insinuating.
'I could have done better than that. I could have known more than that, if it had not been for my destiny from my childhood up. I would have shot a man in a duel if he called me names because I am descended from a filthy beggar and have no father. And they used to throw it in my teeth in Moscow. It had reached them from here, thanks to Grigory Vassilyevitch. Grigory Vassilyevitch blames me for rebelling against my birth, but I would have sanctioned their killing me before I was born that I might not have come into the world at all. They used to say in the market, and your mamma too, with great lack of delicacy, set off telling me that her hair was like a mat on her head, and that she was short of five foot by a wee bit. Why talk of a wee bit while she might have said ‘a little bit,’ like everyone else? She wanted to make it touching, a regular peasant's feeling. Can a Russian peasant be said to feel, in comparison with an educated man? He can't be said to have feeling at all, in his ignorance. From my childhood up when I hear ‘a wee bit,’ I am ready to burst with rage. I hate all Russia, Marya Kondratyevna.'
'If you'd been a cadet in the army, or a young hussar, you wouldn't have talked like that, but would have drawn your sabre to defend all Russia.'
'I don't want to be a hussar, Marya Kondratyevna, and, what's more, I should like to abolish all soldiers.'
'And when an enemy comes, who is going to defend us?'
'There's no need of defence. In 1812 there was a great invasion of Russia by Napoleon, first Emperor of the French, father of the present one, and it would have been a good thing if they had conquered us. A clever nation would have conquered a very stupid one and annexed it. We should have had quite different institutions.'
'Are they so much better in their own country than we are? I wouldn't change a dandy I know of for three young englishmen,' observed Marya Kondratyevna tenderly, doubtless accompanying her words with a most languishing glance.
'That's as one prefers.'
'But you are just like a foreigner--just like a most gentlemanly foreigner. I tell you that, though it makes me bashful.'
'If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in their vice. They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it. The Russian people want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday, though he is mad, and all his children.'
'You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch.'
'But he said I was a stinking lackey. He thinks that I might be unruly. He is mistaken there. If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have left here long ago. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his behaviour, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn't know how to do anything, and yet he is respected by everyone. I may be only a soup-maker, but with luck I could open a cafe restaurant in Petrovka, in Moscow, for my cookery is something special, and there's no one in Moscow, except the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special. Dmitri Fyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first count in the country, he'd fight him. Though in what way is he better than I am? For he is ever so much stupider than I am. Look at the money he has wasted without any need!'
'It must be lovely, a duel,' Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.
'How so?'
'It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers with pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some lady. A perfect picture! Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I'd give anything to see one!'
'It's all very well when you are firing at someone, but when he is firing straight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly. You'd be glad to run away, Marya Kondratyevna.'
'You don't mean you would run away?' But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply. After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto:
Whatever you may say,
I shall go far away.
Life will be bright and gay
In the city far away.
I shall not grieve,
I shall not grieve at all,
I don't intend to grieve at all.
Then something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were silent. Alyosha got up and walked towards them. He found Smerdyakov dressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps curled. The guitar lay on the garden-seat. His companion was the daughter of the house, wearing a light-blue dress with a train two yards long. She was young and would not have been bad-looking, but that her face was so round and terribly freckled.
'Will my brother Dmitri soon be back? asked Alyosha with as much composure as he could.
Smerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.
'How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It's not as if I were his keeper,' answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
'But I simply asked whether you do know?' Alyosha explained.
'I know nothing of his whereabouts and don't want to.'
'But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the house, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.'
Smerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.
'And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour ago?' he asked, looking at Alyosha.
'I came in from the back-alley, over the fence, and went straight to the summer-house. I hope you'll forgive me, he added addressing Marya Kondratyevna. 'I was in a hurry to find my brother.'
'Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!' drawled Marya Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha's apology. 'For Dmitri Fyodorovitch often goes to the summer-house in that way. We don't know he is here and he is sitting in the summer-house.'
'I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now. Believe me, it's on business of great importance to him.'
'He never tells us,' lisped Marya Kondratyevna.
'Though I used to come here as a friend,' Smerdyakov began again, 'Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by his incessant questions about the master. ‘What news?’ he'll ask. 'What's going on in there now? Who's coming and going?’ and can't I tell him something more. Twice already he's threatened me with death
'With death?' Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.
'Do you suppose he'd think much of that, with his temper, which you had a chance of observing yourself yesterday? He says if I let Agrafena Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I'll be the first to suffer for it. I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know. God only knows what he might not do!'
'His honour said to him the other day, ‘I'll pound you in a mortar!'' added Marya Kondratyevna.
'Oh, if it's pounding in a mortar, it may be only talk,' observed Alyosha. 'If I could meet him, I might speak to him about that too.'
'Well, the only thing I can tell you is this,' said Smerdyakov, as though thinking better of it; 'I am here as an old friend and neighbour, and it would be odd if I didn't come. On the other hand, Ivan Fyodorovitch sent me first thing this morning to your brother's lodging in Lake Street, without a letter, but with a message to Dmitri Fyodorovitch to go to dine with him at the restaurant here, in the marketplace. I went, but didn't find Dmitri Fyodorovitch at home, though it was eight o'clock. ‘He's been here, but he is quite gone,’ those were the very words of his landlady. It's as though there was an understanding between them. Perhaps at this moment he is in the restaurant with Ivan Fyodorovitch, for Ivan Fyodorovitch has not been home to dinner and Fyodor Pavlovitch dined alone an hour ago, and is gone to lie down. But I beg you most particularly not to speak of me and of what I have told you, for he'd kill me for nothing at all.'
'Brother Ivan invited Dmitri to the restaurant to-day?' repeated Alyosha quickly.
'That's so.'
'The Metropolis tavern in the marketplace?'
