The Double

When Mr. Goliadkin entered his department, it was already fully dark.^{26} Neither Andrei Filippovich nor Anton Antonovich was in the room. They were both in the director’s office with their reports; the director, as rumor had it, was hastening in his turn to go to his superior. Owing to this circumstance, and also because there was darkness mixed into it and the business day was almost over, some of the clerks, mostly young men, were occupied at the moment our hero entered with some sort of idleness, clustering together, talking, discussing, laughing, and some of the youngest, that is, of the most rankless rank, on the sly and under cover of the general noise, had even begun a game of pitch-and-toss in the corner by the window. Being a polite man and sensing at the present time some particular need to acquire and to find, Mr. Goliadkin approached some of those with whom he was on better terms, to wish them a good afternoon, and so on. But his colleagues responded to Mr. Goliadkin’s greetings somehow strangely. He was unpleasantly struck by a sort of general coldness, dryness, even, one might say, a sort of sternness in the reception. No one shook hands with him. Some simply said “Hello” and walked off; others just nodded, some simply turned away, showing that they had not noticed anything, and, finally, certain—and this was the most offensive thing for Mr. Goliadkin—certain of the lowest ranking young men, boys who, as Mr. Goliadkin correctly observed about them, knew only how to play pitch-and-toss on occasion and to mooch about somewhere—gradually surrounded Mr. Goliadkin, forming a cluster around him and almost blocking his way out. They all gazed at him with some insulting curiosity.

It was a bad sign. Mr. Goliadkin felt that and for his part sensibly prepared not to notice anything. Suddenly one completely unexpected circumstance quite, as they say, finished off and annihilated Mr. Goliadkin.