The Brothers Karamazov
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 skillful 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 wrong-doing 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 every one 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 any one 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 any one about the envelope and
the signals, for that was as good as betraying himself beforehand. He
would have invented something, he would have told some lie if he had
been forced to give information, but he would have been silent about
that. For, on the other hand, if he had said nothing about the money,
but had committed the murder and stolen the money, no one in the world
could have charged him with murder for the sake of robbery, since no
one but he had seen the money, no one but he knew of its existence in
the house. Even if he had been accused of the murder, it could only
have been thought that he had committed it from some other motive. But
since no one had observed any such motive in him beforehand, and every
one saw, on the contrary, that his master was fond of him and honored
him with his confidence, he would, of course, have been the last to be
suspected. People would have suspected first the man who had a motive,
a man who had himself declared he had such motives, who had made no
secret of it; they would, in fact, have suspected the son of the
murdered man, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Had Smerdyakov killed and robbed
him, and the son been accused of it, that would, of course, have suited
Smerdyakov. Yet are we to believe that, though plotting the murder, he
told that son, Dmitri, about the money, the envelope, and the signals?
Is that logical? Is that clear?
“When the day of the murder planned by Smerdyakov came, we have him
falling downstairs in a _feigned_ fit—with what object? In the first
place that Grigory, who had been intending to take his medicine, might
put it off and remain on guard, seeing there was no one to look after
the house, and, in the second place, I suppose, that his master seeing
that there was no one to guard him, and in terror of a visit from his
son, might redouble his vigilance and precaution. And, most of all, I
suppose that he, Smerdyakov, disabled by the fit, might be carried from
the kitchen, where he always slept, apart from all the rest, and where
he could go in and out as he liked, to Grigory’s room at the other end
of the lodge, where he was always put, shut off by a screen three paces
from their own bed. This was the immemorial custom established by his
master and the kind-hearted Marfa Ignatyevna, whenever he had a fit.
There, lying behind the screen, he would most likely, to keep up the
sham, have begun groaning, and so keeping them awake all night (as
Grigory and his wife testified). And all this, we are to believe, that
he might more conveniently get up and murder his master!
“But I shall be told that he shammed illness on purpose that he might
not be suspected and that he told the prisoner of the money and the
signals to tempt him to commit the murder, and when he had murdered him
and had gone away with the money, making a noise, most likely, and
waking people, Smerdyakov got up, am I to believe, and went in—what
for? To murder his master a second time and carry off the money that
had already been stolen? Gentlemen, are you laughing? I am ashamed to
put forward such suggestions, but, incredible as it seems, that’s just
what the prisoner alleges. When he had left the house, had knocked
Grigory down and raised an alarm, he tells us Smerdyakov got up, went
in and murdered his master and stole the money! I won’t press the point
that Smerdyakov could hardly have reckoned on this beforehand, and have
foreseen that the furious and exasperated son would simply come to peep
in respectfully, though he knew the signals, and beat a retreat,
leaving Smerdyakov his booty. Gentlemen of the jury, I put this
question to you in earnest; when was the moment when Smerdyakov could
have committed his crime? Name that moment, or you can’t accuse him.
“But, perhaps, the fit was a real one, the sick man suddenly recovered,
heard a shout, and went out. Well—what then? He looked about him and
said, ‘Why not go and kill the master?’ And how did he know what had
happened, since he had been lying unconscious till that moment? But
there’s a limit to these flights of fancy.
“‘Quite so,’ some astute people will tell me, ‘but what if they were
in agreement? What if they murdered him together and shared the
money—what then?’ A weighty question, truly! And the facts to confirm
it are astounding. One commits the murder and takes all the trouble
while his accomplice lies on one side shamming a fit, apparently to
arouse suspicion in every one, alarm in his master and alarm in
Grigory. It would be interesting to know what motives could have
induced the two accomplices to form such an insane plan.
“But perhaps it was not a case of active complicity on Smerdyakov’s
part, but only of passive acquiescence; perhaps Smerdyakov was
intimidated and agreed not to prevent the murder, and foreseeing that
he would be blamed for letting his master be murdered, without
screaming for help or resisting, he may have obtained permission from
Dmitri Karamazov to get out of the way by shamming a fit—‘you may
murder him as you like; it’s nothing to me.’ But as this attack of
Smerdyakov’s was bound to throw the household into confusion, Dmitri
Karamazov could never have agreed to such a plan. I will waive that
point however. Supposing that he did agree, it would still follow that
Dmitri Karamazov is the murderer and the instigator, and Smerdyakov is
only a passive accomplice, and not even an accomplice, but merely
acquiesced against his will through terror.
“But what do we see? As soon as he is arrested the prisoner instantly
throws all the blame on Smerdyakov, not accusing him of being his
accomplice, but of being himself the murderer. ‘He did it alone,’ he
says. ‘He murdered and robbed him. It was the work of his hands.’
Strange sort of accomplices who begin to accuse one another at once!
And think of the risk for Karamazov. After committing the murder while