The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (reading an ebook TXT) 📗

Chapter 7

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-coloured,

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 everyone. 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 someone else to do it, that was just what you

did want.”

 

“And how coolly, how coolly he speakst 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 anyone 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.