Dead Souls: A Novel

by Nikolai Gogol

  “It’s hard, Platon Mikhalych, hard!” Khlobuev was saying to Platonov. “You can’t imagine how hard! Moneylessness, breadlessness, bootlessness! It all wouldn’t matter a straw to me if I were young and alone. But when all these adversities start breaking over you as you’re approaching old age, and there’s a wife at your side, and five children—one feels sad, willy-nilly, one feels sad …”

  Platonov was moved to pity.

  “Well, and if you sell the estate, will that set you to rights?” he asked.

  “To rights, hah!” said Khlobuev, waving his hand. “It will all go to pay the most necessary debts, and then I won’t have even a thousand left for myself.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “God knows,” Khlobuev said, shrugging.

  Platonov was surprised.

  “How is it you don’t undertake anything to extricate yourself from such circumstances?”

  “What should I undertake?”

  “Are there no ways?” “None.”

  “Well, look for a position, take some post?”

  “But I’m a provincial secretary. They can’t give me any lucrative post. The salary would be tiny, and I have a wife and five children.”

  “Well, some private position, then. Go and become a steward.”

  “But who would entrust an estate to me! I’ve squandered my own.”

  “Well, if you’re threatened with starvation and death, you really must undertake something. I’ll ask my brother whether he can solicit some position in town through someone.”

  “No, Platon Mikhailovich,” said Khlobuev, sighing and squeezing his hand hard, “I’m not good for anything now. I became decrepit before my old age, and there’s lower-back pain on account of my former sins, and rheumatism in my shoulder. I’m not up to it! Why squander government money! Even without that there are many who serve for the sake of lucrative posts. God forbid that because of me, because my salary must be paid, the taxes on poorer folk should be raised: it’s hard for them as it is with this host of bloodsuckers. No, Platon Mikhailovich, forget it.”

  “What a fix!” thought Platonov. “This is worse than my hibernation.”

  Meanwhile, Kostanzhoglo and Chichikov, walking a good distance behind them, were speaking thus with each other:

  “Look how he’s let everything go!” Kostanzhoglo said, pointing a finger. “Drove his muzhiks into such poverty! If there’s cattle plague, it’s no time to look after your own goods. Go and sell what you have, and supply the muzhiks with cattle, so that they don’t go even for one day without the means of doing their work. But now it would take years to set things right: the muzhiks have all grown lazy, drunk, and rowdy.”

  “So that means it’s not at all profitable to buy such an estate now?” asked Chichikov.

  Here Kostanzhoglo looked at him as if he wanted to say: “What an ignoramus you are! Must I start you at the primer level?”

  “Unprofitable! but in three years I’d be getting twenty thousand a year from this estate. That’s how unprofitable it is! Ten miles away. A trifle! And what land! just look at the land! It’s all water meadows. No, I’d plant flax and produce some five thousand worth of flax alone; I’d plant turnips, and make some four thousand on turnips. And look over there—rye is growing on the hillside; it all just seeded itself. He didn’t sow rye, I know that. No, this estate’s worth a hundred and fifty thousand, not forty.”

  Chichikov began to fear lest Khlobuev overhear them, and so he dropped still farther behind.

  “Look how much land he’s left waste!” Kostanzhoglo was saying, beginning to get angry. “At least he should have sent word beforehand, some volunteers would have trudged over here. Well, if you’ve got nothing to plough with, then dig a kitchen garden. You’d have a kitchen garden anyway. He forced his muzhiks to go without working for four years. A trifle! But that alone is enough to corrupt and ruin them forever! They’ve already grown used to being ragamuffins and vagabonds! It’s already become their way of life.” And, having said that, Kostanzhoglo spat, a bilious disposition overshadowed his brow with a dark cloud …

  “I cannot stay here any longer: it kills me to look at this disorder and desolation! You can finish it with him on your own now. Quickly take the treasure away from this fool. He only dishonors the divine gift!”

  And, having said this, Kostanzhoglo bade farewell to Chichikov, and, catching up with the host, began saying good-bye to him, too.

  “Good gracious, Konstantin Fyodorovich,” the surprised host said, “you’ve just come—and home!”

  “I can’t. It’s necessary for me to be at home,” Kostanzhoglo said, took his leave, got into his droshky, and drove off.

  Khlobuev seemed to understand the cause of his departure.

  “Konstantin Fyodorovich couldn’t stand it,” he said. “I feel that it’s not very cheery for such a proprietor as he to look at such wayward management. Believe me, I cannot, I cannot, Pavel Ivanovich … I sowed almost no grain this year! On my honor. I had no seed, not to mention nothing to plough with. Your brother, Platon Mikhailovich, is said to be an extraordinary man; and of Konstantin Fyodorovich it goes without saying—he’s a Napoleon of sorts. I often think, in fact: ‘Now, why is so much intelligence given to one head? Now, if only one little drop of it could get into my foolish pate, if only so that I could keep my house! I don’t know how to do anything, I can’t do anything!’ Ah, Pavel Ivanovich, take it into your care! Most of all I pity the poor muzhiks. I feel that I was never able to be …* what do you want me to do, I can’t be exacting and strict. And how could I get them accustomed to order if I myself am disorderly! I’d set them free right now, but the Russian man is somehow so arranged, he somehow can’t do without being prodded … He’ll just fall asleep, he’ll just get moldy.”

  “That is indeed strange,” said Platonov. “Why is it that with us, unless you keep a close eye on the simple man, he turns into a drunkard and a scoundrel?”

  “Lack of education,” observed Chichikov.

  “Well, God knows about that. We were educated, and how do we live? I went to the university and listened to lectures in all fields, yet not only did I not learn the art and order of living, but it seems I learned best the art of spending more money on various new refinements and comforts, and became better acquainted with the objects for which one needs money. Is it because there was no sense in my studies? Not really: it’s the same with my other comrades. Maybe two or three of them derived something truly useful for themselves from it, and maybe that was because they were intelligent to begin with, but the rest only tried to learn what’s bad for one’s health and fritters away one’s money. By God! We went and studied only so as to applaud the professors, to hand them out awards, and not to receive anything from them. And so we choose from education that which, after all, is on the mean side; we snatch the surface, but the thing itself we don’t take. No, Pavel Ivanovich, it’s because of something else that we don’t know how to live, but what it is, by God, I don’t know.”

  “There must be reasons,” said Chichikov.

  Poor Khlobuev sighed deeply and spoke thus:

  “Sometimes, really, it seems to me that the Russian is somehow a hopeless man. There’s no willpower in him, no courage for constancy. You want to do everything—and can do nothing. You keep thinking—starting tomorrow you’ll begin a new life, starting tomorrow you’ll begin doing everything as you ought to, starting tomorrow you’ll go on a diet—not a bit of it: by the evening of that same day you overeat so much that you just blink your eyes and can’t move your tongue, you sit like an owl staring at everybody—and it’s the same with everything.”

  “One needs a supply of reasonableness,” said Chichikov, “one must consult one’s reasonableness every moment, conduct a friendly conversation with it.”

  “Come, now!” said Khlobuev. “Really, it seems to me that we’re not born for reasonableness at all. I don’t believe any of us is reasonable. If I see that someone is even living de
cently, collecting money and putting it aside—I still don’t believe it. When he’s old, the devil will have his way with him—he’ll blow it all at once! We’re all the same: noblemen and muzhiks, educated and uneducated. There was one clever muzhik: made a hundred thousand out of nothing, and, once he’d made the hundred thousand, he got the crazy idea of taking a bath in champagne, so he took a bath in champagne. But I think we’ve looked it all over. There isn’t any more. Unless you want to glance at the mill? It has no wheel, however, and the building is good for nothing.”

  “Then why look at it!” said Chichikov.

  “In that case, let’s go home.” And they all turned their steps towards the house.

  The views were all the same on the way back. Untidy disorder kept showing its ugly appearance everywhere. Everything was unmended and untended. Only a new puddle had got itself added to the middle of the street. An angry woman in greasy sackcloth was beating a poor girl half to death and cursing all devils up and down. Two muzhiks stood at a distance, gazing with stoic indifference at the drunken wench’s wrath. One was scratching his behind, the other was yawning. Yawning was evident in the buildings as well. The roofs were also yawning. Platonov, looking at them, yawned. “My future property—my muzhiks,” thought Chichikov, “hole upon hole, and patch upon patch!” And, indeed, on one of the cottages a whole gate had been put in place of the roof; the fallen-in windows were propped with laths filched from the master’s barn. In short, it seemed that the system of Trishka’s caftan5 has been introduced into the management: the cuffs and skirts were cut off to patch the elbows.

  They went into the house. Chichikov was rather struck by the mixture of destitution with some glittering knickknacks of the latest luxury. Amid tattered utensils and furnishings—new bronze. Some Shakespeare was sitting on an inkstand; a fashionable ivory hand for scratching one’s own back lay on the table. Khlobuev introduced the mistress of the house, his wife. She was topnotch. Even in Moscow she would have shown herself well. She was dressed fashionably, with taste. She preferred talking about the town and the theater that was being started there. Everything made it obvious that she liked the country even less than did her husband, and that she yawned more than Platonov when she was left alone. Soon the room was full of children, girls and boys. There were five of them. A sixth was carried in. They were all beautiful. The boys and girls were a joy to behold. They were dressed prettily and with taste, were cheerful and frisky. And that made it all the sadder to look at them. It would have been better if they had been dressed poorly, in skirts and shorts of simple ticking, running around in the yard, no different in any way from peasant children! A visitor came to call on the mistress. The ladies went to their half of the house. The children ran after them. The men were left by themselves.

  Chichikov began the purchase. As is customary with all purchasers, he started by running down the estate he was purchasing. And, having run it down on all sides, he said:

  “What, then, will your price be?”

  “Do you know?” said Khlobuev. “I’m not going to ask a high price from you, I don’t like that: it would also be unscrupulous on my part. Nor will I conceal from you that of the hundred souls registered on the census lists of my estate, not even fifty are actually there: the rest either died of epidemics or absented themselves without passports, so you ought to count them as dead. And therefore I ask you for only thirty thousand in all.”

  “Come, now—thirty thousand! The estate is neglected, people have died, and you want thirty thousand! Take twenty-five.”

  “Pavel Ivanovich! I could mortgage it for twenty-five thousand, you see? Then I’d get the twenty-five thousand and the estate would stay mine. I’m selling only because I need money quickly, and mortgaging means red tape, I’d have to pay the clerks, and I have nothing to pay them.”

  “Well, take the twenty-five thousand anyway.”

  Platonov felt ashamed for Chichikov.

  “Buy it, Pavel Ivanovich,” he said. “Any estate is worth that price. If you won’t give thirty thousand for it, my brother and I will get together and buy it.”

  Chichikov got frightened …

  “All right!” he said. “I’ll pay you thirty thousand. Here, I’ll give you two thousand now as a deposit, eight thousand in a week, and the remaining twenty thousand in a month.”

  “No, Pavel Ivanovich, only on condition that I get the money as soon as possible. Give me at least fifteen thousand now, and the rest no later than two weeks from now.”

  “But I don’t have fifteen thousand! I have only ten thousand now. Let me get it together.”

  In other words, Chichikov was lying: he had twenty thousand.

  “No, Pavel Ivanovich, if you please! I tell you that I must have fifteen thousand.”

  “But, really, I’m short five thousand. I don’t know where to get it myself.”

  “I’ll lend it to you,” Platonov picked up.

  “Perhaps, then!” said Chichikov, and he thought to himself: “Quite opportune, however, that he should lend it to me: in that case I can bring it tomorrow.” The chest was brought in from the carriage, and ten thousand were taken from it for Khlobuev; the remaining five were promised for the next day: promised, yes; but the intention was to bring three; and the rest later, in two or three days, and, if possible, to delay a bit longer still. Pavel Ivanovich somehow especially disliked letting money leave his hands. And if there was an extreme necessity, still it seemed better to him to hand over the money tomorrow and not today. That is, he acted as we all do! We enjoy showing the petitioner the door. Let him cool his heels in the anteroom! As if he couldn’t wait! What do we care that every hour, perhaps, is dear to him, and his affairs are suffering for it! “Come tomorrow, brother, today I somehow have no time.”

  “And where are you going to live afterwards?” Platonov asked Khlobuev. “Have you got another little estate?”

  “No little estate, but I’ll move to town. That had to be done in any case, not for ourselves but for the children. They’ll need teachers of catechism, music, dance. One can’t get that in the country.”

  “Not a crust of bread, and he wants to teach his children to dance!” thought Chichikov.

  “Strange!” thought Platonov.

  “Well, we must drink to the deal,” said Khlobuev. “Hey, Kiryushka, bring us a bottle of champagne, brother.”

  “Not a crust of bread, yet he’s got champagne!” thought Chichikov.

  Platonov did not know what to think.

  The champagne was brought. They drank three glasses each and got quite merry. Khlobuev relaxed and became intelligent and charming. Witticisms and anecdotes poured ceaselessly from him. There turned out to be much knowledge of life and the world in his talk! He saw many things so well and so correctly, he sketched his neighboring landowners in a few words, so aptly and so cleverly, saw so clearly everyone’s defects and mistakes, knew so well the story of the ruined gentry—why, and how, and for what reason they had been ruined—was able to convey so originally and aptly their smallest habits, that the two men were totally enchanted by his talk and were ready to acknowledge him a most intelligent man.

  “Listen,” said Platonov, seizing his hand, “how is it that with such intelligence, experience, and knowledge of life, you cannot find ways of getting out of your difficult position?”

  “Oh, there are ways!” said Khlobuev, and forthwith unloaded on them a whole heap of projects. They were all so absurd, so strange, so little consequent upon a knowledge of people and the world, that it remained only to shrug one’s shoulders and say: “Good lord! what an infinite distance there is between knowledge of the world and the ability to use that knowledge!” Almost all the projects were based on the need for suddenly procuring a hundred or two hundred thousand somewhere. Then, it seemed to him, everything could be arranged properly, and the management would get under way, and all the holes would be patched, and the income would be quadrupled, and it would be possible for him to repay all his debts. And he wou
ld end with the words: “But what do you want me to do? There simply is no such benefactor as would decide to lend me two hundred or at least one hundred thousand! Clearly, God is against it.”

  “What else,” thought Chichikov. “As if God would send such a fool two hundred thousand!”

  “There is this aunt of mine who’s good for three million,” said Khlobuev, “a pious little old lady: she gives to churches and monasteries, but she’s a bit tight about helping her neighbor. And she’s a very remarkable little old lady. An aunt from olden times, worth having a look at. She has some four hundred canaries alone. Lapdogs, and lady companions, and servants such as don’t exist nowadays. The youngest of her servants is about sixty, though she shouts ‘Hey, boy!’ to him. If a guest behaves improperly somehow, she orders him bypassed one course at dinner. And they actually do it.”

  Platonov laughed.

  “And what is her last name, and where does she live?” asked Chichikov.

  “She lives here in town—Alexandra Ivanovna Khanasarova.”

  “Why don’t you turn to her?” Platonov said sympathetically. “It seems to me, if she just entered a little more into the situation of your family, she’d be unable to refuse you, however tight she is.”

  “Ah, no, quite able! My aunt has a hard character. This little old lady is a rock, Platon Mikhalych! And there are already enough toadies hanging around her without me. There’s one there who is after a governorship, foisted himself off as her relative … God help him! maybe he’ll succeed! God help them all! I never knew how to fawn, and now less than ever: my back doesn’t bend anymore.”

  “Fool!” thought Chichikov. “I’d look after such an aunt like a nanny looking after a child!”

  “Well, now, such talk makes one dry,” said Khlobuev. “Hey, Kiryushka! bring us another bottle of champagne.”