Dead Souls
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