five versts?” exclaimed Chichikov, feeling his heart beating joyously. “Ought one, when leaving your gates, to turn to the right or to the left?”
“I should be sorry to tell you the way to the house of such a cur,” said Sobakevitch. “A man had far better go to hell than to Plushkin’s.”
“Quite so,” responded Chichikov. “My only reason for asking you is that it interests me to become acquainted with any and every sort of locality.”
To the shoulder of mutton there succeeded, in turn, cutlets (each one larger than a plate), a turkey of about the size of a calf, eggs, rice, pastry, and every conceivable thing which could possibly be put into a stomach. There the meal ended. When he rose from table Chichikov felt as though a pood’s weight were inside him. In the drawing-room the company found dessert awaiting them in the shape of pears, plums, and apples; but since neither host nor guest could tackle these particular dainties the hostess removed them to another room. Taking advantage of her absence, Chichikov turned to Sobakevitch (who, prone in an armchair, seemed, after his ponderous meal, to be capable of doing little beyond belching and grunting—each such grunt or belch necessitating a subsequent signing of the cross over the mouth), and intimated to him a desire to have a little private conversation concerning a certain matter. At this moment the hostess returned.
“Here is more dessert,” she said. “Pray have a few radishes stewed in honey.”
“Later, later,” replied Sobakevitch. “Do you go to your room, and Paul Ivanovitch and I will take off our coats and have a nap.”
Upon this the good lady expressed her readiness to send for feather beds and cushions, but her husband expressed a preference for slumbering in an armchair, and she therefore departed. When she had gone Sobakevitch inclined his head in an attitude of willingness to listen to Chichikov’s business. Our hero began in a sort of detached manner—touching lightly upon the subject of the Russian Empire, and expatiating upon the immensity of the same, and saying that even the Empire of Ancient Rome had been of considerably smaller dimensions. Meanwhile Sobakevitch sat with his head drooping.
From that Chichikov went on to remark that, according to the statutes of the said Russian Empire (which yielded to none in glory—so much so that foreigners marvelled at it), peasants on the census lists who had ended their earthly careers were nevertheless, on the rendering of new lists, returned equally with the living, to the end that the courts might be relieved of a multitude of trifling, useless emendations which might complicate the already sufficiently complex mechanism of the State. Nevertheless, said Chichikov, the general equity of this measure did not obviate a certain amount of annoyance to landowners, since it forced them to pay upon a non-living article the tax due upon a living. Hence (our hero concluded) he (Chichikov) was prepared, owing to the personal respect which he felt for Sobakevitch, to relieve him, in part, of the irksome obligation referred to (in passing, it may be said that Chichikov referred to his principal point only guardedly, for he called the souls which he was seeking not “dead,” but “non-existent”).
Meanwhile Sobakevitch listened with bent head; though something like a trace of expression dawned in his face as he did so. Ordinarily his body lacked a soul—or, if he did possess a soul, he seemed to keep it elsewhere than where it ought to have been; so that, buried beneath mountains (as it were) or enclosed within a massive shell, its movements produced no sort of agitation on the surface.
“Well?” said Chichikov—though not without a certain tremor of diffidence as to the possible response.
“You are after dead souls?” were Sobakevitch’s perfectly simple words. He spoke without the least surprise in his tone, and much as though the conversation had been turning on grain.
“Yes,” replied Chichikov, and then, as before, softened down the expression “dead souls.”
“They are to be found,” said Sobakevitch. “Why should they not be?”
“Then of course you will be glad to get rid of any that you may chance to have?”
“Yes, I shall have no objection to SELLING them.” At this point the speaker raised his head a little, for it had struck him that surely the would-be buyer must have some advantage in view.
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