VII. “Even Talking with a Clever Man Is Worth It”

And he said so, too. Meeting Fyodor Pavlovich in the hall the moment he came in, he suddenly shouted at him, waving his arms: “I’m going upstairs to my room, not to you, goodbye,” and walked past, even trying not to look at his father. It may very well be that the old man was too hateful to him at that minute, but so unceremonious a display of hostility was unexpected even for Fyodor Pavlovich. And the old man evidently really had wanted to tell him something in a hurry, and had come out into the hall on purpose to meet him; hearing such a courtesy, he stopped without a word and, with a mocking look, followed his dear son with his eyes up the stairs to the mezzanine until he was out of sight.

“What’s the matter with him?” he quickly asked Smerdyakov, who had come in after Ivan Fyodorovich.

“He’s angry about something, sir, who can make him out,” the other muttered evasively.

“Oh, devil take him! Let him be angry! Bring the samovar and clear out yourself, quick, look sharp. Anything new?”

Here began questions of precisely the sort Smerdyakov had just been complaining of to Ivan Fyodorovich, that is, all about the visitor he was expecting, and we shall leave those questions out here. Half an hour later the house was locked, and the crazed little old man was pacing alone through the rooms, in trembling expectation that any moment now the five agreed knocks would sound, glancing now and then into the dark windows and seeing nothing in them but the night.

It was already very late, and Ivan Fyodorovich was still not asleep, still turning things over. He went to bed late that night, at about two o’clock. But we shall not set down the whole course of his thoughts, and besides, it is not yet time for us to enter into that soul: that soul will have its turn. And even if we did try to convey something of it, it would be a very hard thing to do, because what was there was not thoughts but something very indefinite and, above all, far too agitated. He himself felt that he had lost every thread. He was tormented, too, by various strange and almost wholly unexpected desires; for instance, well after midnight he suddenly felt an urgent and unbearable wish to go downstairs, unlock the door, walk over to the cottage, and give Smerdyakov a beating, but had you asked him what for, he himself would decidedly not have been able to state a single reason precisely, except perhaps that this lackey had become hateful to him, as the most grievous offender one could possibly find in the world. On the other hand, more than once that night some inexplicable and humiliating timidity seized his soul, under which he—he felt it—even seemed suddenly to lose his physical strength. His head ached and swam. Something hateful gnawed at his soul, as though he were about to take revenge on someone. He hated even Alyosha, remembering the conversation he had had with him earlier, and at moments he very much hated himself. Of Katerina Ivanovna he had almost forgotten even to think, and he wondered a great deal at this afterward, all the more because he himself remembered firmly how only yesterday morning, when he had boasted so grandly at Katerina Ivanovna’s that he would leave for Moscow the next day, he had then and there whispered to himself in his soul: “But that’s nonsense, you won’t go, and it won’t be as easy for you to tear yourself away as you’re bragging now.” Recalling that night long afterward, Ivan Fyodorovich remembered with particular disgust how he would suddenly get up from the sofa and quietly, as though terribly afraid that someone might be spying on him, open the door, go out onto the stairs, and listen down below, into the rooms underneath, to Fyodor Pavlovich stirring and pacing about down there—he listened for a long time, five minutes at a stretch, with a sort of strange curiosity, holding his breath, with his heart pounding, and why he was doing all this, why he was listening, he of course did not know himself. That “act” he called “vile” all the rest of his life, and all the rest of his life, deep within himself, in the secret places of his soul, he considered it the basest act of his whole life. Toward Fyodor Pavlovich himself he felt not even any hatred at those minutes, but was only for some reason curious with all his might: how he was walking about down there, what he must be doing just about now in his rooms; he guessed and pictured how he must be glancing down there into the dark windows and suddenly stopping in the middle of the room and waiting, waiting, to hear whether anyone was knocking. Ivan Fyodorovich went out onto the stairs for this occupation a couple of times. When everything had grown quiet and Fyodor Pavlovich, too, had gone to bed, at around two o’clock, Ivan Fyodorovich also lay down, with the firm intention of falling asleep as quickly as possible, for he felt terribly worn out. And so it was: he fell suddenly into a sound, dreamless sleep, but woke early, at about seven, when it was already light. Opening his eyes, he suddenly, to his own amazement, felt a surge of some extraordinary energy in himself; he jumped up quickly and quickly dressed, then dragged out his trunk and without delay began hurriedly packing it. As it happened, all his linen had come back from the laundress only the morning before. Ivan Fyodorovich even smiled at the thought that everything had fallen out so neatly, that there was nothing whatever to hold up a sudden departure. And the departure was turning out to be sudden indeed. Although Ivan Fyodorovich had said yesterday (to Katerina Ivanovna, to Alyosha, and then to Smerdyakov) that he would leave the next day, still, going to bed last night, he remembered very well that at that minute he had not even been thinking of leaving, at least had not in the least imagined that on waking in the morning his first impulse would be to rush to pack his trunk. At last the trunk and the bag were ready: it was already nearly nine o’clock when Marfa Ignatyevna came up to him with her usual daily question: “Where will you be pleased to take your tea, sir, up here or will you come down?” Ivan Fyodorovich came down looking almost cheerful, though there was something in him, in his words and gestures, scattered, as it were, and hurried. Greeting his father affably and even inquiring particularly after his health, he did not, however, wait for his parent to finish answering, but announced all at once that he was leaving for Moscow in an hour, for good, and asked that the horses be sent for. The old man heard the news without the slightest surprise, forgetting most improperly to look sorry at his dear son’s departure; instead he suddenly became extraordinarily busy, having remembered, just in time, a pressing affair of his own.

“Oh, you! What a one you are! Not a word yesterday… well, never mind, we’ll settle it right now. Do me a great kindness, my own dear boy, stop by Chermashnya. Why, from the Volovya station you only have to turn left, only some twelve little versts or so, and there it is, Chermashnya.”

“Excuse me, I can’t: it’s eighty versts to the railway, and the train leaves the station for Moscow at seven in the evening; that’s barely enough time to make it.”

“You’ll make it tomorrow, or else the day after, but today turn off to Chermashnya. What does it cost you to set your parent’s mind at ease! If I didn’t have business here, I’d have flown over myself long ago, because the matter there is urgent and out of the ordinary, but here my time just now is not such… You see, I have that grove of mine there, in two plots, at Begichevo and at Dyachkino, on the waste lands. The Maslovs, the old man and his son, merchants, are offering only eight thousand for the timber, and only last year a buyer turned up and offered twelve, but he wasn’t from these parts, that’s the rub. Because there’s no selling to anyone local now: the Maslovs, father and son, are running it like moneylenders, they’re worth a hundred thousand: whatever they set, you take it, and nobody local dares go up against them. But the Father at Ilyinskoye suddenly wrote here last Thursday that Gorstkin has come, another little merchant, I know him, only the precious thing about him is that he’s not from here but from Pogrebovo, which means he’s not afraid of the Maslovs, because he’s not from here. ‘I’ll give eleven thousand for the grove,’ he says, do you hear? And he’ll be staying here, the Father writes, only another week at the most. So if you’d just go and come to terms with him…”

“Well, write to the Father, then, and he’ll come to terms with him.”

“He can’t, that’s the thing. That Father has no eye for it. He’s a golden man, I’d hand him twenty thousand this minute to keep for me without a receipt, but he has no eye for anything at all, as if he weren’t a man at all, a crow could fool him. And a learned man, too, just imagine. This Gorstkin looks like a peasant, in a blue coat, only by character he’s a downright scoundrel, and that’s the trouble for all of us: he lies, that’s the rub. Sometimes he tells such lies you can only wonder why he does it. Two years ago he lied that his wife had died and that he’d already married another, and nothing of the sort had happened, just imagine: his wife never died at all, she’s alive to this day and beats him once every three days. So now too we need to find out: is he lying or telling the truth when he says he wants to buy and give eleven thousand?”

“But I can’t do anything there either, I don’t have an eye for it.”

“Wait, hold on, you’ll do too, because I’ll tell you all his signs, Gorstkin’s, I’ve had dealings with him for a long time now. You see: you have to watch his beard; he has a little red beard, a nasty, scraggly little one. If his little beard shakes while he talks and gets angry, then all’s well, he’s telling the truth, he means business; but if he’s stroking his beard with his left hand and chuckling away, well, then he means to cheat you, he’s up to tricks. Never look him in the eyes, you can’t make out anything from his eyes, murky water, a rogue; look at the beard. I’ll give you a note for him, and you show it to him. He’s Gorstkin, only he’s not Gorstkin, he’s Lyagavy, the Bird Dog, but don’t you tell him he’s Lyagavy, he’ll take offense. If you come to terms with him and see that it’s all right, write here at once. Just write this much: ‘He’s not lying,’ that’s all. Hold out for eleven, you can come down a thousand, but no more. Think of it: eight and eleven, that’s a difference of three thousand. It’s just as if I’d found those three thousand, and who knows how soon I’ll find a buyer, and I need the money desperately. Let me know it’s serious, and then I’ll fly over myself from here and close it, I’ll snatch the time somehow. But why should I go galloping out there now, if it’s all something the Father dreamed up? Well, are you going or not?”

“Oh, I have no time, spare me.”

“Ah, oblige your father, I’ll remember it! You’re all heartless, that’s what! What’s a day or two to you? Where are you off to now, Venice? Your Venice won’t fall to pieces in two days. I’d send Alyoshka, but what good is Alyoshka in such matters? I’m asking you solely because you’re a clever man, do you think I don’t see it? You don’t deal in timber, but you have an eye. The only thing is to see whether the man is speaking in earnest or not. I tell you, look at the beard: if the little beard shakes, he’s in earnest.”

“So you yourself are pushing me off to that cursed Chermashnya, eh?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried, with a spiteful smirk.

Fyodor Pavlovich did not notice the spite, or did not want to notice it, but he seized on the smirk:

“So you’re going, you’re going? I’ll dash off the note for you right now.”

“I don’t know if I’ll go, I don’t know, I’ll decide on the way.”

“Why on the way, decide now. My dear boy, decide! Come to terms, write me two lines, hand them to the Father, and he’ll send me your little note in a flash. And after that I won’t keep you, off you go to Venice. The Father will take you back to the Volovya station with his own horses…”

The old man was simply in raptures; he dashed off the note, the horses were sent for, a snack and cognac were served. When the old man was glad he always began to grow expansive, but this time he seemed to be holding himself back. About Dmitri Fyodorovich, for instance, he did not utter a single little word. And he was not touched by the parting at all. He even seemed not to find anything to talk about; and Ivan Fyodorovich took good note of it: “He’s sick of me, all the same,” he thought to himself. Only when he was seeing his son off from the porch did the old man seem to grow a little flustered, and he made a move to kiss him. But Ivan Fyodorovich quickly held out his hand to be shaken, evidently warding off the kisses. The old man understood at once and instantly checked himself.

“Well, God be with you, God be with you!” he kept repeating from the porch. “You’ll come again sometime in your life, won’t you? Well, do come, I’ll always be glad. Well, Christ be with you!”

Ivan Fyodorovich climbed into the carriage.

“Goodbye, Ivan, don’t curse me too much!” his father shouted for the last time.

The whole household came out to see him off: Smerdyakov, Marfa, and Grigory. Ivan Fyodorovich gave each of them ten rubles. When he was already seated in the carriage, Smerdyakov sprang forward to straighten the rug.

“You see… I’m going to Chermashnya…” somehow suddenly broke from Ivan Fyodorovich; again, as yesterday, it slipped out all by itself, and with a sort of nervous little laugh besides. He remembered it for a long time afterward.

“So it’s true what people say, that even talking with a clever man is worth it,” Smerdyakov answered firmly, with a penetrating look at Ivan Fyodorovich.

The carriage started and raced off. The traveler’s soul was troubled, but he gazed greedily about him: at the fields, the hills, the trees, at a flock of geese passing high overhead across the clear sky. And suddenly he felt so good. He tried to strike up a conversation with the driver, and something in the peasant’s answer interested him terribly, but a minute later he realized that it had all gone in one ear and out the other, and that, to tell the truth, he had not even understood what the peasant had answered. He fell silent; it was good even so: the air clean, fresh, a little chilly, the sky clear. The images of Alyosha and Katerina Ivanovna flickered for a moment in his mind; but he smiled quietly and quietly blew at the dear phantoms, and they flew away: “Their time will come,” he thought. They covered the first stage quickly, changed horses, and raced on to Volovya. “Why is it worth talking with a clever man, what did he mean by that?” it suddenly took his breath away. “And why did I report to him that I was going to Chermashnya?” They galloped up to the Volovya station. Ivan Fyodorovich got out of the carriage, and the drivers crowded around him. They bargained over Chermashnya, twelve versts by a country road, with private horses. He told them to harness up. He went into the station house, looked around, glanced at the stationmaster’s wife, and suddenly went back out onto the porch.

“Never mind Chermashnya. Will I make the railway by seven, lads?”

“Just about. Shall we harness up, then?”

“Harness up this minute. Will any of you be in town tomorrow?”

“Sure, there’s Mitry here, he will.”

“Could you do me a favor, Mitry? Go to my father, Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, and tell him that I didn’t go to Chermashnya. Can you or not?”

“Why not, I’ll go; we’ve known Fyodor Pavlovich a very long time.”

“And here’s something for tea, because he very likely won’t give you anything…” Ivan Fyodorovich laughed merrily.

“That he won’t, sure enough,” Mitry laughed too. “Thank you, sir, we’ll be sure to do it…”

At seven in the evening Ivan Fyodorovich boarded the train and flew off to Moscow. “Away with everything past, I am done with the old world forever, and let there be no news from it, no echo; to a new world, to new places, and no looking back!” But instead of rapture, such darkness suddenly descended on his soul, and such sorrow ached in his heart, as he had never felt before in all his life. He thought all night long; the train flew on, and only at daybreak, as it was already entering Moscow, did he suddenly seem to come to himself.

“I am a scoundrel!” he whispered to himself.

And Fyodor Pavlovich, having seen his dear son off, was left very pleased. For two whole hours he felt almost happy and sipped at his cognac; but suddenly an event occurred in the house that was most vexing and most unpleasant for everyone, and that instantly threw Fyodor Pavlovich into great confusion: Smerdyakov went down into the cellar for something and fell from the top step to the bottom. It was lucky that Marfa Ignatyevna happened to be in the yard at the time and heard it in time. She did not see the fall, but she heard the cry, a peculiar, strange cry, but one long known to her: the cry of an epileptic falling in a fit. Whether the fit had come upon him at the moment he was going down the steps, so that he must of course have tumbled straight down senseless, or whether, on the contrary, it was from the fall and the shock that Smerdyakov, a known epileptic, had his fit, there was no telling, but they found him already at the bottom of the cellar, writhing and convulsed, thrashing about and foaming at the mouth. At first they thought he had surely broken something, an arm or a leg, and hurt himself badly, but nevertheless “the Lord preserved him,” as Marfa Ignatyevna put it: nothing of the kind had happened, only it was hard to get him out and carry him up from the cellar into God’s daylight. But they asked the neighbors for help and somehow managed it. Fyodor Pavlovich himself was present through the whole of this ceremony, helping with his own hands, visibly frightened and as if at a loss. The sick man, however, did not come to: the fits stopped for a while but then began again, and everyone concluded that the same thing would happen as last year, when he had also fallen by accident, from the attic. They remembered that ice had been put on the crown of his head then. There was still some ice left in the cellar, and Marfa Ignatyevna saw to it, and toward evening Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Doctor Herzenstube, who arrived at once. Having examined the patient carefully (he was the most careful and attentive doctor in the whole province, an elderly and most estimable little old man), he concluded that the fit was an extraordinary one and “might threaten danger,” that for the time being he, Herzenstube, did not yet understand it all, but that tomorrow morning, if the present remedies did not help, he would decide on taking others. The sick man was put to bed in the cottage, in a little room next to Grigory and Marfa Ignatyevna’s quarters. After that Fyodor Pavlovich suffered nothing but misfortune upon misfortune all day: it was Marfa Ignatyevna who made the dinner, and the soup, next to what Smerdyakov would have made, came out “like dishwater,” and the chicken proved so dried out that there was no possibility of chewing it at all. To her master’s bitter, though just, reproaches Marfa Ignatyevna objected that the chicken had been a very old one to begin with, and that she herself had never trained as a cook. Toward evening another worry arose: Fyodor Pavlovich was informed that Grigory, who had been feeling poorly since the day before yesterday, had now all but taken to his bed altogether: his lower back had given out. Fyodor Pavlovich finished his tea as early as he could and shut himself in the house alone. He was in terrible and anxious expectation. The fact was that on this very evening he expected Grushenka to come almost for certain; at least he had received from Smerdyakov, early that morning, an almost firm assurance that “they’ve promised to come without fail, sir.” The restless little old man’s heart beat anxiously; he walked through his empty rooms and listened. He had to keep his ears pricked: Dmitri Fyodorovich might be lying in wait for her somewhere, and when she knocked at the window (Smerdyakov had assured Fyodor Pavlovich two days before that he had told her where and how to knock), the door had to be unlocked as quickly as possible and she must on no account be kept waiting a single needless second in the entryway, lest, God forbid, she should take fright at something and run away. It was a fretful business for Fyodor Pavlovich, but never yet had his heart bathed in sweeter hope: why, it could be said almost for certain that this time she would come without fail!…