Dead Souls
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 VII
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