Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Текущая страница: 59 (всего у книги 70 страниц)
“Except for the door, it’s all true as he said,” Mitya cried loudly. “For combing the lice out of my hair, I thank him; for forgiving me my blows, I thank him; the old man has been honest all his life, and was as faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles.”
“Watch your words, defendant,” the judge said sternly.
“I am not a poodle,” Grigory also grumbled.
“Then I am, I am a poodle!” cried Mitya. “If he’s offended, I take it upon myself and ask his forgiveness: I was a beast and cruel to him! I was cruel to Aesop, too.”
“What Aesop?” the judge again picked up sternly.
“That Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovich.”
The presiding judge repeated once again to Mitya, imposingly and most sternly now, that he should watch his words more carefully.
“You are harming yourself in the opinion of your judges.”
In just the same rather clever way the defense attorney handled the questioning of the witness Rakitin. I will note that Rakitin was one of the most important witnesses and was undoubtedly valued by the prosecutor. It turned out that he knew everything, knew surprisingly much, had really been everywhere, seen everything, spoken with everyone, knew in the most detailed way the biography of Fyodor Pavlovich and of all the Karamazovs. True, he, too, had heard of the envelope with the three thousand only from Mitya himself. On the other hand, he described in detail Mitya’s deeds in the “Metropolis” tavern, all his compromising words and gestures, and told the story of Captain Snegiryov’s “whiskbroom.” Concerning the particular point, whether Fyodor Pavlovich still owed Mitya anything after the settling of the estate, even Rakitin himself could indicate nothing specific and got off merely with commonplaces of a contemptuous nature: “Who could say which of them was to blame or calculate who owed what to whom, with all that muddled Karamazovism, in which no one could either define or understand himself?” The whole tragedy of the crime on trial he portrayed as resulting from the ingrained habits of serfdom and a Russia immersed in disorder and suffering from a lack of proper institutions. In short, he was allowed to speak out on certain matters. It was starting with this trial that Mr. Rakitin first declared himself and gained notice; the prosecutor knew that the witness was preparing an article for a magazine about the present crime, and in his closing statement (as we shall see below) he quoted several thoughts from this article, indicating that he was already familiar with it. The picture portrayed by the witness was a gloomy and fatal one, and greatly strengthened “the prosecution.” Generally, Rakitin’s presentation captivated the public by its independence of thought and the remarkable nobility of its flight. Two or three spontaneous bursts of applause were even heard—namely, at those passages where mention was made of serfdom and of Russia suffering from disorder. But Rakitin, being still a young man, made a little slip, which was at once superbly exploited by the defense attorney. Answering certain questions about Grushenka, he got carried away by his success, which he was certainly already aware of, and by the height of nobility to which he had soared, and allowed himself to refer to Agrafena Alexandrovna somewhat contemptuously as “the merchant Samsonov’s kept woman.” He would have given much afterwards to take that little phrase back, for it was picked up at once by Fetyukovich. And it was all because Rakitin simply never expected that he could have familiarized himself, in so short a time, with such intimate details of the case.
“Allow me to inquire,” the defense attorney began, with a most amiable and even respectful smile, when it came his turn to ask questions, “whether you are not, indeed, the same Mr. Rakitin whose pamphlet The Life of the Elder, Father Zosima, Fallen Asleep in God,published by the diocesan authorities, full of profound and religious thoughts, and with an excellent and pious dedication to His Grace, I have recently had the great pleasure of reading?”
“I didn’t write it for publication ... they published it afterwards,” Rakitin mumbled, as if suddenly taken aback by something, and almost ashamed.
“Oh, but that’s wonderful! A thinker like you can, and even must, have a very broad attitude towards all social phenomena. Through the patronage of His Grace, your most useful pamphlet was distributed and has been relatively beneficial ... But what I mainly wanted to inquire about was this: you have just stated that you are a quite close acquaintance of Miss Svetlov?” (Nota bene:Grushenka’s last name turned out to be “Svetlov.” I learned it for the first time only that day, in the course of the trial. )
“I cannot answer for all my acquaintances ... I am a young man ... and who can answer for everyone he meets?” Rakitin simply blushed all over.
“I understand, I understand only too well!” exclaimed Fetyukovich, as if embarrassed himself, and as if hastening to apologize. “You, like anyone else, might be interested for your own part in the acquaintance of a young and beautiful woman who readily received the flower of local youth, but ... I simply wanted to inquire: it is known to us that about two months ago Miss Svetlov was extremely eager to make the acquaintance of the youngest Karamazov, Alexei Fyodorovich, and just for bringing him to her, and precisely in the monastery attire he was then wearing, she promised you twenty-five roubles, to be handed over as soon as you brought him. And that, as we know, took place precisely on the evening of the day that ended in the tragic catastrophe that has led to the present trial. You brought Alexei Karamazov to Miss Svetlov, but ... did you get the twenty-five-rouble reward from her—that is what I wanted to hear from you.”
“It was a joke ... I don’t see why it should interest you. I took it for a joke ... so as to give it back later ...”
“You did take it, then. But you have not given it back yet ... or have you?”
“It’s nothing ... ,” Rakitin muttered, “I cannot answer such questions ... Of course I’ll give it back.”
The presiding judge intervened, but the defense attorney announced that he had finished questioning Mr. Rakitin. Mr. Rakitin left the stage somewhat besmirched. The impression of the lofty nobility of his speech was indeed spoiled, and Fetyukovich, following him with his eyes, seemed to be saying, intending it for the public: “So, there goes one of your noble accusers!” I remember that this, too, did not go by without an episode on Mitya’s part: infuriated by the tone in which Rakitin referred to Grushenka, he suddenly cried out from his place: “Bernard!” And when, after all the questioning of Rakitin was over, the presiding judge addressed the defendant, asking him if he had any observations to make, Mitya shouted in a booming voice:
“He kept hitting me for loans, even in prison! A despicable Bernard and careerist, and he doesn’t believe in God, he hoodwinked His Grace!”
Mitya, of course, was again brought to reason for the violence of his language, but that was the end of Mr. Rakitin. There was no luck with Captain Snegiryov’s testimony either, but for an entirely different cause. He presented himself to the court all tattered, in dirty clothes, dirty boots, and, despite all precautions and preliminary “expertise,” suddenly turned out to be quite drunk. Asked about the insult he had received from Mitya, he suddenly refused to answer.
“God be with him, sir. Ilyushechka told me not to. God will repay me there, sir.”
“Who told you not to speak? Who are you referring to?”
“Ilyushechka, my little son. ‘Papa, papa, how he humiliated you! ‘ He said it by our stone. Now he’s dying, sir ...”
The captain suddenly burst into sobs and threw himself at the judge’s feet. He was quickly taken out amid the laughter of the public. The effect prepared by the prosecutor did not come off at all.
The defense attorney continued using every possible means, and surprised people more and more by his familiarity with the smallest details of the case. Thus, for example, the testimony of Trifon Borisovich was on its way to producing a rather strong impression, and one certainly highly unfavorable to Mitya. He calculated precisely, almost on his fingers, that during his first visit to Mokroye about a month before the catastrophe, Mitya could not have spent less than three thousand, or “maybe just a tiny bit less. Think how much he threw to the gypsy girls alone! ‘To fling kopecks down the street’—no, sir, he gave our lousy peasants twenty-five roubles at least, he wouldn’t give less than that. And how much was simply stolen from him then, sir! Whoever stole certainly didn’t sign for it; try catching a thief, when he himself was just throwing it around for nothing! Our people are robbers, they’re not worried about their souls. And the girls, our village girls, what he spent on them! People have got rich since then, that’s what, sir, and before there was just poverty.” In short, he recalled each expense and worked it all out precisely, as on an abacus. Thus the supposition that only fifteen hundred had been spent, and the rest set aside in the amulet, became unthinkable. “I myself saw it, I saw three thousand to a kopeck in his hands, contemplated it with my own eyes, who knows about money if not me, sir!” Trifon Borisovich kept exclaiming, doing his best to please “authority. “ But when the defense attorney began his cross-examination, instead of actually trying to refute the testimony, he suddenly started talking about how the coachman Timofei and another peasant named Akim, during that first spree in Mokroye a month before the arrest, had picked up a hundred roubles that Mitya had dropped on the floor in his drunken state, and turned the money over to Trifon Borisovich, for which he gave them each a rouble. “Well, and did you then return the hundred roubles to Mr. Karamazov, or not?” Trifon Borisovich tried in every way to dodge the question, but after the peasants themselves testified, he was forced to admit to the found hundred roubles, adding only that he had at once religiously returned and restored everything to Dmitri Fyodorovich “in all honesty, and that he simply wasn’t able to recall it himself, having been quite drunk at that time, sir.” But since he had nonetheless denied finding the hundred roubles before the peasant witnesses were called, his testimony about returning the money to the drunken Mitya was naturally called very much in question. And so one of the most dangerous witnesses brought forward by the prosecution again left under suspicion and with his reputation rather besmirched. The same thing happened with the Poles: the two of them appeared looking proud and independent. They loudly testified, first, that they had both “served the Crown” and that “Pan Mitya” had offered them three thousand, to buy their honor, and they themselves had seen a great deal of money in his hands. Pan Mussyalovich introduced a terrible quantity of Polish words into his phrases, and, seeing that this only raised him in the eyes of the judge and the prosecutor, finally let his spirit soar and in the end started speaking entirely in Polish. But Fetyukovich caught them, too, in his snares: no matter how Trifon Borisovich, who was called up again, tried to hedge, he still had to confess that Pan Vrublevsky had switched the innkeeper’s deck of cards for one of his own, and that Pan Mussyalovich had cheated while keeping the bank. This was also confirmed by Kalganov when his turn came to testify, and the two panswithdrew somewhat covered in shame, even amid public laughter.
Exactly the same thing happened with almost all the most dangerous witnesses. Fetyukovich succeeded in morally tainting each one of them and letting them go with their noses somewhat out of joint. Amateurs and lawyers were filled with admiration, and only wondered, again, what great and ultimate purpose all this could serve, for, I repeat, everyone felt that the accusation, which was growing and becoming ever more tragic, was irrefutable. But they waited, seeing by the assurance of “the great magician” that he himself was calm: “such a man” would not have come from Petersburg for nothing, nor was he such as to go back with nothing.
Chapter 3: Medical Expertise and One Pound of Nuts
Medical expertise was not much help to the defendant either. And Fetyukovich himself seemed not to be counting on it very much, as turned out later to be the case. Basically, it was introduced solely at the insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had purposely invited a famous doctor from Moscow. The defense, of course, could not lose anything by it, and at best might even gain something. What came of it, however, was partly even comic, as it were, owing to some disagreement among the doctors. The experts called were: the famous visiting doctor, then our own Dr. Herzenstube, and finally the young Dr. Varvinsky. The latter two were also called as regular witnesses by the prosecution. The first to give expert testimony was Dr. Herzenstube. He was an old man of seventy, gray-haired and bald, of medium height and sturdy build. Everyone in our town valued and respected him very much. He was a conscientious doctor, an excellent and pious man, some sort of Herrnhuter or “Moravian brother” [331]—I am not sure which. He had been with us for a very long time and behaved with the greatest dignity. He was kind and philanthropic, treated poor patients and peasants for nothing, visited their hovels and cottages himself, and left them money for medications, yet for all that he was stubborn as a mule. Once an idea had lodged itself in his head, it was impossible to shake it out of him. Incidentally, almost everyone in town knew by then that the famous visiting doctor, in the two or three days since his arrival, had allowed himself several extremely insulting comments with respect to Dr. Herzenstube’s abilities. The thing was that, though the Moscow doctor charged no less than twenty-five roubles for a visit, some people in our town still rejoiced at the occasion of his coming, and, not sparing the money, rushed to him for advice. Previously all these sick people had, of course, been treated by Herzenstube, and now the famous doctor went around criticizing his treatment with extreme sharpness. In the end, coming to a sick person, he would ask straight off: “Well, who’s been mucking about with you—Herzenstube? Heh, heh!” Dr. Herzenstube, of course, found out about all this. And so all three doctors appeared, one after the other, to be questioned. Dr. Herzenstube declared directly that “the mental abnormality of the defendant is self-evident.” Then, having offered his considerations, which I omit here, he added that this abnormality could be perceived above all, not only in many of the defendant’s former actions, but also now, even this very minute, and when asked to explain how it could be perceived now, this very minute, the old doctor, with all his simple-hearted directness, pointed out that the defendant, on entering the courtroom, “had, considering the circumstances, a remarkable and strange look, marched along like a soldier, and kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him, whereas it would have been more correct for him to look to the left where, among the public, the ladies were sitting, since he was a great admirer of the fair sex and ought to have thought very much about what the ladies would now be saying of him,” the dear old man concluded in his peculiar language. It should be added that he spoke Russian readily and copiously, but somehow each of his phrases came out in German fashion, which, however, never embarrassed him, for all his life he had the weakness of considering his spoken Russian exemplary, “even better than with the Russians,” and he was even very fond of quoting Russian proverbs, each time maintaining that Russian proverbs were the best and most expressive proverbs in the world. I will note, also, that in conversation, perhaps from some sort of absentmindedness, he often forgot the most ordinary words, which he knew perfectly well, but which for some reason suddenly slipped his mind. The same thing happened, incidentally, when he spoke German, and he would always start waving his hand in front of his face, as if seeking to catch the lost word, and no one could make him go on with what he was saying before the lost word was found. His observation that the defendant ought to have looked at the ladies as he came in drew some playful whispers from the public. All our ladies loved our dear old doctor very much, and also knew that he, a lifelong bachelor, a chaste and pious man, looked upon women as exalted and ideal beings. His unexpected observation therefore struck everyone as terribly strange.
The Moscow doctor, questioned in his turn, sharply and emphatically confirmed that he considered the defendant’s mental condition abnormal, “even in the highest degree.” He spoke at length and cleverly about “mania” and the “fit of passion,” and concluded from all the assembled data that the defendant, before his arrest, as much as several days before, was undoubtedly suffering from a morbid fit of passion, and if he did commit the crime, even consciously, it was also almost involuntarily, being totally unable to fight the morbid moral fixation that possessed him. But, besides this fit of passion, the doctor also detected a mania that, in his words, promised to lead straight to complete insanity. (N.B. The words are my own; the doctor expressed himself in a very learned and special language.) “All his actions are contrary to common sense and logic,” he continued. “I am not talking about what I did not see—that is, the crime itself and this whole catastrophe—but even the day before yesterday, during a conversation with me, he had an inexplicable, fixed look in his eyes. Unexpected laughter, when it was quite uncalled for. Incomprehensible, constant irritation; strange words: ‘Bernard’ and ‘ethics,’ and others that were uncalled for.” But the doctor especially detected this mania in the defendant’s inability even to speak of the three thousand roubles, of which he considered himself cheated, without extraordinary irritation, whereas he could recall and speak of all his other failures and offenses rather lightly. Finally, according to inquiries, it had been the same even before as well; each time the three thousand came up, he would fly almost into some sort of frenzy, and yet people said of him that he was disinterested and ungrasping. “And concerning the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor added ironically, concluding his speech, “that the defendant, on entering the courtroom, ought to have been looking at the ladies and not straight in front of him, I shall only say that, apart from the playfulness of such a conclusion, it is, besides, also radically erroneous; for though I fully agree that the defendant, on entering the courtroom where his fate is to be decided, ought not to have looked so fixedly in front of him, and that this indeed can be considered a sign of his abnormal psychological condition at that moment, yet at the same time I assert that he ought not to have been looking to the left, at the ladies, but, on the contrary, precisely to the right, seeking out his defense attorney, in whose help all his hopes lie, and on whose defense his entire fate now depends.” The doctor expressed his opinion decisively and emphatically. But the disagreement of the two learned experts became especially comical in light of the unexpected conclusion of Dr. Varvinsky, who was the last to be questioned. In his opinion the defendant, now as well as before, was in a perfectly normal condition, and although, before his arrest, he must have been in a very nervous and extremely excited state, this could have been owing to a number of quite obvious reasons: jealousy, wrath, continual drunkenness, and so on. But this nervous condition would not in itself imply any special “fit of passion” such as had just been discussed. As to which way the defendant ought to have been looking, to the left or to the right, on entering the courtroom, “in his humble opinion” the defendant, on entering the courtroom, ought to have looked straight in front of him, as in fact he did, because in front of him were sitting the presiding judge and the members of the court, on whom his entire fate now depended, “so that, by looking straight in front of him, he thereby precisely proved his perfectly normal state of mind at the present moment,” the young doctor somewhat heatedly concluded his “humble” testimony.
“Bravo, leech!” Mitya cried from his place. “Precisely right!”
Mitya, of course, was cut short, but the young doctor’s opinion had the most decisive influence both on the court and on the public, for, as it turned out later, everyone agreed with him. However, Dr. Herzenstube, when questioned as a witness, suddenly served quite unexpectedly in Mitya’s favor. As an old-timer in town who had long known the Karamazov family, he furnished some evidence that was quite interesting for “the prosecution,” but suddenly, as if he had just realized something, he added:
“And yet the poor young man might have had an incomparably better lot, for he was of good heart both in childhood and after childhood, for this I know. But the Russian proverb says: ‘It is good when someone has one head, but when an intelligent man comes to visit, it is better still, for then there will be two heads and not just one . . .’”
“Two heads are better than one,” the prosecutor prompted impatiently, being long familiar with the old man’s habit of speaking in a slow, drawn-out fashion, without being embarrassed by the impression he produced or by the fact that he was making everyone wait for him, but, on the contrary, prizing all the more his potato-thick and always happily self-satisfied German wit. And the dear old man loved to be witty.
“Oh, y-yes, that’s what I am saying,” he picked up stubbornly, “two heads are much better than one head. But no one came to him with another head, and he even sent his own head for ... How do you say, where did he send it? This word—where he sent his head—I’ve forgotten,” he went on waving his hand in front of his eyes, “ah, yes, spazieren.”
“For a walk?”
“Yes, for a walk, that’s what I am saying. So his head went for a walk and came to some deep place where it lost itself. And yet he was a grateful and sensitive young man, oh, I remember him still as such a tiny boy, left alone in his father’s backyard, where he was running in the dirt without any shoes and just one button on his little britches.”
A certain note of sensitivity and emotion was suddenly heard in the honest old man’s voice. Fetyukovich fairly started, as if anticipating something, and instantly hung on to it.
“Oh, yes, I myself was a young man then ... I was ... well, yes, I was then forty-five years old, and had just come here. And I felt pity for the boy then, and I asked myself: why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of ... well, yes, a pound of what? I forget what it’s called ... a pound of what children like so much, what is it—well, what is it ... ?” the doctor again waved his hand. “It grows on a tree, they gather it and give it to everyone...”
“Apples?”
“Oh, n-n-no! A pound, a pound—apples come in dozens, not pounds ... no, there are many of them, and they are all small, you put them in the mouth and cr-r-rack . . .!”
“Nuts?”
“Well, yes, nuts, that is what I am saying,” the doctor confirmed in the calmest way, as if he had not even been searching for the word, “and I brought the boy a pound of nuts, because no one had ever yet brought the boy a pound of nuts, and I held up my finger and said to him: ‘Boy! Gott der Vater,’and he laughed and said, ‘Gott der Vater.’ ‘Gott der Sohn.’Again he laughed and said, ‘Gott der Sohn.’ ‘Gott derheilige Geist.’ Then he laughed again and said as well as he could, ‘Gott der heilige Geist.’ [332] And I left. Two days later I was passing by and he called out to me himself: ‘Hey, uncle, Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn,’only he forgot ‘Gott derheilige Geist,’ but I reminded him, and again I felt great pity for him. But he was taken away, and I did not see him anymore. And now after twenty-three years have gone by, I am sitting one morning in my study, and my head is already gray, and suddenly a blossoming young man comes in, whom I would never have recognized, but he held up his finger and said, laughing: ‘Gott der Water, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist!I’ve just arrived, and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts; for no one bought me a pound of nuts before; you are the only one who ever bought me a pound of nuts.’ And then I remembered my happy youth, and a poor boy in the yard without any shoes, and my heart turned over, and I said: ‘You are a grateful young man, for all your life you have remembered that pound of nuts I brought you in your childhood.’ And I embraced him and blessed him. And I wept. He was laughing, but he also wept ... for a Russian quite often laughs when he ought to weep. But he wept, too, I saw it. And now, alas...!”
“And I’m weeping now, too, German, I’m weeping now, too, you man of God!” Mitya suddenly cried from his place.
In any event, this little anecdote produced a certain favorable impression on the public. But the major effect in Mitya’s favor was produced by the testimony of Katerina Ivanovna, which I shall come to presently. And, generally, when the witnesses à décharge—that is, called by the defense—began to testify, fate seemed suddenly and even seriously to smile on Mitya and—what is most remarkable—to the surprise even of the defense itself. But before Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha was questioned, and he suddenly recalled one fact that even looked like positive evidence against one most important point of the accusation.
Chapter 4: Fortune Smiles on Mitya
It came as a complete surprise even to Alyosha himself. He was called up without being under oath, and I remember that from the very first words of the examination all sides treated him with great gentleness and sympathy. One could see that his good fame had preceded him. Alyosha testified modestly and with reserve, but an ardent sympathy for his unfortunate brother kept obviously breaking through his testimony. In answer to one question, he outlined his brother’s character as that of a man who, if he was indeed violent and carried away by his passions, was also noble, proud, and magnanimous, ready even for any sacrifice if it was wanted of him. He admitted, however, that in recent days his brother had been in an unbearable situation because of his passion for Grushenka, because of the rivalry with his father. But he indignantly rejected even the suggestion that his brother could have killed with the purpose of robbery, though he confessed that in Mitya’s mind the three thousand roubles had turned almost into some sort of mania, that he regarded it as an inheritance left owing to him by his father, who had cheated him, and that, while he was a totally unmercenary man, he could not even begin speaking of that three thousand without rage and fury. Concerning the rivalry of the two “persons,” as the prosecutor put it—that is, Grushenka and Katya—he answered evasively, and even preferred once or twice not to answer at all.
“Did your brother tell you, at least, that he intended to kill his father?” the prosecutor asked. “You may choose not to answer if you find it necessary,” he added, “He never said it directly,” Alyosha replied.
“And how, then? Indirectly?” “He once spoke to me of his personal loathing for father, and of his fear that ... in an extreme moment ... in a moment of loathing ... he could, perhaps, even kill him.”
“And did you believe it when you heard it?”
“I am afraid to say I did. But I was always convinced that at the fatal moment some higher feeling would always save him, as it did indeed save him, because it was not hewho killed my father,” Alyosha concluded firmly, in a loud voice, for all the courtroom to hear. The prosecutor gave a start, like a warhorse hearing the sound of trumpets.
“Rest assured that I fully believe in the complete sincerity of your conviction, and do not in the least connect it or assimilate it with love for your unfortunate brother. Your singular view of the whole tragic episode that took place in your family is already known to us from the preliminary investigation. I shall not conceal from you that it is original in the highest degree and contradicts all the other evidence obtained by the prosecution. And therefore at this point I must insist on asking you: what precisely were the facts that guided your thought and led you to a final conviction of your brother’s innocence and, on the contrary, of the guilt of a certain other person to whom you pointed directly in the preliminary investigation?”
“In the preliminary investigation I simply answered questions,” Alyosha said softly and calmly, “I did not come out and accuse Smerdyakov myself.”
“But still you pointed to him?”
“I pointed to him from what my brother Dmitri said. Even before the interrogation I was told of what happened at his arrest, and how he himself had then pointed to Smerdyakov. I believe completely that my brother is innocent. And if it was not he who killed father, then ...”
“Then it was Smerdyakov? But why Smerdyakov, precisely? And precisely why did you become so utterly convinced of your brother’s innocence?”
“I could not but believe my brother. I know he would not lie to me. I saw by his face that he was not lying to me.”
“Only by his face? That’s all the proof you have?”
“I have no other proof.”
“And concerning Smerdyakov’s guilt, you have not the slightest proof to base it on, apart from your brother’s words and the look on his face?”
“No, I do not have any other proof.”
At that the prosecutor had no more questions. Alyosha’s answers produced a most disappointing impression on the public. There had been some talk of Smerdyakov even before the trial, someone had heard something, someone had pointed to something, it was said that Alyosha had gathered some extraordinary proof in favor of his brother and of the lackey’s guilt, and now—nothing, no proof, except for certain moral convictions quite natural in him as the defendant’s brother.
