III. The Medical Experts and a Pound of Nuts

The medical experts did not help the defendant very much either. And Fetyukovich himself, it seems, did not count on them much, as indeed it turned out afterward. At bottom this expert examination came about solely at the insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had sent for a famous doctor from Moscow on purpose. The defense, of course, could lose nothing by it, and at best might gain something. However, something almost comic, as it were, even came of it in part, namely because of a certain disagreement among the doctors. The experts who appeared were: the famous doctor who had come, then our Doctor Herzenstube, and finally the young physician Varvinsky. The last two also figured simply as witnesses called by the prosecutor. The first to be questioned in the capacity of expert was Doctor Herzenstube. He was an old man of seventy, gray and bald, of medium height and sturdy build. Everyone in our town valued and respected him greatly. He was a conscientious physician, an excellent and pious man, some sort of Herrnhuter or “Moravian Brother”—I really do not know for certain. He had lived among us for a very long time and carried himself with extraordinary dignity. He was kind and humane, treated poor patients and peasants free of charge, went himself into their hovels and cottages and left money for medicine, but at the same time he was as stubborn as a mule. To shift him from an idea of his, once it had lodged in his head, was impossible. By the way, almost everyone in town already knew that the famous visiting physician, in some two or three days of his stay among us, had allowed himself several extremely offensive remarks about Doctor Herzenstube’s gifts. The point is that, although the Moscow physician charged no less than twenty-five rubles a visit, still some people in our town were glad of the opportunity of his coming, did not grudge the money, and rushed to him for advice. All these patients had, of course, been treated before him by Doctor Herzenstube, and so the famous physician criticized his treatment everywhere with extraordinary sharpness. Toward the end, on coming to a patient, he would even ask outright: “Well, who’s been messing you up here, Herzenstube? Heh-heh!” Doctor Herzenstube, of course, learned all this. And now all three physicians appeared one after another to be questioned. Doctor Herzenstube declared outright that “the abnormality of the mental faculties of the defendant is self-evident.” Then, having presented his considerations, which I omit here, he added that this abnormality was evident chiefly not only from many of the defendant’s former actions, but now as well, at this very minute even, and when he was asked to explain how it was evident now, at this very minute, the old doctor, with all the directness of his simple-heartedness, pointed out that the defendant, on entering the hall, “had an extraordinary and, under the circumstances, peculiar look, marched forward like a soldier and kept his eyes in front of him, rigidly, whereas it would have been more proper for him to look leftward, where the ladies are sitting in the public, for he was a great lover of the fair sex and must have been thinking very much of what the ladies will now say about him,” the old man concluded in his own peculiar language. It must be added that he spoke Russian a great deal and willingly, but somehow every sentence of his came out in the German manner, which, however, never embarrassed him, for all his life he had had the weakness of considering his Russian speech a model one, “better even than the Russians’ own,” and he was even very fond of resorting to Russian proverbs, assuring everyone each time that Russian proverbs were the best and most expressive of all the proverbs in the world. I will remark further that in conversation, whether from some absentmindedness or other, he often forgot the most ordinary words, which he knew perfectly well but which for some reason would suddenly pop out of his head. The same thing, however, happened when he spoke German, and at such times he would always wave his hand in front of his face, as if trying to catch the lost little word, and no one could have forced him to go on with what he had begun to say until he had found the missing word. His remark that the defendant, on entering, ought to have looked at the ladies, provoked a playful whispering among the public. All our ladies were very fond of our old man; they knew too that he, a bachelor all his life, pious and chaste, looked upon women as higher and ideal beings. And so his unexpected remark seemed terribly strange to everyone.

The Moscow doctor, questioned in his turn, sharply and insistently confirmed that he considered the defendant’s mental condition abnormal, “even in the highest degree.” He spoke a great deal and cleverly about “a fit of passion” and “mania,” and deduced that, according to all the data collected, the defendant had been, for several days before his arrest, in an undoubted morbid state of passion, and if he had committed the crime, then, though he was aware of it, he had done so almost involuntarily, quite without the strength to struggle against the morbid moral impulse that had taken possession of him. But besides the fit of passion, the doctor also discerned mania, which already foretold, in his words, a straight road ahead to complete insanity. (NB. I convey this in my own words; the doctor expressed himself in very learned and specialized language.) “All his actions are contrary to common sense and logic,” he went on. “I will not speak of what I did not see, that is, of the crime itself and this whole catastrophe, but even the day before yesterday, during his conversation with me, he had an inexplicable fixed gaze. Unexpected laughter, when it is not called for at all. Incomprehensible constant irritation, strange words: ‘Bernard, ephics,’ and others that are not called for.” But the doctor discerned this mania especially in the fact that the defendant cannot even speak of those three thousand rubles of which he considers himself cheated without a sort of extraordinary irritation, whereas of all his other failures and injuries he speaks and recalls them rather easily. Finally, according to inquiries made, he had likewise before, every time those three thousand were touched upon, flown into an almost frenzied state, and yet it was testified of him that he was disinterested and not grasping. “As for the opinion of my learned colleague,” the Moscow doctor added ironically as he concluded his speech, “that the defendant, on entering the hall, ought to have looked at the ladies and not straight in front of him, I will say only this: apart from the playfulness of such a conclusion, it is, besides, radically mistaken; for although I fully agree that the defendant, on entering the courtroom in which his fate is being decided, ought not to have looked so fixedly in front of him, and that this really could be considered a sign of his abnormal mental state at the given moment, yet at the same time I assert that he ought to have looked not to the left at the ladies but, on the contrary, precisely to the right, seeking with his eyes his defense counsel, in whose help lies all his hope and on whose defense his whole fate now depends.” The doctor expressed his opinion decisively and emphatically. But a special comedy was given to the disagreement of the two learned experts by the unexpected conclusion of the physician Varvinsky, who was questioned last of all. In his view, the defendant was now, as before, in a perfectly normal state, and although he really must have been in a nervous and extremely excited condition before his arrest, this could have come from many of the most obvious causes: from jealousy, anger, a continually drunken state, and so on. But this nervous condition could not have contained any special “fit of passion” such as had just been spoken of. As to whether the defendant ought to have looked to the left or to the right on entering the hall, then, “in his modest opinion,” the defendant ought precisely to have looked straight in front of him on entering, as indeed he did look, for straight in front of him sat the presiding judge and the members of the court, on whom his whole fate now depends, “so that, by looking straight in front of him, he proved by that very fact the perfectly normal state of his mind at the given moment,” the young physician concluded his “modest” testimony with some heat.

“Bravo, sawbones!” Mitya shouted from his place. “Exactly so!”

Mitya, of course, was stopped, but the young physician’s opinion had the most decisive effect both on the court and on the public, for, as it turned out afterward, everyone agreed with him. However, Doctor Herzenstube, questioned now as a witness, quite unexpectedly and suddenly served Mitya’s cause. As an old resident of the town, who had long known the Karamazov family, he gave several pieces of testimony very interesting for “the prosecution,” and suddenly, as if something had occurred to him, added:

“And yet the poor young man could have had a far better lot beyond comparison, for he was of a good heart both in childhood and after childhood, for I know this. But the Russian proverb says: ‘If someone has one mind, that is good, but if another clever man comes to visit, it will be still better, for then there will be two minds and not only one…’”

“Two heads are better than one,” the prosecutor prompted impatiently, having long known the old man’s habit of speaking slowly, drawn out, untroubled by the impression he was producing or by the fact that he was making people wait, and, on the contrary, setting great store by his heavy, potato-like, and always joyfully self-satisfied German wit. And the old man loved to make witticisms.

“Oh, y-yes, that is what I say too,” he took up stubbornly, “one head is good, but two are much better. But no other man with a head came to him, and he sent his own off… What is it, where did he send it? That word—where he sent his mind, I have forgotten,” he went on, twirling his hand before his eyes. “Ah, yes, spazieren.”

“For a walk?”

“Well, yes, for a walk, that is what I say too. So his mind went off for a stroll and came to such a deep place in which it lost itself. And yet he was a grateful and sensitive youth, oh, I remember him very well when he was still such a little one, abandoned by his father in the backyard, when he ran about on the ground without little boots and with his little trousers on one button.”

A sort of sensitive and heartfelt note was suddenly heard in the honest old man’s voice. Fetyukovich fairly gave a start, as if he had a presentiment of something, and instantly fastened on it.

“Oh, yes, I was then still a young man myself… I… well, yes, I was then forty-five years old, and I had only just come here. And I felt sorry for the boy then, and I asked myself: why can I not buy him one pound… Well, yes, a pound of what? I have forgotten what it is called… a pound of what children love very much, what is it—well, what is it…” and the doctor fell to waving his hands again, “it grows on trees, and they gather it and give it to everyone as a present…”

“Apples?”

“Oh, n-no-o-o! A pound, a pound, apples are by the ten, and not by the pound… no, there are many of them and all little, you put them in your mouth and cr-r-rack!…”

“Nuts?”

“Well, yes, nuts, that is what I say too,” the doctor confirmed in the calmest manner, as though he had not been searching for the word at all, “and I brought him one pound of nuts, for no one had ever yet brought the boy a pound of nuts, and I raised my finger and said to him: ‘Boy! Gott der Vater (God the Father),’ and he laughed and said, ‘Gott der Vater.’ ‘Gott der Sohn (God the Son).’ Again he laughed and babbled, ‘Gott der Sohn.’ ‘Gott der heilige Geist (God the Holy Spirit).’ Then he laughed again and said as best he could, ‘Gott der heilige Geist.’ And I went away. On the third day I am walking by, and he shouts to me himself, ‘Uncle, Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn,’ and only he had forgotten ‘Gott der heilige Geist,’ but I reminded him, and again I felt very sorry for him. But they took him away, and I did not see him anymore. And then twenty-three years have gone by, one morning I am sitting in my study, already with a white head, and suddenly in comes a young man in the bloom of health, whom I cannot recognize at all, but he raised his finger and says, laughing, ‘Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn und Gott der heilige Geist! I am just now arrived and I came to thank you for the pound of nuts; for no one ever bought me a pound of nuts then, and you alone bought me a pound of nuts.’ And then I remembered my happy youth and the poor boy in the yard without little boots, and my heart turned over, and I said, ‘You are a grateful young man, for all your life you have remembered that pound of nuts which I brought you in your childhood.’ And I hugged him and gave him my blessing. And I wept. He laughed, but he wept too… for a Russian very often laughs where he ought to weep. But he wept too, I saw it. And now, alas!…”

“And I’m weeping now, German, I’m weeping now, you man of God!” Mitya suddenly shouted from his place.

Be that as it may, the little anecdote produced a certain favorable impression on the public. But the chief effect in Mitya’s favor was produced by the testimony of Katerina Ivanovna, of which I will speak presently. And in general, when the witnesses à décharge (for the defense) began, that is, those called by the defense counsel, fortune suddenly seemed to smile on Mitya, and even seriously, and—what is most remarkable of all—unexpectedly even for the defense itself. But even before Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha was questioned, and he suddenly recalled a fact that seemed even to have the look of positive evidence against one of the most important points of the prosecution.