The Brothers Karamazov
There was a hush in the court; there was a feeling of something
strange. The President showed signs of uneasiness.
“You ... are perhaps still unwell?” he began, looking everywhere for
the usher.
“Don’t trouble yourself, your excellency, I am well enough and can tell
you something interesting,” Ivan answered with sudden calmness and
respectfulness.
“You have some special communication to make?” the President went on,
still mistrustfully.
Ivan looked down, waited a few seconds and, raising his head, answered,
almost stammering:
“No ... I haven’t. I have nothing particular.”
They began asking him questions. He answered, as it were, reluctantly,
with extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew more and more
marked, though he answered rationally. To many questions he answered
that he did not know. He knew nothing of his father’s money relations
with Dmitri. “I wasn’t interested in the subject,” he added. Threats to
murder his father he had heard from the prisoner. Of the money in the
envelope he had heard from Smerdyakov.
“The same thing over and over again,” he interrupted suddenly, with a
look of weariness. “I have nothing particular to tell the court.”
“I see you are unwell and understand your feelings,” the President
began.
He turned to the prosecutor and the counsel for the defense to invite
them to examine the witness, if necessary, when Ivan suddenly asked in
an exhausted voice:
“Let me go, your excellency, I feel very ill.”
And with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to walk
out of the court. But after taking four steps he stood still, as though
he had reached a decision, smiled slowly, and went back.
“I am like the peasant girl, your excellency ... you know. How does it
go? ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’ They were trying
to put on her sarafan to take her to church to be married, and she
said, ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’... It’s in
some book about the peasantry.”
“What do you mean by that?” the President asked severely.
“Why, this,” Ivan suddenly pulled out a roll of notes. “Here’s the
money ... the notes that lay in that envelope” (he nodded towards the
table on which lay the material evidence), “for the sake of which our
father was murdered. Where shall I put them? Mr. Superintendent, take
them.”
The usher of the court took the whole roll and handed it to the
President.
“How could this money have come into your possession if it is the same
money?” the President asked wonderingly.
“I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday.... I was
with him just before he hanged himself. It was he, not my brother,
killed our father. He murdered him and I incited him to do it ... Who
doesn’t desire his father’s death?”
“Are you in your right mind?” broke involuntarily from the President.
“I should think I am in my right mind ... in the same nasty mind as all
of you ... as all these ... ugly faces.” He turned suddenly to the
audience. “My father has been murdered and they pretend they are
horrified,” he snarled, with furious contempt. “They keep up the sham
with one another. Liars! They all desire the death of their fathers.
One reptile devours another.... If there hadn’t been a murder, they’d
have been angry and gone home ill-humored. It’s a spectacle they want!
_Panem et circenses_. Though I am one to talk! Have you any water? Give
me a drink for Christ’s sake!” He suddenly clutched his head.
The usher at once approached him. Alyosha jumped up and cried, “He is
ill. Don’t believe him: he has brain fever.” Katerina Ivanovna rose
impulsively from her seat and, rigid with horror, gazed at Ivan. Mitya
stood up and greedily looked at his brother and listened to him with a
wild, strange smile.
“Don’t disturb yourselves. I am not mad, I am only a murderer,” Ivan
began again. “You can’t expect eloquence from a murderer,” he added
suddenly for some reason and laughed a queer laugh.
The prosecutor bent over to the President in obvious dismay. The two
other judges communicated in agitated whispers. Fetyukovitch pricked up
his ears as he listened: the hall was hushed in expectation. The
President seemed suddenly to recollect himself.
“Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here. Calm
yourself, if you can, and tell your story ... if you really have
something to tell. How can you confirm your statement ... if indeed you
are not delirious?”
“That’s just it. I have no proof. That cur Smerdyakov won’t send you
proofs from the other world ... in an envelope. You think of nothing
but envelopes—one is enough. I’ve no witnesses ... except one,
perhaps,” he smiled thoughtfully.
“Who is your witness?”
“He has a tail, your excellency, and that would be irregular! _Le
diable n’existe point!_ Don’t pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful
devil,” he added suddenly. He ceased laughing and spoke as it were,
confidentially. “He is here somewhere, no doubt—under that table with
the material evidence on it, perhaps. Where should he sit if not there?
You see, listen to me. I told him I don’t want to keep quiet, and he
talked about the geological cataclysm ... idiocy! Come, release the
monster ... he’s been singing a hymn. That’s because his heart is
light! It’s like a drunken man in the street bawling how ‘Vanka went to
Petersburg,’ and I would give a quadrillion quadrillions for two
seconds of joy. You don’t know me! Oh, how stupid all this business is!
Come, take me instead of him! I didn’t come for nothing.... Why, why is
everything so stupid?...”
And he began slowly, and as it were reflectively, looking round him
again. But the court was all excitement by now. Alyosha rushed towards
him, but the court usher had already seized Ivan by the arm.
“What are you about?” he cried, staring into the man’s face, and
suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the
floor. But the police were on the spot and he was seized. He screamed
furiously. And all the time he was being removed, he yelled and
screamed something incoherent.
The whole court was thrown into confusion. I don’t remember everything
as it happened. I was excited myself and could not follow. I only know
that afterwards, when everything was quiet again and every one
understood what had happened, the court usher came in for a reprimand,
though he very reasonably explained that the witness had been quite
well, that the doctor had seen him an hour ago, when he had a slight
attack of giddiness, but that, until he had come into the court, he had
talked quite consecutively, so that nothing could have been
foreseen—that he had, in fact, insisted on giving evidence. But before
every one had completely regained their composure and recovered from
this scene, it was followed by another. Katerina Ivanovna had an attack
of hysterics. She sobbed, shrieking loudly, but refused to leave the
court, struggled, and besought them not to remove her. Suddenly she
cried to the President:
“There is more evidence I must give at once ... at once! Here is a
document, a letter ... take it, read it quickly, quickly! It’s a letter
from that monster ... that man there, there!” she pointed to Mitya. “It
was he killed his father, you will see that directly. He wrote to me
how he would kill his father! But the other one is ill, he is ill, he
is delirious!” she kept crying out, beside herself.
The court usher took the document she held out to the President, and
she, dropping into her chair, hiding her face in her hands, began
convulsively and noiselessly sobbing, shaking all over, and stifling
every sound for fear she should be ejected from the court. The document
she had handed up was that letter Mitya had written at the “Metropolis”
tavern, which Ivan had spoken of as a “mathematical proof.” Alas! its
mathematical conclusiveness was recognized, and had it not been for
that letter, Mitya might have escaped his doom or, at least, that doom
would have been less terrible. It was, I repeat, difficult to notice
every detail. What followed is still confused to my mind. The President
must, I suppose, have at once passed on the document to the judges, the
jury, and the lawyers on both sides. I only remember how they began
examining the witness. On being gently asked by the President whether
she had recovered sufficiently, Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed
impetuously:
“I am ready, I am ready! I am quite equal to answering you,” she added,
evidently still afraid that she would somehow be prevented from giving
evidence. She was asked to explain in detail what this letter was and
under what circumstances she received it.
“I received it the day before the crime was committed, but he wrote it
the day before that, at the tavern—that is, two days before he
committed the crime. Look, it is written on some sort of bill!” she
cried breathlessly. “He hated me at that time, because he had behaved
contemptibly and was running after that creature ... and because he
owed me that three thousand.... Oh! he was humiliated by that three
thousand on account of his own meanness! This is how it happened about
that three thousand. I beg you, I beseech you, to hear me. Three weeks
before he murdered his father, he came to me one morning. I knew he was
in want of money, and what he wanted it for. Yes, yes—to win that
creature and carry her off. I knew then that he had been false to me
and meant to abandon me, and it was I, I, who gave him that money, who
offered it to him on the pretext of his sending it to my sister in
Moscow. And as I gave it him, I looked him in the face and said that he
could send it when he liked, ‘in a month’s time would do.’ How, how
could he have failed to understand that I was practically telling him
to his face, ‘You want money to be false to me with your creature, so
here’s the money for you. I give it to you myself. Take it, if you have
so little honor as to take it!’ I wanted to prove what he was, and what
happened? He took it, he took it, and squandered it with that creature
in one night.... But he knew, he knew that I knew all about it. I
assure you he understood, too, that I gave him that money to test him,
to see whether he was so lost to all sense of honor as to take it from
me. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine, and he understood
it all and he took it—he carried off my money!”
“That’s true, Katya,” Mitya roared suddenly, “I looked into your eyes
and I knew that you were dishonoring me, and yet I took your money.
Despise me as a scoundrel, despise me, all of you! I’ve deserved it!”
“Prisoner,” cried the President, “another word and I will order you to
be removed.”
“That money was a torment to him,” Katya went on with impulsive haste.
“He wanted to repay it me. He wanted to, that’s true; but he needed
money for that creature, too. So he murdered his father, but he didn’t
repay me, and went off with her to that village where he was arrested.
There, again, he squandered the money he had stolen after the murder of
his father. And a day before the murder he wrote me this letter. He was
drunk when he wrote it. I saw it at once, at the time. He wrote it from
spite, and feeling certain, positively certain, that I should never
show it to any one, even if he did kill him, or else he wouldn’t have
written it. For he knew I shouldn’t want to revenge myself and ruin
him! But read it, read it attentively—more attentively, please—and you
will see that he had described it all in his letter, all beforehand,
how he would kill his father and where his money was kept. Look,
please, don’t overlook that, there’s one phrase there, ‘I shall kill
him as soon as Ivan has gone away.’ So he thought it all out beforehand
how he would kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna pointed out to the court with