The Brothers Karamazov (122 page)

And now these two doctors, along with a third, were scheduled to appear in court, each in turn, as medical experts.

Dr. Herzenstube declared unhesitatingly that “the abnormality of the patient’s mental processes is self-evident.” He then proceeded to give his reasons for his statement, which I shall omit, and added that mental disturbance in the accused could be deduced both from his former acts and from his present behavior. When he was asked to explain this last statement, the old doctor, in his direct, simple-hearted way, mentioned, as an illustration of his point, the manner in which the accused had entered the courtroom:

“His behavior was unusual and peculiar under the circumstances. He marched straight in like a soldier with his eyes fixed in front of him, stubbornly, whereas his normal way would have been to look to his left where most of the ladies are seated, because he is a great admirer of the fair sex and must have been thinking about what the ladies would say of him.”

It must be noted here that, although Dr. Herzenstube spoke Russian with zest and volubility, his sentences somehow made one think of German sentences. This, however, never bothered him, for he had always considered his mastery of the Russian language “exemplary” and his use of it more correct than that of native Russians. He also loved to quote Russian sayings and proverbs, which he considered the best in the world. It should also be noted that, from absentmindedness or some other cause, the most usual words, words that he knew perfectly well, would every now and then slip his mind. This happened to him whether he was speaking Russian or German, and, on such occasions, he would wave one hand in front of his face as if trying to catch the word that had escaped him, and no one could make him continue what he was trying to say until he had finally recaptured the slippery word. Dr. Herzenstube’s remark that the accused would normally have looked at the ladies when entering the courtroom stirred up some playful whispering in the audience. The ladies liked the old fellow very much and they were aware that this old, pious, and most proper bachelor had looked upon women as superior beings all his life. It was in view of this that his remark struck everybody as most unexpected.

The Moscow doctor was the next to give his expert opinion. He confirmed in a sharp and incontrovertible tone that he considered the accused’s mental condition “abnormal, and abnormal to the highest degree.” He expounded learnedly and at great length on manias and different forms of temporary insanity, and declared that it could be deduced from the available facts that the accused had been in a state of temporary insanity for several days before his arrest and that, even if he had known what he was doing when he committed his crime, he was absolutely helpless to resist the mental obsession that held him in its grip. But aside from this temporary insanity, the doctor also found that Mitya was afflicted with a mania which, according to him, would unfailingly lead to full-fledged insanity. I have translated all this into my own words, because the doctor, of course, expressed it in his specialized and learned language.

“All his actions are contrary to common sense,” the doctor went on, “and, of course, I am not speaking of what I have not seen, that is, the crime itself and the catastrophic events that preceded it. But just two days ago, he wore a quite unaccountable fixed stare when we were talking. And he would burst out laughing when there was absolutely no reason for it. Then he used words like ‘Bernard’ and ‘ethics’ that were either incomprehensible or meaningless in their context.”

But the accused’s mania manifested itself most clearly, according to the doctor, in the fact that he was unable to speak about the three thousand rubles of which he considered he had been cheated without an anger and emotion that were out of all proportion, whereas he could dwell calmly on his other failures and frustrations. And finally, the doctor said, the accused, who became almost frantic at the mention of the three thousand, was, according to all the witnesses, a man very little interested in money matters and anything but avaricious.

“As to the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor added ironically at the end of his speech, “that the accused should have looked at the ladies rather than in front of him, I would simply say that, aside from the flippancy of such a statement, it also happens to be radically wrong. For, although I agree with him that, when entering the courtroom, the stiffness of the accused’s bearing and the fixity of his stare could be considered symptoms of his disturbed mental state at that particular moment, I submit that he should have looked not to his left at the ladies, as my colleague claims, but to the right, where he should have been seeking with his eyes the counsel for the defense, who is his only hope and on whom his future now depends.” The Moscow doctor ended his statement most emphatically.

The comic disagreement among the experts became even more evident with the statement of Dr. Varvinsky, the last expert called to testify. His conclusions came as a complete surprise. According to him, the accused was now, and had always been, perfectly normal and, although before his arrest he had been in a nervous and highly excited state, that state could easily be accounted for by many quite obvious reasons: jealousy, anger, constant inebriation, etc. And there was no need at all, Dr. Varvinsky said, to drag in what had been referred to as “temporary insanity.” As to whether the accused “should” have looked to the left or to the right when he entered the courtroom, in Dr. Varvinsky’s “humble opinion,” Dmitry Karamazov had done just the right thing in looking straight ahead of him, for right in front of him sat the presiding judge and the two associate judges on whom his fate really depended, and, by looking in that direction, “he established his sanity at that particular moment.”

“Bravo, doctor, you tell ’em!” Mitya shouted approvingly from his seat.

It goes without saying that he was again admonished, but the opinion of the young doctor had, as was proved later, a decisive effect on the judges, the jury, and the public in general.

Later, however, Dr. Herzenstube, when recalled to the stand, this time as an ordinary witness for the prosecution, quite unexpectedly came up with some evidence in Mitya’s favor. As an inhabitant of the town, who had known the Karamazov family for many years, he was recounting various facts that the prosecutor wanted on record when, all of a sudden, he seemed to think of something and added:

“However, this poor young man deserved infinitely better of life, for he had a good heart when he was a child and even when he was no longer a child. I can say that because I know him well. There is a Russian proverb that teaches us that if a person has a clever head, it is good, but if someone clever comes to see him, it is even better, because two good heads . . .”

“Are better than one,” the prosecutor prompted him impatiently, for he was familiar with the old man’s slow and long-winded way of speaking and knew that the doctor was quite unperturbed by the idea that he might be boring his audience, that, indeed, he liked to make them wait, trusting fully to his heavy, humorless German wit.

“Right, right, and, as I was saying, one head is good, but two is much, much better,” Dr. Herzenstube went on stubbornly. “So no one with a good head came to join him, and later he allowed his own head out . . . How do you say it? He let it out . . . Ah, what’s the word? . . .” the doctor waved his hand impatiently in front of his face. “He let it out . . . ah, yes, he let it out 
spazieren
.”

“For a walk?”

“Right, he let it out for a walk—that’s just what I was trying to say. And so his head went for a walk and found itself in such a dark place that it lost itself there. But he was a very sensitive boy who was always grateful to anyone who did anything for him. Ah, I remember when he was just a baby thrown out into the backyard by his father, where I saw him trotting around barefoot, his little trousers held up by a single button . . .”

A tender, even sentimental, note suddenly crept into the old man’s voice. Fetyukovich suddenly started, as if sensing something in the air, and perked up his ears.

“Oh yes, I was still a young man myself then . . . I must have been perhaps forty-five or so—it wasn’t long after I had moved here. I was sorry for the little boy and I asked myself, why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of . . . a pound of . . . Ah, I’ve forgotten the word—children usually like them very much. What are they called?” and he began to wave his hands in front of his face. “They grow on trees, you know, they pick them and give them to people . . .”

“Apples?”

“No, no, apples are sold by the dozen, the things I mean are sold by the pound—there are too many of them . . . They’re small, children put them in their mouths, and crra-ck, crrr—ack!”

“Nuts?”

“Right, nuts, that’s what I wanted to say,” the doctor said imperturbably, as though he had never forgotten the word but been interrupted. “So I brought the boy a pound of nuts and it was the first pound of nuts anyone had ever given him. So I raised my finger and I said to him: ‘My boy,’ I said, 
‘Gott der Vater.’
 And he laughed and said 
‘Gott der Vater.’
 Then I said 
‘Gott der Sohn,’
 and he babbled in his tiny voice, 
‘Gott der Sohn,’
 and laughed again. Then I said 
‘Gott der heilige Geist,’
 and he tried to repeat as much of it as he could, laughing all the time. Two days later, as I was passing their house, I heard the little boy calling out to me, ‘Hey, uncle, 
Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn!
’ He had only forgotten 
Gott der heilige Geist
, but I reminded him of it and I again felt very sorry for him. But later they took him away and I didn’t see him for a long time. And so twenty-three years go by, and one morning I’m sitting in my study—my hair is completely white now—and suddenly a blooming young man comes in. I don’t recognize him, but he lifts his finger, laughs, and says to me: 
‘Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist!
 I’ve just come to town,’ he says, ‘and I want to thank you now for the pound of nuts you once gave me, because you’re the only person who has ever given me a pound of nuts in my whole life!’ And then I remembered my happy young years and that poor little boy playing barefoot in the backyard, and my heart was stirred and I said, ‘You’re a grateful young man, for in all this time you’ve never forgotten that pound of nuts I brought you when you were a little child.’ And I embraced him and gave him my blessing and I started to cry. He laughed, but later he wept too. But Russians often laugh when it would be more appropriate to cry. But he wept too, I saw it . . . And now, alas . . .”

“I weep even now, German, even now, you dear old man!” Mitya suddenly shouted from his seat.

Be that as it may, Dr. Herzenstube’s little story produced a wave of sympathy for Mitya among the public.

A much more important impression, favorable to Mitya, was produced by Katerina’s evidence, which I am about to describe. In general, when they started calling in the witnesses for the defense, fortune suddenly seemed to smile on Mitya, remarkably enough, to the surprise of the defense counsel himself. But even before Katerina was called to the stand, Alyosha was questioned and reported a fact that seemed to deal a crushing blow to one of the most important points raised by the prosecution.

Chapter 4: Things Look Up For Mitya

IT ALL happened quite unexpectedly, even for Alyosha. He did not testify under oath, and I remember very well the sympathy and consideration with which both sides treated him. It was obvious that his good reputation had preceded him. Alyosha testified modestly and with restraint, but his anxious concern for his unhappy brother was obvious throughout. From his answers to the various questions that were asked him, a picture gradually emerged of his older brother as a man swayed by passions, a man of a violent temperament, but at the same time honorable, proud, and generous, prepared even to sacrifice himself if the circumstances demanded it. He conceded that, in the days just preceding the crime, his brother had been in an unbearable state of tension because of his passion for Grushenka and his rivalry with his father. But Alyosha indignantly rejected the suggestion that Mitya could have killed for the sake of the money, although he readily conceded that the three thousand rubles had become an obsession with him, that he regarded the sum as rightfully his, as part of his inheritance from his mother that his father had misappropriated, and that, while not in the least avaricious, Mitya could not hear the three thousand mentioned without flying into a completely disproportionate rage. As to the rivalry between “the two ladies,” as the prosecutor referred to Grushenka and Katerina, Alyosha answered very evasively and even left a couple of questions unanswered altogether.

“Did your brother tell you that he planned to kill his father?” the prosecutor asked him at one point, adding: “You needn’t answer this question if you don’t wish to.”

“Not directly,” Alyosha said.

“Did he tell you indirectly then?”

“He told me about his deep-seated hatred for his father and he said he was afraid that . . . that he might find it unendurable at some moment . . . that his loathing would perhaps get the better of him, and then he could kill him . . .”

“And did you believe him when he told you that?”

“I’m afraid I did. But I was always convinced that, if such a critical moment did come, he would be saved from doing it by the nobler side of his character. And that is exactly what happened, for it was 
not he
 who killed my father,” Alyosha declared in a loud, firm voice that resounded throughout the hall.

The counsel for the defense started like a battle-horse at the sound of a trumpet.

“Let me assure you, first of all, that I have implicit faith in your sincerity and I am sure that it is not impaired or affected by your love for your unfortunate brother. We are already aware of your personal opinion about the tragic event from your deposition during the preliminary investigation. I may tell you that it is an extremely personal opinion that goes against all the evidence gathered by the prosecution. And because of this, I feel I will have to insist that you answer the following question: ‘What is the basis for your absolute belief in your brother’s innocence and in the guilt of another person, whom you named at the preliminary investigation?’ ”