Dead Souls
all, seeing that by nature Chichikov’s blood flowed strongly, and
that he had to employ much force of will to curb within himself those
elements which longed to burst forth and revel in freedom. He thought
things over, and, as he did so, a certain spice of reason appeared in
his reflections.
“How have I come to be what I am?” he said to himself. “Why has
misfortune overtaken me in this way? Never have I wronged a poor person,
or robbed a widow, or turned any one out of doors: I have always been
careful only to take advantage of those who possess more than their
share. Moreover, I have never gleaned anywhere but where every one else
was gleaning; and, had I not done so, others would have gleaned in my
place. Why, then, should those others be prospering, and I be sunk as
low as a worm? What am I? What am I good for? How can I, in future, hope
to look any honest father of a family in the face? How shall I escape
being tortured with the thought that I am cumbering the ground? What,
in the years to come, will my children say, save that ‘our father was a
brute, for he left us nothing to live upon?’”
Here I may remark that we have seen how much thought Chichikov devoted
to his future descendants. Indeed, had not there been constantly
recurring to his mind the insistent question, “What will my children
say?” he might not have plunged into the affair so deeply. Nevertheless,
like a wary cat which glances hither and thither to see whether its
mistress be not coming before it can make off with whatsoever first
falls to its paw (butter, fat, lard, a duck, or anything else), so our
future founder of a family continued, though weeping and bewailing
his lot, to let not a single detail escape his eye. That is to say,
he retained his wits ever in a state of activity, and kept his brain
constantly working. All that he required was a plan. Once more he pulled
himself together, once more he embarked upon a life of toil, once more
he stinted himself in everything, once more he left clean and decent
surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In other words, until
something better should turn up, he embraced the calling of an ordinary
attorney--a calling which, not then possessed of a civic status, was
jostled on very side, enjoyed little respect at the hands of the minor
legal fry (or, indeed, at its own), and perforce met with universal
slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity compelled Chichikov to face
these things. Among commissions entrusted to him was that of placing in
the hands of the Public Trustee several hundred peasants who belonged
to a ruined estate. The estate had reached its parlous condition through
cattle disease, through rascally bailiffs, through failures of the
harvest, through such epidemic diseases that had killed off the best
workmen, and, last, but not least, through the senseless conduct of the
owner himself, who had furnished a house in Moscow in the latest style,
and then squandered his every kopeck, so that nothing was left for
his further maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the
remains--including the peasants--of the estate. In those days mortgage
to the Treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as
attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to “entertain” every
official concerned (we know that, unless that be previously done, unless
a whole bottle of madeira first be emptied down each clerical throat,
not the smallest legal affair can be carried through), and to explain,
for the barring of future attachments, that half of the peasants were
dead.
“And are they entered on the revision lists?” asked the secretary.
“Yes,” replied Chichikov. “Then what are you boggling at?” continued the
Secretary. “Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time grow
up to take the first one’s place.” Upon that there dawned on our hero
one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human brain. “What
a simpleton I am!” he thought to himself. “Here am I looking about for
my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked into my belt. Why,
were I myself to buy up a few souls which are dead--to buy them before
a new revision list shall have been made, the Council of Public Trust
might pay me two hundred roubles apiece for them, and I might find
myself with, say, a capital of two hundred thousand roubles! The present
moment is particularly propitious, since in various parts of the country
there has been an epidemic, and, glory be to God, a large number of
souls have died of it. Nowadays landowners have taken to card-playing
and junketting and wasting their money, or to joining the Civil Service
in St. Petersburg; consequently their estates are going to rack and
ruin, and being managed in any sort of fashion, and succeeding in paying
their dues with greater difficulty each year. That being so, not a man
of the lot but would gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than
continue paying the poll-tax; and in this fashion I might make--well,
not a few kopecks. Of course there are difficulties, and, to avoid
creating a scandal, I should need to employ plenty of finesse; but man
was given his brain to USE, not to neglect. One good point about the
scheme is that it will seem so improbable that in case of an accident,
no one in the world will believe in it. True, it is illegal to buy or
mortgage peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying
them only for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the
provinces of Taurida and Kherson almost for nothing, provided that one
undertakes subsequently to colonise it; so to Kherson I will ‘transfer’
them, and long may they live there! And the removal of my dead souls
shall be carried out in the strictest legal form; and if the authorities
should want confirmation by testimony, I shall produce a letter signed
by my own superintendent of the Khersonian rural police--that is to
say, by myself. Lastly, the supposed village in Kherson shall be called
Chichikovoe--better still Pavlovskoe, according to my Christian name.”
In this fashion there germinated in our hero’s brain that strange scheme
for which the reader may or may not be grateful, but for which the
author certainly is so, seeing that, had it never occurred to Chichikov,
this story would never have seen the light.
After crossing himself, according to the Russian custom, Chichikov set
about carrying out his enterprise. On pretence of selecting a place
wherein to settle, he started forth to inspect various corners of the
Russian Empire, but more especially those which had suffered from
such unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of
mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at the
lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners haphazard: he
rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly suited to his
taste, or with whom he might with the least possible trouble conclude
identical agreements; though, in the first instance, he always tried, by
getting on terms of acquaintanceship--better still, of friendship--with
them, to acquire the souls for nothing, and so to avoid purchase at all.
In passing, my readers must not blame me if the characters whom they
have encountered in these pages have not been altogether to their
liking. The fault is Chichikov’s rather than mine, for he is the master,
and where he leads we must follow. Also, should my readers gird at me
for a certain dimness and want of clarity in my principal characters
and actors, that will be tantamount to saying that never do the broad
tendency and the general scope of a work become immediately apparent.
Similarly does the entry to every town--the entry even to the Capital
itself--convey to the traveller such an impression of vagueness that
at first everything looks grey and monotonous, and the lines of smoky
factories and workshops seem never to be coming to an end; but in time
there will begin also to stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions,
and of shops and balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a
medley of steeples, columns, statues, and turrets--the whole framed in
rattle and roar and the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of
men have conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov’s first purchases
were made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the
affair progressed, and with what success or failure our hero met,
and how Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more
difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the
levers of his far-flung tale are moved, and how eventually the horizon
will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a lyrical
tendency. Yes, many a verst of road remains to be travelled by a party
made up of an elderly gentleman, a britchka of the kind affected by
bachelors, a valet named Petrushka, a coachman named Selifan, and
three horses which, from the Assessor to the skewbald, are known to us
individually by name. Again, although I have given a full description of
our hero’s exterior (such as it is), I may yet be asked for an inclusive
definition also of his moral personality. That he is no hero compounded
of virtues and perfections must be already clear. Then WHAT is he? A
villain? Why should we call him a villain? Why should we be so hard upon
a fellow man? In these days our villains have ceased to exist. Rather
it would be fairer to call him an ACQUIRER. The love of acquisition, the
love of gain, is a fault common to many, and gives rise to many and many
a transaction of the kind generally known as “not strictly honourable.”
True, such a character contains an element of ugliness, and the same
reader who, on his journey through life, would sit at the board of a
character of this kind, and spend a most agreeable time with him, would
be the first to look at him askance if he should appear in the guise of
the hero of a novel or a play. But wise is the reader who, on meeting
such a character, scans him carefully, and, instead of shrinking from
him with distaste, probes him to the springs of his being. The human
personality contains nothing which may not, in the twinkling of an eye,
become altogether changed--nothing in which, before you can look round,
there may not spring to birth some cankerous worm which is destined to
suck thence the essential juice. Yes, it is a common thing to see not
only an overmastering passion, but also a passion of the most petty
order, arise in a man who was born to better things, and lead him both
to forget his greatest and most sacred obligations, and to see only in
the veriest trifles the Great and the Holy. For human passions are as
numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on to become his most
insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who may choose from
among the gamut of human passions one which is noble! Hour by hour will
that instinct grow and multiply in its measureless beneficence; hour by
hour will it sink deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his
soul. But there are passions of which a man cannot rid himself, seeing
that they are born with him at his birth, and he has no power to abjure
them. Higher powers govern those passions, and in them is something
which will call to him, and refuse to be silenced, to the end of his
life. Yes, whether in a guise of darkness, or whether in a guise which
will become converted into a light to lighten the world, they will and
must attain their consummation on life’s field: and in either case they
have been evoked for man’s good. In the same way may the passion
which drew our Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of
himself; in the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence
something which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust
before the infinite wisdom of God.