The Brothers Karamazov (126 page)

“Mitya!” Grushenka shouted at the top of her voice. “She’s ruined you, that viper of yours! Ah, she’s finally shown her true face!” she shrieked, shaking with fury and glaring at the judges.

The presiding judge made a sign. The guards seized Grushenka and attempted to lead her out. She fought them off, trying to get back to Mitya. Mitya roared wildly and tried to rush to her, but the guards overpowered him.

I feel pretty certain that the spectators, the ladies especially, were quite satisfied with the spectacle: it was, indeed, a choice one.

After that, I remember the Moscow doctor being called back to the stand. I believe that, even before that, the presiding judge had given instructions that Ivan Karamazov was to receive the necessary medical help. The doctor declared that Ivan was suffering from an extremely critical attack of brain fever and that he ought to be taken home at once. When pressed both by the prosecutor and the defense counsel, the doctor confirmed that Ivan Karamazov had come to consult him two days previously, that he had warned him that the threat of a brain fever attack was imminent, but that the patient had refused to be treated.

“Even then, he was definitely not in full possession of his mental faculties, for he admitted to me that he had hallucinations while walking about, that he met various persons who were dead in the street, and that Satan came to visit him every evening.”

Having completed his testimony, the celebrated doctor left.

The letter presented by Katerina was added to the exhibits.

After a brief conference among the judges, they ordered that Ivan’s testimony, as well as Katerina’s unscheduled additional evidence, be entered in the record and that the trial be resumed.

But I shall not describe the questioning of the rest of the witnesses. Anyway, their testimony merely confirmed that of those who had preceded them on the stand, although each witness presented his evidence from his own characteristic point of view. But, as I have said before, all these views will be combined and arranged in the prosecutor’s summation, to which we shall now come. The audience was excited, electrified by the scenes and the outbursts that had just taken place, and they were anxiously awaiting the conclusion of the show—the summations of the prosecutor and the defense counsel, and then the verdict.

Fetyukovich had been visibly shaken by Katerina’s second appearance on the witness stand. The prosecutor, on the other hand, was exultant. After the last witness had testified, the court was adjourned for an hour and then, at last, the presiding judge called upon the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense to present their summations.

I believe it was exactly 8 p.m. when our prosecutor began his speech.

Chapter 6: The Public Prosecutor’s Speech. Psychological Portrayals

AS HE began his speech, the prosecutor was trembling nervously. A cold and sickly sweat broke out on his forehead and on his temples. Hot and cold waves flooded his body in turns. He admitted it himself later. He expected this speech to be his chef d’oeuvre, the masterpiece of his whole life, and also his swan song. And indeed, since he was to die of galloping consumption within nine months, he would have had the right to liken his speech to a swan song had he really known how close his death was. He put all his heart and intelligence into that oration, and he proved to the world that he had in him an unexpected awareness of civic problems and of the great philosophical issues, at least insofar as our poor public prosecutor could cope with these matters. The main strength of his speech, though, lay in its sincerity. He was absolutely convinced of the guilt of the accused and was not simply trying to prove him guilty because that was his role and function; since he felt he was pleading for the just punishment of a culprit, he was eager to “protect society.” Even the ladies in the audience, who were on the whole hostile to the prosecutor, had to concede that he made his point most impressively. He began in a cracked, faltering voice, which became firmer and firmer as he went on, until soon it resounded throughout the courtroom, filling it, to the end of the speech. But the moment he had finished, he almost fainted.

“Gentlemen of the jury,” the prosecutor began, “this case has created a sensation throughout Russia. But why? What is there so special about it? Why should it stir up such amazement and horror in us, who have seen everything and have become used to everything? Well, that is just what is so terrible about it: such horrible things have ceased to horrify us today. And what we must fear above all is our growing general tolerance of crime, rather than this or that criminal act committed by an individual. What is the reason for our indifference, for our strangely mild reaction to certain crimes that are the signs of the times and that promise us an extremely unenviable future? Are we to look for it in our cynicism or in the premature exhaustion of the intellect and the imagination of our still very young, yet already decrepit, society? Does it lie in the weakening of our moral principles or simply, perhaps, in a lack of such principles? I cannot answer these questions, disturbing though they are. I can only say that every citizen ought to—indeed, must—concern himself with them. Our newspapers, though still inexperienced, have already rendered a considerable service to society, for, without them, we would never have learned so fully about the horrors of unbridled license and moral degradation; instances of such behavior are reported in their pages, and are read by everyone, not only those who attend the public trials that have been instituted in our country by the judicial reform of the current regime. What sort of things do we read almost every day now? Well, there are many crimes beside which the crime we are concerned with here pales and begins to look like something quite usual. But the worst of it is that many of our Russian criminal cases indicate a certain state of mind in our society, a sort of general calamity that has taken root among us and that we find more and more difficult to resist as it becomes an omnipresent evil.

“In one case, a dashing young army officer, belonging to our highest society, a young man just setting out on his life and career, cuts the throats of some minor official and of a maid-servant who just happens to be there. He commits these heinous, cowardly crimes in cold blood, without scruple or hesitation, in order to steal back his own IOU’s from the man, who had been helping him, and, while he is at it, he steals some ready cash as well. Why, the young officer feels that the money might come in useful for social occasions and in promoting his career. And he leaves the scene of the crime after placing a pillow under the head of each of his victims . . . Or take the case of a young hero, decorated many times for bravery, who kills the mother of his benefactor in a highway robbery, after having assured his accomplices that ‘she loves me as if I were her own son, so she’ll follow my advice and take no precautions for her safety.’ Granted, this man is a monster, but I no longer dare assert that his is an exceptional case nowadays. And there are many who, although they have not actually murdered anyone, still think and feel in the same way and, deep down, are just as dishonest. Perhaps, when alone with their consciences, they may ask themselves: ‘What does honor really mean? Isn’t the idea that shedding blood is wrong just another prejudice?’

“Some may cry out in indignation at what I have just said and say that I am a sick and hysterical person, that I am exaggerating monstrously, slandering our people, and raving. I wish I were. I would be only too happy if it were so! Oh, do not believe me, think that I am sick, but please remember this: even if only one tenth or one twentieth of what I say is true, even that is dreadful enough! And also, gentlemen, consider the ease with which young people shoot themselves these days. Oh, unlike Hamlet, they do not worry about ‘the dread of something after death,’ as if the entire preoccupation with the soul and what will happen to it after death had long since been erased from their minds and covered over with sand.

“And now, look at the debauchery among us, at our sensualists. Fyodor Karamazov, the unhappy victim in this murder trial, is an innocent babe compared with some. And yet we all knew him—‘for among us he lived,’ as the poet said . . . Yes, perhaps some day the greatest intellects in this country and in Europe will devote themselves to the study of Russian criminal psychology, for the subject is certainly worth while. But such a study will be conducted later, at leisure, seen with greater detachment, and analyzed more intelligently than I can do today, for instance. But now we are either horrified at what we see or we pretend we are horrified, while in reality we relish the spectacle, as connoisseurs of strong and eccentric sensations that rouse us from our cynical and lazy apathy; or else we are like little children who wave off frightening apparitions, bury their faces in their pillows, and wait until the frightening phantoms are gone, so that they can quickly forget them in their games and cheerful laughter. But there comes a moment when we, too, must face our reality soberly and thoughtfully, examine both ourselves and our society, and try to understand the problems facing this society of ours, or at least come to grips with those problems. A great writer of the preceding generation, Gogol, in the finale to his greatest work, 
Dead Souls,
 compares Russia to a galloping troika streaking toward an unknown destination, and exclaims: ‘Oh troika, oh bird-like troika! Who invented you?’ and then he proudly adds that other nations, filled with awe, step out of the way of the Russian troika, as it gallops ahead at a mad rate. Well, it is true, gentlemen, so let them get out of the way, either with or without awe, but in my humble opinion the great writer finished his novel in that way, either in a fit of childish sentimentality or simply to placate the censors of his time, for, if his own heroes Sobakevich, Nozdrev, and Chichikov had been harnessed to his troika, such horses would not get anywhere, whoever held the reins! And bad as those horses were, those of our generation are infinitely worse!”

At this point applause interrupted the prosecutor. His “liberal” views on Gogol’s troika had a wide appeal. It is true that the clapping was very brief, so that the presiding judge did not even have to threaten “to clear the courtroom” and only glared sternly at those who had applauded. The prosecutor, however, felt greatly heartened, for he had never been applauded before. They had refused to listen to him for so many years, and it was only now that, for the first time, he was being given the opportunity to speak his mind before the whole of Russia.

“Indeed,” he went on, “let us have a look, now, at the Karamazov family, whose sad fame has suddenly spread through all Russia. I may be exaggerating, but I believe I can recognize certain of the basic elements in our contemporary educated classes, in the picture that emerges from the close study we have had to make of this charming family. Oh, not all the elements, by any means, but a few, and in a microscopic view, like a picture of the sun in a droplet of water . . . Let us first glance at the hapless, licentious, and depraved old man, that 
pater familias
 who ended his life so lamentably. He, a hereditary member of the gentry, started his career as a ragged hanger-on, then, by an unexpected piece of luck, married a wife with a dowry, and thus got hold of a little capital with which to operate. And so this petty crook, this servile buffoon, despite the fact that he was born with quite considerable intellectual endowments, became, primarily, a usurer. With the years, his capital grew and he became more and more self-assured. His humility and servility vanished, and what was left was a sneering cynic and sensualist. Those spiritual needs he may have had evaporated completely, while his appetite for life expanded. It became so great that he saw nothing in life except the pleasures of the flesh, and that is how he brought up his sons. He never felt any of the moral duties of a father: his children were brought up in his backyard, and he was delighted when someone was willing to take them away. And soon he forgot about them altogether. His whole mentality can be summed up in the words: 
‘Après moi le déluge.’
 All this is just the opposite of what a citizen should be; it is total isolation—I would even say a deliberately hostile isolation—from society, an attitude that may be summed up thus: ‘Let the rest of the world go up in flames as long as I am fine.’ And he does feel fine and is eager to go on living for another twenty or thirty years. He cheats his own son of his mother’s inheritance and uses the money to seduce that son’s mistress. No, I have no intention of leaving to the talented defense counsel from Petersburg the defense of the accused; I will speak the whole truth myself, for I understand fully the resentment that the father had sown in the heart of the accused. But that is enough about that wretched old man, who has received his just deserts. Let us only bear in mind that he was one of our contemporary fathers, and I hope the public will not be too offended if I suggest that there are many such fathers today. For there are many like him, alas, although they do not express themselves as cynically as he did, because they are better bred and more polished. But deep down, their philosophy of life is very much like his. All right, let us assume that I am overpessimistic; we have already agreed that you will make allowances for that. So let us make a further agreement: you don’t have to believe me. I will keep talking, but there is no need for you to take my word for anything. Nevertheless, allow me to have my say, for it is possible that you may remember some of my words.

“And now let us have a look at the children of this ‘head of a family.’ One of them is before you, in the dock, the accused, and I will speak of him at greater length later, but first I would like to say a few words about the others. The elder of the two is a modern young gentleman, highly educated and endowed with a fairly powerful intelligence, but he already believes in nothing, and, just like his father, has discarded too much in life, and sneers at it. We have all heard him speak. When he came here, he was well received in our society. He did not try to hide his views, just the contrary, and this enables me to speak boldly of him, not as a private individual, of course, but as a member of the Karamazov family.

“Yesterday, on the outskirts of this town, a sick, epileptic idiot died by his own hand. He was Smerdyakov, a former servant of Fyodor Karamazov’s and perhaps his illegitimate son, who had also been strongly implicated in the murder. Well, during the preliminary investigation, this Smerdyakov told me, in hysterical tears, how much Ivan Karamazov had frightened him with his talk of the absence of moral restraints. ‘Mr. Ivan says,’ he told me, ‘that everything is permitted in the world, that from now on nothing is forbidden—yes, that’s what Mr. Ivan told me.’ It would appear, therefore, that this poor idiot was driven out of his senses by that thesis, although I admit that both his falling sickness and the terrible catastrophe in the house also played a part in his breakdown. But this idiot somehow made a very curious observation, one that would have done honor to an infinitely more intelligent observer, and that is why I have brought him in now: ‘Of all the sons,’ he said, ‘the one who is the most like my master is Mr. Ivan.’ And with this observation, I will conclude this character sketch, for I feel it would be tactless in me to pursue it any further. Oh, I have no wish to draw final conclusions and prophesy disaster for that young man. That would be to croak like a raven. We all saw this morning, in court, that the spontaneous force of truth is still alive in his young heart, that the feeling of brotherly attachment has not been smothered by his skepticism and moral cynicism, which he acquired more from his father than from working things out for himself by painful searching.