The Brothers Karamazov

“A month before the catastrophe, the defendant was entrusted by Miss Verkhovtsev with three thousand roubles to be sent by mail—but a question: is it true that it was entrusted to him in such shame and humiliation as was declared here today? In Miss Verkhovtsev’s first testimony on the same subject, it came out differently, quite differently; and in her second testimony all we heard were cries of anger, revenge, cries of long-concealed hatred. But this alone, that the witness testified incorrectly in her first testimony, gives us the right to conclude that her second testimony may also be incorrect. The prosecutor ‘does not wish, does not dare’ (in his own words) to touch on this romance. So be it, I shall not touch on it either, but will only allow myself to observe that if a pure and highly virtuous person such as the highly esteemed Miss Verkhovtsev undoubtedly is, if such a person, I say, allows herself suddenly, all at once, in court, to change her first testimony with the direct aim of ruining the defendant, then it is clear that she has also not given this testimony impartially, coolheadedly. Can we be deprived of the right to conclude that a vengeful woman may have exaggerated many things? Yes, precisely exaggerated the shame and disgrace in which she offered the money. On the contrary, it was offered precisely in such a way that it could still be accepted, especially by such a light-minded man as our defendant. Above all, he still had it in his head then that he would soon receive the three thousand he reckoned was owing to him from his father. This was light-minded, but precisely because of his light-mindedness he was firmly convinced that his father would give it to him, that he would get it, and therefore would always be able to mail the money entrusted to him by Miss Verkhovtsev and settle his debt. But the prosecutor will in no way allow that on that same day, the day of the accusation, he was capable of separating half of the money entrusted to him and sewing it into an amulet: ‘Such, ‘ he says, ‘is not his character, he could not have had such feelings.’ But you yourself were shouting that Karamazov is broad, you yourself were shouting about the two extreme abysses Karamazov can contemplate. Karamazov is precisely of such a nature, with two sides, two abysses, as can stop amid the most unrestrained need of carousing if something strikes him on the other side. And the other side is love, precisely this new love that flared up in him like powder, and for this love he needs money, he has more need of it, oh! much more need of it even than of carousing with this same beloved. If she were to say to him: ‘I am yours, I do not want Fyodor Pavlovich,’ and he were to snatch her and take her away—then he would have to have some means of taking her away. This is more important than carousing. Could Karamazov fail to understand that? This is precisely what he was sick over, this care—what, then, is so incredible in his separating this money and stashing it away just in case? But now, however, time is passing, and Fyodor Pavlovich does not give the defendant his three thousand; on the contrary, he hears that he has allotted it precisely to luring away his beloved. ‘If Fyodor Pavlovich does not give it back to me,’ he thinks, ‘I will come out as a thief before Katerina Ivanovna.’ But now the thought is born in him that he will take this same fifteen hundred, which he is still carrying on him in the amulet, lay it before Miss Verkhovtsev, and say to her: ‘I am a scoundrel, but not a thief.’ So now he has a double reason to hold on to this fifteen hundred like the apple of his eye, and on no account to unstitch the amulet and peel off a hundred at a time. Why should you deny the defendant a sense of honor? No, he has a sense of honor, let’s say a faulty one, let’s say very often a mistaken one, but he has it, has it to the point of passion, and he has proved it. Now, however, the situation gets more complicated, the torments of jealousy reach the highest pitch, and the same questions, the two old questions, etch themselves more and more tormentingly in the defendant’s fevered brain: ‘If I give it back to Katerina Ivanovna, with what means will I take Grushenka away?’ If he was raving so, getting drunk and storming in the taverns all that month, it is precisely, perhaps, because he felt bitter himself, it was more than he could bear. These two questions finally became so acute that they finally drove him to despair. He tried sending his younger brother to their father to ask one last time for the three thousand, but without waiting for an answer he burst in himself and ended by beating the old man in front of witnesses. After that, consequently, there is no one to get the money from, his beaten father will not give it. The evening of that same day he beats himself on the chest, precisely on the upper part of the chest, where the amulet was, and swears to his brother that he has the means not to be a scoundrel, but will still remain a scoundrel, because he foresees that he will not use this means, he will not have enough strength of soul, he will not have enough character. Why, why does the prosecution not believe the evidence of Alexei Karamazov, given so purely, so sincerely, so spontaneously and plausibly? Why, on the contrary, would they have me believe in money hidden in some crevice, in the dungeons of the castle of Udolpho? That same evening, after the conversation with his brother, the defendant writes this fatal letter, and now this letter is the most important, the most colossal evidence, convicting the defendant of robbery! ‘I will ask all people, and if I don’t get it from people, I will kill father and take it from under his mattress, in the envelope with the pink ribbon, if only Ivan goes away’—a complete program of the murder, they say; who else could it be? ‘It was accomplished as written! ‘ the prosecution exclaims. But, first of all, the letter is a drunken one, and written in terrible exasperation; second, about the envelope, again he is writing in Smerdyakov’s words, because he did not see the envelope himself; and, third, maybe he wrote it, but was it accomplished as written, is there any proof of that? Did the defendant take the envelope from under the pillow, did he find the money, did it even exist? And was it money that the defendant went running for—remember, remember? He went running headlong, not to rob, but only to find out where she was, this woman who had crushed him—so it was not according to the program, not as written, that he went running there, that is, not for a premeditated robbery; he ran suddenly, impulsively, in a jealous rage! ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘but having come and killed him, he also took the money.’ But did he kill him, finally, or not? The accusation of robbery I reject with indignation: there can be no accusation of robbery if it is impossible to point exactly to what precisely has been robbed—that is an axiom! But did he kill him, without the robbery, did he kill him? Is this proved? Is this not also a novel?”