"To begin with, are we alone?" Ivan asked sternly and impulsively.
"Can they overhear us in there?"
"No one can hear anything.You've seen for yourself: there's a passage.""Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you wouldn't tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate? What do you mean by all? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am afraid of you?"Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to show his cards.Smerdyakov's eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye winked, and he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and deliberation."You want to have everything above-board; very well, you shall have it," he seemed to say.
"This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you, knowing beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his fate, and that people mightn't after that conclude any evil about your feelings and perhaps of something else, too- that's what I promised not to tell the authorities."Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling himself, yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic, resentful and insolently defiant.He stared impudently at Ivan.A mist passed before Ivan's eyes for the first moment.
"How? What? Are you out of your mind?"
"I'm perfectly in possession of all my faculties.""Do you suppose I knew of the murder?" Ivan cried at last, and he brought his fist violently on the table."What do you mean by 'something else, too'? Speak, scoundrel!"Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent stare.
"Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that 'something else, too'?""The 'something else' I meant was that you probably, too, were very desirous of your parent's death."Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so that he fell back against the wall.In an instant his face was bathed in tears.Saying, "It's a shame, sir, to strike a sick man," he dried his eyes with a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet weeping.A minute passed.
"That's enough! Leave off," Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again."Don't put me out of all patience."Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes.Every line of his puckered face reflected the insult he had just received.
"So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri Imeant to kill my father?"
"I didn't know what thoughts were in your mind then," said Smerdyakov resentfully; "and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that very point.""To sound what, what?"
"Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be murdered or not."What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.
"It was you murdered him?" he cried suddenly.
Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.
"You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn't I murdered him.And I should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of it again.""But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?""As you know already, it was simply from fear.For I was in such a position, shaking with fear, that I suspected everyone.I resolved to sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly, too.""Look here, you didn't say that a fortnight ago.""I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only Ithought you'd understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man you wouldn't care to talk of it openly.""What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it...what could I have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?""As for the murder, you couldn't have done that and didn't want to, but as for wanting someone else to do it, that was just what you did want.""And how coolly, how coolly he speakst But why should I have wanted it; what grounds had I for wanting it?""What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?" said Smerdyakov sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively."Why, after your parent's death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and very likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over to her directly after the wedding, for she's plenty of sense, so that your parent would not have left you two roubles between the three of you.And were they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair's-breadth: that lady had only to lift her little finger and he would have run after her to church, with his tongue out."Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.
"Very good," he commented at last."You see, I haven't jumped up, I haven't knocked you down, I haven't killed you.Speak on.So, according to you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?""How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would lose all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you'd each have not forty, but sixty thousand each.There's not a doubt you did reckon on Dmitri Fyodorovitch.""What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on anyone then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and Iswear I did expect some wickedness from you...at the time....Iremember my impression!
"I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on me as well," said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin.
"So that it was just by that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind.For if you had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me, 'You can murder my parent, I won't hinder you!"'
