第54章

"Though I should be pleased to have some hot coffee.""Bravo, my darling! He'll have some coffee.Does it want warming? No, it's boiling.It's capital coffee: Smerdyakov's making.

My Smerdyakov's an artist at coffee and at fish patties, and at fish soup, too.You must come one day and have some fish soup.Let me know beforehand....But, stay; didn't I tell you this morning to come home with your mattress and pillow and all? Have you brought your mattress? He he he!""No, I haven't," said Alyosha, smiling, too.

"Ah, but you were frightened, you were frightened this morning, weren't you? There, my darling, I couldn't do anything to vex you.

Do you know, Ivan, I can't resist the way he looks one straight in the face and laughs? It makes me laugh all over.I'm so fond of him.

Alyosha, let me give you my blessing- a father's blessing."Alyosha rose, but Fyodor Pavlovitch had already changed his mind.

"No, no," he said."I'll just make the sign of the cross over you, for now.Sit still.Now we've a treat for you, in your own line, too.It'll make you laugh.Balaam's ass has begun talking to us here- and how he talks! How he talks!

Balaam's ass, it appeared, was the valet, Smerdyakov.He was a young man of about four and twenty, remarkably unsociable and taciturn.Not that he was shy or bashful.On the contrary, he was conceited and seemed to despise everybody.

But we must pause to say a few words about him now.He was brought up by Grigory and Marfa, but the boy grew up "with no sense of gratitude," as Grigory expressed it; he was an unfriendly boy, and seemed to look at the world mistrustfully.In his childhood he was very fond of hanging cats, and burying them with great ceremony.He used to dress up in a sheet as though it were a surplice, and sang, and waved some object over the dead cat as though it were a censer.

All this he did on the sly, with the greatest secrecy.Grigory caught him once at this diversion and gave him a sound beating.He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week."He doesn't care for you or me, the monster," Grigory used to say to Marfa, "and he doesn't care for anyone.Are you a human being?" he said, addressing the boy directly."You're not a human being.You grew from the mildew in the bath-house.That's what you are," Smerdyakov, it appeared afterwards, could never forgive him those words.Grigory taught him to read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the Scriptures.But this teaching came to nothing.At the second or third lesson the boy suddenly grinned.

"What's that for?" asked Grigory, looking at him threateningly from under his spectacles.

"Oh, nothing.God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day.Where did the light come from on the first day?"Grigory was thunderstruck.The boy looked sarcastically at his teacher.There was something positively condescending in his expression.Grigory could not restrain himself."I'll show you where!"he cried, and gave the boy a violent slap on the cheek.The boy took the slap without a word, but withdrew into his corner again for some days.A week later he had his first attack of the disease to which he was subject all the rest of his life- epilepsy.When Fyodor Pavlovitch heard of it, his attitude to the boy seemed changed at once.Till then he had taken no notice of him, though he never scolded him, and always gave him a copeck when he met him.Sometimes, when he was in good humour, he would send the boy something sweet from his table.But as soon as he heard of his illness, he showed an active interest in him, sent for a doctor, and tried remedies, but the disease turned out to be incurable.The fits occurred, on an average, once a month, but at various intervals.The fits varied too, in violence: some were light and some were very severe.Fyodor Pavlovitch strictly forbade Grigory to use corporal punishment to the boy, and began allowing him to come upstairs to him.He forbade him to be taught anything whatever for a time, too.One day when the boy was about fifteen, Fyodor Pavlovitch noticed him lingering by the bookcase, and reading the titles through the glass.Fyodor Pavlovitch had a fair number of books- over a hundred- but no one ever saw him reading.He at once gave Smerdyakov the key of the bookcase.

"Come, read.You shall be my librarian.You'll be better sitting reading than hanging about the courtyard.Come, read this," and Fyodor Pavlovitch gave him Evenings in a Cottage near Dikanka.

He read a little but didn't like it.He did not once smile, and ended by frowning.

"Why? Isn't it funny?" asked Fyodor Pavlovitch.Smerdyakov did not speak.

"Answer stupid!"

"It's all untrue," mumbled the boy, with a grin.

"Then go to the devil! You have the soul of a lackey.Stay, here's Smaragdov's Universal History.That's all true.Read that."But Smerdyakov did not get through ten pages of Smaragdov.He thought it dull.So the bookcase was closed again.

Shortly afterwards Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovitch that Smerdyakov was gradually beginning to show an extraordinary fastidiousness.He would sit before his soup, take up his spoon and look into the soup, bend over it, examine it, take a spoonful and hold it to the light.

"What is it? A beetle?" Grigory would ask.

"A fly, perhaps," observed Marfa.

The squeamish youth never answered, but he did the same with his bread, his meat, and everything he ate.He would hold a piece on his fork to the light, scrutinise it microscopically, and only after long deliberation decide to put it in his mouth.

"Ach! What fine gentlemen's airs!" Grigory muttered, looking at him.