“Fate, destiny, Yakov Petrovich!…But let’s leave all that,” Mr. Goliadkin Jr. said with a sigh. “Better let’s use the brief moments of our encounter in more useful and pleasant conversation, as befits two colleagues…Really, I somehow haven’t managed to exchange two words with you all this time…I’m not to blame for it, Yakov Petrovich…”
“Neither am I,” our hero warmly interrupted, “neither am I! My heart tells me, Yakov Petrovich, that I am not to blame for all this. Let’s blame destiny for it, Yakov Petrovich,” Mr. Goliadkin Sr. added in a completely conciliatory tone. His voice gradually began to weaken and tremble.
“Well, so? How’s your health generally?” the wayward one asked in a sweet voice.
“I have a slight cough,” our hero replied still more sweetly.
“Take care of yourself. There are these infections going around, it’s easy to catch a quinsy, and, I confess to you, I’m beginning to wrap myself in flannel.”
“Indeed, Yakov Petrovich, it is easy to catch a quinsy, sir…Yakov Petrovich!” our hero said after a meek pause. “Yakov Petrovich! I see that I was mistaken…I have a fond memory of those happy minutes we managed to pass under my poor but, I dare say, hospitable roof…”
“However, that is not what you wrote in your letter,” the perfectly fair (perfectly fair, however, solely in this respect) Mr. Goliadkin Jr. said partly in reproach.
“Yakov Petrovich! I was mistaken…I now see clearly that I was also mistaken in that unfortunate letter of mine. Yakov Petrovich, I am ashamed to look at you, Yakov Petrovich, you won’t believe me…Give me that letter so that I can tear it up before your eyes, Yakov Petrovich, or if that is absolutely impossible, I implore you to read it the other way round—quite the other way round, that is, with a deliberately friendly intention, giving the contrary sense to all the words of my letter. I was mistaken. Forgive me, Yakov Petrovich, I was totally…I was grievously mistaken, Yakov Petrovich.”
“You were saying?” Mr. Goliadkin Sr.’s perfidious friend asked rather absentmindedly and indifferently.
“I was saying that I was totally mistaken, Yakov Petrovich, and that, for my part, without any false shame, I…”
“Ah, well, good! It’s very good that you were mistaken,” Mr. Goliadkin Jr. replied rudely.
“I even had the idea, Yakov Petrovich,” our candid hero added in a noble fashion, totally oblivious of the terrible perfidy of his false friend, “I even had the idea that, say, here two perfect likenesses have been created…”
“Ah, so that’s your idea!…”
Here Mr. Goliadkin Jr., known for his uselessness, got up and seized his hat. Still failing to notice the deceit, Mr. Goliadkin Sr. also got up, smiling simple-heartedly and nobly to his pseudo-friend, trying, in his innocence, to be gentle, to encourage him, and thus to strike up a new friendship with him…
“Good-bye, Your Excellency!” Mr. Goliadkin Jr. suddenly cried out. Our hero shuddered, noticing something even bacchic in his enemy’s face and, solely to be rid of him, thrust two fingers of his hand into the hand the immoral man held out to him; but here…here the shamelessness of Mr. Goliadkin Jr. went beyond all degree. Having seized the two fingers of Mr. Goliadkin Sr.’s hand and pressed them first, the unworthy man straightaway, before Mr. Goliadkin’s eyes, ventured to repeat his shameless morning joke. The measure of human patience was exhausted…
He was already putting the handkerchief with which he had wiped his fingers into his pocket when Mr. Goliadkin Sr. came to his senses and rushed after him into the next room, where, as was his nasty habit, his implacable enemy had at once hastened to slip away. Cool as a cucumber, he was standing at the counter eating little pies and, like a virtuous man, quite calmly paying court to the German pastry cook. “Impossible in front of ladies,” thought our hero, and he also went up to the counter, beside himself with agitation.
“Not a bad-looking wench, in fact! What do you think?” Mr. Goliadkin Jr. began his indecent escapades anew, probably counting on Mr. Goliadkin’s endless patience. The fat German woman, for her part, looked at both her customers with senseless, tinny eyes, obviously not understanding Russian and smiling affably.
Our hero flared up like fire at the words of the shameless Mr. Goliadkin Jr. and, losing all control, finally hurled himself at him with the obvious intention of tearing him to pieces and thus having done with him definitively, but Mr. Goliadkin Jr., as was his mean custom, was already far away: he had taken to his heels, he was already on the porch.
It goes without saying, of course, that after the first momentary stupe-faction, which naturally came over Mr. Goliadkin Sr., he recovered and rushed headlong after his offender, who was already getting into a waiting cab, whose driver was obviously in full complicity with him. But at that same moment the fat German woman, seeing the flight of the two customers, shrieked and rang the bell with all her might.
Our hero turned back almost on the wing, threw her money for himself and the shameless, unpaying man, not asking for change, and, despite this delay, still managed—though, again, only on the wing—to catch up with his adversary. Clinging to the droshky’s mudguard with all the means granted him by nature, our hero went racing down the street for a time, trying to scramble into the carriage, which Mr. Goliadkin Jr. defended with all his might.
Meanwhile the cabby, with whip and reins and foot and words, urged on his broken-down nag, who quite unexpectedly went into a gallop, taking the bit in her teeth and kicking up her hind legs, as was her nasty habit, at every third stride. Finally our hero somehow managed to hoist himself into the droshky, face to his adversary, back leaning against the cabby, his knees to the shameless fellow’s knees, and with his right hand clutching as best he could the rather shabby fur collar of his depraved and most bitter enemy’s overcoat…
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,
