第274章

"Why, you really are ill?" Ivan stopped short."I won't keep you long, I wont even take off my coat.Where can one sit down?"He went to the other end of the table, moved up a chair and sat down on it.

"Why do you look at me without speaking? We only come with one question, and I swear I won't go without an answer.Has the young lady, Katerina Ivanovna, been with you?"Smerdyakov still remained silent, looking quietly at Ivan as before.Suddenly, with a motion of his hand, he turned his face away.

"What's the matter with you?" cried Ivan.

"Nothing."

"What do you mean by 'nothing'?"

"Yes, she has.It's no matter to you.Let me alone.""No, I won't let you alone.Tell me, when was she here?""Why, I'd quite forgotten about her," said Smerdyakov, with a scornful smile, and turning his face to Ivan again, he stared at him with a look of frenzied hatred, the same look that he had fixed on him at their last interview, a month before.

"You seem very ill yourself, your face is sunken; you don't look like yourself," he said to Ivan.

"Never mind my health, tell me what I ask you., "But why are your eyes so yellow? The whites are quite yellow.Are you so worried?" He smiled contemptuously and suddenly laughed outright.

"Listen; I've told you I won't go away without an answer!" Ivan cried, intensely irritated.

"Why do you keep pestering me? Why do you torment me?" said Smerdyakov, with a look of suffering.

"Damn it! I've nothing to do with you.Just answer my question and I'll go away.""I've no answer to give you," said Smerdyakov, looking down again.

"You may be sure I'll make you answer!"

"Why are you so uneasy?" Smerdyakov stared at him, not simply with contempt, but almost with repulsion."Is this because the trial begins to-morrow? Nothing will happen to you; can't you believe that at last?

Go home, go to bed and sleep in peace, don't be afraid of anything.""I don't understand you....What have I to be afraid of to-morrow?" Ivan articulated in astonishment, and suddenly a chill breath of fear did in fact pass over his soul.Smerdyakov measured him with his eyes.

"You don't understand?" he drawled reproachfully."It's a strange thing a sensible man should care to play such a farce!"Ivan looked at him speechless.The startling, incredibly supercilious tone of this man who had once been his valet, was extraordinary in itself.He had not taken such a tone even at their last interview.

"I tell you, you've nothing to be afraid of.I won't say anything about you; there's no proof against you.I say, how your hands are trembling! Why are your fingers moving like that? Go home, you did not murder him."Ivan started.He remembered Alyosha.

"I know it was not I," he faltered.

"Do you?" Smerdyakov caught him up again.

Ivan jumped up and seized him by the shoulder.

"Tell me everything, you viper! Tell me everything!"Smerdyakov was not in the least scared.He only riveted his eyes on Ivan with insane hatred.

"Well, it was you who murdered him, if that's it," he whispered furiously.

Ivan sank back on his chair, as though pondering something.He laughed malignantly.

"You mean my going away.What you talked about last time?""You stood before me last time and understood it all, and you understand it now.""All I understand is that you are mad."

"Aren't you tired of it? Here we are face to face; what's the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your words I did it.""Did it? Why, did you murder him?" Ivan turned cold.

Something seemed to give way in his brain, and he shuddered all over with a cold shiver.Then Smerdyakov himself looked at him wonderingly; probably the genuineness of Ivan's horror struck him.

"You don't mean to say you really did not know?" he faltered mistrustfully, looking with a forced smile into his eyes.Ivan still gazed at him, and seemed unable to speak.

Ach, Vanka's gone to Petersburg;

I won't wait till he comes back,suddenly echoed in his head.

"Do you know, I am afraid that you are a dream, a phantom sitting before me," he muttered.

"There's no phantom here, but only us two and one other.No doubt he is here, that third, between us.""Who is he? Who is here? What third person?" Ivan cried in alarm, looking about him, his eyes hastily searching in every corner.

"That third is God Himself- Providence.He is the third beside us now.Only don't look for Him, you won't find him.""It's a lie that you killed him!" Ivan cried madly."You are mad, or teasing me again!"Smerdyakov, as before, watched him curiously, with no sign of fear.He could still scarcely get over his incredulity; he still fancied that Ivan knew everything and was trying to "throw it all on him to his face.""Wait a minute," he said at last in a weak voice, and suddenly bringing up his left leg from under the table, he began turning up his trouser leg.He was wearing long white stockings and slippers.

Slowly he took off his garter and fumbled to the bottom of his stocking.Ivan gazed at him, and suddenly shuddered in a paroxysm of terror.

"He's mad!" he cried, and rapidly jumping up, he drew back, so that he knocked his back against the wall and stood up against it, stiff and straight.He looked with insane terror at Smerdyakov, who, entirely unaffected by his terror, continued fumbling in his stocking, as though he were making an effort to get hold of something with his fingers and pull it out.At last he got hold of it and began pulling it out.Ivan saw that it was a piece of paper, or perhaps a roll of papers.Smerdyakov pulled it out and laid it on the table.

"Here," he said quietly.

"What is it?" asked Ivan, trembling.

"Kindly look at it," Smerdyakov answered, still in the same low tone.

Ivan stepped up to the table, took up the roll of paper and began unfolding it, but suddenly drew back his fingers, as though from contact with a loathsome reptile.