“Go to Ivan Grigorievich,” said Ivan Antonovich in a voice slightly more benign, “let him give orders in the proper places, we’ll hold our end up.”
Chichikov, taking a banknote from his pocket, placed it in front of Ivan Antonovich, who utterly failed to notice it and covered it at once with a book. Chichikov was about to point it out to him, but Ivan Antonovich, with a motion of his head, gave a sign that there was no need to point it out.
“This one here will take you to the front office,” said Ivan Antonovich, nodding his head, and one of the votaries, right there beside them, who had been sacrificing to Themis so zealously that he had gone through both coatsleeves at the elbow and the lining had long been sticking out, for which in due time he had been made a collegiate registrar, offered his services to our friends, as Virgil once offered his services to Dante, and led them to the front office, where there stood nothing but a wide armchair and in it, at a desk, behind a zertsalo31 and two thick books, alone as the sun, sat the magistrate. In this place the new Virgil felt such awe that he simply did not dare to set foot in it, but turned away, showing his back, threadbare as a bast mat, with a chicken feather stuck to it somewhere. Entering the chamber of the front office, they saw that the magistrate was not alone, Sobakevich was sitting with him, completely hidden by the zertsalo. The visitors’ arrival produced exclamations, the governmental armchair was noisily pushed back. Sobakevich, too, rose from his chair, and he and his long sleeves became visible from all sides. The magistrate took Chichikov into his embrace, and the office resounded with kisses; they inquired after each other’s health; it turned out that they both had some slight lower-back pain, which was straightaway ascribed to the sedentary life. The magistrate seemed already to have been informed of the purchase by Sobakevich, because he set about offering congratulations, which embarrassed our hero somewhat at first, especially when he saw that Sobakevich and Manilov, both sellers with whom deals had been struck in private, were now standing face to face. However, he thanked the magistrate and, turning at once to Sobakevich, asked:
“And how is your health?”
“No complaints, thank God,” said Sobakevich.
And, indeed, he had nothing to complain of: iron would catch cold and start coughing sooner than this wondrously fashioned landowner.
“Yes, you’ve always been known for your health,” said the magistrate, “and your late father was also a sturdy man.”
“Yes, he used to go alone after bear,” replied Sobakevich.
“It seems to me, however,” said the magistrate, “that you’d also bring down your bear, if you chose to go against one.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” replied Sobakevich, “the old man was sturdier than I am,” and, sighing, he went on: “No, people aren’t what they used to be; look at my life, what kind of a life is it? just sort of something …”
“It’s a fine life, isn’t it?” said the magistrate.
“No good, no good,” said Sobakevich, shaking his head. “Consider for yourself, Ivan Grigorievich: I’m in my forties, and never once have I been sick; never even a sore throat, never even a pimple or a boil breaking out … No, it doesn’t bode well! Some day I’ll have to pay for it.” Here Sobakevich sank into melancholy.
“Eh, you,” Chichikov and the magistrate thought simultaneously, “what a thing to bemoan!”
“I’ve got a little letter for you,” Chichikov said, taking Plyushkin’s letter from his pocket.
“From whom?” the magistrate said and, opening it, exclaimed: “Ah! from Plyushkin. So he’s still vegetating in this world. What a fate! Once he was an intelligent, wealthy man, and now …”
“A sonofabitch,” said Sobakevich, “a crook, starved all his people to death.”
“If you please, if you please,” said the magistrate, “I’m ready to act as his attorney. When do you want to execute the deed, now or later?”
“Now,” said Chichikov. “I will even ask you to do it, if possible, today, because I would like to leave town tomorrow. I’ve brought the deed and the application.”
“That’s all very well, only, like it or not, we won’t let you go so soon. The deeds will be executed today, but all the same you must stay on with us a bit. Here, I’ll give the order at once,” he said, and opened the door to the chancellery, all filled with clerks, who could be likened to industrious bees scattered over a honeycomb, if a honeycomb may be likened to chancellery work. “Is Ivan Antonovich here?”
“Here,” responded a voice from inside.
“Send him in.”
Ivan Antonovich, the jug mug, already known to our readers, appeared in the front office and bowed reverently.
“Here, Ivan Antonovich, take these deeds of his …”
“And don’t forget, Ivan Grigorievich,” Sobakevich picked up, “there must be witnesses, at least two on each side. Send for the prosecutor right now, he’s an idle man and must be sitting at home, everything’s done for him by the attorney Zolotukha, the world’s foremost muckworm. The inspector of the board of health is also an idle man and must be at home, unless he went somewhere to play cards, and there’s a lot more around—Trukhachevsky, Begushkin, all of them a useless burden on the earth!”
“Precisely, precisely!” said the magistrate, and he at once dispatched a clerk to fetch them all.
“And I will ask you,” said Chichikov, “to send for the attorney of a lady landowner with whom I also concluded a deal, the son of the archpriest Father Kiril; he works with you here.”
“Well, so, we’ll send for him, too!” said the magistrate. “It will all get done, and you are to give nothing to any of the clerks, that I beg of you. My friends should not pay.” Having said this, he straightaway gave some order to Ivan Antonovich, which he evidently did not like. The deeds seemed to make a good impression on the magistrate, especially when he saw that the purchases added up to almost a hundred thousand roubles. For several minutes he gazed into Chichikov’s eyes with an expression of great contentment, and finally said:
“So that’s how! That’s the way, Pavel Ivanovich! That’s how you’ve acquired!”
“Acquired,” replied Chichikov.
“A good thing, truly, a good thing.”
“Yes, I myself can see that I could not have undertaken any better thing. However it may be, a man’s goal is never defined until he finally sets a firm foot on solid ground, and not on some freethinking chimera of youth.” Here he quite appropriately denounced all young people, and rightly so, for liberalism. Yet, remarkably, there was still some lack of firmness in his words, as if he were saying to himself at the same time: “Eh, brother, you’re lying, and mightily, too!” He did not even glance at Sobakevich and Manilov, for fear of encountering something on their faces. But he need not have feared: Sobakevich’s face did not stir, and Manilov, enchanted by the phrase, just kept shaking his head approvingly, immersed in that state in which a music lover finds himself when the soprano has outdone the fiddle itself and squeaked on such a high note as is even too much for the throat of a bird.
“But why don’t you tell Ivan Grigorievich,” Sobakevich responded, “precisely what you’ve acquired; and you, Ivan Grigorievich, why don’t you ask what acquisitions he has made? Such folk they are! Pure gold! I even sold him the cartwright Mikheev.”
“No, you mean you sold him Mikheev?” said the magistrate. “I know the cartwright Mikheev: a fine craftsman; he rebuilt my droshky. Only, excuse me, but how … Didn’t you tell me he died …”
“Who died? Mikheev?” said Sobakevich, not in the least embarrassed. “It’s his brother who died, but he’s as alive as can be and healthier than ever. The other day he put together such a britzka as they can’t make even in Moscow. He ought, in all truth, be working just for the sovereign alone.”
“Yes, Mikheev’s a fine craftsman,” said the magistrate, “and I even wonder that you could part with him.”
“As if Mikheev’s the only one! There’s Cork Stepan, the carpenter, Milushkin, the brick
layer, Telyatnikov Maxim, the cobbler—they all went, I sold them all!” And when the magistrate asked why they had all gone, seeing they were craftsmen and people necessary for the household, Sobakevich replied with a wave of the hand: “Ah! just like that! I’ve turned foolish: come on, I said, let’s sell them—and so I sold them like a fool!” Whereupon he hung his head as if he regretted having done so, and added: “A gray-haired man, and I still haven’t grown wise.”
“But, excuse me, Pavel Ivanovich,” said the magistrate, “how is it you’re buying peasants without land? Or is it for resettlement?”
“For resettlement.”
“Well, resettlement is something else. And to what parts?”
“What parts … to Kherson province.”
“Oh, there’s excellent land there!” said the magistrate, and he spoke in great praise of the size of the grass in that region. “And is there sufficient land?”
“Sufficient, as much as necessary for the peasants I’ve bought.”
“A river or a pond?”
“A river. However, there’s also a pond.” Having said this, Chichikov glanced inadvertently at Sobakevich, and though Sobakevich was as immobile as ever, it seemed to him as if there were written on his face: “Oh, are you lying! there’s nary a river there, nor a pond, nor any land at all!”
While the conversation continued, the witnesses gradually began to appear: the blinking prosecutor, already known to the reader, the inspector of the board of health, Trukhachevsky, Begushkin, and others who, in Sobakevich’s words, were a useless burden on the earth. Many of them were completely unknown to Chichikov: the lacking and the extras were recruited on the spot from among the office clerks. Not only was the archpriest Father Kiril’s son brought, but even the archpriest himself. Each of the witnesses put himself down, with all his dignities and ranks, one in backhand script, one slanting forward, one simply all but upside down, putting himself in such letters as had never even been seen before in the Russian alphabet. The familiar Ivan Antonovich managed quite deftly: the deeds were recorded, marked, entered in the register and wherever else necessary, with a charge of half a percent plus the notice in the Gazette, and so Chichikov had to pay the smallest sum. The magistrate even ordered that he be charged only half the tax money, while the other half, in some unknown fashion, was transferred to the account of some other petitioner.
“And so,” said the magistrate, when everything was done, “it only remains now to wet this tidy little purchase.”
“I’m ready,” said Chichikov. “It’s for you to name the time. It would be a sin on my part if I didn’t uncork two or three bottles of fizz for such a pleasant company.”
“No, you’re mistaking me: we’ll provide the fizz ourselves,” said the magistrate, “it’s our obligation, our duty. You’re our guest: we must treat you. Do you know what, gentlemen? For the time being this is what we’ll do: we’ll all go, just as we are, to the police chief’s. He’s our wonder-worker, he has only to wink as he passes a fish market or a cellar, and you know what a snack we’ll have! And also, for the occasion, a little game of whist!”
To such a suggestion no one could object. The witnesses felt hungry at the mere mention of the fish market; they all straightaway picked up their hats and caps, and the session was ended. As they passed through the chancellery, Ivan Antonovich, the jug mug, with a courteous bow, said softly to Chichikov:
“You bought up a hundred thousand worth of peasants and gave me just one twenty-fiver for my labors.”
“But what sort of peasants?” Chichikov answered him, also in a whisper. “The most empty and paltry folk, not worth even half that.”
Ivan Antonovich understood that the visitor was of firm character and would not give more.
“And how much per soul did you pay Plyushkin?” Sobakevich whispered in his other ear.
“And why did you stick in that Sparrow?” Chichikov said in reply to that.
“What Sparrow?” said Sobakevich.
“That female, Elizaveta Sparrow, and what’s more you took the a off the end.”
“No, I never stuck in any Sparrow,” said Sobakevich, and he went over to the other guests.
The guests finally arrived in a crowd at the police chief’s house. The police chief was indeed a wonder-worker: having only just heard what was going on, he sent that same moment for a policeman, a perky fellow in patent leather jackboots, and seemed to whisper just two words in his ear, adding only: “Understand!”—and there, in the other room, while the guests were hard at their whist, there appeared on the table beluga, sturgeon, salmon, pressed caviar, freshly salted caviar, herring, red sturgeon, cheeses, smoked tongues and balyks—all from the fish market side. Then there appeared additions from the host’s side, products of his own kitchen: a fish-head pie into which went the cheeks and cartilage of a three-hundred-pound sturgeon, another pie with mushrooms, fritters, dumplings, honey-stewed fruit. The police chief was in a certain way the father and benefactor of the town. Among the townspeople he was completely as in his own family, and stopped in at shops and on merchants’ row as if visiting his own larder. Generally, he was, as they say, suited to his post, and understood his job to perfection. It was even hard to decide whether he had been created for the post or the post for him. The business was handled so intelligently that he received double the income of all his predecessors, and at the same time earned the love of the whole town. The merchants were the first to love him, precisely because he was not haughty; in fact, he stood godfather to their children, was chummy with them, and though he occasionally fleeced them badly, he did it somehow extremely deftly: he would pat the man on the shoulder, and laugh, and stand him to tea, and promise to come for a game of checkers, asking about everything: how’s he doing, this and that. If he learned that a young one was a bit sick, he would suggest some medicine—in short, a fine fellow! He drove around in his droshky, keeping order, and at the same time dropping a word to one man or another: “Say, Mikheych, we ought to finish that card game some day.” “Yes, Alexei Ivanovich,” the man would reply, doffing his hat, “so we ought.” “Well, Ilya Paramonych, stop by and have a look at my trotter: he’ll outrun yours, brother; harness up your racing droshky, and we’ll give it a try.” The merchant, who was crazy about his own trotter, smiled at that with especial eagerness, as they say, and, stroking his beard, said: “Let’s give it a try, Alexei Ivanovich!” At which point even the shop clerks usually took off their hats and glanced with pleasure at each other, as if wishing to say: “Alexei Ivanovich is a good man!” In short, he managed to win universal popularity, and the merchants’ opinion of Alexei Ivanovich was that “though he does take, on the other hand he never gives you up.”
Noticing that the hors d’oeuvres were ready, the police chief suggested that his guests finish their whist after lunch, and everyone went into the other room, the smell wafting from which had long ago begun pleasantly to tickle the nostrils of the guests, and into which Sobakevich had long been peeking through the door, aiming from afar at the sturgeon that lay to one side on a big platter. The guests, having drunk a glass of vodka of the dark olive color that occurs only in those transparent Siberian stones from which seals are carved in Russia, accosted the table from all sides with forks and began to reveal, as they say, each his own character and inclinations, applying themselves one to the caviar, another to the salmon, another to the cheese. Sobakevich, letting all these trifles go unnoticed, stationed himself by the sturgeon, and while the others were drinking, talking, and eating, he, in a little over a quarter of an hour, went right through it, so that when the police chief remembered about it, and with the words: “And what, gentlemen, do you think of this work of nature?” approached it, fork in hand, along with the others, he saw that the only thing left of this work of nature was the tail; and Sobakevich scrooched down as if it was not him, and, coming to a plate some distance away, poked his fork into some little dried fish. After polishing off the sturgeon, Sobakevich sat in an armchair and no lo
nger ate or drank, but only squinted and blinked his eyes. The police chief, it seemed, did not like to stint on wine; the toasts were innumerable. The first toast was drunk, as our readers might guess for themselves, to the health of the new Kherson landowner, then to the prosperity of his peasants and their happy resettlement, then to the health of his future wife, a beauty, which drew a pleasant smile from our hero’s lips. They accosted him on all sides and began begging him insistently to stay in town for at least two weeks:
“No, Pavel Ivanovich! say what you will, in and out just makes the cottage cold! No, you must spend some time with us! We’ll get you married: isn’t that right, Ivan Grigorievich, we’ll get him married?”
“Married, married!” the magistrate picked up. “Even if you resist hand and foot, we’ll get you married! No, my dear, you landed here, so don’t complain. We don’t like joking.”
“Come now, why should I resist hand and foot,” said Chichikov, grinning, “marriage isn’t the sort of thing, that is, as long as there’s a bride.”
“There’ll be a bride, how could there not be, there’ll be everything, everything you want!…”
“Well, if there’ll be …”
“Bravo, he’s staying!” they all shouted. “Viva, hurrah, Pavel Ivanovich! hurrah!” And they all came up with glasses in their hands to clink with him.
Chichikov clinked with everyone. “No, no, again!” said the more enthusiastic ones, and clinked again all around; then they came at him to clink a third time, and so they all clinked a third time. In a short while everyone was feeling extraordinarily merry. The magistrate, who was the nicest of men when he got merry, embraced Chichikov several times, uttering in heartfelt effusion: “My dear soul! my sweetie pie!” and, snapping his fingers, even went around him in a little dance, singing the well-known song: “Ah, you blankety-blank Komarinsky muzhik.”32 After the champagne a Hungarian wine was broached, which raised their spirits still more and made the company all the merrier. Whist was decidedly forgotten; they argued, shouted, discussed everything—politics, even military affairs—expounded free thoughts for which, at another time, they would have whipped their own children. Resolved on the spot a host of the most difficult questions. Chichikov had never felt himself in so merry a mood, already imagined himself a real Kherson landowner, talked of various improvements—the three-field system, the happiness and bliss of twin souls—and began reciting to Sobakevich Werther’s letter in verse to Charlotte,33 at which the man only blinked from his armchair, for after the sturgeon he felt a great urge to sleep. Chichikov himself realized that he was beginning to get much too loose, asked about a carriage, and availed himself of the prosecutor’s droshky. The prosecutor’s coachman, as it turned out on the way, was an experienced fellow, because he drove with one hand only, while holding up the master behind him with the other. Thus, on the prosecutor’s droshky, he reached his inn, where for a long time still he had all sorts of nonsense on the tip of his tongue: a fair-haired bride, blushing and with a dimple on her right cheek, Kherson estates, capital. Selifan was even given some managerial orders: to gather all the newly resettled muzhiks, so as to make an individual roll call of them all personally. Selifan listened silently for quite a while and then walked out of the room, saying to Petrushka: “Go undress the master!” Petrushka started taking his boots off and together with them almost pulled the master onto the floor. But the boots were finally taken off, the master got undressed properly, and after tossing for some time on his bed, which creaked unmercifully, fell asleep a confirmed Kherson landowner. And Petrushka meanwhile brought out to the corridor the trousers and the cranberry-colored tailcoat with flecks, spread them on a wooden clothes rack, and set about beating them with a whip and brush, filling the whole corridor with dust. As he was about to take them down, he glanced over the gallery railing and saw Selifan coming back from the stable. Their eyes met, and they intuitively understood each other: the master has hit the sack, so why not peek in somewhere or other. That same moment, after taking the tailcoat and trousers to the room, Petrushka came downstairs, and the two went off together, saying nothing to each other about the goal of their trip and gabbing on the way about totally unrelated matters. They did not stroll far: to be precise, they simply crossed to the other side of the street, to the house that stood facing the inn, and entered a low, sooty glass door that led almost to the basement, where various sorts were already sitting at wooden tables: some who shaved their beards, and some who did not, some in sheepskin coats, and some simply in shirts, and a few even in frieze greatcoats. What Petrushka and Selifan did there, God only knows, but they came out an hour later holding each other by the arm, keeping a perfect silence, according each other great attention, with mutual warnings against various corners. Arm in arm, not letting go of each other, they spent a whole quarter of an hour going up the stairs, finally managed it and got up. Petrushka paused for a moment before his low bed, pondering the most suitable way of lying down, and then lay down perfectly athwart it, so that his feet rested on the floor. Selifan lay himself down on the same bed, placing his head on Petrushka’s stomach, forgetting that he ought not to be sleeping there at all, but perhaps somewhere in the servants’ quarters, if not in the stable with the horses. They both fell asleep that same moment and set up a snoring of unheard-of density, to which the master responded from the other room with a thin nasal whistle. Soon after them everything quieted down, and the inn was enveloped in deep sleep; only in one little window was there still light, where lived some lieutenant, come from Ryazan, a great lover of boots by the look of it, because he had already ordered four pairs made and was ceaselessly trying on a fifth. Several times he had gone over to his bed with the intention of flinging them off and lying down, but he simply could not: the boots were indeed well made, and for a long time still he kept raising his foot and examining the smart and admirable turn of the heel.
Dead Souls: A Novel Page 19
