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 conscience fully at ease. And so, having now set his conscience fully at ease, he took his pipe, filled it, and, having just begun to draw on it properly, jumped up quickly from the sofa, threw the pipe aside, briskly washed, shaved, smoothed his hair, pulled on his uniform and all the rest, seized some papers, and flew off to the department.
Mr. Goliadkin entered his section timidly, in trembling expectation of something quite unpleasant—an unconscious expectation, obscure, but at the same time disagreeable; he sat down timidly in his usual place beside the chief clerk, Anton Antonovich Setochkin. Not looking at anything, not distracted by anything, he tried to grasp the contents of the papers that lay before him. He resolved and promised himself to keep as far away as possible from anything provoking, from anything that might seriously compromise him—that is, from immodest questions, from somebody or other’s jokes and improper allusions regarding all the circumstances of the previous evening; he even resolved to refrain from the usual civilities with his colleagues, such as inquiries about health and so on. But it was also obvious that to remain that way would not do, was not possible. Anxiety and ignorance about something that closely concerned him always tormented him more than the thing itself. And that was why, despite his promise to himself not to enter into anything, whatever might happen, and to keep away from everything, whatever it might be, Mr. Goliadkin occasionally raised his head on the sly, ever so quietly, and stealthily glanced sidelong to right, to left, peeking into the physiognomies of his colleagues and trying to conclude from them whether there was anything new and particular that concerned him and was being concealed from him for some unseemly purposes. He assumed that there was an inevitable connection between all his circumstances yesterday and everything that surrounded him now. Finally, in his anguish, he began to wish only that it be resolved quickly, even God knows how, even in some disaster—who cared! It was here that fate caught Mr. Goliadkin: he had barely managed to wish it, when his doubts were suddenly resolved, albeit in a most strange and unexpected fashion.
The door to the other room suddenly creaked quietly and timidly, as if to introduce the entering person as quite insignificant, and someone’s figure—quite familiar, however, to Mr. Goliadkin—appeared bashfully before that same desk at which our hero was installed. Our hero did not raise his head—no, he glimpsed this figure only in passing, with the slightest glance, but he already knew everything, understood everything to the smallest detail. He burned with shame and buried his victorious head in the papers, with exactly the same purpose as an ostrich pursued by a hunter buries its head in the hot sand. The newcomer bowed to Andrei Filippovich, and after that a formally benign voice was heard, the sort with which superiors in all official places speak to new subordinates. “Sit down here,” said Andrei Filippovich, pointing the novice to Anton Antonovich’s desk, “here, opposite Mr. Goliadkin, and we’ll find something for you to do at once.” Andrei Filippovich concluded by making the newcomer a quick, properly admonishing gesture, and then immediately immersed himself in the essence of various papers, a whole pile of which lay before him.
Mr. Goliadkin finally raised his eyes, and if he did not faint, it was solely because he had anticipated the whole thing in advance, because he had been forewarned of it all in advance, having divined the newcomer in his soul. Mr. Goliadkin’s first move was to look around quickly, to see whether there was any whispering, whether any office joke was being cooked up, whether anyone’s face was distorted with surprise, whether, finally, anyone fell under the desk from fright. But, to Mr. Goliadkin’s greatest surprise, no one showed anything of the sort. The behavior of Mr. Goliadkin’s gentleman comrades and colleagues astounded him. It seemed beyond common sense. Mr. Goliadkin was even frightened by such extraordinary silence. The ess
ence of the thing spoke for itself: it was strange, outrageous, wild. There was cause for a stir. All this, to be sure, only flashed through Mr. Goliadkin’s head. He himself was roasting on a slow fire. There was cause for that, however. The one now sitting opposite Mr. Goliadkin was Mr. Goliadkin’s horror, he was Mr. Goliadkin’s shame, he was Mr. Goliadkin’s nightmare from yesterday, in short, he was Mr. Goliadkin himself—not the Mr. Goliadkin who was now sitting in a chair with a gaping mouth and a pen frozen in his hand; not the one who served as assistant to his chief clerk; not the one who likes to efface himself and bury himself in the crowd; not the one, finally, whose gait clearly says: “Don’t touch me, and I won’t touch you,” or “Don’t touch me, since I don’t touch you”—no, it was a different Mr. Goliadkin, completely different, but at the same time completely identical to the first—of the same height, of the same mold, dressed the same way, with the same bald spot—in short, nothing, decidedly nothing, had been overlooked for a complete likeness, so that if they had been taken and placed next to each other, no one, decidedly no one, would have undertaken to determine precisely which was the real Goliadkin and which was the counterfeit, which was the old and which the new, which was the original and which the copy.
Our hero, if the comparison is possible, was now in the position of a man at whom some mischiefmaker was poking fun, aiming a burning-glass at him on the sly, as a joke. “What is this, a dream or not,” he thought, “a reality or a continuation of yesterday? How can it be? By what right is it all being done? Who has allowed such a clerk, who gave the right for it? Am I asleep, am I dreaming?” Mr. Goliadkin tried to pinch himself, he even tried to get himself to pinch someone else…No, it was not a dream, and that was that. Mr. Goliadkin felt that sweat was pouring down him in streams, that something unprecedented, something unheard-of, was happening to him, which therefore, to complete the misfortune, was also indecent, for Mr. Goliadkin understood and felt all the disadvantage of being the first example of such a lampoonish thing. He even began, finally, to doubt his own existence, and though he had been prepared for anything beforehand, and had wished himself that his doubts would be resolved at least in some way, the very essence of the circumstance, of course, suited the unexpectedness. Anguish oppressed and tormented him. At times he was completely bereft of sense and memory. Recovering after such moments, he noticed that he was mechanically and unconsciously moving his pen over the paper. Not trusting himself, he began to check all he had written—and understood nothing. Finally, the other Mr. Goliadkin, who till then had been sitting decorously and peaceably, got up and disappeared through the door of another section on some errand. Mr. Goliadkin looked around—all right, everything was quiet; only the scratching of pens was heard, the rustle of turning pages, and talking in the corners furthest from Andrei Filippovich’s seat. Mr. Goliadkin glanced at Anton Antonovich, and since, in all probability, our hero’s physiognomy fully corresponded to his present and was in harmony with the whole sense of the matter, and consequently was highly remarkable in a certain respect, the kindly Anton Antonovich, laying aside his pen, inquired with extraordinary solicitousness after Mr. Goliadkin’s health.
“I thank God, Anton Antonovich,” Mr. Goliadkin said, faltering, “I’m perfectly well, Anton Antonovich; I’m all right now, Anton Antonovich,” he added hesitantly, still not quite trusting the oft-mentioned Anton Antonovich.
“Ah! And I fancied you were unwell; however, no wonder if you were! These days, especially, there are all sorts of infections. You know…”
“Yes, Anton Antonovich, I know, such infections exist…I didn’t mean that, Anton Antonovich,” Mr. Goliadkin went on, peering intently at Anton Antonovich. “You see, Anton Antonovich, I don’t even know how to make you, that is, I mean to say, from which side to approach this matter.”
“What, sir? I…you know…I confess to you, I don’t understand you very well; you…you know, you should explain more thoroughly in what respect you are in difficulties here,” said Anton Antonovich, who was in some small difficulty himself, seeing that tears had even welled up in Mr. Goliadkin’s eyes.
The Double Page 6
