The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

will not repeat all the questions asked her and all her

answers in detail. I will only give the substance of her evidence.

 

“I was firmly convinced that he would send off that sum as soon as

he got money from his father,” she went on. “I have never doubted

his disinterestedness and his honesty… his scrupulous honesty…

in money matters. He felt quite certain that he would receive the

money from his father, and spoke to me several times about it. I

knew he had a feud with his father and have always believed that he

had been unfairly treated by his father. I don’t remember any threat

uttered by him against his father. He certainly never uttered any such

threat before me. If he had come to me at that time, I should have

at once relieved his anxiety about that unlucky three thousand

roubles, but he had given up coming to see me… and I myself was

put in such a position… that I could not invite him…. And I had no

right, indeed, to be exacting as to that money, she added suddenly,

and there was a ring of resolution in her voice. “I was once

indebted to him for assistance in money for more than three

thousand, and I took it, although I could not at that time foresee

that I should ever be in a position to repay my debt.”

 

There was a note of defiance in her voice. It was then

Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination.

 

“Did that take place not here, but at the beginning of your

acquaintance?” Fetyukovitch suggested cautiously, feeling his way,

instantly scenting something favourable. I must mention in parenthesis

that, though Fetyukovitch had been brought from Petersburg partly at

the instance of Katerina Ivanovna herself, he knew nothing about the

episode of the four thousand roubles given her by Mitya, and of her

“bowing to the ground to him.” She concealed this from him and said

nothing about it, and that was strange. It may be pretty certainly

assumed that she herself did not know till the very last minute

whether she would speak of that episode in the court, and waited for

the inspiration of the moment.

 

No, I can never forget those moments. She began telling her story.

She told everything, the whole episode that Mitya had told Alyosha,

and her bowing to the ground, and her reason. She told about her

father and her going to Mitya, and did not in one word, in a single

hint, suggest that Mitya had himself, through her sister, proposed

they should “send him Katerina Ivanovna” to fetch the money. She

generously concealed that and was not ashamed to make it appear as

though she had of her own impulse run to the young officer, relying on

something… to beg him for the money. It was something tremendous!

I turned cold and trembled as I listened. The court was hushed, trying

to catch each word. It was something unexampled. Even from such a

self-willed and contemptuously proud girl as she was, such an

extremely frank avowal, such sacrifice, such self-immolation, seemed

incredible. And for what, for whom? To save the man who had deceived

and insulted her and to help, in however small a degree, in saving

him, by creating a strong impression in his favour. And, indeed, the

figure of the young officer who, with a respectful bow to the innocent

girl, handed her his last four thousand roubles-all he had in the

world-was thrown into a very sympathetic and attractive light, but…

I had a painful misgiving at heart! I felt that calumny might come

of it later (and it did, in fact, it did). It was repeated all over

the town afterwards with spiteful laughter that was perhaps not

quite complete-that is, in the statement that the officer had let the

young lady depart “with nothing but a respectful bow.” It was hinted

that something was here omitted.

 

“And even if nothing had been omitted, if this were the whole

story,” the most highly respected of our ladies maintained, “even then

it’s very doubtful whether it was creditable for a young girl to

behave in that way, even for the sake of saving her father.”

 

And can Katerina Ivanovna, with her intelligence, her morbid

sensitiveness, have failed to understand that people would talk like

that? She must have understood it, yet she made up her mind to tell

everything. Of course, all these nasty little suspicions as to the

truth of her story only arose afterwards and at the first moment all

were deeply impressed by it. As for the judges and the lawyers, they

listened in reverent, almost shamefaced silence to Katerina

Ivanovna. The prosecutor did not venture upon even one question on the

subject. Fetyukovitch made a low bow to her. Oh, he was almost

triumphant! Much ground had been gained. For a man to give his last

four thousand on a generous impulse and then for the same man to

murder his father for the sake of robbing him of three thousand-the

idea seemed too incongruous. Fetyukovitch felt that now the charge

of theft, at least, was as good as disproved. “The case” was thrown

into quite a different light. There was a wave of sympathy for

Mitya. As for him…. I was told that once or twice, while Katerina

Ivanovna was giving her evidence, he jumped up from his seat, sank

back again, and hid his face in his hands. But when she had

finished, he suddenly cried in a sobbing voice:

 

“Katya, why have you ruined me?” and his sobs were audible all

over the court. But he instantly restrained himself, and cried again:

 

“Now I am condemned!”

 

Then he sat rigid in his place, with his teeth clenched and his

arms across his chest. Katerina Ivanovna remained in the court and sat

down in her place. She was pale and sat with her eyes cast down. Those

who were sitting near her declared that for a long time she shivered

all over as though in a fever. Grushenka was called.

 

I am approaching the sudden catastrophe which was perhaps the

final cause of Mitya’s ruin. For I am convinced, so is everyone-all

the lawyers said the same afterwards-that if the episode had not

occurred, the prisoner would at least have been recommended to

mercy. But of that later. A few words first about Grushenka.

 

She, too, was dressed entirely in black, with her magnificent

black shawl on her shoulders. She walked to the witness-box with her

smooth, noiseless tread, with the slightly swaying gait common in

women of full figure. She looked steadily at the President, turning

her eyes neither to the right nor to the left. To my thinking she

looked very handsome at that moment, and not at all pale, as the

ladies alleged afterwards. They declared, too, that she had a

concentrated and spiteful expression. I believe that she was simply

irritated and painfully conscious of the contemptuous and

inquisitive eyes of our scandal-loving public. She was proud and could

not stand contempt. She was one of those people who flare up, angry

and eager to retaliate, at the mere suggestion of contempt. There

was an element of timidity, too, of course, and inward shame at her

own timidity, so it was not strange that her tone kept changing. At

one moment it was angry, contemptuous and rough, and at another

there was a sincere note of self-condemnation. Sometimes she spoke

as though she were taking a desperate plunge; as though she felt, “I

don’t care what happens, I’ll say it….” Apropos of her

acquaintance with Fyodor Pavlovitch, she remarked curtly, “That’s

all nonsense, and was it my fault that he would pester me?” But a

minute later she added, “It was all my fault. I was laughing at them

both-at the old man and at him, too-and I brought both of them to

this. It was all on account of me it happened.”

 

Samsonov’s name came up somehow. “That’s nobody’s business,” she

snapped at once, with a sort of insolent defiance. “He was my

benefactor; he took me when I hadn’t a shoe to my foot, when my family

had turned me out.” The President reminded her, though very

politely, that she must answer the questions directly, without going

off into irrelevant details. Grushenka crimsoned and her eyes flashed.

 

The envelope with the notes in it she had not seen, but had only

heard from “that wicked wretch” that Fyodor Pavlovitch had an envelope

with notes for three thousand in it. “But that was all foolishness.

I was only laughing. I wouldn’t have gone to him for anything.”

 

“To whom are you referring as ‘that wicked wretch’?” inquired

the prosecutor.

 

“The lackey, Smerdyakov, who murdered his master and hanged

himself last night.”

 

She was, of course, at once asked what ground she had for such a

definite accusation; but it appeared that she, too, had no grounds for

it.

 

“Dmitri Fyodorovitch told me so himself; you can believe him.

The woman who came between us has ruined him; she is the cause of it

all, let me tell you,” Grushenka added. She seemed to be quivering

with hatred, and there was a vindictive note in her voice.

 

She was again asked to whom she was referring.

 

“The young lady, Katerina Ivanovna there. She sent for me, offered

me chocolate, tried to fascinate me. There’s not much true shame about

her, I can tell you that…”

 

At this point the President checked her sternly, begging her to

moderate her language. But the jealous woman’s heart was burning,

and she did not care what she did.

 

“When the prisoner was arrested at Mokroe,” the prosecutor

asked, “everyone saw and heard you run out of the next room and cry

out: ‘It’s all my fault. We’ll go to Siberia together!’ So you already

believed him to have murdered his father?”

 

“I don’t remember what I felt at the time,” answered Grushenka.

“Everyone was crying out that he had killed his father, and I felt

that it was my fault, that it was on my account he had murdered him.

But when he said he wasn’t guilty, I believed him at once, and I

believe him now and always shall believe him. He is not the man to

tell a lie.”

 

Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination. I remember that among

other things he asked about Rakitin and the twenty-five roubles “you

paid him for bringing Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov to see you.”

 

“There was nothing strange about his taking the money,” sneered

Grushenka, with angry contempt. “He was always coming to me for money:

he used to get thirty roubles a month at least out of me, chiefly

for luxuries: he had enough to keep him without my help.”

 

“What led you to be so liberal to Mr. Rakitin?” Fetyukovitch

asked, in spite of an uneasy movement on the part of the President.

 

“Why, he is my cousin. His mother was my mother’s sister. But he’s

always besought me not to tell anyone here of it, he is so

dreadfully ashamed of me.”

 

This fact was a complete surprise to everyone; no one in the

town nor in the monastery, not even Mitya, knew of it. I was told that

Rakitin turned purple with shame where he sat. Grushenka had somehow

heard before she came into the court that he had given evidence

against Mitya, and so she was angry. The whole effect on the public,

of Rakitin’s speech, of his noble sentiments, of his attacks upon

serfdom and the political disorder of Russia, was this time finally

ruined. Fetyukovitch was satisfied: it was another godsend.

Grushenka’s cross-examination did not last long and, of course,

there could be nothing particularly new in her evidence. She left