The Brothers Karamazov (129 page)

“And so, after Ivan’s departure, Smerdyakov, who was feeling abandoned and oppressed by his helplessness, had to go down to the cellar for some reason or other; as he descends the steep, narrow stairs, he thinks to himself: ‘Will my sickness strike me now or not? And what will happen if it hits me right now?’ And then, because of this very fear of a seizure, because he is asking himself these questions, he feels the spasm in his throat that always precedes an attack, and the next thing he knows, he is flying head downward to the bottom of the cellar. And it is on this perfectly natural sequence of events that some people have managed to base their suspicions and to find indications that Smerdyakov 
shammed
 his seizure! But assuming that he shammed it, what was his motive? What was he hoping to gain by it? Without even bringing in the doctors’ depositions—because people may say medicine is often wrong and doctors make mistakes—all right, fine, but I still want to know what Smerdyakov would have gained by feigning an epileptic fit? If he had planned the murder, would he then stage the attack so as to attract everybody’s attention to himself?

“Think of this, gentlemen of the jury—on the night of the crime, five persons were present at one time or another in Fyodor Karamazov’s house. First, Fyodor Karamazov, but he obviously did not kill himself. Second, his servant Gregory, who himself was almost killed. Third, Gregory’s wife Martha, but I would be ashamed even to discuss the possibility of her being the murderer. So that leaves us two people: the accused and Smerdyakov. Now, since the accused assures us that he is not the murderer, it must be Smerdyakov, for there was no one else about who could have done it. And this is where that ‘clever’ and colossally absurd suspicion of the poor idiot originates! The only reason they suspect him is that they have been unable to unearth anyone else! If there were a shadow of a possibility that someone else—some sixth person—might have been there, I am sure that they would have suspected him instead, for even the accused realizes how utterly absurd it is to suspect Smerdyakov of the murder.

“But let us leave psychology now, let us leave medicine, let us leave even logic itself, and let us turn to the facts, to the facts alone, and see what they have to tell us. Assuming that Smerdyakov killed his master, how did he kill him? Did he do it alone or was the accused his accomplice? Let us first examine the possibility that Smerdyakov did it on his own. But, of course, if he killed his master, he must have had a motive. Now, since Smerdyakov, unlike the accused, had no motives such as hatred, jealousy, and so on, for murdering. Fyodor Karamazov, he could have conceivably done it for money, namely, to take the three thousand rubles that he had seen his master put into the envelope. And so, having decided to commit the crime, he goes and reveals all the details about the money to another person—the accused—who, he knows, is extremely interested in that money, and he initiates him into every secret: where the money is hidden, what is written on the envelope, how to knock on the door to be let in—the secret knocking code that would enable him to get inside the house, which is the most important. Why did he tell him all that? Was it to give him in advance the clues as to who committed the crime? Or did Smerdyakov want to have some competition from a man who was very likely to want to appropriate the money himself? You may object that he told him all this out of fear. But that makes no sense, because a man capable of conceiving and then carrying out such a daring and brutal murder would never tell anyone secrets that he alone in the world knew and that no one would ever guess if he just held his tongue. No, cowardly as that man may have been, once he had conceived such a plan, he would never have said a word to anyone, at least about the envelope with the money in it and the knocking signals, because that was tantamount to betraying himself. He would have thought up something or other, if the man had absolutely insisted on having some information, but he would certainly have kept those things to himself! Indeed, had he kept quiet, if only about the money, and then killed his master and taken the money, no one in the world could ever have accused him of murdering for money, because no one but him had seen that money or knew there was such a sum of money in the house. So even if he were suspected of murder, they would look for another motive. But no one would have been able to establish any motive, for everybody knew that he was liked by his master and felt honored by the trust his master had in him. So he would have been the last to be suspected. Instead of falling on him, suspicion would have fallen first on someone who had all the motives, who never concealed them, who went around publicly proclaiming them—in a word, suspicion would have fallen directly on Dmitry Karamazov. So Smerdyakov could have killed and stolen the money, and Dmitry would have been suspected. And this, of course, would have been to Smerdyakov’s advantage, too. So why, may I ask, did Smerdyakov have to tell Dmitry Karamazov beforehand both about the money and the secret knocking signals? What was he thinking when he told him that? What was his logic?

“And now comes the day on which Smerdyakov has planned to commit his crime and he throws himself down the cellar stairs and 
pretends
 he is having an epileptic fit. Why does he do it? Is it so that old Gregory, who intended to take his wife’s ‘cure,’ will postpone it when he sees there is no one to guard the premises and, instead of taking the ‘cure,’ will stay awake and keep watch? Or did he sham his seizure to put his master even more on his guard and make him even more careful and distrustful, realizing that there was no one to watch out for his son Dmitry, whose coming he so openly feared? Finally, and this is, of course, the most important, was he trying to make them transfer him from the kitchen, where he usually slept, far from anyone else, where there was a door leading into the yard that he could use unnoticed by anyone—transfer him from there to the other end of the servants’ quarters and put him into the bed separated from Gregory’s and Martha’s by a mere partition, only three paces away from them, where they always put him, on their master’s orders, when he was disabled by his sickness, so that the kindhearted couple could look after him? And lying behind that partition, Smerdyakov proceeds, deliberately, to moan loud enough to keep waking up Martha and Gregory—we have their statement to that effect—and he does all this so that he can at some moment get up and quietly kill his master?

“Some may say that he feigned the fit precisely to avoid being suspected of the murder himself, having told the accused about the money and the signals to lure him to come and kill Fyodor Karamazov and hoping to beat him to the money. Was he hoping that Dmitry Karamazov would make enough noise, wake up witnesses, and bring them to the scene of the murder, and then he, Smerdyakov, would get up and follow them (well, he would have to get up then, that couldn’t be helped!), go and kill his master for a second time, and steal the money that had already been stolen!

“I see you are laughing, gentlemen of the jury. Believe me, I feel quite embarrassed at voicing such preposterous ideas. But the accused claims this is just what happened. He suggests that, after he had left the house, after he had knocked Gregory out and had alarmed the whole neighborhood, Smerdyakov got out of his bed, walked over to his master’s house, killed him, and took the money. To start with, it is really amazing that Smerdyakov could have calculated in advance at exactly what time the crazed, exasperated son of the victim would come, just in order to peer discreetly into the window and then, although he knew the signals that would let him in, quietly withdraw, leaving the prey and the loot to Smerdyakov! But, gentlemen, I ask you seriously now: At what moment is Smerdyakov supposed to have committed the crime? Tell me that first, for if you don’t, you have no right to accuse him!

“So let us assume that the epileptic seizure was a genuine one after all. Well, the sick man suddenly regained his senses, heard the shouting, went out, and what? Did he look around and then say to himself: ‘Why shouldn’t I go and kill the master now?’ But how could he know what had been going on in the house while he was lying there unconscious? But I believe, gentlemen, that there should be a limit even to people’s fantasies!

“Very good, some subtle observers may object, and what if the two of them acted in concert, what if they murdered him together and shared the money afterward?

“Yes, that sounds like a serious possibility and there seems to be quite an impressive array of facts to support it. We then have a situation in which one of the accomplices does all the work while the other lies in bed feigning an epileptic fit, just so as to arouse everybody’s suspicions and put both Gregory and the master on the alert. I would be very curious to know what logic could have guided the two accomplices in thinking up such a crazy plan. It may be objected again that possibly Smerdyakov was not an active, willing accomplice, but a passive and involuntary one; perhaps, under the threats of the accused, he agreed not to interfere with his plans to kill his father and, foreseeing that he would be suspect himself in allowing Dmitry Karamazov to kill his master without calling for help or trying to stop him, Smerdyakov persuaded the accused to allow him to simulate an epileptic fit, while, ‘You yourself,’ he told him, ‘go ahead. Kill him if you wish. It has nothing to do with me!’ But if that were the case, the epileptic seizure was bound to cause a commotion in the house and Dmitry Karamazov would never have allowed him to indulge in one! But even if it had happened that way, even so, Dmitry Karamazov would be the murderer and the direct instigator of the crime, while Smerdyakov would be merely an accomplice, and indeed, an involuntary one, since he would have been forced to agree through terror, and that difference would certainly have been taken into account by the court. And what do we find in reality? No sooner was the accused arrested than he tried to put 
the whole
 blame on Smerdyakov. He never accused him of being merely his accomplice. No, he at once claimed that Smerdyakov had done it all by himself—that he had both killed and taken the money. Where have you ever seen accomplices accusing one another like that? I have never seen such a thing. Now think of this: Karamazov was running a great risk. He was the actual murderer, while Smerdyakov merely connived in it by lying there behind his partition. But then Karamazov tries to blame a man who was lying in bed at the time, knowing full well that he may anger him and make him immediately tell the truth, if only to protect himself—make him reveal that both of them were in on it, but that he himself was not the killer and had simply been too frightened to prevent the other from killing. Smerdyakov would have readily grasped that the court would differentiate between the two of them and that, even if he were to be punished, his punishment would be quite minor compared with that of the main culprit, who was now trying to put all the blame on him. In that case, he would have confessed, because he would have had to. But that is not what happened. Smerdyakov never even hinted at the possibility of such complicity, despite the fact that the accused kept insisting that Smerdyakov was the real and the sole murderer. And, on top of that, Smerdyakov told us during the preliminary investigation that 
he
 was the one who had informed the accused about the envelope with the money and about the knocking signals and that, otherwise, the accused would not have known anything at all. If he had been an accomplice to the crime, do you imagine that he would have so readily admitted, at the investigation, that the accused had obtained from him all the information he later used to commit the crime? He would certainly have tried to avoid answering those questions and would at least have tried to distort and play down the importance of the information he had given the accused. But he never tried to distort anything or play down its importance. Only a man who is completely innocent and is not afraid of being accused of complicity could act this way. Then, in a fit of morbid depression, caused by the combination of his epilepsy and the terrible disaster that had struck his house, Smerdyakov hanged himself. Before hanging himself, he left a note, which was rather strangely worded: ‘I am putting an end to my life of my own free will and no one should be blamed for it.’ What would it have cost him to add to that note the words, ‘I am the murderer, not Karamazov.’ But he did not. If he had sufficient scruples to worry that someone might be blamed for his own death, did he then run out of scruples so completely as to allow an innocent man to be blamed for the death of his former master?

“And what happens next? A short while ago, a witness produced three thousand rubles in cash, claiming that these bills had once been enclosed in the envelope that is one of the exhibits on that table there and that he received the money yesterday from Smerdyakov. But I am sure, gentlemen of the jury, that you can remember for yourselves the sad scene that followed. And even though I know I do not have to refresh your memories, I will point out two or three very minor things, which, just because they are minor, some of you may not have noticed or, if you did, may have already forgotten. To start with, the implication is that, yesterday, Smerdyakov, seized by remorse, returned the money he had stolen and then hanged himself, because, of course, if he had not been remorseful he would not have returned the money. And, of course, it was not until last night that he admitted his guilt to Ivan Karamazov, as Ivan Karamazov testified himself, for obviously Ivan would have announced it before, had he known it. But if he admitted it to the brother of the accused, why didn’t he confirm it in the note he left behind, knowing that an unjustly accused man was to face a terrible trial on the following day? For, obviously, money by itself is not a proof of anything. A week or so ago, for instance, it came to my notice, and to a couple of other people’s as well, that Ivan Karamazov had sent two five per cent bonds of five thousand rubles each—which makes ten thousand—to the capital of our province, to be cashed there. I mention this only to show that there may be all sorts of reasons for a person to have so much cash in his possession at one time and that, by producing three thousand rubles in court, the witness has not convinced us that they are necessarily the bills from that particular envelope.