Dead Souls, Page 39

  "But you, too, have factories," Platonov observed.

  "And who started them? They started of themselves: wool accumulated, there was nowhere to sell it, so I started weaving broadcloth, simple, heavy broadcloth; I have it all sold for a low price at the markets. Fish scales, for example, have been thrown away on my bank for six years in a row; what was I to do with them? I started boiling them for glue and made forty thousand. With me everything's like that."

  "What a devil!" Chichikov thought, staring at him with all his eyes, "he just rakes it in!"

  "And I don't build buildings for that; I have no houses with columns and pediments. I don't invite master craftsmen from abroad. And I'll never tear peasants away from tilling the soil. I have people work in my factories only in lean years, and only those from elsewhere, for the sake of bread. There can be many such factories. Just study your management a bit more closely and you'll see—every rag can be of use, every bit of trash can bring income, so much that later you'll just push it away, saying: no need."

  "That's amazing! And what's most amazing is that every bit of trash can bring income!" said Chichikov.

  "Hm! and not only that! ...” Kostanzhoglo did not finish what he was saying: the bile rose in him, and he wanted to abuse his neighboring landowners. "There's still another clever fellow— what do you think he set up for himself? An almshouse, a stone building on his estate! A pious enterprise! . . . But if you wish to help, help everyone to do his duty, don't tear them away from their Christian duty. Help the son to care for his sick father, don't give him the chance of getting him off his back. Better give him the means of sheltering his neighbor and brother, give him money for that, help him with all your powers, and don't pull him away, or else he'll give up all Christian obligations entirely. Don Quixotes in every sense! ... It comes to two hundred roubles a year for a man in an almshouse! . . . On that money I could keep ten people on my estate!" Kostanzhoglo got angry and spat.

  Chichikov was not interested in the almshouse: he wanted to talk about how every bit of trash could bring income. But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.

  "And here's another Don Quixote of enlightenment: he's set up schools! Now, what, for instance, is more useful to a man than literacy? And how did he handle it? Muzhiks from his estate come to me. 'What's going on, my dear?' they say. 'Our sons have got completely out of hand, don't want to help us work, they all want to become scriveners, but there's need for only one scrivener.' That's what came of it!"

  Chichikov had no use for schools either, but Platonov took up the subject:

  "But that should be no hindrance, that there's no need for scriveners now: there will be later. We must work for posterity."

  "But you at least be intelligent, brother! What do you care about this posterity? Everyone thinks he's some kind of Peter the Great! Look under your feet, don't gaze into posterity; make it so that the muzhik is well off, even rich, so that he has time to study of his own will, but don't take a stick in your hand and say: 'Study!' Devil knows which end they start from! . . . Listen, now, I'll let you be the judge now..." Here Kostanzhoglo moved closer to Chichikov and, to give him a better grasp of the matter, boarded him with a grapnel—in other words, put a finger in the buttonhole of his tailcoat. "Now, what could be clearer? You have peasants, so you should foster them in their peasant way of life. What is this way of life? What is the peasant's occupation? Ploughing? Then see to it that he's a good ploughman. Clear? No, clever fellows turn up who say: 'He should be taken out of this condition. The life he leads is too crude and simple: he must be made acquainted with the objects of luxury' They themselves, owing to this luxury, have become rags instead of people, and got infested with devil knows what diseases, and there's no lad of eighteen left who hasn't already tried everything: he's toothless and bald behind—so now they want to infect these others with it all. Thank God we have at least this one healthy stratum left, as yet unacquainted with such whimsies! We must simply be grateful to God for that. Yes, for me the ploughmen are worthiest of all. God grant that all become ploughmen!"

  "So you suppose that ploughing is the most profitable occupation?" asked Chichikov.

  "The most rightful, not the most profitable. Till the soil in the sweat of your face.[63] That is said to us all; it is not said in vain. Age-old experience has proven that man in his agricultural quality has the purest morals. Where ploughing lies at the basis of social life, there is abundance and well-being; there is neither poverty nor luxury, but there is well-being. Till the soil, man was told, labor ... no need to be clever about it! I say to the muzhik: 'Whoever you work for, whether me, or yourself, or a neighbor, just work. If you're active, I'll be your first helper. You have no livestock, here's a horse for you, here's a cow, here's a cart. . . Whatever you need, I'm ready to supply you with, only work. It kills me if your management is not well set up, and I see disorder and poverty there. I won't suffer idleness. I am set over you so that you should work.' Hm! they think to increase their income with institutions and factories! But think first of all to make every one of your muzhiks rich, and then you yourself will be rich without factories, mills, or foolish fancies."

  "The more one listens to you, most honored Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov, "the more one has a wish to listen. Tell me, my esteemed sir: if, for example, I should have the intention of becoming a landowner in, say, this province, what should I pay most attention to? what should I do, how should I act in order to become rich in a short period of time, and thereby, so to speak, fulfill the essential duty of a citizen?"

  "What you should do in order to become rich? Here's what..." said Kostanzhoglo.

  "Time for supper!" said the mistress, rising from the sofa, and she stepped into the middle of the room, wrapping a shawl around her chilled young limbs.

  Chichikov popped up from his chair with the adroitness of an almost military man, flew over to the mistress with the soft expression of a delicate civilian in his smile, offered her the crook of his arm, and led her gala-fashion through two rooms into the dining room, all the while keeping his head agreeably inclined a bit to one side. The servant took the lid off the tureen; they all moved their chairs up to the table, and the slurping of soup began.

  Having polished off his soup and washed it down with a glass of liqueur (the liqueur was excellent), Chichikov spoke thus to Kostanzhoglo:

  "Allow me, most honored sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. I was asking you what to do, how to act, how best to go about...”[iv]

  "An estate for which, if he were to ask even forty thousand, I'd count it out to him at once."

  "Hm!" Chichikov fell to pondering. "And why is it," he spoke somewhat timidly, "that you don't buy it yourself?"

  "But one needs finally to know one's limits. I have plenty to keep me busy around my own properties without that. Besides, our gentry are shouting at me without that, saying I supposedly take advantage of their extremities and their ruined estates to buy up land for next to nothing. I'm sick of it, finally."

  "The gentry are quite capable of wicked talk!" said Chichikov.

  "And with us, in our own province . . . You can't imagine what they say about me. They don't even call me anything else but a skinflint and a first-degree niggard. They excuse themselves for everything: 'I did squander it all, of course,' they say, 'but it was for the higher necessities of life. I need books, I must live in luxury, so as to encourage industry; but one may, perhaps, live without squandering all, if one lives like that swine Kostanzhoglo.' That's how it is!"

  "I wish I were such a swine!" said Chichikov.

  "And all that because I don't give dinners and don't lend them money. I don't give dinners because it would be oppressive for me, I'm not used to it. But to come and eat what I eat—you're quite welcome! I don't lend money—that's nonsense. If you're truly in need, come to me and tell me in detail how you'll make use of my money. If I see from your words that you'll dispose of i
t intelligently, and the money will clearly bring a profit—I won't refuse you, and won't even take interest on it. But I won't throw money to the winds. Let me be excused for that. He's planning some sort of dinner for his ladylove, or furnishing his house on a crazy footing, and I should lend him money! ..."

  Here Kostanzhoglo spat and almost uttered several indecent and abusive words in the presence of his spouse. The stern shadow of gloomy hypochondria darkened his lively face. Down and across his forehead wrinkles gathered, betraying the wrathful movement of stirred bile.

  Chichikov drank off a glass of raspberry liqueur and spoke thus:

  "Allow me, my esteemed sir, to bring you back to the subject of our interrupted conversation. Supposing I were to acquire that same estate you were pleased to mention, in how much time and how quickly can one get rich to such an extent..."

  "If what you want," Kostanzhoglo picked up sternly and curtly, still full of ill humor, "is to get rich quickly, then you'll never get rich; but if you want to get rich without asking about time, you'll get rich quickly."

  "So that's it!" said Chichikov.

  "Yes," Kostanzhoglo said curtly, as if he were angry with Chichikov himself. "One must have a love of work; without it nothing can be done. One must come to love management, yes! And, believe me, there's nothing dull about it. They've invented the idea that country life is boring . . . but I'd die of boredom if I spent even one day in the city the way they do. A proprietor has no time to be bored. There's no emptiness in his life—everything is fullness. One need only consider this whole varied cycle of yearly occupations—and what occupations! occupations that truly elevate the spirit, to say nothing of their diversity. Here man walks side by side with nature, side by side with the seasons, a participant and conversant with everything that is accomplished in creation. Spring has not yet come, but work is already under way: supplies of firewood and everything for the floodtime; preparing seed; sorting and measuring grain in the granaries, and drying it; establishing new rents. The snow and floods are over— work is suddenly at the boil: here boats are being loaded, there forests are being thinned out, trees replanted in gardens, and the soil dug up everywhere. The spade is at work in the kitchen gardens, in the fields the plough and harrow. And the sowing begins.

  A trifle! They're sowing the future harvest! Summer comes—the mowing, the ploughman's greatest feast. A trifle! Then comes harvest after harvest: rye followed by wheat, barley by oats, and then there's the pulling of the hemp. The piling of hayricks, the stacking of sheaves. August is now half over—everything's being brought to the threshing floors. Autumn comes—the ploughing and sowing of winter crops, repairing of granaries, threshing barns, cattle sheds, bundling of grain, and the first threshing. Winter comes—here, too, work doesn't sleep: first deliveries to town, threshing on all the threshing floors, transporting the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns, cutting and sawing of wood in the forests, deliveries of brick and materials for spring construction. But it's simply impossible for me to embrace it all. Such a diversity of work! You go and have a look here and there: to the mill, to the workshops, to the factories, and to the threshing floors! You also go and have a look at the muzhik working for himself. A trifle! But for me it's a feast if a carpenter has good command of his axe, I'm ready to stand there for two hours: such joy work gives me. And if you also see with what purpose it is all being done, and how everything around you brings increase upon increase, producing fruit and profit. I cannot even tell you what a pleasure it is. And not because the money's growing—money is money—but because all this is—your handiwork; because you see yourself being the cause and creator of it all, how from you, as from some sort of magician, abundance and good pour out on everything. No, where can you find me an equal delight?" said Kostanzhoglo, his face looking up, the wrinkles disappearing. He was as radiant as a king on the day of his solemn coronation. "No, you won't find such a delight in the whole world! Here, precisely here, man imitates God: God granted Himself the work of creation, as the highest delight, and He demands that man, too, be a creator of prosperity and the harmonious course of things. And this they call dull!"

  As to the singing of a bird of paradise, Chichikov lost himself in listening to the sweet sounds of the proprietor's talk. His mouth was watering. His eyes became unctuous and acquired a sweet expression; he could have gone on listening forever.

  "Konstantin! it's time we got up," said the mistress, rising from her chair. Platonov rose, Kostanzhoglo rose, Chichikov rose, though he wanted to go on sitting and listening. Offering her the crook of his arm, he led the mistress back. But his head was not affably inclined to one side, his maneuvering lacked adroitness, because his thoughts were occupied with essential maneuvers and considerations.

  "However you describe it, all the same it's boring," Platonov said, walking behind him.

  "Our guest seems far from stupid," the host was thinking, "temperate in his speech, and no whippersnapper." And this thought made him still more cheerful, as if he had warmed himself up with his own conversation and rejoiced to find a man ready to listen to intelligent advice.

  Later, when they were all settled in a snug little candle-lit room across from the glass balcony door that served as a window, Chichikov felt cozier than he had felt for a long time. It was as if after long peregrinations he had now been received under his own roof, and to crown it all, had now obtained all that he desired and had dropped his pilgrim's staff, saying: "Enough!" So enchanting was the mood brought upon his soul by the host's reasonable talk. For every man there are certain words that are as if closer and more intimate to him than any others. And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was and that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding—the walls, the corners, and every trifle.

  So, too, did everything remain in Chichikov's memory that evening: this unpretentiously furnished little room, and the good-natured expression that settled on the host's face, and the pipe brought to Platonov, with its amber mouthpiece, and the smoke that he began blowing into Yarb's fat muzzle, and Yarb's snorting, and the comely mistress's laughter, interrupted by the words: "Enough, don't torment him," and the cheery candles, and the cricket in the corner, and the glass door, and the spring night looking in at them through it, leaning its elbow on the tree-tops, where in the thicket spring nightingales were whistling away.

  "Sweet is your talk to me, my esteemed Konstantin Fyodorovich," said Chichikov. "I may say that in the whole of Russia I have never met a man to equal you in intelligence."

  He smiled.

  "No, Pavel Ivanovich," he said, "if you want to know an intelligent man, then we do indeed have one of whom it may truly be said, 'This is an intelligent man,' and of whom I am not worth the shoe sole."

  "Who is he?" Chichikov asked in amazement.

  "Our tax farmer, Murazov."

  "This is the second time I'm hearing about him!" Chichikov exclaimed.

  "He's a man who could manage not just a landowner's estate, but a whole country. If I had a country, I'd make him minister of finance at once."

  "I've heard. They say he's a man who surpasses all belief, he's made ten million, they say."

  "Ten, nothing! it's way over forty. Soon half of Russia will be in his hands."

  "You don't say!" Chichikov exclaimed, dumbfounded.

  "Quite certainly. His capital must be growing now at an incredible rate. That's clear. Wealth grows slowly only when you have just a few hundred thousand; a man with millions has a big radius; whatever he gets hold of becomes two or three times more than it was. The field, the range is all too vast. There are no rivals here. No one can vie with h
im. Whatever price he assigns to a thing, so it stays: there's no one to bid higher."

  Pop-eyed and openmouthed, Chichikov gazed into Kostanzhoglo's eyes as if rooted to the spot. There was no breath in him.

  "The mind boggles!" he said, recovering himself slightly. "Thought is petrified with fear. People are amazed at the wisdom of Providence as they examine a little bug; for me it is more amazing that such enormous sums can pass through a mortal's hands!

  Allow me to put a question to you concerning one circumstance; tell me, this, to be sure, was originally acquired not quite sinlessly?"

  "In the most irreproachable fashion, and by the most correct means."

  "I can't believe it, my esteemed sir, excuse me, but I can't believe it. If it were thousands, very well, but millions . . . excuse me, but I can't believe it."

  "Quite the contrary, with thousands it's hard to be quite sinless, but to make millions is easy. A millionaire has no need to resort to crooked ways. Just go on and take the straight road, take all that lies before you! No one else will pick it up."

  "The mind boggles! And what's most mind-boggling is that the whole thing started from a kopeck!"

  "It never happens otherwise. It's the rightful order of things," said Kostanzhoglo. "He who was born with thousands, who was brought up on thousands, will acquire no more: he already has his whims and whatnot! One ought to begin from the beginning, not from the middle. From below, one ought to begin from below. Only then do you get to know well the people and life amidst which you'll have to make shift afterwards. Once you've suffered this or that on your own hide, and have learned that every kopeck is nailed down with a three-kopeck nail, and have gone through every torment, then you'll grow so wise and well schooled that you won't blunder or go amiss in any undertaking. Believe me, it's the truth. One ought to begin from the beginning, not from the middle. If anyone says to me: 'Give me a hundred thousand and I'll get rich at once'—I won't believe him: he's striking at random, not with certainty. One ought to begin with a kopeck!"