“No, no, for now I’ll just make a cross over you—so—sit down. Well, now you’re going to have some fun, and precisely in your line. You’ll laugh your head off. Balaam’s ass,[91] here, has started to talk, and what a talker, what a talker!” Balaam’s ass turned out to be the lackey Smerdyakov. Still a young man, only about twenty-four years old, he was terribly unsociable and taciturn. Not that he was shy or ashamed of anything—no, on the contrary, he had an arrogant nature and seemed to despise everyone. But precisely at this point we cannot avoid saying at least a few words about him. He had been raised by Marfa Ignatievna and Grigory Vasilievich, but the boy grew up “without any gratitude,” as Grigory put it, solitary, and with a sidelong look in his eye. As a child he was fond of hanging cats and then burying them with ceremony. He would put on a sheet, which served him as a vestment, chant, and swing something over the dead cat as if it were a censer. It was all done on the sly, in great secrecy. Grigory once caught him at this exercise and gave him a painful birching. The boy went into a corner and sat there looking sullen for a week. “He doesn’t like us, the monster,” Grigory used to say to Marfa Ignatievna, “and he doesn’t like anyone. You think you’re a human being? “ he would suddenly address Smerdyakov directly. “You are not a human being, you were begotten of bathhouse slime, that’s who you are ... “ Smerdyakov, it turned out later, never could forgive him these words. Grigory taught him to read and write and, when he was twelve, began teaching him the Scriptures. But that immediately went nowhere. One day, at only the second or third lesson, the boy suddenly grinned.
“What is it?” asked Grigory, looking at him sternly from under his spectacles.
“Nothing, sir. The Lord God created light on the first day, and the sun, moon, and stars on the fourth day.[92] Where did the light shine from on the first day?”
Grigory was dumbfounded. The boy looked derisively at his teacher; there was even something supercilious in his look. Grigory could not help himself. “I’ll show you where!” he shouted, and gave his pupil a violent blow on the cheek. The boy suffered the slap without a word, but again hid in the corner for a few days. A week later, as it happened, they discovered for the first time that he had the falling sickness, which never left him for the rest of his life.[93]Having learned of it, Fyodor Pavlovich seemed to change his view of the boy. Formerly he had looked on him somehow indifferently, though he never scolded him and always gave him a kopeck when they met. If he was in a benevolent mood, he sometimes sent the boy some sweets from the table. But now, when he learned of the illness, he decidedly began to worry about him, called in a doctor, began treating him, but a cure turned out to be impossible. The attacks came on the average of once a month, and at various times. They were also of various strength—some were slight, others were extremely severe. Fyodor Pavlovich strictly forbade Grigory any corporal punishment of the boy, and began allowing him upstairs. He also forbade teaching him anything at all for the time being. But once, when the boy was already about fifteen years old, Fyodor Pavlovich noticed him loitering by the bookcase and reading the titles through the glass. There were a fair number of books in the house, more than a hundred volumes, but no one had ever seen Fyodor Pavlovich with a book in his hands. He immediately gave Smerdyakov the key to the bookcase: “Well, read then, you can be my librarian; sit and read, it’s better than loafing around the yard. Here, try this one,” and Fyodor Pavlovich handed him
The lad read it but with displeasure; he never once smiled, and, on the contrary, finished it with a frown.
“What? Not funny?” asked Fyodor Pavlovich.
Smerdyakov was silent.
“Answer, fool!”
“It’s all about lies,” Smerdyakov drawled, grinning.
“Well, then, go to the devil with your lackey soul! Wait, here’s Smaragdov’s Universal
But Smerdyakov did not get through even ten pages of Smaragdov. He found it boring. So the bookcase was locked again. Soon Marfa and Grigory reported to Fyodor Pavlovich that Smerdyakov suddenly was beginning to show signs of some terrible squeamishness: at supper, he would take his spoon and explore the soup, bend over it, examine it, lift up a spoonful and hold it to the light.
“What is it, a cockroach?” Grigory would ask.
