And There Was No Murder Either
“Allow me, gentlemen of the jury, to remind you that a man’s life is at
stake and that you must be careful. We have heard the prosecutor
himself admit that until to-day he hesitated to accuse the prisoner of
a full and conscious premeditation of the crime; he hesitated till he
saw that fatal drunken letter which was produced in court to-day. ‘All
was done as written.’ But, I repeat again, he was running to her, to
seek her, solely to find out where she was. That’s a fact that can’t be
disputed. Had she been at home, he would not have run away, but would
have remained at her side, and so would not have done what he promised
in the letter. He ran unexpectedly and accidentally, and by that time
very likely he did not even remember his drunken letter. ‘He snatched
up the pestle,’ they say, and you will remember how a whole edifice of
psychology was built on that pestle—why he was bound to look at that
pestle as a weapon, to snatch it up, and so on, and so on. A very
commonplace idea occurs to me at this point: What if that pestle had
not been in sight, had not been lying on the shelf from which it was
snatched by the prisoner, but had been put away in a cupboard? It would
not have caught the prisoner’s eye, and he would have run away without
a weapon, with empty hands, and then he would certainly not have killed
any one. How then can I look upon the pestle as a proof of
premeditation?
“Yes, but he talked in the taverns of murdering his father, and two
days before, on the evening when he wrote his drunken letter, he was
quiet and only quarreled with a shopman in the tavern, because a
Karamazov could not help quarreling, forsooth! But my answer to that
is, that, if he was planning such a murder in accordance with his
letter, he certainly would not have quarreled even with a shopman, and
probably would not have gone into the tavern at all, because a person
plotting such a crime seeks quiet and retirement, seeks to efface
himself, to avoid being seen and heard, and that not from calculation,
but from instinct. Gentlemen of the jury, the psychological method is a
two-edged weapon, and we, too, can use it. As for all this shouting in
taverns throughout the month, don’t we often hear children, or
drunkards coming out of taverns shout, ‘I’ll kill you’? but they don’t
murder any one. And that fatal letter—isn’t that simply drunken
irritability, too? Isn’t that simply the shout of the brawler outside
the tavern, ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll kill the lot of you!’ Why not, why
could it not be that? What reason have we to call that letter ‘fatal’
rather than absurd? Because his father has been found murdered, because
a witness saw the prisoner running out of the garden with a weapon in
his hand, and was knocked down by him: therefore, we are told,
everything was done as he had planned in writing, and the letter was
not ‘absurd,’ but ‘fatal.’
“Now, thank God! we’ve come to the real point: ‘since he was in the
garden, he must have murdered him.’ In those few words: ‘since he
_was_, then he _must_’ lies the whole case for the prosecution. He was
there, so he must have. And what if there is no _must_ about it, even
if he was there? Oh, I admit that the chain of evidence—the
coincidences—are really suggestive. But examine all these facts
separately, regardless of their connection. Why, for instance, does the
prosecution refuse to admit the truth of the prisoner’s statement that
he ran away from his father’s window? Remember the sarcasms in which
the prosecutor indulged at the expense of the respectful and ‘pious’
sentiments which suddenly came over the murderer. But what if there
were something of the sort, a feeling of religious awe, if not of
filial respect? ‘My mother must have been praying for me at that
moment,’ were the prisoner’s words at the preliminary inquiry, and so
he ran away as soon as he convinced himself that Madame Svyetlov was
not in his father’s house. ‘But he could not convince himself by
looking through the window,’ the prosecutor objects. But why couldn’t
he? Why? The window opened at the signals given by the prisoner. Some
word might have been uttered by Fyodor Pavlovitch, some exclamation
which showed the prisoner that she was not there. Why should we assume
everything as we imagine it, as we make up our minds to imagine it? A
thousand things may happen in reality which elude the subtlest
imagination.
“‘Yes, but Grigory saw the door open and so the prisoner certainly was
in the house, therefore he killed him.’ Now about that door, gentlemen
of the jury.... Observe that we have only the statement of one witness
as to that door, and he was at the time in such a condition, that— But
supposing the door was open; supposing the prisoner has lied in denying
it, from an instinct of self-defense, natural in his position;
supposing he did go into the house—well, what then? How does it follow
that because he was there he committed the murder? He might have dashed
in, run through the rooms; might have pushed his father away; might
have struck him; but as soon as he had made sure Madame Svyetlov was
not there, he may have run away rejoicing that she was not there and
that he had not killed his father. And it was perhaps just because he
had escaped from the temptation to kill his father, because he had a
clear conscience and was rejoicing at not having killed him, that he
was capable of a pure feeling, the feeling of pity and compassion, and
leapt off the fence a minute later to the assistance of Grigory after
he had, in his excitement, knocked him down.
“With terrible eloquence the prosecutor has described to us the
dreadful state of the prisoner’s mind at Mokroe when love again lay
before him calling him to new life, while love was impossible for him
because he had his father’s bloodstained corpse behind him and beyond
that corpse—retribution. And yet the prosecutor allowed him love, which
he explained, according to his method, talking about his drunken
condition, about a criminal being taken to execution, about it being
still far off, and so on and so on. But again I ask, Mr. Prosecutor,
have you not invented a new personality? Is the prisoner so coarse and
heartless as to be able to think at that moment of love and of dodges
to escape punishment, if his hands were really stained with his
father’s blood? No, no, no! As soon as it was made plain to him that
she loved him and called him to her side, promising him new happiness,
oh! then, I protest he must have felt the impulse to suicide doubled,
trebled, and must have killed himself, if he had his father’s murder on
his conscience. Oh, no! he would not have forgotten where his pistols
lay! I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartlessness ascribed to
him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with his character. He would have
killed himself, that’s certain. He did not kill himself just because
‘his mother’s prayers had saved him,’ and he was innocent of his
father’s blood. He was troubled, he was grieving that night at Mokroe
only about old Grigory and praying to God that the old man would
recover, that his blow had not been fatal, and that he would not have
to suffer for it. Why not accept such an interpretation of the facts?
What trustworthy proof have we that the prisoner is lying?
“But we shall be told at once again, ‘There is his father’s corpse! If
he ran away without murdering him, who did murder him?’ Here, I repeat,
you have the whole logic of the prosecution. Who murdered him, if not
he? There’s no one to put in his place.
“Gentlemen of the jury, is that really so? Is it positively, actually
true that there is no one else at all? We’ve heard the prosecutor count
on his fingers all the persons who were in that house that night. They
were five in number; three of them, I agree, could not have been
responsible—the murdered man himself, old Grigory, and his wife. There
are left then the prisoner and Smerdyakov, and the prosecutor
dramatically exclaims that the prisoner pointed to Smerdyakov because
he had no one else to fix on, that had there been a sixth person, even
a phantom of a sixth person, he would have abandoned the charge against
Smerdyakov at once in shame and have accused that other. But, gentlemen
of the jury, why may I not draw the very opposite conclusion? There are
two persons—the prisoner and Smerdyakov. Why can I not say that you
accuse my client, simply because you have no one else to accuse? And
you have no one else only because you have determined to exclude
Smerdyakov from all suspicion.
“It’s true, indeed, Smerdyakov is accused only by the prisoner, his two
brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him:
there are vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure
report, a feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a
combination of facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In
the first place we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that
fit, for the genuineness of which the prosecutor, for some reason, has
felt obliged to make a careful defense. Then Smerdyakov’s sudden
suicide on the eve of the trial. Then the equally startling evidence
given in court to-day by the elder of the prisoner’s brothers, who had
believed in his guilt, but has to-day produced a bundle of notes and
proclaimed Smerdyakov as the murderer. Oh, I fully share the court’s
and the prosecutor’s conviction that Ivan Karamazov is suffering from
brain fever, that his statement may really be a desperate effort,
planned in delirium, to save his brother by throwing the guilt on the
dead man. But again Smerdyakov’s name is pronounced, again there is a
suggestion of mystery. There is something unexplained, incomplete. And
perhaps it may one day be explained. But we won’t go into that now. Of
that later.
“The court has resolved to go on with the trial, but, meantime, I might
make a few remarks about the character-sketch of Smerdyakov drawn with
subtlety and talent by the prosecutor. But while I admire his talent I
cannot agree with him. I have visited Smerdyakov, I have seen him and
talked to him, and he made a very different impression on me. He was
weak in health, it is true; but in character, in spirit, he was by no
means the weak man the prosecutor has made him out to be. I found in
him no trace of the timidity on which the prosecutor so insisted. There
was no simplicity about him, either. I found in him, on the contrary,
an extreme mistrustfulness concealed under a mask of _naïveté_, and an
intelligence of considerable range. The prosecutor was too simple in
taking him for weak-minded. He made a very definite impression on me: I
left him with the conviction that he was a distinctly spiteful
creature, excessively ambitious, vindictive, and intensely envious. I
made some inquiries: he resented his parentage, was ashamed of it, and
would clench his teeth when he remembered that he was the son of
‘stinking Lizaveta.’ He was disrespectful to the servant Grigory and
his wife, who had cared for him in his childhood. He cursed and jeered
at Russia. He dreamed of going to France and becoming a Frenchman. He
used often to say that he hadn’t the means to do so. I fancy he loved
no one but himself and had a strangely high opinion of himself. His
conception of culture was limited to good clothes, clean shirt-fronts
and polished boots. Believing himself to be the illegitimate son of
Fyodor Pavlovitch (there is evidence of this), he might well have
resented his position, compared with that of his master’s legitimate
sons. They had everything, he nothing. They had all the rights, they
had the inheritance, while he was only the cook. He told me himself
that he had helped Fyodor Pavlovitch to put the notes in the envelope.
The destination of that sum—a sum which would have made his career—must
have been hateful to him. Moreover, he saw three thousand roubles in
new rainbow-colored notes. (I asked him about that on purpose.) Oh,
beware of showing an ambitious and envious man a large sum of money at
once! And it was the first time he had seen so much money in the hands
of one man. The sight of the rainbow-colored notes may have made a
morbid impression on his imagination, but with no immediate results.
“The talented prosecutor, with extraordinary subtlety, sketched for us
all the arguments for and against the hypothesis of Smerdyakov’s guilt,
and asked us in particular what motive he had in feigning a fit. But he
may not have been feigning at all, the fit may have happened quite
naturally, but it may have passed off quite naturally, and the sick man
may have recovered, not completely perhaps, but still regaining
consciousness, as happens with epileptics.
“The prosecutor asks at what moment could Smerdyakov have committed the
murder. But it is very easy to point out that moment. He might have
waked up from deep sleep (for he was only asleep—an epileptic fit is
always followed by a deep sleep) at that moment when the old Grigory
shouted at the top of his voice ‘Parricide!’ That shout in the dark and
stillness may have waked Smerdyakov whose sleep may have been less
sound at the moment: he might naturally have waked up an hour before.
“Getting out of bed, he goes almost unconsciously and with no definite
motive towards the sound to see what’s the matter. His head is still
clouded with his attack, his faculties are half asleep; but, once in
the garden, he walks to the lighted windows and he hears terrible news
from his master, who would be, of course, glad to see him. His mind
sets to work at once. He hears all the details from his frightened
master, and gradually in his disordered brain there shapes itself an
idea—terrible, but seductive and irresistibly logical. To kill the old
man, take the three thousand, and throw all the blame on to his young
master. A terrible lust of money, of booty, might seize upon him as he
realized his security from detection. Oh! these sudden and irresistible
impulses come so often when there is a favorable opportunity, and
especially with murderers who have had no idea of committing a murder
beforehand. And Smerdyakov may have gone in and carried out his plan.
With what weapon? Why, with any stone picked up in the garden. But what
for, with what object? Why, the three thousand which means a career for
him. Oh, I am not contradicting myself—the money may have existed. And
perhaps Smerdyakov alone knew where to find it, where his master kept
it. And the covering of the money—the torn envelope on the floor?
“Just now, when the prosecutor was explaining his subtle theory that
only an inexperienced thief like Karamazov would have left the envelope
on the floor, and not one like Smerdyakov, who would have avoided
leaving a piece of evidence against himself, I thought as I listened
that I was hearing something very familiar, and, would you believe it,
I have heard that very argument, that very conjecture, of how Karamazov
would have behaved, precisely two days before, from Smerdyakov himself.
What’s more, it struck me at the time. I fancied that there was an
artificial simplicity about him; that he was in a hurry to suggest this
idea to me that I might fancy it was my own. He insinuated it, as it
were. Did he not insinuate the same idea at the inquiry and suggest it
to the talented prosecutor?
“I shall be asked, ‘What about the old woman, Grigory’s wife? She heard
the sick man moaning close by, all night.’ Yes, she heard it, but that
evidence is extremely unreliable. I knew a lady who complained bitterly
that she had been kept awake all night by a dog in the yard. Yet the
poor beast, it appeared, had only yelped once or twice in the night.
And that’s natural. If any one is asleep and hears a groan he wakes up,
annoyed at being waked, but instantly falls asleep again. Two hours
later, again a groan, he wakes up and falls asleep again; and the same
thing again two hours later—three times altogether in the night. Next
morning the sleeper wakes up and complains that some one has been
groaning all night and keeping him awake. And it is bound to seem so to
him: the intervals of two hours of sleep he does not remember, he only
remembers the moments of waking, so he feels he has been waked up all
night.
“But why, why, asks the prosecutor, did not Smerdyakov confess in his
last letter? Why did his conscience prompt him to one step and not to
both? But, excuse me, conscience implies penitence, and the suicide may
not have felt penitence, but only despair. Despair and penitence are
two very different things. Despair may be vindictive and
irreconcilable, and the suicide, laying his hands on himself, may well
have felt redoubled hatred for those whom he had envied all his life.
“Gentlemen of the jury, beware of a miscarriage of justice! What is
there unlikely in all I have put before you just now? Find the error in
my reasoning; find the impossibility, the absurdity. And if there is
but a shade of possibility, but a shade of probability in my
propositions, do not condemn him. And is there only a shade? I swear by
all that is sacred, I fully believe in the explanation of the murder I
have just put forward. What troubles me and makes me indignant is that
of all the mass of facts heaped up by the prosecution against the
prisoner, there is not a single one certain and irrefutable. And yet
the unhappy man is to be ruined by the accumulation of these facts.
Yes, the accumulated effect is awful: the blood, the blood dripping
from his fingers, the bloodstained shirt, the dark night resounding
with the shout ‘Parricide!’ and the old man falling with a broken head.
And then the mass of phrases, statements, gestures, shouts! Oh! this
has so much influence, it can so bias the mind; but, gentlemen of the
jury, can it bias your minds? Remember, you have been given absolute
power to bind and to loose, but the greater the power, the more
terrible its responsibility.
“I do not draw back one iota from what I have said just now, but
suppose for one moment I agreed with the prosecution that my luckless
client had stained his hands with his father’s blood. This is only
hypothesis, I repeat; I never for one instant doubt of his innocence.
But, so be it, I assume that my client is guilty of parricide. Even so,
hear what I have to say. I have it in my heart to say something more to
you, for I feel that there must be a great conflict in your hearts and
minds.... Forgive my referring to your hearts and minds, gentlemen of
the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end. Let us all
be sincere!”
At this point the speech was interrupted by rather loud applause. The
last words, indeed, were pronounced with a note of such sincerity that
every one felt that he really might have something to say, and that
what he was about to say would be of the greatest consequence. But the
President, hearing the applause, in a loud voice threatened to clear
the court if such an incident were repeated. Every sound was hushed and
Fetyukovitch began in a voice full of feeling quite unlike the tone he
had used hitherto.