Dead Souls: A Novel

by Nikolai Gogol

  “But, dear heart! I couldn’t really throw him out,” said the general.

  “Don’t throw him out, then, but don’t love him either!”

  “Not so, Your Excellency,” Chichikov said to Ulinka, inclining his head slightly, with a pleasant smile. “According to Christianity, it’s precisely them that we ought to love.”

  And, straightaway turning to the general, he said with a smile, this time a somewhat coy one:

  “If you please, Your Excellency, have you ever heard it said, in this regard—‘love us black, anyone can love us white’?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “It’s a most singular anecdote,” said Chichikov, with a coy smile. “There was, Your Excellency, on the estate of Prince Gukzovsky, whom Your Excellency is no doubt pleased to know …”

  “I don’t.”

  “There was a steward, Your Excellency, of German stock, a young man. He had to go to town for supplying recruits and on other occasions, and, of course, to grease the palms of the court clerks.” Here Chichikov, narrowing one eye, showed with his face how court clerks’ palms are greased. “However, they also liked him and used to wine and dine him. So once, at dinner with them, he said: ‘You know, gentlemen, one day you must also visit me on the prince’s estate.’ They said: ‘We will.’ Soon after that the court happened to go to investigate a case that occurred on the domains of Count Trekhmetyev, whom Your Excellency is no doubt also pleased to know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “They made no investigation properly speaking, but the whole court turned off at the steward’s place, to visit the count’s old steward, and for three days and nights they played cards nonstop. The samovar and punch, naturally, never left the table. The old man got sick of them. In order to get rid of them somehow, he says: ‘Why don’t you gentlemen go and visit the prince’s steward, the German: he’s not far from here, and he’s expecting you.’ ‘Why not, in fact,’ they say, and half-drunk, unshaven, and sleepy, just as they were, they got into their carts and went to the German … And the German, be it known to Your Excellency, had just gotten married at that time. He married a boarding-school girl, a genteel young thing” (Chichikov expressed genteelness with his face). “The two of them are sitting over their tea, not suspecting anything, when suddenly the doors open and the throng barges in.”

  “I can imagine—a pretty sight!” the general said, laughing.

  “The steward was simply dumbfounded. ‘What can I do for you?’ he says. ‘Ah!’ they said, ‘so that’s how you are!’ And all at once, with these words, there is a change of looks and physiognomies … ‘To business! How much liquor is distilled on the premises? Show us the books!’ The man hems and haws. ‘Hey, witnesses!’ They took him, bound him, dragged him to town, and the German actually spent a year and a half in jail.”

  “Well, now!” said the general.

  Ulinka clasped her hands.

  “The wife went around soliciting!” Chichikov continued. “But what can a young, inexperienced woman do? Luckily there happened to be some good people who advised her to settle peaceably. He got off with two thousand and dinner for all. And at the dinner, when they all got quite merry, and he as well, they said to him: ‘Aren’t you ashamed to have treated us the way you did? You’d like to see us always neat and shaven and in tailcoats. No, you must love us black, anyone can love us white.’ ”

  The general burst out laughing; Ulinka groaned painfully.

  “I don’t understand how you can laugh, papa!” she said quickly. Wrath darkened her beautiful brow … “A most dishonorable act, for which I don’t know where they all ought to be sent …”

  “My dear, I’m not justifying them in the least,” said the general, “but what can I do if it’s so funny? How did it go: ‘Love us white …’?”

  “Black, Your Excellency,” Chichikov picked up.

  “ ‘Love us black, anyone can love us white.’ Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  And the general’s body began to heave with laughter. Those shoulders that had once borne thick epaulettes were shaking as if even now they bore thick epaulettes.

  Chichikov also delivered himself of an interjection of laughter, but, out of respect for the general, he launched it with the letter e: “Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh!” And his body, too, began to heave with laughter, though his shoulders did not shake, having never borne thick epaulettes.

  “I can picture what a sight that unshaven court was!” the general said, still laughing.

  “Yes, Your Excellency, in any event it was … nonstop … a three-day vigil—the same as fasting: they wasted away, simply wasted away!” said Chichikov, still laughing.

  Ulinka sank into an armchair and covered her beautiful eyes with her hand; as if vexed that there was no one to share her indignation, she said:

  “I don’t know, it’s just that I’m so vexed.”

  Indeed, of extraordinarily strange contrast were the feelings born in the hearts of the three conversing people. One found amusing the awkward ineptitude of the German. Another found amusing the amusing way the crooks wriggled out of it. The third was saddened that an unjust act had been committed with impunity. There only lacked a fourth to ponder precisely such words as could produce laughter in one and sadness in another. What does it mean, however, that even in his fall, the perishing dirty man demands to be loved? Is it an animal instinct? or the faint cry of the soul smothered under the heavy burden of base passions, still trying to break through the hardening crust of abominations, still crying: “Save me, brother!” There lacked a fourth for whom the most painful thing of all would be his brother’s perishing soul.

  “I don’t know,” Ulinka said, taking her hand away from her face, “it’s that I’m just so vexed.”

  “Only please don’t be angry with us,” said the general. “We’re not to blame for anything. Give me a kiss and go to your room, because I’ll be dressing for dinner now. You, my boy,” the general said, suddenly turning to Chichikov, “will be dining with me?”

  “If Your Excellency …”

  “No ceremonies. There’s cabbage soup.”

  Chichikov inclined his head agreeably, and when he raised it again, he no longer saw Ulinka. She had vanished. Instead of her there stood, in bushy mustache and side-whiskers, a giant of a valet, with a silver pitcher and basin in his hands.

  “You’ll allow me to dress in your presence, eh, my boy?” said the general, throwing off his dressing gown and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt on his mighty arms.

  “Good gracious, not only to dress, you may do anything Your Excellency pleases in my presence,” said Chichikov.

  The general began to wash, splashing and snorting like a duck. Soapy water flew in all directions.

  “How did it go?” he said, wiping his fat neck on all sides, “ ‘love us white …’?”

  “Black, Your Excellency.”

  “ ‘Love us black, anyone can love us white.’ Very, very good!”

  Chichikov was in extraordinarily high spirits; he felt some sort of inspiration.

  “Your Excellency!” he said.

  “What?” said the general.

  “There’s another story.”

  “What sort?”

  “Also an amusing story, only I don’t find it amusing. Even if Your Excellency …”

  “How so?”

  “Here’s how, Your Excellency!…” At this point Chichikov looked around and, seeing that the valet with the basin had left, began thus: “I have an uncle, a decrepit old man. He owns three hundred souls and has no heirs except me. He himself, being decrepit, cannot manage the estate, yet he won’t hand it over to me. And he gives such a strange reason: ‘I don’t know my nephew,’ he says, ‘maybe he’s a spendthrift. Let him first prove to me that he’s a reliable man, let him first acquire three hundred souls himself, then I’ll give him my three hundred souls as well.’ ”

  “What a fool!”

  “Quite a correct observation, if you please, Your Excellency. But imagine
my position now …” Here Chichikov, lowering his voice, began speaking as if in secret: “He has a housekeeper in his house, Your Excellency, and she has children. Just you watch, everything will go to them.”

  “The stupid old man’s gone dotty, that’s all,” said the general. “Only I don’t see how I can be of use to you.”

  “Here’s what I’ve thought up. Right now, before the new census lists have been turned in, the owners of big estates may have, along with their living souls, also some that are departed and dead … So that if, for instance, Your Excellency were to hand them over to me as if they were alive, with a deed of purchase, I could then present this deed to the old man, and he, dodge as he may, will have to give me my inheritance.”

  Here the general burst into such laughter as hardly a man has ever laughed: he collapsed just as he was into his armchair; he threw his head back and nearly choked. The whole house became alarmed. The valet appeared. The daughter came running in, frightened.

  “Papa, what’s happened to you?”

  “Nothing, my dear. Ha, ha, ha! Go to your room, we’ll come to dinner presently. Ha, ha, ha!”

  And, having run out of breath several times, the general’s guffaw would burst out with renewed force, ringing throughout the general’s high-ceilinged, resonant apartments from the front hall to the last room.

  Chichikov waited worriedly for this extraordinary laughter to end.

  “Well, brother, excuse me: the devil himself got you to pull such a trick. Ha, ha, ha! To give the old man a treat, to slip him the dead ones! Ha, ha, ha, ha! And the uncle, the uncle! Made such a fool of! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  Chichikov’s position was embarrassing: the valet was standing right there with gaping mouth and popping eyes.

  “Your Excellency, it was tears that thought up this laughter,” he said.

  “Excuse me, brother! No, it’s killing! But I’d give five hundred thousand just to see your uncle as you present him with the deed for the dead souls. And what, is he so old? What’s his age?”

  “Eighty, Your Excellency. But this is in the closet, I’d … so that …” Chichikov gave a meaning look into the general’s face and at the same time a sidelong glance at the valet.

  “Off with you, my lad. Come back later,” the general said to the valet. The mustachio withdrew.

  “Yes, Your Excellency … This, Your Excellency, is such a matter, that I’d prefer to keep it a secret …”

  “Of course, I understand very well. What a foolish old man! To come up with such foolishness at the age of eighty! And what, how does he look? is he hale? still on his feet?”

  “Yes, but with difficulty.”

  “What a fool! And he’s got his teeth?”

  “Only two, Your Excellency.”

  “What an ass! Don’t be angry, brother … he’s an ass …”

  “Correct, Your Excellency. Though he’s my relative, and it’s hard to admit it, he is indeed an ass.”

  However, as the reader can guess for himself, it was not hard for Chichikov to admit it, the less so since it is unlikely he ever had any uncle.

  “So if you would be so good, Your Excellency, as to …”

  “As to give you the dead souls? But for such an invention I’ll give them to you with land, with lodgings! Take the whole cemetery! Ha, ha, ha, ha! The old man, oh, the old man! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Made such a fool of! Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  And the general’s laughter again went echoing all through the general’s apartments.*

  * The end of the chapter is missing. In the first edition of the second volume of Dead Souls (1855), there was a note: “Here omitted is the reconciliation of Betrishchev and Tentetnikov; the dinner at the general’s and their conversation about the year ’twelve; the betrothal of Ulinka and Tentetnikov; her prayer and lament on her mother’s grave; the conversation of the betrothed couple in the garden. Chichikov sets out, at General Betrishchev’s request, to call on his relatives and to inform them of his daughter’s betrothal, and he goes to see one of these relations—Colonel Koshkarev.”—TRANS.

  Chapter Three

  “No, not like that,” Chichikov was saying as he found himself again in the midst of the open fields and spaces, “I wouldn’t handle it like that. As soon as, God willing, I finish it all happily and indeed become a well-to-do, prosperous man, I’ll behave quite differently: I’ll have a cook, and a house full of plenty, but the managerial side will also be in order. The ends will meet, and a little sum will be set aside each year for posterity, if only God grants my wife fruitfulness …

  “Hey, you tomfool!”

  Selifan and Petrushka both looked back from the box.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just as you were pleased to order, Pavel Ivanovich—to Colonel Koshkarev’s,” said Selifan.

  “And you asked the way?”

  “If you please, Pavel Ivanovich, since I was pottering with the carriage, I … saw only the general’s stableboy … But Petrushka asked the coachman.”

  “What a fool! I told you not to rely on Petrushka: Petrushka’s a log.”

  “It takes no sort of wisdom,” said Petrushka, with a sidelong glance, “excepting as you go down the hill you should keep straight on, there’s nothing more to it.”

  “And I suppose you never touched a drop, excepting the home brew? I suppose you got yourself well oiled?”

  Seeing what turn the conversation was taking, Petrushka merely set his nose awry. He was about to say that he had not even begun, but then he felt somehow ashamed.

  “It’s nice riding in a coach, sir,” Selifan said, turning around.

  “What?”

  “I say, Pavel Ivanovich, that it’s nice for your honor to be riding in a coach, sir, better than a britzka, sir—less bouncy.”

  “Drive, drive! No one’s asking your opinion.”

  Selifan gave the horses’ steep flanks a light flick of the whip and addressed himself to Petrushka:

  “Master Koshkarev, I hear tell, has got his muzhiks dressed up like Germans; you can’t figure out from far off—he walks crane-like, same as a German. And the women don’t wear kerchiefs on their heads, pie-shaped, like they do sometimes, or headbands either, but this sort of German bonnet, what German women wear, you know, a bonnet—a bonnet, it’s called, you know, a bonnet. A German sort of bonnet.”

  “What if they got you up like a German, and in a bonnet!” Petrushka said, sharpening his wit on Selifan and grinning. But what a mug resulted from this grin! It had no semblance of a grin, but was as if a man with a cold in his nose was trying to sneeze, but did not sneeze, and simply remained in the position of a man about to sneeze.

  Chichikov peered into his mug from below, wishing to know what was going on there, and said: “A fine one! and he still fancies he’s a handsome fellow!” It must be said that Pavel Ivanovich was seriously convinced that Petrushka was in love with his own beauty, whereas the latter even forgot at times whether he had any mug at all.

  “What a nice idea it would be, Pavel Ivanovich,” said Selifan, turning around on his box, “to ask Andrei Ivanovich for another horse in exchange for the dapple-gray; he wouldn’t refuse, being of friendly disposition towards you, and this horse, sir, is a scoundrel of a horse and a real hindrance.”

  “Drive, drive, don’t babble!” Chichikov said, and thought to himself: “In fact, it’s too bad it never occurred to me.”

  The light-wheeled coach meanwhile went lightly wheeling along. Lightly it went uphill, though the road was occasionally uneven; lightly it also went downhill, though the descents of country roads are worrisome. They descended the hill. The road went through meadows, across the bends of the river, past the mills. Far away flashed sands, aspen groves emerged picturesquely one from behind the other; willow bushes, slender alders, and silvery poplars flew quickly past them, their branches striking Selifan and Petrushka as they sat on their box. The latter had his peaked cap knocked off every moment. The stern servitor would jump down from the box, scold the stu
pid tree and the owner who had planted it, but never thought of tying the cap on or at least of holding it with his hand, still hoping that maybe it would not happen again. Then the trees became thicker: aspens and alders were joined by birches, and soon a forest thicket formed around them. The light of the sun disappeared. Pines and firs darkled. The impenetrable gloom of the endless forest became denser, and, it seemed, was preparing to turn into night. And suddenly among the trees—light, here and there among the branches and trunks, like a mirror or like quicksilver. The forest began to brighten, trees became sparser, shouts were heard—and suddenly before them was a lake. A watery plain about three miles across, with trees around it, and cottages behind them. Some twenty men, up to their waists, shoulders, or chins in water, were pulling a dragnet towards the opposite shore. In the midst of them, swimming briskly, shouting, fussing enough for all of them, was a man nearly as tall as he was fat, round all around, just like a watermelon. Owing to his fatness he might not possibly drown, and if he wanted to dive, he could flip over all he liked, but the water would keep buoying him up; and if two more men had sat on his back, he would have gone on floating with them like a stubborn bubble on the surface of the water, only groaning slightly under the weight and blowing bubbles from his nose and mouth.

  “That one, Pavel Ivanovich,” said Selifan, turning around on the box, “must be the master, Colonel Koshkarev.”

  “Why so?”

  “Because his body, if you’ll be pleased to notice, is a bit whiter than the others’, and he’s respectably portly, as a master should be.”

  The shouts meanwhile were getting more distinct. The squire-watermelon was shouting in a ringing patter:

  “Hand it over, Denis, hand it over to Kozma! Kozma, take the tail from Denis! You, Big Foma, push there along with Little Foma! Go around to the right, the right! Stop, stop, devil take you both! You’ve got me tangled in the net! You’ve caught me, I tell you, damn it, you’ve caught me by the navel!”

  The draggers on the right flank stopped, seeing that an unforeseen mishap had indeed occurred: the master was caught in the net.