Dead Souls (34 page)

Here I may remark that we have seen how much thought Chichikov devoted
to his future descendants. Indeed, had not there been constantly
recurring to his mind the insistent question, "What will my children
say?" he might not have plunged into the affair so deeply.
Nevertheless, like a wary cat which glances hither and thither to see
whether its mistress be not coming before it can make off with
whatsoever first falls to its paw (butter, fat, lard, a duck, or
anything else), so our future founder of a family continued, though
weeping and bewailing his lot, to let not a single detail escape his
eye. That is to say, he retained his wits ever in a state of activity,
and kept his brain constantly working. All that he required was a
plan. Once more he pulled himself together, once more he embarked upon
a life of toil, once more he stinted himself in everything, once more
he left clean and decent surroundings for a dirty, mean existence. In
other words, until something better should turn up, he embraced the
calling of an ordinary attorney—a calling which, not then possessed
of a civic status, was jostled on very side, enjoyed little respect
at the hands of the minor legal fry (or, indeed, at its own), and
perforce met with universal slights and rudeness. But sheer necessity
compelled Chichikov to face these things. Among commissions entrusted
to him was that of placing in the hands of the Public Trustee several
hundred peasants who belonged to a ruined estate. The estate had
reached its parlous condition through cattle disease, through rascally
bailiffs, through failures of the harvest, through such epidemic
diseases that had killed off the best workmen, and, last, but not
least, through the senseless conduct of the owner himself, who had
furnished a house in Moscow in the latest style, and then squandered
his every kopeck, so that nothing was left for his further
maintenance, and it became necessary to mortgage the
remains—including the peasants—of the estate. In those days mortgage
to the Treasury was an innovation looked upon with reserve, and, as
attorney in the matter, Chichikov had first of all to "entertain"
every official concerned (we know that, unless that be previously
done, unless a whole bottle of madeira first be emptied down each
clerical throat, not the smallest legal affair can be carried
through), and to explain, for the barring of future attachments, that
half of the peasants were dead.

"And are they entered on the revision lists?" asked the secretary.
"Yes," replied Chichikov. "Then what are you boggling at?" continued
the Secretary. "Should one soul die, another will be born, and in time
grow up to take the first one's place." Upon that there dawned on our
hero one of the most inspired ideas which ever entered the human
brain. "What a simpleton I am!" he thought to himself. "Here am I
looking about for my mittens when all the time I have got them tucked
into my belt. Why, were I myself to buy up a few souls which are
dead—to buy them before a new revision list shall have been made, the
Council of Public Trust might pay me two hundred roubles apiece for
them, and I might find myself with, say, a capital of two hundred
thousand roubles! The present moment is particularly propitious,
since in various parts of the country there has been an epidemic, and,
glory be to God, a large number of souls have died of it. Nowadays
landowners have taken to card-playing and junketting and wasting their
money, or to joining the Civil Service in St. Petersburg; consequently
their estates are going to rack and ruin, and being managed in any
sort of fashion, and succeeding in paying their dues with greater
difficulty each year. That being so, not a man of the lot but would
gladly surrender to me his dead souls rather than continue paying the
poll-tax; and in this fashion I might make—well, not a few kopecks.
Of course there are difficulties, and, to avoid creating a scandal, I
should need to employ plenty of finesse; but man was given his brain
to USE, not to neglect. One good point about the scheme is that it
will seem so improbable that in case of an accident, no one in the
world will believe in it. True, it is illegal to buy or mortgage
peasants without land, but I can easily pretend to be buying them only
for transferment elsewhere. Land is to be acquired in the provinces of
Taurida and Kherson almost for nothing, provided that one undertakes
subsequently to colonise it; so to Kherson I will 'transfer' them, and
long may they live there! And the removal of my dead souls shall be
carried out in the strictest legal form; and if the authorities should
want confirmation by testimony, I shall produce a letter signed by my
own superintendent of the Khersonian rural police—that is to say, by
myself. Lastly, the supposed village in Kherson shall be called
Chichikovoe—better still Pavlovskoe, according to my Christian name."

In this fashion there germinated in our hero's brain that strange
scheme for which the reader may or may not be grateful, but for which
the author certainly is so, seeing that, had it never occurred to
Chichikov, this story would never have seen the light.

After crossing himself, according to the Russian custom, Chichikov set
about carrying out his enterprise. On pretence of selecting a place
wherein to settle, he started forth to inspect various corners of the
Russian Empire, but more especially those which had suffered from such
unfortunate accidents as failures of the harvest, a high rate of
mortality, or whatsoever else might enable him to purchase souls at
the lowest possible rate. But he did not tackle his landowners
haphazard: he rather selected such of them as seemed more particularly
suited to his taste, or with whom he might with the least possible
trouble conclude identical agreements; though, in the first instance,
he always tried, by getting on terms of acquaintanceship—better
still, of friendship—with them, to acquire the souls for nothing, and
so to avoid purchase at all. In passing, my readers must not blame me
if the characters whom they have encountered in these pages have not
been altogether to their liking. The fault is Chichikov's rather than
mine, for he is the master, and where he leads we must follow. Also,
should my readers gird at me for a certain dimness and want of clarity
in my principal characters and actors, that will be tantamount to
saying that never do the broad tendency and the general scope of a
work become immediately apparent. Similarly does the entry to every
town—the entry even to the Capital itself—convey to the traveller
such an impression of vagueness that at first everything looks grey
and monotonous, and the lines of smoky factories and workshops seem
never to be coming to an end; but in time there will begin also to
stand out the outlines of six-storied mansions, and of shops and
balconies, and wide perspectives of streets, and a medley of steeples,
columns, statues, and turrets—the whole framed in rattle and roar and
the infinite wonders which the hand and the brain of men have
conceived. Of the manner in which Chichikov's first purchases were
made the reader is aware. Subsequently he will see also how the affair
progressed, and with what success or failure our hero met, and how
Chichikov was called upon to decide and to overcome even more
difficult problems than the foregoing, and by what colossal forces the
levers of his far-flung tale are moved, and how eventually the horizon
will become extended until everything assumes a grandiose and a
lyrical tendency. Yes, many a verst of road remains to be travelled by
a party made up of an elderly gentleman, a britchka of the kind
affected by bachelors, a valet named Petrushka, a coachman named
Selifan, and three horses which, from the Assessor to the skewbald,
are known to us individually by name. Again, although I have given a
full description of our hero's exterior (such as it is), I may yet be
asked for an inclusive definition also of his moral personality. That
he is no hero compounded of virtues and perfections must be already
clear. Then WHAT is he? A villain? Why should we call him a villain?
Why should we be so hard upon a fellow man? In these days our villains
have ceased to exist. Rather it would be fairer to call him an
ACQUIRER. The love of acquisition, the love of gain, is a fault
common to many, and gives rise to many and many a transaction of the
kind generally known as "not strictly honourable." True, such a
character contains an element of ugliness, and the same reader who, on
his journey through life, would sit at the board of a character of
this kind, and spend a most agreeable time with him, would be the
first to look at him askance if he should appear in the guise of the
hero of a novel or a play. But wise is the reader who, on meeting such
a character, scans him carefully, and, instead of shrinking from him
with distaste, probes him to the springs of his being. The human
personality contains nothing which may not, in the twinkling of an
eye, become altogether changed—nothing in which, before you can look
round, there may not spring to birth some cankerous worm which is
destined to suck thence the essential juice. Yes, it is a common thing
to see not only an overmastering passion, but also a passion of the
most petty order, arise in a man who was born to better things, and
lead him both to forget his greatest and most sacred obligations, and
to see only in the veriest trifles the Great and the Holy. For human
passions are as numberless as is the sand of the seashore, and go on
to become his most insistent of masters. Happy, therefore, the man who
may choose from among the gamut of human passions one which is noble!
Hour by hour will that instinct grow and multiply in its measureless
beneficence; hour by hour will it sink deeper and deeper into the
infinite paradise of his soul. But there are passions of which a man
cannot rid himself, seeing that they are born with him at his birth,
and he has no power to abjure them. Higher powers govern those
passions, and in them is something which will call to him, and refuse
to be silenced, to the end of his life. Yes, whether in a guise of
darkness, or whether in a guise which will become converted into a
light to lighten the world, they will and must attain their
consummation on life's field: and in either case they have been evoked
for man's good. In the same way may the passion which drew our
Chichikov onwards have been one that was independent of himself; in
the same way may there have lurked even in his cold essence something
which will one day cause men to humble themselves in the dust before
the infinite wisdom of God.

Yet that folk should be dissatisfied with my hero matters nothing.
What matters is the fact that, under different circumstances, their
approval could have been taken as a foregone conclusion. That is to
say, had not the author pried over-deeply into Chichikov's soul, nor
stirred up in its depths what shunned and lay hidden from the light,
nor disclosed those of his hero's thoughts which that hero would have
not have disclosed even to his most intimate friend; had the author,
indeed, exhibited Chichikov just as he exhibited himself to the
townsmen of N. and Manilov and the rest; well, then we may rest
assured that every reader would have been delighted with him, and have
voted him a most interesting person. For it is not nearly so necessary
that Chichikov should figure before the reader as though his form and
person were actually present to the eye as that, on concluding a
perusal of this work, the reader should be able to return, unharrowed
in soul, to that cult of the card-table which is the solace and
delight of all good Russians. Yes, readers of this book, none of you
really care to see humanity revealed in its nakedness. "Why should we
do so?" you say. "What would be the use of it? Do we not know for
ourselves that human life contains much that is gross and
contemptible? Do we not with our own eyes have to look upon much that
is anything but comforting? Far better would it be if you would put
before us what is comely and attractive, so that we might forget
ourselves a little." In the same fashion does a landowner say to his
bailiff: "Why do you come and tell me that the affairs of my estate
are in a bad way? I know that without YOUR help. Have you nothing
else to tell me? Kindly allow me to forget the fact, or else to remain
in ignorance of it, and I shall be much obliged to you." Whereafter
the said landowner probably proceeds to spend on his diversion the
money which ought to have gone towards the rehabilitation of his affairs.

Possibly the author may also incur censure at the hands of those
so-called "patriots" who sit quietly in corners, and become
capitalists through making fortunes at the expense of others. Yes, let
but something which they conceive to be derogatory to their country
occur—for instance, let there be published some book which voices the
bitter truth—and out they will come from their hiding-places like a
spider which perceives a fly to be caught in its web. "Is it well to
proclaim this to the world, and to set folk talking about it?" they
will cry. "What you have described touches US, is OUR affair. Is
conduct of that kind right? What will foreigners say? Does any one
care calmly to sit by and hear himself traduced? Why should you lead
foreigners to suppose that all is not well with us, and that we are
not patriotic?" Well, to these sage remarks no answer can really be
returned, especially to such of the above as refer to foreign opinion.
But see here. There once lived in a remote corner of Russia two
natives of the region indicated. One of those natives was a good man
named Kifa Mokievitch, and a man of kindly disposition; a man who went
through life in a dressing-gown, and paid no heed to his household,
for the reason that his whole being was centred upon the province of
speculation, and that, in particular, he was preoccupied with a
philosophical problem usually stated by him thus: "A beast," he would
say, "is born naked. Now, why should that be? Why should not a beast
be born as a bird is born—that is to say, through the process of
being hatched from an egg? Nature is beyond the understanding, however
much one may probe her." This was the substance of Kifa Mokievitch's
reflections. But herein is not the chief point. The other of the pair
was a fellow named Mofi Kifovitch, and son to the first named. He was
what we Russians call a "hero," and while his father was pondering the
parturition of beasts, his, the son's, lusty, twenty-year-old
temperament was violently struggling for development. Yet that son
could tackle nothing without some accident occurring. At one moment
would he crack some one's fingers in half, and at another would he
raise a bump on somebody's nose; so that both at home and abroad every
one and everything—from the serving-maid to the yard-dog—fled on his
approach, and even the bed in his bedroom became shattered to
splinters. Such was Mofi Kifovitch; and with it all he had a kindly
soul. But herein is not the chief point. "Good sir, good Kifa
Mokievitch," servants and neighbours would come and say to the father,
"what are you going to do about your Moki Kifovitch? We get no rest
from him, he is so above himself." "That is only his play, that is
only his play," the father would reply. "What else can you expect? It
is too late now to start a quarrel with him, and, moreover, every one
would accuse me of harshness. True, he is a little conceited; but,
were I to reprove him in public, the whole thing would become common
talk, and folk would begin giving him a dog's name. And if they did
that, would not their opinion touch me also, seeing that I am his
father? Also, I am busy with philosophy, and have no time for such
things. Lastly, Moki Kifovitch is my son, and very dear to my heart."
And, beating his breast, Kifa Mokievitch again asserted that, even
though his son should elect to continue his pranks, it would not be
for HIM, for the father, to proclaim the fact, or to fall out with
his offspring. And, this expression of paternal feeling uttered, Kifa
Mokievitch left Moki Kifovitch to his heroic exploits, and himself
returned to his beloved subject of speculation, which now included
also the problem, "Suppose elephants were to take to being hatched
from eggs, would not the shell of such eggs be of a thickness proof
against cannonballs, and necessitate the invention of some new type of
firearm?" Thus at the end of this little story we have these two
denizens of a peaceful corner of Russia looking thence, as from a
window, in less terror of doing what was scandalous than of having it
SAID of them that they were acting scandalously. Yes, the feeling
animating our so-called "patriots" is not true patriotism at all.
Something else lies beneath it. Who, if not an author, is to speak
aloud the truth? Men like you, my pseudo-patriots, stand in dread of
the eye which is able to discern, yet shrink from using your own, and
prefer, rather, to glance at everything unheedingly. Yes, after
laughing heartily over Chichikov's misadventures, and perhaps even
commending the author for his dexterity of observation and pretty turn
of wit, you will look at yourselves with redoubled pride and a
self-satisfied smile, and add: "Well, we agree that in certain parts
of the provinces there exists strange and ridiculous individuals, as
well as unconscionable rascals."