The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

by Nikolai Gogol

  There exists in Petersburg a powerful enemy of all who earn a salary of four hundred roubles or thereabouts. This enemy is none other than our northern frost, though, incidentally, people say it is very healthful. Toward nine o'clock in the morning, precisely the hour when the streets are covered with people going to their offices, it starts dealing such strong and sharp flicks to all noses indiscriminately that the poor clerks decidedly do not know where to put them. At that time, when even those who occupy high positions have an ache in their foreheads from the cold and tears come to their eyes, poor titular councillors are sometimes defenseless. The whole of salvation consists in running as quickly as possible, in your skimpy overcoat, across five or six streets and then standing in the porter's lodge, stamping your feet good and hard, thereby thawing out all your job-performing gifts and abilities, which had become frozen on the way. Akaky Akakievich had for a certain time begun to feel that he was somehow getting it especially in the back and shoulder, though he tried to run across his allotted space as quickly as possible. He thought finally that the sin might perhaps lie with his overcoat. Examining it well at home, he discovered that in two or three places—namely, on the back and shoulders—it had become just like burlap; the broadcloth was so worn out that it was threadbare, and the lining had fallen to pieces. It should be known that Akaky Akakievich's overcoat also served as an object of mockery for the clerks; they even deprived it of the noble name of overcoat and called it a housecoat. Indeed, it was somehow strangely constituted: its collar diminished more and more each year, for it went to mend other parts. The mending did not testify to any skill in the tailor, and the results were in fact crude and unsightly. Seeing what the situation was, Akaky Akakievich decided that the overcoat had to be taken to Petrovich the tailor, who lived somewhere on a fourth floor, up a back entrance, and who, in spite of his blind eye and the pockmarks all over his face, performed the mending of clerkly and all other trousers and tailcoats quite successfully—to be sure, when he was sober and not entertaining any other projects in his head. Of this tailor, of course, not much should be said, but since there exists a rule that the character of every person in a story be well delineated, there's no help for it, let us have Petrovich here as well. In the beginning he was simply called Grigory and was some squire's serf; he began to be called Petrovich when he was freed and started drinking rather heavily on feast days—first on great feasts, and then on all church feasts indiscriminately, wherever a little cross appeared on the calendar. In this respect he was true to the customs of his forebears and, in arguing with his wife, used to call her a worldly woman and a German. 4 Now that we've mentioned the wife, we ought to say a couple of words about her as well; but, unfortunately, not much is known about her, except that Petrovich had a wife, and that she even wore a bonnet, not a kerchief; but it seems she could not boast of her beauty; at least, when meeting her, only guardsmen looked under her bonnet, winking their mustaches and emitting some special noise.

  Climbing the stairway leading to Petrovich, which, to do it justice, was all dressed with water and swill, and redolent throughout of that spiritous smell that makes the eyes smart and is inevitably present in all back stairways of Petersburg houses—climbing the stairway, Akaky Akakievich was thinking about how much Petrovich would ask, and mentally decided not to pay more than two roubles. The door was open, because the mistress of the house, while cooking fish, had filled the kitchen with so much smoke that even the cockroaches themselves could no longer be seen. Akaky Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unnoticed even by the mistress herself, and finally went into the room, where he saw Petrovich sitting on a wide, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked under him like a Turkish pasha's. His feet, after the custom of tailors sitting over their work, were bare. The eye was struck first of all by his big toe, very familiar to Akaky Akakievich, with a somehow disfigured nail, thick and strong as tortoise shell. From Petrovich's neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and on his knees lay some rag. He had already spent three minutes trying to put a thread through the eye of a needle and missing, and therefore he was very angry with the darkness and even with the thread itself, grumbling under his breath, "Won't go through, the barbarian! Get the better of me, you rascal!" Akaky Akakievich was upset that he had come precisely at a moment when Petrovich was angry: he liked dealing with Petrovich when the latter was already a bit under the influence, or, as his wife used to put it, "got himself tight on rotgut, the one-eyed devil." In that condition, Petrovich usually gave in and agreed very willingly, and even bowed and thanked him each time. Later, it's true, his wife would come, lamenting that her husband had been drunk and had asked too little; but a ten-kopeck piece would be added, and the deal was in the hat. Now, however, Petrovich seemed to be in a sober state, and therefore tough, intractable, and liable to demand devil knows what price. Akaky Akakievich grasped that fact and was, as they say, about to backtrack, but the thing was already under way. Petrovich squinted at him very intently with his only eye, and Akaky Akakievich involuntarily said: "Good day, Petrovich!"

  "Good day to you, sir," said Petrovich, and cocked his eye at Akaky Akakievich's hands, trying to see what sort of booty he was bringing.

  "I've come to you, Petrovich, sort of. . ."

  It should be known that Akaky Akakievich expressed himself mostly with prepositions, adverbs, and finally such particles as have decidedly no meaning. If the matter was very difficult, he even had the habit of not finishing the phrase at all, so that very often he would begin his speech with the words "That, really, is altogether sort of. . ." after which would come nothing, and he himself would forget it, thinking everything had been said.

  "What's this?" said Petrovich, at the same time giving his uniform a thorough inspection with his only eye, beginning with the collar, then the sleeves, back, skirts, and buttonholes—all of which was quite familiar to him, since it was his own handiwork. Such is the custom among tailors: it's the first thing they do when they meet someone.

  "And I've come, Petrovich, sort of. . . this overcoat, the broadcloth . . . you see, in all other places it's quite strong, it got a bit dusty and so it seems as if it's old, but it's new, only in one place it's a bit sort of. . . on the back, and here on one shoulder it's a bit worn, and on this shoulder a little bit—you see, that's all. Not much work . . ."

  Petrovich took the housecoat, laid it out on the table first, examined it for a long time, shook his head, and reached his hand out to the windowsill to get his round snuffbox with the portrait of some general on it—which one is not known, because the place where the face was had been poked through by a finger and then pasted over with a rectangular piece of paper.

  Having taken a pinch, Petrovich stretched the housecoat on his hands and examined it against the light and again shook his head. Then he turned it inside out and shook his head once more, once more opened the lid with the general pasted over with paper, and, having filled his nose with snuff, closed the box, put it away, and finally said: "No, impossible to fix it—bad wardrobe."

  At these words, Akaky Akakievich's heart missed a beat.

  "Why impossible, Petrovich?" he said, almost in a child's pleading voice. "It's only a bit worn on the shoulders—surely you have some little scraps. . ."

  "Little scraps might be found, we might find some little scraps," said Petrovich, "but it's impossible to sew them on—the stuff's quite rotten, touch it with a needle and it falls apart."

  "Falls apart, and you patch it over."

  "But there's nothing to put a patch on, nothing for it to hold to, it's too worn out. They pass it off as broadcloth, but the wind blows and it flies to pieces."

  "Well, you can make it hold. Otherwise, really, it's sort of. . . !"

  "No," Petrovich said resolutely, "it's impossible to do anything. The stuff's no good. You'd better make yourself foot cloths out of it when the winter cold comes, because socks don't keep you warm. It's Germans invented them so as to earn more money for themselves."

  (Petrovic
h liked needling the Germans on occasion.) "And it appears you'll have to have a new overcoat made."

  At the word "new" all went dim in Akaky Akakievich's eyes, and everything in the room became tangled before him. The only thing he saw clearly was the general with paper pasted over his face who was on the lid of Petrovich's snuffbox.

  "How's that—new?" he said, still as if in sleep. "I have no money for that."

  "Yes, new," Petrovich said with barbaric calm.

  "Well, if it must be a new one, what would it, sort of. . ."

  "You mean, how much would it cost?"

  "Yes."

  "Three times fifty and then some would have to go into it," Petrovich said and pressed his lips together meaningfully. He very much liked strong effects, liked somehow to confound one completely all of a sudden and then glance sideways at the face the confounded one pulls at such words.

  "A hundred and fifty roubles for an overcoat?" poor Akaky Akakievich cried out—cried out, perhaps, for the first time in all his born days, for he was always distinguished by the softness of his voice.

  "Yes, sir," said Petrovich, "depending also on the overcoat. If we put a marten on the collar, plus a hood with silk lining, it may come to two hundred."

  "Please, Petrovich," Akaky Akakievich said in a pleading voice, not hearing and not trying to hear all Petrovich's words and effects, "fix it somehow, so that it can serve a while longer at least."

  "Ah, no, that'll be work gone for naught and money wasted," said Petrovich, and after these words Akaky Akakievich left, totally annihilated.

  And Petrovich, on his departure, stood for a long time, his lips pressed together meaningfully, without going back to work, feeling pleased that he had not lowered himself or betrayed the art of tailoring.

  When he went outside, Akaky Akakievich was as if in a dream. "So it's that, that's what it is," he said to himself. "I really didn't think it would come out sort of. . ." and then, after some silence, he added, "So that's how it is! that's what finally comes out! and I really never would have supposed it would be so." Following that, a long silence again ensued, after which he said, "So that's it! Such an, indeed, altogether unexpected, sort of. . . it's altogether. . . such a circumstance!" Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the entirely opposite direction, without suspecting it himself. On the way, a chimney sweep brushed against him with his whole dirty flank, blackening his whole shoulder; a full hat-load of lime poured down on him from the top of a house under construction. He did not notice any of it, and only later, when he ran into an on-duty policeman who, having set aside his halberd, was shaking snuff from his snuff bottle onto his callused fist, only then did he recover his senses slightly, and that only because the policeman said, "What're you doing, barging into my mug! Don't you have enough sidewalk?" This made him look around and turn back home. Only here did he begin to collect his thoughts, see his situation clearly for what it was, and start talking to himself, not in snatches now but sensibly and frankly, as with a reasonable friend with whom one could discuss the most heartfelt and intimate things. "Ah, no," said Akaky Akakievich, "it's impossible to talk with Petrovich now: now he's sort of. . . his wife must somehow have given him a beating. I'll do better to come to him on Sunday morning: he'll be cockeyed and sleepy after Saturday night, and he'll need the hair of the dog, and his wife won't give him any money, and just then I'll sort of. . . ten kopecks in his hand, he'll be more tractable then, and then the overcoat sort of. . ." So Akaky Akakievich reasoned with himself, encouraged himself, and waited for the next Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich's wife leave the house for somewhere, he went straight to him. Petrovich was indeed badly cockeyed after Saturday, could hardly hold his head up, and was quite sleepy; but for all that, as soon as he learned what it was about, it was as if the devil gave him a nudge. "Impossible," he said, "be so good as to order a new one." Here Akaky Akakievich gave him a ten-kopeck piece. "Thank you, sir, I'll fortify myself a bit for your health," said Petrovich, "but concerning the overcoat, please don't trouble yourself—it's no good for anything good. I'll make you a new overcoat, I'll do it up famously, that I will."

  Akaky Akakievich tried to mention mending again, but Petrovich did not listen to the end and said, "I'll make you a new one without fail, please count on me for that, I'll do my best. It may even be in today's fashion, the collar fastened by little silver clasps with applique."

  Here Akaky Akakievich saw that he could not get around a new overcoat, and his spirits wilted completely. How, indeed, with what, with what money to make it? Of course, he could count partly on his future holiday bonus, but that money had been placed and distributed long ago. He needed to get new trousers, to pay an old debt to the shoemaker for putting new vamps on his old boot tops, and he had to order three shirts from the seamstress and a couple of pairs of that item of underwear which it is indecent to mention in print—in short, absolutely all the money was to be spent; and even if the director was so gracious as to allot him a forty-five- or fifty-rouble bonus, instead of forty, all the same only a trifle would be left, which in the overcoat capital would be like a drop in the ocean. Though he knew, of course, that Petrovich had a trick of suddenly asking devil knows how incongruously high a price, so that his own wife sometimes could not keep herself from exclaiming, "Have you lost your mind, fool that you are! One day he takes a job for nothing, and now the evil one gets him to ask more than he's worth himself." Though he knew, of course, that Petrovich would agree to do it for eighty roubles—even so, where to get the eighty roubles? Now, it might be possible to find half; half could be produced; maybe even a little more; but where to get the other half? . . .

  But first the reader should learn where the one half would come from. Akaky Akakievich was in the habit of setting aside a half kopeck for every rouble he spent, putting it into a little box with a lock and key and a small hole cut in the lid for dropping money through. At the end of every half year he inspected the accumulated sum of copper and exchanged it for small silver.

  Thus he continued for a long time, and in this way, over the course of several years, he turned out to have saved a total of more than forty roubles. And so, one half was in hand; but where to get the other half? Where to get the other forty roubles? Akaky Akakievich thought and thought and decided that he would have to cut down his usual expenses, at least for a year; to abolish the drinking of tea in the evening, to burn no candles in the evening, and if there was a need to do something, to go to the landlady's room and work by her candle; to make the lightest and most careful steps possible when walking in the street, over cobbles and pavements, almost on tiptoe, thereby avoiding the rapid wearing out of soles; to send his linen to the laundry as seldom as possible, and to prevent soiling it by taking it off each time on coming home, remaining in a half-cotton dressing gown, a very old one, spared even by time itself. Truth to tell, it was a bit difficult for him at first to get used to such limitations, but later it somehow became a habit and went better; he even accustomed himself to going entirely without food in the evenings; but instead he was nourished spiritually, bearing in his thoughts the eternal idea of the future overcoat. From then on it was as if his very existence became somehow fuller, as if he were married, as if some other person were there with him, as if he were not alone but some pleasant life's companion had agreed to walk down the path of life with him—and this companion was none other than that same overcoat with its cotton-wool quilting, with its sturdy lining that knew no wear. He became somehow livelier, even firmer of character, like a man who has defined and set a goal for himself. Doubt, indecision—in short, all hesitant and uncertain features—disappeared of themselves from his face and actions. Fire occasionally showed in his eyes, the most bold and valiant thoughts even flashed in his head: Might he not indeed put a marten on the collar? These reflections led him nearly to distraction. Once, as he was copying a paper, he even nearly made a mistake, so that he cried "Oh!" almost aloud and crossed himself. In the course of each month, he
stopped at least once to see Petrovich, to talk about the overcoat, where it was best to buy broadcloth, and of what color, and at what price, and he would return home somewhat preoccupied yet always pleased, thinking that the time would finally come when all this would be bought and the overcoat would be made. Things went even more quickly than he expected. Contrary to all expectations, the director allotted Akaky Akakievich not forty or forty-five but a whole sixty roubles; whether he sensed that Akaky Akakievich needed an overcoat, or it happened that way of itself, in any case he acquired on account of it an extra twenty roubles. This circumstance speeded the course of things. Another two or three months of going a bit hungry—and Akaky Akakievich had, indeed, about eighty roubles. His heart, generally quite calm, began to throb. The very next day he went shopping with Petrovich. They bought very good broadcloth—and no wonder, because they had begun thinking about it six months before and had hardly ever let a month go by without stopping at a shop and inquiring about prices; and Petrovich himself said that better broadcloth did not exist. For the lining they chose chintz, but of such good, sturdy quality that, according to Petrovich, it was even better than silk and looked more attractive and glossy. They did not buy a marten, because it was indeed expensive; but instead they chose a cat, the best they could find in the shop, a cat which from afar could always be taken for a marten. Petrovich fussed with the overcoat for a whole two weeks, because there was a lot of quilting to do; otherwise it would have been ready sooner. For his work, Petrovich took twelve roubles—it simply couldn't have been less: decidedly everything was sewn with silk, in small double seams, and afterwards Petrovich went along each seam with his own teeth, imprinting it with various designs. It was. . . it's hard to say precisely which day, but it was probably the most festive day in Akaky Akakievich's life, when Petrovich finally brought the overcoat. He brought it in the morning, just before it was time to go to the office. At no other time could the overcoat have come so appropriately, because very bitter frosts were already setting in and, it seemed, were threatening to get still worse. Petrovich came with the overcoat as befits a good tailor. His face acquired a more important expression than Akaky Akakievich had ever seen before. It seemed he felt in full measure that he had done no small thing and had suddenly revealed in himself the abyss that separates tailors who only put in linings and do repairs from those who sew new things. He took the overcoat out of the handkerchief in which he had brought it; the handkerchief was fresh from the laundry, and he proceeded to fold it and put it in his pocket for further use.