Essential Novelists - Nikolai Gogol. Nikolai Gogol

he started to conduct his guests across a field which consisted mostly of moleheaps, and in which the party had to pick their way between strips of ploughed land and of harrowed. Soon Chichikov began to feel weary, for the terrain was so low-lying that in many spots water could be heard squelching underfoot, and though for a while the visitors watched their feet, and stepped carefully, they soon perceived that such a course availed them nothing, and took to following their noses, without either selecting or avoiding the spots where the mire happened to be deeper or the reverse. At length, when a considerable distance had been covered, they caught sight of a boundary-post and a narrow ditch.

      “That is the boundary,” said Nozdrev. “Everything that you see on this side of the post is mine, as well as the forest on the other side of it, and what lies beyond the forest.”

      “WHEN did that forest become yours?” asked the brother-in-law. “It cannot be long since you purchased it, for it never USED to be yours.”

      “Yes, it isn’t long since I purchased it,” said Nozdrev.

      “How long?”

      “How long? Why, I purchased it three days ago, and gave a pretty sum for it, as the devil knows!”

      “Indeed! Why, three days ago you were at the fair?”

      “Wiseacre! Cannot one be at a fair and buy land at the same time? Yes, I WAS at the fair, and my steward bought the land in my absence.”

      “Oh, your STEWARD bought it.” The brother-in-law seemed doubtful, and shook his head.

      The guests returned by the same route as that by which they had come; whereafter, on reaching the house, Nozdrev conducted them to his study, which contained not a trace of the things usually to be found in such apartments—such things as books and papers. On the contrary, the only articles to be seen were a sword and a brace of guns—the one “of them worth three hundred roubles,” and the other “about eight hundred.” The brother-in-law inspected the articles in question, and then shook his head as before. Next, the visitors were shown some “real Turkish” daggers, of which one bore the inadvertent inscription, “Saveli Sibiriakov^[19], Master Cutler.” Then came a barrel-organ, on which Nozdrev started to play some tune or another. For a while the sounds were not wholly unpleasing, but suddenly something seemed to go wrong, for a mazurka started, to be followed by “Marlborough has gone to the war,” and to this, again, there succeeded an antiquated waltz. Also, long after Nozdrev had ceased to turn the handle, one particularly shrill-pitched pipe which had, throughout, refused to harmonise with the rest kept up a protracted whistling on its own account. Then followed an exhibition of tobacco pipes—pipes of clay, of wood, of meerschaum, pipes smoked and non-smoked; pipes wrapped in chamois leather and not so wrapped; an amber-mounted hookah (a stake won at cards) and a tobacco pouch (worked, it was alleged, by some countess who had fallen in love with Nozdrev at a posthouse, and whose handiwork Nozdrev averred to constitute the “sublimity of superfluity”—a term which, in the Nozdrevian vocabulary, purported to signify the acme of perfection).

      Finally, after some hors-d’oeuvres of sturgeon’s back, they sat down to table—the time being then nearly five o’clock. But the meal did not constitute by any means the best of which Chichikov had ever partaken, seeing that some of the dishes were overcooked, and others were scarcely cooked at all. Evidently their compounder had trusted chiefly to inspiration—she had laid hold of the first thing which had happened to come to hand. For instance, had pepper represented the nearest article within reach, she had added pepper wholesale. Had a cabbage chanced to be so encountered, she had pressed it also into the service. And the same with milk, bacon, and peas. In short, her rule seemed to have been “Make a hot dish of some sort, and some sort of taste will result.” For the rest, Nozdrev drew heavily upon the wine. Even before the soup had been served, he had poured out for each guest a bumper of port and another of “haut” sauterne. (Never in provincial towns is ordinary, vulgar sauterne even procurable.) Next, he called for a bottle of madeira—“as fine a tipple as ever a field-marshall drank”; but the madeira only burnt the mouth, since the dealers, familiar with the taste of our landed gentry (who love “good” madeira) invariably doctor the stuff with copious dashes of rum and Imperial vodka, in the hope that Russian stomachs will thus be enabled to carry off the lot. After this bottle Nozdrev called for another and “a very special” brand—a brand which he declared to consist of a blend of burgundy and champagne, and of which he poured generous measures into the glasses of Chichikov and the brother-in-law as they sat to right and left of him. But since Chichikov noticed that, after doing so, he added only a scanty modicum of the mixture to his own tumbler, our hero determined to be cautious, and therefore took advantage of a moment when Nozdrev had again plunged into conversation and was yet a third time engaged in refilling his brother-in-law’s glass, to contrive to upset his (Chichikov’s) glass over his plate. In time there came also to table a tart of mountain-ashberries—berries which the host declared to equal, in taste, ripe plums, but which, curiously enough, smacked more of corn brandy. Next, the company consumed a sort of pasty of which the precise name has escaped me, but which the host rendered differently even on the second occasion of its being mentioned. The meal over, and the whole tale of wines tried, the guests still retained their seats—a circumstance which embarrassed Chichikov, seeing that he had no mind to propound his pet scheme in the presence of Nozdrev’s brother-in-law, who was a complete stranger to him. No, that subject called for amicable and PRIVATE conversation. Nevertheless, the brother-in-law appeared to bode little danger, seeing that he had taken on board a full cargo, and was now engaged in doing nothing of a more menacing nature than picking his nose. At length he himself noticed that he was not altogether in a responsible condition; wherefore he rose and began to make excuses for departing homewards, though in a tone so drowsy and lethargic that, to quote the Russian proverb, he might almost have been “pulling a collar on to a horse by the clasps.”

      “No, no!” cried Nozdrev. “I am NOT going to let you go.”

      “But I MUST go,” replied the brother-in-law. “Don’t try to hinder me. You are annoying me greatly.”

      “Rubbish! We are going to play a game of banker.”

      “No, no. You must play it without me, my friend. My wife is expecting me at home, and I must go and tell her all about the fair. Yes, I MUST go if I am to please her. Do not try to detain me.”

      “Your wife be—! But have you REALLY an important piece of business with her?”

      “No, no, my friend. The real reason is that she is a good and trustful woman, and that she does a great deal for me. The tears spring to my eyes as I think of it. Do not detain me. As an honourable man I say that I must go. Of that I do assure you in all sincerity.”

      “Oh, let him go,” put in Chichikov under his breath. “What use will he be here?”

      “Very well,” said Nozdrev, “though, damn it, I do not like fellows who lose their heads.” Then he added to his brother-in-law: “All right, Thetuk^[20]. Off you go to your wife and your woman’s talk and may the devil go with you!”

      “Do not insult me with the term Thetuk,” retorted the brother-in-law. “To her I owe my life, and she is a dear, good woman, and has shown me much affection. At the very thought of it I could weep. You see, she will be asking me what I have seen at the fair, and tell her about it I must, for she is such a dear, good woman.”

      “Then off you go to her with your pack of lies. Here is your cap.”

      “No, good friend, you are not to speak of her like that. By so doing you offend me greatly—I say that she is a dear, good woman.”

      “Then run along home to her.”

      “Yes, I am just going. Excuse me for having been unable to stay. Gladly would I have stayed, but really I cannot.”

      The brother-in-law repeated his excuses again and again without noticing that he had entered the britchka, that it had passed through the gates, and that he was now in the open country. Permissibly we may suppose that his wife succeeded in gleaning from him few details of the fair.

      “What