The Double

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.