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

have

caught the prisoner’s eye, and he would have run away without a

weapon, with empty hands, and then he would certainly not have

killed anyone. How then can I look upon the pestle as a proof of

premeditation?

 

“Yes, but he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and

two days before, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he

was quiet and only quarrelled with a shopman in the tavern, because

a Karamazov could not help quarrelling, forsooth! But my answer to

that is, that, if he was planning such a murder in accordance with his

letter, he certainly would not have quarrelled even with a shopman,

and probably would not have gone into the tavern at all, because a

person plotting such a crime seeks quiet and retirement, seeks to

efface himself, to avoid being seen and heard, and that not from

calculation, but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury, the

psychological method is a two-edged weapon, and we, too, can use it.

As for all this shouting in taverns throughout the month, don’t we

often hear children, or drunkards coming out of taverns shout, ‘I’ll

kill you’? but they don’t murder anyone. And that fatal letter-isn’t that simply drunken irritability, too? Isn’t that simply the

shout of the brawler outside the tavern, ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill the

lot of you!’ Why not, why could it not be that? What reason have we to

call that letter ‘fatal’ rather than absurd? Because his father has

been found murdered, because a witness saw the prisoner running out of

the garden with a weapon in his hand, and was knocked down by him:

therefore, we are told, everything was done as he had planned in

writing, and the letter was not ‘absurd,’ but ‘fatal.’

 

“Now, thank God! we’ve come to the real point: ‘since he was in

the garden, he must have murdered him.’ In those few words: ‘since

he was, then he must’ lies the whole case for the prosecution. He

was there, so he must have. And what if there is no must about it,

even if he was there? Oh, I admit that the chain of evidence-the

coincidences-are really suggestive. But examine all these facts

separately, regardless of their connection. Why, for instance, does

the prosecution refuse to admit the truth of the prisoner’s

statement that he ran away from his father’s window? Remember the

sarcasms in which the prosecutor indulged at the expense of the

respectful and ‘pious’ sentiments which suddenly came over the

murderer. But what if there were something of the sort, a feeling of

religious awe, if not of filial respect? ‘My mother must have been

praying for me at that moment,’ were the prisoner’s words at the

preliminary inquiry, and so he ran away as soon as he convinced

himself that Madame Svyetlov was not in his father’s house. ‘But he

could not convince himself by looking through the window,’ the

prosecutor objects. But why couldn’t he? Why? The window opened at the

signals given by the prisoner. Some word might have been uttered by

Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation which showed the prisoner that she

was not there. Why should we assume everything as we imagine it, as we

make up our minds to imagine it? A thousand things may happen in

reality which elude the subtlest imagination.

 

“‘Yes, but Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly

was in the house, therefore he killed him.’ Now about that door,

gentlemen of the jury…. Observe that we have only the statement of

one witness as to that door, and he was at the time in such a

condition, that-but supposing the door was open; supposing the

prisoner has lied in denying it, from an instinct of self-defence,

natural in his position; supposing he did go into the house-well,

what then? How does it follow that because he was there he committed

the murder? He might have dashed in, run through the rooms; might have

pushed his father away; might have struck him; but as soon as he had

made sure Madame Svyetlov was not there, he may have run away

rejoicing that she was not there and that he had not killed his

father. And it was perhaps just because he had escaped from the

temptation to kill his father, because he had a clear conscience and

was rejoicing at not having killed him, that he was capable of a

pure feeling, the feeling of pity and compassion, and leapt off the

fence a minute later to the assistance of Grigory after he had, in his

excitement, knocked him down.

 

“With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the

dreadful state of the prisoner’s mind at Mokroe when love again lay

before him calling him to new life, while love was impossible for

him because he had his father’s bloodstained corpse behind him and

beyond that corpse-retribution. And yet the prosecutor allowed him

love, which he explained, according to his method, talking about

this drunken condition, about a criminal being taken to execution,

about it being still far off, and so on and so on. But again I ask,

Mr. Prosecutor, have you not invented a new personality? Is the

prisoner so coarse and heartless as to be able to think at that moment

of love and of dodges to escape punishment, if his hands were really

stained with his father’s blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was made

plain to him that she loved him and called him to her side,

promising him new happiness, oh! then, I protest he must have felt the

impulse to suicide doubled, trebled, and must have killed himself,

if he had his father’s murder on his conscience. Oh, no! he would

not have forgotten where his pistols lay! I know the prisoner: the

savage, stony heartlessness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is

inconsistent with his character. He would have killed himself,

that’s certain. He did not kill himself just because ‘his mother’s

prayers had saved him,’ and he was innocent of his father’s blood.

He was troubled, he was grieving that night at Mokroe only about old

Grigory and praying to God that the old man would recover, that his

blow had not been fatal, and that he would not have to suffer for

it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts? What

trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?

 

“But we shall be told at once again, ‘There is his father’s

corpse! If he ran away without murdering him, who did murder him?’

Here, I repeat, you have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who

murdered him, if not he? There’s no one to put in his place.

 

“Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively,

actually true that there is no one else at all? We’ve heard the

prosecutor count on his fingers all the persons who were in that house

that night. They were five in number; three of them, I agree, could

not have been responsible-the murdered man himself, old Grigory,

and his wife. There are left then the prisoner and Smerdyakov, and the

prosecutor dramatically exclaims that the prisoner pointed to

Smerdyakov because he had no one else to fix on, that had there been a

sixth person, even a phantom of a sixth person, he would have

abandoned the charge against Smerdyakov at once in shame and have

accused that other. But, gentlemen of the jury, why may I not draw the

very opposite conclusion? There are two persons-the prisoner and

Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you accuse my client, simply

because you have no one else to accuse? And you have no one else

only because you have determined to exclude Smerdyakov from all

suspicion.

 

“It’s true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner,

his two brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse

him: there are vague rumours of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure

report, a feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a

combination of facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive.

In the first place we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe

that fit, for the genuineness of which the prosecutor, for some

reason, has felt obliged to make a careful defence. Then

Smerdyakov’s sudden suicide on the eve of the trial. Then the

equally startling evidence given in court to-day by the elder of the

prisoner’s brothers, who had believed in his guilt, but has to-day

produced a bundle of notes and proclaimed Smerdyakov as the

murderer. Oh, I fully share the court’s and the prosecutor’s

conviction that Ivan Karamazov is suffering from brain fever, that his

statement may really be a desperate effort, planned in delirium, to

save his brother by throwing the guilt on the dead man. But again

Smerdyakov’s name is pronounced, again there is a suggestion of

mystery. There is something unexplained, incomplete. And perhaps it

may one day be explained. But we won’t go into that now. Of that

later.

 

“The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime,

I might make a few remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov

drawn with subtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire

his talent I cannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I

have seen him and talked to him, and he made a very different

impression on me. He was weak in health, it is true; but in character,

in spirit, he was by no means the weak man the prosecutor has made him

out to be. I found in him no trace of the timidity on which the

prosecutor so insisted. There was no simplicity about him, either. I

found in him, on the contrary, an extreme mistrustfulness concealed

under a mask of naivete, and an intelligence of considerable range.

The prosecutor was too simple in taking him for weak-minded. He made a

very definite impression on me: I left him with the conviction that he

was a distinctly spiteful creature, excessively ambitious, vindictive,

and intensely envious. I made some inquiries: he resented his

parentage, was ashamed of it, and would clench his teeth when he

remembered that he was the son of ‘stinking Lizaveta.’ He was

disrespectful to the servant Grigory and his wife, who had cared for

him in his childhood. He cursed and jeered at Russia. He dreamed of

going to France and becoming a Frenchman. He used often to say that he

hadn’t the means to do so. I fancy he loved no one but himself and had

a strangely high opinion of himself. His conception of culture was

limited to good clothes, clean shirt-fronts and polished boots.

Believing himself to be the illegitimate son of Fyodor Pavlovitch

(there is evidence of this), he might well have resented his position,

compared with that of his master’s legitimate sons. They had

everything, he nothing. They had all the rights, they had the

inheritance, while he was only the cook. He told me himself that he

had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch to put the notes in the envelope. The

destination of that sum-a sum which would have made his career-must have been hateful to him. Moreover, he saw three thousand roubles

in new rainbow-coloured notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.)

Oh, beware of showing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of

money at once! And it was the first time he had seen so much money

in the hands of one man. The sight of the rainbow-coloured notes may

have made a morbid impression on his imagination, but with no

immediate results.

 

“The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched

for us all the arguments for and against the hypothesis of

Smerdyakov’s guilt, and asked us in particular what motive he had in

feigning a fit. But he may not have