The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (easy to read books for adults list .txt) 📕

A Sudden Catastrophe

I MAY note that he had been called before Alyosha. But the usher

of the court announced to the President that, owing to an attack of

illness or some sort of fit, the witness could not appear at the

moment, but was ready to give his evidence as soon as he recovered.

But no one seemed to have heard it and it only came out later.

His entrance was for the first moment almost unnoticed. The

principal witnesses, especially the two rival ladies, had already been

questioned. Curiosity was satisfied for the time; the public was

feeling almost fatigued. Several more witnesses were still to be

heard, who probably had little information to give after all that

had been given. Time was passing. Ivan walked up with extraordinary

slowness, looking at no one, and with his head bowed, as though

plunged in gloomy thought. He was irreproachably dressed, but his face

made a painful impression, on me at least: there was an earthy look in

it, a look like a dying man’s. His eyes were lustreless; he raised

them and looked slowly round the court. Alyosha jumped up from his

seat and moaned “Ah!” I remember that, but it was hardly noticed.

The President began by informing him that he was a witness not

on oath, that he might answer or refuse to answer, but that, of

course, he must bear witness according to his conscience, and so on,

and so on. Ivan listened and looked at him blankly, but his face

gradually relaxed into a smile, and as soon as the President,

looking at him in astonishment, finished, he laughed outright.

“Well, and what else?” he asked in a loud voice.

There was a hush in the court; there was a feeling of something

strange. The President showed signs of uneasiness.

“You… are perhaps still unwell?” he began, looking everywhere

for the usher.

“Don’t trouble yourself, your excellency, I am well enough and can

tell you something interesting,” Ivan answered with sudden calmness

and respectfulness.

“You have some special communication to make?” the President

went on, still mistrustfully.

Ivan looked down, waited a few seconds and, raising his head,

answered, almost stammering:

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

They began asking him questions. He answered, as it were,

reluctantly, with extreme brevity, with a sort of disgust which grew

more and more marked, though he answered rationally. To many questions

he answered that he did not know. He knew nothing of his father’s

money relations with Dmitri. “I wasn’t interested in the subject,”

he added. Threats to murder his father he had heard from the prisoner.

Of the money in the envelope he had heard from Smerdyakov.

“The same thing over and over again,” he interrupted suddenly,

with a look of weariness. “I have nothing particular to tell the

court.”

“I see you are unwell and understand your feelings,” the President

began.

He turned to the prosecutor and the counsel for the defence to

invite them to examine the witness, if necessary, when Ivan suddenly

asked in an exhausted voice:

“Let me go, your excellency, I feel very ill.”

And with these words, without waiting for permission, he turned to

walk out of the court. But after taking four steps he stood still,

as though he had reached a decision, smiled slowly, and went back.

“I am like the peasant girl, your excellency… you know. How does

it go? ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’ They were

trying to put on her sarafan to take her to church to be married,

and she said, ‘I’ll stand up if I like, and I won’t if I don’t.’…

It’s in some book about the peasantry.”

“What do you mean by that?” the President asked severely.

“Why, this,” Ivan suddenly pulled out a roll of notes. “Here’s the

money… the notes that lay in that envelope” (he nodded towards the

table on which lay the material evidence), “for the sake of which

our father was murdered. Where shall I put them? Mr. Superintendent,

take them.”

The usher of the court took the whole roll and handed it to the

President.

“How could this money have come into your possession if it is

the same money?” the President asked wonderingly.

“I got them from Smerdyakov, from the murderer, yesterday…. I

was with him just before he hanged himself. It was he, not my brother,

killed our father. He murdered him and I incited him to do it… Who

doesn’t desire his father’s death?”

“Are you in your right mind?” broke involuntarily from the

President.

“I should think I am in my right mind… in the same nasty mind as

all of you… as all these… ugly faces.” He turned suddenly to the

audience. “My father has been murdered and they pretend they are

horrified,” he snarled, with furious contempt. “They keep up the

sham with one another. Liars! They all desire the death of their

fathers. One reptile devours another…. If there hadn’t been a

murder, they’d have been angry and gone home ill-humoured. It’s a

spectacle they want! Panem et circenses.* Though I am one to talk!

Have you any water? Give me a drink for Christ’s sake!” He suddenly

clutched his head.

* Bread and circuses.

The usher at once approached him. Alyosha jumped up and cried, “He

is ill. Don’t believe him: he has brain fever.” Katerina Ivanovna rose

impulsively from her seat and, rigid with horror, gazed at Ivan. Mitya

stood up and greedily looked at his brother and listened to him with a

wild, strange smile.

“Don’t disturb yourselves. I am not mad, I am only a murderer,”

Ivan began again. “You can’t expect eloquence from a murderer,” he

added suddenly for some reason and laughed a queer laugh.

The prosecutor bent over to the President in obvious dismay. The

two other judges communicated in agitated whispers. Fetyukovitch

pricked up his ears as he listened: the hall was hushed in

expectation. The President seemed suddenly to recollect himself.

“Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible here.

Calm yourself, if you can, and tell your story… if you really have

something to tell. How can you confirm your statement… if indeed you

are not delirious?”

“That’s just it. I have no proof. That cur Smerdyakov won’t send

you proofs from the other world… in an envelope. You think of

nothing but envelopes-one is enough. I’ve no witnesses… except one,

perhaps,” he smiled thoughtfully.

“Who is your witness?”

“He has a tail, your excellency, and that would be irregular! Le

diable n’existe point! Don’t pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful

devil,” he added suddenly. He ceased laughing and spoke as it were,

confidentially. “He is here somewhere, no doubt-under that table with

the material evidence on it, perhaps. Where should he sit if not

there? You see, listen to me. I told him I don’t want to keep quiet,

and he talked about the geological cataclysm… idiocy! Come,

release the monster… he’s been singing a hymn. That’s because his

heart is light! It’s like a drunken man in the street bawling how

‘Vanka went to Petersburg,’ and I would give a quadrillion

quadrillions for two seconds of joy. You don’t know me! Oh, how stupid

all this business is! Come, take me instead of him! I didn’t come

for nothing…. Why, why is everything so stupid?…”

And he began slowly, and as it were reflectively, looking round

him again. But the court was all excitement by now. Alyosha rushed

towards him, but the court usher had already seized Ivan by the arm.

“What are you about?” he cried, staring into the man’s face, and

suddenly seizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the

floor. But the police were on the spot and he was seized. He

screamed furiously. And all the time he was being removed, he yelled

and screamed something incoherent.

The whole court was thrown into confusion. I don’t remember

everything as it happened. I was excited myself and could not

follow. I only know that afterwards, when everything was quiet again

and everyone understood what had happened, the court usher came in for

a reprimand, though he very reasonably explained that the witness

had been quite well, that the doctor had seen him an hour ago, when he

had a slight attack of giddiness, but that, until he had come into the

court, he had talked quite consecutively, so that nothing could have

been foreseen-that he had, in fact, insisted on giving evidence.

But before everyone had completely regained their composure and

recovered from this scene, it was followed by another. Katerina

Ivanovna had an attack of hysterics. She sobbed, shrieking loudly, but

refused to leave the court, struggled, and besought them not to remove

her. Suddenly she cried to the President:

“There is more evidence I must give at once … at once! Here is a

document, a letter… take it, read it quickly, quickly! It’s a letter

from that monster… that man there, there!” she pointed to Mitya. “It

was he killed his father, you will see that directly. He wrote to me

how he would kill his father! But the other one is ill, he is ill,

he is delirious!” she kept crying out, beside herself.

The court usher took the document she held out to the President,

and she, dropping into her chair, hiding her face in her hands,

began convulsively and noiselessly sobbing, shaking all over, and

stifling every sound for fear she should be ejected from the court.

The document she had handed up was that letter Mitya had written at

the Metropolis tavern, which Ivan had spoken of as a “mathematical

proof.” Alas! its mathematical conclusiveness was recognised, and

had it not been for that letter, Mitya might have escaped his doom or,

at least, that doom would have been less terrible. It was, I repeat,

difficult to notice every detail. What followed is still confused to

my mind. The President must, I suppose, have at once passed on the

document to the judges, the jury, and the lawyers on both sides. I

only remember how they began examining the witness. On being gently

asked by the President whether she had recovered sufficiently,

Katerina Ivanovna exclaimed impetuously:

“I am ready, I am ready! I am quite equal to answering you,” she

added, evidently still afraid that she would somehow be prevented from

giving evidence. She was asked to explain in detail what this letter

was and under what circumstances she received it.

“I received it the day before the crime was committed, but he

wrote it the day before that, at the tavern-that is, two days

before he committed the crime. Look, it is written on some sort of

bill!” she cried breathlessly. “He hated me at that time, because he

had behaved contemptibly and was running after that creature … and

because he owed me that three thousand…. Oh! he was humiliated by

that three thousand on account of his own meanness! This is how it

happened about that three thousand. I beg you, I beseech you, to

hear me. Three weeks before he murdered his father, he came to me

one morning. I knew he was in want of money, and what he wanted it

for. Yes, yes-to