It so happened that Ivan Fyodorovich had recently begun taking an intense dislike to the man, especially over the past few days. He had even begun to notice his growing feeling almost of hatred for this creature. Perhaps the process of hatred had intensified so precisely because at first, when Ivan Fyodorovich had just come to our town, things had gone quite differently. Then, Ivan Fyodorovich had suddenly taken some special interest in Smerdyakov, found him even very original. He got him accustomed to talking with him, always marveling, however, at a certain incoherence, or, better, a certain restiveness in his mind, unable to understand what it was that could so constantly and persistently trouble “this contemplator.”^[184] They talked about philosophical questions and even about why the light shone on the first day, while the sun, moon, and stars were created only on the fourth day, and how this should be understood, but Ivan Fyodorovich was soon convinced that the sun, moon, and stars were not the point at all, that while the sun, moon, and stars might be an interesting subject, for Smerdyakov it was of completely third-rate importance, and that he was after something quite different. Be it one way or the other, in any event a boundless vanity began to appear and betray itself, an injured vanity besides. Ivan Fyodorovich did not like that at all. Here his loathing began. Then disorder came to the house, Grushenka appeared, the episodes with his brother Dmitri began, there were troubles of all sorts—they talked about that, too, but though Smerdyakov always entered into these conversations with great excitement, once again it was impossible to discover what he himself wanted. One might even marvel at the illogic and incoherence of some of his wishes, which came out involuntarily and always with the same vagueness. Smerdyakov kept inquiring, asking certain indirect, apparently farfetched questions, but why—he never explained, and usually, at the most heated moment of his questioning, he would suddenly fall silent or switch to something quite different. But in the end the thing that finally most irritated Ivan Fyodorovich and filled him with such loathing was a sort of loathsome and peculiar familiarity, which Smerdyakov began displaying towards him more and more markedly. Not that he allowed himself any impoliteness; on the contrary, he always spoke with the greatest respect; but nonetheless things worked out in such a way that Smerdyakov apparently, God knows why, finally came to consider himself somehow in league, as it were, with Ivan Fyodorovich, always spoke in such tones as to suggest that there was already something agreed to and kept secret, as it were, between the two of them, something once spoken on both sides, which was known only to the two of them and was even incomprehensible to the other mortals milling around them. For a long time, however, Ivan Fyodorovich did not understand this real reason for his increasing loathing, and only very recently had he finally managed to grasp what it was. With a feeling of squeamishness and irritation, he was now about to walk through the gate silently and without looking at Smerdyakov; but Smerdyakov got up from the bench, and by that one gesture Ivan Fyodorovich perceived at once that he wished to have a special conversation with him Ivan Fyodorovich looked at him and stopped, and the fact that he suddenly stopped like that, and did not pass by as he had wished to do a moment before, so infuriated him that he began to shake. With rage and loathing he looked at Smerdyakov’s wasted, eunuch’s physiognomy with its strands of hair brushed forward at the temples and a fluffed-up little tuft on top. His slightly squinting left eye winked and smirked as if to say: “What’s the hurry? You won’t pass me by. You know that we two intelligent men have something to talk over.” Ivan Fyodorovich was shaking:

“Get away, scoundrel! I’m no friend of yours, you fool!” was about to fly out of his mouth, but to his great amazement what did fly out of his mouth was something quite different.

“How is papa, asleep or awake?” he said softly and humbly, to his own surprise, and suddenly, also to his own surprise, sat down on the bench. For a moment he was almost frightened—he remembered it afterwards. Smerdyakov stood in front of him, his hands behind his back, looking at him confidently, almost sternly.

“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.”