At long last the president declared the court in session for the hearing of the case concerning the murder of ex-titular councillor* Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov—I cannot remember the exact expression he employed. The order was given to bring in the defendant, and the usher escorted Mitya in. There was a hushed silence in the hall; one could hear a pin drop. I cannot speak for the rest of the people present, but Mitya made the worst possible impression on me. The main thing was that he was dressed like a dreadful dandy, in a brand-new frock-coat. I subsequently learned that he had ordered the frock-coat expressly for the trial, from his erstwhile tailor in Moscow, who still kept his measurements. He was wearing a pair of brand-new, black, patent-leather gloves and an elegant shirt. He walked in with his customary long stride, staring straight ahead, and took his seat with a most casual air. Close on his heels followed the counsel for the defence, the famous Fetyukovich, and a suppressed gasp ran through the hall. He was a tall, gaunt man with long, thin legs, extremely long, pale, thin fingers, clean-shaven, with neatly combed, fairly short hair, and thin lips, which occasionally twitched into something resembling a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been quite pleasant had it not been for his eyes, which were small, lacklustre, and so unusually close-set that they were only divided by the fine outline of his bony, elongated nose. In a word, that face had a peculiarly avian appearance that was disconcerting. He wore tails and a white tie. I well remember the president’s preliminary questions to Mitya—that is, regarding his name, his title, and so on. Mitya replied briskly, but so excessively loudly that the president even shook his head and glanced at him with surprise. Next, a list of people summoned by the court was read out, that is, witnesses and experts. The list was a long one; four of the witnesses were absent—Miusov, who by then was in Paris but who had already made his deposition at the preliminary investigation, Mrs Khokhlakova and the landowner Maksimov, due to illness, and Smerdyakov, on account of his sudden demise, of which event police evidence was submitted. The news of this death sent a great flurry of whispering through the hall. Many of the audience, of course, were still unaware of his sudden suicide. But it was Mitya’s reaction which occasioned the greatest astonishment; no sooner was the news about Smerdyakov announced than he shouted from his seat, in a voice that was heard throughout the court:
‘Serves the dog right!’
I remember his counsel rushing towards him, and the president threatening to take severe measures if this sort of thing occurred once more. Nodding his head and speaking haltingly, but apparently without any trace of remorse, Mitya repeated several times to his counsel:
‘All right, all right! Just a slip of the tongue! It won’t happen again!’
Naturally, this brief episode did nothing to enhance his reputation in the eyes of the jury or the public. He was showing himself in his true colours, his real nature was revealing itself. Thus the mood was already set when the clerk of the court read out the indictment.
This document was quite brief, but comprehensive. Only the principal charges against the accused were read out. Nevertheless, it made an immense impression upon me. The clerk read it out in a clear, distinct, sonorous voice. Once more, the whole of this tragedy seemed to be thrown into sharp relief and revealed in a merciless and fateful manner. I remember that, immediately the clerk had finished reading, the president asked Mitya in a loud and imposing voice:
‘Prisoner, do you plead guilty?’
Mitya suddenly got up from his seat.
‘I plead guilty to drunkenness and debauchery,’ he pronounced in his overwrought tone of voice, ‘and to sloth and disorderliness. Just when I wanted to turn over a new leaf and be a decent man for ever, precisely at that moment, fate dealt me a crushing blow! However, as to that old devil, my father and enemy—I’m not guilty of his death! Nor am I guilty of robbing him—no, no, I am not guilty, nor can I possibly be guilty. Dmitry Karamazov may be a scoundrel, but he’s not a thief!’
He sat down after this outburst, visibly shaking all over. The president turned to him once more with a brief but cautionary remark that he should only reply to the questions and not indulge in irrelevant hysterical outbursts. Then he gave orders for the trial to begin. The witnesses were led in to be sworn. This was when I saw them all together. Incidentally, the defendant’s brothers were allowed to give evidence without being sworn. After a priest and the president had exhorted them to testify truthfully, the witnesses were told to stand down and were seated apart from one another, where possible. Then they were called one by one.
2
DANGEROUS WITNESSES
I DO not know whether the witnesses for the prosecution and the defence had been divided into categories somehow by the president of the bench, or in what order they were actually meant to be called. I presume there was a definite order of precedence. All I know is that the witnesses for the prosecution were called first. I repeat, I do not intend to describe all the questioning point by point. Furthermore, any description I might give could well prove to be superfluous, because the counsels for both the prosecution and defence, with characteristic skill, brought the whole sequence and essence of the depositions into clear and sharp focus in their speeches. I have recorded in full at least part of each of these two remarkable speeches, and I shall quote from them at the appropriate point; I shall also describe an extraordinary and totally unexpected incident which took place before the proceedings had progressed very far, and which undoubtedly had an ominous and fateful bearing on the outcome of the trial. I shall merely say that from the very first moments of the trial it was evident to all that a particular feature of this ‘affair’ was the extraordinary strength of the prosecution’s case compared to that of the defence. Everyone realized this, in the tense atmosphere of the courtroom, as soon as the facts began to emerge and fall into place, revealing the whole horror of the bloody deed. One could say that it became clear to everyone right from the outset that the case was hardly in dispute, that there could be no room for doubt, that as a matter of fact there was even no need for any examination of the facts, that any examination would only be for the sake of formality, and that the defendant was guilty, guilty beyond all shadow of a doubt. I even think that all the ladies, who without exception were so eager to see this debonair defendant acquitted, were at the same time firmly convinced of his guilt. I would even go so far as to say that they would have been disappointed had there been any doubt about his guilt, since, were the criminal to be acquitted, that would have detracted from the ensuing furore. And that he would be acquitted—of that, strange though it may seem, all the ladies were firmly convinced almost up to the last moment: ‘guilty, but he’ll be acquitted because of the new ideas and new attitudes which are accepted now’, and so on and so forth. It is for this reason in fact that they had flocked here in such excitement. The menfolk, on the other hand, were more interested in the contest between the prosecutor and the renowned Fetyukovich. Everyone marvelled and asked himself what on earth could even such a genius as Fetyukovich do with this hopeless mess of a case. They therefore followed his line of argument step by step with intense concentration. But Fetyukovich, right to the very end, right up to his closing speech, remained a mystery to everyone. Experienced people suspected that he had a strategy, that he had already devised some plan, that he had a specific aim, but what aim it was, was practically impossible to guess. His confidence and self-assurance, however, were very evident. Furthermore, everyone was immediately delighted to see that, in the short time he had been with us, three days at the most, he had managed to gain such an amazing grasp of the case and to have ‘studied it in the minutest detail’. People subsequently recounted with relish how, for example, he had managed when necessary to ‘hoodwink’ all the prosecution’s witnesses, to trip them up wherever possible, and, most important of all, to impugn their moral reputation and thereby cast doubt on their evidence. Admittedly it was believed that he was doing this as a challenge, out of a desire to score a legal point, so to spea
k, and to use every trick in the book, for everyone was convinced that none of this muck-raking would bring him any significant advantage in the end, and he probably knew this better than anyone, though he continued to hold some kind of a stratagem in reserve, some kind of secret weapon which when the time came would suddenly be brought into play. In the meantime, however, conscious of his power, he played cat and mouse. Thus, for example, when Fyodor Pavlovich’s former manservant Grigory Vasilyevich brought up the vital evidence about the ‘open garden door’, the counsel for the defence pounced on him immediately, as soon as it was his turn to cross-examine. It should be noted that Grigory Vasilyevich presented himself before the court with a calm, almost majestic air, and was neither flustered by its gravitas nor embarrassed by the large number of people listening to him. He gave his statements confidently, as though he were talking privately to Marfa Ignatyevna, only perhaps a little more respectfully. It was impossible to trip him up. First the prosecutor questioned him at length and in detail about the Karamazov family. Everyone had a clear picture of that family. One could hear and see that the witness was forthright and unbiased. Notwithstanding his deep respect for his former master’s memory, he nevertheless stated, for instance, that he had treated Mitya unfairly and that he had not ‘brought up the children properly’. ‘If it wasn’t for me,’ he added, describing Mitya’s childhood years, ‘the little lad would have been eaten alive by fleas.’ Nor was it right for the father to cheat his son out of his mother’s estate. However, in reply to the prosecutor’s question as to what grounds he had for asserting that Fyodor Pavlovich had cheated his son over the settlement, Grigory Vasilyevich to everyone’s surprise did not present any actual facts, but nevertheless insisted that the deal with the son was ‘incorrect’ and that it really was true that ‘several thousand more was owed to him’. I must point out, by the way, that the question of whether Fyodor Pavlovich really had swindled Mitya was subsequently put by the prosecutor with great persistence to all material witnesses, including both Alyosha and Ivan Fyodorovich, but not one of the witnesses could give him any precise information; everyone insisted on the fact, but no one could present the least shred of hard evidence. After Grigory had described the scene at the table when Dmitry Fyodorovich burst in and beat his father, threatening to come back and kill him, a sense of gloomy foreboding permeated the hall, the more so since the old servant spoke calmly, succinctly, in his own distinctive style, and to overwhelming effect. Regarding Mitya’s assault on him, when he struck him and knocked him down, he said that he was not bitter and had long since forgiven him. Of the deceased Smerdyakov, he said, crossing himself, that the fellow had ability but that he was stupid and suffered from an illness and that, worst of all, he was godless, and that Fyodor Pavlovich and his middle son were responsible for his godlessness. But he vouched almost passionately for Smerdyakov’s honesty, and went on to recount the story of how Smerdyakov, finding some money which his master had dropped, had not taken it but had given it to his master, for which the latter had ‘rewarded him with a gold coin’ and from then on had begun to trust him in everything. However, he stubbornly insisted that the garden door had been open. As a matter of fact, he was questioned at such length that I can no longer remember all of it. At last the counsel for the defence took over the questioning, and began straight away by asking about the envelope in which Fyodor Pavlovich had ‘allegedly’ put three thousand roubles for a ‘certain person’. ‘Did you see it yourself—after all, you’d been very close to your master for very many years?’ Grigory replied that he had not seen it, nor had he even heard anyone mention such a sum, ‘not until now that is, now they’ve all started talking about it’. Fetyukovich put this question about the envelope to each witness, with the same persistence as the prosecutor had put his question regarding the division of the estate, and he too received the same answer from everyone—no one had actually seen it, although many of them had heard about it. From the very beginning everyone noticed that the defence counsel was placing particular emphasis on this question.
‘And now may I ask you, if you don’t mind,’ Fetyukovich suddenly and unexpectedly changed tack, ‘what did it consist of, this balsam, or was it an embrocation, which, as we’ve learned from the preliminary investigation, you rubbed on your back to try and relieve the pain that evening, before going to sleep?’
Grigory cast a long glance at his interrogator and muttered after a pause:
‘It had some sage in it.’
‘Only sage? You don’t remember anything else?’
‘Some plantain, too.’
‘And pepper, perhaps?’ enquired Fetyukovich with interest.
‘There was some pepper, too.’
‘Well, well, well. And all this was in vodka?’
‘In pure alcohol.’
There was a slight ripple of laughter through the hall.
‘Really, so it was in pure alcohol? And, having rubbed your back, did you not then drink the rest of the bottle, to the accompaniment of a certain devout prayer known only to you and your spouse, isn’t that so?’
‘I did.’
‘Did you drink much? Roughly how much? A tot or two?’
‘About a tumblerful.’
‘As much as that! Perhaps you had a tumbler and a half?’
Grigory fell silent. Something was beginning to dawn upon him.
‘A tumbler and a half of pure alcohol—not so bad, eh? With that inside you, you could see the gates of heaven open, never mind the garden door!’
Grigory remained silent. There was another ripple of laughter through the hall. The president fidgeted.
‘You wouldn’t happen to know for sure’, Fetyukovich probed deeper and deeper, ‘whether or not you were asleep at the time you saw the garden door open?’
‘I was standing up.’
‘That still doesn’t prove you weren’t asleep.’ (More prolonged laughter in the hall.) ‘Would you, for instance, have been able to reply at that moment if you had been asked about something—say, for example, if you’d been asked what year it was?’
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘And what year is it now—Anno Domini, since the birth of Christ—do you know?’
Grigory stood there looking bewildered, staring straight at his torturer. It seemed strange that, apparently, he really did not know what year it was.
‘Perhaps you can tell me, then, how many fingers you have on your hand?’
‘I am not a free man,’ Grigory said suddenly, loudly and distinctly. ‘If the gentleman wishes to make fun of me, I’ll have to put up with it.’
Fetyukovich seemed a little taken aback; the president intervened and reprovingly reminded him that he should ask more appropriate questions. The counsel for the defence acquiesced, made a dignified bow, and announced that he had no more questions. Of course a nagging doubt could well have been left in the minds of both the jury and the public as to the trustworthiness of one who, while applying his embrocation, could ‘see the gates of heaven’, and who in addition did not even know what year it was; the counsel for the defence had thereby achieved his aim anyway. But before Grigory left the stand, another incident occurred. The president, turning to the defendant, asked him if he had anything to say in connection with the evidence just given.
The Karamazov Brothers Page 100
