‘Thanks!’ Ivan said abruptly, and, leaving Alyosha, went on his way. From then on Alyosha noticed that his brother Ivan suddenly began to distance himself from him and even seemed to have taken a dislike to him, so that he too stopped calling on him. But Ivan Fyodorovich, immediately after that meeting, once again went straight to Smerdyakov without going home.
7
SECOND VISIT TO SMERDYAKOV
BY this time Smerdyakov had already discharged himself from hospital. Ivan Fyodorovich knew his new address—that dilapidated little wooden house consisting of two rooms joined by a hallway. Marya Kondratyevna and her mother had moved into one of these rooms; Smerdyakov, on his own, into the other. God knows on what conditions he had moved in with them, whether he was paying rent or living there rent-free. People said later that he had moved in as Marya Kondratyevna’s betrothed, and for the time being was not paying anything. Both mother and daughter looked up to him and regarded him as superior to themselves. When the door was answered Ivan Fyodorovich stepped into the hallway and, following an indication from Marya Kondratyevna, turned left, straight into the ‘best’ room, which Smerdyakov occupied. This room had a tiled stove which gave out a lot of heat. The walls were decorated with sky-blue wallpaper, admittedly all torn and peeling, and under it, in the cracks, cockroaches swarmed in such profusion that they produced a constant rustling noise. There was very little furniture, and what there was was very basic: two benches along the walls, and two chairs by the table. The table, although a simple wooden one, was nevertheless covered with a pink, patterned tablecloth. On the sills of each of the two small windows stood a pot with geraniums. In the corner was an icon-case with icons in it. On the table stood a small, very battered brass samovar and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had already drunk some tea and had let the samovar go out… He himself was seated on a bench at the table and was scribbling something with a pen in an exercise book. A bottle of ink stood nearby, and also a cast-iron candlestick with a tallow candle in it. Ivan Fyodorovich concluded at once from Smerdyakov’s appearance that he had quite recovered from his illness. His face was fuller, fresher, his quiff brushed up, and his hair slicked back from his temples. He was wearing a gaudy quilted dressing-gown which, however, was threadbare and somewhat frayed. On his nose rested a pair of spectacles, which Ivan Fyodorovich had never seen him wear before. This insignificant fact exacerbated Ivan’s irritation: ‘What a wretch, he’s even wearing spectacles now!’ Smerdyakov looked up slowly and stared at his visitor through his spectacles, then, without a word, he took them off and half rose to his feet, not deferentially somehow, but lazily, as if he were displaying the least degree of deference that he could possibly get away with. All this flashed through Ivan’s mind, and he noticed and took in everything—but in particular the look that Smerdyakov gave him, decidedly hostile and unwelcoming, even condescending: ‘Oh,’ he seemed to say, ‘you again! We’ve said all we have to say to each other, so what are you doing here?’ Ivan Fyodorovich could hardly contain himself.
‘It’s hot in here,’ he said, still standing and unbuttoning his coat.
‘Why don’t you take your coat off, sir?’ Smerdyakov suggested.
Ivan Fyodorovich took off his coat and threw it across a bench, grabbed a chair with shaking hands, pulled it quickly up to the table, and sat down. Smerdyakov managed to sit down first, on his bench.
‘First of all, are we alone?’ asked Ivan Fyodorovich at once, sternly. ‘They won’t overhear us in there?’
‘No one will hear anything, sir. You saw for yourself, there’s a hallway.’
‘Now look here, my man, what was all that bloody nonsense you told me when I was leaving the hospital, all that about not telling the magistrate everything about our conversation by the gate if I kept quiet about your being able to fake epilepsy? What did you mean by everything? What on earth were you alluding to? Were you threatening me? Do you think I’m in cahoots with you, that I’m afraid of you, or something?’
Ivan Fyodorovich said all this in an absolute frenzy, deliberately making it quite obvious that he wished to come straight to the point and was putting all his cards on the table. Smerdyakov’s eyes glittered spitefully, and the left one twitched as if to say, ‘So you want to put all your cards on the table, well that’s all right by me!’ He responded immediately, although with his usual reserve and deliberation.
‘What I meant and the reason why I said it was that you knew your father might be murdered and yet you left him to his fate, and therefore people would inevitably come to some nasty conclusion about your feelings and maybe incidentally about something else—that’s what I promised not to reveal to the authorities.’
Although Smerdyakov spoke unhurriedly and was obviously in control of himself, there was a hint of something hard and insistent in his voice, something malicious and insolently provocative. He stared insolently at Ivan Fyodorovich, and for a moment the latter lost his self-control.
‘What do you mean? Are you out of your mind?’
‘Certainly not, sir, I’m perfectly sane.’
‘Are you suggesting that I knew about the murder?’ screamed Ivan Fyodorovich and banged his fist violently on the table. ‘What do you mean by “about something else”? Talk, you swine!’
Smerdyakov said nothing and continued to stare insolently at Ivan Fyodorovich.
‘Tell me, you stinking scoundrel, what is this “something else”?’ yelled the latter.
‘What I meant by “something else” just now was that at that time you probably very much wanted your father dead.’
Ivan Fyodorovich leapt up and struck Smerdyakov on the shoulder as hard as he could with his fist, so that he fell back against the wall. In a flash tears streamed down his face, and saying, ‘You should be ashamed, sir, to hit a weak man!’ he suddenly covered his eyes with his filthy, blue-check cotton handkerchief, and was overcome by quiet sobbing. A minute or so elapsed.
‘That’s enough! Stop it!’ said Ivan Fyodorovich imperiously, sitting down again. ‘Don’t try my patience.’
Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his wrinkled face reflected the assault he had just suffered.
‘So, you wretch, you thought that I, like Dmitry, wanted to kill my father, did you?’
‘I didn’t know what you were thinking then, sir,’ said Smerdyakov sulkily, ‘and I stopped you as you came in the gate to sound you out on precisely that point, sir.’
‘Sound me out? About what?’
‘About precisely that matter, sir: did you or did you not want your father out of the way as soon as possible?’
What aroused Ivan Fyodorovich’s indignation most of all was the obstinately insolent tone that Smerdyakov insisted on using.
‘It was you who killed him!’ he exclaimed suddenly.
Smerdyakov smiled scornfully.
‘You, of all people, know perfectly well that it wasn’t me that killed him. And I hardly expected an intelligent person even to suggest it.’
‘But, for heaven’s sake, why then did you suspect me of such a thing then?’
‘As you already know, sir, from sheer fear. Because, the way things were then, I was in such a state that I suspected everyone. So I decided to sound you out, too, sir, because if you wanted the same thing as your brother, then, I thought, by the time this whole thing was over I could have got the chop too.’
‘The only thing is, you didn’t say that two weeks ago.’
‘It’s what I meant, exactly what I meant, only when I was talking to you in the hospital, sir, I assumed that you yourself, being a very intelligent person, didn’t want me to spell it out.’
‘Well, I’m damned! But answer me, damn you, I insist that you answer me: how on earth could I have sown such a foul suspicion in your rotten little mind, and why should I have done it?’
‘To kill him. You could never have done it yourself, never in a month of Sundays, sir, and you didn’t want to, but you might have hoped someone else would kill him, th
at’s what you wanted.’
‘How calmly he says it, damn him! Why the hell should I have wanted that, what reason could I have had?’
‘What reason? Well, what about your inheritance, sir?’ Smerdyakov retorted vehemently and even somewhat vindictively. ‘After all, the three of you stood to gain near enough forty thousand each when your father died, or even more, sir, but if Fyodor Pavlovich married that woman, sir, that Agrafena Aleksandrovna, she’d have got all his capital transferred to her name once they were married, because she’s no fool, sir, and then you three wouldn’t even have got a couple of roubles on your father’s death. And the wedding wasn’t far off, was it? A mere hair’s breadth away: it only needed that madam to crook her little finger at him, like this, and he’d have followed her to the altar with his tongue hanging out.’
Ivan Fyodorovich restrained himself with difficulty.
‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘you can see, I haven’t lost my temper, I haven’t hit you, I haven’t killed you. Go on: so according to you, my brother Dmitry was the stooge for this, I was counting on him?’
‘How could you not have been counting on him, sir? After all, if he committed the murder, he’d lose all his hereditary rights,* his rank and estates, and he’d be exiled. So then, when your father died, his share would come to you and your brother Aleksei Fyodorovich, in equal parts, that’s not forty thousand, but sixty thousand each, sir. So you must definitely have been counting on Dmitry Fyodorovich!’
‘I’m fast losing my patience with you! Listen, you stupid fool; if I’d been counting on anyone it would have been you of course, not Dmitry, and I swear I did feel… at that time… I was expecting some kind of a dirty trick from you… I remember having that impression!’
‘And I also felt then, for a minute, that you were counting on me too,’ Smerdyakov smiled sarcastically, ‘so you relaxed your guard with me even more, because if you suspected me, and yet at the same time you still intended to go away, that means you might just as well have said: you can kill my father, and I won’t try to stop you.’
‘You scoundrel! So that’s what you thought!’
‘And all because of that Chermashnya business, sir. I mean, for heaven’s sake! You were intent on going to Moscow, and refused all your father’s pleas to go to Chermashnya! And then I just had to say the word, and you suddenly agreed! Why did you have to agree to go to Chermashnya just then? If you went to Chermashnya instead of Moscow for no other reason than the fact that I suggested it, it stands to reason you expected I’d do something.’
‘No, I swear I didn’t!’ yelled Ivan through clenched teeth.
‘How can you deny it, sir? On the contrary, as your father’s son, you should have had me arrested for what I said to you about him, you should have given me a good beating or at least knocked my block off on the spot, but on the contrary you promptly and obligingly took my utterly stupid advice for what it was worth, if you’ll forgive me saying so, without showing the slightest sign of anger, and left, which was quite ridiculous, because you should have stayed and prevented your father’s murder… How could I conclude otherwise?’
Ivan sat frowning, both fists clenched tightly on his knees.
‘Yes, it’s a pity I didn’t knock your block off,’ he smiled bitterly. ‘It would have been no good taking you to the police then, who would have believed me, and what could I have accused you of… but a good thumping… Blast! Pity I didn’t think of it! So what if it’s forbidden to clout someone, I’d still have smashed you to a pulp.’
Smerdyakov was watching him almost with glee.
‘In normal circumstances,’ he said, in the same smug, opinionated tone of voice in which he used to provoke Grigory Vasilyevich and quarrel with him about religion as he stood by Fyodor Pavlovich’s table, ‘in normal circumstances it is certainly forbidden by law to knock someone’s block off these days, and no one does it any more, but, well, sir, in exceptional circumstances, not only here but also all over the world, even in the most republican of French republics, they still continue to thump each other, just as in Adam and Eve’s time, and they’ll never stop, sir, but you, even in that particular exceptional circumstance, you didn’t dare, sir.’
‘How come you’re learning French grammar?’ Ivan motioned with his head towards the exercise book lying on the table.
‘And why shouldn’t I learn it, sir, so as to improve my education, in case even I might get to go to those more fortunate parts of Europe sometime?’
‘Listen, you monster,’ Ivan’s eyes were flashing and he was shaking all over, ‘I’m not afraid of your accusations, you can tell them what you like against me, and the only reason I didn’t beat you to death just now is that I suspect you of this crime, and I’m going to haul you before the judge. I haven’t finished with you yet!’
‘In my opinion you’d do better not to say anything, sir. Because, what could you accuse me of, when I’m totally innocent, and who’d believe you? And if you started anything, sir, I’d tell them everything, because I’d have to defend myself, wouldn’t I?’
‘Do you think I’m frightened of you?’
‘They might not believe all I’ve just said in court, but the general public will believe it, and you’ll be shown up.’
‘So that means “it’s always interesting to talk to an intelligent person” all over again, eh?’ Ivan said through clenched teeth.
‘That’s about the size of it, sir. So don’t be a fool.’
Ivan Fyodorovich stood up with a shudder of disgust, put on his coat and, without saying anything further to Smerdyakov and without even glancing at him, left the house. The fresh evening air cleared his head. The moon was shining brightly. A terrifying nightmare of thoughts and sensations was seething in his brain. ‘Should I go now and lay charges against Smerdyakov? But what could I accuse him of? He’s innocent really. He would immediately accuse me. Why, in fact, did I go to Chermashnya? What for? What for?’ Ivan Fyodorovich asked himself. ‘Yes, of course I was expecting something, and he’s right…’ And for the umpteenth time he recalled how, on that last evening at his father’s, he had eavesdropped on him on the stairs, but so painful was the recollection that he even stopped dead and stood as if transfixed: ‘Yes, that’s just what I was expecting then, it’s true! That’s exactly what I did want, I wanted the murder to happen! Did I want it or didn’t I?… I’ll have to kill Smerdyakov!… If I don’t have the courage to kill Smerdyakov now, it’s not worth going on living!…’ Without going home, Ivan Fyodorovich went straight to Katerina Ivanovna, who was frightened by his appearance; he was like a madman. He recounted his entire conversation with Smerdyakov to her, down to the smallest detail. No matter how hard she tried to soothe him he was not to be pacified, and kept pacing backwards and forwards and talking in a strange, disjointed fashion. At last he sat down, elbows on the table and his head in his hands, and made the following strange pronouncement:
‘If it wasn’t Dmitry but Smerdyakov who killed him, then of course I’m implicated, because I incited him. Did I incite him? I’m still not sure. But if it was him, if he did it and not Dmitry, then surely I too am a murderer.’
Hearing this, Katerina Ivanovna stood up without speaking, went to her writing-desk, unlocked a casket that stood on it, withdrew a piece of paper, and laid it in front of Ivan. This piece of paper was that same document which Ivan Fyodorovich would later say to Alyosha was ‘unequivocal proof’ of Dmitry’s guilt. It was a letter that Mitya had written in a drunken state to Katerina Ivanovna the evening he had encountered Alyosha on his way to the monastery, after the scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s when Grushenka had insulted her. When he left Alyosha on that occasion Mitya had rushed off to Grushenka; it is not known whether he saw her or not, but late that evening he turned up at the Stolichny Gorod and proceeded to get thoroughly drunk. While drunk, he demanded pen and paper and wrote a document of subsequent importance for himself. It was frantic, rambling, and incoherent—in short, a ‘drunken’ letter. It resembl
ed the conversation of a drunk who, on arriving home, begins with excessive volubility to recount to his wife or one of the family how he has just been insulted, what a scoundrel his abuser is, what a fine fellow he himself is on the other hand, how he’ll teach the scoundrel a lesson—and, while ranting on incoherently and excitably, he thumps his fists on the table and weeps drunken tears. The sheet of paper that they gave him in the inn was a grubby scrap of cheap ordinary writing-paper, on the back of which was written someone’s bill. Evidently Mitya in his drunken state had found insufficient space on the sheet, and not only had he written in all the margins, but by the end had written over the words on the back of the sheet. The content of the letter was as follows:
Fateful Katya,
Tomorrow I shall get some money and shall repay your three thousand roubles, and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell also to my love. We shall make an end of it! Tomorrow I shall try to raise the money from everyone I know, and if I can’t, I give you my word I’ll go to my father, I’ll smash his head in, and take the money from under his pillow, provided that Ivan has left. I shall go to Siberia, but I shall give you back the three thousand. As for you, farewell! I prostrate myself before you, because I have wronged you. Forgive me! No, it’s better not to forgive me; better for you and for me not to! Better the saltmines than your love, for I love another, and you have found out today, only too well, what she is like, so how can you forgive me? I shall kill him who has defrauded me! I shall go away to the East and cut myself off from everyone. From her, also, for you are not my only tormentor, she is too. Farewell!
PS I am writing curses, but I worship you! I hear it in my heart. One string is left and vibrates. It is better to break the heart in twain! I shall kill myself, but all the same I shall kill the dog first. I’ll get the three thousand out of him for you. I may be a scoundrel in your eyes, but I am not a thief! Expect the three thousand. Under the dog’s mattress there’s a pink ribbon. It’s not me who is the thief, I shall kill the thief. Katya, don’t look scornfully at Dmitry; he is not a thief, but a murderer! He has killed his father and must perish himself, so as not to be subjected to your scorn. And not to love you.
The Karamazov Brothers Page 93
