In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened, at which he wept and made a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would have been impossible.
When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as “Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, and whether he had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it.
The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him; they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he exclaimed:
“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”
And there was something strange in these words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was something in it which stirred one’s pity; so that, in fact, a young man, only recently appointed, who, following the example of others, permitted himself to make fun of him, suddenly stopped short, like one stunned, and from that time everything seemed to him to undergo as it were a transformation and to assume a new aspect. Some invisible power repelled him from his companions, with whom he had become acquainted on the assumption that they were well-bred, estimable men. And for a long time afterward, even in his merriest moments, there appeared before his eye the little official with the bald forehead, and his penetrating words: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” And in these touching words other words resounded: “I am thy brother!” At this thought the young man would cover his face with his hands, and many a time later in the course of his life he shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage uncouthness hidden under the delicate and cultivated worldliness, and, oh, God! even in the man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and honest.
It would be no easy matter to find another man who attended so faithfully to his duties. It is not enough to say that he labored with zeal; no, he labored with love. This copying presented to him a sufficiently varied and agreeable existence. Enjoyment showed on his face; he had his favorites among the letters, and when they came his way he was not himself; he would smile, wink, and work his lips, so that by looking at his face it seemed that you could read every letter which his pen put down. Were he rewarded according to the measure of his ardor, he would, to his own astonishment, have been made even a councillor of state. But his companions had their little joke about his work.
It would be untrue to say that no attention was paid him. One kindly director, wishing to reward him for his long service, ordered him to be given something more dignified to do than mere copying; namely, he was requested to draw up some sort of report to another office of an already concluded affair; all that he was required to do was to change the heading, and to alter certain words from the first to the third person. This entailed him such labor that he began to perspire, to wipe his forehead, saying finally, “No, better give me copying.” From that time on he was let alone in his copying. Aside from this copying, nothing seemed to exist for him.
He gave no thought to his dress. His uniform was not green, but rather a reddish-mealy color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck, though not really long, seemed inordinately long as it projected from the collar, quite like the necks of the plaster cats with wagging heads that one sees carried upon the heads of foreign peddlers. And something always clung to his uniform; it was a bit of straw, or perhaps a thread. Besides, he had the unfortunate tendency, while walking in the street, to go past a window precisely at the moment when they threw out of it all kinds of rubbish; hence he always carried about on his hat pieces of melon-rind and articles of a similar nature. Not once in his life did he direct his attention upon what was happening daily in the street—quite unlike his colleague, the young official, whose glance was sufficiently far-reaching and keen to observe when any one’s trouser-straps became undone on the opposite sidewalk, which always called forth upon his face a smile of gratification. But Akaki Akakievich, when he happened to look at all, saw in everything only the clear, even strokes of his written lines, and only when, from goodness knows where, a horse’s head suddenly popped over his shoulder and sent a whole gust of wind from its nostrils into his face, did he begin to notice that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of the street.
On arriving home, he would sit down immediately at the table, gulp down quickly his cabbage-soup, eat a piece of meat with onion without noticing their taste, consuming everything—together with flies or anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.
Becoming conscious of the swelling of his stomach, he would rise from the table, take down a bottle of ink, and begin to copy papers which he had brought home. If such were wanting, he had the habit of making a special copy for his personal gratification, particularly if the paper happened to be remarkable, not indeed so much on account of the beauty of its style, but of its being addressed to some new or important person.