The Brothers Karamazov (125 page)

And again he looked around the room slowly and dreamily. But the whole place was in a commotion now. Alyosha had jumped up and was trying to get to him, but the bailiff had already seized Ivan by the arm.

“What’s going on?” Ivan shouted, staring into the bailiff’s face, and all of a sudden he seized the man by the shoulders and, full of rage, hurled him to the floor. The guards were all over him and held on to him tightly. Ivan let out a terrifying scream, and he continued to scream, inhumanly and inarticulately, as he was carried out.

Utter confusion followed. I cannot remember in proper order what happened then, because I myself was terribly agitated and was in no state to observe developments properly. I can only say that later, when order had been restored and everyone, calming down, realized what had happened, the presiding judge reprimanded the bailiff, despite the man’s assurances that, before appearing on the stand, the witness had been in a completely normal state, that he had been seen by the doctor an hour earlier, when he had felt slightly nauseated, that, before appearing in court, he had spoken quite coherently, so that it had been really quite impossible to anticipate that he would behave in such a manner in court, especially since he himself had been very anxious to testify.

But before order had been completely restored and the public had recovered from this scene, it was followed by another no less dramatic one: Katerina in hysterics. She shrieked shrilly, burst into sobs, refused to leave, pushed away the guards who tried to seize her, implored them not to remove her, and then, turning to the presiding judge, cried out:

“I have one more thing to tell, I must tell it, I must! Here’s a document, a letter—take it, read it at once! Hurry, it’s a letter from that monster,” she pointed at Mitya. “It was he who killed his father and in this letter he writes me that he’s about to kill him! But the other one, his brother, he’s sick, he’s delirious. I know he’s been delirious for three days now!”

And she kept shrieking, beside herself, until the bailiff took the letter from her and gave it to the presiding judge. Then she sank into her chair, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed noiselessly and convulsively, suppressing the moans that tried to escape her, so that they would not make her leave the courtroom. The letter she had handed in was the one Mitya had written her from the Capital City Inn, which Ivan had referred to as the “mathematical” proof of Mitya’s guilt. And, alas, this letter was recognized as such by Mitya’s judges too; it is very likely that, without it, Mitya would have escaped his doom, or at least that the verdict would not have been so crushing. I repeat, it was very hard for me to follow all the developments in order, and, even today, the whole scene is still very confused in my mind. I believe the presiding judge at once communicated this new piece of evidence to the associate judges, to the prosecutor and the defense counsel, and then to the jurors. I remember, though, that Katerina was called back to the stand and the first question the presiding judge asked her, in a very gentle voice, was: “Are you feeling all right now?” Her impulsive answer was, “I’m ready, I’m ready! I’m perfectly capable of answering your questions!” Her tone showed that she was still terribly afraid that, for some reason or other, they might refuse to listen to her. Then she was asked to explain in greater detail the circumstances under which that letter had been written and received.

“I received it the day before the crime was committed, and it was written the previous day in a tavern. You can see for yourself that it was written on somebody’s bill!” she cried, almost out of breath. “He hated me at that moment, because he himself had acted outrageously, running after that creature . . . and because he owed me that three thousand rubles . . . Oh, he felt insulted by the fact that he owed me the three thousand, because it made him realize how contemptible he was himself! I’ll tell you the story behind that money now, and I beg you, I beseech you, to hear me out to the end! One morning—it was three weeks before he killed his father—he came to see me. I knew he needed money and I knew what he needed it for: it was to entice that creature to go away with him. Even then, I was well aware that he had betrayed me and was planning to break with me altogether. Knowing all that, I offered him the money under the pretext that I wanted to send it to my sister in Moscow. As I handed it to him, I looked into his eyes and told him that he could send it at any time that was convenient for him, even in a month if he wanted to. He cannot possibly not have understood that; it was just as if I were telling him straight to his face: ‘So you need money to betray me with that creature? All right, here’s some. I’m giving it to you myself. Take it, if you’re so completely without honor!’ I wanted him to see for himself what sort of person he was, and, indeed, he took the money and spent it with that creature in that place, in one single night . . . But, believe me, he realized very well that I knew everything, and also that I was testing him by offering him that money—to see whether he so completely lacked any sense of honor as to accept it. I looked into his eyes and he looked into mine, and I saw he understood everything and took it nevertheless. He pocketed the money and left!”

“That’s right, Katya!” Mitya suddenly screamed. “I looked into your eyes and knew you were trying to disgrace me, but I still took the money! Despise me, everybody. I have deserved your scorn!”

“One more word and I’ll have you removed!” the presiding judge warned Mitya in a loud voice.

“That money kept weighing on him,” Katerina continued anxiously. “He would have liked to pay it back to me, but he needed it too badly, for that creature. And then he killed his father, but still didn’t pay me the money back. Instead, he left with her for Mokroye, where he was arrested. And once again he squandered the money there that he had stolen from his father after he killed him. And the day before he killed his father, he wrote me that letter, wrote it in a drunken state, as I at once realized, wrote it out of sheer viciousness, because he knew I would never show it to anyone, whether he went through with the murder or not. If he had thought I would show it, he wouldn’t have written it. He knew I wouldn’t want to avenge myself on him and ruin him! But please, please, read it slowly and carefully and you’ll see that he describes everything in advance—how he’ll kill his father and where he’ll find the money his father was hiding. And I want you to note the sentence where he writes: ‘I’ll kill him provided Ivan leaves.’ Doesn’t that prove he’d worked out in advance how he’d go about the murder?” Katerina pleaded maliciously with the court, and it was plain that she had studied and knew every word, every implication, of that fateful letter. “If he hadn’t been so drunk, he wouldn’t have written it!” she cried. “But look, see for yourselves, it tells you everything in advance, and when he actually did kill his father, he followed it point by point—it contains his whole program!”

It was obvious that she no longer cared what consequences her testimony might have for herself, although she must have visualized them earlier, for during the previous month she had often asked herself whether she should not, after all, reveal the letter at the trial, and she had shuddered with rage as she imagined the scene. And now she felt as if she had leaped into an abyss. I remember that it was at that juncture that the letter was read aloud in court by the clerk; the public was horribly shocked.

Mitya was then asked whether he recognized the letter.

“Yes, I wrote it, I wrote it. I was drunk, otherwise I wouldn’t have written it! There were many things that made us hate each other, Katya, but I swear to you, I loved you while I hated you, but you did not love me!”

He collapsed back into his chair, wringing his hands in despair.

The prosecutor and the defense counsel questioned Katerina, mostly in an attempt to find out why she had concealed such an important piece of evidence until then and why her attitude toward the accused had been so different during her previous testimony.

“Yes, yes, I lied before. I lied, ignoring conscience and honor, trying to save him at any cost, because he hated and despised me!” Katya cried hysterically. “Oh yes, he despised me horribly. He always had, ever since the time I prostrated myself at his feet to thank him for that money, at the very beginning . . . I saw it . . . I felt it as soon as I did it, but I didn’t want to believe it was true. So many times I have read in his eyes: ‘Remember, it was you who came to me first, on your own initiative, after all.’ Ah, he never, never understood then what had made me come to him, for a man like that can only suspect the most despicable motives in other people! He judged others by himself; he thought everyone was like him!” Katerina screamed furiously, losing all control of herself. “And he only became engaged to me because of the money I inherited. Yes, that’s all, and I always suspected as much! Oh, he’s an animal! He was convinced that all my life I’d be ashamed to look him in the face, because I had come to him that time, and that that would make it possible for him to despise me and dominate me for the rest of his life! And that’s why he wanted to marry me! Yes, that’s true, absolutely true, and although I tried to win him over by my love, my limitless love—I was even willing to forgive him his betrayal—he didn’t understand anything at all! Besides, how could he understand anything? He’s a monster! I only received the letter the next evening, when they brought it to me from the Capital City Inn, but on the morning of the day they brought it to me, I was still prepared to forgive him everything, even his betrayal!”

Of course, the presiding judge and the prosecutor tried to calm her, and I’m sure they felt rather embarrassed at taking advantage of her hysterical outburst to hear her confession. I remember them saying something like, “We appreciate how painful this is for you,” and, “Please believe us—we understand how you feel.” Nevertheless, they extracted all the statements they needed, from a woman in hysterics. And in the end she described, with the great clarity that often appears at moments of highest nervous tension, how Ivan Karamazov had almost driven himself insane during the past two months, in his desire to save “that monster and murderer who happens to be his brother.”

“He kept tormenting himself terribly,” she said. “He tried to reduce his brother’s guilt by admitting to me that he himself disliked his father and that he, too, probably wished for his death. Oh, he is a man of deep, deep scruples! His conscience makes him suffer atrociously! He confided all these thoughts to me when he came to see me, for he came to my house every day, as I was his only friend. Yes, I am proud and greatly honored to be his only friend!” she shouted challengingly, her eyes flashing. “He did go to see Smerdyakov twice. He told me: ‘If Dmitry did not kill him, it must have been Smerdyakov’—for somehow a stupid story had got around that Smerdyakov had done it—‘and if it was Smerdyakov,’ Ivan Karamazov told me, ‘then I am really the one to blame, because Smerdyakov knew I didn’t like father, and he may have decided I wanted him killed.’ It was then that I showed him this letter, and it convinced him altogether that it was his brother who had done it, and it drove him completely out of his mind. He couldn’t bear the idea that his own brother was a parricide! A week ago I saw that the thought was oppressing him so much that it had made him ill. During the past few days he would suddenly start raving while he was sitting and talking to me at my house. I saw he was going out of his mind. He raved even as he walked through the streets. I asked the doctor who came here from Moscow for the trial to examine him, and he did so, two days ago. He told me that Ivan was on the verge of a breakdown, and all because of that monster, that horrible brother of his! Yesterday, when he learned of Smerdyakov’s death, he was so shocked by the news that it did, in fact, drive him insane . . . And to think that it was all the fault of the monster he was so desperately anxious to save!”

Obviously, it is possible to speak and to confess in this way only once in a lifetime, when facing death, for instance, when mounting the scaffold. But then, such an explosion was very much in character for Katerina; this is how she spontaneously reacted at such a dramatic moment. This was the same impulsive Katya who had hurried to the lodgings of the young rake to save her father’s honor, the same young woman who, proud and chaste, had earlier been willing to forget her feminine modesty before the public, in order to tell of Mitya’s generosity, because it would, she hoped then, help him with the jury. And, in the same way now, she was willing to sacrifice herself and everything else for another man, perhaps for the first time realizing how precious that other man had become to her! She sacrificed herself because she thought he would ruin himself by claiming that he, rather than his brother, was guilty of his father’s death, and she was prepared to do anything to save his name and his reputation!

And yet there was a horrible possibility: Wasn’t she lying now, in describing her former relations with Mitya? That was the question. No, no, she was not slandering him deliberately when she said he despised her for having prostrated herself at his feet once upon a time! She believed it herself; ever since then, she had been convinced that the simple-hearted Mitya, who adored her at the time, actually despised her. And it was only out of pride that she responded to his feelings for her with love, a hysterical, twisted love made up of offended pride, a love that resembled revenge more than love. It is quite possible that, eventually, her twisted love would have turned into a real love; perhaps there was nothing in the world Katya wanted more, but then Mitya insulted her deeply by preferring another woman to her, and she could never forgive him that. Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a longing for revenge. It had been accumulating for a long time, pressing painfully on her, and now, all of a sudden, it exploded and she immolated both Mitya and herself!

As might have been expected, no sooner had she spoken out than the pressure broke and she was crushed by shame. She had another fit of hysterics: she fell to the ground, sobbing and screaming. They carried her out of the courtroom. While Katerina was being carried out, Grushenka jumped to her feet and, with a shout of agony, rushed to Mitya so impetuously that they could not stop her in time.