VII. The Second Visit to Smerdyakov

By that time Smerdyakov had already been discharged from the hospital. Ivan Fyodorovich knew his new lodgings: precisely in this lopsided little log house of two cottage rooms divided by an entryway. In one room Marya Kondratyevna had settled with her mother, and in the other Smerdyakov, by himself. God knows on what terms he had settled with them, whether he lived there free or for money. Later on it was supposed that he had settled with them as Marya Kondratyevna’s intended and was living there free for the time being. Both mother and daughter respected him very much and looked upon him as a man higher than themselves. Having knocked until he was let in, Ivan Fyodorovich stepped into the entryway and, on Marya Kondratyevna’s directions, went straight to the left into the “clean room,” which Smerdyakov occupied. In this room there was a tiled stove, and it was heavily heated. The walls were adorned with blue wallpaper, all torn, it is true, and under it, in the cracks, Prussian cockroaches swarmed in terrible numbers, so that there was an incessant rustling. The furniture was insignificant: two benches along the two walls and two chairs by the table. The table, though, plain wood as it was, was covered with a cloth with pink patterns. On each of the two little windows stood a pot of geraniums. In the corner was an icon case with icons. On the table stood a small, badly dented copper samovar and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had already finished his tea, and the samovar had gone out… He himself was sitting at the table on a bench and, looking into a notebook, was tracing something with a pen. A little bottle of ink stood beside him, as well as a low cast-iron candlestick with a candle, a stearin one, though. Ivan Fyodorovich at once concluded from Smerdyakov’s face that he had fully recovered from his illness. His face was fresher, fuller, his forelock was combed up, the hair at his temples slicked down. He was sitting in a motley quilted dressing gown, very worn, however, and rather frayed. On his nose were spectacles, which Ivan Fyodorovich had never seen on him before. This most trivial circumstance suddenly, as it were, made Ivan Fyodorovich doubly angry: “Such a creature, and in spectacles, too!” Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently through his spectacles at the newcomer; then he quietly took them off and himself half rose on the bench, but somehow not at all so respectfully, somehow even lazily, solely to observe only the very most indispensable courtesy, without which one can hardly manage. All this flashed instantly before Ivan, and all of it he took in and noted at once, and above all—Smerdyakov’s look, decidedly spiteful, unwelcoming, and even haughty: “What are you hanging about for,” it seemed to say, “we agreed about everything that time, so why have you come again?” Ivan Fyodorovich could barely restrain himself:

“It’s hot in here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his coat.

“Take it off, sir,” Smerdyakov permitted.

Ivan Fyodorovich took off his coat and threw it on the bench, took a chair with trembling hands, quickly pulled it up to the table, and sat down. Smerdyakov had managed to lower himself onto his bench before him.

“First of all, are we alone?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked sternly and impetuously. “Can’t they hear us from there?”

“Nobody will hear anything, sir. You saw yourself: there’s the entryway.”

“Listen, my dear fellow: what was that you blurted out that time, when I was leaving you at the hospital, that if I kept quiet about your being a master at shamming the falling sickness, then you, so to speak, would not declare everything to the investigator about our conversation at the gate? What does that mean, everything? What could you have meant then? Were you threatening me, or what? As if I’d entered into some alliance with you, or what, as if I were afraid of you?”

Ivan Fyodorovich said this in a perfect fury, evidently and deliberately letting it be known that he despised any roundabout hints and any approaches and was playing an open game. Smerdyakov’s eyes flashed spitefully, his left eye began to wink, and he at once, though in his usual restrained and measured way, gave his answer too: “You want it all aboveboard, so here’s this very aboveboard for you.”

“What I meant then, and why I said it then, was this: that you, knowin’ beforehand about this murderment of your own parent, left him as a sacrifice that time, and so that people wouldn’t conclude after this anything bad about your feelings, and maybe about something other besides, that is what I promised then not to declare to the authorities.”

Smerdyakov said this unhurriedly, it is true, and apparently in command of himself, but something firm and insistent, spiteful and insolently defiant could even be heard in his voice now. He stared at Ivan Fyodorovich impudently, and for the first minute everything even swam before Ivan’s eyes:

“What? What? Are you in your right mind or not?”

“Perfectly in my full right mind, sir.”

“Do you mean I knew about the murder then?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried at last, and struck the table hard with his fist. “What does ‘something other besides’ mean? Speak, you scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov was silent and went on surveying Ivan Fyodorovich with the same insolent look.

“Speak, you stinking rogue, what ‘something other besides’?” Ivan howled.

“By that ‘something other besides,’ this very minute I meant that you, I dare say, very much wished for your parent’s death yourself then.”

Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up and struck him on the shoulder with his fist with all his might, so that he reeled back against the wall. In an instant his whole face was bathed in tears, and, saying, “It’s shameful, sir, to beat a weak man!” he suddenly covered his eyes with his cotton handkerchief with little blue checks, completely snotted up, and sank into quiet, tearful weeping. A minute or so went by.

“Enough! Stop it!” Ivan Fyodorovich said commandingly at last, sitting down on the chair again. “Don’t drive me past the last of my patience.”

Smerdyakov took his little rag away from his eyes. Every little line of his wrinkled face expressed the injury he had just suffered.

“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that I wanted to kill father together with Dmitri?”

“I didn’t know your thoughts at the time, sir,” Smerdyakov said in an injured tone, “and that’s why I stopped you then, as you were coming in at the gate, so as to test you on this very point, sir.”

“Test what? What?”

“Why, precisely this very circumstance: do you want or don’t you want your parent to be killed as soon as possible?”

What outraged Ivan Fyodorovich most of all was this insistent, insolent tone, from which Smerdyakov stubbornly refused to retreat.

“It was you who killed him!” he suddenly exclaimed.

Smerdyakov grinned contemptuously.

“That it wasn’t me who killed him, you know for a fact yourself. And I thought that for a clever man there was nothing more to say on this subject.”

“But why, why did you have such a suspicion of me then?”

“As is already known to you, out of fear alone, sir. For I was in such a position then that, shaking with fear, I suspected everyone. I resolved to test you too, sir, for if you too, I think, wish for the very same thing as your brother does, then it’s the end of this whole business, and I’ll perish along with it, like a fly.”

“Listen, two weeks ago you didn’t say that.”

“I meant the very same thing in the hospital, too, speaking with you, only I supposed you would understand without superfluous words and did not wish a direct conversation yourself, as the cleverest of men, sir.”

“Just look at him! But answer, answer, I insist: what precisely, with what precisely could I have instilled then in your base soul such a suspicion, so low for me?”

“To kill, that you could never have done yourself, sir, and didn’t want to, either, but to want somebody else to kill, that you did want.”

“And how calmly, how calmly he says it! But why should I want it, what the devil should I want it for?”

“What do you mean, what the devil for, sir? And the inheritance, sir?” Smerdyakov took up venomously, and even somehow vengefully. “Why, after your parent, each of the three brothers might have come in for nearly forty thousand, sir, and maybe even more than that, and if Fyodor Pavlovich had married that very lady then, sir, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have transferred the whole capital to herself right after the wedding, for she is very far from stupid, sir, so that the three of you brothers wouldn’t have got even two rubles after your parent. And how much was left then before the wedding? A single hair, sir: that lady had only to do like this with her little finger before him, and he would have run after her to church at once with his tongue hanging out.”

Ivan Fyodorovich restrained himself with suffering.

“Very well,” he said at last, “you see, I haven’t jumped up, I haven’t beaten you, I haven’t killed you. Go on: so, in your view, I had destined brother Dmitri for it, I was counting on him?”

“How could you not count on him, sir; why, if he killed, then he would be deprived of all the rights of the nobility, of rank and property, and go into exile, sir. So then his share, sir, after your parent would be left to you and your brother Alexei Fyodorovich, in equal parts, sir, so that it would come to not forty but sixty thousand for each of you, sir. You were counting on Dmitri Fyodorovich for certain sure then!”

“Well, the things I put up with from you! Listen, you scum: if I had been counting on anyone then, it would certainly have been on you, not on Dmitri, and, I swear, I even had a presentiment of some vileness from you… then… I remember my impression!”

“And I too thought then, for one little minute, that you were counting on me as well,” Smerdyakov grinned mockingly, “so that by that very thing you gave yourself away to me even more then, for if you had a presentiment about me and at the same time were going away, it means you as good as told me by that very thing: you can kill my parent, and I won’t hinder you.”

“Scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”

“And all through that very Chermashnya, sir. Have mercy! You’re getting ready to go to Moscow, and you refused all your parent’s entreaties to go to Chermashnya, sir! And at just one silly word of mine you suddenly agreed, sir! And what did you need to agree to that Chermashnya for then? If you went not to Moscow but to Chermashnya, without reason, at a single word of mine, then it means you expected something from me.”

“No, I swear, no!” Ivan howled, grinding his teeth.

“How can it be no, sir? On the contrary, for such words of mine then, you, your parent’s son, ought first thing to have taken me to the police station and had me flogged, sir… or at the very least given me a smack in the mug right there on the spot, but you, good gracious, sir, on the contrary, without getting angry in the least, at once amiably carry out exactly what my very silly word said, sir, and go off, which was altogether absurd, sir, for you ought to have stayed to guard your parent’s life… How could I not conclude?”

Ivan sat frowning, his two fists pressed convulsively on his knees.

“Yes, it’s a pity I didn’t smack you in the mug,” he grinned bitterly. “It was impossible to drag you to the police station then: who would have believed me, and what could I have pointed to? But a smack in the mug… ugh, a pity I didn’t think of it; though smacks in the mug are forbidden, I’d have made mush of that snout of yours.”

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.

“In the ordinary cases of life,” he said in that self-satisfied, doctrinaire tone in which he had once argued with Grigory Vasilyevich about faith and teased him, standing behind Fyodor Pavlovich’s table, “in the ordinary cases of life smacks in the mug are nowadays indeed forbidden by law, and everyone has stopped hitting, sir, but in the distinctive cases of life, why, not only here with us but in the whole world, be it even the most complete French republic, they go on hitting all the same, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, sir, and they will never stop it, sir, but you, even in a distinctive case, didn’t dare then, sir.”

“What are you learning French vocables for?” Ivan nodded at the notebook lying on the table.

“And why shouldn’t I learn them, sir, so as to further my education by it, thinking that I myself may perhaps someday have occasion to be in those happy places of Europe.”

“Listen, you monster,” Ivan’s eyes flashed and he began to shake all over, “I’m not afraid of your accusations, testify against me whatever you like, and if I didn’t beat you to death just now, it’s only because I suspect you of this crime and will bring you to court. I’ll expose you yet!”

“But in my opinion you’d better keep silent, sir. For what can you declare against me in my perfect innocence, and who will believe you? Only if you begin, then I too will tell everything, sir, for how could I not defend myself?”

“Do you think I’m afraid of you now?”

“Suppose in court they don’t believe all these words of mine, sir, that I’ve told you now, the public will believe them, sir, and you’ll be ashamed, sir.”

“So that means again: ‘even talking with a clever man is worth it,’ eh?” Ivan ground out.

“You’ve been pleased to hit the very point, sir. So be clever, sir.”

Ivan Fyodorovich rose, trembling all over with indignation, pulled on his coat, and, without answering Smerdyakov any further, without even looking at him, quickly walked out of the cottage. The fresh evening air refreshed him. The moon was shining brightly in the sky. A terrible nightmare of thoughts and sensations was seething in his soul. “Go and denounce Smerdyakov now? But denounce him for what: he’s innocent all the same. On the contrary, he’ll accuse me. Really, why did I go to Chermashnya then? Why, why?” Ivan Fyodorovich kept asking. “Yes, of course, I was expecting something, and he’s right…” And again for the hundredth time he remembered how, on the last night at his father’s, he had eavesdropped on him from the stairs, but he remembered it with such suffering now that he even stopped on the spot as if pierced: “Yes, I was expecting it then, that’s true! I wanted it, it was precisely murder I wanted! Did I want the murder, did I want it?… Smerdyakov has to be killed!… If I don’t dare to kill Smerdyakov now, then life isn’t worth living!…” Ivan Fyodorovich, without going home, went straight to Katerina Ivanovna’s then and frightened her by his appearance: he was like a madman. He told her his whole conversation with Smerdyakov, all of it, to the last detail. He could not calm down, however much she tried to persuade him, kept walking about the room and talking abruptly, strangely. At last he sat down, leaned his elbows on the table, propped his head in both hands, and let fall a strange aphorism:

“If it wasn’t Dmitri who killed, but Smerdyakov, then of course I am in solidarity with him, for I incited him. Whether I incited him, I don’t know yet. But if only he killed, and not Dmitri, then of course I am a murderer too.”

Having heard this, Katerina Ivanovna silently got up from her place, went to her writing desk, unlocked a little box that stood on it, took out a sort of scrap of paper, and laid it before Ivan. This paper was that very document which Ivan Fyodorovich afterward announced to Alyosha as the “mathematical proof” that brother Dmitri had killed their father. It was a letter written by Mitya when drunk to Katerina Ivanovna, on that very evening when he met Alyosha in the field, as Alyosha was going back to the monastery, after the scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s house when Grushenka had insulted her. Then, parting from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed off to Grushenka; whether he saw her is not known, but toward night he found himself in the Metropolis tavern, where he got thoroughly drunk. Drunk, he demanded pen and paper and drew up a document of great weight against himself. It was a frenzied, wordy, and incoherent letter, a “drunken” one precisely. It was like when a drunken man, coming home, begins with extraordinary heat to tell his wife or someone in the household how he has just been insulted, what a scoundrel his insulter is, what a fine man he himself is, on the contrary, and how he will give that scoundrel what for, and all of it long, long, incoherent and excited, with banging of fists on the table, with drunken tears. The paper they had given him at the tavern for the letter was a dirty little scrap of ordinary writing paper of a poor sort, on the back of which some bill had been written. There was evidently not enough room for the drunken wordiness, and Mitya had not only filled all the margins, but the last lines had even been written crosswise over what was already written. The letter ran as follows: “Fatal Katya! Tomorrow I will get hold of the money and return your three thousand to you, and farewell—woman of great wrath, but farewell, my love too! Let us make an end! Tomorrow I will try to get it from everyone, and if I don’t get it from people, I give you my word of honor, I will go to my father and smash his head in and take it from under his pillow, if only Ivan has gone. I’ll go to penal servitude, but I’ll give back the three thousand. And you, farewell. I bow down to the ground before you, for I am a scoundrel before you. Forgive me. No, better not forgive: easier for me and for you! Better penal servitude than your love, for I love another, and today you came to know her too well, so how can you forgive? I will kill my thief! I will go away from all of you to the East, so as to know no one. Her too, for you are not the only one who torments me, she does too. Farewell!

“P. S. I am writing a curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my breast. A string is left, and it rings. Better my heart in two! I will kill myself, but first the cur all the same. I will tear the three out of him and throw it to you. Though a scoundrel before you, I am not a thief! Wait for the three thousand. Under the cur’s mattress, the pink ribbon. It is not I who am the thief, but I will kill my thief. Katya, don’t look contemptuous: Dimitri is not a thief, but a murderer! He has killed his father and ruined himself, so as to stand firm and not have to bear your pride. And not to love you.

“PP. S. I kiss your feet, farewell!

“PP. SS. Katya, pray to God that people give me the money. Then I will not be in blood, and if they don’t—in blood! Kill me!”

When Ivan had read the “document,” he rose convinced. So it was his brother who had killed, and not Smerdyakov. If not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan, either. In his eyes this letter suddenly took on a mathematical meaning. There could no longer be any doubt for him of Mitya’s guilt. By the way, Ivan had never suspected that Mitya might have killed together with Smerdyakov, and that did not fit the facts either. Ivan was completely set at rest. The next morning he remembered Smerdyakov and his jeers only with contempt. A few days later he even wondered how he could have been so painfully hurt by his suspicions. He resolved to despise him and forget him. So a month went by. He did not ask anyone about Smerdyakov any more, but he heard in passing, once or twice, that he was very ill and not in his right mind. “He will end in madness,” the young physician Varvinsky said of him once, and Ivan remembered it. In the last week of that month Ivan himself started to feel very unwell. He had already gone to consult the doctor from Moscow, whom Katerina Ivanovna had sent for and who had arrived just before the trial. And precisely at this same time his relations with Katerina Ivanovna grew strained to the utmost degree. They were a sort of two enemies in love with each other. Katerina Ivanovna’s returns to Mitya, momentary but violent, already drove Ivan into a perfect frenzy. It is strange that right up to the last scene at Katerina Ivanovna’s, described by us, when Alyosha came to her from Mitya, he, Ivan, had not once in the whole month heard her express any doubts of Mitya’s guilt, in spite of all her “returns” to him, which he hated so. It is remarkable, too, that, feeling that he hated Mitya more and more with every day, he understood at the same time that it was not for Katya’s “returns” to him that he hated him, but precisely for having killed their father! He felt and was fully conscious of this himself. Nonetheless, some ten days before the trial he had gone to Mitya and proposed to him a plan of escape, a plan evidently conceived long before. Here, besides the main reason that prompted him to such a step, a certain scratch was also to blame, one that would not heal in his heart, from one little word of Smerdyakov’s, that it was supposedly to his, Ivan’s, advantage that his brother should be convicted, since the sum of the inheritance from their father would then rise for him and Alyosha from forty to sixty thousand. He resolved to sacrifice thirty thousand on his own part alone in order to arrange Mitya’s escape. Returning from him that time, he was terribly sad and troubled: he suddenly began to feel that he wanted the escape not only in order to sacrifice thirty thousand for it and heal the scratch, but for some other reason as well. “Is it because in my soul I am just the same sort of murderer?” he began to ask himself. Something remote, but burning, stung his soul. Above all, throughout this whole month his pride had suffered terribly, but of that later… When, after his conversation with Alyosha, he had taken hold of the bell of his lodgings and suddenly decided to go to Smerdyakov, Ivan Fyodorovich was obeying a peculiar indignation that had suddenly boiled up in his breast. He had suddenly remembered how Katerina Ivanovna had just exclaimed to him in Alyosha’s presence: “It was you, you alone who convinced me that he” (that is, Mitya) “is the murderer!” Remembering this, Ivan was even dumbfounded: never in his life had he convinced her that Mitya was the murderer; on the contrary, he had even suspected himself in front of her when he came back from Smerdyakov’s. On the contrary, it was she, she who had laid out the “document” before him then and proved his brother’s guilt! And suddenly now she herself was exclaiming: “I have been to see Smerdyakov myself!” When had she been? Ivan knew nothing about it. So she was far from certain of Mitya’s guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what exactly had he told her? A terrible wrath blazed up in his heart. He did not understand how he could have let those words of hers pass half an hour ago and not shouted out then and there. He let go of the bell and set off for Smerdyakov’s. “I’ll kill him, perhaps, this time,” he thought on the way.