The Brothers Karamazov

Here Ippolit Kirillovich embarked on a detailed description of all Mitya’s efforts to obtain the money, in order to avoid the crime. He described his adventures with Samsonov, his journey to Lyagavy—all of it documented. “Worn out, ridiculed, hungry, having sold his watch for the journey (but still keeping the fifteen hundred roubles on him—supposedly, oh, supposedly! ), tortured by jealousy over the object of his love, whom he had left in town, suspeering that without him she would go to Fyodor Pavlovich, he finally returns to town. Thank God, she has not been with Fyodor Pavlovich! He himself takes her to her patron Samsonov. (Strangely, we are not jealous of Samsonov, and this is a rather typical psychological peculiarity of this case! ) Then he races to his observation post ‘in the backyard’ and there—and there discovers that Smerdyakov is down with a falling fit, that the other servant is sick—the field is clear, and the ‘signals’ are in his hands—what a temptation! Nevertheless he still resists; he goes to Madame Khokhlakov, a temporary local resident greatly respected by us all. Having long felt compassion for his fate, this lady offers him the most reasonable advice: to drop all this carousing, this outrageous love affair, this idling in taverns, the fruitless waste of his young strength, and go to Siberia, to the gold mines: ‘There is an outlet for your stormy strength, your romantic character yearning for adventure.’” Having described the outcome of that conversation, and the moment when the defendant suddenly received word that Grushenka had not stayed at Samsonov’s at all, having described the instantaneous frenzy of the unfortunate, jealous, overwrought man at the thought that she had precisely deceived him and was now there, with Fyodor Pavlovich, Ippolit Kirillovich concluded by drawing attention to the fatal significance of chance: “If the maid had managed to tell him that his sweetheart was in Mokroye with the ‘former’ and ‘indisputable’ one—nothing would have happened. But she was overcome with fright, began vowing and swearing, and if the defendant did not kill her right then, it was only because he rushed headlong after his traitoress. But observe: beside himself as he may have been, he did take the brass pestle with him. Why precisely the pestle, why not some other weapon? But since we have been contemplating this picture for a whole month and preparing for it, the moment anything resembling a weapon flashes before us, we grab it as a weapon. And that some such object might serve as a weapon—this we have already been imagining for a whole month. That is why we recognized it so instantly and unquestionably as a weapon! Therefore it was by no means unconsciously, by no means inadvertently that he grabbed this fatal pestle. And now he is in his father’s garden—the field is clear, no witnesses, the dead of night, darkness, and jealousy. The suspicion that she is there, with his rival, in his arms, and perhaps is laughing at him that very minute—takes his breath away. And not merely the suspicion—why talk of suspicion, when the deception is evident, obvious: she is there, in that room, where the light is coming from, she is with him behind the screen—and so the unfortunate man steals up to the window, respectfully peeks in, virtuously resigns himself, and sensibly departs, hastening to put trouble behind him, lest something dangerous and immoral happen—and we are asked to believe this, we who know the defendant’s character, who understand what state of mind he was in, a state we know from the facts, and, above all, that he was in possession of the signals with which he could open the house at once and go in!” Here, apropos the “signals,” Ippolit Kirillovich left off his accusatory speech for a time, finding it necessary to expatiate on Smerdyakov, so as to exhaust completely this whole parenthetic episode to do with suspecting Smerdyakov of the murder, and have done with the idea once and for all. He did so quite thoroughly, and everyone understood that, despite the contempt he showed for this suggestion, he still considered it very important.

Chapter 8: A Treatise on Smerdyakov