Dead Souls
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