There Was No Money. There Was No Robbery
There was one point that struck every one in Fetyukovitch’s speech. He
flatly denied the existence of the fatal three thousand roubles, and
consequently, the possibility of their having been stolen.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “Every new and unprejudiced observer
must be struck by a characteristic peculiarity in the present case,
namely, the charge of robbery, and the complete impossibility of
proving that there was anything to be stolen. We are told that money
was stolen—three thousand roubles—but whether those roubles ever
existed, nobody knows. Consider, how have we heard of that sum, and who
has seen the notes? The only person who saw them, and stated that they
had been put in the envelope, was the servant, Smerdyakov. He had
spoken of it to the prisoner and his brother, Ivan Fyodorovitch, before
the catastrophe. Madame Svyetlov, too, had been told of it. But not one
of these three persons had actually seen the notes, no one but
Smerdyakov had seen them.
“Here the question arises, if it’s true that they did exist, and that
Smerdyakov had seen them, when did he see them for the last time? What
if his master had taken the notes from under his bed and put them back
in his cash-box without telling him? Note, that according to
Smerdyakov’s story the notes were kept under the mattress; the prisoner
must have pulled them out, and yet the bed was absolutely unrumpled;
that is carefully recorded in the protocol. How could the prisoner have
found the notes without disturbing the bed? How could he have helped
soiling with his blood-stained hands the fine and spotless linen with
which the bed had been purposely made?
“But I shall be asked: What about the envelope on the floor? Yes, it’s
worth saying a word or two about that envelope. I was somewhat
surprised just now to hear the highly talented prosecutor declare of
himself—of himself, observe—that but for that envelope, but for its
being left on the floor, no one in the world would have known of the
existence of that envelope and the notes in it, and therefore of the
prisoner’s having stolen it. And so that torn scrap of paper is, by the
prosecutor’s own admission, the sole proof on which the charge of
robbery rests, ‘otherwise no one would have known of the robbery, nor
perhaps even of the money.’ But is the mere fact that that scrap of
paper was lying on the floor a proof that there was money in it, and
that that money had been stolen? Yet, it will be objected, Smerdyakov
had seen the money in the envelope. But when, when had he seen it for
the last time, I ask you that? I talked to Smerdyakov, and he told me
that he had seen the notes two days before the catastrophe. Then why
not imagine that old Fyodor Pavlovitch, locked up alone in impatient
and hysterical expectation of the object of his adoration, may have
whiled away the time by breaking open the envelope and taking out the
notes. ‘What’s the use of the envelope?’ he may have asked himself.
‘She won’t believe the notes are there, but when I show her the thirty
rainbow-colored notes in one roll, it will make more impression, you
may be sure, it will make her mouth water.’ And so he tears open the
envelope, takes out the money, and flings the envelope on the floor,
conscious of being the owner and untroubled by any fears of leaving
evidence.
“Listen, gentlemen, could anything be more likely than this theory and
such an action? Why is it out of the question? But if anything of the
sort could have taken place, the charge of robbery falls to the ground;
if there was no money, there was no theft of it. If the envelope on the
floor may be taken as evidence that there had been money in it, why may
I not maintain the opposite, that the envelope was on the floor because
the money had been taken from it by its owner?
“But I shall be asked what became of the money if Fyodor Pavlovitch
took it out of the envelope since it was not found when the police
searched the house? In the first place, part of the money was found in
the cash-box, and secondly, he might have taken it out that morning or
the evening before to make some other use of it, to give or send it
away; he may have changed his idea, his plan of action completely,
without thinking it necessary to announce the fact to Smerdyakov
beforehand. And if there is the barest possibility of such an
explanation, how can the prisoner be so positively accused of having
committed murder for the sake of robbery, and of having actually
carried out that robbery? This is encroaching on the domain of romance.
If it is maintained that something has been stolen, the thing must be
produced, or at least its existence must be proved beyond doubt. Yet no
one had ever seen these notes.
“Not long ago in Petersburg a young man of eighteen, hardly more than a
boy, who carried on a small business as a costermonger, went in broad
daylight into a moneychanger’s shop with an ax, and with extraordinary,
typical audacity killed the master of the shop and carried off fifteen
hundred roubles. Five hours later he was arrested, and, except fifteen
roubles he had already managed to spend, the whole sum was found on
him. Moreover, the shopman, on his return to the shop after the murder,
informed the police not only of the exact sum stolen, but even of the
notes and gold coins of which that sum was made up, and those very
notes and coins were found on the criminal. This was followed by a full
and genuine confession on the part of the murderer. That’s what I call
evidence, gentlemen of the jury! In that case I know, I see, I touch
the money, and cannot deny its existence. Is it the same in the present
case? And yet it is a question of life and death.
“Yes, I shall be told, but he was carousing that night, squandering
money; he was shown to have had fifteen hundred roubles—where did he
get the money? But the very fact that only fifteen hundred could be
found, and the other half of the sum could nowhere be discovered, shows
that that money was not the same, and had never been in any envelope.
By strict calculation of time it was proved at the preliminary inquiry
that the prisoner ran straight from those women servants to Perhotin’s
without going home, and that he had been nowhere. So he had been all
the time in company and therefore could not have divided the three
thousand in half and hidden half in the town. It’s just this
consideration that has led the prosecutor to assume that the money is
hidden in some crevice at Mokroe. Why not in the dungeons of the castle
of Udolpho, gentlemen? Isn’t this supposition really too fantastic and
too romantic? And observe, if that supposition breaks down, the whole
charge of robbery is scattered to the winds, for in that case what
could have become of the other fifteen hundred roubles? By what miracle
could they have disappeared, since it’s proved the prisoner went
nowhere else? And we are ready to ruin a man’s life with such tales!
“I shall be told that he could not explain where he got the fifteen
hundred that he had, and every one knew that he was without money
before that night. Who knew it, pray? The prisoner has made a clear and
unflinching statement of the source of that money, and if you will have
it so, gentlemen of the jury, nothing can be more probable than that
statement, and more consistent with the temper and spirit of the
prisoner. The prosecutor is charmed with his own romance. A man of weak
will, who had brought himself to take the three thousand so insultingly
offered by his betrothed, could not, we are told, have set aside half
and sewn it up, but would, even if he had done so, have unpicked it
every two days and taken out a hundred, and so would have spent it all
in a month. All this, you will remember, was put forward in a tone that
brooked no contradiction. But what if the thing happened quite
differently? What if you’ve been weaving a romance, and about quite a
different kind of man? That’s just it, you have invented quite a
different man!
“I shall be told, perhaps, there are witnesses that he spent on one day
all that three thousand given him by his betrothed a month before the
catastrophe, so he could not have divided the sum in half. But who are
these witnesses? The value of their evidence has been shown in court
already. Besides, in another man’s hand a crust always seems larger,
and no one of these witnesses counted that money; they all judged
simply at sight. And the witness Maximov has testified that the
prisoner had twenty thousand in his hand. You see, gentlemen of the
jury, psychology is a two-edged weapon. Let me turn the other edge now
and see what comes of it.
“A month before the catastrophe the prisoner was entrusted by Katerina
Ivanovna with three thousand roubles to send off by post. But the
question is: is it true that they were entrusted to him in such an
insulting and degrading way as was proclaimed just now? The first
statement made by the young lady on the subject was different,
perfectly different. In the second statement we heard only cries of
resentment and revenge, cries of long-concealed hatred. And the very
fact that the witness gave her first evidence incorrectly, gives us a
right to conclude that her second piece of evidence may have been
incorrect also. The prosecutor will not, dare not (his own words) touch
on that story. So be it. I will not touch on it either, but will only
venture to observe that if a lofty and high-principled person, such as
that highly respected young lady unquestionably is, if such a person, I
say, allows herself suddenly in court to contradict her first
statement, with the obvious motive of ruining the prisoner, it is clear
that this evidence has been given not impartially, not coolly. Have not
we the right to assume that a revengeful woman might have exaggerated
much? Yes, she may well have exaggerated, in particular, the insult and
humiliation of her offering him the money. No, it was offered in such a
way that it was possible to take it, especially for a man so easy-going
as the prisoner, above all, as he expected to receive shortly from his
father the three thousand roubles that he reckoned was owing to him. It
was unreflecting of him, but it was just his irresponsible want of
reflection that made him so confident that his father would give him
the money, that he would get it, and so could always dispatch the money
entrusted to him and repay the debt.
“But the prosecutor refuses to allow that he could the same day have
set aside half the money and sewn it up in a little bag. That’s not his
character, he tells us, he couldn’t have had such feelings. But yet he
talked himself of the broad Karamazov nature; he cried out about the
two extremes which a Karamazov can contemplate at once. Karamazov is
just such a two-sided nature, fluctuating between two extremes, that
even when moved by the most violent craving for riotous gayety, he can
pull himself up, if something strikes him on the other side. And on the
other side is love—that new love which had flamed up in his heart, and
for that love he needed money; oh, far more than for carousing with his
mistress. If she were to say to him, ‘I am yours, I won’t have Fyodor
Pavlovitch,’ then he must have money to take her away. That was more
important than carousing. Could a Karamazov fail to understand it? That
anxiety was just what he was suffering from—what is there improbable in
his laying aside that money and concealing it in case of emergency?
“But time passed, and Fyodor Pavlovitch did not give the prisoner the
expected three thousand; on the contrary, the latter heard that he
meant to use this sum to seduce the woman he, the prisoner, loved. ‘If
Fyodor Pavlovitch doesn’t give the money,’ he thought, ‘I shall be put
in the position of a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.’ And then the idea
presented itself to him that he would go to Katerina Ivanovna, lay
before her the fifteen hundred roubles he still carried round his neck,
and say, ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ So here we have already a
twofold reason why he should guard that sum of money as the apple of
his eye, why he shouldn’t unpick the little bag, and spend it a hundred
at a time. Why should you deny the prisoner a sense of honor? Yes, he
has a sense of honor, granted that it’s misplaced, granted it’s often
mistaken, yet it exists and amounts to a passion, and he has proved
that.
“But now the affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments
reach a climax, and those same two questions torture his fevered brain
more and more: ‘If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the
means to go off with Grushenka?’ If he behaved wildly, drank, and made
disturbances in the taverns in the course of that month, it was perhaps
because he was wretched and strained beyond his powers of endurance.
These two questions became so acute that they drove him at last to
despair. He sent his younger brother to beg for the last time for the
three thousand roubles, but without waiting for a reply, burst in
himself and ended by beating the old man in the presence of witnesses.
After that he had no prospect of getting it from any one; his father
would not give it him after that beating.
“The same evening he struck himself on the breast, just on the upper
part of the breast where the little bag was, and swore to his brother
that he had the means of not being a scoundrel, but that still he would
remain a scoundrel, for he foresaw that he would not use that means,
that he wouldn’t have the character, that he wouldn’t have the
will-power to do it. Why, why does the prosecutor refuse to believe the
evidence of Alexey Karamazov, given so genuinely and sincerely, so
spontaneously and convincingly? And why, on the contrary, does he force
me to believe in money hidden in a crevice, in the dungeons of the
castle of Udolpho?
“The same evening, after his talk with his brother, the prisoner wrote
that fatal letter, and that letter is the chief, the most stupendous
proof of the prisoner having committed robbery! ‘I shall beg from every
one, and if I don’t get it I shall murder my father and shall take the
envelope with the pink ribbon on it from under his mattress as soon as
Ivan has gone.’ A full program of the murder, we are told, so it must
have been he. ‘It has all been done as he wrote,’ cries the prosecutor.
“But in the first place, it’s the letter of a drunken man and written
in great irritation; secondly, he writes of the envelope from what he
has heard from Smerdyakov again, for he has not seen the envelope
himself; and thirdly, he wrote it indeed, but how can you prove that he
did it? Did the prisoner take the envelope from under the pillow, did
he find the money, did that money exist indeed? And was it to get money
that the prisoner ran off, if you remember? He ran off post-haste not
to steal, but to find out where she was, the woman who had crushed him.
He was not running to carry out a program, to carry out what he had
written, that is, not for an act of premeditated robbery, but he ran
suddenly, spontaneously, in a jealous fury. Yes! I shall be told, but
when he got there and murdered him he seized the money, too. But did he
murder him after all? The charge of robbery I repudiate with
indignation. A man cannot be accused of robbery, if it’s impossible to
state accurately what he has stolen; that’s an axiom. But did he murder
him without robbery, did he murder him at all? Is that proved? Isn’t
that, too, a romance?”