CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
A monologue from the
novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Crime and Punishment. Trans. Constance Garnett. New
York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1917. |
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RAZUMIHIN: Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter
and Koch and Pestryakov and the other porter and the wife of
the first porter and the woman who was sitting in the porter’s
lodge and the man Kryukov, who had just got out of a cab at that
minute and went in at the entry with a lady on his arm, that
is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Nikolay had Dmitri on the
ground, was lying on him beating him, while Dmitri hung on to
his hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking
the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they
"like children" (the very words of the witnesses),
were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing
with the funniest faces and, chasing one another like children,
they ran into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs
were warm, you understand, warm when they had found them! If
they, or Nikolay alone, had murdered them and broken open the
boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me to ask you
one question: do their state of mind, their squeals and giggles
and childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed,
fiendish cunning, robbery? They’d just killed them, not
five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and
at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go
there at once, flinging away their booty they rolled about like
children, laughing and attracting general attention. And there
are a dozen witnesses to swear to that! No, brother. And if the
ear-rings’ being found in Nikolay’s hands at the very
day and hour of the murder constitutes an important piece of
circumstantial evidence against him—although the explanation
given by him accounts for it—one must take into consideration
the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts
that cannot be denied. And do you suppose, from the character
of our legal system, that they will accept, or that they are
in a position to accept, this fact—resting simply on a psychological
impossibility—as irrefutable and conclusively breaking down
the circumstantial evidence for the prosecution? No, they won’t
accept it, they certainly won’t, because they found the
jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself, "which he
could not have done if he hadn’t felt guilty." That’s
the point, that’s what excites me, you must understand!
The real murderer dropped these ear-rings. The murderer was upstairs,
looked in, when Koch and Pestryakov knocked at the door. Koch,
like an ass, did not stay at the door; so the murderer popped
out and ran down, too, for he had no other way of escape. He
hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in the flat when Nikolay
and Dmitri had just run out of it. He stopped there while the
porter and others were going upstairs, waited till they were
out of hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the very minute
when Dmitri and Nikolay ran out into the street and there was
no one in the entry; possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There
are lots of people going in and out. He must have dropped the
ear-rings out of his pocket when he stood behind the door, and
did not notice he dropped them, because he had other things to
think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that he did stand
there …. That’s how I explain it.
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MONOLOGUES BY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY |
