Chichikov apologized for troubling her by his unexpected arrival.
"Never mind, never mind," said the mistress. "What weather for God to bring you in! Such turmoil and blizzard . . . You ought to eat something after your journey, but it's nighttime, no way to prepare anything."
The mistress's words were interrupted by a strange hissing, so that the guest was frightened at first; it sounded as if the whole room had suddenly become filled with snakes; but on glancing up he was reassured, for he realized it was the wall clock making up its mind to strike. The hissing was immediately followed by a wheezing, and finally, straining all its forces, it struck two, with a sound as if someone were banging a cracked pot with a stick, after which the pendulum again began calmly clicking right and left.
Chichikov thanked the mistress, saying that he needed nothing, that she should not trouble about anything, that apart from a bed he asked for nothing, and was only curious to know what parts he had come to and whether it was a long way from there to the landowner Sobakevich's place, to which the old woman said that she had never heard such a name and that there was no such landowner at all.
"Do you know Manilov at least?" said Chichikov.
"And who is this Manilov?"
"A landowner, dearie."
"No, never heard of him, there's no such landowner."
"What is there, then?"
"Bobrov, Svinyin, Kanapatyev, Kharpakin, Trepakin, Pleshakov."
"Are they rich men, or not?"
"No, my dear, none of them is very rich. There's some have twenty souls, some thirty, but such as might have a hundred, no, there's none such."
Chichikov observed that he had wound up in quite a backwater.
"Anyway, is it far to town?"
"Some forty miles, must be. What a pity there's nothing for you to eat! Wouldn't you take some tea, dearie?"
"Thank you, dearie. I need nothing but a bed."
"True, after such a journey one needs rest very badly. Settle yourself right here, dearie, on this sofa. Hey, Fetinya, bring a feather bed, pillows, and a sheet. What weather God has sent us: such thunder—I've had a candle burning in front of the icon all night. Eh, my dear, your back and side are all muddy as a hog's! Where'd you get yourself mucked up like that?"
"Thank God all the same that I only mucked myself up, I should be grateful I've still got all my ribs."
"Saints alive, what a fright! Maybe you should have your back rubbed with something?"
"Thank you, thank you. Don't trouble, but just order your girl to dry and brush my clothes."
"Do you hear, Fetinya!" said the mistress, addressing the woman who had come out to the porch with a candle, and who had now managed to bring a feather bed and plump it up with her hands, loosing a flood of feathers all over the room. "Take his coat and underwear and dry them first in front of the fire, as you used to do for the late master, and then brush them and give them a good beating."
"Yes, ma'am," Fetinya said, as she covered the feather bed and arranged the pillows.
"Well, there's your bed made up for you," said the mistress. "Good-bye, dearie, I wish you a good night. Is there anything else you need? Perhaps, my dear, you're used to having your heels scratched before bed? My late husband could never fall asleep without it."
But the guest also declined the heel scratching. The mistress went out, and he straightaway hastened to undress, giving Fetinya all the trappings he took off himself, over and under, and Fetinya, having for her part wished him good night as well, carried off this wet armor. Left alone, he gazed not without pleasure at his bed, which reached almost to the ceiling. One could see that Fetinya was an expert at plumping up feather beds. When, having brought over a chair, he climbed onto the bed, it sank under him almost down to the floor, and the feathers he displaced from under himself flew into every corner of the room. Putting out the candle, he covered himself with the cotton quilt and, curling up under it, fell asleep that same moment. He woke up rather late the next morning. The sun was shining through the window straight into his eyes, and the flies which yesterday had been quietly asleep on the walls and ceiling now all addressed themselves to him: one sat on his lip, another on his ear, a third kept making attempts to settle right on his eye, while one that had been so imprudent as to alight close to the nostril of his nose, he drew into the nose itself while he slept, which made him sneeze violently—a circumstance that was the cause of his waking up. Glancing around the room, he now noticed that the pictures were not all of birds: among them hung a portrait of Kutuzov and an oil painting of some old man with a red-cuffed uniform such as was worn in the time of Pavel Petrovich. [7]The clock again let out a hiss and struck ten; a woman's face peeked in the door and instantly hid itself, for Chichikov, wishing to sleep better, had thrown off absolutely everything. The face that had peeked in seemed somehow slightly familiar to him. He began recalling to himself: who might it be?—and finally remembered that it was the mistress. He put on his shirt; his clothes, already dried and brushed, lay next to him. Having dressed, he went up to the mirror and sneezed again so loudly that a turkey cock, who was just then approaching the window—the window being very near the ground—started babbling something to him suddenly and quite rapidly in his strange language, probably "God bless you," at which Chichikov called him fool. Going to the window, he began to examine the views that spread before him: the window opened almost onto the poultry yard; at least the narrow pen that lay before him was all filled with fowl and every sort of domestic creature. There were turkeys and hens without number; among them a rooster paced with measured steps, shaking his comb and tilting his head to one side as if listening to something; a sow and her family also turned up right there; right there, rooting in a heap of garbage, she incidentally ate a chick and, without noticing it, went on gobbling up watermelon rinds in good order. This small pen or poultry yard was enclosed by a wooden fence, beyond which stretched a vast kitchen garden with cabbages, onions, potatoes, beets, and other household vegetables. Strewn here and there over the kitchen garden were apple and other fruit trees, covered with nets to protect them from magpies and sparrows, the latter of which rushed in whole slanting clouds from one place to another. Several scarecrows had been set up for the same purpose, on long poles with splayed arms; one of them was wearing the mistress's own bonnet. Beyond the kitchen garden came the peasants' cottages, which, though built in a scattered way and not confined to regular streets, nevertheless showed, to Chichikov's observation, the prosperity of their inhabitants, for they were kept up: decrepit roof planks had everywhere been replaced by new ones; the gates were nowhere askew, and in those of the peasants' covered sheds that faced him he noticed here an almost new spare cart, and there even two. "It's no little bit of an estate she's got here," he said and resolved straightaway to get into conversation and become better acquainted with the mistress. He peeked through the crack in the door from which she had just stuck her head, and, seeing her sitting at the tea table, went in to her with a cheerful and benign look.
7
Pavel Petrovich is the emperor Paul I (1754-1801), son of Peter III (1728-62), whose life was cut short by the machinations of his wife, who thus became the empress Catherine II, called the Great (1729-96). Paul I also came to an untimely end, at the hands of conspirators headed by Count Pahlen. Marshal Mikhail Illarion-ovich Kutuzov (1745-1813), prince of Smolensk, after losing to Napoleon at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805, successfully led the defense of Russia against the French invasion of 1812.