The clerks, as it seemed to Mr. Goliadkin, were for their own part also extremely perplexed at meeting their colleague in this fashion; one of them even pointed his finger at Mr. Goliadkin. It even seemed to Mr. Goliadkin that the other called him loudly by name, which, naturally, was quite an improper thing to do in the street. Our hero stayed hidden and did not respond. “Little brats!” he began to reason with himself. “Well, what’s so strange?
A man in a carriage; a man needs to be in a carriage, so he takes a carriage. Simply trash! I know them—they’re simply brats who ought to be whipped! They only play pitch-and-toss on payday and mooch about somewhere, that’s what they do. I could tell them all a thing or two, only…” Mr. Goliadkin did not finish and went dead. A brisk pair of pretty Kazan horses, quite familiar to Mr. Goliadkin, hitched to a jaunty droshky, was quickly passing his carriage on the right.
The gentleman sitting in the droshky, chancing to see the face of Mr. Goliadkin, who quite imprudently stuck his head out the window of the carriage, was apparently also extremely amazed at such an unexpected encounter and, leaning out as far as he could, began peering with great curiosity and concern into the corner of the carriage, where our hero had hastened to hide.
The gentleman in the droshky was Andrei Filippovich, head of an office in the place where Mr. Goliadkin also served in the quality of assistant to his section chief. Mr. Goliadkin, seeing that Andrei Filippovich recognized him perfectly well, was looking at him all eyes, and it was simply impossible to hide from him, blushed to the roots of his hair. “Should I bow or not? Should I respond or not?
Should I acknowledge him or not? our hero thought in indescribable anguish. “Or pretend it’s not me but someone else strikingly resembling me, and look as if nothing has happened? Precisely not me, not me, and that’s that!” Mr. Goliadkin said, tipping his hat to Andrei Filippovich and not taking his eyes off him. “I…I’m all right,” he whispered with effort, “I’m quite all right, it’s not me at all, Andrei Filippovich, it’s not me at all, not me, and that’s that.”
Soon, however, the droshky passed the carriage, and the magnetism of the directorial gaze ceased. However, he still kept blushing, smiling, muttering something to himself…“I was a fool not to respond,” he thought finally, “I should simply have taken a bold footing and said frankly, but not without nobility, ‘Thus and so, Andrei Filippovich, I’m also invited to dinner, and that’s that!’ ”
Then, suddenly remembering that he had flunked it, our hero flared up like fire, frowned, and cast a terrible, defiant glance into the front corner of the carriage, a glance intended to incinerate all his enemies to dust at a stroke. Finally, by some sudden inspiration, he pulled the cord tied to the coachman’s elbow, stopped the carriage, and told the coachman to turn back to Liteinaya.
The thing was that Mr. Goliadkin felt an immediate need, probably for the sake of his own peace of mind, to say something most interesting to his doctor, Krestyan Ivanovich. And though his acquaintance with Krestyan Ivanovich was quite recent—namely, he had visited him only once the previous week, owing to a certain necessity—a doctor, as they say, is the same as a father confessor, to hide would be stupid, and to know the patient was his duty.
“Will all this be right, though?” our hero went on, stepping out of the carriage by the entrance to a five-story house on Liteinaya where he had ordered his equipage to stop, “will it all be right? Will it be decent?
Will it be appropriate? So what, though,” he went on, going up the stairs, trying to catch his breath and restrain the throbbing of his heart, which was in the habit of throbbing on other people’s stairs, “so what? It’s my own affair, and there’s nothing reprehensible in it…It would be stupid to hide. So I’ll make believe that I’m all right, and that I was just passing by…He’ll see that it must be so.”
Reasoning thus, Mr. Goliadkin reached the second floor and stopped in front of apartment number five, on the door of which hung a beautiful brass plaque with the inscription:
KRESTYAN IVANOVICH RUTENSPITZ DOCTOR OF MEDICINE AND SURGERY
Stopping, our hero hastened to give his physiognomy a decent, casual air, not without a certain courtesy, and prepared to give the bell-pull a tug. Having prepared to give the bell-pull a tug, he immediately and rather appropriately reasoned that tomorrow would be better, and that now, for the time being, there was no great need. But, suddenly hearing someone’s footsteps on the stairs, Mr. Goliadkin immediately changed his new resolve and, just by the way, though maintaining a most resolute air, rang at Krestyan Ivanovich’s door.
Chapter II
KRESTYAN IVANOVICH, doctor of medicine and surgery, quite hale, though already an elderly man, endowed with thick, graying eyebrows and side-whiskers, an expressive, flashing gaze that by itself apparently drove away all illnesses, and, finally, an important decoration, was sitting that morning in his office, in his easy chair, drinking coffee, brought to him with her own hands by his doctoress, smoking a cigar, and from time to time writing prescriptions for his patients. Having prescribed the last vial to a little old man suffering from hemorrhoids and sent the suffering old man off through the side door, Krestyan Ivanovich sat down in expectation of the next visitor. Mr. Goliadkin came in.
Apparently, Krestyan Ivanovich was not in the least expecting, nor did he wish to see, Mr. Goliadkin before him, because he suddenly became confused for a moment, and his face involuntarily acquired a sort of strange, even, one might say, displeased mien.
Since Mr. Goliadkin, for his part, almost always became somehow inappropriately crestfallen and lost at those moments when he happened to abord someone for the sake of his own little affairs, so now, too, not having prepared a first phrase, which was a real stumbling block for him on such occasions, he became considerably embarrassed, murmured something—however, it seems to have been an apology—and, not knowing what to do next, took a chair and sat down.
But, recollecting that he had sat down without being invited, he at once felt his impropriety and hastened to correct his error in ignorance of society and good tone by immediately getting up from the seat he had occupied without being invited.
Then, thinking better of it and dimly noting that he had done two stupid things at once, he ventured, without the least delay, upon a third, that is, he tried to excuse himself, murmured something, smiled, blushed, became embarrassed, fell into an expressive silence, and finally sat down definitively and did not get up anymore, but only provided himself, just in case, with that same defiant gaze, which possessed the extraordinary power of mentally incinerating and grinding to dust all of Mr. Goliadkin’s enemies.
Moreover, this gaze fully expressed Mr. Goliadkin’s independence, that is, it stated clearly that Mr. Goliadkin was quite all right, that he was his own man, like everybody else, and that, in any case, he kept to his own backyard. Krestyan Ivanovich coughed, grunted, apparently as a sign of his approval and agreement to all that, and fixed his inspectorial, questioning gaze on Mr. Goliadkin.
“Krestyan Ivanovich,” Mr. Goliadkin began with a smile, “I have come to trouble you for a second time, and now for a second time I venture to ask your indulgence…” Mr. Goliadkin was obviously struggling for words.
“Hm…yes!” uttered Krestyan Ivanovich, letting out a stream of smoke from his mouth and placing the cigar on the desk, “but you must keep to your prescriptions; I did explain to you that your treatment should consist in a change of habits…Well, diversions; well, and you should visit friends and acquaintances, and along with that be no enemy of the bottle; likewise keep merry company.”
Mr. Goliadkin, still smiling, hastened to observe that it seemed to him that he was like everybody else, that he was his own man, that his diversions were like everybody else’s…that he could, of course, go to the theater, for, like everybody else, he also had means, that he worked during the day, but in the evening was at home, that he was quite all right; he even observed just then, in passing, that, as it seemed to him, he was no worse than others, that he lived at home, in his own apartment, and, finally, that he had Petrushka. Here Mr. Goliadkin faltered.
“Hm, no, that’s not the right order, and it’s not at all what I wanted to ask you. I’m generally interested to know whether you are a great lover of merry company, whether you spend your time merrily…Well, I mean, do you continue now in a melancholy or a merry way of life?”
“Krestyan Ivanovich, I…”
“Hm…I’m saying,” the doctor interrupted, “that you need to reorganize your whole life radically and in some sense break your character.” (Krestyan Ivanovich strongly emphasized the word “break” and paused for a moment with a very significant air.) “Not to shun the merry life; to frequent the theater and the club, and in any case be no enemy of the bottle. Staying at home is no good…staying at home is impossible for you.”
“I, Krestyan Ivanovich, love quiet,” said Mr. Goliadkin, casting a significant glance at Krestyan Ivanovich
