particularly to talk to him. Ivan looked at him and stopped, and the fact that he did stop, instead of passing by, as he meant to the minute before, drove him to fury. With anger and repulsion he looked at Smerdyakov's emasculate, sickly face, with the little curls combed forward on his forehead. His left eye winked and he grinned as if to say, 'Where are you going? You won't pass by; you see that we two clever people have something to say to each other.'

Ivan shook. 'Get away, miserable idiot. What have I to do with you?' was on the tip of his tongue, but to his profound astonishment he heard himself say, 'Is my father still asleep, or has he waked?'

He asked the question softly and meekly, to his own surprise, and at once, again to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For an instant he felt almost frightened; he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood facing him, his hands behind his back, looking at him with assurance and almost severity.

'His honour is still asleep,' he articulated deliberately ('You were the first to speak, not I,' he seemed to say). 'I am surprised at you, sir,' he added, after a pause, dropping his eyes affectedly, setting his right foot forward, and playing with the tip of his polished boot.

'Why are you surprised at me?' Ivan asked abruptly and sullenly, doing his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly realising, with disgust, that he was feeling intense curiosity and would not, on any account, have gone away without satisfying it.

'Why don't you go to Tchermashnya, sir?' Smerdyakov suddenly raised his eyes and smiled familiarly. 'Why I smile you must understand of yourself, if you are a clever man,' his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.

'Why should I go to Tchermashnya?' Ivan asked in surprise.

Smerdyakov was silent again.

'Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to,' he said at last, slowly and apparently attaching no significance to his answer. 'I put you off with a secondary reason,' he seemed to suggest, 'simply to say something.'

'Damn you! Speak out what you want!' Ivan cried angrily at last, passing from meekness to violence.

Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled himself up, but still looked at him with the same serenity and the same little smile.

'Substantially nothing--but just by way of conversation.'

Another silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a minute. Ivan knew that he ought to get up and show anger, and Smerdyakov stood before him and seemed to be waiting as though to see whether he would be angry or not. So at least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get up. Smerdyakov seemed to seize the moment.

'I'm in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don't know how to help myself,' he said resolutely and distinctly, and at his last word he sighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.

'They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than little children,' Smerdyakov went on. 'I am speaking of your parent and your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Here Fyodor Pavlovitch will get up directly and begin worrying me every minute, ‘Has she come? Why hasn't she come?’ and so on up till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna doesn't come (for very likely she does not mean to come at all) then he will be at me again to-morrow morning, ‘Why hasn't she come? When will she come?’--as though I were to blame for it. On the other side it's no better. As soon as it gets dark, or even before, your brother will appear with his gun in his hands: ‘Look out, you rogue, you soup-maker. If you miss her and don't let me know she's been --I'll kill you before anyone.’ When the night's over, in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovitch, begins worrying me to death. ‘Why hasn't she come? Will she come soon?’ And he, too, thinks me to blame because his lady hasn't come. And every day and every hour they get angrier and angrier, so that I sometimes think I shall kill myself in a fright. I can't depend them, sir.'

'And why have you meddled? Why did you begin to spy for Dmitri Fyodorovitch?' said Ivan irritably.

'How could I help meddling? Though, indeed, I haven't meddled at all, if you want to know the truth of the matter. I kept quiet from the very beginning, not daring to answer; but he pitched on me to be his servant. He has had only one thing to say since: ‘I'll kill you, you scoundrel, if you miss her.’ I feel certain, sir, that I shall have a long fit to-morrow.'

'What do you mean by ‘a long fit'?'

'A long fit, lasting a long time--several hours, or perhaps a day or two. Once it went on for three days. I fell from the garret that time. The struggling ceased and then began again, and for three days I couldn't come back to my senses. Fyodor Pavlovitch sent for Herzenstube, the doctor here, and he put ice on my head and tried another remedy, too.... I might have died.'

'But they say one can't tell with epilepsy when a fit is coming. What makes you say you will have one to- morrow?' Ivan inquired, with a peculiar, irritable curiosity.

'That's just so. You can't tell beforehand.'

'Besides, you fell from the garret then.'

'I climb up to the garret every day. I might fall from the garret again to-morrow. And, if not, I might fall down the cellar steps. I have to go into the cellar every day, too.'

Ivan took a long look at him.

'You are talking nonsense, I see, and I don't quite understand you,' he said softly, but with a sort of menace. 'Do you mean to pretend to be ill to-morrow for three days, eh?'

Smerdyakov, who was looking at the ground again, and playing with the toe of his right foot, set the foot down, moved the left one forward, and, grinning, articulated:

'If I were able to play such a trick, that is, pretend to have a fit-- and it would not be difficult for a man accustomed to them--I should have a perfect right to use such a means to save myself from death. For even if Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to see his father while I am ill, his honour can't blame a sick man for not telling him. He'd be ashamed to.'

'Hang it all!' Ivan cried, his face working with anger, 'Why are you always in such a funk for your life? All my brother Dmitri's threats are only hasty words and mean nothing. He won't kill you; it's not you he'll kill!'

'He'd kill me first of all, like a fly. But even more than that, I am afraid I shall be taken for an accomplice of his when he does something crazy to his father.'

'Why should you be taken for an accomplice?'

'They'll think I am an accomplice, because I let him know the signals as a great secret.'

'What signals? Whom did you tell? Confound you, speak more plainly.'

'I'm bound to admit the fact,' Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic composure, 'that I have a secret with Fyodor Pavlovitch in this business. As you know yourself (if only you do know it) he has for several days past locked himself in as soon as night or even evening comes on. Of late you've been going upstairs to your room early every evening, and yesterday you did not come down at all, and so perhaps you don't know how carefully he has begun to lock himself in at night, and even if Grigory Vassilyevitch comes to the door he won't open to him till he hears his voice. But Grigory Vassilyevitch does not come, because I wait upon him alone in his room now. That's the arrangement he made himself ever since this to-do with Agrafena Alexandrovna began. But at night, by his orders, I go away to the lodge so that I don't get to sleep till midnight, but am on the watch, getting up and walking about the yard, waiting for Agrafena Alexandrovna to come. For the last few days he's been perfectly frantic expecting her. What he argues is, she is afraid of him, Dmitri Fyodorovitch (Mitya, as he calls him), 'and so,’ says he, ‘she'll come the back-way, late at night, to me. You look out for her,’ says he, ‘till midnight and later; and if she does come, you run up and knock at my door or at the window from the garden. Knock at first twice, rather gently, and then three times more quickly, then,’ says he, ‘I shall understand at once that she has come, and will open the door to you quietly.’ Another signal he gave me in case anything unexpected happens. At first, two knocks, and then, after an interval, another much louder. Then he will understand that something has happened suddenly and that I must see him, and he will open to me so that I can go and speak to him. That's all in case Agrafena Alexandrovna can't come herself, but sends a message. Besides, Dmitri Fyodorovitch might come, too, so I must let him know he is near. His honour is awfully afraid of Dmitri Fyodorovitch, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna had come and were locked in with him, and Dmitri Fyodorovitch were to turn up anywhere near at the time, I should be bound to let him know at once, knocking three times. So that the first signal of five knocks means Agrafena Alexandrovna has come, while the second signal of three knocks means ‘something important to tell you.’ His honour has shown me them several times and explained them. And as in the whole universe no one knows of these signals but myself and his honour, so he'd open the door without the slightest hesitation and without calling out (he is awfully afraid of

Вы читаете The Brothers Karamazov
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