Dead Souls: A Novel

by Nikolai Gogol

  “And indeed,” the host said, addressing Chichikov, also with an agreeable smile, “what can be more enviable than the age of infancy: no cares, no thoughts of the future …”

  “A state one would immediately exchange for one’s own,” said Chichikov.

  “At a glance,” said Lenitsyn.

  But it seems they were both lying: had they been offered such an exchange, they would straightaway have backed out of it. And what fun is it, indeed, sitting in a nurse’s arms and spoiling tailcoats!

  The young mistress and the firstborn withdrew with the nurse, because something on him had to be put right: having rewarded Chichikov, he had not forgotten himself either.

  This apparently insignificant circumstance won the host over completely to satisfying Chichikov. How, indeed, refuse a guest who has been so tender to his little one and paid for it magnanimously with his own tailcoat? Lenitsyn reflected thus: “Why, indeed, not fulfill his request, if such is his wish?”*

  *One word is illegible in the manuscript.—TRANS.

  *Two pages are missing from the manuscript.—TRANS.

  *The rest of the chapter is missing from the manuscript.—TRANS.

  One of the Later Chapters

  At the very moment when Chichikov, in a new Persian dressing gown of gold satin, sprawling on the sofa, was bargaining with an itinerant smuggler-merchant of Jewish extraction and German enunciation, and before them already lay a purchased piece of the foremost Holland shirt linen and two pasteboard boxes with excellent soap of first-rate quality (this was precisely the soap he used to acquire at the Radziwill customs; it indeed had the property of imparting an amazing tenderness and whiteness to the cheeks)—at the moment when he, as a connoisseur, was buying these products necessary for a cultivated man, there came the rumble of a carriage driving up, echoed by a slight reverberation of the windows and walls, and in walked His Excellency Alexei Ivanovich Lenitsyn.

  “I lay it before Your Excellency’s judgment: what linen, what soap, and how about this little thing I bought yesterday!” At which Chichikov put on his head a skullcap embroidered with gold and beads, and acquired the look of a Persian shah, filled with dignity and majesty.

  But His Excellency, without answering the question, said with a worried look:

  “I must talk with you about an important matter.”

  One could see by his face that he was upset. The worthy merchant of German enunciation was sent out at once, and they were left alone.

  “Do you know what trouble is brewing? They’ve found another will of the old woman’s, made five years ago. Half of the estate goes to the monastery, and the other half is divided equally between the two wards, and nothing to anyone else.”

  Chichikov was dumbfounded.

  “Well, that will is nonsense. It means nothing, it is annulled by the second one.”

  “But it’s not stated in the second will that it annuls the first.”

  “It goes without saying: the second annuls the first. The first will is totally worthless. I know the will of the deceased woman very well. I was with her. Who signed it? Who were the witnesses?”

  “It was certified in the proper manner, in court. The witnesses were the former probate judge Burmilov and Khavanov.”

  “That’s bad,” thought Chichikov, “they say Khavanov’s an honest man; Burmilov is an old hypocrite, reads the epistle in church on feast days.”

  “Nonsense, nonsense,” he said aloud, and at once felt himself prepared for any trick. “I know better: I shared the deceased woman’s last minutes. I’m informed better than anyone. I’m ready to testify personally under oath.”

  These words and his resoluteness set Lenitsyn at ease for the moment. He was very worried and had already begun to suspect the possibility of some fabrication on Chichikov’s part with regard to the will. Now he reproached himself for his suspicions. The readiness to testify under oath was clear proof that Chichikov was innocent. We do not know whether Pavel Ivanovich would have had the courage to swear on the Bible, but he did have the courage to say it.

  “Rest assured, I’ll discuss the matter with several lawyers. There’s nothing here that needs doing on your part; you must stay out of it entirely. And I can now live in town as long as I like.”

  Chichikov straightaway ordered the carriage readied and went to see a lawyer. This lawyer was a man of extraordinary experience. For fifteen years he had been on trial himself, but he had managed so that it was quite impossible to remove him from his post. Everyone knew him, and knew that he ought to have been sent into exile six times over for his deeds. There were suspicions of him all around and on every side, yet it was impossible to present any clear and proven evidence. Here there was indeed something mysterious, and he might have been boldly recognized as a sorcerer if the story we are telling belonged to the times of ignorance.

  The lawyer struck him with the coldness of his looks and the greasiness of his dressing gown, in complete contrast to the good mahogany furniture, the golden clock under its glass case, the chandelier visible through the muslin cover protecting it, and generally to everything around him, which bore the vivid stamp of brilliant European cultivation.

  Not hindered, however, by the lawyer’s skeptical appearance, Chichikov explained the difficult points of the matter and depicted in alluring perspective the gratitude necessarily consequent upon good counsel and concern.

  To this the lawyer responded by depicting the uncertainty of all earthly things, and artfully alluded to the fact that two birds in the bush meant nothing, and what was needed was one in the hand.

  There was no help for it: he had to give him the bird in the hand. The philosopher’s skeptical coldness suddenly vanished. He turned out to be a most good-natured man, most talkative, and most agreeable in his talk, not inferior to Chichikov himself in the adroitness of his manners.

  “If I may, instead of starting a long case, you probably did not examine the will very well: there’s probably some sort of little addition. Take it home for a while. Though, of course, it’s prohibited to take such things home, still, if you ask certain officials nicely … I, for my part, will exercise my concern.”

  “I see,” thought Chichikov, and he said: “In fact, I really don’t remember very well whether there was a little addition or not”—as if he had not written the will himself.

  “You’d best look into that. However, in any case,” he continued good-naturedly, “always be calm and don’t be put out by anything, even if something worse happens. Don’t despair of anything ever: there are no incorrigible cases. Look at me: I’m always calm. Whatever mishaps are imputed to me, my calm is imperturbable.”

  The face of the lawyer-philosopher indeed preserved an extraordinary calm, so that Chichikov was greatly …*

  “Of course, that’s the first thing,” he said. “Admit, however, that there may be such cases and matters, such matters and such calumnies on the part of one’s enemies, and such difficult situations, that all calm flies away.”

  “Believe me, that is pusillanimity,” the philosopher-jurist replied very calmly and good-naturedly. “Only make sure that the case is all based on documents, that nothing is merely verbal. And as soon as you see that the case is reaching a denouement and can conveniently be resolved, make sure—not really to justify and defend yourself—no, but simply to confuse things by introducing new and even unrelated issues.”

  “You mean, so as …”

  “To confuse, to confuse—nothing more,” the philosopher replied, “to introduce into the case some other, unrelated circumstances that will entangle other people in it, to make it complicated—nothing more. And then let some Petersburg official come and sort it out. Let him sort it out, just let him!” he repeated, looking into Chichikov’s eyes with extraordinary pleasure, the way a teacher looks into his pupil’s eyes while explaining some fascinating point in Russian grammar.

  “Yes, good, if one picks circumstances capable of blowing smoke in people’s eyes,” said Chichikov, al
so looking with pleasure into the philosopher’s eyes, like a pupil who has understood the fascinating point explained by his teacher.

  “They’ll get picked, the circumstances will get picked! Believe me: frequent exercise makes the head resourceful. Above all remember that you’re going to be helped. In a complicated case there’s gain for many: more officials are needed, and more pay for them … In short, more people must be drawn into the case. Never mind that some of them will get into it for no reason: it’s easier for them to justify themselves, they have to respond to the documents, to pay themselves off … So there’s bread in it … Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that no one can understand anything. Why am I calm? Because I know: if my affairs get worse, I’ll entangle them all in it—the governor, the vice-governor, the police chief, and the magiatrate—I’ll get them all entangled. I know all their circumstances: who’s angry with whom, and who’s pouting at whom, and who wants to lock up whom. Let them disentangle themselves later, but while they do, others will have time to make their own gains. The crayfish thrives in troubled waters. Everyone’s waiting to entangle everything.” Here the jurist-philosopher looked into Chichikov’s eyes again with that delight with which the teacher explains to the pupil a still more fascinating point in Russian grammar.

  “No, the man is indeed a wizard,” Chichikov thought to himself, and he parted from the lawyer in a most excellent and most agreeable state of mind.

  Having been completely reassured and reinforced, he threw himself back on the springy cushions of the carriage with careless adroitness, ordered Selifan to take the top down (as he went to the lawyer, he had the top up and even the apron buttoned), and settled exactly like a retired colonel of the hussars, or Vishnepokromov himself—adroitly tucking one leg under the other, turning his face agreeably towards passersby, beaming from under the new silk hat cocked slightly over one ear. Selifan was ordered to proceed in the direction of the shopping arcade. Merchants, both itinerant and aboriginal, standing at the doors of their shops, reverently took their hats off, and Chichikov, not without dignity, raised his own in response. Many of them were already known to him; others, though itinerant, being charmed by the adroit air of this gentleman who knew how to bear himself, greeted him like an acquaintance. The fair in the town of Phooeyslavl was never-ending. After the horse fair and the agricultural fair were over, there came the fair of luxury goods for gentlefolk of high cultivation. The merchants who came on wheels planned to go home not otherwise than on sleds.

  “Welcome, sir, welcome!” a German frock coat made in Moscow kept saying, outside a fabric shop, posing courteously, his head uncovered, his hat in his outstretched hand, just barely holding two fingers to his round, glabrous chin and with an expression of cultivated finesse on his face.

  Chichikov went into the shop.

  “Show me your little fabrics, my most gentle sir.”

  The propitious merchant at once lifted the removable board in the counter and, having thereby made a passage for himself, wound up inside the shop, his back to his goods, his face to the buyer.

  Standing back to his goods and face to the buyer, the merchant of the bare head and the outstretched hat greeted Chichikov once again. Then he put his hat on and, leaning forward agreeably, his two arms resting on the counter, spoke thus:

  “What sort of cloth, sir? Of English manufacture, or do you prefer domestic?”

  “Domestic,” said Chichikov, “only precisely of that best sort known as English cloth.”

  “What colors would you prefer?” inquired the merchant, still swaying agreeably with his two arms resting on the counter.

  “Dark colors, olive or bottle green, with flecks tending, so to speak, towards cranberry,” said Chichikov.

  “I may say that you will get the foremost sort, of which there is none better in either capital,” the merchant said as he hoisted himself to the upper shelf to get the bolt; he flung it down adroitly onto the counter, unrolled it from the other end, and held it to the light. “What play, sir! The most fashionable, the latest taste!”

  The cloth gleamed like silk. The merchant could smell that there stood before him a connoisseur of fabrics, and he did not wish to begin with the ten-rouble sort.

  “Decent enough,” said Chichikov, stroking it lightly. “But I tell you what, my worthy man, show me at once the one you save for last, and there should be more of that color … those flecks, those red flecks.”

  “I understand, sir: you truly want the color that is now becoming fashionable in Petersburg. I have cloth of the most excellent properties. I warn you that the price is high, but so is the quality.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  Not a word about the price.

  The bolt fell from above. The merchant unrolled it with still greater art, grasping the other end and unrolling it like silk, offered it to Chichikov so that he would have the opportunity not only of examining it, but even of smelling it, and merely said:

  “Here’s the fabric, sir! the colors of the smoke and flame of Navarino!”8

  The price was agreed upon. The iron yardstick, like a magician’s wand, meted out enough for Chichikov’s tailcoat and trousers. Having snipped it a little with his scissors, the merchant performed with both hands the deft tearing of the fabric across its whole width, and on finishing bowed to Chichikov with the most seductive agreeableness. The fabric was straightaway folded and deftly wrapped in paper; the package twirled under the light string. Chichikov was just going to his pocket when he felt his waist being pleasantly encircled by someone’s very delicate arm, and his ears heard:

  “What are you buying here, my most respected friend?”

  “Ah, what a pleasantly unexpected meeting!” said Chichikov.

  “A pleasant encounter,” said the voice of the same man who had encircled his waist. It was Vishnepokromov. “I was prepared to pass by the shop without paying any attention, when suddenly I saw a familiar face—how can one deny oneself an agreeable pleasure! There’s no denying the fabrics are incomparably better this year. It’s a shame and a disgrace! I simply couldn’t find … Thirty roubles, forty roubles I’m prepared to … ask even fifty, but give me something good. I say either one has something that is really of the most excellent quality, or it’s better not to have it at all. Right?”

  “Absolutely right!” said Chichikov. “Why work, if it’s not so as to have something really good?”

  “Show me some moderate-priced fabrics,” a voice came from behind that seemed familiar to Chichikov. He turned around: it was Khlobuev. By all tokens he was buying fabric not merely on a whim, for his wretched frock coat was quite worn out.

  “Ah, Pavel Ivanovich! allow me to speak with you at last. One can’t find you anymore. I came by several times—you’re always out.”

  “My esteemed friend, I’ve been so busy that, by God, I’ve had no time.” He looked around, hoping to elude explanations, and saw Murazov coming into the shop. “Afanasy Vassilyevich! Ah, my God!” said Chichikov. “What a pleasant encounter!”

  And Vishnepokromov repeated after him:

  “Afanasy Vassilyevich!”

  And Khlobuev repeated:

  “Afanasy Vassilyevich!”

  And, lastly, the well-bred merchant, having carried his hat as far away from his head as his arm permitted, and, all of him thrust forward, pronounced:

  “To Afanasy Vassilyevich—our humblest respects!”

  Their faces were stamped with that doglike servility that is rendered unto millionaires by the doglike race of men.

  The old man exchanged bows with them all and turned directly to Khlobuev:

  “Excuse me: I saw you from far off going into the shop, and decided to trouble you. If you’re free afterwards and my house is not out of your way, kindly stop by for a short while. I must have a talk with you.”

  Khlobuev said:

  “Very well, Afanasy Vassilyevich.”

&nbs
p; “What wonderful weather we’re having, Afanasy Vassilyevich,” said Chichikov.

  “Isn’t that so, Afanasy Vassilyevich,” Vishnepokromov picked up, “it’s extraordinary.”

  “Yes, sir, thank God, it’s not bad. But we need a bit of rain for the crops.”

  “We do, very much,” said Vishnepokromov, “it would even be good for the hunting.”

  “Yes, a bit of rain wouldn’t hurt,” said Chichikov, who did not need any rain, but felt it so pleasant to agree with a man who had a million.

  And the old man, having bowed to them all again, walked out.

  “My head simply spins,” said Chichikov, “when I think that this man has ten million. It’s simply impossible.”

  “It’s not a rightful thing, though,” said Vishnepokromov, “capital shouldn’t be in one man’s hands. That’s even the subject of treatises now all over Europe. You have money—so, share it with others: treat people, give balls, produce beneficent luxury, which gives bread to the artisans, the master craftsmen.”

  “This I am unable to understand,” said Chichikov. “Ten million—and he lives like a simple muzhik! With ten million one could do devil knows what. It could be so arranged that you wouldn’t have any other company than generals and princes.”

  “Yes, sir,” the merchant added, “with all his respectable qualities, there’s much uncultivatedness in Afanasy Vassilyevich. If a merchant is respectable, he’s no longer a merchant, he’s already in a certain way a negotiant. I’ve got to take a box in the theater, then, and I’ll never marry my daughter to a mere colonel—no, sir, I won’t marry her to anything but a general. What’s a colonel to me? My dinner’s got to be provided by a confectioner, not just any cook …”

  “What’s there to talk about! for pity’s sake,” said Vishnepokromov, “what can one not do with ten million? Give me ten million—you’ll see what I’ll do!”

  “No,” thought Chichikov, “you won’t do much that’s sensible with ten million. But if I were to have ten million, I’d really do something.”