Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"Ah, the Kherson landowner, the Kherson landowner!" he shouted, approaching and dissolving in laughter, which caused his cheeks, fresh and ruddy as a rose in spring, to shake. "So, have you bought up a lot of dead ones? You don't even know, Your Excellency," he went on bawling, addressing the governor, "he deals in dead souls! By God! Listen, Chichikov! you really—I'm telling you out of friendship, all of us here are your friends, yes, and His Excellency here, too—I'd hang you, by God, I'd hang you!"

Chichikov simply did not know where he was.

"Would you believe it, Your Excellency," Nozdryov went on, "when he said 'Sell me dead souls,' I nearly split with laughter. I come here, and they tell me he's bought up three million worth of peasants for resettlement—resettlement, hah! he was trying to buy dead ones from me. Listen, Chichikov, you're a brute, by God, a brute, and His Excellency here, too, isn't that right, prosecutor?"

But the prosecutor, and Chichikov, and the governor himself were so nonplussed that they were utterly at a loss what to reply, and meanwhile Nozdryov, without paying the least attention, kept pouring out his half-sober speech:

"And you, brother, you, you ... I won't leave your side till I find out why you were buying dead souls. Listen, Chichikov, you really ought to be ashamed, you know you have no better friend than me. And His Excellency here, too, isn't that right, prosecutor? You wouldn't believe, Your Excellency, how attached we are to one another, that is, if you simply said—I'm standing here, see, and you say: 'Nozdryov, tell me in all conscience, who is dearer to you, your own father or Chichikov?' I'd say: 'Chichikov,' by God . . . Allow me, dear heart, to plant one baiser on you. You will allow me to kiss him, Your Excellency. So, Chichikov, don't resist now, allow me to print one bitsy baiser [40] Baiser, French for "kiss," is russified by Nozdryov, who then makes a diminutive of it, bezeshka, our "bitsy baiser." on your snow-white cheek!"

Nozdryov was pushed away with his baisers, so hard that he almost went sprawling on the floor: everyone left him and no longer listened to him; but all the same his words about the buying of dead souls had been uttered at the top of his voice and accompanied by such loud laughter that they had attracted the attention even of those in the farthest corners of the room. This news seemed so strange that everyone stopped with some sort of wooden, foolishly quizzical expression. Chichikov noticed that many of the ladies winked at each other with a sort of spiteful, caustic grin, and certain faces bore an expression of something so ambiguous that it further increased his confusion. That Nozdryov was an inveterate liar everyone knew, and there was no wonder at all in hearing decided balderdash from him; but mortal man—truly, it is hard to understand how your mortal man is made: however banal the news may be, as long as it is news, he will not fail to pass it on to some other mortal, even if it is precisely with the purpose of saying: "See what a lie they're spreading!" and the other mortal will gladly incline his ear, though afterwards he himself will say: "Yes, that is a perfectly banal lie, not worthy of any attention!" and thereupon he will set out at once to look for a third mortal, so that, having told him, they can both exclaim with noble indignation: "What a banal lie!" And it will not fail to make the rounds of the whole town, and all mortals, however many there are, will have their fill of talking and will then admit that it is unworthy of attention and not worth talking about.

This apparently absurd occurrence noticeably upset our hero. However stupid a fool's words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man. He began to feel uneasy, ungainly—exactly as if he had suddenly stepped with a beautifully polished shoe into a dirty, stinking puddle; in short, not good, not good at all! He tried not to think about it, tried to get diverted, distracted, sat down to whist, but it all went like a crooked wheel: twice he played into his opponents' strong suit, and, forgetting that one does not double trump, he swung his arm and, like a fool, took his own trick. The magistrate simply could not understand how Pavel Ivanovich, who had such a good and, one might say, subtle understanding of the game, could make such mistakes and even put under the axe his king of spades, in which, to use his own words, he trusted as in God. Of course, the postmaster and the magistrate, and even the police chief himself, kept poking fun at our hero, as is customary, suggesting that he might be in love, and don't we know that Pavel Ivanovich's heart has been smitten, and don't we know who shot the dart; but all this was no comfort, however much he tried to smile and laugh it off. At supper, too, he was quite unable to be expansive, though the company at table was pleasant and Nozdryov had long ago been taken out; for even the ladies themselves finally noticed that his behavior was becoming much too scandalous. In the midst of the cotillion, he got down on the floor and started grabbing the dancers by their skirt hems, which was really beyond everything, as the ladies put it. The supper was very gay, all the faces flitting before the three-stemmed candlesticks, flowers, sweets, and bottles radiated the most unconstrained pleasure. Officers, ladies, tailcoats—everything became courteous, even to the point of cloying. Men jumped up from their chairs and ran to take dishes from the servants in order to offer them, with extraordinary adroitness, to the ladies. One colonel offered a dish of sauce to a lady on the tip of his bare sword. The men of respectable age, among whom Chichikov sat, were arguing loudly, following their sensible words with fish or beef dipped unmercifully in mustard, and arguing about subjects he had even always been interested in; but he was like a man worn-out or broken by a long journey, whose mind is closed to everything and who is unable to enter into anything. He did not even wait until supper was over, and went home incomparably earlier than was his custom.

There, in that little room so familiar to the reader, with the door blocked up by a chest of drawers, and cockroaches occasionally peeking from the corners, the state of his mind and spirit was uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as the armchair in which he sat. His heart felt unpleasant, troubled; some burdensome emptiness lingered in it. "Devil take all of you who thought up these balls!" he said in vexation. "What are the fools so glad about? There are crop failures, high prices in the provinces, and here they are with their balls! A fine thing: decked out in their female rags! So what if she's wrapped herself in a thousand roubles' worth! And it's at the expense of peasant quitrent or, worse still, at the expense of our own good conscience. Everyone knows why you take bribes and bend the truth: so as to pay for your wife's shawl or hoopskirt or whatever they're called, confound them. And what for? So that some strumpet Sidorovna won't say the postmaster's wife's dress was better, and so—bang, there goes a thousand roubles. They shout: A ball, a ball, a gay time!'—a ball is just trash, not in the Russian spirit, not in the Russian nature; devil knows what it is: an adult, a man of age, suddenly pops out all in black, plucked and tightly fitted like a little imp, and goes mincing away with his feet. Some man, dancing with his partner, can be discussing important business with someone else, while at the same time twirling his legs right and left like a little goat. . . It's all apery, all apery! The Frenchman at forty is the same child he was at fifteen, so let's all do likewise! No, really . . . after each ball it's as if you'd committed some sin; you don't even want to remember it. The head is simply empty, as after talking with a man of society; he talks about all sorts of things, touches lightly on everything, says everything he's pulled out of books, brightly, prettily, but there's no trace of any of it in his head, and you see then that even talking with a simple merchant who knows only his business, but knows it firmly and practically, is better than all these baubles. So, what can possibly be squeezed out of this ball? So, what if some writer, say, decided to describe the whole scene as it is? So, then in the book it would come out just as witless as in nature. What is it—moral? immoral? It's simply devil-knows-what! You'd spit and close the book." So unfavorable was Chichikov's opinion of balls in general; but it seems another reason for indignation was mixed in here. He was mainly vexed not at the ball, but at the fact that he had happened to trip up, that he had suddenly appeared before everyone looking like God knows what, that he had played some strange, ambiguous role. Of course, looking at it with the eye of a reasonable man, he saw that it was all absurd, that a stupid word meant nothing, particularly now, when the main business had already been properly done. But man is strange: he was greatly upset by the ill disposition of those very people whom he did not respect and with regard to whom he had spoken so sharply, denouncing their vanity and finery. This was the more vexatious to him since, on sorting out the matter clearly, he saw that he himself was partly the cause of it. He did not, however, get angry with himself, and in that, of course, he was right. We all have a little weakness for sparing ourselves somewhat, and prefer to try and find some neighbor on whom to vent our vexation, a servant, for instance, or a subordinate official who turns up at that moment, or a wife, or, finally, a chair, which gets flung devil knows where, straight at the door, so that the armrest and back come flying off: that will teach it what wrath is. So Chichikov, too, soon found a neighbor who could drag onto his own back everything his vexation might suggest to him. This neighbor was Nozdryov, and, needless to say, he got it from all sides and ends, as only some crook of a village elder or coachman gets it from some traveled, experienced captain, or even general, who on top of many expressions that have become classical, adds many unknown ones, the invention of which belongs properly to himself. The whole of Nozdryov's genealogy was examined and many members of his family in the line of ascent suffered greatly.