“It’s hot in here,” he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his coat.

“Take it off, sir,” Smerdyakov allowed.

Ivan Fyodorovich took his coat off and threw it on a bench, took a chair with his trembling hands, quickly moved it to the table, and sat down. Smerdyakov managed to sit down on his bench ahead of him.

“First of all, are we alone?” Ivan Fyodorovich asked sternly and abruptly. “Won’t they hear us in there?”

“No one will hear anything, sir. You saw yourself: there’s a hallway.”

“Listen, my friend, what was that remark you came out with as I was leaving you at the hospital, that if I said nothing about you being an expert at shamming the falling sickness, then you also would not tell the district attorney about the whole of our conversation at the gate that time? What whole? What could you mean by that? Were you threatening me or what? Have I entered into some league with you or what? Am I afraid of you or what?”

Ivan Fyodorovich uttered this quite in a rage, obviously and purposely letting it be known that he scorned all deviousness, all beating around the bush, and was playing an open hand. Smerdyakov’s eyes flashed maliciously, his left eye began winking, and at once, though, as was his custom, with measure and reserve, he gave his answer—as if to say, “You want us to come clean, here’s some cleanness for you.”

“This is what I meant then, and this is why I said it then: that you, having known beforehand about the murder of your own parent, left him then as a sacrifice; and so as people wouldn’t conclude anything bad about your feelings because of that, and maybe about various other things as well—that’s what I was promising not to tell the authorities.”

Though Smerdyakov spoke unhurriedly and was apparently in control of himself, all the same there was something hard and insistent, malicious and insolently defiant in his voice. He stared boldly at Ivan Fyodorovich, who was even dazed for the first moment.

“How? What? Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m perfectly in my mind, sir.”

“But did I know about the murder then?” Ivan Fyodorovich cried out at last, and brought his fist down hard on the table. “What is the meaning of ‘various other things’? Speak, scoundrel!”

Smerdyakov was silent and went on studying Ivan Fyodorovich with the same insolent look.

“Speak, you stinking scum, what ‘various other things’?” the latter screamed.

“And by ‘various other things’ just now, I meant that maybe you yourself were even wishing very much for your parent’s death then.”

Ivan Fyodorovich jumped up and hit him as hard as he could on the shoulder with his fist, so that he rocked back towards the wall. In an instant his whole face was flooded with tears, and saying, “Shame on you, sir, to strike a weak man!” he suddenly covered his eyes with his blue-checkered and completely sodden handkerchief and sank into quiet, tearful weeping. About a minute passed.

“Enough! Stop it!” Ivan Fyodorovich finally said peremptorily, sitting down on the chair again. “Don’t drive me out of all patience.”

Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line on his puckered face spoke of the offense he had just endured.

“So, you scoundrel, you thought I was at one with Dmitri in wanting to kill father?”

“I didn’t know your thoughts then, sir,” Smerdyakov said in an injured voice, “and that was why I stopped you then, as you were coming in the gate, in order to test you on that same point, sir.”

“To test what? What?”

“Precisely that same circumstance: whether you did or did not want your parent to be killed soon.”

What aroused Ivan Fyodorovich’s indignation most of all was this insistent, insolent tone, which Smerdyakov stubbornly refused to give up.

“You killed him!” he exclaimed suddenly. Smerdyakov grinned contemptuously. “That I did not kill him, you yourself know for certain. And I’d have thought that for an intelligent man there was no more to be said about it.”

“But why, why did you have such a suspicion about me then?”

“From fear only, sir, as you already know. Because I was in such a state then, all shaking from fear, that I suspected everybody. And I decided to test you, sir, because I thought that if you, too, wanted the same thing as your brother, then it would be the end of the whole business, and I’d perish, too, like a fly.”

“Listen, you said something else two weeks ago.”

“It was the same thing I had in mind when I spoke with you in the hospital, only I thought you’d understand without so many words, and that you yourself didn’t want to talk straight out, being a most intelligent man, sir.”

“Is that so! But answer me, answer, I insist: precisely how could I then have instilled such a base suspicion about myself into your mean soul?”

“As for killing—you, personally, could never have done it, sir, and you didn’t want to do it either; but as for wanting someone else to kill—that you did want.”

“And he says it so calmly, so calmly! But why should I want it, why in hell should I have wanted it?”

“What do you mean, why in hell, sir? What about the inheritance, sir?” Smerdyakov picked up venomously and even somehow vindictively. “After your parent, you, each of you three good brothers, would then get nearly forty thousand, and maybe even more, sir, but if Fyodor Pavlovich was to marry that same lady, Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would surely transfer all the capital to herself, right after the wedding, because she’s not at all stupid, sir, so that your parent wouldn’t even leave you two roubles, for all three of you good brothers. And was marriage so far off, sir? Only a hair’s breadth, sir: the lady had only to beckon to him with her little finger, and he’d have run after her to church at once with his tongue hanging out.”

Ivan Fyodorovich painfully managed to restrain himself.

“All right,” he said at last, “you see I didn’t jump up, I didn’t beat you, I didn’t kill you. Go on: so, according to you, I meant brother Dmitri to do it, I was counting on him?”

“How could you not count on him, sir; if he killed him, then he’d be deprived of all rights of nobility, of rank and property, and be sent to Siberia, sir. And then his share, sir, after your parent, would be left for you and your brother, Alexei Fyodorovich, equally, sir, meaning not forty then but sixty thousand for each of you, sir. So you surely must have been counting on Dmitri Fyodorovich!”

“What I suffer from you! Listen, scoundrel: if I had been counting on anyone then, it would most certainly have been you and not Dmitri, and, I swear, I even did anticipate some sort of loathsomeness from you ... at the time ... I remember my impression!”

“And I, too, thought for a moment then that you were counting on me as well,” Smerdyakov grinned sarcastically, “so that you thereby gave yourself away even more to me, because if you were anticipating on me and you left all the same, it was just as if you told me thereby: you can kill my parent, I won’t prevent you.”

“Scoundrel! So that’s how you understood it!”

“It was all from that same Chermashnya, sir. For pity’s sake! You were going to Moscow, and refused all your parent’s pleas to go to Chermashnya, sir! And after just one foolish word from me, you suddenly agreed, sir! And why did you have to agree to Chermashnya? If you went to Chermashnya instead of Moscow for no reason, after one word from me, then it means you expected something from me.”

“No, I swear I did not!” Ivan yelled, gnashing his teeth.

“What do you mean ‘no,’ sir? On the contrary, after such words from me then, you, being your parent’s son, ought first of all to have reported me to the police and given me a thrashing, sir ... at least slapped me in the mug right there, but you, for pity’s sake, sir, on the contrary, without getting the least bit angry, at once amicably fulfilled everything exactly according to my rather foolish word, sir, and left—which was altogether absurd, sir, for you ought to have stayed to protect your parent’s life ... How could I not conclude?”