The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (32 page)

The young philosopher, who had come into his rights with the passion of an enthusiast, so that his trousers and frock coat and even his hat gave off a whiff of spirits and coarse tobacco, instantly expressed his readiness.

“Khoma was a nice man!” said the ringer, as the lame tavern keeper set the third mug down in front of him.
“A fine man!
And he perished for nothing!”

“No, I know why he perished: because he got scared.
If he hadn’t been scared, the witch couldn’t have done anything to him.
You just have to cross yourself and spit right on her tail, and nothing will happen.
I know all about it.
Here in Kiev, the women sitting in the marketplace are all witches.”

To this the ringer nodded as a sign of agreement.
But, noticing that his tongue was unable to articulate a single word, he carefully got up from the table and, swaying from side to side, went off to hide himself in the remotest part of the weeds.
Withal not forgetting, out of long habit, to steal an old boot sole that was lying on a bench.

^*
Viy is a colossal creation of folk imagination.
This name is applied by people in Little Russia to the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids reach to the ground.
The whole story is a popular legend.
I did not wish to change it in any way and tell it almost as simply as I heard it.
(Author’s note.)

THE STORY OF HOW IVAN IVANOVICH
QUARRELED WITH IVAN NIKIFOROVICH

Chapter I
I
VAN
I
VANOVICH AND
I
VAN
N
IKIFOROVICH

A
FINE BEKESHA
¹
Ivan Ivanovich has!
A most excellent one!
And what fleece!
Pah, damnation, what fleece!
dove gray and frosty!
I’ll bet you anything that nobody has the like!
Look at it, for God’s sake—especially if he starts talking with somebody—look from the side: it’s simply delicious!
There’s no describing it: velvet!
silver!
fire!
Lord God!
Saint Nicholas the holy wonder-worker!
why don’t I have a bekesha like that!
He had it made for him back before Agafya Fedoseevna went to Kiev.
Do you know Agafya Fedoseevna?
The one who bit off the assessor’s ear?

A wonderful man, Ivan Ivanovich!
What a house he’s got in Mirgorod!
A gallery on oak posts all the way round it, with benches along it everywhere.
When it gets too hot, Ivan Ivanovich throws off the bekesha and his underclothes, and relaxes on the gallery in just his shirt, watching what goes on in the yard and street.
What apples and pears he’s got right under his windows!
Just open the window—the branches burst into the room.
That’s all in front of the house; but you should see what he’s got in his garden!
What hasn’t he got in it!
Plums, cherries, black cherries, all kinds of vegetables, sunflowers, cucumbers, melons, beans—even a threshing floor and a smithy.

A wonderful man, Ivan Ivanovich!
He has a great love of melons.
They’re his favorite food.
As soon as he finishes dinner and goes out to the gallery in nothing but his shirt, he immediately tells Gapka to bring two melons.
Then he cuts them up himself, collects the seeds in a special piece of paper, and begins to eat.
Then he tells Gapka to bring the inkpot and himself, with his own hand, writes on the paper with the seeds: “This melon was eaten on such-and-such date.” If there was some guest at the time, then: “with the participation of so-and-so.”

The late judge of Mirgorod always looked at Ivan Ivanovich’s house with admiration.
Yes, it’s not a bad little house at all.
I like the way rooms and hallways have been added on to it, so that if you look at it from afar you see only roofs sitting one on top of the other, looking very much like a plateful of pancakes, or, better still, like the kind of fungus that grows on trees.
Anyhow, the roofs are all thatched with rushes; a willow, an oak, and two apple trees lean on them with their spreading branches.
Small windows with whitewashed openwork shutters flash between the trees and even run out to the street.

A wonderful man, Ivan Ivanovich!
The Poltava commissary also knows him!
Dorosh Tarasovich Pukhivochka, whenever he comes from Khorol, always stops to see him.
And the archpriest, Father Pyotr, who lives in Koliberda, whenever he has a half-dozen guests gathered, always says he knows of no one who fulfills his Christian duty or knows how to live so well as Ivan Ivanovich.

God, how time flies!
By then ten years had gone by since he was left a widower.
He had no children.
Gapka has children and they often run about in the yard.
Ivan Ivanovich always gives each of them a bagel, or a slice of melon, or a pear.
Gapka carries the keys to his storerooms and cellars; the keys to the big trunk in his bedroom and the middle storeroom Ivan Ivanovich keeps himself, and he doesn’t like to let anyone into them.
Gapka, a healthy girl, goes about in an apron and has fresh calves and cheeks.

And what a pious man Ivan Ivanovich is!
Every Sunday he puts
on his bekesha and goes to church.
On entering, Ivan Ivanovich, after bowing in all directions, usually installs himself in the choir and sings along very well in a bass voice.
And when the service is over, Ivan Ivanovich simply can’t refrain from going up to every beggar.
He might not want to occupy himself with something so boring if he weren’t prompted to it by his natural kindness.

“Greetings, poor dear!” he usually says, having sought out a most crippled woman in a ragged dress made all of patches.
“Where are you from, dear?”

“I come from a farmstead, good sir.
It’s three days since I’ve had anything to eat or drink.
My own children drove me out!”

“Poor thing, why have you come here?”

“Just to beg alms, good sir, if someone would give me enough to buy bread.”

“Hm!
so it’s bread you want?” Ivan Ivanovich usually asks.

“How can I not?
I’m hungry as a dog.”

“Hm!” Ivan Ivanovich usually replies.
“Then maybe you’d also like some meat?”

“Whatever your honor gives me I’ll be pleased with.”

“Hm!
so meat is better than bread?”

“A hungry person can’t be choosy.
Whatever your honor gives me, it’s all good.”

At that the old woman usually holds out her hand.

“Well, go with God,” Ivan Ivanovich says.
“Why are you standing there?
I’m not beating you!” And, after addressing the same questions to a second one, and a third, he finally goes home, or stops to have a glass of vodka with his neighbor Ivan Nikiforovich, or with the judge, or with the police chief.

Ivan Ivanovich likes it very much when someone gives him a present or a treat.
That pleases him very much.

Ivan Nikiforovich is also a very good man.
His yard is next to Ivan Ivanovich’s yard.
Never yet has the world produced such friends as they are with each other.
Anton Prokofievich Pupopuz, who to this day still goes around in a brown frock coat with blue sleeves and on Sundays has dinner at the judge’s, used to say that the devil himself had tied Ivan Nikiforovich and Ivan Ivanovich
to each other with a piece of string.
Wherever the one goes, the other gets dragged along.

Ivan Nikiforovich never married.
Though there was talk that he had been married, it was a sheer lie.
I know Ivan Nikiforovich very well, and I can tell you that he never even had any intention of getting married.
Where on earth does all this gossip come from?
Just as it got spread about that Ivan Nikiforovich was born with a tail behind.
But that invention is so preposterous, as well as vile and indecent, that I don’t even consider it necessary to refute it before my enlightened readers, who undoubtedly know that only witches, and a very few of them, have tails behind, and, anyhow, they belong more to the female sex than to the male.

Despite their great attachment, these rare friends were not entirely alike.
Their characters can best be known by comparison: Ivan Ivanovich has an extraordinary gift for speaking with extreme pleasantness.
Lord, how he speaks!
The feeling can only be compared with that of someone picking through your hair or gently passing a finger over your heel.
You listen and listen—and your head lolls.
Pleasant!
extremely pleasant!
like a nap after swimming.
Ivan Nikiforovich, on the contrary, is mostly silent, though if he slaps on a phrase, just hold tight: he’ll trim you better than any razor.
Ivan Ivanovich is tall and lean; Ivan Nikiforovich is slightly shorter, but instead expands sideways.
Ivan Ivanovich’s head resembles a turnip tail-down, Ivan Nikiforovich’s a turnip tail-up.
It’s only after dinner that Ivan Ivanovich lies on the gallery in nothing but his shirt; in the evening he puts on his bekesha and goes somewhere—either to the town store, which he supplies with flour, or out to the fields to hunt quail.
Ivan Nikiforovich lies on the porch all day long—if the day isn’t very hot, he usually puts his back to the sun—and doesn’t care to go anywhere.
In the morning, if he’s of a mind to, he may pass around the yard, looking over the household, and then retire again.
In the old days, he would sometimes call on Ivan Ivanovich.
Ivan Ivanovich is an extremely refined man and never says an improper word in decent conversation, and becomes offended at once if he hears one.
Ivan Nikiforovich sometimes makes a slip; then Ivan Ivanovich usually gets up from
his place and says, “Enough, enough, Ivan Nikiforovich, sooner take to the sunlight than speak such ungodly words.” Ivan Ivanovich gets very angry if he finds a fly in his borscht: he’s beside himself then, and he throws the plate, and it also means trouble for the host.
Ivan Nikiforovich is extremely fond of bathing, and once he’s in the water up to his chin, he asks that a table with a samovar also be put in the water, and he likes very much to drink his tea in such coolness.
Ivan Ivanovich shaves twice a week, Ivan Nikiforovich once.
Ivan Ivanovich is extremely inquisitive.
God forbid you should begin telling him something and not finish!
And if he’s displeased with something, he lets it be known at once.
It’s very hard to tell by the look of him whether Ivan Nikiforovich is pleased or angry; he may be glad of something, but he doesn’t show it.
Ivan Ivanovich is of a somewhat timorous character; Ivan Nikiforovich, on the contrary, has such wide gathered trousers that, if they were inflated, the whole yard with its barns and outbuildings could be put into them.
Ivan Ivanovich has big, expressive eyes of a tobacco color and a mouth somewhat resembling the letter V; Ivan Nikiforovich has small, yellowish eyes that disappear completely between his bushy eyebrows and plump cheeks, and a nose that looks like a ripe plum.
Ivan Ivanovich, when he treats you to snuff, always licks the lid of the snuff box with his tongue first, then flips it open and, offering it to you, says, if you’re an acquaintance, “May I venture to ask you, my good sir, to help yourself?” and if you’re not an acquaintance, “May I venture to ask you, my good sir, not having the honor of knowing your rank, name, and patronymic, to help yourself?” Whereas Ivan Nikiforovich hands you his snuff bottle and only adds: “Help yourself.” Like Ivan Ivanovich, Ivan Nikiforovich has a great dislike of fleas; and therefore neither Ivan Ivanovich nor Ivan Nikiforovich ever passes a Jewish peddler without buying various jars of elixirs against these insects from him, having first given him a good scolding for confessing the Jewish faith.

However, despite certain dissimilarities, Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich are both excellent people.

Chapter II
F
ROM
W
HICH
C
AN
B
E
L
EARNED
W
HAT
I
VAN
I
VANOVICH
T
OOK A
L
IKING TO
, W
HAT THE
C
ONVERSATION
B
ETWEEN
I
VAN
I
VANOVICH AND
I
VAN
N
IKIFOROVICH
W
AS
A
BOUT, AND
H
OW
I
T
E
NDED