V. A Sudden Catastrophe

I will remark that he had been called even before Alyosha. But the bailiff had reported to the presiding judge then that, owing to a sudden indisposition or some sort of fit, the witness could not appear at once, but that as soon as he recovered he would be ready to give his testimony whenever desired. Somehow, however, no one had heard this, and it became known only afterward. In the first moment his appearance was almost unnoticed: the chief witnesses, especially the two rivals, had already been questioned; curiosity was satisfied for the time being. Even fatigue was felt among the public. Several more witnesses still had to be heard, who probably could communicate nothing special in view of all that had already been communicated. And time was passing. Ivan Fyodorovich approached somehow astonishingly slowly, looking at no one and even with his head lowered, as though frowning over some consideration. He was dressed impeccably, but his face made a painful impression, on me at least: there was something in that face as if touched by earth, something like the face of a dying man. His eyes were clouded; he raised them and slowly passed them over the hall. Alyosha suddenly started up from his chair and moaned: ah! I remember that. But few caught even that.

The presiding judge began by saying that he was a witness not under oath, that he might testify or keep silent, but that, of course, everything he testified must be according to his conscience, and so on, and so on. Ivan Fyodorovich listened and looked at him dully; but suddenly his face slowly began to spread into a smile, and the moment the presiding judge, who was looking at him in surprise, finished speaking, he suddenly burst out laughing.

“Well, and what else?” he asked loudly.

Everything went quiet in the hall; something seemed to be sensed. The presiding judge grew uneasy.

“You are… perhaps not quite well yet?” he began, searching with his eyes for the bailiff.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Your Excellency, I am well enough, and I can tell you something curious,” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly answered, quite calmly and respectfully.

“You have some special communication to present?” the presiding judge went on, still distrustfully.

Ivan Fyodorovich lowered his eyes, hesitated a few seconds, and, raising his head again, answered as though stammering:

“No… I haven’t. I have nothing special.”

They began to put questions to him. He answered somehow quite reluctantly, somehow with deliberate brevity, even with a sort of loathing that kept growing more and more, though he answered sensibly all the same. To many questions he pleaded ignorance. Of his father’s accounts with Dmitri Fyodorovich he knew nothing. “And I didn’t concern myself with it,” he said. Of the threats to kill his father he had heard from the defendant. Of the money in the envelope he had heard from Smerdyakov…

“It’s all one and the same,” he suddenly interrupted with a weary look. “I can communicate nothing special to the court.”

“I see you are unwell, and I understand your feelings…” the presiding judge began.

He was about to turn to the parties, to the prosecutor and the defense counsel, inviting them to put questions if they found it necessary, when suddenly Ivan Fyodorovich asked in an exhausted voice:

“Let me go, Your Excellency, I feel very unwell.”

And with that word, without waiting for permission, he suddenly turned of his own accord and started out of the hall. But, having gone four steps or so, he stopped, as though he had suddenly thought something over, grinned quietly, and came back to his former place.

“I, Your Excellency, am like that peasant girl… you know how it goes: ‘Ef I wanna, I’ll jump, ef I wanna, I won’t jump.’ They go after her with a sarafan or a homespun skirt, or whatever it is, for her to jump into, so they can tie her up and take her off to be married, and she says, ‘Ef I wanna, I’ll jump, ef I wanna, I won’t jump’… It’s in some folk custom of ours…”

“What do you mean by that?” the presiding judge asked sternly.

“Why, this,” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly took out a wad of money. “Here is the money… the very money that lay in that envelope there,” he nodded at the table with the material evidence, “and for which Father was killed. Where shall I put it? Mr. Bailiff, pass it on, please.”

The bailiff took the whole wad and passed it to the presiding judge.

“How could this money have come into your possession… if it is the same money?” the presiding judge said in surprise.

“I got it from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday. I was at his place before he hanged himself. It was he who killed Father, not my brother. He killed him, and I taught him to kill… Who doesn’t wish for his father’s death?…”

“Are you in your right mind or not?” escaped involuntarily from the presiding judge.

“That’s just it, I am in my right mind… and a base mind, just like yours, like all of these… m-mugs!” he suddenly turned on the public. “A father has been killed, and they pretend to be frightened,” he ground out with furious contempt. “They make faces at one another. Liars! They all wish for their father’s death. One viper devours the other… If there were no parricide, they would all get angry and go home in a bad temper… A spectacle! ‘Bread and circuses!’ Though I’m a fine one myself! Have you any water or not, give me a drink, for Christ’s sake!” He suddenly clutched his head.

The bailiff at once went up to him. Alyosha suddenly jumped up and shouted, “He’s ill, don’t believe him, he has delirium tremens!” Katerina Ivanovna rose impetuously from her chair and, motionless with horror, stared at Ivan Fyodorovich. Mitya got up and, with a sort of wild, twisted smile, looked at his brother and listened to him avidly.

“Calm yourselves, I’m not insane, I’m only a murderer!” Ivan began again. “You can’t expect eloquence from a murderer…” he suddenly added for some reason, and laughed a twisted laugh.

The prosecutor, in visible confusion, leaned over to the presiding judge. The members of the court whispered fussily among themselves. Fetyukovich pricked up his ears and listened intently. The hall froze in expectation. The presiding judge suddenly seemed to come to his senses.

“Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here. Calm yourself, if you can, and tell us… if you really have something to say. How can you confirm such a confession… if you are not simply raving?”

“That’s just it, I have no witnesses. That dog Smerdyakov won’t send you his testimony from the other world… in an envelope. You want envelopes for everything, one is enough. I have no witnesses… Except perhaps just one,” he grinned pensively.

“Who is your witness?”

“He has a tail, Your Excellency, it won’t be according to form! Le diable n’existe point! (The devil does not exist!) Pay no attention, a trashy, petty devil,” he added, suddenly ceasing to laugh and as if confidentially. “He’s sure to be here somewhere, under that table with the material evidence, where else would he sit, if not there? You see, listen to me: I told him, I don’t want to keep silent, and he goes on about the geological upheaval… nonsense! Well, set the monster free… he’s started singing a hymn, that’s because he feels light! It’s just like some drunken rogue bawling out ‘Vanka’s gone off to Piter,’ and I would give a quadrillion quadrillions for two seconds of joy. You don’t know me! Oh, how stupid it all is with you! Well, take me instead of him! I must have come for something… Why, why is everything that exists so stupid!…”

And again he began slowly, and as if pensively, to look around the hall. But by now everything was in commotion. Alyosha was about to rush to him from his place, but the bailiff had already seized Ivan Fyodorovich by the arm.

“What’s this now?” the latter cried, peering point-blank into the bailiff’s face, and suddenly, seizing him by the shoulders, he furiously flung him to the floor. But the guards came running up, seized him, and at that he let out a frenzied howl. And all the while they were carrying him out, he howled and shouted something incoherent.

A commotion arose. I do not remember it all in order; I was agitated myself and could not keep track. I know only that afterward, when everything had calmed down and everyone had understood what the matter was, the bailiff did get a dressing-down, although he explained to his superiors, with good reason, that the witness had been well the whole time, that the doctor had seen him when he had had a slight fainting spell an hour before, but that until he came into the hall he had talked coherently, so that it was impossible to foresee anything; that he himself, on the contrary, had insisted and absolutely wanted to give testimony. But before anyone had calmed down and come to his senses even a little, right after this scene another broke out: Katerina Ivanovna went into hysterics. With loud shrieks she burst into sobs, but she would not leave, she struggled, begged them not to take her away, and suddenly cried out to the presiding judge:

“I must give one more piece of testimony, at once… at once!… Here is a paper, a letter… take it, read it quickly, quickly! It’s a letter from this monster, this one here, this one!” She was pointing at Mitya. “It was he who killed his father, you will see now, he writes to me how he will kill his father! And the other one is ill, ill, he has delirium tremens! I’ve seen for three days now that he is in a fever!”

So she cried out, beside herself. The bailiff took the paper she was holding out to the presiding judge, and she, falling back on her chair and covering her face, began to sob convulsively and soundlessly, shaking all over and stifling the slightest moan for fear of being sent out of the hall. The paper she had handed over was that very letter of Mitya’s from the Metropolis tavern which Ivan Fyodorovich had called a document of “mathematical” importance. Alas! It was precisely this mathematical quality that was recognized in it, and had it not been for this letter, perhaps Mitya would not have perished, or at least would not have perished so terribly! I repeat, it was hard to follow the details. Even now it all appears to me in such a commotion. The presiding judge must have communicated the new document to the court, the prosecutor, the defense counsel, and the jury right then. I remember only how they began to question the witness. To the question whether she had calmed herself, gently addressed to her by the presiding judge, Katerina Ivanovna impetuously exclaimed:

“I am ready, ready! I am perfectly able to answer you,” she added, evidently still terribly afraid that for some reason they would not hear her out. She was asked to explain in more detail what this letter was and under what circumstances she had received it.

“I received it on the very eve of the crime, and he wrote it a day earlier still, from the tavern, that is, two days before his crime—look, it’s written on some sort of bill!” she cried, gasping. “He hated me then because he himself had done a base thing and gone after that creature… and also because he owed me those three thousand… Oh, he felt injured over those three thousand because of his own baseness! This is how it was with those three thousand—I beg you, I implore you to hear me out: three weeks before he killed his father, he came to me one morning. I knew what he needed—money, and I knew what for—why, precisely to seduce that creature and carry her off with him. I knew then that he had already betrayed me and wanted to abandon me, and I, I myself, held out that money to him then, I myself offered it, supposedly for sending to my sister in Moscow—and as I gave it, I looked him in the face and said that he could send it whenever he liked, ‘even in a month’s time.’ Well, how, how could he not have understood that I was telling him straight to his face: ‘You need money to betray me with your creature, so here is the money, I give it to you myself, take it, if you are so dishonorable as to take it!…’ I wanted to expose him, and what happened? He took it, he took it and carried it off and spent it with that creature there, in one night… But he understood, he understood that I knew everything, I assure you that he understood then that in giving him the money I was only testing him: would he be so dishonorable as to take it from me, or not? I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine and understood everything, understood everything, and took it, and took it, and carried off my money!”

“It’s true, Katya!” Mitya suddenly howled. “I looked into your eyes and I knew that you were dishonoring me, and still I took your money! Despise the scoundrel, despise me, all of you, I’ve deserved it!”

“Defendant,” cried the presiding judge, “one more word, and I will have you removed.”

“That money tormented him,” Katya went on, hurrying convulsively. “He wanted to give it back to me, he wanted to, that is true, but he needed money for that creature too. So he killed his father, and still he did not give me back the money, but went off with her to that village where he was seized. There again he squandered on drink the money he had stolen from the father he had killed. And the day before he killed his father, he wrote me this letter, wrote it drunk, I saw that at once then, wrote it out of spite and knowing, surely knowing, that I would show this letter to no one, even if he did kill. Otherwise he would not have written it. He knew that I would not want to take revenge on him and ruin him! But read it, read it attentively, please, more attentively, and you will see that in the letter he described everything, everything beforehand: how he would kill his father and where the old man’s money lay. Look, please don’t miss it, there is one phrase there: ‘I’ll kill him, if only Ivan has gone.’ That means he had thought out beforehand how he would kill him,” Katerina Ivanovna prompted the court, gloating and venomous. Oh, one could see that she had read that fatal letter through to the finest point and studied every little stroke in it. “If he weren’t drunk he wouldn’t have written to me, but look, everything is described in advance there, everything exactly as he killed him afterward, the whole program!”

So she exclaimed, beside herself, and of course scorning all the consequences for herself, though of course she had foreseen them, perhaps as much as a month before, because even then, perhaps, shuddering with spite, she had dreamed: “Shouldn’t I read this to the court?” Now it was as if she had gone flying downhill. I remember, I think it was precisely then, that the letter was read aloud by the clerk and produced a staggering impression. Mitya was asked: “Did he acknowledge this letter?”

“It’s mine, mine!” exclaimed Mitya. “I wouldn’t have written it if I hadn’t been drunk!… We hated each other for many things, Katya, but I swear, I swear, I loved you even while I hated you, and you didn’t love me!”

He fell back into his place, wringing his hands in despair. The prosecutor and the defense counsel began to put questions in cross-examination, chiefly to this effect: “What, you see, induced you earlier to conceal such a document and to testify before in a quite different spirit and tone?”

“Yes, yes, I lied earlier, I lied all along, against honor and conscience, but I wanted earlier to save him, because he hated and despised me so!” Katya exclaimed like a madwoman. “Oh, he despised me terribly, he always despised me, and you know, you know—he despised me from that very minute when I bowed down at his feet that time for that money. I saw it… I felt it right then and there, but for a long time I did not believe myself. How many times I read in his eyes: ‘All the same, you came to me yourself that time.’ Oh, he did not understand, he understood nothing of why I came running then, he is capable of suspecting only baseness! He measured by himself, he thought everyone was like him,” Katya ground out furiously, now in a complete frenzy. “And he wanted to marry me only because I had received an inheritance, because of that, because of that! I always suspected it was because of that! Oh, he is a beast! All his life he was sure that all my life I would tremble before him with shame for having come to him that time, and that he could despise me for it forever, and so be the one on top—that is why he wanted to marry me! It is so, it is all so! I tried to conquer him with my love, a love without end, I even wanted to bear his betrayal, but he understood nothing, nothing. And can he understand anything! He is a monster! I received this letter only the next day in the evening, it was brought to me from the tavern, and that very morning, that very morning of that day, I had wanted to forgive him everything, everything, even his betrayal!”

Of course, the presiding judge and the prosecutor tried to calm her. I am sure that they were all, perhaps, even ashamed themselves to take such advantage of her frenzy and to listen to such confessions. I remember, I heard, how they said to her, “We understand how hard it is for you, believe us, we are capable of feeling,” and so on, and so on—and yet they drew the testimony out of the woman, driven out of her mind, in hysterics. At last she described, with the extraordinary clarity that so often flashes, though only for an instant, even at moments of such a strained state, how Ivan Fyodorovich had been almost going out of his mind all these two months trying to save “the monster and murderer,” his brother.

“He tormented himself,” she exclaimed, “he kept wanting to lessen his guilt, confessing to me that he himself had not loved his father and perhaps had himself wished for his death. Oh, that is a deep, deep conscience! He has tormented himself with his conscience! He revealed everything to me, everything, he came to me and talked with me every day as with his only friend. I have the honor to be his only friend!” she suddenly exclaimed, just as if with a sort of challenge, her eyes flashing. “He went to Smerdyakov’s twice. Once he came to me and said: if it was not my brother who killed, but Smerdyakov (because everyone here was spreading that fable, that Smerdyakov had killed), then perhaps I am guilty too, because Smerdyakov knew that I did not love my father and perhaps thought that I wished for my father’s death. Then I took out this letter and showed it to him, and he became completely convinced that his brother had killed, and that struck him down completely. He could not bear it that his own brother was a parricide! A week ago already I saw that he was ill from it. In these last days, sitting at my place, he was delirious. I saw that his mind was wandering. He walked about raving, people saw him like that in the streets. The doctor who came from Moscow examined him at my request the day before yesterday and told me that he was close to brain fever—all because of him, all because of the monster! And yesterday he learned that Smerdyakov had died—it struck him so that he went out of his mind… and all from the monster, all from trying to save the monster!”

Oh, of course, one can speak like that and confess like that only once in a lifetime—at the moment before death, for example, mounting the scaffold. But Katya was precisely in her character and in her moment. It was the same impetuous Katya who had rushed that time to the young profligate to save her father; the same Katya who earlier, before this whole public, proud and chaste, had sacrificed herself and her maidenly shame, telling of “Mitya’s noble deed,” only in order to soften in some measure the fate awaiting him. And now, just the same, she had sacrificed herself as well, but now for another, and perhaps only now, only at this moment, feeling and grasping fully for the first time how dear this other man was to her! She had sacrificed herself in fear for him, suddenly imagining that he had ruined himself by his testimony, that it was he who had killed and not his brother; she had sacrificed herself to save him, his good name, his reputation! And yet a terrible thing flashed through the mind: was she lying about Mitya when she described her former relations with him—that is the question. No, no, she did not slander him deliberately when she cried out that Mitya despised her for the bow to the ground! She believed it herself, she was profoundly convinced, perhaps from the very moment of that bow, that simple-hearted Mitya, who had adored her even then, was laughing at her and despising her. And it was only out of pride that she herself had become attached to him then with a love, a hysterical and strained love, out of wounded pride, and that love resembled not love but revenge. Oh, perhaps that strained love might have grown into a real one, perhaps Katya wished for nothing so much as that, but Mitya had insulted her to the depths of her soul by his betrayal, and her soul did not forgive. And the moment of revenge swooped down unexpectedly, and everything that had accumulated so long and so painfully in the injured woman’s breast burst out all at once, and again unexpectedly. She had betrayed Mitya, but she had betrayed herself as well! And of course, the moment she had finished speaking her mind, the strain snapped, and shame overwhelmed her. Again the hysterics began; she fell, sobbing and crying out. She was carried out. At the moment when she was being carried out, Grushenka rushed with a wail from her place to Mitya, so quickly that they did not even have time to hold her back.

“Mitya!” she wailed. “Your serpent has ruined you! There, she’s shown you what she is!” she cried to the court, shaking with fury. At a sign from the presiding judge she was seized and they began to lead her out of the hall. She would not let herself be taken, she struggled and tore herself back toward Mitya. Mitya howled and tore himself toward her too. He was overpowered.

Yes, I suppose our lady spectators were left satisfied: it was a rich spectacle. Then I remember how the visiting Moscow doctor appeared. I believe the presiding judge had already sent the bailiff before that to arrange for help to be given to Ivan Fyodorovich. The doctor reported to the court that the sick man was in a most dangerous attack of brain fever and that he ought to be taken away immediately. In answer to questions from the prosecutor and the defense counsel, he confirmed that the patient had come to him himself the day before yesterday and that he had predicted an imminent brain fever for him then and there, but that he had not wanted to be treated. “And he was positively not in a sound state of mind; he confessed to me himself that he sees visions while awake, meets in the street various persons who have already died, and that Satan comes to visit him every evening,” the doctor concluded. Having given his testimony, the famous physician withdrew. The letter presented by Katerina Ivanovna was added to the material evidence. After deliberation the court decided: to continue the examination of the evidence, and to enter both unexpected pieces of testimony (Katerina Ivanovna’s and Ivan Fyodorovich’s) into the record.

But I will not describe the further examination of the evidence. And the testimony of the remaining witnesses was only a repetition and confirmation of the earlier testimony, though each with its own characteristic features. But I repeat, everything will be brought together into one point in the prosecutor’s speech, to which I will now proceed. Everyone was excited, everyone was electrified by the last catastrophe, and waited with burning impatience only for the denouement as soon as possible, for the speeches of the parties and the verdict. Fetyukovich was visibly shaken by Katerina Ivanovna’s testimony. The prosecutor, on the other hand, was triumphant. When the examination of the evidence was over, a recess was announced that lasted almost an hour. At last the presiding judge opened the closing arguments. I believe it was exactly eight o’clock in the evening when our prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, began his speech for the prosecution.