The Brothers Karamazov

“Now, with your kind permission, I should like to ask you a question,” Fetyukovich said suddenly and quite unexpectedly. “What were the ingredients of that balm, or, so to speak, that infusion, with which you rubbed your suffering lower back, in hopes thereby of being cured, that evening before going to bed, as we know from the preliminary investigation?”

Grigory looked dumbly at the questioner and, after a short silence, muttered:

“There was sage in it.”

“Just sage? You don’t recall anything else?”

“There was plantain, too.”

“And pepper, perhaps?” Fetyukovich inquired further.

“And pepper.”

“And so on. And all steeped in vodka?”

“In spirits.”

A slight laugh flitted through the courtroom.

“So, in spirits no less. After rubbing your back, you drank the rest of the bottle with a certain pious prayer, known only to your wife, is that so?”

“I drank it.”

“Approximately how much did you drink? Just approximately. A shot-glass or two?”

“About a tumbler.”

“About a tumbler no less. Maybe even a tumbler and a half?”

Grigory fell silent. He seemed to have understood something.

“About a tumbler and a half of pure spirits—not bad at all, wouldn’t you say? Enough to see ‘the doors of heaven open,’^[330] not to mention the door to the garden?”

Grigory remained silent. Again a slight laugh went through the courtroom. The judge stirred.

“Do you know for certain,” Fetyukovich was biting deeper and deeper, “whether you were awake or not at the moment when you saw the door to the garden open?”

“I was standing on my feet. “

“That’s no proof that you were awake.” (More and more laughter in the courtroom.) “Could you, for instance, have answered at that moment if someone had asked you something—say, for instance, what year it is?”

“That I don’t know.” “And what year of the present era, what year of our Lord is it—do you know?”

Grigory stood looking bewildered, staring straight at his tormentor. It seemed strange indeed that he apparently did not know what year it was.

“But perhaps you do know how many fingers you have on your hand?”

“I am a subordinate man,” Grigory suddenly said, loudly and distinctly. “If the authorities see fit to deride me, then I must endure it.”

Fetyukovich was a little taken aback, as it were, but the presiding judge also intervened with a didactic reminder to the defense attorney that he ought to ask more appropriate questions. Fetyukovich, having listened, bowed with dignity, and announced that he had no further questions. Of course, both the public and the jury might be left with a small worm of doubt as to the testimony of a man for whom it was possible to “see the doors of heaven” in a certain state of medical treatment, and who, besides, did not know what year of our Lord it was; so that the attorney had nonetheless achieved his goal. But before Grigory stepped down another episode took place. The judge, addressing the defendant, asked whether he had anything to say concerning the present testimony.

“Except for the door, it’s all true as he said,” Mitya cried loudly. “For combing the lice out of my hair, I thank him; for forgiving me my blows, I thank him; the old man has been honest all his life, and was as faithful to my father as seven hundred poodles.”

“Watch your words, defendant,” the judge said sternly.

“I am not a poodle,” Grigory also grumbled.

“Then I am, I am a poodle!” cried Mitya. “If he’s offended, I take it upon myself and ask his forgiveness: I was a beast and cruel to him! I was cruel to Aesop, too.”

“What Aesop?” the judge again picked up sternly.

“That Pierrot ... my father, Fyodor Pavlovich.”

The presiding judge repeated once again to Mitya, imposingly and most sternly now, that he should watch his words more carefully.

“You are harming yourself in the opinion of your judges.”