The Brothers Karamazov

“I’m like that peasant girl, Your Honor ... you know how it goes: ‘I’ll jump if I want, and I won’t if I don’t.’ They go after her with some sarafan or wedding skirt or whatever, asking her to jump up so they can tie it around her and take her to church to be married, and she says: ‘I’ll jump if I want, and I won’t if I don’t . . .’It’s some sort of folk custom . . .” “What do you mean to say by that?” the judge asked sternly.

“Here ... ,”Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly pulled out a wad of money, “here is the money ... the same money that was in that envelope,” he nodded towards the table with the material evidence, “and on account of which my father was murdered. Where shall I put it? Marshal, please hand it to him.”

The marshal took the entire wad and handed it to the judge.

“How could this money possibly end up in your possession ... if it is the same money?” the judge said in surprise.

“I got it from Smerdyakov, the murderer, yesterday. I visited him before he hanged himself. It was he who killed father, not my brother. He killed him, and killed him on my instructions ... Who doesn’t wish for his father’s death ... ?”

“Are you in your right mind?” inadvertently escaped from the judge.

“The thing is that I am precisely in my right mind ... my vile mind, the same as you, and all these ... m-mugs!” he suddenly turned to the public. “A murdered father, and they pretend to be frightened,” he growled with fierce contempt. “They pull faces to each other. Liars! Everyone wants his father dead. Viper devours viper ... If there were no parricide, they’d all get angry and go home in a foul temper ... Circuses! ‘Bread and circuses!”^[333] And me, I’m a good one! Is there some water? Give me a drink, for Christ’s sake!” he suddenly clutched his head.

The marshal at once approached him. Alyosha suddenly jumped up and shouted: “He’s sick, don’t believe him, he’s delirious!” Katerina Ivanovna rose impetuously from her chair and, motionless with horror, looked at Ivan Fyodorovich. Mitya stood up and, with a sort of wild, twisted smile, looked and listened greedily to his brother.

“Calm yourselves, I’m not mad, I’m simply a murderer!” Ivan began again. “One really cannot expect eloquence from a murderer ... ,” he suddenly added for some reason, with a twisted laugh.

The prosecutor, visibly perturbed, leaned over to the presiding judge. The members of the court fidgeted and whispered among themselves. Fetyukovich pricked up his ears, listening attentively. The courtroom was frozen in expectation. The judge suddenly came to his senses, as it were.

“Witness, your words are incomprehensible and impossible in this place. Calm yourself if you can, and tell us ... if you really have anything to tell. How can you confirm such a confession ... if in fact you are not raving?”

“That’s the trouble, I have no witnesses. That dog Smerdyakov won’t send you evidence from the other world ... in an envelope. You keep asking for envelopes, as if one wasn’t enough. I have no witnesses ... except one, perhaps,” he smiled pensively. “Who is your witness?”

“He’s got a tail, Your Honor, you’d find him inadmissible! Le diable n’existe point!^[334] Pay no mind to him, he’s a wretched, paltry devil,” he added, confidentially, as it were, and suddenly stopped laughing. “He’s sure to be here somewhere, there, under the table with the material evidence, where else would he be sitting? You see, listen to me: I told him I would not keep silent, and he started telling me about the geological cataclysm ... what rot! Well, set the monster free ... he’s begun his hymn, because he finds it all so easy. The same as if some drunken lout started bawling that ‘Vanka’s gone to Petersburg,’ but I’d give a quadrillion quadrillion for two seconds of joy. You don’t know me! Oh, how stupid this all is! Well, take me instead of him! I must have come for some reason ... Why, why is everything in the world so stupid...!”

And again, slowly, pensively, as it were, he began looking around the courtroom. But by then all was astir. Alyosha rushed to him from his place, but the marshal had already seized Ivan Fyodorovich by the arm.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ivan Fyodorovich exclaimed, staring straight into the marshal’s face, and suddenly, seizing him by the shoulders, he flung him violently to the floor. But the guards were already there, he was seized, and then he cried out with a frenzied cry.^[335] And all the while he was being taken away, he kept shouting and crying out something incoherent.