The Brothers Karamazov

This was now the third time that Ivan Fyodorovich had gone to talk with Smerdyakov since his return from Moscow. The first time he had seen him and spoken with him after the catastrophe was immediately upon the day of his arrival; then he had visited him once more two weeks later. But after this second time, he stopped his meetings with Smerdyakov, so that now he had not seen him, and had scarcely heard anything about him, for more than a month. Ivan Fyodorovich had returned from Moscow only on the fifth day following his father’s death, so that he did not even find him in his coffin: the burial took place just the day before he arrived. The reason for Ivan Fyodorovich’s delay was that Alyosha, not knowing his precise address in Moscow, had resorted to Katerina Ivanovna to send the telegram, and she, being equally ignorant of his actual address, had sent the telegram to her sister and aunt, reckoning that Ivan Fyodorovich would go to see them as soon as he arrived in Moscow. But he had gone to see them only on the fourth day after his arrival, and, having read the telegram, he at once, of course, came flying back here. The first one he met was Alyosha, but after talking with him, he was greatly amazed to find that he refused even to suspect Mitya and pointed directly to Smerdyakov as the murderer, contrary to all other opinions in our town. Having then met with the police commissioner and the prosecutor, having learned the details of the accusation and the arrest, he was still more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his opinion to his highly aroused brotherly feeling and compassion for Mitya, whom, as Ivan knew, Alyosha loved very much. Incidentally, let us say just two words once and for all about Ivan’s feelings towards his brother Dmitri Fyodorovich: he decidedly disliked him, and the most he occasionally felt for him was compassion, but even then mixed with great contempt, reaching the point of squeamishness. The whole of Mitya, even his whole figure, was extremely unsympathetic to him. Katerina Ivanovna’s love for him Ivan regarded with indignation. Nonetheless he also met with the imprisoned Mitya on the day of his arrival, and this meeting not only did not weaken his conviction of Mitya’s guilt, but even strengthened it. He found his brother agitated, morbidly excited. Mitya was verbose, but absentminded and scattered, spoke very abruptly, accused Smerdyakov, and was terribly confused. Most of all he kept referring to those same three thousand roubles that the deceased had “stolen” from him. “The money was mine, it was mine,” Mitya kept repeating, “even if I had stolen it, I’d be right.” He contested almost none of the evidence against him, and when he did interpret facts in his favor, again he did so quite inconsistently and absurdly—generally as though he did not even wish to justify himself at all before Ivan or anyone else; on the contrary, he was angry, proudly scanted the accusations, cursed and seethed. He merely laughed contemptuously at Grigory’s evidence about the open door, and insisted it was “the devil who opened it.” But he could not present any coherent explanation of this fact. He even managed to insult Ivan Fyodorovich in this first meeting, telling him abruptly that he was not to be suspected or questioned by those who themselves assert that “everything is permitted.” Generally on this occasion he was very unfriendly to Ivan Fyodorovich. It was right after this meeting with Mitya that Ivan Fyodorovich went to see Smerdyakov.