The Brothers Karamazov

“Two heads are better than one,” the prosecutor prompted impatiently, being long familiar with the old man’s habit of speaking in a slow, drawn-out fashion, without being embarrassed by the impression he produced or by the fact that he was making everyone wait for him, but, on the contrary, prizing all the more his potato-thick and always happily self-satisfied German wit. And the dear old man loved to be witty.

“Oh, y-yes, that’s what I am saying,” he picked up stubbornly, “two heads are much better than one head. But no one came to him with another head, and he even sent his own head for ... How do you say, where did he send it? This word—where he sent his head—I’ve forgotten,” he went on waving his hand in front of his eyes, “ah, yes, spazieren.”

“For a walk?”

“Yes, for a walk, that’s what I am saying. So his head went for a walk and came to some deep place where it lost itself. And yet he was a grateful and sensitive young man, oh, I remember him still as such a tiny boy, left alone in his father’s backyard, where he was running in the dirt without any shoes and just one button on his little britches.”

A certain note of sensitivity and emotion was suddenly heard in the honest old man’s voice. Fetyukovich fairly started, as if anticipating something, and instantly hung on to it.

“Oh, yes, I myself was a young man then ... I was ... well, yes, I was then forty-five years old, and had just come here. And I felt pity for the boy then, and I asked myself: why shouldn’t I buy him a pound of ... well, yes, a pound of what? I forget what it’s called ... a pound of what children like so much, what is it—well, what is it ... ?” the doctor again waved his hand. “It grows on a tree, they gather it and give it to everyone...”

“Apples?”

“Oh, n-n-no! A pound, a pound—apples come in dozens, not pounds ... no, there are many of them, and they are all small, you put them in the mouth and cr-r-rack . . .!”

“Nuts?”

“Well, yes, nuts, that is what I am saying,” the doctor confirmed in the calmest way, as if he had not even been searching for the word, “and I brought the boy a pound of nuts, because no one had ever yet brought the boy a pound of nuts, and I held up my finger and said to him: ‘Boy! Gott der Vater,’ and he laughed and said, ‘Gott der Vater.’ ‘Gott der Sohn.’ Again he laughed and said, ‘Gott der Sohn.’ ‘Gott der heilige Geist.’ Then he laughed again and said as well as he could, ‘Gott der heilige Geist.’^[332] And I left. Two days later I was passing by and he called out to me himself: ‘Hey, uncle, Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn,’ only he forgot ‘Gott der heilige Geist,’ but I reminded him, and again I felt great pity for him. But he was taken away, and I did not see him anymore. And now after twenty-three years have gone by, I am sitting one morning in my study, and my head is already gray, and suddenly a blossoming young man comes in, whom I would never have recognized, but he held up his finger and said, laughing: ‘Gott der Water, Gott der Sohn, und Gott der heilige Geist! I’ve just arrived, and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts; for no one bought me a pound of nuts before; you are the only one who ever bought me a pound of nuts.’ And then I remembered my happy youth, and a poor boy in the yard without any shoes, and my heart turned over, and I said: ‘You are a grateful young man, for all your life you have remembered that pound of nuts I brought you in your childhood.’ And I embraced him and blessed him. And I wept. He was laughing, but he also wept ... for a Russian quite often laughs when he ought to weep. But he wept, too, I saw it. And now, alas...!”

“And I’m weeping now, too, German, I’m weeping now, too, you man of God!” Mitya suddenly cried from his place.

In any event, this little anecdote produced a certain favorable impression on the public. But the major effect in Mitya’s favor was produced by the testimony of Katerina Ivanovna, which I shall come to presently. And, generally, when the witnesses à décharge—that is, called by the defense—began to testify, fate seemed suddenly and even seriously to smile on Mitya and—what is most remarkable—to the surprise even of the defense itself. But before Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha was questioned, and he suddenly recalled one fact that even looked like positive evidence against one most important point of the accusation.

Chapter 4: Fortune Smiles on Mitya