Dead Souls
“And does he go out at all? Does he see company? Can he still hold
himself upright?”
“Yes, but with great difficulty.”
“And has he any teeth left?”
“No more than two at the most.”
“The old jackass! Don’t be angry with me, but I must say that, though
your uncle, he is also a jackass.”
“Quite so, your Excellency. And though it grieves ME to have to confess
that he is my uncle, what am I to do with him?”
Yet this was not altogether the truth. What would have been a far harder
thing for Chichikov to have confessed was the fact that he possessed no
uncles at all.
“I beg of you, your Excellency,” he went on, “to hand me over those,
those--”
“Those dead souls, eh? Why, in return for the jest I will give you some
land as well. Yes, you can take the whole graveyard if you like. Ha, ha,
ha! The old man! Ha, ha, ha! WHAT a fool he’ll look! Ha, ha, ha!”
And once more the General’s guffaws went ringing through the house.
[At this point there is a long hiatus in the original.]
CHAPTER III
“If Colonel Koshkarev should turn out to be as mad as the last one it
is a bad look-out,” said Chichikov to himself on opening his eyes amid
fields and open country--everything else having disappeared save the
vault of heaven and a couple of low-lying clouds.
“Selifan,” he went on, “did you ask how to get to Colonel Koshkarev’s?”
“Yes, Paul Ivanovitch. At least, there was such a clatter around the
koliaska that I could not; but Petrushka asked the coachman.”
“You fool! How often have I told you not to rely on Petrushka? Petrushka
is a blockhead, an idiot. Besides, at the present moment I believe him
to be drunk.”
“No, you are wrong, barin,” put in the person referred to, turning his
head with a sidelong glance. “After we get down the next hill we shall
need but to keep bending round it. That is all.”
“Yes, and I suppose you’ll tell me that sivnkha is the only thing that
has passed your lips? Well, the view at least is beautiful. In fact,
when one has seen this place one may say that one has seen one of
the beauty spots of Europe.” This said, Chichikov added to himself,
smoothing his chin: “What a difference between the features of a
civilised man of the world and those of a common lacquey!”
Meanwhile the koliaska quickened its pace, and Chichikov once more
caught sight of Tientietnikov’s aspen-studded meadows. Undulating gently
on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline,
and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and
jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a
molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The vehicle was comfort itself.
Swiftly there flew by clumps of osiers, slender elder trees, and
silver-leaved poplars, their branches brushing against Selifan and
Petrushka, and at intervals depriving the valet of his cap. Each time
that this happened, the sullen-faced servitor fell to cursing both the
tree responsible for the occurrence and the landowner responsible for
the tree being in existence; yet nothing would induce him thereafter
either to tie on the cap or to steady it with his hand, so complete was
his assurance that the accident would never be repeated. Soon to the
foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir,
while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue
iris and the yellow wood-tulip. Gradually the forest grew darker, as
though eventually the obscurity would become complete. Then through
the trunks and the boughs there began to gleam points of light like
glittering mirrors, and as the number of trees lessened, these points
grew larger, until the travellers debouched upon the shore of a lake
four versts or so in circumference, and having on its further margin
the grey, scattered log huts of a peasant village. In the water a great
commotion was in progress. In the first place, some twenty men, immersed
to the knee, to the breast, or to the neck, were dragging a large
fishing-net inshore, while, in the second place, there was entangled in
the same, in addition to some fish, a stout man shaped precisely like a
melon or a hogshead. Greatly excited, he was shouting at the top of his
voice: “Let Kosma manage it, you lout of a Denis! Kosma, take the end
of the rope from Denis! Don’t bear so hard on it, Thoma Bolshoy [41]! Go
where Thoma Menshov [42] is! Damn it, bring the net to land, will you!”
From this it became clear that it was not on his own account that the
stout man was worrying. Indeed, he had no need to do so, since his fat
would in any case have prevented him from sinking. Yes, even if he
had turned head over heels in an effort to dive, the water would
persistently have borne him up; and the same if, say, a couple of men
had jumped on his back--the only result would have been that he would
have become a trifle deeper submerged, and forced to draw breath by
spouting bubbles through his nose. No, the cause of his agitation was
lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging
some additional peasants who were standing on the bank to lay hold of
and to pull at, an extra rope or two.
“That must be the barin--Colonel Koshkarev,” said Selifan.
“Why?” asked Chichikov.
“Because, if you please, his skin is whiter than the rest, and he has
the respectable paunch of a gentleman.”
Meanwhile good progress was being made with the hauling in of the barin;
until, feeling the ground with his feet, he rose to an upright position,
and at the same moment caught sight of the koliaska, with Chichikov
seated therein, descending the declivity.
“Have you dined yet?” shouted the barin as, still entangled in the net,
he approached the shore with a huge fish on his back. With one hand
shading his eyes from the sun, and the other thrown backwards, he
looked, in point of pose, like the Medici Venus emerging from her bath.
“No,” replied Chichikov, raising his cap, and executing a series of
bows.
“Then thank God for that,” rejoined the gentleman.
“Why?” asked Chichikov with no little curiosity, and still holding his
cap over his head.
“Because of THIS. Cast off the net, Thoma Menshov, and pick up that
sturgeon for the gentleman to see. Go and help him, Telepen Kuzma.”
With that the peasants indicated picked up by the head what was a
veritable monster of a fish.
“Isn’t it a beauty--a sturgeon fresh run from the river?” exclaimed the
stout barin. “And now let us be off home. Coachman, you can take the
lower road through the kitchen garden. Run, you lout of a Thoma Bolshoy,
and open the gate for him. He will guide you to the house, and I myself
shall be along presently.”
Thereupon the barelegged Thoma Bolshoy, clad in nothing but a shirt,
ran ahead of the koliaska through the village, every hut of which had
hanging in front of it a variety of nets, for the reason that every
inhabitant of the place was a fisherman. Next, he opened a gate into a
large vegetable enclosure, and thence the koliaska emerged into a square
near a wooden church, with, showing beyond the latter, the roofs of the
manorial homestead.
“A queer fellow, that Koshkarev!” said Chichikov to himself.
“Well, whatever I may be, at least I’m here,” said a voice by his side.
Chichikov looked round, and perceived that, in the meanwhile, the barin
had dressed himself and overtaken the carriage. With a pair of yellow
trousers he was wearing a grass-green jacket, and his neck was as
guiltless of a collar as Cupid’s. Also, as he sat sideways in his
drozhki, his bulk was such that he completely filled the vehicle.
Chichikov was about to make some remark or another when the stout
gentleman disappeared; and presently his drozhki re-emerged into view at
the spot where the fish had been drawn to land, and his voice could be
heard reiterating exhortations to his serfs. Yet when Chichikov reached
the verandah of the house he found, to his intense surprise, the stout
gentleman waiting to welcome the visitor. How he had contrived to
convey himself thither passed Chichikov’s comprehension. Host and guest
embraced three times, according to a bygone custom of Russia. Evidently
the barin was one of the old school.
“I bring you,” said Chichikov, “a greeting from his Excellency.”
“From whom?”
“From your relative General Alexander Dmitrievitch.”
“Who is Alexander Dmitrievitch?”
“What? You do not know General Alexander Dmitrievitch Betrishev?”
exclaimed Chichikov with a touch of surprise.
“No, I do not,” replied the gentleman.
Chichikov’s surprise grew to absolute astonishment.
“How comes that about?” he ejaculated. “I hope that I have the honour of
addressing Colonel Koshkarev?”
“Your hopes are vain. It is to my house, not to his, that you have come;
and I am Peter Petrovitch Pietukh--yes, Peter Petrovitch Pietukh.”
Chichikov, dumbfounded, turned to Selifan and Petrushka.
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed. “I told you to drive to the house
of Colonel Koshkarev, whereas you have brought me to that of Peter
Petrovitch Pietukh.”
“All the same, your fellows have done quite right,” put in the gentleman
referred to. “Do you” (this to Selifan and Petrushka) “go to the
kitchen, where they will give you a glassful of vodka apiece. Then put
up the horses, and be off to the servants’ quarters.”
“I regret the mistake extremely,” said Chichikov.
“But it is not a mistake. When you have tried the dinner which I have in
store for you, just see whether you think IT a mistake. Enter, I beg of
you.” And, taking Chichikov by the arm, the host conducted him within,
where they were met by a couple of youths.
“Let me introduce my two sons, home for their holidays from the
Gymnasium [43],” said Pietukh. “Nikolasha, come and entertain our
good visitor, while you, Aleksasha, follow me.” And with that the host
disappeared.
Chichikov turned to Nikolasha, whom he found to be a budding man about
town, since at first he opened a conversation by stating that, as no
good was to be derived from studying at a provincial institution, he and
his brother desired to remove, rather, to St. Petersburg, the provinces
not being worth living in.
“I quite understand,” Chichikov thought to himself. “The end of the
chapter will be confectioners’ assistants and the boulevards.”
“Tell me,” he added aloud, “how does your father’s property at present
stand?”
“It is all mortgaged,” put in the father himself as he re-entered the
room. “Yes, it is all mortgaged, every bit of it.”
“What a pity!” thought Chichikov. “At this rate it will not be long
before this man has no property at all left. I must hurry my departure.”
Aloud he said with an air of sympathy: “That you have mortgaged the
estate seems to me a matter of regret.”
“No, not at all,” replied Pietukh. “In fact, they tell me that it is a
good thing to do, and that every one else is doing it. Why should I act
differently from my neighbours? Moreover, I have had enough of living
here, and should like to try Moscow--more especially since my sons are
always begging me to give them a metropolitan education.”
“Oh, the fool, the fool!” reflected Chichikov. “He is for throwing
up everything and making spendthrifts of his sons. Yet this is a nice
property, and it is clear that the local peasants are doing well, and
that the family, too, is comfortably off. On the other hand, as soon as
ever these lads begin their education in restaurants and theatres, the
devil will away with every stick of their substance. For my own part, I
could desire nothing better than this quiet life in the country.”
“Let me guess what is in your mind,” said Pietukh.
“What, then?” asked Chichikov, rather taken aback.
“You are thinking to yourself: ‘That fool of a Pietukh has asked me to