540 book page, Chapter 6 — The First Interview with Smerdyakov
they take possession of him again. It was just after fancying this, that he met Alyosha in the street. He stopped him at once, and put a question to him:
«Do you remember when Dmitri burst in after dinner and beat father, and afterwards I told you in the yard that I reserved ‘the right to desire’?… Tell me, did you think then that I desired father’s death or not?»
«I did think so,» answered Alyosha, softly.
«It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn’t you fancy then that what I wished was just that one reptile should devour another’; that is, just that Dmitri should kill father, and as soon as possible… and that I myself was even prepared to help to bring that about?»
Alyosha turned rather pale, and looked silently into his brother’s face.
«Speak!» cried Ivan, «I want above everything to know what you thought then. I want the truth, the truth!»
He drew a deep breath, looking angrily at Alyosha before his answer came.
«Forgive me, I did think that, too, at the time,» whispered Alyosha, and he did not add one softening phrase.
«Thanks,» snapped Ivan, and, leaving Alyosha, he went quickly on his way. From that time Alyosha noticed that Ivan began obviously to avoid him and seemed even to have taken a dislike to him, so much so that Alyosha gave up going to see him. Immediately after that meeting with him, Ivan had not gone home, but went straight to Smerdyakov again.
541 book page, Chapter 7 — The Second Visit to Smerdyakov
BY that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan knew his new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in two by a passage, on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her mother, and on the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he lived with them, whether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed afterwards that he had come to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna’s betrothed, and was living there for a time without paying for board or lodging. Both mother and daughter had the greatest respect for him and looked upon him as greatly superior to themselves.
Ivan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the passage. By Marya Kondratyevna’s directions he went straight to the better room on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled stove in the room and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with blue paper, which was a good deal used however, and in the cracks under it cock-roaches swarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a continual rustling from them. The furniture was very scanty: two benches against each wall and two chairs by the table. The table of plain wood was covered with a cloth with pink patterns on it. There was a pot of geranium on each of the two little windows. In the corner there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a little copper samovar with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the table on a bench. He was looking at an exercise-book and slowly writing with a pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick, but with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov’s face that he had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher, fuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at the sides. He was sitting in a parti-coloured, wadded dressing-gown, rather dirty and frayed, however. He had spec-tacles on his nose, which Ivan had never seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance suddenly redoubled Ivan’s anger: «A creature like that and wearing spectacles!»
Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor through his spec-tacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the bench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least possible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan in-stantly; he took it all in and noted it at once- most of all the look in Smerdyakov’s eyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. «What do you want to intrude for?» it seemed to say; «we settled everything then; why have you come again?» Ivan could scarcely control himself.
«It’s hot here,» he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat. «Take off your coat,» Smerdyakov conceded.
Ivan took off his coat and threw it on a bench with trembling hands. He took a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov managed to sit down on his bench before him.
«To begin with, are we alone?» Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. «Can they overhear us in there?»
542 book page, Chapter 7 — The Second Visit to Smerdyakov
«No one can hear anything. You’ve seen for yourself: there’s a passage.»
«Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate? What do you mean by all? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am afraid of you?»
Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to show his cards. Smerdyakov’s eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and deliberation. «You want to have everything above-board; very well, you shall have it,» he seemed to say.
«This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you, knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his fate, and that people mightn’t after that conclude any evil about your feelings and perhaps of something else, too- that’s what I promised not to tell the authorities.»
Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic, resentful and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist passed before Ivan’s eyes for the first moment.
«How? What? Are you out of your mind?»
«I’m perfectly in possession of all my faculties.»
«Do you suppose I knew of the murder?» Ivan cried at last, and he brought his fist viol-ently on the table. «What do you mean by ‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!»
Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent stare. «Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that ‘something else, too’?»
«The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably, too, were very desirous of your parent’s death.»
Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so that he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed in tears. Saying, «It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,» he dried his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet weeping. A minute passed.
«That’s enough! Leave off,» Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again. «Don’t put me out of all patience.»
Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face reflected the insult he had just received.
«So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to kill my father?»
«I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,» said Smerdyakov resentfully; «and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that very point.»
543 book page, Chapter 7 — The Second Visit to Smerdyakov
«To sound what, what?»
«Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be murdered or not.» What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone to which
Smerdyakov persistently adhered.
«It was you murdered him?» he cried suddenly. Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.
«You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of it again.»
«But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?»
«As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a position, shaking with fear, that I suspected everyone. I resolved to sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly, too.»
«Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.»
«I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.»
«What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it… what could I have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?»
«As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but as for wanting someone else to do it, that was just what you did want.»
«And how coolly, how coolly he speakst But
