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

Chapter 8

The Third and Last Interview with Smerdyakov

 

WHEN he was halfway there, the keen dry wind that had been

blowing early that morning rose again, and a fine dry snow began

falling thickly. It did not lie on the ground, but was whirled about

by the wind, and soon there was a regular snowstorm. There were

scarcely any lamp-posts in the part of the town where Smerdyakov

lived. Ivan strode alone in the darkness, unconscious of the storm,

instinctively picking out his way. His head ached and there was a

painful throbbing in his temples. He felt that his hands were

twitching convulsively. Not far from Marya Kondratyevna’s cottage,

Ivan suddenly came upon a solitary drunken little peasant. He was

wearing a coarse and patched coat, and was walking in zigzags,

grumbling and swearing to himself. Then suddenly he would begin

singing in a husky drunken voice:

 

Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg;

 

I won’t wait till he comes back.

 

But he broke off every time at the second line and began

swearing again; then he would begin the same song again. Ivan felt

an intense hatred for him before he had thought about him at all.

Suddenly he realised his presence and felt an irresistible impulse

to knock him down. At that moment they met, and the peasant with a

violent lurch fell full tilt against Ivan, who pushed him back

furiously. The peasant went flying backwards and fell like a log on

the frozen ground. He uttered one plaintive “O-oh!” and then was

silent. Ivan stepped up to him. He was lying on his back, without

movement or consciousness. “He will be frozen,” thought Ivan, and he

went on his way to Smerdyakov’s.

 

In the passage, Marya Kondratyevna, who ran out to open the door

with a candle in her hand, whispered that Smerdyakov was very ill;

“It’s not that he’s laid up, but he seems not himself, and he even

told us to take the tea away; he wouldn’t have any.”

 

“Why, does he make a row?” asked Ivan coarsely.

 

“Oh dear no, quite the contrary, he’s very quiet. Only please

don’t talk to him too long,” Marya Kondratyevna begged him. Ivan

opened the door and stepped into the room.

 

It was overheated as before, but there were changes in the

room. One of the benches at the side had been removed, and in its

place had been put a large old mahogany leather sofa, on which a bed

had been made up, with fairly clean white pillows. Smerdyakov was

sitting on the sofa, wearing the same dressing-gown. The table had

been brought out in front of the sofa, so that there was hardly room

to move. On the table lay a thick book in yellow cover, but Smerdyakov

was not reading it. He seemed to be sitting doing nothing. He met Ivan

with a slow silent gaze, and was apparently not at all surprised at

his coming. There was a great change in his face; he was much

thinner and sallower. His eyes were sunken and there were blue marks

under them.

 

“Why, you really are ill?” Ivan stopped short. “I won’t keep you

long, I wont even take off my coat. Where can one sit down?”

 

He went to the other end of the table, moved up a chair and sat

down on it.

 

“Why do you look at me without speaking? We only come with one

question, and I swear I won’t go without an answer. Has the young

lady, Katerina Ivanovna, been with you?”

 

Smerdyakov still remained silent, looking quietly at Ivan as

before. Suddenly, with a motion of his hand, he turned his face away.

 

“What’s the matter with you?” cried Ivan.

 

“Nothing.”

 

“What do you mean by ‘nothing’?”

 

“Yes, she has. It’s no matter to you. Let me alone.”

 

“No, I won’t let you alone. Tell me, when was she here?”

 

“Why, I’d quite forgotten about her,” said Smerdyakov, with a

scornful smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him

with a look of frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him

at their last interview, a month before.

 

“You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don’t look

like yourself,” he said to Ivan.

 

“Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you.,

 

“But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow. Are

you so worried?” He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed

outright.

 

“Listen; I’ve told you I won’t go away without an answer!” Ivan

cried, intensely irritated.

 

“Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?” said

Smerdyakov, with a look of suffering.

 

“Damn it! I’ve nothing to do with you. Just answer my question and

I’ll go away.”

 

“I’ve no answer to give you,” said Smerdyakov, looking down again.

 

“You may be sure I’ll make you answer!”

 

“Why are you so uneasy?” Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with

contempt, but almost with repulsion. “Is this because the trial begins

to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can’t you believe that at last?

Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don’t be afraid of anything.”

 

“I don’t understand you…. What have I to be afraid of

to-morrow?” Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill

breath of fear did in fact pass over his soul. Smerdyakov measured him

with his eyes.

 

“You don’t understand?” he drawled reproachfully. “It’s a

strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce!”

 

Ivan looked at him speechless. The startling, incredibly

supercilious tone of this man who had once been his valet, was

extraordinary in itself. He had not taken such a tone even at their

last interview.

 

“I tell you, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. I won’t say

anything about you; there’s no proof against you. I say, how your

hands are trembling! Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home,

you did not murder him.”

 

Ivan started. He remembered Alyosha.

 

“I know it was not I,” he faltered.

 

“Do you?” Smerdyakov caught him up again.

 

Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.

 

“Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!”

 

Smerdyakov was not in the least scared. He only riveted his eyes

on Ivan with insane hatred.

 

“Well, it was you who murdered him, if that’s it,” he whispered

furiously.

 

Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something. He

laughed malignantly.

 

“You mean my going away. What you talked about last time?”

 

“You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you

understand it now.”

 

“All I understand is that you are mad.”

 

“Aren’t you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what’s the

use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying

to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the

real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant,

and it was following your words I did it.”

 

“Did it? Why, did you murder him?” Ivan turned cold.

 

Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all

over with a cold shiver. Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him

wonderingly; probably the genuineness of Ivan’s horror struck him.

 

“You don’t mean to say you really did not know?” he faltered

mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes. Ivan still

gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.

 

Ach, Vanka’s gone to Petersburg;

 

I won’t wait till he comes back,

 

suddenly echoed in his head.

 

“Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom

sitting before me,” he muttered.

 

“There’s no phantom here, but only us two and one other. No

doubt he is here, that third, between us.”

 

“Who is he? Who is here? What third person?” Ivan cried in

alarm, looking about him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.

 

“That third is God Himself-Providence. He is the third beside

us now. Only don’t look for Him, you won’t find him.”

 

“It’s a lie that you killed him!” Ivan cried madly. “You are

mad, or teasing me again!”

 

Smerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of

fear. He could still scarcely get over his incredulity; he still

fancied that Ivan knew everything and was trying to “throw it all on

him to his face.”

 

“Wait a minute,” he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly

bringing up his left leg from under the table, he began turning up his

trouser leg. He was wearing long white stockings and slippers.

Slowly he took off his garter and fumbled to the bottom of his

stocking. Ivan gazed at him, and suddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of

terror.

 

“He’s mad!” he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so

that he knocked his back against the wall and stood up against it,

stiff and straight. He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who,

entirely unaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking,

as though he were making an effort to get hold of something with his

fingers and pull it out. At last he got hold of it and began pulling

it out. Ivan saw that it was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of

papers. Smerdyakov pulled it out and laid it on the table.

 

“Here,” he said quietly.

 

“What is it?” asked Ivan, trembling.

 

“Kindly look at it,” Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low

tone.

 

Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and

began unfolding it, but suddenly drew back his fingers, as though from

contact with a loathsome reptile.

 

“Your hands keep twitching,” observed Smerdyakov, and he

deliberately unfolded the bundle himself. Under the wrapper were three

packets of hundred-rouble notes.

 

“They are all here, all the three thousand roubles; you need not

count them. Take them,” Smerdyakov suggested to Ivan, nodding at the

notes. Ivan sank back in his chair. He was as white as a handkerchief.

 

“You frightened me… with your stocking,” he said, with a strange

grin.

 

“Can you really not have known till now?” Smerdyakov asked once

more.

 

“No, I did not know. I kept thinking of Dmitri. Brother,

brother! Ach!” He suddenly clutched his head in both hands.

 

“Listen. Did you kill him alone? With my brother’s help or

without?”

 

“It was only with you, with your help, I killed him, and Dmitri

Fyodorovitch is quite innocent.”

 

“All right, all right. Talk about me later. Why do I keep on

trembling? I can’t speak properly.”

 

“You were bold enough then. You said ‘everything was lawful,’

and how frightened you are now,” Smerdyakov muttered in surprise.

“Won’t you have some lemonade? I’ll ask for some at once. It’s very

refreshing. Only I must hide this first.”

 

And again he motioned at the notes. He was just going to get up

and call at the door to Marya Kondratyevna to make some lemonade and

bring it them, but, looking for something to cover up the notes that

she might