VI. A Very Obscure One, for Now

And Ivan Fyodorovich, having parted with Alyosha, went home, to Fyodor Pavlovich’s house. But a strange thing: an unbearable anguish suddenly came over him, and, what was more, it kept growing with every step as he drew nearer to the house. The strangeness was not in the anguish but in the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich could not possibly define what the anguish consisted of. He had often been subject to anguish before, and it would have been no wonder if it had come at such a moment, when tomorrow, having suddenly broken with everything that had drawn him here, he was preparing to make another sharp turn aside and to set out on a new, utterly unknown path, and again quite alone, as before, hoping for much, but not knowing for what, expecting much, far too much, from life, but unable himself to define anything either in his expectations or even in his desires. And yet at that moment, though the anguish of the new and unknown really was in his soul, that was not at all what was tormenting him. “Can it be a loathing for my father’s house?” he thought to himself. “It looks like it, I’m so sick of it, and though today I shall cross this nasty threshold for the last time, still it’s loathsome…” But no, that wasn’t it either. Could it be the parting with Alyosha and the conversation he had had with him: “For so many years I kept silent with the whole world and did not deign to speak, and then suddenly I piled up such a heap of drivel.” Indeed, it might have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and youthful vanity, vexation at not having managed to express himself, and with such a being as Alyosha, too, on whom he undoubtedly had great designs in his heart. Of course, that was there too, that is, that vexation; it was even bound to be there, but that wasn’t it either, it wasn’t it at all. “Anguish to the point of nausea, and I can’t define what I want. Perhaps not to think…”

Ivan Fyodorovich tried “not to think,” but even that did not help. The main thing that made this anguish so vexing, so irritating, was that it had a sort of accidental, completely external character; that could be felt. Some being or object was standing, sticking up somewhere, the way something will sometimes stick up before one’s eye, and for a long time, while busy or in heated conversation, one does not notice it, and yet one is evidently irritated, almost tormented, until at last one thinks of removing the offending object, often a very trivial and ridiculous one, some thing left lying in the wrong place, a handkerchief fallen on the floor, a book not put back in the bookcase, and so on, and so on. At last, in the nastiest and most irritated state of mind, Ivan Fyodorovich reached his father’s house, and suddenly, some fifteen paces from the wicket gate, glancing at the gates, he guessed at once what had been tormenting and troubling him so.

On the bench by the gates the lackey Smerdyakov sat taking the cool evening air, and at the first glance at him Ivan Fyodorovich understood that the lackey Smerdyakov was sitting in his soul too, and that it was precisely this man his soul could not bear. Everything was suddenly lit up and became clear. Earlier, ever since Alyosha’s account of his meeting with Smerdyakov, something gloomy and repulsive had suddenly pierced his heart and at once roused an answering malice in him. Then, during the conversation, Smerdyakov had been forgotten for a while, but he had remained in his soul all the same, and the moment Ivan Fyodorovich parted with Alyosha and set off alone toward the house, the forgotten sensation at once quickly began to surface again. “Can that wretched scoundrel really trouble me to such a degree!” he thought with unbearable malice.

The fact was that Ivan Fyodorovich had really come to dislike this man very much of late, and especially in the very last few days. He had even begun to notice in himself this growing feeling, almost hatred, for the creature. Perhaps the process of hatred had grown so acute precisely because at first, when Ivan Fyodorovich had only just arrived among us, something quite different had taken place. Then Ivan Fyodorovich had suddenly taken a sort of special interest in Smerdyakov, had even found him very original. He himself had got him used to talking with him, always marveling, however, at a certain muddle-headedness, or, better to say, a certain restlessness of his mind, and not understanding what it was that could so constantly and persistently trouble “this contemplator.” They talked about philosophical questions too, and even about why there was light on the first day when the sun, the moon, and the stars were made only on the fourth day, and how this should be understood; but Ivan Fyodorovich soon became convinced that the point was not in the sun, the moon, and the stars at all, that the sun, the moon, and the stars, though an interesting subject, were of quite third-rate importance to Smerdyakov, and that he wanted something else entirely. Be that as it may, at any rate a boundless vanity began to show and betray itself, and a wounded vanity at that. Ivan Fyodorovich disliked this very much. That was where his aversion began. Later, troubles began in the house, Grushenka appeared, the stories with brother Dmitri began, there was a lot of bother—they talked about that too, but though Smerdyakov always conducted these conversations with great excitement, again it was impossible to find out what he himself wanted in it all. One could even marvel at the illogicality and disorder of some of his desires, which involuntarily came out and were always equally vague. Smerdyakov kept questioning, putting some sort of oblique, obviously premeditated questions, but what for—he did not explain, and usually, at the very hottest moment of his own questioning, he would suddenly fall silent or pass on to something quite different. But the main thing that finally irritated Ivan Fyodorovich for good and filled him with such aversion was a sort of loathsome and peculiar familiarity that Smerdyakov had begun to show him strongly, and the further it went, the more. It was not that he allowed himself to be impolite; on the contrary, he always spoke extremely respectfully; but things had somehow come to such a pass that Smerdyakov evidently began to consider himself, God knows why, as somehow in solidarity at last with Ivan Fyodorovich in something, always spoke in such a tone as though there were already something agreed upon between the two of them and somehow secret, something once uttered on both sides, known only to the two of them, and even incomprehensible to the other mortals swarming around them. Ivan Fyodorovich, however, for a long time did not understand this real cause of his growing aversion either, and only quite recently had he managed to guess what the matter was. With a feeling of squeamishness and irritation he wanted to go through the wicket gate now in silence, without looking at Smerdyakov, but Smerdyakov rose from the bench, and from this gesture alone Ivan Fyodorovich instantly guessed that he wished to have a special talk with him. Ivan Fyodorovich looked at him and stopped, and the fact that he had stopped so suddenly and had not passed by, as he had wanted to a minute before, enraged him to the point of trembling. With anger and loathing he looked at Smerdyakov’s eunuch-like, sunken face, with the little hair at the temples combed back and the little tuft fluffed up on top. His left eye, slightly screwed up, winked and smirked, exactly as if saying: “Why go on, you won’t get past, you see that the two of us, two intelligent men, have something to talk over.” Ivan Fyodorovich began to shake:

“Get away, scoundrel, what company am I for you, you fool!” was about to fly off his tongue, but, to his very great surprise, something quite different flew off it:

“Is Father asleep or has he woken up?” he said quietly and humbly, unexpectedly to himself, and suddenly, just as unexpectedly, sat down on the bench. For a moment he was almost afraid; afterward he remembered it. Smerdyakov stood facing him, his hands behind his back, and looked at him with assurance, almost sternly.

“He is still resting, sir,” he brought out unhurriedly. (“He spoke first himself, as much as to say, not I.”) “I’m surprised at you, sir,” he added after a pause, lowering his eyes somehow affectedly, putting his right foot forward and playing with the toe of his patent-leather boot.

“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan Fyodorovich said abruptly and sternly, restraining himself with all his might, and suddenly realized with disgust that he was feeling the keenest curiosity and that he would not leave here for anything without satisfying it.

“Why don’t you go to Chermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov suddenly raised his eyes and smiled familiarly. “And why I smiled, you must understand yourself, if you’re an intelligent man,” his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.

“Why should I go to Chermashnya?” Ivan Fyodorovich was surprised.

Smerdyakov was silent again.

“Fyodor Pavlovich himself begged you so to do it, sir,” he said at last, without haste and as though he himself set no value on his answer: I am putting you off with a third-rate reason, as much as to say, just to say something.

“Eh, devil take it, speak more plainly, what do you want?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried at last angrily, passing from humility to rudeness.

Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, straightened himself, but went on looking with the same calm and the same little smile.

“Nothing of substance, sir… just so, sir, for the sake of conversation…”

Again there was silence. They were silent for almost a minute. Ivan Fyodorovich knew that he ought to get up at once and be angry, but Smerdyakov stood before him and seemed to be waiting: “Now I’ll see whether you get angry or not.” So at least it seemed to Ivan Fyodorovich. At last he swayed forward to get up. Smerdyakov seemed to catch the moment.

“My position is terrible, sir, Ivan Fyodorovich, I don’t even know how to help myself,” he said suddenly, firmly and distinctly, and with his last word he sighed. Ivan Fyodorovich at once sat down again.

“They’re both quite crazed, sir, they’ve both come down to the merest childishness, sir,” Smerdyakov went on. “I’m speaking of your parent and your brother, sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich. Now Fyodor Pavlovich will get up and start pestering me every minute: ‘Why hasn’t she come? Why hasn’t she come?’ and so on right up till midnight, and even past midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna doesn’t come (because perhaps she has no intention whatever of ever coming at all, sir), then he’ll fall on me again tomorrow morning: ‘Why hasn’t she come? Why didn’t she come, when will she come?’ as if I were somehow to blame before him in this. On the other hand, there’s this item, sir: as soon as it gets dark, and even before, your brother will turn up next door with a weapon in his hands: ‘Look here,’ he says, ‘you rogue, you broth-boy: if you miss her on me and don’t let me know she’s come—I’ll kill you before anyone else.’ The night passes, and in the morning he too, like Fyodor Pavlovich, starts tormenting me torturously: ‘Why hasn’t she come, will she show up soon?’ and as though again I’m to blame before him too that his lady hasn’t appeared, sir. And with every day and every hour they both get angrier, sir, so that some hours I think of taking my own life, sir, from fear. I can’t rely on them, sir.”

“Then why did you get mixed up in it! Why did you start carrying tales to Dmitri Fyodorovich?” Ivan Fyodorovich said irritably.

“And how could I not get mixed up in it, sir? Why, I didn’t get mixed up in it at all, if you wish to know with complete accuracy, sir. From the very beginning I kept silent, not daring to object, but he himself appointed me to serve him as his servant Lichard. Ever since, he knows only one word: ‘I’ll kill you, you rogue, if you miss her!’ I suppose for certain, sir, that tomorrow I shall have a long falling fit.”

“What sort of long falling fit?”

“A long fit like that, sir, an extremely long one, sir. It lasts several hours, sir, or maybe a day or two, sir. Once with me it went on for about three days; I fell from the attic that time. It stops beating me, and then it starts again; and for all three days I couldn’t come to my senses. Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Herzenstube then, the doctor here, sir, and he put ice to the crown of my head and used one other remedy as well… I might have died, sir.”

“But they say, you know, that a falling fit can’t be foretold, that it will come at such and such an hour. How can you say it will come tomorrow?” Ivan Fyodorovich inquired with a peculiar and irritable curiosity.

“That is exactly so, it can’t be foretold, sir.”

“Besides, you fell from the attic that time.”

“I climbs up to the attic every day, sir, I could fall from the attic tomorrow too. And if not from the attic, then I’ll fall into the cellar, sir; I go to the cellar every day too, sir, on my business, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich gave him a long look.

“You’re spinning something, I see, and I don’t quite understand you,” he said quietly, but somehow menacingly. “Do you mean to pretend tomorrow that you’re in a falling fit for three days? Eh?”

Smerdyakov, who had been looking at the ground and again playing with the toe of his right foot, set his right foot back in place, put his left forward instead, raised his head, and, with a smirk, said:

“Even if I could do that very trick, sir, that is, pretend, sir, and since it isn’t at all hard for an experienced man to do it, then even so I would be fully within my rights to use that means to save my life from death; for when I’m lying ill, then even if Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to his parent, he can’t demand of a sick man then: ‘Why didn’t you report it?’ He’d be ashamed himself.”

“Eh, devil take it!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly flared up, his face twisted with malice. “Why are you always so afraid for your life! All these threats of brother Dmitri’s are only hotheaded words and nothing more. He won’t kill you; he’ll kill, but not you!”

“He’ll kill me like a fly, sir, and me first of all, sir. And I’m more afraid still of something else: that they’ll count me as his accomplice, when he does something absurd to his parent.”

“Why would they count you as an accomplice?”

“They’ll count me as an accomplice because I told him those very signals in great secrecy, sir.”

“What signals? Told whom? Devil take you, speak more plainly!”

“I must confess entirely,” Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic calm, “that there is a certain secret here between me and Fyodor Pavlovich. As you yourself deign to know (if only you deign to know it), for some days now, as soon as it’s night, or even evening, he locks himself in from the inside straightaway. Toward the end you’ve taken to going back upstairs to your room early every time, and yesterday you didn’t go out anywhere at all, sir, and so perhaps you don’t know how carefully he has begun locking himself in for the night now. And even if Grigory Vasilyevich himself came, he would open to him only after making sure of him by his voice, sir. But Grigory Vasilyevich doesn’t come, sir, because now I alone wait on him in the rooms, sir—so he himself arranged it from the very moment he started this business with Agrafena Alexandrovna, and for the night, now, by his orders, I too withdraw and sleep in the cottage, on condition that I’m not to sleep till midnight but keep watch, get up and go round the yard, and wait for Agrafena Alexandrovna to come, sir, since for some days now he’s been waiting for her like a madman. And he reasons like this, sir: she, he says, is afraid of him, of Dmitri Fyodorovich, that is (he calls him Mitka, sir), and so she’ll come to me late at night by the back way; and you, he says, watch out for her till midnight and longer. And if she comes, you run up to the door and knock on my door, or on the window from the garden, with your hand, the first two times softly, like this: one-two, and then right away three times faster: knock-knock-knock. Then, he says, I’ll understand at once that it’s she who has come, and I’ll open the door to you quietly. He told me another signal, for the case of something extraordinary happening: first two times quickly, knock-knock, and then, after waiting, one more time, much harder. Then he’ll understand that something sudden has happened and that I need very much to see him, and he’ll open to me too, and I’ll go in and report. All this in case Agrafena Alexandrovna doesn’t come herself, but sends word about something; ’sides that, Dmitri Fyodorovich may also come, so I’m to let him know that he is near. He’s awful afraid of Dmitri Fyodorovich, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna had already come and he had locked himself in with her, and Dmitri Fyodorovich turned up somewhere near in the meantime, even then I am bound without fail to report it to him at once, with three knocks, so that the first signal, the five knocks, stands for ‘Agrafena Alexandrovna has come,’ and the second signal, of three knocks, ‘very much needful,’ as much as to say; he himself taught me several times by example and explained it. And since in the whole universe nobody knows about these signals except me and him, sir, he’ll open without any doubtation and without calling out at all (he’s very afraid of calling out aloud). And now these very signals have become known to Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“How have they become known? You passed them on? How did you dare pass them on?”

“From that very fear, sir. And how could I have dared keep silent before him, sir? Dmitri Fyodorovich pressed me every day: ‘You’re deceiving me, you’re hiding something from me? I’ll break both your legs!’ So then I told him those very secret signals, so that at least he might see my servility and thereby be assured that I’m not deceiving him but reporting to him in every way.”

“If you think he’ll use those signals and want to get in, then don’t let him in.”

“But when I’m lying in a fit myself, sir, how can I not let him in then, sir, even if I could make bold not to let him in, sir, knowing how desperate he is, sir?”

“Eh, devil take it! Why are you so sure there’ll be a falling fit, devil take you? Are you laughing at me or not?”

“How could I dare laugh at you, and is this any time for laughing, when there’s such fear? I have a presentiment there’ll be a falling fit, I have such a presentiment; it’ll come from the fear alone, sir.”

“Eh, devil take it! If you’re lying ill, Grigory will keep watch. Warn Grigory beforehand; he certainly won’t let him in.”

“I dare not by any means tell Grigory Vasilyevich about the signals without the master’s orders, sir. And as for Grigory Vasilyevich hearing him and not letting him in, why, just today, since yesterday, he’s been taken ill, and Marfa Ignatyevna means to treat him tomorrow. That’s what they agreed earlier. And this treatment of theirs is a very curious one, sir: Marfa Ignatyevna knows a certain infusion, sir, and always keeps it, a strong one, on some herb—she possesses that sort of secret, sir. And with this secret medicine she treats Grigory Vasilyevich some three times a year, sir, when his lower back gives out entirely, sir, like a sort of paralysis with him, sir, some three times a year, sir. Then she takes a towel, sir, soaks it in that infusion, and Marfa Ignatyevna rubs his whole back for half an hour, sir, till it’s dry, sir, till it even goes quite red and swells up, sir, and then what’s left in the little bottle she gives him to drink, sir, with a certain prayer, sir; not all of it, though, because on this rare occasion she keeps a small part for herself, sir, and drinks it too, sir. And both of them, I can tell you, not being drinkers, just drop down on the spot, sir, and sleep very soundly for a very long time, sir; and when Grigory Vasilyevich wakes up, he is almost always well after it, sir, but when Marfa Ignatyevna wakes up, she always has a headache after it, sir. So, if tomorrow Marfa Ignatyevna carries out this intention of hers, sir, they’ll hardly hear anything, sir, or keep Dmitri Fyodorovich out, sir. They’ll be asleep, sir.”

“What drivel! And all this will just come together, as if on purpose, all at once: you with a falling fit, and those two both unconscious!” cried Ivan Fyodorovich. “And aren’t you yourself trying to arrange it so that it does come together?” broke from him suddenly, and he knit his brows menacingly.

“How could I arrange it, sir… and why should I arrange it, when everything here depends on Dmitri Fyodorovich alone, sir, and on his thoughts alone, sir… If he wants to do something—he’ll do it, sir, and if not, then surely I won’t bring him on purpose to push him in on his parent.”

“And why should he get in to Father, and on the quiet at that, if, by your own account, Agrafena Alexandrovna won’t come at all,” Ivan Fyodorovich went on, turning pale with malice. “You say so yourself, and all the while I’ve lived here I’ve been sure too that the old man is only fantasizing and that this creature won’t come to him. Why should Dmitri burst in on the old man if she doesn’t come? Speak! I want to know your thoughts.”

“You yourself deign to know why he’ll come, what have my thoughts to do with it? He’ll come out of sheer malice, or out of his suspiciousness in case of my illness, say; he’ll have his doubts and go out of impatience to search in the rooms, like that time yesterday: hasn’t she somehow slipped past him on the quiet, he’ll think. He knows perfectly well, too, that Fyodor Pavlovich has a big envelope ready, and in it three thousand sealed up, under three seals, sir, tied with a ribbon and inscribed in his own hand: ‘To my angel Grushenka, if she will come,’ and then, some three days later, he added: ‘and to my little chick.’ So that’s what is doubtful, sir.”

“Nonsense!” shouted Ivan Fyodorovich, almost in a frenzy. “Dmitri won’t go to rob money, and to kill his father into the bargain. He might have killed him yesterday over Grushenka, like a frenzied, spiteful fool, but he won’t go robbing!”

“He needs money awful badly now, sir, he needs it to the last extremity, Ivan Fyodorovich. You don’t even know how badly,” Smerdyakov explained extremely calmly and with remarkable distinctness. “Besides, he considers those very three thousand, sir, as good as his own, and he explained it to me himself like this: ‘My parent,’ he says, ‘still owes me exactly three thousand.’ And on top of all that, Ivan Fyodorovich, consider a certain plain truth too, sir: why, it’s almost certainly so, it must be said, sir, that Agrafena Alexandrovna, if only she wishes it herself, will certainly make him marry her, the master himself, that is, Fyodor Pavlovich, sir, if only she wishes it, sir; well, and perhaps she will wish it, sir. I only say she won’t come, but perhaps she’ll want more than that, sir, that is, to become the mistress outright. I know myself that her merchant Samsonov told her quite frankly that it would be no stupid business at all, and laughed as he said it. And she herself is very far from stupid in her mind, sir. It wouldn’t suit her to marry a pauper like Dmitri Fyodorovich, sir. So now, takin’ that into account, judge for yourself, Ivan Fyodorovich: then neither Dmitri Fyodorovich nor even you, sir, with your brother Alexei Fyodorovich, will have anything at all left after your parent’s death, not a ruble, sir, because Agrafena Alexandrovna will marry him precisely in order to have everything made over to her and to transfer whatever capital there is to herself, sir. But if your parent were to die now, while there’s nothing of the sort yet, sir, then each of you would get a sure forty thousand at once, sir, even Dmitri Fyodorovich, whom he hates so, sir, since he hasn’t made any will, you know, sir… Dmitri Fyodorovich knows all this extremely well…”

Something seemed to twist and quiver in Ivan Fyodorovich’s face. He suddenly flushed.

“Then why,” he suddenly interrupted Smerdyakov, “after all this, do you advise me to go to Chermashnya? What did you mean by that? I’ll leave, and this is what will happen here.” Ivan Fyodorovich was breathing with difficulty.

“Perfectly correct, sir,” Smerdyakov said quietly and reasonably, watching Ivan Fyodorovich intently, however.

“What do you mean, perfectly correct?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked again, restraining himself with an effort, his eyes flashing menacingly.

“I spoke out of pity for you. In your place, if it were only me here, I’d throw it all up right away… rather than sit by such a business, sir…” answered Smerdyakov, looking with the most candid air at Ivan Fyodorovich’s flashing eyes. They were both silent.

“You seem to be a great idiot and, of course… a terrible scoundrel!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly rose from the bench. Then he wanted to go through the wicket gate at once, but suddenly stopped and turned to Smerdyakov. Something strange happened: Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly, as if in a spasm, bit his lip, clenched his fists, and—another instant, and of course he would have thrown himself on Smerdyakov. The other at least noticed it in that same instant, gave a start, and jerked his whole body back. But the instant passed safely for Smerdyakov, and Ivan Fyodorovich turned in silence, though as if in some sort of perplexity, toward the wicket gate.

“I’m leaving for Moscow tomorrow, if you want to know, early tomorrow morning—and that’s all!” he suddenly said with malice, distinctly and loudly, wondering at himself afterward why he had needed to say it to Smerdyakov then.

“That’s the very best thing, sir,” the other took up, as though he had been waiting for it, “except perhaps that you might be troubled from here by telegraph in Moscow, sir, in some such case, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich stopped again and again turned quickly to Smerdyakov. But something seemed to have happened to the other too. All his familiarity and nonchalance had vanished in an instant; his whole face expressed extraordinary attention and expectation, but timid and obsequious now: “Won’t you say something more, won’t you add something,” as much as to say, could be read in his intent gaze, which had fairly fastened itself on Ivan Fyodorovich.

“And wouldn’t they send for me from Chermashnya too… in some such case?” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly howled, for some unknown reason suddenly raising his voice terribly.

“From Chermashnya too, sir… they’d trouble you, sir…” Smerdyakov muttered almost in a whisper, as though at a loss, but continuing to look intently, intently, straight into Ivan Fyodorovich’s eyes.

“Only Moscow is farther, and Chermashnya is nearer, so is it the fare you begrudge, insisting on Chermashnya, or is it me you pity, that I’ll be going a long way round?”

“Perfectly correct, sir…” Smerdyakov muttered, his voice breaking now, smiling vilely and again convulsively getting ready to leap back in time. But Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly, to Smerdyakov’s surprise, laughed and went quickly through the wicket gate, still laughing. Anyone who had glanced at his face would surely have concluded that he was laughing not at all because he was so merry. And he himself could not for anything have explained what was happening to him at that moment. He moved and walked as if in a spasm.