The Medical Experts And A Pound Of Nuts
The evidence of the medical experts, too, was of little use to the
prisoner. And it appeared later that Fetyukovitch had not reckoned much
upon it. The medical line of defense had only been taken up through the
insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had sent for a celebrated doctor
from Moscow on purpose. The case for the defense could, of course, lose
nothing by it and might, with luck, gain something from it. There was,
however, an element of comedy about it, through the difference of
opinion of the doctors. The medical experts were the famous doctor from
Moscow, our doctor, Herzenstube, and the young doctor, Varvinsky. The
two latter appeared also as witnesses for the prosecution.
The first to be called in the capacity of expert was Doctor
Herzenstube. He was a gray and bald old man of seventy, of middle
height and sturdy build. He was much esteemed and respected by every
one in the town. He was a conscientious doctor and an excellent and
pious man, a Hernguter or Moravian brother, I am not quite sure which.
He had been living amongst us for many years and behaved with wonderful
dignity. He was a kind-hearted and humane man. He treated the sick poor
and peasants for nothing, visited them in their slums and huts, and
left money for medicine, but he was as obstinate as a mule. If once he
had taken an idea into his head, there was no shaking it. Almost every
one in the town was aware, by the way, that the famous doctor had,
within the first two or three days of his presence among us, uttered
some extremely offensive allusions to Doctor Herzenstube’s
qualifications. Though the Moscow doctor asked twenty-five roubles for
a visit, several people in the town were glad to take advantage of his
arrival, and rushed to consult him regardless of expense. All these
had, of course, been previously patients of Doctor Herzenstube, and the
celebrated doctor had criticized his treatment with extreme harshness.
Finally, he had asked the patients as soon as he saw them, “Well, who
has been cramming you with nostrums? Herzenstube? He, he!” Doctor
Herzenstube, of course, heard all this, and now all the three doctors
made their appearance, one after another, to be examined.
Doctor Herzenstube roundly declared that the abnormality of the
prisoner’s mental faculties was self-evident. Then giving his grounds
for this opinion, which I omit here, he added that the abnormality was
not only evident in many of the prisoner’s actions in the past, but was
apparent even now at this very moment. When he was asked to explain how
it was apparent now at this moment, the old doctor, with simple-hearted
directness, pointed out that the prisoner on entering the court had “an
extraordinary air, remarkable in the circumstances”; that he had
“marched in like a soldier, looking straight before him, though it
would have been more natural for him to look to the left where, among
the public, the ladies were sitting, seeing that he was a great admirer
of the fair sex and must be thinking much of what the ladies are saying
of him now,” the old man concluded in his peculiar language.
I must add that he spoke Russian readily, but every phrase was formed
in German style, which did not, however, trouble him, for it had always
been a weakness of his to believe that he spoke Russian perfectly,
better indeed than Russians. And he was very fond of using Russian
proverbs, always declaring that the Russian proverbs were the best and
most expressive sayings in the whole world. I may remark, too, that in
conversation, through absent-mindedness he often forgot the most
ordinary words, which sometimes went out of his head, though he knew
them perfectly. The same thing happened, though, when he spoke German,
and at such times he always waved his hand before his face as though
trying to catch the lost word, and no one could induce him to go on
speaking till he had found the missing word. His remark that the
prisoner ought to have looked at the ladies on entering roused a
whisper of amusement in the audience. All our ladies were very fond of
our old doctor; they knew, too, that having been all his life a
bachelor and a religious man of exemplary conduct, he looked upon women
as lofty creatures. And so his unexpected observation struck every one
as very queer.
The Moscow doctor, being questioned in his turn, definitely and
emphatically repeated that he considered the prisoner’s mental
condition abnormal in the highest degree. He talked at length and with
erudition of “aberration” and “mania,” and argued that, from all the
facts collected, the prisoner had undoubtedly been in a condition of
aberration for several days before his arrest, and, if the crime had
been committed by him, it must, even if he were conscious of it, have
been almost involuntary, as he had not the power to control the morbid
impulse that possessed him.
But apart from temporary aberration, the doctor diagnosed mania, which
premised, in his words, to lead to complete insanity in the future. (It
must be noted that I report this in my own words, the doctor made use
of very learned and professional language.) “All his actions are in
contravention of common sense and logic,” he continued. “Not to refer
to what I have not seen, that is, the crime itself and the whole
catastrophe, the day before yesterday, while he was talking to me, he
had an unaccountably fixed look in his eye. He laughed unexpectedly
when there was nothing to laugh at. He showed continual and
inexplicable irritability, using strange words, ‘Bernard!’ ‘Ethics!’
and others equally inappropriate.” But the doctor detected mania, above
all, in the fact that the prisoner could not even speak of the three
thousand roubles, of which he considered himself to have been cheated,
without extraordinary irritation, though he could speak comparatively
lightly of other misfortunes and grievances. According to all accounts,
he had even in the past, whenever the subject of the three thousand
roubles was touched on, flown into a perfect frenzy, and yet he was
reported to be a disinterested and not grasping man.
“As to the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor added
ironically in conclusion, “that the prisoner would, on entering the
court, have naturally looked at the ladies and not straight before him,
I will only say that, apart from the playfulness of this theory, it is
radically unsound. For though I fully agree that the prisoner, on
entering the court where his fate will be decided, would not naturally
look straight before him in that fixed way, and that that may really be
a sign of his abnormal mental condition, at the same time I maintain
that he would naturally not look to the left at the ladies, but, on the
contrary, to the right to find his legal adviser, on whose help all his
hopes rest and on whose defense all his future depends.” The doctor
expressed his opinion positively and emphatically.
But the unexpected pronouncement of Doctor Varvinsky gave the last
touch of comedy to the difference of opinion between the experts. In
his opinion the prisoner was now, and had been all along, in a
perfectly normal condition, and, although he certainly must have been
in a nervous and exceedingly excited state before his arrest, this
might have been due to several perfectly obvious causes, jealousy,
anger, continual drunkenness, and so on. But this nervous condition
would not involve the mental aberration of which mention had just been
made. As to the question whether the prisoner should have looked to the
left or to the right on entering the court, “in his modest opinion,”
the prisoner would naturally look straight before him on entering the
court, as he had in fact done, as that was where the judges, on whom
his fate depended, were sitting. So that it was just by looking
straight before him that he showed his perfectly normal state of mind
at the present. The young doctor concluded his “modest” testimony with
some heat.
“Bravo, doctor!” cried Mitya, from his seat, “just so!”
Mitya, of course, was checked, but the young doctor’s opinion had a
decisive influence on the judges and on the public, and, as appeared
afterwards, every one agreed with him. But Doctor Herzenstube, when
called as a witness, was quite unexpectedly of use to Mitya. As an old
resident in the town who had known the Karamazov family for years, he
furnished some facts of great value for the prosecution, and suddenly,
as though recalling something, he added:
“But the poor young man might have had a very different life, for he
had a good heart both in childhood and after childhood, that I know.
But the Russian proverb says, ‘If a man has one head, it’s good, but if
another clever man comes to visit him, it would be better still, for
then there will be two heads and not only one.’”
“One head is good, but two are better,” the prosecutor put in
impatiently. He knew the old man’s habit of talking slowly and
deliberately, regardless of the impression he was making and of the
delay he was causing, and highly prizing his flat, dull and always
gleefully complacent German wit. The old man was fond of making jokes.
“Oh, yes, that’s what I say,” he went on stubbornly. “One head is good,
but two are much better, but he did not meet another head with wits,
and his wits went. Where did they go? I’ve forgotten the word.” He went
on, passing his hand before his eyes, “Oh, yes, _spazieren_.”
“Wandering?”
“Oh, yes, wandering, that’s what I say. Well, his wits went wandering
and fell in such a deep hole that he lost himself. And yet he was a
grateful and sensitive boy. Oh, I remember him very well, a little chap
so high, left neglected by his father in the back yard, when he ran
about without boots on his feet, and his little breeches hanging by one
button.”
A note of feeling and tenderness suddenly came into the honest old
man’s voice. Fetyukovitch positively started, as though scenting
something, and caught at it instantly.
“Oh, yes, I was a young man then.... I was ... well, I was forty-five
then, and had only just come here. And I was so sorry for the boy then;
I asked myself why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of ... a pound of what?
I’ve forgotten what it’s called. A pound of what children are very fond
of, what is it, what is it?” The doctor began waving his hands again.
“It grows on a tree and is gathered and given to every one....”
“Apples?”
“Oh, no, no. You have a dozen of apples, not a pound.... No, there are
a lot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack.”
“Nuts?”
“Quite so, nuts, I say so.” The doctor repeated in the calmest way as
though he had been at no loss for a word. “And I bought him a pound of
nuts, for no one had ever bought the boy a pound of nuts before. And I
lifted my finger and said to him, ‘Boy, _Gott der Vater_.’ He laughed
and said, ‘_Gott der Vater_.’... ‘_Gott der Sohn_.’ He laughed again
and lisped, ‘_Gott der Sohn_.’ ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ Then he
laughed and said as best he could, ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ I went
away, and two days after I happened to be passing, and he shouted to me
of himself, ‘Uncle, _Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_,’ and he had only
forgotten ‘_Gott der heilige Geist_.’ But I reminded him of it and I
felt very sorry for him again. But he was taken away, and I did not see
him again. Twenty-three years passed. I am sitting one morning in my
study, a white-haired old man, when there walks into the room a
blooming young man, whom I should never have recognized, but he held up
his finger and said, laughing, ‘_Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_, and
_Gott der heilige Geist_. I have just arrived and have come to thank
you for that pound of nuts, for no one else ever bought me a pound of
nuts; you are the only one that ever did.’ And then I remembered my
happy youth and the poor child in the yard, without boots on his feet,
and my heart was touched and I said, ‘You are a grateful young man, for
you have remembered all your life the pound of nuts I bought you in
your childhood.’ And I embraced him and blessed him. And I shed tears.
He laughed, but he shed tears, too ... for the Russian often laughs
when he ought to be weeping. But he did weep; I saw it. And now,
alas!...”
“And I am weeping now, German, I am weeping now, too, you saintly man,”
Mitya cried suddenly.
In any case the anecdote made a certain favorable impression on the
public. But the chief sensation in Mitya’s favor was created by the
evidence of Katerina Ivanovna, which I will describe directly. Indeed,
when the witnesses _à décharge_, that is, called by the defense, began
giving evidence, fortune seemed all at once markedly more favorable to
Mitya, and what was particularly striking, this was a surprise even to
the counsel for the defense. But before Katerina 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.