The Brothers Karamazov

he Second Visit To Smerdyakov

By that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan
knew his new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in
two by a passage on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her
mother, and on the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he
lived with them, whether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed
afterwards that he had come to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna’s
betrothed, and was living there for a time without paying for board or
lodging. Both mother and daughter had the greatest respect for him and
looked upon him as greatly superior to themselves.

Ivan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the
passage. By Marya Kondratyevna’s directions he went straight to the
better room on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled
stove in the room and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with
blue paper, which was a good deal used however, and in the cracks under
it cockroaches swarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a
continual rustling from them. The furniture was very scanty: two
benches against each wall and two chairs by the table. The table of
plain wood was covered with a cloth with pink patterns on it. There was
a pot of geranium on each of the two little windows. In the corner
there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a little copper samovar
with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But Smerdyakov had
finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the table on a
bench. He was looking at an exercise‐book and slowly writing with a
pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick, but
with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov’s face that
he had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher,
fuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at
the sides. He was sitting in a parti‐colored, wadded dressing‐gown,
rather dirty and frayed, however. He had spectacles on his nose, which
Ivan had never seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance
suddenly redoubled Ivan’s anger: “A creature like that and wearing
spectacles!”

Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor
through his spectacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the
bench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least
possible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan instantly;
he took it all in and noted it at once—most of all the look in
Smerdyakov’s eyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. “What do
you want to intrude for?” it seemed to say; “we settled everything
then; why have you come again?” Ivan could scarcely control himself.

“It’s hot here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

“Take off your coat,” Smerdyakov conceded.

Ivan took off his coat and threw it on a bench with trembling hands. He
took a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov
managed to sit down on his bench before him.

“To begin with, are we alone?” Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. “Can
they overhear us in there?”

“No one can hear anything. You’ve seen for yourself: there’s a
passage.”

“Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving
the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming
fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation
at the gate? What do you mean by all? What could you mean by it? Were
you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you?
Do you suppose I am afraid of you?”

Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious
intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to
show his cards. Smerdyakov’s eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye
winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and
deliberation. “You want to have everything above‐board; very well, you
shall have it,” he seemed to say.

“This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you,
knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his
fate, and that people mightn’t after that conclude any evil about your
feelings and perhaps of something else, too—that’s what I promised not
to tell the authorities.”

Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling
himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic,
resentful and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist
passed before Ivan’s eyes for the first moment.

“How? What? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m perfectly in possession of all my faculties.”

“Do you suppose I knew of the murder?” Ivan cried at last, and he
brought his fist violently on the table. “What do you mean by
‘something else, too’? Speak, scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent
stare.

“Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that ‘something else, too’?”

“The ‘something else’ I meant was that you probably, too, were very
desirous of your parent’s death.”

Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so
that he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed
in tears. Saying, “It’s a shame, sir, to strike a sick man,” he dried
his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet
weeping. A minute passed.

“That’s enough! Leave off,” Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again.
“Don’t put me out of all patience.”

Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face
reflected the insult he had just received.

“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant
to kill my father?”

“I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,” said Smerdyakov
resentfully; “and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on
that very point.”

“To sound what, what?”

“Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be
murdered or not.”

What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent
tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.

“It was you murdered him?” he cried suddenly.

Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.

“You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I
should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak
of it again.”

“But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?”

“As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a
position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to
sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother,
then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a
fly, too.”

“Look here, you didn’t say that a fortnight ago.”

“I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought
you’d understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible
man you wouldn’t care to talk of it openly.”

“What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I
have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?”

“As for the murder, you couldn’t have done that and didn’t want to, but
as for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did
want.”

“And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it;
what grounds had I for wanting it?”

“What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?” said Smerdyakov
sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively. “Why, after your parent’s
death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and
very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that
lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made
over to her directly after the wedding, for she’s plenty of sense, so
that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three
of you. And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair’s‐breadth:
that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run
after her to church, with his tongue out.”

Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.

“Very good,” he commented at last. “You see, I haven’t jumped up, I
haven’t knocked you down, I haven’t killed you. Speak on. So, according
to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?”

“How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would
lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go
off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and
your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you’d each have not
forty, but sixty thousand each. There’s not a doubt you did reckon on
Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”

“What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on
any one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I
did expect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my
impression!”

“I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on
me as well,” said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. “So that it was
just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind.
For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as
said to me, ‘You can murder my parent, I won’t hinder you!’ ”

“You scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”

“It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to
Moscow and refused all your father’s entreaties to go to
Tchermashnya—and simply at a foolish word from me you consented at
once! What reason had you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to
Tchermashnya with no reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must
have expected something from me.”

“No, I swear I didn’t!” shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.

“You didn’t? Then you ought, as your father’s son, to have had me taken
to the lock‐up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least,
to have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a
bit angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my
foolish word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to
have stayed to save your parent’s life. How could I help drawing my
conclusions?”

Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.

“Yes, I am sorry I didn’t punch you in the face,” he said with a bitter
smile. “I couldn’t have taken you to the lock‐up just then. Who would
have believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the
punch in the face ... oh, I’m sorry I didn’t think of it. Though blows
are forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly.”

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.

“In the ordinary occasions of life,” he said in the same complacent and
sententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and argued with him
about religion at Fyodor Pavlovitch’s table, “in the ordinary occasions
of life, blows on the face are forbidden nowadays by law, and people
have given them up, but in exceptional occasions of life people still
fly to blows, not only among us but all over the world, be it even the
fullest Republic of France, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, and
they never will leave off, but you, even in an exceptional case, did
not dare.”

“What are you learning French words for?” Ivan nodded towards the
exercise‐book lying on the table.

“Why shouldn’t I learn them so as to improve my education, supposing
that I may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts of
Europe?”

“Listen, monster.” Ivan’s eyes flashed and he trembled all over. “I am
not afraid of your accusations; you can say what you like about me, and
if I don’t beat you to death, it’s simply because I suspect you of that
crime and I’ll drag you to justice. I’ll unmask you.”

“To my thinking, you’d better keep quiet, for what can you accuse me
of, considering my absolute innocence? and who would believe you? Only
if you begin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must defend myself.”

“Do you think I am afraid of you now?”

“If the court doesn’t believe all I’ve said to you just now, the public
will, and you will be ashamed.”

“That’s as much as to say, ‘It’s always worth while speaking to a
sensible man,’ eh?” snarled Ivan.

“You hit the mark, indeed. And you’d better be sensible.”

Ivan got up, shaking all over with indignation, put on his coat, and
without replying further to Smerdyakov, without even looking at him,
walked quickly out of the cottage. The cool evening air refreshed him.
There was a bright moon in the sky. A nightmare of ideas and sensations
filled his soul. “Shall I go at once and give information against
Smerdyakov? But what information can I give? He is not guilty, anyway.
On the contrary, he’ll accuse me. And in fact, why did I set off for
Tchermashnya then? What for? What for?” Ivan asked himself. “Yes, of
course, I was expecting something and he is right....” And he
remembered for the hundredth time how, on the last night in his
father’s house, he had listened on the stairs. But he remembered it now
with such anguish that he stood still on the spot as though he had been
stabbed. “Yes, I expected it then, that’s true! I wanted the murder, I
did want the murder! Did I want the murder? Did I want it? I must kill
Smerdyakov! If I don’t dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth
living!”

Ivan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and
alarmed her by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all
his conversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn’t be
calmed, however much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about the
room, speaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put his
elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced this
strange sentence: “If it’s not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who’s the
murderer, I share his guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did, I
don’t know yet. But if he is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then, of
course, I am the murderer, too.”

When Katerina Ivanovna heard that, she got up from her seat without a
word, went to her writing‐table, opened a box standing on it, took out
a sheet of paper and laid it before Ivan. This was the document of
which Ivan spoke to Alyosha later on as a “conclusive proof” that
Dmitri had killed his father. It was the letter written by Mitya to
Katerina Ivanovna when he was drunk, on the very evening he met Alyosha
at the crossroads on the way to the monastery, after the scene at
Katerina Ivanovna’s, when Grushenka had insulted her. Then, parting
from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed to Grushenka. I don’t know whether he
saw her, but in the evening he was at the “Metropolis,” where he got
thoroughly drunk. Then he asked for pen and paper and wrote a document
of weighty consequences to himself. It was a wordy, disconnected,
frantic letter, a drunken letter in fact. It was like the talk of a
drunken man, who, on his return home, begins with extraordinary heat
telling his wife or one of his household how he has just been insulted,
what a rascal had just insulted him, what a fine fellow he is on the
other hand, and how he will pay that scoundrel out; and all that at
great length, with great excitement and incoherence, with drunken tears
and blows on the table. The letter was written on a dirty piece of
ordinary paper of the cheapest kind. It had been provided by the tavern
and there were figures scrawled on the back of it. There was evidently
not space enough for his drunken verbosity and Mitya not only filled
the margins but had written the last line right across the rest. The
letter ran as follows:

FATAL KATYA: To‐morrow I will get the money and repay your three
thousand and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my
love! Let us make an end! To‐morrow I shall try and get it from every
one, and if I can’t borrow it, I give you my word of honor I shall go
to my father and break his skull and take the money from under the
pillow, if only Ivan has gone. If I have to go to Siberia for it, I’ll
give you back your three thousand. And farewell. I bow down to the
ground before you, for I’ve been a scoundrel to you. Forgive me! No,
better not forgive me, you’ll be happier and so shall I! Better Siberia
than your love, for I love another woman and you got to know her too
well to‐day, so how can you forgive? I will murder the man who’s robbed
me! I’ll leave you all and go to the East so as to see no one again.
Not her either, for you are not my only tormentress; she is too.
Farewell!
P.S.—I write my curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One
string is left, and it vibrates. Better tear my heart in two! I
shall kill myself, but first of all that cur. I shall tear three
thousand from him and fling it to you. Though I’ve been a scoundrel
to you, I am not a thief! You can expect three thousand. The cur
keeps it under his mattress, in pink ribbon. I am not a thief, but
I’ll murder my thief. Katya, don’t look disdainful. Dmitri is not a
thief! but a murderer! He has murdered his father and ruined
himself to hold his ground, rather than endure your pride. And he
doesn’t love you.
P.P.S.—I kiss your feet, farewell! P.P.P.S.—Katya, pray to God that
some one’ll give me the money. Then I shall not be steeped in gore,
and if no one does—I shall! Kill me!

Your slave and enemy,
D. KARAMAZOV.

When Ivan read this “document” he was convinced. So then it was his
brother, not Smerdyakov. And if not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan. This
letter at once assumed in his eyes the aspect of a logical proof. There
could be no longer the slightest doubt of Mitya’s guilt. The suspicion
never occurred to Ivan, by the way, that Mitya might have committed the
murder in conjunction with Smerdyakov, and, indeed, such a theory did
not fit in with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured. The next
morning he only thought of Smerdyakov and his gibes with contempt. A
few days later he positively wondered how he could have been so
horribly distressed at his suspicions. He resolved to dismiss him with
contempt and forget him. So passed a month. He made no further inquiry
about Smerdyakov, but twice he happened to hear that he was very ill
and out of his mind.

“He’ll end in madness,” the young doctor Varvinsky observed about him,
and Ivan remembered this. During the last week of that month Ivan
himself began to feel very ill. He went to consult the Moscow doctor
who had been sent for by Katerina Ivanovna just before the trial. And
just at that time his relations with Katerina Ivanovna became acutely
strained. They were like two enemies in love with one another. Katerina
Ivanovna’s “returns” to Mitya, that is, her brief but violent
revulsions of feeling in his favor, drove Ivan to perfect frenzy.
Strange to say, until that last scene described above, when Alyosha
came from Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna, Ivan had never once, during that
month, heard her express a doubt of Mitya’s guilt, in spite of those
“returns” that were so hateful to him. It is remarkable, too, that
while he felt that he hated Mitya more and more every day, he realized
that it was not on account of Katya’s “returns” that he hated him, but
just because he was the murderer of his father. He was conscious of
this and fully recognized it to himself.

Nevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and
proposed to him a plan of escape—a plan he had obviously thought over a
long time. He was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still left
in his heart from a phrase of Smerdyakov’s, that it was to his, Ivan’s,
advantage that his brother should be convicted, as that would increase
his inheritance and Alyosha’s from forty to sixty thousand roubles. He
determined to sacrifice thirty thousand on arranging Mitya’s escape. On
his return from seeing him, he was very mournful and dispirited; he
suddenly began to feel that he was anxious for Mitya’s escape, not only
to heal that sore place by sacrificing thirty thousand, but for another
reason. “Is it because I am as much a murderer at heart?” he asked
himself. Something very deep down seemed burning and rankling in his
soul. His pride above all suffered cruelly all that month. But of that
later....

When, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided with
his hand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he obeyed a
sudden and peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly remembered how
Katerina Ivanovna had only just cried out to him in Alyosha’s presence:
“It was you, you, persuaded me of his” (that is, Mitya’s) “guilt!” Ivan
was thunderstruck when he recalled it. He had never once tried to
persuade her that Mitya was the murderer; on the contrary, he had
suspected himself in her presence, that time when he came back from
Smerdyakov. It was she, she, who had produced that “document” and
proved his brother’s guilt. And now she suddenly exclaimed: “I’ve been
at Smerdyakov’s myself!” When had she been there? Ivan had known
nothing of it. So she was not at all so sure of Mitya’s guilt! And what
could Smerdyakov have told her? What, what, had he said to her? His
heart burned with violent anger. He could not understand how he could,
half an hour before, have let those words pass and not have cried out
at the moment. He let go of the bell and rushed off to Smerdyakov. “I
shall kill him, perhaps, this time,” he thought on the way.