coming. What makes you say you will have one tomorrow?” Ivan inquired, with a peculiar, irritable curiosity.
“That’s just so. You can’t tell beforehand.”
“Besides, you fell from the garret then.”
“I climb up to the garret every day. I might fall from the garret again tomorrow. And, if not, I might fall down the cellar steps. I have to go into the cellar every day, too.”
Ivan took a long look at him.
“You are talking nonsense, I see, and I don’t quite understand you,” he said softly, but with a sort of menace. “Do you mean to pretend to be ill tomorrow for three days, eh?”
Smerdyakov, who was looking at the ground again, and playing with the toe of his right foot, set the foot down, moved the left one forward, and, grinning, articulated:
“If I were able to play such a trick, that is, pretend to have a fit—and it would not be difficult for a man accustomed to them—I