Part 2, Chapter 2 — the officer on the Nevsky

The chapter recounts a story sixteen years old at the time of the writing. One night, in a billiard room he had wandered into out of boredom, the Underground Man got in the way of an officer of the line — a tall man, healthy, in uniform — who, without breaking stride, picked him up by the shoulders and silently moved him out of the way. The officer did not say anything. He did not look at him. He had a man to see at another table and the Underground Man was a piece of furniture between him and it.

The Underground Man went home and could not sleep. The episode took on, in retrospect, the proportions of a defining humiliation. He began to follow the officer at a distance on the Nevsky. He learned his habits, his hours, the times he walked. He decided that he would, one day, walk down the Nevsky in the opposite direction at the same time as the officer, and refuse to step aside. The collision would be the retaliation. To prepare, he had to dress respectably enough that the officer would feel obliged to notice him as an equal. He borrowed money — fifteen roubles — and bought a beaver-collared overcoat and new gloves and decent boots.

Eventually he engineered the encounter. He saw the officer approaching on the Nevsky at the right hour. He squared his shoulders. He walked straight at him. They collided — slightly. The officer barely registered the contact. He did not pause. The Underground Man went on, shaking, and went home, and lived the rest of the day in a private exhilaration. The officer did not, then or ever, notice that anything had happened. Dostoevsky has supplied the first long demonstration of how completely the Underground Man's enemies live in his head.