VI. Первое свидание со Смердяковым

The first time after the catastrophe he had seen him and spoken with him at once, on the very first day of his arrival; then he had visited him a second time, two weeks later.

But after that second time he broke off his meetings with Smerdyakov, so that now it was more than a month since he had last seen him and had heard almost nothing of him.

Ivan Fyodorovich had returned from Moscow only on the fifth day after his father's death, so that he did not even find the coffin: the burial had taken place on the very eve of his arrival.

The cause of Ivan Fyodorovich's delay lay in this: that Alyosha, not knowing his Moscow address exactly, had turned, in order to send the telegram, to Katerina Ivanovna, who, likewise ignorant of his actual address, had wired her own sister and aunt, reckoning that Ivan Fyodorovich would call on them at once upon reaching Moscow.

But he called on them only on the fourth day after his arrival and, having read the telegram, of course flew to us at once, headlong.

The first person he met among us was Alyosha, but on talking with him he was greatly astonished that his brother would not so much as suspect Mitya, and pointed straight at Smerdyakov as the murderer — which ran contrary to every other opinion in our town.

Having then seen the police captain and the prosecutor, and learned the particulars of the accusation and the arrest, he wondered all the more at Alyosha, and ascribed his view solely to a brotherly feeling and compassion for Mitya excited to the last degree — Mitya whom Alyosha, as Ivan well knew, loved dearly.

Incidentally, let us say just two words once and for all about Ivan's feelings toward his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich: he decidedly did not love him, and at most felt for him, on occasion, a certain compassion — and even that was mixed with great contempt, reaching as far as disgust.

Mitya, the whole of him, down to his very figure, was profoundly distasteful to him.

On Katerina Ivanovna's love for him Ivan looked with indignation.

With the accused Mitya, however, he had also met on the first day of his arrival, and that interview not only did not weaken his conviction of Mitya's guilt but even strengthened it.

He had found his brother then in agitation, in a sickly distress.

Mitya was talkative, but scattered and rambling; he spoke very sharply, accused Smerdyakov, and got himself terribly muddled.

Most of all he kept going on about those same three thousand that the dead man had "stolen" from him.

"The money was mine, it was mine," Mitya kept repeating, "and even if I had stolen it, I would have been in the right."

He scarcely disputed any of the evidence ranged against him, and when he did interpret the facts in his own favor, it was again very confusedly and absurdly — in general as though he had no wish whatever to justify himself before Ivan or anyone else; on the contrary, he grew angry, proudly scorned the charges, swore, and flew into a passion.

At Grigory's testimony about the open door he merely laughed contemptuously and insisted that it was "the devil who opened it."

But he could offer no coherent explanation of this fact.

He even managed, at this first interview, to insult Ivan Fyodorovich, telling him sharply that it was not for those who themselves maintain that "everything is lawful" to suspect and interrogate him.

On the whole he was very unfriendly toward Ivan Fyodorovich this time.

It was right after this meeting with Mitya that Ivan Fyodorovich set off, that same day, to Smerdyakov.

Already in the railway car, flying from Moscow, he had kept thinking about Smerdyakov and about his last conversation with him, on the evening before his departure.

Much in it troubled him, much seemed suspicious.

But in giving his evidence to the examining magistrate, Ivan Fyodorovich for the time being said nothing of that conversation.

He put it all off until he could meet with Smerdyakov.

The latter was then in the town hospital.

Doctor Herzenstube, and the physician Varvinsky, whom Ivan Fyodorovich met at the hospital, both firmly answered his insistent questions that Smerdyakov's falling sickness was beyond doubt, and were even surprised at the question, "Was he not perhaps shamming on the day of the catastrophe?"

They gave him to understand that this fit had been an extraordinary one — it had gone on and recurred over several days, so that the patient's life had been in decided danger, and only now, after the measures taken, could one say with assurance that the sick man would survive, though it was very possible (the doctor Herzenstube added) that his reason would remain partly disordered "if not for the whole of his life, then for a fairly long time."

To Ivan Fyodorovich's impatient demand — "So then, he is now mad?" — they answered that "in the full sense this is not yet so, but that certain abnormalities are observable."

Ivan Fyodorovich resolved to find out for himself what these abnormalities were.

At the hospital he was admitted to the interview at once.

Smerdyakov lay in a separate room, on a cot.

Beside him there was another cot, occupied by an enfeebled townsman, a tradesman, all swollen with dropsy and plainly ready to die the next day or the day after; he could be no hindrance to their conversation.

Smerdyakov gave a distrustful grin on catching sight of Ivan Fyodorovich, and for the first instant seemed even to take fright.

So, at least, it flashed upon Ivan Fyodorovich.

But it was only an instant; on the contrary, throughout the rest of the time Smerdyakov almost astounded him by his composure.

From the very first glance at him Ivan Fyodorovich was convinced beyond doubt of his thoroughly and exceedingly sick condition: he was very weak, spoke slowly and as though turning his tongue with difficulty; he had grown very thin and sallow.

Throughout the whole twenty minutes of the interview he complained of a headache and of aching in all his limbs.

His dry, eunuch-like face seemed to have grown somehow so small; his temple-locks were tousled, and in place of his tuft of hair a single thin little wisp stuck up.

But the screwed-up left eye, as though hinting at something, gave away the old Smerdyakov.

"It is interesting to talk even with a clever man," flashed at once into Ivan Fyodorovich's mind.

He sat down on the stool at the foot of the bed.

With an effort of pain Smerdyakov shifted his whole body on the bed, but did not speak first; he kept silent, and indeed looked now as if not very curious.

"Can you talk with me?" asked Ivan Fyodorovich. "I won't tire you much."

"I can well enough, sir," Smerdyakov mumbled in a weak voice. "Have you long been pleased to arrive?" he added condescendingly, as though encouraging an abashed visitor.

"Just today… come to sup up the mess you've brewed here."

Smerdyakov sighed.

"What are you sighing for — you knew, didn't you?" Ivan Fyodorovich blurted out straight.

Smerdyakov kept a dignified silence.

"How was one not to know, sir? It was clear beforehand. Only how was one to know, sir, that it would turn out this way?"

"Turn out what way? Don't dodge! Why, you yourself foretold that the fit would come over you the moment you climbed down into the cellar. You pointed straight at the cellar."

"Have you already stated that in the deposition?" Smerdyakov inquired calmly.

Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly grew angry.

"No, I haven't stated it yet, but I shall state it without fail. You, brother, must explain a good deal to me now, and mark this, my fine fellow, that I will not let myself be toyed with!"

"And why should I play any such game, sir, when all my hope is in you alone, as in the Lord God Himself, sir!" said Smerdyakov, all the while just as perfectly calm, only for a moment closing his little eyes.

"In the first place," Ivan Fyodorovich began, "I know that a fit of the falling sickness cannot be foretold in advance. I have inquired about it — don't dodge. The day and the hour cannot be foretold. How, then, did you foretell me both the day and the hour at the time, and the cellar besides? How could you know beforehand that you would fall down into that very cellar in a fit, unless you shammed the fit on purpose?"

"I had to go down into the cellar anyway, sir, several times a day even, sir," Smerdyakov drawled unhurriedly. "Just so, a year ago, I fell from the loft, sir. It's quite certain that the falling sickness cannot be foretold ahead by day and hour, but a foreboding of it one can always have."

"But you foretold the day and the hour!"

"As to my illness, the falling sickness, sir, you would do best, sir, to make inquiry of the doctors here — whether it was a genuine one I had or not genuine; and I have nothing more to say to you on the subject."

"But the cellar? How did you foreknow about the cellar?"

"You will keep on about that cellar! When I climbed down into it then, I was in dread and in doubt — and the more in dread because I had lost you and had no protection to look for from anyone in the whole world. So I climb down into that very cellar and I think: 'Here it comes now, here it strikes; shall I fall or not?' — and from that very doubt the inevitable spasm suddenly gripped me by the throat, sir… well, and down I went. All of this, and our whole previous conversation with you, sir, by the gate on the evening before that day, sir — how I told you my dread then and about the cellar, sir — I disclosed it all in detail to Mr. Doctor Herzenstube and to the magistrate Nikolai Parfenovich, and they put it all down in the record, sir. And the doctor here, Mr. Varvinsky, before them all especially insisted that it came about precisely from the thought — from that very apprehension, that is, 'What if I fall or not?' And then it seized me. So they wrote it down, sir, that this was bound to come about just so, from my single fear alone, sir, that is."