The Brothers Karamazov (130 page)

“And finally, last night, after having learned the identity of the true murderer, Ivan Karamazov calmly went home, instead of hurrying off at once to report it to the proper authorities. Why did he put it off until morning? I believe I have the right to conjecture why: he had been ill for over a week and had admitted that he was suffering from hallucinations both to the doctor and to persons close to him, telling them he was seeing the ghosts of dead people. He was on the verge of the brain fever to which he succumbed completely after the shock of Smerdyakov’s death. And then he suddenly conceived the following idea: ‘The man is dead and now I can save my brother by shifting the blame for the murder onto Smerdyakov. Since I have cash at home, I’ll take three thousand rubles with me and tell them that Smerdyakov gave me the money.’ You may say that it is dishonorable to slander a dead man, even in order to save one’s brother. You are right, but then he may have lied without knowing he was lying; he may have imagined that this really happened, when his mind became confused under the impact of the news of Smerdyakov’s death. You witnessed the scene that took place when he was testifying; you could see for yourselves the state in which he was. He could stand on his feet, he could speak, but who knows what was going on inside him?

“And then, following the testimony of this feverish man, we were handed a document—a letter from the accused to Miss Katerina Verkhovtsev, a letter written two days before the murder, a letter containing a detailed program of the forthcoming crime. So what need have we to look any further afield, since we now have the plan underlying the crime and know who its author is? Yes, gentlemen of the jury, everything was carried out ‘according to plan,’ as they say. The accused did not really hurry dutifully and fearfully away from his father’s window, especially as he was convinced his lady love was in there. No, that would be most unlikely and, in this case, completely impossible. He went in and did what he had come to do. Probably he killed in an outburst of rage, his passion inflamed at the mere sight of the face of his hated rival, but after killing him—which he may have done with a single powerful blow of the pestle—and after convincing himself that she was not there, he still did not forget to thrust his hand under the pillow, pull out the envelope with the money in it, and tear it open. And you can see that torn envelope here on the table with the other exhibits.

“I have described all this in the hope that you would notice a fact that I consider extremely revealing. If this were a calculating criminal—someone killing coldly for money—would he have left the torn envelope near the body of the victim where it was found later? Let us assume, for instance, that Smerdyakov had killed his master to rob him, wouldn’t he have calmly put the whole envelope in his pocket without bothering to open it while standing over his victim? He certainly would have, because 
he knew
 the money was there, since it was put there in his presence. And if he had taken the whole envelope, no one would have known that a theft as well as a murder had been committed. Now decide for yourselves, gentlemen of the jury—if Smerdyakov were the murderer, would he have left the envelope lying on the floor when he left? No, the presence of that envelope there indicates that the murderer was a frantic man, a man who was no longer reasoning clearly, a man who might be a killer but who was not a thief, a man who had never stolen before, who now reached for the money that was under the pillow, not as a thief would, but as a man who considered it rightfully his, indeed, was convinced that he was taking it back from the thief who had stolen it from him in the first place—for we know how Dmitry Karamazov felt on this subject and that this money had become a mania with him. When he had hold of the envelope, which he had never seen before, he tore it open to see whether the money was really there, and then rushed off with the money stuffed in his pockets, without giving a thought to the torn envelope. And he acted in that way because he was Dmitry Karamazov and not Smerdyakov, because he did not calculate, and was certainly not in a state to think clearly: he was in too much of a hurry to get away from there!

“So he ran off and climbed the fence, pursued by the screaming Gregory, who managed to catch his foot as he sat astride the fence. So he hit the old man with the brass pestle, knocked him out, and then jumped down from the fence, filled with pity for the old servant. Just imagine, he assured us that he jumped down from the wall because he was sorry for Gregory and wanted to see whether he could not do something for him! A strange moment for a man to show such compassion, wasn’t it? No, he jumped down to make sure that the only witness to his crime was dead. Any other concern, any other motivation, on his part, at that particular moment, would have been quite unnatural. Now note this: as he examined Gregory, he wiped away the man’s blood with his handkerchief and, once convinced that the old man was dead, he rushed off like a madman, still covered with blood, back to the house of his lady love, apparently without worrying that he would at once attract attention and be arrested. But then the accused told us himself that he hadn’t even noticed he was covered with blood, and this we can readily believe, because it is what usually happens with criminals. So, in some respects, he was diabolically calculating, while in others, his mind seems to have been completely blank. At that particular moment, the only thought in his mind was, ‘Where is she now?’ He had to know at once. That’s why he rushed so impatiently to her place, where a most shattering piece of news awaited him: she had left for Mokroye with her first lover, the man to whom, the accused had felt all along, she ‘rightfully belonged.’ ”

Chapter 9: Full Steam Ahead Into Psychology. A Galloping Troika. The Finale Of The Prosecutor’s Speech

LIKE MANY nervous speakers who have to restrain their impatience and a tendency to wander off the subject, our prosecutor favored a chronological method of exposition that offered him a solid framework in which to contain his flights into the irrelevant. But when he reached the point where Grushenka’s “first and rightful” lover had to be introduced, the prosecutor indulged in several interesting comments.

“Karamazov, who was madly jealous of everyone else,” he said, “all of a sudden bows and yields to the claims on his lady love of this ‘first and rightful’ lover of hers. And what makes this attitude even stranger is that, until then, he had hardly paid any attention to the threat the new rival presented to his own aspirations. But he had imagined that it was only a far-off, remote threat, and Dmitry Karamazov is, above all, a man who lives entirely in the present. Possibly he even viewed that ‘first lover’ as a sort of fictional character. Now, however, his aching heart suddenly understood that his lady love had been concealing this new rival from him, had lied to him earlier that day, because the new rival was all too real for her, was not at all a fictional character or a figment of her imagination, but a man in whom she had invested all her hopes. And the moment he understood that, Karamazov resigned himself.

“I cannot pass over in silence, gentlemen of the jury, this sudden change of heart that took place in the accused, a change of which he seemed quite incapable, a sudden hankering after justice, a sudden recognition of the right of this woman to follow her feelings—all these feelings appearing in him just as he stood there, his hands still dripping with his father’s blood, that he had shed because of her! It is also true that, at the same moment, the spilt blood was crying out for vengeance, for he was now a man who had lost his soul and his right to live on earth; and he knew that, as of this moment, he was just nothing to the being he loved more than his soul, now that her ‘first and rightful’ one had come back to her and was prepared to make up to her the harm he had done her and offer her a new and happy life! So what could Karamazov offer her now? He realized this, and he also realized that his crime had closed all roads to him and that he was no longer a man looking forward to life, but a hunted criminal facing punishment. That idea crushed him completely. He at once conceived a mad plan which, with his character, he could not fail to view as the only possible and the fatal way out. His solution was suicide. So the next thing he did was to rush to Mr. Perkhotin, with whom he had left his pistols as security, and, as he ran, he pulled out of his pockets the bills for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his father’s blood. Oh, it was money he needed now more than anything else! For Karamazov was about to die, about to shoot himself, and he wanted to mark the occasion, so that everybody would remember it. Why, wasn’t he a poet? Wasn’t he a man who always burnt his candle at both ends? To see her once more, and to have a feast wilder than anything anyone had ever seen! A crazy party with mad noise, gypsy songs, and wild dances, during which he, Mitya Karamazov, would toast with champagne the newly found happiness of his lady love. And after that, at her feet, he would smash his skull with a bullet and rid himself of his life. Yes, they’d remember Mitya Karamazov, and they would all see how much he loved her!

“There is a great deal of showing off in this, many wild romantic notions, a lot of the typical Karamazov lack of restraint, much sentimentality . . . But there is 
something else
 in it too, gentlemen of the jury, something that weighs on him, something that nags at his heart and drips deadly poison into it, something that is called 
conscience
, gentlemen, a terrible remorse! But he reckoned that a loaded pistol would take care of everything for him. That was the only solution, but it was a solution. I do not know whether Karamazov ever worried about 
what would happen in the other world
, or whether this poet and would-be Hamlet was capable of worrying about such things as the 
beyond
. No, gentlemen of the jury, in the West they may have their Hamlets, but as yet we have nothing but Karamazovs!”

The prosecutor then dwelt in great detail on Mitya’s preparations for the party, first at Perkhotin’s, then at the store, and then with the drivers. He quoted many of Mitya’s words and phrases, described many of his gestures, all attested to by witnesses, and the picture he drew impressed his audience greatly. What impressed them most was the accumulation of facts. The guilt of this madly agitated man, who was beyond caring what might happen to him, appeared beyond all doubt.

“He no longer had any reason to try to save himself,” the prosecutor said; “two or three times he was on the verge of admitting everything; he almost hinted that it was he who had done it without, however, quite saying so,” and the prosecutor quoted from the testimony of two or three witnesses. “He even shouted to his driver on the way there: ‘You know, you’re driving a murderer!’ But he couldn’t, of course, admit it outright, because he first wanted to get to Mokroye, for it was there that he planned to put an end to his personal poem!

“But what did the unhappy man find in Mokroye? From the very first look he understood that his ‘rightful’ and undisputed rival might not be so undisputed after all, and perhaps not even rightful either, and that no one expected him to toast them in champagne or to hear his best wishes for new life and happiness. But you already know the facts from the examination of the witnesses, gentlemen of the jury. Karamazov’s triumph over his rival was overwhelming. And here began a new phase in his soul, oh, the most painful of all the phases his soul had been through! We may certainly say that outraged nature and the criminal heart were wreaking their own revenge more fully than any man-devised justice could!” the prosecutor exclaimed. “And what’s more, man-made justice and punishment really alleviate nature’s punishment and are even indispensable for the criminal’s soul at such a moment, to save him from despair. For I cannot even imagine the full horror of the mental torments that Karamazov was subjected to when he learned that she really loved him, that she would reject her ‘first and rightful’ lover for him, that it was with him, Dmitry Karamazov, that she now wanted to start on a new life of happiness, and all this at a moment when everything was ruined and nothing was possible any longer!

“I want to note here something that may be very important to an understanding of the accused’s situation at that time. The woman he loved had, up until the very last moment, right up to his very arrest, been inaccessible to him and, although he desired her passionately, she had always been out of his reach. But why, why didn’t he shoot himself then? Why did he abandon his decision and even forget where his pistol was? The answer is that he was held back by his ardent yearning for love and his hope to satisfy it then and there. Through the drunken mist of revelry, he clung to his beloved, who was also taking an active part in the feast and who was in his eyes more beautiful and more desirable than ever before. He never left her side; he admired only her; the rest of the world did not exist for him. And this passionate man succeeded in drowning out for a moment, not only his fear of arrest, but even his pangs of guilt. Oh, only for a moment, only for a brief moment! I can imagine the mental state in which the accused was at that time, under the sway of three influences: first, the wild party, with its cries, songs, and dances, reaching him through a drunken mist, and she, next to him, flushed with wine, singing, and dancing, tipsy, laughing and looking at him; second, his wishful thinking that the fatal consequences were still far away, at least that the danger was not yet immediate, that it might take them a day or two yet to catch up with him, and that they certainly would not come to take him until morning, which left him several hours of safety—and that was lots and lots of time! One can think up so many things in a few hours, so many ways out! I imagine that he felt like a man who is being driven to the place of execution and knows that he has to go down a very, very long street and that it will take quite a while, since he is being driven at a slow walking pace past thousands of people. And after that, they will have to turn into still another street and go all the way to the very end of it, for it is only there that the terrible square is where they have erected the gallows! I imagine that, at the beginning, when the procession first starts off, the condemned man, sitting in his cart, must feel that he still has all eternity before him. But then he passes one house after another, his cart moves on and on . . . Oh, never mind, it is still very far to that corner where they will turn into the second street, and, reassured by this thought, the condemned man looks cheerfully to his right and to his left, at all those thousands of curious people who are so unconcerned with what is about to happen to him, and under their fixed stares, he still has the delusion that he is one of them, just another human being. Oh, but here is that corner . . . They turn into the second street, oh! Ah, that’s nothing, there’s still all the length of that street. And as they again pass house after house, the condemned man keeps thinking that there are still very, very many houses ahead. And this goes on all the time, until they reach the square where the execution is to take place.