The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗
- Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Ivanovna was called, Alyosha was examined, and he recalled a fact
which seemed to furnish positive evidence against one important
point made by the prosecution.
Fortune Smiles on Mitya
IT came quite as a surprise even to Alyosha himself. He was not
required to take the oath, and I remember that both sides addressed
him very gently and sympathetically. It was evident that his
reputation for goodness had preceded him. Alyosha gave his evidence
modestly and with restraint, but his warm sympathy for his unhappy
brother was unmistakable. In answer to one question, he sketched his
brother’s character as that of a man, violent-tempered perhaps and
carried away by his passions, but at the same time honourable, proud
and generous, capable of self-sacrifice, if necessary. He admitted,
however, that, through his passion for Grushenka and his rivalry
with his father, his brother had been of late in an intolerable
position. But he repelled with indignation the suggestion that his
brother might have committed a murder for the sake of gain, though
he recognised that the three thousand roubles had become almost an
obsession with Mitya; that upon them as part of the inheritance he had
been cheated of by his father, and that, indifferent as he was to
money as a rule, he could not even speak of that three thousand
without fury. As for the rivalry of the two “ladies,” as the
prosecutor expressed it-that is, of Grushenka and Katya-he
answered evasively and was even unwilling to answer one or two
questions altogether.
“Did your brother tell you, anyway, that he intended to kill
your father?” asked the prosecutor. “You can refuse to answer if you
think necessary,” he added.
“He did not tell me so directly,” answered Alyosha.
“How so? Did he indirectly?”
“He spoke to me once of his hatred for our father and his fear
that at an extreme moment… at a moment of fury, he might perhaps
murder him.”
“And you believed him?”
“I am afraid to say that I did. But I never doubted that some
higher feeling would always save him at that fatal moment, as it has
indeed saved him, for it was not he killed my father,” Alyosha said
firmly, in a loud voice that was heard throughout the court.
The prosecutor started like a war-horse at the sound of a trumpet.
“Let me assure you that I fully believe in the complete
sincerity of your conviction and do not explain it by or identify it
with your affection for your unhappy brother. Your peculiar view of
the whole tragic episode is known to us already from the preliminary
investigation. I won’t attempt to conceal from you that it is highly
individual and contradicts all the other evidence collected by the
prosecution. And so I think it essential to press you to tell me
what facts have led you to this conviction of your brother’s innocence
and of the guilt of another person against whom you gave evidence at
the preliminary inquiry?”
“I only answered the questions asked me at the preliminary
inquiry,” replied Alyosha, slowly and calmly. “I made no accusation
against Smerdyakov of myself.”
“Yet you gave evidence against him?”
“I was led to do so by my brother Dmitri’s words. I was told
what took place at his arrest and how he had pointed to Smerdyakov
before I was examined. I believe absolutely that my brother is
innocent, and if he didn’t commit the murder, then-”
“Then Smerdyakov? Why Smerdyakov? And why are you so completely
persuaded of your brother’s innocence?”
“I cannot help believing my brother. I know he wouldn’t lie to me.
I saw from his face he wasn’t lying.”
“Only from his face? Is that all the proof you have?”
“I have no other proof.”
“And of Smerdyakov’s guilt you have no proof whatever but your
brother’s word and the expression of his face?”
“No, I have no other proof.”
The prosecutor dropped the examination at this point. The
impression left by Alyosha’s evidence on the public was most
disappointing. There had been talk about Smerdyakov before the
trial; someone had heard something, someone had pointed out
something else, it was said that Alyosha had gathered together some
extraordinary proofs of his brother’s innocence and Smerdyakov’s
guilt, and after all there was nothing, no evidence except certain
moral convictions so natural in a brother.
But Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. On his asking
Alyosha when it was that the prisoner had told him of his hatred for
his father and that he might kill him, and whether he had heard it,
for instance, at their last meeting before the catastrophe, Alyosha
started as he answered, as though only just recollecting and
understanding something.
“I remember one circumstance now which I’d quite forgotten myself.
It wasn’t clear to me at the time, but now-”
And, obviously only now for the first time struck by an idea, he
recounted eagerly how, at his last interview with Mitya that evening
under the tree, on the road to the monastery, Mitya had struck himself
on the breast, “the upper part of the breast,” and had repeated
several times that he had a means of regaining his honour, that that
means was here, here on his breast. “I thought, when he struck himself
on the breast, he meant that it was in his heart,” Alyosha
continued, “that he might find in his heart strength to save himself
from some awful disgrace which was awaiting him and which he did not
dare confess even to me. I must confess I did think at the time that
he was speaking of our father, and that the disgrace he was shuddering
at was the thought of going to our father and doing some violence to
him. Yet it was just then that he pointed to something on his
breast, so that I remember the idea struck me at the time that the
heart is not on that part of the breast, but below, and that he struck
himself much too high, just below the neck, and kept pointing to
that place. My idea seemed silly to me at the time, but he was perhaps
pointing then to that little bag in which he had fifteen hundred
roubles!”
“Just so, Mitya cried from his place. “That’s right, Alyosha, it
was the little bag I struck with my fist.”
Fetyukovitch flew to him in hot haste entreating him to keep
quiet, and at the same instant pounced on Alyosha. Alyosha, carried
away himself by his recollection, warmly expressed his theory that
this disgrace was probably just that fifteen hundred roubles on him,
which he might have returned to Katerina Ivanovna as half of what he
owed her, but which he had yet determined not to repay her and to
use for another purpose-namely, to enable him to elope with
Grushenka, if she consented.
“It is so, it must be so,” exclaimed Alyosha, in sudden
excitement. “My brother cried several times that half of the disgrace,
half of it (he said half several times) he could free himself from
at once, but that he was so unhappy in his weakness of will that he
wouldn’t do it… that he knew beforehand he was incapable of doing
it!”
“And you clearly, confidently remember that he struck himself just
on this part of the breast?” Fetyukovitch asked eagerly.
“Clearly and confidently, for I thought at the time, ‘Why does
he strike himself up there when the heart is lower down?’ and the
thought seemed stupid to me at the time… I remember its seeming
stupid… it flashed through my mind. That’s what brought it back to
me just now. How could I have forgotten it till now? It was that
little bag he meant when he said he had the means but wouldn’t give
back that fifteen hundred. And when he was arrested at Mokroe he cried
out-I know, I was told it-that he considered it the most disgraceful
act of his life that when he had the means of repaying Katerina
Ivanovna half (half, note!) what he owed her, he yet could not bring
himself to repay the money and preferred to remain a thief in her eyes
rather than part with it. And what torture, what torture that debt has
been to him!” Alyosha exclaimed in conclusion.
The prosecutor, of course, intervened. He asked Alyosha to
describe once more how it had all happened, and several times insisted
on the question, “Had the prisoner seemed to point to anything?
Perhaps he had simply struck himself with his fist on the breast?”
“But it was not with his fist,” cried Alyosha; “he pointed with
his fingers and pointed here, very high up…. How could I have so
completely forgotten it till this moment?”
The President asked Mitya what he had to say to the last witness’s
evidence. Mitya confirmed it, saying that he had been pointing to
the fifteen hundred roubles which were on his breast, just below the
neck, and that that was, of course, the disgrace, “A disgrace I cannot
deny, the most shameful act of my whole life,” cried Mitya. “I might
have repaid it and didn’t repay it. I preferred to remain a thief in
her eyes rather than give it back. And the most shameful part of it
was that I knew beforehand I shouldn’t give it back! You are right,
Alyosha! Thanks, Alyosha!”
So Alyosha’s cross-examination ended. What was important and
striking about it was that one fact at least had been found, and
even though this were only one tiny bit of evidence, a mere hint at
evidence, it did go some little way towards proving that the bag had
existed and had contained fifteen hundred roubles and that the
prisoner had not been lying at the preliminary inquiry when he alleged
at Mokroe that those fifteen hundred roubles were “his own.” Alyosha
was glad. With a flushed face he moved away to the seat assigned to
him. He kept repeating to himself: “How was it I forgot? How could I
have forgotten it? And what made it come back to me now?”
Katerina Ivanovna was called to the witness-box. As she entered
something extraordinary happened in the court. The ladies clutched
their lorgnettes and opera-glasses. There was a stir among the men:
some stood up to get a better view. Everybody alleged afterwards
that Mitya had turned “white as a sheet” on her entrance. All in
black, she advanced modestly, almost timidly. It was impossible to
tell from her face that she was agitated; but there was a resolute
gleam in her dark and gloomy eyes. I may remark that many people
mentioned that she looked particularly handsome at that moment. She
spoke softly but clearly, so that she was heard all over the court.
She expressed herself with composure, or at least tried to appear
composed. The President began his examination discreetly and very
respectfully, as though afraid to touch on “certain chords,” and
showing consideration for her great unhappiness. But in answer to
one of the first questions Katerina Ivanovna replied firmly that she
had been formerly betrothed to the prisoner, “until he left me of
his own accord…” she added quietly. When they asked her about the
three thousand she had entrusted to Mitya to post to her relations,
she said firmly, “I didn’t give him the money simply to send it off. I
felt at the time that he was in great need of money…. I gave him the
three thousand on the understanding that he should post it within
the month if he cared to. There was no need for him to worry himself
about that debt afterwards.”
I
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