Dead Souls
CHAPTER XI
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