Look, I don’t really know what I’m talking about… Do you realize, he already had the locket round his neck when he spat at me… only spat, of course, didn’t actually kill me, and… so that’s where he rushed off to! But what about us, what should we do now, what do you think?’

  Pyotr Ilyich stood up and announced that he would go straight to the chief of police and tell him everything; he would know what to do.

  ‘Oh, I know Mikhail Makarovich, such a wonderful, wonderful man! You really must go to him, not to anyone else. You’re so resourceful, Pyotr Ilyich, you’ve really handled the situation so well; you know, if I’d been in your place, I’d never have come up with such a marvellous idea!’

  ‘As a matter of fact, the chief of police is a very good acquaintance of mine too,’ observed Pyotr Ilyich, still standing there and obviously quite anxious to escape from this enthusiastic lady who simply would not let him make his farewells and depart.

  ‘And you know,’ she rambled on, ‘you must come back and tell me what you find out and what’s going on… what they decide to do with him and what sentence he’ll get. By the way, capital punishment has been abolished, hasn’t it? But you must definitely come back, even if it’s three o’clock in the morning, or four, even half past four… If I’m not up, tell them to rouse me, shake me if need be… Oh God, I’ll never be able to sleep tonight. Look here, perhaps I should go with you?…’

  ‘N-no madam, but if you were to put something down in writing, just in case, saying that you didn’t give Dmitry Fyodorovich any money, that might come in handy… you never know…’

  ‘Gladly!’ Mrs Khokhlakova rushed to her bureau in excitement. ‘You know, I can’t stop marvelling at you, you simply astound me with your resourcefulness and your experience in such matters… Do you work locally? How nice it is to hear that you work locally…’

  And without so much as a pause for breath, she quickly scribbled the following few lines in a firm hand on half a sheet of writing paper:

  I have never in my life loaned three thousand roubles to the unfortunate Dmitry Fyodorovich (he is, despite everything, unfortunate) today, nor any other monies, ever! So help me God.

  Khokhlakova

  ‘Here’s the note!’ she turned quickly towards Pyotr Ilyich. ‘See what you can do to help him. It will be an honourable deed on your part.’

  And she made the sign of the cross over him three times. She even rushed out into the hall to see him to the door.

  ‘I’m so grateful to you. You won’t believe how grateful I am to you for coming to me first. How is it we’ve never met before? I should be most flattered to welcome you in my house in future. It really is nice to hear that you work locally… such attention to detail, such resourcefulness… You must be in great demand, surely they can’t fail to appreciate you, and if I can be of any service to you, believe me… Oh, I love the younger generation so much! I do love the younger generation. The young people—they are the cornerstone of the whole of our long-suffering modern Russia, they are its only hope… Oh, hurry, do hurry!…’

  But Pyotr Ilyich was already on his way out, otherwise she might have detained him even longer. On the whole, however, Mrs Khokhlakova had made rather a favourable impression upon him, and this even helped to alleviate his disquiet about his involvement in the wretched business. There is no accounting for tastes; that is well known. ‘She really doesn’t look all that old,’ he thought with gratification, ‘on the contrary, I’d have taken her for her daughter.’

  As for Mrs Khokhlakova, she was simply charmed by the young man. ‘Such aptitude, such scrupulousness, and in one so young, so unexpected nowadays, and all this along with such manners and such a pleasing appearance. Young people nowadays are said to be quite ignorant, but you can’t say that about him, can you?’ and so on and so forth. As for the ‘dreadful incident’ itself, she nearly forgot about it, and it was only as she was about to retire that she suddenly remembered how ‘close to death’ she had been. ‘Oh, but this is dreadful!’ she said, and immediately fell into a deep and most satisfying sleep. To be sure, I would never have dwelt on such trivial and episodic details had not this bizarre meeting between the meticulous and scrupulous young man and the far from old widow subsequently set the seal on the young man’s entire career, a fact that is remembered in our small town to this day, and to which we ourselves may return, perhaps, especially once we have completed our protracted story of the Karamazov brothers.

  2

  ALARM

  OUR chief of police, Mikhail Makarovich Makarov, a retired Lieutenant-Colonel who on retirement had been given an equivalent rank in the police, was a widower and by nature a kindly person. He had arrived in our town only three years before, but had already managed to win universal approbation, mainly because of his ‘knack of bringing people together’. He was always entertaining guests, and seemed unable to do without them. As a rule he would always have some people, even if only one or two, to dinner, and would never dine without some guest or other. He also held formal dinner-parties on various, sometimes quite unexpected pretexts. The food served was plentiful, if not particularly choice, though the koulibiaca, for example, was excellent, and as for the wine, that too made up in quantity what it lacked in quality. A billiard-table stood in the large entrance hall, which was very well appointed, even down to the prints of English racehorses in dark wooden frames on the walls, an essential accoutrement of any bachelor’s games room. They would play cards every evening, even if only at one table. But the smart society of our town, husbands accompanied by their wives and daughters, would frequently gather there to dance the hours away. Although Mikhail Makarych was a widower he nevertheless enjoyed a family life, for his daughter, also long-since widowed and the mother of two girls, his granddaughters, still lived with him. The granddaughters, who were already grown up and had completed their education, were of a cheerful disposition and not unattractive, and although it was common knowledge that they would not receive any dowry, the most eligible of our young men still flocked to their grandfather’s house. Mikhail Makarovich was not particularly astute as regards his work, though he performed his duties as conscientiously as the next man. If the truth be known, he was somewhat uneducated and was even rather cavalier in the precise interpretation of the limits of his administrative authority. At times he made some glaring errors in the interpretation of certain reforms introduced by the Tsar, not because he was unable to comprehend them fully, or because of any particular lack of ability, but simply because of his innate irresponsibility, always blaming insufficient time to study them in depth. ‘Deep down, gentlemen, I’m more of a military man than a civilian,’ he would say about himself. It would appear that he had not even formulated a precise and firm view as regards the fundamental provisions of the peasant reforms, and used to obtain his information, as it were, piecemeal, picking it up involuntarily as he went along, in spite of being a landowner himself. Pyotr Ilyich was sure that he would meet some guests at Mikhail Makarovich’s that evening, but he did not know exactly who. Meanwhile, at Mikhail Makarovich’s, the public prosecutor and the local doctor, Varvinsky, a young man newly arrived from St Petersburg, one of a number of brilliant graduates from the St Petersburg Medical School, were at that precise moment playing yeralash.* Ippolit Kyrillovich, the prosecutor, actually the deputy prosecutor, but referred to as the prosecutor by everyone in the town, was, it must be owned, an unusual character, stil
l relatively young, about thirty-five at most, but consumptive and married to a very fat, childless woman. By nature proud and irritable, he nevertheless had a good mind and a kind heart. It would appear that his basic trouble stemmed from the fact that he thought rather more of himself than his true worth warranted. That is why he always seemed ill at ease. On top of everything, he entertained certain rather lofty and even artistic pretensions, for example in the field of psychology, claiming to possess special insights into the human soul and, in particular, an understanding of the criminal and his actions. In this regard he believed he had been ignored and passed over for promotion, and was quite convinced that he had enemies and that his superiors had failed to recognize his abilities. In moments of deepest despair he had even threatened to change sides and become a defence counsel. The unexpected Karamazov patricide case seemed to shake him to the core: ‘The Karamazov case could become a cause célèbre throughout Russia!’ But I anticipate.

  In the neighbouring room with the young ladies sat our young investigative magistrate, Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov, who had arrived only two months before from St Petersburg. People subsequently remarked in astonishment that, on the very evening of the crime, so many had gathered at the house of the upholder of law and order, as if by prior arrangement. In actual fact, however, there was a much simpler explanation; everything had occurred perfectly spontaneously: Ippolit Kyrillovich’s spouse had been suffering from toothache for two days, and he just had to escape from her groans somewhere; as for the doctor, he was the sort of person who could not spend his evenings any other way than playing cards. For some three days Nikolai Parfenovich Nelyudov had been planning to appear, as if fortuitously, at Mikhail Makarovich’s that evening in order ‘naughtily’ and unexpectedly to astonish the elder granddaughter, Olga Mikhailovna, by disclosing that he was privy to her secret and knew it was her birthday, and that she had deliberately concealed this fact so as not to have to invite the whole town to the celebrations. He anticipated a great deal of laughter and allusions to her age, which she was apparently anxious to conceal, and to the fact that he was in possession of her secret now and would tell everyone about it tomorrow, and so on and so forth. This amiable young man was given to practical jokes, and our ladies had actually nicknamed him ‘the prankster’, which seemed to please him no end. It has to be said that he was from a good family and society, well brought up and of refined sensibility, and even if he was inclined to levity it was all quite innocent and proper. In stature he was short and of small and delicate build. Several unusually large rings always sparkled on his thin, pale fingers. However, when it came to the performance of his duties he would exhibit an extraordinary pomposity and a wellnigh sacred regard for his own importance and duties. During cross-examination he was particularly adept at uncovering murderers and other criminals of the peasant class, and he really did evoke in them if not respect, then at least a certain sense of awe.