"To the right, is it?" With this dry question Selifan turned to the girl sitting next to him, and pointed with his whip to a rain-blackened road between bright green, freshened fields.
"No, no, I'll show you," the girl replied.
"Where, then?" said Selifan, when they came nearer.
"There's where," replied the girl, pointing with her hand.
"Eh, you!" said Selifan. "But that is to the right: she doesn't know right from left!"
Although the day was very fine, the earth had turned so much to mud that the wheels of the britzka, picking it up, soon became covered with it as with thick felt, which made the carriage considerably heavier; besides, the soil was clayey and extraordinarily tenacious. The one and the other were the reason why they could not get off the back roads before noon. Without the girl it would have been hard to do even that, because the roads went crawling in all directions like caught crayfish dumped out of a sack, and Selifan would have rambled about through no fault of his own.
Soon the girl pointed her hand at a building blackening in the distance, saying:
"There's the high road."
"And the building?" asked Selifan.
"A tavern," said the girl.
"Well, now we can get along by ourselves," said Selifan, "so home you go."
He stopped and helped her get down, saying through his teeth: "Ugh, you blacklegs!"
Chichikov gave her a copper, and she trudged off homewards, pleased enough that she had gotten to ride on the box.
Chapter Four
Driving up to the tavern, Chichikov ordered a stop for two reasons. On the one hand, so that the horses could rest, and on the other hand, so that he could have a little snack and fortify himself. The author must admit that he is quite envious of the appetite and stomach of this sort of people. To him those gentlemen of the grand sort mean decidedly nothing, who live in Petersburg or Moscow, spend their time pondering what they would like to eat the next day and what dinner to devise for the day after, and who will not partake of that dinner without first sending a pill into their mouths; who swallow oysters, sea spiders, and other marvels, and then set off for Karlsbad or the Caucasus. [9]No, those gentlemen have never aroused envy in him. But gentlemen of the middling sort, those who order ham at one station, suckling pig at another, a hunk of sturgeon or some baked sausage with onions at a third, and then sit down to table as if nothing had happened, whenever you like, and a sterlet soup with burbot and soft roe hisses and gurgles between their teeth, accompanied by a tart or pie with catfish tails, so that even a vicarious appetite is piqued— now, these gentlemen indeed enjoy an enviable gift from heaven! More than one gentleman of the grand sort would instantly sacrifice half of his peasant souls and half of his estates, mortgaged and unmortgaged, with all improvements on a foreign or Russian footing, only so as to have a stomach such as a gentleman of the middling sort has; but the trouble is that no amount of money, no estates with or without improvements, can buy such a stomach as the gentleman of the middling sort happens to have.
The weathered wooden tavern received Chichikov under its narrow, hospitable porch roof on turned wooden posts, resembling old church candlestands. The tavern was rather like a Russian peasant cottage, on a somewhat bigger scale. Carved lacy cornices of fresh wood around the windows and under the eaves stood out in sharp and vivid patches against its dark walls; pots of flowers were painted on the shutters.
Having gone up the narrow wooden steps into the wide front hall, he met a door creaking open and a fat old woman in motley chintzes, who said: "This way, please!" Inside he found all the old friends that everyone finds in little wooden taverns, such as have been built in no small number along the roadsides—namely: a hoary samovar, smoothly scrubbed pinewood walls, a triangular corner cupboard with teapots and cups, gilded porcelain Easter eggs hanging on blue and red ribbons in front of icons, a recently littered cat, a mirror that reflected four eyes instead of two and some sort of pancake instead of a face; finally, bunches of aromatic herbs and cloves stuck around the icons, dried up to such a degree that whoever tried to smell them only sneezed and nothing more.
"Do you have suckling pig?" With this question Chichikov turned to the woman standing there.
"We do."
"With horseradish and sour cream?"
"With horseradish and sour cream."
"Bring it here."
The old woman went poking about and brought a plate, a napkin so starched that it stuck out like dry bark, then a knife, thin-bladed as a penknife, with a yellowed bone handle, a fork with two prongs, and a saltcellar that simply would not stand upright on the table.
Our hero, as usual, entered into conversation with her at once and inquired whether she kept the tavern herself, or was there a proprietor, and how much income it brought, and whether their sons lived with them, and was the eldest son a bachelor or a married man, and what sort of wife he had taken, with a big dowry or not, and was the father-in-law pleased, and was he not angry that he had received too few presents at the wedding—in short, he skipped nothing. It goes without saying that he was curious to find out what landowners there were in the vicinity, and found out that there were all sorts of landowners: Blokhin, Pochitaev, Mylnoy, Cheprakov the colonel, Sobakevich. "Ah! You know Sobakevich?" he asked, and straightaway heard that the old woman knew not only Sobakevich, but also Manilov, and that Manilov was a bit more refeened than Sobakevich: he orders a chicken boiled at once, and also asks for veal; if there is lamb's liver, he also asks for lamb's liver, and just tries a little of everything, while Sobakevich asks for some one thing, but then eats all of it, and will even demand seconds for the same price.
As he was talking in this way, and dining on suckling pig, of which only one last piece now remained, there came a rattle of wheels from a carriage driving up. Peeking out the window, he saw a light britzka, harnessed to a troika of fine horses, standing in front of the tavern. Two men were getting out of it. One was tall and fair-haired, the other a little shorter and dark-haired. The fair-haired one was wearing a navy blue Hungarian jacket, the dark-haired one simply a striped quilted smock. In the distance another wretched carriage was dragging along, empty, drawn by a four-in-hand of shaggy horses with torn collars and rope harness. The fair-haired one went up the steps at once, while the dark-haired one stayed behind and felt around for something in the britzka, talking all the while with a servant and at the same time waving to the carriage coming after them. His voice seemed to Chichikov as if it were slightly familiar. While he was studying him, the fair-haired one had already managed to feel his way to the door and open it. He was a tall man with a lean, or what is known as wasted, face, and a red little mustache. From his tanned face one could deduce that he knew what smoke was—if not of the battlefield, then at least of tobacco. He bowed politely to Chichikov, to which the latter responded in kind. In the course of a few minutes they would probably have struck up a conversation and come to know each other well, because a start had already been made, and almost at one and the same time they had expressed their satisfaction that the dust of the road had been completely laid by yesterday's rain and the driving was now both cool and agreeable, when his dark-haired comrade entered, flinging his peaked cap from his head onto the table, and dashingly ruffling his thick black hair. Of average height and rather well-built, he was a dashing fellow with full, ruddy cheeks, teeth white as snow, and whiskers black as pitch. He was fresh as milk and roses; health, it seemed, was simply bursting from his face.
9
Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary), close to the German border in what is now the Czech Republic, is known for its salutary hot springs. The Caucasus also has hot springs, mineral waters, and mountain air.