VI. Пока еще очень неясная

But a strange thing happened: an unbearable anguish suddenly fell upon him, and what was worse, it grew greater and greater with every step, the nearer he came to the house.

The strangeness lay not in the anguish itself, but in the fact that Ivan Fyodorovich could not at all make out wherein the anguish consisted.

It was nothing new for him to feel such anguish, and it would have been no wonder had it come at such a moment, when, on the morrow, breaking abruptly with everything that had drawn him here, he was preparing to turn sharply aside once more and step onto a new, wholly unknown path — alone again, as before, hoping much yet not knowing for what, expecting much, too much, of life, while himself unable to define anything, neither in his expectations nor even in his desires.

And yet at that moment, although the anguish of the new and the unknown truly was in his soul, it was not that at all that tormented him.

"Can it really be revulsion at my father's house?" he thought to himself. "It looks like it — so loathsome has it grown; and though tonight I cross this vile threshold for the last time, it is repugnant all the same…"

But no, that was not it either.

Could it be the parting from Alyosha, and the conversation he had just had with him: "So many years I held my tongue before all the world and did not deign to speak, and now of a sudden I have piled up such a heap of nonsense."

Indeed, it might have been the youthful vexation of youthful inexperience and youthful vanity — vexation at not having managed to speak his mind, and that too with such a being as Alyosha, on whom in his heart he had undoubtedly built great expectations.

Of course that was there too — that is, the vexation — it even necessarily had to be there; yet that was not it either, none of it was.

"Anguish to the point of nausea, and I have no power to define what it is I want. Best not to think, perhaps…"

Ivan Fyodorovich tried "not to think," but that did not help him either.

Most of all, this anguish was vexing, and irritating, precisely because it had some chance, wholly external air about it; that was how it felt.

Somewhere there stood and stuck out some being or object, the way something will sometimes jut before your eye, and for a long time, busy with work or in the heat of conversation, you do not notice it, yet all the while you are plainly irritated, almost tormented, until at last you think to remove the offending object — often something quite trivial and absurd, some thing left out of its proper place, a handkerchief dropped on the floor, a book not put back in the cupboard, and so on, and so forth.

At last Ivan Fyodorovich, in a most foul and irritated frame of mind, reached his father's house, and suddenly, about fifteen paces from the wicket-gate, glancing at the gate, he grasped all at once what it was that so tormented and disturbed him.

On the bench by the gate sat the lackey Smerdyakov, taking the cool of the evening air, and at the first glance at him Ivan Fyodorovich understood that the lackey Smerdyakov was sitting in his soul as well, and that it was precisely this man whom his soul could not endure.

Everything suddenly lit up and became clear.

Earlier that evening, ever since Alyosha's account of his meeting with Smerdyakov, something dark and repellent had suddenly pierced his heart and at once roused an answering rancour in him.

Then, during the conversation, Smerdyakov had been forgotten for a time, yet he had remained in his soul nonetheless, and no sooner had Ivan Fyodorovich parted from Alyosha and gone off alone toward the house than the forgotten sensation suddenly and swiftly began to surface once more.

"Can it really be that this wretched scoundrel is capable of disturbing me to such a degree!" the thought came to him with unbearable rancour.

The fact was that Ivan Fyodorovich had indeed come to dislike this man intensely of late, and especially in these very last days.

He had even begun to notice in himself this almost mounting hatred toward the creature.

Perhaps the process of hatred had sharpened so keenly precisely because, in the beginning, when Ivan Fyodorovich had only just arrived among us, something quite different had been the case.

At that time Ivan Fyodorovich had suddenly taken a peculiar interest in Smerdyakov, finding him even very original.

He had himself trained the man to talk with him, always marvelling, however, at a certain muddle-headedness, or rather a certain restlessness of his mind, and unable to understand what it was that could so constantly and inescapably disturb "this contemplative."

They talked of philosophical questions, and even of why light shone on the first day, when the sun, moon, and stars were set in place only on the fourth, and of how this was to be understood; but Ivan Fyodorovich soon became convinced that the matter lay not at all in the sun, the moon, and the stars, that the sun, moon, and stars, though a curious subject, were for Smerdyakov entirely of the third rank, and that he was after something quite else.

One way or another, in any case there began to show and betray itself a boundless vanity, and what is more, a wounded vanity.

Ivan Fyodorovich found this very much not to his liking.

It was from this that his revulsion began.

Afterwards troubles started in the house, Grushenka appeared, the affairs with his brother Dmitri began, the worries set in — they talked of this too, but although Smerdyakov always conducted the conversation about it with great agitation, it was again quite impossible to make out what he himself wanted of it all.

One might even marvel at the illogicality and disorder of certain of his desires, which came reluctantly to the surface and were always equally vague.

Smerdyakov was forever probing, putting some oblique, evidently premeditated questions, but to what end he did not explain, and as a rule, at the very hottest moment of his own questioning, he would suddenly fall silent or shift to something altogether else.

But the chief thing that finally irritated Ivan Fyodorovich utterly and instilled in him such revulsion was a certain repulsive and peculiar familiarity that Smerdyakov began strongly to display toward him, and the further it went, the more.

It was not that he allowed himself to be uncivil — on the contrary, he always spoke exceedingly respectfully — but matters had so arranged themselves that Smerdyakov had visibly come to regard himself, God knows why, as somehow at last in league with Ivan Fyodorovich, and he always spoke in such a tone, as though between the two of them there were already something agreed and as it were secret, something once uttered on both sides, known to the two of them alone, and to the other mortals swarming about them not even comprehensible.

Ivan Fyodorovich, however, even here failed for a long while to grasp the true cause of his mounting revulsion, and only at the very last did he succeed in guessing what the matter was.

With a feeling of disgust and irritation he had meant now to pass through the wicket-gate in silence, without looking at Smerdyakov, but Smerdyakov rose from the bench, and from that one gesture alone Ivan Fyodorovich understood in a flash that the man wished to have a particular conversation with him.

Ivan Fyodorovich looked at him and stopped, and the very fact that he had so suddenly stopped and not walked past, as he had wished to do but a minute before, infuriated him to the point of trembling.

With wrath and revulsion he gazed at Smerdyakov's gaunt, eunuch-like face, with its temple-locks combed forward and its little tuft of hair puffed up on top.

His left eye, slightly screwed up, was winking and smirking, as if to say: "Where are you off to? You won't pass by — you can see well enough that the two of us, clever men, have something to talk over."

Ivan Fyodorovich began to shake:

"Off with you, scoundrel — what company are you for me, you fool!" was about to fly from his tongue, but to his utmost astonishment something quite different flew off it instead:

"What of my father — is he asleep or awake?" he said softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and suddenly, just as unexpectedly, he sat down on the bench.

For an instant he felt almost frightened — he recalled this afterwards.

Smerdyakov stood facing him, his hands clasped behind his back, and gazed with assurance, almost sternly.

"He's still at his rest, sir," he brought out unhurriedly. ("You spoke first, mind, not I," he seemed to imply.) "I do wonder at you, sir," he added after a pause, somehow primly lowering his eyes, thrusting his right foot forward and toying with the toe of his patent-leather boot.

"What is it you wonder at me about?" Ivan Fyodorovich uttered abruptly and harshly, restraining himself with all his might, and suddenly understood with revulsion that he felt the keenest curiosity and that he would not leave this spot for anything on earth without satisfying it.

"Why don't you set off for Chermashnya, sir?" Smerdyakov suddenly flashed his little eyes and smiled familiarly.

"And as for why I smiled — well, you ought to understand that yourself, if you're a clever man," his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.

"Why should I go to Chermashnya?" Ivan Fyodorovich asked in surprise.