A fine dry snow is falling, whirled about by the wind, and it does not lie on the ground. Not far from Marya Kondratyevna's cottage, Ivan comes upon a solitary drunken peasant in a coarse patched coat, walking in zigzags and swearing. The peasant lurches full tilt against him. Ivan pushes him back furiously. The peasant goes flying backwards and falls like a log on the frozen ground. He utters one plaintive cry, and then is silent. Ivan goes on. Smerdyakov is sitting on the large old mahogany sofa, in the same dressing-gown, where a bed has been made up. Ivan asks whether Katerina Ivanovna has been with him. Smerdyakov stays silent, then says it to his face. You murdered him. You are the real murderer. I was only your instrument. The look of Ivan's horror strikes him. You do not mean to say you really did not know? Ivan cries that he is mad, or teasing him again. Smerdyakov watches him with no sign of fear. Slowly he takes off his garter and fumbles to the bottom of his stocking. Under the wrapper are packets of hundred-rouble notes. They are all here, all the three thousand roubles. Ivan draws back so that he knocks his back against the wall, and stands stiff and straight.
Was it a fit, or a sham one? A sham one, naturally. I shammed it all. I went quietly down to the cellar. Smerdyakov is very weak and speaks slowly and wearily, but some hidden inner force urges him on. He has a design. All things are lawful. You silently sanctioned my doing it. He looks resolutely at Ivan. The departure, the silence, the nearness of Tchermashnya instead of Moscow: he turns them until they look like consent.
He tells the signal from Grushenka, and the iron paper-weight from the table, weighing about three pounds. He planned the blows, and he planned the traces that would fall on Dmitri. The prosecutor's mouth positively watered at the suggestion. But can you possibly have thought of all that on the spot? Ivan looks at him again with alarm. Mercy on us. Could he have held it all in his head while the house was still awake? Smerdyakov is not flustered. He had thought it out before.
Well, it was the devil helped you, Ivan cries, and he sees that Smerdyakov is far cleverer than he thought. He gets up, meaning to go. On the way back he finds the peasant he had knocked down, still lying senseless and motionless. The snow has almost covered his face. Ivan seizes him. He gets the man of the house to help carry him to the police station, promising three roubles, and he arranges for a doctor to see him at once. Then he enters his own room. A touch of ice passes over his heart, a reminder of something agonizing that is in that room now, and had been there before. He sinks on his sofa. The old woman brings a samovar. He makes tea and does not touch it. He fancies he is delirious, but it is not illness that he thinks of most. At last his eyes fasten on one point. He smiles, and an angry flush covers his face. He sits a long time with his head propped on both arms, looking sideways at the sofa against the opposite wall. There is something there that irritates him, worries him, and torments him.
