“No, my friend, nobody’s calling me. You’re mistaken. I’ll say more: you were also mistaken earlier today when you assured me…made so bold as to assure me, I say” (Mr. Goliadkin raised his voice), “that Olsufy Ivanovich, my benefactor from time immemorial, who in a certain sense has taken the place of a father for me, would close his door to me at a moment of familial and festive joy for his parental heart.” (Mr. Goliadkin looked around self-contentedly, but with deep feeling. Tears welled up in his eyes.) “I repeat, my friend,” our hero concluded, “you were mistaken, you were cruelly, unforgivably mistaken…”
It was a solemn moment. Mr. Goliadkin felt that the effect was most certain. Mr. Goliadkin stood modestly looking down and waiting for Olsufy Ivanovich’s embrace. Agitation and perplexity could be noticed among the guests; even the un-flinching and awesome Gerasimych faltered at the word “Doubtful, sir”…when suddenly out of the blue the merciless orchestra struck up a polka. All was lost, all was blown to the winds. Mr. Goliadkin shuddered, Gerasimych drew back, everything that was in the room billowed up like the sea, and Vladimir Semyonovich was already flying in the lead couple with Klara Olsufyevna, and the handsome lieutenant with Princess Chevchekhanov.
Onlookers crowded around with curiosity and delight to watch them dancing the polka—a new, interesting, fashionable dance that had turned everyone’s head. Mr. Goliadkin was forgotten for a while.
But suddenly everything roused, stirred, bustled; the music stopped…a strange incident had occurred. Wearied by the dancing, Klara Olsufyevna, barely able to breathe from exhaustion, her cheeks aflame and her breast heaving deeply, finally fell strengthless into an armchair.
All hearts strained towards the lovely enchantress, everyone hastened to be the first to greet her and thank her for the pleasure she had given—suddenly Mr. Goliadkin appeared before her. Mr. Goliadkin was pale, extremely upset; he also seemed somehow strengthless, he could barely move. He smiled for some reason, he reached out his hand imploringly.
In her amazement, Klara Olsufyevna had no time to draw her hand back and mechanically stood up at Mr. Goliadkin’s invitation. Mr. Goliadkin swayed forward, first one time, then another, then raised his foot, then somehow shuffled, then somehow stamped, then stumbled…he also wanted to dance with Klara Olsufyevna. Klara Olsufyevna cried out; everyone rushed to free her hand from the hand of Mr. Goliadkin, and all at once our hero was shoved nearly ten paces away by the crowd. Around him a little circle also grouped itself.
Shrieking and crying came from two old women whom Mr. Goliadkin had nearly knocked down in his retreat. The commotion was terrible; everything questioned, everything cried out, everything argued. The orchestra fell silent.
Our hero turned around within his little circle and mechanically, partly smiling, muttered something to himself, that, say, “why not,” and, say, “the polka, as it seemed to him at least, was a new and highly interesting dance, made to humor the ladies…but if it came to that, then he was perhaps ready to agree.” But it seemed no one was asking for Mr. Goliadkin’s agreement.
Our hero felt someone’s hand suddenly fall on his arm, another hand rested lightly on his back, and with a special solicitousness he was directed somewhere to the side. Finally he noticed that he was heading straight for the door. Mr. Goliadkin wanted to say something, to do something…But no, he no longer wanted anything.
He merely laughed it off mechanically. Finally he felt that an overcoat was being put on him, that a hat was being pulled over his eyes; he finally felt himself in the hallway, in the dark and cold, and finally on the stairs. Finally, he stumbled, it seemed to him that he was falling into an abyss; he was about to cry out—and suddenly found himself in the yard.
Fresh air breathed on him, he paused for a minute; at that same moment the sounds reached him of the orchestra striking up anew. Mr. Goliadkin suddenly remembered everything; it seemed that all his sagging strength came back to him. He tore from the spot where he had been standing till then as if rooted, and rushed headlong away, anywhere, into the air, into freedom, wherever his legs would carry him…
Chapter V
IN ALL THE PETERSBURG towers that displayed and struck the hour, it struck midnight exactly as Mr. Goliadkin, beside himself, ran out to the embankment of the Fontanka just next to the Izmailovsky Bridge, fleeing from his enemies, from persecutions, from the shower of flicks hanging over him, from the cries of alarmed old women, from ladies’ ah’s and oh’s, and from the destructive gazes of Andrei Filippovich. Mr. Goliadkin was destroyed—fully destroyed, in the full sense of the word, and if at the present moment he retained the ability to run, it was solely by some sort of miracle, a miracle in which he himself, finally, refused to believe.
It was a terrible November night—wet, foggy, rainy, snowy, fraught with fluxes, colds, agues, anginas, fevers of all possible sorts and kinds, in short, with all the gifts of a Petersburg November. The wind howled in the deserted streets, heaving the black water of the Fontanka higher than the mooring rings and perkily brushing up against the skinny streetlamps of the embankment, which in their turn seconded its howling with a thin, shrill creaking, which made up an endless, squeaking, rattling concert, quite familiar to every inhabitant of Petersburg.
Rain and snow fell at once. Streams of rainwater, broken up by the wind, sprayed almost horizontally, as if from a fire hose, and pricked and lashed at the wretched Mr. Goliadkin’s face like thousands of pins and needles.
Amid the night’s silence, broken only by the distant rumble of carriages, the howling of the wind, and the creaking of the streetlamps, the splashing and burbling water pouring down from all the roofs, porches, gutters, and eaves onto the granite pavement of the sidewalks had a dismal sound. There was not a soul either near or far, nor did it seem there could be at such an hour and in such weather. Thus only Mr. Goliadkin, alone with his despair, trotted just then along the sidewalk of the Fontanka with his usual small and quick step, hurrying to reach as soon as possible his Shestilavochnaya Street, his fourth floor, his own apartment.
Though the snow, the rain, and all that does not even have a name when blizzard and blackness break loose under the November sky of Petersburg, at one blow suddenly attacked Mr. Goliadkin, destroyed by his misfortunes even without that, granting him not the slightest mercy or respite, chilling him to the bone, gluing his eyes shut, blowing from all sides, knocking him off his path and out of his last wits, though it all poured at once onto Mr. Goliadkin, as if purposely cooperating and agreeing with all his enemies to make a fine day and evening and night of it for him—despite all that, Mr. Goliadkin remained almost insensible to this ultimate proof of fate’s persecution: so strongly had he been shaken and shocked by all that had happened to him a few minutes earlier at State Councillor Berendeev’s! If some stranger, some disinterested observer, had merely glanced from the side now at Mr. Goliadkin’s dreary course, even he would have been pervaded at once by all the terrible horror of his misfortunes and would surely have said that Mr. Goliadkin looked as if he wanted to hide somewhere from himself, as if he wanted to escape somewhere from himself.
Yes, it really was so! We will say more: Mr. Goliadkin now wanted not only to escape from himself, but to annihilate himself completely, to be no more, to turn to dust. In the present moments he paid heed to nothing around him, understood nothing that was going on around him, and looked as if indeed neither the unpleasantness of the foul night, nor the long way, the rain, the snow, the wind, nor all this harsh weather existed for him.
A galosh that came off the boot on Mr. Goliadkin’s right foot simply stayed there in the mud and snow on the Fontanka sidewalk, and Mr. Goliadkin neither thought of going back for it nor noticed its loss.
He was so bewildered that several times, suddenly, in spite of everything around him, totally pervaded by the idea of his recent terrible fall, he would stop motionless, like a post, in the middle of the sidewalk at those moments he died, vanished; then suddenly he would tear himself furiously from the spot and run, run without looking back, as if escaping from someone’s pursuit, from some still more terrible calamity…Indeed, his situation was terrible!…Finally, at the end of his strength, Mr. Goliadkin stopped, leaned on the rail of the embankment in the position of a man who suddenly, quite unexpectedly, has a nose bleed, and began gazing intently at the muddy black water of the Fontanka. It is not known precisely how much time he spent in this occupation.
It is known only that at that moment Mr. Goliadkin reached such despair, was so broken, so tormented, so exhausted and sagging in what remained of his spirit, which was weak to begin with, that he forgot everything—the Izmailovsky Bridge, and Shestilavochnaya Street, and his present…But what of it, in fact? It was all the same to him the thing was done, finished, the decision was signed and sealed; what was it to him?…Suddenly…suddenly he shuddered all over and involuntarily jumped aside a couple of steps.
In inexplicable alarm, he began to look
