The Brothers Karamazovkov seemed to seize the moment.
‘I’m in an awful position, Ivan Fyodorovitch. I don’t know
how to help myself,’ he said resolutely and distinctly, and at
his last word he sighed. Ivan Fyodorovitch sat down again.
‘They are both utterly crazy, they are no better than lit-
tle children,’ Smerdyakov went on. ‘I am speaking of your
parent and your brother Dmitri Fyodorovitch. Here Fyodor
Pavlovitch will get up directly and begin worrying me ev-
ery minute, ‘Has she come? Why hasn’t she come?’ and so
on up till midnight and even after midnight. And if Agraf-
ena Alexandrovna doesn’t come (for very likely she does not
mean to come at all) then he will be at me again to-mor-
row morning, ‘Why hasn’t she come? When will she come?’
— as though I were to blame for it. On the other side it’s no
better. As soon as it gets dark, or even before, your brother
will appear with his gun in his hands: ‘Look out, you rogue,
you soup-maker. If you miss her and don’t let me know she’s
been — I’ll kill you before anyone.’ When the night’s over,
in the morning, he, too, like Fyodor Pavlovitch, begins wor-
rying me to death. ‘Why hasn’t she come? Will she come
soon?’ And he, too, thinks me to blame because his lady
hasn’t come. And every day and every hour they get angrier
and angrier, so that I sometimes think I shall kill myself in
a fright. I can’t depend them, sir.’
‘And why have you meddled? Why did you begin to spy
for Dmitri Fyodorovitch?’ said Ivan irritably.
‘How could I help meddling? Though, indeed, I haven’t
meddled at all, if you want to know the truth of the matter.
I kept quiet from the very beginning, not daring to answer;