“Still asleep, sir,” he said unhurriedly. (“You see, you yourself spoke first, not I.”) “I’m surprised at you, sir,” he added after a short pause, lowering his eyes somehow demurely, moving his right foot forward, and playing with the toe of his patent leather boot.
“Why are you surprised at me?” Ivan asked abruptly and severely, doing his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly he realized with loathing that he felt the most intense curiosity, and that nothing could induce him to leave before it was satisfied.
“Why won’t you go to Chermashnya, sir?” Smerdyakov suddenly glanced up and smiled familiarly. “And why I’m smiling, you yourself should understand, if you’re an intelligent man,” his squinting left eye seemed to say.
“Why should I go to Chermashnya?” Ivan Fyodorovich said in surprise.
Smerdyakov paused again.
“Even Fyodor Pavlovich himself has begged you so to do it, sir,” he said at last, unhurriedly and as if he attached no value to his answer: I’m getting off with a third-rate explanation, just so as to say something.
“What the devil do you want? Speak more clearly!” Ivan Fyodorovich cried at last angrily, passing from humility to rudeness.
Smerdyakov put his right foot together with his left, straightened up, but continued looking at him with the same calmness and the same little smile.
“Essentially nothing, sir ... just making conversation...”
There was another pause. They were silent for about a minute. Ivan Fyodorovich knew that now he ought to rise up and be angry, and Smerdyakov stood in front of him as if he were waiting: “Now we’ll see whether you get angry or not.” So at least it seemed to Ivan Fyodorovich. At last he swung forward in order to get up. Smerdyakov caught the moment precisely.
“My position, sir, is terrible, Ivan Fyodorovich, I don’t even know how to help myself,” he suddenly said firmly and distinctly, with a sigh on the last word. Ivan Fyodorovich at once sat down again.
“They’re both quite crazy, sir, they’ve both gone as far as childishness, sir,” Smerdyakov went on. “I mean your father and your brother, sir, Dmitri Fyodorovich. He’ll get up now, Fyodor Pavlovich will, and begin pestering me every minute: ‘Why hasn’t she come? How is it she hasn’t come? ‘ and it will go on until midnight, even past midnight. And if Agrafena Alexandrovna doesn’t come (because she may have no intention of ever coming at all, sir), then he’ll jump on me again tomorrow morning: ‘Why didn’t she come? Tell me why, and when will she come?’—just as if I stood to blame for that all before him. On the other hand, there’s this matter, sir, that just as soon as it turns dusk, and even before, your good brother arrives at our neighbors’, with a weapon in his hands. ‘Listen, you rogue, you broth-maker,’ he says, ‘if you miss her and don’t let me know when she comes—I’ll kill you first of all.’ The night goes by, and in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovich, starts tormenting me with his torments: ‘Why didn’t she come? Will she be here soon?’ and again it’s as if I stood to blame before him, sir, because his lady didn’t come. And both of them, sir, keep getting angrier and angrier with every day and every hour, so that I sometimes think of taking my own life, sir, from fear. I can’t trust them, sir.”
“And why did you get mixed up in it? Why did you begin carrying tales to Dmitri Fyodorovich?” Ivan Fyodorovich said irritably.
“How could I not get mixed up in it, sir? And I didn’t get mixed up in it at all, if you want to know with complete exactitude, sir. I kept quiet from the very beginning, I was afraid to object, and the gentleman himself appointed me to be his servant Licharda.[185] And since then all he says to me is: ‘I’ll kill you, you rogue, if you miss her!’ I suppose for certain, sir, that a long attack of the falling sickness will come on me tomorrow.”
“What do you mean, a long attack?”
“A long sort of attack, sir, extremely long. Several hours, sir, maybe even a day or two. Once it went on for three days, I fell out of the attic that time. It would stop shaking me, and then it would start again; and for all three days I couldn’t get into my right mind. Fyodor Pavlovich sent for Herzenstube, the local doctor, sir, and he put ice on my head and used some other remedy. . . I could have died, sir.”
“But they say that with the falling sickness you can’t know beforehand that an attack will come at such and such a time. What makes you say you’ll have one tomorrow?” Ivan Fyodorovich inquired with peculiar and irritable curiosity.
“That’s right, sir, you can’t know beforehand.”
“Besides, you fell from the attic that time.”
“I climb up to the attic every day, sir. I could fall from the attic tomorrow, too. Or if not from the attic, then I might fall into the cellar, sir, I go to the cellar every day, too, with my duties, sir.”
Ivan Fyodorovich gave him a long look.
“I see, you’re just driveling, and I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” he said softly but somehow menacingly. “You mean you’re going to pretend to have a three-day attack of the falling sickness tomorrow, eh?”
Smerdyakov, who was staring at the ground and again playing with his right toe, moved his right foot back, put his left foot forward instead, raised his eyes, and, smirking, said:
“Even if I could do such a thing, sir—that is, pretend, sir—and since for an experienced man it would be easy enough to do, then in that case, too, I would have every right to use such a means to save my life from death; for if I’m lying sick, then even if Agrafena Alexandrovna comes to his father, he can’t ask a sick man: ‘Why didn’t you inform me?’ He’d be ashamed to.”
“What the devil!” Ivan Fyodorovich suddenly flung out, his face twisted with malice. “Why are you so afraid for your life? My brother Dmitri’s threats are all just passionate talk, nothing more. He won’t kill you; he’ll kill, but not you!”
“He’d kill me like a fly, sir, me first of all. And even more than that, I’m afraid of something else: that I’ll be considered in his accomplice when he commits some absurdity over his father.”
“Why would they consider you his accomplice?”
“They’ll consider me his accomplice because I informed him about the signals, in great secrecy, sir.”
“What signals? Who did you inform? Devil take you, speak more clearly!”
“I must confess fully,” Smerdyakov drawled with pedantic composure, “that I have a secret here with Fyodor Pavlovich. As you yourself have the honor of knowing (if you do have the honor of knowing it), for the past few days now, as soon as night comes, or just evening, he immediately locks himself in. Lately you’ve been going upstairs early, and yesterday you didn’t go anywhere at all, sir, and therefore maybe you don’t know how carefully he’s begun locking himself in for the night. And even if Grigory Vasilievich himself was to come, he’d open the door for him, sir, only if he was sure of his voice. But Grigory Vasilievich won’t come, sir, because I’m the only one who waits on him now in his room, sir—that’s how he arranged it ever since he started this to-do with Agrafena Alexandrovna, and for the night, I, too, now retire, on his directions, and go and sleep in the cottage, provided I don’t sleep before midnight, but keep watch, get up and walk around the yard, and wait for Agrafena Alexandrovna to come, sir, because he’s been waiting for her like a crazy man for the past few days. And he reasons like this, sir: she’s afraid of him, he says, of Dmitri Fyodorovich (he calls him Mitka), and therefore she will come late at night, by the back way, you watch out for her, he says, until midnight or later. And if she comes, run to the door and knock, on the door or on the garden window, first two times slowly, like this: one, two; then three times more quickly: tap-tap-tap. Then, he says, I’ll know at once that she’s there and will quietly open the door to you. The other signal he gave me in case something urgent happens: first twice quickly, tap-tap, then a pause, then one much stronger tap. Then he’ll know that something sudden has happened and I need very bad to see him, and he’ll open up and I’ll come in and report. It’s all in case Agrafena Alexandrovna might not come herself, but sends a message about something; Dmitri Fyodorovich might come, too, besides, so I should also inform him if he’s around. He’s real frightened of Dmitri Fyodorovich, so that even if Agrafena Alexandrovna has already come and he’s locked himself up with her, and meanwhile Dmitri Fyodorovich turns up somewhere around, then, in that case, it is my duty to report it to him at once without fail, by three knocks, so that the first signal of five knocks means ‘Agrafena Alexandrovna is here,’ and the second signal of three knocks means \ ‘Really have to see you’— that’s how he himself taught me and explained them each several times, with examples. And since in the whole universe only he and I, sir, know about these signals, he’ll come doubtless and not calling out any names (he’s afraid of calling out loud) and open the door. And these same signals have now become known to Dmitri Fyodorovich.”