บทที่ บทที่ 1 · 美丽新世界
Part 2. , as it seems only part of Part II survived the adventures
described in the introduction. Where the text notes that pages are
missing from the “original”, this refers to the Russian original, not
the translation.
All the foreign words were italicised in the original, a style not
preserved here. Accents and diphthongs have also been left out.
INTRODUCTION
Dead Souls, first published in 1842, is the great prose classic of
Russia. That amazing institution, “the Russian novel,” not only began
its career with this unfinished masterpiece by Nikolai Vasil’evich
Gogol, but practically all the Russian masterpieces that have come since
have grown out of it, like the limbs of a single tree. Dostoieffsky
goes so far as to bestow this tribute upon an earlier work by the same
author, a short story entitled The Cloak; this idea has been wittily
expressed by another compatriot, who says: “We have all issued out of
Gogol’s Cloak.”
Dead Souls, which bears the word “Poem” upon the title page of the
original, has been generally compared to Don Quixote and to the Pickwick
Papers, while E. M. Vogue places its author somewhere between Cervantes
and Le Sage. However considerable the influences of Cervantes and
Dickens may have been--the first in the matter of structure, the other
in background, humour, and detail of characterisation--the predominating
and distinguishing quality of the work is undeniably something foreign
to both and quite peculiar to itself; something which, for want of
a better term, might be called the quality of the Russian soul. The
English reader familiar with the works of Dostoieffsky, Turgenev, and
Tolstoi, need hardly be told what this implies; it might be defined in
the words of the French critic just named as “a tendency to pity.” One
might indeed go further and say that it implies a certain tolerance of
one’s characters even though they be, in the conventional sense, knaves,
products, as the case might be, of conditions or circumstance, which
after all is the thing to be criticised and not the man. But pity and
tolerance are rare in satire, even in clash with it, producing in the
result a deep sense of tragic humour. It is this that makes of Dead
Souls a unique work, peculiarly Gogolian, peculiarly Russian, and
distinct from its author’s Spanish and English masters.
Still more profound are the contradictions to be seen in the author’s
personal character; and unfortunately they prevented him from completing
his work. The trouble is that he made his art out of life, and when in
his final years he carried his struggle, as Tolstoi did later, back into
life, he repented of all he had written, and in the frenzy of a wakeful
night burned all his manuscripts, including the second part of Dead
Souls, only fragments of which were saved. There was yet a third part to
be written. Indeed, the second part had been written and burned twice.
Accounts differ as to why he had burned it finally. Religious remorse,
fury at adverse criticism, and despair at not reaching ideal perfection
are among the reasons given. Again it is said that he had destroyed the
manuscript with the others inadvertently.
The poet Pushkin, who said of Gogol that “behind his laughter you feel
the unseen tears,” was his chief friend and inspirer. It was he who
suggested the plot of Dead Souls as well as the plot of the earlier work
The Revisor, which is almost the only comedy in Russian. The importance
of both is their introduction of the social element in Russian
literature, as Prince Kropotkin points out. Both hold up the mirror
to Russian officialdom and the effects it has produced on the national
character. The plot of Dead Souls is simple enough, and is said to have
been suggested by an actual episode.
It was the day of serfdom in Russia, and a man’s standing was often
judged by the numbers of “souls” he possessed. There was a periodical
census of serfs, say once every ten or twenty years. This being the
case, an owner had to pay a tax on every “soul” registered at the
last census, though some of the serfs might have died in the meantime.
Nevertheless, the system had its material advantages, inasmuch as an
owner might borrow money from a bank on the “dead souls” no less than
on the living ones. The plan of Chichikov, Gogol’s hero-villain, was
therefore to make a journey through Russia and buy up the “dead souls,”
at reduced rates of course, saving their owners the government tax,
and acquiring for himself a list of fictitious serfs, which he meant to
mortgage to a bank for a considerable sum. With this money he would buy
an estate and some real life serfs, and make the beginning of a fortune.
Obviously, this plot, which is really no plot at all but merely a ruse
to enable Chichikov to go across Russia in a troika, with Selifan the
coachman as a sort of Russian Sancho Panza, gives Gogol a magnificent
opportunity to reveal his genius as a painter of Russian panorama,
peopled with characteristic native types commonplace enough but drawn in
comic relief. “The comic,” explained the author yet at the beginning of
his career, “is hidden everywhere, only living in the midst of it we are
not conscious of it; but if the artist brings it into his art, on the
stage say, we shall roll about with laughter and only wonder we did not
notice it before.” But the comic in Dead Souls is merely external. Let
us see how Pushkin, who loved to laugh, regarded the work. As Gogol read
it aloud to him from the manuscript the poet grew more and more gloomy
and at last cried out: “God! What a sad country Russia is!” And later he
said of it: “Gogol invents nothing; it is the simple truth, the terrible
truth.”
The work on one hand was received as nothing less than an exposure of
all Russia--what would foreigners think of it? The liberal elements,
however, the critical Belinsky among them, welcomed it as a revelation,
as an omen of a freer future. Gogol, who had meant to do a service to
Russia and not to heap ridicule upon her, took the criticisms of the
Slavophiles to heart; and he palliated his critics by promising to bring
about in the succeeding parts of his novel the redemption of Chichikov
and the other “knaves and blockheads.” But the “Westerner” Belinsky
and others of the liberal camp were mistrustful. It was about this time
(1847) that Gogol published his Correspondence with Friends, and aroused
a literary controversy that is alive to this day. Tolstoi is to be found
among his apologists.
Opinions as to the actual significance of Gogol’s masterpiece differ.
Some consider the author a realist who has drawn with meticulous detail
a picture of Russia; others, Merejkovsky among them, see in him a great
symbolist; the very title Dead Souls is taken to describe the living of
Russia as well as its dead. Chichikov himself is now generally regarded
as a universal character. We find an American professor, William Lyon
Phelps [1], of Yale, holding the opinion that “no one can travel far in
America without meeting scores of Chichikovs; indeed, he is an accurate
portrait of the American promoter, of the successful commercial
traveller whose success depends entirely not on the real value and
usefulness of his stock-in-trade, but on his knowledge of human nature
and of the persuasive power of his tongue.” This is also the opinion
held by Prince Kropotkin [2], who says: “Chichikov may buy dead
souls, or railway shares, or he may collect funds for some charitable
institution, or look for a position in a bank, but he is an immortal
international type; we meet him everywhere; he is of all lands and of
all times; he but takes different forms to suit the requirements of
nationality and time.”
Again, the work bears an interesting relation to Gogol himself. A
romantic, writing of realities, he was appalled at the commonplaces
of life, at finding no outlet for his love of colour derived from his
Cossack ancestry. He realised that he had drawn a host of “heroes,” “one
more commonplace than another, that there was not a single palliating
circumstance, that there was not a single place where the reader might
find pause to rest and to console himself, and that when he had finished
the book it was as though he had walked out of an oppressive cellar
into the open air.” He felt perhaps inward need to redeem Chichikov;
in Merejkovsky’s opinion he really wanted to save his own soul, but
had succeeded only in losing it. His last years were spent morbidly;
he suffered torments and ran from place to place like one hunted; but
really always running from himself. Rome was his favourite refuge, and
he returned to it again and again. In 1848, he made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, but he could find no peace for his soul. Something of this
mood had reflected itself even much earlier in the Memoirs of a Madman:
“Oh, little mother, save your poor son! Look how they are tormenting
him.... There’s no place for him on earth! He’s being driven!... Oh,
little mother, take pity on thy poor child.”
All the contradictions of Gogol’s character are not to be disposed of
in a brief essay. Such a strange combination of the tragic and the comic
was truly seldom seen in one man. He, for one, realised that “it is
dangerous to jest with laughter.” “Everything that I laughed at became
sad.” “And terrible,” adds Merejkovsky. But earlier his humour was
lighter, less tinged with the tragic; in those days Pushkin never failed
to be amused by what Gogol had brought to read to him. Even Revizor
(1835), with its tragic undercurrent, was a trifle compared to Dead
Souls, so that one is not astonished to hear that not only did the Tsar,
Nicholas I, give permission to have it acted, in spite of its being a
criticism of official rottenness, but laughed uproariously, and led the
applause. Moreover, he gave Gogol a grant of money, and asked that its
source should not be revealed to the author lest “he might feel obliged
to write from the official point of view.”
Gogol was born at Sorotchinetz, Little Russia, in March 1809. He left
college at nineteen and went to St. Petersburg, where he secured a
position as copying clerk in a government department. He did not keep
his position long, yet long enough to store away in his mind a number of
bureaucratic types which proved useful later. He quite suddenly started
for America with money given to him by his mother for another purpose,
but when he got as far as Lubeck he turned back. He then wanted to
become an actor, but his voice proved not strong enough. Later he wrote
a poem which was unkindly received. As the copies remained unsold, he
gathered them all up at the various shops and burned them in his room.
His next effort, Evenings at the Farm of Dikanka (1831) was more
successful. It was a series of gay and colourful pictures of Ukraine,
the land he knew and loved, and if he is occasionally a little over
romantic here and there, he also achieves some beautifully lyrical
passages. Then came another even finer series called Mirgorod, which won
the admiration of Pushkin. Next he planned a “History of Little Russia”
and a “History of the Middle Ages,” this last work to be in eight or
nine volumes. The result of all this study was a beautiful and short
Homeric epic in prose, called Taras Bulba. His appointment to a
professorship in history was a ridiculous episode in his life. After a
brilliant first lecture, in which he had evidently said all he had to
say, he settled to a life of boredom for himself and his pupils. When he
resigned he said joyously: “I am once more a free Cossack.” Between
1834 and 1835 he produced a new series of stories, including his famous
Cloak, which may be regarded as the legitimate beginning of the Russian
novel.
Gogol knew little about women, who played an equally minor role in
his life and in his books. This may be partly because his personal
appearance was not prepossessing. He is described by a contemporary as
“a little man with legs too short for his body. He walked crookedly; he
was clumsy, ill-dressed, and rather ridiculous-looking, with his long
lock of hair flapping on his forehead, and his large prominent nose.”
From 1835 Gogol spent almost his entire time abroad; some strange
unrest--possibly his Cossack blood--possessed him like a demon, and
he never stopped anywhere very long. After his pilgrimage in 1848 to
Jerusalem, he returned to Moscow, his entire possessions in a little
bag; these consisted of pamphlets, critiques, and newspaper articles
mostly inimical to himself. He wandered about with these from house to
house. Everything he had of value he gave away to the poor. He ceased
work entirely. According to all accounts he spent his last days in
praying and fasting. Visions came to him. His death, which came in 1852,
was extremely fantastic. His last words, uttered in a loud frenzy,
were: “A ladder! Quick, a ladder!” This call for a ladder--“a spiritual
ladder,” in the words of Merejkovsky--had been made on an earlier
occasion by a certain Russian saint, who used almost the same language.
“I shall laugh my bitter laugh” [3] was the inscription placed on
Gogol’s grave.
JOHN COURNOS
Evenings on the Farm near the Dikanka, 1829-31; Mirgorod, 1831-33; Taras
Bulba, 1834; Arabesques (includes tales, The Portrait and A Madman’s
Diary), 1831-35; The Cloak, 1835; The Revizor (The Inspector-General),
1836; Dead Souls, 1842; Correspondence with Friends, 1847.
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Cossack Tales (The Night of Christmas Eve, Tarass
Boolba), trans. by G. Tolstoy, 1860; St. John’s Eve and Other Stories,
trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York, Crowell, 1886; Taras Bulba: Also
St. John’s Eve and Other Stories, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Taras Bulba,
trans. by B. C. Baskerville, London, Scott, 1907; The Inspector: a
Comedy, Calcutta, 1890; The Inspector-General, trans. by A. A. Sykes,
London, Scott, 1892; Revizor, trans. for the Yale Dramatic Association
by Max S. Mandell, New Haven, Conn., 1908; Home Life in Russia
(adaptation of Dead Souls), London, Hurst, 1854; Tchitchikoff’s
Journey’s; or Dead Souls, trans. by Isabel F. Hapgood, New York,
Crowell, 1886; Dead Souls, London, Vizetelly, 1887; Dead Souls, London,
Maxwell 1887; Meditations on the Divine Liturgy, trans. by L. Alexeieff,
London, A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1913.
LIVES, etc.: (Russian) Kotlyarevsky (N. A.), 1903; Shenrok (V. I.),
Materials for a Biography, 1892; (French) Leger (L.), Nicholas Gogol,
1914.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS WORK
Second Edition published in 1846
From the Author to the Reader
Reader, whosoever or wheresoever you be, and whatsoever be your
station--whether that of a member of the higher ranks of society or that
of a member of the plainer walks of life--I beg of you, if God shall
have given you any skill in letters, and my book shall fall into your
hands, to extend to me your assistance.
For in the book which lies before you, and which, probably, you have
read in its first edition, there is portrayed a man who is a type taken
from our Russian Empire. This man travels about the Russian land and
meets with folk of every condition--from the nobly-born to the humble
toiler. Him I have taken as a type to show forth the vices and the
failings, rather than the merits and the virtues, of the commonplace
Russian individual; and the characters which revolve around him have
also been selected for the purpose of demonstrating our national
weaknesses and shortcomings. As for men and women of the better sort, I
propose to portray them in subsequent volumes. Probably much of what I
have described is improbable and does not happen as things customarily
happen in Russia; and the reason for that is that for me to learn all
that I have wished to do has been impossible, in that human life is not
sufficiently long to become acquainted with even a hundredth part
of what takes place within the borders of the Russian Empire. Also,
carelessness, inexperience, and lack of time have led to my perpetrating
numerous errors and inaccuracies of detail; with the result that in
every line of the book there is something which calls for correction.
For these reasons I beg of you, my reader, to act also as my corrector.
Do not despise the task, for, however superior be your education, and
however lofty your station, and however insignificant, in your eyes,
my book, and however trifling the apparent labour of correcting and
commenting upon that book, I implore you to do as I have said. And you
too, O reader of lowly education and simple status, I beseech you not to
look upon yourself as too ignorant to be able in some fashion, however
small, to help me. Every man who has lived in the world and mixed with
his fellow men will have remarked something which has remained hidden
from the eyes of others; and therefore I beg of you not to deprive me
of your comments, seeing that it cannot be that, should you read my book
with attention, you will have NOTHING to say at some point therein.
For example, how excellent it would be if some reader who is
sufficiently rich in experience and the knowledge of life to be
acquainted with the sort of characters which I have described herein
would annotate in detail the book, without missing a single page, and
undertake to read it precisely as though, laying pen and paper before
him, he were first to peruse a few pages of the work, and then to recall
his own life, and the lives of folk with whom he has come in contact,
and everything which he has seen with his own eyes or has heard of from
others, and to proceed to annotate, in so far as may tally with his own
experience or otherwise, what is set forth in the book, and to jot down
the whole exactly as it stands pictured to his memory, and, lastly, to
send me the jottings as they may issue from his pen, and to continue
doing so until he has covered the entire work! Yes, he would indeed do
me a vital service! Of style or beauty of expression he would need
to take no account, for the value of a book lies in its truth and its
actuality rather than in its wording. Nor would he need to consider my
feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame or to upbraid
me, or to demonstrate the harm rather than the good which has been
done through any lack of thought or verisimilitude of which I have
been guilty. In short, for anything and for everything in the way of
criticism I should be thankful.
Also, it would be an excellent thing if some reader in the higher walks
of life, some person who stands remote, both by life and by education,
from the circle of folk which I have pictured in my book, but who knows
the life of the circle in which he himself revolves, would undertake to
read my work in similar fashion, and methodically to recall to his mind
any members of superior social classes whom he has met, and carefully to
observe whether there exists any resemblance between one such class and
another, and whether, at times, there may not be repeated in a higher
sphere what is done in a lower, and likewise to note any additional fact
in the same connection which may occur to him (that is to say, any fact
pertaining to the higher ranks of society which would seem to confirm or
to disprove his conclusions), and, lastly, to record that fact as it may
have occurred within his own experience, while giving full details of
persons (of individual manners, tendencies, and customs) and also of
inanimate surroundings (of dress, furniture, fittings of houses, and so
forth). For I need knowledge of the classes in question, which are the
flower of our people. In fact, this very reason--the reason that I do
not yet know Russian life in all its aspects, and in the degree to
which it is necessary for me to know it in order to become a successful
author--is what has, until now, prevented me from publishing any
subsequent volumes of this story.
Again, it would be an excellent thing if some one who is endowed with
the faculty of imagining and vividly picturing to himself the various
situations wherein a character may be placed, and of mentally following
up a character’s career in one field and another--by this I mean some
one who possesses the power of entering into and developing the ideas
of the author whose work he may be reading--would scan each character
herein portrayed, and tell me how each character ought to have acted
at a given juncture, and what, to judge from the beginnings of each
character, ought to have become of that character later, and what new
circumstances might be devised in connection therewith, and what new
details might advantageously be added to those already described.
Honestly can I say that to consider these points against the time when a
new edition of my book may be published in a different and a better form
would give me the greatest possible pleasure.
One thing in particular would I ask of any reader who may be willing to
give me the benefit of his advice. That is to say, I would beg of him
to suppose, while recording his remarks, that it is for the benefit of
a man in no way his equal in education, or similar to him in tastes and
ideas, or capable of apprehending criticisms without full explanation
appended, that he is doing so. Rather would I ask such a reader to
suppose that before him there stands a man of incomparably inferior
enlightenment and schooling--a rude country bumpkin whose life,
throughout, has been passed in retirement--a bumpkin to whom it is
necessary to explain each circumstance in detail, while never forgetting
to be as simple of speech as though he were a child, and at every step
there were a danger of employing terms beyond his understanding. Should
these precautions be kept constantly in view by any reader undertaking
to annotate my book, that reader’s remarks will exceed in weight
and interest even his own expectations, and will bring me very real
advantage.
Thus, provided that my earnest request be heeded by my readers, and
that among them there be found a few kind spirits to do as I desire, the
following is the manner in which I would request them to transmit their
notes for my consideration. Inscribing the package with my name, let
them then enclose that package in a second one addressed either to the
Rector of the University of St. Petersburg or to Professor Shevirev of
the University of Moscow, according as the one or the other of those two
cities may be the nearer to the sender.
Lastly, while thanking all journalists and litterateurs for their
previously published criticisms of my book--criticisms which, in spite
of a spice of that intemperance and prejudice which is common to all
humanity, have proved of the greatest use both to my head and to my
heart--I beg of such writers again to favour me with their reviews. For
in all sincerity I can assure them that whatsoever they may be pleased
to say for my improvement and my instruction will be received by me with
naught but gratitude.
DEAD SOULS
CHAPTER 1
To the door of an inn in the provincial town of N. there drew up a smart
britchka--a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by bachelors,
retired lieutenant-colonels, staff-captains, land-owners possessed of
about a hundred souls, and, in short, all persons who rank as gentlemen
of the intermediate category. In the britchka was seated such a
gentleman--a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not
over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was
not over-young. His arrival produced no stir in the town, and was
accompanied by no particular incident, beyond that a couple of peasants
who happened to be standing at the door of a dramshop exchanged a few
comments with reference to the equipage rather than to the individual
who was seated in it. “Look at that carriage,” one of them said to the
other. “Think you it will be going as far as Moscow?” “I think it will,”
replied his companion. “But not as far as Kazan, eh?” “No, not as far as
Kazan.” With that the conversation ended. Presently, as the britchka was
approaching the inn, it was met by a young man in a pair of very short,
very tight breeches of white dimity, a quasi-fashionable frockcoat, and
a dickey fastened with a pistol-shaped bronze tie-pin. The young man
turned his head as he passed the britchka and eyed it attentively;
after which he clapped his hand to his cap (which was in danger of being
removed by the wind) and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the
inn door, its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi,
or waiter, of the establishment--an individual of such nimble and
brisk movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was
impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form
clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed
back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden
gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the
gentleman’s reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary
appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all
provincial towns--the species wherein, for two roubles a day, travellers
may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and communicating by a
doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the doorway may be blocked
up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all probability, there will be
standing a silent, motionless neighbour whose ears are burning to learn
every possible detail concerning the latest arrival. The inn’s exterior
corresponded with its interior. Long, and consisting only of two
storeys, the building had its lower half destitute of stucco; with the
result that the dark-red bricks, originally more or less dingy, had
grown yet dingier under the influence of atmospheric changes. As for the
upper half of the building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint
of unfading yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number
of benches heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the
window-seat accommodated a sbitentshik [4], cheek by jowl with a samovar
[5]--the latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but
for the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar
and the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair.
During the traveller’s inspection of his room his luggage was brought
into the apartment. First came a portmanteau of white leather whose
raggedness indicated that the receptacle had made several previous
journeys. The bearers of the same were the gentleman’s coachman,
Selifan (a little man in a large overcoat), and the gentleman’s
valet, Petrushka--the latter a fellow of about thirty, clad in a worn,
over-ample jacket which formerly had graced his master’s shoulders, and
possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness communicated to
his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the portmanteau came a
small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch bark, a boot-case,
and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of which having been
deposited, the coachman departed to look after his horses, and the valet
to establish himself in the little dark anteroom or kennel where already
he had stored a cloak, a bagful of livery, and his own peculiar smell.
Pressing the narrow bedstead back against the wall, he covered it with
the tiny remnant of mattress--a remnant as thin and flat (perhaps also
as greasy) as a pancake--which he had managed to beg of the landlord of
the establishment.
While the attendants had been thus setting things straight the gentleman
had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common parlours of
the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they have varnished
walls which, grown black in their upper portions with tobacco smoke,
are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of customers’
backs--more especially with that of the backs of such local tradesmen
as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort to
the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind
invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a
number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter
scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the
glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a
selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which
one sees in every inn. In the present case the only outstanding feature
of the room was the fact that in one of the paintings a nymph was
portrayed as possessing breasts of a size such as the reader can never
in his life have beheld. A similar caricaturing of nature is to be noted
in the historical pictures (of unknown origin, period, and creation)
which reach us--sometimes through the instrumentality of Russian
magnates who profess to be connoisseurs of art--from Italy; owing to
the said magnates having made such purchases solely on the advice of the
couriers who have escorted them.
To resume, however--our traveller removed his cap, and divested his neck
of a parti-coloured woollen scarf of the kind which a wife makes for
her husband with her own hands, while accompanying the gift with
interminable injunctions as to how best such a garment ought to be
folded. True, bachelors also wear similar gauds, but, in their case,
God alone knows who may have manufactured the articles! For my part,
I cannot endure them. Having unfolded the scarf, the gentleman ordered
dinner, and whilst the various dishes were being got ready--cabbage
soup, a pie several weeks old, a dish of marrow and peas, a dish of
sausages and cabbage, a roast fowl, some salted cucumber, and the sweet
tart which stands perpetually ready for use in such establishments;
whilst, I say, these things were either being warmed up or brought in
cold, the gentleman induced the waiter to retail certain fragments of
tittle-tattle concerning the late landlord of the hostelry, the amount
of income which the hostelry produced, and the character of its present
proprietor. To the last-mentioned inquiry the waiter returned the answer
invariably given in such cases--namely, “My master is a terribly hard
man, sir.” Curious that in enlightened Russia so many people cannot even
take a meal at an inn without chattering to the attendant and making
free with him! Nevertheless not ALL the questions which the gentleman
asked were aimless ones, for he inquired who was Governor of the town,
who President of the Local Council, and who Public Prosecutor. In short,
he omitted no single official of note, while asking also (though with an
air of detachment) the most exact particulars concerning the landowners
of the neighbourhood. Which of them, he inquired, possessed serfs, and
how many of them? How far from the town did those landowners reside?
What was the character of each landowner, and was he in the habit of
paying frequent visits to the town? The gentleman also made searching
inquiries concerning the hygienic condition of the countryside. Was
there, he asked, much sickness about--whether sporadic fever, fatal
forms of ague, smallpox, or what not? Yet, though his solicitude
concerning these matters showed more than ordinary curiosity, his
bearing retained its gravity unimpaired, and from time to time he
blew his nose with portentous fervour. Indeed, the manner in which he
accomplished this latter feat was marvellous in the extreme, for, though
that member emitted sounds equal to those of a trumpet in intensity,
he could yet, with his accompanying air of guileless dignity, evoke the
waiter’s undivided respect--so much so that, whenever the sounds of
the nose reached that menial’s ears, he would shake back his locks,
straighten himself into a posture of marked solicitude, and inquire
afresh, with head slightly inclined, whether the gentleman happened
to require anything further. After dinner the guest consumed a cup of
coffee, and then, seating himself upon the sofa, with, behind him,
one of those wool-covered cushions which, in Russian taverns,
resemble nothing so much as a cobblestone or a brick, fell to snoring;
whereafter, returning with a start to consciousness, he ordered himself
to be conducted to his room, flung himself at full length upon the bed,
and once more slept soundly for a couple of hours. Aroused, eventually,
by the waiter, he, at the latter’s request, inscribed a fragment of
paper with his name, his surname, and his rank (for communication, in
accordance with the law, to the police): and on that paper the waiter,
leaning forward from the corridor, read, syllable by syllable: “Paul
Ivanovitch Chichikov, Collegiate Councillor--Landowner--Travelling
on Private Affairs.” The waiter had just time to accomplish this
feat before Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov set forth to inspect the town.
Apparently the place succeeded in satisfying him, and, to tell the
truth, it was at least up to the usual standard of our provincial
capitals. Where the staring yellow of stone edifices did not greet his
eye he found himself confronted with the more modest grey of wooden
ones; which, consisting, for the most part, of one or two storeys (added
to the range of attics which provincial architects love so well), looked
almost lost amid the expanses of street and intervening medleys of
broken or half-finished partition-walls. At other points evidence of
more life and movement was to be seen, and here the houses stood crowded
together and displayed dilapidated, rain-blurred signboards whereon
boots or cakes or pairs of blue breeches inscribed “Arshavski, Tailor,”
and so forth, were depicted. Over a shop containing hats and caps
was written “Vassili Thedorov, Foreigner”; while, at another spot, a
signboard portrayed a billiard table and two players--the latter clad
in frockcoats of the kind usually affected by actors whose part it is
to enter the stage during the closing act of a piece, even though, with
arms sharply crooked and legs slightly bent, the said billiard players
were taking the most careful aim, but succeeding only in making abortive
strokes in the air. Each emporium of the sort had written over it: “This
is the best establishment of its kind in the town.” Also, al fresco in
the streets there stood tables heaped with nuts, soap, and gingerbread
(the latter but little distinguishable from the soap), and at an
eating-house there was displayed the sign of a plump fish transfixed
with a gaff. But the sign most frequently to be discerned was the
insignia of the State, the double-headed eagle (now replaced, in this
connection, with the laconic inscription “Dramshop”). As for the paving
of the town, it was uniformly bad.
The gentleman peered also into the municipal gardens, which contained
only a few sorry trees that were poorly selected, requiring to be
propped with oil-painted, triangular green supports, and able to boast
of a height no greater than that of an ordinary walking-stick. Yet
recently the local paper had said (apropos of a gala) that, “Thanks to
the efforts of our Civil Governor, the town has become enriched with a
pleasaunce full of umbrageous, spaciously-branching trees. Even on the
most sultry day they afford agreeable shade, and indeed gratifying
was it to see the hearts of our citizens panting with an impulse of
gratitude as their eyes shed tears in recognition of all that their
Governor has done for them!”
Next, after inquiring of a gendarme as to the best ways and means of
finding the local council, the local law-courts, and the local Governor,
should he (Chichikov) have need of them, the gentleman went on to
inspect the river which ran through the town. En route he tore off a
notice affixed to a post, in order that he might the more conveniently
read it after his return to the inn. Also, he bestowed upon a lady
of pleasant exterior who, escorted by a footman laden with a bundle,
happened to be passing along a wooden sidewalk a prolonged stare.
Lastly, he threw around him a comprehensive glance (as though to fix in
his mind the general topography of the place) and betook himself
home. There, gently aided by the waiter, he ascended the stairs to his
bedroom, drank a glass of tea, and, seating himself at the table, called
for a candle; which having been brought him, he produced from his pocket
the notice, held it close to the flame, and conned its tenour--slightly
contracting his right eye as he did so. Yet there was little in the
notice to call for remark. All that it said was that shortly one of
Kotzebue’s [6] plays would be given, and that one of the parts in the
play was to be taken by a certain Monsieur Poplevin, and another by
a certain Mademoiselle Ziablova, while the remaining parts were to
be filled by a number of less important personages. Nevertheless the
gentleman perused the notice with careful attention, and even jotted
down the prices to be asked for seats for the performance. Also, he
remarked that the bill had been printed in the press of the Provincial
Government. Next, he turned over the paper, in order to see if anything
further was to be read on the reverse side; but, finding nothing there,
he refolded the document, placed it in the box which served him as a
receptacle for odds and ends, and brought the day to a close with a
portion of cold veal, a bottle of pickles, and a sound sleep.
The following day he devoted to paying calls upon the various municipal
officials--a first, and a very respectful, visit being paid to the
Governor. This personage turned out to resemble Chichikov himself in
that he was neither fat nor thin. Also, he wore the riband of the order
of Saint Anna about his neck, and was reported to have been recommended
also for the star. For the rest, he was large and good-natured, and had
a habit of amusing himself with occasional spells of knitting. Next,
Chichikov repaired to the Vice-Governor’s, and thence to the house of
the Public Prosecutor, to that of the President of the Local Council, to
that of the Chief of Police, to that of the Commissioner of Taxes, and
to that of the local Director of State Factories. True, the task of
remembering every big-wig in this world of ours is not a very easy one;
but at least our visitor displayed the greatest activity in his work of
paying calls, seeing that he went so far as to pay his respects also to
the Inspector of the Municipal Department of Medicine and to the City
Architect. Thereafter he sat thoughtfully in his britchka--plunged
in meditation on the subject of whom else it might be well to visit.
However, not a single magnate had been neglected, and in conversation
with his hosts he had contrived to flatter each separate one. For
instance to the Governor he had hinted that a stranger, on arriving
in his, the Governor’s province, would conceive that he had reached
Paradise, so velvety were the roads. “Governors who appoint capable
subordinates,” had said Chichikov, “are deserving of the most ample meed
of praise.” Again, to the Chief of Police our hero had passed a most
gratifying remark on the subject of the local gendarmery; while in
his conversation with the Vice-Governor and the President of the Local
Council (neither of whom had, as yet, risen above the rank of State
Councillor) he had twice been guilty of the gaucherie of addressing his
interlocutors with the title of “Your Excellency”--a blunder which had
not failed to delight them. In the result the Governor had invited
him to a reception the same evening, and certain other officials had
followed suit by inviting him, one of them to dinner, a second to a
tea-party, and so forth, and so forth.
Of himself, however, the traveller had spoken little; or, if he had
spoken at any length, he had done so in a general sort of way and with
marked modesty. Indeed, at moments of the kind his discourse had assumed
something of a literary vein, in that invariably he had stated that,
being a worm of no account in the world, he was deserving of no
consideration at the hands of his fellows; that in his time he had
undergone many strange experiences; that subsequently he had suffered
much in the cause of Truth; that he had many enemies seeking his life;
and that, being desirous of rest, he was now engaged in searching for a
spot wherein to dwell--wherefore, having stumbled upon the town in which
he now found himself, he had considered it his bounden duty to evince
his respect for the chief authorities of the place. This, and no more,
was all that, for the moment, the town succeeded in learning about the
new arrival. Naturally he lost no time in presenting himself at the
Governor’s evening party. First, however, his preparations for that
function occupied a space of over two hours, and necessitated an
attention to his toilet of a kind not commonly seen. That is to say,
after a brief post-prandial nap he called for soap and water, and spent
a considerable period in the task of scrubbing his cheeks (which, for
the purpose, he supported from within with his tongue) and then of
drying his full, round face, from the ears downwards, with a towel which
he took from the waiter’s shoulder. Twice he snorted into the waiter’s
countenance as he did this, and then he posted himself in front of the
mirror, donned a false shirt-front, plucked out a couple of hairs which
were protruding from his nose, and appeared vested in a frockcoat
of bilberry-coloured check. Thereafter driving through broad streets
sparsely lighted with lanterns, he arrived at the Governor’s residence
to find it illuminated as for a ball. Barouches with gleaming lamps,
a couple of gendarmes posted before the doors, a babel of postillions’
cries--nothing of a kind likely to be impressive was wanting; and, on
reaching the salon, the visitor actually found himself obliged to
close his eyes for a moment, so strong was the mingled sheen of lamps,
candles, and feminine apparel. Everything seemed suffused with light,
and everywhere, flitting and flashing, were to be seen black coats--even
as on a hot summer’s day flies revolve around a sugar loaf while the
old housekeeper is cutting it into cubes before the open window, and
the children of the house crowd around her to watch the movements of her
rugged hands as those members ply the smoking pestle; and airy squadrons
of flies, borne on the breeze, enter boldly, as though free of the
house, and, taking advantage of the fact that the glare of the sunshine
is troubling the old lady’s sight, disperse themselves over broken
and unbroken fragments alike, even though the lethargy induced by the
opulence of summer and the rich shower of dainties to be encountered at
every step has induced them to enter less for the purpose of eating than
for that of showing themselves in public, of parading up and down the
sugar loaf, of rubbing both their hindquarters and their fore against
one another, of cleaning their bodies under the wings, of extending
their forelegs over their heads and grooming themselves, and of flying
out of the window again to return with other predatory squadrons.
Indeed, so dazed was Chichikov that scarcely did he realise that the
Governor was taking him by the arm and presenting him to his (the
Governor’s) lady. Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his head sufficiently
to contrive to murmur some such compliment as might fittingly come
from a middle-aged individual of a rank neither excessively high nor
excessively low. Next, when couples had been formed for dancing and the
remainder of the company found itself pressed back against the walls,
Chichikov folded his arms, and carefully scrutinised the dancers. Some
of the ladies were dressed well and in the fashion, while the remainder
were clad in such garments as God usually bestows upon a provincial
town. Also here, as elsewhere, the men belonged to two separate and
distinct categories; one of which comprised slender individuals who,
flitting around the ladies, were scarcely to be distinguished from
denizens of the metropolis, so carefully, so artistically, groomed were
their whiskers, so presentable their oval, clean-shaven faces, so easy
the manner of their dancing attendance upon their womenfolk, so glib
their French conversation as they quizzed their female companions. As
for the other category, it comprised individuals who, stout, or of the
same build as Chichikov (that is to say, neither very portly nor very
lean), backed and sidled away from the ladies, and kept peering hither
and thither to see whether the Governor’s footmen had set out green
tables for whist. Their features were full and plump, some of them had
beards, and in no case was their hair curled or waved or arranged in
what the French call “the devil-may-care” style. On the contrary, their
heads were either close-cropped or brushed very smooth, and their faces
were round and firm. This category represented the more respectable
officials of the town. In passing, I may say that in business matters
fat men always prove superior to their leaner brethren; which is
probably the reason why the latter are mostly to be found in the
Political Police, or acting as mere ciphers whose existence is a purely
hopeless, airy, trivial one. Again, stout individuals never take a back
seat, but always a front one, and, wheresoever it be, they sit firmly,
and with confidence, and decline to budge even though the seat crack and
bend with their weight. For comeliness of exterior they care not a rap,
and therefore a dress coat sits less easily on their figures than is the
case with figures of leaner individuals. Yet invariably fat men amass
the greater wealth. In three years’ time a thin man will not have a
single serf whom he has left unpledged; whereas--well, pray look at
a fat man’s fortunes, and what will you see? First of all a suburban
villa, and then a larger suburban villa, and then a villa close to a
town, and lastly a country estate which comprises every amenity! That is
to say, having served both God and the State, the stout individual
has won universal respect, and will end by retiring from business,
reordering his mode of life, and becoming a Russian landowner--in other
words, a fine gentleman who dispenses hospitality, lives in comfort and
luxury, and is destined to leave his property to heirs who are purposing
to squander the same on foreign travel.
That the foregoing represents pretty much the gist of Chichikov’s
reflections as he stood watching the company I will not attempt to deny.
And of those reflections the upshot was that he decided to join
himself to the stouter section of the guests, among whom he had
already recognised several familiar faces--namely, those of the Public
Prosecutor (a man with beetling brows over eyes which seemed to be
saying with a wink, “Come into the next room, my friend, for I have
something to say to you”--though, in the main, their owner was a man of
grave and taciturn habit), of the Postmaster (an insignificant-looking
individual, yet a would-be wit and a philosopher), and of the President
of the Local Council (a man of much amiability and good sense). These
three personages greeted Chichikov as an old acquaintance, and to their
salutations he responded with a sidelong, yet a sufficiently civil, bow.
Also, he became acquainted with an extremely unctuous and approachable
landowner named Manilov, and with a landowner of more uncouth exterior
named Sobakevitch--the latter of whom began the acquaintance by treading
heavily upon Chichikov’s toes, and then begging his pardon. Next,
Chichikov received an offer of a “cut in” at whist, and accepted
the same with his usual courteous inclination of the head. Seating
themselves at a green table, the party did not rise therefrom till
supper time; and during that period all conversation between the players
became hushed, as is the custom when men have given themselves up to
a really serious pursuit. Even the Postmaster--a talkative man by
nature--had no sooner taken the cards into his hands than he assumed
an expression of profound thought, pursed his lips, and retained this
attitude unchanged throughout the game. Only when playing a court card
was it his custom to strike the table with his fist, and to exclaim (if
the card happened to be a queen), “Now, old popadia [7]!” and (if
the card happened to be a king), “Now, peasant of Tambov!” To which
ejaculations invariably the President of the Local Council retorted,
“Ah, I have him by the ears, I have him by the ears!” And from the
neighbourhood of the table other strong ejaculations relative to the
play would arise, interposed with one or another of those nicknames
which participants in a game are apt to apply to members of the various
suits. I need hardly add that, the game over, the players fell to
quarrelling, and that in the dispute our friend joined, though so
artfully as to let every one see that, in spite of the fact that he was
wrangling, he was doing so only in the most amicable fashion possible.
Never did he say outright, “You played the wrong card at such and such
a point.” No, he always employed some such phrase as, “You permitted
yourself to make a slip, and thus afforded me the honour of covering
your deuce.” Indeed, the better to keep in accord with his antagonists,
he kept offering them his silver-enamelled snuff-box (at the bottom
of which lay a couple of violets, placed there for the sake of their
scent). In particular did the newcomer pay attention to landowners
Manilov and Sobakevitch; so much so that his haste to arrive on good
terms with them led to his leaving the President and the Postmaster
rather in the shade. At the same time, certain questions which he put
to those two landowners evinced not only curiosity, but also a certain
amount of sound intelligence; for he began by asking how many peasant
souls each of them possessed, and how their affairs happened at present
to be situated, and then proceeded to enlighten himself also as their
standing and their families. Indeed, it was not long before he had
succeeded in fairly enchanting his new friends. In particular did
Manilov--a man still in his prime, and possessed of a pair of eyes
which, sweet as sugar, blinked whenever he laughed--find himself unable
to make enough of his enchanter. Clasping Chichikov long and fervently
by the hand, he besought him to do him, Manilov, the honour of visiting
his country house (which he declared to lie at a distance of not more
than fifteen versts from the boundaries of the town); and in return
Chichikov averred (with an exceedingly affable bow and a most sincere
handshake) that he was prepared not only to fulfil his friend’s behest,
but also to look upon the fulfilling of it as a sacred duty. In the same
way Sobakevitch said to him laconically: “And do you pay ME a visit,”
and then proceeded to shuffle a pair of boots of such dimensions that
to find a pair to correspond with them would have been indeed
difficult--more especially at the present day, when the race of epic
heroes is beginning to die out in Russia.
Next day Chichikov dined and spent the evening at the house of the Chief
of Police--a residence where, three hours after dinner, every one sat
down to whist, and remained so seated until two o’clock in the morning.
On this occasion Chichikov made the acquaintance of, among others, a
landowner named Nozdrev--a dissipated little fellow of thirty who had no
sooner exchanged three or four words with his new acquaintance than he
began to address him in the second person singular. Yet although he did
the same to the Chief of Police and the Public Prosecutor, the company
had no sooner seated themselves at the card-table than both the one
and the other of these functionaries started to keep a careful eye upon
Nozdrev’s tricks, and to watch practically every card which he played.
The following evening Chichikov spent with the President of the Local
Council, who received his guests--even though the latter included two
ladies--in a greasy dressing-gown. Upon that followed an evening at the
Vice-Governor’s, a large dinner party at the house of the Commissioner
of Taxes, a smaller dinner-party at the house of the Public Prosecutor
(a very wealthy man), and a subsequent reception given by the Mayor. In
short, not an hour of the day did Chichikov find himself forced to
spend at home, and his return to the inn became necessary only for the
purposes of sleeping. Somehow or other he had landed on his feet, and
everywhere he figured as an experienced man of the world. No matter what
the conversation chanced to be about, he always contrived to maintain
his part in the same. Did the discourse turn upon horse-breeding, upon
horse-breeding he happened to be peculiarly well-qualified to speak. Did
the company fall to discussing well-bred dogs, at once he had remarks of
the most pertinent kind possible to offer. Did the company touch upon
a prosecution which had recently been carried out by the Excise
Department, instantly he showed that he too was not wholly unacquainted
with legal affairs. Did an opinion chance to be expressed concerning
billiards, on that subject too he was at least able to avoid committing
a blunder. Did a reference occur to virtue, concerning virtue he
hastened to deliver himself in a way which brought tears to every eye.
Did the subject in hand happen to be the distilling of brandy--well,
that was a matter concerning which he had the soundest of knowledge. Did
any one happen to mention Customs officials and inspectors, from that
moment he expatiated as though he too had been both a minor functionary
and a major. Yet a remarkable fact was the circumstance that he always
contrived to temper his omniscience with a certain readiness to give
way, a certain ability so to keep a rein upon himself that never did his
utterances become too loud or too soft, or transcend what was perfectly
befitting. In a word, he was always a gentleman of excellent manners,
and every official in the place felt pleased when he saw him enter the
door. Thus the Governor gave it as his opinion that Chichikov was a man
of excellent intentions; the Public Prosecutor, that he was a good man
of business; the Chief of Gendarmery, that he was a man of education;
the President of the Local Council, that he was a man of breeding and
refinement; and the wife of the Chief of Gendarmery, that his politeness
of behaviour was equalled only by his affability of bearing. Nay, even
Sobakevitch--who as a rule never spoke well of ANY ONE--said to his
lanky wife when, on returning late from the town, he undressed and
betook himself to bed by her side: “My dear, this evening, after dining
with the Chief of Police, I went on to the Governor’s, and met there,
among others, a certain Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov, who is a Collegiate
Councillor and a very pleasant fellow.” To this his spouse replied “Hm!”
and then dealt him a hearty kick in the ribs.
Such were the flattering opinions earned by the newcomer to the town;
and these opinions he retained until the time when a certain speciality
of his, a certain scheme of his (the reader will learn presently what it
was), plunged the majority of the townsfolk into a sea of perplexity.
CHAPTER 3
Meanwhile, Chichikov, seated in his britchka and bowling along the
turnpike, was feeling greatly pleased with himself. From the preceding
chapter the reader will have gathered the principal subject of his bent
and inclinations: wherefore it is no matter for wonder that his body
and his soul had ended by becoming wholly immersed therein. To all
appearances the thoughts, the calculations, and the projects which
were now reflected in his face partook of a pleasant nature, since
momentarily they kept leaving behind them a satisfied smile. Indeed, so
engrossed was he that he never noticed that his coachman, elated with
the hospitality of Manilov’s domestics, was making remarks of a didactic
nature to the off horse of the troika [11], a skewbald. This skewbald
was a knowing animal, and made only a show of pulling; whereas its
comrades, the middle horse (a bay, and known as the Assessor, owing to
his having been acquired from a gentleman of that rank) and the near
horse (a roan), would do their work gallantly, and even evince in their
eyes the pleasure which they derived from their exertions.
“Ah, you rascal, you rascal! I’ll get the better of you!” ejaculated
Selifan as he sat up and gave the lazy one a cut with his whip. “YOU
know your business all right, you German pantaloon! The bay is a good
fellow, and does his duty, and I will give him a bit over his feed, for
he is a horse to be respected; and the Assessor too is a good horse. But
what are YOU shaking your ears for? You are a fool, so just mind when
you’re spoken to. ’Tis good advice I’m giving you, you blockhead. Ah!
You CAN travel when you like.” And he gave the animal another cut,
and then shouted to the trio, “Gee up, my beauties!” and drew his whip
gently across the backs of the skewbald’s comrades--not as a punishment,
but as a sign of his approval. That done, he addressed himself to the
skewbald again.
“Do you think,” he cried, “that I don’t see what you are doing? You can
behave quite decently when you like, and make a man respect you.”
With that he fell to recalling certain reminiscences.
“They were NICE folk, those folk at the gentleman’s yonder,” he mused.
“I DO love a chat with a man when he is a good sort. With a man of that
kind I am always hail-fellow-well-met, and glad to drink a glass of
tea with him, or to eat a biscuit. One CAN’T help respecting a decent
fellow. For instance, this gentleman of mine--why, every one looks up
to him, for he has been in the Government’s service, and is a Collegiate
Councillor.”
Thus soliloquising, he passed to more remote abstractions; until, had
Chichikov been listening, he would have learnt a number of interesting
details concerning himself. However, his thoughts were wholly occupied
with his own subject, so much so that not until a loud clap of thunder
awoke him from his reverie did he glance around him. The sky was
completely covered with clouds, and the dusty turnpike beginning to
be sprinkled with drops of rain. At length a second and a nearer and a
louder peal resounded, and the rain descended as from a bucket. Falling
slantwise, it beat upon one side of the basketwork of the tilt until the
splashings began to spurt into his face, and he found himself forced to
draw the curtains (fitted with circular openings through which to obtain
a glimpse of the wayside view), and to shout to Selifan to quicken his
pace. Upon that the coachman, interrupted in the middle of his harangue,
bethought him that no time was to be lost; wherefore, extracting from
under the box-seat a piece of old blanket, he covered over his sleeves,
resumed the reins, and cheered on his threefold team (which, it may
be said, had so completely succumbed to the influence of the pleasant
lassitude induced by Selifan’s discourse that it had taken to scarcely
placing one leg before the other). Unfortunately, Selifan could not
clearly remember whether two turnings had been passed or three. Indeed,
on collecting his faculties, and dimly recalling the lie of the road,
he became filled with a shrewd suspicion that A VERY LARGE NUMBER of
turnings had been passed. But since, at moments which call for a hasty
decision, a Russian is quick to discover what may conceivably be
the best course to take, our coachman put away from him all ulterior
reasoning, and, turning to the right at the next cross-road, shouted,
“Hi, my beauties!” and set off at a gallop. Never for a moment did he
stop to think whither the road might lead him!
It was long before the clouds had discharged their burden, and,
meanwhile, the dust on the road became kneaded into mire, and the
horses’ task of pulling the britchka heavier and heavier. Also,
Chichikov had taken alarm at his continued failure to catch sight of
Sobakevitch’s country house. According to his calculations, it ought to
have been reached long ago. He gazed about him on every side, but the
darkness was too dense for the eye to pierce.
“Selifan!” he exclaimed, leaning forward in the britchka.
“What is it, barin?” replied the coachman.
“Can you see the country house anywhere?”
“No, barin.” After which, with a flourish of the whip, the man broke
into a sort of endless, drawling song. In that song everything had
a place. By “everything” I mean both the various encouraging and
stimulating cries with which Russian folk urge on their horses, and a
random, unpremeditated selection of adjectives.
Meanwhile Chichikov began to notice that the britchka was swaying
violently, and dealing him occasional bumps. Consequently he suspected
that it had left the road and was being dragged over a ploughed field.
Upon Selifan’s mind there appeared to have dawned a similar inkling, for
he had ceased to hold forth.
“You rascal, what road are you following?” inquired Chichikov.
“I don’t know,” retorted the coachman. “What can a man do at a time of
night when the darkness won’t let him even see his whip?” And as Selifan
spoke the vehicle tilted to an angle which left Chichikov no choice but
to hang on with hands and teeth. At length he realised the fact that
Selifan was drunk.
“Stop, stop, or you will upset us!” he shouted to the fellow.
“No, no, barin,” replied Selifan. “HOW could I upset you? To upset
people is wrong. I know that very well, and should never dream of such
conduct.”
Here he started to turn the vehicle round a little--and kept on doing so
until the britchka capsized on to its side, and Chichikov landed in the
mud on his hands and knees. Fortunately Selifan succeeded in stopping
the horses, although they would have stopped of themselves, seeing
that they were utterly worn out. This unforeseen catastrophe evidently
astonished their driver. Slipping from the box, he stood resting his
hands against the side of the britchka, while Chichikov tumbled and
floundered about in the mud, in a vain endeavour to wriggle clear of the
stuff.
“Ah, you!” said Selifan meditatively to the britchka. “To think of
upsetting us like this!”
“You are as drunk as a lord!” exclaimed Chichikov.
“No, no, barin. Drunk, indeed? Why, I know my manners too well. A word
or two with a friend--that is all that I have taken. Any one may talk
with a decent man when he meets him. There is nothing wrong in
that. Also, we had a snack together. There is nothing wrong in a
snack--especially a snack with a decent man.”
“What did I say to you when last you got drunk?” asked Chichikov. “Have
you forgotten what I said then?”
“No, no, barin. HOW could I forget it? I know what is what, and know
that it is not right to get drunk. All that I have been having is a word
or two with a decent man, for the reason that--”
“Well, if I lay the whip about you, you’ll know then how to talk to a
decent fellow, I’ll warrant!”
“As you please, barin,” replied the complacent Selifan. “Should you
whip me, you will whip me, and I shall have nothing to complain of. Why
should you not whip me if I deserve it? ’Tis for you to do as you like.
Whippings are necessary sometimes, for a peasant often plays the fool,
and discipline ought to be maintained. If I have deserved it, beat me.
Why should you not?”
This reasoning seemed, at the moment, irrefutable, and Chichikov said
nothing more. Fortunately fate had decided to take pity on the pair, for
from afar their ears caught the barking of a dog. Plucking up courage,
Chichikov gave orders for the britchka to be righted, and the horses to
be urged forward; and since a Russian driver has at least this merit,
that, owing to a keen sense of smell being able to take the place
of eyesight, he can, if necessary, drive at random and yet reach a
destination of some sort, Selifan succeeded, though powerless to discern
a single object, in directing his steeds to a country house near by, and
that with such a certainty of instinct that it was not until the shafts
had collided with a garden wall, and thereby made it clear that to
proceed another pace was impossible, that he stopped. All that Chichikov
could discern through the thick veil of pouring rain was something
which resembled a verandah. So he dispatched Selifan to search for the
entrance gates, and that process would have lasted indefinitely had it
not been shortened by the circumstance that, in Russia, the place of
a Swiss footman is frequently taken by watchdogs; of which animals a
number now proclaimed the travellers’ presence so loudly that Chichikov
found himself forced to stop his ears. Next, a light gleamed in one
of the windows, and filtered in a thin stream to the garden wall--thus
revealing the whereabouts of the entrance gates; whereupon Selifan
fell to knocking at the gates until the bolts of the house door were
withdrawn and there issued therefrom a figure clad in a rough cloak.
“Who is that knocking? What have you come for?” shouted the hoarse voice
of an elderly woman.
“We are travellers, good mother,” said Chichikov. “Pray allow us to
spend the night here.”
“Out upon you for a pair of gadabouts!” retorted the old woman. “A fine
time of night to be arriving! We don’t keep an hotel, mind you. This is
a lady’s residence.”
“But what are we to do, mother? We have lost our way, and cannot spend
the night out of doors in such weather.”
“No, we cannot. The night is dark and cold,” added Selifan.
“Hold your tongue, you fool!” exclaimed Chichikov.
“Who ARE you, then?” inquired the old woman.
“A dvorianin [12], good mother.”
Somehow the word dvorianin seemed to give the old woman food for
thought.
“Wait a moment,” she said, “and I will tell the mistress.”
Two minutes later she returned with a lantern in her hand, the gates
were opened, and a light glimmered in a second window. Entering the
courtyard, the britchka halted before a moderate-sized mansion. The
darkness did not permit of very accurate observation being made,
but, apparently, the windows only of one-half of the building were
illuminated, while a quagmire in front of the door reflected the beams
from the same. Meanwhile the rain continued to beat sonorously down upon
the wooden roof, and could be heard trickling into a water butt; nor
for a single moment did the dogs cease to bark with all the strength of
their lungs. One of them, throwing up its head, kept venting a howl
of such energy and duration that the animal seemed to be howling for a
handsome wager; while another, cutting in between the yelpings of the
first animal, kept restlessly reiterating, like a postman’s bell, the
notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be
gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of
contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer
when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in
their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of
choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and
this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and
sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce
a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack.
Naturally, from a canine chorus of such executants it might reasonably
be inferred that the establishment was one of the utmost respectability.
To that, however, our damp, cold hero gave not a thought, for all his
mind was fixed upon bed. Indeed, the britchka had hardly come to a
standstill before he leapt out upon the doorstep, missed his footing,
and came within an ace of falling. To meet him there issued a female
younger than the first, but very closely resembling her; and on his
being conducted to the parlour, a couple of glances showed him that the
room was hung with old striped curtains, and ornamented with pictures
of birds and small, antique mirrors--the latter set in dark frames which
were carved to resemble scrolls of foliage. Behind each mirror was stuck
either a letter or an old pack of cards or a stocking, while on the wall
hung a clock with a flowered dial. More, however, Chichikov could not
discern, for his eyelids were as heavy as though smeared with treacle.
Presently the lady of the house herself entered--an elderly woman in a
sort of nightcap (hastily put on) and a flannel neck wrap. She belonged
to that class of lady landowners who are for ever lamenting failures of
the harvest and their losses thereby; to the class who, drooping their
heads despondently, are all the while stuffing money into striped
purses, which they keep hoarded in the drawers of cupboards. Into one
purse they will stuff rouble pieces, into another half roubles, and into
a third tchetvertachki [13], although from their mien you would suppose
that the cupboard contained only linen and nightshirts and skeins of
wool and the piece of shabby material which is destined--should the
old gown become scorched during the baking of holiday cakes and other
dainties, or should it fall into pieces of itself--to become converted
into a new dress. But the gown never does get burnt or wear out, for
the reason that the lady is too careful; wherefore the piece of shabby
material reposes in its unmade-up condition until the priest advises
that it be given to the niece of some widowed sister, together with a
quantity of other such rubbish.
Chichikov apologised for having disturbed the household with his
unexpected arrival.
“Not at all, not at all,” replied the lady. “But in what dreadful
weather God has brought you hither! What wind and what rain! You could
not help losing your way. Pray excuse us for being unable to make better
preparations for you at this time of night.”
Suddenly there broke in upon the hostess’ words the sound of a strange
hissing, a sound so loud that the guest started in alarm, and the more
so seeing that it increased until the room seemed filled with adders. On
glancing upwards, however, he recovered his composure, for he perceived
the sound to be emanating from the clock, which appeared to be in a mind
to strike. To the hissing sound there succeeded a wheezing one, until,
putting forth its best efforts, the thing struck two with as much
clatter as though some one had been hitting an iron pot with a
cudgel. That done, the pendulum returned to its right-left, right-left
oscillation.
Chichikov thanked his hostess kindly, and said that he needed nothing,
and she must not put herself about: only for rest was he longing--though
also he should like to know whither he had arrived, and whether the
distance to the country house of land-owner Sobakevitch was anything
very great. To this the lady replied that she had never so much as heard
the name, since no gentleman of the name resided in the locality.
“But at least you are acquainted with landowner Manilov?” continued
Chichikov.
“No. Who is he?”
“Another landed proprietor, madam.”
“Well, neither have I heard of him. No such landowner lives hereabouts.”
“Then who ARE your local landowners?”
“Bobrov, Svinin, Kanapatiev, Khapakin, Trepakin, and Plieshakov.”
“Are they rich men?”
“No, none of them. One of them may own twenty souls, and another thirty,
but of gentry who own a hundred there are none.”
Chichikov reflected that he had indeed fallen into an aristocratic
wilderness!
“At all events, is the town far away?” he inquired.
“About sixty versts. How sorry I am that I have nothing for you to eat!
Should you care to drink some tea?”
“I thank you, good mother, but I require nothing beyond a bed.”
“Well, after such a journey you must indeed be needing rest, so you
shall lie upon this sofa. Fetinia, bring a quilt and some pillows and
sheets. What weather God has sent us! And what dreadful thunder! Ever
since sunset I have had a candle burning before the ikon in my bedroom.
My God! Why, your back and sides are as muddy as a boar’s! However have
you managed to get into such a state?”
“That I am nothing worse than muddy is indeed fortunate, since, but for
the Almighty, I should have had my ribs broken.”
“Dear, dear! To think of all that you must have been through. Had I not
better wipe your back?”
“I thank you, I thank you, but you need not trouble. Merely be so good
as to tell your maid to dry my clothes.”
“Do you hear that, Fetinia?” said the hostess, turning to a woman who
was engaged in dragging in a feather bed and deluging the room with
feathers. “Take this coat and this vest, and, after drying them before
the fire--just as we used to do for your late master--give them a good
rub, and fold them up neatly.”
“Very well, mistress,” said Fetinia, spreading some sheets over the bed,
and arranging the pillows.
“Now your bed is ready for you,” said the hostess to Chichikov.
“Good-night, dear sir. I wish you good-night. Is there anything else
that you require? Perhaps you would like to have your heels tickled
before retiring to rest? Never could my late husband get to sleep
without that having been done.”
But the guest declined the proffered heel-tickling, and, on his hostess
taking her departure, hastened to divest himself of his clothing, both
upper and under, and to hand the garments to Fetinia. She wished him
good-night, and removed the wet trappings; after which he found himself
alone. Not without satisfaction did he eye his bed, which reached
almost to the ceiling. Clearly Fetinia was a past mistress in the art of
beating up such a couch, and, as the result, he had no sooner mounted
it with the aid of a chair than it sank well-nigh to the floor, and the
feathers, squeezed out of their proper confines, flew hither and thither
into every corner of the apartment. Nevertheless he extinguished the
candle, covered himself over with the chintz quilt, snuggled down
beneath it, and instantly fell asleep. Next day it was late in the
morning before he awoke. Through the window the sun was shining into his
eyes, and the flies which, overnight, had been roosting quietly on the
walls and ceiling now turned their attention to the visitor. One settled
on his lip, another on his ear, a third hovered as though intending
to lodge in his very eye, and a fourth had the temerity to alight
just under his nostrils. In his drowsy condition he inhaled the latter
insect, sneezed violently, and so returned to consciousness. He
glanced around the room, and perceived that not all the pictures were
representative of birds, since among them hung also a portrait of
Kutuzov [14] and an oil painting of an old man in a uniform with red
facings such as were worn in the days of the Emperor Paul [15]. At this
moment the clock uttered its usual hissing sound, and struck ten, while
a woman’s face peered in at the door, but at once withdrew, for the
reason that, with the object of sleeping as well as possible, Chichikov
had removed every stitch of his clothing. Somehow the face seemed to him
familiar, and he set himself to recall whose it could be. At length he
recollected that it was the face of his hostess. His clothes he found
lying, clean and dry, beside him; so he dressed and approached the
mirror, meanwhile sneezing again with such vehemence that a cock which
happened at the moment to be near the window (which was situated at no
great distance from the ground) chuckled a short, sharp phrase. Probably
it meant, in the bird’s alien tongue, “Good morning to you!” Chichikov
retorted by calling the bird a fool, and then himself approached the
window to look at the view. It appeared to comprise a poulterer’s
premises. At all events, the narrow yard in front of the window was full
of poultry and other domestic creatures--of game fowls and barn door
fowls, with, among them, a cock which strutted with measured gait, and
kept shaking its comb, and tilting its head as though it were trying to
listen to something. Also, a sow and her family were helping to grace
the scene. First, she rooted among a heap of litter; then, in passing,
she ate up a young pullet; lastly, she proceeded carelessly to munch
some pieces of melon rind. To this small yard or poultry-run a length
of planking served as a fence, while beyond it lay a kitchen garden
containing cabbages, onions, potatoes, beetroots, and other household
vegetables. Also, the garden contained a few stray fruit trees that
were covered with netting to protect them from the magpies and sparrows;
flocks of which were even then wheeling and darting from one spot to
another. For the same reason a number of scarecrows with outstretched
arms stood reared on long poles, with, surmounting one of the figures,
a cast-off cap of the hostess’s. Beyond the garden again there stood a
number of peasants’ huts. Though scattered, instead of being arranged in
regular rows, these appeared to Chichikov’s eye to comprise well-to-do
inhabitants, since all rotten planks in their roofing had been replaced
with new ones, and none of their doors were askew, and such of their
tiltsheds as faced him evinced evidence of a presence of a spare
waggon--in some cases almost a new one.
“This lady owns by no means a poor village,” said Chichikov to himself;
wherefore he decided then and there to have a talk with his hostess, and
to cultivate her closer acquaintance. Accordingly he peeped through the
chink of the door whence her head had recently protruded, and, on seeing
her seated at a tea table, entered and greeted her with a cheerful,
kindly smile.
“Good morning, dear sir,” she responded as she rose. “How have you
slept?” She was dressed in better style than she had been on the
previous evening. That is to say, she was now wearing a gown of some
dark colour, and lacked her nightcap, and had swathed her neck in
something stiff.
“I have slept exceedingly well,” replied Chichikov, seating himself upon
a chair. “And how are YOU, good madam?”
“But poorly, my dear sir.”
“And why so?”
“Because I cannot sleep. A pain has taken me in my middle, and my legs,
from the ankles upwards, are aching as though they were broken.”
“That will pass, that will pass, good mother. You must pay no attention
to it.”
“God grant that it MAY pass. However, I have been rubbing myself with
lard and turpentine. What sort of tea will you take? In this jar I have
some of the scented kind.”
“Excellent, good mother! Then I will take that.”
Probably the reader will have noticed that, for all his expressions of
solicitude, Chichikov’s tone towards his hostess partook of a freer, a
more unceremonious, nature than that which he had adopted towards Madam
Manilov. And here I should like to assert that, howsoever much, in
certain respects, we Russians may be surpassed by foreigners, at least
we surpass them in adroitness of manner. In fact the various shades and
subtleties of our social intercourse defy enumeration. A Frenchman or
a German would be incapable of envisaging and understanding all its
peculiarities and differences, for his tone in speaking to a millionaire
differs but little from that which he employs towards a small
tobacconist--and that in spite of the circumstance that he is accustomed
to cringe before the former. With us, however, things are different. In
Russian society there exist clever folk who can speak in one manner to
a landowner possessed of two hundred peasant souls, and in another to
a landowner possessed of three hundred, and in another to a landowner
possessed of five hundred. In short, up to the number of a million
souls the Russian will have ready for each landowner a suitable mode of
address. For example, suppose that somewhere there exists a government
office, and that in that office there exists a director. I would beg of
you to contemplate him as he sits among his myrmidons. Sheer nervousness
will prevent you from uttering a word in his presence, so great are the
pride and superiority depicted on his countenance. Also, were you to
sketch him, you would be sketching a veritable Prometheus, for his
glance is as that of an eagle, and he walks with measured, stately
stride. Yet no sooner will the eagle have left the room to seek the
study of his superior officer than he will go scurrying along (papers
held close to his nose) like any partridge. But in society, and at the
evening party (should the rest of those present be of lesser rank than
himself) the Prometheus will once more become Prometheus, and the man
who stands a step below him will treat him in a way never dreamt of by
Ovid, seeing that each fly is of lesser account than its superior fly,
and becomes, in the presence of the latter, even as a grain of sand.
“Surely that is not Ivan Petrovitch?” you will say of such and such a
man as you regard him. “Ivan Petrovitch is tall, whereas this man is
small and spare. Ivan Petrovitch has a loud, deep voice, and never
smiles, whereas this man (whoever he may be) is twittering like a
sparrow, and smiling all the time.” Yet approach and take a good look at
the fellow and you will see that is IS Ivan Petrovitch. “Alack, alack!”
will be the only remark you can make.
Let us return to our characters in real life. We have seen that, on this
occasion, Chichikov decided to dispense with ceremony; wherefore, taking
up the teapot, he went on as follows:
“You have a nice little village here, madam. How many souls does it
contain?”
“A little less than eighty, dear sir. But the times are hard, and I have
lost a great deal through last year’s harvest having proved a failure.”
“But your peasants look fine, strong fellows. May I enquire your name?
Through arriving so late at night I have quite lost my wits.”
“Korobotchka, the widow of a Collegiate Secretary.”
“I humbly thank you. And your Christian name and patronymic?”
“Nastasia Petrovna.”
“Nastasia Petrovna! Those are excellent names. I have a maternal aunt
named like yourself.”
“And YOUR name?” queried the lady. “May I take it that you are a
Government Assessor?”
“No, madam,” replied Chichikov with a smile. “I am not an Assessor, but
a traveller on private business.”
“Then you must be a buyer of produce? How I regret that I have sold my
honey so cheaply to other buyers! Otherwise YOU might have bought it,
dear sir.”
“I never buy honey.”
“Then WHAT do you buy, pray? Hemp? I have a little of that by me, but
not more than half a pood [16] or so.”
“No, madam. It is in other wares that I deal. Tell me, have you, of late
years, lost many of your peasants by death?”
“Yes; no fewer than eighteen,” responded the old lady with a sigh. “Such
a fine lot, too--all good workers! True, others have since grown up,
but of what use are THEY? Mere striplings. When the Assessor last called
upon me I could have wept; for, though those workmen of mine are dead,
I have to keep on paying for them as though they were still alive! And
only last week my blacksmith got burnt to death! Such a clever hand at
his trade he was!”
“What? A fire occurred at your place?”
“No, no, God preserve us all! It was not so bad as that. You must
understand that the blacksmith SET HIMSELF on fire--he got set on fire
in his bowels through overdrinking. Yes, all of a sudden there burst
from him a blue flame, and he smouldered and smouldered until he had
turned as black as a piece of charcoal! Yet what a clever blacksmith he
was! And now I have no horses to drive out with, for there is no one to
shoe them.”
“In everything the will of God, madam,” said Chichikov with a sigh.
“Against the divine wisdom it is not for us to rebel. Pray hand them
over to me, Nastasia Petrovna.”
“Hand over whom?”
“The dead peasants.”
“But how could I do that?”
“Quite simply. Sell them to me, and I will give you some money in
exchange.”
“But how am I to sell them to you? I scarcely understand what you mean.
Am I to dig them up again from the ground?”
Chichikov perceived that the old lady was altogether at sea, and that he
must explain the matter; wherefore in a few words he informed her that
the transfer or purchase of the souls in question would take place
merely on paper--that the said souls would be listed as still alive.
“And what good would they be to you?” asked his hostess, staring at him
with her eyes distended.
“That is MY affair.”
“But they are DEAD souls.”
“Who said they were not? The mere fact of their being dead entails upon
you a loss as dead as the souls, for you have to continue paying tax
upon them, whereas MY plan is to relieve you both of the tax and of the
resultant trouble. NOW do you understand? And I will not only do as
I say, but also hand you over fifteen roubles per soul. Is that clear
enough?”
“Yes--but I do not know,” said his hostess diffidently. “You see, never
before have I sold dead souls.”
“Quite so. It would be a surprising thing if you had. But surely you do
not think that these dead souls are in the least worth keeping?”
“Oh, no, indeed! Why should they be worth keeping? I am sure they are
not so. The only thing which troubles me is the fact that they are
DEAD.”
“She seems a truly obstinate old woman!” was Chichikov’s inward comment.
“Look here, madam,” he added aloud. “You reason well, but you are simply
ruining yourself by continuing to pay the tax upon dead souls as though
they were still alive.”
“Oh, good sir, do not speak of it!” the lady exclaimed. “Three weeks ago
I took a hundred and fifty roubles to that Assessor, and buttered him
up, and--”
“Then you see how it is, do you not? Remember that, according to my
plan, you will never again have to butter up the Assessor, seeing that
it will be I who will be paying for those peasants--_I_, not YOU, for I
shall have taken over the dues upon them, and have transferred them to
myself as so many bona fide serfs. Do you understand AT LAST?”
However, the old lady still communed with herself. She could see that
the transaction would be to her advantage, yet it was one of such a
novel and unprecedented nature that she was beginning to fear lest this
purchaser of souls intended to cheat her. Certainly he had come from God
only knew where, and at the dead of night, too!
“But, sir, I have never in my life sold dead folk--only living ones.
Three years ago I transferred two wenches to Protopopov for a hundred
roubles apiece, and he thanked me kindly, for they turned out splendid
workers--able to make napkins or anything else.
“Yes, but with the living we have nothing to do, damn it! I am asking
you only about DEAD folk.”
“Yes, yes, of course. But at first sight I felt afraid lest I should be
incurring a loss--lest you should be wishing to outwit me, good sir.
You see, the dead souls are worth rather more than you have offered for
them.”
“See here, madam. (What a woman it is!) HOW could they be worth more?
Think for yourself. They are so much loss to you--so much loss, do you
understand? Take any worthless, rubbishy article you like--a piece of
old rag, for example. That rag will yet fetch its price, for it can be
bought for paper-making. But these dead souls are good for NOTHING AT
ALL. Can you name anything that they ARE good for?”
“True, true--they ARE good for nothing. But what troubles me is the fact
that they are dead.”
“What a blockhead of a creature!” said Chichikov to himself, for he was
beginning to lose patience. “Bless her heart, I may as well be going.
She has thrown me into a perfect sweat, the cursed old shrew!”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the perspiration from
his brow. Yet he need not have flown into such a passion. More than one
respected statesman reveals himself, when confronted with a business
matter, to be just such another as Madam Korobotchka, in that, once he
has got an idea into his head, there is no getting it out of him--you
may ply him with daylight-clear arguments, yet they will rebound
from his brain as an india-rubber ball rebounds from a flagstone.
Nevertheless, wiping away the perspiration, Chichikov resolved to try
whether he could not bring her back to the road by another path.
“Madam,” he said, “either you are declining to understand what I say or
you are talking for the mere sake of talking. If I hand you over some
money--fifteen roubles for each soul, do you understand?--it is MONEY,
not something which can be picked up haphazard on the street. For
instance, tell me how much you sold your honey for?”
“For twelve roubles per pood.”
“Ah! Then by those words, madam, you have laid a trifling sin upon your
soul; for you did NOT sell the honey for twelve roubles.”
“By the Lord God I did!”
“Well, well! Never mind. Honey is only honey. Now, you had collected
that stuff, it may be, for a year, and with infinite care and labour.
You had fussed after it, you had trotted to and fro, you had duly frozen
out the bees, and you had fed them in the cellar throughout the winter.
But these dead souls of which I speak are quite another matter, for in
this case you have put forth no exertions--it was merely God’s will that
they should leave the world, and thus decrease the personnel of your
establishment. In the former case you received (so you allege) twelve
roubles per pood for your labour; but in this case you will receive
money for having done nothing at all. Nor will you receive twelve
roubles per item, but FIFTEEN--and roubles not in silver, but roubles in
good paper currency.”
That these powerful inducements would certainly cause the old woman to
yield Chichikov had not a doubt.
“True,” his hostess replied. “But how strangely business comes to me as
a widow! Perhaps I had better wait a little longer, seeing that other
buyers might come along, and I might be able to compare prices.”
“For shame, madam! For shame! Think what you are saying. Who else, I
would ask, would care to buy those souls? What use could they be to any
one?”
“If that is so, they might come in useful to ME,” mused the old woman
aloud; after which she sat staring at Chichikov with her mouth open and
a face of nervous expectancy as to his possible rejoinder.
“Dead folk useful in a household!” he exclaimed. “Why, what could you do
with them? Set them up on poles to frighten away the sparrows from your
garden?”
“The Lord save us, but what things you say!” she ejaculated, crossing
herself.
“Well, WHAT could you do with them? By this time they are so much bones
and earth. That is all there is left of them. Their transfer to myself
would be ON PAPER only. Come, come! At least give me an answer.”
Again the old woman communed with herself.
“What are you thinking of, Nastasia Petrovna?” inquired Chichikov.
“I am thinking that I scarcely know what to do. Perhaps I had better
sell you some hemp?”
“What do I want with hemp? Pardon me, but just when I have made to you
a different proposal altogether you begin fussing about hemp! Hemp is
hemp, and though I may want some when I NEXT visit you, I should like to
know what you have to say to the suggestion under discussion.”
“Well, I think it a very queer bargain. Never have I heard of such a
thing.”
Upon this Chichikov lost all patience, upset his chair, and bid her go
to the devil; of which personage even the mere mention terrified her
extremely.
“Do not speak of him, I beg of you!” she cried, turning pale. “May God,
rather, bless him! Last night was the third night that he has appeared
to me in a dream. You see, after saying my prayers, I bethought me
of telling my fortune by the cards; and God must have sent him as a
punishment. He looked so horrible, and had horns longer than a bull’s!”
“I wonder you don’t see SCORES of devils in your dreams! Merely out of
Christian charity he had come to you to say, ‘I perceive a poor widow
going to rack and ruin, and likely soon to stand in danger of want.’
Well, go to rack and ruin--yes, you and all your village together!”
“The insults!” exclaimed the old woman, glancing at her visitor in
terror.
“I should think so!” continued Chichikov. “Indeed, I cannot find words
to describe you. To say no more about it, you are like a dog in a
manger. You don’t want to eat the hay yourself, yet you won’t let
anyone else touch it. All that I am seeking to do is to purchase
certain domestic products of yours, for the reason that I have certain
Government contracts to fulfil.” This last he added in passing, and
without any ulterior motive, save that it came to him as a happy
thought. Nevertheless the mention of Government contracts exercised a
powerful influence upon Nastasia Petrovna, and she hastened to say in a
tone that was almost supplicatory:
“Why should you be so angry with me? Had I known that you were going to
lose your temper in this way, I should never have discussed the matter.”
“No wonder that I lose my temper! An egg too many is no great matter,
yet it may prove exceedingly annoying.”
“Well, well, I will let you have the souls for fifteen roubles each.
Also, with regard to those contracts, do not forget me if at any time
you should find yourself in need of rye-meal or buckwheat or groats or
dead meat.”
“No, I shall NEVER forget you, madam!” he said, wiping his forehead,
where three separate streams of perspiration were trickling down his
face. Then he asked her whether in the town she had any acquaintance or
agent whom she could empower to complete the transference of the serfs,
and to carry out whatsoever else might be necessary.
“Certainly,” replied Madame Korobotchka. “The son of our archpriest,
Father Cyril, himself is a lawyer.”
Upon that Chichikov begged her to accord the gentleman in question a
power of attorney, while, to save extra trouble, he himself would then
and there compose the requisite letter.
“It would be a fine thing if he were to buy up all my meal and stock
for the Government,” thought Madame to herself. “I must encourage him a
little. There has been some dough standing ready since last night, so I
will go and tell Fetinia to try a few pancakes. Also, it might be well
to try him with an egg pie. We make then nicely here, and they do not
take long in the making.”
So she departed to translate her thoughts into action, as well as to
supplement the pie with other products of the domestic cuisine; while,
for his part, Chichikov returned to the drawing-room where he had spent
the night, in order to procure from his dispatch-box the necessary
writing-paper. The room had now been set in order, the sumptuous
feather bed removed, and a table set before the sofa. Depositing his
dispatch-box upon the table, he heaved a gentle sigh on becoming aware
that he was so soaked with perspiration that he might almost have
been dipped in a river. Everything, from his shirt to his socks,
was dripping. “May she starve to death, the cursed old harridan!” he
ejaculated after a moment’s rest. Then he opened his dispatch-box. In
passing, I may say that I feel certain that at least SOME of my readers
will be curious to know the contents and the internal arrangements of
that receptacle. Why should I not gratify their curiosity? To begin
with, the centre of the box contained a soap-dish, with, disposed around
it, six or seven compartments for razors. Next came square partitions
for a sand-box [17] and an inkstand, as well as (scooped out in their
midst) a hollow of pens, sealing-wax, and anything else that required
more room. Lastly there were all sorts of little divisions, both with
and without lids, for articles of a smaller nature, such as visiting
cards, memorial cards, theatre tickets, and things which Chichikov had
laid by as souvenirs. This portion of the box could be taken out, and
below it were both a space for manuscripts and a secret money-box--the
latter made to draw out from the side of the receptacle.
Chichikov set to work to clean a pen, and then to write. Presently his
hostess entered the room.
“What a beautiful box you have got, my dear sir!” she exclaimed as she
took a seat beside him. “Probably you bought it in Moscow?”
“Yes--in Moscow,” replied Chichikov without interrupting his writing.
“I thought so. One CAN get good things there. Three years ago my sister
brought me a few pairs of warm shoes for my sons, and they were such
excellent articles! To this day my boys wear them. And what nice stamped
paper you have!” (she had peered into the dispatch-box, where, sure
enough, there lay a further store of the paper in question). “Would you
mind letting me have a sheet of it? I am without any at all, although I
shall soon have to be presenting a plea to the land court, and possess
not a morsel of paper to write it on.”
Upon this Chichikov explained that the paper was not the sort proper
for the purpose--that it was meant for serf-indenturing, and not for
the framing of pleas. Nevertheless, to quiet her, he gave her a sheet
stamped to the value of a rouble. Next, he handed her the letter to
sign, and requested, in return, a list of her peasants. Unfortunately,
such a list had never been compiled, let alone any copies of it, and the
only way in which she knew the peasants’ names was by heart. However, he
told her to dictate them. Some of the names greatly astonished our hero,
so, still more, did the surnames. Indeed, frequently, on hearing the
latter, he had to pause before writing them down. Especially did he halt
before a certain “Peter Saveliev Neuvazhai Korito.” “What a string of
titles!” involuntarily he ejaculated. To the Christian name of another
serf was appended “Korovi Kirpitch,” and to that of a third “Koleso
Ivan.” However, at length the list was compiled, and he caught a deep
breath; which latter proceeding caused him to catch also the attractive
odour of something fried in fat.
“I beseech you to have a morsel,” murmured his hostess. Chichikov looked
up, and saw that the table was spread with mushrooms, pies, and other
viands.
“Try this freshly-made pie and an egg,” continued Madame.
Chichikov did so, and having eaten more than half of what she offered
him, praised the pie highly. Indeed, it was a toothsome dish, and, after
his difficulties and exertions with his hostess, it tasted even better
than it might otherwise have done.
“And also a few pancakes?” suggested Madame.
For answer Chichikov folded three together, and, having dipped them in
melted butter, consigned the lot to his mouth, and then wiped his
mouth with a napkin. Twice more was the process repeated, and then
he requested his hostess to order the britchka to be got ready. In
dispatching Fetinia with the necessary instructions, she ordered her to
return with a second batch of hot pancakes.
“Your pancakes are indeed splendid,” said Chichikov, applying himself to
the second consignment of fried dainties when they had arrived.
“Yes, we make them well here,” replied Madame. “Yet how unfortunate it
is that the harvest should have proved so poor as to have prevented me
from earning anything on my--But why should you be in such a hurry to
depart, good sir?” She broke off on seeing Chichikov reach for his cap.
“The britchka is not yet ready.”
“Then it is being got so, madam, it is being got so, and I shall need a
moment or two to pack my things.”
“As you please, dear sir; but do not forget me in connection with those
Government contracts.”
“No, I have said that NEVER shall I forget you,” replied Chichikov as he
hurried into the hall.
“And would you like to buy some lard?” continued his hostess, pursuing
him.
“Lard? Oh certainly. Why not? Only, only--I will do so ANOTHER time.”
“I shall have some ready at about Christmas.”
“Quite so, madam. THEN I will buy anything and everything--the lard
included.”
“And perhaps you will be wanting also some feathers? I shall be having
some for sale about St. Philip’s Day.”
“Very well, very well, madam.”
“There you see!” she remarked as they stepped out on to the verandah.
“The britchka is NOT yet ready.”
“But it soon will be, it soon will be. Only direct me to the main road.”
“How am I to do that?” said Madame. “‘Twould puzzle a wise man to do so,
for in these parts there are so many turnings. However, I will send a
girl to guide you. You could find room for her on the box-seat, could
you not?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then I will send her. She knows the way thoroughly. Only do not carry
her off for good. Already some traders have deprived me of one of my
girls.”
Chichikov reassured his hostess on the point, and Madame plucked up
courage enough to scan, first of all, the housekeeper, who happened to
be issuing from the storehouse with a bowl of honey, and, next, a
young peasant who happened to be standing at the gates; and, while thus
engaged, she became wholly absorbed in her domestic pursuits. But
why pay her so much attention? The Widow Korobotchka, Madame Manilov,
domestic life, non-domestic life--away with them all! How strangely are
things compounded! In a trice may joy turn to sorrow, should one halt
long enough over it: in a trice only God can say what ideas may strike
one. You may fall even to thinking: “After all, did Madame Korobotchka
stand so very low in the scale of human perfection? Was there really
such a very great gulf between her and Madame Manilov--between her and
the Madame Manilov whom we have seen entrenched behind the walls of a
genteel mansion in which there were a fine staircase of wrought metal
and a number of rich carpets; the Madame Manilov who spent most of her
time in yawning behind half-read books, and in hoping for a visit from
some socially distinguished person in order that she might display her
wit and carefully rehearsed thoughts--thoughts which had been de rigueur
in town for a week past, yet which referred, not to what was going on
in her household or on her estate--both of which properties were at odds
and ends, owing to her ignorance of the art of managing them--but to
the coming political revolution in France and the direction in which
fashionable Catholicism was supposed to be moving? But away with such
things! Why need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into
the midst of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter
another, and a very different, tendency?--that the smile may not have
left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or
her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that
the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen
there?...
“Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!” exclaimed Chichikov on
perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing. “Ah, you blockhead!” he
went on to Selifan. “Why have you been loitering about? I suppose last
night’s fumes have not yet left your brain?”
To this Selifan returned no reply.
“Good-bye, madam,” added the speaker. “But where is the girl whom you
promised me?”
“Here, Pelagea!” called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was
dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet
which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so
encrusted were they with fresh mire. “Here, Pelagea! Come and show this
gentleman the way.”
Selifan helped the girl to ascend to the box-seat. Placing one foot upon
the step by which the gentry mounted, she covered the said step with
mud, and then, ascending higher, attained the desired position beside
the coachman. Chichikov followed in her wake (causing the britchka to
heel over with his weight as he did so), and then settled himself back
into his place with an “All right! Good-bye, madam!” as the horses moved
away at a trot.
Selifan looked gloomy as he drove, but also very attentive to his
business. This was invariably his custom when he had committed the fault
of getting drunk. Also, the horses looked unusually well-groomed. In
particular, the collar on one of them had been neatly mended, although
hitherto its state of dilapidation had been such as perennially to allow
the stuffing to protrude through the leather. The silence preserved was
well-nigh complete. Merely flourishing his whip, Selifan spoke to the
team no word of instruction, although the skewbald was as ready as usual
to listen to conversation of a didactic nature, seeing that at such
times the reins hung loosely in the hands of the loquacious driver,
and the whip wandered merely as a matter of form over the backs of the
troika. This time, however, there could be heard issuing from Selifan’s
sullen lips only the uniformly unpleasant exclamation, “Now then, you
brutes! Get on with you, get on with you!” The bay and the Assessor too
felt put out at not hearing themselves called “my pets” or “good lads”;
while, in addition, the skewbald came in for some nasty cuts across his
sleek and ample quarters. “What has put master out like this?” thought
the animal as it shook its head. “Heaven knows where he does not keep
beating me--across the back, and even where I am tenderer still. Yes, he
keeps catching the whip in my ears, and lashing me under the belly.”
“To the right, eh?” snapped Selifan to the girl beside him as he pointed
to a rain-soaked road which trended away through fresh green fields.
“No, no,” she replied. “I will show you the road when the time comes.”
“Which way, then?” he asked again when they had proceeded a little
further.
“This way.” And she pointed to the road just mentioned.
“Get along with you!” retorted the coachman. “That DOES go to the right.
You don’t know your right hand from your left.”
The weather was fine, but the ground so excessively sodden that the
wheels of the britchka collected mire until they had become caked as
with a layer of felt, a circumstance which greatly increased the weight
of the vehicle, and prevented it from clearing the neighbouring parishes
before the afternoon was arrived. Also, without the girl’s help the
finding of the way would have been impossible, since roads wiggled away
in every direction, like crabs released from a net, and, but for the
assistance mentioned, Selifan would have found himself left to his own
devices. Presently she pointed to a building ahead, with the words,
“THERE is the main road.”
“And what is the building?” asked Selifan.
“A tavern,” she said.
“Then we can get along by ourselves,” he observed. “Do you get down, and
be off home.”
With that he stopped, and helped her to alight--muttering as he did so:
“Ah, you blackfooted creature!”
Chichikov added a copper groat, and she departed well pleased with her
ride in the gentleman’s carriage.
CHAPTER 4
On reaching the tavern, Chichikov called a halt. His reasons for this
were twofold--namely, that he wanted to rest the horses, and that he
himself desired some refreshment. In this connection the author feels
bound to confess that the appetite and the capacity of such men are
greatly to be envied. Of those well-to-do folk of St. Petersburg and
Moscow who spend their time in considering what they shall eat on the
morrow, and in composing a dinner for the day following, and who never
sit down to a meal without first of all injecting a pill and then
swallowing oysters and crabs and a quantity of other monsters, while
eternally departing for Karlsbad or the Caucasus, the author has but a
small opinion. Yes, THEY are not the persons to inspire envy. Rather,
it is the folk of the middle classes--folk who at one posthouse call for
bacon, and at another for a sucking pig, and at a third for a steak of
sturgeon or a baked pudding with onions, and who can sit down to table
at any hour, as though they had never had a meal in their lives, and
can devour fish of all sorts, and guzzle and chew it with a view
to provoking further appetite--these, I say, are the folk who enjoy
heaven’s most favoured gift. To attain such a celestial condition the
great folk of whom I have spoken would sacrifice half their serfs and
half their mortgaged and non-mortgaged property, with the foreign and
domestic improvements thereon, if thereby they could compass such
a stomach as is possessed by the folk of the middle class. But,
unfortunately, neither money nor real estate, whether improved or
non-improved, can purchase such a stomach.
The little wooden tavern, with its narrow, but hospitable, curtain
suspended from a pair of rough-hewn doorposts like old church
candlesticks, seemed to invite Chichikov to enter. True, the
establishment was only a Russian hut of the ordinary type, but it was
a hut of larger dimensions than usual, and had around its windows and
gables carved and patterned cornices of bright-coloured wood which threw
into relief the darker hue of the walls, and consorted well with the
flowered pitchers painted on the shutters.
Ascending the narrow wooden staircase to the upper floor, and arriving
upon a broad landing, Chichikov found himself confronted with a creaking
door and a stout old woman in a striped print gown. “This way, if you
please,” she said. Within the apartment designated Chichikov
encountered the old friends which one invariably finds in such roadside
hostelries--to wit, a heavy samovar, four smooth, bescratched walls of
white pine, a three-cornered press with cups and teapots, egg-cups
of gilded china standing in front of ikons suspended by blue and red
ribands, a cat lately delivered of a family, a mirror which gives one
four eyes instead of two and a pancake for a face, and, beside the
ikons, some bunches of herbs and carnations of such faded dustiness
that, should one attempt to smell them, one is bound to burst out
sneezing.
“Have you a sucking-pig?” Chichikov inquired of the landlady as she
stood expectantly before him.
“Yes.”
“And some horse-radish and sour cream?”
“Yes.”
“Then serve them.”
The landlady departed for the purpose, and returned with a plate, a
napkin (the latter starched to the consistency of dried bark), a knife
with a bone handle beginning to turn yellow, a two-pronged fork as thin
as a wafer, and a salt-cellar incapable of being made to stand upright.
Following the accepted custom, our hero entered into conversation with
the woman, and inquired whether she herself or a landlord kept the
tavern; how much income the tavern brought in; whether her sons lived
with her; whether the oldest was a bachelor or married; whom the
eldest had taken to wife; whether the dowry had been large; whether the
father-in-law had been satisfied, and whether the said father-in-law
had not complained of receiving too small a present at the wedding.
In short, Chichikov touched on every conceivable point. Likewise
(of course) he displayed some curiosity as to the landowners of the
neighbourhood. Their names, he ascertained, were Blochin, Potchitaev,
Minoi, Cheprakov, and Sobakevitch.
“Then you are acquainted with Sobakevitch?” he said; whereupon the old
woman informed him that she knew not only Sobakevitch, but also Manilov,
and that the latter was the more delicate eater of the two, since,
whereas Manilov always ordered a roast fowl and some veal and mutton,
and then tasted merely a morsel of each, Sobakevitch would order one
dish only, but consume the whole of it, and then demand more at the same
price.
Whilst Chichikov was thus conversing and partaking of the sucking pig
until only a fragment of it seemed likely to remain, the sound of an
approaching vehicle made itself heard. Peering through the window, he
saw draw up to the tavern door a light britchka drawn by three fine
horses. From it there descended two men--one flaxen-haired and tall, and
the other dark-haired and of slighter build. While the flaxen-haired
man was clad in a dark-blue coat, the other one was wrapped in a coat
of striped pattern. Behind the britchka stood a second, but an empty,
turn-out, drawn by four long-coated steeds in ragged collars and
rope harnesses. The flaxen-haired man lost no time in ascending the
staircase, while his darker friend remained below to fumble at something
in the britchka, talking, as he did so, to the driver of the vehicle
which stood hitched behind. Somehow, the dark-haired man’s voice struck
Chichikov as familiar; and as he was taking another look at him the
flaxen-haired gentleman entered the room. The newcomer was a man of
lofty stature, with a small red moustache and a lean, hard-bitten face
whose redness made it evident that its acquaintance, if not with the
smoke of gunpowder, at all events with that of tobacco, was intimate
and extensive. Nevertheless he greeted Chichikov civilly, and the latter
returned his bow. Indeed, the pair would have entered into conversation,
and have made one another’s acquaintance (since a beginning was made
with their simultaneously expressing satisfaction at the circumstance
that the previous night’s rain had laid the dust on the roads,
and thereby made driving cool and pleasant) when the gentleman’s
darker-favoured friend also entered the room, and, throwing his cap upon
the table, pushed back a mass of dishevelled black locks from his brow.
The latest arrival was a man of medium height, but well put together,
and possessed of a pair of full red cheeks, a set of teeth as white as
snow, and coal-black whiskers. Indeed, so fresh was his complexion that
it seemed to have been compounded of blood and milk, while health danced
in his every feature.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he cried with a gesture of astonishment at the sight of
Chichikov. “What chance brings YOU here?”
Upon that Chichikov recognised Nozdrev--the man whom he had met at
dinner at the Public Prosecutor’s, and who, within a minute or two of
the introduction, had become so intimate with his fellow guest as to
address him in the second person singular, in spite of the fact that
Chichikov had given him no opportunity for doing so.
“Where have you been to-day?” Nozdrev inquired, and, without waiting for
an answer, went on: “For myself, I am just from the fair, and completely
cleaned out. Actually, I have had to do the journey back with stage
horses! Look out of the window, and see them for yourself.” And he
turned Chichikov’s head so sharply in the desired direction that he came
very near to bumping it against the window frame. “Did you ever see such
a bag of tricks? The cursed things have only just managed to get here.
In fact, on the way I had to transfer myself to this fellow’s britchka.”
He indicated his companion with a finger. “By the way, don’t you know
one another? He is Mizhuev, my brother-in-law. He and I were talking of
you only this morning. ‘Just you see,’ said I to him, ‘if we do not fall
in with Chichikov before we have done.’ Heavens, how completely cleaned
out I am! Not only have I lost four good horses, but also my watch and
chain.” Chichikov perceived that in very truth his interlocutor was
minus the articles named, as well as that one of Nozdrev’s whiskers was
less bushy in appearance than the other one. “Had I had another twenty
roubles in my pocket,” went on Nozdrev, “I should have won back all that
I have lost, as well as have pouched a further thirty thousand. Yes, I
give you my word of honour on that.”
“But you were saying the same thing when last I met you,” put in the
flaxen-haired man. “Yet, even though I lent you fifty roubles, you lost
them all.”
“But I should not have lost them THIS time. Don’t try to make me out
a fool. I should NOT have lost them, I tell you. Had I only played the
right card, I should have broken the bank.”
“But you did NOT break the bank,” remarked the flaxen-haired man.
“No. That was because I did not play my cards right. But what about your
precious major’s play? Is THAT good?”
“Good or not, at least he beat you.”
“Splendid of him! Nevertheless I will get my own back. Let him play me
at doubles, and we shall soon see what sort of a player he is!
Friend Chichikov, at first we had a glorious time, for the fair was a
tremendous success. Indeed, the tradesmen said that never yet had there
been such a gathering. I myself managed to sell everything from my
estate at a good price. In fact, we had a magnificent time. I can’t help
thinking of it, devil take me! But what a pity YOU were not there! Three
versts from the town there is quartered a regiment of dragoons, and you
would scarcely believe what a lot of officers it has. Forty at least
there are, and they do a fine lot of knocking about the town and
drinking. In particular, Staff-Captain Potsieluev is a SPLENDID fellow!
You should just see his moustache! Why, he calls good claret ‘trash’!
‘Bring me some of the usual trash,’ is his way of ordering it. And
Lieutenant Kuvshinnikov, too! He is as delightful as the other man. In
fact, I may say that every one of the lot is a rake. I spent my whole
time with them, and you can imagine that Ponomarev, the wine merchant,
did a fine trade indeed! All the same, he is a rascal, you know, and
ought not to be dealt with, for he puts all sorts of rubbish into his
liquor--Indian wood and burnt cork and elderberry juice, the villain!
Nevertheless, get him to produce a bottle from what he calls his
‘special cellar,’ and you will fancy yourself in the seventh heaven of
delight. And what quantities of champagne we drank! Compared with it,
provincial stuff is kvass [18]. Try to imagine not merely Clicquot, but
a sort of blend of Clicquot and Matradura--Clicquot of double strength.
Also Ponomarev produced a bottle of French stuff which he calls
‘Bonbon.’ Had it a bouquet, ask you? Why, it had the bouquet of a rose
garden, of anything else you like. What times we had, to be sure! Just
after we had left Pnomarev’s place, some prince or another arrived in
the town, and sent out for some champagne; but not a bottle was there
left, for the officers had drunk every one! Why, I myself got through
seventeen bottles at a sitting.”
“Come, come! You CAN’T have got through seventeen,” remarked the
flaxen-haired man.
“But I did, I give my word of honour,” retorted Nozdrev.
“Imagine what you like, but you didn’t drink even TEN bottles at a
sitting.”
“Will you bet that I did not?”
“No; for what would be the use of betting about it?”
“Then at least wager the gun which you have bought.”
“No, I am not going to do anything of the kind.”
“Just as an experiment?”
“No.”
“It is as well for you that you don’t, since, otherwise, you would have
found yourself minus both gun and cap. However, friend Chichikov, it
is a pity you were not there. Had you been there, I feel sure you would
have found yourself unable to part with Lieutenant Kuvshinnikov. You and
he would have hit it off splendidly. You know, he is quite a
different sort from the Public Prosecutor and our other provincial
skinflints--fellows who shiver in their shoes before they will spend a
single kopeck. HE will play faro, or anything else, and at any time.
Why did you not come with us, instead of wasting your time on cattle
breeding or something of the sort? But never mind. Embrace me. I like
you immensely. Mizhuev, see how curiously things have turned out.
Chichikov has nothing to do with me, or I with him, yet here is he come
from God knows where, and landed in the very spot where I happen to be
living! I may tell you that, no matter how many carriages I possessed, I
should gamble the lot away. Recently I went in for a turn at billiards,
and lost two jars of pomade, a china teapot, and a guitar. Then I staked
some more things, and, like a fool, lost them all, and six roubles in
addition. What a dog is that Kuvshinnikov! He and I attended nearly
every ball in the place. In particular, there was a woman--decolletee,
and such a swell! I merely thought to myself, ‘The devil take her!’ but
Kuvshinnikov is such a wag that he sat down beside her, and began paying
her strings of compliments in French. However, I did not neglect the
damsels altogether--although HE calls that sort of thing ‘going in for
strawberries.’ By the way, I have a splendid piece of fish and some
caviare with me. ’Tis all I HAVE brought back! In fact it is a lucky
chance that I happened to buy the stuff before my money was gone. Where
are you for?”
“I am about to call on a friend.”
“On what friend? Let him go to the devil, and come to my place instead.”
“I cannot, I cannot. I have business to do.”
“Oh, business again! I thought so!”
“But I HAVE business to do--and pressing business at that.”
“I wager that you’re lying. If not, tell me whom you’re going to call
upon.”
“Upon Sobakevitch.”
Instantly Nozdrev burst into a laugh compassable only by a healthy man
in whose head every tooth still remains as white as sugar. By this I
mean the laugh of quivering cheeks, the laugh which causes a neighbour
who is sleeping behind double doors three rooms away to leap from his
bed and exclaim with distended eyes, “Hullo! Something HAS upset him!”
“What is there to laugh at?” asked Chichikov, a trifle nettled; but
Nozdrev laughed more unrestrainedly than ever, ejaculating: “Oh, spare
us all! The thing is so amusing that I shall die of it!”
“I say that there is nothing to laugh at,” repeated Chichikov. “It is in
fulfilment of a promise that I am on my way to Sobakevitch’s.”
“Then you will scarcely be glad to be alive when you’ve got there, for
he is the veriest miser in the countryside. Oh, _I_ know you. However,
if you think to find there either faro or a bottle of ‘Bonbon’ you are
mistaken. Look here, my good friend. Let Sobakevitch go to the devil,
and come to MY place, where at least I shall have a piece of sturgeon
to offer you for dinner. Ponomarev said to me on parting: ‘This piece is
just the thing for you. Even if you were to search the whole market, you
would never find a better one.’ But of course he is a terrible rogue.
I said to him outright: ‘You and the Collector of Taxes are the two
greatest skinflints in the town.’ But he only stroked his beard
and smiled. Every day I used to breakfast with Kuvshinnikov in his
restaurant. Well, what I was nearly forgetting is this: that, though I
am aware that you can’t forgo your engagement, I am not going to give
you up--no, not for ten thousand roubles of money. I tell you that in
advance.”
Here he broke off to run to the window and shout to his servant (who was
holding a knife in one hand and a crust of bread and a piece of sturgeon
in the other--he had contrived to filch the latter while fumbling in the
britchka for something else):
“Hi, Porphyri! Bring here that puppy, you rascal! What a puppy it is!
Unfortunately that thief of a landlord has given it nothing to eat, even
though I have promised him the roan filly which, as you may remember, I
swopped from Khvostirev.” As a matter of fact, Chichikov had never in
his life seen either Khvostirev or the roan filly.
“Barin, do you wish for anything to eat?” inquired the landlady as she
entered.
“No, nothing at all. Ah, friend Chichikov, what times we had! Yes, give
me a glass of vodka, old woman. What sort do you keep?”
“Aniseed.”
“Then bring me a glass of it,” repeated Nozdrev.
“And one for me as well,” added the flaxen-haired man.
“At the theatre,” went on Nozdrev, “there was an actress who sang like a
canary. Kuvshinnikov, who happened to be sitting with me, said: ‘My boy,
you had better go and gather that strawberry.’ As for the booths at the
fair, they numbered, I should say, fifty.” At this point he broke off
to take the glass of vodka from the landlady, who bowed low in
acknowledgement of his doing so. At the same moment Porphyri--a
fellow dressed like his master (that is to say, in a greasy, wadded
overcoat)--entered with the puppy.
“Put the brute down here,” commanded Nozdrev, “and then fasten it up.”
Porphyri deposited the animal upon the floor; whereupon it proceeded to
act after the manner of dogs.
“THERE’S a puppy for you!” cried Nozdrev, catching hold of it by the
back, and lifting it up. The puppy uttered a piteous yelp.
“I can see that you haven’t done what I told you to do,” he continued
to Porphyri after an inspection of the animal’s belly. “You have quite
forgotten to brush him.”
“I DID brush him,” protested Porphyri.
“Then where did these fleas come from?”
“I cannot think. Perhaps they have leapt into his coat out of the
britchka.”
“You liar! As a matter of fact, you have forgotten to brush him.
Nevertheless, look at these ears, Chichikov. Just feel them.”
“Why should I? Without doing that, I can see that he is well-bred.”
“Nevertheless, catch hold of his ears and feel them.”
To humour the fellow Chichikov did as he had requested, remarking: “Yes,
he seems likely to turn out well.”
“And feel the coldness of his nose! Just take it in your hand.”
Not wishing to offend his interlocutor, Chichikov felt the puppy’s nose,
saying: “Some day he will have an excellent scent.”
“Yes, will he not? ’Tis the right sort of muzzle for that. I must say
that I have long been wanting such a puppy. Porphyri, take him away
again.”
Porphyri lifted up the puppy, and bore it downstairs.
“Look here, Chichikov,” resumed Nozdrev. “You MUST come to my place. It
lies only five versts away, and we can go there like the wind, and you
can visit Sobakevitch afterwards.”
“Shall I, or shall I not, go to Nozdrev’s?” reflected Chichikov. “Is he
likely to prove any more useful than the rest? Well, at least he is as
promising, even though he has lost so much at play. But he has a head on
his shoulders, and therefore I must go carefully if I am to tackle him
concerning my scheme.”
With that he added aloud: “Very well, I WILL come with you, but do not
let us be long, for my time is very precious.”
“That’s right, that’s right!” cried Nozdrev. “Splendid, splendid! Let me
embrace you!” And he fell upon Chichikov’s neck. “All three of us will
go.”
“No, no,” put in the flaxen-haired man. “You must excuse me, for I must
be off home.”
“Rubbish, rubbish! I am NOT going to excuse you.”
“But my wife will be furious with me. You and Monsieur Chichikov must
change into the other britchka.”
“Come, come! The thing is not to be thought of.”
The flaxen-haired man was one of those people in whose character, at
first sight, there seems to lurk a certain grain of stubbornness--so
much so that, almost before one has begun to speak, they are ready to
dispute one’s words, and to disagree with anything that may be opposed
to their peculiar form of opinion. For instance, they will decline to
have folly called wisdom, or any tune danced to but their own. Always,
however, will there become manifest in their character a soft spot, and
in the end they will accept what hitherto they have denied, and call
what is foolish sensible, and even dance--yes, better than any one else
will do--to a tune set by some one else. In short, they generally begin
well, but always end badly.
“Rubbish!” said Nozdrev in answer to a further objection on his
brother-in-law’s part. And, sure enough, no sooner had Nozdrev clapped
his cap upon his head than the flaxen-haired man started to follow him
and his companion.
“But the gentleman has not paid for the vodka?” put in the old woman.
“All right, all right, good mother. Look here, brother-in-law. Pay her,
will you, for I have not a kopeck left.”
“How much?” inquired the brother-in-law.
“What, sir? Eighty kopecks, if you please,” replied the old woman.
“A lie! Give her half a rouble. That will be quite enough.”
“No, it will NOT, barin,” protested the old woman. However, she took the
money gratefully, and even ran to the door to open it for the gentlemen.
As a matter of fact, she had lost nothing by the transaction, since she
had demanded fully a quarter more than the vodka was worth.
The travellers then took their seats, and since Chichikov’s britchka
kept alongside the britchka wherein Nozdrev and his brother-in-law were
seated, it was possible for all three men to converse together as they
proceeded. Behind them came Nozdrev’s smaller buggy, with its team
of lean stage horses and Porphyri and the puppy. But inasmuch as the
conversation which the travellers maintained was not of a kind likely
to interest the reader, I might do worse than say something concerning
Nozdrev himself, seeing that he is destined to play no small role in our
story.
Nozdrev’s face will be familiar to the reader, seeing that every one
must have encountered many such. Fellows of the kind are known as
“gay young sparks,” and, even in their boyhood and school days, earn a
reputation for being bons camarades (though with it all they come in for
some hard knocks) for the reason that their faces evince an element of
frankness, directness, and enterprise which enables them soon to make
friends, and, almost before you have had time to look around, to start
addressing you in the second person singular. Yet, while cementing such
friendships for all eternity, almost always they begin quarrelling the
same evening, since, throughout, they are a loquacious, dissipated,
high-spirited, over-showy tribe. Indeed, at thirty-five Nozdrev was just
what he had been an eighteen and twenty--he was just such a lover of
fast living. Nor had his marriage in any way changed him, and the less
so since his wife had soon departed to another world, and left behind
her two children, whom he did not want, and who were therefore placed
in the charge of a good-looking nursemaid. Never at any time could he
remain at home for more than a single day, for his keen scent could
range over scores and scores of versts, and detect any fair which
promised balls and crowds. Consequently in a trice he would be
there--quarrelling, and creating disturbances over the gaming-table
(like all men of his type, he had a perfect passion for cards) yet
playing neither a faultless nor an over-clean game, since he was both
a blunderer and able to indulge in a large number of illicit cuts and
other devices. The result was that the game often ended in another kind
of sport altogether. That is to say, either he received a good kicking,
or he had his thick and very handsome whiskers pulled; with the result
that on certain occasions he returned home with one of those appendages
looking decidedly ragged. Yet his plump, healthy-looking cheeks were
so robustly constituted, and contained such an abundance of recreative
vigour, that a new whisker soon sprouted in place of the old one, and
even surpassed its predecessor. Again (and the following is a phenomenon
peculiar to Russia) a very short time would have elapsed before once
more he would be consorting with the very cronies who had recently
cuffed him--and consorting with them as though nothing whatsoever had
happened--no reference to the subject being made by him, and they too
holding their tongues.
In short, Nozdrev was, as it were, a man of incident. Never was he
present at any gathering without some sort of a fracas occurring
thereat. Either he would require to be expelled from the room by
gendarmes, or his friends would have to kick him out into the street. At
all events, should neither of those occurrences take place, at least he
did something of a nature which would not otherwise have been witnessed.
That is to say, should he not play the fool in a buffet to such an
extent as to make every one smile, you may be sure that he was engaged
in lying to a degree which at times abashed even himself. Moreover, the
man lied without reason. For instance, he would begin telling a story to
the effect that he possessed a blue-coated or a red-coated horse; until,
in the end, his listeners would be forced to leave him with the remark,
“You are giving us some fine stuff, old fellow!” Also, men like Nozdrev
have a passion for insulting their neighbours without the least excuse
afforded. (For that matter, even a man of good standing and of
respectable exterior--a man with a star on his breast--may unexpectedly
press your hand one day, and begin talking to you on subjects of a
nature to give food for serious thought. Yet just as unexpectedly may
that man start abusing you to your face--and do so in a manner worthy of
a collegiate registrar rather than of a man who wears a star on his
breast and aspires to converse on subjects which merit reflection. All
that one can do in such a case is to stand shrugging one’s shoulders in
amazement.) Well, Nozdrev had just such a weakness. The more he became
friendly with a man, the sooner would he insult him, and be ready to
spread calumnies as to his reputation. Yet all the while he would
consider himself the insulted one’s friend, and, should he meet him
again, would greet him in the most amicable style possible, and say,
“You rascal, why have you given up coming to see me.” Thus, taken all
round, Nozdrev was a person of many aspects and numerous potentialities.
In one and the same breath would he propose to go with you whithersoever
you might choose (even to the very ends of the world should you so
require) or to enter upon any sort of an enterprise with you, or to
exchange any commodity for any other commodity which you might care to
name. Guns, horses, dogs, all were subjects for barter--though not for
profit so far as YOU were concerned. Such traits are mostly the outcome
of a boisterous temperament, as is additionally exemplified by the fact
that if at a fair he chanced to fall in with a simpleton and to fleece
him, he would then proceed to buy a quantity of the very first articles
which came to hand--horse-collars, cigar-lighters, dresses for his
nursemaid, foals, raisins, silver ewers, lengths of holland, wheatmeal,
tobacco, revolvers, dried herrings, pictures, whetstones, crockery,
boots, and so forth, until every atom of his money was exhausted. Yet
seldom were these articles conveyed home, since, as a rule, the same day
saw them lost to some more skilful gambler, in addition to his pipe, his
tobacco-pouch, his mouthpiece, his four-horsed turn-out, and his
coachman: with the result that, stripped to his very shirt, he would be
forced to beg the loan of a vehicle from a friend.
Such was Nozdrev. Some may say that characters of his type have become
extinct, that Nozdrevs no longer exist. Alas! such as say this will
be wrong; for many a day must pass before the Nozdrevs will have
disappeared from our ken. Everywhere they are to be seen in our
midst--the only difference between the new and the old being a
difference of garments. Persons of superficial observation are apt to
consider that a man clad in a different coat is quite a different person
from what he used to be.
To continue. The three vehicles bowled up to the steps of Nozdrev’s
house, and their occupants alighted. But no preparations whatsoever had
been made for the guest’s reception, for on some wooden trestles in
the centre of the dining-room a couple of peasants were engaged in
whitewashing the ceiling and drawling out an endless song as they
splashed their stuff about the floor. Hastily bidding peasants and
trestles to be gone, Nozdrev departed to another room with further
instructions. Indeed, so audible was the sound of his voice as he
ordered dinner that Chichikov--who was beginning to feel hungry once
more--was enabled to gather that it would be at least five o’clock
before a meal of any kind would be available. On his return, Nozdrev
invited his companions to inspect his establishment--even though as
early as two o’clock he had to announce that nothing more was to be
seen.
The tour began with a view of the stables, where the party saw two mares
(the one a grey, and the other a roan) and a colt; which latter animal,
though far from showy, Nozdrev declared to have cost him ten thousand
roubles.
“You NEVER paid ten thousand roubles for the brute!” exclaimed the
brother-in-law. “He isn’t worth even a thousand.”
“By God, I DID pay ten thousand!” asserted Nozdrev.
“You can swear that as much as you like,” retorted the other.
“Will you bet that I did not?” asked Nozdrev, but the brother-in-law
declined the offer.
Next, Nozdrev showed his guests some empty stalls where a number of
equally fine animals (so he alleged) had lately stood. Also there was on
view the goat which an old belief still considers to be an indispensable
adjunct to such places, even though its apparent use is to pace up and
down beneath the noses of the horses as though the place belonged to it.
Thereafter the host took his guests to look at a young wolf which he had
got tied to a chain. “He is fed on nothing but raw meat,” he explained,
“for I want him to grow up as fierce as possible.” Then the party
inspected a pond in which there were “fish of such a size that it would
take two men all their time to lift one of them out.”
This piece of information was received with renewed incredulity on the
part of the brother-in-law.
“Now, Chichikov,” went on Nozdrev, “let me show you a truly magnificent
brace of dogs. The hardness of their muscles will surprise you, and they
have jowls as sharp as needles.”
So saying, he led the way to a small, but neatly-built, shed surrounded
on every side with a fenced-in run. Entering this run, the visitors
beheld a number of dogs of all sorts and sizes and colours. In their
midst Nozdrev looked like a father lording it over his family circle.
Erecting their tails--their “stems,” as dog fanciers call those
members--the animals came bounding to greet the party, and fully a score
of them laid their paws upon Chichikov’s shoulders. Indeed, one dog was
moved with such friendliness that, standing on its hind legs, it licked
him on the lips, and so forced him to spit. That done, the visitors duly
inspected the couple already mentioned, and expressed astonishment at
their muscles. True enough, they were fine animals. Next, the party
looked at a Crimean bitch which, though blind and fast nearing her end,
had, two years ago, been a truly magnificent dog. At all events, so said
Nozdrev. Next came another bitch--also blind; then an inspection of
the water-mill, which lacked the spindle-socket wherein the upper stone
ought to have been revolving--“fluttering,” to use the Russian peasant’s
quaint expression. “But never mind,” said Nozdrev. “Let us proceed to
the blacksmith’s shop.” So to the blacksmith’s shop the party proceeded,
and when the said shop had been viewed, Nozdrev said as he pointed to a
field:
“In this field I have seen such numbers of hares as to render the ground
quite invisible. Indeed, on one occasion I, with my own hands, caught a
hare by the hind legs.”
“You never caught a hare by the hind legs with your hands!” remarked the
brother-in-law.
“But I DID” reiterated Nozdrev. “However, let me show you the boundary
where my lands come to an end.”
So saying, he started to conduct his guests across a field which
consisted mostly of moleheaps, and in which the party had to pick their
way between strips of ploughed land and of harrowed. Soon Chichikov
began to feel weary, for the terrain was so low-lying that in many spots
water could be heard squelching underfoot, and though for a while the
visitors watched their feet, and stepped carefully, they soon perceived
that such a course availed them nothing, and took to following their
noses, without either selecting or avoiding the spots where the mire
happened to be deeper or the reverse. At length, when a considerable
distance had been covered, they caught sight of a boundary-post and a
narrow ditch.
“That is the boundary,” said Nozdrev. “Everything that you see on this
side of the post is mine, as well as the forest on the other side of it,
and what lies beyond the forest.”
“WHEN did that forest become yours?” asked the brother-in-law. “It
cannot be long since you purchased it, for it never USED to be yours.”
“Yes, it isn’t long since I purchased it,” said Nozdrev.
“How long?”
“How long? Why, I purchased it three days ago, and gave a pretty sum for
it, as the devil knows!”
“Indeed? Why, three days ago you were at the fair?”
“Wiseacre! Cannot one be at a fair and buy land at the same time? Yes, I
WAS at the fair, and my steward bought the land in my absence.”
“Oh, your STEWARD bought it.” The brother-in-law seemed doubtful, and
shook his head.
The guests returned by the same route as that by which they had come;
whereafter, on reaching the house, Nozdrev conducted them to his study,
which contained not a trace of the things usually to be found in such
apartments--such things as books and papers. On the contrary, the only
articles to be seen were a sword and a brace of guns--the one “of them
worth three hundred roubles,” and the other “about eight hundred.” The
brother-in-law inspected the articles in question, and then shook
his head as before. Next, the visitors were shown some “real Turkish”
daggers, of which one bore the inadvertent inscription, “Saveli
Sibiriakov [19], Master Cutler.” Then came a barrel-organ, on which
Nozdrev started to play some tune or another. For a while the sounds
were not wholly unpleasing, but suddenly something seemed to go wrong,
for a mazurka started, to be followed by “Marlborough has gone to the
war,” and to this, again, there succeeded an antiquated waltz. Also,
long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle, one particularly
shrill-pitched pipe which had, throughout, refused to harmonise with the
rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own account. Then followed
an exhibition of tobacco pipes--pipes of clay, of wood, of meerschaum,
pipes smoked and non-smoked; pipes wrapped in chamois leather and not
so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake won at cards) and a tobacco
pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some countess who had fallen in love
with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred
to constitute the “sublimity of superfluity”--a term which, in the
Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to signify the acme of perfection).
Finally, after some hors-d’oeuvres of sturgeon’s back, they sat down
to table--the time being then nearly five o’clock. But the meal did not
constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken,
seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked, and others were scarcely
cooked at all. Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly to
inspiration--she had laid hold of the first thing which had happened to
come to hand. For instance, had pepper represented the nearest article
within reach, she had added pepper wholesale. Had a cabbage chanced to
be so encountered, she had pressed it also into the service. And the
same with milk, bacon, and peas. In short, her rule seemed to have been
“Make a hot dish of some sort, and some sort of taste will result.” For
the rest, Nozdrev drew heavily upon the wine. Even before the soup
had been served, he had poured out for each guest a bumper of port and
another of “haut” sauterne. (Never in provincial towns is ordinary,
vulgar sauterne even procurable.) Next, he called for a bottle of
madeira--“as fine a tipple as ever a field-marshall drank”; but the
madeira only burnt the mouth, since the dealers, familiar with the taste
of our landed gentry (who love “good” madeira) invariably doctor the
stuff with copious dashes of rum and Imperial vodka, in the hope that
Russian stomachs will thus be enabled to carry off the lot. After this
bottle Nozdrev called for another and “a very special” brand--a brand
which he declared to consist of a blend of burgundy and champagne, and
of which he poured generous measures into the glasses of Chichikov
and the brother-in-law as they sat to right and left of him. But since
Chichikov noticed that, after doing so, he added only a scanty modicum
of the mixture to his own tumbler, our hero determined to be cautious,
and therefore took advantage of a moment when Nozdrev had again plunged
into conversation and was yet a third time engaged in refilling his
brother-in-law’s glass, to contrive to upset his (Chichikov’s)
glass over his plate. In time there came also to table a tart of
mountain-ashberries--berries which the host declared to equal, in taste,
ripe plums, but which, curiously enough, smacked more of corn brandy.
Next, the company consumed a sort of pasty of which the precise name has
escaped me, but which the host rendered differently even on the second
occasion of its being mentioned. The meal over, and the whole tale of
wines tried, the guests still retained their seats--a circumstance which
embarrassed Chichikov, seeing that he had no mind to propound his pet
scheme in the presence of Nozdrev’s brother-in-law, who was a complete
stranger to him. No, that subject called for amicable and PRIVATE
conversation. Nevertheless, the brother-in-law appeared to bode little
danger, seeing that he had taken on board a full cargo, and was now
engaged in doing nothing of a more menacing nature than picking his
nose. At length he himself noticed that he was not altogether in a
responsible condition; wherefore he rose and began to make excuses for
departing homewards, though in a tone so drowsy and lethargic that, to
quote the Russian proverb, he might almost have been “pulling a collar
on to a horse by the clasps.”
“No, no!” cried Nozdrev. “I am NOT going to let you go.”
“But I MUST go,” replied the brother-in-law. “Don’t try to hinder me.
You are annoying me greatly.”
“Rubbish! We are going to play a game of banker.”
“No, no. You must play it without me, my friend. My wife is expecting me
at home, and I must go and tell her all about the fair. Yes, I MUST go
if I am to please her. Do not try to detain me.”
“Your wife be--! But have you REALLY an important piece of business with
her?”
“No, no, my friend. The real reason is that she is a good and trustful
woman, and that she does a great deal for me. The tears spring to my
eyes as I think of it. Do not detain me. As an honourable man I say that
I must go. Of that I do assure you in all sincerity.”
“Oh, let him go,” put in Chichikov under his breath. “What use will he
be here?”
“Very well,” said Nozdrev, “though, damn it, I do not like fellows who
lose their heads.” Then he added to his brother-in-law: “All right,
Thetuk [20]. Off you go to your wife and your woman’s talk and may the
devil go with you!”
“Do not insult me with the term Thetuk,” retorted the brother-in-law.
“To her I owe my life, and she is a dear, good woman, and has shown me
much affection. At the very thought of it I could weep. You see, she
will be asking me what I have seen at the fair, and tell her about it I
must, for she is such a dear, good woman.”
“Then off you go to her with your pack of lies. Here is your cap.”
“No, good friend, you are not to speak of her like that. By so doing you
offend me greatly--I say that she is a dear, good woman.”
“Then run along home to her.”
“Yes, I am just going. Excuse me for having been unable to stay. Gladly
would I have stayed, but really I cannot.”
The brother-in-law repeated his excuses again and again without noticing
that he had entered the britchka, that it had passed through the gates,
and that he was now in the open country. Permissibly we may suppose that
his wife succeeded in gleaning from him few details of the fair.
“What a fool!” said Nozdrev as, standing by the window, he watched the
departing vehicle. “Yet his off-horse is not such a bad one. For a long
time past I have been wanting to get hold of it. A man like that is
simply impossible. Yes, he is a Thetuk, a regular Thetuk.”
With that they repaired to the parlour, where, on Porphyri bringing
candles, Chichikov perceived that his host had produced a pack of cards.
“I tell you what,” said Nozdrev, pressing the sides of the pack
together, and then slightly bending them, so that the pack cracked and
a card flew out. “How would it be if, to pass the time, I were to make a
bank of three hundred?”
Chichikov pretended not to have heard him, but remarked with an air of
having just recollected a forgotten point:
“By the way, I had omitted to say that I have a request to make of you.”
“What request?”
“First give me your word that you will grant it.”
“What is the request, I say?”
“Then you give me your word, do you?”
“Certainly.”
“Your word of honour?”
“My word of honour.”
“This, then, is my request. I presume that you have a large number
of dead serfs whose names have not yet been removed from the revision
list?”
“I have. But why do you ask?”
“Because I want you to make them over to me.”
“Of what use would they be to you?”
“Never mind. I have a purpose in wanting them.”
“What purpose?”
“A purpose which is strictly my own affair. In short, I need them.”
“You seem to have hatched a very fine scheme. Out with it, now! What is
in the wind?”
“How could I have hatched such a scheme as you say? One could not very
well hatch a scheme out of such a trifle as this.”
“Then for what purpose do you want the serfs?”
“Oh, the curiosity of the man! He wants to poke his fingers into and
smell over every detail!”
“Why do you decline to say what is in your mind? At all events, until
you DO say I shall not move in the matter.”
“But how would it benefit you to know what my plans are? A whim has
seized me. That is all. Nor are you playing fair. You have given me your
word of honour, yet now you are trying to back out of it.”
“No matter what you desire me to do, I decline to do it until you have
told me your purpose.”
“What am I to say to the fellow?” thought Chichikov. He reflected for
a moment, and then explained that he wanted the dead souls in order
to acquire a better standing in society, since at present he possessed
little landed property, and only a handful of serfs.
“You are lying,” said Nozdrev without even letting him finish. “Yes, you
are lying my good friend.”
Chichikov himself perceived that his device had been a clumsy one, and
his pretext weak. “I must tell him straight out,” he said to himself as
he pulled his wits together.
“Should I tell you the truth,” he added aloud, “I must beg of you not
to repeat it. The truth is that I am thinking of getting married. But,
unfortunately, my betrothed’s father and mother are very ambitious
people, and do not want me to marry her, since they desire the
bridegroom to own not less than three hundred souls, whereas I own but a
hundred and fifty, and that number is not sufficient.”
“Again you are lying,” said Nozdrev.
“Then look here; I have been lying only to this extent.” And Chichikov
marked off upon his little finger a minute portion.
“Nevertheless I will bet my head that you have been lying throughout.”
“Come, come! That is not very civil of you. Why should I have been
lying?”
“Because I know you, and know that you are a regular skinflint. I say
that in all friendship. If I possessed any power over you I should hang
you to the nearest tree.”
This remark hurt Chichikov, for at any time he disliked expressions
gross or offensive to decency, and never allowed any one--no, not even
persons of the highest rank--to behave towards him with an undue
measure of familiarity. Consequently his sense of umbrage on the present
occasion was unbounded.
“By God, I WOULD hang you!” repeated Nozdrev. “I say this frankly, and
not for the purpose of offending you, but simply to communicate to you
my friendly opinion.”
“To everything there are limits,” retorted Chichikov stiffly. “If you
want to indulge in speeches of that sort you had better return to the
barracks.”
However, after a pause he added:
“If you do not care to give me the serfs, why not SELL them?”
“SELL them? _I_ know you, you rascal! You wouldn’t give me very much for
them, WOULD you?”
“A nice fellow! Look here. What are they to you? So many diamonds, eh?”
“I thought so! _I_ know you!”
“Pardon me, but I could wish that you were a member of the Jewish
persuasion. You would give them to me fast enough then.”
“On the contrary, to show you that I am not a usurer, I will decline to
ask of you a single kopeck for the serfs. All that you need do is to buy
that colt of mine, and then I will throw in the serfs in addition.”
“But what should _I_ want with your colt?” said Chichikov, genuinely
astonished at the proposal.
“What should YOU want with him? Why, I have bought him for ten thousand
roubles, and am ready to let you have him for four.”
“I ask you again: of what use could the colt possibly be to me? I am not
the keeper of a breeding establishment.”
“Ah! I see that you fail to understand me. Let me suggest that you pay
down at once three thousand roubles of the purchase money, and leave the
other thousand until later.”
“But I do not mean to buy the colt, damn him!”
“Then buy the roan mare.”
“No, nor the roan mare.”
“Then you shall have both the mare and the grey horse which you have
seen in my stables for two thousand roubles.”
“I require no horses at all.”
“But you would be able to sell them again. You would be able to get
thrice their purchase price at the very first fair that was held.”
“Then sell them at that fair yourself, seeing that you are so certain of
making a triple profit.”
“Oh, I should make it fast enough, only I want YOU to benefit by the
transaction.”
Chichikov duly thanked his interlocutor, but continued to decline either
the grey horse or the roan mare.
“Then buy a few dogs,” said Nozdrev. “I can sell you a couple of hides
a-quiver, ears well pricked, coats like quills, ribs barrel-shaped, and
paws so tucked up as scarcely to graze the ground when they run.”
“Of what use would those dogs be to me? I am not a sportsman.”
“But I WANT you to have the dogs. Listen. If you won’t have the dogs,
then buy my barrel-organ. ’Tis a splendid instrument. As a man of honour
I can tell you that, when new, it cost me fifteen hundred roubles. Well,
you shall have it for nine hundred.”
“Come, come! What should I want with a barrel-organ? I am not a German,
to go hauling it about the roads and begging for coppers.”
“But this is quite a different kind of organ from the one which Germans
take about with them. You see, it is a REAL organ. Look at it for
yourself. It is made of the best wood. I will take you to have another
view of it.”
And seizing Chichikov by the hand, Nozdrev drew him towards the other
room, where, in spite of the fact that Chichikov, with his feet planted
firmly on the floor, assured his host, again and again, that he knew
exactly what the organ was like, he was forced once more to hear how
Marlborough went to the war.
“Then, since you don’t care to give me any money for it,” persisted
Nozdrev, “listen to the following proposal. I will give you the
barrel-organ and all the dead souls which I possess, and in return you
shall give me your britchka, and another three hundred roubles into the
bargain.”
“Listen to the man! In that case, what should I have left to drive in?”
“Oh, I would stand you another britchka. Come to the coach-house, and
I will show you the one I mean. It only needs repainting to look a
perfectly splendid britchka.”
“The ramping, incorrigible devil!” thought Chichikov to himself as at
all hazards he resolved to escape from britchkas, organs, and every
species of dog, however marvellously barrel-ribbed and tucked up of paw.
“And in exchange, you shall have the britchka, the barrel-organ, and the
dead souls,” repeated Nozdrev.
“I must decline the offer,” said Chichikov.
“And why?”
“Because I don’t WANT the things--I am full up already.”
“I can see that you don’t know how things should be done between good
friends and comrades. Plainly you are a man of two faces.”
“What do you mean, you fool? Think for yourself. Why should I acquire
articles which I don’t want?”
“Say no more about it, if you please. I have quite taken your measure.
But see here. Should you care to play a game of banker? I am ready to
stake both the dead souls and the barrel-organ at cards.”
“No; to leave an issue to cards means to submit oneself to the unknown,”
said Chichikov, covertly glancing at the pack which Nozdrev had got
in his hands. Somehow the way in which his companion had cut that pack
seemed to him suspicious.
“Why ‘to the unknown’?” asked Nozdrev. “There is no such thing as ‘the
unknown.’ Should luck be on your side, you may win the devil knows what
a haul. Oh, luck, luck!” he went on, beginning to deal, in the hope of
raising a quarrel. “Here is the cursed nine upon which, the other night,
I lost everything. All along I knew that I should lose my money. Said I
to myself: ‘The devil take you, you false, accursed card!’”
Just as Nozdrev uttered the words Porphyri entered with a fresh bottle
of liquor; but Chichikov declined either to play or to drink.
“Why do you refuse to play?” asked Nozdrev.
“Because I feel indisposed to do so. Moreover, I must confess that I am
no great hand at cards.”
“WHY are you no great hand at them?”
Chichikov shrugged his shoulders. “Because I am not,” he replied.
“You are no great hand at ANYTHING, I think.”
“What does that matter? God has made me so.”
“The truth is that you are a Thetuk, and nothing else. Once upon a
time I believed you to be a good fellow, but now I see that you
don’t understand civility. One cannot speak to you as one would to an
intimate, for there is no frankness or sincerity about you. You are a
regular Sobakevitch--just such another as he.”
“For what reason are you abusing me? Am I in any way at fault for
declining to play cards? Sell me those souls if you are the man to
hesitate over such rubbish.”
“The foul fiend take you! I was about to have given them to you for
nothing, but now you shan’t have them at all--not if you offer me three
kingdoms in exchange. Henceforth I will have nothing to do with you, you
cobbler, you dirty blacksmith! Porphyri, go and tell the ostler to give
the gentleman’s horses no oats, but only hay.”
This development Chichikov had hardly expected.
“And do you,” added Nozdrev to his guest, “get out of my sight.”
Yet in spite of this, host and guest took supper together--even though
on this occasion the table was adorned with no wines of fictitious
nomenclature, but only with a bottle which reared its solitary head
beside a jug of what is usually known as vin ordinaire. When supper was
over Nozdrev said to Chichikov as he conducted him to a side room where
a bed had been made up:
“This is where you are to sleep. I cannot very well wish you
good-night.”
Left to himself on Nozdrev’s departure, Chichikov felt in a most
unenviable frame of mind. Full of inward vexation, he blamed himself
bitterly for having come to see this man and so wasted valuable
time; but even more did he blame himself for having told him of his
scheme--for having acted as carelessly as a child or a madman. Of a
surety the scheme was not one which ought to have been confided to a man
like Nozdrev, for he was a worthless fellow who might lie about it, and
append additions to it, and spread such stories as would give rise
to God knows what scandals. “This is indeed bad!” Chichikov said to
himself. “I have been an absolute fool.” Consequently he spent an uneasy
night--this uneasiness being increased by the fact that a number of
small, but vigorous, insects so feasted upon him that he could do
nothing but scratch the spots and exclaim, “The devil take you and
Nozdrev alike!” Only when morning was approaching did he fall asleep. On
rising, he made it his first business (after donning dressing-gown
and slippers) to cross the courtyard to the stable, for the purpose of
ordering Selifan to harness the britchka. Just as he was returning from
his errand he encountered Nozdrev, clad in a dressing-gown, and holding
a pipe between his teeth.
Host and guest greeted one another in friendly fashion, and Nozdrev
inquired how Chichikov had slept.
“Fairly well,” replied Chichikov, but with a touch of dryness in his
tone.
“The same with myself,” said Nozdrev. “The truth is that such a lot of
nasty brutes kept crawling over me that even to speak of it gives me
the shudders. Likewise, as the effect of last night’s doings, a whole
squadron of soldiers seemed to be camping on my chest, and giving me a
flogging. Ugh! And whom also do you think I saw in a dream? You would
never guess. Why, it was Staff-Captain Potsieluev and Lieutenant
Kuvshinnikov!”
“Yes,” though Chichikov to himself, “and I wish that they too would give
you a public thrashing!”
“I felt so ill!” went on Nozdrev. “And just after I had fallen asleep
something DID come and sting me. Probably it was a party of hag fleas.
Now, dress yourself, and I will be with you presently. First of all I
must give that scoundrel of a bailiff a wigging.”
Chichikov departed to his own room to wash and dress; which process
completed, he entered the dining-room to find the table laid with
tea-things and a bottle of rum. Clearly no broom had yet touched the
place, for there remained traces of the previous night’s dinner and
supper in the shape of crumbs thrown over the floor and tobacco ash on
the tablecloth. The host himself, when he entered, was still clad in a
dressing-gown exposing a hairy chest; and as he sat holding his pipe in
his hand, and drinking tea from a cup, he would have made a model for
the sort of painter who prefers to portray gentlemen of the less curled
and scented order.
“What think you?” he asked of Chichikov after a short silence. “Are you
willing NOW to play me for those souls?”
“I have told you that I never play cards. If the souls are for sale, I
will buy them.”
“I decline to sell them. Such would not be the course proper between
friends. But a game of banker would be quite another matter. Let us deal
the cards.”
“I have told you that I decline to play.”
“And you will not agree to an exchange?”
“No.”
“Then look here. Suppose we play a game of chess. If you win, the souls
shall be yours. There are lots which I should like to see crossed off
the revision list. Hi, Porphyri! Bring me the chessboard.”
“You are wasting your time. I will play neither chess nor cards.”
“But chess is different from playing with a bank. In chess there can be
neither luck nor cheating, for everything depends upon skill. In fact, I
warn you that I cannot possibly play with you unless you allow me a move
or two in advance.”
“The same with me,” thought Chichikov. “Shall I, or shall I not, play
this fellow? I used not to be a bad chess-player, and it is a sport in
which he would find it more difficult to be up to his tricks.”
“Very well,” he added aloud. “I WILL play you at chess.”
“And stake the souls for a hundred roubles?” asked Nozdrev.
“No. Why for a hundred? Would it not be sufficient to stake them for
fifty?”
“No. What would be the use of fifty? Nevertheless, for the hundred
roubles I will throw in a moderately old puppy, or else a gold seal and
watch-chain.”
“Very well,” assented Chichikov.
“Then how many moves are you going to allow me?”
“Is THAT to be part of the bargain? Why, none, of course.”
“At least allow me two.”
“No, none. I myself am only a poor player.”
“_I_ know you and your poor play,” said Nozdrev, moving a chessman.
“In fact, it is a long time since last I had a chessman in my hand,”
replied Chichikov, also moving a piece.
“Ah! _I_ know you and your poor play,” repeated Nozdrev, moving a second
chessman.
“I say again that it is a long time since last I had a chessman in my
hand.” And Chichikov, in his turn, moved.
“Ah! _I_ know you and your poor play,” repeated Nozdrev, for the third
time as he made a third move. At the same moment the cuff of one of his
sleeves happened to dislodge another chessman from its position.
“Again, I say,” said Chichikov, “that ’tis a long time since last--But
hi! look here! Put that piece back in its place!”
“What piece?”
“This one.” And almost as Chichikov spoke he saw a third chessman coming
into view between the queens. God only knows whence that chessman had
materialised.
“No, no!” shouted Chichikov as he rose from the table. “It is impossible
to play with a man like you. People don’t move three pieces at once.”
“How ‘three pieces’? All that I have done is to make a mistake--to move
one of my pieces by accident. If you like, I will forfeit it to you.”
“And whence has the third piece come?”
“What third piece?”
“The one now standing between the queens?”
“’Tis one of your own pieces. Surely you are forgetting?”
“No, no, my friend. I have counted every move, and can remember each
one. That piece has only just become added to the board. Put it back in
its place, I say.”
“Its place? Which IS its place?” But Nozdrev had reddened a good deal.
“I perceive you to be a strategist at the game.”
“No, no, good friend. YOU are the strategist--though an unsuccessful
one, as it happens.”
“Then of what are you supposing me capable? Of cheating you?”
“I am not supposing you capable of anything. All that I say is that I
will not play with you any more.”
“But you can’t refuse to,” said Nozdrev, growing heated. “You see, the
game has begun.”
“Nevertheless, I have a right not to continue it, seeing that you are
not playing as an honest man should do.”
“You are lying--you cannot truthfully say that.”
“’Tis you who are lying.”
“But I have NOT cheated. Consequently you cannot refuse to play, but
must continue the game to a finish.”
“You cannot force me to play,” retorted Chichikov coldly as, turning to
the chessboard, he swept the pieces into confusion.
Nozdrev approached Chichikov with a manner so threatening that the other
fell back a couple of paces.
“I WILL force you to play,” said Nozdrev. “It is no use you making a
mess of the chessboard, for I can remember every move. We will replace
the chessmen exactly as they were.”
“No, no, my friend. The game is over, and I play you no more.”
“You say that you will not?”
“Yes. Surely you can see for yourself that such a thing is impossible?”
“That cock won’t fight. Say at once that you refuse to play with me.”
And Nozdrev approached a step nearer.
“Very well; I DO say that,” replied Chichikov, and at the same moment
raised his hands towards his face, for the dispute was growing heated.
Nor was the act of caution altogether unwarranted, for Nozdrev
also raised his fist, and it may be that one of our hero’s plump,
pleasant-looking cheeks would have sustained an indelible insult had
not he (Chichikov) parried the blow and, seizing Nozdrev by his whirling
arms, held them fast.
“Porphyri! Pavlushka!” shouted Nozdrev as madly he strove to free
himself.
On hearing the words, Chichikov, both because he wished to avoid
rendering the servants witnesses of the unedifying scene and because he
felt that it would be of no avail to hold Nozdrev any longer, let go of
the latter’s arms; but at the same moment Porphyri and Pavlushka entered
the room--a pair of stout rascals with whom it would be unwise to
meddle.
“Do you, or do you not, intend to finish the game?” said Nozdrev. “Give
me a direct answer.”
“No; it will not be possible to finish the game,” replied Chichikov,
glancing out of the window. He could see his britchka standing ready for
him, and Selifan evidently awaiting orders to draw up to the entrance
steps. But from the room there was no escape, since in the doorway was
posted the couple of well-built serving-men.
“Then it is as I say? You refuse to finish the game?” repeated Nozdrev,
his face as red as fire.
“I would have finished it had you played like a man of honour. But, as
it is, I cannot.”
“You cannot, eh, you villain? You find that you cannot as soon as you
find that you are not winning? Thrash him, you fellows!” And as he spoke
Nozdrev grasped the cherrywood shank of his pipe. Chichikov turned as
white as a sheet. He tried to say something, but his quivering lips
emitted no sound. “Thrash him!” again shouted Nozdrev as he rushed
forward in a state of heat and perspiration more proper to a warrior who
is attacking an impregnable fortress. “Thrash him!” again he shouted
in a voice like that of some half-demented lieutenant whose desperate
bravery has acquired such a reputation that orders have had to be issued
that his hands shall be held lest he attempt deeds of over-presumptuous
daring. Seized with the military spirit, however, the lieutenant’s head
begins to whirl, and before his eye there flits the image of Suvorov
[21]. He advances to the great encounter, and impulsively cries,
“Forward, my sons!”--cries it without reflecting that he may be
spoiling the plan of the general attack, that millions of rifles may
be protruding their muzzles through the embrasures of the impregnable,
towering walls of the fortress, that his own impotent assault may be
destined to be dissipated like dust before the wind, and that already
there may have been launched on its whistling career the bullet which is
to close for ever his vociferous throat. However, if Nozdrev resembled
the headstrong, desperate lieutenant whom we have just pictured as
advancing upon a fortress, at least the fortress itself in no way
resembled the impregnable stronghold which I have described. As a matter
of fact, the fortress became seized with a panic which drove its spirit
into its boots. First of all, the chair with which Chichikov (the
fortress in question) sought to defend himself was wrested from his
grasp by the serfs, and then--blinking and neither alive nor dead--he
turned to parry the Circassian pipe-stem of his host. In fact, God
only knows what would have happened had not the fates been pleased by
a miracle to deliver Chichikov’s elegant back and shoulders from the
onslaught. Suddenly, and as unexpectedly as though the sound had
come from the clouds, there made itself heard the tinkling notes of
a collar-bell, and then the rumble of wheels approaching the entrance
steps, and, lastly, the snorting and hard breathing of a team of horses
as a vehicle came to a standstill. Involuntarily all present glanced
through the window, and saw a man clad in a semi-military greatcoat leap
from a buggy. After making an inquiry or two in the hall, he entered the
dining-room just at the juncture when Chichikov, almost swooning with
terror, had found himself placed in about as awkward a situation as
could well befall a mortal man.
“Kindly tell me which of you is Monsieur Nozdrev?” said the unknown with
a glance of perplexity both at the person named (who was still standing
with pipe-shank upraised) and at Chichikov (who was just beginning to
recover from his unpleasant predicament).
“Kindly tell ME whom I have the honour of addressing?” retorted Nozdrev
as he approached the official.
“I am the Superintendent of Rural Police.”
“And what do you want?”
“I have come to fulfil a commission imposed upon me. That is to say,
I have come to place you under arrest until your case shall have been
decided.”
“Rubbish! What case, pray?”
“The case in which you involved yourself when, in a drunken condition,
and through the instrumentality of a walking-stick, you offered grave
offence to the person of Landowner Maksimov.”
“You lie! To your face I tell you that never in my life have I set eyes
upon Landowner Maksimov.”
“Good sir, allow me to represent to you that I am a Government officer.
Speeches like that you may address to your servants, but not to me.”
At this point Chichikov, without waiting for Nozdrev’s reply, seized
his cap, slipped behind the Superintendent’s back, rushed out on to the
verandah, sprang into his britchka, and ordered Selifan to drive like
the wind.
CHAPTER 5
Certainly Chichikov was a thorough coward, for, although the britchka
pursued its headlong course until Nozdrev’s establishment had
disappeared behind hillocks and hedgerows, our hero continued to glance
nervously behind him, as though every moment expecting to see a stern
chase begin. His breath came with difficulty, and when he tried his
heart with his hands he could feel it fluttering like a quail caught in
a net.
“What a sweat the fellow has thrown me into!” he thought to himself,
while many a dire and forceful aspiration passed through his mind.
Indeed, the expressions to which he gave vent were most inelegant
in their nature. But what was to be done next? He was a Russian
and thoroughly aroused. The affair had been no joke. “But for the
Superintendent,” he reflected, “I might never again have looked upon
God’s daylight--I might have vanished like a bubble on a pool, and left
neither trace nor posterity nor property nor an honourable name for my
future offspring to inherit!” (it seemed that our hero was particularly
anxious with regard to his possible issue).
“What a scurvy barin!” mused Selifan as he drove along. “Never have I
seen such a barin. I should like to spit in his face. ’Tis better to
allow a man nothing to eat than to refuse to feed a horse properly. A
horse needs his oats--they are his proper fare. Even if you make a man
procure a meal at his own expense, don’t deny a horse his oats, for he
ought always to have them.”
An equally poor opinion of Nozdrev seemed to be cherished also by
the steeds, for not only were the bay and the Assessor clearly out of
spirits, but even the skewbald was wearing a dejected air. True, at home
the skewbald got none but the poorer sorts of oats to eat, and Selifan
never filled his trough without having first called him a villain; but
at least they WERE oats, and not hay--they were stuff which could be
chewed with a certain amount of relish. Also, there was the fact that
at intervals he could intrude his long nose into his companions’ troughs
(especially when Selifan happened to be absent from the stable) and
ascertain what THEIR provender was like. But at Nozdrev’s there had
been nothing but hay! That was not right. All three horses felt greatly
discontented.
But presently the malcontents had their reflections cut short in a very
rude and unexpected manner. That is to say, they were brought back
to practicalities by coming into violent collision with a six-horsed
vehicle, while upon their heads descended both a babel of cries from the
ladies inside and a storm of curses and abuse from the coachman. “Ah,
you damned fool!” he vociferated. “I shouted to you loud enough! Draw
out, you old raven, and keep to the right! Are you drunk?” Selifan
himself felt conscious that he had been careless, but since a Russian
does not care to admit a fault in the presence of strangers, he retorted
with dignity: “Why have you run into US? Did you leave your eyes behind
you at the last tavern that you stopped at?” With that he started to
back the britchka, in the hope that it might get clear of the other’s
harness; but this would not do, for the pair were too hopelessly
intertwined. Meanwhile the skewbald snuffed curiously at his new
acquaintances as they stood planted on either side of him; while the
ladies in the vehicle regarded the scene with an expression of terror.
One of them was an old woman, and the other a damsel of about sixteen. A
mass of golden hair fell daintily from a small head, and the oval of
her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent
whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to
the light to let the sun’s rays filter through its shell. The same tint
marked the maiden’s ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and,
in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she
presented so attractive a picture that our hero bestowed upon it more
than a passing glance before he turned his attention to the hubbub which
was being raised among the horses and the coachmen.
“Back out, you rook of Nizhni Novgorod!” the strangers’ coachman
shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same.
The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again--this
time getting a leg or two over the traces. In fact, so pleased did the
skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the
melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him. Laying his muzzle
lovingly upon the neck of one of his recently-acquired acquaintances,
he seemed to be whispering something in that acquaintance’s ear--and
whispering pretty nonsense, too, to judge from the way in which that
confidant kept shaking his ears.
At length peasants from a village which happened to be near the scene of
the accident tackled the mess; and since a spectacle of that kind is to
the Russian muzhik what a newspaper or a club-meeting is to the German,
the vehicles soon became the centre of a crowd, and the village denuded
even of its old women and children. The traces were disentangled, and a
few slaps on the nose forced the skewbald to draw back a little; after
which the teams were straightened out and separated. Nevertheless,
either sheer obstinacy or vexation at being parted from their new
friends caused the strange team absolutely to refuse to move a leg.
Their driver laid the whip about them, but still they stood as though
rooted to the spot. At length the participatory efforts of the peasants
rose to an unprecedented degree of enthusiasm, and they shouted in an
intermittent chorus the advice, “Do you, Andrusha, take the head of the
trace horse on the right, while Uncle Mitai mounts the shaft horse. Get
up, Uncle Mitai.” Upon that the lean, long, and red-bearded Uncle Mitai
mounted the shaft horse; in which position he looked like a village
steeple or the winder which is used to raise water from wells. The
coachman whipped up his steeds afresh, but nothing came of it, and
Uncle Mitai had proved useless. “Hold on, hold on!” shouted the peasants
again. “Do you, Uncle Mitai, mount the trace horse, while Uncle Minai
mounts the shaft horse.” Whereupon Uncle Minai--a peasant with a pair of
broad shoulders, a beard as black as charcoal, and a belly like the
huge samovar in which sbiten is brewed for all attending a local
market--hastened to seat himself upon the shaft horse, which almost
sank to the ground beneath his weight. “NOW they will go all right!” the
muzhiks exclaimed. “Lay it on hot, lay it on hot! Give that sorrel horse
the whip, and make him squirm like a koramora [22].” Nevertheless, the
affair in no way progressed; wherefore, seeing that flogging was of
no use, Uncles Mitai and Minai BOTH mounted the sorrel, while Andrusha
seated himself upon the trace horse. Then the coachman himself lost
patience, and sent the two Uncles about their business--and not before
it was time, seeing that the horses were steaming in a way that made it
clear that, unless they were first winded, they would never reach the
next posthouse. So they were given a moment’s rest. That done, they
moved off of their own accord!
Throughout, Chichikov had been gazing at the young unknown with
great attention, and had even made one or two attempts to enter into
conversation with her: but without success. Indeed, when the ladies
departed, it was as in a dream that he saw the girl’s comely presence,
the delicate features of her face, and the slender outline of her form
vanish from his sight; it was as in a dream that once more he saw only
the road, the britchka, the three horses, Selifan, and the bare, empty
fields. Everywhere in life--yes, even in the plainest, the dingiest
ranks of society, as much as in those which are uniformly bright and
presentable--a man may happen upon some phenomenon which is so entirely
different from those which have hitherto fallen to his lot. Everywhere
through the web of sorrow of which our lives are woven there may
suddenly break a clear, radiant thread of joy; even as suddenly along
the street of some poor, poverty-stricken village which, ordinarily,
sees nought but a farm waggon there may came bowling a gorgeous coach
with plated harness, picturesque horses, and a glitter of glass, so that
the peasants stand gaping, and do not resume their caps until long after
the strange equipage has become lost to sight. Thus the golden-haired
maiden makes a sudden, unexpected appearance in our story, and as
suddenly, as unexpectedly, disappears. Indeed, had it not been that the
person concerned was Chichikov, and not some youth of twenty summers--a
hussar or a student or, in general, a man standing on the threshold
of life--what thoughts would not have sprung to birth, and stirred and
spoken, within him; for what a length of time would he not have stood
entranced as he stared into the distance and forgot alike his journey,
the business still to be done, the possibility of incurring loss through
lingering--himself, his vocation, the world, and everything else that
the world contains!
But in the present case the hero was a man of middle-age, and of
cautious and frigid temperament. True, he pondered over the incident,
but in more deliberate fashion than a younger man would have done. That
is to say, his reflections were not so irresponsible and unsteady. “She
was a comely damsel,” he said to himself as he opened his snuff-box and
took a pinch. “But the important point is: Is she also a NICE DAMSEL?
One thing she has in her favour--and that is that she appears only just
to have left school, and not to have had time to become womanly in the
worser sense. At present, therefore, she is like a child. Everything in
her is simple, and she says just what she thinks, and laughs merely when
she feels inclined. Such a damsel might be made into anything--or she
might be turned into worthless rubbish. The latter, I surmise, for
trudging after her she will have a fond mother and a bevy of aunts,
and so forth--persons who, within a year, will have filled her with
womanishness to the point where her own father wouldn’t know her. And
to that there will be added pride and affectation, and she will begin
to observe established rules, and to rack her brains as to how, and how
much, she ought to talk, and to whom, and where, and so forth. Every
moment will see her growing timorous and confused lest she be saying too
much. Finally, she will develop into a confirmed prevaricator, and end
by marrying the devil knows whom!” Chichikov paused awhile. Then he went
on: “Yet I should like to know who she is, and who her father is, and
whether he is a rich landowner of good standing, or merely a respectable
man who has acquired a fortune in the service of the Government.
Should he allow her, on marriage, a dowry of, say, two hundred thousand
roubles, she will be a very nice catch indeed. She might even, so to
speak, make a man of good breeding happy.”
Indeed, so attractively did the idea of the two hundred thousand
roubles begin to dance before his imagination that he felt a twinge of
self-reproach because, during the hubbub, he had not inquired of the
postillion or the coachman who the travellers might be. But soon the
sight of Sobakevitch’s country house dissipated his thoughts, and forced
him to return to his stock subject of reflection.
Sobakevitch’s country house and estate were of very fair size, and on
each side of the mansion were expanses of birch and pine forest in two
shades of green. The wooden edifice itself had dark-grey walls and a
red-gabled roof, for it was a mansion of the kind which Russia builds
for her military settlers and for German colonists. A noticeable
circumstance was the fact that the taste of the architect had differed
from that of the proprietor--the former having manifestly been a pedant
and desirous of symmetry, and the latter having wished only for comfort.
Consequently he (the proprietor) had dispensed with all windows on one
side of the mansion, and had caused to be inserted, in their place, only
a small aperture which, doubtless, was intended to light an otherwise
dark lumber-room. Likewise, the architect’s best efforts had failed to
cause the pediment to stand in the centre of the building, since the
proprietor had had one of its four original columns removed. Evidently
durability had been considered throughout, for the courtyard was
enclosed by a strong and very high wooden fence, and both the stables,
the coach-house, and the culinary premises were partially constructed of
beams warranted to last for centuries. Nay, even the wooden huts of the
peasantry were wonderful in the solidity of their construction, and
not a clay wall or a carved pattern or other device was to be seen.
Everything fitted exactly into its right place, and even the draw-well
of the mansion was fashioned of the oakwood usually thought suitable
only for mills or ships. In short, wherever Chichikov’s eye turned he
saw nothing that was not free from shoddy make and well and skilfully
arranged. As he approached the entrance steps he caught sight of two
faces peering from a window. One of them was that of a woman in a mobcap
with features as long and as narrow as a cucumber, and the other that
of a man with features as broad and as short as the Moldavian pumpkins
(known as gorlianki) whereof balallaiki--the species of light,
two-stringed instrument which constitutes the pride and the joy of
the gay young fellow of twenty as he sits winking and smiling at the
white-necked, white-bosomed maidens who have gathered to listen to his
low-pitched tinkling--are fashioned. This scrutiny made, both faces
withdrew, and there came out on to the entrance steps a lacquey clad
in a grey jacket and a stiff blue collar. This functionary conducted
Chichikov into the hall, where he was met by the master of the house
himself, who requested his guest to enter, and then led him into the
inner part of the mansion.
A covert glance at Sobakevitch showed our hero that his host exactly
resembled a moderate-sized bear. To complete the resemblance,
Sobakevitch’s long frockcoat and baggy trousers were of the precise
colour of a bear’s hide, while, when shuffling across the floor, he made
a criss-cross motion of the legs, and had, in addition, a constant habit
of treading upon his companion’s toes. As for his face, it was of the
warm, ardent tint of a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind--persons
to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the
fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a
file or a gimlet and so forth--are not uncommon. Such persons she merely
roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another
such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two
thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning
to plane down the roughness, she sends out that person into the world,
saying: “There is another live creature.” Sobakevitch was just such a
ragged, curiously put together figure--though the above model would seem
to have been followed more in his upper portion than in his lower. One
result was that he seldom turned his head to look at the person with
whom he was speaking, but, rather, directed his eyes towards, say, the
stove corner or the doorway. As host and guest crossed the dining-room
Chichikov directed a second glance at his companion. “He is a bear, and
nothing but a bear,” he thought to himself. And, indeed, the strange
comparison was inevitable. Incidentally, Sobakevitch’s Christian name
and patronymic were Michael Semenovitch. Of his habit of treading upon
other people’s toes Chichikov had become fully aware; wherefore he
stepped cautiously, and, throughout, allowed his host to take the
lead. As a matter of fact, Sobakevitch himself seemed conscious of his
failing, for at intervals he would inquire: “I hope I have not hurt
you?” and Chichikov, with a word of thanks, would reply that as yet he
had sustained no injury.
At length they reached the drawing-room, where Sobakevitch pointed to
an armchair, and invited his guest to be seated. Chichikov gazed with
interest at the walls and the pictures. In every such picture there were
portrayed either young men or Greek generals of the type of Movrogordato
(clad in a red uniform and breaches), Kanaris, and others; and all these
heroes were depicted with a solidity of thigh and a wealth of moustache
which made the beholder simply shudder with awe. Among them there were
placed also, according to some unknown system, and for some unknown
reason, firstly, Bagration [24]--tall and thin, and with a cluster of
small flags and cannon beneath him, and the whole set in the narrowest
of frames--and, secondly, the Greek heroine, Bobelina, whose legs looked
larger than do the whole bodies of the drawing-room dandies of the
present day. Apparently the master of the house was himself a man of
health and strength, and therefore liked to have his apartments adorned
with none but folk of equal vigour and robustness. Lastly, in the
window, and suspended cheek by jowl with Bobelina, there hung a cage
whence at intervals there peered forth a white-spotted blackbird.
Like everything else in the apartment, it bore a strong resemblance to
Sobakevitch. When host and guest had been conversing for two minutes or
so the door opened, and there entered the hostess--a tall lady in a cap
adorned with ribands of domestic colouring and manufacture. She entered
deliberately, and held her head as erect as a palm.
“This is my wife, Theodulia Ivanovna,” said Sobakevitch.
Chichikov approached and took her hand. The fact that she raised it
nearly to the level of his lips apprised him of the circumstance that it
had just been rinsed in cucumber oil.
“My dear, allow me to introduce Paul Ivanovitch Chichikov,” added
Sobakevitch. “He has the honour of being acquainted both with our
Governor and with our Postmaster.”
Upon this Theodulia Ivanovna requested her guest to be seated, and
accompanied the invitation with the kind of bow usually employed only by
actresses who are playing the role of queens. Next, she took a seat upon
the sofa, drew around her her merino gown, and sat thereafter without
moving an eyelid or an eyebrow. As for Chichikov, he glanced upwards,
and once more caught sight of Kanaris with his fat thighs and
interminable moustache, and of Bobelina and the blackbird. For fully
five minutes all present preserved a complete silence--the only sound
audible being that of the blackbird’s beak against the wooden floor of
the cage as the creature fished for grains of corn. Meanwhile Chichikov
again surveyed the room, and saw that everything in it was massive and
clumsy in the highest degree; as also that everything was curiously in
keeping with the master of the house. For example, in one corner of the
apartment there stood a hazelwood bureau with a bulging body on four
grotesque legs--the perfect image of a bear. Also, the tables and the
chairs were of the same ponderous, unrestful order, and every single
article in the room appeared to be saying either, “I, too, am a
Sobakevitch,” or “I am exactly like Sobakevitch.”
“I heard speak of you one day when I was visiting the President of the
Council,” said Chichikov, on perceiving that no one else had a mind to
begin a conversation. “That was on Thursday last. We had a very pleasant
evening.”
“Yes, on that occasion I was not there,” replied Sobakevitch.
“What a nice man he is!”
“Who is?” inquired Sobakevitch, gazing into the corner by the stove.
“The President of the Local Council.”
“Did he seem so to you? True, he is a mason, but he is also the greatest
fool that the world ever saw.”
Chichikov started a little at this mordant criticism, but soon pulled
himself together again, and continued:
“Of course, every man has his weakness. Yet the President seems to be an
excellent fellow.”
“And do you think the same of the Governor?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“Because there exists no greater rogue than he.”
“What? The Governor a rogue?” ejaculated Chichikov, at a loss to
understand how the official in question could come to be numbered with
thieves. “Let me say that I should never have guessed it. Permit me
also to remark that his conduct would hardly seem to bear out your
opinion--he seems so gentle a man.” And in proof of this Chichikov
cited the purses which the Governor knitted, and also expatiated on the
mildness of his features.
“He has the face of a robber,” said Sobakevitch. “Were you to give him a
knife, and to turn him loose on a turnpike, he would cut your throat for
two kopecks. And the same with the Vice-Governor. The pair are just Gog
and Magog.”
“Evidently he is not on good terms with them,” thought Chichikov to
himself. “I had better pass to the Chief of Police, which whom he DOES
seem to be friendly.” Accordingly he added aloud: “For my own part, I
should give the preference to the Head of the Gendarmery. What a frank,
outspoken nature he has! And what an element of simplicity does his
expression contain!”
“He is mean to the core,” remarked Sobakevitch coldly. “He will sell you
and cheat you, and then dine at your table. Yes, I know them all, and
every one of them is a swindler, and the town a nest of rascals engaged
in robbing one another. Not a man of the lot is there but would sell
Christ. Yet stay: ONE decent fellow there is--the Public Prosecutor;
though even HE, if the truth be told, is little better than a pig.”
After these eulogia Chichikov saw that it would be useless to continue
running through the list of officials--more especially since suddenly he
had remembered that Sobakevitch was not at any time given to commending
his fellow man.
“Let us go to luncheon, my dear,” put in Theodulia Ivanovna to her
spouse.
“Yes; pray come to table,” said Sobakevitch to his guest; whereupon they
consumed the customary glass of vodka (accompanied by sundry snacks of
salted cucumber and other dainties) with which Russians, both in town
and country, preface a meal. Then they filed into the dining-room in the
wake of the hostess, who sailed on ahead like a goose swimming across a
pond. The small dining-table was found to be laid for four persons--the
fourth place being occupied by a lady or a young girl (it would have
been difficult to say which exactly) who might have been either a
relative, the housekeeper, or a casual visitor. Certain persons in the
world exist, not as personalities in themselves, but as spots or specks
on the personalities of others. Always they are to be seen sitting in
the same place, and holding their heads at exactly the same angle, so
that one comes within an ace of mistaking them for furniture, and thinks
to oneself that never since the day of their birth can they have spoken
a single word.
“My dear,” said Sobakevitch, “the cabbage soup is excellent.” With that
he finished his portion, and helped himself to a generous measure of
niania [25]--the dish which follows shtchi and consists of a sheep’s
stomach stuffed with black porridge, brains, and other things. “What
niania this is!” he added to Chichikov. “Never would you get such stuff
in a town, where one is given the devil knows what.”
“Nevertheless the Governor keeps a fair table,” said Chichikov.
“Yes, but do you know what all the stuff is MADE OF?” retorted
Sobakevitch. “If you DID know you would never touch it.”
“Of course I am not in a position to say how it is prepared, but at
least the pork cutlets and the boiled fish seemed excellent.”
“Ah, it might have been thought so; yet I know the way in which such
things are bought in the market-place. They are bought by some rascal of
a cook whom a Frenchman has taught how to skin a tomcat and then serve
it up as hare.”
“Ugh! What horrible things you say!” put in Madame.
“Well, my dear, that is how things are done, and it is no fault of mine
that it is so. Moreover, everything that is left over--everything that
WE (pardon me for mentioning it) cast into the slop-pail--is used by
such folk for making soup.”
“Always at table you begin talking like this!” objected his helpmeet.
“And why not?” said Sobakevitch. “I tell you straight that I would not
eat such nastiness, even had I made it myself. Sugar a frog as much
as you like, but never shall it pass MY lips. Nor would I swallow an
oyster, for I know only too well what an oyster may resemble. But
have some mutton, friend Chichikov. It is shoulder of mutton, and
very different stuff from the mutton which they cook in noble
kitchens--mutton which has been kicking about the market-place four days
or more. All that sort of cookery has been invented by French and German
doctors, and I should like to hang them for having done so. They go and
prescribe diets and a hunger cure as though what suits their flaccid
German systems will agree with a Russian stomach! Such devices are no
good at all.” Sobakevitch shook his head wrathfully. “Fellows like
those are for ever talking of civilisation. As if THAT sort of thing was
civilisation! Phew!” (Perhaps the speaker’s concluding exclamation would
have been even stronger had he not been seated at table.) “For myself, I
will have none of it. When I eat pork at a meal, give me the WHOLE pig;
when mutton, the WHOLE sheep; when goose, the WHOLE of the bird. Two
dishes are better than a thousand, provided that one can eat of them as
much as one wants.”
And he proceeded to put precept into practice by taking half the
shoulder of mutton on to his plate, and then devouring it down to the
last morsel of gristle and bone.
“My word!” reflected Chichikov. “The fellow has a pretty good holding
capacity!”
“None of it for me,” repeated Sobakevitch as he wiped his hands on his
napkin. “I don’t intend to be like a fellow named Plushkin, who owns
eight hundred souls, yet dines worse than does my shepherd.”
“Who is Plushkin?” asked Chichikov.
“A miser,” replied Sobakevitch. “Such a miser as never you could
imagine. Even convicts in prison live better than he does. And he
starves his servants as well.”
“Really?” ejaculated Chichikov, greatly interested. “Should you, then,
say that he has lost many peasants by death?”
“Certainly. They keep dying like flies.”
“Then how far from here does he reside?”
“About five versts.”
“Only five versts?” exclaimed Chichikov, feeling his heart beating
joyously. “Ought one, when leaving your gates, to turn to the right or
to the left?”
“I should be sorry to tell you the way to the house of such a cur,” said
Sobakevitch. “A man had far better go to hell than to Plushkin’s.”
“Quite so,” responded Chichikov. “My only reason for asking you is
that it interests me to become acquainted with any and every sort of
locality.”
To the shoulder of mutton there succeeded, in turn, cutlets (each one
larger than a plate), a turkey of about the size of a calf, eggs, rice,
pastry, and every conceivable thing which could possibly be put into a
stomach. There the meal ended. When he rose from table Chichikov felt as
though a pood’s weight were inside him. In the drawing-room the company
found dessert awaiting them in the shape of pears, plums, and apples;
but since neither host nor guest could tackle these particular dainties
the hostess removed them to another room. Taking advantage of her
absence, Chichikov turned to Sobakevitch (who, prone in an armchair,
seemed, after his ponderous meal, to be capable of doing little
beyond belching and grunting--each such grunt or belch necessitating a
subsequent signing of the cross over the mouth), and intimated to him
a desire to have a little private conversation concerning a certain
matter. At this moment the hostess returned.
“Here is more dessert,” she said. “Pray have a few radishes stewed in
honey.”
“Later, later,” replied Sobakevitch. “Do you go to your room, and Paul
Ivanovitch and I will take off our coats and have a nap.”
Upon this the good lady expressed her readiness to send for feather beds
and cushions, but her husband expressed a preference for slumbering in
an armchair, and she therefore departed. When she had gone Sobakevitch
inclined his head in an attitude of willingness to listen to Chichikov’s
business. Our hero began in a sort of detached manner--touching lightly
upon the subject of the Russian Empire, and expatiating upon the
immensity of the same, and saying that even the Empire of Ancient Rome
had been of considerably smaller dimensions. Meanwhile Sobakevitch sat
with his head drooping.
From that Chichikov went on to remark that, according to the statutes of
the said Russian Empire (which yielded to none in glory--so much so that
foreigners marvelled at it), peasants on the census lists who had ended
their earthly careers were nevertheless, on the rendering of new lists,
returned equally with the living, to the end that the courts might be
relieved of a multitude of trifling, useless emendations which might
complicate the already sufficiently complex mechanism of the State.
Nevertheless, said Chichikov, the general equity of this measure did
not obviate a certain amount of annoyance to landowners, since it forced
them to pay upon a non-living article the tax due upon a living. Hence
(our hero concluded) he (Chichikov) was prepared, owing to the personal
respect which he felt for Sobakevitch, to relieve him, in part, of
the irksome obligation referred to (in passing, it may be said that
Chichikov referred to his principal point only guardedly, for he called
the souls which he was seeking not “dead,” but “non-existent”).
Meanwhile Sobakevitch listened with bent head; though something like a
trace of expression dawned in his face as he did so. Ordinarily his
body lacked a soul--or, if he did possess a soul, he seemed to keep it
elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath
mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements
produced no sort of agitation on the surface.
“Well?” said Chichikov--though not without a certain tremor of
diffidence as to the possible response.
“You are after dead souls?” were Sobakevitch’s perfectly simple words.
He spoke without the least surprise in his tone, and much as though the
conversation had been turning on grain.
“Yes,” replied Chichikov, and then, as before, softened down the
expression “dead souls.”
“They are to be found,” said Sobakevitch. “Why should they not be?”
“Then of course you will be glad to get rid of any that you may chance
to have?”
“Yes, I shall have no objection to SELLING them.” At this point the
speaker raised his head a little, for it had struck him that surely the
would-be buyer must have some advantage in view.
“The devil!” thought Chichikov to himself. “Here is he selling the goods
before I have even had time to utter a word!”
“And what about the price?” he added aloud. “Of course, the articles are
not of a kind very easy to appraise.”
“I should be sorry to ask too much,” said Sobakevitch. “How would a
hundred roubles per head suit you?”
“What, a hundred roubles per head?” Chichikov stared open-mouthed at
his host--doubting whether he had heard aright, or whether his host’s
slow-moving tongue might not have inadvertently substituted one word for
another.
“Yes. Is that too much for you?” said Sobakevitch. Then he added: “What
is your own price?”
“My own price? I think that we cannot properly have understood one
another--that you must have forgotten of what the goods consist. With
my hand on my heart do I submit that eight grivni per soul would be a
handsome, a VERY handsome, offer.”
“What? Eight grivni?”
“In my opinion, a higher offer would be impossible.”
“But I am not a seller of boots.”
“No; yet you, for your part, will agree that these souls are not live
human beings?”
“I suppose you hope to find fools ready to sell you souls on the census
list for a couple of groats apiece?”
“Pardon me, but why do you use the term ‘on the census list’? The souls
themselves have long since passed away, and have left behind them only
their names. Not to trouble you with any further discussion of the
subject, I can offer you a rouble and a half per head, but no more.”
“You should be ashamed even to mention such a sum! Since you deal in
articles of this kind, quote me a genuine price.”
“I cannot, Michael Semenovitch. Believe me, I cannot. What a man
cannot do, that he cannot do.” The speaker ended by advancing another
half-rouble per head.
“But why hang back with your money?” said Sobakevitch. “Of a truth I am
not asking much of you. Any other rascal than myself would have cheated
you by selling you old rubbish instead of good, genuine souls, whereas
I should be ready to give you of my best, even were you buying only
nut-kernels. For instance, look at wheelwright Michiev. Never was there
such a one to build spring carts! And his handiwork was not like your
Moscow handiwork--good only for an hour. No, he did it all himself, even
down to the varnishing.”
Chichikov opened his mouth to remark that, nevertheless, the said
Michiev had long since departed this world; but Sobakevitch’s eloquence
had got too thoroughly into its stride to admit of any interruption.
“And look, too, at Probka Stepan, the carpenter,” his host went on. “I
will wager my head that nowhere else would you find such a workman. What
a strong fellow he was! He had served in the Guards, and the Lord only
knows what they had given for him, seeing that he was over three arshins
in height.”
Again Chichikov tried to remark that Probka was dead, but Sobakevitch’s
tongue was borne on the torrent of its own verbiage, and the only thing
to be done was to listen.
“And Milushkin, the bricklayer! He could build a stove in any house you
liked! And Maksim Teliatnikov, the bootmaker! Anything that he drove
his awl into became a pair of boots--and boots for which you would
be thankful, although he WAS a bit foul of the mouth. And Eremi
Sorokoplechin, too! He was the best of the lot, and used to work at
his trade in Moscow, where he paid a tax of five hundred roubles. Well,
THERE’S an assortment of serfs for you!--a very different assortment
from what Plushkin would sell you!”
“But permit me,” at length put in Chichikov, astounded at this flood of
eloquence to which there appeared to be no end. “Permit me, I say, to
inquire why you enumerate the talents of the deceased, seeing that they
are all of them dead, and that therefore there can be no sense in doing
so. ‘A dead body is only good to prop a fence with,’ says the proverb.”
“Of course they are dead,” replied Sobakevitch, but rather as though the
idea had only just occurred to him, and was giving him food for thought.
“But tell me, now: what is the use of listing them as still alive? And
what is the use of them themselves? They are flies, not human beings.”
“Well,” said Chichikov, “they exist, though only in idea.”
“But no--NOT only in idea. I tell you that nowhere else would you
find such a fellow for working heavy tools as was Michiev. He had the
strength of a horse in his shoulders.” And, with the words, Sobakevitch
turned, as though for corroboration, to the portrait of Bagration, as is
frequently done by one of the parties in a dispute when he purports to
appeal to an extraneous individual who is not only unknown to him, but
wholly unconnected with the subject in hand; with the result that the
individual is left in doubt whether to make a reply, or whether to
betake himself elsewhere.
“Nevertheless, I CANNOT give you more than two roubles per head,” said
Chichikov.
“Well, as I don’t want you to swear that I have asked too much of you
and won’t meet you halfway, suppose, for friendship’s sake, that you pay
me seventy-five roubles in assignats?”
“Good heavens!” thought Chichikov to himself. “Does the man take me for
a fool?” Then he added aloud: “The situation seems to me a strange
one, for it is as though we were performing a stage comedy. No other
explanation would meet the case. Yet you appear to be a man of sense,
and possessed of some education. The matter is a very simple one. The
question is: what is a dead soul worth, and is it of any use to any
one?”
“It is of use to YOU, or you would not be buying such articles.”
Chichikov bit his lip, and stood at a loss for a retort. He tried
to saying something about “family and domestic circumstances,” but
Sobakevitch cut him short with:
“I don’t want to know your private affairs, for I never poke my nose
into such things. You need the souls, and I am ready to sell them.
Should you not buy them, I think you will repent it.”
“Two roubles is my price,” repeated Chichikov.
“Come, come! As you have named that sum, I can understand your not
liking to go back upon it; but quote me a bona fide figure.”
“The devil fly away with him!” mused Chichikov. “However, I will add
another half-rouble.” And he did so.
“Indeed?” said Sobakevitch. “Well, my last word upon it is--fifty
roubles in assignats. That will mean a sheer loss to me, for nowhere
else in the world could you buy better souls than mine.”
“The old skinflint!” muttered Chichikov. Then he added aloud, with
irritation in his tone: “See here. This is a serious matter. Any one but
you would be thankful to get rid of the souls. Only a fool would stick
to them, and continue to pay the tax.”
“Yes, but remember (and I say it wholly in a friendly way) that
transactions of this kind are not generally allowed, and that any one
would say that a man who engages in them must have some rather doubtful
advantage in view.”
“Have it your own away,” said Chichikov, with assumed indifference. “As
a matter of fact, I am not purchasing for profit, as you suppose, but to
humour a certain whim of mine. Two and a half roubles is the most that I
can offer.”
“Bless your heart!” retorted the host. “At least give me thirty roubles
in assignats, and take the lot.”
“No, for I see that you are unwilling to sell. I must say good-day to
you.”
“Hold on, hold on!” exclaimed Sobakevitch, retaining his guest’s hand,
and at the same moment treading heavily upon his toes--so heavily,
indeed, that Chichikov gasped and danced with the pain.
“I BEG your pardon!” said Sobakevitch hastily. “Evidently I have hurt
you. Pray sit down again.”
“No,” retorted Chichikov. “I am merely wasting my time, and must be
off.”
“Oh, sit down just for a moment. I have something more agreeable to
say.” And, drawing closer to his guest, Sobakevitch whispered in his
ear, as though communicating to him a secret: “How about twenty-five
roubles?”
“No, no, no!” exclaimed Chichikov. “I won’t give you even a QUARTER of
that. I won’t advance another kopeck.”
For a while Sobakevitch remained silent, and Chichikov did the same.
This lasted for a couple of minutes, and, meanwhile, the aquiline-nosed
Bagration gazed from the wall as though much interested in the
bargaining.
“What is your outside price?” at length said Sobakevitch.
“Two and a half roubles.”
“Then you seem to rate a human soul at about the same value as a boiled
turnip. At least give me THREE roubles.”
“No, I cannot.”
“Pardon me, but you are an impossible man to deal with. However, even
though it will mean a dead loss to me, and you have not shown a very
nice spirit about it, I cannot well refuse to please a friend. I suppose
a purchase deed had better be made out in order to have everything in
order?”
“Of course.”
“Then for that purpose let us repair to the town.”
The affair ended in their deciding to do this on the morrow, and to
arrange for the signing of a deed of purchase. Next, Chichikov requested
a list of the peasants; to which Sobakevitch readily agreed. Indeed, he
went to his writing-desk then and there, and started to indite a
list which gave not only the peasants’ names, but also their late
qualifications.
Meanwhile Chichikov, having nothing else to do, stood looking at the
spacious form of his host; and as he gazed at his back as broad as that
of a cart horse, and at the legs as massive as the iron standards which
adorn a street, he could not help inwardly ejaculating:
“Truly God has endowed you with much! Though not adjusted with nicety,
at least you are strongly built. I wonder whether you were born a
bear or whether you have come to it through your rustic life, with its
tilling of crops and its trading with peasants? Yet no; I believe that,
even if you had received a fashionable education, and had mixed with
society, and had lived in St. Petersburg, you would still have been just
the kulak [26] that you are. The only difference is that circumstances,
as they stand, permit of your polishing off a stuffed shoulder of mutton
at a meal; whereas in St. Petersburg you would have been unable to
do so. Also, as circumstances stand, you have under you a number
of peasants, whom you treat well for the reason that they are your
property; whereas, otherwise, you would have had under you tchinovniks
[27]: whom you would have bullied because they were NOT your property.
Also, you would have robbed the Treasury, since a kulak always remains a
money-grubber.”
“The list is ready,” said Sobakevitch, turning round.
“Indeed? Then please let me look at it.” Chichikov ran his eye over the
document, and could not but marvel at its neatness and accuracy. Not
only were there set forth in it the trade, the age, and the pedigree
of every serf, but on the margin of the sheet were jotted remarks
concerning each serf’s conduct and sobriety. Truly it was a pleasure to
look at it.
“And do you mind handing me the earnest money?” said Sobakevitch.
“Yes, I do. Why need that be done? You can receive the money in a lump
sum as soon as we visit the town.”
“But it is always the custom, you know,” asserted Sobakevitch.
“Then I cannot follow it, for I have no money with me. However, here are
ten roubles.”
“Ten roubles, indeed? You might as well hand me fifty while you are
about it.”
Once more Chichikov started to deny that he had any money upon him, but
Sobakevitch insisted so strongly that this was not so that at length
the guest pulled out another fifteen roubles, and added them to the ten
already produced.
“Kindly give me a receipt for the money,” he added.
“A receipt? Why should I give you a receipt?”
“Because it is better to do so, in order to guard against mistakes.”
“Very well; but first hand me over the money.”
“The money? I have it here. Do you write out the receipt, and then the
money shall be yours.”
“Pardon me, but how am I to write out the receipt before I have seen the
cash?”
Chichikov placed the notes in Sobakevitch’s hand; whereupon the host
moved nearer to the table, and added to the list of serfs a note that
he had received for the peasants, therewith sold, the sum of twenty-five
roubles, as earnest money. This done, he counted the notes once more.
“This is a very OLD note,” he remarked, holding one up to the light.
“Also, it is a trifle torn. However, in a friendly transaction one must
not be too particular.”
“What a kulak!” thought Chichikov to himself. “And what a brute beast!”
“Then you do not want any WOMEN souls?” queried Sobakevitch.
“I thank you, no.”
“I could let you have some cheap--say, as between friends, at a rouble a
head?”
“No, I should have no use for them.”
“Then, that being so, there is no more to be said. There is no
accounting for tastes. ‘One man loves the priest, and another the
priest’s wife,’ says the proverb.”
Chichikov rose to take his leave. “Once more I would request of you,” he
said, “that the bargain be left as it is.”
“Of course, of course. What is done between friends holds good because
of their mutual friendship. Good-bye, and thank you for your visit. In
advance I would beg that, whenever you should have an hour or two to
spare, you will come and lunch with us again. Perhaps we might be able
to do one another further service?”
“Not if I know it!” reflected Chichikov as he mounted his britchka. “Not
I, seeing that I have had two and a half roubles per soul squeezed out
of me by a brute of a kulak!”
Altogether he felt dissatisfied with Sobakevitch’s behaviour. In spite
of the man being a friend of the Governor and the Chief of Police,
he had acted like an outsider in taking money for what was worthless
rubbish. As the britchka left the courtyard Chichikov glanced back
and saw Sobakevitch still standing on the verandah--apparently for the
purpose of watching to see which way the guest’s carriage would turn.
“The old villain, to be still standing there!” muttered Chichikov
through his teeth; after which he ordered Selifan to proceed so that the
vehicle’s progress should be invisible from the mansion--the truth
being that he had a mind next to visit Plushkin (whose serfs, to quote
Sobakevitch, had a habit of dying like flies), but not to let his late
host learn of his intention. Accordingly, on reaching the further end of
the village, he hailed the first peasant whom he saw--a man who was in
the act of hoisting a ponderous beam on to his shoulder before setting
off with it, ant-like, to his hut.
“Hi!” shouted Chichikov. “How can I reach landowner Plushkin’s place
without first going past the mansion here?”
The peasant seemed nonplussed by the question.
“Don’t you know?” queried Chichikov.
“No, barin,” replied the peasant.
“What? You don’t know skinflint Plushkin who feeds his people so badly?”
“Of course I do!” exclaimed the fellow, and added thereto an
uncomplimentary expression of a species not ordinarily employed in
polite society. We may guess that it was a pretty apt expression, since
long after the man had become lost to view Chichikov was still laughing
in his britchka. And, indeed, the language of the Russian populace is
always forcible in its phraseology.
CHAPTER 6
Chichikov’s amusement at the peasant’s outburst prevented him from
noticing that he had reached the centre of a large and populous village;
but, presently, a violent jolt aroused him to the fact that he was
driving over wooden pavements of a kind compared with which the
cobblestones of the town had been as nothing. Like the keys of a piano,
the planks kept rising and falling, and unguarded passage over them
entailed either a bump on the back of the neck or a bruise on the
forehead or a bite on the tip of one’s tongue. At the same time
Chichikov noticed a look of decay about the buildings of the village.
The beams of the huts had grown dark with age, many of their roofs were
riddled with holes, others had but a tile of the roof remaining, and yet
others were reduced to the rib-like framework of the same. It would
seem as though the inhabitants themselves had removed the laths and
traverses, on the very natural plea that the huts were no protection
against the rain, and therefore, since the latter entered in bucketfuls,
there was no particular object to be gained by sitting in such huts when
all the time there was the tavern and the highroad and other places to
resort to.
Suddenly a woman appeared from an outbuilding--apparently the
housekeeper of the mansion, but so roughly and dirtily dressed as almost
to seem indistinguishable from a man. Chichikov inquired for the master
of the place.
“He is not at home,” she replied, almost before her interlocutor had had
time to finish. Then she added: “What do you want with him?”
“I have some business to do,” said Chichikov.
“Then pray walk into the house,” the woman advised. Then she turned upon
him a back that was smeared with flour and had a long slit in the lower
portion of its covering. Entering a large, dark hall which reeked like
a tomb, he passed into an equally dark parlour that was lighted only by
such rays as contrived to filter through a crack under the door. When
Chichikov opened the door in question, the spectacle of the untidiness
within struck him almost with amazement. It would seem that the floor
was never washed, and that the room was used as a receptacle for every
conceivable kind of furniture. On a table stood a ragged chair, with,
beside it, a clock minus a pendulum and covered all over with cobwebs.
Against a wall leant a cupboard, full of old silver, glassware, and
china. On a writing table, inlaid with mother-of-pearl which, in places,
had broken away and left behind it a number of yellow grooves (stuffed
with putty), lay a pile of finely written manuscript, an overturned
marble press (turning green), an ancient book in a leather cover with
red edges, a lemon dried and shrunken to the dimensions of a hazelnut,
the broken arm of a chair, a tumbler containing the dregs of some liquid
and three flies (the whole covered over with a sheet of notepaper), a
pile of rags, two ink-encrusted pens, and a yellow toothpick with which
the master of the house had picked his teeth (apparently) at least
before the coming of the French to Moscow. As for the walls, they were
hung with a medley of pictures. Among the latter was a long engraving of
a battle scene, wherein soldiers in three-cornered hats were brandishing
huge drums and slender lances. It lacked a glass, and was set in a frame
ornamented with bronze fretwork and bronze corner rings. Beside it hung
a huge, grimy oil painting representative of some flowers and fruit,
half a water melon, a boar’s head, and the pendent form of a dead
wild duck. Attached to the ceiling there was a chandelier in a holland
covering--the covering so dusty as closely to resemble a huge cocoon
enclosing a caterpillar. Lastly, in one corner of the room lay a pile
of articles which had evidently been adjudged unworthy of a place on the
table. Yet what the pile consisted of it would have been difficult to
say, seeing that the dust on the same was so thick that any hand which
touched it would have at once resembled a glove. Prominently protruding
from the pile was the shaft of a wooden spade and the antiquated sole
of a shoe. Never would one have supposed that a living creature had
tenanted the room, were it not that the presence of such a creature was
betrayed by the spectacle of an old nightcap resting on the table.
Whilst Chichikov was gazing at this extraordinary mess, a side door
opened and there entered the housekeeper who had met him near the
outbuildings. But now Chichikov perceived this person to be a man rather
than a woman, since a female housekeeper would have had no beard to
shave, whereas the chin of the newcomer, with the lower portion of his
cheeks, strongly resembled the curry-comb which is used for grooming
horses. Chichikov assumed a questioning air, and waited to hear what the
housekeeper might have to say. The housekeeper did the same. At length,
surprised at the misunderstanding, Chichikov decided to ask the first
question.
“Is the master at home?” he inquired.
“Yes,” replied the person addressed.
“Then where is he?” continued Chichikov.
“Are you blind, my good sir?” retorted the other. “_I_ am the master.”
Involuntarily our hero started and stared. During his travels it had
befallen him to meet various types of men--some of them, it may be,
types which you and I have never encountered; but even to Chichikov this
particular species was new. In the old man’s face there was nothing very
special--it was much like the wizened face of many another dotard, save
that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was
forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling, and that his
small eyes were not yet grown dull, but twinkled under their overhanging
brows like the eyes of mice when, with attentive ears and sensitive
whiskers, they snuff the air and peer forth from their holes to
see whether a cat or a boy may not be in the vicinity. No, the most
noticeable feature about the man was his clothes. In no way could it
have been guessed of what his coat was made, for both its sleeves and
its skirts were so ragged and filthy as to defy description, while
instead of two posterior tails, there dangled four of those appendages,
with, projecting from them, a torn newspaper. Also, around his neck
there was wrapped something which might have been a stocking, a garter,
or a stomacher, but was certainly not a tie. In short, had Chichikov
chanced to encounter him at a church door, he would have bestowed upon
him a copper or two (for, to do our hero justice, he had a sympathetic
heart and never refrained from presenting a beggar with alms), but in
the present case there was standing before him, not a mendicant, but
a landowner--and a landowner possessed of fully a thousand serfs, the
superior of all his neighbours in wealth of flour and grain, and the
owner of storehouses, and so forth, that were crammed with homespun
cloth and linen, tanned and undressed sheepskins, dried fish, and every
conceivable species of produce. Nevertheless, such a phenomenon is
rare in Russia, where the tendency is rather to prodigality than to
parsimony.
For several minutes Plushkin stood mute, while Chichikov remained so
dazed with the appearance of the host and everything else in the room,
that he too, could not begin a conversation, but stood wondering how
best to find words in which to explain the object of his visit. For a
while he thought of expressing himself to the effect that, having heard
so much of his host’s benevolence and other rare qualities of spirit,
he had considered it his duty to come and pay a tribute of respect; but
presently even HE came to the conclusion that this would be overdoing
the thing, and, after another glance round the room, decided that
the phrase “benevolence and other rare qualities of spirit” might to
advantage give place to “economy and genius for method.” Accordingly,
the speech mentally composed, he said aloud that, having heard of
Plushkin’s talents for thrifty and systematic management, he had
considered himself bound to make the acquaintance of his host, and
to present him with his personal compliments (I need hardly say that
Chichikov could easily have alleged a better reason, had any better one
happened, at the moment, to have come into his head).
With toothless gums Plushkin murmured something in reply, but nothing is
known as to its precise terms beyond that it included a statement
that the devil was at liberty to fly away with Chichikov’s sentiments.
However, the laws of Russian hospitality do not permit even of a miser
infringing their rules; wherefore Plushkin added to the foregoing a more
civil invitation to be seated.
“It is long since I last received a visitor,” he went on. “Also, I feel
bound to say that I can see little good in their coming. Once introduce
the abominable custom of folk paying calls, and forthwith there will
ensue such ruin to the management of estates that landowners will be
forced to feed their horses on hay. Not for a long, long time have I
eaten a meal away from home--although my own kitchen is a poor one, and
has its chimney in such a state that, were it to become overheated, it
would instantly catch fire.”
“What a brute!” thought Chichikov. “I am lucky to have got through so
much pastry and stuffed shoulder of mutton at Sobakevitch’s!”
“Also,” went on Plushkin, “I am ashamed to say that hardly a wisp of
fodder does the place contain. But how can I get fodder? My lands are
small, and the peasantry lazy fellows who hate work and think of nothing
but the tavern. In the end, therefore, I shall be forced to go and spend
my old age in roaming about the world.”
“But I have been told that you possess over a thousand serfs?” said
Chichikov.
“Who told you that? No matter who it was, you would have been justified
in giving him the lie. He must have been a jester who wanted to make
a fool of you. A thousand souls, indeed! Why, just reckon the taxes
on them, and see what there would be left! For these three years that
accursed fever has been killing off my serfs wholesale.”
“Wholesale, you say?” echoed Chichikov, greatly interested.
“Yes, wholesale,” replied the old man.
“Then might I ask you the exact number?”
“Fully eighty.”
“Surely not?”
“But it is so.”
“Then might I also ask whether it is from the date of the last census
revision that you are reckoning these souls?”
“Yes, damn it! And since that date I have been bled for taxes upon a
hundred and twenty souls in all.”
“Indeed? Upon a hundred and twenty souls in all!” And Chichikov’s
surprise and elation were such that, this said, he remained sitting
open-mouthed.
“Yes, good sir,” replied Plushkin. “I am too old to tell you lies, for I
have passed my seventieth year.”
Somehow he seemed to have taken offence at Chichikov’s almost joyous
exclamation; wherefore the guest hastened to heave a profound sigh, and
to observe that he sympathised to the full with his host’s misfortunes.
“But sympathy does not put anything into one’s pocket,” retorted
Plushkin. “For instance, I have a kinsman who is constantly plaguing me.
He is a captain in the army, damn him, and all day he does nothing but
call me ‘dear uncle,’ and kiss my hand, and express sympathy until I am
forced to stop my ears. You see, he has squandered all his money upon
his brother-officers, as well as made a fool of himself with an actress;
so now he spends his time in telling me that he has a sympathetic
heart!”
Chichikov hastened to explain that HIS sympathy had nothing in common
with the captain’s, since he dealt, not in empty words alone, but in
actual deeds; in proof of which he was ready then and there (for
the purpose of cutting the matter short, and of dispensing with
circumlocution) to transfer to himself the obligation of paying the
taxes due upon such serfs as Plushkin’s as had, in the unfortunate
manner just described, departed this world. The proposal seemed to
astonish Plushkin, for he sat staring open-eyed. At length he inquired:
“My dear sir, have you seen military service?”
“No,” replied the other warily, “but I have been a member of the CIVIL
Service.”
“Oh! Of the CIVIL Service?” And Plushkin sat moving his lips as though
he were chewing something. “Well, what of your proposal?” he added
presently. “Are you prepared to lose by it?”
“Yes, certainly, if thereby I can please you.”
“My dear sir! My good benefactor!” In his delight Plushkin lost sight of
the fact that his nose was caked with snuff of the consistency of thick
coffee, and that his coat had parted in front and was disclosing some
very unseemly underclothing. “What comfort you have brought to an old
man! Yes, as God is my witness!”
For the moment he could say no more. Yet barely a minute had elapsed
before this instantaneously aroused emotion had, as instantaneously,
disappeared from his wooden features. Once more they assumed a careworn
expression, and he even wiped his face with his handkerchief, then
rolled it into a ball, and rubbed it to and fro against his upper lip.
“If it will not annoy you again to state the proposal,” he went on,
“what you undertake to do is to pay the annual tax upon these souls, and
to remit the money either to me or to the Treasury?”
“Yes, that is how it shall be done. We will draw up a deed of purchase
as though the souls were still alive and you had sold them to myself.”
“Quite so--a deed of purchase,” echoed Plushkin, once more relapsing
into thought and the chewing motion of the lips. “But a deed of such
a kind will entail certain expenses, and lawyers are so devoid of
conscience! In fact, so extortionate is their avarice that they will
charge one half a rouble, and then a sack of flour, and then a whole
waggon-load of meal. I wonder that no one has yet called attention to
the system.”
Upon that Chichikov intimated that, out of respect for his host, he
himself would bear the cost of the transfer of souls. This led Plushkin
to conclude that his guest must be the kind of unconscionable fool who,
while pretending to have been a member of the Civil Service, has in
reality served in the army and run after actresses; wherefore the old
man no longer disguised his delight, but called down blessings alike
upon Chichikov’s head and upon those of his children (he had never even
inquired whether Chichikov possessed a family). Next, he shuffled to the
window, and, tapping one of its panes, shouted the name of “Proshka.”
Immediately some one ran quickly into the hall, and, after much stamping
of feet, burst into the room. This was Proshka--a thirteen-year-old
youngster who was shod with boots of such dimensions as almost to engulf
his legs as he walked. The reason why he had entered thus shod was
that Plushkin only kept one pair of boots for the whole of his domestic
staff. This universal pair was stationed in the hall of the mansion, so
that any servant who was summoned to the house might don the said boots
after wading barefooted through the mud of the courtyard, and enter
the parlour dry-shod--subsequently leaving the boots where he had found
them, and departing in his former barefooted condition. Indeed, had any
one, on a slushy winter’s morning, glanced from a window into the said
courtyard, he would have seen Plushkin’s servitors performing saltatory
feats worthy of the most vigorous of stage-dancers.
“Look at that boy’s face!” said Plushkin to Chichikov as he pointed to
Proshka. “It is stupid enough, yet, lay anything aside, and in a trice
he will have stolen it. Well, my lad, what do you want?”
He paused a moment or two, but Proshka made no reply.
“Come, come!” went on the old man. “Set out the samovar, and then give
Mavra the key of the store-room--here it is--and tell her to get out
some loaf sugar for tea. Here! Wait another moment, fool! Is the devil
in your legs that they itch so to be off? Listen to what more I have to
tell you. Tell Mavra that the sugar on the outside of the loaf has gone
bad, so that she must scrape it off with a knife, and NOT throw away
the scrapings, but give them to the poultry. Also, see that you yourself
don’t go into the storeroom, or I will give you a birching that you
won’t care for. Your appetite is good enough already, but a better one
won’t hurt you. Don’t even TRY to go into the storeroom, for I shall be
watching you from this window.”
“You see,” the old man added to Chichikov, “one can never trust these
fellows.” Presently, when Proshka and the boots had departed, he fell
to gazing at his guest with an equally distrustful air, since certain
features in Chichikov’s benevolence now struck him as a little open to
question, and he had begin to think to himself: “After all, the
devil only knows who he is--whether a braggart, like most of these
spendthrifts, or a fellow who is lying merely in order to get some tea
out of me.” Finally, his circumspection, combined with a desire to
test his guest, led him to remark that it might be well to complete
the transaction IMMEDIATELY, since he had not overmuch confidence in
humanity, seeing that a man might be alive to-day and dead to-morrow.
To this Chichikov assented readily enough--merely adding that he should
like first of all to be furnished with a list of the dead souls. This
reassured Plushkin as to his guest’s intention of doing business, so
he got out his keys, approached a cupboard, and, having pulled back the
door, rummaged among the cups and glasses with which it was filled. At
length he said:
“I cannot find it now, but I used to possess a splendid bottle of
liquor. Probably the servants have drunk it all, for they are such
thieves. Oh no: perhaps this is it!”
Looking up, Chichikov saw that Plushkin had extracted a decanter coated
with dust.
“My late wife made the stuff,” went on the old man, “but that rascal of
a housekeeper went and threw away a lot of it, and never even replaced
the stopper. Consequently bugs and other nasty creatures got into the
decanter, but I cleaned it out, and now beg to offer you a glassful.”
The idea of a drink from such a receptacle was too much for Chichikov,
so he excused himself on the ground that he had just had luncheon.
“You have just had luncheon?” re-echoed Plushkin. “Now, THAT shows how
invariably one can tell a man of good society, wheresoever one may be.
A man of that kind never eats anything--he always says that he has had
enough. Very different that from the ways of a rogue, whom one can never
satisfy, however much one may give him. For instance, that captain of
mine is constantly begging me to let him have a meal--though he is about
as much my nephew as I am his grandfather. As it happens, there is never
a bite of anything in the house, so he has to go away empty. But about
the list of those good-for-nothing souls--I happen to possess such a
list, since I have drawn one up in readiness for the next revision.”
With that Plushkin donned his spectacles, and once more started to
rummage in the cupboard, and to smother his guest with dust as he untied
successive packages of papers--so much so that his victim burst out
sneezing. Finally he extracted a much-scribbled document in which the
names of the deceased peasants lay as close-packed as a cloud of midges,
for there were a hundred and twenty of them in all. Chichikov grinned
with joy at the sight of the multitude. Stuffing the list into his
pocket, he remarked that, to complete the transaction, it would be
necessary to return to the town.
“To the town?” repeated Plushkin. “But why? Moreover, how could I leave
the house, seeing that every one of my servants is either a thief or
a rogue? Day by day they pilfer things, until soon I shall have not a
single coat to hang on my back.”
“Then you possess acquaintances in the town?”
“Acquaintances? No. Every acquaintance whom I ever possessed has either
left me or is dead. But stop a moment. I DO know the President of the
Council. Even in my old age he has once or twice come to visit me, for
he and I used to be schoolfellows, and to go climbing walls together.
Yes, him I do know. Shall I write him a letter?”
“By all means.”
“Yes, him I know well, for we were friends together at school.”
Over Plushkin’s wooden features there had gleamed a ray of warmth--a
ray which expressed, if not feeling, at all events feeling’s pale
reflection. Just such a phenomenon may be witnessed when, for a brief
moment, a drowning man makes a last re-appearance on the surface of a
river, and there rises from the crowd lining the banks a cry of hope
that even yet the exhausted hands may clutch the rope which has been
thrown him--may clutch it before the surface of the unstable element
shall have resumed for ever its calm, dread vacuity. But the hope is
short-lived, and the hands disappear. Even so did Plushkin’s face,
after its momentary manifestation of feeling, become meaner and more
insensible than ever.
“There used to be a sheet of clean writing paper lying on the table,” he
went on. “But where it is now I cannot think. That comes of my servants
being such rascals.”
With that he fell to looking also under the table, as well as to
hurrying about with cries of “Mavra, Mavra!” At length the call was
answered by a woman with a plateful of the sugar of which mention has
been made; whereupon there ensued the following conversation.
“What have you done with my piece of writing paper, you pilferer?”
“I swear that I have seen no paper except the bit with which you covered
the glass.”
“Your very face tells me that you have made off with it.”
“Why should I make off with it? ‘Twould be of no use to me, for I can
neither read nor write.”
“You lie! You have taken it away for the sexton to scribble upon.”
“Well, if the sexton wanted paper he could get some for himself. Neither
he nor I have set eyes upon your piece.”
“Ah! Wait a bit, for on the Judgment Day you will be roasted by devils
on iron spits. Just see if you are not!”
“But why should I be roasted when I have never even TOUCHED the paper?
You might accuse me of any other fault than theft.”
“Nay, devils shall roast you, sure enough. They will say to you, ‘Bad
woman, we are doing this because you robbed your master,’ and then stoke
up the fire still hotter.”
“Nevertheless _I_ shall continue to say, ‘You are roasting me for
nothing, for I never stole anything at all.’ Why, THERE it is, lying on
the table! You have been accusing me for no reason whatever!”
And, sure enough, the sheet of paper was lying before Plushkin’s very
eyes. For a moment or two he chewed silently. Then he went on:
“Well, and what are you making such a noise about? If one says a single
word to you, you answer back with ten. Go and fetch me a candle to seal
a letter with. And mind you bring a TALLOW candle, for it will not cost
so much as the other sort. And bring me a match too.”
Mavra departed, and Plushkin, seating himself, and taking up a pen, sat
turning the sheet of paper over and over, as though in doubt whether
to tear from it yet another morsel. At length he came to the conclusion
that it was impossible to do so, and therefore, dipping the pen into the
mixture of mouldy fluid and dead flies which the ink bottle contained,
started to indite the letter in characters as bold as the notes of a
music score, while momentarily checking the speed of his hand, lest it
should meander too much over the paper, and crawling from line to line
as though he regretted that there was so little vacant space left on the
sheet.
“And do you happen to know any one to whom a few runaway serfs would be
of use?” he asked as subsequently he folded the letter.
“What? You have some runaways as well?” exclaimed Chichikov, again
greatly interested.
“Certainly I have. My son-in-law has laid the necessary information
against them, but says that their tracks have grown cold. However, he is
only a military man--that is to say, good at clinking a pair of spurs,
but of no use for laying a plea before a court.”
“And how many runaways have you?”
“About seventy.”
“Surely not?”
“Alas, yes. Never does a year pass without a certain number of them
making off. Yet so gluttonous and idle are my serfs that they are simply
bursting with food, whereas I scarcely get enough to eat. I will take
any price for them that you may care to offer. Tell your friends about
it, and, should they find even a score of the runaways, it will repay
them handsomely, seeing that a living serf on the census list is at
present worth five hundred roubles.”
“Perhaps so, but I am not going to let any one but myself have a finger
in this,” thought Chichikov to himself; after which he explained to
Plushkin that a friend of the kind mentioned would be impossible to
discover, since the legal expenses of the enterprise would lead to the
said friend having to cut the very tail from his coat before he would
get clear of the lawyers.
“Nevertheless,” added Chichikov, “seeing that you are so hard pressed
for money, and that I am so interested in the matter, I feel moved to
advance you--well, to advance you such a trifle as would scarcely be
worth mentioning.”
“But how much is it?” asked Plushkin eagerly, and with his hands
trembling like quicksilver.
“Twenty-five kopecks per soul.”
“What? In ready money?”
“Yes--in money down.”
“Nevertheless, consider my poverty, dear friend, and make it FORTY
kopecks per soul.”
“Venerable sir, would that I could pay you not merely forty kopecks,
but five hundred roubles. I should be only too delighted if that were
possible, since I perceive that you, an aged and respected gentleman,
are suffering for your own goodness of heart.”
“By God, that is true, that is true.” Plushkin hung his head, and wagged
it feebly from side to side. “Yes, all that I have done I have done
purely out of kindness.”
“See how instantaneously I have divined your nature! By now it will have
become clear to you why it is impossible for me to pay you five hundred
roubles per runaway soul: for by now you will have gathered the fact
that I am not sufficiently rich. Nevertheless, I am ready to add another
five kopecks, and so to make it that each runaway serf shall cost me, in
all, thirty kopecks.”
“As you please, dear sir. Yet stretch another point, and throw in
another two kopecks.”
“Pardon me, but I cannot. How many runaway serfs did you say that you
possess? Seventy?”
“No; seventy-eight.”
“Seventy-eight souls at thirty kopecks each will amount to--to--” only
for a moment did our hero halt, since he was strong in his arithmetic,
“--will amount to twenty-four roubles, ninety-six kopecks.” [28]
With that he requested Plushkin to make out the receipt, and then handed
him the money. Plushkin took it in both hands, bore it to a bureau with
as much caution as though he were carrying a liquid which might at any
moment splash him in the face, and, arrived at the bureau, and glancing
round once more, carefully packed the cash in one of his money bags,
where, doubtless, it was destined to lie buried until, to the intense
joy of his daughters and his son-in-law (and, perhaps, of the captain
who claimed kinship with him), he should himself receive burial at the
hands of Fathers Carp and Polycarp, the two priests attached to his
village. Lastly, the money concealed, Plushkin re-seated himself in the
armchair, and seemed at a loss for further material for conversation.
“Are you thinking of starting?” at length he inquired, on seeing
Chichikov making a trifling movement, though the movement was only
to extract from his pocket a handkerchief. Nevertheless the question
reminded Chichikov that there was no further excuse for lingering.
“Yes, I must be going,” he said as he took his hat.
“Then what about the tea?”
“Thank you, I will have some on my next visit.”
“What? Even though I have just ordered the samovar to be got ready?
Well, well! I myself do not greatly care for tea, for I think it an
expensive beverage. Moreover, the price of sugar has risen terribly.”
“Proshka!” he then shouted. “The samovar will not be needed. Return the
sugar to Mavra, and tell her to put it back again. But no. Bring the
sugar here, and _I_ will put it back.”
“Good-bye, dear sir,” finally he added to Chichikov. “May the Lord bless
you! Hand that letter to the President of the Council, and let him
read it. Yes, he is an old friend of mine. We knew one another as
schoolfellows.”
With that this strange phenomenon, this withered old man, escorted his
guest to the gates of the courtyard, and, after the guest had departed,
ordered the gates to be closed, made the round of the outbuildings for
the purpose of ascertaining whether the numerous watchmen were at their
posts, peered into the kitchen (where, under the pretence of seeing
whether his servants were being properly fed, he made a light meal
of cabbage soup and gruel), rated the said servants soundly for their
thievishness and general bad behaviour, and then returned to his room.
Meditating in solitude, he fell to thinking how best he could contrive
to recompense his guest for the latter’s measureless benevolence. “I
will present him,” he thought to himself, “with a watch. It is a good
silver article--not one of those cheap metal affairs; and though it
has suffered some damage, he can easily get that put right. A young man
always needs to give a watch to his betrothed.”
“No,” he added after further thought. “I will leave him the watch in my
will, as a keepsake.”
Meanwhile our hero was bowling along in high spirit. Such an unexpected
acquisition both of dead souls and of runaway serfs had come as
a windfall. Even before reaching Plushkin’s village he had had a
presentiment that he would do successful business there, but not
business of such pre-eminent profitableness as had actually resulted.
As he proceeded he whistled, hummed with hand placed trumpetwise to his
mouth, and ended by bursting into a burst of melody so striking that
Selifan, after listening for a while, nodded his head and exclaimed, “My
word, but the master CAN sing!”
By the time they reached the town darkness had fallen, and changed the
character of the scene. The britchka bounded over the cobblestones, and
at length turned into the hostelry’s courtyard, where the travellers
were met by Petrushka. With one hand holding back the tails of his coat
(which he never liked to see fly apart), the valet assisted his
master to alight. The waiter ran out with candle in hand and napkin on
shoulder. Whether or not Petrushka was glad to see the barin return
it is impossible to say, but at all events he exchanged a wink with
Selifan, and his ordinarily morose exterior seemed momentarily to
brighten.
“Then you have been travelling far, sir?” said the waiter, as he lit the
way upstarts.
“Yes,” said Chichikov. “What has happened here in the meanwhile?”
“Nothing, sir,” replied the waiter, bowing, “except that last night
there arrived a military lieutenant. He has got room number sixteen.”
“A lieutenant?”
“Yes. He came from Riazan, driving three grey horses.”
On entering his room, Chichikov clapped his hand to his nose, and asked
his valet why he had never had the windows opened.
“But I did have them opened,” replied Petrushka. Nevertheless this was
a lie, as Chichikov well knew, though he was too tired to contest the
point. After ordering and consuming a light supper of sucking pig, he
undressed, plunged beneath the bedclothes, and sank into the profound
slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither
with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.
CHAPTER 7
When Chichikov awoke he stretched himself and realised that he had slept
well. For a moment or two he lay on his back, and then suddenly clapped
his hands at the recollection that he was now owner of nearly four
hundred souls. At once he leapt out of bed without so much as glancing
at his face in the mirror, though, as a rule, he had much solicitude for
his features, and especially for his chin, of which he would make the
most when in company with friends, and more particularly should any one
happen to enter while he was engaged in the process of shaving. “Look
how round my chin is!” was his usual formula. On the present occasion,
however, he looked neither at chin nor at any other feature, but at once
donned his flower-embroidered slippers of morroco leather (the kind
of slippers in which, thanks to the Russian love for a dressing-gowned
existence, the town of Torzhok does such a huge trade), and, clad only
in a meagre shirt, so far forgot his elderliness and dignity as to cut
a couple of capers after the fashion of a Scottish highlander--alighting
neatly, each time, on the flat of his heels. Only when he had done that
did he proceed to business. Planting himself before his dispatch-box,
he rubbed his hands with a satisfaction worthy of an incorruptible rural
magistrate when adjourning for luncheon; after which he extracted from
the receptacle a bundle of papers. These he had decided not to deposit
with a lawyer, for the reason that he would hasten matters, as well as
save expense, by himself framing and fair-copying the necessary deeds
of indenture; and since he was thoroughly acquainted with the necessary
terminology, he proceeded to inscribe in large characters the date, and
then in smaller ones, his name and rank. By two o’clock the whole was
finished, and as he looked at the sheets of names representing bygone
peasants who had ploughed, worked at handicrafts, cheated their masters,
fetched, carried, and got drunk (though SOME of them may have behaved
well), there came over him a strange, unaccountable sensation. To his
eye each list of names seemed to possess a character of its own;
and even individual peasants therein seemed to have taken on certain
qualities peculiar to themselves. For instance, to the majority of
Madame Korobotchka’s serfs there were appended nicknames and other
additions; Plushkin’s list was distinguished by a conciseness of
exposition which had led to certain of the items being represented
merely by Christian name, patronymic, and a couple of dots;
and Sobakevitch’s list was remarkable for its amplitude and
circumstantiality, in that not a single peasant had such of his peculiar
characteristics omitted as that the deceased had been “excellent at
joinery,” or “sober and ready to pay attention to his work.” Also, in
Sobakevitch’s list there was recorded who had been the father and
the mother of each of the deceased, and how those parents had behaved
themselves. Only against the name of a certain Thedotov was there
inscribed: “Father unknown, Mother the maidservant Kapitolina, Morals
and Honesty good.” These details communicated to the document a certain
air of freshness, they seemed to connote that the peasants in question
had lived but yesterday. As Chichikov scanned the list he felt softened
in spirit, and said with a sigh:
“My friends, what a concourse of you is here! How did you all pass your
lives, my brethren? And how did you all come to depart hence?”
As he spoke his eyes halted at one name in particular--that of the same
Peter Saveliev Neuvazhai Korito who had once been the property of the
window Korobotchka. Once more he could not help exclaiming:
“What a series of titles! They occupy a whole line! Peter Saveliev, I
wonder whether you were an artisan or a plain muzhik. Also, I wonder how
you came to meet your end; whether in a tavern, or whether through going
to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train of
waggons. Again, I see the name, ‘Probka Stepan, carpenter, very sober.’
That must be the hero of whom the Guards would have been so glad to get
hold. How well I can imagine him tramping the country with an axe in his
belt and his boots on his shoulder, and living on a few groats’-worth
of bread and dried fish per day, and taking home a couple of half-rouble
pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into his breeches, or stuffing
them into his boots! In what manner came you by your end, Probka Stepan?
Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the
village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your
footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle
Michai--the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and
muttering, ‘Ah, Vania, for once you have been too clever!’ straightway
lashed himself to a rope, and took your place? ‘Maksim Teliatnikov,
shoemaker.’ A shoemaker, indeed? ‘As drunk as a shoemaker,’ says the
proverb. _I_ know what you were like, my friend. If you wish, I will
tell you your whole history. You were apprenticed to a German, who fed
you and your fellows at a common table, thrashed you with a strap,
kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake, and spoke of you in
uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends. At length, when your
apprenticeship was over, you said to yourself, ‘I am going to set up
on my own account, and not just to scrape together a kopeck here and a
kopeck there, as the Germans do, but to grow rich quick.’ Hence you took
a shop at a high rent, bespoke a few orders, and set to work to buy up
some rotten leather out of which you could make, on each pair of boots,
a double profit. But those boots split within a fortnight, and brought
down upon your head dire showers of maledictions; with the result that
gradually your shop grew empty of customers, and you fell to roaming
the streets and exclaiming, ‘The world is a very poor place indeed!
A Russian cannot make a living for German competition.’ Well, well!
‘Elizabeta Vorobei!’ But that is a WOMAN’S name! How comes SHE to be on
the list? That villain Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my
knowing it.”
“‘Grigori Goiezhai-ne-Doiedesh,’” he went on. “What sort of a man were
YOU, I wonder? Were you a carrier who, having set up a team of three
horses and a tilt waggon, left your home, your native hovel, for ever,
and departed to cart merchandise to market? Was it on the highway that
you surrendered your soul to God, or did your friends first marry you
to some fat, red-faced soldier’s daughter; after which your harness and
team of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman’s fancy, and you,
lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt
that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into
an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death when
it comes!”
“And you, my friends?” continued Chichikov, turning to the sheet whereon
were inscribed the names of Plushkin’s absconded serfs. “Although you
are still alive, what is the good of you? You are practically dead.
Whither, I wonder, have your fugitive feet carried you? Did you fare
hardly at Plushkin’s, or was it that your natural inclinations led you
to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering travellers? Are you, by this
time, in gaol, or have you taken service with other masters for the
tillage of their lands? ‘Eremei Kariakin, Nikita Volokita and Anton
Volokita (son of the foregoing).’ To judge from your surnames, you would
seem to have been born gadabouts [29]. ‘Popov, household serf.’ Probably
you are an educated man, good Popov, and go in for polite thieving, as
distinguished from the more vulgar cut-throat sort. In my mind’s eye I
seem to see a Captain of Rural Police challenging you for being without
a passport; whereupon you stake your all upon a single throw. ‘To whom
do you belong?’ asks the Captain, probably adding to his question a
forcible expletive. ‘To such and such a landowner,’ stoutly you reply.
‘And what are you doing here?’ continues the Captain. ‘I have
just received permission to go and earn my obrok,’ is your fluent
explanation. ‘Then where is your passport?’ ‘At Miestchanin [30]
Pimenov’s.’ ‘Pimenov’s? Then are you Pimenov himself?’ ‘Yes, I am
Pimenov himself.’ ‘He has given you his passport?’ ‘No, he has not given
me his passport.’ ‘Come, come!’ shouts the Captain with another forcible
expletive. ‘You are lying!’ ‘No, I am not,’ is your dogged reply. ‘It is
only that last night I could not return him his passport, because I came
home late; so I handed it to Antip Prochorov, the bell-ringer, for him
to take care of.’ ‘Bell-ringer, indeed! Then HE gave you a passport?’
‘No; I did not receive a passport from him either.’ ‘What?’--and here
the Captain shouts another expletive--‘How dare you keep on lying? Where
is YOUR OWN passport?’ ‘I had one all right,’ you reply cunningly, ‘but
must have dropped it somewhere on the road as I came along.’ ‘And what
about that soldier’s coat?’ asks the Captain with an impolite addition.
‘Whence did you get it? And what of the priest’s cashbox and copper
money?’’ ‘About them I know nothing,’ you reply doggedly. ‘Never at any
time have I committed a theft.’ ‘Then how is it that the coat was found
at your place?’ ‘I do not know. Probably some one else put it there.’
‘You rascal, you rascal!’ shouts the Captain, shaking his head, and
closing in upon you. ‘Put the leg-irons upon him, and off with him to
prison!’ ‘With pleasure,’ you reply as, taking a snuff-box from your
pocket, you offer a pinch to each of the two gendarmes who are manacling
you, while also inquiring how long they have been discharged from the
army, and in what wars they may have served. And in prison you remain
until your case comes on, when the justice orders you to be removed from
Tsarev-Kokshaika to such and such another prison, and a second justice
orders you to be transferred thence to Vesiegonsk or somewhere else, and
you go flitting from gaol to gaol, and saying each time, as you eye your
new habitation, ‘The last place was a good deal cleaner than this one
is, and one could play babki [31] there, and stretch one’s legs, and see
a little society.’”
“‘Abakum Thirov,’” Chichikov went on after a pause. “What of YOU,
brother? Where, and in what capacity, are YOU disporting yourself?
Have you gone to the Volga country, and become bitten with the life of
freedom, and joined the fishermen of the river?”
Here, breaking off, Chichikov relapsed into silent meditation. Of what
was he thinking as he sat there? Was he thinking of the fortunes of
Abakum Thirov, or was he meditating as meditates every Russian when his
thoughts once turn to the joys of an emancipated existence?
“Ah, well!” he sighed, looking at his watch. “It has now gone twelve
o’clock. Why have I so forgotten myself? There is still much to be done,
yet I go shutting myself up and letting my thoughts wander! What a fool
I am!”
So saying, he exchanged his Scottish costume (of a shirt and nothing
else) for attire of a more European nature; after which he pulled
tight the waistcoat over his ample stomach, sprinkled himself with
eau-de-Cologne, tucked his papers under his arm, took his fur cap, and
set out for the municipal offices, for the purpose of completing the
transfer of souls. The fact that he hurried along was not due to a fear
of being late (seeing that the President of the Local Council was an
intimate acquaintance of his, as well as a functionary who could shorten
or prolong an interview at will, even as Homer’s Zeus was able to
shorten or to prolong a night or a day, whenever it became necessary to
put an end to the fighting of his favourite heroes, or to enable them
to join battle), but rather to a feeling that he would like to have the
affair concluded as quickly as possible, seeing that, throughout, it had
been an anxious and difficult business. Also, he could not get rid of
the idea that his souls were unsubstantial things, and that therefore,
under the circumstances, his shoulders had better be relieved of their
load with the least possible delay. Pulling on his cinnamon-coloured,
bear-lined overcoat as he went, he had just stepped thoughtfully into
the street when he collided with a gentleman dressed in a similar
coat and an ear-lappeted fur cap. Upon that the gentleman uttered an
exclamation. Behold, it was Manilov! At once the friends became folded
in a strenuous embrace, and remained so locked for fully five minutes.
Indeed, the kisses exchanged were so vigorous that both suffered from
toothache for the greater portion of the day. Also, Manilov’s delight
was such that only his nose and lips remained visible--the eyes
completely disappeared. Afterwards he spent about a quarter of an hour
in holding Chichikov’s hand and chafing it vigorously. Lastly, he, in
the most pleasant and exquisite terms possible, intimated to his friend
that he had just been on his way to embrace Paul Ivanovitch; and upon
this followed a compliment of the kind which would more fittingly have
been addressed to a lady who was being asked to accord a partner the
favour of a dance. Chichikov had opened his mouth to reply--though
even HE felt at a loss how to acknowledge what had just been said--when
Manilov cut him short by producing from under his coat a roll of paper
tied with red riband.
“What have you there?” asked Chichikov.
“The list of my souls.”
“Ah!” And as Chichikov unrolled the document and ran his eye over it
he could not but marvel at the elegant neatness with which it had been
inscribed.
“It is a beautiful piece of writing,” he said. “In fact, there will be
no need to make a copy of it. Also, it has a border around its edge! Who
worked that exquisite border?”
“Do not ask me,” said Manilov.
“Did YOU do it?”
“No; my wife.”
“Dear, dear!” Chichikov cried. “To think that I should have put her to
so much trouble!”
“NOTHING could be too much trouble where Paul Ivanovitch is concerned.”
Chichikov bowed his acknowledgements. Next, on learning that he was
on his way to the municipal offices for the purpose of completing the
transfer, Manilov expressed his readiness to accompany him; wherefore
the pair linked arm in arm and proceeded together. Whenever they
encountered a slight rise in the ground--even the smallest unevenness
or difference of level--Manilov supported Chichikov with such energy as
almost to lift him off his feet, while accompanying the service with a
smiling implication that not if HE could help it should Paul Ivanovitch
slip or fall. Nevertheless this conduct appeared to embarrass Chichikov,
either because he could not find any fitting words of gratitude or
because he considered the proceeding tiresome; and it was with a
sense of relief that he debouched upon the square where the municipal
offices--a large, three-storied building of a chalky whiteness which
probably symbolised the purity of the souls engaged within--were
situated. No other building in the square could vie with them in size,
seeing that the remaining edifices consisted only of a sentry-box, a
shelter for two or three cabmen, and a long hoarding--the latter adorned
with the usual bills, posters, and scrawls in chalk and charcoal. At
intervals, from the windows of the second and third stories of the
municipal offices, the incorruptible heads of certain of the attendant
priests of Themis would peer quickly forth, and as quickly disappear
again--probably for the reason that a superior official had just entered
the room. Meanwhile the two friends ascended the staircase--nay, almost
flew up it, since, longing to get rid of Manilov’s ever-supporting
arm, Chichikov hastened his steps, and Manilov kept darting forward to
anticipate any possible failure on the part of his companion’s legs.
Consequently the pair were breathless when they reached the first
corridor. In passing it may be remarked that neither corridors nor rooms
evinced any of that cleanliness and purity which marked the exterior of
the building, for such attributes were not troubled about within, and
anything that was dirty remained so, and donned no meritricious, purely
external, disguise. It was as though Themis received her visitors in
neglige and a dressing-gown. The author would also give a description of
the various offices through which our hero passed, were it not that he
(the author) stands in awe of such legal haunts.
Approaching the first desk which he happened to encounter, Chichikov
inquired of the two young officials who were seated at it whether they
would kindly tell him where business relating to serf-indenture was
transacted.
“Of what nature, precisely, IS your business?” countered one of the
youthful officials as he turned himself round.
“I desire to make an application.”
“In connection with a purchase?”
“Yes. But, as I say, I should like first to know where I can find the
desk devoted to such business. Is it here or elsewhere?”
“You must state what it is you have bought, and for how much. THEN we
shall be happy to give you the information.”
Chichikov perceived that the officials’ motive was merely one of
curiosity, as often happens when young tchinovniks desire to cut a more
important and imposing figure than is rightfully theirs.
“Look here, young sirs,” he said. “I know for a fact that all serf
business, no matter to what value, is transacted at one desk alone.
Consequently I again request you to direct me to that desk. Of course,
if you do not know your business I can easily ask some one else.”
To this the tchinovniks made no reply beyond pointing towards a corner
of the room where an elderly man appeared to be engaged in sorting some
papers. Accordingly Chichikov and Manilov threaded their way in his
direction through the desks; whereupon the elderly man became violently
busy.
“Would you mind telling me,” said Chichikov, bowing, “whether this is
the desk for serf affairs?”
The elderly man raised his eyes, and said stiffly:
“This is NOT the desk for serf affairs.”
“Where is it, then?”
“In the Serf Department.”
“And where might the Serf Department be?”
“In charge of Ivan Antonovitch.”
“And where is Ivan Antonovitch?”
The elderly man pointed to another corner of the room; whither
Chichikov and Manilov next directed their steps. As they advanced, Ivan
Antonovitch cast an eye backwards and viewed them askance. Then, with
renewed ardour, he resumed his work of writing.
“Would you mind telling me,” said Chichikov, bowing, “whether this is
the desk for serf affairs?”
It appeared as though Ivan Antonovitch had not heard, so completely did
he bury himself in his papers and return no reply. Instantly it became
plain that HE at least was of an age of discretion, and not one of your
jejune chatterboxes and harum-scarums; for, although his hair was still
thick and black, he had long ago passed his fortieth year. His whole
face tended towards the nose--it was what, in common parlance, is known
as a “pitcher-mug.”
“Would you mind telling me,” repeated Chichikov, “whether this is the
desk for serf affairs?”
“It is that,” said Ivan Antonovitch, again lowering his jug-shaped jowl,
and resuming his writing.
“Then I should like to transact the following business. From various
landowners in this canton I have purchased a number of peasants for
transfer. Here is the purchase list, and it needs but to be registered.”
“Have you also the vendors here?”
“Some of them, and from the rest I have obtained powers of attorney.”
“And have you your statement of application?”
“Yes. I desire--indeed, it is necessary for me so to do--to hasten
matters a little. Could the affair, therefore, be carried through
to-day?”
“To-day? Oh, dear no!” said Ivan Antonovitch. “Before that can be done
you must furnish me with further proofs that no impediments exist.”
“Then, to expedite matters, let me say that Ivan Grigorievitch, the
President of the Council, is a very intimate friend of mine.”
“Possibly,” said Ivan Antonovitch without enthusiasm. “But Ivan
Grigorievitch alone will not do--it is customary to have others as
well.”
“Yes, but the absence of others will not altogether invalidate the
transaction. I too have been in the service, and know how things can be
done.”
“You had better go and see Ivan Grigorievitch,” said Ivan Antonovitch
more mildly. “Should he give you an order addressed to whom it may
concern, we shall soon be able to settle the matter.”
Upon that Chichikov pulled from his pocket a paper, and laid it before
Ivan Antonovitch. At once the latter covered it with a book. Chichikov
again attempted to show it to him, but, with a movement of his head,
Ivan Antonovitch signified that that was unnecessary.
“A clerk,” he added, “will now conduct you to Ivan Grigorievitch’s
room.”
Upon that one of the toilers in the service of Themis--a zealot who
had offered her such heartfelt sacrifice that his coat had burst at the
elbows and lacked a lining--escorted our friends (even as Virgil had
once escorted Dante) to the apartment of the Presence. In this sanctum
were some massive armchairs, a table laden with two or three fat books,
and a large looking-glass. Lastly, in (apparently) sunlike isolation,
there was seated at the table the President. On arriving at the door of
the apartment, our modern Virgil seemed to have become so overwhelmed
with awe that, without daring even to intrude a foot, he turned back,
and, in so doing, once more exhibited a back as shiny as a mat, and
having adhering to it, in one spot, a chicken’s feather. As soon as the
two friends had entered the hall of the Presence they perceived that the
President was NOT alone, but, on the contrary, had seated by his side
Sobakevitch, whose form had hitherto been concealed by the intervening
mirror. The newcomers’ entry evoked sundry exclamations and the
pushing back of a pair of Government chairs as the voluminous-sleeved
Sobakevitch rose into view from behind the looking-glass. Chichikov
the President received with an embrace, and for a while the hall of
the Presence resounded with osculatory salutations as mutually the pair
inquired after one another’s health. It seemed that both had lately
had a touch of that pain under the waistband which comes of a sedentary
life. Also, it seemed that the President had just been conversing with
Sobakevitch on the subject of sales of souls, since he now proceeded
to congratulate Chichikov on the same--a proceeding which rather
embarrassed our hero, seeing that Manilov and Sobakevitch, two of
the vendors, and persons with whom he had bargained in the strictest
privacy, were now confronting one another direct. However, Chichikov
duly thanked the President, and then, turning to Sobakevitch, inquired
after HIS health.
“Thank God, I have nothing to complain of,” replied Sobakevitch: which
was true enough, seeing that a piece of iron would have caught cold and
taken to sneezing sooner than would that uncouthly fashioned landowner.
“Ah, yes; you have always had good health, have you not?” put in the
President. “Your late father was equally strong.”
“Yes, he even went out bear hunting alone,” replied Sobakevitch.
“I should think that you too could worst a bear if you were to try a
tussle with him,” rejoined the President.
“Oh no,” said Sobakevitch. “My father was a stronger man than I am.”
Then with a sigh the speaker added: “But nowadays there are no such men
as he. What is even a life like mine worth?”
“Then you do not have a comfortable time of it?” exclaimed the
President.
“No; far from it,” rejoined Sobakevitch, shaking his head. “Judge for
yourself, Ivan Grigorievitch. I am fifty years old, yet never in my life
had been ill, except for an occasional carbuncle or boil. That is not a
good sign. Sooner or later I shall have to pay for it.” And he relapsed
into melancholy.
“Just listen to the fellow!” was Chichikov’s and the President’s joint
inward comment. “What on earth has HE to complain of?”
“I have a letter for you, Ivan Grigorievitch,” went on Chichikov aloud
as he produced from his pocket Plushkin’s epistle.
“From whom?” inquired the President. Having broken the seal, he
exclaimed: “Why, it is from Plushkin! To think that HE is still alive!
What a strange world it is! He used to be such a nice fellow, and now--”
“And now he is a cur,” concluded Sobakevitch, “as well as a miser who
starves his serfs to death.”
“Allow me a moment,” said the President. Then he read the letter
through. When he had finished he added: “Yes, I am quite ready to act
as Plushkin’s attorney. When do you wish the purchase deeds to be
registered, Monsieur Chichikov--now or later?”
“Now, if you please,” replied Chichikov. “Indeed, I beg that, if
possible, the affair may be concluded to-day, since to-morrow I wish to
leave the town. I have brought with me both the forms of indenture and
my statement of application.”
“Very well. Nevertheless we cannot let you depart so soon. The
indentures shall be completed to-day, but you must continue your sojourn
in our midst. I will issue the necessary orders at once.”
So saying, he opened the door into the general office, where the clerks
looked like a swarm of bees around a honeycomb (if I may liken affairs
of Government to such an article?).
“Is Ivan Antonovitch here?” asked the President.
“Yes,” replied a voice from within.
“Then send him here.”
Upon that the pitcher-faced Ivan Antonovitch made his appearance in the
doorway, and bowed.
“Take these indentures, Ivan Antonovitch,” said the President, “and see
that they--”
“But first I would ask you to remember,” put in Sobakevitch, “that
witnesses ought to be in attendance--not less than two on behalf of
either party. Let us, therefore, send for the Public Prosecutor, who has
little to do, and has even that little done for him by his chief clerk,
Zolotucha. The Inspector of the Medical Department is also a man of
leisure, and likely to be at home--if he has not gone out to a card
party. Others also there are--all men who cumber the ground for
nothing.”
“Quite so, quite so,” agreed the President, and at once dispatched a
clerk to fetch the persons named.
“Also,” requested Chichikov, “I should be glad if you would send for the
accredited representative of a certain lady landowner with whom I have
done business. He is the son of a Father Cyril, and a clerk in your
offices.”
“Certainly we shall call him here,” replied the President. “Everything
shall be done to meet your convenience, and I forbid you to present any
of our officials with a gratuity. That is a special request on my part.
No friend of mine ever pays a copper.”
With that he gave Ivan Antonovitch the necessary instructions; and
though they scarcely seemed to meet with that functionary’s approval,
upon the President the purchase deeds had evidently produced an
excellent impression, more especially since the moment when he had
perceived the sum total to amount to nearly a hundred thousand roubles.
For a moment or two he gazed into Chichikov’s eyes with an expression of
profound satisfaction. Then he said:
“Well done, Paul Ivanovitch! You have indeed made a nice haul!”
“That is so,” replied Chichikov.
“Excellent business! Yes, excellent business!”
“I, too, conceive that I could not well have done better. The truth is
that never until a man has driven home the piles of his life’s structure
upon a lasting bottom, instead of upon the wayward chimeras of youth,
will his aims in life assume a definite end.” And, that said, Chichikov
went on to deliver himself of a very telling indictment of Liberalism
and our modern young men. Yet in his words there seemed to lurk a
certain lack of conviction. Somehow he seemed secretly to be saying to
himself, “My good sir, you are talking the most absolute rubbish, and
nothing but rubbish.” Nor did he even throw a glance at Sobakevitch and
Manilov. It was as though he were uncertain what he might not encounter
in their expression. Yet he need not have been afraid. Never once did
Sobakevitch’s face move a muscle, and, as for Manilov, he was too much
under the spell of Chichikov’s eloquence to do aught beyond nod his
approval at intervals, and strike the kind of attitude which is assumed
by lovers of music when a lady singer has, in rivalry of an accompanying
violin, produced a note whereof the shrillness would exceed even the
capacity of a bird’s throstle.
“But why not tell Ivan Grigorievitch precisely what you have bought?”
inquired Sobakevitch of Chichikov. “And why, Ivan Grigorievitch, do YOU
not ask Monsieur Chichikov precisely what his purchases have consisted
of? What a splendid lot of serfs, to be sure! I myself have sold him my
wheelwright, Michiev.”
“What? You have sold him Michiev?” exclaimed the President. “I know the
man well. He is a splendid craftsman, and, on one occasion, made me a
drozhki [32]. Only, only--well, lately didn’t you tell me that he is
dead?”
“That Michiev is dead?” re-echoed Sobakevitch, coming perilously near
to laughing. “Oh dear no! That was his brother. Michiev himself is very
much alive, and in even better health than he used to be. Any day he
could knock you up a britchka such as you could not procure even in
Moscow. However, he is now bound to work for only one master.”
“Indeed a splendid craftsman!” repeated the President. “My only wonder
is that you can have brought yourself to part with him.”
“Then think you that Michiev is the ONLY serf with whom I have parted?
Nay, for I have parted also with Probka Stepan, my carpenter, with
Milushkin, my bricklayer, and with Teliatnikov, my bootmaker. Yes, the
whole lot I have sold.”
And to the President’s inquiry why he had so acted, seeing that the
serfs named were all skilled workers and indispensable to a household,
Sobakevitch replied that a mere whim had led him to do so, and thus the
sale had owed its origin to a piece of folly. Then he hung his head as
though already repenting of his rash act, and added:
“Although a man of grey hairs, I have not yet learned wisdom.”
“But,” inquired the President further, “how comes it about, Paul
Ivanovitch, that you have purchased peasants apart from land? Is it for
transferment elsewhere that you need them?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, then. That is quite another matter. To what province of the
country?”
“To the province of Kherson.”
“Indeed? That region contains some splendid land,” said the President;
whereupon he proceeded to expatiate on the fertility of the Kherson
pastures.
“And have you MUCH land there?” he continued.
“Yes; quite sufficient to accommodate the serfs whom I have purchased.”
“And is there a river on the estate or a lake?”
“Both.”
After this reply Chichikov involuntarily threw a glance at Sobakevitch;
and though that landowner’s face was as motionless as every other, the
other seemed to detect in it: “You liar! Don’t tell ME that you own both
a river and a lake, as well as the land which you say you do.”
Whilst the foregoing conversation had been in progress, various
witnesses had been arriving on the scene. They consisted of the
constantly blinking Public Prosecutor, the Inspector of the Medical
Department, and others--all, to quote Sobakevitch, “men who cumbered
the ground for nothing.” With some of them, however, Chichikov was
altogether unacquainted, since certain substitutes and supernumeraries
had to be pressed into the service from among the ranks of the
subordinate staff. There also arrived, in answer to the summons, not
only the son of Father Cyril before mentioned, but also Father Cyril
himself. Each such witness appended to his signature a full list of his
dignities and qualifications: one man in printed characters, another in
a flowing hand, a third in topsy-turvy characters of a kind never before
seen in the Russian alphabet, and so forth. Meanwhile our friend Ivan
Antonovitch comported himself with not a little address; and after the
indentures had been signed, docketed, and registered, Chichikov
found himself called upon to pay only the merest trifle in the way of
Government percentage and fees for publishing the transaction in the
Official Gazette. The reason of this was that the President had given
orders that only half the usual charges were to be exacted from the
present purchaser--the remaining half being somehow debited to the
account of another applicant for serf registration.
“And now,” said Ivan Grigorievitch when all was completed, “we need only
to wet the bargain.”
“For that too I am ready,” said Chichikov. “Do you but name the hour.
If, in return for your most agreeable company, I were not to set a few
champagne corks flying, I should be indeed in default.”
“But we are not going to let you charge yourself with anything
whatsoever. WE must provide the champagne, for you are our guest, and
it is for us--it is our duty, it is our bounden obligation--to entertain
you. Look here, gentlemen. Let us adjourn to the house of the Chief
of Police. He is the magician who needs but to wink when passing a
fishmonger’s or a wine merchant’s. Not only shall we fare well at his
place, but also we shall get a game of whist.”
To this proposal no one had any objection to offer, for the mere mention
of the fish shop aroused the witnesses’ appetite. Consequently, the
ceremony being over, there was a general reaching for hats and caps.
As the party were passing through the general office, Ivan Antonovitch
whispered in Chichikov’s ear, with a courteous inclination of his
jug-shaped physiognomy:
“You have given a hundred thousand roubles for the serfs, but have paid
ME only a trifle for my trouble.”
“Yes,” replied Chichikov with a similar whisper, “but what sort of serfs
do you suppose them to be? They are a poor, useless lot, and not worth
even half the purchase money.”
This gave Ivan Antonovitch to understand that the visitor was a man of
strong character--a man from whom nothing more was to be expected.
“Why have you gone and purchased souls from Plushkin?” whispered
Sobakevitch in Chichikov’s other ear.
“Why did YOU go and add the woman Vorobei to your list?” retorted
Chichikov.
“Vorobei? Who is Vorobei?”
“The woman ‘Elizabet’ Vorobei--‘Elizabet,’ not ‘Elizabeta?’”
“I added no such name,” replied Sobakevitch, and straightway joined the
other guests.
At length the party arrived at the residence of the Chief of Police. The
latter proved indeed a man of spells, for no sooner had he learnt what
was afoot than he summoned a brisk young constable, whispered in his
ear, adding laconically, “You understand, do you not?” and brought it
about that, during the time that the guests were cutting for partners at
whist in an adjoining room, the dining-table became laden with sturgeon,
caviare, salmon, herrings, cheese, smoked tongue, fresh roe, and a
potted variety of the same--all procured from the local fish market, and
reinforced with additions from the host’s own kitchen. The fact was that
the worthy Chief of Police filled the office of a sort of father and
general benefactor to the town, and that he moved among the citizens as
though they constituted part and parcel of his own family, and watched
over their shops and markets as though those establishments were
merely his own private larder. Indeed, it would be difficult to say--so
thoroughly did he perform his duties in this respect--whether the post
most fitted him, or he the post. Matters were also so arranged that
though his income more than doubled that of his predecessors, he had
never lost the affection of his fellow townsmen. In particular did the
tradesmen love him, since he was never above standing godfather to their
children or dining at their tables. True, he had differences of opinion
with them, and serious differences at that; but always these were
skilfully adjusted by his slapping the offended ones jovially on the
shoulder, drinking a glass of tea with them, promising to call at their
houses and play a game of chess, asking after their belongings, and,
should he learn that a child of theirs was ill, prescribing the proper
medicine. In short, he bore the reputation of being a very good fellow.
On perceiving the feast to be ready, the host proposed that his guests
should finish their whist after luncheon; whereupon all proceeded to the
room whence for some time past an agreeable odour had been tickling the
nostrils of those present, and towards the door of which Sobakevitch in
particular had been glancing since the moment when he had caught sight
of a huge sturgeon reposing on the sideboard. After a glassful of warm,
olive-coloured vodka apiece--vodka of the tint to be seen only in the
species of Siberian stone whereof seals are cut--the company applied
themselves to knife-and-fork work, and, in so doing, evinced their
several characteristics and tastes. For instance, Sobakevitch,
disdaining lesser trifles, tackled the large sturgeon, and, during the
time that his fellow guests were eating minor comestibles, and drinking
and talking, contrived to consume more than a quarter of the whole fish;
so that, on the host remembering the creature, and, with fork in hand,
leading the way in its direction and saying, “What, gentlemen, think you
of this striking product of nature?” there ensued the discovery that of
the said product of nature there remained little beyond the tail, while
Sobakevitch, with an air as though at least HE had not eaten it, was
engaged in plunging his fork into a much more diminutive piece of fish
which happened to be resting on an adjacent platter. After his divorce
from the sturgeon, Sobakevitch ate and drank no more, but sat frowning
and blinking in an armchair.
Apparently the host was not a man who believed in sparing the wine, for
the toasts drunk were innumerable. The first toast (as the reader may
guess) was quaffed to the health of the new landowner of Kherson; the
second to the prosperity of his peasants and their safe transferment;
and the third to the beauty of his future wife--a compliment which
brought to our hero’s lips a flickering smile. Lastly, he received from
the company a pressing, as well as an unanimous, invitation to extend
his stay in town for at least another fortnight, and, in the meanwhile,
to allow a wife to be found for him.
“Quite so,” agreed the President. “Fight us tooth and nail though you
may, we intend to have you married. You have happened upon us by chance,
and you shall have no reason to repent of it. We are in earnest on this
subject.”
“But why should I fight you tooth and nail?” said Chichikov, smiling.
“Marriage would not come amiss to me, were I but provided with a
betrothed.”
“Then a betrothed you shall have. Why not? We will do as you wish.”
“Very well,” assented Chichikov.
“Bravo, bravo!” the company shouted. “Long live Paul Ivanovitch! Hurrah!
Hurrah!” And with that every one approached to clink glasses with him,
and he readily accepted the compliment, and accepted it many times in
succession. Indeed, as the hours passed on, the hilarity of the company
increased yet further, and more than once the President (a man of great
urbanity when thoroughly in his cups) embraced the chief guest of the
day with the heartfelt words, “My dearest fellow! My own most precious
of friends!” Nay, he even started to crack his fingers, to dance around
Chichikov’s chair, and to sing snatches of a popular song. To the
champagne succeeded Hungarian wine, which had the effect of still
further heartening and enlivening the company. By this time every
one had forgotten about whist, and given himself up to shouting and
disputing. Every conceivable subject was discussed, including politics
and military affairs; and in this connection guests voiced jejune
opinions for the expression of which they would, at any other time, have
soundly spanked their offspring. Chichikov, like the rest, had never
before felt so gay, and, imagining himself really and truly to be a
landowner of Kherson, spoke of various improvements in agriculture, of
the three-field system of tillage [33], and of the beatific felicity of
a union between two kindred souls. Also, he started to recite poetry to
Sobakevitch, who blinked as he listened, for he greatly desired to go to
sleep. At length the guest of the evening realised that matters had gone
far enough, so begged to be given a lift home, and was accommodated with
the Public Prosecutor’s drozhki. Luckily the driver of the vehicle was
a practised man at his work, for, while driving with one hand, he
succeeded in leaning backwards and, with the other, holding Chichikov
securely in his place. Arrived at the inn, our hero continued babbling
awhile about a flaxen-haired damsel with rosy lips and a dimple in her
right cheek, about villages of his in Kherson, and about the amount of
his capital. Nay, he even issued seignorial instructions that Selifan
should go and muster the peasants about to be transferred, and make a
complete and detailed inventory of them. For a while Selifan listened
in silence; then he left the room, and instructed Petrushka to help the
barin to undress. As it happened, Chichikov’s boots had no sooner
been removed than he managed to perform the rest of his toilet without
assistance, to roll on to the bed (which creaked terribly as he did so),
and to sink into a sleep in every way worthy of a landowner of Kherson.
Meanwhile Petrushka had taken his master’s coat and trousers of
bilberry-coloured check into the corridor; where, spreading them over a
clothes’ horse, he started to flick and to brush them, and to fill the
whole corridor with dust. Just as he was about to replace them in his
master’s room he happened to glance over the railing of the gallery, and
saw Selifan returning from the stable. Glances were exchanged, and in
an instant the pair had arrived at an instinctive understanding--an
understanding to the effect that the barin was sound asleep, and that
therefore one might consider one’s own pleasure a little. Accordingly
Petrushka proceeded to restore the coat and trousers to their appointed
places, and then descended the stairs; whereafter he and Selifan left
the house together. Not a word passed between them as to the object
of their expedition. On the contrary, they talked solely of extraneous
subjects. Yet their walk did not take them far; it took them only to
the other side of the street, and thence into an establishment which
immediately confronted the inn. Entering a mean, dirty courtyard covered
with glass, they passed thence into a cellar where a number of customers
were seated around small wooden tables. What thereafter was done by
Selifan and Petrushka God alone knows. At all events, within an hour’s
time they issued, arm in arm, and in profound silence, yet remaining
markedly assiduous to one another, and ever ready to help one another
around an awkward corner. Still linked together--never once releasing
their mutual hold--they spent the next quarter of an hour in attempting
to negotiate the stairs of the inn; but at length even that ascent had
been mastered, and they proceeded further on their way. Halting
before his mean little pallet, Petrushka stood awhile in thought. His
difficulty was how best to assume a recumbent position. Eventually he
lay down on his face, with his legs trailing over the floor; after which
Selifan also stretched himself upon the pallet, with his head resting
upon Petrushka’s stomach, and his mind wholly oblivious of the fact that
he ought not to have been sleeping there at all, but in the servant’s
quarters, or in the stable beside his horses. Scarcely a moment had
passed before the pair were plunged in slumber and emitting the most
raucous snores; to which their master (next door) responded with snores
of a whistling and nasal order. Indeed, before long every one in the
inn had followed their soothing example, and the hostelry lay plunged
in complete restfulness. Only in the window of the room of the
newly-arrived lieutenant from Riazan did a light remain burning.
Evidently he was a devotee of boots, for he had purchased four pairs,
and was now trying on a fifth. Several times he approached the bed with
a view to taking off the boots and retiring to rest; but each time he
failed, for the reason that the boots were so alluring in their make
that he had no choice but to lift up first one foot, and then the other,
for the purpose of scanning their elegant welts.
CHAPTER 8
It was not long before Chichikov’s purchases had become the talk of the
town; and various were the opinions expressed as to whether or not it
was expedient to procure peasants for transferment. Indeed such was the
interest taken by certain citizens in the matter that they advised the
purchaser to provide himself and his convoy with an escort, in order
to ensure their safe arrival at the appointed destination; but though
Chichikov thanked the donors of this advice for the same, and declared
that he should be very glad, in case of need, to avail himself of it, he
declared also that there was no real need for an escort, seeing that the
peasants whom he had purchased were exceptionally peace-loving folk,
and that, being themselves consenting parties to the transferment, they
would undoubtedly prove in every way tractable.
One particularly good result of this advertisement of his scheme was
that he came to rank as neither more nor less than a millionaire.
Consequently, much as the inhabitants had liked our hero in the first
instance (as seen in Chapter I.), they now liked him more than ever.
As a matter of fact, they were citizens of an exceptionally quiet,
good-natured, easy-going disposition; and some of them were even
well-educated. For instance, the President of the Local Council could
recite the whole of Zhukovski’s LUDMILLA by heart, and give such an
impressive rendering of the passage “The pine forest was asleep and the
valley at rest” (as well as of the exclamation “Phew!”) that one felt,
as he did so, that the pine forest and the valley really WERE as he
described them. The effect was also further heightened by the manner in
which, at such moments, he assumed the most portentous frown. For his
part, the Postmaster went in more for philosophy, and diligently perused
such works as Young’s Night Thoughts, and Eckharthausen’s A Key to
the Mysteries of Nature; of which latter work he would make copious
extracts, though no one had the slightest notion what they referred
to. For the rest, he was a witty, florid little individual, and much
addicted to a practice of what he called “embellishing” whatsoever he
had to say--a feat which he performed with the aid of such by-the-way
phrases as “my dear sir,” “my good So-and-So,” “you know,” “you
understand,” “you may imagine,” “relatively speaking,” “for instance,”
and “et cetera”; of which phrases he would add sackfuls to his
speech. He could also “embellish” his words by the simple expedient of
half-closing, half-winking one eye; which trick communicated to some of
his satirical utterances quite a mordant effect. Nor were his colleagues
a wit inferior to him in enlightenment. For instance, one of them made
a regular practice of reading Karamzin, another of conning the Moscow
Gazette, and a third of never looking at a book at all. Likewise,
although they were the sort of men to whom, in their more intimate
movements, their wives would very naturally address such nicknames
as “Toby Jug,” “Marmot,” “Fatty,” “Pot Belly,” “Smutty,” “Kiki,” and
“Buzz-Buzz,” they were men also of good heart, and very ready to extend
their hospitality and their friendship when once a guest had eaten
of their bread and salt, or spent an evening in their company.
Particularly, therefore, did Chichikov earn these good folk’s approval
with his taking methods and qualities--so much so that the expression
of that approval bid fair to make it difficult for him to quit the town,
seeing that, wherever he went, the one phrase dinned into his ears was
“Stay another week with us, Paul Ivanovitch.” In short, he ceased to
be a free agent. But incomparably more striking was the impression
(a matter for unbounded surprise!) which he produced upon the ladies.
Properly to explain this phenomenon I should need to say a great deal
about the ladies themselves, and to describe in the most vivid of
colours their social intercourse and spiritual qualities. Yet this would
be a difficult thing for me to do, since, on the one hand, I should be
hampered by my boundless respect for the womenfolk of all Civil
Service officials, and, on the other hand--well, simply by the innate
arduousness of the task. The ladies of N. were--But no, I cannot do
it; my heart has already failed me. Come, come! The ladies of N. were
distinguished for--But it is of no use; somehow my pen seems to refuse
to move over the paper--it seems to be weighted as with a plummet
of lead. Very well. That being so, I will merely say a word or
two concerning the most prominent tints on the feminine palette of
N.--merely a word or two concerning the outward appearance of
its ladies, and a word or two concerning their more superficial
characteristics. The ladies of N. were pre-eminently what is known as
“presentable.” Indeed, in that respect they might have served as a
model to the ladies of many another town. That is to say, in whatever
pertained to “tone,” etiquette, the intricacies of decorum, and strict
observance of the prevailing mode, they surpassed even the ladies of
Moscow and St. Petersburg, seeing that they dressed with taste, drove
about in carriages in the latest fashions, and never went out without
the escort of a footman in gold-laced livery. Again, they looked upon
a visiting card--even upon a make-shift affair consisting of an ace of
diamonds or a two of clubs--as a sacred thing; so sacred that on one
occasion two closely related ladies who had also been closely attached
friends were known to fall out with one another over the mere fact of an
omission to return a social call! Yes, in spite of the best efforts
of husbands and kinsfolk to reconcile the antagonists, it became clear
that, though all else in the world might conceivably be possible, never
could the hatchet be buried between ladies who had quarrelled over
a neglected visit. Likewise strenuous scenes used to take place over
questions of precedence--scenes of a kind which had the effect of
inspiring husbands to great and knightly ideas on the subject of
protecting the fair. True, never did a duel actually take place, since
all the husbands were officials belonging to the Civil Service; but at
least a given combatant would strive to heap contumely upon his rival,
and, as we all know, that is a resource which may prove even more
effectual than a duel. As regards morality, the ladies of N. were
nothing if not censorious, and would at once be fired with virtuous
indignation when they heard of a case of vice or seduction. Nay, even to
mere frailty they would award the lash without mercy. On the other hand,
should any instance of what they called “third personism” occur among
THEIR OWN circle, it was always kept dark--not a hint of what was going
on being allowed to transpire, and even the wronged husband holding
himself ready, should he meet with, or hear of, the “third person,” to
quote, in a mild and rational manner, the proverb, “Whom concerns it
that a friend should consort with friend?” In addition, I may say that,
like most of the female world of St. Petersburg, the ladies of N. were
pre-eminently careful and refined in their choice of words and phrases.
Never did a lady say, “I blew my nose,” or “I perspired,” or “I spat.”
No, it had to be, “I relieved my nose through the expedient of wiping it
with my handkerchief,” and so forth. Again, to say, “This glass, or
this plate, smells badly,” was forbidden. No, not even a hint to such an
effect was to be dropped. Rather, the proper phrase, in such a case, was
“This glass, or this plate, is not behaving very well,”--or some such
formula.
In fact, to refine the Russian tongue the more thoroughly, something
like half the words in it were cut out: which circumstance necessitated
very frequent recourse to the tongue of France, since the same words, if
spoken in French, were another matter altogether, and one could use even
blunter ones than the ones originally objected to.
So much for the ladies of N., provided that one confines one’s
observations to the surface; yet hardly need it be said that, should one
penetrate deeper than that, a great deal more would come to light. At
the same time, it is never a very safe proceeding to peer deeply into
the hearts of ladies; wherefore, restricting ourselves to the foregoing
superficialities, let us proceed further on our way.
Hitherto the ladies had paid Chichikov no particular attention, though
giving him full credit for his gentlemanly and urbane demeanour; but
from the moment that there arose rumours of his being a millionaire
other qualities of his began to be canvassed. Nevertheless, not ALL the
ladies were governed by interested motives, since it is due to the term
“millionaire” rather than to the character of the person who bears it,
that the mere sound of the word exercises upon rascals, upon decent
folk, and upon folk who are neither the one nor the other, an undeniable
influence. A millionaire suffers from the disadvantage of everywhere
having to behold meanness, including the sort of meanness which, though
not actually based upon calculations of self-interest, yet runs after
the wealthy man with smiles, and doffs his hat, and begs for invitations
to houses where the millionaire is known to be going to dine. That
a similar inclination to meanness seized upon the ladies of N. goes
without saying; with the result that many a drawing-room heard it
whispered that, if Chichikov was not exactly a beauty, at least he was
sufficiently good-looking to serve for a husband, though he could have
borne to have been a little more rotund and stout. To that there would
be added scornful references to lean husbands, and hints that they
resembled tooth-brushes rather than men--with many other feminine
additions. Also, such crowds of feminine shoppers began to repair to the
Bazaar as almost to constitute a crush, and something like a procession
of carriages ensued, so long grew the rank of vehicles. For their part,
the tradesmen had the joy of seeing highly priced dress materials which
they had bought at fairs, and then been unable to dispose of, now
suddenly become tradeable, and go off with a rush. For instance, on one
occasion a lady appeared at Mass in a bustle which filled the church to
an extent which led the verger on duty to bid the commoner folk withdraw
to the porch, lest the lady’s toilet should be soiled in the crush.
Even Chichikov could not help privately remarking the attention which he
aroused. On one occasion, when he returned to the inn, he found on
his table a note addressed to himself. Whence it had come, and who had
delivered it, he failed to discover, for the waiter declared that the
person who had brought it had omitted to leave the name of the writer.
Beginning abruptly with the words “I MUST write to you,” the letter went
on to say that between a certain pair of souls there existed a bond of
sympathy; and this verity the epistle further confirmed with rows of
full stops to the extent of nearly half a page. Next there followed a
few reflections of a correctitude so remarkable that I have no choice
but to quote them. “What, I would ask, is this life of ours?” inquired
the writer. “’Tis nought but a vale of woe. And what, I would ask, is
the world? ’Tis nought but a mob of unthinking humanity.” Thereafter,
incidentally remarking that she had just dropped a tear to the memory of
her dear mother, who had departed this life twenty-five years ago, the
(presumably) lady writer invited Chichikov to come forth into the wilds,
and to leave for ever the city where, penned in noisome haunts, folk
could not even draw their breath. In conclusion, the writer gave way to
unconcealed despair, and wound up with the following verses:
“Two turtle doves to thee, one day,
My dust will show, congealed in death;
And, cooing wearily, they’ll say:
‘In grief and loneliness she drew her closing breath.’”
True, the last line did not scan, but that was a trifle, since the
quatrain at least conformed to the mode then prevalent. Neither
signature nor date were appended to the document, but only a postscript
expressing a conjecture that Chichikov’s own heart would tell him who
the writer was, and stating, in addition, that the said writer would be
present at the Governor’s ball on the following night.
This greatly interested Chichikov. Indeed, there was so much that was
alluring and provocative of curiosity in the anonymous missive that he
read it through a second time, and then a third, and finally said to
himself: “I SHOULD like to know who sent it!” In short, he took the
thing seriously, and spent over an hour in considering the same. At
length, muttering a comment upon the epistle’s efflorescent style, he
refolded the document, and committed it to his dispatch-box in company
with a play-bill and an invitation to a wedding--the latter of which had
for the last seven years reposed in the self-same receptacle and in
the self-same position. Shortly afterwards there arrived a card of
invitation to the Governor’s ball already referred to. In passing, it
may be said that such festivities are not infrequent phenomena in county
towns, for the reason that where Governors exist there must take place
balls if from the local gentry there is to be evoked that respectful
affection which is every Governor’s due.
Thenceforth all extraneous thoughts and considerations were laid aside
in favour of preparing for the coming function. Indeed, this conjunction
of exciting and provocative motives led to Chichikov devoting to his
toilet an amount of time never witnessed since the creation of the
world. Merely in the contemplation of his features in the mirror, as he
tried to communicate to them a succession of varying expressions, was an
hour spent. First of all he strove to make his features assume an air
of dignity and importance, and then an air of humble, but faintly
satirical, respect, and then an air of respect guiltless of any alloy
whatsoever. Next, he practised performing a series of bows to his
reflection, accompanied with certain murmurs intended to bear a
resemblance to a French phrase (though Chichikov knew not a single word
of the Gallic tongue). Lastly came the performing of a series of what I
might call “agreeable surprises,” in the shape of twitchings of the brow
and lips and certain motions of the tongue. In short, he did all that a
man is apt to do when he is not only alone, but also certain that he is
handsome and that no one is regarding him through a chink. Finally he
tapped himself lightly on the chin, and said, “Ah, good old face!” In
the same way, when he started to dress himself for the ceremony, the
level of his high spirits remained unimpaired throughout the process.
That is to say, while adjusting his braces and tying his tie, he
shuffled his feet in what was not exactly a dance, but might be called
the entr’acte of a dance: which performance had the not very serious
result of setting a wardrobe a-rattle, and causing a brush to slide from
the table to the floor.
Later, his entry into the ballroom produced an extraordinary effect.
Every one present came forward to meet him, some with cards in their
hands, and one man even breaking off a conversation at the most
interesting point--namely, the point that “the Inferior Land Court must
be made responsible for everything.” Yes, in spite of the responsibility
of the Inferior Land Court, the speaker cast all thoughts of it to
the winds as he hurried to greet our hero. From every side resounded
acclamations of welcome, and Chichikov felt himself engulfed in a sea of
embraces. Thus, scarcely had he extricated himself from the arms of
the President of the Local Council when he found himself just as firmly
clasped in the arms of the Chief of Police, who, in turn, surrendered
him to the Inspector of the Medical Department, who, in turn, handed
him over to the Commissioner of Taxes, who, again, committed him to the
charge of the Town Architect. Even the Governor, who hitherto had been
standing among his womenfolk with a box of sweets in one hand and
a lap-dog in the other, now threw down both sweets and lap-dog (the
lap-dog giving vent to a yelp as he did so) and added his greeting to
those of the rest of the company. Indeed, not a face was there to be
seen on which ecstatic delight--or, at all events, the reflection of
other people’s ecstatic delight--was not painted. The same expression
may be discerned on the faces of subordinate officials when, the newly
arrived Director having made his inspection, the said officials are
beginning to get over their first sense of awe on perceiving that he
has found much to commend, and that he can even go so far as to jest
and utter a few words of smiling approval. Thereupon every tchinovnik
responds with a smile of double strength, and those who (it may be) have
not heard a single word of the Director’s speech smile out of sympathy
with the rest, and even the gendarme who is posted at the distant
door--a man, perhaps, who has never before compassed a smile, but is
more accustomed to dealing out blows to the populace--summons up a kind
of grin, even though the grin resembles the grimace of a man who is
about to sneeze after inadvertently taking an over-large pinch of
snuff. To all and sundry Chichikov responded with a bow, and felt
extraordinarily at his ease as he did so. To right and left did he
incline his head in the sidelong, yet unconstrained, manner that was
his wont and never failed to charm the beholder. As for the ladies,
they clustered around him in a shining bevy that was redolent of every
species of perfume--of roses, of spring violets, and of mignonette; so
much so that instinctively Chichikov raised his nose to snuff the air.
Likewise the ladies’ dresses displayed an endless profusion of taste and
variety; and though the majority of their wearers evinced a tendency to
embonpoint, those wearers knew how to call upon art for the concealment
of the fact. Confronting them, Chichikov thought to himself: “Which of
these beauties is the writer of the letter?” Then again he snuffed the
air. When the ladies had, to a certain extent, returned to their seats,
he resumed his attempts to discern (from glances and expressions) which
of them could possibly be the unknown authoress. Yet, though those
glances and expressions were too subtle, too insufficiently open, the
difficulty in no way diminished his high spirits. Easily and gracefully
did he exchange agreeable bandinage with one lady, and then approach
another one with the short, mincing steps usually affected by young-old
dandies who are fluttering around the fair. As he turned, not without
dexterity, to right and left, he kept one leg slightly dragging
behind the other, like a short tail or comma. This trick the ladies
particularly admired. In short, they not only discovered in him a host
of recommendations and attractions, but also began to see in his face
a sort of grand, Mars-like, military expression--a thing which, as we
know, never fails to please the feminine eye. Certain of the ladies even
took to bickering over him, and, on perceiving that he spent most of
his time standing near the door, some of their number hastened to occupy
chairs nearer to his post of vantage. In fact, when a certain dame
chanced to have the good fortune to anticipate a hated rival in the
race there very nearly ensued a most lamentable scene--which, to many
of those who had been desirous of doing exactly the same thing, seemed a
peculiarly horrible instance of brazen-faced audacity.
So deeply did Chichikov become plunged in conversation with his fair
pursuers--or rather, so deeply did those fair pursuers enmesh him in the
toils of small talk (which they accomplished through the expedient of
asking him endless subtle riddles which brought the sweat to his brow in
his attempts to guess them)--that he forgot the claims of courtesy which
required him first of all to greet his hostess. In fact, he remembered
those claims only on hearing the Governor’s wife herself addressing him.
She had been standing before him for several minutes, and now greeted
him with suave expressement and the words, “So HERE you are, Paul
Ivanovitch!” But what she said next I am not in a position to report,
for she spoke in the ultra-refined tone and vein wherein ladies and
gentlemen customarily express themselves in high-class novels which have
been written by experts more qualified than I am to describe salons, and
able to boast of some acquaintance with good society. In effect, what
the Governor’s wife said was that she hoped--she greatly hoped--that
Monsieur Chichikov’s heart still contained a corner--even the smallest
possible corner--for those whom he had so cruelly forgotten. Upon that
Chichikov turned to her, and was on the point of returning a reply at
least no worse than that which would have been returned, under similar
circumstances, by the hero of a fashionable novelette, when he stopped
short, as though thunderstruck.
Before him there was standing not only Madame, but also a young girl
whom she was holding by the hand. The golden hair, the fine-drawn,
delicate contours, the face with its bewitching oval--a face which might
have served as a model for the countenance of the Madonna, since it was
of a type rarely to be met with in Russia, where nearly everything, from
plains to human feet, is, rather, on the gigantic scale; these features,
I say, were those of the identical maiden whom Chichikov had encountered
on the road when he had been fleeing from Nozdrev’s. His emotion was
such that he could not formulate a single intelligible syllable; he
could merely murmur the devil only knows what, though certainly
nothing of the kind which would have risen to the lips of the hero of a
fashionable novel.
“I think that you have not met my daughter before?” said Madame. “She is
just fresh from school.”
He replied that he HAD had the happiness of meeting Mademoiselle before,
and under rather unexpected circumstances; but on his trying to say
something further his tongue completely failed him. The Governor’s wife
added a word or two, and then carried off her daughter to speak to some
of the other guests.
Chichikov stood rooted to the spot, like a man who, after issuing
into the street for a pleasant walk, has suddenly come to a halt on
remembering that something has been left behind him. In a moment, as
he struggles to recall what that something is, the mien of careless
expectancy disappears from his face, and he no longer sees a single
person or a single object in his vicinity. In the same way did Chichikov
suddenly become oblivious to the scene around him. Yet all the while the
melodious tongues of ladies were plying him with multitudinous hints
and questions--hints and questions inspired with a desire to captivate.
“Might we poor cumberers of the ground make so bold as to ask you what
you are thinking of?” “Pray tell us where lie the happy regions in which
your thoughts are wandering?” “Might we be informed of the name of her
who has plunged you into this sweet abandonment of meditation?”--such
were the phrases thrown at him. But to everything he turned a dead ear,
and the phrases in question might as well have been stones dropped into
a pool. Indeed, his rudeness soon reached the pitch of his walking
away altogether, in order that he might go and reconnoitre wither the
Governor’s wife and daughter had retreated. But the ladies were not
going to let him off so easily. Every one of them had made up her mind
to use upon him her every weapon, and to exhibit whatsoever might chance
to constitute her best point. Yet the ladies’ wiles proved useless, for
Chichikov paid not the smallest attention to them, even when the dancing
had begun, but kept raising himself on tiptoe to peer over people’s
heads and ascertain in which direction the bewitching maiden with the
golden hair had gone. Also, when seated, he continued to peep between
his neighbours’ backs and shoulders, until at last he discovered her
sitting beside her mother, who was wearing a sort of Oriental turban and
feather. Upon that one would have thought that his purpose was to carry
the position by storm; for, whether moved by the influence of spring,
or whether moved by a push from behind, he pressed forward with such
desperate resolution that his elbow caused the Commissioner of Taxes
to stagger on his feet, and would have caused him to lose his balance
altogether but for the supporting row of guests in the rear. Likewise
the Postmaster was made to give ground; whereupon he turned and eyed
Chichikov with mingled astonishment and subtle irony. But Chichikov
never even noticed him; he saw in the distance only the golden-haired
beauty. At that moment she was drawing on a long glove and, doubtless,
pining to be flying over the dancing-floor, where, with clicking heels,
four couples had now begun to thread the mazes of the mazurka. In
particular was a military staff-captain working body and soul and
arms and legs to compass such a series of steps as were never before
performed, even in a dream. However, Chichikov slipped past the mazurka
dancers, and, almost treading on their heels, made his way towards the
spot where Madame and her daughter were seated. Yet he approached them
with great diffidence and none of his late mincing and prancing. Nay,
he even faltered as he walked; his every movement had about it an air of
awkwardness.
It is difficult to say whether or not the feeling which had awakened
in our hero’s breast was the feeling of love; for it is problematical
whether or not men who are neither stout nor thin are capable of any
such sentiment. Nevertheless, something strange, something which he
could not altogether explain, had come upon him. It seemed as though
the ball, with its talk and its clatter, had suddenly become a thing
remote--that the orchestra had withdrawn behind a hill, and the scene
grown misty, like the carelessly painted-in background of a picture. And
from that misty void there could be seen glimmering only the delicate
outlines of the bewitching maiden. Somehow her exquisite shape reminded
him of an ivory toy, in such fair, white, transparent relief did it
stand out against the dull blur of the surrounding throng.
Herein we see a phenomenon not infrequently observed--the phenomenon of
the Chichikovs of this world becoming temporarily poets. At all events,
for a moment or two our Chichikov felt that he was a young man again, if
not exactly a military officer. On perceiving an empty chair beside the
mother and daughter, he hastened to occupy it, and though conversation
at first hung fire, things gradually improved, and he acquired more
confidence.
At this point I must reluctantly deviate to say that men of weight and
high office are always a trifle ponderous when conversing with ladies.
Young lieutenants--or, at all events, officers not above the rank of
captain--are far more successful at the game. How they contrive to be so
God only knows. Let them but make the most inane of remarks, and at once
the maiden by their side will be rocking with laughter; whereas, should
a State Councillor enter into conversation with a damsel, and remark
that the Russian Empire is one of vast extent, or utter a compliment
which he has elaborated not without a certain measure of intelligence
(however strongly the said compliment may smack of a book), of a surety
the thing will fall flat. Even a witticism from him will be laughed at
far more by him himself than it will by the lady who may happen to be
listening to his remarks.
These comments I have interposed for the purpose of explaining to the
reader why, as our hero conversed, the maiden began to yawn. Blind to
this, however, he continued to relate to her sundry adventures which had
befallen him in different parts of the world. Meanwhile (as need hardly
be said) the rest of the ladies had taken umbrage at his behaviour. One
of them purposely stalked past him to intimate to him the fact, as well
as to jostle the Governor’s daughter, and let the flying end of a scarf
flick her face; while from a lady seated behind the pair came both a
whiff of violets and a very venomous and sarcastic remark. Nevertheless,
either he did not hear the remark or he PRETENDED not to hear it. This
was unwise of him, since it never does to disregard ladies’ opinions.
Later--but too late--he was destined to learn this to his cost.
In short, dissatisfaction began to display itself on every feminine
face. No matter how high Chichikov might stand in society, and no matter
how much he might be a millionaire and include in his expression of
countenance an indefinable element of grandness and martial ardour,
there are certain things which no lady will pardon, whosoever be the
person concerned. We know that at Governor’s balls it is customary for
the onlookers to compose verses at the expense of the dancers; and in
this case the verses were directed to Chichikov’s address. Briefly, the
prevailing dissatisfaction grew until a tacit edict of proscription had
been issued against both him and the poor young maiden.
But an even more unpleasant surprise was in store for our hero; for
whilst the young lady was still yawning as Chichikov recounted to her
certain of his past adventures and also touched lightly upon the subject
of Greek philosophy, there appeared from an adjoining room the figure of
Nozdrev. Whether he had come from the buffet, or whether he had issued
from a little green retreat where a game more strenuous than whist had
been in progress, or whether he had left the latter resort unaided, or
whether he had been expelled therefrom, is unknown; but at all events
when he entered the ballroom, he was in an elevated condition, and
leading by the arm the Public Prosecutor, whom he seemed to have been
dragging about for a long while past, seeing that the poor man was
glancing from side to side as though seeking a means of putting an end
to this personally conducted tour. Certainly he must have found the
situation almost unbearable, in view of the fact that, after deriving
inspiration from two glasses of tea not wholly undiluted with rum,
Nozdrev was engaged in lying unmercifully. On sighting him in the
distance, Chichikov at once decided to sacrifice himself. That is to
say, he decided to vacate his present enviable position and make off
with all possible speed, since he could see that an encounter with the
newcomer would do him no good. Unfortunately at that moment the Governor
buttonholed him with a request that he would come and act as arbiter
between him (the Governor) and two ladies--the subject of dispute
being the question as to whether or not woman’s love is lasting.
Simultaneously Nozdrev descried our hero and bore down upon him.
“Ah, my fine landowner of Kherson!” he cried with a smile which set his
fresh, spring-rose-pink cheeks a-quiver. “Have you been doing much
trade in departed souls lately?” With that he turned to the Governor. “I
suppose your Excellency knows that this man traffics in dead peasants?”
he bawled. “Look here, Chichikov. I tell you in the most friendly
way possible that every one here likes you--yes, including even the
Governor. Nevertheless, had I my way, I would hang you! Yes, by God I
would!”
Chichikov’s discomfiture was complete.
“And, would you believe it, your Excellency,” went on Nozdrev, “but this
fellow actually said to me, ‘Sell me your dead souls!’ Why, I laughed
till I nearly became as dead as the souls. And, behold, no sooner do
I arrive here than I am told that he has bought three million roubles’
worth of peasants for transferment! For transferment, indeed! And he
wanted to bargain with me for my DEAD ones! Look here, Chichikov. You
are a swine! Yes, by God, you are an utter swine! Is not that so, your
Excellency? Is not that so, friend Prokurator [34]?”
But both his Excellency, the Public Prosecutor, and Chichikov were too
taken aback to reply. The half-tipsy Nozdrev, without noticing them,
continued his harangue as before.
“Ah, my fine sir!” he cried. “THIS time I don’t mean to let you go. No,
not until I have learnt what all this purchasing of dead peasants means.
Look here. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Yes, _I_ say that--_I_
who am one of your best friends.” Here he turned to the Governor
again. “Your Excellency,” he continued, “you would never believe what
inseperables this man and I have been. Indeed, if you had stood there
and said to me, ‘Nozdrev, tell me on your honour which of the two you
love best--your father or Chichikov?’ I should have replied, ‘Chichikov,
by God!’” With that he tackled our hero again, “Come, come, my friend!”
he urged. “Let me imprint upon your cheeks a baiser or two. You will
excuse me if I kiss him, will you not, your Excellency? No, do not
resist me, Chichikov, but allow me to imprint at least one baiser upon
your lily-white cheek.” And in his efforts to force upon Chichikov what
he termed his “baisers” he came near to measuring his length upon the
floor.
Every one now edged away, and turned a deaf ear to his further
babblings; but his words on the subject of the purchase of dead souls
had none the less been uttered at the top of his voice, and been
accompanied with such uproarious laughter that the curiosity even of
those who had happened to be sitting or standing in the remoter corners
of the room had been aroused. So strange and novel seemed the idea that
the company stood with faces expressive of nothing but a dumb, dull
wonder. Only some of the ladies (as Chichikov did not fail to remark)
exchanged meaning, ill-natured winks and a series of sarcastic smiles:
which circumstance still further increased his confusion. That Nozdrev
was a notorious liar every one, of course, knew, and that he should have
given vent to an idiotic outburst of this sort had surprised no one; but
a dead soul--well, what was one to make of Nozdrev’s reference to such a
commodity?
Naturally this unseemly contretemps had greatly upset our hero; for,
however foolish be a madman’s words, they may yet prove sufficient to
sow doubt in the minds of saner individuals. He felt much as does a
man who, shod with well-polished boots, has just stepped into a dirty,
stinking puddle. He tried to put away from him the occurrence, and to
expand, and to enjoy himself once more. Nay, he even took a hand
at whist. But all was of no avail--matters kept going as awry as a
badly-bent hoop. Twice he blundered in his play, and the President of
the Council was at a loss to understand how his friend, Paul Ivanovitch,
lately so good and so circumspect a player, could perpetrate such a
mauvais pas as to throw away a particular king of spades which the
President has been “trusting” as (to quote his own expression) “he would
have trusted God.” At supper, too, matters felt uncomfortable, even
though the society at Chichikov’s table was exceedingly agreeable and
Nozdrev had been removed, owing to the fact that the ladies had found
his conduct too scandalous to be borne, now that the delinquent had
taken to seating himself on the floor and plucking at the skirts of
passing lady dancers. As I say, therefore, Chichikov found the situation
not a little awkward, and eventually put an end to it by leaving the
supper room before the meal was over, and long before the hour when
usually he returned to the inn.
In his little room, with its door of communication blocked with a
wardrobe, his frame of mind remained as uncomfortable as the chair in
which he was seated. His heart ached with a dull, unpleasant sensation,
with a sort of oppressive emptiness.
“The devil take those who first invented balls!” was his reflection.
“Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist
want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd,
too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a thousand
roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the overtaxed
peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her neighbour.
Yes, we all know why bribes are accepted, and why men become crooked
in soul. It is all done to provide wives--yes, may the pit swallow them
up!--with fal-lals. And for what purpose? That some woman may not have
to reproach her husband with the fact that, say, the Postmaster’s wife
is wearing a better dress than she is--a dress which has cost a thousand
roubles! ‘Balls and gaiety, balls and gaiety’ is the constant cry. Yet
what folly balls are! They do not consort with the Russian spirit and
genius, and the devil only knows why we have them. A grown, middle-aged
man--a man dressed in black, and looking as stiff as a poker--suddenly
takes the floor and begins shuffling his feet about, while another man,
even though conversing with a companion on important business, will, the
while, keep capering to right and left like a billy-goat! Mimicry, sheer
mimicry! The fact that the Frenchman is at forty precisely what he was
at fifteen leads us to imagine that we too, forsooth, ought to be the
same. No; a ball leaves one feeling that one has done a wrong thing--so
much so that one does not care even to think of it. It also leaves one’s
head perfectly empty, even as does the exertion of talking to a man of
the world. A man of that kind chatters away, and touches lightly upon
every conceivable subject, and talks in smooth, fluent phrases which he
has culled from books without grazing their substance; whereas go and
have a chat with a tradesman who knows at least ONE thing thoroughly,
and through the medium of experience, and see whether his conversation
will not be worth more than the prattle of a thousand chatterboxes. For
what good does one get out of balls? Suppose that a competent writer
were to describe such a scene exactly as it stands? Why, even in a
book it would seem senseless, even as it certainly is in life. Are,
therefore, such functions right or wrong? One would answer that the
devil alone knows, and then spit and close the book.”
Such were the unfavourable comments which Chichikov passed upon balls
in general. With it all, however, there went a second source of
dissatisfaction. That is to say, his principal grudge was not so much
against balls as against the fact that at this particular one he had
been exposed, he had been made to disclose the circumstance that he had
been playing a strange, an ambiguous part. Of course, when he reviewed
the contretemps in the light of pure reason, he could not but see that
it mattered nothing, and that a few rude words were of no account now
that the chief point had been attained; yet man is an odd creature, and
Chichikov actually felt pained by the cold-shouldering administered to
him by persons for whom he had not an atom of respect, and whose vanity
and love of display he had only that moment been censuring. Still more,
on viewing the matter clearly, he felt vexed to think that he himself
had been so largely the cause of the catastrophe.
Yet he was not angry with HIMSELF--of that you may be sure, seeing that
all of us have a slight weakness for sparing our own faults, and
always do our best to find some fellow-creature upon whom to vent our
displeasure--whether that fellow-creature be a servant, a subordinate
official, or a wife. In the same way Chichikov sought a scapegoat upon
whose shoulders he could lay the blame for all that had annoyed him. He
found one in Nozdrev, and you may be sure that the scapegoat in question
received a good drubbing from every side, even as an experienced captain
or chief of police will give a knavish starosta or postboy a rating not
only in the terms become classical, but also in such terms as the said
captain or chief of police may invent for himself. In short, Nozdrev’s
whole lineage was passed in review; and many of its members in the
ascending line fared badly in the process.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the town there was in progress an event
which was destined to augment still further the unpleasantness of our
hero’s position. That is to say, through the outlying streets and
alleys of the town there was clattering a vehicle to which it would be
difficult precisely to assign a name, seeing that, though it was of a
species peculiar to itself, it most nearly resembled a large, rickety
water melon on wheels. Eventually this monstrosity drew up at the gates
of a house where the archpriest of one of the churches resided, and from
its doors there leapt a damsel clad in a jerkin and wearing a scarf over
her head. For a while she thumped the gates so vigorously as to set
all the dogs barking; then the gates stiffly opened, and admitted this
unwieldy phenomenon of the road. Lastly, the barinia herself alighted,
and stood revealed as Madame Korobotchka, widow of a Collegiate
Secretary! The reason of her sudden arrival was that she had felt so
uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov’s whim, that during the
three nights following his departure she had been unable to sleep a
wink; whereafter, in spite of the fact that her horses were not shod,
she had set off for the town, in order to learn at first hand how the
dead souls were faring, and whether (which might God forfend!) she
had not sold them at something like a third of their true value. The
consequences of her venture the reader will learn from a conversation
between two ladies. We will reserve it for the ensuing chapter.
CHAPTER 9
Next morning, before the usual hour for paying calls, there tripped from
the portals of an orange-coloured wooden house with an attic storey and
a row of blue pillars a lady in an elegant plaid cloak. With her came
a footman in a many-caped greatcoat and a polished top hat with a gold
band. Hastily, but gracefully, the lady ascended the steps let down from
a koliaska which was standing before the entrance, and as soon as
she had done so the footman shut her in, put up the steps again, and,
catching hold of the strap behind the vehicle, shouted to the coachman,
“Right away!” The reason of all this was that the lady was the possessor
of a piece of intelligence that she was burning to communicate to a
fellow-creature. Every moment she kept looking out of the carriage
window, and perceiving, with almost speechless vexation, that, as yet,
she was but half-way on her journey. The fronts of the houses appeared
to her longer than usual, and in particular did the front of the white
stone hospital, with its rows of narrow windows, seem interminable to
a degree which at length forced her to ejaculate: “Oh, the cursed
building! Positively there is no end to it!” Also, she twice adjured the
coachman with the words, “Go quicker, Andrusha! You are a horribly long
time over the journey this morning.” But at length the goal was reached,
and the koliaska stopped before a one-storied wooden mansion, dark grey
in colour, and having white carvings over the windows, a tall wooden
fence and narrow garden in front of the latter, and a few meagre trees
looming white with an incongruous coating of road dust. In the windows
of the building were also a few flower pots and a parrot that kept
alternately dancing on the floor of its cage and hanging on to the ring
of the same with its beak. Also, in the sunshine before the door two pet
dogs were sleeping. Here there lived the lady’s bosom friend. As soon as
the bosom friend in question learnt of the newcomer’s arrival, she ran
down into the hall, and the two ladies kissed and embraced one another.
Then they adjourned to the drawing-room.
“How glad I am to see you!” said the bosom friend. “When I heard some
one arriving I wondered who could possibly be calling so early. Parasha
declared that it must be the Vice-Governor’s wife, so, as I did not want
to be bored with her, I gave orders that I was to be reported ‘not at
home.’”
For her part, the guest would have liked to have proceeded to business
by communicating her tidings, but a sudden exclamation from the hostess
imparted (temporarily) a new direction to the conversation.
“What a pretty chintz!” she cried, gazing at the other’s gown.
“Yes, it IS pretty,” agreed the visitor. “On the other hand, Praskovia
Thedorovna thinks that--”
In other words, the ladies proceeded to indulge in a conversation on
the subject of dress; and only after this had lasted for a considerable
while did the visitor let fall a remark which led her entertainer to
inquire:
“And how is the universal charmer?”
“My God!” replied the other. “There has been SUCH a business! In fact,
do you know why I am here at all?” And the visitor’s breathing became
more hurried, and further words seemed to be hovering between her lips
like hawks preparing to stoop upon their prey. Only a person of the
unhumanity of a “true friend” would have had the heart to interrupt her;
but the hostess was just such a friend, and at once interposed with:
“I wonder how any one can see anything in the man to praise or to
admire. For my own part, I think--and I would say the same thing
straight to his face--that he is a perfect rascal.”
“Yes, but do listen to what I have got to tell you.”
“Oh, I know that some people think him handsome,” continued the
hostess, unmoved; “but _I_ say that he is nothing of the kind--that, in
particular, his nose is perfectly odious.”
“Yes, but let me finish what I was saying.” The guest’s tone was almost
piteous in its appeal.
“What is it, then?”
“You cannot imagine my state of mind! You see, this morning I received
a visit from Father Cyril’s wife--the Archpriest’s wife--you know her,
don’t you? Well, whom do you suppose that fine gentleman visitor of ours
has turned out to be?”
“The man who has built the Archpriest a poultry-run?”
“Oh dear no! Had that been all, it would have been nothing. No. Listen
to what Father Cyril’s wife had to tell me. She said that, last night,
a lady landowner named Madame Korobotchka arrived at the Archpriest’s
house--arrived all pale and trembling--and told her, oh, such things!
They sound like a piece out of a book. That is to say, at dead of night,
just when every one had retired to rest, there came the most dreadful
knocking imaginable, and some one screamed out, ‘Open the gates, or we
will break them down!’ Just think! After this, how any one can say that
the man is charming I cannot imagine.”
“Well, what of Madame Korobotchka? Is she a young woman or good
looking?”
“Oh dear no! Quite an old woman.”
“Splendid indeed! So he is actually engaged to a person like that? One
may heartily commend the taste of our ladies for having fallen in love
with him!”
“Nevertheless, it is not as you suppose. Think, now! Armed with weapons
from head to foot, he called upon this old woman, and said: ‘Sell me any
souls of yours which have lately died.’ Of course, Madame Korobotchka
answered, reasonably enough: ‘I cannot sell you those souls, seeing that
they have departed this world;’ but he replied: ‘No, no! They are NOT
dead. ’Tis I who tell you that--I who ought to know the truth of the
matter. I swear that they are still alive.’ In short, he made such a
scene that the whole village came running to the house, and children
screamed, and men shouted, and no one could tell what it was all
about. The affair seemed to me so horrible, so utterly horrible, that I
trembled beyond belief as I listened to the story. ‘My dearest madam,’
said my maid, Mashka, ‘pray look at yourself in the mirror, and see how
white you are.’ ‘But I have no time for that,’ I replied, ‘as I must
be off to tell my friend, Anna Grigorievna, the news.’ Nor did I lose a
moment in ordering the koliaska. Yet when my coachman, Andrusha, asked
me for directions I could not get a word out--I just stood staring
at him like a fool, until I thought he must think me mad. Oh, Anna
Grigorievna, if you but knew how upset I am!”
“What a strange affair!” commented the hostess. “What on earth can
the man have meant by ‘dead souls’? I confess that the words pass my
understanding. Curiously enough, this is the second time I have heard
speak of those souls. True, my husband avers that Nozdrev was lying; yet
in his lies there seems to have been a grain of truth.”
“Well, just think of my state when I heard all this! ‘And now,’
apparently said Korobotchka to the Archpriest’s wife, ‘I am altogether
at a loss what to do, for, throwing me fifteen roubles, the man forced
me to sign a worthless paper--yes, me, an inexperienced, defenceless
widow who knows nothing of business.’ That such things should happen!
TRY and imagine my feelings!”
“In my opinion, there is in this more than the dead souls which meet the
eye.”
“I think so too,” agreed the other. As a matter of fact, her friend’s
remark had struck her with complete surprise, as well as filled her with
curiosity to know what the word “more” might possibly signify. In fact,
she felt driven to inquire: “What do YOU suppose to be hidden beneath it
all?”
“No; tell me what YOU suppose?”
“What _I_ suppose? I am at a loss to conjecture.”
“Yes, but tell me what is in your mind?”
Upon this the visitor had to confess herself nonplussed; for, though
capable of growing hysterical, she was incapable of propounding any
rational theory. Consequently she felt the more that she needed tender
comfort and advice.
“Then THIS is what I think about the dead souls,” said the hostess.
Instantly the guest pricked up her ears (or, rather, they pricked
themselves up) and straightened herself and became, somehow, more
modish, and, despite her not inconsiderable weight, posed herself to
look like a piece of thistledown floating on the breeze.
“The dead souls,” began the hostess.
“Are what, are what?” inquired the guest in great excitement.
“Are, are--”
“Tell me, tell me, for heaven’s sake!”
“They are an invention to conceal something else. The man’s real object
is, is--TO ABDUCT THE GOVERNOR’S DAUGHTER.”
So startling and unexpected was this conclusion that the guest sat
reduced to a state of pale, petrified, genuine amazement.
“My God!” she cried, clapping her hands, “I should NEVER have guessed
it!”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I guessed it as soon as ever you opened
your mouth.”
“So much, then, for educating girls like the Governor’s daughter at
school! Just see what comes of it!”
“Yes, indeed! And they tell me that she says things which I hesitate
even to repeat.”
“Truly it wrings one’s heart to see to what lengths immorality has
come.”
“Some of the men have quite lost their heads about her, but for my part
I think her not worth noticing.”
“Of course. And her manners are unbearable. But what puzzles me most is
how a travelled man like Chichikov could come to let himself in for such
an affair. Surely he must have accomplices?”
“Yes; and I should say that one of those accomplices is Nozdrev.”
“Surely not?”
“CERTAINLY I should say so. Why, I have known him even try to sell his
own father! At all events he staked him at cards.”
“Indeed? You interest me. I should never had thought him capable of such
things.”
“I always guessed him to be so.”
The two ladies were still discussing the matter with acumen and success
when there walked into the room the Public Prosecutor--bushy eyebrows,
motionless features, blinking eyes, and all. At once the ladies hastened
to inform him of the events related, adducing therewith full details
both as to the purchase of dead souls and as to the scheme to abduct the
Governor’s daughter; after which they departed in different directions,
for the purpose of raising the rest of the town. For the execution of
this undertaking not more than half an hour was required. So thoroughly
did they succeed in throwing dust in the public’s eyes that for a while
every one--more especially the army of public officials--was placed in
the position of a schoolboy who, while still asleep, has had a bag of
pepper thrown in his face by a party of more early-rising comrades. The
questions now to be debated resolved themselves into two--namely, the
question of the dead souls and the question of the Governor’s daughter.
To this end two parties were formed--the men’s party and the feminine
section. The men’s party--the more absolutely senseless of the
two--devoted its attention to the dead souls: the women’s party
occupied itself exclusively with the alleged abduction of the Governor’s
daughter. And here it may be said (to the ladies’ credit) that the
women’s party displayed far more method and caution than did its rival
faction, probably because the function in life of its members had always
been that of managing and administering a household. With the ladies,
therefore, matters soon assumed vivid and definite shape; they became
clearly and irrefutably materialised; they stood stripped of all doubt
and other impedimenta. Said some of the ladies in question, Chichikov
had long been in love with the maiden, and the pair had kept tryst by
the light of the moon, while the Governor would have given his consent
(seeing that Chichikov was as rich as a Jew) but for the obstacle that
Chichikov had deserted a wife already (how the worthy dames came to
know that he was married remains a mystery), and the said deserted wife,
pining with love for her faithless husband, had sent the Governor a
letter of the most touching kind, so that Chichikov, on perceiving that
the father and mother would never give their consent, had decided to
abduct the girl. In other circles the matter was stated in a different
way. That is to say, this section averred that Chichikov did NOT possess
a wife, but that, as a man of subtlety and experience, he had bethought
him of obtaining the daughter’s hand through the expedient of first
tackling the mother and carrying on with her an ardent liaison, and
that, thereafter, he had made an application for the desired hand, but
that the mother, fearing to commit a sin against religion, and feeling
in her heart certain gnawings of conscience, had returned a blank
refusal to Chichikov’s request; whereupon Chichikov had decided to carry
out the abduction alleged. To the foregoing, of course, there became
appended various additional proofs and items of evidence, in proportion
as the sensation spread to more remote corners of the town. At length,
with these perfectings, the affair reached the ears of the Governor’s
wife herself. Naturally, as the mother of a family, and as the first
lady in the town, and as a matron who had never before been suspected of
things of the kind, she was highly offended when she heard the stories,
and very justly so: with the result that her poor young daughter, though
innocent, had to endure about as unpleasant a tete-a-tete as ever befell
a maiden of sixteen, while, for his part, the Swiss footman received
orders never at any time to admit Chichikov to the house.
Having done their business with the Governor’s wife, the ladies’ party
descended upon the male section, with a view to influencing it to their
own side by asserting that the dead souls were an invention used solely
for the purpose of diverting suspicion and successfully affecting the
abduction. And, indeed, more than one man was converted, and joined the
feminine camp, in spite of the fact that thereby such seceders incurred
strong names from their late comrades--names such as “old women,”
“petticoats,” and others of a nature peculiarly offensive to the male
sex.
Also, however much they might arm themselves and take the field, the
men could not compass such orderliness within their ranks as could the
women. With the former everything was of the antiquated and rough-hewn
and ill-fitting and unsuitable and badly-adapted and inferior kind;
their heads were full of nothing but discord and triviality and
confusion and slovenliness of thought. In brief, they displayed
everywhere the male bent, the rude, ponderous nature which is incapable
either of managing a household or of jumping to a conclusion, as well
as remains always distrustful and lazy and full of constant doubt and
everlasting timidity. For instance, the men’s party declared that the
whole story was rubbish--that the alleged abduction of the Governor’s
daughter was the work rather of a military than of a civilian culprit;
that the ladies were lying when they accused Chichikov of the deed;
that a woman was like a money-bag--whatsoever you put into her she
thenceforth retained; that the subject which really demanded attention
was the dead souls, of which the devil only knew the meaning, but in
which there certainly lurked something that was contrary to good order
and discipline. One reason why the men’s party was so certain that the
dead souls connoted something contrary to good order and discipline,
was that there had just been appointed to the province a new
Governor-General--an event which, of course, had thrown the whole army
of provincial tchinovniks into a state of great excitement, seeing that
they knew that before long there would ensue transferments and sentences
of censure, as well as the series of official dinners with which a
Governor-General is accustomed to entertain his subordinates. “Alas,”
thought the army of tchinovniks, “it is probable that, should he learn
of the gross reports at present afloat in our town, he will make such a
fuss that we shall never hear the last of them.” In particular did
the Director of the Medical Department turn pale at the thought that
possibly the new Governor-General would surmise the term “dead folk”
to connote patients in the local hospitals who, for want of proper
preventative measures, had died of sporadic fever. Indeed, might it not
be that Chichikov was neither more nor less than an emissary of the said
Governor-General, sent to conduct a secret inquiry? Accordingly he (the
Director of the Medical Department) communicated this last supposition
to the President of the Council, who, though at first inclined to
ejaculate “Rubbish!” suddenly turned pale on propounding to himself the
theory. “What if the souls purchased by Chichikov should REALLY be
dead ones?”--a terrible thought considering that he, the President, had
permitted their transferment to be registered, and had himself acted
as Plushkin’s representative! What if these things should reach the
Governor-General’s ears? He mentioned the matter to one friend and
another, and they, in their turn, went white to the lips, for panic
spreads faster and is even more destructive, than the dreaded black
death. Also, to add to the tchinovniks’ troubles, it so befell that
just at this juncture there came into the local Governor’s hands two
documents of great importance. The first of them contained advices that,
according to received evidence and reports, there was operating in the
province a forger of rouble-notes who had been passing under various
aliases and must therefore be sought for with the utmost diligence;
while the second document was a letter from the Governor of a
neighbouring province with regard to a malefactor who had there evaded
apprehension--a letter conveying also a warning that, if in the province
of the town of N. there should appear any suspicious individual who
could produce neither references nor passports, he was to be arrested
forthwith. These two documents left every one thunderstruck, for they
knocked on the head all previous conceptions and theories. Not for
a moment could it be supposed that the former document referred to
Chichikov; yet, as each man pondered the position from his own point of
view, he remembered that no one REALLY knew who Chichikov was; as also
that his vague references to himself had--yes!--included statements that
his career in the service had suffered much to the cause of Truth, and
that he possessed a number of enemies who were seeking his life. This
gave the tchinovniks further food for thought. Perhaps his life really
DID stand in danger? Perhaps he really WAS being sought for by some one?
Perhaps he really HAD done something of the kind above referred to? As a
matter of fact, who was he?--not that it could actually be supposed that
he was a forger of notes, still less a brigand, seeing that his exterior
was respectable in the highest degree. Yet who was he? At length
the tchinovniks decided to make enquiries among those of whom he had
purchased souls, in order that at least it might be learnt what the
purchases had consisted of, and what exactly underlay them, and whether,
in passing, he had explained to any one his real intentions, or revealed
to any one his identity. In the first instance, therefore, resort was
had to Korobotchka. Yet little was gleaned from that source--merely
a statement that he had bought of her some souls for fifteen roubles
apiece, and also a quantity of feathers, while promising also to buy
some other commodities in the future, seeing that, in particular, he had
entered into a contract with the Treasury for lard, a fact constituting
fairly presumptive proof that the man was a rogue, seeing that just such
another fellow had bought a quantity of feathers, yet had cheated folk
all round, and, in particular, had done the Archpriest out of over a
hundred roubles. Thus the net result of Madame’s cross-examination was
to convince the tchinovniks that she was a garrulous, silly old woman.
With regard to Manilov, he replied that he would answer for Chichikov as
he would for himself, and that he would gladly sacrifice his property in
toto if thereby he could attain even a tithe of the qualities which
Paul Ivanovitch possessed. Finally, he delivered on Chichikov, with
acutely-knitted brows, a eulogy couched in the most charming of terms,
and coupled with sundry sentiments on the subject of friendship and
affection in general. True, these remarks sufficed to indicate the
tender impulses of the speaker’s heart, but also they did nothing to
enlighten his examiners concerning the business that was actually at
hand. As for Sobakevitch, that landowner replied that he considered
Chichikov an excellent fellow, as well as that the souls whom he had
sold to his visitor had been in the truest sense of the word alive, but
that he could not answer for anything which might occur in the future,
seeing that any difficulties which might arise in the course of the
actual transferment of souls would not be HIS fault, in view of the fact
that God was lord of all, and that fevers and other mortal complaints
were so numerous in the world, and that instances of whole villages
perishing through the same could be found on record.
Finally, our friends the tchinovniks found themselves compelled to
resort to an expedient which, though not particularly savoury, is not
infrequently employed--namely, the expedient of getting lacqueys quietly
to approach the servants of the person concerning whom information is
desired, and to ascertain from them (the servants) certain details with
regard to their master’s life and antecedents. Yet even from this source
very little was obtained, since Petrushka provided his interrogators
merely with a taste of the smell of his living-room, and Selifan
confined his replies to a statement that the barin had “been in the
employment of the State, and also had served in the Customs.”
In short, the sum total of the results gathered by the tchinovniks was
that they still stood in ignorance of Chichikov’s identity, but that he
MUST be some one; wherefore it was decided to hold a final debate on the
subject on what ought to be done, and who Chichikov could possibly be,
and whether or not he was a man who ought to be apprehended and detained
as not respectable, or whether he was a man who might himself be able
to apprehend and detain THEM as persons lacking in respectability. The
debate in question, it was proposed, should be held at the residence of
the Chief of Police, who is known to our readers as the father and the
general benefactor of the town.
CHAPTER 10
On assembling at the residence indicated, the tchinovniks had occasion
to remark that, owing to all these cares and excitements, every one
of their number had grown thinner. Yes, the appointment of a new
Governor-General, coupled with the rumours described and the reception
of the two serious documents above-mentioned, had left manifest traces
upon the features of every one present. More than one frockcoat had come
to look too large for its wearer, and more than one frame had fallen
away, including the frames of the President of the Council, the Director
of the Medical Department, and the Public Prosecutor. Even a certain
Semen Ivanovitch, who, for some reason or another, was never alluded to
by his family name, but who wore on his index finger a ring with which
he was accustomed to dazzle his lady friends, had diminished in bulk.
Yet, as always happens at such junctures, there were also present
a score of brazen individuals who had succeeded in NOT losing their
presence of mind, even though they constituted a mere sprinkling.
Of them the Postmaster formed one, since he was a man of equable
temperament who could always say: “WE know you, Governor-Generals! We
have seen three or four of you come and go, whereas WE have been sitting
on the same stools these thirty years.” Nevertheless a prominent feature
of the gathering was the total absence of what is vulgarly known as
“common sense.” In general, we Russians do not make a good show at
representative assemblies, for the reason that, unless there be in
authority a leading spirit to control the rest, the affair always
develops into confusion. Why this should be so one could hardly say, but
at all events a success is scored only by such gatherings as have for
their object dining and festivity--to wit, gatherings at clubs or in
German-run restaurants. However, on the present occasion, the meeting
was NOT one of this kind; it was a meeting convoked of necessity, and
likely in view of the threatened calamity to affect every tchinovnik in
the place. Also, in addition to the great divergency of views expressed
thereat, there was visible in all the speakers an invincible tendency to
indecision which led them at one moment to make assertions, and at the
next to contradict the same. But on at least one point all seemed to
agree--namely, that Chichikov’s appearance and conversation were too
respectable for him to be a forger or a disguised brigand. That is to
say, all SEEMED to agree on the point; until a sudden shout arose from
the direction of the Postmaster, who for some time past had been sitting
plunged in thought.
“_I_ can tell you,” he cried, “who Chichikov is!”
“Who, then?” replied the crowd in great excitement.
“He is none other than Captain Kopeikin.”
“And who may Captain Kopeikin be?”
Taking a pinch of snuff (which he did with the lid of his snuff-box
half-open, lest some extraneous person should contrive to insert a not
over-clean finger into the stuff), the Postmaster related the following
story [35].
“After fighting in the campaign of 1812, there was sent home, wounded,
a certain Captain Kopeikin--a headstrong, lively blade who, whether on
duty or under arrest, made things lively for everybody. Now, since at
Krasni or at Leipzig (it matters not which) he had lost an arm and a
leg, and in those days no provision was made for wounded soldiers, and
he could not work with his left arm alone, he set out to see his father.
Unfortunately his father could only just support himself, and was forced
to tell his son so; wherefore the Captain decided to go and apply for
help in St. Petersburg, seeing that he had risked his life for his
country, and had lost much blood in its service. You can imagine him
arriving in the capital on a baggage waggon--in the capital which is
like no other city in the world! Before him there lay spread out the
whole field of life, like a sort of Arabian Nights--a picture made up of
the Nevski Prospect, Gorokhovaia Street, countless tapering spires, and
a number of bridges apparently supported on nothing--in fact, a regular
second Nineveh. Well, he made shift to hire a lodging, but found
everything so wonderfully furnished with blinds and Persian carpets and
so forth that he saw it would mean throwing away a lot of money. True,
as one walks the streets of St. Petersburg one seems to smell money by
the thousand roubles, but our friend Kopeikin’s bank was limited to a
few score coppers and a little silver--not enough to buy a village with!
At length, at the price of a rouble a day, he obtained a lodging in the
sort of tavern where the daily ration is a bowl of cabbage soup and a
crust of bread; and as he felt that he could not manage to live very
long on fare of that kind he asked folk what he had better do. ‘What you
had better do?’ they said. ‘Well the Government is not here--it is in
Paris, and the troops have not yet returned from the war; but there is a
TEMPORARY Commission sitting, and you had better go and see what IT can
do for you.’ ‘All right!’ he said. ‘I will go and tell the Commission
that I have shed my blood, and sacrificed my life, for my country.’
And he got up early one morning, and shaved himself with his left hand
(since the expense of a barber was not worth while), and set out, wooden
leg and all, to see the President of the Commission. But first he
asked where the President lived, and was told that his house was in
Naberezhnaia Street. And you may be sure that it was no peasant’s hut,
with its glazed windows and great mirrors and statues and lacqueys and
brass door handles! Rather, it was the sort of place which you would
enter only after you had bought a cheap cake of soap and indulged in a
two hours’ wash. Also, at the entrance there was posted a grand Swiss
footman with a baton and an embroidered collar--a fellow looking like a
fat, over-fed pug dog. However, friend Kopeikin managed to get himself
and his wooden leg into the reception room, and there squeezed himself
away into a corner, for fear lest he should knock down the gilded china
with his elbow. And he stood waiting in great satisfaction at having
arrived before the President had so much as left his bed and been served
with his silver wash-basin. Nevertheless, it was only when Kopeikin had
been waiting four hours that a breakfast waiter entered to say, ‘The
President will soon be here.’ By now the room was as full of people as
a plate is of beans, and when the President left the breakfast-room he
brought with him, oh, such dignity and refinement, and such an air
of the metropolis! First he walked up to one person, and then up to
another, saying: ‘What do YOU want? And what do YOU want? What can I
do for YOU? What is YOUR business?’ And at length he stopped before
Kopeikin, and Kopeikin said to him: ‘I have shed my blood, and lost
both an arm and a leg, for my country, and am unable to work. Might I
therefore dare to ask you for a little help, if the regulations should
permit of it, or for a gratuity, or for a pension, or something of the
kind?’ Then the President looked at him, and saw that one of his legs
was indeed a wooden one, and that an empty right sleeve was pinned to
his uniform. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Come to me again in a few days’
time.’ Upon this friend Kopeikin felt delighted. ‘NOW I have done my
job!’ he thought to himself; and you may imagine how gaily he trotted
along the pavement, and how he dropped into a tavern for a glass of
vodka, and how he ordered a cutlet and some caper sauce and some other
things for luncheon, and how he called for a bottle of wine, and how he
went to the theatre in the evening! In short, he did himself thoroughly
well. Next, he saw in the street a young English lady, as graceful as a
swan, and set off after her on his wooden leg. ‘But no,’ he thought to
himself. ‘To the devil with that sort of thing just now! I will wait
until I have drawn my pension. For the present I have spent enough.’
(And I may tell you that by now he had got through fully half his
money.) Two or three days later he went to see the President of the
Commission again. ‘I should be glad to know,’ he said, ‘whether by now
you can do anything for me in return for my having shed my blood and
suffered sickness and wounds on military service.’ ‘First of all,’ said
the President, ‘I must tell you that nothing can be decided in your case
without the authority of the Supreme Government. Without that sanction
we cannot move in the matter. Surely you see how things stand until the
army shall have returned from the war? All that I can advise you to
do is wait for the Minister to return, and, in the meanwhile, to have
patience. Rest assured that then you will not be overlooked. And if for
the moment you have nothing to live upon, this is the best that I can
do for you.’ With that he handed Kopeikin a trifle until his case should
have been decided. However, that was not what Kopeikin wanted. He
had supposed that he would be given a gratuity of a thousand roubles
straight away; whereas, instead of ‘Drink and be merry,’ it was ‘Wait,
for the time is not yet.’ Thus, though his head had been full of soup
plates and cutlets and English girls, he now descended the steps with
his ears and his tail down--looking, in fact, like a poodle over which
the cook has poured a bucketful of water. You see, St. Petersburg life
had changed him not a little since first he had got a taste of it, and,
now that the devil only knew how he was going to live, it came all the
harder to him that he should have no more sweets to look forward to.
Remember that a man in the prime of years has an appetite like a
wolf; and as he passed a restaurant he could see a round-faced,
holland-shirted, snow-white aproned fellow of a French chef preparing a
dish delicious enough to make it turn to and eat itself; while, again,
as he passed a fruit shop he could see delicacies looking out of a
window for fools to come and buy them at a hundred roubles apiece.
Imagine, therefore, his position! On the one hand, so to speak, were
salmon and water-melons, while on the other hand was the bitter fare
which passed at a tavern for luncheon. ‘Well,’ he thought to himself,
‘let them do what they like with me at the Commission, but I intend
to go and raise the whole place, and to tell every blessed functionary
there that I have a mind to do as I choose.’ And in truth this
bold impertinence of a man did have the hardihood to return to the
Commission. ‘What do you want?’ said the President. ‘Why are you here
for the third time? You have had your orders given you.’ ‘I daresay I
have,’ he retorted, ‘but I am not going to be put off with THEM. I want
some cutlets to eat, and a bottle of French wine, and a chance to go and
amuse myself at the theatre.’ ‘Pardon me,’ said the President. ‘What you
really need (if I may venture to mention it) is a little patience. You
have been given something for food until the Military Committee shall
have met, and then, doubtless, you will receive your proper reward,
seeing that it would not be seemly that a man who has served his country
should be left destitute. On the other hand, if, in the meanwhile, you
desire to indulge in cutlets and theatre-going, please understand that
we cannot help you, but you must make your own resources, and try as
best you can to help yourself.’ You can imagine that this went in at one
of Kopeikin’s ears, and out at the other; that it was like shooting peas
at a stone wall. Accordingly he raised a turmoil which sent the staff
flying. One by one, he gave the mob of secretaries and clerks a real
good hammering. ‘You, and you, and you,’ he said, ‘do not even know
your duties. You are law-breakers.’ Yes, he trod every man of them under
foot. At length the General himself arrived from another office, and
sounded the alarm. What was to be done with a fellow like Kopeikin?
The President saw that strong measures were imperative. ‘Very well,’ he
said. ‘Since you decline to rest satisfied with what has been given you,
and quietly to await the decision of your case in St. Petersburg, I must
find you a lodging. Here, constable, remove the man to gaol.’ Then a
constable who had been called to the door--a constable three ells
in height, and armed with a carbine--a man well fitted to guard a
bank--placed our friend in a police waggon. ‘Well,’ reflected Kopeikin,
‘at least I shan’t have to pay my fare for THIS ride. That’s one
comfort.’ Again, after he had ridden a little way, he said to himself:
‘they told me at the Commission to go and make my own means of enjoying
myself. Very good. I’ll do so.’ However, what became of Kopeikin,
and whither he went, is known to no one. He sank, to use the poet’s
expression, into the waters of Lethe, and his doings now lie buried in
oblivion. But allow me, gentlemen, to piece together the further threads
of the story. Not two months later there appeared in the forests of
Riazan a band of robbers: and of that band the chieftain was none other
than--”
“Allow me,” put in the Head of the Police Department. “You have said
that Kopeikin had lost an arm and a leg; whereas Chichikov--”
To say anything more was unnecessary. The Postmaster clapped his hand
to his forehead, and publicly called himself a fool, though, later, he
tried to excuse his mistake by saying that in England the science of
mechanics had reached such a pitch that wooden legs were manufactured
which would enable the wearer, on touching a spring, to vanish
instantaneously from sight.
Various other theories were then propounded, among them a theory that
Chichikov was Napoleon, escaped from St. Helena and travelling about
the world in disguise. And if it should be supposed that no such notion
could possibly have been broached, let the reader remember that these
events took place not many years after the French had been driven out of
Russia, and that various prophets had since declared that Napoleon was
Antichrist, and would one day escape from his island prison to exercise
universal sway on earth. Nay, some good folk had even declared the
letters of Napoleon’s name to constitute the Apocalyptic cipher!
As a last resort, the tchinovniks decided to question Nozdrev, since not
only had the latter been the first to mention the dead souls, but
also he was supposed to stand on terms of intimacy with Chichikov.
Accordingly the Chief of Police dispatched a note by the hand of a
commissionaire. At the time Nozdrev was engaged on some very important
business--so much so that he had not left his room for four days, and
was receiving his meals through the window, and no visitors at all. The
business referred to consisted of the marking of several dozen selected
cards in such a way as to permit of his relying upon them as upon his
bosom friend. Naturally he did not like having his retirement invaded,
and at first consigned the commissionaire to the devil; but as soon
as he learnt from the note that, since a novice at cards was to be the
guest of the Chief of Police that evening, a call at the latter’s house
might prove not wholly unprofitable he relented, unlocked the door of
his room, threw on the first garments that came to hand, and set forth.
To every question put to him by the tchinovniks he answered firmly and
with assurance. Chichikov, he averred, had indeed purchased dead souls,
and to the tune of several thousand roubles. In fact, he (Nozdrev) had
himself sold him some, and still saw no reason why he should not have
done so. Next, to the question of whether or not he considered Chichikov
to be a spy, he replied in the affirmative, and added that, as long ago
as his and Chichikov’s joint schooldays, the said Chichikov had been
known as “The Informer,” and repeatedly been thrashed by his companions
on that account. Again, to the question of whether or not Chichikov was
a forger of currency notes the deponent, as before, responded in
the affirmative, and appended thereto an anecdote illustrative of
Chichikov’s extraordinary dexterity of hand--namely, an anecdote to
that effect that, once upon a time, on learning that two million
roubles worth of counterfeit notes were lying in Chichikov’s house, the
authorities had placed seals upon the building, and had surrounded it
on every side with an armed guard; whereupon Chichikov had, during the
night, changed each of these seals for a new one, and also so arranged
matters that, when the house was searched, the forged notes were found
to be genuine ones!
Again, to the question of whether or not Chichikov had schemed to abduct
the Governor’s daughter, and also whether it was true that he, Nozdrev,
had undertaken to aid and abet him in the act, the witness replied that,
had he not undertaken to do so, the affair would never have come off. At
this point the witness pulled himself up, on realising that he had told
a lie which might get him into trouble; but his tongue was not to be
denied--the details trembling on its tip were too alluring, and he
even went on to cite the name of the village church where the pair
had arranged to be married, that of the priest who had performed
the ceremony, the amount of the fees paid for the same (seventy-five
roubles), and statements (1) that the priest had refused to solemnise
the wedding until Chichikov had frightened him by threatening to expose
the fact that he (the priest) had married Mikhail, a local corn dealer,
to his paramour, and (2) that Chichikov had ordered both a koliaska for
the couple’s conveyance and relays of horses from the post-houses on the
road. Nay, the narrative, as detailed by Nozdrev, even reached the
point of his mentioning certain of the postillions by name! Next, the
tchinovniks sounded him on the question of Chichikov’s possible identity
with Napoleon; but before long they had reason to regret the step, for
Nozdrev responded with a rambling rigmarole such as bore no resemblance
to anything possibly conceivable. Finally, the majority of the audience
left the room, and only the Chief of Police remained to listen (in the
hope of gathering something more); but at last even he found himself
forced to disclaim the speaker with a gesture which said: “The devil
only knows what the fellow is talking about!” and so voiced the general
opinion that it was no use trying to gather figs of thistles.
Meanwhile Chichikov knew nothing of these events; for, having contracted
a slight chill, coupled with a sore throat, he had decided to keep his
room for three days; during which time he gargled his throat with
milk and fig juice, consumed the fruit from which the juice had been
extracted, and wore around his neck a poultice of camomile and camphor.
Also, to while away the hours, he made new and more detailed lists of
the souls which he had bought, perused a work by the Duchesse de la
Valliere [36], rummaged in his portmanteau, looked through various
articles and papers which he discovered in his dispatch-box, and found
every one of these occupations tedious. Nor could he understand why
none of his official friends had come to see him and inquire after his
health, seeing that, not long since, there had been standing in front of
the inn the drozhkis both of the Postmaster, the Public Prosecutor, and
the President of the Council. He wondered and wondered, and then, with
a shrug of his shoulders, fell to pacing the room. At length he felt
better, and his spirits rose at the prospect of once more going out into
the fresh air; wherefore, having shaved a plentiful growth of hair from
his face, he dressed with such alacrity as almost to cause a split
in his trousers, sprinkled himself with eau-de-Cologne, and wrapping
himself in warm clothes, and turning up the collar of his coat, sallied
forth into the street. His first destination was intended to be the
Governor’s mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning
the Governor’s daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that
almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking jokes to
himself.
Arrived at the Governor’s entrance, he was about to divest himself
of his scarf when a Swiss footman greeted him with the words, “I am
forbidden to admit you.”
“What?” he exclaimed. “You do not know me? Look at me again, and see if
you do not recognise me.”
“Of course I recognise you,” the footman replied. “I have seen you
before, but have been ordered to admit any one else rather than Monsieur
Chichikov.”
“Indeed? And why so?”
“Those are my orders, and they must be obeyed,” said the footman,
confronting Chichikov with none of that politeness with which, on
former occasions, he had hastened to divest our hero of his wrappings.
Evidently he was of opinion that, since the gentry declined to receive
the visitor, the latter must certainly be a rogue.
“I cannot understand it,” said Chichikov to himself. Then he departed,
and made his way to the house of the President of the Council. But so
put about was that official by Chichikov’s entry that he could not utter
two consecutive words--he could only murmur some rubbish which left both
his visitor and himself out of countenance. Chichikov wondered, as he
left the house, what the President’s muttered words could have meant,
but failed to make head or tail of them. Next, he visited, in turn, the
Chief of Police, the Vice-Governor, the Postmaster, and others; but in
each case he either failed to be accorded admittance or was received
so strangely, and with such a measure of constraint and conversational
awkwardness and absence of mind and embarrassment, that he began to fear
for the sanity of his hosts. Again and again did he strive to divine
the cause, but could not do so; so he went wandering aimlessly about
the town, without succeeding in making up his mind whether he or
the officials had gone crazy. At length, in a state bordering upon
bewilderment, he returned to the inn--to the establishment whence, that
every afternoon, he had set forth in such exuberance of spirits. Feeling
the need of something to do, he ordered tea, and, still marvelling at
the strangeness of his position, was about to pour out the beverage when
the door opened and Nozdrev made his appearance.
“What says the proverb?” he began. “‘To see a friend, seven versts is
not too long a round to make.’ I happened to be passing the house, saw a
light in your window, and thought to myself: ‘Now, suppose I were to run
up and pay him a visit? It is unlikely that he will be asleep.’ Ah, ha!
I see tea on your table! Good! Then I will drink a cup with you, for I
had wretched stuff for dinner, and it is beginning to lie heavy on my
stomach. Also, tell your man to fill me a pipe. Where is your own pipe?”
“I never smoke,” rejoined Chichikov drily.
“Rubbish! As if I did not know what a chimney-pot you are! What is your
man’s name? Hi, Vakhramei! Come here!”
“Petrushka is his name, not Vakhramei.”
“Indeed? But you USED to have a man called Vakhramei, didn’t you?”
“No, never.”
“Oh, well. Then it must be Derebin’s man I am thinking of. What a lucky
fellow that Derebin is! An aunt of his has gone and quarrelled with her
son for marrying a serf woman, and has left all her property to HIM,
to Derebin. Would that _I_ had an aunt of that kind to provide against
future contingencies! But why have you been hiding yourself away? I
suppose the reason has been that you go in for abstruse subjects and are
fond of reading” (why Nozdrev should have drawn these conclusions no one
could possibly have said--least of all Chichikov himself). “By the way,
I can tell you of something that would have found you scope for your
satirical vein” (the conclusion as to Chichikov’s “satirical vein” was,
as before, altogether unwarranted on Nozdrev’s part). “That is to say,
you would have seen merchant Likhachev losing a pile of money at play.
My word, you would have laughed! A fellow with me named Perependev said:
‘Would that Chichikov had been here! It would have been the very thing
for him!’” (As a matter of fact, never since the day of his birth had
Nozdrev met any one of the name of Perependev.) “However, my friend, you
must admit that you treated me rather badly the day that we played that
game of chess; but, as I won the game, I bear you no malice. A propos,
I am just from the President’s, and ought to tell you that the feeling
against you in the town is very strong, for every one believes you to be
a forger of currency notes. I myself was sent for and questioned
about you, but I stuck up for you through thick and thin, and told
the tchinovniks that I had been at school with you, and had known your
father. In fact, I gave the fellows a knock or two for themselves.”
“You say that I am believed to be a forger?” said Chichikov, starting
from his seat.
“Yes,” said Nozdrev. “Why have you gone and frightened everybody as you
have done? Some of our folk are almost out of their minds about it, and
declare you to be either a brigand in disguise or a spy. Yesterday the
Public Prosecutor even died of it, and is to be buried to-morrow”
(this was true in so far as that, on the previous day, the official in
question had had a fatal stroke--probably induced by the excitement of
the public meeting). “Of course, _I_ don’t suppose you to be anything of
the kind, but, you see, these fellows are in a blue funk about the new
Governor-General, for they think he will make trouble for them over your
affair. A propos, he is believed to be a man who puts on airs, and turns
up his nose at everything; and if so, he will get on badly with the
dvoriane, seeing that fellows of that sort need to be humoured a bit.
Yes, my word! Should the new Governor-General shut himself up in his
study, and give no balls, there will be the very devil to pay! By the
way, Chichikov, that is a risky scheme of yours.”
“What scheme to you mean?” Chichikov asked uneasily.
“Why, that scheme of carrying off the Governor’s daughter. However, to
tell the truth, I was expecting something of the kind. No sooner did
I see you and her together at the ball than I said to myself: ‘Ah, ha!
Chichikov is not here for nothing!’ For my own part, I think you have
made a poor choice, for I can see nothing in her at all. On the other
hand, the niece of a friend of mine named Bikusov--she IS a girl, and no
mistake! A regular what you might call ‘miracle in muslin!’”
“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Chichikov with his eyes
distended. “HOW could I carry off the Governor’s daughter? What on earth
do you mean?”
“Come, come! What a secretive fellow you are! My only object in having
come to see you is to lend you a helping hand in the matter. Look here.
On condition that you will lend me three thousand roubles, I will stand
you the cost of the wedding, the koliaska, and the relays of horses. I
must have the money even if I die for it.”
Throughout Nozdrev’s maunderings Chichikov had been rubbing his eyes to
ascertain whether or not he was dreaming. What with the charge of being
a forger, the accusation of having schemed an abduction, the death of
the Public Prosecutor (whatever might have been its cause), and the
advent of a new Governor-General, he felt utterly dismayed.
“Things having come to their present pass,” he reflected, “I had better
not linger here--I had better be off at once.”
Getting rid of Nozdrev as soon as he could, he sent for Selifan, and
ordered him to be up at daybreak, in order to clean the britchka and to
have everything ready for a start at six o’clock. Yet, though Selifan
replied, “Very well, Paul Ivanovitch,” he hesitated awhile by the door.
Next, Chichikov bid Petrushka get out the dusty portmanteau from under
the bed, and then set to work to cram into it, pell-mell, socks, shirts,
collars (both clean and dirty), boot trees, a calendar, and a variety of
other articles. Everything went into the receptacle just as it came
to hand, since his one object was to obviate any possible delay in
the morning’s departure. Meanwhile the reluctant Selifan slowly, very
slowly, left the room, as slowly descended the staircase (on each
separate step of which he left a muddy foot-print), and, finally, halted
to scratch his head. What that scratching may have meant no one could
say; for, with the Russian populace, such a scratching may mean any one
of a hundred things.
CHAPTER 11
Nevertheless events did not turn out as Chichikov had intended they
should. In the first place, he overslept himself. That was check number
one. In the second place, on his rising and inquiring whether the
britchka had been harnessed and everything got ready, he was informed
that neither of those two things had been done. That was check number
two. Beside himself with rage, he prepared to give Selifan the wigging
of his life, and, meanwhile, waited impatiently to hear what the
delinquent had got to say in his defence. It goes without saying that
when Selifan made his appearance in the doorway he had only the usual
excuses to offer--the sort of excuses usually offered by servants when a
hasty departure has become imperatively necessary.
“Paul Ivanovitch,” he said, “the horses require shoeing.”
“Blockhead!” exclaimed Chichikov. “Why did you not tell me of that
before, you damned fool? Was there not time enough for them to be shod?”
“Yes, I suppose there was,” agreed Selifan. “Also one of the wheels is
in want of a new tyre, for the roads are so rough that the old tyre is
worn through. Also, the body of the britchka is so rickety that probably
it will not last more than a couple of stages.”
“Rascal!” shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists and approaching Selifan
in such a manner that, fearing to receive a blow, the man backed and
dodged aside. “Do you mean to ruin me, and to break all our bones on the
road, you cursed idiot? For these three weeks past you have been doing
nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come here stammering
and playing the fool! Do you think I keep you just to eat and to drive
yourself about? You must have known of this before? Did you, or did you
not, know it? Answer me at once.”
“Yes, I did know it,” replied Selifan, hanging his head.
“Then why didn’t you tell me about it?”
Selifan had no reply immediately ready, so continued to hang his head
while quietly saying to himself: “See how well I have managed things! I
knew what was the matter, yet I did not say.”
“And now,” continued Chichikov, “go you at once and fetch a blacksmith.
Tell him that everything must be put right within two hours at the most.
Do you hear? If that should not be done, I, I--I will give you the best
flogging that ever you had in your life.” Truly Chichikov was almost
beside himself with fury.
Turning towards the door, as though for the purpose of going and
carrying out his orders, Selifan halted and added:
“That skewbald, barin--you might think it well to sell him, seeing that
he is nothing but a rascal? A horse like that is more of a hindrance
than a help.”
“What? Do you expect me to go NOW to the market-place and sell him?”
“Well, Paul Ivanovitch, he is good for nothing but show, since by nature
he is a most cunning beast. Never in my life have I seen such a horse.”
“Fool! Whenever I may wish to sell him I SHALL sell him. Meanwhile,
don’t you trouble your head about what doesn’t concern you, but go and
fetch a blacksmith, and see that everything is put right within two
hours. Otherwise I will take the very hair off your head, and beat you
till you haven’t a face left. Be off! Hurry!”
Selifan departed, and Chichikov, his ill-humour vented, threw down
upon the floor the poignard which he always took with him as a means of
instilling respect into whomsoever it might concern, and spent the next
quarter of an hour in disputing with a couple of blacksmiths--men who,
as usual, were rascals of the type which, on perceiving that something
is wanted in a hurry, at once multiplies its terms for providing the
same. Indeed, for all Chichikov’s storming and raging as he dubbed
the fellows robbers and extortioners and thieves, he could make no
impression upon the pair, since, true to their character, they declined
to abate their prices, and, even when they had begun their work, spent
upon it, not two hours, but five and a half. Meanwhile he had the
satisfaction of experiencing that delightful time with which all
travellers are familiar--namely, the time during which one sits in a
room where, except for a litter of string, waste paper, and so forth,
everything else has been packed. But to all things there comes an end,
and there arrived also the long-awaited moment when the britchka had
received the luggage, the faulty wheel had been fitted with a new tyre,
the horses had been re-shod, and the predatory blacksmiths had departed
with their gains. “Thank God!” thought Chichikov as the britchka rolled
out of the gates of the inn, and the vehicle began to jolt over the
cobblestones. Yet a feeling which he could not altogether have defined
filled his breast as he gazed upon the houses and the streets and the
garden walls which he might never see again. Presently, on turning a
corner, the britchka was brought to a halt through the fact that along
the street there was filing a seemingly endless funeral procession.
Leaning forward in his britchka, Chichikov asked Petrushka whose
obsequies the procession represented, and was told that they represented
those of the Public Prosecutor. Disagreeably shocked, our hero hastened
to raise the hood of the vehicle, to draw the curtains across the
windows, and to lean back into a corner. While the britchka remained
thus halted Selifan and Petrushka, their caps doffed, sat watching the
progress of the cortege, after they had received strict instructions not
to greet any fellow-servant whom they might recognise. Behind the hearse
walked the whole body of tchinovniks, bare-headed; and though, for a
moment or two, Chichikov feared that some of their number might discern
him in his britchka, he need not have disturbed himself, since their
attention was otherwise engaged. In fact, they were not even exchanging
the small talk customary among members of such processions, but
thinking exclusively of their own affairs, of the advent of the new
Governor-General, and of the probable manner in which he would take up
the reins of administration. Next came a number of carriages, from
the windows of which peered the ladies in mourning toilets. Yet the
movements of their hands and lips made it evident that they were
indulging in animated conversation--probably about the Governor-General,
the balls which he might be expected to give, and their own eternal
fripperies and gewgaws. Lastly came a few empty drozhkis. As soon as the
latter had passed, our hero was able to continue on his way. Throwing
back the hood of the britchka, he said to himself:
“Ah, good friend, you have lived your life, and now it is over! In the
newspapers they will say of you that you died regretted not only by
your subordinates, but also by humanity at large, as well as that, a
respected citizen, a kind father, and a husband beyond reproach, you
went to your grave amid the tears of your widow and orphans. Yet, should
those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance which
justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back upon the
fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows!”
With that Chichikov bid Selifan quicken his pace, and concluded: “After
all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they say that
to meet a funeral is lucky.”
Presently the britchka turned into some less frequented streets, lines
of wooden fencing of the kind which mark the outskirts of a town began
to file by, the cobblestones came to an end, the macadam of the highroad
succeeded to them, and once more there began on either side of the
turnpike a procession of verst stones, road menders, and grey villages;
inns with samovars and peasant women and landlords who came running out
of yards with seivefuls of oats; pedestrians in worn shoes which, it
might be, had covered eight hundred versts; little towns, bright with
booths for the sale of flour in barrels, boots, small loaves, and other
trifles; heaps of slag; much repaired bridges; expanses of field to
right and to left; stout landowners; a mounted soldier bearing a green,
iron-clamped box inscribed: “The --th Battery of Artillery”; long strips
of freshly-tilled earth which gleamed green, yellow, and black on the
face of the countryside. With it mingled long-drawn singing, glimpses of
elm-tops amid mist, the far-off notes of bells, endless clouds of rocks,
and the illimitable line of the horizon.
Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still
see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you
the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature which
a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities
with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque
trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and
roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony
immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and
ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear,
silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open; your
towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and
nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what
invincible force draws me to you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and
re-echo in my ears the sad song which hovers throughout the length and
the breadth of your borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does
it wail and sob and catch at my heart? What say the notes which
thus painfully caress and embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their
lamentations, around me? What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is
the hidden bond which subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you
do? Why does everything within you turn upon me eyes full of
yearning? Even at this moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly
contemplating your vastness, a menacing cloud, charged with gathering
rain, seems to overshadow my head. What is it that your boundless
expanses presage? Do they not presage that one day there will arise in
you ideas as boundless as yourself? Do they not presage that one day you
too will know no limits? Do they not presage that one day, when again
you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life
the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and
reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and
flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange,
brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of
mine!
“Stop, stop, you fool!” shouted Chichikov to Selifan; and even as he
spoke a troika, bound on Government business, came chattering by, and
disappeared in a cloud of dust. To Chichikov’s curses at Selifan for not
having drawn out of the way with more alacrity a rural constable with
moustaches of the length of an arshin added his quota.
What a curious and attractive, yet also what an unreal, fascination
the term “highway” connotes! And how interesting for its own sake is
a highway! Should the day be a fine one (though chilly) in mellowing
autumn, press closer your travelling cloak, and draw down your cap over
your ears, and snuggle cosily, comfortably into a corner of the britchka
before a last shiver shall course through your limbs, and the ensuing
warmth shall put to flight the autumnal cold and damp. As the horses
gallop on their way, how delightfully will drowsiness come stealing upon
you, and make your eyelids droop! For a while, through your somnolence,
you will continue to hear the hard breathing of the team and the
rumbling of the wheels; but at length, sinking back into your corner,
you will relapse into the stage of snoring. And when you awake--behold!
you will find that five stages have slipped away, and that the moon is
shining, and that you have reached a strange town of churches and old
wooden cupolas and blackened spires and white, half-timbered houses! And
as the moonlight glints hither and thither, almost you will believe that
the walls and the streets and the pavements of the place are spread with
sheets--sheets shot with coal-black shadows which make the wooden roofs
look all the brighter under the slanting beams of the pale luminary.
Nowhere is a soul to be seen, for every one is plunged in slumber. Yet
no. In a solitary window a light is flickering where some good burgher
is mending his boots, or a baker drawing a batch of dough. O night
and powers of heaven, how perfect is the blackness of your infinite
vault--how lofty, how remote its inaccessible depths where it lies
spread in an intangible, yet audible, silence! Freshly does the lulling
breath of night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into
snoring oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in his corner as
he begins to be conscious of your weight. Then again you awake, but
this time to find yourself confronted with only fields and steppes.
Everywhere in the ascendant is the desolation of space. But suddenly the
ciphers on a verst stone leap to the eye! Morning is rising, and on the
chill, gradually paling line of the horizon you can see gleaming a faint
gold streak. The wind freshens and grows keener, and you snuggle closer
in your cloak; yet how glorious is that freshness, and how marvellous
the sleep in which once again you become enfolded! A jolt!--and for the
last time you return to consciousness. By now the sun is high in the
heavens, and you hear a voice cry “gently, gently!” as a farm waggon
issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an ample dike, stretches
a sheet of water which glistens like copper in the sunlight. Beyond, on
the side of a slope, lie some scattered peasants’ huts, a manor house,
and, flanking the latter, a village church with its cross flashing
like a star. There also comes wafted to your ear the sound of peasants’
laughter, while in your inner man you are becoming conscious of an
appetite which is not to be withstood.
Oh long-drawn highway, how excellent you are! How often have I in
weariness and despondency set forth upon your length, and found in you
salvation and rest! How often, as I followed your leading, have I been
visited with wonderful thoughts and poetic dreams and curious, wild
impressions!
At this moment our friend Chichikov also was experiencing visions of a
not wholly prosaic nature. Let us peep into his soul and share them.
At first he remained unconscious of anything whatsoever, for he was too
much engaged in making sure that he was really clear of the town; but
as soon as he saw that it had completely disappeared, with its mills and
factories and other urban appurtenances, and that even the steeples
of the white stone churches had sunk below the horizon, he turned his
attention to the road, and the town of N. vanished from his thoughts as
completely as though he had not seen it since childhood. Again, in its
turn, the road ceased to interest him, and he began to close his eyes
and to loll his head against the cushions. Of this let the author
take advantage, in order to speak at length concerning his hero; since
hitherto he (the author) has been prevented from so doing by Nozdrev and
balls and ladies and local intrigues--by those thousand trifles which
seem trifles only when they are introduced into a book, but which, in
life, figure as affairs of importance. Let us lay them aside, and betake
ourselves to business.
Whether the character whom I have selected for my hero has pleased my
readers is, of course, exceedingly doubtful. At all events the ladies
will have failed to approve him for the fair sex demands in a hero
perfection, and, should there be the least mental or physical stain
on him--well, woe betide! Yes, no matter how profoundly the author may
probe that hero’s soul, no matter how clearly he may portray his figure
as in a mirror, he will be given no credit for the achievement. Indeed,
Chichikov’s very stoutness and plenitude of years may have militated
against him, for never is a hero pardoned for the former, and the
majority of ladies will, in such case, turn away, and mutter to
themselves: “Phew! What a beast!” Yes, the author is well aware of this.
Yet, though he could not, to save his life, take a person of virtue for
his principal character, it may be that this story contains themes
never before selected, and that in it there projects the whole boundless
wealth of Russian psychology; that it portrays, as well as Chichikov,
the peasant who is gifted with the virtues which God has sent him, and
the marvellous maiden of Russia who has not her like in all the world
for her beautiful feminine spirituality, the roots of which lie buried
in noble aspirations and boundless self-denial. In fact, compared with
these types, the virtuous of other races seem lifeless, as does an
inanimate volume when compared with the living word. Yes, each time that
there arises in Russia a movement of thought, it becomes clear that the
movement sinks deep into the Slavonic nature where it would but have
skimmed the surface of other nations.--But why am I talking like this?
Whither am I tending? It is indeed shameful that an author who long
ago reached man’s estate, and was brought up to a course of severe
introspection and sober, solitary self-enlightenment, should give way to
such jejune wandering from the point. To everything its proper time
and place and turn. As I was saying, it does not lie in me to take a
virtuous character for my hero: and I will tell you why. It is because
it is high time that a rest were given to the “poor, but virtuous”
individual; it is because the phrase “a man of worth” has grown into a
by-word; it is because the “man of worth” has become converted into a
horse, and there is not a writer but rides him and flogs him, in and out
of season; it is because the “man of worth” has been starved until he
has not a shred of his virtue left, and all that remains of his body is
but the ribs and the hide; it is because the “man of worth” is for ever
being smuggled upon the scene; it is because the “man of worth” has at
length forfeited every one’s respect. For these reasons do I reaffirm
that it is high time to yoke a rascal to the shafts. Let us yoke that
rascal.
Our hero’s beginnings were both modest and obscure. True, his parents
were dvoriane, but he in no way resembled them. At all events, a short,
squab female relative who was present at his birth exclaimed as she
lifted up the baby: “He is altogether different from what I had expected
him to be. He ought to have taken after his maternal grandmother,
whereas he has been born, as the proverb has it, ‘like not father nor
mother, but like a chance passer-by.’” Thus from the first life
regarded the little Chichikov with sour distaste, and as through a dim,
frost-encrusted window. A tiny room with diminutive casements which were
never opened, summer or winter; an invalid father in a dressing-gown
lined with lambskin, and with an ailing foot swathed in bandages--a man
who was continually drawing deep breaths, and walking up and down the
room, and spitting into a sandbox; a period of perpetually sitting on
a bench with pen in hand and ink on lips and fingers; a period of being
eternally confronted with the copy-book maxim, “Never tell a lie, but
obey your superiors, and cherish virtue in your heart;” an everlasting
scraping and shuffling of slippers up and down the room; a period of
continually hearing a well-known, strident voice exclaim: “So you have
been playing the fool again!” at times when the child, weary of the
mortal monotony of his task, had added a superfluous embellishment
to his copy; a period of experiencing the ever-familiar, but
ever-unpleasant, sensation which ensued upon those words as the boy’s
ear was painfully twisted between two long fingers bent backwards at
the tips--such is the miserable picture of that youth of which, in later
life, Chichikov preserved but the faintest of memories! But in this
world everything is liable to swift and sudden change; and, one day in
early spring, when the rivers had melted, the father set forth with
his little son in a teliezshka [37] drawn by a sorrel steed of the kind
known to horsy folk as a soroka, and having as coachman the diminutive
hunchback who, father of the only serf family belonging to the elder
Chichikov, served as general factotum in the Chichikov establishment.
For a day and a half the soroka conveyed them on their way; during which
time they spent the night at a roadside inn, crossed a river, dined off
cold pie and roast mutton, and eventually arrived at the county town. To
the lad the streets presented a spectacle of unwonted brilliancy, and
he gaped with amazement. Turning into a side alley wherein the mire
necessitated both the most strenuous exertions on the soroka’s part and
the most vigorous castigation on the part of the driver and the barin,
the conveyance eventually reached the gates of a courtyard which,
combined with a small fruit garden containing various bushes, a couple
of apple-trees in blossom, and a mean, dirty little shed, constituted
the premises attached to an antiquated-looking villa. Here there lived
a relative of the Chichikovs, a wizened old lady who went to market in
person and dried her stockings at the samovar. On seeing the boy, she
patted his cheek and expressed satisfaction at his physique; whereupon
the fact became disclosed that here he was to abide for a while, for
the purpose of attending a local school. After a night’s rest his father
prepared to betake himself homeward again; but no tears marked the
parting between him and his son, he merely gave the lad a copper or two
and (a far more important thing) the following injunctions. “See here,
my boy. Do your lessons well, do not idle or play the fool, and above
all things, see that you please your teachers. So long as you observe
these rules you will make progress, and surpass your fellows, even if
God shall have denied you brains, and you should fail in your studies.
Also, do not consort overmuch with your comrades, for they will do you
no good; but, should you do so, then make friends with the richer of
them, since one day they may be useful to you. Also, never entertain or
treat any one, but see that every one entertains and treats YOU. Lastly,
and above all else, keep and save your every kopeck. To save money is
the most important thing in life. Always a friend or a comrade may fail
you, and be the first to desert you in a time of adversity; but never
will a KOPECK fail you, whatever may be your plight. Nothing in the
world cannot be done, cannot be attained, with the aid of money.” These
injunctions given, the father embraced his son, and set forth on his
return; and though the son never again beheld his parent, the latter’s
words and precepts sank deep into the little Chichikov’s soul.
The next day young Pavlushka made his first attendance at school. But no
special aptitude in any branch of learning did he display. Rather, his
distinguishing characteristics were diligence and neatness. On the other
hand, he developed great intelligence as regards the PRACTICAL aspect
of life. In a trice he divined and comprehended how things ought to
be worked, and, from that time forth, bore himself towards his
school-fellows in such a way that, though they frequently gave him
presents, he not only never returned the compliment, but even on
occasions pocketed the gifts for the mere purpose of selling them again.
Also, boy though he was, he acquired the art of self-denial. Of the
trifle which his father had given him on parting he spent not a kopeck,
but, the same year, actually added to his little store by fashioning
a bullfinch of wax, painting it, and selling the same at a handsome
profit. Next, as time went on, he engaged in other speculations--in
particular, in the scheme of buying up eatables, taking his seat in
class beside boys who had plenty of pocket-money, and, as soon as such
opulent individuals showed signs of failing attention (and, therefore,
of growing appetite), tendering them, from beneath the desk, a roll of
pudding or a piece of gingerbread, and charging according to degree
of appetite and size of portion. He also spent a couple of months in
training a mouse, which he kept confined in a little wooden cage in his
bedroom. At length, when the training had reached the point that, at the
several words of command, the mouse would stand upon its hind legs,
lie down, and get up again, he sold the creature for a respectable sum.
Thus, in time, his gains attained the amount of five roubles; whereupon
he made himself a purse and then started to fill a second receptacle of
the kind. Still more studied was his attitude towards the authorities.
No one could sit more quietly in his place on the bench than he. In the
same connection it may be remarked that his teacher was a man who, above
all things, loved peace and good behaviour, and simply could not
abide clever, witty boys, since he suspected them of laughing at him.
Consequently any lad who had once attracted the master’s attention with
a manifestation of intelligence needed but to shuffle in his place, or
unintentionally to twitch an eyebrow, for the said master at once to
burst into a rage, to turn the supposed offender out of the room, and
to visit him with unmerciful punishment. “Ah, my fine fellow,” he would
say, “I’LL cure you of your impudence and want of respect! I know you
through and through far better than you know yourself, and will take
good care that you have to go down upon your knees and curb your
appetite.” Whereupon the wretched lad would, for no cause of which he
was aware, be forced to wear out his breeches on the floor and go hungry
for days. “Talents and gifts,” the schoolmaster would declare, “are so
much rubbish. I respect only good behaviour, and shall award full marks
to those who conduct themselves properly, even if they fail to learn a
single letter of their alphabet: whereas to those in whom I may perceive
a tendency to jocularity I shall award nothing, even though they should
outdo Solon himself.” For the same reason he had no great love of the
author Krylov, in that the latter says in one of his Fables: “In my
opinion, the more one sings, the better one works;” and often the
pedagogue would relate how, in a former school of his, the silence had
been such that a fly could be heard buzzing on the wing, and for the
space of a whole year not a single pupil sneezed or coughed in class,
and so complete was the absence of all sound that no one could have
told that there was a soul in the place. Of this mentor young Chichikov
speedily appraised the mentality; wherefore he fashioned his behaviour
to correspond with it. Not an eyelid, not an eyebrow, would he stir
during school hours, howsoever many pinches he might receive from
behind; and only when the bell rang would he run to anticipate his
fellows in handing the master the three-cornered cap which that
dignitary customarily sported, and then to be the first to leave the
class-room, and contrive to meet the master not less than two or three
times as the latter walked homeward, in order that, on each occasion,
he might doff his cap. And the scheme proved entirely successful.
Throughout the period of his attendance at school he was held in high
favour, and, on leaving the establishment, received full marks for every
subject, as well as a diploma and a book inscribed (in gilt letters)
“For Exemplary Diligence and the Perfection of Good Conduct.” By this
time he had grown into a fairly good-looking youth of the age when the
chin first calls for a razor; and at about the same period his father
died, leaving behind him, as his estate, four waistcoats completely worn
out, two ancient frockcoats, and a small sum of money. Apparently he had
been skilled only in RECOMMENDING the saving of kopecks--not in ACTUALLY
PRACTISING the art. Upon that Chichikov sold the old house and its
little parcel of land for a thousand roubles, and removed, with his
one serf and the serf’s family, to the capital, where he set about
organising a new establishment and entering the Civil Service.
Simultaneously with his doing so, his old schoolmaster lost (through
stupidity or otherwise) the establishment over which he had hitherto
presided, and in which he had set so much store by silence and good
behaviour. Grief drove him to drink, and when nothing was left, even
for that purpose, he retired--ill, helpless, and starving--into a
broken-down, cheerless hovel. But certain of his former pupils--the same
clever, witty lads whom he had once been wont to accuse of impertinence
and evil conduct generally--heard of his pitiable plight, and collected
for him what money they could, even to the point of selling their own
necessaries. Only Chichikov, when appealed to, pleaded inability, and
compromised with a contribution of a single piatak [38]: which his
old schoolfellows straightway returned him--full in the face, and
accompanied with a shout of “Oh, you skinflint!” As for the poor
schoolmaster, when he heard what his former pupils had done, he buried
his face in his hands, and the tears gushed from his failing eyes as
from those of a helpless infant. “God has brought you but to weep over
my death-bed,” he murmured feebly; and added with a profound sigh, on
hearing of Chichikov’s conduct: “Ah, Pavlushka, how a human being may
become changed! Once you were a good lad, and gave me no trouble; but
now you are become proud indeed!”
Yet let it not be inferred from this that our hero’s character had grown
so blase and hard, or his conscience so blunted, as to preclude his
experiencing a particle of sympathy or compassion. As a matter of fact,
he was capable both of the one and the other, and would have been glad
to assist his old teacher had no great sum been required, or had he not
been called upon to touch the fund which he had decided should remain
intact. In other words, the father’s injunction, “Guard and save every
kopeck,” had become a hard and fast rule of the son’s. Yet the youth had
no particular attachment to money for money’s sake; he was not possessed
with the true instinct for hoarding and niggardliness. Rather, before
his eyes there floated ever a vision of life and its amenities and
advantages--a vision of carriages and an elegantly furnished house and
recherche dinners; and it was in the hope that some day he might attain
these things that he saved every kopeck and, meanwhile, stinted both
himself and others. Whenever a rich man passed him by in a splendid
drozhki drawn by swift and handsomely-caparisoned horses, he would halt
as though deep in thought, and say to himself, like a man awakening
from a long sleep: “That gentleman must have been a financier, he has so
little hair on his brow.” In short, everything connected with wealth and
plenty produced upon him an ineffaceable impression. Even when he left
school he took no holiday, so strong in him was the desire to get to
work and enter the Civil Service. Yet, for all the encomiums contained
in his diploma, he had much ado to procure a nomination to a Government
Department; and only after a long time was a minor post found for him,
at a salary of thirty or forty roubles a year. Nevertheless, wretched
though this appointment was, he determined, by strict attention to
business, to overcome all obstacles, and to win success. And, indeed,
the self-denial, the patience, and the economy which he displayed
were remarkable. From early morn until late at night he would, with
indefatigable zeal of body and mind, remain immersed in his sordid task
of copying official documents--never going home, snatching what sleep he
could on tables in the building, and dining with the watchman on duty.
Yet all the while he contrived to remain clean and neat, to preserve
a cheerful expression of countenance, and even to cultivate a certain
elegance of movement. In passing, it may be remarked that his fellow
tchinovniks were a peculiarly plain, unsightly lot, some of them having
faces like badly baked bread, swollen cheeks, receding chins, and
cracked and blistered upper lips. Indeed, not a man of them was
handsome. Also, their tone of voice always contained a note of
sullenness, as though they had a mind to knock some one on the head; and
by their frequent sacrifices to Bacchus they showed that even yet there
remains in the Slavonic nature a certain element of paganism. Nay, the
Director’s room itself they would invade while still licking their lips,
and since their breath was not over-aromatic, the atmosphere of the room
grew not over-pleasant. Naturally, among such an official staff a man
like Chichikov could not fail to attract attention and remark, since in
everything--in cheerfulness of demeanour, in suavity of voice, and
in complete neglect of the use of strong potions--he was the absolute
antithesis of his companions. Yet his path was not an easy one to tread,
for over him he had the misfortune to have placed in authority a Chief
Clerk who was a graven image of elderly insensibility and inertia.
Always the same, always unapproachable, this functionary could never in
his life have smiled or asked civilly after an acquaintance’s health.
Nor had any one ever seen him a whit different in the street or at his
own home from what he was in the office, or showing the least interest
in anything whatever, or getting drunk and relapsing into jollity in
his cups, or indulging in that species of wild gaiety which, when
intoxicated, even a burglar affects. No, not a particle of this was
there in him. Nor, for that matter, was there in him a particle of
anything at all, whether good or bad: which complete negativeness
of character produced rather a strange effect. In the same way, his
wizened, marble-like features reminded one of nothing in particular, so
primly proportioned were they. Only the numerous pockmarks and dimples
with which they were pitted placed him among the number of those over
whose faces, to quote the popular saying, “The Devil has walked by night
to grind peas.” In short, it would seem that no human agency could have
approached such a man and gained his goodwill. Yet Chichikov made the
effort. As a first step, he took to consulting the other’s convenience
in all manner of insignificant trifles--to cleaning his pens carefully,
and, when they had been prepared exactly to the Chief Clerk’s liking,
laying them ready at his elbow; to dusting and sweeping from his table
all superfluous sand and tobacco ash; to procuring a new mat for his
inkstand; to looking for his hat--the meanest-looking hat that ever
the world beheld--and having it ready for him at the exact moment when
business came to an end; to brushing his back if it happened to become
smeared with whitewash from a wall. Yet all this passed as unnoticed
as though it had never been done. Finally, Chichikov sniffed into his
superior’s family and domestic life, and learnt that he possessed a
grown-up daughter on whose face also there had taken place a nocturnal,
diabolical grinding of peas. HERE was a quarter whence a fresh attack
might be delivered! After ascertaining what church the daughter attended
on Sundays, our hero took to contriving to meet her in a neat suit and a
well-starched dickey: and soon the scheme began to work. The surly Chief
Clerk wavered for a while; then ended by inviting Chichikov to tea. Nor
could any man in the office have told you how it came about that before
long Chichikov had removed to the Chief Clerk’s house, and become a
person necessary--indeed indispensable--to the household, seeing that he
bought the flour and the sugar, treated the daughter as his betrothed,
called the Chief Clerk “Papenka,” and occasionally kissed “Papenka’s”
hand. In fact, every one at the office supposed that, at the end of
February (i.e. before the beginning of Lent) there would take place
a wedding. Nay, the surly father even began to agitate with the
authorities on Chichikov’s behalf, and so enabled our hero, on a vacancy
occurring, to attain the stool of a Chief Clerk. Apparently this marked
the consummation of Chichikov’s relations with his host, for he hastened
stealthily to pack his trunk and, the next day, figured in a fresh
lodging. Also, he ceased to call the Chief Clerk “Papenka,” or to kiss
his hand; and the matter of the wedding came to as abrupt a termination
as though it had never been mooted. Yet also he never failed to press
his late host’s hand, whenever he met him, and to invite him to tea;
while, on the other hand, for all his immobility and dry indifference,
the Chief Clerk never failed to shake his head with a muttered, “Ah, my
fine fellow, you have grown too proud, you have grown too proud.”
The foregoing constituted the most difficult step that our hero had to
negotiate. Thereafter things came with greater ease and swifter
success. Everywhere he attracted notice, for he developed within
himself everything necessary for this world--namely, charm of manner
and bearing, and great diligence in business matters. Armed with these
resources, he next obtained promotion to what is known as “a fat post,”
and used it to the best advantage; and even though, at that period,
strict inquiry had begun to be made into the whole subject of bribes,
such inquiry failed to alarm him--nay, he actually turned it to account
and thereby manifested the Russian resourcefulness which never fails to
attain its zenith where extortion is concerned. His method of working
was the following. As soon as a petitioner or a suitor put his hand into
his pocket, to extract thence the necessary letters of recommendation
for signature, Chichikov would smilingly exclaim as he detained his
interlocutor’s hand: “No, no! Surely you do not think that I--? But no,
no! It is our duty, it is our obligation, and we do not require rewards
for doing our work properly. So far as YOUR matter is concerned, you may
rest easy. Everything shall be carried through to-morrow. But may I
have your address? There is no need to trouble yourself, seeing that the
documents can easily be brought to you at your residence.” Upon which
the delighted suitor would return home in raptures, thinking: “Here, at
long last, is the sort of man so badly needed. A man of that kind is
a jewel beyond price.” Yet for a day, for two days--nay, even for
three--the suitor would wait in vain so far as any messengers with
documents were concerned. Then he would repair to the office--to find
that his business had not so much as been entered upon! Lastly, he would
confront the “jewel beyond price.” “Oh, pardon me, pardon me!” Chichikov
would exclaim in the politest of tones as he seized and grasped the
visitor’s hands. “The truth is that we have SUCH a quantity of business
on hand! But the matter shall be put through to-morrow, and in the
meanwhile I am most sorry about it.” And with this would go the most
fascinating of gestures. Yet neither on the morrow, nor on the day
following, nor on the third would documents arrive at the suitor’s
abode. Upon that he would take thought as to whether something more
ought not to have been done; and, sure enough, on his making inquiry,
he would be informed that “something will have to be given to the
copyists.” “Well, there can be no harm in that,” he would reply. “As a
matter of fact, I have ready a tchetvertak [39] or two.” “Oh, no, no,”
the answer would come. “Not a tchetvertak per copyist, but a rouble,
is the fee.” “What? A rouble per copyist?” “Certainly. What is there to
grumble at in that? Of the money the copyists will receive a tchetvertak
apiece, and the rest will go to the Government.” Upon that the
disillusioned suitor would fly out upon the new order of things brought
about by the inquiry into illicit fees, and curse both the tchinovniks
and their uppish, insolent behaviour. “Once upon a time,” would the
suitor lament, “one DID know what to do. Once one had tipped the
Director a bank-note, one’s affair was, so to speak, in the hat. But
now one has to pay a rouble per copyist after waiting a week because
otherwise it was impossible to guess how the wind might set! The devil
fly away with all ‘disinterested’ and ‘trustworthy’ tchinovniks!” And
certainly the aggrieved suitor had reason to grumble, seeing that,
now that bribe-takers had ceased to exist, and Directors had uniformly
become men of honour and integrity, secretaries and clerks ought not
with impunity to have continued their thievish ways. In time there
opened out to Chichikov a still wider field, for a Commission was
appointed to supervise the erection of a Government building, and, on
his being nominated to that body, he proved himself one of its most
active members. The Commission got to work without delay, but for a
space of six years had some trouble with the building in question.
Either the climate hindered operations or the materials used were of the
kind which prevents official edifices from ever rising higher than the
basement. But, meanwhile, OTHER quarters of the town saw arise, for each
member of the Commission, a handsome house of the NON-official style of
architecture. Clearly the foundation afforded by the soil of those parts
was better than that where the Government building was still engaged
in hanging fire! Likewise the members of the Commission began to look
exceedingly prosperous, and to blossom out into family life; and, for
the first time in his existence, even Chichikov also departed from the
iron laws of his self-imposed restraint and inexorable self-denial, and
so far mitigated his heretofore asceticism as to show himself a man not
averse to those amenities which, during his youth, he had been capable
of renouncing. That is to say, certain superfluities began to make their
appearance in his establishment. He engaged a good cook, took to wearing
linen shirts, bought for himself cloth of a pattern worn by no one else
in the province, figured in checks shot with the brightest of reds and
browns, fitted himself out with two splendid horses (which he drove with
a single pair of reins, added to a ring attachment for the trace horse),
developed a habit of washing with a sponge dipped in eau-de-Cologne, and
invested in soaps of the most expensive quality, in order to communicate
to his skin a more elegant polish.
But suddenly there appeared upon the scene a new Director--a military
man, and a martinet as regarded his hostility to bribe-takers and
anything which might be called irregular. On the very day after his
arrival he struck fear into every breast by calling for accounts,
discovering hosts of deficits and missing sums, and directing his
attention to the aforesaid fine houses of civilian architecture. Upon
that there ensued a complete reshuffling. Tchinovniks were retired
wholesale, and the houses were sequestrated to the Government, or else
converted into various pious institutions and schools for soldiers’
children. Thus the whole fabric, and especially Chichikov, came crashing
to the ground. Particularly did our hero’s agreeable face displease the
new Director. Why that was so it is impossible to say, but frequently,
in cases of the kind, no reason exists. However, the Director conceived
a mortal dislike to him, and also extended that enmity to the whole of
Chichikov’s colleagues. But inasmuch as the said Director was a military
man, he was not fully acquainted with the myriad subtleties of the
civilian mind; wherefore it was not long before, by dint of maintaining
a discreet exterior, added to a faculty for humouring all and sundry,
a fresh gang of tchinovniks succeeded in restoring him to mildness, and
the General found himself in the hands of greater thieves than before,
but thieves whom he did not even suspect, seeing that he believed
himself to have selected men fit and proper, and even ventured to
boast of possessing a keen eye for talent. In a trice the tchinovniks
concerned appraised his spirit and character; with the result that the
entire sphere over which he ruled became an agency for the detection of
irregularities. Everywhere, and in every case, were those irregularities
pursued as a fisherman pursues a fat sturgeon with a gaff; and to such
an extent did the sport prove successful that almost in no time each
participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several
thousand roubles of capital. Upon that a large number of the former band
of tchinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude, and were
allowed to re-enter the Service; but not by hook or by crook could
Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited thereto by sundry
items of paper currency, the General’s first secretary and principal
bear leader did all he could on our hero’s behalf. It seemed that the
General was the kind of man who, though easily led by the nose (provided
it was done without his knowledge) no sooner got an idea into his head
than it stuck there like a nail, and could not possibly be extracted;
and all that the wily secretary succeeded in procuring was the tearing
up of a certain dirty fragment of paper--even that being effected only
by an appeal to the General’s compassion, on the score of the unhappy
fate which, otherwise, would befall Chichikov’s wife and children (who,
luckily, had no existence in fact).
“Well,” said Chichikov to himself, “I have done my best, and now
everything has failed. Lamenting my misfortune won’t help me, but only
action.” And with that he decided to begin his career anew, and once
more to arm himself with the weapons of patience and self-denial. The
better to effect this, he had, of course to remove to another town. Yet
somehow, for a while, things miscarried. More than once he found himself
forced to exchange one post for another, and at the briefest of notice;
and all of them were posts of the meanest, the most wretched, order.
Yet, being a man of the utmost nicety of feeling, the fact that he found
himself rubbing shoulders with anything but nice companions did not
prevent him from preserving intact his innate love of what was decent
and seemly, or from cherishing the instinct which led him to hanker
after office fittings of lacquered wood, with neatness and orderliness
everywhere. Nor did he at any time permit a foul word to creep into
his speech, and would feel hurt even if in the speech of others there
occurred a scornful reference to anything which pertained to rank and
dignity. Also, the reader will be pleased to know that our hero changed
his linen every other day, and in summer, when the weather was very
hot, EVERY day, seeing that the very faintest suspicion of an unpleasant
odour offended his fastidiousness. For the same reason it was his
custom, before being valeted by Petrushka, always to plug his nostrils
with a couple of cloves. In short, there were many occasions when his
nerves suffered rackings as cruel as a young girl’s, and so helped to
increase his disgust at having once more to associate with men who set
no store by the decencies of life. Yet, though he braced himself to the
task, this period of adversity told upon his health, and he even grew a
trifle shabby. More than once, on happening to catch sight of himself
in the mirror, he could not forbear exclaiming: “Holy Mother of God,
but what a nasty-looking brute I have become!” and for a long while
afterwards could not with anything like sang-froid contemplate his
reflection. Yet throughout he bore up stoutly and patiently--and ended
by being transferred to the Customs Department. It may be said that the
department had long constituted the secret goal of his ambition, for
he had noted the foreign elegancies with which its officials always
contrived to provide themselves, and had also observed that invariably
they were able to send presents of china and cambric to their sisters
and aunts--well, to their lady friends generally. Yes, more than once
he had said to himself with a sigh: “THAT is the department to which I
ought to belong, for, given a town near the frontier, and a sensible set
of colleagues, I might be able to fit myself out with excellent linen
shirts.” Also, it may be said that most frequently of all had his
thoughts turned towards a certain quality of French soap which imparted
a peculiar whiteness to the skin and a peerless freshness to the cheeks.
Its name is known to God alone, but at least it was to be procured only
in the immediate neighbourhood of the frontier. So, as I say, Chichikov
had long felt a leaning towards the Customs, but for a time had been
restrained from applying for the same by the various current advantages
of the Building Commission; since rightly he had adjudged the latter to
constitute a bird in the hand, and the former to constitute only a bird
in the bush. But now he decided that, come what might, into the Customs
he must make his way. And that way he made, and then applied himself
to his new duties with a zeal born of the fact that he realised that
fortune had specially marked him out for a Customs officer. Indeed,
such activity, perspicuity, and ubiquity as his had never been seen or
thought of. Within four weeks at the most he had so thoroughly got his
hand in that he was conversant with Customs procedure in every detail.
Not only could he weigh and measure, but also he could divine from
an invoice how many arshins of cloth or other material a given piece
contained, and then, taking a roll of the latter in his hand, could
specify at once the number of pounds at which it would tip the scale. As
for searchings, well, even his colleagues had to admit that he possessed
the nose of a veritable bloodhound, and that it was impossible not
to marvel at the patience wherewith he would try every button of the
suspected person, yet preserve, throughout, a deadly politeness and an
icy sang-froid which surpass belief. And while the searched were raging,
and foaming at the mouth, and feeling that they would give worlds to
alter his smiling exterior with a good, resounding slap, he would
move not a muscle of his face, nor abate by a jot the urbanity of his
demeanour, as he murmured, “Do you mind so far incommoding yourself as
to stand up?” or “Pray step into the next room, madam, where the wife
of one of our staff will attend you,” or “Pray allow me to slip this
penknife of mine into the lining of your coat” (after which he would
extract thence shawls and towels with as much nonchalance as he
would have done from his own travelling-trunk). Even his superiors
acknowledged him to be a devil at the job, rather than a human being, so
perfect was his instinct for looking into cart-wheels, carriage-poles,
horses’ ears, and places whither an author ought not to penetrate even
in thought--places whither only a Customs official is permitted to go.
The result was that the wretched traveller who had just crossed the
frontier would, within a few minutes, become wholly at sea, and, wiping
away the perspiration, and breaking out into body flushes, would be
reduced to crossing himself and muttering, “Well, well, well!” In fact,
such a traveller would feel in the position of a schoolboy who, having
been summoned to the presence of the headmaster for the ostensible
purpose of being given an order, has found that he receives, instead, a
sound flogging. In short, for some time Chichikov made it impossible
for smugglers to earn a living. In particular, he reduced Polish
Jewry almost to despair, so invincible, so almost unnatural, was the
rectitude, the incorruptibility which led him to refrain from converting
himself into a small capitalist with the aid of confiscated goods and
articles which, “to save excessive clerical labour,” had failed to be
handed over to the Government. Also, without saying it goes that
such phenomenally zealous and disinterested service attracted general
astonishment, and, eventually, the notice of the authorities; whereupon
he received promotion, and followed that up by mooting a scheme for
the infallible detection of contrabandists, provided that he could be
furnished with the necessary authority for carrying out the same. At
once such authority was accorded him, as also unlimited power to conduct
every species of search and investigation. And that was all he
wanted. It happened that previously there had been formed a well-found
association for smuggling on regular, carefully prepared lines, and
that this daring scheme seemed to promise profit to the extent of
some millions of money: yet, though he had long had knowledge of it,
Chichikov had said to the association’s emissaries, when sent to buy him
over, “The time is not yet.” But now that he had got all the reins into
his hands, he sent word of the fact to the gang, and with it the remark,
“The time is NOW.” Nor was he wrong in his calculations, for, within
the space of a year, he had acquired what he could not have made during
twenty years of non-fraudulent service. With similar sagacity he had,
during his early days in the department, declined altogether to enter
into relations with the association, for the reason that he had then
been a mere cipher, and would have come in for nothing large in the way
of takings; but now--well, now it was another matter altogether, and
he could dictate what terms he liked. Moreover, that the affair might
progress the more smoothly, he suborned a fellow tchinovnik of the type
which, in spite of grey hairs, stands powerless against temptation;
and, the contract concluded, the association duly proceeded to business.
Certainly business began brilliantly. But probably most of my readers
are familiar with the oft-repeated story of the passage of Spanish sheep
across the frontier in double fleeces which carried between their outer
layers and their inner enough lace of Brabant to sell to the tune of
millions of roubles; wherefore I will not recount the story again beyond
saying that those journeys took place just when Chichikov had become
head of the Customs, and that, had he not a hand in the enterprise, not
all the Jews in the world could have brought it to success. By the time
that three or four of these ovine invasions had taken place, Chichikov
and his accomplice had come to be the possessors of four hundred
thousand roubles apiece; while some even aver that the former’s gains
totalled half a million, owing to the greater industry which he had
displayed in the matter. Nor can any one but God say to what a figure
the fortunes of the pair might not eventually have attained, had not an
awkward contretemps cut right across their arrangements. That is to
say, for some reason or another the devil so far deprived these
tchinovnik-conspirators of sense as to make them come to words with
one another, and then to engage in a quarrel. Beginning with a heated
argument, this quarrel reached the point of Chichikov--who was,
possibly, a trifle tipsy--calling his colleague a priest’s son; and
though that description of the person so addressed was perfectly
accurate, he chose to take offence, and to answer Chichikov with the
words (loudly and incisively uttered), “It is YOU who have a priest for
your father,” and to add to that (the more to incense his companion),
“Yes, mark you! THAT is how it is.” Yet, though he had thus turned the
tables upon Chichikov with a tu quoque, and then capped that exploit
with the words last quoted, the offended tchinovnik could not remain
satisfied, but went on to send in an anonymous document to the
authorities. On the other hand, some aver that it was over a woman that
the pair fell out--over a woman who, to quote the phrase then current
among the staff of the Customs Department, was “as fresh and as strong
as the pulp of a turnip,” and that night-birds were hired to assault our
hero in a dark alley, and that the scheme miscarried, and that in any
case both Chichikov and his friend had been deceived, seeing that the
person to whom the lady had really accorded her favours was a certain
staff-captain named Shamsharev. However, only God knows the truth of the
matter. Let the inquisitive reader ferret it out for himself. The fact
remains that a complete exposure of the dealings with the contrabandists
followed, and that the two tchinovniks were put to the question,
deprived of their property, and made to formulate in writing all that
they had done. Against this thunderbolt of fortune the State Councillor
could make no headway, and in some retired spot or another sank into
oblivion; but Chichikov put a brave face upon the matter, for, in
spite of the authorities’ best efforts to smell out his gains, he had
contrived to conceal a portion of them, and also resorted to every
subtle trick of intellect which could possibly be employed by an
experienced man of the world who has a wide knowledge of his fellows.
Nothing which could be effected by pleasantness of demeanour, by moving
oratory, by clouds of flattery, and by the occasional insertion of
a coin into a palm did he leave undone; with the result that he was
retired with less ignominy than was his companion, and escaped actual
trial on a criminal charge. Yet he issued stripped of all his capital,
stripped of his imported effects, stripped of everything. That is to
say, all that remained to him consisted of ten thousand roubles which he
had stored against a rainy day, two dozen linen shirts, a small britchka
of the type used by bachelors, and two serving-men named Selifan and
Petrushka. Yes, and an impulse of kindness moved the tchinovniks of the
Customs also to set aside for him a few cakes of the soap which he had
found so excellent for the freshness of the cheeks. Thus once more our
hero found himself stranded. And what an accumulation of misfortunes had
descended upon his head!--though, true, he termed them “suffering in the
Service in the cause of Truth.” Certainly one would have thought that,
after these buffetings and trials and changes of fortune--after this
taste of the sorrows of life--he and his precious ten thousand roubles
would have withdrawn to some peaceful corner in a provincial town,
where, clad in a stuff dressing-gown, he could have sat and listened to
the peasants quarrelling on festival days, or (for the sake of a breath
of fresh air) have gone in person to the poulterer’s to finger chickens
for soup, and so have spent a quiet, but not wholly useless, existence;
but nothing of the kind took place, and therein we must do justice to
the strength of his character. In other words, although he had undergone
what, to the majority of men, would have meant ruin and discouragement
and a shattering of ideals, he still preserved his energy. True,
downcast and angry, and full of resentment against the world in general,
he felt furious with the injustice of fate, and dissatisfied with
the dealings of men; yet he could not forbear courting additional
experiences. In short, the patience which he displayed was such as to
make the wooden persistency of the German--a persistency merely due to
the slow, lethargic circulation of the Teuton’s blood--seem nothing at
all, seeing that by nature Chichikov’s blood flowed strongly, and
that he had to employ much force of will to curb within himself those
elements which longed to burst forth and revel in freedom. He thought
things over, and, as he did so, a certain spice of reason appeared in
his reflections.
“How have I come to be what I am?” he said to himself. “Why has
misfortune overtaken me in this way? Never have I wronged a poor person,
or robbed a widow, or turned any one out of doors: I have always been
careful only to take advantage of those who possess more than their
share. Moreover, I have never gleaned anywhere but where every one else
was gleaning; and, had I not done so, others would have gleaned in my
place. Why, then, should those others be prospering, and I be sunk as
low as a worm? What am I? What am I good for? How can I, in future, hope
to look any honest father of a family in the face? How shall I escape
being tortured with the thought that I am cumbering the ground? What,
in the years to come, will my children say, save that ‘our father was a
brute, for he left us nothing to live upon?’”
Here I may remark that we have seen how much thought Chichikov devoted
to his future descendants. Indeed, had not there been constantly
recurring to his mind the insistent question, “What will my children
say?” he might not have plunged into the affair so deeply. Nevertheless,
like a wary cat which glances hither and thither to see whether its
mistress be not coming before it can make off with whatsoever first
falls to its paw (butter, fat, lard, a duck, or anything else), so our
future founder of a family continued, though weeping and bewailing
his lot, to let not a single detail escape his eye. That is to say,
he retained his wits ever in a state of activity, and kept his brain
constantly working. All that he required was a plan. Once more he pulled
himself together, once more he embarked upon a life of toil, once more
he stinted himself in everything, once more he left clean and decent
surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In other words, until
something better should turn up, he embraced the calling of an ordinary
attorney--a calling which, not then possessed of a civic status, was
jostled on very side, enjoyed little respect at the hands of the minor
legal fry (or, indeed, at its own), and perforce met with universal
slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity compelled Chichikov to face
these things. Among commissions entrusted to him was that of placing in
the hands of the Public Trustee several hundred peasants who belonged
to a ruined estate. The estate had reached its parlous condition through
cattle disease, through rascally bailiffs, through failures of the
harvest, through such epidemic diseases that had killed off the best
workmen, and, last, but not least, through the senseless conduct of the
owner himself, who had furnished a house in Moscow in the latest style,
and then squandered his every kopeck, so that nothing was left for
his further maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the
remains--including the peasants--of the estate. In those days mortgage
to the Treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as
attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to “entertain” every
official concerned (we know that, unless that be previously done, unless
a whole bottle of madeira first be emptied down each clerical throat,
not the smallest legal affair can be carried through), and to explain,
for the barring of future attachments, that half of the peasants were
dead.
“And are they entered on the revision lists?” asked the secretary.
“Yes,” replied Chichikov. “Then what are you boggling at?” continued the
Secretary. “Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time grow
up to take the first one’s place.” Upon that there dawned on our hero
one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human brain. “What
a simpleton I am!” he thought to himself. “Here am I looking about for
my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked into my belt. Why,
were I myself to buy up a few souls which are dead--to buy them before
a new revision list shall have been made, the Council of Public Trust
might pay me two hundred roubles apiece for them, and I might find
myself with, say, a capital of two hundred thousand roubles! The present
moment is particularly propitious, since in various parts of the country
there has been an epidemic, and, glory be to God, a large number of
souls have died of it. Nowadays landowners have taken to card-playing
and junketting and wasting their money, or to joining the Civil Service
in St. Petersburg; consequently their estates are going to rack and
ruin, and being managed in any sort of fashion, and succeeding in paying
their dues with greater difficulty each year. That being so, not a man
of the lot but would gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than
continue paying the poll-tax; and in this fashion I might make--well,
not a few kopecks. Of course there are difficulties, and, to avoid
creating a scandal, I should need to employ plenty of finesse; but man
was given his brain to USE, not to neglect. One good point about the
scheme is that it will seem so improbable that in case of an accident,
no one in the world will believe in it. True, it is illegal to buy or
mortgage peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying
them only for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the
provinces of Taurida and Kherson almost for nothing, provided that one
undertakes subsequently to colonise it; so to Kherson I will ‘transfer’
them, and long may they live there! And the removal of my dead souls
shall be carried out in the strictest legal form; and if the authorities
should want confirmation by testimony, I shall produce a letter signed
by my own superintendent of the Khersonian rural police--that is to
say, by myself. Lastly, the supposed village in Kherson shall be called
Chichikovoe--better still Pavlovskoe, according to my Christian name.”
In this fashion there germinated in our hero’s brain that strange scheme
for which the reader may or may not be grateful, but for which the
author certainly is so, seeing that, had it never occurred to Chichikov,
this story would never have seen the light.
After crossing himself, according to the Russian custom, Chichikov set
about carrying out his enterprise. On pretence of selecting a place
wherein to settle, he started forth to inspect various corners of the
Russian Empire, but more especially those which had suffered from
such unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of
mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at the
lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners haphazard: he
rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly suited to his
taste, or with whom he might with the least possible trouble conclude
identical agreements; though, in the first instance, he always tried, by
getting on terms of acquaintanceship--better still, of friendship--with
them, to acquire the souls for nothing, and so to avoid purchase at all.
In passing, my readers must not blame me if the characters whom they
have encountered in these pages have not been altogether to their
liking. The fault is Chichikov’s rather than mine, for he is the master,
and where he leads we must follow. Also, should my readers gird at me
for a certain dimness and want of clarity in my principal characters
and actors, that will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad
tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent.
Similarly does the entry to every town--the entry even to the Capital
itself--convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that
at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky
factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time
there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions,
and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a
medley of steeples, columns, statues, and turrets--the whole framed in
rattle and roar and the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of
men have conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov’s first purchases
were made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the
affair progressed, and with what success or failure our hero met,
and how Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more
difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the
levers of his far-flung tale are moved, and how eventually the horizon
will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a lyrical
tendency. Yes, many a verst of road remains to be travelled by a party
made up of an elderly gentleman, a britchka of the kind affected by
bachelors, a valet named Petrushka, a coachman named Selifan, and
three horses which, from the Assessor to the skewbald, are known to us
individually by name. Again, although I have given a full description of
our hero’s exterior (such as it is), I may yet be asked for an inclusive
definition also of his moral personality. That he is no hero compounded
of virtues and perfections must be already clear. Then WHAT is he? A
villain? Why should we call him a villain? Why should we be so hard upon
a fellow man? In these days our villains have ceased to exist. Rather
it would be fairer to call him an ACQUIRER. The love of acquisition, the
love of gain, is a fault common to many, and gives rise to many and many
a transaction of the kind generally known as “not strictly honourable.”
True, such a character contains an element of ugliness, and the same
reader who, on his journey through life, would sit at the board of a
character of this kind, and spend a most agreeable time with him, would
be the first to look at him askance if he should appear in the guise of
the hero of a novel or a play. But wise is the reader who, on meeting
such a character, scans him carefully, and, instead of shrinking from
him with distaste, probes him to the springs of his being. The human
personality contains nothing which may not, in the twinkling of an eye,
become altogether changed--nothing in which, before you can look round,
there may not spring to birth some cankerous worm which is destined to
suck thence the essential juice. Yes, it is a common thing to see not
only an overmastering passion, but also a passion of the most petty
order, arise in a man who was born to better things, and lead him both
to forget his greatest and most sacred obligations, and to see only in
the veriest trifles the Great and the Holy. For human passions are as
numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on to become his most
insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who may choose from
among the gamut of human passions one which is noble! Hour by hour will
that instinct grow and multiply in its measureless beneficence; hour by
hour will it sink deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his
soul. But there are passions of which a man cannot rid himself, seeing
that they are born with him at his birth, and he has no power to abjure
them. Higher powers govern those passions, and in them is something
which will call to him, and refuse to be silenced, to the end of his
life. Yes, whether in a guise of darkness, or whether in a guise which
will become converted into a light to lighten the world, they will and
must attain their consummation on life’s field: and in either case they
have been evoked for man’s good. In the same way may the passion
which drew our Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of
himself; in the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence
something which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust
before the infinite wisdom of God.
Yet that folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing. What
matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their approval
could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to say, had not
the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov’s soul, nor stirred up in
its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light, nor disclosed
those of his hero’s thoughts which that hero would have not have
disclosed even to his most intimate friend; had the author, indeed,
exhibited Chichikov just as he exhibited himself to the townsmen of
N. and Manilov and the rest; well, then we may rest assured that every
reader would have been delighted with him, and have voted him a most
interesting person. For it is not nearly so necessary that Chichikov
should figure before the reader as though his form and person were
actually present to the eye as that, on concluding a perusal of this
work, the reader should be able to return, unharrowed in soul, to that
cult of the card-table which is the solace and delight of all good
Russians. Yes, readers of this book, none of you really care to see
humanity revealed in its nakedness. “Why should we do so?” you say.
“What would be the use of it? Do we not know for ourselves that human
life contains much that is gross and contemptible? Do we not with our
own eyes have to look upon much that is anything but comforting?
Far better would it be if you would put before us what is comely and
attractive, so that we might forget ourselves a little.” In the same
fashion does a landowner say to his bailiff: “Why do you come and tell
me that the affairs of my estate are in a bad way? I know that without
YOUR help. Have you nothing else to tell me? Kindly allow me to forget
the fact, or else to remain in ignorance of it, and I shall be much
obliged to you.” Whereafter the said landowner probably proceeds to
spend on his diversion the money which ought to have gone towards the
rehabilitation of his affairs.
Possibly the author may also incur censure at the hands of those
so-called “patriots” who sit quietly in corners, and become capitalists
through making fortunes at the expense of others. Yes, let but something
which they conceive to be derogatory to their country occur--for
instance, let there be published some book which voices the bitter
truth--and out they will come from their hiding-places like a spider
which perceives a fly to be caught in its web. “Is it well to proclaim
this to the world, and to set folk talking about it?” they will cry.
“What you have described touches US, is OUR affair. Is conduct of that
kind right? What will foreigners say? Does any one care calmly to sit
by and hear himself traduced? Why should you lead foreigners to suppose
that all is not well with us, and that we are not patriotic?” Well, to
these sage remarks no answer can really be returned, especially to such
of the above as refer to foreign opinion. But see here. There once lived
in a remote corner of Russia two natives of the region indicated. One of
those natives was a good man named Kifa Mokievitch, and a man of kindly
disposition; a man who went through life in a dressing-gown, and paid no
heed to his household, for the reason that his whole being was centred
upon the province of speculation, and that, in particular, he was
preoccupied with a philosophical problem usually stated by him thus:
“A beast,” he would say, “is born naked. Now, why should that be? Why
should not a beast be born as a bird is born--that is to say, through
the process of being hatched from an egg? Nature is beyond the
understanding, however much one may probe her.” This was the substance
of Kifa Mokievitch’s reflections. But herein is not the chief point.
The other of the pair was a fellow named Mofi Kifovitch, and son to the
first named. He was what we Russians call a “hero,” and while his
father was pondering the parturition of beasts, his, the son’s, lusty,
twenty-year-old temperament was violently struggling for development.
Yet that son could tackle nothing without some accident occurring. At
one moment would he crack some one’s fingers in half, and at another
would he raise a bump on somebody’s nose; so that both at home
and abroad every one and everything--from the serving-maid to the
yard-dog--fled on his approach, and even the bed in his bedroom became
shattered to splinters. Such was Mofi Kifovitch; and with it all he had
a kindly soul. But herein is not the chief point. “Good sir, good Kifa
Mokievitch,” servants and neighbours would come and say to the father,
“what are you going to do about your Moki Kifovitch? We get no rest from
him, he is so above himself.” “That is only his play, that is only his
play,” the father would reply. “What else can you expect? It is too late
now to start a quarrel with him, and, moreover, every one would accuse
me of harshness. True, he is a little conceited; but, were I to reprove
him in public, the whole thing would become common talk, and folk would
begin giving him a dog’s name. And if they did that, would not their
opinion touch me also, seeing that I am his father? Also, I am busy with
philosophy, and have no time for such things. Lastly, Moki Kifovitch
is my son, and very dear to my heart.” And, beating his breast, Kifa
Mokievitch again asserted that, even though his son should elect
to continue his pranks, it would not be for HIM, for the father,
to proclaim the fact, or to fall out with his offspring. And, this
expression of paternal feeling uttered, Kifa Mokievitch left Moki
Kifovitch to his heroic exploits, and himself returned to his beloved
subject of speculation, which now included also the problem, “Suppose
elephants were to take to being hatched from eggs, would not the
shell of such eggs be of a thickness proof against cannonballs, and
necessitate the invention of some new type of firearm?” Thus at the end
of this little story we have these two denizens of a peaceful corner of
Russia looking thence, as from a window, in less terror of doing what
was scandalous than of having it SAID of them that they were acting
scandalously. Yes, the feeling animating our so-called “patriots” is not
true patriotism at all. Something else lies beneath it. Who, if not an
author, is to speak aloud the truth? Men like you, my pseudo-patriots,
stand in dread of the eye which is able to discern, yet shrink from
using your own, and prefer, rather, to glance at everything unheedingly.
Yes, after laughing heartily over Chichikov’s misadventures, and perhaps
even commending the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty
turn of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a
self-satisfied smile, and add: “Well, we agree that in certain parts of
the provinces there exists strange and ridiculous individuals, as well
as unconscionable rascals.”
Yet which of you, when quiet, and alone, and engaged in solitary
self-communion, would not do well to probe YOUR OWN souls, and to put
to YOURSELVES the solemn question, “Is there not in ME an element of
Chichikov?” For how should there not be? Which of you is not liable at
any moment to be passed in the street by an acquaintance who, nudging
his neighbour, may say of you, with a barely suppressed sneer: “Look!
there goes Chichikov! That is Chichikov who has just gone by!”
But here are we talking at the top of our voices whilst all the time our
hero lies slumbering in his britchka! Indeed, his name has been repeated
so often during the recital of his life’s history that he must almost
have heard us! And at any time he is an irritable, irascible fellow when
spoken of with disrespect. True, to the reader Chichikov’s displeasure
cannot matter a jot; but for the author it would mean ruin to quarrel
with his hero, seeing that, arm in arm, Chichikov and he have yet far to
go.
“Tut, tut, tut!” came in a shout from Chichikov. “Hi, Selifan!”
“What is it?” came the reply, uttered with a drawl.
“What is it? Why, how dare you drive like that? Come! Bestir yourself a
little!”
And indeed, Selifan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and
hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an
occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka
had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to
rest against Chichikov’s knees--a position which necessitated his being
awakened with a cuff. Selifan also roused himself, and apportioned to
the skewbald a few cuts across the back of a kind which at least had the
effect of inciting that animal to trot; and when, presently, the other
two horses followed their companion’s example, the light britchka moved
forwards like a piece of thistledown. Selifan flourished his whip and
shouted, “Hi, hi!” as the inequalities of the road jerked him vertically
on his seat; and meanwhile, reclining against the leather cushions
of the vehicle’s interior, Chichikov smiled with gratification at the
sensation of driving fast. For what Russian does not love to drive fast?
Which of us does not at times yearn to give his horses their head, and
to let them go, and to cry, “To the devil with the world!”? At such
moments a great force seems to uplift one as on wings; and one flies,
and everything else flies, but contrariwise--both the verst stones, and
traders riding on the shafts of their waggons, and the forest with
dark lines of spruce and fir amid which may be heard the axe of the
woodcutter and the croaking of the raven. Yes, out of a dim, remote
distance the road comes towards one, and while nothing save the sky and
the light clouds through which the moon is cleaving her way seem halted,
the brief glimpses wherein one can discern nothing clearly have in them
a pervading touch of mystery. Ah, troika, troika, swift as a bird, who
was it first invented you? Only among a hardy race of folk can you have
come to birth--only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread
over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave
one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the
road--a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen
and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav.
Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man
bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and
breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and
the wheels, with their spokes, become transparent circles, and the
road seems to quiver beneath them, and a pedestrian, with a cry of
astonishment, halts to watch the vehicle as it flies, flies, flies on
its way until it becomes lost on the ultimate horizon--a speck amid a
cloud of dust!
And you, Russia of mine--are not you also speeding like a troika which
nought can overtake? Is not the road smoking beneath your wheels, and
the bridges thundering as you cross them, and everything being left in
the rear, and the spectators, struck with the portent, halting to wonder
whether you be not a thunderbolt launched from heaven? What does that
awe-inspiring progress of yours foretell? What is the unknown force
which lies within your mysterious steeds? Surely the winds themselves
must abide in their manes, and every vein in their bodies be an
ear stretched to catch the celestial message which bids them, with
iron-girded breasts, and hooves which barely touch the earth as
they gallop, fly forward on a mission of God? Whither, then, are
you speeding, O Russia of mine? Whither? Answer me! But no answer
comes--only the weird sound of your collar-bells. Rent into a thousand
shreds, the air roars past you, for you are overtaking the whole world,
and shall one day force all nations, all empires to stand aside, to give
you way!
1841.