The Brothers Karamazov
realized his presence and felt an irresistible impulse to knock him
down. At that moment they met, and the peasant with a violent lurch
fell full tilt against Ivan, who pushed him back furiously. The peasant
went flying backwards and fell like a log on the frozen ground. He
uttered one plaintive “O—oh!” and then was silent. Ivan stepped up to
him. He was lying on his back, without movement or consciousness. “He
will be frozen,” thought Ivan, and he went on his way to Smerdyakov’s.
In the passage, Marya Kondratyevna, who ran out to open the door with a
candle in her hand, whispered that Smerdyakov was very ill, “It’s not
that he’s laid up, but he seems not himself, and he even told us to
take the tea away; he wouldn’t have any.”
“Why, does he make a row?” asked Ivan coarsely.
“Oh, dear, no, quite the contrary, he’s very quiet. Only please don’t
talk to him too long,” Marya Kondratyevna begged him. Ivan opened the
door and stepped into the room.
It was over-heated as before, but there were changes in the room. One
of the benches at the side had been removed, and in its place had been
put a large old mahogany leather sofa, on which a bed had been made up,
with fairly clean white pillows. Smerdyakov was sitting on the sofa,
wearing the same dressing-gown. The table had been brought out in front
of the sofa, so that there was hardly room to move. On the table lay a
thick book in yellow cover, but Smerdyakov was not reading it. He
seemed to be sitting doing nothing. He met Ivan with a slow silent
gaze, and was apparently not at all surprised at his coming. There was
a great change in his face; he was much thinner and sallower. His eyes
were sunken and there were blue marks under them.
“Why, you really are ill?” Ivan stopped short. “I won’t keep you long,
I won’t even take off my coat. Where can one sit down?”
He went to the other end of the table, moved up a chair and sat down on
it.
“Why do you look at me without speaking? I’ve only come with one
question, and I swear I won’t go without an answer. Has the young lady,
Katerina Ivanovna, been with you?”
Smerdyakov still remained silent, looking quietly at Ivan as before.
Suddenly, with a motion of his hand, he turned his face away.
“What’s the matter with you?” cried Ivan.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”
“Yes, she has. It’s no matter to you. Let me alone.”
“No, I won’t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?”
“Why, I’d quite forgotten about her,” said Smerdyakov, with a scornful
smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look
of frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their
last interview, a month before.
“You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don’t look like
yourself,” he said to Ivan.
“Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.”
“But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you
so worried?” He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.
“Listen; I’ve told you I won’t go away without an answer!” Ivan cried,
intensely irritated.
“Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?” said Smerdyakov,
with a look of suffering.
“Damn it! I’ve nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I’ll
go away.”
“I’ve no answer to give you,” said Smerdyakov, looking down again.
“You may be sure I’ll make you answer!”
“Why are you so uneasy?” Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with
contempt, but almost with repulsion. “Is this because the trial begins
to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can’t you believe that at last?
Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don’t be afraid of anything.”
“I don’t understand you.... What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?”
Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear
did in fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.
“You don’t understand?” he drawled reproachfully. “It’s a strange thing
a sensible man should care to play such a farce!”
Ivan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly supercilious
tone of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in
itself. He had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.
“I tell you, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I won’t say anything about
you; there’s no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling!
Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, _you_ did not murder
him.”
Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha.
“I know it was not I,” he faltered.
“Do you?” Smerdyakov caught him up again.
Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.
“Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!”
Smerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes on
Ivan with insane hatred.
“Well, it was you who murdered him, if that’s it,” he whispered
furiously.
Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something. He laughed
malignantly.
“You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?”
“You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you
understand it now.”
“All I understand is that you are mad.”
“Aren’t you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what’s the use of
going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to
throw it all on me, to my face? _You_ murdered him; you are the real
murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was
following your words I did it.”
“_Did_ it? Why, did you murder him?” Ivan turned cold.
Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over
with a cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly;
probably the genuineness of Ivan’s horror struck him.
“You don’t mean to say you really did not know?” he faltered
mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still
gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.
Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg;
I won’t wait till he comes back,
suddenly echoed in his head.
“Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting
before me,” he muttered.
“There’s no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No doubt he is
here, that third, between us.”
“Who is he? Who is here? What third person?” Ivan cried in alarm,
looking about him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.
“That third is God Himself—Providence. He is the third beside us now.
Only don’t look for Him, you won’t find Him.”
“It’s a lie that you killed him!” Ivan cried madly. “You are mad, or
teasing me again!”
Smerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of fear. He
could still scarcely get over his incredulity; he still fancied that
Ivan knew everything and was trying to “throw it all on him to his
face.”
“Wait a minute,” he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly bringing
up his left leg from under the table, he began turning up his trouser
leg. He was wearing long white stockings and slippers. Slowly he took
off his garter and fumbled to the bottom of his stocking. Ivan gazed at
him, and suddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of terror.
“He’s mad!” he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so that he
knocked his back against the wall and stood up against it, stiff and
straight. He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who, entirely
unaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking, as though
he were making an effort to get hold of something with his fingers and
pull it out. At last he got hold of it and began pulling it out. Ivan
saw that it was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of papers.
Smerdyakov pulled it out and laid it on the table.
“Here,” he said quietly.
“What is it?” asked Ivan, trembling.
“Kindly look at it,” Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone.
Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began
unfolding it, but suddenly he drew back his fingers, as though from
contact with a loathsome reptile.
“Your hands keep twitching,” observed Smerdyakov, and he deliberately
unfolded the bundle himself. Under the wrapper were three packets of
hundred-rouble notes.
“They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not count
them. Take them,” Smerdyakov suggested to Ivan, nodding at the notes.
Ivan sank back in his chair. He was as white as a handkerchief.
“You frightened me ... with your stocking,” he said, with a strange
grin.
“Can you really not have known till now?” Smerdyakov asked once more.
“No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother, brother! Ach!”
He suddenly clutched his head in both hands.
“Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother’s help or without?”
“It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri
Fyodorovitch is quite innocent.”
“All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on trembling?
I can’t speak properly.”
“You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’ and how
frightened you are now,” Smerdyakov muttered in surprise. “Won’t you
have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very refreshing.
Only I must hide this first.”
And again he motioned at the notes. He was just going to get up and
call at the door to Marya Kondratyevna to make some lemonade and bring
it them, but, looking for something to cover up the notes that she
might not see them, he first took out his handkerchief, and as it
turned out to be very dirty, took up the big yellow book that Ivan had
noticed at first lying on the table, and put it over the notes. The
book was _The Sayings of the Holy Father Isaac the Syrian_. Ivan read
it mechanically.
“I won’t have any lemonade,” he said. “Talk of me later. Sit down and
tell me how you did it. Tell me all about it.”
“You’d better take off your greatcoat, or you’ll be too hot.” Ivan, as
though he’d only just thought of it, took off his coat, and, without
getting up from his chair, threw it on the bench.
“Speak, please, speak.”
He seemed calmer. He waited, feeling sure that Smerdyakov would tell
him _all_ about it.
“How it was done?” sighed Smerdyakov. “It was done in a most natural
way, following your very words.”
“Of my words later,” Ivan broke in again, apparently with complete
self-possession, firmly uttering his words, and not shouting as
before. “Only tell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it
happened. Don’t forget anything. The details, above everything, the
details, I beg you.”
“You’d gone away, then I fell into the cellar.”
“In a fit or in a sham one?”
“A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps
to the very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a
scream, and struggled, till they carried me out.”
“Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the
hospital?”
“No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the
hospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I’ve had for
years. For two days I was quite unconscious.”
“All right, all right. Go on.”
“They laid me on the bed. I knew I’d be the other side of the
partition, for whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me
there, near them. She’s always been very kind to me, from my birth up.
At night I moaned, but quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to
come.”
“Expecting him? To come to you?”
“Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I’d no doubt
that he’d come that night, for being without me and getting no news,
he’d be sure to come and climb over the fence, as he used to, and do
something.”
“And if he hadn’t come?”
“Then nothing would have happened. I should never have brought myself
to it without him.”
“All right, all right ... speak more intelligibly, don’t hurry; above
all, don’t leave anything out!”
“I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that was certain,
for I had prepared him for it ... during the last few days.... He knew