The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (best e book reader for android txt) 📖

Chapter 6

For Awhile a Very Obscure One

 

AND Ivan, on parting from Alyosha, went home to Fyodor

Pavlovitch’s house. But, strange to say, he was overcome by

insufferable depression, which grew greater at every step he took

towards the house. There was nothing strange in his being depressed;

what was strange was that Ivan could not have said what was the

cause of it. He had often been depressed before, and there was nothing

surprising at his feeling so at such a moment, when he had broken

off with everything had brought him here, and was preparing that day

to make a new start and enter upon a new, unknown future. He would

again be as solitary as ever, and though he had great hopes, and

great-too great-expectations from life, he could not have given

any definite account of his hopes, his expectations, or even his

desires.

 

Yet at that moment, though the apprehension of the new and unknown

certainly found place in his heart, what was worrying him was

something quite different. “Is it loathing for my father’s house?”

he wondered. “Quite likely; I am so sick of it; and though it’s the

last time I shall cross its hateful threshold, still I loathe it….

No, it’s not that either. Is it the parting with Alyosha and the

conversation I had with him? For so many years I’ve been silent with

the whole world and not deigned to speak, and all of a sudden I reel

off a rigmarole like that.” certainly might have been the youthful

vexation of youthful inexperience and vanity-vexation at having

failed to express himself, especially with such a being as Alyosha, on

whom his heart had certainly been reckoning. No doubt that came in,

that vexation, it must have done indeed; but yet that was not it, that

was not it either. “I feel sick with depression and yet I can’t tell

what I want. Better not think, perhaps.”

 

Ivan tried “not to think,” but that, too, was no use. What made

his depression so vexatious and irritating was that it had a kind of

casual, external character-he felt that. Some person or thing

seemed to be standing out somewhere, just as something will

sometimes obtrude itself upon the eye, and though one may be so busy

with work or conversation that for a long time one does not notice it,

yet it irritates and almost torments one till at last one realises,

and removes the offending object, often quite a trifling and

ridiculous one-some article left about in the wrong place, a

handkerchief on the floor, a book not replaced on the shelf, and so

on.

 

At last, feeling very cross and ill-humoured, Ivan arrived home,

and suddenly, about fifteen paces from the garden gate, he guessed

what was fretting and worrying him.

 

On a bench in the gateway the valet Smerdyakov was sitting

enjoying the coolness of the evening, and at the first glance at him

Ivan knew that the valet Smerdyakov was on his mind, and that it was

this man that his soul loathed. It all dawned upon him suddenly and

became clear. just before, when Alyosha had been telling him of his

meeting with Smerdyakov, he had felt a sudden twinge of gloom and

loathing, which had immediately stirred responsive anger in his heart.

Afterwards, as he talked, Smerdyakov had been forgotten for the

time; but still he had been in his mind, and as soon as Ivan parted

with Alyosha and was walking home, the forgotten sensation began to

obtrude itself again. “Is it possible that a miserable, contemptible

creature like that can worry me so much?” he wondered, with

insufferable irritation.

 

It was true that Ivan had come of late to feel an intense

dislike for the man, especially during the last few days. He had

even begun to notice in himself a growing feeling that was almost of

hatred for the creature. Perhaps this hatred was accentuated by the

fact that when Ivan first came to the neighbourhood he had felt

quite differently. Then he had taken a marked interest in

Smerdyakov, and had even thought him very original. He had

encouraged him to talk to him, although he had always wondered at a

certain incoherence, or rather restlessness, in his mind, and could

not understand what it was that so continually and insistently

worked upon the brain of “the contemplative.” They discussed

philosophical questions and even how there could have been light on

the first day when the sun, moon, and stars were only created on the

fourth day, and how that was to be understood. But Ivan soon saw that,

though the sun, moon, and stars might be an interesting subject, yet

that it was quite secondary to Smerdyakov, and that he was looking for

something altogether different. In one way and another, he began to

betray a boundless vanity, and a wounded vanity, too, and that Ivan

disliked. It had first given rise to his aversion. Later on, there had

been trouble in the house. Grushenka had come on the scene, and

there had been the scandals with his brother Dmitri-they discussed

that, too. But though Smerdyakov always talked of that with great

excitement, it was impossible to discover what he desired to come of

it. There was, in fact, something surprising in the illogicality and

incoherence of some of his desires, accidentally betrayed and always

vaguely expressed. Smerdyakov was always inquiring, putting certain

indirect but obviously premeditated questions, but what his object was

he did not explain, and usually at the most important moment he

would break off and relapse into silence or pass to another subject.

But what finally irritated Ivan most and confirmed his dislike for him

was the peculiar, revolting familiarity which Smerdyakov began to show

more and more markedly. Not that he forgot himself and was rude; on

the contrary, he always spoke very respectfully, yet he had

obviously begun to consider-goodness knows why!- that there was

some sort of understanding between him and Ivan Fyodorovitch. He

always spoke in a tone that suggested that those two had some kind

of compact, some secret between them, that had at some time been

expressed on both sides, only known to them and beyond the

comprehension of those around them. But for a long while Ivan did

not recognise the real cause of his growing dislike and he had only

lately realised what was at the root of it.

 

With a feeling of disgust and irritation he tried to pass in at

the gate without speaking or looking at Smerdyakov. But Smerdyakov

rose from the bench, and from that action alone, Ivan knew instantly

that he wanted 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,