The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky [children's books read aloud TXT] 📗

and carry away that money, for he considered it as good as

his own; but who could tell that it would end in a murder like this? I

thought that he would only carry off the three thousand that lay under

the master’s mattress in the envelope, and you see, he’s murdered him.

How could you guess it either, sir?”

 

“But if you say yourself that it couldn’t be guessed, how could

I have guessed and stayed at home? You contradict yourself!” said

Ivan, pondering.

 

“You might have guessed from my sending you to Tchermashnya and

not to Moscow.”

 

“How could I guess it from that?”

 

Smerdyakov seemed much exhausted, and again he was silent for a

minute.

 

“You might have guessed from the fact of my asking you not to go

to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya, that I wanted to have you nearer,

for Moscow’s a long way off, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch, knowing you

are not far off, would not be so bold. And if anything had happened,

you might have come to protect me, too, for I warned you of Grigory

Vassilyevitch’s illness, and that I was afraid of having a fit. And

when I explained those knocks to you, by means of which one could go

in to the deceased, and that Dmitri Fyodorovitch knew them all through

me, I thought that you would guess yourself that he would be sure to

do something, and so wouldn’t go to Tchermashnya even, but would

stay.”

 

“He talks very coherently,” thought Ivan, “though he does

mumble; what’s the derangement of his faculties that Herzenstube

talked of?”

 

“You are cunning with me, damn you!” he exclaimed, getting angry.

 

“But I thought at the time that you quite guessed,” Smerdyakov

parried with the simplest air.

 

“If I’d guessed, I should have stayed,” cried Ivan.

 

“Why, I thought that it was because you guessed, that you went

away in such a hurry, only to get out of trouble, only to run away and

save yourself in your fright.”

 

“You think that everyone is as great a coward as yourself?”

 

“Forgive me, I thought you were like me.”

 

“Of course, I ought to have guessed,” Ivan said in agitation; “and

I did guess there was some mischief brewing on your part… only you

are lying, you are lying again,” he cried, suddenly recollecting.

“Do you remember how you went up to the carriage and said to me, ‘It’s

always worth while speaking to a clever man’? So you were glad I

went away, since you praised me?”

 

Smerdyakov sighed again and again. A trace of colour came into his

face.

 

“If I was pleased,” he articulated rather breathlessly, “it was

simply because you agreed not to go to Moscow, but to Tchermashnya.

For it was nearer, anyway. Only when I said these words to you, it was

not by way of praise, but of reproach. You didn’t understand it.”

 

“What reproach?”

 

“Why, that foreseeing such a calamity you deserted your own

father, and would not protect us, for I might have been taken up any

time for stealing that three thousand.”

 

“Damn you!” Ivan swore again. “Stay, did you tell the prosecutor

and the investigating lawyer about those knocks?”

 

“I told them everything just as it was.”

 

Ivan wondered inwardly again.

 

“If I thought of anything then,” he began again, “it was solely of

some wickedness on your part. Dmitri might kill him, but that he would

steal-I did not believe that then…. But I was prepared for any

wickedness from you. You told me yourself you could sham a fit. What

did you say that for?”

 

“It was just through my simplicity, and I never have shammed a fit

on purpose in my life. And I only said so then to boast to you. It was

just foolishness. I liked you so much then, and was open-hearted

with you.”

 

“My brother directly accuses you of the murder and theft.”

 

“What else is left for him to do?” said Smerdyakov, with a

bitter grin. “And who will believe him with all the proofs against

him? Grigory Vassilyevitch saw the door open. What can he say after

that? But never mind him! He is trembling to save himself.”

 

He slowly ceased speaking; then suddenly, as though on reflection,

added:

 

“And look here again. He wants to throw it on me and make out that

it is the work of my hands-I’ve heard that already. But as to my

being clever at shamming a fit: should I have told you beforehand that

I could sham one, if I really had had such a design against your

father? If I had been planning such a murder could I have been such

a fool as to give such evidence against myself beforehand? And to

his son, too! Upon my word! Is that likely? As if that could be;

such a thing has never happened. No one hears this talk of ours now,

except Providence itself, and if you were to tell of it to the

prosecutor and Nikolay Parfenovitch you might defend me completely

by doing so, for who would be likely to be such a criminal, if he is

so open-hearted beforehand? Anyone can see that.”

 

“Well,” and Ivan got up to cut short the conversation, struck by

Smerdyakov’s last argument. “I don’t suspect you at all, and I think

it’s absurd, indeed, to suspect you. On the contrary, I am grateful to

you for setting my mind at rest. Now I am going, but I’ll come

again. Meanwhile, good-bye. Get well. Is there anything you want?”

 

“I am very thankful for everything. Marfa Ignatyevna does not

forget me, and provides me anything I want, according to her kindness.

Good people visit me every day.”

 

“Goodbye. But I shan’t say anything of your being able to sham

a fit, and I don’t advise you to, either,” something made Ivan say

suddenly.

 

“I quite understand. And if you don’t speak of that, I shall say

nothing of that conversation of ours at the gate.”

 

Then it happened that Ivan went out, and only when he had gone a

dozen steps along the corridor, he suddenly felt that there was an

insulting significance in Smerdyakov’s last words. He was almost on

the point of turning back, but it was only a passing impulse, and

muttering, “Nonsense!” he went out of the hospital.

 

His chief feeling was one of relief at the fact that it was not

Smerdyakov, but Mitya, who had committed the murder, though he might

have been expected to feel the opposite. He did not want to analyse

the reason for this feeling, and even felt a positive repugnance at

prying into his sensations. He felt as though he wanted to make

haste to forget something. In the following days he became convinced

of Mitya’s guilt, as he got to know all the weight of evidence against

him. There was evidence of people of no importance, Fenya and her

mother, for instance, but the effect of it was almost overpowering. As

to Perhotin, the people at the tavern, and at Plotnikov’s shop, as

well as the witnesses at Mokroe, their evidence seemed conclusive.

It was the details that were so damning. The secret of the knocks

impressed the lawyers almost as much as Grigory’s evidence as to the

open door. Grigory’s wife, Marfa, in answer to Ivan’s questions,

declared that Smerdyakov had been lying all night the other side of

the partition wall, “He was not three paces from our bed,” and that

although she was a sound sleeper she waked several times and heard him

moaning, “He was moaning the whole time, moaning continually.”

 

Talking to Herzenstube, and giving it as his opinion that

Smerdyakov was not mad, but only rather weak, Ivan only evoked from

the old man a subtle smile.

 

“Do you know how he spends his time now?” he asked; “learning

lists of French words by heart. He has an exercise-book under his

pillow with the French words written out in Russian letters for him by

someone, he he he!”

 

Ivan ended by dismissing all doubts. He could not think of

Dmitri without repulsion. Only one thing was strange, however. Alyosha

persisted that Dmitri was not the murderer, and that “in all

probability” Smerdyakov was. Ivan always felt that Alyosha’s opinion

meant a great deal to him, and so he was astonished at it now. Another

thing that was strange was that Alyosha did not make any attempt to

talk about Mitya with Ivan, that he never began on the subject and

only answered his questions. This, too, struck Ivan particularly.

 

But he was very much preoccupied at that time with something quite

apart from that. On his return from Moscow, he abandoned himself

hopelessly to his mad and consuming passion for Katerina Ivanovna.

This is not the time to begin to speak of this new passion of

Ivan’s, which left its mark on all the rest of his life: this would

furnish the subject for another novel, which I may perhaps never

write. But I cannot omit to mention here that when Ivan, on leaving

Katerina Ivanovna with Alyosha, as I’ve related already, told him,

“I am not keen on her,” it was an absolute lie: he loved her madly,

though at times he hated her so that he might have murdered her.

Many causes helped to bring about this feeling. Shattered by what

had happened with Mitya, she rushed on Ivan’s return to meet him as

her one salvation. She was hurt, insulted and humiliated in her

feelings. And here the man had come back to her, who had loved her

so ardently before (oh! she knew that very well), and whose heart

and intellect she considered so superior to her own. But the sternly

virtuous girl did not abandon herself altogether to the man she loved,

in spite of the Karamazov violence of his passions and the great

fascination he had for her. She was continually tormented at the

same time by remorse for having deserted Mitya, and in moments of

discord and violent anger (and they were numerous) she told Ivan so

plainly. This was what he had called to Alyosha “lies upon lies.”

There was, of course, much that was false in it, and that angered Ivan

more than anything…. But of all this later.

 

He did, in fact, for a time almost forget Smerdyakov’s

existence, and yet, a fortnight after his first visit to him, he began

to be haunted by the same strange thoughts as before. It’s enough to

say that he was continually asking himself, why was it that on that

last night in Fyodor Pavlovitch’s house he had crept out on to the

stairs like a thief and listened to hear what his father was doing

below? Why had he recalled that afterwards with repulsion? Why next

morning, had he been suddenly so depressed on the journey? Why, as

he reached Moscow, had he said to himself, “I am a scoundrel”? And now

he almost fancied that these tormenting thoughts would make him even

forget Katerina Ivanovna, so completely did they take possession of

him again. It was just after fancying this, that he met Alyosha in the

street. He stopped him at once, and put a question to him:

 

“Do you remember when Dmitri burst in after dinner and beat

father, and afterwards I told you in the yard that I reserved ‘the

right to desire’?… Tell me, did you think then that I desired

father’s death or not?”

 

“I did think so,” answered Alyosha, softly.

 

“It was so, too; it was not a matter of guessing. But didn’t you

fancy then that what I wished was just that one reptile should