The Brothers Karamazov

Here Ippolit Kirillovich unfolded a most detailed picture of Mitya’s preparations, the scene at Perkhotin’s, at the shop, with the coachmen. He cited a quantity of words, phrases, gestures—all confirmed by witnesses—and the picture terribly swayed his listeners’ convictions. What swayed them above all was the totality of the facts. The guilt of this frenzied, turbulent man, who no longer cared about himself, was set forth irrefutably. “There was no longer any reason for him to care about himself,” Ippolit Kirillovich went on. “Two or three times he was on the verge of confessing outright, almost hinted at it, and stopped just short of telling all.” (Here followed the testimony of the witnesses.) “He even shouted to the coachman on the way: ‘Do you know you’re driving a murderer!’ But still he could not tell all: he had first to get to the village of Mokroye, and there finish the poem. What awaits the unfortunate man, however? The thing is that almost from his first moments in Mokroye, he sees and finally perceives fully that his ‘indisputable’ rival is perhaps not so indisputable, and that no congratulations for new happiness and no raised cups would either be wanted or accepted from him. But you already know the facts, gentlemen of the jury, from the court’s investigation. Karamazov’s triumph over his rival turned out to be beyond dispute, and here—oh, here his soul entered quite a new phase, even the most terrible of all his soul has lived through and will yet live through! One can positively admit, gentlemen of the jury,” exclaimed Ippolit Kirillovich, “that outraged nature and the criminal heart revenge themselves more fully than any earthly justice! Moreover, justice and earthly punishment even alleviate the punishment of nature, are even necessary for the soul of the criminal in those moments as its salvation from despair, for I cannot even imagine the horror and the moral suffering of Karamazov when he discovered that she loved him, that for him she rejected her ‘former’ and ‘indisputable’ one, that she was calling him, him, ‘Mitya,’ to renewed life, promising him happiness, and all of that when? When everything was finished for him, and nothing was possible! Incidentally, I shall make one rather important observation in passing, to clarify the true essence of the defendant’s situation at that moment: this woman, this love of his, until the very last minute, even until the very instant of his arrest, remained inaccessible to him, passionately desired but unattainable. Why, why did he not shoot himself right then, why did he abandon his original intent and even forget where his pistol was? It was precisely this passionate thirst for love and the hope of satisfying it right then and there that held him back. In a daze of revelry he fastened himself to his beloved, who reveled with him, more lovely and alluring for him than ever—he would not leave her side, he admired her, he melted away before her. This passionate thirst even managed for a moment to suppress not only his fear of arrest, but the very pangs of his conscience! For a moment, oh, only for a moment! I picture to myself the state of the criminal’s soul at that time as an indisputable slavish submission to three elements that overwhelmed it completely: first, a state of drunkenness, daze and noise, feet pounding, singers wailing, and she, she, flushed with wine, singing and dancing, drunk and laughing to him! Second, the remote, encouraging dream that the fatal ending was still a long way off, was at least not near—perhaps only the next day, only in the morning, would they come and take him. Several hours, then—a long time, terribly long! One can think up a lot in several hours. He felt, as I picture it to myself, something similar to what a criminal feels on his way to execution, to the gallows: he still has to go down a long, long street, and at a slow pace, past thousands of people, then turn down another street, and only at the end of that other street—the terrible square! I precisely think that at the start of the procession the condemned man, sitting in the cart of shame, must feel precisely that there is still an endless life ahead of him. Now, however, the houses are going past, the cart is moving on—oh, that’s nothing, it’s still such a long way to the turn down the second street, and so he still looks cheerfully to right and left at those thousands of indifferently curious people whose eyes are fastened on him, and he still fancies he is the same sort of man as they are. But here comes the turn down the other street—oh, it’s nothing, nothing, still a whole street to go. And no matter how many houses pass by, he will keep thinking: ‘There are still a lot of houses left.’ And so on to the very end, to the very square. So it was then, as I picture it to myself, with Karamazov. ‘They haven’t had enough time yet,’ he thinks, ‘it’s still possible to find some way, oh, there’s still time to invent a plan of defense, to think up a response, but now, now—she’s so lovely now!’ His soul is full of darkness and dread, but even so he manages to set aside half his money and hide it somewhere—otherwise I cannot explain to myself the disappearance of one whole half of the three thousand he had just taken from under his father’s pillow. This was not his first time in Mokroye, he had once spent two days carousing there. He knew that big, old wooden house with all its sheds and porches. I precisely suppose that part of the money disappeared right then, and precisely in that house, not long before his arrest, into some crack, some crevice, under some floorboard, somewhere in a corner, under the roof—but why? You ask why? The catastrophe may come now, and of course we have not thought out how to meet it, we have had no time, and our head is throbbing, and we are drawn to her, but money?—money is necessary in all situations! A man with money is a man everywhere. Perhaps such calculation at such a moment appears unnatural to you? But does he not insist himself that a month earlier, also in a most anxious and fatal moment for him, he set apart half of the three thousand and sewed it into his amulet, and, of course, if that is not true, as we shall presently prove, still the idea is familiar to Karamazov, he did contemplate it. Moreover, when he later insisted to the investigator that he had set apart fifteen hundred in the amulet (which never existed), he perhaps invented this amulet that same instant, precisely because two hours earlier he had set apart half of his money and hidden it somewhere there in Mokroye, just in case, until morning, so as not to keep it with him, on a sudden inspiration. Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time. We searched that house and found nothing. Perhaps the money is still there, or perhaps it disappeared the next day and is now with the defendant. In any case, he was arrested at her side, kneeling before her, she was lying on a bed, he was stretching out his hands to her, and was so oblivious of everything at that moment that he did not even hear the approach of those who arrested him. He had no time to prepare any response in his mind. Both he and his mind were caught unawares.