The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘A month before the murder, Miss Verkhovtseva entrusted the defendant with three thousand roubles to post, but the question arises: were the conditions under which she entrusted the money to him in fact as shameful and demeaning as we have been led to believe? In Miss Verkhovtseva’s original testimony concerning this matter she suggested quite otherwise; in her later testimony, however, all we heard were cries of hatred, of revenge, of long-suppressed animosity. But the very fact that the witness perjured herself in her original testimony gives us every right to conclude that her later testimony could be untruthful too. The prosecutor “does not want, he does not dare to” (his words) delve into that love affair. So be it, I too shall desist; however, I shall merely permit myself to observe that if a pure and highly moral young lady—such as Miss Verkhovtseva undoubtedly is—can allow herself suddenly, without warning, to change her original testimony with the clear intention of discrediting the defendant, then it goes without saying that her testimony was not delivered dispassionately, with cold detachment. Are we then going to be denied the right to conclude that, to a large extent, the scorned woman could have been exaggerating? Yes, that’s right, exaggerating the shame and ignominy implied in her offer of the money. In fact, it was offered in such a way that it could easily have been accepted, especially by such a frivolous person as the defendant. The main thing is that at the time he was shortly expecting to receive from his father the three thousand which, according to his calculation, was due to him. It was naive of him, but it was precisely his naïvety which led him to believe that his father would pay up, that the money was coming to him, and that consequently he would later be able to post the sum that Miss Verkhovtseva had entrusted to him and thus settle his debt. But the prosecutor refuses outright to accept that he could have divided the money and sewn it in a purse that very day: “He’s not the type, it would be quite unlike him to have done that sort of thing.” But did he not himself proclaim that the Karamazovs were larger than life; did he not draw our attention to the two extremes that a Karamazov can encompass? Precisely, a Karamazov is a man of opposites, of extremes, a man who can call a halt in the midst of the most reckless abandon the moment he feels himself subject to another force. And that other force was love, none other than the love which had flared up in him like a tinder-box, and, to feed that love he needed money, far, far more than he needed it to go on a spree with that same lady-love of his. Were she to say to him: “I’m yours, I don’t want Fyodor Pavlovich,” he’d have taken her and run away with her—but he’d have needed the means with which to do it. That would have been even more important than going on a spree with her. Karamazov, of all people, would have understood that. That was the one thing that was worrying him, that was preying on his mind—so what could have been more natural than for him to have taken some of the money and hidden it, just in case he needed it later? Meanwhile, time was passing, and Fyodor Pavlovich had not come up with the three thousand; on the contrary, it became evident that he had set it aside for the express purpose of luring away the defendant’s sweetheart. “If Fyodor Pavlovich doesn’t pay up,” he thinks, “I’ll be a thief in Katerina Ivanovna’s eyes.” And so he has an idea: he’ll give Miss Verkhovtseva the fifteen hundred roubles that he’s still carrying about with him in that purse of his, and say to her: “I’m a scoundrel, but not a thief.” So now there’s a twofold reason for him to guard the fifteen hundred roubles as if his life depended on it, and certainly every reason not to undo the purse and help himself to the money a hundred roubles at a time. Why should the defendant be denied a sense of honour? Yes, he has a sense of honour—granted, a distorted one, granted, very frequently a mistaken one—but the fact remains that he has one, he has this honour to the point of obsession, and he has demonstrated it. Now, however, the picture becomes more complicated, the defendant’s agony of jealousy reaches its climax, and his disturbed faculties of reasoning conflict painfully again and again with the original dilemma: “If I return the money to Katerina Ivanovna, where will I get the money to run away with Grushenka?” All his excesses, his drinking bouts, his acts of violence in drinking-dens throughout that month were perhaps the result of his bitterness, his inability to come to terms with his situation. Finally this dilemma became so acute that he grew desperate. He sent his younger brother to ask his father for the last time to let him have the three thousand, and, without waiting for a reply, he burst into the house himself and ended up by violently assaulting his father in front of witnesses. That was the end of that; his father, having received a beating, was unlikely to give him anything now. And that same day, beating his breast—note that that was just where the purse was hanging round his neck—he swears to his brother that he has the means to cease being a scoundrel, but that he will remain a scoundrel all the same, because he knows he will use this money to his own ends, he hasn’t the will-power, the strength of character to resist. Why, oh, why does the prosecution refuse to believe Aleksei Karamazov’s evidence, given so openly, so sincerely, in such an uncontrived and truthful manner? Why, on the contrary, am I supposed to believe that there is money hidden in some cranny in the vaults of Udolpho Castle? That same evening, after the conversation with his brother, the defendant wrote that fateful letter, and it is this very letter which is now the principal, the most incriminating piece of evidence that he took the money! “I’ll ask everybody I can for money, and if no one gives me any, I’ll kill my father and take the money out of the envelope tied with the pink ribbon under his mattress, provided Ivan has left”—a full statement of intent to murder, so who else could have done it? “Everything happened just as he’d written it down!” says the prosecution. But, firstly, the letter was written when he was drunk and in a state of extreme agitation; secondly, in referring to the envelope he merely repeated what Smerdyakov had said, for he himself had not seen the envelope; and thirdly, written it may have been, but did everything in fact happen as written? That is what has to be proved. Did the defendant in fact pull out the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money, did it even exist? And was the defendant really after money when he went to his father’s house; think about it, just think about it! He ran there hell for leather, not in order to commit a robbery but to find out where she was, this woman who had broken his heart—consequently, he wasn’t following any plan, any written statement of intent—that is to say, he ran there not to commit a premeditated robbery, but on impulse, on the spur of the moment, in a state of frenzied jealousy! But, you will say, on arrival he nevertheless committed the murder and helped himself to the money. But did he in fact commit the murder? I reject the accusation of theft outright: an accusation of theft cannot be made if it is not possible to indicate precisely what has been stolen, that is axiomatic! But whether he did actually commit the murder without stealing the money remains to be seen. Or is that just more fiction?

  12

  NEITHER WAS THERE A MURDER

  ‘REMEMBER, gentlemen of the jury, we are dealing here with a man’s life, and therefore we cannot be too careful. We have heard the prosecution solemnly declare that, up to the very last moment—in fact up to today, the day of the trial—it hesitated to accuse the defendant outright of actual premeditated murder; indeed, the prosecution hesitated right up to the moment that that fateful, “drunken” letter was presented to the court today. “It all happened as written!” But I keep coming back to the same point: he was running to her, running to look for her, to find out where she was. Surely that is a fact that is beyond dispute. Had she happened to be at home, he would not have run off anywhere; instead, he would have stayed with her and would not have done what he said in the letter. He set off on an impulse, on the spur of the moment; as for the letter, perhaps he had forgotten all about it at the time. “He grabbed the pestle,” we are told—and remember that, from this one pestle, a whole psychological edifice has been fabricated for our benefit as to why he must have regarded the pestle as a weapon, grabbed it to use as a weapon, and so on and so forth. A very simple
idea occurs to me here: what would have happened if the pestle had been lying not in full view, not on the shelf from which the defendant grabbed it, but in a sideboard? It would definitely not have caught his eye then, and he would have run off empty-handed, without a weapon, and perhaps would not have killed anyone at all. How therefore can the pestle be considered an offensive weapon and as evidence of premeditation? Yes, but he had been shouting his head off in all the taverns about killing his father, and two days before the murder, the evening he got drunk and wrote the letter, he was quiet and only quarrelled with a merchant’s clerk in the tavern because, it is said, “a Karamazov can’t help picking a quarrel”. To which I shall reply that if he had decided to commit such a murder, if he had planned it, committed it to paper, he definitely would not have picked a quarrel with the clerk—come to that, he would not even have gone to the tavern, perhaps, because someone who is planning such a deed wants to lie low, to become inconspicuous, and wishes to be neither seen nor heard: “Pretend I don’t exist,” he thinks—instinctively rather than purely rationally. Gentlemen of the jury, psychology cuts both ways, and we too know a thing or two about psychology. As for that month of shouting his mouth off in the taverns, it’s no different from what children shout, or from drunken revellers quarrelling as they emerge from their drinking-dens. “I’ll kill you!” they shout, but they don’t, do they? And even that fateful letter—couldn’t that also have been just drunken intemperance, like the shouts of the departing drinkers: “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you all!” Why could it not have happened like that, why not? Why is this letter significant, why could it not on the contrary be simply ridiculous? Well, because his father’s corpse was found, because a witness saw the defendant escaping from the garden with a weapon and was himself struck down by him, so everything happened as he had written it down, hence the letter is not ridiculous, it is significant. Thank God, we have come to the point at last: “He was in the garden, therefore he must have committed the murder.” Two words: he was, and therefore, it goes without saying, he must have… this covers everything, those two words are the sum total of the accusation—“He was, therefore he must have…” But what if there is no therefore, even though he was? Oh, I agree the totality, the combination of facts is really quite remarkable. But consider all these facts in isolation, however, and do not be swayed by their overall effect: why, for instance, will the prosecution not under any circumstances accept the veracity of the defendant’s testimony that he ran away from his father’s window? Remember even the sarcastic way in which the prosecution referred to the respect and filial piety that suddenly overcame the accused. But what if there really was something of the kind, if not respect, then at least filial piety? “My mother must have prayed for me at that moment,” the defendant subsequently testified at the inquiry, and so, as soon as he had ascertained that Miss Svetlova was not in his father’s house, he ran off. “But he could not have ascertained that simply by looking through the window,” objects the prosecution. And why couldn’t he? Surely the window had been opened in response to the signal given by the defendant. At that point Fyodor Pavlovich could have uttered some word or other, or called out something that would have told the defendant immediately that Miss Svetlova was not there. Why do we have to jump to such conclusions? A thousand things may occur in real life and escape the attention of the most imaginative writer of fiction. “Ah, but Grigory saw that the door was open, therefore the defendant must have been in the house, and, it follows, he must have committed the murder.” About this door, gentlemen of the jury… You see, only one person testified that the door was open, and that person was in such a state at the time that… But granted, granted that the door was open, granted that the defendant had opened it and lied about it in an instinctive act of self-preservation—understandable enough in the circumstances, you’ll agree—granted that he gained access to the house, that he was in the house—so what? Even if he was in the house, why does that necessarily mean that he committed the murder? He may have burst in, run through the rooms, pushed his father aside, he may even have hit his father, but then, finding that Miss Svetlova was not there, he ran away, relieved that she was not there and that he had not killed his father. Perhaps that was precisely why, a minute later, having injured Grigory in the heat of the moment, he jumped down from the fence to tend him—because he was capable of genuine feelings of pity and compassion; because he had resisted the temptation to kill his father; because, not having killed his father, he felt his heart was pure and suffused with joy. The prosecutor has described with graphic eloquence the defendant’s dreadful state of mind in Mokroye, when the prospect of love had revealed itself to him again, beckoning him to a new life, just when he was no longer capable of love, because behind him lay the bloodstained corpse of his father, and ahead of him—retribution. And yet, nevertheless, the prosecutor did allow for the possibility of love, which he explained according to his own brand of psychology: “His drunken condition… a prisoner being taken to his place of execution… the long wait ahead… etcetera, etcetera.” But I ask my learned friend, has he not invented a quite different person? Is the defendant really so callous, so heartless, that he could have thought about love and about dissembling before the court at that moment if he really had the blood of his father on his hands? No, no, I repeat, no! As soon as it became evident that she loved him, that she was beckoning him, promising him new happiness—I swear, he would have felt a double, a treble compulsion to kill himself, and had he really left his father’s corpse in that room, he certainly would have done so! Oh no, he would not have forgotten where his pistols were! I know the defendant: the cruel, stony heartlessness attributed to him by the prosecution is out of keeping with his character. He would have killed himself, that is certain; he did not kill himself, precisely because his mother was praying for him and his heart was innocent of his father’s blood. That night in Mokroye he agonized, he grieved only over the old man Grigory, whom he had struck down, and he prayed to God that the old man would regain consciousness, that the blow would not prove fatal, and that he would not be punished for it. Why shouldn’t such an interpretation of events be admissible? What firm evidence is there that the defendant is lying? But, you will say again, what about his father’s corpse? If he ran out without killing the old man, then who did kill him?