The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky (the reader ebook txt) 📖

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 defense 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-humored. 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.

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