The Double

Mr. Goliadkin was about to begin, but stopped. “Won’t it be too much?” he thought. “Haven’t I overshot the mark? It’s always that way; I fill to overflowing.” Our hero left Petrushka’s very displeased with himself. Besides, he was slightly hurt by Petrushka’s rudeness and unyieldingness. “I make advances to the rogue, the master does the rogue that honor, and he doesn’t feel it,” thought Mr. Goliadkin. “However, that’s the mean tendency of all his kind!” Swaying a bit, he returned to his room and, seeing that his guest was already lying down, sat on his bed for a moment. “But confess, Yasha,” he began in a whisper and wagging his head, “you scoundrel, aren’t you guilty before me? You know, my namesake, you sort of…” he went on, making advances rather familiarly to his guest. Finally, taking leave of him amicably, Mr. Goliadkin went to bed. The guest meanwhile began to snore. Mr. Goliadkin, in his turn, began to stretch out in bed, and meanwhile, chuckling, whispered to himself: “And you’re drunk tonight, Yakov Petrovich, my dear heart, what a scoundrel you are, eh, what a Goliadka—that’s what your name is!! Well, why are you so glad? You’ll be weeping tomorrow, you’re such a sniveler: what am I to do with you?!” Here a rather strange sensation echoed through Mr. Goliadkin’s whole being, something like doubt or regret. “I really let myself go,” he thought, “there’s a buzzing in my head now, and I’m drunk; and you couldn’t help yourself, you’re such a big fool! poured out three buckets of drivel and still wanted to be clever, you scoundrel. Of course, forgiving and forgetting an offense is the foremost virtue, but all the same things are bad, that’s what!” Here Mr. Goliadkin got up, took a candle, and went on tiptoe to look at his sleeping guest. For a long time he stood over him deep in thought. “An unpleasant picture! a lampoon, the sheerest lampoon, that’s the end of it!”

Finally, Mr. Goliadkin lay down. In his head there was a buzzing, a crackling, a ringing. He began to sink into oblivion…tried to think about something, to remember something highly interesting, to resolve something highly important, some ticklish matter—but could not. Sleep flew down upon his victorious head, and he dropped off as people usually do who, without being accustomed to it, suddenly avail themselves of five glasses of punch at some friendly soirée.

CHAPTER VIII

AS USUAL, MR. GOLIADKIN woke up the next day at eight o’clock; on waking up, he at once recalled all that had happened yesterday evening, recalled it and winced. “Eh, I got playful yesterday like some kind of fool!” he thought, getting out of bed and looking at his guest’s bed. But what was his surprise when not only the guest but even the bed on which the guest had slept was not in the room! “What is this?” Mr. Goliadkin all but cried out. “What can this possibly be? What does this new circumstance mean?” While Mr. Goliadkin, in perplexity, stared open-mouthed at the now empty place, the door creaked, and Petrushka came in with the tea tray. “But where, where?” our hero uttered in a barely audible voice, pointing his finger at the place reserved yesterday for the guest. Petrushka at first made no reply, did not even look at his master, but shifted his eyes to the right corner, so that Mr. Goliadkin was also forced to look into the right corner. However, after some silence, Petrushka replied in a husky and rude voice that “the master wasn’t home.”

“You fool, I’m your master, Petrushka,” Mr. Goliadkin said in a faltering voice and stared all eyes at his servant.