'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 not see them, he first took out his handkerchief, and as it turned out to be very dirty, took up the big yellow book that Ivan had noticed at first lying on the table, and put it over the notes. The book was The Sayings of the Holy Father Isaac the Syrian. Ivan read it mechanically.
'I won't have any lemonade,' he said. 'Talk of me later. Sit down and tell me how you did it. Tell me all about it.'
'You'd better take off your greatcoat, or you'll be too hot.' Ivan, as though he'd only just thought of it, took off his coat, and, without getting up from his chair, threw it on the bench.
'Speak, please, speak.'
He seemed calmer. He waited, feeling sure that Smerdyakov would tell him all about it.
'How it was done?' sighed Smerdyakov. 'It was done in a most natural way, following your very words.'
'Of my words later,' Ivan broke in again, apparently with complete self-possession, firmly uttering his words, and not shouting as before. 'Only tell me in detail how you did it. Everything, as it happened. Don't forget anything. The details, above everything, the details, I beg you.'
'You'd gone away, then I fell into the cellar.'
'In a fit or in a sham one?'
'A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down the steps to the very bottom and lay down quietly, and as I lay down I gave a scream, and struggled, till they carried me out.'
'Stay! And were you shamming all along, afterwards, and in the hospital?'
'No, not at all. Next day, in the morning, before they took me to the hospital, I had a real attack and a more violent one than I've had for years. For two days I was quite unconscious.'
'All right, all right. Go on.'
'They laid me on the bed. I knew I'd be the other side of the partition, for whenever I was ill, Marfa Ignatyevna used to put me there, near them. She's always been very kind to me, from my birth up. At night I moaned, but quietly. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovitch to come.'
'Expecting him? To come to you?'
'Not to me. I expected him to come into the house, for I'd no doubt that he'd come that night, for being without me and getting no news, he'd be sure to come and climb over the fence, as he used to, and do something.'
'And if he hadn't come?'
'Then nothing would have happened. I should never have brought myself to it without him.'
'All right, all right. speak more intelligibly, don't hurry; above all, don't leave anything out!'
'I expected him to kill Fyodor Pavlovitch. I thought that was certain, for I had prepared him for it... during the last few days.... He knew about the knocks, that was the chief thing. With his suspiciousness and the fury which had been growing in him all those days, he was bound to get into the house by means of those taps. That was inevitable, so I was expecting him.'
'Stay,' Ivan interrupted; 'if he had killed him, he would have taken the money and carried it away; you must have considered that. What would you have got by it afterwards? I don't see.' 0 'But he would never have found the money. That was only what I told him, that the money was under the mattress. But that wasn't true. It had been lying in a box. And afterwards I suggested to Fyodor Pavlovitch, as I was the only person he trusted, to hide the envelope with the notes in the corner behind the ikons, for no one would have guessed that place, especially if they came in a hurry. So that's where the envelope lay, in the corner behind the ikons. It would have been absurd to keep it under the mattress; the box, anyway, could be locked. But all believe it was under the mattress. A stupid thing to believe. So if Dmitri Fyodorovitch had committed the murder, finding nothing, he would either have run away in a hurry, afraid of every sound, as always happens with murderers, or he would have been arrested. So I could always have clambered up to the ikons and have taken away the money next moming or even that night, and it would have all been put down to Dmitri Fyodorovitch. I could reckon upon that.'
'But what if he did not kill him, but only knocked him down?'
'If he did not kill him, of course, I would not have ventured to take the money, and nothing would have happened. But I calculated that he would beat him senseless, and I should have time to take it then, and then I'd make out to Fyodor Pavlovitch that it was no one but Dmitri Fyodorovitch who had taken the money after beating him.'
'Stop... I am getting mixed. Then it was Dmitri after all who killed him; you only took the money?'
'No, he didn't kill him. Well, I might as well have told you now that he was the murderer.... But I don't want to lie to you now because... because if you really haven't understood till now, as I see for myself, and are not pretending, so as to throw your guilt on me to my very face, you are still responsible for it all, since you knew of the murder and charged me to do it, and went away knowing all about it. And so I want to prove to your face this evening that you are the only real murderer in the whole affair, and I am not the real murderer, though I did kill him. You are the rightful murderer.'
'Why, why, am I a murderer? Oh, God!' Ivan cried, unable to restrain himself at last, and forgetting that he had put off discussing himself till the end of the conversation. 'You still mean that Tchermashnya? Stay, tell me, why did you want my consent, if you really took Tchermashnya for consent? How will you explain that now?'
'Assured of your consent, I should have known that you wouldn't have made an outcry over those three thousand being lost, even if I'd been suspected, instead of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, or as his accomplice; on the contrary, you would have protected me from others.... And when you got your inheritance you would have rewarded me when you were able, all the rest of your life. For you'd have received your inheritance through me, seeing that if he had married Agrafena Alexandrovna, you wouldn't have had a farthing.'
'Ah! Then you intended to worry me all my life afterwards,' snarled Ivan. 'And what if I hadn't gone away then, but had informed against you?'
'What could you have informed? That I persuaded you to go to Tcherinashnya? That's all nonsense. Besides, after our conversation you would either have gone away or have stayed. If you had stayed, nothing would have happened. I should have known that you didn't want it done, and should have attempted nothing. As you went away, it meant you assured me that you wouldn't dare to inform against me at the trial, and that you'd overlook my having the three thousand. And, indeed, you couldn't have prosecuted me afterwards, because then I should have told it all in the court; that is, not that I had stolen the money or killed him--I shouldn't have said that--but that you'd put me up to the theft and the murder, though I didn't consent to it. That's why I needed your consent, so that you couldn't have cornered me afterwards, for what proof could you have had? I could always have cornered you, revealing your eagerness for your father's death, and I tell you the public would have believed it all, and you would have been ashamed for the rest of your life.'
'Was I then so eager, was I?' Ivan snarled again.
'To be sure you were, and by your consent you silently sanctioned my doing it.' Smerdyakov looked resolutely at Ivan. He was very weak and spoke slowly and wearily, but some hidden inner force urged him on. He evidently had some design. Ivan felt that.
'Go on,' he said. 'Tell me what happened that night.'
'What more is there to tell! I lay there and I thought I heard the master shout. And before that Grigory Vassilyevitch had suddenly got up and came out, and he suddenly gave a scream, and then all was silence and darkness. I lay there waiting, my heart beating; I couldn't bear it. I got up at last, went out. I saw the window open on the left into the garden, and I stepped to the left to listen whether he was sitting there alive, and I heard the master moving about, sighing, so I knew he was alive. ‘Ech!’ I thought. I went to the window and shouted to the
