Chapter II: Part 2

But above all (more than his gentleness, more than his agreeable speech, more than his interesting pallor, more than his bandaged arm) the silence of the young Hussar stirred her curiosity and imagination. She could not but feel conscious that she pleased him immensely; undoubtedly, he too, with his keenness of perception, and experience, had noted her preference for him; and she could not explain why she had not yet seen him at her feet and had not heard his declaration. What restrained him? Was it the timidity which is inseparable from true love, or pride, or the coquetry of a shrewd wooer? This was a riddle to her. Having reflected on the matter, she concluded that timidity was the sole reason; and this decided her to encourage him with greater attention, and, if the circumstances permitted it, even tenderness. She anticipated the most surprising dénouement; and with impatience awaited a romantic explanation. A secret, whatever its nature may be, is always oppressive to the feminine heart. Her aggressive tactics had the desired result; at least, Bourmin fell into such a pensive mood, and his dark eyes fixed themselves with such a fire upon Maria Gavrilovna, that the decisive moment seemed close at hand. The neighbors talked of the forthcoming marriage as of a thing settled, and the good Prascovia Petrovna rejoiced that her daughter had found at last a worthy mate.

The old mother was sitting one day in the drawing-room, playing patience, when Bourmin entered and immediately inquired after Maria Gavrilovna.

“She is in the garden,” answered the old lady. “You go out to her, and I’ll await you here.”

Bourmin went into the garden, and the old lady crossed herself and thought, “The matter will be settled today.”

At the pond, under a willow, Bourmin found Maria Gavrilovna, dressed in white, looking like a real heroine of a novel. After the first questions, Maria Gavrilovna purposely refrained from sustaining the conversation, intending in this manner to create a mutual embarrassment, from which it was possible to free oneself only by an instant and decisive explanation. That was, in fact, what happened. Bourmin, feeling the embarrassment of his position, said that he had long sought an opportunity to reveal his heart to her, and requested a moment’s attention from her. Maria Gavrilovna closed the book and cast down her eyes as a sign of assent.

“I love you,” said Bourmin. “I love you passionately.” (Maria Gavrilovna blushed and inclined her head even lower.) “I have behaved imprudently in yielding to the sweet pleasure of seeing and hearing you every day.” (Maria Gavrilovna recalled the first letter of St. Preux.[1]) “It is too late now to resist my fate: the mere recollection of you, your lovely, incomparable image, shall be the torment and consolation of my life. It is still left to me, however, to execute a weighty responsibility, to reveal to you a terrible secret which will raise between us an insurmountable barrier.”

“It has always existed,” interrupted Maria Gavrilovna, in an excited manner. “I could never be your wife.”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I know that you once loved; and that he died, and that you had mourned for three years.... My good, adorable Maria Gavrilovna! Please don’t deprive me of my last consolation: the thought that you would have consented to make my happiness if----Please, not a word--for God’s sake, not a word! You torture me. Yes, I know it, that you would have been willing to become mine, but I--I am a most unhappy creature.... I am already married!”

Maria Gavrilovna looked at him in amazement.

“Yes, I am married,” continued Bourmin; “and this is the fourth year of my marriage, and I don’t know--who my wife is, where she is, or whether I shall ever see her.”

“What are you saying?” exclaimed Maria Gavrilovna. “How strange! But continue--I also have something to tell--do me the kindness, continue!”

“In the beginning of the year 1812,” resumed Bourmin, “I was making haste to rejoin my regiment at Wilna. Having arrived late one night at a station, I ordered horses to be harnessed immediately, when suddenly a terrible snow-storm broke out, and the station-master and the drivers advised me to wait. At first I agreed, but an incomprehensible restlessness took possession of me; it seemed to me as if some one were prodding me on. The storm, however, showed no signs of abatement. I could stand it no longer, ordered the horses to be harnessed, and proceeded on my journey in the very height of the storm. The driver took a notion into his head to drive along the river, which would shorten the journey by three versts. The banks were buried under snowdrifts; we drove past the place where we should have turned into the road, and so chance took us into strange parts. The storm did not quiet down. I saw a small light in the distance, and asked to be driven there. We arrived in a village; there was light in the wooden church. The church was open; within the outside enclosure stood several sledges; people could be seen walking about on the porch of the church. ‘This way! This way!’ cried a number of voices. I ordered my man to drive up closer. ‘What made you so late, pray?’ some one said to me. ‘The bride has fainted; the priest doesn’t know what to do; we were just getting ready to go home. Come quickly!’ Silently I sprang out of my sledge and entered the church, which was but dimly lighted by two or three candles. The girl was sitting on a bench in a dark corner of the church; another was rubbing her temples. ‘Thank God,’ said the latter, ‘you have made up your mind to come! You have almost killed her!’ The old priest approached me with the question, ‘Shall we begin?’ ‘Begin, begin, Father,’ I replied absently. The girl was raised on her feet. She seemed to me not at all bad-looking .... An incomprehensible, unforgivable heedlessness .... I stood beside her before the pulpit; the priest made haste; three men and the maid supported the bride, and were giving her all their attention. We were married. ‘Now kiss each other,’ they said to us. My wife turned towards me her pale face. I made a movement to kiss her .... She cried out, ‘Oh, it is not he, not he!’ and fainted away. The witnesses directed on me their frightened eyes. I turned round and left the church without the slightest interference, threw myself into my sledge, and cried out, ‘Let her go!’”

“My God!” cried out Maria Gavrilovna. “And you don’t know what became of your poor wife?”

“I don’t know,” answered Bourmin. “I even don’t know the name of the village where I was married. I can’t remember by what station I went. At that time I attached so little importance to my wicked lark, that, after leaving the church, I slept soundly and awakened only next morning, having reached by that time the third station. My servant, who was then with me, died in the campaign, so that I haven’t the slightest hope of finding her upon whom I played such a horrible joke, and who now is so terribly avenged.”

“My God! My God!” said Maria Gavrilovna, grasping his hand. “So, then, it was you! And you do not recognize me?”

Bourmin became pale ... and threw himself at her feet ....

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In _La Nouvelle Heloise_, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST

Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln, Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land of the Cossacks--in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously called.

When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He also contributed certain satires and ballads--all equally sophomoric. Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic studies.

Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast--romantic, dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too seriously--went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked for foreign parts--some say for America. But his heart failed him, and he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”

In this billet he remained for a year, chafing under the grinding routine, whose pressure at length compelled him to resign. He took up acting next, but his voice was not considered to be strong enough, and he then became a tutor in the families of the nobility in the Russian capital. Eventually he was appointed to a professorship of history in the University. His opening address was altogether brilliant, but, never a thorough student, he soon sounded the depths of his knowledge, and his students complained that he put them to sleep. That ended his teaching.

All these successive failures--for such they really were--drove him to the one means of self-expression: literature. He now published a few modest essays in the leading journals. These attracted some attention and brought about his introduction to Pushkin, who received him warmly, and advised him to write of the land and people that he knew so well. This wise counsel resulted in a collection of brilliant fictional sketches entitled “Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka” (1828-1831).

The most important of these is probably “St. John’s Eve.” It is instinct with the superstitious beliefs of his native province. The story is soon told, how that a young man, finely favored of body, falls in love with the daughter of his farmer-employer. His attentions having been discovered, he is flatly dismissed, whereupon a certain Mephistophelian character who has been doing tricksy things about the village offers to procure for the youth a plentiful supply of gold wherewith to win the favor of the girl’s father. This leads to a night meeting with a witch, accompanied with all the traditional manifestations. Under an incantation, the young man digs, finds a coffer, and is about to take out the gold, when the witch admonishes him that he first must perform a duty--thrust a knife into a large bag which stands before him. He refuses, and tears open the bag, when to his horror the form of his sweetheart’s little brother is disclosed. The demon-man pictures all that the youth is about to lose by his unwillingness to murder the child; and, thus tempted, he plunges in the knife.

Thereafter all things go according to promise--he has plenty of gold, wins the favor of the father, and marries the girl, but he can never get over his settled melancholy as he thinks upon his terrible deed. Eventually--quite in the manner of all the tales which involve the sale of the soul to the devil--he disappears and goes to his Master.

The whole story is told with a remarkable handling of the weird. Perhaps no tale of witchcraft was ever more vividly and brilliantly handled--it is typical, both in matter and manner, of the Ukraine.

And this leads me to say that those writers are most interesting who are the most distinctly national, and by “national” I mean those who temperamentally exhibit the typical characteristics of their land, who glory in its peculiar traits, and who in their writings picture and interpret its spirit.

Little Russia is neither north nor south, but, for reasons which the scientists may explain, displays quite marvellously the elements of both north and south in the two great seasons of the year. The few short summer months are saturated with flaring sunshine, causing the fields fairly to leap toward the farmer, full-handed with harvests. In these halcyon days the people revel in the miraculous transformation of nature, but when winter comes, the land of the Dnieper feels the sweep of icy northern winds quite as bitterly as do the dwellers on the Neva.

The population, too, is just as antipodal--in fact, it is really complex. Little Russia was at one time dominated by the Turks, who left many of their oriental traits among the people they had conquered; later, the Ukraine was subdued by Poland, which “transmitted something of its savage luxury to its vassals;” then Tartar hordes constantly swept across its borders and kept alive the joy of savage warfare; finally the Cossack leagues established themselves in the Ukraine and set up a wild chivalry upon whose picturesque exploits the Little Russian has ever since dwelt with prideful interest.

Gogol was born with a full measure of the Cossack spirit, descended, as he was, directly from this stock. His native Poltava is the very heart of the Cossack country, and Gogol’s grandfather, who was his first teacher, infused the young spirit with all the imagery and fanciful extravagance of Cossack folk-lore. His mother, too, of whom he speaks most tenderly in his “Confessions of an Author,” poured into his ears the legends of her land.

This primal literary equipment was bestowed upon a temperament that never ceased to be mystical, religious, and at the last melancholy--traits that are characteristic of almost every great Russian writer.

Gogol was also a humorist, but from the strangest reason, a reason which, unhappily, several other humorists shared with him: he wrote grotesque and laughter-provoking conceits to keep his mind from brooding on dark and depressing visions. Perhaps it may have been bodily weakness--for Gogol was small, weazened, unlovely to look upon, and often ill--or perhaps the result of an intensely religious nature turned in upon itself, but some cause constantly evoked in him the wildest hallucinations. Once while suffering the extremes of chilling penury in St. Petersburg, he contemplated suicide. He saw Death, and thus writes of the vision to his mother:

Mother, dearest mother, I know you are my truest friend.
Believe me, even now, though I have shaken off something
of the dread, even now, at the bare recollection of it, an
indescribable agony comes over my soul. It is only to you that
I speak of it. You know that I was in my boyhood endowed with
a courage beyond my years. Who, then, could have expected I
should prove so weak? But I saw her--no, I cannot name her--she
is too majestic, too awful for any mortal, not merely for me,
to name. That face, whose brilliant glory in one moment burns
into the heart; those eyes that quickly pierce the inner soul;
that consuming, all-penetrating gaze: these are the traits of
none that is born of woman. Oh, if you only had seen me in that
moment! True, I could hide myself from all, but how hide myself
from myself? The pains of hell, with every possible torture,
filled my breast. Oh, what a cruel condition! I think, whatever
the hell prepared for sinners may be, its tortures cannot equal
mine. No, that was not love. At least, I never heard of love
like that.... And then, my heart softened; I recognized the
inscrutable finger of Providence that ever watches over us, and
I blessed Him, who thus marvellously had pointed out the path
wherein I should walk. No; this being whom He sent to rob me of
quiet, and to topple down my frail plans, was no woman.... But
I pray you, do not ask me who she is. She is too majestic, too
awful, to be named.

A later series of short-stories and sketches appeared from 1831 to 1833 under the title of “Mirgorod.”

The first part of this collection constitutes one of the great romances of history--“Taras Bulba.” It is long enough to be a short novel, and, indeed, it is a novel in plot. Briefly, it tells the story of a mighty Cossack colonel, whose name gives the work its title. The romance opens with his two sons, Ostap and Andríi, coming home from school and meeting their Homeric old father and gentle, homely, and adoring mother. The father cannot be convinced that his boys have not been injured by their course at school until he engages in violent fisticuffs with Ostap. Almost immediately, to the heart-breaking of the old lady, who plays a small part in the whole scheme of her husband’s life, Taras Bulba personally takes his boys away to the great Cossack camp, where these corsairs of the steppes are gathered waiting for some chance of foray, or a war that may promise them spoils. The revelling scenes of the camp are pictured with tremendous verve, and the doughty, fear-despising, Jew-abusing Cossack is pictured to the life.

At length, a cause of war against the Tartars is cooked up and their city besieged. One night, Andríi, the younger son of Taras Bulba, is awakened by the gliding of a woman’s figure near his sleeping quarters. She proves to be the servant of a beautiful Tartar maiden, the daughter of the Governor of the beleaguered city, who with all the other inhabitants is dying of starvation. Andríi gathers some provisions and follows the old woman by a secret underground passage into the city, where he meets the young beauty, who had previously enchanted him with a single glance while he was on the march from his home to the Cossack camp. For the sake of her love he renounces his own people and fights tremendously against them in the subsequent battle. During the mêlée he meets his father, who slays him with a single blow and scarcely regrets the death of his traitorous son. Ostap is captured and carried away to a distant city. Knowing that his son is to be executed with torture, old Taras Bulba arises from his bed of many wounds and, after a long journey, makes his way to the foot of the scaffold in the public square. The boy suffers terribly, but is brave to the end.

But when they took him to the last deadly tortures, it seemed
as though his strength were failing. He turned his eyes about.

Oh, God! all strangers, all unknown faces! If only some of his
relatives were present at his death! He would not have cared
to hear the sobs and anguish of his feeble mother, or the
unreasoning cries of a wife, tearing her hair and beating her
white breast; he would have liked to see the strong man who
could refresh him with a wise word, and cheer his end. And his
strength failed him, and he cried in the weakness of his soul,
“Father, where are you? Do you hear all?”

“I hear!” rang through the universal silence, and all that
million of people shuddered in concert.

Force is its prime quality--physical, mental, religious. “In this story,” writes Professor Phelps, “the old Cossacks, centuries dead, have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and drinking, their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to their religious faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by passion for race and native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy”--which even tragedy cannot silence.

Gogol was a stylist of no mean order, as “Taras Bulba” well demonstrates. It is full of Homeric passages, whose pungent vigor even survives translation. And for sheer beauty what can surpass this, the opening passage of “Night in May”?

Do you know the beauty of the nights of Ukraine? The moon looks
down from the deep, immeasurable vault, which is filled to
overflowing and palpitating with its pure radiance. The earth
is silver; the air is deliciously cool, yet almost oppressive
with perfume. Divine, enchanting night! The great forest
trees, black, solemn, and still, reposing as if oppressed with
thought, throw out their gigantic shadows. How silent are the
ponds! Their dark waters are imprisoned within the vine-laden
walls of the gardens. The little virgin forest of wild cherry
and young plum-trees dip their dainty roots timidly into the
cold waters; their murmuring leaves angrily shiver when a
little current of the night wind stealthily creeps in to caress
them. The distant horizon sleeps, but above it and overhead
all is palpitating life; august, triumphal, sublime! Like the
firmament, the soul seems to open into endless space; silvery
visions of grace and beauty arise before it. Oh, the charm of
this divine night!

Suddenly life, animation, spreads through forest, lake, and
steppe. The nightingale’s majestic trill resounds through the
air; the moon seems to stop, embosomed in clouds, to listen.
The little village on the hill is wrapt in an enchanted
slumber; its cluster of white cottages gleams vividly in the
moonlight, and the outlines of their low walls are sharply
clear-cut against the dark shadows. All songs are hushed;
silence reigns in the homes of these simple peasants. But here
and there a twinkling light appears in a little window of some
cottage, where supper has waited for a belated occupant.

Gogol’s reputation as a humorist is strongly supported by his comedy “Revizor” (“The Inspector-General”). It is held to be the best comedy in the Russian language, and, while it brought out no immediate followers, it did arouse an immense amount of amused discussion at the time of its production.

The plot is simple enough. The officials of a provincial government office are looking for the arrival of an inspector, who is supposed to be coming _incognito_ to inspect their accounts. A traveller happens to arrive at the inn, and him they all suppose to be the dreaded official. Made anxious by their guilty consciences, each attempts to plead his own cause with the supposed judge, and no one hesitates to denounce a colleague in order to better his own standing. The traveller is at first amazed, but he is astute enough to accept the situation and pocket the money. The confusion grows until the crash of the final thunderbolt, when the real inspector arrives upon the scene.

In his “Confessions of an Author,” Gogol says: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the gay satire.”

The play was received with uproarious laughter all over the empire, but it is a singular comment upon the Russian character of the period to observe that, while it produced so great a furor that the Czar read it with tears of laughter and afterwards handsomely pensioned the author, it led to no official reforms.

A single specimen of its dry humor will illustrate. I quote from Turner’s “Studies in Russian Literature.”

The prefect is alarmed at the intelligence that his superior,
the revising [inspecting] officer, may be expected on any
day or at any hour, and begs the postmaster to open all the
letters that may in the meantime pass through his office.
That exemplary official informs him that such has always been
his custom, “not from any state reason,” as he takes care to
explain, “but from curiosity;” some of the letters he had
opened being so entertaining that he really could not find the
heart to send them on, but had kept them in his desk. When
reminded by a cautious colleague that this is likely to get
him into trouble with the public, the prefect cuts short the
remonstration by crying out, “Oh, _batoushka_ [a diminutive
term of endearment, meaning practically ‘little father’],
don’t you see this is a family affair of our own? What have the
public to do with it?”

Gogol founded the realistic school in Russia when he produced his masterpiece “Dead Souls,” a work sufficiently powerful to raise him at once to the pinnacle of literary fame. The idea of the book consists of the ingenious plan of a certain Tchitchikoff, who had lost his place in consequence of his misdemeanors in the custom-house having been discovered. In order to retrieve his fortune he visits different landed proprietors and buys from them the names of all their serfs who have died since the last census. Having thus established an ownership, he succeeds in borrowing large sums of money by giving the names of the dead serfs as security, since these dead souls have been legally made over to him. Naturally, the bankers think that they are making the loan upon good live collateral. What becomes of Tchitchikoff, we do not know, for Gogol destroyed the manuscript of the last section of his work--some say, in a fit of abstraction; others, under the influence of religious enthusiasm.

Upon this framework, the author has produced a series of remarkable descriptions--not pure realism, indeed, in our modern acceptation of the term, but rather akin to the realism of Dickens. Its truthful picture of Russian life, its repellent yet attractive qualities, its penetratingly keen analysis of character, caused Pushkin to exclaim when Gogol read him the first chapters of his book, “God, how miserable life is in Russia!”

Rarely do power and delicacy unite in a stylist as they do in Gogol. For the one, we may find an origin in his love for the sun-steeped and snow-blown plains of his native Cossack country--a love which constantly manifested itself in a real nostalgia, yet never brought him back for long from his wanderings, especially in Italy. But for the other, that delicate power of evocation--that compound of Loti’s subtlety of nature-sense, Hoffmann’s light fantasy, and Daudet’s airy narrative manner, half-humorous, half-pathetic--for this we must look to some inborn faculty. In any other writer we might trace this gossamer lightness to much commerce with the thoughts of women. But no woman ever entered largely into Gogol’s life, and when he died, on March 4, 1852, being not yet forty-three years of age, his mother--always his mother--was still his only love. His last days were shadowed by a growing ineptitude. His frail body weakened by religious fastings, his resources scattered by prodigal gifts, his mind enfeebled and depressed--his passing was sad, lonely, and almost unnoticed.

Gogol was the first great prose artist in Russian literature. In the tale and the sketch, in comedy, in romance, and in realism, he not only blazed new trails but penetrated so far into the unknown that others for a long time followed only at a distance. But follow they did, for, as one of his compatriot wits has observed, “We have all hidden under ‘The Cloak.’”

The masterpiece of fantastic narration and character delineation which follows in translation was published, under the title “Shinel,” in 1839, when Gogol was thirty. It is overlong, according to our modern standards, yet not as a piece of artistic workmanship. Its humor, its suggestiveness, its pathos, its whimsicality, all rank it with the world’s great short fictions.

THE CLOAK
_By Nikolai Gogol_

In the department of ------ but it is better not to name the department. Nothing is more annoying than all kinds of departments, regiments, law courts--in a word, any branch of public service. Nowadays things have come to such a pass that every individual considers all society offended in his person. Only lately, I have heard it told, a complaint has been received from a district chief of police--I don’t remember of what town--in which he sets forth clearly that the Imperial institutions are on the wane, and that the Czar’s sacred name is being uttered in vain; and in proof of his assertion he appended to the petition a voluminous romance, in which a district chief of police is made to appear at least once every ten pages, often in a hopelessly drunken condition. Therefore, to avoid all unpleasantness, it is better to designate the department in question as a _certain department_.

* * * * *

So, in a _certain department_ there served a _certain official_--in no way a remarkable official, at least in appearance; short of stature, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired, somewhat even dull-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion that is known as hemorrhoidal. Poor man--the St. Petersburg climate was to blame! As for his official rank--with us a man’s rank comes before all!--he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, a type which, as is well-known, has evoked the jests of many writers, following the praiseworthy custom of belaboring those who cannot bite back.

The official’s name was Bashmachkin. As is quite evident, it was derived from _bashmak_ [shoe]; but when, at what period, and in what manner, nothing is known. It is certain that his father and grandfather, and even brother-in-law--in fact, all the Bashmachkins--wore shoes, which were reheeled three times a year. His name was Akaki Akakievich. Perhaps it may seem to the reader as somewhat odd and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that, owing to the circumstances which led to it, any other name would have been impossible. This is how it happened.

Akaki Akakievich, if my memory serves me right, was born in the evening of the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of an official, and a very good woman, made all the proper preparations for baptizing the child. She lay on her bed opposite the door, and at her right hand stood the godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin by name, who served as the chief clerk of the Senate; and the godmother, Arina Semenovna Bielobrushkova, the wife of an officer, and a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names: Mokiya, Sossiya, and that of the martyr Khozdazat.

“No,” said the mother. “What a lot of names!”

So as to please her, they turned to another page in the calendar, and hit upon the names of Traphili, Dula, and Varakhasi.

“That sounds like a judgment!” muttered the sick woman. “What names! I truly never heard the like. Varadat and Varukh would have been bad enough, but Traphili and Varakhasi!”

They turned to another page. The result was: Povsikakhi and Vakhtisi.

“Enough,” said the mother. “I now see that it is fate. And since it is so, I think he had better be called after his father. Akaki was his father’s name, let the son too be Akaki.”

In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened, at which he wept and made a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would have been impossible.

When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as “Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, and whether he had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it.

The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him; they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he exclaimed:

“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”

And there was something strange in these words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was something in it which stirred one’s pity; so that, in fact, a young man, only recently appointed, who, following the example of others, permitted himself to make fun of him, suddenly stopped short, like one stunned, and from that time everything seemed to him to undergo as it were a transformation and to assume a new aspect. Some invisible power repelled him from his companions, with whom he had become acquainted on the assumption that they were well-bred, estimable men. And for a long time afterward, even in his merriest moments, there appeared before his eye the little official with the bald forehead, and his penetrating words: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” And in these touching words other words resounded: “I am thy brother!” At this thought the young man would cover his face with his hands, and many a time later in the course of his life he shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage uncouthness hidden under the delicate and cultivated worldliness, and, oh, God! even in the man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and honest.

It would be no easy matter to find another man who attended so faithfully to his duties. It is not enough to say that he labored with zeal; no, he labored with love. This copying presented to him a sufficiently varied and agreeable existence. Enjoyment showed on his face; he had his favorites among the letters, and when they came his way he was not himself; he would smile, wink, and work his lips, so that by looking at his face it seemed that you could read every letter which his pen put down. Were he rewarded according to the measure of his ardor, he would, to his own astonishment, have been made even a councillor of state. But his companions had their little joke about his work.

It would be untrue to say that _no_ attention was paid him. One kindly director, wishing to reward him for his long service, ordered him to be given something more dignified to do than mere copying; namely, he was requested to draw up some sort of report to another office of an already concluded affair; all that he was required to do was to change the heading, and to alter certain words from the first to the third person. This entailed him such labor that he began to perspire, to wipe his forehead, saying finally, “No, better give me copying.” From that time on he was let alone in his copying. Aside from this copying, nothing seemed to exist for him.

He gave no thought to his dress. His uniform was not green, but rather a reddish-mealy color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck, though not really long, seemed inordinately long as it projected from the collar, quite like the necks of the plaster cats with wagging heads that one sees carried upon the heads of foreign peddlers. And something always clung to his uniform; it was a bit of straw, or perhaps a thread. Besides, he had the unfortunate tendency, while walking in the street, to go past a window precisely at the moment when they threw out of it all kinds of rubbish; hence he always carried about on his hat pieces of melon-rind and articles of a similar nature. Not once in his life did he direct his attention upon what was happening daily in the street--quite unlike his colleague, the young official, whose glance was sufficiently far-reaching and keen to observe when any one’s trouser-straps became undone on the opposite sidewalk, which always called forth upon his face a smile of gratification. But Akaki Akakievich, when he happened to look at all, saw in everything only the clear, even strokes of his written lines, and only when, from goodness knows where, a horse’s head suddenly popped over his shoulder and sent a whole gust of wind from its nostrils into his face, did he begin to notice that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of the street.

On arriving home, he would sit down immediately at the table, gulp down quickly his cabbage-soup, eat a piece of meat with onion without noticing their taste, consuming everything--together with flies or anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.

Becoming conscious of the swelling of his stomach, he would rise from the table, take down a bottle of ink, and begin to copy papers which he had brought home. If such were wanting, he had the habit of making a special copy for his personal gratification, particularly if the paper happened to be remarkable, not indeed so much on account of the beauty of its style, but of its being addressed to some new or important person.

Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers--indeed, all the work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure--the more alert going to the theatre; those on the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this being the more frequent rule--visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps a dinner or an outing; in a word, at the very hour that all the officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about, repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party. Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send him for the next day’s copying?

So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and various other councillors, even for those who render counsel unto no one, and take none themselves.

St. Petersburg contains a powerful enemy to all those receiving four hundred rubles a year salary or thereabouts. This foe is none other than our northern cold, though otherwise it is said to be very healthy. At nine o’clock in the morning, precisely at the hour when the streets are filled with officials on their way to their departments, the cold begins to give them all, without discrimination, such powerful and biting nips upon their noses that the poor officials are at a loss where to hide them. At such a time, when even those occupying superior positions suffer the pain of cold in their foreheads, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected. Their only salvation lies in their ability to scamper quickly over five or six streets in their scant cloaks, and then warm their feet in the porter’s room; incidentally thawing out in the process all their faculties and abilities for official service which had become frozen on the way.

Akaki Akakievich had for some time felt the cold piercing his back and shoulders with unwonted vigor, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to cover the distance from his house to the department as quickly as possible. He finally thought to see whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. Examining the garment very carefully at home, he made a discovery: that in two or three places--to be precise, in the back and shoulders--it had become like a thin canvas; the cloth, in fact, was threadbare to the point of transparency, while the lining too had gone to pieces.

It should be mentioned that the cloak of Akaki Akakievich served as an object of ridicule to the officials; they even had deprived it of the dignified name of cloak and called it a cape. To confess the truth, it was of a rather curious construction; year by year its collar diminished more and more, because it served to patch other parts. The patching itself did not exhibit much sartorial art; and was, in fact, ill done and ugly. Seeing where the trouble lay, Akaki Akakievich decided to take the cloak to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere on the fourth floor, up a dark staircase, and who, notwithstanding his one eye and pockmarked face, busied himself, with fair success, mending trousers and frocks of officials and others; that is to say, when he was in sober condition and was not up to something or other.

It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but as it is customary that in a story the character of each person be clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf; he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again, he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice.

Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses--ascending the staircase, Akaki Akakievich was thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job, and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian! You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”

Akaki Akakievich felt unhappy because he had come precisely at the moment when Petrovich was angry; he preferred to deal with Petrovich when that individual was somewhat discouraged, or, as his wife expressed it, when “he had sunk down with brandy, the one-eyed demon!” In such a condition Petrovich, as a rule, readily came down in price, and thanked you profusely into the bargain. Afterwards, it is true, his wife would visit the customer, saying, with weeping eyes, that her husband had been drunk, and had charged too cheaply. Well, you would add a ten-copeck piece, and have the best of it at that. On the present occasion, however, Petrovich to all appearances was sober, and therefore gruff, uncommunicative, and in a condition to demand the devil only knows what a price! Akaki Akakievich felt this, and would gladly have beat a retreat, but it was too late. Petrovich had already fixed his one eye intently upon him, and Akaki Akakievich greeted him rather unwillingly:

“How are you, Petrovich?”

“And how are you, sir?” returned Petrovich, and slanted his gaze towards the hands of Akaki Akakievich, in order to see what sort of booty he had brought.

“Ah--here I am to you, Petrovich, this----”

It should be noted that Akaki Akakievich expressed himself chiefly by means of prepositions, adverbs, and particles of speech which have no meaning whatsoever. And if the matter was very difficult, he was in the habit of not completing his phrases, so that very often when his sentence began with the words, “This, in fact, is quite----” nothing would come of it, and he himself would forget to continue, thinking he had said what he had to say.

“Well, what is it?” asked Petrovich, and at the same time surveyed with his one eye the entire uniform from the collar to the cuffs, the back, the coat-flaps, and the button-holes; they were all familiar to him, for they were his own work. Such is the tailor’s habit; it is the first thing he does upon meeting one.

“Well, I here--this, Petrovich--about the cloak--the cloth, you see, everywhere in other places, is quite strong--it is a trifle dusty, and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place, just a little on the back, and a trifle too on the shoulder--bit worn through, and on this shoulder a bit--do you see?--and that’s all. Not much to do----”

Petrovich took the cape, spread it on the table, examined it for a long time, shook his head, and reached out his hand towards the window-sill for his round snuff-box, on the lid of which was the portrait of some general or other, whose identity was lost, however, because a finger had been thrust straight through the face and the hole glued over with a square bit of paper. Having taken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held up and examined the cape against the light, and again shook his head; then turned it, lining upwards, and once more shook his head. Again he removed the lid of his snuff-box, and, having applied some of its contents to his nose, he pocketed the case, and finally said:

“No, it is impossible to mend it. It’s a miserable garment!”

Akaki Akakievich’s heart sank at these words.

“And why impossible, Petrovich?” he asked in a voice almost that of an imploring child. “There’s nothing--only a bit worn-out at the shoulders. You surely have some pieces----”

“It’s easy enough to find pieces,” answered Petrovich, “but how is one to sew them on? The cloth is all rotten. Put a needle to it--and it goes apart.”

“Let it; you can put another patch there.”

“There’s nothing to lay the patches on; there’s no way of strengthening it--it is beyond all help. You may thank the stars that it’s cloth; or else a wind would come along and blow it away.”

“Well, yes, better strengthen it. How is it, in fact, this----”

“No,” said Petrovich decisively, “nothing can be done. It’s a thoroughly bad job. You’d better make gaiters out of it for cold winter days, because stockings are not sufficiently warm. The Germans invented them, in order to make more money.” (Petrovich took advantage of every opportunity to make thrusts at the Germans.) “As for the cloak, it’s quite evident you want a new one.”

At the word _new_ all grew dark before the eyes of Akaki Akakievich, and everything in the room began to go round. Only one object he saw clearly: the general with the mutilated face on the lid of Petrovich’s snuff-box.

“How a new one?” he asked, as if he were in a dream. “Why, I have no money for it.”

“Yes, a new one,” repeated Petrovich, with a savage calm.

“Well, and if I order a new one, how will it----?”

“That is, you want to know how much it would cost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’d have to put down a hundred and fifty,” said Petrovich, and compressed his lips significantly. He liked powerful effects, he liked to stun suddenly and completely, and then to look askance in order to see what kind of face the victim might make after such words.

“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki Akakievich, perhaps for the first time since his birth, for he had always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.

“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will mount up to two hundred.”

“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”

“No, it’s of no use--it will only be a waste of time and money,” answered Petrovich.

After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed. As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did not prove a traitor to sartorial art.

Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well, what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even imagined that the matter stood like that!” Another silence followed, after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow unexpected--it’s impossible--a kind of predicament!” Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction, altogether unconscious of the fact.