Page 444 - the-brothers-karamazov

with the tip of his polished boot.
‘Why are you surprised at me?’ Ivan asked abruptly and
sullenly, doing his utmost to restrain himself, and suddenly
realising, with disgust, that he was feeling intense curios-
ity and would not, on any account, have gone away without
satisfying it.
‘Why don’t you go to Tchermashnya, sir?’ Smerdyakov
suddenly raised his eyes and smiled familiarly. ‘Why I smile
you must understand of yourself, if you are a clever man,’
his screwed-up left eye seemed to say.
‘Why should I go to Tchermashnya?’ Ivan asked in sur-
prise.
Smerdyakov was silent again.
‘Fyodor Pavlovitch himself has so begged you to,’ he said
at last, slowly and apparently attaching no significance
to his answer. ‘I put you off with a secondary reason,’ he
seemed to suggest, ‘simply to say something.’
‘Damn you! Speak out what you want!’ Ivan cried angrily
at last, passing from meekness to violence.
Smerdyakov drew his right foot up to his left, pulled
himself up, but still looked at him with the same serenity
and the same little smile.
‘Substantially nothing — but just by way of conversa-
tion.’
Another silence followed. They did not speak for nearly a
minute. Ivan knew that he ought to get up and show anger,
and Smerdyakov stood before him and seemed to be wait-
ing as though to see whether he would be angry or not. So at
least it seemed to Ivan. At last he moved to get up. Smerdya-