The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky

IT is quite possible to say that the previous day's happenings had shaken Mr Golyadkin to his foundations. Our hero had passed a very bad night, that is to say, he simply could not get to sleep properly for even as much as five minutes: it was as though some practical joker had scattered itching powder in his bed. He spent the whole night in a kind of half-sleeping, half-waking state, tossing and turning from side to side, sighing, grunting, dropping off for a moment and waking up again almost immediately, and all this to the accompaniment of a strange kind of anguish, obscure recollections, ugly visions – in short, of everything that could be called disagreeable. . Now, in a strange mysterious half-light, the figure of Andrey Philippovich appeared before him – a spare figure, an irate figure, with a cold harsh glance and coldly civil words of reproof. . And hardly had Mr Golyadkin begun to approach Andrey Philippovich to justify himself to him in some way, by hook or by crook, and prove he was not at all the kind of person his enemies described him as, but was in fact this and that, and even possessed, over and above the ordinary inborn qualities, this and that and the other one; hardly had he done so than just at that point the person distinguished by his mischievous and harmful tendencies appeared and by some outrageous means brought Mr Golyadkin's tentative hopes crashing down, thoroughly blackened his reputation almost to his face, trampled his self-respect in the mud and then at once usurped his place at work and in society. Now it was some little rebuff that rankled in Mr Golyadkin's mind, a rebuff recently administered and taken as degrading, administered either in the presence of others or somewhere else in circumstances that made it difficult to protest against the said rebuff. . And while Mr Golyadkin was beginning to rack his brains over what exactly it had been that made it difficult to protest against that kind of rebuff, the idea of the rebuff was imperceptibly merging into another form – the form of a certain small, or perhaps not so small, mean trick, seen or heard of or recently performed by himself – perhaps even frequently performed, and not out of nastiness or through vicious impulses, but simply – sometimes, for example, accidentally – out of delicacy; another time because of his own utter defencelessness, or finally because. because, in short, Mr Golyadkin knew very well why! Here Mr Golyadkin blushed in his sleep and, trying to suppress his blushes, mumbled something like ‘here, for example, he might have displayed his firmness of character, in this instance he might have displayed considerable firmness of character'. concluding with ‘but why firmness of character?. why mention it now?' But what most annoyed and upset Mr Golyadkin was the way in which, summoned or not, a certain person renowned for his ugliness and his satirical propensities now made his appearance, exactly at that minute, and also – in spite of its being well enough known, one would think – also began muttering with an illnatured grin, ‘What's firmness of character got to do with it? what firmness of character can you and I have to show, Yakov Petrovich?'. Now it seemed to Mr Golyadkin that he was in the midst of a splendid company, all the persons who constituted it being distinguished for their wit and polished manners: that Mr Golyadkin in his turn distinguished himself in respect of courtliness and wit, that everybody was charmed with him, and that even some of his enemies who were there were charmed with him, which was very pleasing to Mr Golyadkin; everybody yielded him the first place and finally Mr Golyadkin had the pleasure of overhearing his host praising him to one of the guests as he led him aside. and at that very moment there suddenly appeared again out of the blue a certain person notorious for his disloyalty and swinish impulses, in the shape of Mr Golyadkin junior, and at once, on the spot, in the twinkling of an eye, by his mere appearance, Golyadkin junior ruined all Golyadkin senior's triumph and renown, eclipsed Golyadkin senior, trampled Golyadkin senior in the mire and, finally, showed clearly that the senior, and also the genuine, Golyadkin was not genuine at all but a counterfeit, and that he himself was the real one, that Golyadkin senior was not at all what he seemed, but this and that, and consequently ought not, indeed had no right, to belong to a society of people of decent feeling and good tone. And all this happened so quickly that before Mr Golyadkin senior had had time to open his mouth they had all given themselves up, body and soul, to the hideous fake Mr Golyadkin and repudiated him, the real and blameless Mr Golyadkin, with the profoundest contempt. There remained not one whose attitude had not in one instant been transformed in his own favour by the hideous Mr Golyadkin. There was not one left whom the empty and spurious Mr Golyadkin had not sucked up to, in his usual way, in the most honeyed manner, whom he had not, in his usual way, won over, before whom he had not, in his usual way, burnt the sweetest and pleasantest incense, so that the personage, wreathed in smoke, could only sniff and sneeze till the tears came, in token of the highest satisfaction. But the main thing was that it had all happened in a flash; the speed of movement of the suspicious and pernicious Mr Golyadkin was astonishing! Hardly had he had time to make up to one person and get into his good graces, for example, than before you could say knife he was already talking to another. He would slyly wheedle and wheedle away, extract a smile of good will, kick up his short, round, rather vulgar little leg, and be off to a third, playing the whore and slobbering over him; before you could wink an eye or have time to feel astonished, he was beside a fourth, and already on the same terms with him too – it was terrible, sheer witchcraft, nothing else! And everybody was glad to see him, everybody liked him, everybody praised him to the skies, everybody proclaimed in chorus that his amiability and his satirical gifts were infinitely superior to the amiability and satirical gifts of the real Mr Golyadkin, thus shaming the innocent real Mr Golyadkin, rejecting the upright Mr Golyadkin, driving the loyal Mr Golyadkin away with blows, showering insults on the real Mr Golyadkin's well-known love of his neighbour. ! In anguish, in horror, in frenzy, the tormented Mr Golyadkin dashed out into the street and hailed a cab so that he could rush straight to His Excellency, or if not there, at least to Andrey Philippovich, but – oh horror! the cabbies flatly refused to take Mr Golyadkin: ‘No sir, your honour, I can't take two people that are just the same; a good man does his best to live honestly, your honour, not just higgledy-piggledy, and he's never double.' In a frenzy of shame the completely honest Mr Golyadkin looked round and saw for himself, with his own eyes, that the cabbies and Petrushka, who had somehow merged into them, were indeed quite right; for the disreputable Mr Golyadkin really was there, beside him and not very far away, and, in accordance with his usual bad manners, was even here, even at this critical juncture, undoubtedly preparing to do something quite shocking, and certainly not showing the least trace of that gentlemanly polish that is usually bestowed by education – a polish on which the loathsome Mr Golyadkin the second so prided himself on every possible occasion. Beside himself with shame and desperation, the lost and altogether rightful Mr Golyadkin rushed away, following his nose, at the mercy of fate, to wherever chance would lead him; but with every step he took, every time his foot struck the pavement, there sprang up, as if from under the ground, another exactly and completely identical Mr Golyadkin, revolting in his depravity. And all these complete replicas, as soon as they appeared, began running along one behind the other, stretching out in a long file like a string of geese and scurrying after Mr Golyadkin, so that there was no escaping from perfect counterparts of himself, so that horror deprived the much-to-be-pitied Mr Golyadkin of breath, so that finally there had sprung up a terrible multitude of perfect replicas, so that at length the whole capital was clogged with perfect replicas and a policeman, seeing such a disturbance of the peace, was obliged to take all the perfect replicas by the collar and put them in a lock-up that happened to be handy. . Rigid and frozen with horror, our hero woke up; rigid and frozen with horror, he felt that even awake he could hardly pass the time more cheerfully. . It was a cruel and wretched moment. . The anguish he experienced was as though the heart was being eaten out of his breast.