And so, this was the sort of landowner who stood before Chichikov! It must be said that one rarely comes upon such a phenomenon in Russia, where everything prefers rather to expand than to shrink, and it is all the more striking when, right there in the neighborhood, there happens to be a landowner who carouses to the full breadth of Russian dash and largesse—who, as they say, burns up his whole life. A newcomer passing by will stop in amazement at the sight of his dwelling, wondering what sovereign prince has suddenly appeared among small, obscure landowners: there is the look of a palace about his white stone mansions with their numberless multitude of chimneys, belvederes, weather vanes, surrounded by a flock of cottages and all sorts of lodgings for long-term guests. Is there anything he lacks? Theatricals, balls; all night the garden shines, adorned with lights and lampions, resounding with the thunder of music. Half the province is decked out and gaily strolling under the trees, and in this forcible illumination no one sees it as wild and menacing when a branch leaps out theatrically from the thick of the trees, lit by the false light, robbed of its bright green; and, through all that, the night sky up above appears darker and sterner and twenty times more menacing; and the stern treetops, their leaves trembling in the far-off heights, sink deeper into the impenetrable darkness, indignant at this tinsel glitter illuminating their roots below.
For several minutes already Plyushkin had been standing there, not saying a word, yet Chichikov was still unable to begin talking, distracted as much by the look of the master himself as by all that was in his room. For a long time he was unable to think up any words to explain the reason for his visit. He was just about to express himself in some such spirit as, having heard of his virtue and the rare qualities of his soul, he felt it his duty personally to pay a tribute of respect, but he checked himself, feeling it was too much. Casting one more sidelong glance at all that was in the room, he felt that the words “virtue” and “rare qualities of soul” could successfully be replaced by the words “economy” and “order”; and therefore, transforming the speech in this manner, he said that, having heard of his economy and rare skill in running his estate, he felt it his duty to make his acquaintance and offer his respects personally. Of course, it would have been possible to produce another, better reason, but nothing else came into his head just then.
To this Plyushkin muttered something through his lips—for there were no teeth—precisely what is not known, but the meaning was probably this: “Ah, devil take you and your respects!” But since hospitality is so much the thing with us that even a niggard cannot transgress its laws, he added at once, somewhat more distinctly: “Pray be seated!”
“It’s quite a while since I’ve seen visitors,” he said, “and, I confess to say, I see little benefit in it. There’s a most indecent custom of going and visiting each other, while the work of the estate is neglected … plus giving hay to their horses! I had my dinner long ago, and my kitchen is low, very shabby, and the chimney’s all falling to pieces: heat it up and you’ll start a fire.”
“So that’s how it is!” Chichikov thought to himself. “A good thing I snatched a cheesecake and a slice of lamb at Sobakevich’s.”
“And, such a nasty story, there’s not a wisp of hay on the whole estate!” Plyushkin went on. “And how, indeed, can one save any?—wretched little piece of land, lazy muzhiks, don’t like to work at all, dream only of the pot-house … I’m afraid I’ll find myself a beggar in my old age.”
“I was told, however,” Chichikov observed modestly, “that you have more than a thousand souls.”
“Who told you so? You ought, my dear, to have spit in the eye of the one who said it! He’s a joker, obviously, and wanted to poke fun at you. A thousand souls, they say, but you just try counting them and there’ll be nothing to count! In the last three years the cursed fever has killed off a healthy lot of muzhiks on me.”
“You don’t say! So a lot were killed off?” Chichikov exclaimed with sympathy.
“Yes, a lot got carted away.”
“How many, if I may inquire?”
“About eighty.”
“No!”
“I wouldn’t lie, my dear.”
“And, if I may ask: these souls have been counted up, I assume, since the day you submitted the last census report?”
“Would to God it were so,” said Plyushkin, “but the pox of it is that since then it may have gone as high as a hundred and twenty.”
“Really? A whole hundred and twenty?” Chichikov exclaimed and even opened his mouth slightly in amazement.
“I’m too old to lie, my dear: I’m in my sixties!” said Plyushkin. He seemed offended by such an almost joyful exclamation. Chichikov noticed that such indifference to another’s misfortune was indeed improper, and therefore he straightaway sighed and offered his condolence.
“But condolence can’t be put in the pocket,” said Plyushkin. “There’s this captain in the neighborhood, devil knows where he came from, says he’s my relative—‘Uncle! Uncle!’ and kisses my hand—and once he starts his condoling, hold your ears, he sets up such a howl. He’s all red in the face: keeps a deathly grip on the home brew, I expect. Must have blown all his cash serving as an officer, or else some theater actress lured it out of him, so now he’s here condoling!”
Chichikov tried to explain that his condolence was not at all of the same sort as the captain’s, and he was ready to prove it, not with empty words, but with deeds, and, not putting the matter off any longer, without beating around the bush, he straightaway expressed his readiness to take upon himself the duty of paying taxes on all the peasants who had died through such unfortunate occasions. The offer, it seemed, utterly astounded Plyushkin. He stared pop-eyed at him for a long time, and finally asked:
“You, my dear, were never in military service?”
“No,” Chichikov replied rather slyly, “I was in the civil service.”
“In the civil service?” Plyushkin repeated, and he began munching his lips as if he were eating something. “But how can it be? Won’t you yourself come out the loser?”
“For your pleasure I am even ready to come out the loser.”
“Ah, my dear! ah, my benefactor!” Plyushkin cried, not noticing in his joy that snuff was peeking quite unpicturesquely from his nose, after the manner of thick coffee, and the skirts of his robe had opened revealing garments none too fit for inspection. “What a boon for an old man! Ah, my Lord! Ah, saints alive!…” Further Plyushkin could not even speak. But before a minute passed, this joy, which had appeared so instantaneously on his wooden face, just as instantaneously left, as if it had never been, and his face again assumed a worried expression. He even wiped it with a handkerchief, which he then bunched into a ball and began dragging over his upper lip.
“So then, with your permission, not wishing to anger you, are you undertaking to pay the tax on them each year? and will you give the money to me or to the treasury?”
“Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll make out a deed of purchase, as if they were alive and as if you were selling them to me.”
“Yes, a deed of purchase …,” Plyushkin said, lapsed into thought, and began chewing with his lips again. “This deed of purchase, you see—it all costs money. The clerks are such a shameless lot! Before, you used to get off with fifty coppers and a sack of flour, but now you must send them a whole cartload of grain, and a red banknote29 on top of it—such cupidity! I don’t know how it is the priests don’t pay attention to it; they should read some sort of lesson: say what you like, no one can stand against the word of God.”
“But you’d stand, I imagine!” Chichikov thought to himself, and straightaway said that, out of respect for him, he was even ready to take upon himself the costs of the deed.
Hearing that he would even take the costs of the deed upon himself, Plyushkin concluded that the visitor must be completely stupid and was only pretending he had been in the civil service, but had really been an officer and dangled after actresses. For all that, however, he
was unable to conceal his joy and wished all kinds of boons not only upon him, but even upon his children, without asking whether he had any or not. Going to the window, he rapped on it with his fingers and shouted: “Hey, Proshka!” A minute later someone could be heard running into the front hall in a flurry, pottering about there and thumping with his boots for a long time, then the door finally opened and in came Proshka, a boy of about thirteen, in such big boots that he almost walked out of them as he stepped. Why Proshka had such big boots can be learned at once: Plyushkin had for all his domestics, however many there were in the house, only one pair of boots, which had always to be kept in the front hall. Anyone summoned to the squire’s quarters would usually do a barefoot dance across the whole yard, but, on coming into the front hall, would put on the boots and in that manner enter the room. On leaving the room, he would put the boots back in the front hall and set off again on his own soles. Someone looking out the window in the fall, especially when there begins to be a little frost in the mornings, would see all the domestics making such leaps as the most nimble dancer in the theater is scarcely able to bring off.
“Just look, my dear, what a mug!” Plyushkin said to Chichikov, pointing his finger at Proshka’s face. “Stupid as a log, but try putting something down and he’ll steal it in a trice! Well, what have you come for, fool, can you tell me that?” Here he produced a small silence, to which Proshka also responded with silence. “Prepare the samovar, do you hear, and take this key and give it to Mavra so she can go to the pantry: there’s a rusk of the kulich Alexandra Stepanovna brought on the shelf there, to be served with tea!… Wait, where are you going? A tomfool! egad, what a tomfool! Have you got a devil itching in your feet, or what?… You listen first: the rusk, I expect, has gone bad on the outside, so have her scrape it with a knife, but don’t throw the crumbs out, take them to the henhouse. And look out, brother, don’t go into the pantry yourself, or you’ll get you know what! with a birch broom, to make it taste better! You’ve got a nice appetite now, so that’ll improve it for you! Just try going into the pantry with me watching out the window all the while. They can’t be trusted in anything,” he went on, turning to Chichikov, once Proshka had cleared out together with his boots. Then he began glancing suspiciously at Chichikov as well. The traits of such extraordinary magnanimity began to seem incredible to him, and he thought to himself: “Devil knows about him, maybe he’s just a braggart, like all those spendthrifts: he’ll lie and lie, just to talk and have some tea, and then he’ll up and leave!” Hence, as a precaution and at the same time wishing to test him a little, he said it would not be a bad idea to sign the deed as soon as possible, because there’s no trusting in man: today he’s alive, but tomorrow God knows.
Chichikov expressed a readiness to sign it that very minute and asked only for a list of all the peasants.
This reassured Plyushkin. One could see that he was thinking about doing something, and, in fact, taking his keys, he approached the cupboard and, opening the little door, rummaged for a long time among the glasses and cups and finally said:
“I can’t seem to find it, but I did have a splendid little liqueur, unless they drank it! Such thievish folk! Ah, could this be it?” Chichikov saw in his hands a little decanter, all covered with dust as with a fuzzy jacket. “My late wife made it,” Plyushkin went on, “the crook of a housekeeper neglected it completely and didn’t even put a stopper in it, the slut! Bugs and other trash got into it, but I removed all the bits, and now it’s nice and clean; I’ll pour you a glass.”
But Chichikov tried to decline this nice little liqueur, saying that he already drank and ate.
“Already drank and ate!” said Plyushkin. “Yes, of course, a man of good society is recognizable anywhere: he doesn’t eat but is full; but just take one of these little thieves, the more you feed him … There’s this captain turns up: ‘Uncle,’ he says, ‘give me something to eat!’ And I’m as much his uncle as he’s my carbuncle. Must have nothing to eat at home, so he hangs around here! Ah, yes, you want a little list of all those parasites? Look here, just as if I’d known, I wrote them all down on a separate piece of paper, so as to cross them off at the next census report.”
Plyushkin put on his spectacles and began rummaging among his papers. Untying various bundles, he treated his visitor to so much dust that he sneezed. At last he pulled out a sheet that was written all over. Peasant names covered it as thickly as gnats. Every sort was there: Paramonov, Pimenov, Panteleimonov, even a certain Grigory Go-never-get peeked out—a hundred and twenty-something in all. Chichikov smiled to see such numerousness. Tucking it away in his pocket, he observed to Plyushkin that he would have to go to town to sign the deed.
“To town? But how?… how can I leave the house? All my folk are either thieves or crooks: they’ll strip the place bare in a day, there’ll be nothing left to hang a caftan on.”
“Don’t you have some acquaintance then?”
“Have I some acquaintance? My acquaintances all either died off or got unacquainted. Ah, my dear! but I do have one, I do!” he cried. “I know the head magistrate himself, he used to come here in the old days, of course I know him! we supped from the same trough, we used to climb fences together! of course we’re acquainted! As if we’re not acquainted! So mightn’t I just write to him?”
“But, of course, write to him.”
“Really, as if we’re not acquainted! We were friends at school.”
And some warm ray suddenly passed over his wooden face, expressing not a feeling, but some pale reflection of a feeling, a phenomenon similar to the sudden appearance of a drowning man on the surface, drawing a joyful shout from the crowd on the bank. But in vain do the rejoicing brothers and sisters throw a rope from the bank and wait for another glimpse of the back or the struggle-weary arms—that appearance was the last. Everything is desolate, and the stilled surface of the unresponding element is all the more terrible and deserted after that. So, too, Plyushkin’s face, after the momentary passage of that feeling, became all the more unfeeling and trite.
“There was a piece of clean writing paper lying on the table,” he said, “I don’t know where on earth it’s gone: my people are such a worthless lot!” Here he began peering under the table, and over the table, feeling everywhere, and finally shouted: “Mavra! hey, Mavra!”
At his call a woman appeared with a plate in her hands, on which lay a rusk, already familiar to the reader. Between them the following conversation took place:
Dead Souls: A Novel Page 16
