Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"Please!" said Sobakevich.

Whereupon, going up to the table where the hors d'oeuvres were, guest and host fittingly drank a glass of vodka each, and snacked as the whole of Russia snacks in towns and villages—that is, on various pickled things and other savory blessings—and they all flowed into the dining room; at their head, like a gliding goose, swept the hostess. The small table was set for four. The fourth place was very quickly claimed, it is hard to say positively by whom, a lady or a young maid, a relation, a housekeeper, or simply a woman living in the house: something without a bonnet, about thirty years old, in a motley shawl. There are persons who exist in the world not as objects, but as alien specks or spots on objects. They sit in the same place, hold their head in the identical manner, one is ready to take them for furniture and thinks that in all their born days no word has ever passed those lips; but somewhere in the servants' quarters or the pantry it turns out simply—oh-ho-ho!

"The cabbage soup is very good today, my sweet!" said Sobakevich, having slurped up some soup and heaped on his plate an enormous piece of nyanya, a well-known dish served with cabbage soup, consisting of a sheep's stomach stuffed with buckwheat groats, brains, and trotters. "Such nyanya you'll never get in town," he went on, addressing Chichikov, "they'll serve you the devil knows what there!"

"The governor, however, keeps a rather good table," said Chichikov.

"But do you know what it's all made from? You wouldn't eat it if you found out."

"I don't know how it's prepared, I can't judge about that, but the pork cutlets and poached fish were excellent."

"It seemed so to you. I know what they buy at the market. That rascal of a cook, who learned from a Frenchman, buys a cat, skins it, and serves it instead of hare."

"Pah! what an unpleasant thing to say," said Sobakevich's spouse.

"But, sweetie, that's what they do, it's not my fault, that's what they all do. Whatever they've got that's unusable, that our Akulka throws, if I may say so, into the pig bucket, they put into the soup! into the soup! right plop into it!"

"What things you're always telling about at the table!" Sobakevich's spouse objected again.

"But, my sweet," said Sobakevich, "it's not as if I were doing it myself, but I'll tell you right to your face, I will not eat any vile-ness. No frog, even if it's pasted all over with sugar, will ever go near my mouth, and no oyster either: I know what oysters are like. Take this lamb," he went on, addressing Chichikov, "this is a rack of lamb with buckwheat groats! It's not that fricassee they make in squires' kitchens out of lamb that's been lying around the marketplace for four days! It was German and French doctors who invented it all, I'd have the whole lot of them hung for it! They invented the diet, the hunger treatment! With their thin-boned German nature, they fancy they can take on the Russian stomach, too! No, it's all wrong, all these inventions, it's all..." Here Sobakevich even shook his head angrily. "They say: enlightenment, enlightenment, and this enlightenment—poof! I'd use another word, only it wouldn't be proper at the table. With me it's not like that. With me, if it's pork—let's have the whole pig on the table, if it's lamb—drag in the whole sheep, if goose—the whole goose! Better that I eat just two courses, but eat my fill, as my soul demands." Sobakevich confirmed this in action: he dumped half of the rack of lamb onto his own plate, ate it all up, gnawed it, and sucked it out to the last little bone.

"Yes," thought Chichikov, "there's no flies on this one."

"With me it's not like that," Sobakevich said, wiping his hands on a napkin, "with me it's not like with some Plyushkin: he owns eight hundred souls, yet he lives and eats worse than my shepherd!"

"Who is this Plyushkin?" asked Chichikov.

"A crook," replied Sobakevich. "Such a niggard, it's hard to imagine. Jailbirds in prison live better than he does: he's starved all his people to death ..."

"Indeed!" Chichikov picked up with interest. "And you say his people are actually dying in large numbers?"

"Dropping like flies."

"Like flies, really! And may I ask how far away he lives?"

"Three miles."

"Three miles!" exclaimed Chichikov, and he even felt a slight throb in his heart. "But if one were driving out your gate, would it be to the right or the left?"

"I wouldn't advise you even to know the way to that dog's!"

said Sobakevich. "It's more excusable to go and visit some indecent place than him."

"No, I wasn't asking for any reason, but just because I'm interested in learning about all sorts of places," Chichikov replied to that.

After the rack of lamb came cheesecakes, each much bigger than a plate, then a turkey the size of a calf, chock-full of all sorts of good things: eggs, rice, livers, and whatnot else, all of which settled in one lump in the stomach. With that dinner ended; but when they got up from the table, Chichikov felt himself a good ton heavier. They went to the drawing room, where a saucer of preserves was already waiting—not pear, not plum, not any other berry—which, however, neither guest nor host touched. The hostess stepped out in order to put more in other saucers. Taking advantage of her absence, Chichikov addressed Sobakevich, who was lying in an armchair, only letting out little groans after such a hearty dinner and producing some unintelligible sounds with his mouth, crossing and covering it with his hand every moment. [22] Russians (and others) have a custom of making the sign of the cross over their mouths when they yawn, to keep evil spirits from flying in. Chichikov addressed him in the following words:

"I would like to talk with you about a little business."

"Here's more preserves," said the hostess, returning with a saucer, "black radish, cooked in honey."

"We'll get to it later!" said Sobakevich. "You go to your room now, Pavel Ivanovich and I are going to take our coats off and rest a bit."

The hostess at once expressed a readiness to send for feather beds and pillows, but the host said: "Never mind, we'll rest in the armchairs," and the hostess left.

Sobakevich inclined his head slightly, preparing to hear what the little business was about.

Chichikov began somehow very remotely, touched generally on the entire Russian state, and spoke in great praise of its vast-ness, saying that even the most ancient Roman monarchy was not so big, and foreigners are rightly astonished . . . Sobakevich went on listening, his head bent. And that according to the existing regulations of this state, unequaled in glory, the souls listed in the census, once their life's path has ended, are nevertheless counted equally with the living until the new census is taken, so as not to burden the institutions with a quantity of petty and useless documents and increase the complexity of the already quite complex state machinery . . . Sobakevich went on listening, his head bent—and that, nevertheless, for all the justice of this measure, it was often somewhat burdensome for many owners, obliging them to pay taxes as if for the living object, and that he, feeling a personal respect for him, would even be ready to take this truly heavy responsibility partly upon himself. With regard to the main object, Chichikov expressed himself very cautiously: he never referred to the souls as dead, but only as nonexistent.

Sobakevich went on listening in the same way, his head bowed, and nothing in the least resembling expression showed on his face. It seemed there was no soul in this body at all, or if there was, it was not at all where it ought to be, but, as with the deathless Koshchey, [23] Koshchey the Deathless is a wicked character from Russian folktales. The hero of the tales must cross the sea, come to an island, find an oak tree, dig up a chest under the oak tree, find in the chest a hare, in the hare a duck, in the duck an egg, and in the egg a needle. When the hero breaks off the point of the needle, Koshchey dies. was somewhere beyond the mountains, and covered with such a thick shell that whatever stirred at the bottom of it produced decidedly no movement on the surface.