VII. Второй визит к Смердякову

Ivan Fyodorovich knew his new lodgings: precisely this lopsided little log house, two cottages under one roof, separated by an entry hall.

In one cottage Marya Kondratyevna had settled with her mother, and in the other Smerdyakov, on his own.

God knows on what terms he had taken up residence with them, whether he lived there for free or paid them money.

Afterward people supposed that he had settled in with them as Marya Kondratyevna's betrothed and was living there, for the time being, for free.

Both mother and daughter held him in great esteem and looked upon him as a man superior to themselves.

Having knocked until he was let in, Ivan Fyodorovich stepped into the entry hall and, following Marya Kondratyevna's directions, went straight on to the left into the "white cottage" that Smerdyakov occupied.

In this cottage stood a tiled stove, and the room had been heated to a stifling warmth.

Pale-blue wallpaper showed off along the walls, though it was all tattered, and beneath it, in the cracks, cockroaches teemed in dreadful numbers, so that there rose an unceasing rustle.

The furniture was paltry: two benches along either wall and two chairs beside the table.

The table, however, plain wood though it was, had nonetheless been covered with a cloth patterned in pink swirls.

On each of the two little windows stood a pot of geraniums.

In the corner, an icon case with holy images.

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 cold…

He himself sat at the table on the bench and, peering into a notebook, was tracing something out with a pen.

A little vial of ink stood beside him, and likewise a low cast-iron candlestick with — a stearin candle, as it happened.

Ivan Fyodorovich concluded at once, from Smerdyakov's face, that he had fully recovered from his illness.

His face was fresher, fuller, the forelock fluffed up, the side-locks slicked down.

He sat in a gaudy quilted dressing gown, very threadbare, however, and decidedly worn to rags.

On his nose were spectacles that Ivan Fyodorovich had never before seen on him.

This utterly trifling detail suddenly redoubled, as it were, Ivan Fyodorovich's anger: "A creature like that, and in spectacles, no less!"

Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and stared fixedly through the spectacles at the man who had come in; then he quietly took them off and half-rose from the bench himself, but somehow not at all so respectfully — somehow even lazily, solely to observe the barest minimum of courtesy that one can scarcely do without.

All this flashed through Ivan's mind in an instant, and all of it he took in and noticed at once, but above all — Smerdyakov's gaze, decidedly malicious, unwelcoming, and even haughty: "What are you loitering about for? We settled everything between us back then, so why have you come again?"

Ivan Fyodorovich could barely contain himself:

"It's hot in here," he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

"Take it off, sir," Smerdyakov permitted.

Ivan Fyodorovich took off his overcoat and tossed it onto the bench, seized a chair with trembling hands, swiftly drew it up to the table, and sat down.

Smerdyakov had managed to lower himself onto his own bench before him.

"First of all, are we alone?" Ivan Fyodorovich asked sternly and impetuously. "They won't overhear us from in there?"

"No one will hear a thing, sir.

You saw for yourself: the entry hall."

"Listen, my good fellow: what was it you blurted out back then, when I was leaving you at the hospital — that if I held my tongue about your being a master at feigning fits of the falling sickness, then you, for your part, would not reveal to the investigator the whole of our conversation at the gate?

What does it mean, this ''whole''?

What could you have meant by it then?

Were you threatening me, or what?

Have I entered into some alliance with you, or what — am I afraid of you, or what?"

Ivan Fyodorovich said all this in a complete fury, plainly and deliberately making it known that he scorned every evasion and every roundabout approach and was playing his cards face up.

Smerdyakov's eyes glinted malignly, his left eye twitched, and at once — though after his usual manner, restrained and measured — he too gave his answer: "You want it plain and straight? Very well, then, here is your plain truth for you."

"What I meant back then, and what I uttered it for, was this: that you, knowing beforehand about this murder of your own father, left him as a sacrifice at that time, and so that people should not afterward conclude something wicked about your feelings — and perhaps about something else besides — that is what I promised the authorities I would not reveal."

Smerdyakov spoke without haste and seemingly in command of himself, but already there sounded in his voice something hard and insistent, malicious and brazenly defiant.

He fixed his gaze insolently on Ivan Fyodorovich, who for the first moment even felt the room swim before his eyes:

"What? What's that? Are you in your right mind or not?"

"Entirely in my full and proper mind, sir."

"But did I really ''know'' about the murder then?" Ivan Fyodorovich cried out at last, and struck the table hard with his fist. "What does it mean, this 'something else besides'? Speak, you scoundrel!"

Smerdyakov said nothing and went on surveying Ivan Fyodorovich with the same insolent stare.

"Speak, you stinking knave, what is this 'something else besides'?" the other man bellowed.

"By that 'something else besides' I meant, this very minute, that you yourself, very likely, also greatly desired your father's death at the time."

Ivan Fyodorovich leapt up and struck him on the shoulder with his fist, with all his might, so that the man lurched back against the wall.

In an instant his whole face was bathed in tears, and saying, "It is shameful, sir, to strike a feeble man!" he suddenly covered his eyes with his blue-checked paper handkerchief, thoroughly soiled with blowing his nose, and sank into a quiet, tearful weeping.

A minute or so passed.

"Enough! Stop it!" Ivan Fyodorovich said at last, commandingly, sitting down again on the chair. "Don't drive me to the last of my patience."

Smerdyakov took the rag away from his eyes.

Every little line of his wrinkled face expressed the affront he had just suffered.

"So you, you scoundrel, thought back then that I wanted to kill my father in league with Dmitri?"

"Your thoughts at the time I did not know, sir," Smerdyakov said in an injured tone, "and that is why I stopped you then, as you were coming in at the gate, in order to sound you out on that very point, sir."

"Sound me out on what? What?"

"Why, on this very circumstance: did you, or did you not, want your father to be killed the sooner?"

What outraged Ivan Fyodorovich most of all was this insistent, insolent tone that Smerdyakov stubbornly refused to drop.

"It was you who killed him!" he exclaimed suddenly.

Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.

"That it was not I who killed him, you know perfectly well yourself, for a certainty.

And I thought that to an intelligent man there was nothing more to be said about it."

"But why, why did such a suspicion of me arise in you back then?"

"As you already know, sir, out of sheer fear alone.

For I was in such a state at the time that, trembling with terror, I suspected everyone.

I resolved to sound you out too, sir, for if you, I thought, wanted the very same thing your brother did, then that would be the end of this whole business, and I myself would perish along with it, like a fly."

"Listen, two weeks ago you said something different."

"The very same thing I meant in the hospital too, when I was speaking with you, only I supposed that you would understand even without any extra words and that you yourself, as the most intelligent of men, wanted no plain talk of it, sir."

"Just look at him!"

But answer me, answer — I insist: from what exactly, by what exactly, could I have planted such a base suspicion in your vile soul back then?"

"As for the killing itself — that you could never have done with your own hands, sir, nor did you want to; but as for wanting someone else to do the killing — that you did want."

"And how calmly, how calmly he says it!

But why should I have wanted it — what the devil would I have wanted it for?"

"What do you mean, what the devil for, sir? And what about the inheritance, then, sir?" Smerdyakov caught him up venomously and somehow even vindictively. "After your father, each of the three brothers stood to come into something close to forty thousand apiece, sir, and perhaps even more, sir; but had Fyodor Pavlovich married this very lady then, sir — Agrafena Alexandrovna — she would have signed over the whole capital to herself the moment after the wedding, for she is by no means a foolish woman, sir, so that you three brothers would not have been left even two rubles between you after your father."

And how much was there left, back then, before the wedding?

A single hair, sir: that lady had only to crook her little finger at him, just so, and he would have run off to church after her at once, with his tongue hanging out."

Ivan Fyodorovich restrained himself with anguish.