The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

by Nikolai Gogol

  The officers animated society, which till then had consisted only of the judge, who lived in the same house as some deacon's widow, and the mayor, a reasonable man, but who slept decidedly all day: from dinner till evening, and from evening till dinner. Society became still more numerous and entertaining when the quarters of the brigadier general were transferred there. Neighboring landowners, whose existence no one had even suspected till then, began coming to the little town more often, to meet the gentlemen officers and on occasion to play a little game of faro, which before had been an extremely vague fancy in their heads, busied with crops, their wives' errands, and hunting hares. It's a great pity I'm unable to remember for what occasion the brigadier general gave a big dinner; enormous preparations went into it: the snick of the chef's knives in the general's kitchen could be heard as far as the town gates. The entire market was completely bought up for this dinner, so that the judge and his deaconess had to eat buckwheat pancakes and cornstarch custard. The small yard of the general's house was entirely filled with droshkies and carriages. The company consisted of men: officers and some neighboring landowners. Among the landowners, the most remarkable was Pythagor Pythagorovich Chertokutsky, one of the chief aristocrats of the B. region, who made the biggest stir at the local elections, coming to them in a jaunty carriage. He had served formerly in one of the cavalry regiments and had numbered among its important and notable officers.

  At least he was seen at many balls and gatherings, wherever his regiment happened to migrate; the girls of Tambov and Simbirsk provinces might, incidentally, be asked about that. It's quite possible that his favorable repute would have spread to other provinces as well, if he had not retired on a certain occasion, usually known as an unpleasant incident: either he gave someone a slap in his earlier years, or he was given one, I don't remember for sure, only the upshot was that he was asked to retire. However, he by no means lost any of his dignity: wore a high-waisted tailcoat after the fashion of military uniforms, spurs on his boots, and a mustache under his nose, because otherwise the noblemen might have thought he had served in the infantry, which he sometimes scornfully called infantury and sometimes infantary. He visited all the crowded fairs, where the insides of Russia, consisting of nannies, children, daughters, and fat landowners, came for the merrymaking in britzkas, gigs, tarantasses, and such carriages as no one ever saw even in dreams. His nose could smell where a cavalry regiment was stationed, and he always went to meet the gentleman officers. With great adroitness he would leap from his light carriage or droshky before them and make their acquaintance extremely quickly. During the last election, he gave an excellent dinner for the nobility, at which he announced that if he were elected marshal, 1 he would put the nobility on the very best footing. He generally behaved with largesse, as they say in the districts and provinces, married a pretty little thing, with her got a dowry of two hundred souls plus several thousand in capital. The capital went immediately on a sixsome of really fine horses, gilded door latches, a tame monkey for the house, and a Frenchman for a butler. The two hundred souls, together with his own two hundred, were mortgaged with a view to some sort of commercial transactions. In short, he was a real landowner ... A landowner good and proper.

  Besides him, there were several other landowners at the general's dinner, but they are not worth talking about. The rest were all army men of the same regiment, including two staff officers: a colonel and a rather fat major. The general was stocky and corpulent himself, though a good commander in the officers' opinion. He spoke in a rather deep, imposing bass.

  The dinner was extraordinary: sturgeon, beluga, sterlet, bustard, asparagus, quail, partridge, and mushrooms testified that the cook had not sat down to eat since the day before, and that four soldiers, knives in hand, had worked all night helping him with the fricassees and gelees.

  The myriads of bottles—tall ones of Lafitte, short-necked ones of Madeira—the beautiful summer day, the windows all thrown wide open, the plates of ice on the table, the gentlemen officers with their bottom button unbuttoned, the owners of trim tailcoats with their shirt fronts all rumpled, the crisscross conversation dominated by the general's voice and drowned in champagne—everything was in harmony with everything else. After dinner they all got up with an agreeable heaviness in their stomachs and, having lit their long or short chibouks, stepped out on the porch, cups of coffee in their hands.

  The general, the colonel, and even the major had their uniforms completely unbuttoned, so that their noble silk suspenders showed slightly, while the gentlemen officers, observing due respect, remained buttoned up except for the bottom three buttons.

  "We can have a look at her now," said the general. "Please, my good fellow," he added, turning to his aide-de-camp, a rather adroit young man of pleasant appearance, "tell them to bring the bay mare here! You'll see for yourselves." Here the general drew on his pipe and let the smoke out. "She still hasn't been well cared for—cursed little town, not a decent stable in it. The horse, puff, puff, is quite a decent one!"

  "And have you, puff, puff, had her long, Your Excellency?" said Chertokutsky.

  "Puff, puff, puff, well. . . puff, not so long. It's only two years since I brought her from the stud farm!"

  "And was she broken when you got her, or did they break her here?"

  "Puff, puff, pu, pu, pu . . . u . . . u . . . ff, here." Having said which, the general vanished completely in smoke.

  Meanwhile, a soldier sprang out of the stable, the sound of hooves was heard, another finally appeared in a white coverall, with an enormous black mustache, leading by the bridle the twitching and shying horse, which, suddenly raising its head, all but raised the crouching soldier into the air along with his mustache. "Now, now, Agrafena Ivanovna!" he said as he led her to the porch.

  The mare's name was Agrafena Ivanovna; strong and wild as a southern beauty, she drummed her hooves on the wooden porch and suddenly stood still.

  The general, lowering his pipe, began looking at Agrafena Ivanovna with a contented air.

  The colonel himself stepped down from the porch and took Agrafena Ivanovna by the muzzle.

  The major himself patted Agrafena Ivanovna on the leg. The rest clucked their tongues.

  Chertokutsky got down from the porch and went behind her.

  The soldier, standing at attention and holding the bridle, stared straight into the visitor's eyes, as if he wished to jump into them.

  "Very, very good," said Chertokutsky, "a shapely horse! How's her gait, Your Excellency, if I may ask?"

  "Her gait is good, only . . . devil knows. . . that fool of a vet gave her some sort of pills, and she's been sneezing for two days now."

  "Very, very nice. And do you have a corresponding equipage, Your Excellency?"

  "Equipage? . . . But this is a saddle horse."

  "I know that. But I asked Your Excellency about it so as to learn whether you have corresponding equipages for your other horses."

  "Well, as for equipages, I don't have quite enough. I must confess to tell you, I've long wanted to own a modern carriage. I wrote about it to my brother, who is now in Petersburg, but I don't know whether he'll send me one or not."

  "It seems to me, Your Excellency," the colonel observed, "that there's no better carriage than a Viennese one."

  "You think rightly, puff, puff, puff!"

  "I have a surpassing carriage, Your Excellency, real Viennese workmanship."

  "Which? The one you came in?"

  "Oh, no. This one's just for driving around, for my own use, but that one . . . it's astonishing, light as a feather; and when you get in, it's simply as if-—with Your Excellency's permission—as if a nurse were rocking you in a cradle!"

  "So it's comfortable?"

  "Very, very comfortable; cushions, springs—all just like a picture.”

  "That's good."

  "And so roomy! I mean, Your Excellency, I've never yet seen the like of it. When I was in the service, I used to put ten bottles of rum and twenty pounds
of tobacco in the trunk; and besides that I'd take with me some six changes of uniform, linens, and two chibouks, Your Excellency, as long—if you'll permit the expression—as tapeworms, and you could put a whole ox in the pouches."

  "That's good."

  "I paid four thousand for it, Your Excellency."

  "Judging by the price, it must be good. And you bought it yourself?"

  "No, Your Excellency, it happened to come to me. It was bought by a friend of mine, a rare person, a childhood friend, you'd get along perfectly with him. Between us there was no yours or mine, it was all the same. I won it from him at cards. Perhaps you'd care to do me the honor, Your Excellency, of coming to dine with me tomorrow and of having a look at the carriage at the same time?"

  "I don't know what to say to you. Myself alone, it's somehow . . . Or, if you please, perhaps the gentlemen officers can come along?"

  "I humbly invite the gentlemen officers as well. Gentlemen, I would consider myself greatly honored to have the pleasure of seeing you in my house!"

  The colonel, the major, and the other officers thanked him with a courteous bow.

  "I personally am of the opinion, Your Excellency, that if one buys something, it ought to be good, and if it's bad, there's no point in acquiring it. At my place, when you honor me with your visit tomorrow, I'll show you a thing or two that I've acquired for the management of my estate."

  The general looked and let the smoke out of his mouth.

  Chertokutsky was extremely pleased to have invited the gentlemen officers; in anticipation, he ordered pates and sauces in his head, kept glancing very gaily at the gentlemen officers, who, for their part, also doubled their benevolence toward him, as could be noticed by their eyes and little gestures of a half-bowing sort. Chertokutsky's step grew somehow more casual, his voice more languid: it sounded like a voice heavy with pleasure.

  "There, Your Excellency, you will make the acquaintance of the mistress of the house."

  "I shall be very pleased," said the general, stroking his mustache.

  After which Chertokutsky wanted to go home at once, so as to make all the preparations for receiving his guests at the next day's dinner in good time; he had already picked up his hat, but it happened somehow strangely that he stayed a little longer. Meanwhile the card tables were set up in the room. Soon the whole company broke up into foursomes for whist and settled in different corners of the general's rooms.

  Candles were brought. For a long time, Chertokutsky did not know whether to sit down to whist or not. But since the gentlemen officers had begun to invite him, he thought it quite against social rules to decline. He sat down. Imperceptibly, a glass of punch turned up before him, which he, forgetting himself, drank straight off that same minute. Having played two rubbers, Chertokutsky again found a glass of punch under his hand, which he, forgetting himself, again drank off, after first saying, "It's time, gentlemen, really, it's time I went home."

  But he sat down again for a second game. Meanwhile the conversation took it's own particular turn in different corners of the room. Those playing whist were rather silent; but the nonplayers sitting to the side on sofas conducted their own conversation. In one corner a cavalry staff captain, putting a pillow under his side and a pipe in his mouth, spoke quite freely and fluently of his amorous adventures and held the full attention of the circle around him.

  One extremely fat landowner with short arms, somewhat resembling two potatoes growing on him, listened with an extraordinarily sweet look and only tried now and then to send his short arm behind his broad back to get out his snuffbox. In another corner, a rather heated argument sprang up about squadron exercises, and Chertokutsky, who by then had twice played a jack instead of a queen, would suddenly interfere in other people's conversation and cry out from his corner: "What year was that?" or "What regiment?"—not noticing that the question was sometimes completely beside the point. Finally, a few minutes before suppertime, the whist came to an end, though it still went on in words and everyone's head seemed filled with whist. Chertokutsky remembered very well that he had won a lot, but he had nothing in his hands, and, getting up from the table, he stood for a long time in the position of a man who finds no handkerchief in his pocket. Meanwhile supper was served. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of wines and that Chertokutsky almost inadvertently had sometimes to fill his glass because there were bottles standing to right and left of him.

  A most lengthy conversation went on at the table, yet it was conducted somehow strangely. One landowner who had served back in the campaign of 1812 2 told about a battle such as never took place, and then, for completely unknown reasons, removed the stopper from a decanter and stuck it into a pastry. In short, when they began to leave, it was already three o'clock in the morning, and the coachmen had to gather up some persons in their arms like shopping parcels, and Chertokutsky, for all his aristocratism, bowed so low and swung his head so much as he sat in his carriage that he brought two burrs home with him on his mustache.

  In the house all was completely asleep; the coachman had great difficulty finding the valet, who brought his master through the drawing room and handed him over to the chambermaid, following whom Chertokutsky somehow reached his bedroom and lay down next to his young and pretty wife, who was lying there looking lovely in her white-as-snow nightgown. The movement produced by her husband falling into bed woke her up. She stretched herself, raised her eyelashes, and, quickly squinting three times, opened her eyes with a half-angry smile; but seeing that he was decidedly unwilling to show her any tenderness just then, she vexedly turned on her other side and, putting her fresh cheek on her hand, fell asleep soon after he did.

  It was already that time which on country estates is not called early, when the young mistress woke up beside her snoring husband. Recalling that he had come home past three o'clock last night, she was sorry to rouse him, and having put on her slippers, which her husband had ordered from Petersburg, with a white jacket draping her like flowing water, she went out to her dressing room, washed with water fresh as her own self, and approached the mirror. Glancing at herself a couple of times, she saw that she was not at all bad looking that day. This apparently insignificant circumstance made her sit for precisely two extra hours before the mirror. At last she dressed herself very prettily and went to take some fresh air in the garden. As if by design, the weather was beautiful then, such as only a southern summer day can boast of. The sun, getting toward noon, blazed down with all the force of its rays, but it was cool strolling in the dense shade of the alleys, and the flowers, warmed by the sun, tripled their fragrance. The pretty mistress quite forgot that it was already twelve and her husband was still asleep. There already came to her ears the after-dinner snoring of the two coachmen and one postilion, who slept in the stables beyond the garden. But she went on sitting in the dense alley, from which a view opened onto the high road, and gazing absentmindedly at its unpeopled emptiness, when dust suddenly rising in the distance caught her attention. Looking closer, she soon made out several carriages. At their head drove a light, open two-seater; in it sat the general, his thick epaulettes gleaming in the sun, with the colonel beside him. It was followed by another, a four-seater; in it sat the major, with the general's aide-de-camp and two officers on the facing seats; following that carriage came the regimental droshky known to all the world, owned this time by the corpulent major; after the droshky came a four-place bon-voyage in which four officers sat holding a fifth on their lap . . . behind the bonvoyage three officers pranced on handsome dapple-bay horses.

  "Can they be coming here?" the mistress of the house thought. "Ah, my God! they've actually turned onto the bridge!" She cried out, clasped her hands, and ran across flower beds and flowers straight to her husband's bedroom. He lay in a dead sleep.

  "Get up, get up! Get up quickly!" she cried, pulling him by the arm.

  "Ah?" said Chertokutsky, stretching without opening his eyes.

  "Get up, poopsy! Do you hear? Guests!"
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  "Guests? What guests?" Having said which, he uttered a little moo, like a calf feeling for its mother's teats with its muzzle. "Mm . . ." he grunted, "give me your little neck, moomsy! I'll kiss you."

  "Sweetie, get up quickly, for God's sake. The general and the officers! Ah, my God, you've got a burr on your mustache!"

  "The general? Ah, so he's coming already? But why the devil didn't anybody wake me up? And the dinner, what about the dinner—is everything properly prepared?"

  "What dinner?"