Текст книги "The Brothers Karamazov"
Автор книги: Федор Достоевский
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Chapter 5: Not You! Not You!
On the way to Ivan he had to pass by the house where Katerina Ivanovna was staying. There was light in the windows. He suddenly stopped and decided to go in. It was more than a week since he had seen Katerina Ivanovna. But it just occurred to him that Ivan might be with her now, especially on the eve of such a day. He rang and was starting up the stairs, dimly lit by a Chinese lantern, when he saw a man coming down in whom, as they drew near each other, he recognized his brother. He was then just leaving Katerina Ivanovna’s.
“Ah, it’s only you,” Ivan Fyodorovich said drily. “Well, good-bye. Are you coming to see her?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t recommend it; she’s ‘agitated,’ and you will upset her even more.”
“No, no!” a voice suddenly cried from above, from the instantly opened door. “Alexei Fyodorovich, are you coming from him?”
“Yes, I was just there.”
“Did he ask you to tell me anything? Come in, Alyosha, and you, Ivan Fyodorovich, you must, must come back. Do you hear me!”
Such an imperious note sounded in Katya’s voice that Ivan Fyodorovich, after hesitating a moment, decided after all to go upstairs again with Alyosha.
“She was eavesdropping!” he whispered irritably to himself, but Alyosha heard it.
“Allow me to keep my coat on,” Ivan Fyodorovich said as he entered the drawing room. “And I won’t sit down. I won’t stay more than a minute.”
“Sit down, Alexei Fyodorovich,” Katerina Ivanovna said, while she herself remained standing. She had changed little during this time, but her dark eyes gleamed with an ominous fire. Alyosha remembered afterwards that she had seemed extremely good-looking to him at that moment.
“Well, what did he ask you to tell me?”
“Only one thing,” Alyosha said, looking directly in her face, “that you should spare yourself and not give any evidence in court ... ,” he faltered a little, “of what happened between you ... at the time of your first acquaintance ... in that town...”
“Ah, about bowing down for the money!” she joined in with a bitter laugh. “And what, is he afraid for himself or for me—eh? He said I should spare– but whom? Him, or myself? Tell me, Alexei Fyodorovich.”
Alyosha was watching intently, trying to understand her.
“Both yourself and him,” he spoke softly.
“So!” she snapped somehow viciously, and suddenly blushed. “You do not know me yet, Alexei Fyodorovich,” she said menacingly, “and I do not know myself yet. Perhaps you will want to trample me underfoot after tomorrow’s questioning.”
“You will testify honestly,” said Alyosha, “that’s all that’s necessary.”
“Women are often dishonest,” she snarled. “Just an hour ago I was thinking how afraid I am to touch that monster ... like a viper ... but no, he’s still a human being for me! But is he a murderer? Is he the murderer?” she exclaimed hysterically, all of a sudden, turning quickly to Ivan Fyodorovich. Alyosha understood at once that she had already asked Ivan Fyodorovich the same question, perhaps only a moment before he arrived, and not for the first but for the hundredth time, and that they had ended by quarreling.
“I’ve been to see Smerdyakov ... It was you, you who convinced me that he is a parricide. I believed only you, my dear!” she went on, still addressing Ivan Fyodorovich. The latter smiled as if with difficulty. Alyosha was startled to hear this “my dear.” He would not even have suspected they were on such terms. [298]
“Well, enough, in any case,” Ivan snapped. “I’m going. I’ll come tomorrow.” And turning at once, he left the room and went straight to the stairs. Katerina Ivanovna, with a sort of imperious gesture, suddenly seized Alyosha by both hands.
“Go after him! Catch up with him! Don’t leave him alone for a minute!” she whispered rapidly. “He’s mad. Did you know he’s gone mad? He has a fever, a nervous fever! The doctor told me. Go, run after him...”
Alyosha jumped up and rushed after Ivan Fyodorovich. He was not even fifty paces away.
“What do you want?” he suddenly turned to Alyosha, seeing that he was catching up with him. “She told you to run after me because I’m crazy. I know it all by heart,” he added irritably.
“She’s mistaken, of course, but she’s right that you are ill,” said Alyosha. “I was looking at your face just now, when we were there; you look very ill, really, Ivan!”
Ivan walked on without stopping. Alyosha followed him.
“And do you know, Alexei Fyodorovich, just how one loses one’s mind?” Ivan asked in a voice suddenly quite soft, quite unirritated now, in which suddenly the most ingenuous curiosity could be heard. “No, I don’t know; I suppose there are many different kinds of madness.”
“And can one observe oneself losing one’s mind?”
“I think it must be impossible to watch oneself in such a case,” Alyosha answered with surprise. Ivan fell silent for half a minute.
“If you want to talk to me about something, please change the subject,” he said suddenly.
“Here, so that I don’t forget, is a letter for you,” Alyosha said timidly, and, pulling Liza’s letter from his pocket, he handed it to him. Just then they came up to a streetlamp. Ivan recognized the hand at once.
“Ah, it’s from that little demon!” he laughed maliciously, and, without unsealing the envelope, he suddenly tore it into several pieces and tossed them to the wind. The scraps flew all over.
“She’s not yet sixteen, I believe, and already offering herself!” he said contemptuously, and started down the street again.
“What do you mean, offering herself?” Alyosha exclaimed.
“You know, the way loose women offer themselves.”
“No, no, Ivan, don’t say that!” Alyosha pleaded ruefully and ardently. “She’s a child, you’re offending a child! She’s ill, she’s very ill; she, too, may be losing her mind ... I had no choice but to give you her letter ... I wanted, on the contrary, to hear something from you ... to save her.”
“You’ll hear nothing from me. If she’s a child, I’m not her nanny. Keep still, Alexei. Don’t go on. I’m not even thinking about it.”
They again fell silent for a minute or so.
“She’ll be praying all night now to the Mother of God, to show her how to act at the trial tomorrow,” he suddenly spoke again, sharply and spitefully.
“You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?”
“Yes. Whether to come as Mitenka’s savior, or as his destroyer. She will pray for her soul to be illumined. She doesn’t know yet, you see, she hasn’t managed to prepare herself. She, too, takes me for a nanny, she wants me to coo over her!”
“Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother,” Alyosha said sorrowfully.
“Maybe. Only I don’t fancy her.”
“She’s suffering. Why, then, do you ... sometimes ... say things to her that give her hope?” Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. “I know you used to give her hope—forgive me for talking like this,” he added.
“I cannot act as I ought to here, break it off and tell her directly!” Ivan said irritably. “I must wait until they pass sentence on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she’ll take vengeance on me by destroying the scoundrel in court tomorrow, because she hates him and she knows she hates him. There are nothing but lies here, lie upon lie! But now, as long as I haven’t broken off with her, she still has hopes, and will not destroy the monster, knowing how much I want to get him out of trouble. Oh, when will that cursed sentence come!”
The words “murderer” and “monster” echoed painfully in Alyosha’s heart.
“But in what way can she destroy our brother?” he asked, pondering Ivan’s words. “What testimony can she give that would destroy Mitya outright?”
“You don’t know about it yet. She has hold of a document, in Mitenka’s own hand, which proves mathematically that he killed Fyodor Pavlovich.”
“That can’t be!” Alyosha exclaimed.
“Why can’t it? I’ve read it myself.”
“There can be no such document!” Alyosha repeated hotly. “There cannot be, because he is not the murderer. It was not he who murdered father, not he!”
Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly stopped.
“Then who is the murderer, in your opinion ?” he asked somehow with obvious coldness, [299]and a certain haughty note even sounded in the tone of the question.
“You know who,” Alyosha said softly, and with emotion.
“Who? You mean that fable about the mad epileptic idiot? About Smerdyakov?”
Alyosha suddenly felt himself trembling all over.
“You know who,” escaped him helplessly. He was breathless.
“Who? Who?” Ivan cried almost fiercely now. All his reserve suddenly vanished.
“I know only one thing,” Alyosha said, still in the same near whisper. “It was not youwho killed father.”
“‘Not you’! What do you mean by ‘not you’?” Ivan was dumbfounded.
“It was not you who killed father, not you!” Alyosha repeated firmly.
The silence lasted for about half a minute.
“But I know very well it was not me—are you raving? “ Ivan said with a pale and crooked grin. His eyes were fastened, as it were, on Alyosha. The two were again standing under a streetlamp.
“No, Ivan, you’ve told yourself several times that you were the murderer.”
“When did I ... ? I was in Moscow ... When did I say so?” Ivan stammered, completely at a loss.
“You’ve said it to yourself many times while you were alone during these two horrible months,” Alyosha continued as softly and distinctly as before. But he was now speaking not of himself, as it were, not of his own will, but obeying some sort of irresistible command. “You’ve accused yourself and confessed to yourself that you and you alone are the murderer. But it was not you who killed him, you are mistaken, the murderer was not you, do you hear, it was not you! God has sent me to tell you that.”
They both fell silent. For a whole, long minute the silence continued. They both stood there looking into each other’s eyes. They were both pale. Suddenly Ivan began shaking all over and gripped Alyosha hard by the shoulder.
“You were in my room!” he uttered in a rasping whisper. “You were in my room at night when he came ... Confess ... you saw him, didn’t you?”
“Who are you talking about ... Mitya?” Alyosha asked in bewilderment.
“Not him—devil take the monster!” Ivan shouted frenziedly. “Can you possibly know that he’s been coming to me? How did you find out? Speak!”
“Who is he? I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Alyosha murmured, frightened now.
“No, you do know ... otherwise how could you ... it’s impossible that you don’t know ...”
But suddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood and seemed to be thinking something over. A strange grin twisted his lips.
“Brother,” Alyosha began again, in a trembling voice, “I’ve said this to you because you will believe my word, I know it. I’ve spoken this word to you for the whole of your life: it was notyou! Do you hear? For the whole of your life. And it is God who has put it into my heart to say this to you, even if you were to hate me forever after ...”
But Ivan Fyodorovich had now apparently managed to regain control of himself.
“Alexei Fyodorovich,” he spoke with a cold smile, “I cannot bear prophets and epileptics, messengers from God especially, you know that only too well. From this moment on I am breaking with you, and, I suppose, forever. I ask you to leave me this instant, at this very crossroads. Besides, your way home is down this lane. Beware especially of coming to me today! Do you hear?”
He turned and walked straight off, with firm steps, not looking back.
“Brother,” Alyosha called after him, “if anything happens to you today, think of me first of all...!”
But Ivan did not answer. Alyosha stood at the crossroads under the street-lamp until Ivan disappeared completely into the darkness. Then he turned down the lane and slowly made his way home. He and Ivan lived separately, in different lodgings: neither of them wanted to live in the now empty house of Fyodor Pavlovich. Alyosha rented a furnished room with a family of tradespeople; and Ivan Fyodorovich lived quite far from him, and occupied a spacious and rather comfortable apartment in the wing of a good house belonging to the well-to-do widow of an official. But his only servant in the whole wing was an ancient, completely deaf old woman, rheumatic all over, who went to bed at six o’clock in the evening and got up at six o’clock in the morning. Ivan Fyodorovich had become undemanding to a strange degree during those two months and liked very much to be left completely alone. He even tidied the one room he occupied himself; as for the other rooms in his lodgings, he rarely even went into them. Having come up to the gates of his house, and with his hand already on the bell, he stopped. He felt himself still trembling all over with a spiteful trembling. He suddenly let go of the bell, spat, turned around, and quickly went off again to quite a different, opposite end of town, about a mile and a half from his apartment, to a tiny, lopsided log house, the present lodgings of Maria Kondratievna, formerly Fyodor Pavlovich’s neighbor, who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovich’s kitchen to get soup and to whom Smerdyakov, in those days, used to sing his songs and play on the guitar. She had sold her former house, and now lived with her mother in what was almost a hut, and the sick, nearly dying Smerdyakov had been living with them ever since Fyodor Pavlovich’s death. It was to him that Ivan Fyodorovich now directed his steps, drawn by a sudden and irresistible consideration.
Chapter 6: The First Meeting with Smerdyakov
This was now the third time that Ivan Fyodorovich had gone to talk with Smerdyakov since his return from Moscow. The first time he had seen him and spoken with him after the catastrophe was immediately upon the day of his arrival; then he had visited him once more two weeks later. But after this second time, he stopped his meetings with Smerdyakov, so that now he had not seen him, and had scarcely heard anything about him, for more than a month. Ivan Fyodorovich had returned from Moscow only on the fifth day following his father’s death, so that he did not even find him in his coffin: the burial took place just the day before he arrived. The reason for Ivan Fyodorovich’s delay was that Alyosha, not knowing his precise address in Moscow, had resorted to Katerina Ivanovna to send the telegram, and she, being equally ignorant of his actual address, had sent the telegram to her sister and aunt, reckoning that Ivan Fyodorovich would go to see them as soon as he arrived in Moscow. But he had gone to see them only on the fourth day after his arrival, and, having read the telegram, he at once, of course, came flying back here. The first one he met was Alyosha, but after talking with him, he was greatly amazed to find that he refused even to suspect Mitya and pointed directly to Smerdyakov as the murderer, contrary to all other opinions in our town. Having then met with the police commissioner and the prosecutor, having learned the details of the accusation and the arrest, he was still more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his opinion to his highly aroused brotherly feeling and compassion for Mitya, whom, as Ivan knew, Alyosha loved very much. Incidentally, let us say just two words once and for all about Ivan’s feelings towards his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich: he decidedly disliked him, and the most he occasionally felt for him was compassion, but even then mixed with great contempt, reaching the point of squeamishness. The whole of Mitya, even his whole figure, was extremely unsympathetic to him. Katerina Ivanovna’s love for him Ivan regarded with indignation. Nonetheless he also met with the imprisoned Mitya on the day of his arrival, and this meeting not only did not weaken his conviction of Mitya’s guilt, but even strengthened it. He found his brother agitated, morbidly excited. Mitya was verbose, but absentminded and scattered, spoke very abruptly, accused Smerdyakov, and was terribly confused. Most of all he kept referring to those same three thousand roubles that the deceased had “stolen” from him. “The money was mine, it was mine,” Mitya kept repeating, “even if I had stolen it, I’d be right.” He contested almost none of the evidence against him, and when he did interpret facts in his favor, again he did so quite inconsistently and absurdly—generally as though he did not even wish to justify himself at all before Ivan or anyone else; on the contrary, he was angry, proudly scanted the accusations, cursed and seethed. He merely laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence about the open door, and insisted it was “the devil who opened it.” But he could not present any coherent explanation of this fact. He even managed to insult Ivan Fyodorovich in this first meeting, telling him abruptly that he was not to be suspected or questioned by those who themselves assert that “everything is permitted.” Generally on this occasion he was very unfriendly to Ivan Fyodorovich. It was right after this meeting with Mitya that Ivan Fyodorovich went to see Smerdyakov.
While still on the train, flying back from Moscow, he kept thinking about Smerdyakov and his last conversation with him the evening before his departure. There was much in it that perplexed him, much that seemed suspicious. But when he gave his evidence to the investigator, Ivan Fyodorovich kept silent about that conversation for the time being. He put everything off until he had seen Smerdyakov. The latter was then in the local hospital. In reply to Ivan Fyodorovich’s insistent questions, Dr. Herzenstube and Dr. Varvinsky, whom Ivan Fyodorovich met in the hospital, stated firmly that Smerdyakov’s falling sickness was indubitable, and were even surprised at the question: “Could he have been shamming on the day of the catastrophe?” They gave him to understand that the fit was even an exceptional one, that it had persisted and recurred over several days, so that the patient’s life was decidedly in danger, and that only now, after the measures taken, was it possible to say affirmatively that the patient would live, though it was very possible (Dr. Herzenstube added) that his reason would remain partially unsettled “if not for life, then for a rather long time.” To Ivan Fyodorovich’s impatient asking whether “that means he’s now mad?” the reply was “not in the full sense of the word, but some abnormalities can be noticed.” Ivan Fyodorovich decided to find out for himself what these abnormalities were. In the hospital he was admitted at once as a visitor. Smerdyakov was in a separate ward, lying on a cot. Just next to him was another cot taken up by a local tradesman, paralyzed and all swollen with dropsy, who was obviously going to die in a day or two; he would not interfere with the conversation. Smerdyakov grinned mistrustfully when he saw Ivan Fyodorovich, and in the first moment even seemed to become timorous. That at least is what flashed through Ivan Fyodorovich’s mind. But it was a momentary thing; for the rest of the time, on the contrary, Smerdyakov almost struck him by his composure. From the very first sight of him, Ivan Fyodorovich was convinced beyond doubt of his complete and extremely ill condition: he was very weak, spoke slowly, and seemed to have difficulty moving his tongue; he had become very thin and yellow. All through the twenty minutes of the visit, he complained of a headache and of pain in all his limbs. His dry eunuch’s face seemed to have become very small, his side-whiskers were disheveled, and instead of a tuft, only a thin little wisp of hair stuck up on his head. But his left eye, which squinted and seemed to be hinting at something, betrayed the former Smerdyakov. “It’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man”—Ivan Fyodorovich immediately recalled. He sat down on a stool at his feet. Smerdyakov painfully shifted his whole body on the bed, but did not speak first; he kept silent, and looked now as if he were not even particularly interested.
“Can you talk to me?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked. “I won’t tire you too much.”
“I can, sir,” Smerdyakov murmured in a weak voice. “Did you come long ago, sir?” he added condescendingly, as though encouraging a shy visitor.
“Just today ... To deal with this mess here.”
Smerdyakov sighed.
“Why are you sighing? You knew, didn’t you?” Ivan Fyodorovich blurted right out. Smerdyakov remained sedately silent for a while.
“How could I not know, sir? It was clear beforehand. Only who could know it would turn out like this?”
“What would turn out? Don’t hedge! Didn’t you foretell that you’d have a falling fit just as you went to the cellar? You precisely indicated the cellar.”
“Did you testify to that at the interrogation?” Smerdyakov calmly inquired.
Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly became angry.
“No, I did not, but I certainly shall testify to it. You have a lot to explain to me right now, brother, and let me tell you, my dear, that I shall not let myself be toyed with!”
“And why should I want to toy like that, sir, when all my hope is in you alone, as if you were the Lord God, sir!” Smerdyakov said, still in the same calm way, and merely closing his eyes for a moment.
“First of all,” Ivan Fyodorovich began, “I know that a falling fit cannot be predicted beforehand. I’ve made inquiries, don’t try to hedge. It’s not possible to predict the day and the hour. How is it, then, that you predicted both the day and the hour to me, and the cellar on top of that? How could you know beforehand that you would fall in a fit precisely into that cellar, unless you shammed the fit on purpose?”
“I had to go to the cellar in any case, sir, even several times a day, sir,” Smerdyakov drawled unhurriedly. “Just the same as I fell out of the attic a year ago, sir. It’s certainly true, sir, that one can’t predict the day and the hour of a falling fit, but one can always have a presentiment.”
“But you did predict the day and the hour!”
“Concerning my falling fit, sir, you’d best inquire of the local doctors, sir, whether it was a real one or not a real one—I have nothing more to tell you on that subject.”
“And the cellar? How did you foresee the cellar?”
“You and your cellar, sir! As I was going down to the cellar that day, I was in fear and doubt; and mostly in fear, because, having lost you, I had no one else in the whole world to expect any protection from. And there I was climbing down into that cellar, thinking: ‘It will come now, it will strike me, am I going to fall in or not?’ and from this same doubt I was seized by the throat by this same inevitable spasm, sir ... well, and so I fell in. All these things and all the previous conversation with you, sir, on the eve of that day, in the evening by the gate, sir, how I informed you then of my fear and about the cellar, sir—all that I gave out in detail to mister Dr. Herzenstube and the investigator, Nikolai Parfenovich, and he wrote it all into the record, sir. And the local doctor, Mr. Varvinsky, he especially insisted to them all that this happened precisely from the thought, that is, from this same insecurity, ‘am I going to fall, or not?’ And there it was waiting to get me. And they wrote down, sir, that it certainly must have happened like that, that is, for the sole reason of my fear, sir.”
Having said this, Smerdyakov drew a deep breath, as though suffering from fatigue.
“So you stated all that in your evidence?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked, somewhat taken aback. He had been about to scare him with the threat of reporting their earlier conversation, when it turned out that he had already reported everything himself.
“What should I be afraid of? Let them write down all the real truth,” Smerdyakov said firmly.
“And you told them every word of our conversation at the gate?”
“No, not really every word, sir.”
“And that you could sham a falling fit, as you boasted then—did you tell them that?”
“No, I didn’t say that either, sir.”
“Now tell me, why were you sending me to Chermashnya then?”
“I was afraid you’d leave for Moscow; Chermashnya is closer, after all, sir.”
“Lies! You were asking me to leave yourself: go, you said, get out of harm’s way.”
“I said it out of sole friendship for you then, and heartfelt devotion, anticipating calamity in the house, sir, feeling pity for you. Only I pitied myself more than you, sir. That’s why I said: get out of harm’s way, so you’d understand that things were going to be bad at home, and you’d stay to protect your parent.”
“You should have been more direct, fool!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly flared up.
“How could I be more direct then, sir? It was just fear alone speaking in me, and besides you might have been angry. Of course I might have been wary lest Dmitri Fyodorovich cause some scandal and take away that same money, because he regarded it as if it was his, but who could know it would end with such a murder? I thought he would simply steal those three thousand roubles that were lying under the master’s mattress, in an envelope, sir, but he went and killed him. And you, too, how could you possibly have guessed, sir?”
“But if you yourself say it was impossible to guess, how could I have guessed it and stayed? Why are you confusing things?” Ivan Fyodorovich said, pondering.
“You could have guessed just because I was sending you to Chermashnya, and not to Moscow, sir.”
“What could be guessed from that?”
Smerdyakov seemed very tired and again was silent for about a minute.
“Thereby you could have guessed, sir, that if I was dissuading you from Moscow to Chermashnya, it meant I wanted your presence closer by, because Moscow is far away, and Dmitri Fyodorovich, seeing you were not so far away, wouldn’t be so encouraged. Besides, in case anything happened, you could come with greater swiftness to protect me, for I myself pointed out Grigory Vasilievich’s illness to you, and also that I was afraid of the falling sickness. And having explained to you about those knocks by which one could get in to the deceased, and that through me they were all known to Dmitri Fyodorovich, I thought you would guess yourself that he would be certain to commit something, and not only would not go to Chermashnya, but would stay altogether.”
“He talks quite coherently,” Ivan Fyodorovich thought, “even though he mumbles; what is this unsettling of his faculties Herzenstube was referring to?”
“You’re dodging me, devil take you!” he exclaimed, getting angry.
“And I must admit that I thought you had already guessed it quite well then,” Smerdyakov parried with a most guileless air.
“If I had guessed, I would have stayed!” Ivan Fyodorovich shouted, flaring up again.
“Well, sir, and I thought you’d guessed everything, and were just getting as quick as possible out of harm’s way, so as to run off somewhere, saving yourself out of fear, sir.”
“You thought everyone was as much a coward as you?”
“Forgive me, sir, I thought you were like I am.”
“Of course, I should have guessed,” Ivan was agitated, “and indeed I was beginning to guess at some loathsomeness on your part ... Only you’re lying, lying again,” he cried out, suddenly recalling. “Do you remember how you came up to the carriage then and said to me: ‘It’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man’? Since you praised me, doesn’t it mean you were glad I was leaving?”
Smerdyakov sighed again and yet again. Color seemed to come to his face.
“If I was glad,” he said, somewhat breathlessly, “it was only for the reason that you agreed to go not to Moscow but to Chermashnya. Because it’s closer, after all; only I spoke those words then not as praise but as a reproach, sir. You failed to make it out, sir.”
“Reproach for what?”
“That anticipating such a calamity, sir, you were abandoning your own parent and did not want to protect us, because they could have hauled me in anytime for that three thousand, for having stolen it, sir.”
“Devil take you!” Ivan swore again. “Wait: did you tell the district attorney and the prosecutor about those signals, those knocks?”
“I told it all just as it was, sir.” Again Ivan Fyodorovich was inwardly surprised.
“If I was thinking of anything then,” he began again, “it was only of some loathsomeness on your part. Dmitri might kill, but that he would steal—I did not believe at the time ... But I was prepared for any loathsomeness on your part. You told me yourself that you could sham a falling fit—why did you tell me that?”
“For the sole reason of my simple-heartedness. And I’ve never shammed a falling fit on purpose in my life, I only said it so as to boast to you. Just foolishness, sir. I loved you very much then, and acted in all simplicity.”
“My brother accuses you directly of the murder and the robbery.”
“And what else has he got left to do?” Smerdyakov grinned bitterly. “And who will believe him after all that evidence? Grigory Vasilievich did see the open door, and there you have it, sir. Well, what can I say, God be with him! He’s trembling, trying to save himself...”
He was calmly silent for a while, and suddenly, as if realizing something, added:
“There’s this, sir, yet another thing: he wants to shift the blame, so that it was my doing, sir—I’ve heard that already, sir—but just take this other thing, that I’m an expert at shamming the falling sickness: but would I have told you beforehand that I could sham it if I really had any plot against your parent then? If I was plotting such a murder, could I possibly be such a fool as to tell such evidence against myself beforehand, and tell it to his own son, for pity’s sake, sir! Does that resemble a probability? As if that could happen, sir; no, on the contrary, not ever at all, sir. No one can hear this conversation between us now, except that same Providence, sir, but if you informed the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfenovich, you could thereby ultimately defend me, sir: because what kind of villain is so simple-hearted beforehand? They may well consider all that, sir.”
“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich, struck by Smerdyakov’s last argument, rose from his seat, interrupting the conversation, “I do not suspect you at all and even consider it ridiculous to accuse you ... on the contrary, I am grateful to you for reassuring me. I am leaving now, but I shall come again. Meanwhile, good-bye; get well. Perhaps there’s something you need?”
