“Madman!” he shouted, and, jumping quickly from his seat, he reeled backwards so that his back struck the wall and was as if glued to it, drawn up tight as a string. He looked at Smerdyakov with insane horror. The latter, not in the least disturbed by his fear, kept fishing around in his stocking as if he were trying to get hold of something and pull it out. Finally he got hold of it and began to pull. Ivan Fyodorovich saw that it was some papers, or a bundle of papers. Smerdyakov pulled it out and placed it on the table.
“Here, sir,” he said softly.
“What?” Ivan answered, shaking.
“Take a look, if you please, sir,” Smerdyakov said, just as softly.
Ivan stepped to the table, took the bundle, and began to unwrap it, but suddenly jerked his hands back as if he had touched some loathsome, horrible viper.
“Your fingers are trembling, sir, you’ve got a cramp,” Smerdyakov observed, and he slowly unwrapped the bundle himself. Under the wrapping were found three packets of iridescent hundred-rouble bills.
“It’s all there, sir, all three thousand, no need to count it. Have it, sir,” he invited Ivan, nodding towards the money. Ivan sank onto the chair. He was white as a sheet.
“You frightened me ... with that stocking ... ,” he said, grinning somehow strangely.
“Can it possibly be that you didn’t know till now?” Smerdyakov asked once again.
“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.”
“But he never would have found the money, sir. I only instructed him that the money was under the mattress. But it wasn’t true, sir. At first it was in the box, that’s how it was, sir. And then I instructed Fyodor Pavlovich, since he trusted only me of all mankind, to transfer that same package with the money to the corner behind the icons, because no one would ever think of looking there, especially if he was in a hurry. And so that package lay there in the corner, behind the icons, sir. And to keep it under the mattress would even be ridiculous, the box at least had a lock on it. And everyone here now believes it was under the mattress. Foolish reasoning, sir. And so, if Dmitri Fyodorovich committed that same murder, then, having found nothing, he would either run away in a hurry, sir, afraid of every rustle, as always happens with murderers, or he’d be arrested, sir. So then, either the next day, or even that same night, sir, I could always get behind the icons and take that same money, sir, and it would all have fallen on Dmitri Fyodorovich. I could always hope for that.”
“Well, and what if he didn’t kill him, but only gave him a beating?”
“If he didn’t kill him, then of course I wouldn’t dare take the money, and it would all be in vain. But there was also the calculation that he might beat him unconscious, and meanwhile I’d have time to take the money, and then afterwards I would report to Fyodor Pavlovich that it was none other than Dmitri Fyodorovich who had beaten him and carried off the money.”
“Wait ... I’m getting confused. So it was Dmitri who killed him after all, and you just took the money?”
“No, it wasn’t him that killed him, sir. Look, even now I could tell you he was the murderer ... but I don’t want to lie to you now, because. . .because if, as I see now, you really didn’t understand anything before this, and weren’t pretending so as to shift your obvious guilt onto me right to my face, still you are guilty of everything, sir, because you knew about the murder, and you told me to kill him, sir, and, knowing everything, you left. Therefore I want to prove it to your face tonight that in all this the chief murderer is you alone, sir, and I’m just not the real chief one, though I did kill him. It’s you who are the most lawful murderer!”