Here something unexpected happened: Alyosha suddenly sneezed. The people on the bench hushed at once. Alyosha got up and walked in their direction. It was indeed Smerdyakov, dressed up, pomaded, perhaps even curled, in patent leather shoes. The guitar lay on the bench. The lady was Maria Kondratievna, the landlady’s daughter; she was wearing a light blue dress with a train two yards long; she was still a young girl, and would have been pretty if her face had not been so round and so terribly freckled.
“Will my brother Dmitri be back soon?” Alyosha asked as calmly as he could.
Smerdyakov slowly rose from the bench; Maria Kondratievna rose, too.
“Why should I be informed as to Dmitri Fyodorovich? It’s not as if I were his keeper,” Smerdyakov answered quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
“But I just asked if you knew,” Alyosha explained.
“I know nothing of his whereabouts, and have no wish to know, sir.”
“But my brother precisely told me that it is you who let him know about everything that goes on in the house, and have promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes.”
Smerdyakov slowly and imperturbably raised his eyes to him.
“And how were you pleased to get in this time, since the gates here have been latched for an hour already?” he asked, looking fixedly at Alyosha.
“I got in over the fence from the lane and went straight to the gazebo. I hope you will excuse me for that,” he addressed Maria Kondratievna, “I was in a hurry to get hold of my brother.” “Ah, how should we take offense at you,” drawled Maria Kondratievna, flattered by Alyosha’s apology, “since Dmitri Fyodorovich, too, often goes to the gazebo in the same manner, we don’t even know it and there he is sitting in the gazebo.”
“I am trying very hard to find him now, I very much wish to see him, or to find out from you where he is now. Believe me, it’s a matter of great importance for him.”
“He doesn’t keep us notified,” babbled Maria Kondratievna.
“Even though I come here as an acquaintance,” Smerdyakov began again, “even here the gentleman harasses me cruelly with his ceaseless inquiries about the master; well, he says, how are things there, who comes and who goes, and can I tell him anything else? Twice he even threatened me with death.”
“With death?” Alyosha asked in surprise.
“But that would constitute nothing for him, sir, given his character, which you yourself had the honor of observing yesterday. If I miss Agrafena Alexandrovna, and she spends the night here, he says, you won’t live long, you first. I’m very afraid of him, sir, and if I wasn’t even more afraid, I’d have to report him to the town authorities. God even knows what he may produce.”
“The other day he said to him, ‘I’ll grind you in a mortar,’ “ Maria Kondratievna added.
“Well, if it’s in a mortar, it may just be talk .. . ,” Alyosha remarked. “If I could see him now, I might say something about that, too...”
“There’s only one thing I can tell you,” Smerdyakov suddenly seemed to make up his mind. “I come here sometimes as a customary neighborly acquaintance, and why shouldn’t I, sir? On the other hand, today at daybreak Ivan Fyodorovich sent me to his lodgings, on his Lake Street, without a letter, sir, so that in words Dmitri Fyodorovich should come to the local tavern, on the square, to have dinner together. I went, sir, but I didn’t find Dmitri Fyodorovich at home, and it was just eight o’clock. ‘He’s been and gone,’ his landlords informed me, in those very words. As if they had some kind of conspiracy, sir, a mutual one. And now, maybe at this very moment he’s sitting in that tavern with his brother Ivan Fyodorovich, because Ivan Fyodorovich did not come home for dinner, and Fyodor Pavlovich finished his dinner alone an hour ago, and then lay down to sleep. I earnestly request, however, that you not tell him anything about me and what I’ve told you, because he’d kill me for nothing, sir.”
“My brother Ivan invited Dmitri to a tavern today?” Alyosha quickly asked again.
“Right, sir.” “To the ‘Metropolis,’ on the square?”
“That’s the one, sir.”
“It’s quite possible!” Alyosha exclaimed in great excitement. “Thank you, Smerdyakov, that is important news, I shall go there now.”
“Don’t give me away, sir,” Smerdyakov called after him.
“Oh, no, I’ll come to the tavern as if by chance, don’t worry.”
“But where are you going? Let me open the gate for you,” cried Maria Kondratievna.
“No, it’s closer this way, I’ll climb over the fence.”
The news shook Alyosha terribly. He set off for the tavern. It would be improper for him to enter the tavern dressed as he was, but he could inquire on the stairs and ask them to come out. Just as he reached the tavern, however, a window suddenly opened and his brother Ivan himself shouted down to him:
“Alyosha, can you come in here, or not? I’d be awfully obliged.”
“Certainly I can, only I’m not sure, the way I’m dressed...”
“But I have a private room. Go to the porch, I’ll run down and meet you...”
