Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls

"You scoundrel!" cried Chichikov, clasping his hands, and he came up so close to him that Selifan, for fear the master might make him a little gift, backed off a bit and stepped aside. "So you're going to kill me, eh? want to put a knife in me? knife me on the high road, you robber, you cursed pig, you sea monster! eh? eh? Sat here for three weeks, eh? If you'd only made a peep, you wastrel—and now you've pushed it right up to the final hour! when everything's almost set—just get in and go, eh? and it's here that you muck it up, eh? eh? Didn't you know before? didn't you, eh? eh? Answer! Didn't you know?"

"I knew," Selifan replied, hanging his head.

"Then why didn't you say so, eh?"

To this question Selifan made no reply, but, hanging his head, seemed to be saying to himself: "You see what a tricky thing it is: I knew, and I just didn't say!"

"So, now go and fetch the blacksmith, and see that everything's done in two hours. Do you hear? in two hours without fail, and if it's not, I'll. . . I'll bend you double and tie you in a knot!" Our hero was very angry.

Selifan made as if to turn for the door, to go and carry out the order, but stopped and said:

"Another thing, sir, the dapple-gray horse, he really ought to be sold, because he's a downright scoundrel, Pavel Ivanovich; he's that kind of horse, God help us, nothing but a hindrance."

"Oh, yes! I'll just up and run to the market to sell him!"

"By God, Pavel Ivanovich, not but he looks right enough, only in fact he's a sly horse, such a horse as never ..."

"Fool! When I want to sell him, I'll sell him. Look at the man reasoning! I'll see: if you don't bring me the blacksmiths and if everything's not ready in two hours, I'll give you such a thrashing . . . you won't know your own face! Go! Off with you!"

Selifan left.

Chichikov was completely out of sorts and flung down on the floor the sword that traveled with him for inspiring due fear in those who needed it. He fussed with the blacksmiths for a good quarter of an hour before he could come to terms with them, because the blacksmiths, as is their wont, were inveterate scoundrels, and, having grasped that the job was an urgent one, stuck him with six times the price. He got all fired up, called them crooks, thieves, highway robbers, even hinted at the Last Judgment, but nothing fazed them: the blacksmiths stayed absolutely in character—not only did not yield on the price, but even fussed over the work for a whole five and a half hours instead of two. During that time he had the pleasure of experiencing those agreeable moments, familiar to every traveler, when the trunk is all packed and only strings, scraps of paper, and various litter are strewn about the room, when a man belongs neither to the road nor to sitting in place, and from the window sees people plodding by, discussing nickels and dimes, lifting their eyes with some stupid curiosity to glance at him and then continuing on their way, which further aggravates the low spirits of the poor non-departing traveler. Everything there, everything he sees—the little shop across from his windows, the head of the old woman who lives in the house opposite, and who keeps coming up to the window with its half-curtains—everything is loathsome to him, and yet he will not leave the window. He stands, now oblivious, now dimly attentive again to everything moving and not moving in front of him, and in vexation stifles under his finger some fly which at the moment is buzzing and beating against the glass. But there is an end to all things, and the longed-for moment came: everything was ready, the front end of the britzka was set to rights, the wheel was fitted with a new tire, the horses were brought from the watering place, and the robber-blacksmiths went off counting the roubles they had made and wishing him all their blessings. Finally the britzka, too, was harnessed, and two hot kalatchi, only just bought, were put in, and Selifan stuck something for himself into the pouch in the coachman's box, and finally the hero himself, to the waving cap of the floorboy, who stood there in the same half-cotton frock coat, in the presence of the tavern servants and other lackeys and coachmen, who gathered to gape at someone else's master departing, and with all the other circumstances that accompany a departure, got into the carriage—and the britzka such as bachelors drive around in, which had stood so long in town and which the reader is so sick of, finally drove out the gates of the inn. "Thank God for that!" thought Chichikov, crossing himself. Selifan cracked his whip; Petrushka, having first hung from the footboard for a while, sat down next to him, and our hero, settling himself better on the Georgian rug, put a leather cushion behind his back and squashed the two kalatchi, as the carriage again started its jigging and jolting, owing to the pavement, which, as we know, possessed a bouncing force. With a sort of indefinite feeling he gazed at the houses, walls, fences, and streets, which, also as if hopping for their own part, were slowly moving backwards, and which God knows if he was destined to see again in the course of his life. At a turn down one of the streets the britzka had to stop, because an endless funeral procession was passing the whole length of it. Chichikov, having peeked out, told Petrushka to ask who was being buried, and learned that it was the prosecutor. Filled with unpleasant sensations, he at once hid himself in a corner, covered himself with the leather apron, and closed the curtains. All the while the carriage was stopped in this way, Selifan and Petrushka, piously doffing their hats, were looking at who drove how, in what, and on what, counting the number of all those on foot and on wheels, while the master, ordering them not to acknowledge or greet any servants they knew, also began timidly looking through the glass in the leather curtains: behind the coffin, hats off, walked all the officials. He began to be a bit afraid that they might recognize his carriage, but they could not be bothered with that. They were not even occupied with the various mundane conversations that are usually conducted among those accompanying the deceased. All their thoughts at that time were concentrated on their own selves: they thought about what sort of man the new Governor-general would be, how he would get down to business, and how he would receive them. After the officials, who went on foot, came carriages out of which peeked ladies in mourning caps. By the movement of their lips and hands one could see that they were engaged in lively conversation; perhaps they, too, were talking about the arrival of the new Governor-general, making speculations concerning the balls he would give, and worrying about their eternal festoons and appliqués. Finally, after the carriages, came several empty droshkies, strung out in single file, and finally there was nothing more left, and our hero could go. Opening the leather curtains, he sighed, saying from the bottom of his heart: "So, the prosecutor! He lived and lived, and then he died! And so they'll print in the newspapers that there passed away, to the sorrow of his subordinates and of all mankind, a respectable citizen, a rare father, an exemplary husband, and they'll write all sorts of stuff; they'll add, maybe, that he was accompanied by the weeping of widows and orphans; but if one looks into the matter properly, all you had, in fact, was bushy eyebrows." Here he told Selifan to drive faster, and meanwhile thought to himself: "It's a good thing, however, that I met the funeral; they say it's a lucky sign when you meet a dead man." The britzka meanwhile turned onto more deserted streets; soon there were only long stretches of wooden fence, heralding the end of town. Now the pavement has already ended, and the tollgate, and the town is behind, and there is nothing, and it is the road again. And again both sides of the high road are scrawled once more with mileposts, stationmasters, wells, wagon trains, gray villages with samovars, women, and a brisk, bearded innkeeper running out of the inn yard with an armful of oats, a passerby in worn bast shoes trudging on foot from eight hundred miles away, little towns slapped together, with little wooden shops, flour barrels, bast shoes, kalatchi, and other small stuff, rippling tollgates, bridges under repair, fields beyond view on this side and that, landowners' coaches, a soldier on horseback carrying a green box of leaden peas and the words "Such-and-such Artillery Battery," green, yellow, and freshly ploughed black stripes flashing over the steppes, a song struck up afar, pine tops in the mist, a ringing bell fading far off, crows like flies, and a horizon without end . . . Rus! Rus! I see you, from my wondrous, beautiful distance I see you: [55] Gogol was living in Italy when he wrote Dead Souls, and here, from his "beautiful distance," compares the landscapes of Italy and Russia. it is poor, scattered, and comfortless in you; not gladdened, not frightened will one's gaze be at bold wonders of nature, crowned by bold wonders of art, cities with high, many-windowed palaces grown into the cliffs, picturesque trees and ivy grown into the houses, with the noise and eternal mist of waterfalls; the head will not be thrown back to look at great boulders heaped up endlessly above it and into the heights; through dark arches cast one upon the other, all entangled with vines and ivy and countless millions of wild roses, there will come no flash of the distant, eternal lines of shining mountains, soaring up into the bright silver heavens. In you all is openly deserted and level; like dots, like specks, your low towns stick up inconspicuously amidst the plains; there is nothing to seduce or enchant the eye. But what inconceivable, mysterious force draws one to you? Why do the ears hear and ring unceasingly with your melancholy song, coursing through the whole length and breadth of you from sea to sea? What is in it, in this song? What calls, and weeps, and grips the heart? What sounds so painfully caress and stream into the soul, and twine about my heart? Rus! what is it that you want of me? what inconceivable bond lies hidden between us? Why do you gaze so, and why is everything in you turned towards me with eyes full of expectation? . . . And still, all in perplexity, I stand motionless, but my head is already overshadowed by a menacing cloud, heavy with coming rains, and thought stands numb before your vastness. What prophecy is in this uncompassable expanse? Is it not here, in you, that the boundless thought is to be born, since you yourself are without end? Is it not here that the mighty man is to be, where there is room for him to show himself and walk about? And menacingly the mighty vastness envelops me, reflected with terrible force in my depths; my eyes are lit up by an unnatural power: ohh! what a shining, wondrous yonder, unknown to the world! Rus! ...”