Part 2, Chapter 8 — the morning of the war with Apollon

It was some time before I consented to recognize that truth. So the chapter opens. The Underground Man wakes the next day already trying to convince himself that the entire Liza episode had been an aberration — a lapse into "womanish hysteria" — and that he should simply forget about her and return to his ordinary dreaming life. He decides, first, to repay his debt to Simonov. He goes to Anton Antonovitch and borrows fifteen roubles, which Anton lends him without question. He signs the IOU with a swaggering air and tells Anton, complacently, that the previous night's dinner had gone splendidly. The lie is delivered without effort.

He returns home. The flat is, as ever, the flat. The dressing gown, the candle stub, the boxes of frippery. Apollon, his elderly servant, has not been paid the wages owed to him for the previous month. The war with Apollon over the wages — petty, repetitive, intolerable — has been running for weeks. The Underground Man's strategy is to refuse to hand over the wages until Apollon explicitly asks for them; Apollon's strategy is never to ask, and to perform every duty with such pointed contempt that the master is reminded, every minute of the day, who is being humiliated.

On this particular morning the war reaches its loudest point. The Underground Man, in his dressing gown, screams at Apollon in the parlour. Apollon, immobile, will not respond. The Underground Man works himself into a high theatrical fury. The shouting is at its peak when the bell rings. He goes to the door without thinking, with the dressing gown half-tied and his face still flushed. Liza is standing on the landing. She has come, three days late, in a plain dress and shawl, having walked in the snow. She has caught him at the worst possible moment of his actual life.