else, a decent one, to be sure, like all decent people, and maybe had some merits, even rather significant ones—in short, he was his own man. Mr. Goliadkin did not even nurse any hatred, or hostility, or even the slightest animosity for this man, even the contrary, it would seem—yet (and the greatest force lay in this circumstance), yet he would not have wanted to meet him for all the treasures in the world and especially to meet him as he had now, for instance. We will say more: Mr. Goliadkin knew this man perfectly well; he even knew what he was called, knew what the man’s last name was; yet not for anything, and again not for all the treasures in the world, would he have wanted to name him, to agree to recognize, say, that he was called such-and-such, that such-and-such was his patronymic, and such-and-such his last name. Whether Mr. Goliadkin’s quandary lasted a long or a short time, whether he sat for precisely a long time on the hitching post, I cannot say, but only that finally, having recovered a little, he suddenly broke into a run without looking back, for all the strength that was in him; his breath kept failing; he stumbled twice, nearly fell—on this occasion Mr. Goliadkin’s other boot became orphaned, also abandoned by its galosh. Finally, Mr. Goliadkin slowed his pace a little, so as to catch his breath, hurriedly looked around, and saw that he had already run, without noticing it, the whole of his way along the Fontanka, crossed the Anichkov Bridge, gone partway down Nevsky, and was now standing at the corner of Liteinaya. Mr. Goliadkin turned onto Liteinaya. His position at that moment was like the position of a man standing over a frightful precipice, when the earth breaks away under him, is rocking, shifting, sways for a last time, and falls, drawing him into the abyss, and meanwhile the unfortunate man has neither the strength nor the firmness of spirit to jump back, to take his eyes from the yawning chasm; the abyss draws him, and he finally leaps into it himself, himself hastening the moment of his own perdition. Mr. Goliadkin knew, felt, and was completely certain that some further bad thing was bound to befall him on the way, that some further trouble would break over him, that, for instance, he would meet his stranger again; but—strange thing—he even wished for that meeting, considered it inevitable, and asked only for it all to be over, for his situation to be resolved at least somehow, only soon. And meanwhile he went on running, running, as if moved by some outside force, for he felt some sort of weakening and numbness in his whole being; he was unable to think about anything, though his ideas kept catching at everything like thorns. Some forsaken little dog, all wet and shivering, tagged after Mr. Goliadkin and also ran along sideways next to him, hurriedly, tail and ears drooping, from time to time glancing at him timidly and intelligently. Some remote, long-forgotten idea—the remembrance of circumstances that had occurred long ago—now came to his head, knocked like a little hammer in his head, vexed him, would not leave him alone. “Eh, this nasty little dog!” whispered Mr. Goliadkin, not understanding himself. Finally, he saw his stranger at the corner of Italianskaya Street. Only now the stranger was going not in the opposite but in the same direction as himself, and was also running, a few steps ahead. Finally, they reached Shestilavochnaya. Mr. Goliadkin was breathless. The stranger stopped right in front of the house where Mr. Goliadkin lived. The bell rang and at almost the same time the iron bolt rasped. The gate opened, the stranger stooped, flashed, and vanished. At almost the same instant, Mr. Goliadkin arrived and shot arrowlike through the gate. Not heeding the caretaker’s grumbling, breathless, he ran into the courtyard and at once saw his interesting companion, whom he had lost for a moment. The stranger flashed at the entrance to the stairway that led to Mr. Goliadkin’s apartment. Mr. Goliadkin rushed after him. The stairway was dark, damp, and dirty. At each turning, a mass of all sorts of household rubbish was heaped up, so that a stranger, an unaccustomed man, coming to that stairway at a dark time, would be forced to travel it for half an hour, risking a broken leg, and cursing both the stairway and his acquaintances who lived in so uncomfortable a place. But Mr. Goliadkin’s companion was like an acquaintance, a familiar; he ran up lightly, without difficulty, and with a perfect knowledge of the locale. Mr. Goliadkin almost caught up with him completely; the skirt of the stranger’s overcoat even struck him on the nose once or twice. His heart was sinking. The mysterious man stopped right in front of the door to Mr. Goliadkin’s apartment, knocked, and (which, however, would have surprised Mr. Goliadkin at another time) Petrushka, as if he had been waiting and had not gone to bed, opened the door at once and walked after the entering man with a candle in his hand. Beside himself, the hero of our narrative also ran into his lodgings; not taking off his overcoat and hat, he went down the little corridor and, as if thunderstruck, stopped on the threshold of his room. All of Mr. Goliadkin’s forebodings had come perfectly true. All that he had feared and anticipated had now become reality. His breath broke off, his head spun. The stranger sat before him, also in his overcoat and hat, on his own bed, smiling slightly, narrowing his eyes a little, nodding to him amicably. Mr. Goliadkin wanted to cry out but could not—to protest in some way, but had no strength. His hair stood on end, and he slumped down where he was, insensible from horror. With good reason, however. Mr. Goliadkin had perfectly well recognized his night companion. His night companion was none other than himself—Mr. Goliadkin himself, another Mr. Goliadkin, but perfectly the same as himself—in short, what is known as his double in all respects.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEXT MORNING, at exactly eight o’clock, Mr. Goliadkin came to in his bed. Straight away all the extraordinary things of yesterday and all that incredible, wild night, with its almost impossible adventures, at once, suddenly, in all their terrifying fullness, appeared to his imagination and memory. Such fierce, infernal malice from his enemies, and especially the last proof of that malice, froze Mr. Goliadkin’s heart. But at the same time it was all so strange, incomprehensible, wild, it seemed so impossible, that it was actually hard to give credence to the whole thing; even Mr. Goliadkin himself would have been prepared to recognize it all as unfeasible raving, a momentarily disturbed imagination, a darkening of the mind, if, luckily for him, he had not known from bitter life’s experience how far malice can sometimes drive a man, how far an enemy’s fierceness can sometimes go in avenging his honor and ambition. Besides, Mr. Goliadkin’s racked limbs, his dazed head, his aching back, and a malignant cold witnessed to and insisted on all the probability of last night’s promenade, and partly to all the rest that had occurred during that promenade. And, finally, Mr. Goliadkin had already long known that they were preparing something there, that they had someone else there. But—what then? Having thought well, Mr. Goliadkin decided to say nothing, to submit, and not to protest about this matter for the time being. “Maybe they just think to frighten me a little, and when they see that I don’t mind, don’t protest, and am perfectly humble, that I endure with humility, they’ll give it up, give it up themselves, even be the first to give it up.”
Such were the thoughts in Mr. Goliadkin’s head when, stretching in his bed and spreading his racked limbs, he waited this time for Petrushka’s usual appearance in his room. He waited for a quarter of an hour; he heard the lazybones Petrushka pottering with the samovar behind the partition, and yet he simply could not bring himself to call him. We will say more: Mr. Goliadkin was now even slightly afraid of a face-to-face meeting with Petrushka. “God knows,” he thought, “God knows how that knave looks at this whole thing now. He says nothing, but he keeps his own counsel.” Finally the door creaked, and Petrushka appeared with a tray in his hands. Mr. Goliadkin timidly gave him a sidelong glance, waiting impatiently for what would happen, waiting to see if he would finally say something concerning a certain circumstance. But Petrushka said nothing; on the contrary, he was somehow more silent, stern, and cross than usual, looking askance at everything from under his eyebrows; generally it was evident that he was extremely displeased with something; he did not look at his master even once, which, be it said in passing, slightly piqued Mr. Goliadkin; he put everything he had brought with him on the table, turned, and silently went behind his partition. “He knows, he knows, he knows everything, the lout!” Mr. Goliadkin muttered, sitting down to his tea. However, our hero asked his man precisely nothing, though Petrushka later came into his room several times for various needs. Mr. Goliadkin was in a most alarmed state of mind. He also felt eerie about going to the department. He had a strong presentiment that precisely there something was not right. “Suppose you go there,” he thought, “and run into something or other? Wouldn’t it be better to be patient now? Wouldn’t it be better to wait now? Let them be as they like there; but today I’d rather wait here, gather my strength, recover, reflect better about the whole thing, and then seize the moment, drop on them out of the blue, and act as if nothing happened.” Pondering in this way, Mr. Goliadkin smoked pipe after pipe; time flew; it was already nearly half-past nine. “So it’s already half-past nine,” thought Mr. Goliadkin, “it’s even late to show up. Besides, I’m sick, of course I’m sick, certainly I’m sick; who’ll say I’m not? What do I care! So they send to verify it, so let the errand boy come; what indeed do I care? I’ve got a backache, a cough, a cold; and, finally, I can’t go, I simply can’t go in such weather; I may fall ill, and then even die for all I know; there’s such peculiar mortality nowadays…” With such reasonings, Mr. Goliadkin finally set his conscience fully at ease and justified himself beforehand in view of the dressing-down he expected from Andrei Filippovich for being remiss at work. Generally, in all such circumstances, our hero was extremely fond of justifying himself in his own eyes by various irrefutable reasons and thus setting his
