The Double

The enemies raced on and for a time were silent. Our hero could barely catch his breath; the road was very bad, and he was jolted at every step, in danger of breaking his neck. On top of that, his bitter adversary still would not admit defeat and tried to push his enemy off into the mud. To complete all the unpleasantnesses, the weather was most terrible. Snow poured down in big flakes and tried all it could, for its part, to get under the flung-open overcoat of the real Mr. Goliadkin. It was murky all around and impossible to see. It was hard to tell where and down what streets they were racing…It seemed to Mr. Goliadkin that something familiar was happening to him. At one point he tried to recall whether he had had any presentiment the day before…in a dream, for instance…Finally, his anguish grew to the ultimate degree of its agony. Leaning his full weight against his merciless adversary, he was about to cry out. But the cry died on his lips…There was a moment when Mr. Goliadkin forgot everything and decided that all this was quite negligible and that it had been done just like that, somehow, in an inexplicable fashion, and to protest on this occasion would be a superfluous and completely wasted business…But suddenly, and almost at the moment when our hero was coming to this conclusion, some careless jolt changed the whole sense of the affair. Mr. Goliadkin tumbled off the droshky like a sack of flour and rolled away somewhere, admitting quite correctly in the moment of his fall that he had really and highly inappropriately lost his temper. Jumping to his feet, finally, he saw that they had arrived somewhere; the droshky was standing in the middle of someone’s yard, and our hero noticed at first glance that it was the yard of the house where Olsufy Ivanovich lived. At that same moment he noticed that his companion was already making his way to the porch and probably to Olsufy Ivanovich’s. In his indescribable anguish, he was about to rush in pursuit of his adversary, but, fortunately for him, he had sense enough to think better of it in time. Not forgetting to pay the cabby, Mr. Goliadkin rushed out to the street and ran as fast as he could wherever his legs would carry him. Snow poured down in big flakes as before; as before it was murky, damp, and dark. Our hero did not walk but flew, knocking down everyone in his way—peasants, their women, children, and bouncing off of women, peasants, and children in his turn. Around him and behind him he heard frightened talk, shrieks, cries…But it seemed that Mr. Goliadkin was oblivious and did not want to pay any attention to anything…He came to his senses, however, by the Semyonovsky Bridge, and then only because he happened somehow clumsily to brush against and knock down two peasant women with the wares they were carrying, and to fall down himself along with them. “Never mind that,” thought Mr. Goliadkin, “all this may very well still work out for the best”—and he straightaway went to his pocket, wishing to get off by paying a silver rouble for the spilled gingerbreads, apples, peas, and various other things. Suddenly a new light dawned on Mr. Goliadkin; in his pocket he felt the letter that the scrivener had handed to him in the morning. Remembering among other things that there was a tavern he knew not far away, he ran to the tavern, sat down without wasting a moment at a little table lit by a tallow candle, and, not paying attention to anything, not listening to the waiter who came to take his order, he broke the seal and began to read what follows below, struck by it to the uttermost.