The Karamazov Brothers

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  ‘What do you mean, you expected him to come to you?’

  ‘Why to me? I expected him to come to the house, I was sure he’d come that very night because without me and therefore without any way of finding out what was going on, he’d certainly have to enter the house by climbing over the fence, like he knew how, sir, and do whatever he had a mind to do.’

  ‘And if he hadn’t come?’

  ‘Then nothing would have happened, sir. I wouldn’t have dared to do it without him.’

  ‘All right, all right… don’t mumble so, take your time, the important thing is—don’t leave anything out.’

  ‘I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovich, sir… I was sure. Because I’d sown the idea in his head… several days before… and especially as he knew the signal. What with the suspicion and rage that had been building up in him recently, he was bound to use the signal to get into the house, sir, bound to. And that’s what I expected, sir.’

  ‘One moment,’ Ivan interrupted, ‘if he’d killed him, he’d have taken the money. You must have realized that. I don’t see what you would have got out of it afterwards.’

  ‘But he’d never have found the money, sir. It was I who told him it was under the mattress. Only it wasn’t true. It used to be in a casket, you know. Then I told Fyodor Pavlovich—because I was the only one he trusted in the whole world—to place the envelope containing the money in the corner, behind the icons, because absolutely no one would guess it was there, especially if they were in a hurry. So that envelope was hidden in the corner of his room, behind the icons, sir. And it would have been stupid to keep it under the mattress, he’d have put it in the casket, at least, and locked it. And now everyone believes it was under the mattress. Stupid reasoning, sir. So if Dmitry Fyodorovich did commit the murder, then, finding nothing, either he’d run away, afraid of every sound, like it is with murderers, or he’d be arrested, sir. So then I could always have crept in the next day, or even that same night, and taken the money out from behind the icons and blamed it all on Dmitry Fyodorovich. I could always count on that.’

  ‘Well, what if he didn’t kill him, but only beat him up?’

  ‘If he didn’t kill him, I wouldn’t dare take the money, of course, and it would all have been for nothing. But then there was also the possibility that he might beat him unconscious, and I’d have time to slip in and take the money and then tell Fyodor Pavlovich that it was his attacker, Dmitry, who’d taken it.’

  ‘Wait… I’m getting confused. So it was Dmitry who killed him after all, and you only took the money?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t him, sir. Well, yes, if I wanted to I could say even now that he was the murderer… but I don’t want to lie to you now, because… because if, as is quite obvious, you really didn’t understand anything until now and were not trying to fool me so as to make it look as if I were guilty, you’re still guilty overall, sir, because you knew there’d be a murder and you commissioned me to do it, and knowing all about it, you left. That’s why I want to prove to you this evening, without any doubt, that it’s you who’s the real murderer in this case and that, although I killed him, I’m only your accomplice. And, legally, it’s you who’s the murderer!’

  ‘Why, why am I the murderer? Oh God!’ Ivan, forgetting that he had intended to avoid all discussion of his own involvement till the end of the conversation, could no longer restrain himself. ‘You’re still on about that Chermashnya business, aren’t you? Hold on, assuming you took Chermashnya as a sign of acquiescence, why did you need my approval? How are you going to explain that now?’

  ‘Once I had your approval, I knew you wouldn’t raise a hue and cry about the missing three thousand when you got back, if for some reason the authorities suspected me instead of Dmitry Fyodorovich, or thought I was his accomplice; on the contrary, you would protect me from the others… And, having received your inheritance, you could then repay me for the rest of my life, because after all you’d have got your inheritance because of me, whereas if he’d married Agrafena Aleksandrovna you’d have got damn all.’

  ‘Aha! So you thought you could go on harassing me afterwards, all my life!’ growled Ivan. ‘But what if I hadn’t gone to Chermashnya, if I’d denounced you instead?’

  ‘What could you have denounced me for? That I persuaded you to go to Chermashnya? That’s a load of rubbish, sir. Anyway, you could have left after our conversation, or you could have stayed. If you’d stayed, nothing would have happened; I’d have known you didn’t want anything to happen and I wouldn’t have done anything. But since you left, that meant you were assuring me that you wouldn’t dare denounce me and that you’d turn a blind eye if I took the three thousand. Anyway, you couldn’t have denounced me afterwards because I would have told them everything, that is, not that I’d stolen the money and killed him—I wouldn’t have told them that, sir—but that you were urging me to take it and to kill him, but that I didn’t agree to it. I needed your consent so that you wouldn’t be able to put me on the spot, because you wouldn’t have any evidence, whereas I could always put you on the spot by letting them know how much you wanted your father dead—as I give you my word, I would have done—and public opinion would believe it and you’d be despised all your life.’

  ‘So I did want it, I wanted him dead, did I?’ Ivan growled again.

  ‘Undoubtedly you did, sir, and by your tacit agreement you gave me permission to do it,’ Smerdyakov gave Ivan an uncompromising look. He was very weak, spoke quietly, and sounded exhausted, but he was fired by some secret within him, he was obviously hatching something. Ivan could sense it.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘go on about that night.’

  ‘About that night, all right, sir! Well, there I was, lying on the bed, and then I thought I heard the master cry out. But Grigory Vasilyevich had got up before that and gone out, and he suddenly started to scream, and then everything went quiet and it was all dark. I just lay there, waiting, my heart was thumping, I couldn’t bear it. In the end, I got up and went out, sir—I saw his window on the left was open, and I walked a few paces towards it, sir, to listen and see if he was alive and sitting there or not, and then I heard the master shuffling about and mumbling, so that meant he was alive. Aha, I thought! I went up to the window and called out to the master. “It’s me,” I said. And he said, “He was here, right here, he ran off!” That was Dmitry Fyodorovich he meant, sir, he’d been there. “He’s killed Grigory.” “Where?” I whispered. “Over there, in the corner of the garden,” he pointed, also whispering. “Wait,” I said. I went over to the corner to have a look, and stumbled on Grigory Vasilyevich lying by the wall, all covered in blood he was, and unconscious. So, obviously Dmitry Fyodorovich had been there, and at that point I made up my mind, I resolved to stop hesitating and do it straight away, because even if Grigory Vasilyevich was still alive he wasn’t going to see anything while he was lying there unconscious. There was only one risk, sir—that Marfa Ignatyevna might suddenly wake up. I was aware of that at the time, but I was quite breathless with excitement and couldn’t stop myself. I went back to the master’s window and said, “She’s here, she’s here, Agrafena Aleksandrovna has come, she’s asking for you.” And you know, he shook all over, like a baby: “What do you mean, ‘here’? Where?” he was mumbling, he still didn’t really believe it. “There she is,” I said, “standing over there. Open the door!” He looked at me through the window; he didn’t know whether to believe me or not and he was afraid to open it—he was afraid of me too, I think. And it’s funny; I suddenly had the idea of knocking in full view on the window, to give the signal that Grushenka had come; he didn’t seem to believe me when I told him, but as soon as I knocked on the window he rushed to open the door. He opened it. I was going to enter, but he stood there, blocking my way. “Where is she? Where is she?” He was looking at me and trembling all over. Well, I thought, if he’s that frightened of me, that doesn’t bode well, that’s when my legs turned to jelly at the thought that he might not let me in,
or he might call out, or Marfa Ignatyevna might come running over, or something else, I don’t remember what I thought then; I must have gone quite pale myself, standing in front of him. I whispered, “There she is, over there by the window, don’t you see her?” “Fetch her, you fetch her,” he replied. “She’s afraid,” I said, “your shouting frightened her and she’s hidden in the bushes. Go and call her yourself from your study.” He ran to the study and put a candle in the window. “Grushenka,” he shouts, “Grushenka, are you there?” He’s shouting all right, but he won’t lean out of the window, he won’t leave me, from sheer terror, because he’s become very frightened of me, so he daren’t leave me. “There she is,” I said (I went right up to the window and leaned out), “over there in those bushes, she’s laughing at you, can you see her?” Suddenly he believed me and began to tremble, terribly infatuated with her, he was, sir, and leaned right out of the window. I grabbed the cast-iron paperweight he had on the table—you remember the one, it must weigh a good three pounds—I lifted it up, and hit him right on top of his head with the corner of it. He didn’t even cry out. He just slumped down, and I hit him again, and then a third time. With the third blow, I felt I’d broken his skull. He fell back suddenly, face up, all covered in blood. I looked to see if I had any blood on me, if it had splashed, I wiped the paperweight, put it back, went behind the icons, took the money out of the envelope, and threw the envelope and the ribbon on the floor. I went out into the garden, shaking all over. Straight to the hollow apple tree—you know the one—I’d earmarked it a long time ago, there was already a piece of cloth and some paper there, prepared ages before; I wrapped it all in the paper and then in the cloth, and pushed it right down the hole. And it stayed there for more than two weeks, that money, sir, and I retrieved it when I came out of hospital. I then went back to bed and lay there, so frightened, thinking, “If Grigory Vasilyevich really is dead, things could turn out very badly, but if he’s not dead and he recovers, then that will be perfect, because he’ll testify that Dmitry Fyodorovich came here, and that’ll point to him having committed the murder and stolen the money.” Then I started to groan with doubt and impatience, so as to wake Marfa Ignatyevna as soon as possible. At last she got up and she rushed over to me first, then suddenly realized that Grigory Vasilyevich wasn’t there and ran outside, and I heard her start screaming in the garden. And that’s how it went on all night, sir, and I felt quite reassured.’

  He stopped. Ivan had listened to him the whole time in deathly silence, not moving, not taking his eyes off him. Smerdyakov, on the other hand, had glanced at Ivan only occasionally throughout his account, mostly staring to one side. Finishing his story, he himself was obviously disturbed and was breathing heavily. A sweat broke out on his face. It was impossible to guess, however, whether or not he felt any remorse.

  ‘Wait a second,’ said Ivan thoughtfully. ‘What about that door? If he only opened it to you, how could Grigory have seen it open before? Because, after all, Grigory must have seen it before you were there.’

  It is a remarkable fact that Ivan asked this perfectly calmly, in such an amiable tone of voice even, that had anyone opened the door just then and glanced at them, that person would certainly have concluded that they were sitting there having a peaceful discussion about some mundane but interesting matter.

  ‘As to the door and the fact that Grigory Vasilyevich claims to have seen it open, he just thought he did,’ Smerdyakov smiled wryly. ‘I tell you, he’s not a man, he’s a stubborn mule; he didn’t see anything, he thinks it was open, and you can’t convince him otherwise. It’s lucky for us that he got that impression, because that makes it quite certain that they’ll find Dmitry Fyodorovich guilty in the end.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Ivan Fyodorovich, as if he had lost track again and was trying to understand, ‘listen… There’s a lot I still want to ask you, but I’ve forgotten what it was… I keep forgetting and losing track… Ah, yes! Just tell me this one thing: why did you open the envelope and leave it there, on the floor? Why didn’t you simply take the whole lot, envelope and all?… When you were telling me about it, I got the impression that you were saying you had to do that with the envelope… but I don’t understand what the point was…’

  ‘I did it for a reason, sir. Because if someone in the know, like me for example, someone who had seen the money beforehand and maybe had even put it in the envelope himself and, with his own eyes, had seen it being sealed and addressed—if, for the sake of example, that person had committed the murder, would he have stopped to open the envelope after the murder, sir, being in such a hurry and knowing pretty well for certain that the money was in there? Not on your life! Suppose for example I was the murderer, I’d have simply shoved it in my pocket without even thinking of opening it, and bolted with it, sir. Now, for Dmitry Fyodorovich the situation was quite different; he knew about the envelope only from hearsay, he’d never seen it himself, so if he had pulled it out, supposedly from under the mattress, he’d have opened it on the spot to check whether the money was there, in fact, wouldn’t he? And he’d have thrown away the envelope, not realizing he was leaving incriminating evidence, because he’s not a habitual thief, never stole a thing in his life, being gentry by birth, sir, and if he’d decided to steal this time it wouldn’t really have been stealing, but just claiming his inheritance, because he’d been telling all and sundry, even boasting about it, that he’d recover what was his by rights from Fyodor Pavlovich. I let that idea slip out during my interview with the prosecutor, a bit vaguely, as if I didn’t really realize myself what I was telling him, sir, so he’d think he thought it out for himself. That really had the old prosecutor licking his lips, sir…’

  ‘You really mean to tell me you thought all that up on the spot?’ exclaimed Ivan Fyodorovich in utter astonishment. He was once more looking at Smerdyakov with horror.

  ‘Oh, come now, you don’t imagine one could improvize all that on the spur of the moment? It was all worked out beforehand.’

  ‘Well… well, that means the devil himself must have helped you!’ exclaimed Ivan Fyodorovich. ‘No, you’re no fool, you’re a lot cleverer than I thought…’

  He stood up with the evident intention of stretching his legs a bit. He was in a state of utter dejection. But as the table was in the way, and he would practically have had to climb over in order to squeeze between the table and the wall, he just turned round on the spot and sat down again. Perhaps it was not being able to stretch his legs that irritated him, for he suddenly shouted out almost as frenziedly as before:

  ‘Listen, you miserable, despicable specimen! Surely you can understand that if I haven’t killed you already, it’s only because I’m letting you live so that you can answer for your deeds tomorrow, in court. As God is my witness,’ Ivan pointed heavenwards, ‘perhaps I too was guilty, perhaps I really did harbour a secret wish for… my father’s death, but I swear to you, I wasn’t as guilty as you think, and perhaps I didn’t encourage you at all. No, no, I didn’t encourage you! But all the same, I’ll testify against myself tomorrow in court, I’ve decided! I’ll tell them everything, everything. But we’ll be in the dock together, you and I! And whatever you may say about me in court, whatever evidence you may give—I’ll admit everything and I won’t be afraid of you; I’ll confirm everything you say! But you too must confess before the court! You must, you must, we’ll testify together! That’s how it will be!’

  Ivan pronounced all this solemnly and forcefully, and it was clear simply from his blazing eyes that such was, indeed, his intention.

  ‘You’re ill, I can see you’re really ill, sir. Your eyes are all yellow, sir,’ said Smerdyakov, but without the least irony, and even with a touch of compassion.

  ‘We’ll testify together,’ repeated Ivan, ‘and if you don’t, it doesn’t matter, I’ll testify alone.’

  Smerdyakov was silent for a moment, apparently thinking.

  ‘None of that is going to happen, sir, and you won’t testify,’ he said
at last, in a tone that defied contradiction.

  ‘You don’t understand me!’ Ivan exclaimed reproachfully.

  ‘You’ll be taking too much blame on yourself, sir, if you admit to everything yourself. And, moreover, it would be pointless, completely pointless, sir, because I should promptly deny that I ever said anything of the sort to you, and I’d say that either you were suffering from some sort of affliction (and, really, it does seem to be something like that, sir) or that you were so sorry for your poor brother that you were sacrificing yourself for him and had thought up all these things against me, always having thought of me as a fly rather than a human being. So who’s going to believe you, and what proof have you got, what single item of proof?’

  ‘Listen, you obviously brought that money out just now to convince me.’

  Smerdyakov picked up Isaac the Syrian, which was lying on top of the money, and laid it to one side.

  ‘Take this money with you,’ he sighed.

  ‘Of course I’m going to take it! But why are you giving it to me, when you killed him to get it?’ Ivan looked at him in pained surprise.

  ‘I don’t need it at all, sir,’ said Smerdyakov haltingly, with a dismissive gesture. ‘At first I thought that if I had some money I could start all over again, either in Moscow or, better still, abroad; I got that idea, sir, mainly from “everything is permitted”—it was you who taught me that, sir, because you used to say it a lot—because, if there is no eternal God, then there is no virtue and, what’s more, absolutely no need for it. You really meant it. That’s what I reckoned.’

  ‘You worked it out all by yourself?’ Ivan smiled wryly.

  ‘With your guidance, sir.’

  ‘And now, I suppose, you believe in God, since you’ve decided not to keep the money?’

  ‘No, sir, I don’t believe,’ whispered Smerdyakov.