Dead Souls: A Novel

by Nikolai Gogol

  Two turtle doves will show

  My cold remains to thee,

  With languid cooing so

  As to say that in tears died she.

  There was no meter in the last line, but that, however, was nothing: the letter was written in the spirit of the times. There was no signature either: no name, no family name, not even the month and day. It was only added in a postscriptum that his own heart should guess the lady who wrote it, and that, at the governor’s ball, which was to take place the next day, the original would be present in person.

  This greatly intrigued him. The anonymity had so much that was alluring and arousing of curiosity in it, that he read it over again and then a third time, and finally said: “It would be curious, however, to know who the writer might be!” In short, it looked as if the matter was turning serious; for more than an hour he kept thinking about it, and at last, spreading his arms and inclining his head, he said: “The letter is very, very fancily written!” After which, it goes without saying, the letter was folded and put away in the chest, in the vicinity of some playbill and a wedding invitation preserved for seven years in the same position and the same place. A short time later he was in fact brought an invitation to the governor’s ball—quite a usual thing in provincial capitals: where the governor is, there will also be a ball, otherwise there would be no love or respect on the part of the nobility.

  All unrelated things were instantly ended and suspended, and everything was focused on preparing for the ball: for there were, in fact, many stimulating and provoking causes. And perhaps not since the very creation of the world has so much time been spent on toilet. A whole hour was devoted merely to studying his face in the mirror. Attempts were made to impart to it a multitude of different expressions: now dignified and grave, now deferential but with a certain smile, now simply deferential without the smile; several bows were delivered to the mirror, accompanied by vague sounds somewhat resembling French ones, though Chichikov knew no French at all. He even gave himself a multitude of pleasant surprises, winked with his eyebrow and lips, and even did something with his tongue; in short, one does all sorts of things when one is left alone, feels oneself a fine fellow besides, and is also certain that no one is peeking through a crack. In the end he patted himself lightly on the chin, saying: “Ah, you sweet mug, you!” and began to dress. The most contented disposition accompanied him all the while he was dressing: putting on his suspenders or tying his tie, he bowed and scraped with special adroitness and, though he never danced, performed an entrechat. This entrechat produced a small, innocuous consequence: the chest of drawers shook, and a brush fell off the table.

  His appearance at the ball produced an extraordinary effect. All that were there turned to meet him, one with cards in his hand, another saying, at the most interesting point in the conversation: “… and the lower circuit court’s answer to that was …,” but whatever the circuit court’s answer was, it was brushed aside as the man hastened to greet our hero. “Pavel Ivanovich! Ah, my God, Pavel Ivanovich! My gentle Pavel Ivanovich! My most esteemed Pavel Ivanovich! Pavel Ivanovich, my dear soul! So here’s where you are, Pavel Ivanovich! Here he is, our Pavel Ivanovich! Allow me to hug you, Pavel Ivanovich! Let him come here till I give him a good kiss, my dearest Pavel Ivanovich!” Chichikov felt himself simultaneously in several embraces. Before he had quite managed to scramble out of the magistrate’s embrace, he found himself in the police chief’s embrace; the police chief handed him on to the inspector of the board of health; the inspector of the board of health to the tax farmer, the tax farmer to the architect … The governor, who at that moment was standing by the ladies holding a candy-kiss motto in one hand and a lapdog in the other, dropped both dog and motto to the floor on seeing him—only the pup let out a squeal; in short, he spread joy and extraordinary merriment. There was not a face that did not express pleasure, or at least a reflection of the general pleasure. The same thing takes place on the faces of officials when a superior arrives to inspect the work entrusted to their management: once the initial fear has passed, they see that there is much that pleases him, and he himself finally deigns to make a joke—that is, to utter a few words with an agreeable smile. Twice as hard do the closely surrounding officials laugh in response to that; with all their hearts others laugh who, incidentally, had not heard very well what the man said, and finally some policeman standing way off by the door, by the very exit, who from the day he was born has never laughed in his whole life, and who a moment before was shaking his fist at the people, even he, by the immutable laws of reflection, puts some sort of smile on his face, though this smile is more like the look of someone about to sneeze after a pinch of strong snuff. Our hero responded to each and all, and felt himself somehow extraordinarily adroit: bowed right and left, somewhat to one side as usual, but with perfect ease, so that he enchanted everyone. The ladies surrounded him at once in a sparkling garland and brought with them whole clouds of varied fragrances; one breathed roses, another gave off a whiff of spring and violets, a third was perfumed throughout with mignonette; Chichikov just kept lifting his nose and sniffing. Their attire evinced no end of taste: the muslins, satins, cambrics were of such pale fashionable shades as could not even be matched with any names (taste had reached such a degree of fineness). Ribbon bows and bouquets of flowers fluttered here and there over the dresses in a most picturesque disorder, though this disorder had been much labored over by some orderly head. Light headdresses held on only at the ears and seemed to be saying: “Hey, I’m flying away, only it’s a pity I can’t take this beauty with me!” Waists were tight-fitting and formed in a way most firm and pleasing to the eye (it should be noted that generally the ladies of the town of N. were all a bit plump, but they laced themselves up so artfully and were of such pleasing comportment that the fatness simply could not be noticed). Everything about them had been designed and foreseen with extraordinary circumspection; neck and shoulders were revealed precisely as far as necessary, and no further; each one bared her possessions to the point to which she felt convinced in herself that they could be the ruin of a man; the rest was all secreted away with extraordinary taste: either some light little ribbon tie, or a scarf lighter than the pastry known by the name of “kiss,”39 ethereally embraced her neck, or else there peeked out around her shoulders, from under the dress, those little serrated trimmings of light cambric known by the name of “modesties.” These “modesties,” in front or behind, concealed that which could no longer be the ruin of a man, and yet made one suspect that ruin itself lay precisely there. Long gloves were worn not up to the sleeves, but deliberately leaving bare the arousing parts of the arms above the elbow, which in many ladies breathed an enviable plumpness: some kid gloves even burst in their striving to move further up—in short, everything seemed to have written on it: No, this is no province, this is a capital, this is Paris itself! Only in places would some bonnet stick out such as had never been seen on earth, or even almost some sort of peacock feather, contrary to all fashion, following its own taste. But there’s no avoiding it, such is the property of a provincial town: it is simply bound to trip up somewhere. Chichikov was thinking, as he stood before them: “Which of them, however, was the writer of that letter?” and he tried to stick his nose out; but right against his nose brushed a whole row of elbows, cuffs, sleeves, ends of ribbons, fragrant chemisettes, and dresses. Everything was galloping headlong: the postmaster’s wife, the captain of police, a lady with a blue feather, a lady with a white feather, the Georgian prince Chipkhaikhilidzev, an official from Petersburg, an official from Moscow, the Frenchman Coucou, Perkhunovsky, Berebendovsky—everything rose up and rushed on …

  “There the province goes scrawling!” Chichikov said, backing up, and as soon as the ladies took their seats, he again began spying out whether it was possible by the expression of the face and eyes to tell which one was the writer; but it was not possible to tell either by the expression of the face, or by the expression of the eyes, which one was the write
r. One could see everywhere something so faintly disclosed, so elusively subtle, ooh! so subtle! … “No,” Chichikov said to himself, “women are such a subject …” (here he even waved his hand) “there’s simply no point in talking! Go on, try telling or conveying all that flits across their faces, all those little curves and allusions—you simply won’t convey a thing. Their eyes alone are such an endless country, a man gets into it—and that’s the last you hear of him! You won’t pull him out of there with hooks or anything. Try, for instance, just telling about the lustre of them: moist, velvety, sugary. God knows whatnot else!—hard, and soft, and even altogether blissful, or, as some say, in languor, or else without languor, but worse than in languor—it just grips your heart and passes over your whole soul as if with a fiddle bow. No, there’s simply no way to find a word: the cockety half of mankind, and nothing else!”

  Beg pardon! It seems a little word picked up in the street just flew out of our hero’s mouth. No help for it! Such is the writer’s position in Russia! Anyway, if a word from the street has got into a book, it is not the writer’s fault, the fault is with the readers, high-society readers most of all: they are the first not to use a single decent Russian word, but French, German, and English they gladly dispense in greater quantity than one might wish, and dispense even preserving all possible pronunciations: French through the nose and with a burr, English they pronounce in the manner of a bird, and even assume a bird’s physiognomy, and they will even laugh at anyone who cannot assume a bird’s physiognomy; and they will only not dispense anything Russian, unless perhaps out of patriotism they build themselves a Russian-style cottage as a country house. Such are readers of the higher ranks, and along with them all those who count themselves among the higher ranks! And yet what exactingness! They absolutely insist that everything be written in the most strict, purified, and noble of tongues—in short, they want the Russian tongue suddenly to descend from the clouds on its own, all properly finished, and settle right on their tongue, leaving them nothing to do but gape their mouths open and stick it out. Of course, the female half of mankind is a puzzle; but our worthy readers, it must be confessed, are sometimes even more of a puzzle.

  And Chichikov meanwhile was getting thoroughly perplexed deciding which of the ladies was the writer of the letter. Trying to aim an attentive glance at them, he saw that on the ladies’ part there was also the expression of a certain something that sent down both hope and sweet torment at once into the heart of a poor mortal, so that he finally said: “No, it’s simply impossible to guess!” That, however, in no way diminished the merry mood he was in. With ease and adroitness he exchanged pleasant words with some of the ladies, approaching one or another of them with small, rapid steps, or, as they say, mincingly, as foppish little old men, called “mousey colts,” usually do, scampering around the ladies quite nimbly on their high heels. After mincing through some rather adroit turns to the right and left, he made a little scrape with his foot, in the form of a short tail or comma. The ladies were very pleased and not only discovered a heap of agreeable and courteous things in him, but even began to find a majestic expression in his face, something even Mars-like and military, which, as everyone knows, women like very much. They were even beginning to quarrel a bit over him: noticing that he usually stood by the door, some hastened to vie with each other in occupying the chair nearest the door, and when one had the good fortune of being the first to do so, it almost caused a very unpleasant episode, and to many who wished to do the same, such impudence seemed all too repugnant.

  Chichikov was so taken up by his conversations with the ladies—or, better, the ladies so took him up and whirled him around with their conversations, adding a heap of the most fanciful and subtle allegories, which all had to be penetrated, even making sweat stand out on his brow—that he forgot to fulfill his duty to propriety and go up to the hostess first of all. He remembered it only when he heard the voice of the governor’s wife herself, who had been standing before him for several minutes. She said in a somewhat tender and coy voice, accompanied by a pleasant shaking of the head: “Ah, Pavel Ivanovich, so that’s how you are!…” I cannot convey the lady’s words exactly, something was said full of great courtesy, in the spirit in which ladies and gentlemen express themselves in the novellas of our society writers, who love to describe drawing rooms and boast of their knowledge of high tone, in the spirit of: “Can it be that your heart is so possessed that there is no longer any room, not even the tiniest corner, for those whom you have mercilessly forgotten?” Our hero turned to the governor’s wife that same instant and was ready to deliver his reply, probably in no way inferior to those delivered in fashionable novels by the Zvonskys, the Linskys, the Lidins, the Gremins, and various other adroit military men, when, chancing to raise his eyes, he stopped suddenly, as if stunned by a blow.

  Before him stood not only the governor’s wife: on her arm she had a young girl of sixteen, a fresh blonde with fine and trim features, a sharp chin, a charmingly rounded face, the sort an artist would choose as a model for a Madonna, a sort rarely occurring in Russia, where everything likes to be on a vast scale, whatever there is—mountains and forests and steppes, and faces and lips and feet; the same blonde he had met on the road, leaving Nozdryov’s, when, owing to the stupidity either of the coachmen or of the horses, their carriages had so strangely collided, entangling their harnesses, and Uncle Mityai and Uncle Minyai had set about disentangling the affair. Chichikov was so abashed that he was unable to utter a single sensible word and mumbled devil knows what, something no Gremin or Zvonsky or Lidin would ever have said.

  “You don’t know my daughter yet?” said the governor’s wife. “A boarding-school girl, just graduated.”

  He replied that he had already had the happiness of accidentally making her acquaintance; tried to add something more, but the something did not come off at all. The governor’s wife, after saying two or three words, finally walked away with her daughter to other guests at the other end of the ballroom, while Chichikov still stood motionless on the same spot, like a man who merrily goes out for a stroll, his eyes disposed to look at everything, and suddenly stops motionless, recalling that he has forgotten something, and there can be nothing stupider than such a man then: instantly the carefree expression leaves his face; he strains to remember what he has forgotten—was it his handkerchief? but his handkerchief is in his pocket; was it money? but his money is also in his pocket; he seems to have everything, and yet some unknown spirit whispers in his ear that he has forgotten something. And so he now looks vaguely and perplexedly at the crowd moving before him, at the carriages flying along, at the shakos and guns of the regiment passing by, at the signboards—and sees nothing clearly. So, too, did Chichikov suddenly become a stranger to everything going on around him. During this time the ladies’ fragrant lips poured at him a multitude of hints and questions, thoroughly pervaded by subtlety and courtesy. “Is it permitted us poor earth-dwellers to be so bold as to ask what you are dreaming about?” “Where are those happy places in which your thought is fluttering?” “May we know the name of her who has plunged you into this sweet vale of reverie?” But he responded to it all with decided inattention, and the pleasant phrases vanished into thin air. He was even so impolite as to walk away from them soon, over to the other side, wishing to spy out where the governor’s wife had gone with her daughter. But the ladies seemed unwilling to give him up so soon; each of them resolved inwardly to employ all possible means, so dangerous for our hearts, and bring her best into play. It should be noted that some ladies—I say some, which is not the same as all—have a little weakness: if they notice that they have something particularly good—brow, or lips, or arms—they right away think that their best feature will be the first to catch everyone’s eye, and that they will all suddenly start saying with one voice: “Look, look, what a fine Greek nose she has!” or “What a well-formed, lovely brow!” And she who has handsome shoulders is certain beforehand that all the young men will be utterl
y enraptured and will not cease repeating as she passes by: “Ah, how wonderful those shoulders are!” and will not even glance at her face, hair, nose, brow, or, if they do, only as at something beside the point. So certain ladies think. Each lady inwardly vowed to herself to be as charming as possible while dancing and show in all its splendor the excellence of that which was most excellent in her. The postmaster’s wife, as she waltzed, held her head to one side with such languor that it indeed gave one the feeling of something unearthly. One very amiable lady—who had by no means come with the intention of dancing, owing to the occurrence, as she herself put it, of a slight incommodité, in the form of a little bump on her right foot, as a result of which she even had to wear velveteen booties—was nevertheless unable to help herself and took several turns in her velveteen booties, precisely so that the postmaster’s wife should not indeed take too much into her head.

  But all this in no way produced the intended effect on Chichikov. He was not even looking at the turns produced by the ladies, but was constantly getting on tiptoe to seek over the heads where the engaging blonde might have gotten to; he also crouched down, looking between shoulders and backs, and finally succeeded in his search and spotted her sitting with her mother, above whom some sort of oriental turban with a feather swayed majestically. It seemed as if he wanted to take them by storm; whether it was a spring mood affecting him, or someone was pushing him from behind, in any case he was decidedly pressing forward despite all; the tax farmer got such a shove from him that he staggered and barely managed to keep himself on one leg, otherwise he certainly would have brought down a whole row along with him; the postmaster also stepped back and looked at him with amazement, mingled with rather subtle irony, but he did not look at them; all he saw was the blond girl in the distance, putting on a long glove and undoubtedly burning with desire to start flying over the parquet. And there, to one side, four couples were already jigging away at the mazurka; heels were smashing the floor, and one army staff captain was working body and soul, and arms, and legs, pulling off such steps as no one had ever pulled off before even in a dream. Chichikov slipped past the mazurka almost right on their heels, and made straight for the place where the governor’s wife sat with her daughter. However, he approached them very timidly, did not mince his steps so perkily and foppishly, even became somewhat confused, and in all his movements showed a certain awkwardness.