“Her?”
“Her. The sluts who own this house rent out a closet to Foma. Foma is a local man, one of our former soldiers. He does chores for them, guards the house at night, and goes hunting grouse during the day, and that’s how he lives. I’ve set myself up in his place; neither he nor the women of the house know the secret, that is, that I’m keeping watch here.”
“Only Smerdyakov knows?”
“Only he. And he’ll let me know if she comes to the old man.”
“It was he who told you about the envelope?”
“Yes. It’s a great secret. Even Ivan knows nothing about the money or anything. And the old man is sending Ivan on a ride to Chermashnya for two or three days: a buyer has turned up for the woodlot, eight thousand to cut down the trees, so the old man is begging Ivan: ‘Help me, go by yourself—which means for two or three days. So that when Grushenka comes, he won’t be there.”
“So he’s expecting her even today?”
“No, she won’t come today, there are signs. She surely won’t come today!” Mitya suddenly shouted. “And Smerdyakov thinks the same. Father is drinking now, he’s sitting at the table with brother Ivan. Go, Alexei, and ask him for the three thousand ...”
“Mitya, my dear, what’s the matter with you!” Alyosha exclaimed, jumping up and staring at the frenzied Dmitri Fyodorovich. For a moment he thought he had gone mad.
“What’s wrong? I haven’t gone mad,” said Dmitri Fyodorovich, looking at him intently and even somehow solemnly. “No, when I tell you to go to father, I know what I’m saying: I believe in a miracle.”
“In a miracle?”
“In a miracle of divine Providence. God knows my heart, he sees all my despair. He sees the whole picture. Can he allow horror tohappen? Alyosha, I believe in a miracle. Go!”
“I will go. Tell me, will you be waiting here?”
“Yes. I realize it will take some time, you can’t just walk in and ask him— bang!—like that. He’s drunk now. I’ll wait three hours, and four, and five, and six, and seven—only know that you must go to Katerina Ivanovna today, even if it’s at midnight, with the money or without it, and tell her: ‘He says he bows to you.’ I want you to say precisely this verse: ‘He says he bows to you.’”
“Mitya! What if Grushenka comes today ... or if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after?”
“Grushenka? I’ll spot her, burst in, and stop it...”
“And if ... ?”
“If there’s an if, I’ll kill. I couldn’t endure that.”
“Kill whom?”
“The old man. I wouldn’t kill her.”
“Brother, what are you saying!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know ... Maybe I won’t kill him, and maybe I will. I’m afraid that at that moment his face will suddenly become hateful to me. I hate his Adam’s apple, his nose, his eyes, his shameless sneer. I feel a personal loathing. I’m afraid of that. I may not be able to help myself ...”
“I’ll go, Mitya. I believe God will arrange it as he knows best, so that there will be no horror.”
“And I’ll sit and wait for a miracle. But if it doesn’t happen, then...”
Alyosha, in deep thought, went to see his father.
Chapter 6: Smerdyakov
And indeed he found his father still at the table. And the table was laid, as usual, in the drawing room, though the house had an actual dining room. This drawing room was the largest room in the house, furnished with some sort of old-fashioned pretentiousness. The furniture was ancient, white, with threadbare upholstery of red half-silk. Mirrors in fanciful frames with old-fashioned carving, also white and gilt, hung in the spaces between the windows. The walls, covered with white paper, now cracked in many places, were adorned by two large portraits—one of some prince who thirty years before had been governor-general hereabouts, and the other of some bishop, also long since deceased. In the front corner were several icons, before which an oil-lamp burned all night ... not so much out of veneration as to keep the room lit through the night. Fyodor Pavlovich went to bed very late, at about three or four o’clock in the morning, and until then would pace around the room or sit in his armchair and think. This had become a habit with him. He often spent the night quite alone in the house, after sending the servants to the cottage, but usually the servant Smerdyakov stayed with him, sleeping on a bench in the front hall. The dinner was all finished when Alyosha entered, but they were still having coffee and preserves. Fyodor Pavlovich liked sweets and cognac after dinner. Ivan Fyodorovich was there at the table, also having coffee. The servants Grigory and Smerdyakov stood near the table. Both masters and servants were obviously and unusually animated. Fyodor Pavlovich loudly roared and laughed. From the front hall, Alyosha already heard his shrill laughter, by now so familiar to him, and concluded at once from the sound of it that his father was not yet drunk, but was still only in a benevolent mood.
“Here he is! Here he is!” yelled Fyodor Pavlovich, terribly glad suddenly to see Alyosha. “Join us, sit down, have some coffee—it’s lenten fare, lenten fare, and it’s hot, it’s good! I’m not offering you cognac, you’re fasting, but would you like some, would you? No, I’d better give you some liqueur, it’s fine stuff! Smerdyakov, go to the cupboard, second shelf on the right, here’s the key, get moving!”
Alyosha started to refuse the liqueur.
“We’ll serve it anyway, if not for you then for us,” Fyodor Pavlovich beamed. “But wait, did you have dinner or not?”
“I did,” said Alyosha, who in truth had had only a piece of bread and a glass of kvass in the Superior’s kitchen. “But I’d very much like some hot coffee.”
“Good for you, my dear! He’ll have some coffee. Shall we heat it up? Ah, no, it’s already boiling. Fine stuff, this coffee. Smerdyakovian! With coffee and cabbage pies, my Smerdyakov is an artist—yes, and with fish soup, too. Come for fish soup some time, let us know beforehand ... But wait, wait, didn’t I tell you this morning to move back today with your mattress and pillows? Did you bring the mattress, heh, heh, heh?”
“No, I didn’t,” Alyosha grinned too.
“Ah, but you were scared then—weren’t you scared, scared? Ah, my boy, my dear, could I offend you? You know, Ivan, I can’t resist it when he looks me in the eyes like that and laughs, I simply can’t. My whole insides begin to laugh with him, I love him so! Alyoshka, let me give you my paternal blessing.”
Alyosha stood up, but Fyodor Pavlovich had time to think better of it.
“No, no, for now I’ll just make a cross over you—so—sit down. Well, now you’re going to have some fun, and precisely in your line. You’ll laugh your head off. Balaam’s ass, [91]here, has started to talk, and what a talker, what a talker!” Balaam’s ass turned out to be the lackey Smerdyakov. Still a young man, only about twenty-four years old, he was terribly unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or ashamed of anything—no, on the contrary, he had an arrogant nature and seemed to despise everyone. But precisely at this point we cannot avoid saying at least a few words about him. He had been raised by Marfa Ignatievna and Grigory Vasilievich, but the boy grew up “without any gratitude,” as Grigory put it, solitary, and with a sidelong look in his eye. As a child he was fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony. He would put on a sheet, which served him as a vestment, chant, and swing something over the dead cat as if it were a censer. It was all done on the sly, in great secrecy. Grigory once caught him at this exercise and gave him a painful birching. The boy went into a corner and sat there looking sullen for a week. “He doesn’t like us, the monster,” Grigory used to say to Marfa Ignatievna, “and he doesn’t like anyone. You think you’re a human being? “ he would suddenly address Smerdyakov directly. “You are not a human being, you were begotten of bathhouse slime, that’s who you are ... “ Smerdyakov, it turned out later, never could forgive him these words. Grigory taught him to read and write and, when he was twelve, began teaching him the Scriptures. But that immediately went nowhere. One day, at only the second or third lesson, the boy suddenly grinned.