The Double

besides, was embarrassed about the bad dinner—embarrassed partly because he wanted to feed his guest well, and partly because he wanted to show that he did not live like a beggar. The guest, for his part, was extremely embarrassed and extremely abashed. Having taken the bread once and eaten his slice, he was now afraid to reach for a second slice; he was ashamed to take the better pieces, and insisted every moment that he was not at all hungry, that the dinner was excellent, and that he, for his part, was completely satisfied, and would be sensible of it to his dying day. When the eating was over, Mr. Goliadkin lit his pipe, offered another, kept for friends, to his guest, the two sat down facing each other, and the guest began recounting his adventures.

Mr. Goliadkin Jr.’s account went on for three or four hours. The story of his adventures was, however, made up of the most empty, the most puny, if one may say that, of circumstances. It was a matter of working somewhere in a provincial government office, of some prosecutors and chairmen, of some bureaucratic intrigues, of the depraved soul of one of the chief clerks, of an inspector, of a sudden change of superiors, of Mr. Goliadkin-the- second suffering quite blamelessly; of his elderly aunt, Pelageya Semyonovna; of how, owing to various intrigues of his enemies, he lost his post and came on foot to Petersburg; of how he languished and suffered grief here in Petersburg, how he sought work fruitlessly for a long time, spent all his money, ate up all his food, lived almost in the street, ate stale bread, washing it down with his tears, slept on a bare floor, and, finally how one good man undertook to solicit for him and magnanimously set him up in a new job. Mr. Goliadkin’s guest wept as he told it all, and wiped his tears with a blue checked handkerchief that greatly resembled oilcloth. He concluded by opening himself completely to Mr. Goliadkin and confessing that, for the time being, he not only did not have enough to live on and set himself up decently, but could not even outfit himself properly, and that he had borrowed a uniform from someone for a short time.

Mr. Goliadkin was moved to tenderness, was genuinely touched. However, and even despite the fact that his guest’s story was of the emptiest sort, every word of this story lay on his heart like heavenly manna. The thing was that Mr. Goliadkin was forgetting his last doubts, he unbound his heart for freedom and joy, and finally bestowed on himself the title of fool. It was all so natural! And what cause was there to lament, to raise such an alarm? Well, there is, there actually is this one ticklish circumstance—but there’s no harm in that: it can’t besmirch a man, stain his ambition, and ruin his career, if it’s not the man’s fault, if nature itself has mixed into it. Besides, the guest asked for protection, the guest wept, the guest blamed fate, he seemed so artless, without malice or cunning, pathetic, insignificant, and, it seemed, was now ashamed himself, though perhaps in another connection, of the strange likeness of his own and his host’s face. He behaved himself with the utmost propriety: all he was looking to do was to please his host, and he looked the way a man looks who is tormented by remorse and feels himself guilty before another man. If the talk, for instance, got on to some doubtful point, the guest at once agreed with Mr. Goliadkin’s opinion. If, somehow by mistake, he expressed an opinion that went counter to Mr. Goliadkin’s and then noticed that he had gone astray, he at once corrected his speech, explained himself, and made it known immediately that he understood it all just as his host did, his thoughts were the same as his, and he looked at it all with exactly the same eyes as he. In short, the guest made every possible effort to “seek after” Mr. Goliadkin, so that Mr. Goliadkin decided finally that his guest must be a highly obliging man in all respects. Meanwhile, tea was served; it was past eight o’clock. Mr. Goliadkin felt himself in excellent spirits, became cheerful, playful, let himself go a little, and finally launched into a most lively and entertaining conversation with his guest. Mr. Goliadkin, when in a jolly mood, occasionally enjoyed telling some interesting story. So it was now: he told his guest a great deal about the capital, its amusements and beauties, the theater, the clubs, Briullov’s painting;^{20} about two Englishmen who came on purpose from England to Petersburg in order to look at the fence of the Summer Garden, and then left at once; about the office, about Olsufy Ivanovich and Andrei Filippovich; about the fact that Russia was hourly moving towards perfection, and that here

The art of letters flourisheth today;^{21}

about a little anecdote he had read recently in the Northern Bee,^{22} and that in India there was a boa snake of extraordinary strength; finally, about Baron Brambeus,^{23} and so on, and so forth. In short, Mr. Goliadkin was fully content, first, because he was perfectly at ease; second, because he not only was not afraid of his enemies, but was now even ready to challenge them all to a most decisive battle; third, because he, in his own person, was offering patronage and, finally, was doing a good deed. In his soul, however, he acknowledged that he was not yet entirely happy at that moment, that there was one little worm still sitting in him—a very little one, however—and gnawing at his heart even now. He was greatly tormented by the recollection of the previous evening at Olsufy Ivanovich’s. He would have given much now if one thing or another of what had happened yesterday had not happened. “However, it’s all nothing!” our hero finally concluded, and he firmly resolved in his heart to behave well in the future and not fall into such blunders. Since Mr. Goliadkin had now let himself go completely and had suddenly become almost perfectly happy, he even decided to enjoy life. Petrushka brought rum and they put together a punch. Guest and host each drained a glass, then another. The guest turned out to be still more obliging and, for his part, showed more than one proof of his straightforwardness and happy character, was greatly concerned with Mr. Goliadkin’s good pleasure, seemed to find joy only in his joy, and looked upon him as his sole and true benefactor. Having taken a pen and a sheet of paper, he asked Mr. Goliadkin not to look at what he was going to write, and then, when he had finished, himself showed his host all he had written. It turned out to be a quatrain, rather sentimentally written—in a beautiful style and handwriting, however, and evidently composed by the obliging guest himself. The verses were the following:

Though me thou mayest well forget,
I shall ne’er forget thee.
Anything can happen in this life,
But, thou, do not forget me!

With tears in his eyes, Mr. Goliadkin embraced his guest and, finally waxing totally sentimental, initiated his guest into some of his secrets and mysteries, laying great stress in his speech on Andrei Filippovich and Klara Olsufyevna. “Well, so you and I will become close, Yakov Petrovich,” our hero said to his guest, “you and I, Yakov Petrovich, will live like fish in water, like two brothers; we, my friend, will be clever, we’ll be clever together; for our part, we’ll conduct an intrigue to spite them…to spite them we’ll conduct an intrigue. And don’t trust a one of them. I know you, Yakov Petrovich, and understand your character; you’ll just up and tell all, you truthful soul! Keep away from all of them, brother.” The guest agreed completely, thanked Mr. Goliadkin, and finally also waxed tearful. “You know, Yasha,” Mr. Goliadkin went on in a trembling, weakened voice, “you settle with me for a time, or even for good. We’ll become close. What is it to you, brother—eh? And don’t be embarrassed and don’t grumble that there’s such a strange circumstance between us now: grumbling’s a sin, brother; it’s nature! Mother Nature’s generous, that’s what, brother Yasha! It’s from love for you, from brotherly love for you, that I speak. And you and I are going to be clever, Yasha, for our part we’ll undermine them and put their noses out of joint.” The punch finally went as far as three and four glasses each, and then Mr. Goliadkin began to experience two sensations: one, that he was extraordinarily happy, the other—that he was no longer able to stand on his feet. The guest, naturally, was invited to spend the night. A bed was somehow put together out of two rows of chairs. Mr. Goliadkin Jr. announced that under a friendly roof even the floor was soft to sleep on, that he for his part would sleep wherever need be, with humility and gratitude; that he was now in paradise, and that, finally, he had suffered many misfortunes and woes in his life, had seen everything, had endured everything, and—who knows the future?—might endure still more. Mr. Goliadkin Sr. protested against that and began to demonstrate that one should place all hope in God. The guest fully agreed and said that, to be sure, there was no one like God. Here Mr. Goliadkin Sr. observed that the Turks were right in certain respects to invoke the name of God even in their sleep. Then, not agreeing, however, with some scholars in some of the aspersions they cast at the Turkish prophet Mohammed, and recognizing him as a great politician in his way, Mr. Goliadkin went on to a very interesting description of an Algerian barbershop, which he had read about in the miscellaneous section of some book. Guest and host laughed much at the simple-heartedness of the Turks; however, they could not help granting due astonishment to the fanaticism aroused in them by opium… The guestfinally began to undress, and Mr. Goliadkin stepped behind the partition, partly out of the kindness of his