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Chapter Six |
In former days, long ago, during the years of my youth, during the years of my childhood, now as irretrievably fled as a gleam of light, it was a gladsome thing for me to be driving up for the first time to some unfamiliar place; it was all one whether it were some hamlet, some poor, wretched little town (yet the chief one of its district), or some settlement, or some borough, the curious eye of the child would discover a great deal that was curious about the place. |
Every structure, everything, as long as it bore upon it the impress of some noticeable peculiarity, everything would bring me to a stop and amaze me. |
Whether it were a stone government building of the familiar style of architecture, with half its windows false ones, sticking up all by its lonesome amid the cluster of one-story little houses of hewed timber inhabited by the local burghers, or a well-rounded cupola, covered all over with white sheet iron, rearing over a new church whitewashed so that it was as white as snow, or a market place, or some dandy of the district whom one chanced upon in a town—nothing evaded the fresh, fine observation and, with nose thrust out of the traveling cart, I would stare at some frock coat of a cut hitherto never seen and at wooden bins full of nails, full of sulphur that showed yellowly even from afar, full of raisins and soap, all these to be glimpsed through the doors of a greengrocer’s, together with jars of stale candies brought all the way from Moscow. I stared, as well, at an infantry officer walking on one side of the street, blown thither by a chance wind from God knows what province to endure the ennui of the district town, and at a merchant in a long double-breasted frock coat, who flashed by in a racing sulky, and in my thoughts I would whirl off after these people into their meager way of life. |
A petty clerk of the district administration might happen to pass by me, and I would already be in deep thought: |
whither was he bound, to an evening at the home of some brother clerk, or straight for home, in order, after having sat on his front porch for half an hour or so before the dusk came down for good and all, to sit down to an early supper with his mother, his wife, his wife’s sister, and his whole household; and what would the talk be about around the time when a serving wench with many beads about her neck, or a boy in a quilted short jacket, would bring in (this would be after the soup had been served) a tallow candle in an ancient candlestick that had seen endless service in the house. |
As I drove up to the village of some landed proprietor or other, I would eye curiously the tall, narrow, wooden belfry or the old, sprawling, weather-beaten wooden church itself. |
In the distance I could catch enticing glimpses, through the leafage of the trees, of the red roof and white chimneys of the proprietor’s house, and I waited impatiently until the gardens that screened it would part to either side and it would appear in all its entirety, with all its exterior, which in those days (alas!) |
did not appear at all vulgar, and by that exterior I tried to guess just who and what the landed proprietor himself was—was he stout, and did he have sons or all of a half-dozen daughters, with sonorous maidenly laughter forever playing games, and with the youngest little sister, as always, the greatest beauty of them all; and were their eyes dark, and was the proprietor himself a jolly fellow or as dour as September in its last days, forever consulting his calendar and discoursing on rye and wheat, which were such boresome topics for youthful people. |
Now I drive up apathetically to every unfamiliar village and look apathetically at its vulgar appearance; to my time-chilled gaze things seem bleak, and I am not amused, and that which in former years would have aroused an animated expression, laughter, and unceasing speeches, glides past me now and my expressionless lips preserve an impassive silence. |
Oh, my youth! |
Oh, my fresh vigor! |
While Chichikov was mulling over and inwardly chuckling over the nickname which the muzhiks had bestowed upon Pliushkin, he had not noticed how he had driven into the center of a far-spreading settlement, with a multitude of huts and lanes. |
In a short while, however, a most jarring jolt, brought about by a corduroy roadway, a roadway before which the cobbled one in town was a mere nothing, let him perceive where he was.1 |
The logs of this roadway now rose, now fell, like the keys of a pianoforte, and the incautious rider acquired either a lump on the back of his neck, or a livid bruise on his forehead, or might even chance to nip, most painfully, the tip of his tongue between his teeth. |
He noticed some sort of especial tumbledown air over all the structures in the village; the logs of the huts were darkened and old; many of the roofs had gaps through which one could see the sky as through a sieve; on some only the roof-ridge remained up above—that, and the transverse poles which looked like ribs. |
Apparently the owners themselves had carried the shingles and planks off the roofs, reasoning, and quite justly at that, that the huts afforded no shelter from the rain, while in fine weather it’s dry and there’s no sense in coddling oneself indoors, when one can find room to spread out both at the tavern and on the highroad—in short, wherever you wish. |
The windows in the small huts were without panes; some were stuffed up with rags or a homespun jacket; the tiny railed balconies under the eaves which, for some unknown reason, are tacked onto some Russian huts, had become askew and weather-beaten, yet without acquiring any picturesqueness thereby. |
Behind the huts, in many places, were rows of enormous stacks of grain which had been stagnating there, as was very evident, for a long time; in hue they resembled old, badly baked brick; all sorts of weeds were growing on top of them, and here and there even a shrub would be clinging to one of the sides. |
The grain evidently belonged to the master. |
Out from behind the stacks of grain and the tumble-down roofs reared up and momentarily appeared and disappeared in the clear air, now on the right, now on the left, depending on the turns the carriage made, two village churches that were side by side; a deserted one of wood, and one of stone with yellowish walls; it was all in stains and blotches and with cracks everywhere. |
Parts of the proprietor’s house began to emerge, and finally, it came into full view at the spot where the chain of huts ended and was succeeded by a vegetable garden or cabbage patch that had been allowed to become a waste land, with a low picket fence, broken in some places, thrown about it. |
Like some decrepit invalid did this strange castle appear, long, inordinately long. |
In places it was of only one story, in others of two stories; on its darkened roof, which did not everywhere afford dependable protection to the house in its old age, two cupolas were sticking up, facing each other; both of them were rickety by now, devoid of the paint that had covered them at one time. |
The walls of the house showed cracks here and there that exposed the naked plastering and lath and, as one could see, had endured a great deal from inclement weather, rains, whirlwinds, and autumnal changes. |
Of the windows, only two were in use; the others were shuttered or simply boarded over. |
These two windows, for their part, were also purblind; on one of them a triangle of dark-blue paper, such as comes wrapped around sugar loaves, had been pasted. |
The old, vast garden, stretching away behind the house, extending beyond the settlement and then losing itself in an open field, a garden gone wild, overgrown and stifled with weeds, was the only thing that lent a fresh air to the widely scattered settlement and the only thing that was fully picturesque in its pictorial desolation. |
The joined summits of trees that had attained their full growth in freedom lay in green clouds and irregular cupolas of trembling foliage against the skyline. |
The colossal white trunk of a birch that had been deprived of its crest by some tempest or thunderstorm rose up out of this thick green tangle and, high in the air, looked like a round, regular column of dazzling marble; the oblique, sharply pointed fracture in which it terminated in lieu of a capital showed darkly against its snowy whiteness, like a cap or some black-plumed bird. |
The hopvines that stifled the elder, rowan, and hazel bushes below and then ran all over the tops of the paling, at last darted halfway up the broken birch and entwined it. |
After reaching its middle, the vine hung down from there and was already beginning to catch at the tips of other trees or else dangled in the air, its slender, clinging tendrils curled into rings and lightly swaying in the breeze. |
In places the green, sunlit thickets parted and revealed some depression in their midst, sunless and gaping like a dark maw; it would be all enveloped in shadow and one could barely, barely glimpse in its dark depths a narrow path running through it; fallen railings; a rickety arbor; the hollow, decayed trunk of a willow; a hoary Siberian pea tree that stuck out from behind the willow its thick, bristling tangle and crisscross of twigs and leaves, dried and dead because of the fearful underwoods; and, finally, a young maple branch, extending from one side its green paws of leaves. |
Getting under one of these leaves, God alone knows how, the sun would suddenly transform it into a thing of transparency and fire that shone wondrously amid this dense darkness. Off to one side, at the very edge of the garden, a few tall aspens, rising above their fellows, lifted high into the air the enormous raven nests upon their quivering summits. |
Some of these aspens had branches broken but not completely severed, which dangled, their leaves all withered. |
In short, everything was as beautiful as neither Nature alone nor art alone can conceive, but as can only be produced when they come together, when over the labor of man, often heaped up without any sense, Nature will run her conclusive burin, will lighten the heavy masses, will do away with the coarsely palpable regularity and the beggar’s rents through which the unconcealed, naked plan peers, and bestow a wondrous warmth on everything that had been created amid the frigidity of a measured purity and tidiness. |
After making a turn or two on the road, our hero found himself at last before the house itself, which now seemed more woebegone than ever. |
Green mold had already covered the timeworn wood of the enclosure and the gates. |
A throng of buildings—quarters for the domestic serfs, granaries, storehouses, all almost visibly moldering away—filled the whole courtyard; near them, to the right and left, one could see gates leading into other yards. |
Everything testified that once upon a time husbandry had been carried on on a large scale here; now everything bore a dismal look. |
One could not notice anything that might animate the picture, neither a door opening, nor people coming out of anywhere, nor any of the living fuss and bustle which enliven a household. |
The main gate alone was open, and that one only because a muzhik had driven in with a laden, matting-covered cart and seemed to have come on the scene for the sole purpose of animating this extinct place; another time this gate, too, would have been locked tight, inasmuch as it had a colossus of a padlock hanging on an iron ring. |
Near one of the structures Chichikov soon noticed some sort of figure that began bickering with the muzhik who had driven in the cart. |
For a long while Chichikov could not make out the sex of this figure, whether it was a peasant woman or a muzhik. |
The clothing upon it was utterly indeterminate, resembling very much a woman’s housedress; on its head was a nightcap, such as village serving women wear about the house; the voice alone sounded to Chichikov somewhat too hoarse for a woman’s. “Oh, it’s a peasant woman!” |
he thought to himself, and added on the spot: |
“Oh, no!... |
Oh, of course it’s a woman!” |
he decided at last, after a closer scrutiny. |
For her part the figure also scrutinized Chichikov closely. |
A visitor, it seemed, was a rara avis for her, inasmuch as she looked closely not only at him but at Selifan as well, and the horses, too, beginning with their tails and ending with their very noses. |
By the keys that were dangling from her waist and from the fact that she was cursing out the muzhik in rather abusive terms, Chichikov concluded that this must surely be the housekeeper. |
“I say, mother,” he began, getting out of the carriage, “is your master—” |
“Not at home,” the housekeeper cut him short, without waiting for him to finish the question and then, after the lapse of a minute, added: |
“And what was it you wanted?” |
“I have business with him.” |
“Go in the house!” |
said the housekeeper, turning around and showing him her back, soiled with flour and flaunting a great rent down below. |
Chichikov stepped into a dark, wide entry, out of which cold blew upon him as from a cellar. |
From the entry he found his way into another room that was likewise dark, very, very meagerly lit by a light that came through a broad crack below a door. |
Opening this door he at last found himself in the light and was struck by the disorder that appeared before his eyes. |
It seemed as if a general housecleaning were going on and all the furniture had been piled up here for the time being. |
There was even a broken chair standing on one of the tables and, side by side with it, a clock whose pendulum had stopped and to which a spider had already cunningly attached its web. |
Here, too, with one of its sides leaning against the wall, stood a dresser with antiquated silver, small carafes, and Chinese porcelain. |
Upon a bureau, with a marquetry of mother-of-pearl mosaic, which had already fallen out in places and left behind it only yellowish little grooves and depressions filled with crusted glue, was lying a great and bewildering omnium-gatherum: |
a mound of scraps of paper, closely covered with writing, pressed down with a paperweight of marble turned green and having an egg-shaped little knob; some sort of ancient tome in a leather binding and with red edges; a lemon, so dried up that it was no bigger than a hazelnut; a broken-off chair arm; a wine glass with some kind of liquid and three dead flies, covered over with a letter; a bit of sealing wax; a bit of rag picked up somewhere; two quills, dirty with ink and as dried out as consumptives; a toothpick, perfectly yellowed, which its owner had probably been picking his teeth with even before Moscow had been invaded by the French. |
Hung about the walls, quite closely and without much discrimination, were several pictures. |
One was a long, yellowed engraving of some military engagement or other, with enormous drums, soldiers in cocked hats yelling fit to split their throats, and drowning steeds; it was unglazed, set in a frame of mahogany with very thin strips of bronze and with whorls, also of bronze, at the corners. |
Alongside the other pictures hung an enormous, time-stained one that took up half a wall by itself, done in oils and depicting flowers, fruits, a cut watermelon, a boar’s head, and a wild duck hung with its head down. |
Suspended from the middle of the ceiling was a chandelier in a canvas bag, which because of its accumulated dust had taken on the appearance of a silk cocoon with the silkworm still inside. |
Piled up on the floor in one corner of the room were a heap of those things which were of a coarser nature and unworthy of lying about on the tables. |
Precisely what the heap consisted of it would have been difficult to determine, since the dust upon it was so copious that the hands of whosoever touched it took on a gloved appearance. More noticeable than the other things were two that stuck out of the pile: a piece broken off a wooden shovel and an old boot sole. |
One could by no means have told that a living creature inhabited this room had not an old, worn nightcap, lying on one of the tables, proclaimed the fact. |
As Chichikov was examining the whole strange setting of the room, a side door opened and the same housekeeper whom he had met out in the yard entered. |
But now he perceived that this was a chatelain rather than a chatelaine; a chatelaine, at least, has no beard to shave, whereas this fellow on the contrary had one and did shave it, although, it seemed, he did so rarely enough, since all his chin and his jowls resembled a wire-bristled currycomb. |
Chichikov, assuming a questioning expression, waited impatiently for what this chatelain might want to tell him. |
The chatelain, for his part, waited for what Chichikov might want to tell him. |
Chichikov at last, astonished by such a strange misunderstanding, decided to ask: |
“Well, what about your master? |
Is he at home, or what?” |
“The master is here,” said the chatelain. |
“But where?” |
Chichikov persisted. |
“What’s the matter with you, my good man, are you blind or what?” |
asked the chatelain. |
“Oh, you! |
Why, I am the master!” |
At this point our hero involuntarily took a step backward and looked at the other intently. |
It had been his lot to see not a few of all kinds of people, even such folk as the reader and I may never have a chance to see; but such a specimen as this he had never yet beheld. |
His face did not present anything peculiar; it was almost the same as that of many gaunt old men, save that his chin jutted out far too much, so that he had to cover it with his handkerchief every time he spat to avoid slobbering on it; the fire in his little eyes had not died out and they darted about under his high, bushy eyebrows very much as mice do when, thrusting out of their dark holes their sharp little snouts, their ears perked and their whiskers twitching, they are spying out whether the cat is lurking about in ambush somewhere or whether some mischievous boy is about, and sniff the very air with suspicion. |
Far more remarkable was his attire. |
Through no means and efforts could one ferret out what his dressing gown had been concocted from; the sleeves and upper portions had become greasy and shiny to such a degree that they resembled the sort of soft, tar-treated leather which is used for boots; dangling in the back were four flaps instead of two, out of which the cotton-wool quilting was actually crawling in tufts! |
About his neck, too, he had tied a something that one could not make out; it might have been a stocking, or a bandage, or an abdominal supporter, but nothing that one could possibly consider a cravat. |
In a word, had Chichikov met him thus accoutered at a church door he would most probably have slipped him a small copper, inasmuch as it must be said to our hero’s credit that his heart was a compassionate one and he could never hold himself back from giving a small copper to a poor man. |
But this was no beggar standing before him; standing before him was a landed proprietor. |
This landed proprietor owned a thousand serf souls and more, and there would be no use in trying to find another who had so much wheat, in grain, flour, or simply in stacks, or one whose storerooms, warehouses, and drying sheds were cluttered with such a world of linens, cloths, sheepskins (both dressed and raw), dried fish of all sorts, and all kinds of vegetables and berries, everything the lips will accept, as they say. |
Had anyone peeped into his work yard, where there was a reserve laid by of every sort of wood and wooden utensils, never used, it would have seemed to him that he must somehow have strayed into the famous Chip Fair in Moscow, to which the wide-awake matriarchs resort daily, with their cooks behind them, to put in supplies for their households, and where every sort of wood rises in mountains of white: |
nailed, turned, joined, to say nothing of wickerwork; there are barrels here, and tubs made out of half-barrels, and tubs slung on poles, and lidded buckets, and jugs with spouts and without, and honey-flagons, and bast baskets, and boxes in which countrywives keep their bundles of flax and hemp and other suchlike trash, and hampers of thin, bent aspen wood, and cylindrical boxes of woven birch bark, and a great deal of all that goes to supply the needs of rich Russia and poor. |
What need, it seemed, had Pliushkin of such a host of these wares? |
He would never have been able to use them up in his whole lifetime even if he owned two estates instead of only one, but even this accumulation seemed small to him. |
Not satisfied with this, he would also patrol the lanes and byways of his village every day, peering under small bridges, under planks, and in every nook and cranny, and everything that he came upon—an old sole, a woman’s rag, an iron nail, a clay shard—everything would be dragged off to his place and piled on that heap which Chichikov had noticed in a corner of the room. |
“There, the fisherman is setting out for his catch!” |
the muzhiks would say when they caught sight of him setting out to try his luck. |
And truly, there was no need to sweep the street after he had passed by; if a cavalry officer riding by happened to lose a spur, that spur was in an instant on its way to the pile we know of; if a peasant woman, having grown absent-minded somehow at the water well, would forget her bucket there, he would lug the bucket off, too. |
However, if some muzhik, having seen him, would catch him red-handed on the spot, he would not argue and would give up the purloined article; but if ever it landed on that pile, then it was all over and done with: |
he called God to witness that he had bought the article at such-and-such a time from so-and-so. Or it had come down to him from his grandfather. |
In his room he would pick up from the floor whatever met his eye—a bit of sealing wax, a scrap of paper, a feather— and all this he would lay on the desk or on a windowsill. |
And yet there had been a time when he had been but a thrifty householder! |
He had been married and had a family, and one or another of his neighbors would drop in on him for dinner, to listen to him and learn husbandry and a wise miserliness. |
All things went briskly and were performed at a smooth, even pace: |
the mills, the fulleries turned; the cloth manufactories, the carpenters’ benches, the looms were all busy; the keen eye of the master penetrated everywhere and into everything and, like the toil-loving spider, he ran bustlingly yet smartly from one end of his husbandly web to the other. |
His features did not reflect any emotions that were too strong, but one could see intelligence in his eyes; with experience and a knowledge of the world was his speech imbued, and it was a pleasure for his guest to listen to him; the affable and talkative mistress of the house was famed for her hospitality; two pretty daughters would come out to meet you, both with flaxen-fair curls and as fresh as roses; the son would come running out, a sprightly little urchin, and would kiss everyone, paying but little attention to whether the guest liked it or not. |
All the windows in the house were open; the attics had been taken for his own by the tutor, a Frenchman, who was exemplarily clean-shaven and a great hand with a hunting gun; he would often bring for dinner some black grouse or wild ducks, while at times there would be only sparrow eggs, which he would order to be made into an omelet, inasmuch as there was not another soul in the house that would eat them. |
There was also a fair compatriot of his living in the attics, a preceptress for the two girls. |
The master of the house himself would come to dinner in a frock coat, somewhat worn, true, but neat, just the same—the elbows were in good order and there was never a patch showing anywhere. |
But the good lady of the house died; some of the keys and, together with them, some of the petty cares, passed on to the master. |
Pliushkin became more restless, and, like all widowers, more suspicious and more miserly. |
He could not rely in everything upon Aleksandra Stepanovna, his elder daughter, and he was right in this, since Aleksandra Stepanovna shortly ran off with a second captain of cavalry attached to God knows what regiment and married him somewhere in a hurry, in some village church, knowing that her father had no great love for military officers, because of an odd prejudice that all military men, now, were inveterate gamblers and profligate scalawags. |
The father sent a curse after her instead of a Godspeed, but did not bother with pursuit. |
It became still emptier in the house. |
The miserliness of the master began to evince itself more markedly; the gray that gleamed in his coarse hair, a faithful mate of miserliness, helped it to develop still more. The French tutor was dismissed, since the time had come for the son to enter government service. Madame la gouvernante was sent packing, since it had turned out that she had not been entirely blameless in the abduction of Aleksandra Stepanovna. The son, having been sent to the capital city of the province in order to find some berth in the administration which in his father’s opinion would benefit him, joined a regiment instead and informed his father only after doing so, when he wrote asking him for money to outfit himself; quite naturally he received in answer to this that which is called among the common folk a fig. |
Finally his last daughter, who had stayed on in the house with him, died, and the old man was left sole watchman, guardian, and possessor of his riches. |
His lonely life afforded rich fare to his miserliness, which, as everybody knows, has a wolfish appetite and which, the more it devours, the more insatiable it becomes; the human emotions, which, even as it was, were none too deep within him, shoaled more with every minute, and every day this decrepit ruin would suffer some loss. |
And it so fell out, at such a moment, as though on purpose to confirm his opinion of military men, that his son lost heavily at cards; he sent him a father’s heartfelt curse and thenceforth never evinced any interest to learn whether his son was still in this world or not. |
With every year more and more windows were boarded up in the house until at last but two remained unobstructed, of which one, as the reader has already seen, had been pasted over with paper. With every year the important aspects of his estate disappeared more and more from his view, while his petty outlook was turned upon scraps of paper and stray feathers, which he accumulated in his room. He grew more and more unyielding to the commission merchants who came around to buy the produce of his estate—the commission men used to dicker with him, and dicker some more, and finally gave him up for good, saying this was a fiend and not a man. His hay and wheat rotted; the grain stacks and the hayricks turned into downright manure—you could just go ahead and grow cabbages on ’em; the flour in his cellars had turned into stone and you had to take an ax to it; it was a fearsome thing to touch his cloths, his linens, his homespuns—they turned to dust under your fingers. |
He was already beginning to forget how much he had of this or that and remembered only in what spot the little carafe stood that held the remains of some cordial, on which carafe he had put a secret mark, so that no one might thievishly swig a drink, and he likewise remembered where that old quill ought to be and where that stub of sealing wax was. |
And yet, in his domestic economy, the revenue and perquisites accumulated as hitherto: |
each muzhik was bound to bring in the same quitrent, every peasant woman had to bring in the same allotment of nuts, each spinster had to work just as many linen looms. All these goods, wares, and produce were dumped into the storerooms and all turned to rot and rents, and he himself had turned, at last, into a rent on the cloak of humanity. |
Aleksandra Stepanovna happened to visit him twice; the first time with her little son, trying to see if she mightn’t get something out of him—evidently the nomadic life with her second captain of cavalry was not so enticing as it had seemed before marriage. |
Pliushkin forgave her, it must be said, and even allowed his grandson to play awhile with some button lying on one of the tables, but not a copper of money did he part with. |
The second time Aleksandra Stepanovna arrived with two little ones and brought him an Easter cake for his tea and a new dressing gown, since father had a dressing gown which it was not only a pity but an actual shame to look at. |
Pliushkin petted both his grandchildren a little and, having seated one of them on his right knee and the other on his left, gave them an absolutely perfect horsie-ride; the Easter cake and the dressing gown he accepted but gave his daughter absolutely nothing, and Aleksandra Stepanovna went back even more empty-handed than she had come. |
And so that’s the kind of landed proprietor who was standing before Chichikov! |
It must be said that one encounters such a phenomenon but rarely in Russia, where all things love to open up rather than to shrivel into a ball like a hedgehog, and it is all the more striking when there turns up in the immediate vicinity of such a phenomenon some landowner roistering with all the expansiveness of Russian recklessness and seigniorage, burning his candle, as they say, at both ends. |
The unfamiliar wayfarer will stop in astonishment at the sight of his dwelling, wondering what prince of the blood had suddenly turned up amid the petty, drab landed proprietors; like palaces do his white stone houses look with their innumerable multitude of chimneys, cupolas, weathercocks, surrounded with a drove of built-on wings and all sorts of apartments for the accommodation of any and all guests who might come. |
What won’t you find on his place? |
Theatricals; balls; all night will his garden glow ornamented with Chinese lanterns and lampions and be pealing with the thunder of music. |
Half the province is attired in its best and gaily strolling under his trees, and no one will perceive anything wild or sinister amid this forced illumination when out of the woody thickness a branch, lit up by the artificial light yet devoid of its vivid greenery, leaps forth theatrically, while because of this light the night sky appears still darker, still more austere, and twenty times more terrible, and the trees, receding still further into the impenetrable darkness, their leaves quivering on high, make their austere summits protest indignantly at this tinselly brilliance that lights up their roots from below. |
Pliushkin had been standing thus for several minutes by now, without uttering a word, while Chichikov still could not begin a conversation, being distracted both by the appearance of his host and by everything in his room. |
For a long time he could not hit upon the words with which to explain the reason for his coming. |
He was just about to express himself in some such high-flown vein as that, having heard such a great deal about his virtue and the rare qualities of his soul, he had deemed it his duty to pay him his due tribute of respect in person; but he brought himself up short and sensed that this was a bit much. |
Casting another look out of the corner of his eye at all the things in the room, he sensed that for such words as virtue and rare qualities of the soul one might well substitute the words economy and orderliness, and for that reason, having reworked his speech accordingly, he said that having heard of Pliushkin’s economy and his rare skill in estate management, he had deemed it his duty to make his acquaintance and to pay him his respects in person. |
Of course, he might have given another and a better reason, but at the time nothing else popped into his head. |
In answer to this, Pliushkin mumbled something or other through his lips—inasmuch as he had no teeth; precisely what it was is not certain, but probably the sense was: |
“Eh, may the Devil take you, respects and all!” |
But since hospitality is so prevalent among us that even a miser may not transgress its laws, he at once added, somewhat more distinctly: |
“I beg of you to be seated!” |
“It’s rather a long while since IVe seen any callers,” he went on, “and, I admit, I see but little good in ’em. |
They’ve started a most indecent custom of gadding about from one to the other, and yet it means a detriment to your household ... |
and besides, you’ve got to give their horses hay! |
I’ve long since had my dinner, besides my kitchen has such a low ceiling, as abominable a kitchen as you ever saw, and the chimney, now, has fallen all to pieces; if you light the stove you’ll put the whole place on fire, like as not—” |
“So that’s the way it is!” |
Chichikov reflected inwardly. |
“It’s a good thing, then, that I managed to stay my hunger with a tart of curds and a slice of the side of mutton at Sobakevich’s.” |
“And what vile luck, there isn’t as much as a wisp of hay on the whole place!” |
Pliushkin continued.” |
And, really, how is one to store it up? |
There’s so little land; the muzhik is lazy, not overfond of work; all he thinks of is how he might sneak off to the tavern .. . |
like as not, one may have to go out into the world and beg in one’s old age!” |
“However, I’ve been told,” Chichikov put in discreetly, “that you have over a thousand souls.” |
“And who was telling you that? |
Why, my good man, you should have spit in the eye of whoever told it to you! |
He must have been a great wag; evidently he wanted to have a bit of fun at your expense. |
There, they’re blabbing about a thousand souls, but you just go and count ’em, and you won’t count up anything at all! |
The last three years the accursed fever has carried off no end of my muzhiks.” |
“You don’t say! |
And has it actually carried off many?” |
Chichikov exclaimed with concern. |
“Yes, a lot of them have been carried off.” |
“Yes, but permit me to ask, what was the exact number?” |
“Eighty head.” |
“No!” |
“I’m not going to lie about it, my good sir.” |
“Allow me to ask you something else—you reckon these souls from the day when you submitted the last census to the Bureau of Audits?” |
“I’d thank God if that were the case,” said Pliushkin, “but the trouble is that they would add up to a hundred and twenty since that time.” |
“Really? |
All of a hundred and twenty?” |
Chichikov exclaimed and even let his jaw drop a little from astonishment. |
“I’m too old, my good man, to go in for lying now; I’m going on my seventh decade now!” |
said Pliushkin. |
He had, apparently, taken umbrage at such an almost joyous exclamation. |
Chichikov perceived that such a lack of concern for another’s woe was really unseemly, and for that reason immediately heaved a sigh and said that he commiserated with him. |
“Yes, but commiseration isn’t anything you can put in your pocket,” Pliushkin remarked. |
“There, now, there’s a certain captain lives near me, the Devil knows where he has bobbed up from; he says he’s a relative of mine. ‘ |
‘Dear Uncle, dear Uncle!’— |
!’—and he kisses my hand. Well, when he starts in commiserating, he’ll set up such a howl that you’d better watch out for your ears. |
His face is all ruddy—he must be clinging to strong brandy for dear life, I guess. |
Probably he squandered every copper he had at the time he was serving as an officer, or some play-acting jade wheedled everything out of him, so now he’s taken to commiserating!” |
Chichikov made an attempt to explain that his commiseration was not at all of the same sort as the captain’s, and that he was ready to prove this not in empty words but in deeds, and, without putting the matter off further, without any beating about the bush, announced right then and there his readiness to assume the obligation of paying taxes on all those serfs who had died through such unfortunate causes. |
This proposal, it seemed, utterly amazed Pliushkin. |
For a long while he stared at his guest with his eyes starting out of his head and finally asked: |
“But I say, my good man, were you ever in the military service, by any chance?” |
“No,” Chichikov answered him, rather slyly, “I was in the Civil Service.” |
“Civil Service?” |
Pliushkin repeated and fell to munching his lips, as though he were eating something. |
“But how can you do such a thing as that? |
Why, it would mean a loss to you, wouldn’t it?” |
“To give you pleasure I am ready even to face a loss.” |
“Ah, my good sir! |
Ah, my benefactor!” |
Pliushkin cried out, not noticing in his joy that the snuff had slipped out of his nose quite unpic-turesquely, looking like coffee grounds, and that the skirts of his dressing gown, opening, had revealed his underlinen, which was not a quite seemly object to contemplate. |
“There, how you have comforted an old man! |
Ah, my Lord! |
Ah, all ye saints!” |
After which Pliushkin could not utter another word. |
But hardly a minute had passed when this joy, which had so momentarily appeared upon his wooden features, passed just as momentarily, just as if it had never been, and his face assumed anew an expression of care. |
He even mopped his face with his handkerchief and, having rolled it up into a wad, began passing it over his upper lip. |
“But just how, if you will be kind enough to tell me, since I don’t want to anger you—how are you undertaking to pay taxes on them? |
Will you pay them every year, and will you pay the money out to me or to the Treasury?” |
“Why, here’s how we’ll work it: |
we’ll put through a purchase deed for them, just as though they were still living and as though you had sold them to me.” |
“Yes, a purchase deed.. .” |
said Pliushkin, falling into deep thought and beginning to chew his lips again, as if he were munching something. |
“That there purchase deed, now, it all means expenses. |
The clerks are so conscienceless! |
In former days you could get away with giving them half a ruble in coppers and a bag of flour, maybe, but nowadays you’ve got to send ’em a whole wagonload of all sorts of grits, and then add on a red ten-ruble note, that’s how avaricious they are! |
I don’t know why the priests never give a thought to this. There, if but someone would give a sermon on it: |
No matter what anyone may say, there’s no one can withstand the Word of God!”2 |
“Well, you would withstand it, I think!” |
Chichikov thought to himself and at once declared that, out of personal regard for Pliushkin, he was willing to take upon himself even the expenses connected with the purchase deed. |
On hearing that Chichikov was assuming even these expenses, Pliushkin concluded that his guest must be an utter simpleton and had merely pretended when claiming that he had been in the Civil Service but, of a certainty, must have served as an officer and dangled after play actresses. |
With all that, however, he could not conceal his joy and wished all sorts of pleasant things not only to Chichikov but even to his little ones, without having asked whether he had any or not. |
Walking up to the window, he rapped his fingers against the glass and called out: |
“Hey, Proshka!” |
A minute later they heard someone come running hurriedly into the entry and fussing there a long while with much clatter of boots; at last the door opened and Proshka came in, a lad of thirteen, in such large boots that at every step he took he all but stepped out of them. |
The reason Proshka had such large boots can be learned without much delay: |
Pliushkin had for all his domestics, no matter how many of them might be in the house, but the one pair of boots, which always had to be left standing in the entry. |
Everyone who was summoned to the master’s chambers usually had to prance barefoot through the entire yard, but upon coming into the entry had to put on these boots and appear in the room only when thus shod. |
On coming out of the room he had to leave the boots in the entry again and set out anew on his own soles. |
Had anyone glanced out of the little window at the time of autumn, and especially when slight hoarfrosts set in of mornings, he would have seen all the domestics going through such leaps as even the sprightliest of male ballet dancers in the theaters could hardly succeed in performing. |
“There, have a look, my good man, what a phiz!” |
said Pliushkin to Chichikov, pointing a finger at Proshka’s face. |
“Why, he’s as stupid as a block of wood, but you just try to leave anything lying around, he’ll steal it in a moment! |
There, what did you come for, you fool? Tell me, what for?” |
Here he fell into silence for a short while, to which Proshka responded with a like silence. “Get a samovar going, do you hear? |
And here, take this key, give it to Mavra and let her go to the storeroom; there, on a shelf, is a dried-up Easter cake that Aleksandra Stepanovna brought me—let it be served with the tea!... |
Hold on, where are you off to? |
Eh, you, what a great fool you are! |
Has the fiend got you by the legs, or what, that you’re itching to be off? |
You listen to all I’ve got to tell you first. |
The Easter cake must have gotten moldy on top, I guess, so let her scrape it off with a knife, but don’t let her throw the crumbs away—let her bring them over to the henhouse for feed. |
And look now, don’t you be going into the storeroom, brother, or else I’ll treat you to—you know what? |
A bundle of birch twigs, just to let you know what they taste like, now! |
There, you’ve got a glorious appetite as it is, but that will whet it still more! |
There, you just try to set foot in the storeroom, for I’ll be watching you from the window all the time! |
You can’t trust them in a single thing,” he resumed, turning to Chichikov after Proshka, boots and all, had cleared out of the room. |
After that he began throwing suspicious glances at Chichikov as well. |
The various aspects of such an unusual magnanimity began to seem improbable to him, and he pondered: |
“Why, the Devil knows him, perhaps he is merely a common braggart, like all these profligate scalawags; he’ll tell you a pack of lies, and then another, just for the sake of talking and getting his fill of tea, and then will be off in his fine carriage!” |
And therefore, out of precaution, and at the same time wishing to test him out to some extent, he said it might not be a bad idea to make out the purchase deed as speedily as possible, j since the life of man is so uncertain— today he lives, but as for the morrow, God alone knows. |
Chichikov evinced a readiness to make out the purchase deed that very instant; all he asked for was a list of the dead serfs. |
This pacified Pliushkin. |
One could see that now he was contemplating some action, and sure enough, taking his keys he walked up to the dresser and, having opened the door, rummaged for a long time among the tumblers and cups therein and at last declared: |
“There, I can’t find it, and yet I had a fine cordial, if only it hasn’t been drunk up, my people are such thieves! |
But wait, isn’t this it?” |
Chichikov beheld a small carafe in his hands, which was all covered with dust, as if with a wool jersey. |
“Goes back to my late wife, she made it herself,” Pliushkin went on. “My scoundrelly housekeeper had thrown it aside altogether and didn’t even cork it up, the creature! |
Little bugs and all sorts of trash managed to get in it, but I got all the rubbish out and now it’s as clear as can be—let me pour a little glass out for you.” |
But Chichikov did his best to decline such a fine cordial, saying that he had already dined and wined. |
“You have already dined and wined!” |
Pliushkin exclaimed. |
“Why, of course, one can always tell a man who moves in good society no matter where he is—he doesn’t eat, yet he’s full; but when it’s some petty thief or other, it doesn’t make any difference how much you feed him.... |
That captain will come, for instance: ‘ |
‘Uncle dear,’ says he, ‘let me have something to eat!’ |
!’And I’m as much of an uncle to him as he is a grandfather to me. |
Probably he must go without anything at all to eat at home, and so he’s traipsing around! |
Oh, yes, you need a list of all these drones? |
By all means! I wrote all their names out on a separate piece of paper, to the best of my knowledge, so as to cross them out, first thing, when submitting a new census.” |
Pliushkin put on spectacles and began rummaging among his papers. |
As he untied all sorts of packets he regaled his guest with such dust that the latter had to sneeze. |
At last the old man drew out a bit of paper, entirely crisscrossed with writing. |
The names of the peasants were as closely clustered on it as midges. |
There were all sorts of names on it: |
Paramonovs, and Pimenovs, and Panteleimonovs, and there even popped up a certain Grigorii Doezhai-ne-doedesh (Try-to-get-there-but-you-won’t); there were actually more than a hundred and twenty of them. |
Chichikov smiled upon seeing such a multitude. |
Having put the list away in his pocket, he remarked to Pliushkin that, to execute the purchase deed, his host would have to go into town. |
“Into town? |
But how can I?... |
And how can I ever leave the house? |
For not a one of my people but is a thief or a swindler; they’ll strip me so in one day that there won’t be a nail left to hang my overcoat on.” |
“Haven’t you some friend in town, then?” |
“There, now, what friend? |
All my friends have died off, or have dropped their friendship.... |
Ah, my good fellow, what am I talking about! |
Of course I have!” |
he cried out. |
“Why, I know none other than the Chairman of the Administrative Offices himself; in the old days he even used to come out to see me. How can I help but know him? |
We used to eat out of the same trough, we used to climb fences together! |
What else should we be but friends? |
And what a friend!... |
Should I write to him, then, perhaps?” |
“Why, by all means write to him!” |
“Surely, and what a friend, at that! |
We were schoolmates.” |
And suddenly some warm ray glided over those wooden features; there appeared an expression of—no, not of emotion, but of a pale reflection of emotion: |
a phenomenon like that of the unexpected emergence upon the surface of the waters of a drowning man, which evokes a joyous shout from the crowd thronging the bank; but his brothers and sisters have rejoiced in vain, and in vain do they cast from the bank a rope and wait whether there will not appear anew the drowning man’s back, or his arms wearied with the struggle—he has come up for the last time. |
All is over, and yet more fearsome and desolate does the stilled surface of the unresponsive element become thereafter. |
And so it was with Pliushkin’s face: immediately following the emotion that had glided over it, it became still more impassive and still more vulgar. |
“I had a sheet of clean paper lying on the table,” said he, “but I don’t know where it has ever gone to; my people are all such a worthless lot!” |
Here he began looking for it on the table and under it; he groped all over and at last set up a shout: “Mavra! |
Hey, there, Mavra!” |
A woman appeared in answer to the call, carrying a plate on which lay the stale Easter cake, which the reader already knows about. |
Whereupon the following dialogue took place between them: |
“Wherever did you hide that paper, you murderess?” |
“Honest to God, master, I ain’t laid eyes on any paper, save for a small scrap that you used to cover your wineglass with.” |
“There, I can see by your eyes that you sneaked off with it.” |
“And what would I be sneaking off with it for? |
Why, I have no use for it at all: I don t know how to read or write.” |
“You lie; you carried it off to that little sexton; he’s forever scribbling away, and so you carried it off to him.” |
“Why, that sexton, should he want to, can get his own paper. |
He never laid eyes on your scrap of paper.” |
“You just wait; on the dread Day of Judgment the devils will make it hot for you with their iron pitchforks. |
You’ll see how hot they’ll make it for you!” |
“But why should they be making it hot for me, when I never laid a finger on that paper? |
If it were some other womanish frailty, well and good, but thieving is something no one has ever yet reproached me with.” |
“Oh, but will the devils make it hot for you! ‘ |
‘There,’ they’ll be saying, ‘take that, you conniver, for the way you fooled your master!’ |
and they’ll make it hot for you with their red-hot pitchforks, they will!” |
“And I’ll say: ‘ |
‘You got no call to do it! |
As God is my witness, you got no call to do it, I didn’t take it!’ |
Why, it’s lying right there on the table! |
You’re always reproaching a body, for nothing at all!” |
And, true enough, Pliushkin caught sight of the paper; pausing for a moment, he munched his lips and said: |
“There, why did you fly off the handle like that? |
What a touchy creature! |
You tell her but one word, and she’ll come back at you with ten. Go on, now, bring me something so I can seal a letter. Wait, hold on! |
You’ll grab a tallow candle; tallow melts, it will burn up and there’s nothing left, just so much loss; guess you’d better bring me a bit of kindling wood!” |
Mavra went off, while Pliushkin, seating himself in an easy chair and picking up a quill, for a long while kept on turning the paper this way and that, figuring if there weren’t some means or other of tearing even one-eighth off it, but finally became convinced that there was no possible way of accomplishing this, whereupon he thrust the quill into the inkpot that held some sort of fluid with scum on top and a multitude of flies at the bottom and fell to writing, forming letters that looked like musical notes, at every moment curbing the impetuosity of his hand to keep it from racing all over the paper and instead meanly adding crabbed line to crabbed line as he reflected, not without regret, that there would still be a great deal of white space left. |
And is it to such insignificance, such pettiness, such vileness that a man could sink? |
Could a man change to such an extent? |
And does all this have any verisimilitude? All this has verisimilitude, all this can befall a man. |
The fiery youth of the present would recoil in horror were you to show him a portrait of himself in his old age. |
Take along with you, then, on setting out upon your way, as you emerge from the gentle years of youth into stern, coarsening manhood, take along with you all the humane impulses, abandon them not on the road; you will never retrieve them after! |
Sinister, fearsome is the old age that will come upon you farther along the way, and it never releases aught nor ever aught returns! |
The grave is more merciful than it; upon the grave will be inscribed: |
Here Lies a Man, but naught will you read upon the frigid, insensate features of inhuman old age. |
“But do you know some friend of yours, perhaps,” asked Pliushkin, folding the letter, “who might have need of runaway souls?” |
“Why, have you any runaways too?” |
Chichikov asked quickly, immediately on the qui vive. |
“That’s just it, I do have. |
My son-in-law made inquiries; he says that apparently there’s never a trace of them by now; but then, he’s a military man, all he can do right is clink his spurs. |
But as for trying to accomplish something in the courts—” |
“And how many might you have of them?” |
“Well, they may add up to as many as seventy.” |
“Really?” |
“Yes, by God! |
Why, not a year passes but what some of them run off from me. |
My people are no end gluttonous; out of sheer idleness they’ve gotten into the habit of stuffing their guts, whereas I haven’t a thing to eat even myself. ... |
Yes, and I’d take anything you’d give me for them. |
So you just advise that friend of yours, now; if he should recapture but half a score souls he would already have a goodly sum. |
For, after all, a serf-soul registered with the Bureau of Audits is worth five hundred rubles.” |
“No, we won’t let any friend have even a sniff of this,” said Chichikov to himself and then explained that one could never find such a friend as that, inasmuch as the mere outlay involved would cost more than any serf was worth, for once you got tangled with the law and lawyers you would have to cut off the skirts of your own coat to get out of their clutches as fast and as far as possible; but if he, Pliushkin, was so hard-pressed, then he, Chichikov, being motivated by sympathy, was ready to give him ... |
but it was such a trifle that it was not worthwhile even talking about it. |
“But how much would you give?” |
asked Pliushkin and became the utter miser; his hands began to quiver like quicksilver. |
“I would give you five-and-twenty kopecks per soul!” |
“And what would your terms be, spot cash?” |
“Yes, you would get the money at once.” |
“Only, my good man, for the sake of my poverty, you ought to make it forty kopecks each, really.” |
“My most esteemed friend!” |
said Chichikov. “By right it should be not only forty kopecks a soul; I would, if I could, pay you five hundred rubles apiece! |
I would pay it with pleasure, inasmuch as I behold before me a venerable, kindly old man who is enduring hardship because of his own kindheartedness—” |
“Ah, by God, that is so! |
By God, that’s the truth!” |
said Pliushkin, hanging his head down and shaking it sadly. |
“It all comes of being so kind-hearted.” |
“There, you see, it didn’t take me long to grasp your character. |
And so, why shouldn’t I give you five hundred rubles per soul? But... |
I haven’t the wherewithal! I’m ready, if you like, to add on another five-kopeck piece, so that every soul will stand me thirty kopecks.” |
“Well, my good sir, it’s all up to you, but you might tack on just two kopecks apiece to that.” |
“I will tack on just two kopecks apiece, if you like. |
How many of these runaways have you? |
You said seventy, I think.” |
“No, they’ll come to eight-and-seventy.” |
“Eight-and-seventy, eight-and-seventy, at two-and-thirty kopecks per soul, that’ll come to—” Here our hero stopped to think, but only for a second, no more, and suddenly announced: |
“That’ll come to twenty-four rubles and ninety-six kopecks!” |
He was strong in arithmetic. |
Right then and there he made Pliushkin write out a receipt and handed the money over to him, which the latter took in both his hands and carried over to the desk as though he were carrying something liquid, fearing at every moment to let it slop over. |
Having reached the desk, he examined the money once more and tucked it away, also with the utmost care, in one of the drawers, where in all probability it was destined to be buried until such time as Father Karp and Father Polikarp, the two priests of his village, would bury him himself, to the indescribable joy of his son-in-law and his daughter, and perhaps even that of the captain who had enrolled himself among Pliushkin’s kin. |
Having hidden the money, Pliushkin sat down in an easy chair and apparently could find no other subject for conversation. |
“Well, now, are you preparing to leave?” |
he asked, noticing a slight movement on the part of Chichikov, who had only wanted to get a handkerchief out of his pocket. |
This question reminded him that there really was no use in tarrying any longer. |
“Yes, it’s time for me to be going!” |
he announced, picking up his hat. |
“And what about a cup of tea?” |
“No, I’d better have a cup of tea with you some other time.” |
“But, I say! Why, I’ve ordered a samovar. |
I am no great lover of tea, I must tell you, it’s an expensive beverage, and besides that the price of sugar has gone up unmercifully. |
Proshka! |
We don’t need the samovar! |
You bring that dried Easter cake back to Mavra, you hear? |
Let her put it back in the same place it was; or no, let’s have it here; I’ll carry it back myself. |
Good-bye, my dear sir! And may God bless you! As for the letter, you hand it over to the Chairman of the Administrative Offices. |
Yes! |
Let him read it; he’s an old friend of mine. |
Of course! |
We used to eat out of the same trough.” |
After which this strange phenomenon, this shriveled little dotard, escorted him out of the courtyard, ordering the gates to be locked immediately thereafter; then he made the rounds of his storerooms, to make sure that all the watchmen were at their posts—they were stationed at every corner and had to pound small paddles against empty little casks that did duty for the traditional sheets of iron; then he looked in at the kitchen, where, under pretext of seeing whether his people were getting good fare, he filled himself with plenty of cabbage soup and buckwheat groats and, having scolded every last one of his domestics for their thievish and loose ways, returned to his own room. |
Left to himself, he even thought of how he might show his gratitude to his recent caller for such a really unparalleled magnanimity. |
“I’ll make him a present,” he reflected to himself, “of my pocket watch; after all it’s a good watch, of silver, and not just ordinary pinchbeck or bronze; it’s a trifle out of order, true enough, but then he can get it fixed himself; he’s still a young man, so he has to have a watch to make his fiancee like him. |
Or no,” he added after some meditation, “I’d better leave it to him after my death, in my will, to remember me by.” |
But our hero, even without the watch, was in most cheerful spirits. |
Such an unexpected acquisition was a veritable gift. |
Really, no matter what you might say, there were not only the dead souls alone, but runaway souls as well, and two hundred odd creatures in all! |
Of course, while he had still been driving up to Pliushkin’s village he had already had a premonition that he would gain something or other, but that it would be such a windfall he had never anticipated. |
All the way back he was unusually jolly; he whistled in a low key; he made music with his lips, putting a fist to his lips as if he were playing on a trumpet, and finally struck up some song or other, a thing so unusual that Selifan himself listened, listened and then, with a slight shake of his head, said: |
“Just you listen how the master’s singing!” |
It was already dusk when they drove up to town. |
Light and shadow had become thoroughly intermingled and, it seemed, all objects had also become intermingled among themselves. |
The striped tollgate had taken on some indeterminate hue; the mustachios of the soldier on sentry duty seemed to be up on his forehead and considerably above his eyes, and as for his nose, why, he seemed to have none at all. |
The thunderous rattling of the carriage and its bouncing made the occupant notice that it had reached a cobbled way. |
The street lamps had not been lit yet; only here and there were lights beginning to appear in the windows of the houses, while in the lanes and the blind alleys scenes and conversations were taking place inseparable from this time of day in all towns where there are many soldiers, cabbies, workmen, and beings of a peculiar species who look like ladies, wearing red shawls and shoes without stockings and who dart like bats over the street crossings at nightfall. |
Chichikov did not notice them, nor did he notice even the exceedingly slim petty officials with little canes who, probably after taking a stroll beyond the town, were now returning to their homes. |
At rare intervals there would come floating to Chichikov’s ears such exclamations, apparently feminine, as “You lie, you drunkard, I never let him take no such liberties as that with me!” |
or: |
“Don’t you be fighting, you ignoramus, but come along to the station house and I’ll show you what’s what!” |
In brief, such words as will suddenly scald, like so much boiling water, some youth of twenty as, lost in reveries, he is on his way home from the theater, his head filled with visions of a Spanish street, night, a wondrous feminine image with a guitar and ringlets. |
What doesn’t he have in that head of his and what dreams do not come to him? |
He is soaring in the clouds, and he may just have dropped in on Schiller for a chat, when suddenly, like thunder, the fatal words peal out over his head, and he perceives that he has come back to earth once more, and not only to earth, but actually to Haymarket Square, and right by a tavern, at that; and once more life has begun strutting its stuff before him in its workaday fashion. |
Finally the carriage, after a considerable bounce, plunged, as if it were sinking into a pit, into the gates of his inn, where Chichikov was met by his servant Petrushka, who held the skirts of his frock coat with one hand (inasmuch as he did not like having them come apart) and with the other helped his master to climb out of the carriage. |
The tavern servant, too, came running out with a candle and a napkin over his shoulder. |
Whether Petrushka was gladdened by the arrival of his master, no one knows; but at any rate he exchanged winks with Selifan, and his usual sullen air seemed on this occasion to clear up to some extent. |
“You’ve been pleased to take a long holiday,” said the inn waiter, lighting the stairs. |
“Yes,” said Chichikov, when he had ascended them. |
“Well, and what’s new with you?” |
“Everything’s well, glory be to God,” said the server, scraping. |
“Yesterday we had some military lieutenant or other arrive; he’s taken Room Sixteen.” |
“A lieutenant?” |
“Don’t know who he is; from Riazan; got bay horses.” |
“Fine, fine; keep on being a good lad,” said Chichikov and entered his room. |
As he was passing through the entry he turned up his nose and said to Petrushka: |
“You might open the windows, at least!” |
“Why, I did have them open,” said Petrushka, but he was lying. |
His master himself knew that he was lying, but he no longer wanted to pursue the argument any further. |
Having eaten the lightest of suppers, consisting only of a suckling pig, he immediately undressed and, climbing in under his blanket, fell into fast, sound slumber, fell into that marvelous slumber which is known only to those fortunate beings who are bothered neither by hemorrhoids, nor fleas, nor overdeveloped mental faculties. |
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