VII. «С умным человеком и поговорить любопытно»

Meeting Fyodor Pavlovich in the hall the moment he came in, he suddenly shouted at him, waving his arms: "I'm going up to my own room, not in to you — goodbye," and walked past, even trying not to glance at his father.

Very likely the old man was simply too hateful to him at that moment, but such an unceremonious display of hostility came as a surprise even to Fyodor Pavlovich.

And the old man had evidently meant, in fact, to tell him something in a hurry — that was the very reason he had come out on purpose to meet him in the hall; on hearing such a civility, however, he stopped in silence and, with a mocking look, followed his little son with his eyes up the stairs toward the attic, until the young man had vanished from sight.

"What's the matter with him?"

he quickly asked Smerdyakov, who had come in behind Ivan Fyodorovich.

"Cross about something, sir — who can make them out," the man muttered evasively.

"Well, the devil take him!

Let him be cross!

Bring the samovar and then clear out yourself, and be quick about it.

Anything new?"

Here began the very questions of the kind Smerdyakov had just been complaining of to Ivan Fyodorovich — all of them, that is, about the expected visitor — and we shall pass these questions over here.

Within half an hour the house was locked up, and the deranged old man paced the rooms alone, in tremulous anticipation that at any moment the five agreed-upon knocks would sound, now and then peering into the dark windows and seeing nothing in them but the night.

It was already very late, and Ivan Fyodorovich still lay awake, turning things over.

He went to bed late that night, around two o'clock.

But we shall not set down the whole course of his thoughts, nor is it the moment for us to enter into that soul: that soul will have its turn.

And even if we did try to convey something of it, it would be very hard to do, because they were not thoughts at all, but something very indefinite, and — above all — too agitated.

He felt himself that he had lost all his bearings.

He was tormented, too, by various strange and almost wholly unexpected desires; for instance, sometime after midnight he was suddenly seized by an urgent, unbearable craving to go downstairs, unbolt the door, cross to the lodge, and beat Smerdyakov — yet had you asked him what for, he himself could not have set out a single reason precisely, except perhaps that this lackey had become as hateful to him as the gravest offender one could find anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, more than once that night his soul was overcome by a kind of inexplicable and humiliating timidity, from which he — he felt it — even seemed all at once to lose his physical strength.

His head ached and swam.

Something hateful gnawed at his soul, as though he were about to take revenge on someone.

He hated even Alyosha, recalling the conversation he had had with him earlier that day; at moments he hated himself intensely as well.

Of Katerina Ivanovna he had almost forgotten even to think — something he marveled at greatly afterward, the more so since he himself remembered clearly how only yesterday morning, when he had boasted so grandly at Katerina Ivanovna's that he would leave for Moscow tomorrow, he had whispered to himself at that very moment, deep down: "But that's nonsense — you won't go, and it won't be so easy for you to tear yourself away as you're swaggering now."

Recalling that night long afterward, Ivan Fyodorovich would remember with peculiar disgust how he suddenly, every so often, would get up from the sofa and softly, as though terribly afraid of being spied upon, open the door, go out onto the stairs, and listen down into the lower rooms — listen to Fyodor Pavlovich stirring and pacing about down below — listen for a long while, five minutes at a stretch, with a strange sort of curiosity, holding his breath, his heart pounding; and why he kept doing all this, why he was listening, he himself, of course, did not know.

That "act" he would all his life afterward call "vile," and all his life he reckoned it, deep within himself, in the innermost recesses of his soul, the basest act of his whole life.

Toward Fyodor Pavlovich himself, in those moments, he felt no hatred whatever — he was merely, for some reason, curious with all his might: how was he moving about down there, what could he be doing now in his rooms, and he tried to guess and picture how the old man must be peering into the dark windows down below, then suddenly stopping in the middle of the room and waiting, waiting — to see whether anyone would knock.

Twice Ivan Fyodorovich went out onto the stairs for this occupation.

When everything had fallen quiet and Fyodor Pavlovich too had at last lain down, around two o'clock, Ivan Fyodorovich also lay down, firmly resolved to fall asleep as quickly as possible, since he felt himself terribly worn out.

And so indeed he did: he fell asleep all at once, soundly, and slept without dreams, but woke early, around seven o'clock, when day had already broken.

Opening his eyes, he suddenly felt within himself, to his own astonishment, a surge of some extraordinary energy; he sprang up quickly and dressed quickly, then dragged out his trunk and, without delay, began hurriedly packing it.

His linen, as it happened, had all come back from the laundress only yesterday morning.

Ivan Fyodorovich even smiled at the thought that everything had fallen out so neatly, that there was nothing to hold up his sudden departure.

And his departure really was turning out to be a sudden one.

Although Ivan Fyodorovich had said yesterday (to Katerina Ivanovna, to Alyosha, and then to Smerdyakov) that he would leave tomorrow, yet when he had gone to bed the night before, he remembered very well that at that moment he had not even been thinking of leaving — or at least had had no idea whatever that, waking in the morning, his very first move would be to rush to pack his trunk.

At last the trunk and the bag were ready: it was already getting on toward nine o'clock when Marfa Ignatyevna came up to him with her usual daily question: "Where will you be pleased to take your tea — in your room, or will you come down?" Ivan Fyodorovich came down, his look almost cheerful, though there was about him, in his words and gestures, something as it were scattered and hurried.

Having greeted his father amiably and even asked after his health with particular attention, he announced, without however waiting for his parent to finish answering, all at once that within the hour he was leaving for Moscow, for good, and asked that the horses be sent for.

The old man heard the news without the slightest surprise, and, with marked impropriety, quite forgot to grieve over his little son's departure; instead he suddenly fell into an extraordinary bustle, having recalled, just in the nick of time, a pressing piece of business of his own.

"Ah, you!

What a fellow!

You didn't say so yesterday… well, never mind, we'll settle it now too.

Do me a great kindness, my own dear boy — stop off at Chermashnya.

Why, from the Volovya station you've only to turn left, a mere dozen versts or so, and there it is — Chermashnya."

"For pity's sake, I can't: it's eighty versts to the railway, and the train leaves the station for Moscow at seven in the evening — just exactly time enough to catch it."

"You'll catch it tomorrow, or the day after — but today turn off to Chermashnya.

What does it cost you to set your father's mind at ease!

If I weren't tied up with business here, I'd have dashed over long ago myself, because the matter there is urgent and pressing, but just now my time isn't my own…

You see, there's that copse of mine over there, on two plots, at Begichevo and at Dyachkino, on the wastelands.

The Maslovs — the old man and his son, the merchants — are offering only eight thousand for the timber, and only last year a buyer turned up who'd give twelve, but he wasn't a local man, and there's the rub.

Because the local men have no market now: the Maslovs throw their weight around — father and son, men worth a hundred thousand — they set the price and you take it, and not one of the locals dares to bid against them.

But the Ilyinsky priest suddenly wrote here last Thursday that Gorstkin had arrived — a petty trader too, I know him — only the precious thing about it is that he's not a local man but from Pogrebovo, which means he's not afraid of the Maslovs, because he's not from here.

Eleven thousand, he says, I'll give for the copse — do you hear?

And he'll only be here, the priest writes, another week all told.

So if you'd go over and come to terms with him…"

"Then write to the priest, and he'll come to terms."

"He can't do it — that's the trouble.

That priest hasn't an eye for it.

A heart of gold, the man — I'd hand him twenty thousand this minute without a receipt, to keep for me — but he hasn't an eye for anything, it's as if he weren't a man at all; a crow could cheat him.

And yet he's an educated man, just imagine.

This Gorstkin looks like a peasant, in a blue full-skirted coat, only in character he's a thorough scoundrel — and that's just where the trouble lies for all of us: he lies, that's the rub.

Sometimes he tells such lies you can only wonder what on earth he's at.

Two years ago he lied that his wife had died and that he'd already married another, and none of it was so, just imagine: his wife never died at all, she's alive even now and gives him a thrashing once every three days.