Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol [best biographies to read .TXT] 📗

What wouldn’t I give to see you handing him the title deeds? Who is he? What is he like? Is he very old?”

“He is eighty, your Excellency.”

“But still brisk and able to move about, eh? Surely he must be pretty strong to go on living with his housekeeper like that?”

“Yes. But what does such strength mean? Sand runs away, your Excellency.”

“The old fool! But is he really such a fool?”

“Yes, your Excellency.”

“And does he go out at all? Does he see company? Can he still hold himself upright?”

“Yes, but with great difficulty.”

“And has he any teeth left?”

“No more than two at the most.”

“The old jackass! Don’t be angry with me, but I must say that, though your uncle, he is also a jackass.”

“Quite so, your Excellency. And though it grieves me to have to confess that he is my uncle, what am I to do with him?”

Yet this was not altogether the truth. What would have been a far harder thing for Chichikov to have confessed was the fact that he possessed no uncles at all.

“I beg of you, your Excellency,” he went on, “to hand me over those, those⁠—”

“Those dead souls, eh? Why, in return for the jest I will give you some land as well. Yes, you can take the whole graveyard if you like. Ha, ha, ha! The old man! Ha, ha, ha! What a fool he’ll look! Ha, ha, ha!”

And once more the General’s guffaws went ringing through the house.41

III

“If Colonel Koshkarev should turn out to be as mad as the last one it is a bad lookout,” said Chichikov to himself on opening his eyes amid fields and open country⁠—everything else having disappeared save the vault of heaven and a couple of low-lying clouds.

“Selifan,” he went on, “did you ask how to get to Colonel Koshkarev’s?”

“Yes, Paul Ivanovitch. At least, there was such a clatter around the koliaska that I could not; but Petrushka asked the coachman.”

“You fool! How often have I told you not to rely on Petrushka? Petrushka is a blockhead, an idiot. Besides, at the present moment I believe him to be drunk.”

“No, you are wrong, barin,” put in the person referred to, turning his head with a sidelong glance. “After we get down the next hill we shall need but to keep bending round it. That is all.”

“Yes, and I suppose you’ll tell me that sivnkha is the only thing that has passed your lips? Well, the view at least is beautiful. In fact, when one has seen this place one may say that one has seen one of the beauty spots of Europe.” This said, Chichikov added to himself, smoothing his chin: “What a difference between the features of a civilised man of the world and those of a common lackey!”

Meanwhile the koliaska quickened its pace, and Chichikov once more caught sight of Tientietnikov’s aspen-studded meadows. Undulating gently on elastic springs, the vehicle cautiously descended the steep incline, and then proceeded past water-mills, rumbled over a bridge or two, and jolted easily along the rough-set road which traversed the flats. Not a molehill, not a mound jarred the spine. The vehicle was comfort itself.

Swiftly there flew by clumps of osiers, slender elder trees, and silver-leaved poplars, their branches brushing against Selifan and Petrushka, and at intervals depriving the valet of his cap. Each time that this happened, the sullen-faced servitor fell to cursing both the tree responsible for the occurrence and the landowner responsible for the tree being in existence; yet nothing would induce him thereafter either to tie on the cap or to steady it with his hand, so complete was his assurance that the accident would never be repeated. Soon to the foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir, while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue iris and the yellow wood-tulip. Gradually the forest grew darker, as though eventually the obscurity would become complete. Then through the trunks and the boughs there began to gleam points of light like glittering mirrors, and as the number of trees lessened, these points grew larger, until the travellers debouched upon the shore of a lake four versts or so in circumference, and having on its further margin the grey, scattered log huts of a peasant village. In the water a great commotion was in progress. In the first place, some twenty men, immersed to the knee, to the breast, or to the neck, were dragging a large fishing-net inshore, while, in the second place, there was entangled in the same, in addition to some fish, a stout man shaped precisely like a melon or a hogshead. Greatly excited, he was shouting at the top of his voice: “Let Kosma manage it, you lout of a Denis! Kosma, take the end of the rope from Denis! Don’t bear so hard on it, Thoma Bolshoy!42 Go where Thoma Menshov43 is! Damn it, bring the net to land, will you!” From this it became clear that it was not on his own account that the stout man was worrying. Indeed, he had no need to do so, since his fat would in any case have prevented him from sinking. Yes, even if he had turned head over heels in an effort to dive, the water would persistently have borne him up; and the same if, say, a couple of men had jumped on his back⁠—the only result would have been that he would have become a trifle deeper submerged, and forced to draw breath by spouting bubbles through his nose. No, the cause of his agitation was lest the net should break, and the fish escape: wherefore he was urging some additional peasants who were standing on the bank to lay hold of and to pull at, an extra rope or two.

“That must be the barin⁠—Colonel Koshkarev,” said Selifan.

“Why?”