«What do you mean by ‘nothing’?»
«Yes, she has. It’s no matter to you. Let me alone.»
«No, I won’t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?»
«Why, I’d quite forgotten about her,» said Smerdyakov, with a scornful smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look of frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their last interview, a month before.
«You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don’t look like yourself,» he said to Ivan.
«Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.,
«But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are you so worried?» He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.
«Listen; I’ve told you I won’t go away without an answer!» Ivan cried, intensely irritated. «Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?» said Smerdyakov, with a
look of suffering.
«Damn it! I’ve nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and I’ll go away.» «I’ve no answer to give you,» said Smerdyakov, looking down again.
«You may be sure I’ll make you answer!»
«Why are you so uneasy?» Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with contempt, but almost with repulsion. «Is this because the trial begins to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can’t you believe that at last? Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don’t be afraid of anything.»
«I don’t understand you…. What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?» Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.
«You don’t understand?» he drawled reproachfully. «It’s a strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce!»
Ivan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly supercilious tone of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in itself. He had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.
«I tell you, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I won’t say anything about you; there’s no proof against you. I say, how your hands are trembling! Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, you did not murder him.»
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Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha. «I know it was not I,» he faltered.
«Do you?» Smerdyakov caught him up again. Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.
«Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!»
Smerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes on Ivan with insane hatred.
«Well, it was you who murdered him, if that’s it,» he whispered furiously.
Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something. He laughed malignantly. «You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?»
«You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand it now.» «All I understand is that you are mad.»
«Aren’t you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what’s the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it.»
«Did it? Why, did you murder him?» Ivan turned cold.
Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over with a cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly; probably the genuineness of Ivan’s horror struck him.
«You don’t mean to say you really did not know?» he faltered mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.
Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg; I won’t wait till he comes back, suddenly echoed in his head.
«Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting before me,» he muttered.
«There’s no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No doubt he is here, that third, between us.»
«Who is he? Who is here? What third person?» Ivan cried in alarm, looking about him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.
«That third is God Himself- Providence. He is the third beside us now. Only don’t look for Him, you won’t find him.»
«It’s a lie that you killed him!» Ivan cried madly. «You are mad, or teasing me again!» Smerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of fear. He could still
scarcely get over his incredulity; he still fancied that Ivan knew everything and was trying to «throw it all on him to his face.»
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«Wait a minute,» he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly bringing up his left leg from under the table, he began turning up his trouser leg. He was wearing long white stockings and slippers. Slowly he took off his garter and fumbled to the bottom of his stocking. Ivan gazed at him, and suddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of terror.
«He’s mad!» he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so that he knocked his back against the wall and stood up against it, stiff and straight. He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who, entirely unaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking, as though he were making an effort to get hold of something with his fingers and pull it out. At last he got hold of it and began pulling it out. Ivan saw that it was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of papers. Smerdyakov pulled it out and laid it on the table.
«Here,» he said quietly.
«What is it?» asked Ivan, trembling.
«Kindly look at it,» Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone.
Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began unfolding it, but sud-denly drew back his fingers, as though from contact with a loathsome reptile. «Your hands keep twitching,» observed Smerdyakov, and he deliberately unfolded the bundle himself. Under the wrapper were three packets of hundred-rouble notes.
«They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not count them. Take them,» Smerdyakov suggested to Ivan, nodding at the notes. Ivan sank back in his chair. He was as white as a handkerchief.
«You frightened me… with your stocking,» he said, with a strange grin. «Can you really not have known till now?» Smerdyakov asked once more.
«No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother, brother! Ach!» He suddenly clutched his head in both hands.
«Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother’s help or without?»
«It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch is quite innocent.»
«All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on trembling? I can’t speak properly.»
«You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’ and how frightened you are now,» Smerdyakov muttered in surprise. «Won’t you have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very refreshing. Only I must hide this first.»
And again he motioned at the notes. He was just going to get up and call at the door to Marya Kondratyevna to make some lemonade and bring it them, but, looking for something to cover up the notes that she might not see them, he first took out his handkerchief, and as it turned out to be very dirty, took up the big yellow book that Ivan had noticed at first lying on the table, and put it over the notes. The book was The Sayings of the Holy Father Isaac the Syrian. Ivan read it mechanically.
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«I won’t have any lemonade,» he said. «Talk of me later. Sit down and tell me how you did it. Tell me all about it.»
«You’d better take off your greatcoat, or you’ll be too hot.» Ivan, as though he’d only just thought of it, took off his coat, and, without getting up from his chair, threw it on the bench.
«Speak, please, speak.»
He seemed calmer. He waited, feeling sure that Smerdyakov would tell him all about it. «How it was done?» sighed Smerdyakov. «It was done in a most natural way, following
your very words.»
«Of my words later,» Ivan broke in again, apparently with complete self-possession, firmly uttering his words, and not shouting as before. «Only tell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it happened. Don’t forget anything. The details, above everything, the details, I beg you.»
«You’d gone away, then I fell into the cellar.» «In a fit or in a sham one?»
«A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps to the very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a scream, and struggled, till they carried me out.»
«Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the hospital?»
«No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the hospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I’ve had for years. For two days I was quite uncon-scious.»
«All right, all right. Go on.»
«They laid me on the bed. I knew I’d be the other side of the partition, for whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me there, near them. She’s always been very kind to me, from my birth up. At night I moaned, but quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to come.»
«Expecting him? To come to you?»
«Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I’d
