The Brothers Karamazov

“No, I didn’t. I kept thinking it was Dmitri. Brother! Brother! Ah!” he suddenly seized his head with both hands. “Listen: did you kill him alone? Without my brother, or with him?”

“Just only with you, sir; together with you, sir, and Dmitri Fyodorovich is as innocent as could be, sir.” “All right, all right ... We’ll get to me later. Why do I keep trembling. . . I can’t get a word out.”

“You used to be brave once, sir, you used to say ‘Everything is permitted,’ sir, and now you’ve got so frightened!” Smerdyakov murmured, marveling. “Would you like some lemonade? I’ll tell them to bring it, sir. It’s very refreshing. Only I must cover that up first, sir.”

And he nodded again towards the money. He made a move to get up and call for Maria Kondratievna from the doorway to make some lemonade and bring it to them, but, looking for something to cover the money with, so that she would not see it, he first pulled out his handkerchief, but, as it again turned out to be completely sodden, he then took from the table that thick, yellow book, the only one lying on it, the one Ivan had noticed as he came in, and placed it on top of the bills. The title of the book was The Homilies of Our Father among the Saints, Isaac the Syrian.^[302] Ivan Fyodorovich read it mechanically.

“I don’t want any lemonade,” he said. “We’ll get to me later. Sit down and tell me: how did you do it? Tell everything ...”

“You should at least take your coat off, sir, or you’ll get all sweaty.”

Ivan Fyodorovich, as though he had only just thought of it, tore his coat off and threw it on the bench without getting up.

“Speak, please, speak!”

He seemed to calm down. He waited, with the assurance that Smerdyakov would now tell him everything.

“About how it was done, sir?” Smerdyakov sighed. “It was done in the most natural manner, sir, according to those same words of yours.”

“We’ll get to my words later,” Ivan interrupted again, not shouting as before, but uttering the words firmly and as if with complete self-possession. “Just tell me in detail how you did it. Step by step. Don’t leave anything out. The details, above all, the details. I beg you.”

“You left, and then I fell into the cellar, sir...”

“In a falling fit, or were you shamming?”

“Of course I was shamming, sir. It was all a sham. I went quietly down the stairs, sir, to the very bottom, and lay down quietly, sir, and after I lay down, I started yelling. And I kept thrashing while they were taking me out.”

“Wait! You were shamming all the while, even later, and in the hospital?”

“By no means, sir. The very next day, in the morning, still before the hospital, a real one struck me, and such a strong one, there hasn’t been one like it for many years. I was completely unconscious for two days.”

“All right, all right, go on.”

“They put me on that cot, sir, and I knew it would be behind the partition, sir, because on every occasion when I was sick, Marfa Ignatievna always put me for the night behind the partition in her room, sir. She’s always been tender to me since my very birth, sir. During the night I kept moaning, only softly, sir. I kept expecting Dmitri Fyodorovich.”

“Expecting what, that he’d visit you?”

“Why would he visit me? I expected him to come to the house, for I had no doubt at all that he would arrive that same night, for, being deprived of me and not having any information, he would surely have to get to the house over the fence, as he knew how to, sir, and commit whatever it was. “

“And what if he didn’t come?”

“Then nothing would happen, sir. I wouldn’t dare without him.”

“All right, all right ... speak more clearly, don’t hurry, and above all— don’t omit anything!”

“I was expecting him to kill Fyodor Pavlovich, sir ... that was bound to be, sir. Because I’d already prepared him for it ... in those last few days, sir ... and the main thing was that those signals became known to him. Given his suspiciousness and the rage he’d stored up over those days, he was sure to use the signals to get right into the house, sir. It was sure to be. I was just expecting him, sir.”

“Wait,” Ivan interrupted, “if he killed him, he’d take the money and go off with it; wouldn’t you have reasoned precisely that way? What would you get out of it then? I don’t see.”