Olsufy Ivanovitch’s flat is the setting of Yakov Petrovitch Golyadkin’s last ordeal: the place where he once waited in concealment becomes a stage on which he is exposed to a watching crowd and led away. Its rooms and thresholds give his private hope of shelter a public, inescapable ending.

Setting and Recalled Hideaway

The flat is associated with both the scandal at Olsufy Ivanovitch’s last ball and an earlier attempt by Golyadkin to remain unnoticed. In a back entry, between a cupboard and an old screen, he had once stood for two hours among domestic odds and ends and useless litter. The hiding place matters because, when he returns to the house, he remembers it as a possible snug corner in which to wait privately. Yet he also knows the location may now be marked and guarded after the scandal. The flat thus holds the memory of concealment while making clear that concealment cannot simply be repeated.

The remembered corner is not merely practical shelter. Golyadkin imagines that he must wait for a signal from Klara Olsufyevna, as if the expected message belonged to the conventions of a romantic novel. He recalls a heroine tying a pink ribbon to a window, then rejects the device as unsuitable to the damp, unreliable Petersburg night. The house’s windows consequently have two meanings in his thoughts: they are possible sources of a sign meant for him, and, later, the openings through which the people inside discover him.

The Yard and the Windows

After being expelled from the house, Golyadkin waits in its yard for two hours, exhausted and soaked through. His heavy greatcoat weighs on his legs; water streams from the brim of his round hat. Near a heap of logs, he tries to sit on a thick clump of wood and considers shelter in a corner that might be private, if not warm. The material details of the yard—wet clothing, wood, and the exposed space outside the rooms—make his need for protection concrete, while his improvised refuge is too incomplete to hide him.

He first understands himself as an outsider with no responsibility for what is happening inside. Reassured by this thought, he creeps back beneath the shelter of a woodstack and watches the windows. The change from hiding place to lookout briefly lets him observe the house without entering it. Then figures gather at the windows, curtains are drawn back, and groups crowd forward to peer into the yard. Golyadkin realizes that the search is directed at him. The woodstack’s shadow does not cover him completely; when he presses himself against it, the shelter that had promised concealment instead frames his exposure.

The people at the windows wave, nod, call, and open the windows to shout. Golyadkin responds by muttering about the girls, but his attempt to explain their behavior does not alter the situation. The house has become a collective gaze: many people see him at once, while he has nowhere in the yard from which to disappear. Its windows connect the private interior to the exposed yard and turn observation into an act that summons him back inside.

From Threshold to Drawing Room

Golyadkin junior descends the steps to meet him, bareheaded and without a greatcoat, rubbing his hands and capering with apparent delight. Golyadkin senior says he would rather go home, but his double refuses and drags him towards the steps. Because everyone is looking at them, resistance seems impossible; Golyadkin goes without knowing what is being done with him. The entrance is therefore not a voluntary return to the flat but a passage under pressure, with the crowd’s attention making refusal feel futile.

Inside, the drawing room and all the other rooms are full to overflowing. Pale, dishevelled, and harassed, Golyadkin scans the crowd as people press around him and force him in one direction. He fears they are taking him to the door, but they lead him instead to Olsufy Ivanovitch’s easy chair. Klara Olsufyevna stands beside it in a pale, melancholy manner, dressed magnificently, with a white flower in her hair; on the other side stands Vladimir Semyonovitch in black, wearing his new order. Golyadkin junior adopts an air of decorum, to Golyadkin’s immense relief, while Andrey Filippovitch stands solemnly nearby. The crowded interior gathers the people associated with Golyadkin’s social disgrace around the chair and directs his movement through the room.

The Stairs and Removal

The flat’s final role is to provide the route from public display to removal. Golyadkin junior identifies Krestyan Ivanovitch Rutenspitz as Golyadkin’s old acquaintance, then takes a candle and leads the way. The party rushes after them, repeating assurances that the doctor is an old friend. On the brightly lit stairs, Golyadkin finds another crowd; the front door is thrown open, and outside a carriage with four impatiently snorting horses waits. His double bounds down and opens its door, while Krestyan Ivanovitch gestures for Golyadkin to get in. Other people are ready to help him, so the movement is carried out by the assembled group rather than by any stated decision of his own.

Before entering the carriage, Golyadkin looks back. The entire illuminated staircase is crowded with onlookers, and Olsufy Ivanovitch sits in his easy chair on the top landing, watching with deep interest. The crowd waits; when Golyadkin continues looking back, a murmur of impatience passes through it. His desperate concern is that he has done nothing reprehensible that could warrant severity or public attention in his official relations. Talk rises around him, heads shake, and tears come to his eyes. The flat, from yard to upper landing, has converted his attempt to wait unseen into a scene of collective scrutiny and escort. Its doors and stairs do not offer an escape route: they carry him from the exposed yard, through the crowded rooms, and out towards the carriage in which Krestyan Ivanovitch takes him away.