The Double

IN ALL THE PETERSBURG towers that displayed and struck the hour, it struck midnight exactly as Mr. Goliadkin, beside himself, ran out to the embankment of the Fontanka just next to the Izmailovsky Bridge, fleeing from his enemies, from persecutions, from the shower of flicks hanging over him, from the cries of alarmed old women, from ladies’ ah’s and oh’s, and from the destructive gazes of Andrei Filippovich. Mr. Goliadkin was destroyed—fully destroyed, in the full sense of the word, and if at the present moment he retained the ability to run, it was solely by some sort of miracle, a miracle in which he himself, finally, refused to believe. It was a terrible November night—wet, foggy, rainy, snowy, fraught with fluxes, colds, agues, anginas, fevers of all possible sorts and kinds, in short, with all the gifts of a Petersburg November. The wind howled in the deserted streets, heaving the black water of the Fontanka higher than the mooring rings and perkily brushing up against the skinny streetlamps of the embankment, which in their turn seconded its howling with a thin, shrill creaking, which made up an endless, squeaking, rattling concert, quite familiar to every inhabitant of Petersburg. Rain and snow fell at once. Streams of rainwater, broken up by the wind, sprayed almost horizontally, as if from a fire hose, and pricked and lashed at the wretched Mr. Goliadkin’s face like thousands of pins and needles. Amid the night’s silence, broken only by the distant rumble of carriages, the howling of the wind, and the creaking of the streetlamps, the splashing and burbling water pouring down from all the roofs, porches, gutters, and eaves onto the granite pavement of the sidewalks had a dismal sound. There was not a soul either near or far, nor did it seem there could be at such an hour and in such weather. Thus only Mr. Goliadkin, alone with his despair, trotted just then along the sidewalk of the Fontanka with his usual small and quick step, hurrying to reach as soon as possible his Shestilavochnaya Street, his fourth floor, his own apartment.