Dead Souls (30 page)

"Things having come to their present pass," he reflected, "I had
better not linger here—I had better be off at once."

Getting rid of Nozdrev as soon as he could, he sent for Selifan, and
ordered him to be up at daybreak, in order to clean the britchka and
to have everything ready for a start at six o'clock. Yet, though
Selifan replied, "Very well, Paul Ivanovitch," he hesitated awhile by
the door. Next, Chichikov bid Petrushka get out the dusty portmanteau
from under the bed, and then set to work to cram into it, pell-mell,
socks, shirts, collars (both clean and dirty), boot trees, a calendar,
and a variety of other articles. Everything went into the receptacle
just as it came to hand, since his one object was to obviate any
possible delay in the morning's departure. Meanwhile the reluctant
Selifan slowly, very slowly, left the room, as slowly descended the
staircase (on each separate step of which he left a muddy foot-print),
and, finally, halted to scratch his head. What that scratching may
have meant no one could say; for, with the Russian populace, such a
scratching may mean any one of a hundred things.

Nevertheless events did not turn out as Chichikov had intended they
should. In the first place, he overslept himself. That was check
number one. In the second place, on his rising and inquiring whether
the britchka had been harnessed and everything got ready, he was
informed that neither of those two things had been done. That was
check number two. Beside himself with rage, he prepared to give
Selifan the wigging of his life, and, meanwhile, waited impatiently to
hear what the delinquent had got to say in his defence. It goes
without saying that when Selifan made his appearance in the doorway he
had only the usual excuses to offer—the sort of excuses usually
offered by servants when a hasty departure has become imperatively
necessary.

"Paul Ivanovitch," he said, "the horses require shoeing."

"Blockhead!" exclaimed Chichikov. "Why did you not tell me of that
before, you damned fool? Was there not time enough for them to be
shod?"

"Yes, I suppose there was," agreed Selifan. "Also one of the wheels is
in want of a new tyre, for the roads are so rough that the old tyre is
worn through. Also, the body of the britchka is so rickety that
probably it will not last more than a couple of stages."

"Rascal!" shouted Chichikov, clenching his fists and approaching
Selifan in such a manner that, fearing to receive a blow, the man
backed and dodged aside. "Do you mean to ruin me, and to break all our
bones on the road, you cursed idiot? For these three weeks past you
have been doing nothing at all; yet now, at the last moment, you come
here stammering and playing the fool! Do you think I keep you just to
eat and to drive yourself about? You must have known of this before?
Did you, or did you not, know it? Answer me at once."

"Yes, I did know it," replied Selifan, hanging his head.

"Then why didn't you tell me about it?"

Selifan had no reply immediately ready, so continued to hang his head
while quietly saying to himself: "See how well I have managed things!
I knew what was the matter, yet I did not say."

"And now," continued Chichikov, "go you at once and fetch a
blacksmith. Tell him that everything must be put right within two
hours at the most. Do you hear? If that should not be done, I, I—I
will give you the best flogging that ever you had in your life." Truly
Chichikov was almost beside himself with fury.

Turning towards the door, as though for the purpose of going and
carrying out his orders, Selifan halted and added:

"That skewbald, barin—you might think it well to sell him, seeing
that he is nothing but a rascal? A horse like that is more of a
hindrance than a help."

"What? Do you expect me to go NOW to the market-place and sell him?"

"Well, Paul Ivanovitch, he is good for nothing but show, since by nature
he is a most cunning beast. Never in my life have I seen such a horse."

"Fool! Whenever I may wish to sell him I SHALL sell him. Meanwhile,
don't you trouble your head about what doesn't concern you, but go and
fetch a blacksmith, and see that everything is put right within two
hours. Otherwise I will take the very hair off your head, and beat you
till you haven't a face left. Be off! Hurry!"

Selifan departed, and Chichikov, his ill-humour vented, threw down
upon the floor the poignard which he always took with him as a means
of instilling respect into whomsoever it might concern, and spent the
next quarter of an hour in disputing with a couple of blacksmiths—men
who, as usual, were rascals of the type which, on perceiving that
something is wanted in a hurry, at once multiplies its terms for
providing the same. Indeed, for all Chichikov's storming and raging as
he dubbed the fellows robbers and extortioners and thieves, he could
make no impression upon the pair, since, true to their character, they
declined to abate their prices, and, even when they had begun their
work, spent upon it, not two hours, but five and a half. Meanwhile he
had the satisfaction of experiencing that delightful time with which
all travellers are familiar—namely, the time during which one sits in
a room where, except for a litter of string, waste paper, and so
forth, everything else has been packed. But to all things there comes
an end, and there arrived also the long-awaited moment when the
britchka had received the luggage, the faulty wheel had been fitted
with a new tyre, the horses had been re-shod, and the predatory
blacksmiths had departed with their gains. "Thank God!" thought
Chichikov as the britchka rolled out of the gates of the inn, and the
vehicle began to jolt over the cobblestones. Yet a feeling which he
could not altogether have defined filled his breast as he gazed upon
the houses and the streets and the garden walls which he might never
see again. Presently, on turning a corner, the britchka was brought to
a halt through the fact that along the street there was filing a
seemingly endless funeral procession. Leaning forward in his britchka,
Chichikov asked Petrushka whose obsequies the procession represented,
and was told that they represented those of the Public Prosecutor.
Disagreeably shocked, our hero hastened to raise the hood of the
vehicle, to draw the curtains across the windows, and to lean back
into a corner. While the britchka remained thus halted Selifan and
Petrushka, their caps doffed, sat watching the progress of the
cortege, after they had received strict instructions not to greet any
fellow-servant whom they might recognise. Behind the hearse walked the
whole body of tchinovniks, bare-headed; and though, for a moment or
two, Chichikov feared that some of their number might discern him in
his britchka, he need not have disturbed himself, since their
attention was otherwise engaged. In fact, they were not even
exchanging the small talk customary among members of such processions,
but thinking exclusively of their own affairs, of the advent of the
new Governor-General, and of the probable manner in which he would
take up the reins of administration. Next came a number of carriages,
from the windows of which peered the ladies in mourning toilets. Yet
the movements of their hands and lips made it evident that they were
indulging in animated conversation—probably about the
Governor-General, the balls which he might be expected to give, and
their own eternal fripperies and gewgaws. Lastly came a few empty
drozhkis. As soon as the latter had passed, our hero was able to
continue on his way. Throwing back the hood of the britchka, he said
to himself:

"Ah, good friend, you have lived your life, and now it is over! In the
newspapers they will say of you that you died regretted not only by
your subordinates, but also by humanity at large, as well as that, a
respected citizen, a kind father, and a husband beyond reproach, you
went to your grave amid the tears of your widow and orphans. Yet,
should those journals be put to it to name any particular circumstance
which justified this eulogy of you, they would be forced to fall back
upon the fact that you grew a pair of exceptionally thick eyebrows!"

With that Chichikov bid Selifan quicken his pace, and concluded:
"After all, it is as well that I encountered the procession, for they
say that to meet a funeral is lucky."

Presently the britchka turned into some less frequented streets, lines
of wooden fencing of the kind which mark the outskirts of a town began
to file by, the cobblestones came to an end, the macadam of the
highroad succeeded to them, and once more there began on either side
of the turnpike a procession of verst stones, road menders, and grey
villages; inns with samovars and peasant women and landlords who came
running out of yards with seivefuls of oats; pedestrians in worn shoes
which, it might be, had covered eight hundred versts; little towns,
bright with booths for the sale of flour in barrels, boots, small
loaves, and other trifles; heaps of slag; much repaired bridges;
expanses of field to right and to left; stout landowners; a mounted
soldier bearing a green, iron-clamped box inscribed: "The —th Battery
of Artillery"; long strips of freshly-tilled earth which gleamed
green, yellow, and black on the face of the countryside. With it
mingled long-drawn singing, glimpses of elm-tops amid mist, the
far-off notes of bells, endless clouds of rocks, and the illimitable
line of the horizon.

Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can
still see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely;
in you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature
which a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no
cities with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no
picturesque trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their
everlasting spray and roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the
brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and
millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look
almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky. In you
everything is flat and open; your towns project like points or signals
from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or
deludes the eye. Yet what secret, what invincible force draws me to
you? Why does there ceaselessly echo and re-echo in my ears the sad
song which hovers throughout the length and the breadth of your
borders? What is the burden of that song? Why does it wail and sob and
catch at my heart? What say the notes which thus painfully caress and
embrace my soul, and flit, uttering their lamentations, around me?
What is it you seek of me, O Russia? What is the hidden bond which
subsists between us? Why do you regard me as you do? Why does
everything within you turn upon me eyes full of yearning? Even at this
moment, as I stand dumbly, fixedly, perplexedly contemplating your
vastness, a menacing cloud, charged with gathering rain, seems to
overshadow my head. What is it that your boundless expanses presage?
Do they not presage that one day there will arise in you ideas as
boundless as yourself? Do they not presage that one day you too will
know no limits? Do they not presage that one day, when again you shall
have room for their exploits, there will spring to life the heroes of
old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates
through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my
eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, brilliant,
unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of mine!

"Stop, stop, you fool!" shouted Chichikov to Selifan; and even as he
spoke a troika, bound on Government business, came chattering by, and
disappeared in a cloud of dust. To Chichikov's curses at Selifan for
not having drawn out of the way with more alacrity a rural constable
with moustaches of the length of an arshin added his quota.

What a curious and attractive, yet also what an unreal, fascination
the term "highway" connotes! And how interesting for its own sake is a
highway! Should the day be a fine one (though chilly) in mellowing
autumn, press closer your travelling cloak, and draw down your cap
over your ears, and snuggle cosily, comfortably into a corner of the
britchka before a last shiver shall course through your limbs, and the
ensuing warmth shall put to flight the autumnal cold and damp. As the
horses gallop on their way, how delightfully will drowsiness come
stealing upon you, and make your eyelids droop! For a while, through
your somnolence, you will continue to hear the hard breathing of the
team and the rumbling of the wheels; but at length, sinking back into
your corner, you will relapse into the stage of snoring. And when you
awake—behold! you will find that five stages have slipped away, and
that the moon is shining, and that you have reached a strange town of
churches and old wooden cupolas and blackened spires and white,
half-timbered houses! And as the moonlight glints hither and thither,
almost you will believe that the walls and the streets and the
pavements of the place are spread with sheets—sheets shot with
coal-black shadows which make the wooden roofs look all the brighter
under the slanting beams of the pale luminary. Nowhere is a soul to be
seen, for every one is plunged in slumber. Yet no. In a solitary
window a light is flickering where some good burgher is mending his
boots, or a baker drawing a batch of dough. O night and powers of
heaven, how perfect is the blackness of your infinite vault—how
lofty, how remote its inaccessible depths where it lies spread in an
intangible, yet audible, silence! Freshly does the lulling breath of
night blow in your face, until once more you relapse into snoring
oblivion, and your poor neighbour turns angrily in his corner as he
begins to be conscious of your weight. Then again you awake, but this
time to find yourself confronted with only fields and steppes.
Everywhere in the ascendant is the desolation of space. But suddenly
the ciphers on a verst stone leap to the eye! Morning is rising, and
on the chill, gradually paling line of the horizon you can see
gleaming a faint gold streak. The wind freshens and grows keener, and
you snuggle closer in your cloak; yet how glorious is that freshness,
and how marvellous the sleep in which once again you become enfolded!
A jolt!—and for the last time you return to consciousness. By now the
sun is high in the heavens, and you hear a voice cry "gently, gently!"
as a farm waggon issues from a by-road. Below, enclosed within an
ample dike, stretches a sheet of water which glistens like copper in
the sunlight. Beyond, on the side of a slope, lie some scattered
peasants' huts, a manor house, and, flanking the latter, a village
church with its cross flashing like a star. There also comes wafted to
your ear the sound of peasants' laughter, while in your inner man you
are becoming conscious of an appetite which is not to be withstood.