The Giants of Russian Literature: The Greatest Russian Novels, Stories, Plays, Folk Tales & Legends. Максим Горький
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inside him. In the drawing-room the company found dessert awaiting them in the shape of pears, plums, and apples; but since neither host nor guest could tackle these particular dainties the hostess removed them to another room. Taking advantage of her absence, Chichikov turned to Sobakevitch (who, prone in an armchair, seemed, after his ponderous meal, to be capable of doing little beyond belching and grunting — each such grunt or belch necessitating a subsequent signing of the cross over the mouth), and intimated to him a desire to have a little private conversation concerning a certain matter. At this moment the hostess returned.
“Here is more dessert,” she said. “Pray have a few radishes stewed in honey.”
“Later, later,” replied Sobakevitch. “Do you go to your room, and Paul Ivanovitch and I will take off our coats and have a nap.”
Upon this the good lady expressed her readiness to send for feather beds and cushions, but her husband expressed a preference for slumbering in an armchair, and she therefore departed. When she had gone Sobakevitch inclined his head in an attitude of willingness to listen to Chichikov’s business. Our hero began in a sort of detached manner — touching lightly upon the subject of the Russian Empire, and expatiating upon the immensity of the same, and saying that even the Empire of Ancient Rome had been of considerably smaller dimensions. Meanwhile Sobakevitch sat with his head drooping.
From that Chichikov went on to remark that, according to the statutes of the said Russian Empire (which yielded to none in glory — so much so that foreigners marvelled at it), peasants on the census lists who had ended their earthly careers were nevertheless, on the rendering of new lists, returned equally with the living, to the end that the courts might be relieved of a multitude of trifling, useless emendations which might complicate the already sufficiently complex mechanism of the State. Nevertheless, said Chichikov, the general equity of this measure did not obviate a certain amount of annoyance to landowners, since it forced them to pay upon a non-living article the tax due upon a living. Hence (our hero concluded) he (Chichikov) was prepared, owing to the personal respect which he felt for Sobakevitch, to relieve him, in part, of the irksome obligation referred to (in passing, it may be said that Chichikov referred to his principal point only guardedly, for he called the souls which he was seeking not “dead,” but “non-existent”).
Meanwhile Sobakevitch listened with bent head; though something like a trace of expression dawned in his face as he did so. Ordinarily his body lacked a soul — or, if he did posses a soul, he seemed to keep it elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements produced no sort of agitation on the surface.
“Well?” said Chichikov — though not without a certain tremor of diffidence as to the possible response.
“You are after dead souls?” were Sobakevitch’s perfectly simple words. He spoke without the least surprise in his tone, and much as though the conversation had been turning on grain.
“Yes,” replied Chichikov, and then, as before, softened down the expression “dead souls.”
“They are to be found,” said Sobakevitch. “Why should they not be?”
“Then of course you will be glad to get rid of any that you may chance to have?”
“Yes, I shall have no objection to SELLING them.” At this point the speaker raised his head a little, for it had struck him that surely the would-be buyer must have some advantage in view.
“The devil!” thought Chichikov to himself. “Here is he selling the goods before I have even had time to utter a word!”
“And what about the price?” he added aloud. “Of course, the articles are not of a kind very easy to appraise.”
“I should be sorry to ask too much,” said Sobakevitch. “How would a hundred roubles per head suit you?”
“What, a hundred roubles per head?” Chichikov stared open-mouthed at his host — doubting whether he had heard aright, or whether his host’s slow-moving tongue might not have inadvertently substituted one word for another.
“Yes. Is that too much for you?” said Sobakevitch. Then he added: “What is your own price?”
“My own price? I think that we cannot properly have understood one another — that you must have forgotten of what the goods consist. With my hand on my heart do I submit that eight grivni per soul would be a handsome, a VERY handsome, offer.”
“What? Eight grivni?”
“In my opinion, a higher offer would be impossible.”
“But I am not a seller of boots.”
“No; yet you, for your part, will agree that these souls are not live human beings?”
“I suppose you hope to find fools ready to sell you souls on the census list for a couple of groats apiece?”
“Pardon me, but why do you use the term ‘on the census list’? The souls themselves have long since passed away, and have left behind them only their names. Not to trouble you with any further discussion of the subject, I can offer you a rouble and a half per head, but no more.”
“You should be ashamed even to mention such a sum! Since you deal in articles of this kind, quote me a genuine price.”
“I cannot, Michael Semenovitch. Believe me, I cannot. What a man cannot do, that he cannot do.” The speaker ended by advancing another half-rouble per head.
“But why hang back with your money?” said Sobakevitch. “Of a truth I am not asking much of you. Any other rascal than myself would have cheated you by selling you old rubbish instead of good, genuine souls, whereas I should be ready to give you of my best, even were you buying only nut-kernels. For instance, look at wheelwright Michiev. Never was there such a one to build spring carts! And his handiwork was not like your Moscow handiwork — good only for an hour. No, he did it all himself, even down to the varnishing.”
Chichikov opened his mouth to remark that, nevertheless, the said Michiev had long since departed this world; but Sobakevitch’s eloquence had got too thoroughly into its stride to admit of any interruption.
“And look, too, at Probka Stepan, the carpenter,” his host went on. “I will wager my head that nowhere else would you find such a workman. What a strong fellow he was! He had served in the Guards, and the Lord only knows what they had given for him, seeing that he was over three arshins in height.”
Again Chichikov tried to remark that Probka was dead, but Sobakevitch’s tongue was borne on the torrent of its own verbiage, and the only thing to be done was to listen.
“And Milushkin, the bricklayer! He could build a stove in any house you liked! And Maksim Teliatnikov, the bootmaker! Anything that he drove his awl into became a pair of boots — and boots for which you would be thankful, although he WAS a bit foul of the mouth. And Eremi Sorokoplechin, too! He was the best of the lot, and used to work at his trade in Moscow, where he paid a tax of five hundred roubles. Well, THERE’S an assortment of serfs for you! — a very different assortment from what Plushkin would sell you!”
“But permit me,” at length put in Chichikov, astounded at this flood of eloquence to which there appeared to be no end. “Permit me, I say, to inquire why you enumerate the talents of the deceased, seeing that they are all of them dead, and that therefore there can be no sense in doing so. ‘A dead body is only good to prop a fence with,’ says the proverb.”
“Of course they are dead,” replied Sobakevitch, but rather as though the idea had only just occurred to him, and was giving him food for thought. “But tell me, now: what is the use of listing them as still alive? And what is the use of them themselves? They are flies, not human beings.”
“Well,” said Chichikov, “they exist, though only in idea.”
“But no — NOT only in idea. I tell you that nowhere else would you find such a fellow for working heavy tools as was Michiev. He had the strength of a horse in his shoulders.” And,