Dead Souls
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 VI
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