The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  The usher went over to him immediately. Alyosha suddenly leapt to his feet and cried out: ‘He’s sick, don’t believe him, he’s out of his mind!’ Katerina Ivanovna got up hurriedly from her chair and stared at Ivan Fyodorovich, petrified with terror. Mitya too was standing up, hanging on his brother’s every word, his face contorted in a wild grimace.

  ‘Calm down, I’m not mad, I’m just a murderer!’ Ivan began again. ‘After all, you can’t expect eloquence from a murderer…’, he added suddenly, his face crumpled and he burst out laughing.

  The prosecutor, visibly bewildered, leant over to the president. The other members of the bench went into an agitated huddle. Fetyukovich pricked up his ears and listened avidly. A hushed, expectant silence pervaded the courtroom. The president suddenly seemed to take a grip on himself.

  ‘Mr Karamazov, what you’ve said is unclear and inappropriate. Calm down, if you can, and tell us… provided, of course, you really do have something to tell us… how you can substantiate your confession… are you sure you’re feeling well?’

  ‘That’s just it, I haven’t got any witnesses. That dog Smerdyakov won’t send you his evidence from the other world… in an envelope. You just, can’t get enough envelopes, can you? One’ll be enough. I haven’t got any witnesses… On second thoughts, perhaps just one,’ he smiled pensively.

  ‘Who’s your witness?’

  ‘One that’s sporting a tail, your honour, and not dressed for the occasion! Le diable n’existe point! Ignore him, he’s just a shabby, small-time devil,’ he added in mock confidentiality, his smile fading, ‘he’s probably around here somewhere—there he is, under that table, material evidence in hand, where else would you expect him to hide? Look, listen to me! I told him I didn’t want to keep quiet, and he just went ranting on about some geological cataclysm… What rubbish! Why don’t you set the monster free!… Listen, he’s started singing hymns, that’s because he hasn’t got a care in the world! Sounds just like a bloody drunk caterwauling, “Vanya’s gone to town”, and for just two seconds of happiness I’d be ready to travel a quadrillion quadrillions. You’ve no idea what I’m like! To hell with all this, it’s just too stupid! Go on, why don’t you convict me in his stead! I didn’t come here for nothing, you know… Why, oh why should everything, everything under the sun be so damn absurd!…’ And once more he began slowly and somewhat thoughtfully to survey the courtroom. The whole court was now in uproar. Alyosha leapt to his feet and rushed towards Ivan Fyodorovich, but the court usher had already grabbed Ivan by the arm.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ yelled Ivan Fyodorovich, staring hard into the usher’s face, and suddenly he grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him furiously to the ground. But the guards were already upon him; as he was seized, he let out an almighty cry. He was manhandled out, crying and shouting incoherently.

  Turmoil ensued. I cannot recall the exact sequence of events; I was agitated myself, and could not keep track of all that was going on. All I know is that later, when everything had calmed down and everyone realized what had happened, the court usher was severely reprimanded, even though he was at great pains to explain to his superiors that the witness had been behaving perfectly normally right up to his appearance, that he had been seen by the doctor about an hour before, when he had complained of feeling slightly ill, but that before entering the courtroom he had still been quite coherent and no one could have foreseen that anything untoward would happen; in fact, it was the witness himself who had insisted on giving evidence. But before anyone had managed to calm down and take stock, this scene was immediately followed by another; Katerina Ivanovna went into hysterics. She screeched loudly and began to sob, but refused to leave; she was flailing her arms about and begging to be allowed to remain, and all of a sudden she cried out to the president:

  ‘I wish to submit another piece of evidence, immediately… now! Here, take this, it’s a letter… take it, read it now, quickly! It’s from that swine, that abomination, over there!’ she was pointing at Mitya. ‘It was he who killed his father, you’ll see in a moment, he wrote and told me he was going to kill his father! But the other one’s sick, sick, he’s got the shakes! I could see for the last three days that he’d got the shakes!’

  She went on shrieking frantically. The usher took the letter that she was proffering to the president, after which she slumped on her chair and, burying her face in her hands, began to sob convulsively and silently, her whole body shaking, suppressing every groan for fear that she might be ordered to leave the courtroom. The letter that she had handed over was that same letter which Mitya had written in the Stolichny Gorod and to which Ivan had referred, saying it was ‘proof beyond all shadow of doubt’. Alas! It was indeed deemed to be such, and had it not been for this letter, the outcome of the case might have been different, perhaps—or, at least, it might not have been so dreadful. I repeat, it was difficult to follow everything in detail. I am still thoroughly confused about it all. The president probably revealed at once the contents of the new document to the bench, the prosecutor, defence counsel, and members of the jury. I do remember, though, that Katerina Ivanovna was questioned again. When she was asked solicitously by the president whether she had recovered sufficiently, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed eagerly:

  ‘I’m ready, quite ready! I’m quite able to answer all your questions.’ She still seemed terribly worried that, for some reason, they might not let her have her say. She was asked to explain in greater detail about the letter and the circumstances in which she had received it.

  ‘I received it just the night before the crime, but he’d written it the day before that, in the tavern, in other words two days before the crime—look at it, he’s written it on the back of some kind of bill!’ she could hardly get the words out. ‘He hated me at the time because he’d behaved despicably, going after that creature… and also because he owed me that three thousand… Oh, that three thousand was devouring him, because he’d sunk so low! About that three thousand… I beg you, I implore you, hear me out. He came to me one morning, three weeks before he murdered his father. I knew he needed money, and I knew what for—I knew, he needed it to seduce that creature and run away with her. I knew then that he’d already been unfaithful to me and wanted to be rid of me, and I, I myself, gave him the money, pretending I expected him to send it to my sister in Moscow—and as I was giving it to him, I looked him in the eye and told him he could send it whenever he wished, “even in a month’s time will do”. So, how could he possibly have failed to understand what I was trying to convey to him straight to his face: “You need money to be unfaithful to me with that creature of yours, so here’s the money, I’m giving it to you myself, take it if you’re such a bastard!…” I wanted to expose him—and what happened? He took it, he really took it and walked off with it, and he spent it there with that creature in a single night… But he saw, he saw that I knew everything; I assure you that at the time he also realized that by giving him the money, I was merely putting him to the test: would he really be such a bastard as to take it? We were face to face and he saw, he saw everything, and he took it, he took my money and left!’

  ‘That’s right, Katya!’ Mitya burst out suddenly. ‘I looked you straight in the eyes and I could see that you thought I was a bastard, but I took your money all the same! Go on, despise me for it, I’m a scoundrel, it serves me right!’

  ‘Mr Karamazov,’ the president raised his voice, ‘one more word—and I shall order you to be escorted from the court!’

  ‘That money was a thorn in his side,’ continued Katerina Ivanovna in feverish haste, ‘he wanted to return it to me, he wanted to, that’s true, but he needed the money for that creature too. So he went and killed his father, but still he didn’t give me my money back—instead, he went with her to that village, where he was arrested. He squandered all the money there that he stole from his murdered father. And the day before he killed his father he wrote me that letter; he was drunk, I could see at once that he’d
written it out of malice and in the knowledge, in the sure knowledge, that I wouldn’t show it to anyone even if he committed the murder. Otherwise he wouldn’t have written it. He knew I wouldn’t want to take revenge and ruin him! But go on, read it, read it carefully, very carefully please, and you’ll see that he described everything in the letter, everything in advance, how he was going to kill his father and where his father kept his money. Read it carefully, don’t omit anything, there’s a place where he says: “I’ll kill him, provided that Ivan has left.” That means he had already thought out in advance how he was going to kill him,’ Katerina Ivanovna went on maliciously, venomously poisoning the minds of the jury against Mitya. It was clear that she had considered every nuance of that fateful letter and had thought about it in the minutest detail. ‘If he hadn’t been drunk he wouldn’t have written it, but just look, he disclosed everything in advance, exactly the way he went and murdered him afterwards, there you have his whole plan!’

  She continued like this, beside herself with fury, and obviously disregarding all the consequences this might have for her, although she must surely have foreseen them, perhaps as much as a month earlier, but even then she probably thought in her state of fury, ‘Why don’t I read it out in court?” She was getting totally carried away now. If I remember rightly, the letter was read aloud by the clerk of the court at precisely this juncture, and it produced a shattering effect. Mitya was asked whether he admitted writing the letter.

  ‘Yes, I did!’ exclaimed Mitya. ‘If I hadn’t been drunk I wouldn’t have written it!… There were lots of things we hated each other for, Katya, but I swear, I swear I loved you even when I hated you, but you didn’t love me!’

  He slumped on his seat, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the counsel for the defence both began to question her, the general drift of their questions being: ‘What prompted you to conceal such a document till now, and why didn’t you disclose all this before?’

  ‘Yes, all right, I lied, I lied about everything, against my conscience and my honour, but I wanted to save him because he hated and despised me so much,’ exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, as though demented. ‘Oh yes, he despised me terribly, he’s always despised me, and you know what—he’s despised me ever since the time I curtsied to him for giving me that money. I realized it… I felt it immediately then, but I didn’t want to believe it for a long time. I hate to think how often I read in his eyes: “You came to me of your own accord that time, didn’t you?” Oh, he didn’t understand, he didn’t understand why I came running to him at all, he’s only capable of suspecting baseness! He was judging by his own yardstick, he thinks everyone’s the same as he is,’ snarled Katerina Ivanovna, having lost all self-control. ‘And the only reason he wanted to marry me was because I’d come into an inheritance, that’s the reason, the only reason! I always suspected that was the reason! Oh, he’s worse than an animal! He’s been convinced all along that just because I went to him then I wouldn’t stop feeling ashamed of myself in front of him for the rest of my life, and he’d therefore be entitled to despise me for ever and be able to lord it over me—that’s why he wanted to marry me! That’s the truth, the gospel truth! I tried to win him over with my love, with my undying love, I was even ready to put up with his unfaithfulness, but he understood nothing, nothing at all. You’d think he’d be able to understand something at least! He’s a monster! I didn’t receive that letter until the evening of the following day, someone brought it from the tavern, and only that very morning, the morning of the same day, I’d been on the point of forgiving him everything, everything, even his unfaithfulness!’

  Naturally, the president and the prosecutor tried to pacify her. I am convinced that they were both ashamed to take advantage of her hysterical outburst and to listen to such a confession. I remember hearing them say to her: ‘We understand how difficult it must be for you, believe us, we’re not made of stone,’ and so on and so forth. All the same, this did not prevent them from extracting evidence from a demented, hysterical woman. Finally she described—with extraordinary clarity, as often happens momentarily at such times of tension—how Ivan Fyodorovich had nearly gone out of his mind trying to save ‘the monster and murderer’, his brother.

  ‘He was tormenting himself,’ she went on, ‘he always wanted to minimize his brother’s guilt by admitting to me that he didn’t love his father either, and that he himself perhaps wished him dead. Oh, he was so open about it, so frank! He used to reveal everything to me, everything, he used to come and talk to me every day as if I were his only friend. I have the honour of being his only friend!’ she exclaimed suddenly, a challenging glint in her eyes. ‘He went to see Smerdyakov twice. On one occasion he came to me and said: “If it wasn’t my brother who murdered him, but Smerdyakov—after all, everyone here’s spreading the rumour that it was Smerdyakov—then perhaps I too am guilty, because Smerdyakov knew that I didn’t love my father, and perhaps he thought I wished him dead.” Then I took out the letter and showed it to him, and that was when he became totally convinced that his brother was the murderer, and, of course, this destroyed him totally. He couldn’t bear the thought that his own brother was guilty of patricide! I could already see a week ago that he was ill. The past few days, at my place, he’s been in a state of delirium. I could see he was going mad. He’s been wandering around raving, and he’s been seen like that on the streets. The doctor who examined him the other day at my request told me that he was on the verge of a breakdown—and all because of him, all because of that monster! And yesterday he discovered that Smerdyakov was dead—this was such a shock to him that he lost his sanity… and all on account of the monster, all because he wanted to save him!’

  Of course, such talk, such a confession can be made only once in a lifetime—in the last remaining moments of one’s life, for example, when mounting the scaffold. And Katerina Ivanovna was true to her nature and equal to the occasion. This was the same impulsive Katerina Ivanovna who had previously rushed to the young rake in order to save her father; the same chaste and proud Katerina Ivanovna who previously had sacrificed herself and her maidenly sense of modesty in front of all these people, telling them about ‘Mitya’s act of chivalry’ purely in order to make things easier for him, however slightly. And now she was sacrificing herself again in exactly the same way, only this time for a different man, and perhaps it was only now, only at this instant, that she felt and understood fully for the first time how dear this other one was to her! She had sacrificed herself out of concern for him, realizing that he had ruined himself by testifying that it was he and not his brother who was the murderer; she had sacrificed herself in order to save him, his honour and his reputation! And yet, a terrible thought flashed through her mind—had she been lying when she described her former relationship with Mitya? That was the question. No, not at all, she had not intended to malign Mitya when she declared in front of everyone that Mitya despised her for having curtsied low before him! She believed it—in fact, she had been firmly convinced the moment she made that curtsey that, for all his naïvety and adoration of her, he was none the less mocking and despising her. And it was only out of pride that she had pledged her frenzied, hysterical love for him, out of wounded pride, which made her love look more like vengeance. Perhaps this hysterical love would have turned into genuine love; perhaps that was the one thing that Katya wished for, but he had insulted her to the very depths of her being by his betrayal, and she was unable to find it within herself to forgive him. However, the opportunity for revenge had presented itself unexpectedly, and everything that this scorned woman had been harbouring in her breast so painfully and for so long burst forth all at once and quite unexpectedly. She had betrayed Mitya, but she had also betrayed herself! And, naturally, as soon as she poured her heart out the tension broke and she was overwhelmed by remorse. Once more she became hysterical and collapsed, sobbing and shrieking. She was carried out of the courtroom. And, just as she was being carried out, Grushenka leapt to her f
eet with a wail and, before anyone had time to restrain her, rushed towards Mitya.

  ‘Mitya,’ she wailed, ‘your bitch has done for you!’ Shaking with fury, she turned to the bench and shouted, ‘Now you know what she’s like!’ At a signal from the president she was seized and led towards the courtroom exit. She resisted, fighting and struggling to get back to Mitya. Mitya let out a cry and rushed towards her. He was seized and overpowered.

  Yes, I suppose the ladies in the audience were satisfied; the spectacle was certainly an entertaining one. Then, I remember, the doctor from Moscow reappeared. Apparently, the president had instructed the usher to arrange for Ivan Fyodorovich to receive medical attention. The doctor informed the court that the patient was in a serious condition, and that he ought to be admitted to hospital. In response to the questions of the prosecutor and the defence counsel, he confirmed that the patient himself had visited him two days previously and that he had warned him that he was heading for a nervous breakdown, but that he had refused to have medical treatment. ‘He was most decidedly not in his right mind, he admitted to me himself that he saw apparitions in broad daylight, that he encountered all manner of deceased people on the street, and that Satan came to visit him every night,’ the doctor concluded. Having made his statement, the famous doctor withdrew. The letter handed over by Katerina Ivanovna was added to the material evidence. After due consultation it was decided that the session should continue, and that the two unexpected statements (those of Katerina Ivanovna and Ivan Fyodorovich) be entered in the record.

  But I shall not describe the subsequent court proceedings. In any case, the remaining witnesses merely repeated and confirmed what the others had said, albeit each in his own characteristic way. But I repeat, everything will become clear in the prosecutor’s speech, which I am coming to now. Everyone was in a state of excitement, everyone was electrified by the most recent revelations and dying with impatience for the outcome, for the speeches of the two counsels and for the verdict. Fetyukovich had been visibly shaken by Katerina Ivanovna’s testimony. The prosecutor, on the other hand, was triumphant. When the session was over, the court went into recess for almost an hour. Finally the president announced the opening of the judicial pleadings. I think it was precisely eight o’clock in the evening when Ippolit Kyrillovich, our prosecutor, began the address for the prosecution.