Текст книги "Dead Souls"

Автор книги: Николай Гоголь

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

It is already known that Chichikov was greatly concerned with his posterity. Such a sensitive subject! A man would, perhaps, not be so light of finger, were it not for the question which, no one knows why, comes of itself: "And what will the children say?" And so the future progenitor, like a cautious cat casting a sidelong glance with one eye to make sure his master is not watching, hastily grabs everything close to him—soap, a candle, lard, a canary that turns up under his paw—in short, he does not miss a thing. So our hero complained and wept, and meanwhile the activity in his head refused to die; it was all concentrated on building something and only waited for a plan. Again he shrank, again he began to lead a hard life, again limited himself in everything, again sank from cleanliness and a decent situation into mire and low life. And, in expectation of better things, was even forced to occupy himself with the calling of solicitor, a calling which has not yet acquired citizenship among us, is pushed around on all sides, is little respected by petty clerkdom, or even by the clients themselves, which is condemned to groveling in hallways, to rudeness, and all the rest of it, but need made him resolve on it all. Among other cases there was one in which he had to solicit for the taking in custody of several hundred peasants. The estate was in the last degree of disorder. The disorder had been caused by loss of cattle, swindling stewards, bad crops, epidemic diseases that killed off the best workers, and finally by the witlessness of the landowner himself, who was decorating his Moscow house in the newest taste and in the process destroying his entire fortune to the last kopeck, so that there was no longer enough to eat. And this was the reason why it was finally necessary to mortgage what remained of the estate. Mortgaging to the treasury was a new thing then, which was not ventured upon without fear. As a solicitor, Chichikov, having first gained everyone's favor (without gaining favor beforehand, as we all know, even the simplest document or certificate cannot be obtained; a bottle of Madeira must at least be poured down every gullet)—and so, having gained the favor of everyone he needed, he explained that there was, incidentally, this circumstance, that half the peasants had died off– just so there should be no quibbling later on . . .

"But aren't they listed in the census reports?" said the secretary.

"They are," replied Chichikov.

"Well, then why be so timid?" said the secretary. "One dies, another gets born, there's nothing to mourn."

The secretary, as you see, could also talk in rhyme. And meanwhile the most inspired thought that ever entered a human head dawned on our hero. "Ah, what a Simple Simon I am," he said to himself, "hunting for my mittens when they're tucked right under my belt! No, if I were to buy up all the ones that have died before the new census lists are turned in, to acquire, say, a thousand of them, and get, say, two hundred roubles per soul—that's already two hundred thousand in capital! And now is a good time, there were epidemics recently, thank God, quite a lot of folk died off. The landowners have gambled away everything at cards, caroused and squandered the lot well and good; everything goes off to government service in Petersburg; estates are abandoned, managed haphazardly, the taxes are harder to pay each year, so everyone will be glad to let me have them, if only so as not to pay the soul tax for them; chances are I may occasionally pick up a kopeck or two on it. Of course, it's difficult, worrisome, frightening, because I might get in trouble again for it, some scandal might come of it. Well, but after all, man hasn't been given brains for nothing. And the best part of it is that the thing will seem incredible to them all, no one will believe it. True, it's impossible to buy or mortgage them without land. So I'll buy them for relocation, that's what; land in the Taurida and Kherson provinces is being given away now, just go and settle on it. I'll resettle them all there! to Kherson with them! let them live there! And the resettlement can be done legally, through the proper court procedures. If they want to verify the peasants: go ahead, I have no objections, why not? I'll provide a certificate signed by the district captain of police with his own hand. The village can be called Chichikov Hamlet, or by the name I was baptized with: Pavlovsk Settlement." And that was how this strange subject formed itself in our hero's head, for which I do not know whether readers will be grateful to him, but how grateful the author is, it is even difficult to express. For, say what you will, if this thought had not entered Chichikov's head, the present poem would never have come into being.

After crossing himself, as Russians do, he went into action. In the guise of looking for a place to live and on other pretexts, he undertook to peek into various corners of our state, mostly those that had suffered more than others from calamities, bad harvests, mortalities, and so on and so forth—in short, where he could more readily and cheaply buy up the sort of folk he wanted. He did not turn at random to just any landowner, but selected people more to his taste or those with whom he would have less difficulty concluding such deals, and he tried first to strike up an acquaintance, to gain favor, so as to acquire the muzhiks, if possible, more through friendship than by purchase. And so, readers ought not to be indignant with the author if the characters who have appeared so far are not to their liking: it is Chichikov's fault, he is full master here, and wherever he decides to go, we must drag ourselves after him. For our part, if indeed there should fall an accusation of paleness and unsightliness in our characters and persons, we shall say only that in the beginning one never sees the whole broad flow and volume of a thing. The entrance to any town whatever, even a capital, is always somehow pale; at first everything is gray and monotonous: mills and factories all smudged with smoke stretch out endlessly, and only later appear the corners of six-storied buildings, shops, signboards, the immense perspectives of streets, steeples everywhere, columns, statues, towers, with city splendor, noise and thunder, and all that the hand and mind of man have so marvelously brought about. How the first purchases were brought about, the reader has already seen; how matters will develop further, what fortunes and misfortunes await our hero, how he is to solve and surmount more difficult obstacles, how colossal images will emerge, how the secret levers of the vast narrative will work, how its horizon will extend far and wide, and all of it become one majestic lyrical flow—this he will see later. There is still a long way ahead of the whole traveling outfit, consisting of a gentleman of middle age, a britzka such as bachelors drive around in, a lackey Petrushka, a coachman Selifan, and three horses already known by name, from Assessor to the scoundrelly dapple-gray. And so, there you have the whole of our hero, just as he is! But perhaps there will be a demand for a conclusive definition, in one stroke: what is he as regards moral qualities? That he is no hero filled with perfections and virtues is clear. What is he—a scoundrel, then? Why a scoundrel, why be so hard on others? Nowadays we have no scoundrels, we have well-meaning, agreeable people, and of those who, for general disgrace, would offer their physiognomies to be publicly slapped, one can count no more than some two or three men, and they, too, have started talking about virtue. It would be most correct to call him an owner, an acquirer. Acquisition is to blame for everything; because of it things have been done which the world dubs not quite clean.True, there is something repulsive in such a character, and the same reader who on his journey through life would make friends with such a person, welcome him at his table, and pass the time pleasantly, will look askance at him once he becomes the hero of a drama or a poem. But he is wise who does not scorn any character, but, fixing a piercing eye on him, searches out his primary causes. Everything transforms quickly in man; before you can turn around, a horrible worm has grown inside him, despotically drawing all life's juices to itself.

And it has happened more than once that some passion, not a broad but a paltry little passion for some petty thing, has spread through one born for better deeds, making him forsake great and sacred duties and see the great and sacred in paltry baubles. Numberless as the sands of the sea are human passions, and no one resembles another, and all of them, base or beautiful, are at first obedient to man and only later become his dread rulers. Blessed is he who has chosen the most beautiful passion; his boundless bliss grows tenfold with every hour and minute, and he goes deeper and deeper into the infinite paradise of his soul. But there are passions that it is not for man to choose. They are born with him at the moment of his birth into this world, and he is not granted the power to refuse them. They are guided by a higher destiny, and they have in them something eternally calling, never ceasing throughout one's life. They are ordained to accomplish a great earthly pursuit: as a dark image, or as a bright apparition sweeping by, gladdening the world—it makes no difference, both are equally called forth for the good unknown to man. And it may be that in this same Chichikov the passion that drives him comes not from him, and that his cold existence contains that which will later throw man down in the dust and make him kneel before the wisdom of the heavens. And it is still a mystery why this image has appeared in the poem that is presently coming into being.

But the hard thing is not that readers will be displeased with my hero, what is hard is that there lives in my soul an irrefutable certainty that they might have been pleased with this same hero, this same Chichikov. If the author had not looked deeply into his soul, had not stirred up from its bottom that which flees and hides from the light, had not revealed his secret thoughts which no man entrusts to another, but had shown him such as he appeared to the whole town, to Manilov and the others, everyone would have been happy as can be and would have taken him for an interesting man. Never mind that neither his face nor his whole image would have hovered as if alive before their eyes; instead, once the reading was over, the soul would not be troubled by anything, and one could turn back to the card table, the solace of all Russia. Yes, my good readers, you would prefer not to see human poverty revealed. Why, you ask, what for? Do we not know ourselves that there is much in life that is contemptible and stupid? Even without that, one often chances to see things which are by no means comforting. Better present us with something beautiful, captivating. Better let us become oblivious! "Why, brother, are you telling me that things aren't going well with the management of the estate?" says the landowner to his steward. "I know that without you, brother, haven't you got something else to talk about? You ought to let me forget it, not know it, then I'll be happy." And so the money that would have helped somehow to straighten things out is spent on the means for making oneself oblivious. The mind sleeps, the mind that might find some unexpected fount of great means; and then, bang! the estate gets auctioned, and the landowner takes his oblivion and goes begging, his soul ready in its extremity for such baseness as once would have horrified him.

Accusation will also fall upon the author from the side of the so-called patriots, who sit quietly in their corners, occupied with completely unrelated matters, and stash away small fortunes for themselves, arranging their lives at the expense of others; but as soon as something happens which in their opinion is insulting to the fatherland, if some book appears in which the sometimes bitter truth is told, they rush out of all corners like spiders seeing a fly tangled in their web, and suddenly raise a cry: "But is it good to bring it to light, to proclaim about it? Because all this that's written here, all this is ours—is that nice? And what will foreigners say? Is it cheery to hear a bad opinion of oneself? Do they think it doesn't hurt? Do they think we're not patriots?" To these wise observations, especially concerning the opinion of foreigners, I confess it is impossible to find an answer. Unless it is this: in a remote corner of Russia there lived two inhabitants. One was a father of a family, Kifa Mokievich by name, a man of meek character who spent his life in a dressing-gown way. He did not occupy himself with his family; his existence was turned more in a contemplative direction and was occupied with the following, as he called it, philosophical question: "Take, for instance, a beast," he would say, pacing the room, "a beast is born naked. And why precisely naked? Why not like a bird, why not hatched from an egg? So you see: the deeper you go into nature, the less you understand her!" Thus reasoned the inhabitant Kifa Mokievich. But that is still not the main thing. The other inhabitant was Moky Kifovich, his own son. He was what is known in Russia as a mighty man, and all the while that his father was occupied with the birth of a beast, his broad-shouldered twenty-year-old nature kept wanting to display itself. He could not go about anything lightly: it was always someone's arm broken or a bump swelling on someone's nose. In and around the house everything, from the serf wench to the yard bitch, ran away from him on sight; he even broke his own bed to pieces in the bedroom. Such was Moky Kifovich, who nevertheless had a good heart. But that is still not the main thing. The main thing is the following: "For pity's sake, dear master, Kifa Mokievich," his own and other house serfs used to say to the father, "what's with your Moky Kifovich? He won't leave anyone in peace, he's such a roughneck." "Yes, a prankster, a prankster," the father usually replied to that, "but what can I do? It's too late to beat him, and I'd be the one accused of cruelty; then, too, he's a proud man, if I reproached him in front of just a couple of people, he'd calm down, but publicity—there's the trouble! They'd find out in town and call him a downright dog. What do they think, really, that it doesn't hurt me? that I'm not a father? That I occupy myself with philosophy and sometimes have no time, and so I'm not a father anymore? No, I'm a father all right! a father, devil take them, a father! I've got Moky Kifovich sitting right here in my heart!" Here Kifa Mokievich beat himself quite hard on the breast with his fist and flew into a complete passion. "Let him even remain a dog, but let them not find it out from me, let it not be me who betrays him." Then, having shown such paternal feeling, he would leave Moky Kifovich to go on with his mighty deeds, and himself turn again to his favorite subject, suddenly asking himself some such question as: "Well, and if an elephant was born from an egg, then I suppose the shell would be mighty thick, a cannonball couldn't break it; some new firearms would have to be invented." So they spent their life, these two inhabitants of a peaceful corner, who have suddenly peeked out, as from a window, at the end of our poem, peeked out in order to respond modestly to accusations on the part of certain ardent patriots, who for the moment are quietly occupied with some sort of philosophy or with augmentations at the expense of their dearly beloved fatherland, and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. But no, neither patriotism nor primal feeling is the cause of these accusations, something else is hidden behind them. Why conceal the word? Who, then, if not an author, must speak the sacred truth? You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes. You will even have a hearty laugh over Chichikov, will perhaps even praise the author, saying: "He did cleverly catch a thing or two, though; must be a man of merry temperament!" And after these words you will turn to yourself with redoubled pride, a self-satisfied smile will appear on your face, and you will add: "One can't help agreeing, the most strange and ridiculous people turn up in some provinces, and no small scoundrels at that!" And who among you, filled with Christian humility, not publicly, but in quiet, alone, in moments of solitary converse with himself, will point deeply into his own soul this painful question: "And isn't there a bit of Chichikov in me, too?" Perish the thought! But if some acquaintance of yours should pass by just then, a man of neither too high nor too low a rank, you will straightaway nudge your neighbor and tell him, all but snorting with laughter: "Look, look, there goes Chichikov, it's Chichikov!" And then, like a child, forgetting all decorum incumbent upon your age and station, you will run after him, taunting him from behind and repeating: "Chichikov! Chichikov! Chichikov!"

But we have begun talking rather loudly, forgetting that our hero, asleep all the while his story was being told, is now awake and can easily hear his last name being repeated so often. He is a touchy man and does not like it when he is spoken of disrespectfully. The reader can hardly care whether Chichikov gets angry with him or not, but as for the author, he must in no case quarrel with his hero: they still have many a road to travel together hand in hand; two big parts lie ahead—no trifling matter.

"Hey, hey! what's with you!" said Chichikov to Selifan, "eh?"

"What?" said Selifan in a slow voice.

"What do you mean, what? You goose! is that any way to drive? Get a move on!"

And indeed Selifan had long been driving with his eyes closed, only occasionally, through sleep, snapping the reins against the flanks of the horses, who were also dozing; and Petrushka's cap had long since flown off at some unknown place, and he himself was leaning back, resting his head on Chichikov's knee, so that he had to give it a flick. Selifan perked up and, slapping the dapple-gray on the back a few times, which made him break into a trot, and brandishing his whip over them all, added in a thin, singsong voice: "Never fear!" The horses got moving and pulled the light britzka along like a bit of fluff. Selifan just kept brandishing and shouting "Hup! hup! hup!" bouncing smoothly on his box, as the troika now flew up and now rushed full-tilt down a hummock, such as were scattered the whole length of the high road, which ran down a barely noticeable slope. Chichikov just smiled, jouncing slightly on his leather cushion, for he loved fast driving. And what Russian does not love fast driving? How can his soul, which yearns to get into a whirl, to carouse, to say sometimes: "Devil take it all!"—how can his soul not love it? Not love it when something ecstatically wondrous is felt in it? It seems an unknown force has taken you on its wing, and you are flying, and everything is flying: milestones go flying by, merchants come flying at you on the boxes of their kibitkas, the forest on both sides is flying by with its dark ranks of firs and pines, with axes chopping and crows cawing, the whole road is flying off no one knows where into the vanishing distance, and there is something terrible in this quick flashing, in which the vanishing object has no time to fix itself—only the sky overhead, and the light clouds, and the moon trying to break through, they alone seem motionless. Ah, troika! bird troika, who invented you? Surely you could only have been born among a brisk people, in a land that cares not for jokes, but sweeps smoothly and evenly over half the world, and you can go on counting the miles until it all dances before your eyes. And you are no clever traveling outfit, it seems, held together by an iron screw, but some dextrous Yaroslav muzhik fitted you out and put you together slapdash, with only an axe and a chisel. The driver wears no German top boots: a beard, mittens, and devil knows what he sits on; but when he stands up, waves, and strikes up a song—the steeds go like the wind, the spokes of the wheels blend to a smooth disc, the road simply shudders, and the passerby stops and cries out in fright—there she goes racing, racing, racing! . . . And already far in the distance you see something raising dust and drilling the air.

And you, Rus, are you not also like a brisk, unbeatable troika racing on? The road smokes under you, bridges rumble, everything falls back and is left behind. Dumbstruck by the divine wonder, the contemplator stops: was it a bolt of lightning thrown down from heaven? what is the meaning of this horrific movement? and what unknown force is hidden in these steeds unknown to the world? Ah, steeds, steeds, what steeds! Are there whirlwinds in your manes? Is a keen ear burning in your every nerve? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines flying through the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on! . . . Rus, where are you racing to? Give answer! She gives no answer. Wondrously the harness bell dissolves in ringing; the air rumbles, shattered to pieces, and turns to wind; everything on earth flies by, and, looking askance, other nations and states step aside to make way.