The Brothers Karamazov
“I did think so,” answered Alyosha, softly.
“It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn’t you fancy
then that what I wished was just that ‘one reptile should devour
another’; that is, just that Dmitri should kill father, and as soon as
possible ... and that I myself was even prepared to help to bring that
about?”
Alyosha turned rather pale, and looked silently into his brother’s
face.
“Speak!” cried Ivan, “I want above everything to know what you thought
then. I want the truth, the truth!”
He drew a deep breath, looking angrily at Alyosha before his answer
came.
“Forgive me, I did think that, too, at the time,” whispered Alyosha,
and he did not add one softening phrase.
“Thanks,” snapped Ivan, and, leaving Alyosha, he went quickly on his
way. From that time Alyosha noticed that Ivan began obviously to avoid
him and seemed even to have taken a dislike to him, so much so that
Alyosha gave up going to see him. Immediately after that meeting with
him, Ivan had not gone home, but went straight to Smerdyakov again.
Chapter VII.
The Second Visit To Smerdyakov
By that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan
knew his new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in
two by a passage on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her
mother, and on the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he
lived with them, whether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed
afterwards that he had come to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna’s
betrothed, and was living there for a time without paying for board or
lodging. Both mother and daughter had the greatest respect for him and
looked upon him as greatly superior to themselves.
Ivan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the
passage. By Marya Kondratyevna’s directions he went straight to the
better room on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled
stove in the room and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with
blue paper, which was a good deal used however, and in the cracks under
it cockroaches swarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a
continual rustling from them. The furniture was very scanty: two
benches against each wall and two chairs by the table. The table of
plain wood was covered with a cloth with pink patterns on it. There was
a pot of geranium on each of the two little windows. In the corner
there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a little copper samovar
with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had
finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the table on a
bench. He was looking at an exercise-book and slowly writing with a
pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick, but
with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov’s face that
he had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher,
fuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at
the sides. He was sitting in a parti-colored, wadded dressing-gown,
rather dirty and frayed, however. He had spectacles on his nose, which
Ivan had never seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance
suddenly redoubled Ivan’s anger: “A creature like that and wearing
spectacles!”
Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor
through his spectacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the
bench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least
possible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan instantly;
he took it all in and noted it at once—most of all the look in
Smerdyakov’s eyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. “What do
you want to intrude for?” it seemed to say; “we settled everything
then; why have you come again?” Ivan could scarcely control himself.
“It’s hot here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.
“Take off your coat,” Smerdyakov conceded.
Ivan took off his coat and threw it on a bench with trembling hands. He
took a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov
managed to sit down on his bench before him.
“To begin with, are we alone?” Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. “Can
they overhear us in there?”
“No one can hear anything. You’ve seen for yourself: there’s a
passage.”
“Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving
the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming
fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation
at the gate? What do you mean by _all_? What could you mean by it? Were
you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you?
Do you suppose I am afraid of you?”
Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious
intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to
show his cards. Smerdyakov’s eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye
winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and
deliberation. “You want to have everything above-board; very well, you
shall have it,” he seemed to say.
“This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you,
knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his
fate, and that people mightn’t after that conclude any evil about your
feelings and perhaps of something else, too—that’s what I promised not
to tell the authorities.”
Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling
himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic,
resentful and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist
passed before Ivan’s eyes for the first moment.
“How? What? Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m perfectly in possession of all my faculties.”
“Do you suppose I _knew_ of the murder?” Ivan cried at last, and he
brought his fist violently on the table. “What do you mean by
‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!”
Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent
stare.
“Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that ‘something else, too’?”
“The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably, too, were very
desirous of your parent’s death.”
Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so
that he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed
in tears. Saying, “It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,” he dried
his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet
weeping. A minute passed.
“That’s enough! Leave off,” Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again.
“Don’t put me out of all patience.”
Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face
reflected the insult he had just received.
“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant
to kill my father?”
“I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,” said Smerdyakov
resentfully; “and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on
that very point.”
“To sound what, what?”
“Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be
murdered or not.”
What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent
tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.
“It was you murdered him?” he cried suddenly.
Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.
“You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I
should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak
of it again.”
“But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?”
“As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a
position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to
sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother,
then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a
fly, too.”
“Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.”
“I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought
you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible
man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.”
“What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I
have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?”
“As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but
as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did
want.”
“And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it;
what grounds had I for wanting it?”
“What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?” said Smerdyakov
sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively. “Why, after your parent’s
death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and
very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that
lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made
over to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense, so
that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three
of you. And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair’s-breadth:
that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run
after her to church, with his tongue out.”
Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.
“Very good,” he commented at last. “You see, I haven’t jumped up, I
haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed you. Speak on. So, according
to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?”
“How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would
lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go
off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and
your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you’d each have not
forty, but sixty thousand each. There’s not a doubt you did reckon on
Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”
“What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on
any one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I
did expect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my
impression!”
“I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on
me as well,” said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. “So that it was
just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind.
For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as
said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!’”
“You scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”
“It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to
Moscow and refused all your father’s entreaties to go to
Tchermashnya—and simply at a foolish word from me you consented at
once! What reason had you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to
Tchermashnya with no reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must
have expected something from me.”
“No, I swear I didn’t!” shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.
“You didn’t? Then you ought, as your father’s son, to have had me taken
to the lock-up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least,
to have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a
bit angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my
foolish word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to
have stayed to save your parent’s life. How could I help drawing my
conclusions?”
Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.
“Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a bitter
smile. “I couldn’t have taken you to the lock-up just then. Who would
have believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the
punch in the face ... oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. Though blows
are forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly.”
Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.
“In the ordinary occasions of life,” he said in the same complacent and
sententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and argued with him