VIII. Трактат о Смердякове

Then, only three persons confirm this accusation: both of the defendant's brothers and Madame Svetlova.

But the defendant's elder brother declared his suspicion only today, in illness, in a fit of indisputable mental derangement and fever, whereas before, throughout the whole two months — as we know for a positive fact — he completely shared the conviction of his brother's guilt and did not even attempt to argue against the idea.

But we shall take this up in particular later on.

Then the defendant's younger brother announces to us himself, just now, that he has no facts whatsoever, not the slightest, in support of his notion of Smerdyakov's guilt, and that he concludes it solely from the defendant's own words and 'from the expression of his face' — yes, this colossal proof was uttered twice just now by his brother.

And Madame Svetlova expressed herself perhaps even more colossally still: 'Whatever the defendant tells you, that you may believe; he is not the kind of man to lie.'

There you have all the factual proofs against Smerdyakov from these three persons, who are far too closely concerned in the defendant's fate.

And yet, all the same, the accusation against Smerdyakov has circulated and held its ground, and still holds it — can one believe this, can one even imagine it?"

Here Ippolit Kirillovich found it necessary to sketch in brief the character of the late Smerdyakov, "who ended his own life in a fit of morbid mental derangement and insanity."

He presented him as a feeble-minded man, with the mere rudiments of some vague education, thrown off balance by philosophical ideas beyond the strength of his mind and frightened by certain modern doctrines of duty and obligation — taught to him broadly in practice by the reckless life of his late master, and perhaps father, Fyodor Pavlovich, and theoretically by various strange philosophical conversations with the master's elder son, Ivan Fyodorovich, who willingly indulged himself in this diversion, probably out of boredom or out of a craving for mockery that had found no better outlet.

"He himself told me about his state of mind during the last days of his stay in his master's house," Ippolit Kirillovich explained, "but others testify to the same thing: the defendant himself, his brother, and even the servant Grigory — that is, all those who must have known him very closely.

Besides, worn down by the falling sickness, Smerdyakov was 'as timid as a hen.'

'He used to fall at my feet and kiss them,' the defendant himself reported to us at a moment when he did not yet realize that there was a certain disadvantage to himself in such a report, 'he is a hen in the falling sickness,' — so he expressed himself about him in his own characteristic idiom.

And it is precisely this man whom the defendant (as he himself testifies) chooses as one of his confidants and intimidates so thoroughly that he at last agrees to serve him as a spy and informer.

In this capacity of household watcher he betrays his master, telling the defendant both about the existence of the packet of money and about the signals by which one could get in to the master — and indeed, how could he have failed to tell him!

'He'll kill me, sir, I saw plainly that he'd kill me, sir,' he said at the inquiry, trembling and quivering even in our presence, despite the fact that the tormentor who had so frightened him was by then himself under arrest and could no longer come to punish him.

'They suspected me every minute, sir; in terror and trembling myself, only to soothe their wrath I would hurry to report every secret to them, sir, so that they might see my innocence before them and let me go alive to do penance, sir.'

These are his own words; I wrote them down and remember them: 'When he would start shouting at me, I'd just drop to my knees before him.'

A young man high-minded by nature, who had thereby won his master's trust — the master having marked that honesty in him when the fellow returned to him the money he had lost — the unhappy Smerdyakov, one must suppose, was tormented dreadfully by remorse at having betrayed the master whom he loved as his benefactor.

Those who suffer severely from the falling sickness are, on the testimony of the most profound psychiatrists, always inclined toward an incessant and, of course, morbid self-accusation.

They torment themselves over their 'guilt' in something and before someone, they are tormented by pangs of conscience, often, even without any grounds whatsoever, they exaggerate and even invent against themselves various sins and crimes.

And now a man of just this sort actually becomes guilty and criminal out of fright and out of intimidation.

Besides, he had a strong foreboding that something untoward might come of the circumstances taking shape before his eyes.

When Fyodor Pavlovich's elder son, Ivan Fyodorovich, was leaving for Moscow just before the catastrophe, Smerdyakov begged him to stay, not daring, however — in keeping with his timorous habit — to lay out for him all his apprehensions in a clear and definite form.

He contented himself merely with hints, but the hints were not understood.

It must be noted that in Ivan Fyodorovich he saw, as it were, his protection, a kind of guarantee that while the man was at home no calamity would occur.

Recall the phrase in Dmitri Karamazov's 'drunken' letter: 'I'll kill the old man, the moment Ivan leaves'; so the presence of Ivan Fyodorovich seemed to everyone, as it were, a guarantee of quiet and order in the house.

And so he goes off, and Smerdyakov at once, almost within an hour of the young master's departure, is struck down by the falling sickness.

But this is entirely understandable.

Here it must be mentioned that, weighed down by fears and by a kind of despair, Smerdyakov in those last days felt with special keenness within himself the possibility that a fit of the falling sickness was approaching — a fit which even before had always come upon him in moments of moral strain and shock.

The day and the hour of these fits cannot, of course, be foretold, but the predisposition to a fit every epileptic can feel within himself beforehand.

So medicine tells us.

And so, the moment Ivan Fyodorovich drives out of the yard, Smerdyakov, under the impression of his — so to speak — orphanhood and his defenselessness, goes down to the cellar on a household errand, descends the stairs, and thinks: 'Will the fit come or won't it, and what if it comes right now?'

And it is precisely from this mood, from this apprehensiveness, from these very questions that the spasm in the throat — which always precedes the falling sickness — seizes him, and he plunges headlong, unconscious, to the bottom of the cellar.

And now in this most natural of accidents they contrive to see some sort of suspicion, some sort of indication, some sort of hint that he had ''deliberately'' feigned illness!

But if deliberately, then at once the question arises: what for?

Out of what calculation, with what aim?

I will say nothing of medicine now; science, they say, lies, science is mistaken, the doctors could not tell the truth from pretense — granted, granted; but answer me this question nonetheless: what reason had he to pretend?

Was it perhaps in order, having planned the murder, to draw attention to himself in the house beforehand and as quickly as possible by means of the fit that befell him?

Consider, gentlemen of the jury, that on the night of the crime there were five persons in Fyodor Pavlovich's house, or who passed through it: first, Fyodor Pavlovich himself, but of course he did not kill himself, that is clear; second, his servant Grigory, but he was the very man nearly murdered; third, Grigory's wife, the maidservant Marfa Ignatyevna, but to picture her as the murderer of her master is simply shameful.

There remain, then, two persons in view: the defendant and Smerdyakov.

But since the defendant insists that he is not the killer, then Smerdyakov must have been the one to kill — there is no other way out, for no one else can be found, no other murderer can be turned up.

There, there is the source, then, of this 'cunning' and colossal accusation against the unfortunate idiot who made away with himself yesterday!

Solely and only because there is no one else to lay hold of!

Were there but the shadow, but a suspicion, of someone else, of some sixth person, then I am convinced that even the defendant himself would have been ashamed to point to Smerdyakov then, and would have pointed to that sixth person — for to accuse Smerdyakov of this murder is a perfect absurdity.

Gentlemen, let us set aside psychology, let us set aside medicine, let us set aside even logic itself, and turn only to the facts, to the facts alone, and see what the facts will tell us.

Smerdyakov killed him — but how?

Alone, or in concert with the defendant?

Let us first consider the former case, that is, that Smerdyakov kills him alone.

Of course, if he killed, then it was for some purpose, for some gain.

But, having not the shadow of the kind of motives for murder that the defendant had — that is, hatred, jealousy, and so on, and so on — Smerdyakov could, beyond doubt, have killed only for the sake of money, in order to appropriate to himself precisely those three thousand which he himself had watched his master pack into the packet.