The Brothers Karamazov
his accomplice lay in bed, he throws the blame on the invalid, who
might well have resented it and in self-preservation might well have
confessed the truth. For he might well have seen that the court would
at once judge how far he was responsible, and so he might well have
reckoned that if he were punished, it would be far less severely than
the real murderer. But in that case he would have been certain to make
a confession, yet he has not done so. Smerdyakov never hinted at their
complicity, though the actual murderer persisted in accusing him and
declaring that he had committed the crime alone.
“What’s more, Smerdyakov at the inquiry volunteered the statement that
it was _he_ who had told the prisoner of the envelope of notes and of
the signals, and that, but for him, he would have known nothing about
them. If he had really been a guilty accomplice, would he so readily
have made this statement at the inquiry? On the contrary, he would have
tried to conceal it, to distort the facts or minimize them. But he was
far from distorting or minimizing them. No one but an innocent man, who
had no fear of being charged with complicity, could have acted as he
did. And in a fit of melancholy arising from his disease and this
catastrophe he hanged himself yesterday. He left a note written in his
peculiar language, ‘I destroy myself of my own will and inclination so
as to throw no blame on any one.’ What would it have cost him to add:
‘I am the murderer, not Karamazov’? But that he did not add. Did his
conscience lead him to suicide and not to avowing his guilt?
“And what followed? Notes for three thousand roubles were brought into
the court just now, and we were told that they were the same that lay
in the envelope now on the table before us, and that the witness had
received them from Smerdyakov the day before. But I need not recall the
painful scene, though I will make one or two comments, selecting such
trivial ones as might not be obvious at first sight to every one, and
so may be overlooked. In the first place, Smerdyakov must have given
back the money and hanged himself yesterday from remorse. And only
yesterday he confessed his guilt to Ivan Karamazov, as the latter
informs us. If it were not so, indeed, why should Ivan Fyodorovitch
have kept silence till now? And so, if he has confessed, then why, I
ask again, did he not avow the whole truth in the last letter he left
behind, knowing that the innocent prisoner had to face this terrible
ordeal the next day?
“The money alone is no proof. A week ago, quite by chance, the fact
came to the knowledge of myself and two other persons in this court
that Ivan Fyodorovitch had sent two five per cent. coupons of five
thousand each—that is, ten thousand in all—to the chief town of the
province to be changed. I only mention this to point out that any one
may have money, and that it can’t be proved that these notes are the
same as were in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s envelope.
“Ivan Karamazov, after receiving yesterday a communication of such
importance from the real murderer, did not stir. Why didn’t he report
it at once? Why did he put it all off till morning? I think I have a
right to conjecture why. His health had been giving way for a week
past: he had admitted to a doctor and to his most intimate friends that
he was suffering from hallucinations and seeing phantoms of the dead:
he was on the eve of the attack of brain fever by which he has been
stricken down to-day. In this condition he suddenly heard of
Smerdyakov’s death, and at once reflected, ‘The man is dead, I can
throw the blame on him and save my brother. I have money. I will take a
roll of notes and say that Smerdyakov gave them me before his death.’
You will say that was dishonorable: it’s dishonorable to slander even
the dead, and even to save a brother. True, but what if he slandered
him unconsciously? What if, finally unhinged by the sudden news of the
valet’s death, he imagined it really was so? You saw the recent scene:
you have seen the witness’s condition. He was standing up and was
speaking, but where was his mind?
“Then followed the document, the prisoner’s letter written two days
before the crime, and containing a complete program of the murder. Why,
then, are we looking for any other program? The crime was committed
precisely according to this program, and by no other than the writer of
it. Yes, gentlemen of the jury, it went off without a hitch! He did not
run respectfully and timidly away from his father’s window, though he
was firmly convinced that the object of his affections was with him.
No, that is absurd and unlikely! He went in and murdered him. Most
likely he killed him in anger, burning with resentment, as soon as he
looked on his hated rival. But having killed him, probably with one
blow of the brass pestle, and having convinced himself, after careful
search, that she was not there, he did not, however, forget to put his
hand under the pillow and take out the envelope, the torn cover of
which lies now on the table before us.
“I mention this fact that you may note one, to my thinking, very
characteristic circumstance. Had he been an experienced murderer and
had he committed the murder for the sake of gain only, would he have
left the torn envelope on the floor as it was found, beside the corpse?
Had it been Smerdyakov, for instance, murdering his master to rob him,
he would have simply carried away the envelope with him, without
troubling himself to open it over his victim’s corpse, for he would
have known for certain that the notes were in the envelope—they had
been put in and sealed up in his presence—and had he taken the envelope
with him, no one would ever have known of the robbery. I ask you,
gentlemen, would Smerdyakov have behaved in that way? Would he have
left the envelope on the floor?
“No, this was the action of a frantic murderer, a murderer who was not
a thief and had never stolen before that day, who snatched the notes
from under the pillow, not like a thief stealing them, but as though
seizing his own property from the thief who had stolen it. For that was
the idea which had become almost an insane obsession in Dmitri
Karamazov in regard to that money. And pouncing upon the envelope,
which he had never seen before, he tore it open to make sure whether
the money was in it, and ran away with the money in his pocket, even
forgetting to consider that he had left an astounding piece of evidence
against himself in that torn envelope on the floor. All because it was
Karamazov, not Smerdyakov, he didn’t think, he didn’t reflect, and how
should he? He ran away; he heard behind him the servant cry out; the
old man caught him, stopped him and was felled to the ground by the
brass pestle.
“The prisoner, moved by pity, leapt down to look at him. Would you
believe it, he tells us that he leapt down out of pity, out of
compassion, to see whether he could do anything for him. Was that a
moment to show compassion? No; he jumped down simply to make certain
whether the only witness of his crime were dead or alive. Any other
feeling, any other motive would be unnatural. Note that he took trouble
over Grigory, wiped his head with his handkerchief and, convincing
himself he was dead, he ran to the house of his mistress, dazed and
covered with blood. How was it he never thought that he was covered
with blood and would be at once detected? But the prisoner himself
assures us that he did not even notice that he was covered with blood.
That may be believed, that is very possible, that always happens at
such moments with criminals. On one point they will show diabolical
cunning, while another will escape them altogether. But he was thinking
at that moment of one thing only—where was _she_? He wanted to find out
at once where she was, so he ran to her lodging and learnt an
unexpected and astounding piece of news—she had gone off to Mokroe to
meet her first lover.”
Chapter IX.
The Galloping Troika. The End Of The Prosecutor’s Speech.
Ippolit Kirillovitch had chosen the historical method of exposition,
beloved by all nervous orators, who find in its limitation a check on
their own eager rhetoric. At this moment in his speech he went off into
a dissertation on Grushenka’s “first lover,” and brought forward
several interesting thoughts on this theme.
“Karamazov, who had been frantically jealous of every one, collapsed,
so to speak, and effaced himself at once before this first lover. What
makes it all the more strange is that he seems to have hardly thought
of this formidable rival. But he had looked upon him as a remote
danger, and Karamazov always lives in the present. Possibly he regarded
him as a fiction. But his wounded heart grasped instantly that the
woman had been concealing this new rival and deceiving him, because he
was anything but a fiction to her, because he was the one hope of her
life. Grasping this instantly, he resigned himself.
“Gentlemen of the jury, I cannot help dwelling on this unexpected trait
in the prisoner’s character. He suddenly evinces an irresistible desire
for justice, a respect for woman and a recognition of her right to
love. And all this at the very moment when he had stained his hands
with his father’s blood for her sake! It is true that the blood he had
shed was already crying out for vengeance, for, after having ruined his
soul and his life in this world, he was forced to ask himself at that
same instant what he was and what he could be now to her, to that
being, dearer to him than his own soul, in comparison with that former
lover who had returned penitent, with new love, to the woman he had
once betrayed, with honorable offers, with the promise of a reformed
and happy life. And he, luckless man, what could he give her now, what
could he offer her?
“Karamazov felt all this, knew that all ways were barred to him by his
crime and that he was a criminal under sentence, and not a man with
life before him! This thought crushed him. And so he instantly flew to
one frantic plan, which, to a man of Karamazov’s character, must have
appeared the one inevitable way out of his terrible position. That way
out was suicide. He ran for the pistols he had left in pledge with his
friend Perhotin and on the way, as he ran, he pulled out of his pocket
the money, for the sake of which he had stained his hands with his
father’s gore. Oh, now he needed money more than ever. Karamazov would
die, Karamazov would shoot himself and it should be remembered! To be
sure, he was a poet and had burnt the candle at both ends all his life.
‘To her, to her! and there, oh, there I will give a feast to the whole
world, such as never was before, that will be remembered and talked of
long after! In the midst of shouts of wild merriment, reckless gypsy
songs and dances I shall raise the glass and drink to the woman I adore
and her new-found happiness! And then, on the spot, at her feet, I
shall dash out my brains before her and punish myself! She will
remember Mitya Karamazov sometimes, she will see how Mitya loved her,
she will feel for Mitya!’
“Here we see in excess a love of effect, a romantic despair and
sentimentality, and the wild recklessness of the Karamazovs. Yes, but
there is something else, gentlemen of the jury, something that cries
out in the soul, throbs incessantly in the mind, and poisons the heart
unto death—that _something_ is conscience, gentlemen of the jury, its
judgment, its terrible torments! The pistol will settle everything, the
pistol is the only way out! But _beyond_—I don’t know whether Karamazov
wondered at that moment ‘What lies beyond,’ and whether Karamazov
could, like Hamlet, wonder ‘What lies beyond.’ No, gentlemen of the
jury, they have their Hamlets, but we still have our Karamazovs!”