Part 2, Chapter 4 — the dinner

The Hôtel de Paris. The Underground Man, having spent the morning in alternating panic and fantasy, arrives at the tavern at five o'clock — an hour before the dinner. He has misread the time. The room has not been set. He sits in it for an hour by himself. The others arrive at six: Zverkov first, in the centre of the group, friendly in the slightly condescending register of a healthy man being kind to a sick one; Simonov, Ferfichkin, Trudolyubov behind him. They are surprised to find the Underground Man already in the room. The evening starts wrong and never recovers.

Through the dinner the Underground Man drinks too much. He tries to be ironic; he sounds petulant. He tries to needle Zverkov; Zverkov barely responds. He delivers, at one point, a speech full of contempt — for Zverkov's career, for the table, for Petersburg — that no one answers. He challenges Ferfichkin to a duel; Ferfichkin laughs at him; the others change the subject. He paces around the table while the others, now ignoring him entirely, go on with their conversation as if he had left. He drinks more. He hates them. He hates himself for being there. He cannot leave because leaving would be the final admission of his irrelevance.

Near eleven the others decide to continue the evening at a brothel. Zverkov is friendly enough to invite the Underground Man along, though no one expects him to come. The Underground Man has no money; he cannot bear to be left behind. He borrows six roubles from Simonov on the spot. He follows them out into the wet snow. He has produced, by his own engineering, the evening he foresaw the night before, including the part where he is unable to stop himself from making it worse.