Part 2, Chapter 5 — into the wet snow

The chapter is short, frantic, and one of the strangest passages in the book. The Underground Man runs out of the Hôtel de Paris after the Zverkov party. So this is it, this is it at last — contact with real life, he mutters to himself as he runs headlong downstairs. He has been quoting himself at himself for half a chapter and he is not done. You're a scoundrel, a thought flashes through his mind, if you laugh at this now. No matter, he cries, answering himself. Now everything is lost! The doubling — speaking to himself in two voices at once, and meaning both — is exactly the move Part 1 was diagnosing in the abstract.

He flags down a sledge in the snow. He has the six roubles he just borrowed from Simonov. The driver names six roubles as the fare. The Underground Man hands him the money without arguing. He has, in a single gesture, spent the last money he had on a pursuit he is not certain he can complete. The wet snow falls steadily; the streets are empty; the sledge slides through the dark. He works himself, on the way, into a fantasy in which he will arrive at the brothel, find Zverkov, slap him across the face, and challenge him to a duel.

He arrives at the brothel after the others. He cannot find the Zverkov party. He stands in the entrance hall, drunk, the wet snow melting off his coat onto the floor. The mistress of the house meets him. Behind her, a young woman appears in a doorway. She is twenty, pale, watching him. The Underground Man understands that the evening, having lost its ostensible target, has just acquired a new one. The young woman in the doorway is Liza.