menu_book Chapter 11

dead souls part one chapter seven section one this is a lippervox recording all lippervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit lippervox dot org dead souls by nikolai vasirevich gogol translated by d j hogarth part one chapter seven section one read by anna simon when chichikov awoke he stretched himself and realized that he had slept well for a moment or two he lay on his back and then suddenly clapped his hands at the recollection that he was now owner of nearly four hundred souls at once he leapt out of bed without so much as glancing at his face in the mirror though as a rule he had much solicitude for his features and especially for his chin of which he would make the most when in company with friends and more particularly should any one happen to enter while he was engaged in the process of shaving look how round my chin is was his usual formula on the present occasion however he looked neither at chin nor at any other feature but at once donned his flower-embroidered slippers of morocco leather

the kind of slippers in which thanks to the russian love for a dressing-gown's existence the town of torzok does such a huge trade and clad only in a meagre shirt so far forgot his elderliness and dignity as to cut a couple of capers after the fashion of a scottish highlander alighting neatly each time on the flat of his heels only when he had done that did he proceed to business planting himself before his dispatch-box he rubbed his hands with a satisfaction worthy of an incorruptible rural magistrate when adjourning for luncheon after which he extracted from the receptacle a bundle of papers these he had decided not to deposit with the lawyer for the reason that he would hasten matters as well as save expense by himself framing and fair copying the necessary deeds of indenture and since he was thoroughly acquainted with the necessary terminology he proceeded to inscribe in large characters the date and then in smaller ones his name and rank by two o'clock the whole was finished and as he looked at the sheets of names representing bygone peasants who had ploughed worked at handicrafts cheated their masters fetched carried and got drunk

though some of them may have behaved well there came over him a strange unaccountable sensation to his eye each list of names seemed to possess a character of its own and even individual peasants therein seemed to have taken on certain qualities peculiar to themselves for instance to the majority of madame korobotschka's serves there were appended nicknames and other additions plushkin's list was distinguished by a conciseness of exposition which had led to certain of the items being represented merely by christian name patronymic and a couple of dots and sobakevitch's list was remarkable for its amplitude and circumstantiality in that not a single peasant had such of his peculiar characteristics omitted as that the deceased had been excellent at joinery or sober and ready to pay attention to his work also in sobakevitch list there was recorded who had been the father and the mother of each of the deceased and how those parents had behaved themselves only against the name of a certain theodotov was there inscribed father unknown mother the maidservant kapitolina morals and honesty good these details communicated to the document a certain air of freshness they seemed to connote that the peasants in question had lived but yesterday as chichikov scanned the list he felt softened in spirit and said with a sigh

my friends what a concourse of you is here how did you all pass your lives my brethren and how did you all come to depart hence as he spoke his eyes halted at one name in particular that of the same peter zavelyev neuvajay who had once been the property of the widow korobotschka once more he could not help exclaiming what a series of titles they occupy a whole line peter zavelyev i wonder whether you were an artisan or a plain also i wonder how you came to meet your aunt whether in a tavern or whether through going to sleep in the middle of the road and being run over by a train of wagons again i see the name propka stepan carpenter very sober that must be the hero of whom the guards would have been so glad to get hold how well i can imagine him tramping the country with an axe in his belt and his boots on his shoulder and living on a few groats worth of bread and dried fish per day and taking home a couple of half-rouble pieces in his purse and sewing the notes into his breeches or stuffing them into his boots in what manner came you by your end

did you for good wages mount a scaffold around the cupola of the village church and climbing thence to the cross above miss your footing on a beam and fall headlong with none at hand but uncle the good uncle who scratching the back of his neck and muttering ah vanya for once you have been too clever straightway lashed himself to a rope and took your place maxim telyatnikov shoemaker a shoemaker indeed as drunk as a shoemaker says the proverb i know what you are like my friend if you wish i'll tell you your whole history your apprentice to a german who fed you and your fellows at a common table thrashed you with a strap kept you indoors whenever you had made a mistake and spoke of you in uncomplimentary terms to his wife and friends at length when your apprenticeship was over you said to yourself i am going to set up on my own account and not just to scrape together a coppock here and a coppock there as the germans do but to grow rich quick

hence you took a shop at a high rent bespoke a few orders and set to work to buy up some rotten leather out of which you could make on each pair of boots a double profit but those boots split within a fortnight and brought down upon your head dire showers of maledictions with the result that gradually your shop grew empty of customers and you fell to roaming the streets and exclaiming the world is a very poor place indeed a russian cannot make a living for german competition well well elizabetta vorbeye but that is a woman's name how comes she to be on the list that villain sobakevitch must have sneaked her in without my knowing it gree gree gojjay ne doy desh he went on what sort of a man were you i wonder were you a carrier who having set up a team of three horses and a tilt wagon left your home your native hovel forever and departed to cart merchandise to market was it on the highway that you surrendered your soul to god or did your friends first marry you to some fat red-faced soldier's daughter after which your harness and team of rough but sturdy horses

called a highwayman's fancy and you lying on your pallet thought things over until willy-nilly you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern thereafter blundering into an ice-hole ah our peasant of russia never do you welcome death when it comes and you my friends continued chichikov turning to the sheet whereon were inscribed the names of plushkin's absconded serfs although you are still alive what is the good of you you are practically dead whither i wonder have your fugitive feet carried you did you fare heartily at plushkins or was it that your natural inclinations led you to prefer roaming the wilds and plundering travellers are you by this time in gaul or have you taken service with other masters for the tillage of their lands hermay karjakin nikita volokita and anton volokita son of the foregoing to judge from your surnames you would seem to have been born getabouts footnote the names karjakin and volokita might perhaps be translated as gallant and loafer popov household serve

probably you were an educated man good popov and go in for polite thieving as distinguished from the more vulgar cut-throat sword in my mind's eye i seem to see a captain of rural police challenging you for being without a passport whereupon you stake your all upon a single throw to whom do you belong asks the captain probably adding to his question a forcible expletive to such and such a landowner stoutly you reply and what are you doing here continues the captain i have just received permission to go and earn my oprog is your fluent explanation then where is your passport a mission in pimenof's pimenof's then are you pimenof himself yes i'm pimenof himself he has given you his passport no he has not given me his passport come come shouts the captain with another forcible expletive you are lying no i am not is your dog to reply it is only that last night i could not return him his passport because i came home late so i handed it to ante progorov the bell-ringer for him to take care of bell-ringer indeed then he gave you a passport

no i did not receive a passport from him either what and here the captain shouts another expletive how dare you keep on lying where is your own passport i had one all right you replied cunningly but must have dropped it somewhere on the road as i came along and what about that soldier's coat asked the captain with an impolite addition whence did you get it and what about the priest's cash-box and copper money about them i know nothing you reply doggedly never at any time have i committed a theft then how is it that the coat was found at your place i do not know probably someone else put it there you rascal you rascal shouts the captain shaking his head and closing in upon you put the leg-irons upon him and off with him to prison with pleasure you reply as taking a snuff-box from your pocket you offer a pinch to each of the two gendarmes who are manacling you while also inquiring how long they have been discharged from the army and in what wars they may have served

and in prison you remain until your case comes on when the justice orders you to be removed from tsaravkokzhaika to such and such another prison and a second justice orders you to be transferred thence to vizhjegonsk or somewhere else and you go flitting from goal to goal and saying each time as you eye your new habitation the last place was a good deal cleaner than this one is and one could play babki there and stretch one's legs and see a little society footnote babki is the game of knuckle-bones abakum tzirov chichikov went on after a pause what of you brother where and in what capacity are you disporting yourself have he gone to the volga country and become bitten with a life of freedom and joined the fishermen of the river here breaking off chichikov relapsed into silent meditation of what was he thinking as he sat there was he thinking of the fortunes of abakum sirov or was he meditating as meditates every russian when his thoughts once turned to the joys of an emancipated existence

ah well he sighed looking at his watch it has now gone twelve o'clock why have i so forgotten myself there is still much to be done yet i go shutting myself up and letting my thoughts wander what a fool i am so saying he exchanged his scottish costume of a shirt and nothing else for attire of a more european nature after which he pulled tight the waistcoat over his ample stomach sprinkled himself with eau de cologne stucked his papers under his arm took his fur cap and set out for the municipal offices for the purpose of completing the transfer of souls the fact that he hurried along was not due to a fear of being late seeing that the president of the local council was an intimate acquaintance of his as well as a functionary who could shorten or prolong an interview at will even as homer's zeus was able to shorten or to prolong a night or a day whenever it became necessary to put an end to the fighting of his favorite heroes or to enable them to join battle but rather to a feeling that he would like to have the affair concluded as quickly as possible seeing that throughout it had been an anxious and difficult business also he could not get rid of the idea that his souls were unsubstantial things and that therefore under the circumstances

his shoulders had better be relieved of their load with the least possible delay pulling on his cinnamon-coloured barrel-lined overcoat as he went he had just stepped thoughtfully into the street when he collided with a gentleman dressed in a similar coat and an ear-lapetted fur cap upon that the gentleman uttered an exclamation behold it was manilov at once the friends became folded in a strenuous embrace and remained so locked for fully five minutes indeed the kisses exchanged were so vigorous that both suffered from toothache for the greater portion of the day also mandalof's delight was such that only his nose and lips remained visible the eyes completely disappeared afterwards he spent about a quarter of an hour in holding chichikov's hand and chafing it vigorously lastly he in the most pleasant and exquisite terms possible intimated to his friend that he had just been on his way to embrace paul ivanovitch and upon this followed a compliment of the kind which would more fittingly have been addressed to a lady who was being asked to accord a partner the favor of a dance chichikov had opened his mouth to reply though even he felt at a loss how to acknowledge what had just been said when manilov cut him short by producing from under his coat a roll of paper tied with red ribband what have you there asked

the list of my souls ah and as chichikov unrolled the document and ran his eye over it he could not but marvel at the elegant neatness with which it had been inscribed it is a beautiful piece of writing he said in fact there will be no need to make a copy of it also it has a border around its edge who worked that exquisite border do not ask me said manilov did you do it no my wife dear dear chichikov cried to think that i should have put her to so much trouble nothing could be too much trouble where paul ivanovitch is concerned chichikov bowed his acknowledgments next on learning that he was on his way to the municipal offices for the purpose of completing the transfer manilov expressed his readiness to accompany him wherefore the pair linked arm in arm and proceeded together whenever they encountered a slight rise in the ground even the smallest unevenness or difference of level mandolev supported chichikov with such energy as almost to lift him off his feet while accompanying the service with the smiling implication that not if he could help it should paul ivanovitch slip or fall

nevertheless this conduct appeared to embarrass chichikov either because he could not find any fitting words of gratitude or because he considered the preceding tiresome and it was with a sense of relief that he debouched upon the square where the municipal offices a large three-storied building of a chalky whiteness which probably symbolized the purity of the souls engaged within was situated no other building in the square could vie with them in size seeing that the remaining artifices consisted only of a sentry-box a shelter for two or three cabmen and a long hoarding the latter adorned with the usual bills posters and scrolls in chalk and charcoal at intervals from the windows of the second and third stories of the municipal offices the incorruptible heads of certain of the attendant priests of themis would peer quickly forth and as quickly disappear again probably for the reason that a superior official had just entered the room meanwhile the two friends ascended the staircase nay almost flew up it since longing to get rid of manilov's ever supporting arm chichikov hastened his steps and manilov kept darting forward to anticipate any possible failure on the part of his companion's legs consequently the pair were breathless when they reached the first corridor

in passing it may be remarked that neither corridors nor rooms evinced any of that cleanliness and purity which marked the exterior of the building for such attributes were not troubled about within and anything that was dirty remained so and donned no meretricious purely external disguise it was as though thames received her visitors in negligee and a dressing-gown the author would also give a description of the various offices through which our hero passed were it not that he the author stands in awe of such legal haunts chapter seven section one