Dead Souls, Page 43

  "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!"[67]

  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."

  "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."

  "No, if I were to have ten million now, after this dreadful experience!" thought Khlobuev. "Eh, it would be different now: one comes to know the value of every kopeck by experience." And then, having thought for a moment, he asked himself inwardly: "Would I really handle it more intelligently?" And, waving his hand, he added: "What the devil! I suppose I'd squander it just as I did before," and he walked out of the shop, burning with desire to know what Murazov would say to him.

  "I've been waiting for you, Pyotr Petrovich!" said Murazov, when he saw Khlobuev enter. "Please come to my little room."

  And he led Khlobuev into the little room already familiar to the reader, and so unpretentious that an official with a salary of seven hundred roubles a year would not have one more so.

  "Tell me, now, I suppose your circumstances have improved? You did get something from your aunt?"

  "How shall I tell you, Afanasy Vassilyevich? I don't know whether my circumstances have improved. I got only fifty peasant souls and thirty thousand roubles, which I had to pay out to cover part of my debts—and I again have exactly nothing. And the main thing is that this thing about the will is most shady. Such swindling has been going on here, Afanasy Vassilyevich! I'll tell you right now, and you'll marvel at such goings-on. This Chichikov ..."

  "Excuse me, Pyotr Petrovich: before we talk about this Chichikov, allow me to talk about you yourself. Tell me: how much, in your estimation, would be satisfactory and sufficient for you to extricate yourself completely from these circumstances?"

  "My circumstances are difficult," said Khlobuev. "And in order to extricate myself, pay everything off, and have the possibility of living in the most moderate fashion, I would need at least a hundred thousand, if not more. In short, it's impossible for me."

  "Well, and if you had it, how would you lead your life then?"

  "Well, I would then rent a little apartment and occupy myself with my children's upbringing, because I'm not going to enter the service: I'm no longer good for anything."

  "And why are you no longer good for anything?"

  "But where shall I go, judge for yourself! I can't start as an office clerk. You forget that I have a family. I'm forty, I have lower-back pains, I've grown lazy; they won't give me a more important post; I'm not in good repute. I confess to you: I personally would not take a lucrative post. I may be a worthless man, a gambler, anything you like, but I won't take bribes. I wouldn't get along with Krasnonosov and Samosvistov."

  "But still, excuse me, sir, I can't understand how one can be without any path; how can you walk if not down a path; how can you drive if there's no ground under you; how can you float if the bark isn't in the water?
And life is a journey. Forgive me, Pyotr Petrovich, those gentlemen of whom you are speaking are, after all, on some sort of path, they do work, after all. Well, let's say they turned off somehow, as happens with every sinner; yet there's hope they'll find their way back. Whoever walks can't fail to arrive; there's hope he'll find his way back. But how will one who sits idle get to any path? The path won't come to me."

  "Believe me, Afanasy Vassilyevich, I feel you're absolutely right, but I tell you that all activity has decidedly perished and died in me; I don't see that I can be of any use to anyone in the world. I

  feel that I'm decidedly a useless log. Before, when I was younger, it seemed to me that it was all a matter of money, that if I had hundreds of thousands in my hands, I'd make many people happy: I'd help poor artists, I'd set up libraries, useful institutions, assemble collections. I'm a man not without taste, and I know that in many respects I could manage better than those rich men among us who do it all senselessly. And now I see that this, too, is vanity and there's not much sense in it. No, Afanasy Vassilyevich, I'm good for nothing, precisely nothing, I tell you. I'm not capable of the least thing."

  "Listen, Pyotr Petrovich! But you do pray, you go to church, you don't miss any matins or vespers, I know. Though you don't like getting up early, you do get up and go—you go at four o'clock in the morning, when no one's up yet."

  "That is a different matter, Afanasy Vassilyevich. I do it for the salvation of my soul, because I'm convinced that I will thereby make up at least somewhat for my idle life, that, bad as I am, prayers still mean something to God. I tell you that I pray, that even without faith, I still pray. One feels only that there is a master on whom everything depends, as a horse or a beast of burden smells the one who harnesses him."

  "So you pray in order to please the one you pray to, in order to save your soul, and this gives you strength and makes you get up early from your bed. Believe me, if you were to undertake your work in the same fashion, as if in the certainty that you are serving the one you pray to, you would become active and no man among us would be able to cool you down."

  "Afanasy Vassilyevich! I tell you again that this is something different. In the first case I see that anyway I'm doing something. I tell you that I'm ready to go to the monastery, and I'll do whatever labors and deeds they impose on me there, even the heaviest. I'm sure that it's not my business to reason about what will be asked of those who make me do it; there I obey and know that I'm obeying God."

  "And why don't you reason that way in worldly matters as well? In the world we must also serve God and no one else. Even if we serve another, we do it only while being convinced that God tells us to do so, and without that we would not serve. What else are all our abilities and gifts, which vary from one person to another? They are tools for our prayer: the one is in words, and the other is in deeds. You cannot go to a monastery: you're tied to the world, you have a family."

  Here Murazov fell silent. Khlobuev also fell silent.

  "So you suppose that if you had, for instance, two hundred thousand, you would be able to shore up your life and live more economically therafter?"

  "That is, at least I would occupy myself with what I would be able to do—my children's upbringing; it would be possible for me to provide them with good teachers."

  "And shall I tell you this, Pyotr Petrovich, that in two years you'd again be over your head in debt, as in a net?"

  Khlobuev was silent for a while, and then began measuredly:

  "Not really, though, after such experience ..."

  "What's experience?" said Murazov. "You see, I know you. You're a man with a good heart: a friend will come to borrow money from you—you'll give it to him; you'll see a poor man and want to help; a nice guest will come—you'll want to receive him better, and you'll obey that first good impulse and forget your accounting. And allow me finally to tell you in all sincerity that you are unable to bring up your own children. Children can be brought up only by a father who has already done his own duty. And your wife . . . she, too, is good-hearted . . . she wasn't brought up at all so as to be able to bring up children. I even think—forgive me, Pyotr Petrovich—mightn't it even be harmful for the children to be with you?"

  Khlobuev thought a little: he began to examine himself mentally on all sides and finally felt that Murazov was partly right.

  "You know what, Pyotr Petrovich? hand it all over to me— your children, your affairs; leave your family, and the children: I'll take care of them. Your circumstances are such that you are in my hands; you're heading for starvation. Here you must be prepared to do anything. Do you know Ivan Potapych?"

  "And respect him greatly, even though he goes around in a sibirka."

  "Ivan Potapych was a millionaire, got his daughters married to officials, lived like a tsar; but once he was bankrupt—what to do?

  He went and became a shop clerk. It was no fun for him going from a silver platter to a simple bowl: it seemed he couldn't set a hand to anything. Now Ivan Potapych could gobble from a silver platter, but he no longer wants to. He could save it all up again, but he says: 'No, Afanasy Ivanovich,[ix] now I do not serve myself or for myself, but because God has judged so. I don't wish to do anything of my own will. I listen to you, because I wish to obey God and not people, and because God speaks only through the mouths of the best people. You are more intelligent than I am, and therefore it is not I who answer, but you.' That is what Ivan Potapych says; and he, if the truth be told, is many times more intelligent than I am."

  "Afanasy Vassilyevich! I, too, am ready to acknowledge your power over me, I am your servant and whatever you want: I give myself to you. But don't give me work beyond my strength: I'm no Potapych, and I tell you that I'm not fit for anything good."

  "It is not I, Pyotr Petrovich, who will impose it on you, but since you wish to serve, as you yourself say, sir, here is a God-pleasing deed for you. There is a church being built in a certain place on voluntary donations from pious people. There's not enough money, a collection must be taken. Put on a simple sibirka. . . you see, you're a simple man now, a ruined nobleman, the same as a beggar: why pretend? With ledger in hand, in a simple cart, go around to the towns and villages. You'll get a blessing and a loose-leaf ledger from the bishop, and go with God."

  Pyotr Petrovich was amazed by this completely new duty. He, a nobleman, after all, of a once ancient family, was to set out with a ledger in his hand, to beg donations for a church, and go bouncing along in a cart to boot! And yet it was impossible to wriggle out of it or avoid it: it was a God-pleasing thing.

  "Thinking it over?" said Murazov. "You'll be performing two services here: one for God, and the other—for me."

  "What for you?"

  "Here's what. Since you'll be going to places where I've never been, you'll find out everything on the spot, sir: how the muzhiks live there, where the richer ones are, where the needy, and what condition it's all in. I must tell you that I love the muzhiks, perhaps because I myself come from muzhiks. But the thing is that all sorts of vileness is going on among them. Old Believers[68] and various vagabonds confuse them, sir, get them to rebel against the authorities, yes, against the authorities and the regulations, and if a man is oppressed, he rebels easily. Why, as if it's hard to stir up a man who is truly suffering! But the thing is that reprisals ought not to start from below. It's bad when it comes to fists: there'll be no sense to it, only the thieves will gain. You're an intelligent man, you'll examine things, you'll find out where a man indeed suffers from others, and where from his own restless character, and then you'll tell me about it all. I'll give you a small sum of money just in case, to give to those who truly suffer innocently. For your part, it will also be helpful to comfort them with your word, and to explain to them as best you can that God tells us to endure without murmuring, and to pray in times of misfortune, and not to be violent and take justice into our own hands. In short, speak to them, not rousing anyone against anyone else, but reconciling them all. If you see hatred in anyone
against whomever it may be, apply all your efforts."

  "Afanasy Vassilyevich! the task you are entrusting to me," said Khlobuev, "is a holy task; but remember whom you are entrusting it to. You might entrust it to a man who is of almost holy life and already knows how to forgive others."

  "But I'm not saying you should accomplish it all, only as much as possible, whatever you can. The thing is that you will come back from those parts with some knowledge in any case, and will have an idea of the situation in that area. An official will never meet anyone personally, and a muzhik will not be frank with him. While you, collecting for the church, will call on all sorts of people—tradesmen, merchants—and will have the chance to question them all. I'm telling you this, sir, because the Governor-general now has special need of such people; and you, bypassing all official promotions, will get a position in which your life will not be useless."

  "I'll try, I'll apply my efforts, as far as my strength allows," said Khlobuev. And reassurance could be noted in his voice, his back straightened, and his head lifted, as with a man upon whom hope shines. "I see that God has granted you understanding, and you know certain things better than we nearsighted people."

  "Now allow me to ask you," said Murazov, "what Chichikov is and what sort of affair it is?"

  "I can tell you unheard-of things about Chichikov. He pulls such deals . . . Do you know, Afanasy Vassilyevich, that the will is false? The real one has been found, in which the whole estate goes to the wards."

  "What are you saying? But who, then, concocted the false will?"

  "That's just the thing, it's a most vile affair! They say it was Chichikov, and that the will was signed after death: they dressed up some woman in place of the deceased, and it was she who signed it. In short, a most tempting affair. They say thousands of petitions have come from all sides. Marya Yeremeevna is now besieged by wooers; two functionaries are already fighting over her. That's what sort of affair it is, Afanasy Vassilyevich!"