II. Опасные свидетели

There must have been some such arrangement.

I know only that it was the prosecution's witnesses who were called first.

I repeat, I do not intend to describe every examination step by step.

Besides, my account would prove in part superfluous, because in the speeches of the prosecutor and of the defence counsel, once the closing arguments began, the whole drift and sense of all the evidence given and heard was drawn together, as it were, into a single point under a vivid and characteristic light; and these two remarkable speeches I set down, at least in places, in full, and shall pass them on in due course — together with one extraordinary and wholly unexpected episode of the trial, which broke out suddenly even before the closing arguments and which undoubtedly influenced its grim and fatal outcome.

I will only remark that, from the very first minutes of the trial, a certain peculiar character of this 'case' came out sharply, noticed by everyone — namely, the extraordinary strength of the prosecution as against the means at the defence's disposal.

Everyone grasped this in the first instant, when in that fearsome courtroom the facts began to gather and group themselves, condensing, and the whole of this horror, all this blood, began bit by bit to surface.

It became plain to all, perhaps, from the very first steps, that this was no contested matter at all, that there was no room for doubt here, that in essence there was no need of any arguments whatever, that the closing speeches would be a mere formality, and that the criminal was guilty — plainly guilty, conclusively guilty.

I even think that all the ladies, every single one of them, who had so impatiently longed for the acquittal of the interesting defendant, were at the same time perfectly convinced of his complete guilt.

What is more, it seems to me they would even have been distressed had his guilt not been so firmly established, for then there would have been no such effect in the dénouement, when the criminal is acquitted.

And that he would be acquitted — of this, strange to say, all the ladies were conclusively persuaded almost up to the very last minute: 'guilty, but they will acquit him out of humanity, out of the new ideas, the new sentiments now in fashion,' and so on, and so on.

That was the very reason they had come flocking here with such impatience.

The men, for their part, were most interested in the duel between the prosecutor and the celebrated Fetyukovitch.

Everyone marvelled and asked themselves: what could even a talent like Fetyukovitch make of so lost a cause, of an egg so thoroughly sucked dry? — and so they followed his exploits step by step with strained attention.

But Fetyukovitch, right up to the very end, up to his own speech, remained a riddle to everyone.

Experienced men sensed that he had a system, that something had already taken shape in his mind, that he had a goal ahead of him — but what it was, to guess that was all but impossible.

His confidence and self-assurance were, however, striking to the eye.

Moreover, everyone noted at once, with pleasure, that in so brief a stay among us — all of some three days, perhaps — he had managed to acquaint himself wonderfully with the case and 'had studied it down to the finest detail.'

Afterwards people recounted with relish, for instance, how he had contrived to 'trip up' all the prosecution's witnesses at the right moment and, as far as possible, to throw them off — and, above all, to smear their moral reputations, and thereby, of course, to smear their testimony as well.

It was supposed, however, that he was doing this at most for the play of it, for a kind of legal brilliance, so to speak — so that none of the accepted advocate's devices should be left unused; for everyone was convinced that he could gain no real, decisive advantage by all these 'smearings,' and that he himself, in all likelihood, understood this better than anyone, holding some idea of his own in reserve, some weapon of the defence still kept hidden away, which he would suddenly reveal when the time came.

But for the moment, conscious all the same of his strength, he seemed to be playing and frolicking.

Thus, for example, when they were questioning Grigory Vassilyev, the late Fyodor Pavlovitch's former valet, who gave the most crucial testimony about 'the door standing open into the garden,' the defence counsel fastened upon him the moment his own turn came to put questions.

It should be noted that Grigory Vassilyevitch stepped into the courtroom not in the least disconcerted, neither by the majesty of the court nor by the presence of the vast public that listened to him, with an air calm and almost stately.

He gave his testimony with as much assurance as if he were conversing alone with his own Marfa Ignatyevna — only, perhaps, more respectfully.

To throw him off was impossible.

First the prosecutor questioned him at length about all the particulars of the Karamazov household.

The family picture stood out vividly.

One could hear and see that the witness was simple-hearted and impartial.

For all his most profound reverence toward the memory of his late master, he nonetheless declared, for instance, that the man had been unjust to Mitya and 'did not raise his children right. As a little boy, but for me, the lice would have eaten him alive,' he added, recounting Mitya's childhood years. 'It was wrong, too, for a father to wrong his son over the boy's mother's estate, his patrimony.'

When the prosecutor asked him what grounds he had for asserting that Fyodor Pavlovitch had cheated his son in the reckoning, Grigory Vassilyevitch, to everyone's astonishment, could produce no solid evidence at all, yet still stood his ground that the settlement with the son had been 'unfair' and that the master 'most certainly ought to have paid him a few thousand more.'

I will remark, by the way, that this question — whether Fyodor Pavlovitch had in fact underpaid Mitya anything — the prosecutor afterwards put with peculiar insistence to all the witnesses he could put it to, not excepting Alyosha or Ivan Fyodorovitch; but from none of the witnesses did he obtain any precise information: all of them affirmed the fact, and not one could offer even the slightest clear proof.

After Grigory had described the scene at the table, when Dmitri Fyodorovitch had burst in and beaten his father, threatening to come back and kill him, a gloomy impression swept through the hall — all the more so because the old servant told it calmly, without superfluous words, in his own peculiar idiom, and it came out terribly eloquent.

As for the offence Mitya had done him — striking him in the face that time and knocking him off his feet — he remarked that he bore no grudge and had long since forgiven it.

Of the late Smerdyakov he spoke, crossing himself, that the fellow had ability, but was stupid and oppressed by his illness, and worse still a godless man, and that it was Fyodor Pavlovitch and the elder son who had taught him his godlessness.

But of Smerdyakov's honesty he testified almost with warmth, and at once related how Smerdyakov, in time gone by, having found some money the master had dropped, had not kept it hidden but brought it to his master, who for this 'gave him a gold piece' and thenceforth began to trust him in everything.

The open garden door he affirmed with stubborn insistence.

However, they questioned him at such length that I cannot recall it all.

At last the examination passed to the defence counsel, and his first move was to begin inquiring about the packet in which Fyodor Pavlovitch had 'supposedly' hidden three thousand roubles for 'a certain person.'

'Did you see it yourself — you, a man so many years close in service to your master?'

Grigory answered that he had not seen it, nor had he heard of any such money at all from anyone, 'until everybody started talking of it now.'

This question about the packet Fetyukovitch, for his part, likewise put to everyone among the witnesses he could ask about it, with the same insistence with which the prosecutor put his question about the division of the estate; and from all of them he too received only the one answer — that no one had seen the packet, though very many had heard of it.

This insistence of the defence counsel on the point was noticed by everyone from the very start.

'Now may I be permitted to turn to you with a question, if only you will allow it,' Fetyukovitch asked suddenly and quite unexpectedly — 'what was that balsam made of, or, so to speak, that tincture, by means of which you, on that evening, before bed — as is known from the preliminary investigation — rubbed your aching back, hoping thereby to cure it?'

Grigory stared dully at his questioner and, after a brief silence, muttered:

'There was sage put in it.'

'Only sage? Can you not recall anything else?'

'There was plantain too.'

'And pepper, perhaps?' Fetyukovitch inquired with curiosity.

'There was pepper too.'

'And so on. And all of it in vodka?'

'In spirits.'

A faint titter ran through the hall.

'You see, in spirits, no less. And, having rubbed your back, you were good enough to drink the rest of the bottle's contents, with a certain pious little prayer known only to your wife — was that not so?'

'I drank it.'

'About how much did you drink, roughly? Roughly? A glass or two?'

'It would come to a tumblerful.'

'Even a whole tumbler. Maybe a tumbler and a half?'

Grigory fell silent. He seemed to have understood something.