The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

THE next morning, at exactly eight o'clock, Mr Golyadkin came back to consciousness in his own bed. Immediately the unusual events of the previous day and the whole wild night with its almost incredible happenings, returned suddenly and all at once, in all their horrible completeness, to his memory and his mind. So much bitter hellish spite on the part of his enemies, and especially the last manifestation of that spite, froze Mr Golyadkin's heart. But at the same time it was all so impossible, that it was really difficult to believe a word of it; even Mr Golyadkin himself would have been ready to admit that the whole thing was a fantastic delusion, a temporary aberration of the mind, an overclouding of the intellect, if he had not, fortunately for him, known by hard practical experience to what lengths malevolence can sometimes drive a man and to what heights the embitterment of an enemy seeking revenge for his frustrated pride and ambition can sometimes mount. Besides, Mr Golyadkin's exhausted limbs, his fumy head, his aching back, the pernicious cold in his head, were powerful testimony to uphold the reality of the previous day's nocturnal excursion on foot, and to some degree of everything else that had happened in the course of that walk. And finally, Mr Golyadkin had known for a very long time that something was being prepared, that there was somebody else in reserve. But – what then? When he had thought it over carefully, Mr Golyadkin decided to say nothing, to submit, to raise no objections in the matter for the time being. ‘Perhaps they have only taken it into their heads to try to scare me, and when they see that I'm not affected, make no protest, am perfectly patient and bear it all submissively, they will retreat, they will retreat of their own accord, they will be the first to draw back.'

These were the thoughts that were in Mr Golyadkin's mind as, stretching himself in his bed and straightening his tired limbs, he waited, this time, for Petrushka's usual appearance in his room. He had been waiting for about a quarter of an hour already; he could hear the lazy Petrushka occupying himself with the samovar on the other side of the partition, and yet he simply could not make up his mind to call him. We will go further: Mr Golyadkin was even a little afraid now of a confrontation with Petrushka. ‘God only knows,' he thought, ‘God only knows what that scoundrel's attitude will be to all this. He keeps quiet and says nothing, but he's crafty.' At last the door creaked and Petrushka appeared with a tray in his hands. Mr Golyadkin cast him a timid sidelong look, waiting impatiently for what would come next and expecting that something would at last be said about a certain circumstance. But Petrushka did not utter a word; on the contrary, indeed, he seemed more uncommunicative, grim, and ill-humoured than usual, and his sidelong glances were sullen; altogether it was evident that he was extremely discontented about something. He would not look even once at his master – a fact, by the way, that rather piqued Mr Golyadkin; he put down on the table everything he had brought, turned round and silently retreated behind the partition. ‘He knows, he knows, that idle rogue knows everything!' muttered Mr Golyadkin, applying himself to the tea. Our hero, however, did not question his man at all, although several times Petrushka came into the room on various errands. Mr Golyadkin was in a very anxious state of mind. It would be terrible going into the office again. He had a strong foreboding that it was precisely there that something was wrong. ‘You'll go there,' he thought, ‘and then what if you stumble into something? Wouldn't it be better to be patient? Oughtn't I to wait a bit? Let them do as they like; but I'd better wait here today, get my nerve back and recover a bit, think the whole thing over as well as I know how, and then go and take them all by surprise, and behave as though nothing had happened.' Pondering in this way, Mr Golyadkin smoked pipe after pipe; the time flew, it was almost half-past nine already. ‘Why, it's half-past nine,' thought Mr Golyadkin, ‘and too late to put in an appearance now. And besides I'm ill, of course I'm ill, certainly I'm ill; who's going to say I'm not? What is it to me? Let them send to inquire, let the timekeeper come; what difference does it make to me, after all? My back aches, I've got a cough and a cold in the head; and really, after all, I simply can't go, I can't go out in this weather; I could fall ill and even die, perhaps; the deathrate's very high, especially just now. .' With this kind of reasoning Mr Golyadkin succeeded at last in calming his conscience and excusing himself beforehand in his own eyes in anticipation of the expected carpeting from Andrey Philippovich for remissness in the performance of his duties. In all such circumstances our hero was in general extremely inclined to justify himself in his own eyes by irrefutable arguments, and making his conscience completely easy. And so, having now made his conscience completely easy, he applied himself to his pipe, filled it, and as soon as he had lighted it, sprang up from the sofa, threw down the pipe, quickly washed, shaved, and smoothed his hair, put on his frock-coat, snatched up some papers, and hurried to the office.