The Double

“This is it! How to act, oh, Lord God? And all this just had to happen!” he finally cried in despair, hobbling down the street wherever his legs carried him, “it all just had to happen! If it weren’t for this, precisely for this, everything would have been settled; all at once, at one stroke, one deft, energetic, firm stroke, it would have been settled. I’d let them cut my finger off that it would have been settled. And I even know in precisely what way it would have been settled. Here’s how it would be: I’d say such and such—thus and so, but for me, my good sir, with your permission, it’s neither here nor there; say, things aren’t done this way; say, my good sir, my very dear sir, things aren’t done this way, and imposture doesn’t get anywhere with us; an impostor, my good sir, is a man who is—useless and of no use to the fatherland. Do you understand that? I say, do you understand that, my very dear sir?! That’s how it would be, sort of…But no, however, what am I…that’s not it, not it at all…What am I babbling, like an utter fool! me, suicide that I am! I say, suicide that you are, it’s not that at all…Though that is how, you depraved man, that is how things are done nowadays!…Well, where shall I take myself now? Well, what, for instance, am I to do with myself now? What am I good for now? What, for instance, are you good for now, you Goliadkin, you worthless fellow! Well, what now? I have to hire a carriage; go, she says, and fetch a carriage here; our little feet, she says, will get wet if there’s no carriage…There, who’d have thought it? Oh, you young lady! oh, lady mine! oh, you well-behaved miss! oh, our much-praised one! You’ve distinguished yourself, ma’am, I declare, you’ve distinguished yourself!…And it all comes from immoral upbringing; and I, as I look closely now and get to the bottom of it all, I see that it comes from nothing else than immorality. Instead of a bit of birching from a young age…every once in a while…they give her candy, they stuff her with all sorts of sweets, and the old fellow slobbers over her: says you’re my this, and you’re my that, you good girl, says I’ll give you away to a count!…And now she’s up and shown us her cards; says here’s what our game is! Instead of keeping her at home at a young age, they put her in a boarding school, with a French madame, an émigrée Falbala^{28} of some sort; and she learns all kinds of good things from the émigrée Falbala—and so it all turns out this way. She says, go on, rejoice! Says, be there with a carriage at such and such hour in front of the windows and sing a sentimental romance in Spanish style; I’m waiting for you, and I know you love me, and we’ll run off together and live in a cabin. But it’s impossible, finally; if it’s come to that, lady mine, it’s impossible, it’s against the law to carry off an honest and innocent girl from her parents’ home without her parents’ permission! And, finally, what for, and why, and where’s the need? Well, let her marry the one she ought to, the one she’s destined for, and the matter can end there. But I’m in government service; I could lose my job because of it; I, lady mine, could wind up in court because of it! that’s what, in case you didn’t know! This is the German woman’s work. It’s from her, the witch, that all this comes, she set the whole forest on fire. Because they’re slandering a man, because they’ve invented some old wives’ tale about him, some cock-and-bull story, on Andrei Filippovich’s advice, that’s where it comes from. Otherwise why is Petrushka mixed up in it? what is it to him? what’s the need for that rogue here? No, I can’t do it, my lady, I simply can’t do it, can’t do it for anything…You, my lady, must excuse me somehow this time. It all comes from you, my lady, it doesn’t come from the German woman, not from the witch at all, but purely from you, because the witch is a good woman, because the witch is not to blame for anything, it’s you, lady mine, who are to blame—that’s how it is! You, my lady, are leading me into futility…A man’s perishing here, a man’s vanishing from his own sight here, and can’t control himself—what sort of wedding can there be! And how will it all end? and how will it be settled now? I’d pay dearly to know all that!…”