The Double
Page 19
“I hope there’s nothing here…nothing reprehensible…or that might be cause for severity…and the attention of everyone regarding my official relations?” our hero said, at a loss. Talk and noise arose around him; everyone wagged their heads in the negative. Tears gushed from Mr. Goliadkin’s eyes.
“In that case, I’m ready…I fully entrust…and hand over my fate to Krestyan Ivanovich…”
Mr. Goliadkin had only just said that he fully handed over his fate to Krestyan Ivanovich, when a terrible, deafening, joyful shout burst from everyone around him, and its sinister echo passed through the whole expectant crowd. Here Krestyan Ivanovich on the one side and Andrei Filippovich on the other took Mr. Goliadkin under the arms and began putting him into the carriage; his double, as was his mean custom, helped from behind. The unfortunate Mr. Goliadkin Sr. cast a last glance at everyone and everything and, trembling like a kitten that has been doused with cold water—if the comparison be permitted—got into the carriage. Krestyan Ivanovich at once got in behind him. The carriage door slammed, the whip cracked over the horses, the horses tore the vehicle from its place…everything rushed after Mr. Goliadkin. The piercing, furious shouts of all his enemies came rolling after him in the guise of a farewell. For a certain time faces still flashed around the carriage that was bearing Mr. Goliadkin away; but they gradually dropped behind, dropped behind, and finally disappeared completely. Mr. Goliadkin’s indecent twin held out longer than anyone else. His hands in the pockets of his green uniform trousers, he ran along with a pleased look, skipping now on one side of the carriage, now on the other; sometimes, taking hold of the window frame and hanging on, he would thrust his head through the window and blow Mr. Goliadkin little farewell kisses; but he, too, began to tire, appeared more and more rarely, and finally disappeared completely. The heart in Mr. Goliadkin’s breast ached dully; a hot stream of blood rushed to his head; he gasped for air, he wanted to unbutton himself, to bare his chest, to pour snow and cold water on it. He fell, finally, into oblivion…When he came to, he saw that the horses were bearing him along some unfamiliar road. To right and left a forest blackened; it felt desolate and deserted. Suddenly he went dead: two fiery eyes gazed at him from the darkness, and those two eyes shone with sinister, infernal glee. This was not Krestyan Ivanovich! Who was it? Or was it him? Him! It was Krestyan Ivanovich, only not the former, but another Krestyan Ivanovich! This was a terrible Krestyan Ivanovich!…
“Krestyan Ivanovich, I…I seem to be all right, Krestyan Ivanovich,” our hero began timidly and with trepidation, wishing to appease the terrible Krestyan Ivanovich at least somewhat with submissiveness and humility.
“You vill haf a gofernment apartment, mit firewood, mit licht, und mit serfices, vich you don’t deserf,” Krestyan Ivanovich’s reply came sternly and terribly, like a verdict.
Our hero cried out and clutched his head. Alas! he had long foreseen it!
Footnotes
1
Without ceremony.
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Notes
1
Russian civil service ranks are referred to throughout The Double. The following is the table of fourteen ranks established by the emperor Peter the Great in 1722:
Chancellor
Actual Privy Councillor
Privy Councillor
Actual State Councillor
State Councillor
Collegiate Councillor
Court Councillor
Collegiate Assessor
Titular Councillor
Collegiate Secretary
Secretary of Naval Constructions
Government Secretary
Provincial Secretary
Collegiate Registrar
The rank of titular councillor was immortalized in Russian literature in the person of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, hero of “The Overcoat,” by Nikolai Gogol (1809–52). Dostoevsky’s hero is his direct descendant.
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2
Silver roubles and paper roubles (banknotes) circulated simultaneously in Russia at that time, the silver rouble being worth more than the paper.
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3
Nevsky Prospect is the central thoroughfare of Petersburg; its mysterious qualities are celebrated in a story of the same name by Gogol.
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4
See note 1 above.
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5
The Gostiniy Dvor was, and still is, a large shopping arcade on Nevsky Prospect.
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6
See note 1 above.
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7
A reference to the fable “The Crow and the Fox” by I. A. Krylov (1768–1844): “The crow cawed with all her crow’s gullet—/The cheese fell…” Krylov, one of the most beloved Russian poets, is a master of the poetic fable in the manner of La Fontaine.
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8
See note 1 above.
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9
Balshazzar’s feast, described in Chapter 5 of the Old Testament book of Daniel, became the prototype of any sumptuous feast. The house of Clicquot (Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin) in Reims, founded in 1772, produces one of the finest champagnes. Eliseevs’ and Miliutin’s were actual shops on Nevsky Prospect (Eliseevs’ is still flourishing). The “fatted calf ” is found in Luke 15:23, the parable of the prodigal son: “And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry.” For the table of ranks, see note 1 above.
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10
Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is the greatest of Russian poets.
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11
Demosthenes (384–322 b.c.) was an Athenian political leader, whose powerful oratory awakened the Greek national spirit in the conflict with Macedonia.
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12
See note 1 above.
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13
Anton Antonovich Setochkin will reappear in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), where he is the anonymous hero’s superior in the civil service.
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14
Joseph, comte de Villèle (1773–1854), French statesman, was leader of the ultra-royalists under the Restoration (1814–30) and president of the Council of Ministers from 1821 to 1828. The laws passed under his leadership made him extremely unpopular.
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15
The Story of the English Milord George and Frederike Louise, Margravine of Brandenburg, with the Appended Story of the Former Turkish Vizier Marzimiris, by Matvei Komarov, was first published in 1782; its ninth edition came out in 1839.
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16
Goliadka is an endearing diminutive of goliada (probably cognate with goliy, “naked”), meaning a poor man, a beggar.
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17
After the disastrous flood of 1824, the citizens of Petersburg were warned of the danger of flooding by the firing of a cannon from the Peter and Paul fortress.
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18
See note 7 above. The line “And the coffer had no trick to it” is from the fable “The Coffer.”
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19
Field Marshal Alexander V. Suvorov (1729–1800), supreme commander of Russian forces under Catherine the Great, fought successfully against the Turks, put down the Polish uprising in 1794, and fought against the French revolutionary army in Italy until his defeat by Marshal Masséna in 1799. He was known for several eccentricities, one of which was crowing like a rooster.
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20
Karl Pavlovich Briullov (1799–1852), leader of the Russian Romantic school of painters, finished his most famous painting, The Last Day of Pompeii, in Italy in 1833; in 1834 it was brought to Russia and exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg, where it met with great public admiration and critical acclaim.
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21
; A line from the eighteenth-century Russian poet A. P. Sumarokov (1717–77) in the prologue “New Laurels,” written for a ballet performed on the occasion of Catherine the Great’s birthday in 1759.
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22
The Northern Bee was a reactionary newspaper edited by Faddey Bulgarin (1789–1859) and Nikolai Grech (1787–1867). Bulgarin was also a bad novelist and a police spy who specialized in denouncing literary figures, Pushkin among them.
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23
The pen name of O. I. Senkovsky (1800–58), critic and writer, publisher of the collection “Library for Reading.”
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24
Grigory (“Grishka”) Otrepyev, known as “the False Dmitri,” was a defrocked monk who claimed the Russian throne by pretending to be the lawful heir, the prince Dmitri, who had been murdered in childhood. He reigned for less than a year.
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25
The words about the serpent are a distorted quotation from the opening monologue of the little tragedy Mozart and Salieri, by Alexander Pushkin: “Who will say the proud Salieri was ever…/A crushed serpent, still alive, / Impotently biting the sand and dust…”
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26
In Petersburg, owing to its northern latitude, the sun sets in mid-afternoon during the winter.
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27
The Adventures of Faublas, a novel by the French writer and Girondist Louvet de Couvrai (1760–97), was translated into Russian in 1792–6.
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28
A reference to Pushkin’s comic poem Count Nulin, in which the heroine is said to have been “brought up / Not in the customs of our forefathers, / But in a noble girls’ boarding school / By some émigrée Falbala.”
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29
The name Basavriuk (Dostoevsky added the second “s”) belongs to the satanic villain in Gogol’s first published story, “St. John’s Eve.”
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30
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), one of the most influential writers of the French Enlightenment, favored natural settings and emotions.
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