The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘I repeat, the whole basis of the prosecution’s case is this: if he didn’t commit the murder, who did? We are told that there is no one else. Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it really and truly the case that there is no one else? We have heard the prosecution enumerate everyone who was in the house that night. There were five people in all. Three of them, I agree, can definitely be discounted: the murdered man himself, the old man Grigory, and his wife. That obviously leaves the defendant and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor solemnly declares that the only reason the defendant points the finger at Smerdyakov is because there is no one else for him to accuse, and that if there were some sixth person, even the faintest hint of a sixth person, the defendant, overcome with shame, would immediately cease accusing Smerdyakov and would instead point to that sixth person. But, gentlemen of the jury, why should I not draw precisely the opposite conclusion? There are two people—the defendant and Smerdyakov—what is to prevent me from saying that you are accusing my client solely because you cannot find anyone else to accuse? And the reason you have no one else to accuse is because, from the very beginning, you quite arbitrarily excluded Smerdyakov from the list of suspects. Yes, true, it is only the defendant, his two brothers, and Miss Svetlova who have pointed the finger at Smerdyakov. But there are other dissenting voices: the public at large is preoccupied, albeit only vaguely, with a certain question; a certain suspicion is growing, a vague rumour is circulating, one senses a certain expectation. Finally, there is the evidence of a certain combination of facts—very striking, although I must admit rather inconclusive. First, we have on the very day of the murder that epileptic fit, the authenticity of which the prosecution was at such pains to defend and substantiate. Then followed Smerdyakov’s unexpected suicide on the very eve of the trial. And then, in court today, the no less unexpected testimony of the defendant’s younger brother, who up till now, had believed his brother guilty but who suddenly produced the money and named Smerdyakov as the murderer into the bargain! I am fully convinced, together with the bench and the prosecution, that Ivan Karamazov was sick, that he was delirious, that his testimony could really have been a desperate attempt, conceived in delirium, to save his brother by putting the blame on the dead man. And so the name of Smerdyakov has cropped up yet again, and one cannot but detect a touch of mystery here. It is, gentlemen of the jury, as though something has been left unsaid, left hanging in the air. Perhaps it will all become clear in due course. But for the time being let that be, we shall return to it later. Meanwhile I shall make a few comments on the analysis of the late Smerdyakov’s character, for example, which was presented so subtly and skilfully by the prosecutor. But while I marvel at his skill, I cannot, however, accept his analysis. I met Smerdyakov, I saw him and spoke to him; I formed a very different impression of him. Physically he was weak, that is true, but in character, in spirit—oh no, he was not the weakling that the prosecution has described. In particular, I failed to find any signs of timidity in him, that timidity which the prosecutor was at pains to describe to us. As for ingenuousness, he was devoid of it; on the contrary, I discovered a façade of naïvety concealing an immense sense of mistrust, and a mind capable of great deliberation. The prosecution was too gullible in assuming that he was simple-minded. The impression he created on me was absolutely unequivocal: I was convinced that here was a thoroughly malicious creature, exceedingly ambitious, spiteful, and consumed with jealousy. I gathered a certain amount of information: he hated his name and was ashamed of his birth, grinding his teeth as he recalled “I’m Smerdyashchaya’s bastard.” He had no respect for his childhood benefactors, Grigory and his wife. He cursed and ridiculed Russia. His ambition was to go to France, to become a Frenchman. He had for a long time frequently bemoaned his impecuniousness. I do not think he had ever loved anyone except himself, and his self-esteem was astonishingly high. Fine clothes, a clean shirt, and a pair of polished boots was his idea of culture. Regarding himself as Fyodor Pavlovich’s illegitimate son (there is evidence to support this), he must have hated his status compared to that of his master’s legitimate children: they had everything and he had nothing, they had all the privileges, would receive all the inheritance, while he was just a cook. He informed me that he and Fyodor Pavlovich put the money in the envelope together. The purpose for which this money was designated—money which could have gone to improve his circumstances—was, of course, abhorrent to him. On top of that, the three thousand roubles were all in unused, hundred-rouble notes—I made a point of asking him about this. One should never show a large amount of money all at once to a greedy, self-indulgent person who has never set eyes on such a sum. A wad of large-denomination notes could have had a harmful effect on his imagination, with consequences which might not be apparent at first. My learned colleague has outlined for us, with extraordinary subtlety, all the arguments for and against the possibility that Smerdyakov committed the murder, and he asks specifically why the latter should have feigned an epileptic fit. Ah, well, he could simply not have been faking the fit at all, it could have been a real fit, and the patient could have recovered naturally. Perhaps not recovered altogether, but come to, regained consciousness, as happens with epileptic fits. The prosecution asks: “Just when could Smerdyakov have committed the murder?” But it’s very easy to say when. He could have regained consciousness and woken from his deep sleep (because he was only asleep—an epileptic attack is always followed by a deep sleep) just as old Grigory grabbed the defendant’s foot as he climbed over the fence, and yelled out for all the neighbourhood to hear: “You killed your father!” This sudden, unexpected cry in the silence and the darkness could in fact have woken Smerdyakov, who was perhaps sleeping less soundly by this time; he could have started to wake up quite naturally an hour or so before. Getting out of bed, he sets off—almost unconsciously and completely aimlessly—in the direction of the shouting, to see what’s going on. He is still in a daze, still half-asleep, but he finds his way into the garden, approaches the lighted windows and hears the dreadful news from his master, who is of course overjoyed to see him. His mind immediately springs into action. His frightened master tells him in detail what has happened. And gradually, in his deranged and sickly brain, an idea takes shape—terrible and yet enticing and ruthlessly logical: to kill the old man, take the three thousand roubles, and then blame it all on the young master; who else but the young man would be suspected, who else but he would be blamed? He had been there, all the evidence pointed to that. He could have been overwhelmed by a powerful compulsion to lay his hands on the money, together with the conviction that he could act with impunity. I can assure you, these sudden and irresistible impulses are often opportunistic, and, most importantly, they take such murderers quite unawares, when only a minute before, perhaps, it would not even have entered their heads to commit a murder! And so Smerdyakov could have entered his master’s room and carried out the deed. With what, with what weapon? Well, with the first stone that came to hand in the garden. But what for, to what end? Well, the three thousand roubles could have set him up for life. Oh no, I am not contradicting myself here: the money could really have existed. And perhaps Smerdyakov was the only one in fact who knew where to find it, where precisely his master had hidden it. What about the wrapping that the money was in, the torn envelope on the floor? Earlier, when the prosecutor, talking of this envelope, put forward his extremely subtle theory that only an inexperienced thief, just such a one as Karamazov, would have left it on the floor, whereas Smerdyakov would never have done so, would never have left behind such evidence against himself—at that moment, gentlemen of the jury, as I listened, I suddenly realized that I was hearing something extraordinarily familiar. And you know, I had already heard that same theory, that conjecture about what Karamazov might have done with the envelope, just two days previously from Smerdyakov himself, and that’s not all; what astonished me most was that he seemed to be feigning naïvety, anticipating, putting an idea into my head so that I myself would draw the c
onclusion that he intended. Might he not have done the same thing to the investigators? And perhaps to my learned colleague too? You may say: what about the old woman, Grigory’s wife? Surely she must have heard the sick man groaning nearby the whole night. Granted, she did hear him. But we are on extremely shaky ground here. I know of a certain lady who complained bitterly that she was being kept awake all night by a pug-dog in the yard. And yet, as it turned out subsequently, the poor dog had only barked once or twice throughout the whole night. And this is very natural—a person is asleep and then she suddenly hears a groan, she wakes up annoyed that she has been disturbed, but falls asleep again at once. About two hours later there is another groan, she wakes up again, and again falls asleep; finally, a couple of hours later, there is yet another groan—in all, three or four in the night. The sleeper awakes the next morning, complaining that someone has been groaning all night and constantly waking her up. But that is just how it seems to her; the two-hour periods of sleep have passed unnoticed and she does not remember them, she remembers only the few minutes of wakefulness, and that is why it seems to her that she has been kept awake all night. “But why, why”, exclaims the prosecution, “didn’t Smerdyakov admit his guilt in his suicide note? He had no qualms of conscience about doing the one but not the other.” But just a moment: conscience leads to repentance, and he may not have felt repentance, but only despair. Repentance and despair are totally dissimilar. Despair can be malicious and irreconcilable, and at the moment of committing suicide a person might hate those he was jealous of all his life twice as intensely. Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! Why should the picture that I have painted, everything I have suggested to you, be so improbable? I challenge you to find a flaw in my argument, a discrepancy, an incongruity! But should there be even the remotest possibility that I am right, the least suggestion of verisimilitude in my conjectures—you must refrain from convicting the defendant. And surely there is more than a remote possibility. I swear by all that is holy that I fully believe my interpretation of the circumstances surrounding the murder. But what perturbs and frightens me above all is the thought that, out of the whole list of allegations hurled at the defendant by the prosecution, there is not a single one which is even remotely accurate and which will withstand scrutiny, and that it is merely the totality of these allegations which is being used to destroy the unfortunate man. Yes, the sum total is terrifying; that blood, blood dripping from the defendant’s fingers, his bloodstained clothes, the dark night, its silence rent by the cry of “murderer!”, the victim screaming as he falls with a smashed skull, and then all that multitude of declarations, of evidence, of gestures, of shouts—all this exerts such a powerful, such a subversive influence upon the ability to reach a verdict, but, gentlemen of the jury, surely not upon your judgment! Remember, you have been invested with boundless authority, the authority “to bind and to loose”.* But the greater the authority, the more awesome its application! I do not retract one iota of what I said just now, but be that as it may, suppose I were to agree with the prosecution for a moment that my hapless client stained his hands with his father’s blood. This is purely hypothetical; I repeat, I do not doubt his innocence for a moment, but for the sake of argument I shall presume that the defendant is guilty of patricide. However, bear with me a little in my hypothesis. I feel conscience-bound to tell you something else, because I perceive a great struggle raging in your hearts and minds… Forgive me, gentlemen of the jury, for referring to your hearts and minds. But I want to be sincere and honest to the end. Let us all be sincere!…’

  At this point the defence counsel was interrupted by a fairly loud burst of applause. True enough, he had spoken these last words with such a note of sincerity that everyone felt he really did perhaps have something to say, and that whatever he was about to say just then would be of the utmost importance. But at the sound of the applause the judge threatened sternly to clear the courtroom if this sort of thing were repeated. Everyone fell silent, and Fetyukovich resumed in quite a new, emotionally charged tone, completely different from the one in which he had spoken hitherto.

  13

  TRUTH PERVERTED

  ‘IT is not the totality of the evidence which threatens to convict my client, gentlemen of the jury,’ he went on, ‘no, in reality, my client is in danger of being convicted by one single fact: his aged father’s corpse! If it were a simple murder you would surely, in view of the paucity of the evidence, the lack of proof, and the ridiculousness of the allegations (if taken individually rather than in their totality), dismiss the accusation—or, at least, think twice before condemning a man purely on account of his reputation, for which, alas, he has only himself to blame! But we are not dealing with simple murder here, we are dealing with patricide! This raises the stakes to the extent that even the most insignificant and unsubstantiated of the prosecution’s allegations suddenly acquire significance and veracity, even in the most unprejudiced of minds. So how can one acquit a man accused of such a crime? Surely one cannot commit murder and walk free? That is what every man feels almost intuitively in his heart. Yes, it is a terrible thing to shed the blood of one’s father—who begat me, who loved me, who for my sake did not spare himself, who felt for me when I suffered all my childhood illnesses, who struggled for my happiness all his life, and who lived his life only through my joys and triumphs! Oh, to kill such a father—it does not even bear thinking about! Gentlemen of the jury, what is a father, a true father? What an august title, what an awesome concept is contained in the very word itself! I have indicated something of the nature of a true father and what he should be. In the present case with which we are so preoccupied and which is causing us so much heartache—in the present case, the father, the late Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, bore no resemblance whatsoever to that idealization of a father that we have been picturing in our minds. That is the trouble. Yes, there are some fathers who are indeed a problem. Let us examine this problem a little closer then; in view of the gravity of the decision which we are called upon to take, gentlemen of the jury, we must not balk at anything. Now, above all, we must not be afraid, must not, as it were, shrink from certain things, as children or timorous women do, to borrow the felicitous expression used by my learned colleague. In his impassioned speech my learned adversary (and he was my adversary, even before I had spoken a word), my adversary declared several times: “No, I shall not permit anyone to defend the accused, I shall not concede his defence to the defence counsel who has come from St Petersburg—I am both prosecutor and counsel for the defence!” He said that several times, forgetting to mention, however, that if this unfortunate man in the dock could still, after twenty-three years, retain a sense of gratitude for the gift of just a pound of nuts from the one man who had befriended him in his parental home, then surely such a person would also have remembered, for all those twenty-three years, the times that he ran around barefoot in his father’s place, “in the backyard, with no shoes on, his trousers hanging on by just one button”, as the warm-hearted Doctor Herzenstube has described. Gentlemen of the jury, what need is there for us to delve deeper into this tragedy, to repeat what is already common knowledge! What did my client find when he came back to his father’s house? Why should my client be represented as an unfeeling egoist, as a monster? He is foolhardy, he is wild and hotheaded, and we are passing judgement on him here for that, but who is to blame for his fate, who is to blame for the fact that, along with his innate goodness, along with his noble and sensitive heart, he had such an abominable upbringing? Did anyone ever teach him what life was all about, attend to his education, love him—even just a little—in his childhood? My client was left to God’s tender care, like an animal in the wild. Perhaps he yearned to see his father after so many years of separation, perhaps he had recalled his childhood thousands of times, as in a dream, exorcizing the disturbing ghosts of his childhood, and perhaps he longed with all his heart to vindicate his father and embrace him. And what happened? He was met with nothing
but cynical taunts, mistrust, and deceit as regards the disputed money; daily, “over a glass of brandy”, he heard nothing but conversations and attitudes to life that were enough to turn the stomach, and, finally, he beheld his father planning to snatch his paramour from him, from his own son, using that selfsame money—gentlemen of the jury, that was disgusting and cruel! And that same old man then proceeded to complain to all and sundry of his son’s cruelty and disrespect, to malign him in public, to slander him, to buy up his promissory notes in order to have him sent to prison! Gentlemen of the jury, I put it to you that people such as my client—to all appearances cruel-hearted, reckless, unruly characters—are, more often than not, extraordinarily tender-hearted, only they do not show it. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh at my proposition! My learned colleague was mocking my client cruelly just now, portraying him as an admirer of Schiller, a lover of “the fine and the exalted”. I would not have ridiculed that had I been in his place, had I been prosecuting! Yes, such souls—I want to defend such souls as these, so seldom understood, so often maligned—such souls very often yearn for what is tender, beautiful, and just, yearn, without being aware of it themselves, for all that is in contradiction to their own natures, their recklessness, their cruelty. Seemingly passionate and cruel, they are capable of loving to distraction with an essentially spiritual, exalted love. Again, do not laugh at me: more often than not this is precisely the case with such natures! It is merely that they are unable to conceal their—sometimes very coarse—passions—and it is this which causes consternation, it is this which draws attention, and no one sees the man within. All these passions, however, are quickly satisfied, and when he meets a noble, sublime being, this apparently coarse and cruel man seeks spiritual regeneration, an opportunity to mend his ways, to become better, to become noble and honest—“noble and fine”, that hackneyed phrase. I said just now that I shall not permit myself to touch upon my client’s romance with Miss Verkhovtseva. However, a word or two would not be out of order: what we heard earlier was not a testimony, but an outburst by a frenzied and vengeful woman, and it ill behoves one who has betrayed people herself to accuse others of betrayal! Had she only stopped to think, even for a moment, she would not have testified as she did! Do not believe her; no, my client is not the “monster” she said he was! He who loved mankind said, before He was crucified: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep, that not one should perish…”* Let us not, therefore, condemn a man’s soul to perdition! I asked just now: what is a father? And I replied that it was an exalted title. But a word, gentlemen of the jury, must not be abused, and I shall take the liberty of being perfectly frank: a father such as the late Karamazov cannot be—is not worthy to be—called a father. Filial love, if the father is not deserving of it, is an absurdity, an impossibility. Love cannot be born of nothing, God alone can create something out of nothing. “Fathers, provoke not your children,”* wrote the apostle, his heart consumed by love. It is not for my client’s sake that I am citing these sacred words now, I am repeating them for the benefit of all fathers. Who gave me the authority to teach those among you who are fathers? No one. But, as a human being and a citizen, I call upon you—vivos vocol* We are not here on this earth for long, we commit many bad deeds, and we say much that we should not. Therefore, let us all take advantage of any opportunity of social interaction to say a kind word to one another. That’s what I’m doing while I’m here, I am taking advantage of the opportunity. Not for nothing has this forum been entrusted to us by a higher authority—all Russia is listening to us. It is not just to those fathers present that I speak, I appeal to all fathers: “Fathers, provoke not your children!” Before we make any demands upon our children, let us first fulfil Christ’s will ourselves. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies to our children; nor are they our children, but rather our enemies, and it is we ourselves who have made enemies of them! “For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”* These are not my words, it is prescribed in the Scriptures: do unto others as they do unto you. How then can we blame our children if they do unto us as we do unto them? Recently in Finland a servant girl was suspected of having secretly given birth to a child. They began to investigate and, in the attic of the house, in a corner behind some bricks, they found a trunk that no one had known about, forced it open, and found the corpse of the newly born infant whom she had killed. In the same trunk they found the skeletons of two other infants whom she confessed she had killed at birth. Gentlemen of the jury, was she a mother to her children? True, she gave birth to them, but was she a mother to them? Could any one of us bring ourselves to call her by the sacred title of mother? Let us be bold, gentlemen of the jury, let us even be brazen—truly it is even incumbent upon us to be so in this instance—and let us not be afraid of using certain words and notions, like those Moscow merchants’ wives who were afraid of “brass” and “brimstone”.* No, let us show on the contrary that our development has not been unaffected by the progress of recent years, and let me say openly: to father a child does not make one a father, a father is one who, having fathered a child, proves himself worthy of fatherhood. There is another point of view of course, another definition of the word “father”, which incorporates the idea that a father, even though he may be a monster, even though he may be a fiend to his children, nevertheless remains a father simply because he has sired a child. But this definition is, so to speak, mystical; I cannot accept it intellectually, I can only believe in it—or, to be more precise, as with much else that cannot be understood but which religion commands us nevertheless to believe—accept it as a matter of faith. In that case, let it stay beyond the confines of the real world. In the real world, which not only bestows rights but itself imposes enormous obligations—in this world, if we want to behave like civilized human beings—come to that, if we want to behave like Christians—we should, indeed we must, put into practice only those ideas which have been tested against reason and experience, which have been tempered in the crucible of empirical analysis; in a word, we must act rationally, not mindlessly as in a dream or in delirium, so as not to harm our fellow man, not to stifle him or destroy him. That, then, will be a truly Christian approach, not merely something metaphysical, but a sensible and a truly philanthropic approach…’