"If you care to know, the folks there and ours here are just alike in their vice.
They are swindlers, only there the scoundrel wears polished boots and here he grovels in filth and sees no harm in it.
The Russian people want thrashing, as Fyodor Pavlovitch said very truly yesterday, though he is mad, and all his children."
"You said yourself you had such a respect for Ivan Fyodorovitch."
"But he said I was a stinking lackey.
He thinks that I might be unruly. He is mistaken there.
If I had a certain sum in my pocket, I would have left here long ago.
Dmitri Fyodorovitch is lower than any lackey in his behaviour, in his mind, and in his poverty. He doesn't know how to do anything, and yet he is respected by everyone.
I may be only a soup-maker, but with luck I could open a cafe restaurant in Petrovka, in Moscow, for my cookery is something special, and there's no one in Moscow, except the foreigners, whose cookery is anything special.
Dmitri Fyodorovitch is a beggar, but if he were to challenge the son of the first count in the country, he'd fight him. Though in what way is he better than I am?
For he is ever so much stupider than I am.
Look at the money he has wasted without any need!"
"It must be lovely, a duel," Marya Kondratyevna observed suddenly.
"How so?"
"It must be so dreadful and so brave, especially when young officers with pistols in their hands pop at one another for the sake of some lady.
A perfect picture!
Ah, if only girls were allowed to look on, I'd give anything to see one!"
"It's all very well when you are firing at someone, but when he is firing straight in your mug, you must feel pretty silly.
You'd be glad to run away, Marya Kondratyevna."
"You don't mean you would run away?"
But Smerdyakov did not deign to reply.
After a moment's silence the guitar tinkled again, and he sang again in the same falsetto:
Whatever you may say, I shall go far away. Life will be bright and gay In the city far away.
I shall not grieve,
I shall not grieve at all, I don't intend to grieve at all.
Then something unexpected happened. Alyosha suddenly sneezed. They were silent.
Alyosha got up and walked towards them.
He found Smerdyakov dressed up and wearing polished boots, his hair pomaded, and perhaps curled.
The guitar lay on the garden-seat.
His companion was the daughter of the house, wearing a light-blue dress with a train two yards long. She was young and would not have been bad-looking, but that her face was so round and terribly freckled.
"Will my brother Dmitri soon be back? asked Alyosha with as much composure as he could.
Smerdyakov got up slowly; Marya Kondratyevna rose too.
"How am I to know about Dmitri Fyodorovitch? It's not as if I were his keeper," answered Smerdyakov quietly, distinctly, and superciliously.
"But I simply asked whether you do know?" Alyosha explained.
"I know nothing of his whereabouts and don't want to."
"But my brother told me that you let him know all that goes on in the house, and promised to let him know when Agrafena Alexandrovna comes."
Smerdyakov turned a deliberate, unmoved glance upon him.
"And how did you get in this time, since the gate was bolted an hour ago?" he asked, looking at Alyosha.
"I came in from the back-alley, over the fence, and went straight to the summer-house.
I hope you'll forgive me, he added addressing Marya Kondratyevna. "I was in a hurry to find my brother."
"Ach, as though we could take it amiss in you!" drawled Marya Kondratyevna, flattered by Alyosha's apology. "For Dmitri Fyodorovitch often goes to the summer-house in that way. We don't know he is here and he is sitting in the summer-house."
"I am very anxious to find him, or to learn from you where he is now.
Believe me, it's on business of great importance to him."
"He never tells us," lisped Marya Kondratyevna.
"Though I used to come here as a friend," Smerdyakov began again, "Dmitri Fyodorovitch has pestered me in a merciless way even here by his incessant questions about the master. 'What news?' he'll ask. 'What's going on in there now? Who's coming and going?' and can't I tell him something more.
Twice already he's threatened me with death
"With death?" Alyosha exclaimed in surprise.
"Do you suppose he'd think much of that, with his temper, which you had a chance of observing yourself yesterday?
He says if I let Agrafena Alexandrovna in and she passes the night there, I'll be the first to suffer for it.
I am terribly afraid of him, and if I were not even more afraid of doing so, I ought to let the police know.