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try to splash me with a … cid … just you try …’
    And the suit hiccuped.
    But the stranger stood still, shaken by all he had heard:
    ‘They’re going to?…’
    ‘Throw?…’
    ‘At Abl …’
    ‘Oh no: they’re not going to …’
    While all round the whisper began:
    ‘Soon …’
    And then again from the rear:
    ‘It’s time …’
    And having disappeared round the crossroads, there came from another crossroads:
    ‘It’s time … pravo , indeed it is …’
    The stranger heard not pravo (indeed) but provo - and himself completed the word:
    ‘Provo-cation?!’
    Provocation began to go on a spree along the Nevsky.Provocation altered the sense of all the words that had been heard: with provocation did it endow the innocent ‘indeed’; while it turned ‘I bloody wish’ into the devil knew what:
    ‘At Abl …’
    And the stranger thought:
    ‘At Ableukhov.’
    He had simply of his own accord attached the preposition ‘at’: by the appendage of the letter a and the letter t an innocent verbal fragment had been changed into a fragment of dreadful content; and what was most important: it was the stranger who had attached the preposition.
    The provocation, consequently, lay in him; and he was running away from it: running away – from himself.He was his own shadow.
    O Russian people, Russian people!
    Do not admit the crowds of flickering shadows from the island: stealthily those shadows penetrate into your corporeal abodes; they penetrate from there into the nooks and crannies of your souls: you become the shadows of the wreathed, flying mists: those mists have been flying from time immemorial out of the end of the earth: out of the leaden spaces of the wave-seething Baltic; into the fog from time immemorial the crushing mouths of the cannons have stared.
    At twelve o’clock, in accordance with tradition, a hollow cannonshot solemnly filled Saint Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire: all the mists were broken and all the shadows were scattered.
    Only my shadow – the elusive young man – was not shaken and was not diffused by the shot, completing his run to the Neva without hindrance.Suddenly my stranger’s sensitive ear heard behind his back an ecstatic whisper:
    ‘It’s the Elusive One!’
    ‘Look – it’s the Elusive One!’
    ‘How brave he is!…’
    And when, unmasked, he turned his island face, he saw steadily fixed on him the little eyes of two poorly dressed coursistes …
    Oh, You Be Quiet!…
    ‘ Býby … byby …’
    Thus did the man at the small table thunder: a man of enormous dimensions; he was stuffing a piece of yellow salmon into his mouth and, as he choked, shouting out incomprehensible words.He seemed to be shouting:
    ‘ Vy – by … (You should …)’
    But what was heard was:
    ‘ Bý – by …’
    And a company of emaciated men in lounge-suits was beginning to squeal:
    ‘A- ah -ha-ha, ah -ha-ha!…’
    A Petersburg street in autumn permeates the whole organism: chills the marrow and tickles the shuddering backbone; but as soon as you come from it into some warm premises, the Petersburg street runs in your veins like a fever.The quality of this street was experienced now by the stranger as he entered a rather dirty hallway, stuffed tight: with black, blue, grey and yellow coats, devil-may-care caps, lop-eared ones, dock-tailed ones and every possible kind of galosh.One felt a warm dampness; in the air hung a white vapour: the vapour of pancake smell.
    Having received the numbered metal tag for his overcoat, a tagthat burned the palm of his hand, the raznochinets with the pair of moustaches at last entered the hall …
    ‘A-a-a …’
    At first the voices deafened him.
    ‘Cra-aa-yfish … aaa … ah -ha-ha …’
    ‘You see, you see, you see …’
    ‘You’re not saying …’
    ‘Em-em-em …’
    ‘And vodka …’
    ‘But for goodness’ sake … But come now … But there must be something wrong …’
    All this threw itself in his face, while behind his