Dead Souls

Chichikov walked a lot. Sometimes he directed his steps over the flat top of the heights, with a view of the valleys spreading out below, where flooding rivers left big lakes everywhere; or else he would go into the ravines, where the trees, barely beginning to be adorned with leaves, were laden with birds' nests—and be deafened by the cawing of crows, the chatter of jackdaws, and the croaking of rooks that darkened the sky with their crisscross flight; or else he went down to the water meadows and burst dams, to watch the water rush with a deafening noise and fall upon the wheels of a mill; or else he made his way further to the pier, from which, borne along by the current, the first boats rushed, laden with peas, oats, barley, and wheat; or he set out for the first spring work in the fields, to watch the freshly ploughed furrow cutting a black stripe through the green, or the deft sower casting handfuls of seed evenly, accurately, not letting a single seed fall to one side or the other. He had discussions with the steward, the muzhiks, the miller, talking of what and of how, and of whether the harvest would be good, and how the ploughing was going, and how much grain they sell, and what they charged for grinding flour in the spring and fall, and what was the name of each muzhik, and who was related to whom, and where he had bought his cow, and what he fed his sow on—in short, everything. He also found out how many muzhiks had died. Not many, it turned out. Being an intelligent man, he noticed at once that Andrei Ivanovich's estate was not in good shape. Everywhere there was negligence, carelessness, theft, and not a little drunkenness. And mentally he said to himself: "What a brute Tentetnikov is, though! To so neglect an estate that could bring in at least fifty thousand a year!" And, unable to restrain his righteous indignation, he kept repeating: "Decidedly a brute!" More than once in the middle of these walks the thought occurred to him of himself becoming someday—that is, of course, not now but later on, when the main business was taken care of, and the means were in hand—of himself becoming the peaceful owner of such an estate. Here he usually pictured a young mistress, a fresh, fair-skinned wench, perhaps even of merchant class, though nonetheless educated and brought up like a gentlewoman—so that she also understood music, for, while music is, of course, not the main thing, still, since that is the custom, why go against the general opinion? He also pictured the younger generation that was to perpetuate the name of the Chichikovs: a frolicsome lad and a beautiful daughter, or even two boys, two or even three girls, so that everyone would know that he had indeed lived and existed, and had not merely passed over the earth like some shadow or ghost—so that there would be no shame before the fatherland. He even pictured that a certain addition to his rank would not be amiss: state councillor, for instance, is a venerable and respectable rank . . . And much came into his head of the sort that so often takes a man away from the dull present moment, frets him, teases him, stirs him, and gives him pleasure even when he himself is sure that it will never come true.

Pavel Ivanovich's servants also liked the estate. Like him, they made themselves at home there. Petrushka very soon made friends with the butler Grigory though at first they both put on airs and blustered before each other insufferably. Petrushka threw dust in Grigory's eyes by saying that he had been in Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Nizhni Novgorod, and even Moscow; Grigory immediately pulled him up short with Petersburg, where Petrushka had never been. The latter tried to rise and get his own back with the considerable remoteness of the places he had been; but Grigory named a place for him such as could not be found on any map, and reckoned it was over twenty thousand miles away, so that Petrushka stood like an owl, gaping, and was immediately laughed at by all the servants. However, matters ended between them in the closest friendship: bald Uncle Pimen kept a well-known pot-house at the end of the village, called "Akulka"; in this establishment they could be seen at all hours of the day. There they became fast friends, or what is known among the people as—pot-house fixtures.