Dead Souls (11 page)

"I beseech you to have a morsel," murmured his hostess. Chichikov
looked up, and saw that the table was spread with mushrooms, pies, and
other viands.

"Try this freshly-made pie and an egg," continued Madame.

Chichikov did so, and having eaten more than half of what she offered
him, praised the pie highly. Indeed, it was a toothsome dish, and,
after his difficulties and exertions with his hostess, it tasted even
better than it might otherwise have done.

"And also a few pancakes?" suggested Madame.

For answer Chichikov folded three together, and, having dipped them in
melted butter, consigned the lot to his mouth, and then wiped his
mouth with a napkin. Twice more was the process repeated, and then he
requested his hostess to order the britchka to be got ready. In
dispatching Fetinia with the necessary instructions, she ordered her
to return with a second batch of hot pancakes.

"Your pancakes are indeed splendid," said Chichikov, applying himself
to the second consignment of fried dainties when they had arrived.

"Yes, we make them well here," replied Madame. "Yet how unfortunate it
is that the harvest should have proved so poor as to have prevented me
from earning anything on my— But why should you be in such a hurry to
depart, good sir?" She broke off on seeing Chichikov reach for his
cap. "The britchka is not yet ready."

"Then it is being got so, madam, it is being got so, and I shall need
a moment or two to pack my things."

"As you please, dear sir; but do not forget me in connection with
those Government contracts."

"No, I have said that NEVER shall I forget you," replied Chichikov
as he hurried into the hall.

"And would you like to buy some lard?" continued his hostess, pursuing
him.

"Lard? Oh certainly. Why not? Only, only—I will do so ANOTHER time."

"I shall have some ready at about Christmas."

"Quite so, madam. THEN I will buy anything and everything—the
lard included."

"And perhaps you will be wanting also some feathers? I shall be having
some for sale about St. Philip's Day."

"Very well, very well, madam."

"There you see!" she remarked as they stepped out on to the verandah.
"The britchka is NOT yet ready."

"But it soon will be, it soon will be. Only direct me to the main
road."

"How am I to do that?" said Madame. "'Twould puzzle a wise man to do
so, for in these parts there are so many turnings. However, I will
send a girl to guide you. You could find room for her on the box-seat,
could you not?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then I will send her. She knows the way thoroughly. Only do not carry
her off for good. Already some traders have deprived me of one of my
girls."

Chichikov reassured his hostess on the point, and Madame plucked up
courage enough to scan, first of all, the housekeeper, who happened to
be issuing from the storehouse with a bowl of honey, and, next, a
young peasant who happened to be standing at the gates; and, while
thus engaged, she became wholly absorbed in her domestic pursuits. But
why pay her so much attention? The Widow Korobotchka, Madame Manilov,
domestic life, non-domestic life—away with them all! How strangely
are things compounded! In a trice may joy turn to sorrow, should one
halt long enough over it: in a trice only God can say what ideas may
strike one. You may fall even to thinking: "After all, did Madame
Korobotchka stand so very low in the scale of human perfection? Was
there really such a very great gulf between her and Madame
Manilov—between her and the Madame Manilov whom we have seen
entrenched behind the walls of a genteel mansion in which there were a
fine staircase of wrought metal and a number of rich carpets; the
Madame Manilov who spent most of her time in yawning behind half-read
books, and in hoping for a visit from some socially distinguished
person in order that she might display her wit and carefully rehearsed
thoughts—thoughts which had been de rigeur in town for a week past,
yet which referred, not to what was going on in her household or on
her estate—both of which properties were at odds and ends, owing to
her ignorance of the art of managing them—but to the coming political
revolution in France and the direction in which fashionable
Catholicism was supposed to be moving? But away with such things! Why
need we speak of them? Yet how comes it that suddenly into the midst
of our careless, frivolous, unthinking moments there may enter
another, and a very different, tendency?—that the smile may not have
left a human face before its owner will have radically changed his or
her nature (though not his or her environment) with the result that
the face will suddenly become lit with a radiance never before seen
there? . . .

"Here is the britchka, here is the britchka!" exclaimed Chichikov on
perceiving that vehicle slowly advancing. "Ah, you blockhead!" he went
on to Selifan. "Why have you been loitering about? I suppose last
night's fumes have not yet left your brain?"

To this Selifan returned no reply.

"Good-bye, madam," added the speaker. "But where is the girl whom you
promised me?"

"Here, Pelagea!" called the hostess to a wench of about eleven who was
dressed in home-dyed garments and could boast of a pair of bare feet
which, from a distance, might almost have been mistaken for boots, so
encrusted were they with fresh mire. "Here, Pelagea! Come and show
this gentleman the way."

Selifan helped the girl to ascend to the box-seat. Placing one foot
upon the step by which the gentry mounted, she covered the said step
with mud, and then, ascending higher, attained the desired position
beside the coachman. Chichikov followed in her wake (causing the
britchka to heel over with his weight as he did so), and then settled
himself back into his place with an "All right! Good-bye, madam!" as
the horses moved away at a trot.

Selifan looked gloomy as he drove, but also very attentive to his
business. This was invariably his custom when he had committed the
fault of getting drunk. Also, the horses looked unusually
well-groomed. In particular, the collar on one of them had been neatly
mended, although hitherto its state of dilapidation had been such as
perennially to allow the stuffing to protrude through the leather. The
silence preserved was well-nigh complete. Merely flourishing his whip,
Selifan spoke to the team no word of instruction, although the
skewbald was as ready as usual to listen to conversation of a didactic
nature, seeing that at such times the reins hung loosely in the hands
of the loquacious driver, and the whip wandered merely as a matter of
form over the backs of the troika. This time, however, there could be
heard issuing from Selifan's sullen lips only the uniformly unpleasant
exclamation, "Now then, you brutes! Get on with you, get on with you!"
The bay and the Assessor too felt put out at not hearing themselves
called "my pets" or "good lads"; while, in addition, the skewbald came
in for some nasty cuts across his sleek and ample quarters. "What has
put master out like this?" thought the animal as it shook its head.
"Heaven knows where he does not keep beating me—across the back, and
even where I am tenderer still. Yes, he keeps catching the whip in my
ears, and lashing me under the belly."

"To the right, eh?" snapped Selifan to the girl beside him as he pointed
to a rain-soaked road which trended away through fresh green fields.

"No, no," she replied. "I will show you the road when the time comes."

"Which way, then?" he asked again when they had proceeded a little further.

"This way." And she pointed to the road just mentioned.

"Get along with you!" retorted the coachman. "That DOES go to the
right. You don't know your right hand from your left."

The weather was fine, but the ground so excessively sodden that the
wheels of the britchka collected mire until they had become caked as
with a layer of felt, a circumstance which greatly increased the
weight of the vehicle, and prevented it from clearing the neighbouring
parishes before the afternoon was arrived. Also, without the girl's
help the finding of the way would have been impossible, since roads
wiggled away in every direction, like crabs released from a net, and,
but for the assistance mentioned, Selifan would have found himself
left to his own devices. Presently she pointed to a building ahead,
with the words, "THERE is the main road."

"And what is the building?" asked Selifan.

"A tavern," she said.

"Then we can get along by ourselves," he observed. "Do you get down,
and be off home."

With that he stopped, and helped her to alight—muttering as he did
so: "Ah, you blackfooted creature!"

Chichikov added a copper groat, and she departed well pleased with her
ride in the gentleman's carriage.

On reaching the tavern, Chichikov called a halt. His reasons for this
were twofold—namely, that he wanted to rest the horses, and that he
himself desired some refreshment. In this connection the author feels
bound to confess that the appetite and the capacity of such men are
greatly to be envied. Of those well-to-do folk of St. Petersburg and
Moscow who spend their time in considering what they shall eat on the
morrow, and in composing a dinner for the day following, and who never
sit down to a meal without first of all injecting a pill and then
swallowing oysters and crabs and a quantity of other monsters, while
eternally departing for Karlsbad or the Caucasus, the author has but a
small opinion. Yes, THEY are not the persons to inspire envy.
Rather, it is the folk of the middle classes—folk who at one
posthouse call for bacon, and at another for a sucking pig, and at a
third for a steak of sturgeon or a baked pudding with onions, and who
can sit down to table at any hour, as though they had never had a meal
in their lives, and can devour fish of all sorts, and guzzle and chew
it with a view to provoking further appetite—these, I say, are the
folk who enjoy heaven's most favoured gift. To attain such a celestial
condition the great folk of whom I have spoken would sacrifice half
their serfs and half their mortgaged and non-mortgaged property, with
the foreign and domestic improvements thereon, if thereby they could
compass such a stomach as is possessed by the folk of the middle
class. But, unfortunately, neither money nor real estate, whether
improved or non-improved, can purchase such a stomach.

The little wooden tavern, with its narrow, but hospitable, curtain
suspended from a pair of rough-hewn doorposts like old church
candlesticks, seemed to invite Chichikov to enter. True, the
establishment was only a Russian hut of the ordinary type, but it was
a hut of larger dimensions than usual, and had around its windows and
gables carved and patterned cornices of bright-coloured wood which
threw into relief the darker hue of the walls, and consorted well with
the flowered pitchers painted on the shutters.

Ascending the narrow wooden staircase to the upper floor, and arriving
upon a broad landing, Chichikov found himself confronted with a
creaking door and a stout old woman in a striped print gown. "This
way, if you please," she said. Within the apartment designated
Chichikov encountered the old friends which one invariably finds in
such roadside hostelries—to wit, a heavy samovar, four smooth,
bescratched walls of white pine, a three-cornered press with cups and
teapots, egg-cups of gilded china standing in front of ikons suspended
by blue and red ribands, a cat lately delivered of a family, a mirror
which gives one four eyes instead of two and a pancake for a face,
and, beside the ikons, some bunches of herbs and carnations of such
faded dustiness that, should one attempt to smell them, one is bound
to burst out sneezing.

"Have you a sucking-pig?" Chichikov inquired of the landlady as she
stood expectantly before him.

"Yes."

"And some horse-radish and sour cream?"

"Yes."

"Then serve them."

The landlady departed for the purpose, and returned with a plate, a
napkin (the latter starched to the consistency of dried bark), a knife
with a bone handle beginning to turn yellow, a two-pronged fork as
thin as a wafer, and a salt-cellar incapable of being made to stand
upright.

Following the accepted custom, our hero entered into conversation with
the woman, and inquired whether she herself or a landlord kept the
tavern; how much income the tavern brought in; whether her sons lived
with her; whether the oldest was a bachelor or married; whom the
eldest had taken to wife; whether the dowry had been large; whether
the father-in-law had been satisfied, and whether the said
father-in-law had not complained of receiving too small a present at
the wedding. In short, Chichikov touched on every conceivable point.
Likewise (of course) he displayed some curiosity as to the landowners
of the neighbourhood. Their names, he ascertained, were Blochin,
Potchitaev, Minoi, Cheprakov, and Sobakevitch.

"Then you are acquainted with Sobakevitch?" he said; whereupon the old
woman informed him that she knew not only Sobakevitch, but also
Manilov, and that the latter was the more delicate eater of the two,
since, whereas Manilov always ordered a roast fowl and some veal and
mutton, and then tasted merely a morsel of each, Sobakevitch would
order one dish only, but consume the whole of it, and then demand more
at the same price.

Whilst Chichikov was thus conversing and partaking of the sucking pig
until only a fragment of it seemed likely to remain, the sound of an
approaching vehicle made itself heard. Peering through the window, he
saw draw up to the tavern door a light britchka drawn by three fine
horses. From it there descended two men—one flaxen-haired and tall,
and the other dark-haired and of slighter build. While the
flaxen-haired man was clad in a dark-blue coat, the other one was
wrapped in a coat of striped pattern. Behind the britchka stood a
second, but an empty, turn-out, drawn by four long-coated steeds in
ragged collars and rope harnesses. The flaxen-haired man lost no time
in ascending the staircase, while his darker friend remained below to
fumble at something in the britchka, talking, as he did so, to the
driver of the vehicle which stood hitched behind. Somehow, the
dark-haired man's voice struck Chichikov as familiar; and as he was
taking another look at him the flaxen-haired gentleman entered the
room. The newcomer was a man of lofty stature, with a small red
moustache and a lean, hard-bitten face whose redness made it evident
that its acquaintance, if not with the smoke of gunpowder, at all
events with that of tobacco, was intimate and extensive. Nevertheless
he greeted Chichikov civilly, and the latter returned his bow. Indeed,
the pair would have entered into conversation, and have made one
another's acquaintance (since a beginning was made with their
simultaneously expressing satisfaction at the circumstance that the
previous night's rain had laid the dust on the roads, and thereby
made driving cool and pleasant) when the gentleman's darker-favoured
friend also entered the room, and, throwing his cap upon the table,
pushed back a mass of dishevelled black locks from his brow. The
latest arrival was a man of medium height, but well put together, and
possessed of a pair of full red cheeks, a set of teeth as white as
snow, and coal-black whiskers. Indeed, so fresh was his complexion
that it seemed to have been compounded of blood and milk, while health
danced in his every feature.