Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"May I inquire," Chichikov said with a bow, "if this is the deeds section?"

Ivan Antonovich seemed not to hear and buried himself completely in paper, making no reply. One could see at once that he was already a man of reasonable age, not some young babbler and whippersnapper. Ivan Antonovich seemed already well past forty; his hair was black, thick; the whole middle of his face projected forward and went mostly into nose—in short, it was the type of face commonly known as a jug mug.

"May I inquire if this is the deeds section?" said Chichikov.

"It is," Ivan Antonovich said, swung his jug mug, and again applied himself to his writing.

"And my business is this: I've bought peasants from various owners in this district, to be resettled; I have the deed, it remains to execute it."

"And are the sellers present?"

"Some are here, and I have warrants from the others."

"And have you brought the application?"

"I have brought the application. I'd like ... I must hurry. . . so mightn't we, for instance, finish the business today?"

"Today! hm, today's impossible," said Ivan Antonovich. "Inquiries must be made, to see that there are no interdictions."

"By the way, to do with speeding the business up, Ivan Grigorievich, the head magistrate, is a great friend of mine ..."

"Yes, but Ivan Grigorievich is not the only one; others exist," Ivan Antonovich said sternly.

Chichikov understood the little hitch Ivan Antonovich had just thrown in, and said:

"The others won't come out losers, I've been in the service myself, I know the business ..."

"Go to Ivan Grigorievich," said Ivan Antonovich in a voice slightly more benign, "let him give orders in the proper places, we'll hold our end up."

Chichikov, taking a banknote from his pocket, placed it in front of Ivan Antonovich, who utterly failed to notice it and covered it at once with a book. Chichikov was about to point it out to him, but Ivan Antonovich, with a motion of his head, gave a sign that there was no need to point it out.

"This one here will take you to the front office," said Ivan Antonovich, nodding his head, and one of the votaries, right there beside them, who had been sacrificing to Themis so zealously that he had gone through both coatsleeves at the elbow and the lining had long been sticking out, for which in due time he had been made a collegiate registrar, offered his services to our friends, as Virgil once offered his services to Dante, and led them to the front office, where there stood nothing but a wide armchair and in it, at a desk, behind a zertsalo [31] A zertsalo was a small three-faced glass pyramid bearing an eagle and certain edicts of the emperor Peter the Great (1682-1725), which stood on the desk in every government office. and two thick books, alone as the sun, sat the magistrate. In this place the new Virgil felt such awe that he simply did not dare to set foot in it, but turned away, showing his back, threadbare as a bast mat, with a chicken feather stuck to it somewhere. Entering the chamber of the front office, they saw that the magistrate was not alone, Sobakevich was sitting with him, completely hidden by the zertsalo. The visitors' arrival produced exclamations, the governmental armchair was noisily pushed back. Sobakevich, too, rose from his chair, and he and his long sleeves became visible from all sides. The magistrate took Chichikov into his embrace, and the office resounded with kisses; they inquired after each other's health; it turned out that they both had some slight lower-back pain, which was straightaway ascribed to the sedentary life. The magistrate seemed already to have been informed of the purchase by Sobakevich, because he set about offering congratulations, which embarrassed our hero somewhat at first, especially when he saw that Sobakevich and Manilov, both sellers with whom deals had been struck in private, were now standing face to face. However, he thanked the magistrate and, turning at once to Sobakevich, asked:

"And how is your health?"

"No complaints, thank God," said Sobakevich.

And, indeed, he had nothing to complain of: iron would catch cold and start coughing sooner than this wondrously fashioned landowner.

"Yes, you've always been known for your health," said the magistrate, "and your late father was also a sturdy man."

"Yes, he used to go alone after bear," replied Sobakevich.

"It seems to me, however," said the magistrate, "that you'd also bring down your bear, if you chose to go against one."

"No, I wouldn't," replied Sobakevich, "the old man was sturdier than I am," and, sighing, he went on: "No, people aren't what they used to be; look at my life, what kind of a life is it? just sort of something ..."

"It's a fine life, isn't it?" said the magistrate.

"No good, no good," said Sobakevich, shaking his head. "Consider for yourself, Ivan Grigorievich: I'm in my forties, and never once have I been sick; never even a sore throat, never even a pimple or a boil breaking out . . . No, it doesn't bode well! Some day I'll have to pay for it." Here Sobakevich sank into melancholy.

"Eh, you," Chichikov and the magistrate thought simultaneously, "what a thing to bemoan!"

"I've got a little letter for you," Chichikov said, taking Plyush-kin's letter from his pocket.

"From whom?" the magistrate said and, opening it, exclaimed:

"Ah! from Plyushkin. So he's still vegetating in this world. What a fate! Once he was an intelligent, wealthy man, and now ..."

"A sonofabitch," said Sobakevich, "a crook, starved all his people to death."

"If you please, if you please," said the magistrate, "I'm ready to act as his attorney. When do you want to execute the deed, now or later?"

"Now," said Chichikov. "I will even ask you to do it, if possible, today, because I would like to leave town tomorrow. I've brought the deed and the application."

"That's all very well, only, like it or not, we won't let you go so soon. The deeds will be executed today, but all the same you must stay on with us a bit. Here, I'll give the order at once," he said, and opened the door to the chancellery, all filled with clerks, who could be likened to industrious bees scattered over a honeycomb, if a honeycomb may be likened to chancellery work. "Is Ivan Antonovich here?"

"Here," responded a voice from inside.

"Send him in."

Ivan Antonovich, the jug mug, already known to our readers, appeared in the front office and bowed reverently.

"Here, Ivan Antonovich, take these deeds of his ..."

"And don't forget, Ivan Grigorievich," Sobakevich picked up, "there must be witnesses, at least two on each side. Send for the prosecutor right now, he's an idle man and must be sitting at home, everything's done for him by the attorney Zolotukha, the world's foremost muckworm. The inspector of the board of health is also an idle man and must be at home, unless he went somewhere to play cards, and there's a lot more around—Trukhachevsky, Be-gushkin, all of them a useless burden on the earth!"

"Precisely, precisely!" said the magistrate, and he at once dispatched a clerk to fetch them all.

"And I will ask you," said Chichikov, "to send for the attorney of a lady landowner with whom I also concluded a deal, the son of the archpriest Father Kiril; he works with you here."

"Well, so, we'll send for him, too!" said the magistrate. "It will all get done, and you are to give nothing to any of the clerks, that I beg of you. My friends should not pay." Having said this, he straightaway gave some order to Ivan Antonovich, which he evidently did not like. The deeds seemed to make a good impression on the magistrate, especially when he saw that the purchases added up to almost a hundred thousand roubles. For several minutes he gazed into Chichikov's eyes with an expression of great contentment, and finally said: