Dead Souls (21 page)

"And do you happen to know any one to whom a few runaway serfs would
be of use?" he asked as subsequently he folded the letter.

"What? You have some runaways as well?" exclaimed Chichikov, again
greatly interested.

"Certainly I have. My son-in-law has laid the necessary information
against them, but says that their tracks have grown cold. However, he
is only a military man—that is to say, good at clinking a pair of
spurs, but of no use for laying a plea before a court."

"And how many runaways have you?"

"About seventy."

"Surely not?"

"Alas, yes. Never does a year pass without a certain number of them
making off. Yet so gluttonous and idle are my serfs that they are
simply bursting with food, whereas I scarcely get enough to eat. I
will take any price for them that you may care to offer. Tell your
friends about it, and, should they find even a score of the runaways,
it will repay them handsomely, seeing that a living serf on the census
list is at present worth five hundred roubles."

"Perhaps so, but I am not going to let any one but myself have a
finger in this," thought Chichikov to himself; after which he
explained to Plushkin that a friend of the kind mentioned would be
impossible to discover, since the legal expenses of the enterprise
would lead to the said friend having to cut the very tail from his
coat before he would get clear of the lawyers.

"Nevertheless," added Chichikov, "seeing that you are so hard pressed
for money, and that I am so interested in the matter, I feel moved to
advance you—well, to advance you such a trifle as would scarcely be
worth mentioning."

"But how much is it?" asked Plushkin eagerly, and with his hands
trembling like quicksilver.

"Twenty-five kopecks per soul."

"What? In ready money?"

"Yes—in money down."

"Nevertheless, consider my poverty, dear friend, and make it FORTY
kopecks per soul."

"Venerable sir, would that I could pay you not merely forty kopecks,
but five hundred roubles. I should be only too delighted if that were
possible, since I perceive that you, an aged and respected gentleman,
are suffering for your own goodness of heart."

"By God, that is true, that is true." Plushkin hung his head, and
wagged it feebly from side to side. "Yes, all that I have done I have
done purely out of kindness."

"See how instantaneously I have divined your nature! By now it will
have become clear to you why it is impossible for me to pay you five
hundred roubles per runaway soul: for by now you will have gathered
the fact that I am not sufficiently rich. Nevertheless, I am ready to
add another five kopecks, and so to make it that each runaway serf
shall cost me, in all, thirty kopecks."

"As you please, dear sir. Yet stretch another point, and throw in
another two kopecks."

"Pardon me, but I cannot. How many runaway serfs did you say that you
possess? Seventy?"

"No; seventy-eight."

"Seventy-eight souls at thirty kopecks each will amount to—to—" only
for a moment did our hero halt, since he was strong in his arithmetic,
"—will amount to twenty-four roubles, ninety-six kopecks."
^[28]

With that he requested Plushkin to make out the receipt, and then
handed him the money. Plushkin took it in both hands, bore it to a
bureau with as much caution as though he were carrying a liquid which
might at any moment splash him in the face, and, arrived at the
bureau, and glancing round once more, carefully packed the cash in one
of his money bags, where, doubtless, it was destined to lie buried
until, to the intense joy of his daughters and his son-in-law (and,
perhaps, of the captain who claimed kinship with him), he should
himself receive burial at the hands of Fathers Carp and Polycarp, the
two priests attached to his village. Lastly, the money concealed,
Plushkin re-seated himself in the armchair, and seemed at a loss for
further material for conversation.

"Are you thinking of starting?" at length he inquired, on seeing
Chichikov making a trifling movement, though the movement was only to
extract from his pocket a handkerchief. Nevertheless the question
reminded Chichikov that there was no further excuse for lingering.

"Yes, I must be going," he said as he took his hat.

"Then what about the tea?"

"Thank you, I will have some on my next visit."

"What? Even though I have just ordered the samovar to be got ready?
Well, well! I myself do not greatly care for tea, for I think it an
expensive beverage. Moreover, the price of sugar has risen terribly."

"Proshka!" he then shouted. "The samovar will not be needed. Return
the sugar to Mavra, and tell her to put it back again. But no. Bring
the sugar here, and
I
will put it back."

"Good-bye, dear sir," finally he added to Chichikov. "May the Lord
bless you! Hand that letter to the President of the Council, and let
him read it. Yes, he is an old friend of mine. We knew one another as
schoolfellows."

With that this strange phenomenon, this withered old man, escorted his
guest to the gates of the courtyard, and, after the guest had
departed, ordered the gates to be closed, made the round of the
outbuildings for the purpose of ascertaining whether the numerous
watchmen were at their posts, peered into the kitchen (where, under
the pretence of seeing whether his servants were being properly fed,
he made a light meal of cabbage soup and gruel), rated the said
servants soundly for their thievishness and general bad behaviour, and
then returned to his room. Meditating in solitude, he fell to thinking
how best he could contrive to recompense his guest for the latter's
measureless benevolence. "I will present him," he thought to himself,
"with a watch. It is a good silver article—not one of those cheap
metal affairs; and though it has suffered some damage, he can easily
get that put right. A young man always needs to give a watch to his
betrothed."

"No," he added after further thought. "I will leave him the watch in
my will, as a keepsake."

Meanwhile our hero was bowling along in high spirit. Such an
unexpected acquisition both of dead souls and of runaway serfs had
come as a windfall. Even before reaching Plushkin's village he had had
a presentiment that he would do successful business there, but not
business of such pre-eminent profitableness as had actually resulted.
As he proceeded he whistled, hummed with hand placed trumpetwise to
his mouth, and ended by bursting into a burst of melody so striking
that Selifan, after listening for a while, nodded his head and
exclaimed, "My word, but the master CAN sing!"

By the time they reached the town darkness had fallen, and changed the
character of the scene. The britchka bounded over the cobblestones,
and at length turned into the hostelry's courtyard, where the
travellers were met by Petrushka. With one hand holding back the tails
of his coat (which he never liked to see fly apart), the valet
assisted his master to alight. The waiter ran out with candle in hand
and napkin on shoulder. Whether or not Petrushka was glad to see the
barin return it is impossible to say, but at all events he exchanged a
wink with Selifan, and his ordinarily morose exterior seemed
momentarily to brighten.

"Then you have been travelling far, sir?" said the waiter, as he lit
the way upstarts.

"Yes," said Chichikov. "What has happened here in the meanwhile?"

"Nothing, sir," replied the waiter, bowing, "except that last night
there arrived a military lieutenant. He has got room number sixteen."

"A lieutenant?"

"Yes. He came from Riazan, driving three grey horses."

On entering his room, Chichikov clapped his hand to his nose, and
asked his valet why he had never had the windows opened.

"But I did have them opened," replied Petrushka. Nevertheless this was
a lie, as Chichikov well knew, though he was too tired to contest the
point. After ordering and consuming a light supper of sucking pig, he
undressed, plunged beneath the bedclothes, and sank into the profound
slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled
neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.

When Chichikov awoke he stretched himself and realised that he had
slept well. For a moment or two he lay on his back, and then suddenly
clapped his hands at the recollection that he was now owner of nearly
four hundred souls. At once he leapt out of bed without so much as
glancing at his face in the mirror, though, as a rule, he had much
solicitude for his features, and especially for his chin, of which he
would make the most when in company with friends, and more
particularly should any one happen to enter while he was engaged in
the process of shaving. "Look how round my chin is!" was his usual
formula. On the present occasion, however, he looked neither at chin
nor at any other feature, but at once donned his flower-embroidered
slippers of morroco leather (the kind of slippers in which, thanks to
the Russian love for a dressing-gowned existence, the town of Torzhok
does such a huge trade), and, clad only in a meagre shirt, so far
forgot his elderliness and dignity as to cut a couple of capers after
the fashion of a Scottish highlander—alighting neatly, each time, on
the flat of his heels. Only when he had done that did he proceed to
business. Planting himself before his dispatch-box, he rubbed his
hands with a satisfaction worthy of an incorruptible rural magistrate
when adjourning for luncheon; after which he extracted from the
receptacle a bundle of papers. These he had decided not to deposit
with a lawyer, for the reason that he would hasten matters, as well as
save expense, by himself framing and fair-copying the necessary deeds
of indenture; and since he was thoroughly acquainted with the
necessary terminology, he proceeded to inscribe in large characters
the date, and then in smaller ones, his name and rank. By two o'clock
the whole was finished, and as he looked at the sheets of names
representing bygone peasants who had ploughed, worked at handicrafts,
cheated their masters, fetched, carried, and got drunk (though SOME
of them may have behaved well), there came over him a strange,
unaccountable sensation. To his eye each list of names seemed to
possess a character of its own; and even individual peasants therein
seemed to have taken on certain qualities peculiar to themselves. For
instance, to the majority of Madame Korobotchka's serfs there were
appended nicknames and other additions; Plushkin's list was
distinguished by a conciseness of exposition which had led to certain
of the items being represented merely by Christian name, patronymic,
and a couple of dots; and Sobakevitch's list was remarkable for its
amplitude and circumstantiality, in that not a single peasant had such
of his peculiar characteristics omitted as that the deceased had been
"excellent at joinery," or "sober and ready to pay attention to his
work." Also, in Sobakevitch's list there was recorded who had been the
father and the mother of each of the deceased, and how those parents
had behaved themselves. Only against the name of a certain Thedotov
was there inscribed: "Father unknown, Mother the maidservant
Kapitolina, Morals and Honesty good." These details communicated to
the document a certain air of freshness, they seemed to connote that
the peasants in question had lived but yesterday. As Chichikov scanned
the list he felt softened in spirit, and said with a sigh:

"My friends, what a concourse of you is here! How did you all pass
your lives, my brethren? And how did you all come to depart hence?"

As he spoke his eyes halted at one name in particular—that of the
same Peter Saveliev Neuvazhai Korito who had once been the property of
the window Korobotchka. Once more he could not help exclaiming:

"What a series of titles! They occupy a whole line! Peter Saveliev, I
wonder whether you were an artisan or a plain muzhik. Also, I wonder
how you came to meet your end; whether in a tavern, or whether through
going to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train
of waggons. Again, I see the name, 'Probka Stepan, carpenter, very
sober.' That must be the hero of whom the Guards would have been so
glad to get hold. How well I can imagine him tramping the country with
an axe in his belt and his boots on his shoulder, and living on a few
groats'-worth of bread and dried fish per day, and taking home a
couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse, and sewing the notes into
his breeches, or stuffing them into his boots! In what manner came you
by your end, Probka Stepan? Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold
around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the
cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none
at hand but Uncle Michai—the good uncle who, scratching the back of
his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for once you have been too
clever!' straightway lashed himself to a rope, and took your place?
'Maksim Teliatnikov, shoemaker.' A shoemaker, indeed? 'As drunk as a
shoemaker,' says the proverb.
I
know what you were like, my friend.
If you wish, I will tell you your whole history. You were apprenticed
to a German, who fed you and your fellows at a common table, thrashed
you with a strap, kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake,
and spoke of you in uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends. At
length, when your apprenticeship was over, you said to yourself, 'I am
going to set up on my own account, and not just to scrape together a
kopeck here and a kopeck there, as the Germans do, but to grow rich
quick.' Hence you took a shop at a high rent, bespoke a few orders,
and set to work to buy up some rotten leather out of which you could
make, on each pair of boots, a double profit. But those boots split
within a fortnight, and brought down upon your head dire showers of
maledictions; with the result that gradually your shop grew empty of
customers, and you fell to roaming the streets and exclaiming, 'The
world is a very poor place indeed! A Russian cannot make a living for
German competition.' Well, well! 'Elizabeta Vorobei!' But that is a
WOMAN'S name! How comes SHE to be on the list? That villain
Sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my knowing it."