The Brothers Karamazov

“Of course, I should have guessed,” Ivan was agitated, “and indeed I was beginning to guess at some loathsomeness on your part ... Only you’re lying, lying again,” he cried out, suddenly recalling. “Do you remember how you came up to the carriage then and said to me: ‘It’s always interesting to talk with an intelligent man’? Since you praised me, doesn’t it mean you were glad I was leaving?”

Smerdyakov sighed again and yet again. Color seemed to come to his face.

“If I was glad,” he said, somewhat breathlessly, “it was only for the reason that you agreed to go not to Moscow but to Chermashnya. Because it’s closer, after all; only I spoke those words then not as praise but as a reproach, sir. You failed to make it out, sir.”

“Reproach for what?”

“That anticipating such a calamity, sir, you were abandoning your own parent and did not want to protect us, because they could have hauled me in anytime for that three thousand, for having stolen it, sir.”

“Devil take you!” Ivan swore again. “Wait: did you tell the district attorney and the prosecutor about those signals, those knocks?”

“I told it all just as it was, sir.” Again Ivan Fyodorovich was inwardly surprised.

“If I was thinking of anything then,” he began again, “it was only of some loathsomeness on your part. Dmitri might kill, but that he would steal—I did not believe at the time ... But I was prepared for any loathsomeness on your part. You told me yourself that you could sham a falling fit—why did you tell me that?”

“For the sole reason of my simple-heartedness. And I’ve never shammed a falling fit on purpose in my life, I only said it so as to boast to you. Just foolishness, sir. I loved you very much then, and acted in all simplicity.”

“My brother accuses you directly of the murder and the robbery.”

“And what else has he got left to do?” Smerdyakov grinned bitterly. “And who will believe him after all that evidence? Grigory Vasilievich did see the open door, and there you have it, sir. Well, what can I say, God be with him! He’s trembling, trying to save himself...”

He was calmly silent for a while, and suddenly, as if realizing something, added:

“There’s this, sir, yet another thing: he wants to shift the blame, so that it was my doing, sir—I’ve heard that already, sir—but just take this other thing, that I’m an expert at shamming the falling sickness: but would I have told you beforehand that I could sham it if I really had any plot against your parent then? If I was plotting such a murder, could I possibly be such a fool as to tell such evidence against myself beforehand, and tell it to his own son, for pity’s sake, sir! Does that resemble a probability? As if that could happen, sir; no, on the contrary, not ever at all, sir. No one can hear this conversation between us now, except that same Providence, sir, but if you informed the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfenovich, you could thereby ultimately defend me, sir: because what kind of villain is so simple-hearted beforehand? They may well consider all that, sir.”

“Listen,” Ivan Fyodorovich, struck by Smerdyakov’s last argument, rose from his seat, interrupting the conversation, “I do not suspect you at all and even consider it ridiculous to accuse you ... on the contrary, I am grateful to you for reassuring me. I am leaving now, but I shall come again. Meanwhile, good-bye; get well. Perhaps there’s something you need?”

“I’m grateful in all things, sir. Marfa Ignatievna doesn’t forget me, sir, and assists me in everything, if there’s ever anything I need, according to her usual goodness. Good people visit every day.”

“Good-bye. Incidentally, I won’t mention that you know how to sham ... and I advise you not to testify to it,” Ivan said suddenly for some reason.

“I understand ver-ry well, sir. And since you won’t testify about that, sir, I also will not report the whole of our conversation by the gate that time ...”