The Brothers Karamazov
it were from America, you may be sure of that. I’ll come on purpose. It
will be very interesting to have a look at you, to see what you’ll be
by that time. It’s rather a solemn promise, you see. And we really may
be parting for seven years or ten. Come, go now to your Pater
Seraphicus, he is dying. If he dies without you, you will be angry with
me for having kept you. Good-by, kiss me once more; that’s right, now
go.”
Ivan turned suddenly and went his way without looking back. It was just
as Dmitri had left Alyosha the day before, though the parting had been
very different. The strange resemblance flashed like an arrow through
Alyosha’s mind in the distress and dejection of that moment. He waited
a little, looking after his brother. He suddenly noticed that Ivan
swayed as he walked and that his right shoulder looked lower than his
left. He had never noticed it before. But all at once he turned too,
and almost ran to the monastery. It was nearly dark, and he felt almost
frightened; something new was growing up in him for which he could not
account. The wind had risen again as on the previous evening, and the
ancient pines murmured gloomily about him when he entered the hermitage
copse. He almost ran. “Pater Seraphicus—he got that name from
somewhere—where from?” Alyosha wondered. “Ivan, poor Ivan, and when
shall I see you again?... Here is the hermitage. Yes, yes, that he is,
Pater Seraphicus, he will save me—from him and for ever!”
Several times afterwards he wondered how he could on leaving Ivan so
completely forget his brother Dmitri, though he had that morning, only
a few hours before, so firmly resolved to find him and not to give up
doing so, even should he be unable to return to the monastery that
night.
Chapter VI.
For Awhile A Very Obscure One
And Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s
house. But, strange to say, he was overcome by insufferable depression,
which grew greater at every step he took towards the house. There was
nothing strange in his being depressed; what was strange was that Ivan
could not have said what was the cause of it. He had often been
depressed before, and there was nothing surprising at his feeling so at
such a moment, when he had broken off with everything that had brought
him here, and was preparing that day to make a new start and enter upon
a new, unknown future. He would again be as solitary as ever, and
though he had great hopes, and great—too great—expectations from life,
he could not have given any definite account of his hopes, his
expectations, or even his desires.
Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown
certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was something
quite different. “Is it loathing for my father’s house?” he wondered.
“Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it’s the last time I
shall cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it.... No, it’s not
that either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the conversation I had
with him? For so many years I’ve been silent with the whole world and
not deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel off a rigmarole like
that.” It certainly might have been the youthful vexation of youthful
inexperience and vanity—vexation at having failed to express himself,
especially with such a being as Alyosha, on whom his heart had
certainly been reckoning. No doubt that came in, that vexation, it must
have done indeed; but yet that was not it, that was not it either. “I
feel sick with depression and yet I can’t tell what I want. Better not
think, perhaps.”
Ivan tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. What made his
depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of
casual, external character—he felt that. Some person or thing seemed to
be standing out somewhere, just as something will sometimes obtrude
itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy with work or
conversation that for a long time one does not notice it, yet it
irritates and almost torments one till at last one realizes, and
removes the offending object, often quite a trifling and ridiculous
one—some article left about in the wrong place, a handkerchief on the
floor, a book not replaced on the shelf, and so on.
At last, feeling very cross and ill-humored, Ivan arrived home, and
suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed what was
fretting and worrying him.
On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting enjoying the
coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him Ivan knew that
the valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was this man that his
soul loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and became clear. Just
before, when Alyosha had been telling him of his meeting with
Smerdyakov, he had felt a sudden twinge of gloom and loathing, which
had immediately stirred responsive anger in his heart. Afterwards, as
he talked, Smerdyakov had been forgotten for the time; but still he had
been in his mind, and as soon as Ivan parted with Alyosha and was
walking home, the forgotten sensation began to obtrude itself again.
“Is it possible that a miserable, contemptible creature like that can
worry me so much?” he wondered, with insufferable irritation.
It was true that Ivan had come of late to feel an intense dislike for
the man, especially during the last few days. He had even begun to
notice in himself a growing feeling that was almost of hatred for the
creature. Perhaps this hatred was accentuated by the fact that when
Ivan first came to the neighborhood he had felt quite differently. Then
he had taken a marked interest in Smerdyakov, and had even thought him
very original. He had encouraged him to talk to him, although he had
always wondered at a certain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in
his mind, and could not understand what it was that so continually and
insistently worked upon the brain of “the contemplative.” They
discussed philosophical questions and even how there could have been
light on the first day when the sun, moon, and stars were only created
on the fourth day, and how that was to be understood. But Ivan soon saw
that, though the sun, moon, and stars might be an interesting subject,
yet that it was quite secondary to Smerdyakov, and that he was looking
for something altogether different. In one way and another, he began to
betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too, and that Ivan
disliked. It had first given rise to his aversion. Later on, there had
been trouble in the house. Grushenka had come on the scene, and there
had been the scandals with his brother Dmitri—they discussed that, too.
But though Smerdyakov always talked of that with great excitement, it
was impossible to discover what he desired to come of it. There was, in
fact, something surprising in the illogicality and incoherence of some
of his desires, accidentally betrayed and always vaguely expressed.
Smerdyakov was always inquiring, putting certain indirect but obviously
premeditated questions, but what his object was he did not explain, and
usually at the most important moment he would break off and relapse
into silence or pass to another subject. But what finally irritated
Ivan most and confirmed his dislike for him was the peculiar, revolting
familiarity which Smerdyakov began to show more and more markedly. Not
that he forgot himself and was rude; on the contrary, he always spoke
very respectfully, yet he had obviously begun to consider—goodness
knows why!—that there was some sort of understanding between him and
Ivan Fyodorovitch. He always spoke in a tone that suggested that those
two had some kind of compact, some secret between them, that had at
some time been expressed on both sides, only known to them and beyond
the comprehension of those around them. But for a long while Ivan did
not recognize the real cause of his growing dislike and he had only
lately realized what was at the root of it.
With a feeling of disgust and irritation he tried to pass in at the
gate without speaking or looking at Smerdyakov. But Smerdyakov rose
from the bench, and from that action alone, Ivan knew instantly that he
wanted particularly to talk to him. Ivan looked at him and stopped, and
the fact that he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to the
minute before, drove him to fury. With anger and repulsion he looked at
Smerdyakov’s emasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed
forward on his forehead. His left eye winked and he grinned as if to
say, “Where are you going? You won’t pass by; you see that we two
clever people have something to say to each other.”
Ivan shook. “Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?”
was on the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard
himself say, “Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?”
He asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at
once, again to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant
he felt almost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov
stood facing him, his hands behind his back, looking at him with
assurance and almost severity.
“His honor is still asleep,” he articulated deliberately (“You were the
first to speak, not I,” he seemed to say). “I am surprised at you,
sir,” he added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting
his right foot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.
“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing
his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realizing, with disgust,
that he was feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account,
have gone away without satisfying it.
“Why don’t you go to Tchermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov suddenly raised his
eyes and smiled familiarly. “Why I smile you must understand of
yourself, if you are a clever man,” his screwed-up left eye seemed to
say.
“Why should I go to Tchermashnya?” Ivan asked in surprise.
Smerdyakov was silent again.
“Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to,” he said at last,
slowly and apparently attaching no significance to his answer. “I put
you off with a secondary reason,” he seemed to suggest, “simply to say
something.”
“Damn you! Speak out what you want!” Ivan cried angrily at last,
passing from meekness to violence.
Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled himself up, but
still looked at him with the same serenity and the same little smile.
“Substantially nothing—but just by way of conversation.”
Another silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a minute. Ivan
knew that he ought to get up and show anger, and Smerdyakov stood
before him and seemed to be waiting as though to see whether he would
be angry or not. So at least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get
up. Smerdyakov seemed to seize the moment.
“I’m in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don’t know how to help
myself,” he said resolutely and distinctly, and at his last word he
sighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.
“They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than little children,”
Smerdyakov went on. “I am speaking of your parent and your brother
Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Here Fyodor Pavlovitch will get up directly and
begin worrying me every minute, ‘Has she come? Why hasn’t she come?’
and so on up till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agrafena
Alexandrovna doesn’t come (for very likely she does not mean to come at
all) then he will be at me again to-morrow morning, ‘Why hasn’t she
come? When will she come?’—as though I were to blame for it. On the
other side it’s no better. As soon as it gets dark, or even before,
your brother will appear with his gun in his hands: ‘Look out, you
rogue, you soup-maker. If you miss her and don’t let me know she’s
been—I’ll kill you before any one.’ When the night’s over, in the