Dead Souls, Page 42

  "I am beginning to think, Platon, that a journey may indeed stir you up. Your mind is hibernating. You've simply fallen asleep, and you've fallen asleep not from satiety or fatigue, but from a lack of living impressions and sensations. I, for instance, am quite the contrary. I'd very much like not to feel so keenly and not to take so closely to heart all that happens."

  "Who makes you take it all so closely to heart?" said Platon. "You seek out worries and invent anxieties for yourself."

  "Why invent, if there are troubles at every step even without that?" said Vassily "Have you heard what trick Lenitsyn has played on us? He's appropriated the waste land where our people celebrate Krasnaya Gorka."[66]

  "He doesn't know, so he seized it," said Platon. "The man's new here, just come from Petersburg. He must be told, and have it explained to him."

  "He knows, he knows very well. I sent to tell him, but he responded with rudeness."

  "You must go yourself and explain it. Have a personal talk with him."

  "Ah, no. He puts on too many airs. I won't go to him. You can go if you like."

  "I'd go, but I don't want to mix in it. He may deceive me and swindle me."

  "I'll go, if you like," said Chichikov.

  Vassily glanced at him and thought: "He loves going places, this one!"

  "Just give me an idea of what sort of man he is," said Chichikov, "and what it's about."

  "I'm ashamed to charge you with such an unpleasant mission, because merely to talk with such a man is already an unpleasant mission for me. I must tell you that he is from simple, petty-landowning nobility of our province, got his rank serving in Petersburg, set himself up somehow by marrying someone's illegitimate daughter, and puts on airs. He sets the tone here. But, thank God, in our province people aren't so stupid: for us fashion is no order, and Petersburg is no church."

  "Of course," said Chichikov, "and what is it about?"

  "It's nonsense, in fact. He hasn't got enough land, so he appropriated our waste land—that is, he reckoned that it wasn't needed and that the owners had forgotten about it, but it so happens that from time immemorial our peasants have gathered there to celebrate Krasnaya Gorka. For that reason, I'm better prepared to sacrifice other, better land than to give up this piece. Custom is sacred to me."

  "So you're prepared to let him have other land?"

  "I would have been, if he hadn't acted this way with me; but he wants, as I can see, to do it through the courts. Very well, we'll see who wins. Though it's not so clear on the map, there are still witnesses—old people who are living and who remember."

  "Hm!" thought Chichikov. "I see they're both a bit off." And he said aloud:

  "But it seems to me that the business can be handled peaceably. Everything depends on the mediator. In writ...”[vi]

  ". . . that for you yourself it would also be very profitable to transfer, to my name, for instance, all the dead souls registered on your estates in the last census lists, so that I pay the tax on them. And to avoid causing any offense, you can perform the transfer through a deed of purchase, as if the souls were alive."

  "Well, now!" Lenitsyn thought. "This is something most strange." And he even pushed his chair back, so entirely puzzled he was.

  "I have no doubts that you will agree entirely to this," Chichikov said, "because this is entirely the same sort of thing we've just been talking about. It'll be completed between solid people, in private, and there'll be no offense to anyone."

  What to do here? Lenitsyn found himself in a difficult position. He could never have foreseen that an opinion he had just formulated would be so quickly brought to realization. The offer was highly unexpected. Of course, there could be no harm for anyone in this action: the landowners would mortgage these souls anyway, the same as living ones, so there could be no loss for the treasury; the difference was that they would all be in one hand rather than in several. But all the same he was at a loss. He knew the law and was a businessman—a businessman in a good sense: he would not decide a case unjustly for any bribe. But here he hesitated, not knowing what name to give to this action—was it right or wrong? If someone else had addressed him with such an offer, he would have said: "This is nonsense! trifles! I have no wish to fool around or play with dolls." But he liked his guest so much, they agreed on so many things with regard to the success of education and learning—how could he refuse? Lenitsyn found himself in a most difficult position.

  But at that moment, just as if to help him in his woe, the young, pug-nosed mistress, Lenitsyn's wife, came into the room, pale, thin, small, and dressed tastefully, like all Petersburg ladies. Following her came a nurse carrying a baby in her arms, the firstborn fruit of the tender love of the recently married couple. Chichikov naturally approached the lady at once and, to say nothing of the proper greeting, simply by the agreeable inclining of his head to one side, disposed her greatly in his favor. Then he ran over to the baby. The baby burst into howls; nevertheless, by means of the words: "Goo, goo, darling!" and by flicking his fingers and the carnelian seal on his watch chain, Chichikov managed to lure him into his arms. Taking him into his arms, he started tossing him up, thereby provoking the baby's pleasant smile, which made both parents very happy.

  Whether from pleasure or from something else, the baby suddenly misbehaved. Lenitsyn's wife cried out:

  "Ah, my God! he's spoiled your whole tailcoat."

  Chichikov looked: the sleeve of the brand new tailcoat was all spoiled. "Blast it, the cursed little devil!" he muttered vexedly to himself.

  The host, the hostess, and the nurse all ran to fetch some eau de cologne; they began wiping him on all sides.

  "It's nothing, nothing at all," Chichikov was saying. "What can an innocent baby do?" At the same time thinking to himself: "And so well aimed, the cursed little canaille!" "A golden age!" he said when he was well wiped off and the agreeable expression had returned to his face again.

  "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?"[vii]

  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 abou
t 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 philosophers 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 . . .[viii]

  "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, also 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 lux
ury 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."