finished_summaries/shmoop/The Brothers Karamazov/section_75_part_0.txt
The Brothers Karamazov.book 11.chapter 7
book 11, chapter 7
{"name": "Book 11, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201023112808/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/brothers-karamazov/summary/book-11-chapter-7", "summary": "By the time of Ivan's second visit, Smerdyakov is holed up with Maria Kondratievna, who is now his fiancee. In contrast to the first visit, Smerdyakov seems quite well, and he seems to be studying when Ivan walks in on him. Ivan again confronts Smerdyakov, this time about Smerdyakov's suggestion that he won't tell the authorities about the \"whole\" of their conversation. This time Smerdyakov is at his most direct and accuses Ivan of being as good as responsible for their father's murder. If Ivan suspected Smerdyakov of planning their father's murder, he did nothing to prevent it or to protect him, making him indirectly guilty. Ivan goes so far as to punch Smerdyakov in the shoulder, but when he leaves, he's crazed with doubt and guilt. He goes straight to Katerina's and tells her about his conversation with Smerdyakov. She pulls out a letter from Dmitri, which Dmitri had written after Katerina's encounter with Grushenka . In this letter Dmitri vowed that if he was unable to find someone to loan him 3,000 roubles, he would kill his father and steal the money from him. This letter reassures Ivan and calms his fears. And yet, perhaps because he sees some truth in Smerdyakov's sly suggestion that he wants Dmitri convicted so he can have more of his father's inheritance, he visits Dmitri ten days before his trial and offers him 30,000 roubles toward his escape. Finally the novel catches up to the present moment. Surprised that Katerina had been to visit Smerdyakov, Ivan decides to visit him a third time.", "analysis": ""}
Chapter VII. The Second Visit To Smerdyakov


By that time Smerdyakov had been discharged from the hospital. Ivan knew
his new lodging, the dilapidated little wooden house, divided in two by a
passage on one side of which lived Marya Kondratyevna and her mother, and
on the other, Smerdyakov. No one knew on what terms he lived with them,
whether as a friend or as a lodger. It was supposed afterwards that he had
come to stay with them as Marya Kondratyevna's betrothed, and was living
there for a time without paying for board or lodging. Both mother and
daughter had the greatest respect for him and looked upon him as greatly
superior to themselves.

Ivan knocked, and, on the door being opened, went straight into the
passage. By Marya Kondratyevna's directions he went straight to the better
room on the left, occupied by Smerdyakov. There was a tiled stove in the
room and it was extremely hot. The walls were gay with blue paper, which
was a good deal used however, and in the cracks under it cockroaches
swarmed in amazing numbers, so that there was a continual rustling from
them. The furniture was very scanty: two benches against each wall and two
chairs by the table. The table of plain wood was covered with a cloth with
pink patterns on it. There was a pot of geranium on each of the two little
windows. In the corner there was a case of ikons. On the table stood a
little copper samovar with many dents in it, and a tray with two cups. But
Smerdyakov had finished tea and the samovar was out. He was sitting at the
table on a bench. He was looking at an exercise-book and slowly writing
with a pen. There was a bottle of ink by him and a flat iron candlestick,
but with a composite candle. Ivan saw at once from Smerdyakov's face that
he had completely recovered from his illness. His face was fresher,
fuller, his hair stood up jauntily in front, and was plastered down at the
sides. He was sitting in a parti-colored, wadded dressing-gown, rather
dirty and frayed, however. He had spectacles on his nose, which Ivan had
never seen him wearing before. This trifling circumstance suddenly
redoubled Ivan's anger: "A creature like that and wearing spectacles!"

Smerdyakov slowly raised his head and looked intently at his visitor
through his spectacles; then he slowly took them off and rose from the
bench, but by no means respectfully, almost lazily, doing the least
possible required by common civility. All this struck Ivan instantly; he
took it all in and noted it at once--most of all the look in Smerdyakov's
eyes, positively malicious, churlish and haughty. "What do you want to
intrude for?" it seemed to say; "we settled everything then; why have you
come again?" Ivan could scarcely control himself.

"It's hot here," he said, still standing, and unbuttoned his overcoat.

"Take off your coat," Smerdyakov conceded.

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

"To begin with, are we alone?" Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. "Can
they overhear us in there?"

"No one can hear anything. You've seen for yourself: there's a passage."

"Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the
hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you
wouldn't tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate?
What do you mean by _all_? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening
me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am
afraid of you?"

Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious
intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to show
his cards. Smerdyakov's eyes gleamed resentfully, his left eye winked, and
he at once gave his answer, with his habitual composure and deliberation.
"You want to have everything above-board; very well, you shall have it,"
he seemed to say.

"This is what I meant then, and this is why I said that, that you, knowing
beforehand of this murder of your own parent, left him to his fate, and
that people mightn't after that conclude any evil about your feelings and
perhaps of something else, too--that's what I promised not to tell the
authorities."

Though Smerdyakov spoke without haste and obviously controlling himself,
yet there was something in his voice, determined and emphatic, resentful
and insolently defiant. He stared impudently at Ivan. A mist passed before
Ivan's eyes for the first moment.

"How? What? Are you out of your mind?"

"I'm perfectly in possession of all my faculties."

"Do you suppose I _knew_ of the murder?" Ivan cried at last, and he
brought his fist violently on the table. "What do you mean by 'something
else, too'? Speak, scoundrel!"

Smerdyakov was silent and still scanned Ivan with the same insolent stare.

"Speak, you stinking rogue, what is that 'something else, too'?"

"The 'something else' I meant was that you probably, too, were very
desirous of your parent's death."

Ivan jumped up and struck him with all his might on the shoulder, so that
he fell back against the wall. In an instant his face was bathed in tears.
Saying, "It's a shame, sir, to strike a sick man," he dried his eyes with
a very dirty blue check handkerchief and sank into quiet weeping. A minute
passed.

"That's enough! Leave off," Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again.
"Don't put me out of all patience."

Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face
reflected the insult he had just received.

"So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to
kill my father?"

"I didn't know what thoughts were in your mind then," said Smerdyakov
resentfully; "and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that
very point."

"To sound what, what?"

"Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be
murdered or not."

What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone
to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.

"It was you murdered him?" he cried suddenly.

Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.

"You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn't I murdered him. And I
should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of
it again."

"But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?"

"As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a
position, shaking with fear, that I suspected every one. I resolved to
sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then
the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly,
too."

"Look here, you didn't say that a fortnight ago."

"I meant the same when I talked to you in the hospital, only I thought
you'd understand without wasting words, and that being such a sensible man
you wouldn't care to talk of it openly."

"What next! Come answer, answer, I insist: what was it ... what could I
have done to put such a degrading suspicion into your mean soul?"

"As for the murder, you couldn't have done that and didn't want to, but as
for wanting some one else to do it, that was just what you did want."

"And how coolly, how coolly he speaks! But why should I have wanted it;
what grounds had I for wanting it?"

"What grounds had you? What about the inheritance?" said Smerdyakov
sarcastically, and, as it were, vindictively. "Why, after your parent's
death there was at least forty thousand to come to each of you, and very
likely more, but if Fyodor Pavlovitch got married then to that lady,
Agrafena Alexandrovna, she would have had all his capital made over to her
directly after the wedding, for she's plenty of sense, so that your parent
would not have left you two roubles between the three of you. And were
they far from a wedding, either? Not a hair's-breadth: that lady had only
to lift her little finger and he would have run after her to church, with
his tongue out."

Ivan restrained himself with painful effort.

"Very good," he commented at last. "You see, I haven't jumped up, I
haven't knocked you down, I haven't killed you. Speak on. So, according to
you, I had fixed on Dmitri to do it; I was reckoning on him?"

"How could you help reckoning on him? If he killed him, then he would lose
all the rights of a nobleman, his rank and property, and would go off to
exile; so his share of the inheritance would come to you and your brother
Alexey Fyodorovitch in equal parts; so you'd each have not forty, but
sixty thousand each. There's not a doubt you did reckon on Dmitri
Fyodorovitch."

"What I put up with from you! Listen, scoundrel, if I had reckoned on any
one then, it would have been on you, not on Dmitri, and I swear I did
expect some wickedness from you ... at the time.... I remember my
impression!"

"I thought, too, for a minute, at the time, that you were reckoning on me
as well," said Smerdyakov, with a sarcastic grin. "So that it was just by
that more than anything you showed me what was in your mind. For if you
had a foreboding about me and yet went away, you as good as said to me,
'You can murder my parent, I won't hinder you!' "

"You scoundrel! So that's how you understood it!"

"It was all that going to Tchermashnya. Why! You were meaning to go to
Moscow and refused all your father's entreaties to go to Tchermashnya--and
simply at a foolish word from me you consented at once! What reason had
you to consent to Tchermashnya? Since you went to Tchermashnya with no
reason, simply at my word, it shows that you must have expected something
from me."

"No, I swear I didn't!" shouted Ivan, grinding his teeth.

"You didn't? Then you ought, as your father's son, to have had me taken to
the lock-up and thrashed at once for my words then ... or at least, to
have given me a punch in the face on the spot, but you were not a bit
angry, if you please, and at once in a friendly way acted on my foolish
word and went away, which was utterly absurd, for you ought to have stayed
to save your parent's life. How could I help drawing my conclusions?"

Ivan sat scowling, both his fists convulsively pressed on his knees.

"Yes, I am sorry I didn't punch you in the face," he said with a bitter
smile. "I couldn't have taken you to the lock-up just then. Who would have
believed me and what charge could I bring against you? But the punch in
the face ... oh, I'm sorry I didn't think of it. Though blows are
forbidden, I should have pounded your ugly face to a jelly."

Smerdyakov looked at him almost with relish.

"In the ordinary occasions of life," he said in the same complacent and
sententious tone in which he had taunted Grigory and argued with him about
religion at Fyodor Pavlovitch's table, "in the ordinary occasions of life,
blows on the face are forbidden nowadays by law, and people have given
them up, but in exceptional occasions of life people still fly to blows,
not only among us but all over the world, be it even the fullest Republic
of France, just as in the time of Adam and Eve, and they never will leave
off, but you, even in an exceptional case, did not dare."

"What are you learning French words for?" Ivan nodded towards the
exercise-book lying on the table.

"Why shouldn't I learn them so as to improve my education, supposing that
I may myself chance to go some day to those happy parts of Europe?"

"Listen, monster." Ivan's eyes flashed and he trembled all over. "I am not
afraid of your accusations; you can say what you like about me, and if I
don't beat you to death, it's simply because I suspect you of that crime
and I'll drag you to justice. I'll unmask you."

"To my thinking, you'd better keep quiet, for what can you accuse me of,
considering my absolute innocence? and who would believe you? Only if you
begin, I shall tell everything, too, for I must defend myself."

"Do you think I am afraid of you now?"

"If the court doesn't believe all I've said to you just now, the public
will, and you will be ashamed."

"That's as much as to say, 'It's always worth while speaking to a sensible
man,' eh?" snarled Ivan.

"You hit the mark, indeed. And you'd better be sensible."

Ivan got up, shaking all over with indignation, put on his coat, and
without replying further to Smerdyakov, without even looking at him,
walked quickly out of the cottage. The cool evening air refreshed him.
There was a bright moon in the sky. A nightmare of ideas and sensations
filled his soul. "Shall I go at once and give information against
Smerdyakov? But what information can I give? He is not guilty, anyway. On
the contrary, he'll accuse me. And in fact, why did I set off for
Tchermashnya then? What for? What for?" Ivan asked himself. "Yes, of
course, I was expecting something and he is right...." And he remembered
for the hundredth time how, on the last night in his father's house, he
had listened on the stairs. But he remembered it now with such anguish
that he stood still on the spot as though he had been stabbed. "Yes, I
expected it then, that's true! I wanted the murder, I did want the murder!
Did I want the murder? Did I want it? I must kill Smerdyakov! If I don't
dare kill Smerdyakov now, life is not worth living!"

Ivan did not go home, but went straight to Katerina Ivanovna and alarmed
her by his appearance. He was like a madman. He repeated all his
conversation with Smerdyakov, every syllable of it. He couldn't be calmed,
however much she tried to soothe him: he kept walking about the room,
speaking strangely, disconnectedly. At last he sat down, put his elbows on
the table, leaned his head on his hands and pronounced this strange
sentence: "If it's not Dmitri, but Smerdyakov who's the murderer, I share
his guilt, for I put him up to it. Whether I did, I don't know yet. But if
he is the murderer, and not Dmitri, then, of course, I am the murderer,
too."

When Katerina Ivanovna heard that, she got up from her seat without a
word, went to her writing-table, opened a box standing on it, took out a
sheet of paper and laid it before Ivan. This was the document of which
Ivan spoke to Alyosha later on as a "conclusive proof" that Dmitri had
killed his father. It was the letter written by Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna
when he was drunk, on the very evening he met Alyosha at the crossroads on
the way to the monastery, after the scene at Katerina Ivanovna's, when
Grushenka had insulted her. Then, parting from Alyosha, Mitya had rushed
to Grushenka. I don't know whether he saw her, but in the evening he was
at the "Metropolis," where he got thoroughly drunk. Then he asked for pen
and paper and wrote a document of weighty consequences to himself. It was
a wordy, disconnected, frantic letter, a drunken letter in fact. It was
like the talk of a drunken man, who, on his return home, begins with
extraordinary heat telling his wife or one of his household how he has
just been insulted, what a rascal had just insulted him, what a fine
fellow he is on the other hand, and how he will pay that scoundrel out;
and all that at great length, with great excitement and incoherence, with
drunken tears and blows on the table. The letter was written on a dirty
piece of ordinary paper of the cheapest kind. It had been provided by the
tavern and there were figures scrawled on the back of it. There was
evidently not space enough for his drunken verbosity and Mitya not only
filled the margins but had written the last line right across the rest.
The letter ran as follows:


    FATAL KATYA: To-morrow I will get the money and repay your three
    thousand and farewell, woman of great wrath, but farewell, too, my
    love! Let us make an end! To-morrow I shall try and get it from
    every one, and if I can't borrow it, I give you my word of honor I
    shall go to my father and break his skull and take the money from
    under the pillow, if only Ivan has gone. If I have to go to
    Siberia for it, I'll give you back your three thousand. And
    farewell. I bow down to the ground before you, for I've been a
    scoundrel to you. Forgive me! No, better not forgive me, you'll be
    happier and so shall I! Better Siberia than your love, for I love
    another woman and you got to know her too well to-day, so how can
    you forgive? I will murder the man who's robbed me! I'll leave you
    all and go to the East so as to see no one again. Not _her_
    either, for you are not my only tormentress; she is too. Farewell!

    P.S.--I write my curse, but I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One
    string is left, and it vibrates. Better tear my heart in two! I
    shall kill myself, but first of all that cur. I shall tear three
    thousand from him and fling it to you. Though I've been a
    scoundrel to you, I am not a thief! You can expect three thousand.
    The cur keeps it under his mattress, in pink ribbon. I am not a
    thief, but I'll murder my thief. Katya, don't look disdainful.
    Dmitri is not a thief! but a murderer! He has murdered his father
    and ruined himself to hold his ground, rather than endure your
    pride. And he doesn't love you.

    P.P.S.--I kiss your feet, farewell! P.P.P.S.--Katya, pray to God
    that some one'll give me the money. Then I shall not be steeped in
    gore, and if no one does--I shall! Kill me!

    Your slave and enemy,

    D. KARAMAZOV.


When Ivan read this "document" he was convinced. So then it was his
brother, not Smerdyakov. And if not Smerdyakov, then not he, Ivan. This
letter at once assumed in his eyes the aspect of a logical proof. There
could be no longer the slightest doubt of Mitya's guilt. The suspicion
never occurred to Ivan, by the way, that Mitya might have committed the
murder in conjunction with Smerdyakov, and, indeed, such a theory did not
fit in with the facts. Ivan was completely reassured. The next morning he
only thought of Smerdyakov and his gibes with contempt. A few days later
he positively wondered how he could have been so horribly distressed at
his suspicions. He resolved to dismiss him with contempt and forget him.
So passed a month. He made no further inquiry about Smerdyakov, but twice
he happened to hear that he was very ill and out of his mind.

"He'll end in madness," the young doctor Varvinsky observed about him, and
Ivan remembered this. During the last week of that month Ivan himself
began to feel very ill. He went to consult the Moscow doctor who had been
sent for by Katerina Ivanovna just before the trial. And just at that time
his relations with Katerina Ivanovna became acutely strained. They were
like two enemies in love with one another. Katerina Ivanovna's "returns"
to Mitya, that is, her brief but violent revulsions of feeling in his
favor, drove Ivan to perfect frenzy. Strange to say, until that last scene
described above, when Alyosha came from Mitya to Katerina Ivanovna, Ivan
had never once, during that month, heard her express a doubt of Mitya's
guilt, in spite of those "returns" that were so hateful to him. It is
remarkable, too, that while he felt that he hated Mitya more and more
every day, he realized that it was not on account of Katya's "returns"
that he hated him, but just _because he was the murderer of his father_.
He was conscious of this and fully recognized it to himself.

Nevertheless, he went to see Mitya ten days before the trial and proposed
to him a plan of escape--a plan he had obviously thought over a long time.
He was partly impelled to do this by a sore place still left in his heart
from a phrase of Smerdyakov's, that it was to his, Ivan's, advantage that
his brother should be convicted, as that would increase his inheritance
and Alyosha's from forty to sixty thousand roubles. He determined to
sacrifice thirty thousand on arranging Mitya's escape. On his return from
seeing him, he was very mournful and dispirited; he suddenly began to feel
that he was anxious for Mitya's escape, not only to heal that sore place
by sacrificing thirty thousand, but for another reason. "Is it because I
am as much a murderer at heart?" he asked himself. Something very deep
down seemed burning and rankling in his soul. His pride above all suffered
cruelly all that month. But of that later....

When, after his conversation with Alyosha, Ivan suddenly decided with his
hand on the bell of his lodging to go to Smerdyakov, he obeyed a sudden
and peculiar impulse of indignation. He suddenly remembered how Katerina
Ivanovna had only just cried out to him in Alyosha's presence: "It was
you, you, persuaded me of his" (that is, Mitya's) "guilt!" Ivan was
thunderstruck when he recalled it. He had never once tried to persuade her
that Mitya was the murderer; on the contrary, he had suspected himself in
her presence, that time when he came back from Smerdyakov. It was _she_,
she, who had produced that "document" and proved his brother's guilt. And
now she suddenly exclaimed: "I've been at Smerdyakov's myself!" When had
she been there? Ivan had known nothing of it. So she was not at all so
sure of Mitya's guilt! And what could Smerdyakov have told her? What,
what, had he said to her? His heart burned with violent anger. He could
not understand how he could, half an hour before, have let those words
pass and not have cried out at the moment. He let go of the bell and
rushed off to Smerdyakov. "I shall kill him, perhaps, this time," he
thought on the way.





Book 11, Chapter 7
By the time of Ivan's second visit, Smerdyakov is holed up with Maria Kondratievna, who is now his fiancee. In contrast to the first visit, Smerdyakov seems quite well, and he seems to be studying when Ivan walks in on him. Ivan again confronts Smerdyakov, this time about Smerdyakov's suggestion that he won't tell the authorities about the "whole" of their conversation. This time Smerdyakov is at his most direct and accuses Ivan of being as good as responsible for their father's murder. If Ivan suspected Smerdyakov of planning their father's murder, he did nothing to prevent it or to protect him, making him indirectly guilty. Ivan goes so far as to punch Smerdyakov in the shoulder, but when he leaves, he's crazed with doubt and guilt. He goes straight to Katerina's and tells her about his conversation with Smerdyakov. She pulls out a letter from Dmitri, which Dmitri had written after Katerina's encounter with Grushenka . In this letter Dmitri vowed that if he was unable to find someone to loan him 3,000 roubles, he would kill his father and steal the money from him. This letter reassures Ivan and calms his fears. And yet, perhaps because he sees some truth in Smerdyakov's sly suggestion that he wants Dmitri convicted so he can have more of his father's inheritance, he visits Dmitri ten days before his trial and offers him 30,000 roubles toward his escape. Finally the novel catches up to the present moment. Surprised that Katerina had been to visit Smerdyakov, Ivan decides to visit him a third time.