The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

Chapter 8

A Treatise on Smerdyakov

 

“TO begin with, what was the source of this suspicion?” (Ippolit

Kirillovitch began). “The first person who cried out that Smerdyakov

had committed the murder was the prisoner himself at the moment of his

arrest, yet from that time to this he had not brought forward a single

fact to confirm the charge, nor the faintest suggestion of a fact. The

charge is confirmed by three persons only-the two brothers of the

prisoner and Madame Svyetlov. The elder of these brothers expressed

his suspicions only to-day, when he was undoubtedly suffering from

brain fever. But we know that for the last two months he has

completely shared our conviction of his brother’s guilt and did not

attempt to combat that idea. But of that later. The younger brother

has admitted that he has not the slightest fact to support his

notion of Smerdyakov’s guilt, and has only been led to that conclusion

from the prisoner’s own words and the expression of his face. Yes,

that astounding piece of evidence has been brought forward twice

to-day by him. Madame Svyetslov was even more astounding. ‘What the

prisoner tells you, you must believe; he is not a man to tell a

lie.’ That is all the evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these

three persons. who are all deeply concerned in the prisoner’s fate.

And yet the theory of Smerdyakov’s guilt has been noised about, has

been and is still maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?”

 

Here Ippolit Kirillovitch thought it necessary to describe the

personality of Smerdyakov, “who had cut short his life in a fit of

insanity.” He depicted him as a man of weak intellect, with a

smattering of education, who had been thrown off his balance by

philosophical ideas above his level and certain modern theories of

duty, which he learnt in practice from the reckless life of his

master, who was also perhaps his father-Fyodor Pavlovitch; and,

theoretically, from various strange philosophical conversations with

his master’s elder son, Ivan Fyodorovitch, who readily indulged in

this diversion, probably feeling dull or wishing to amuse himself at

the valet’s expense. “He spoke to me himself of his spiritual

condition during the last few days at his father’s house,” Ippolit

Kirillovitch explained; “but others too have borne witness to it-the prisoner himself, his brother, and the servant Grigory-that is,

all who knew him well.

 

“Moreover, Smerdyakov, whose health was shaken by his attacks of

epilepsy, had not the courage of a chicken. ‘He fell at my feet and

kissed them,’ the prisoner himself has told us, before he realised how

damaging such a statement was to himself. ‘He is an epileptic

chicken,’ he declared about him in his characteristic language. And

the prisoner chose him for his confidant (we have his own word for it)

and he frightened him into consenting at last to act as a spy for him.

In that capacity he deceived his master, revealing to the prisoner the

existence of the envelope with the notes in it and the signals by

means of which he could get into the house. How could he help

telling him, indeed? ‘He would have killed me, I could see that he

would have killed me,’ he said at the inquiry, trembling and shaking

even before us, though his tormentor was by that time arrested and

could do him no harm. ‘He suspected me at every instant. In fear and

trembling I hastened to tell him every secret to pacify him, that he

might see that I had not deceived him and let me off alive.’ Those are

his own words. I wrote them down and I remember them. ‘When he began

shouting at me, I would fall on my knees.’

 

“He was naturally very honest and enjoyed the complete

confidence of his master, ever since he had restored him some money he

had lost. So it may be supposed that the poor fellow suffered pangs of

remorse at having deceived his master, whom he loved as his

benefactor. Persons severely afflicted with epilepsy are, so the

most skilful doctors tell us, always prone to continual and morbid

self-reproach. They worry over their ‘wickedness,’ they are

tormented by pangs of conscience, often entirely without cause; they

exaggerate and often invent all sorts of faults and crimes. And here

we have a man of that type who had really been driven to wrongdoing by

terror and intimidation.

 

“He had, besides, a strong presentiment that something terrible

would be the outcome of the situation that was developing before his

eyes. When Ivan Fyodorovitch was leaving for Moscow, just before the

catastrophe, Smerdyakov besought him to remain, though he was too

timid to tell him plainly what he feared. He confined himself to

hints, but his hints were not understood.

 

“It must be observed that he looked on Ivan Fyodorovitch as a

protector, whose presence in the house was a guarantee that no harm

would come to pass. Remember the phrase in Dmitri Karamazov’s

drunken letter, ‘I shall kill the old man, if only Ivan goes away.’ So

Ivan Fyodorovitch’s presence seemed to everyone a guarantee of peace

and order in the house.

 

“But he went away, and within an hour of his young master’s

departure Smerdyakov was taken with an epileptic fit. But that’s

perfectly intelligible. Here I must mention that Smerdyakov, oppressed

by terror and despair of a sort, had felt during those last few days

that one of the fits from which he had suffered before at moments of

strain, might be coming upon him again. The day and hour of such an

attack cannot, of course, be foreseen, but every epileptic can feel

beforehand that he is likely to have one. So the doctors tell us.

And so, as soon as Ivan Fyodorovitch had driven out of the yard,

Smerdyakov, depressed by his lonely and unprotected position, went

to the cellar. He went down the stairs wondering if he would have a

fit or not, and what if it were to come upon him at once. And that

very apprehension, that very wonder, brought on the spasm in his

throat that always precedes such attacks, and he fell unconscious into

the cellar. And in this perfectly natural occurrence people try to

detect a suspicion, a hint that he was shamming an attack on

purpose. But, if it were on purpose, the question arises at once, what

was his motive? What was he reckoning on? What was he aiming at? I say

nothing about medicine: science, I am told, may go astray: the doctors

were not able to discriminate between the counterfeit and the real.

That may be so, but answer me one question: what motive had he for

such a counterfeit? Could he, had he been plotting the murder, have

desired to attract the attention of the household by having a fit just

before?

 

“You see, gentlemen of the jury, on the night of the murder, there

were five persons in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s-Fyodor Pavlovitch himself

(but he did not kill himself, that’s evident); then his servant,

Grigory, but he was almost killed himself; the third person was

Grigory’s wife, Marfa Ignatyevna, but it would be simply shameful to

imagine her murdering her master. Two persons are left-the prisoner

and Smerdyakov. But, if we are to believe the prisoner’s statement

that he is not the murderer, then Smerdyakov must have been, for there

is no other alternative, no one else can be found. That is what

accounts for the artful, astounding accusation against the unhappy

idiot who committed suicide yesterday. Had a shadow of suspicion

rested on anyone else, had there been any sixth person, I am persuaded

that even the prisoner would have been ashamed to accuse Smerdyakov,

and would have accused that sixth person, for to charge Smerdyakov

with that murder is perfectly absurd.

 

“Gentlemen, let us lay aside psychology, let us lay aside

medicine, let us even lay aside logic, let us turn only to the facts

and see what the facts tell us. If Smerdyakov killed him, how did he

do it? Alone or with the assistance of the prisoner? Let us consider

the first alternative-that he did it alone. If he had killed him it

must have been with some object, for some advantage to himself. But

not having a shadow of the motive that the prisoner had for the

murder-hatred, jealousy, and so on-Smerdyakov could only have

murdered him for the sake of gain, in order to appropriate the three

thousand roubles he had seen his master put in the envelope. And yet

he tells another person-and a person most closely interested, that

is, the prisoner-everything about the money and the signals, where

the envelope lay, what was written on it, what it was tied up with,

and, above all, told him of those signals by which he could enter

the house. Did he do this simply to betray himself, or to invite to

the same enterprise one who would be anxious to get that envelope

for himself? ‘Yes,’ I shall be told, ‘but he betrayed it from fear.’

But how do you explain this? A man who could conceive such an

audacious, savage act, and carry it out, tells facts which are known

to no one else in the world, and which, if he held his tongue, no

one would ever have guessed!

 

“No, however cowardly he might be, if he had plotted such a crime,

nothing would have induced him to tell anyone about the envelope and

the signals, for that