In the department of but
it is better not to mention the department. There
is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments,
courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of
public service. Each individual attached to them
nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person.
Quite recently a complaint was received from a justice
of the peace, in which he plainly demonstrated that
all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs,
and that the Czar’s sacred name was being taken
in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint
a romance in which the justice of the peace is made
to appear about once every ten lines, and sometimes
in a drunken condition. Therefore, in order to
avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to describe
the department in question only as a certain department.
So, in a certain department there
was a certain official not a very high
one, it must be allowed short of stature,
somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted,
with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion
of the kind known as sanguine. The St. Petersburg
climate was responsible for this. As for his official
status, he was what is called a perpetual titular
councillor, over which, as is well known, some writers
make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy
custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.
His family name was Bashmatchkin.
This name is evidently derived from “bashmak”
(shoe); but when, at what time, and in what manner,
is not known. His father and grandfather, and
all the Bashmatchkins, always wore boots, which only
had new heels two or three times a year. His name
was Akakiy Akakievitch. It may strike the reader
as rather singular and far-fetched, but he may rest
assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that
the circumstances were such that it would have been
impossible to give him any other.
This is how it came about.
Akakiy Akakievitch was born, if my
memory fails me not, in the evening of the 23rd of
March. His mother, the wife of a Government official
and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for
having the child baptised. She was lying on the
bed opposite the door; on her right stood the godfather,
Ivan Ivanovitch Eroshkin, a most estimable man, who
served as presiding officer of the senate, while the
godmother, Anna Semenovna Byelobrushkova, the wife
of an officer of the quarter, and a woman of rare
virtues. They offered the mother her choice of
three names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should
be called after the martyr Khozdazat. “No,”
said the good woman, “all those names are poor.”
In order to please her they opened the calendar to
another place; three more names appeared, Triphiliy,
Dula, and Varakhasiy. “This is a judgment,”
said the old woman. “What names! I
truly never heard the like. Varada or Varukh
might have been borne, but not Triphiliy and Varakhasiy!”
They turned to another page and found Pavsikakhiy and
Vakhtisiy. “Now I see,” said the old
woman, “that it is plainly fate. And since
such is the case, it will be better to name him after
his father. His father’s name was Akakiy,
so let his son’s be Akakiy too.”
In this manner he became Akakiy Akakievitch. They
christened the child, whereat he wept and made a grimace,
as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor.
In this manner did it all come about.
We have mentioned it in order that the reader might
see for himself that it was a case of necessity, and
that it was utterly impossible to give him any other
name. When and how he entered the department,
and who appointed him, no one could remember.
However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds
were changed, he was always to be seen in the same
place, the same attitude, the same occupation; so
that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born
in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect
was shown him in the department. The porter not
only did not rise from his seat when he passed, but
never even glanced at him, any more than if a fly had
flown through the reception-room. His superiors
treated him in coolly despotic fashion. Some
sub-chief would thrust a paper under his nose without
so much as saying, “Copy,” or “Here’s
a nice interesting affair,” or anything else
agreeable, as is customary amongst well-bred officials.
And he took it, looking only at the paper and not observing
who handed it to him, or whether he had the right
to do so; simply took it, and set about copying it.
The young officials laughed at and
made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted;
told in his presence various stories concocted about
him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy;
declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding
was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head,
calling them snow. But Akakiy Akakievitch answered
not a word, any more than if there had been no one
there besides himself. It even had no effect
upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never
made a single mistake in a letter. But if the
joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged
his hand and prevented his attending to his work,
he would exclaim, “Leave me alone! Why do
you insult me?” And there was something strange
in the words and the voice in which they were uttered.
There was in it something which moved to pity; so
much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern
by the others, had permitted himself to make sport
of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about
him had undergone a transformation, and presented
itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force
repelled him from the comrades whose acquaintance
he had made, on the supposition that they were well-bred
and polite men. Long afterwards, in his gayest
moments, there recurred to his mind the little official
with the bald forehead, with his heart-rending words,
“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”
In these moving words, other words resounded “I
am thy brother.” And the young man covered
his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards,
in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how
much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness
is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness,
and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges
as honourable and noble.
It would be difficult to find another
man who lived so entirely for his duties. It
is not enough to say that Akakiy laboured with zeal:
no, he laboured with love. In his copying, he
found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment
was written on his face: some letters were even
favourites with him; and when he encountered these,
he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till
it seemed as though each letter might be read in his
face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been
in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his
great surprise, have been made even a councillor of
state. But he worked, as his companions, the
wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.
Moreover, it is impossible to say
that no attention was paid to him. One director
being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for
his long service, ordered him to be given something
more important than mere copying. So he was ordered
to make a report of an already concluded affair to
another department: the duty consisting simply
in changing the heading and altering a few words from
the first to the third person. This caused him
so much toil that he broke into a perspiration, rubbed
his forehead, and finally said, “No, give me
rather something to copy.” After that they
let him copy on forever.
Outside this copying, it appeared
that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought
to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green,
but a sort of rusty-meal colour. The collar was
low, so that his neck, in spite of the fact that it
was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged
from it, like the necks of those plaster cats which
wag their heads, and are carried about upon the heads
of scores of image sellers. And something was
always sticking to his uniform, either a bit of hay
or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack,
as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath
a window just as all sorts of rubbish were being flung
out of it: hence he always bore about on his hat
scraps of melon rinds and other such articles.
Never once in his life did he give heed to what was
going on every day in the street; while it is well
known that his young brother officials train the range
of their glances till they can see when any one’s
trouser straps come undone upon the opposite sidewalk,
which always brings a malicious smile to their faces.
But Akakiy Akakievitch saw in all things the clean,
even strokes of his written lines; and only when a
horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter,
over his shoulder, and sent a whole gust of wind down
his neck from his nostrils, did he observe that he
was not in the middle of a page, but in the middle
of the street.
On reaching home, he sat down at once
at the table, supped his cabbage soup up quickly,
and swallowed a bit of beef with onions, never noticing
their taste, and gulping down everything with flies
and anything else which the Lord happened to send
at the moment. His stomach filled, he rose from
the table, and copied papers which he had brought home.
If there happened to be none, he took copies for himself,
for his own gratification, especially if the document
was noteworthy, not on account of its style, but of
its being addressed to some distinguished person.
Even at the hour when the grey St.
Petersburg sky had quite dispersed, and all the official
world had eaten or dined, each as he could, in accordance
with the salary he received and his own fancy; when
all were resting from the departmental jar of pens,
running to and fro from their own and other people’s
indispensable occupations, and from all the work that
an uneasy man makes willingly for himself, rather than
what is necessary; when officials hasten to dedicate
to pleasure the time which is left to them, one bolder
than the rest going to the theatre; another, into
the street looking under all the bonnets; another wasting
his evening in compliments to some pretty girl, the
star of a small official circle; another and
this is the common case of all visiting
his comrades on the fourth or third floor, in two
small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some
pretensions to fashion, such as a lamp or some other
trifle which has cost many a sacrifice of dinner or
pleasure trip; in a word, at the hour when all officials
disperse among the contracted quarters of their friends,
to play whist, as they sip their tea from glasses
with a kopek’s worth of sugar, smoke long pipes,
relate at times some bits of gossip which a Russian
man can never, under any circumstances, refrain from,
and, when there is nothing else to talk of, repeat
eternal anecdotes about the commandant to whom they
had sent word that the tails of the horses on the
Falconet Monument had been cut off, when all strive
to divert themselves, Akakiy Akakievitch indulged in
no kind of diversion. No one could ever say that
he had seen him at any kind of evening party.
Having written to his heart’s content, he lay
down to sleep, smiling at the thought of the coming
day of what God might send him to copy
on the morrow.
Thus flowed on the peaceful life of
the man, who, with a salary of four hundred rubles,
understood how to be content with his lot; and thus
it would have continued to flow on, perhaps, to extreme
old age, were it not that there are various ills strewn
along the path of life for titular councillors as
well as for private, actual, court, and every other
species of councillor, even for those who never give
any advice or take any themselves.
There exists in St. Petersburg a powerful
foe of all who receive a salary of four hundred rubles
a year, or thereabouts. This foe is no other
than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very
healthy. At nine o’clock in the morning,
at the very hour when the streets are filled with
men bound for the various official departments, it
begins to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on
all noses impartially that the poor officials really
do not know what to do with them. At an hour when
the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions
ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes,
the poor titular councillors are sometimes quite unprotected.
Their only salvation lies in traversing as quickly
as possible, in their thin little cloaks, five or six
streets, and then warming their feet in the porter’s
room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications
for official service, which had become frozen on the
way.
Akakiy Akakievitch had felt for some
time that his back and shoulders suffered with peculiar
poignancy, in spite of the fact that he tried to traverse
the distance with all possible speed. He began
finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in
his cloak. He examined it thoroughly at home,
and discovered that in two places, namely, on the
back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze:
the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could
see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces.
You must know that Akakiy Akakievitch’s cloak
served as an object of ridicule to the officials:
they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and
called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular
make: its collar diminishing year by year, but
serving to patch its other parts. The patching
did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor,
and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the
matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would
be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the
tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up
a dark stair-case, and who, in spite of his having
but one eye, and pock-marks all over his face, busied
himself with considerable success in repairing the
trousers and coats of officials and others; that is
to say, when he was sober and not nursing some other
scheme in his head.
It is not necessary to say much about
this tailor; but, as it is the custom to have the
character of each personage in a novel clearly defined,
there is no help for it, so here is Petrovitch the
tailor. At first he was called only Grigoriy,
and was some gentleman’s serf; he commenced
calling himself Petrovitch from the time when he received
his free papers, and further began to drink heavily
on all holidays, at first on the great ones, and then
on all church festivities without discrimination,
wherever a cross stood in the calendar. On this
point he was faithful to ancestral custom; and when
quarrelling with his wife, he called her a low female
and a German. As we have mentioned his wife, it
will be necessary to say a word or two about her.
Unfortunately, little is known of her beyond the fact
that Petrovitch has a wife, who wears a cap and a
dress; but cannot lay claim to beauty, at least, no
one but the soldiers of the guard even looked under
her cap when they met her.
Ascending the staircase which led
to Petrovitch’s room which staircase
was all soaked with dish-water, and reeked with the
smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and is an
inevitable adjunct to all dark stairways in St. Petersburg
houses ascending the stairs, Akakiy Akakievitch
pondered how much Petrovitch would ask, and mentally
resolved not to give more than two rubles. The
door was open; for the mistress, in cooking some fish,
had raised such a smoke in the kitchen that not even
the beetles were visible. Akakiy Akakievitch passed
through the kitchen unperceived, even by the housewife,
and at length reached a room where he beheld Petrovitch
seated on a large unpainted table, with his legs tucked
under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet were
bare, after the fashion of tailors who sit at work;
and the first thing which caught the eye was his thumb,
with a deformed nail thick and strong as a turtle’s
shell. About Petrovitch’s neck hung a skein
of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay some old
garment. He had been trying unsuccessfully for
three minutes to thread his needle, and was enraged
at the darkness and even at the thread, growling in
a low voice, “It won’t go through, the
barbarian! you pricked me, you rascal!”
Akakiy Akakievitch was vexed at arriving
at the precise moment when Petrovitch was angry; he
liked to order something of Petrovitch when the latter
was a little downhearted, or, as his wife expressed
it, “when he had settled himself with brandy,
the one-eyed devil!” Under such circumstances,
Petrovitch generally came down in his price very readily,
and even bowed and returned thanks. Afterwards,
to be sure, his wife would come, complaining that
her husband was drunk, and so had fixed the price
too low; but, if only a ten-kopek piece were added,
then the matter was settled. But now it appeared
that Petrovitch was in a sober condition, and therefore
rough, taciturn, and inclined to demand, Satan only
knows what price. Akakiy Akakievitch felt this,
and would gladly have beat a retreat; but he was in
for it. Petrovitch screwed up his one eye very
intently at him, and Akakiy Akakievitch involuntarily
said: “How do you do, Petrovitch?”
“I wish you a good morning,
sir,” said Petrovitch, squinting at Akakiy Akakievitch’s
hands, to see what sort of booty he had brought.
“Ah! I to you,
Petrovitch, this ” It must be known
that Akakiy Akakievitch expressed himself chiefly
by prepositions, adverbs, and scraps of phrases which
had no meaning whatever. If the matter was a
very difficult one, he had a habit of never completing
his sentences; so that frequently, having begun a
phrase with the words, “This, in fact, is quite ”
he forgot to go on, thinking that he had already finished
it.
“What is it?” asked Petrovitch,
and with his one eye scanned Akakievitch’s whole
uniform from the collar down to the cuffs, the back,
the tails and the button-holes, all of which were well
known to him, since they were his own handiwork.
Such is the habit of tailors; it is the first thing
they do on meeting one.
“But I, here, this Petrovitch a
cloak, cloth here you see, everywhere,
in different places, it is quite strong it
is a little dusty, and looks old, but it is new, only
here in one place it is a little on the
back, and here on one of the shoulders, it is a little
worn, yes, here on this shoulder it is a little do
you see? that is all. And a little work ”
Petrovitch took the cloak, spread
it out, to begin with, on the table, looked hard at
it, shook his head, reached out his hand to the window-sill
for his snuff-box, adorned with the portrait of some
general, though what general is unknown, for the place
where the face should have been had been rubbed through
by the finger, and a square bit of paper had been
pasted over it. Having taken a pinch of snuff,
Petrovitch held up the cloak, and inspected it against
the light, and again shook his head once more.
After which he again lifted the general-adorned lid
with its bit of pasted paper, and having stuffed his
nose with snuff, closed and put away the snuff-box,
and said finally, “No, it is impossible to mend
it; it’s a wretched garment!”
Akakiy Akakievitch’s heart sank at these words.
“Why is it impossible, Petrovitch?”
he said, almost in the pleading voice of a child;
“all that ails it is, that it is worn on the
shoulders. You must have some pieces ”
“Yes, patches could be found,
patches are easily found,” said Petrovitch,
“but there’s nothing to sew them to.
The thing is completely rotten; if you put a needle
to it see, it will give way.”
“Let it give way, and you can
put on another patch at once.”
“But there is nothing to put
the patches on to; there’s no use in strengthening
it; it is too far gone. It’s lucky that
it’s cloth; for, if the wind were to blow, it
would fly away.”
“Well, strengthen it again. How will this,
in fact ”
“No,” said Petrovitch
decisively, “there is nothing to be done with
it. It’s a thoroughly bad job. You’d
better, when the cold winter weather comes on, make
yourself some gaiters out of it, because stockings
are not warm. The Germans invented them in order
to make more money.” Petrovitch loved,
on all occasions, to have a fling at the Germans.
“But it is plain you must have a new cloak.”
At the word “new,” all
grew dark before Akakiy Akakievitch’s eyes,
and everything in the room began to whirl round.
The only thing he saw clearly was the general with
the paper face on the lid of Petrovitch’s snuff-box.
“A new one?” said he, as if still in a
dream: “why, I have no money for that.”
“Yes, a new one,” said
Petrovitch, with barbarous composure.
“Well, if it came to a new one, how would it ?”
“You mean how much would it cost?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you would have to lay
out a hundred and fifty or more,” said Petrovitch,
and pursed up his lips significantly. He liked
to produce powerful effects, liked to stun utterly
and suddenly, and then to glance sideways to see what
face the stunned person would put on the matter.
“A hundred and fifty rubles
for a cloak!” shrieked poor Akakiy Akakievitch,
perhaps for the first time in his life, for his voice
had always been distinguished for softness.
“Yes, sir,” said Petrovitch,
“for any kind of cloak. If you have a marten
fur on the collar, or a silk-lined hood, it will mount
up to two hundred.”
“Petrovitch, please,”
said Akakiy Akakievitch in a beseeching tone, not
hearing, and not trying to hear, Petrovitch’s
words, and disregarding all his “effects,”
“some repairs, in order that it may wear yet
a little longer.”
“No, it would only be a waste
of time and money,” said Petrovitch; and Akakiy
Akakievitch went away after these words, utterly discouraged.
But Petrovitch stood for some time after his departure,
with significantly compressed lips, and without betaking
himself to his work, satisfied that he would not be
dropped, and an artistic tailor employed.
Akakiy Akakievitch went out into the
street as if in a dream. “Such an affair!”
he said to himself: “I did not think it
had come to ” and then after a pause,
he added, “Well, so it is! see what it has come
to at last! and I never imagined that it was so!”
Then followed a long silence, after which he exclaimed,
“Well, so it is! see what already nothing
unexpected that it would be nothing what
a strange circumstance!” So saying, instead
of going home, he went in exactly the opposite direction
without himself suspecting it. On the way, a
chimney-sweep bumped up against him, and blackened
his shoulder, and a whole hatful of rubbish landed
on him from the top of a house which was building.
He did not notice it; and only when he ran against
a watchman, who, having planted his halberd beside
him, was shaking some snuff from his box into his
horny hand, did he recover himself a little, and that
because the watchman said, “Why are you poking
yourself into a man’s very face? Haven’t
you the pavement?” This caused him to look about
him, and turn towards home.
There only, he finally began to collect
his thoughts, and to survey his position in its clear
and actual light, and to argue with himself, sensibly
and frankly, as with a reasonable friend with whom
one can discuss private and personal matters.
“No,” said Akakiy Akakievitch, “it
is impossible to reason with Petrovitch now; he is
that evidently his wife has been beating
him. I’d better go to him on Sunday morning;
after Saturday night he will be a little cross-eyed
and sleepy, for he will want to get drunk, and his
wife won’t give him any money; and at such a
time, a ten-kopek piece in his hand will he
will become more fit to reason with, and then the
cloak, and that ” Thus argued Akakiy
Akakievitch with himself, regained his courage, and
waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar
that Petrovitch’s wife had left the house, he
went straight to him.
Petrovitch’s eye was, indeed,
very much askew after Saturday: his head drooped,
and he was very sleepy; but for all that, as soon as
he knew what it was a question of, it seemed as though
Satan jogged his memory. “Impossible,”
said he: “please to order a new one.”
Thereupon Akakiy Akakievitch handed over the ten-kopek
piece. “Thank you, sir; I will drink your
good health,” said Petrovitch: “but
as for the cloak, don’t trouble yourself about
it; it is good for nothing. I will make you a
capital new one, so let us settle about it now.”
Akakiy Akakievitch was still for mending
it; but Petrovitch would not hear of it, and said,
“I shall certainly have to make you a new one,
and you may depend upon it that I shall do my best.
It may even be, as the fashion goes, that the collar
can be fastened by silver hooks under a flap.”
Then Akakiy Akakievitch saw that it
was impossible to get along without a new cloak, and
his spirit sank utterly. How, in fact, was it
to be done? Where was the money to come from?
He might, to be sure, depend, in part, upon his present
at Christmas; but that money had long been allotted
beforehand. He must have some new trousers, and
pay a debt of long standing to the shoemaker for putting
new tops to his old boots, and he must order three
shirts from the seamstress, and a couple of pieces
of linen. In short, all his money must be spent;
and even if the director should be so kind as to order
him to receive forty-five rubles instead of forty,
or even fifty, it would be a mere nothing, a mere drop
in the ocean towards the funds necessary for a cloak:
although he knew that Petrovitch was often wrong-headed
enough to blurt out some outrageous price, so that
even his own wife could not refrain from exclaiming,
“Have you lost your senses, you fool?”
At one time he would not work at any price, and now
it was quite likely that he had named a higher sum
than the cloak would cost.
But although he knew that Petrovitch
would undertake to make a cloak for eighty rubles,
still, where was he to get the eighty rubles from?
He might possibly manage half, yes, half might be
procured, but where was the other half to come from?
But the reader must first be told where the first
half came from. Akakiy Akakievitch had a habit
of putting, for every ruble he spent, a groschen into
a small box, fastened with a lock and key, and with
a slit in the top for the reception of money.
At the end of every half-year he counted over the
heap of coppers, and changed it for silver. This
he had done for a long time, and in the course of
years, the sum had mounted up to over forty rubles.
Thus he had one half on hand; but where was he to
find the other half? where was he to get another forty
rubles from? Akakiy Akakievitch thought and thought,
and decided that it would be necessary to curtail
his ordinary expenses, for the space of one year at
least, to dispense with tea in the evening; to burn
no candles, and, if there was anything which he must
do, to go into his landlady’s room, and work
by her light. When he went into the street, he
must walk as lightly as he could, and as cautiously,
upon the stones, almost upon tiptoe, in order not
to wear his heels down in too short a time; he must
give the laundress as little to wash as possible;
and, in order not to wear out his clothes, he must
take them off, as soon as he got home, and wear only
his cotton dressing-gown, which had been long and
carefully saved.
To tell the truth, it was a little
hard for him at first to accustom himself to these
deprivations; but he got used to them at length, after
a fashion, and all went smoothly. He even got
used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up
for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit,
by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak.
From that time forth his existence seemed to become,
in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as
if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he
were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented
to travel along life’s path with him, the friend
being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding
and a strong lining incapable of wearing out.
He became more lively, and even his character grew
firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind,
and set himself a goal. From his face and gait,
doubt and indecision, all hesitating and wavering traits
disappeared of themselves. Fire gleamed in his
eyes, and occasionally the boldest and most daring
ideas flitted through his mind; why not, for instance,
have marten fur on the collar? The thought of
this almost made him absent-minded. Once, in
copying a letter, he nearly made a mistake, so that
he exclaimed almost aloud, “Ugh!” and crossed
himself. Once, in the course of every month,
he had a conference with Petrovitch on the subject
of the cloak, where it would be better to buy the cloth,
and the colour, and the price. He always returned
home satisfied, though troubled, reflecting that the
time would come at last when it could all be bought,
and then the cloak made.
The affair progressed more briskly
than he had expected. Far beyond all his hopes,
the director awarded neither forty nor forty-five rubles
for Akakiy Akakievitch’s share, but sixty.
Whether he suspected that Akakiy Akakievitch needed
a cloak, or whether it was merely chance, at all events,
twenty extra rubles were by this means provided.
This circumstance hastened matters. Two or three
months more of hunger and Akakiy Akakievitch had accumulated
about eighty rubles. His heart, generally so
quiet, began to throb. On the first possible day,
he went shopping in company with Petrovitch.
They bought some very good cloth, and at a reasonable
rate too, for they had been considering the matter
for six months, and rarely let a month pass without
their visiting the shops to inquire prices. Petrovitch
himself said that no better cloth could be had.
For lining, they selected a cotton stuff, but so firm
and thick that Petrovitch declared it to be better
than silk, and even prettier and more glossy.
They did not buy the marten fur, because it was, in
fact, dear, but in its stead, they picked out the very
best of cat-skin which could be found in the shop,
and which might, indeed, be taken for marten at a
distance.
Petrovitch worked at the cloak two
whole weeks, for there was a great deal of quilting:
otherwise it would have been finished sooner.
He charged twelve rubles for the job, it could not
possibly have been done for less. It was all
sewed with silk, in small, double seams; and Petrovitch
went over each seam afterwards with his own teeth,
stamping in various patterns.
It was it is difficult
to say precisely on what day, but probably the most
glorious one in Akakiy Akakievitch’s life, when
Petrovitch at length brought home the cloak.
He brought it in the morning, before the hour when
it was necessary to start for the department.
Never did a cloak arrive so exactly in the nick of
time; for the severe cold had set in, and it seemed
to threaten to increase. Petrovitch brought the
cloak himself as befits a good tailor. On his
countenance was a significant expression, such as
Akakiy Akakievitch had never beheld there. He
seemed fully sensible that he had done no small deed,
and crossed a gulf separating tailors who only put
in linings, and execute repairs, from those who make
new things. He took the cloak out of the pocket
handkerchief in which he had brought it. The handkerchief
was fresh from the laundress, and he put it in his
pocket for use. Taking out the cloak, he gazed
proudly at it, held it up with both hands, and flung
it skilfully over the shoulders of Akakiy Akakievitch.
Then he pulled it and fitted it down behind with his
hand, and he draped it around Akakiy Akakievitch without
buttoning it. Akakiy Akakievitch, like an experienced
man, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovitch helped
him on with them, and it turned out that the sleeves
were satisfactory also. In short, the cloak appeared
to be perfect, and most seasonable. Petrovitch
did not neglect to observe that it was only because
he lived in a narrow street, and had no signboard,
and had known Akakiy Akakievitch so long, that he
had made it so cheaply; but that if he had been in
business on the Nevsky Prospect, he would have charged
seventy-five rubles for the making alone. Akakiy
Akakievitch did not care to argue this point with
Petrovitch. He paid him, thanked him, and set
out at once in his new cloak for the department.
Petrovitch followed him, and, pausing in the street,
gazed long at the cloak in the distance, after which
he went to one side expressly to run through a crooked
alley, and emerge again into the street beyond to
gaze once more upon the cloak from another point,
namely, directly in front.
Meantime Akakiy Akakievitch went on
in holiday mood. He was conscious every second
of the time that he had a new cloak on his shoulders;
and several times he laughed with internal satisfaction.
In fact, there were two advantages, one was its warmth,
the other its beauty. He saw nothing of the road,
but suddenly found himself at the department.
He took off his cloak in the ante-room, looked it
over carefully, and confided it to the especial care
of the attendant. It is impossible to say precisely
how it was that every one in the department knew at
once that Akakiy Akakievitch had a new cloak, and
that the “cape” no longer existed.
All rushed at the same moment into the ante-room to
inspect it. They congratulated him and said pleasant
things to him, so that he began at first to smile
and then to grow ashamed. When all surrounded
him, and said that the new cloak must be “christened,”
and that he must give a whole evening at least to
this, Akakiy Akakievitch lost his head completely,
and did not know where he stood, what to answer, or
how to get out of it. He stood blushing all over
for several minutes, and was on the point of assuring
them with great simplicity that it was not a new cloak,
that it was so and so, that it was in fact the old
“cape.”
At length one of the officials, a
sub-chief probably, in order to show that he was not
at all proud, and on good terms with his inferiors,
said, “So be it, only I will give the party instead
of Akakiy Akakievitch; I invite you all to tea with
me to-night; it happens quite a propos, as it is my
name-day.” The officials naturally at once
offered the sub-chief their congratulations and accepted
the invitations with pleasure. Akakiy Akakievitch
would have declined, but all declared that it was
discourteous, that it was simply a sin and a shame,
and that he could not possibly refuse. Besides,
the notion became pleasant to him when he recollected
that he should thereby have a chance of wearing his
new cloak in the evening also.
That whole day was truly a most triumphant
festival day for Akakiy Akakievitch. He returned
home in the most happy frame of mind, took off his
cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, admiring
afresh the cloth and the lining. Then he brought
out his old, worn-out cloak, for comparison.
He looked at it and laughed, so vast was the difference.
And long after dinner he laughed again when the condition
of the “cape” recurred to his mind.
He dined cheerfully, and after dinner wrote nothing,
but took his ease for a while on the bed, until it
got dark. Then he dressed himself leisurely,
put on his cloak, and stepped out into the street.
Where the host lived, unfortunately we cannot say:
our memory begins to fail us badly; and the houses
and streets in St. Petersburg have become so mixed
up in our head that it is very difficult to get anything
out of it again in proper form. This much is certain,
that the official lived in the best part of the city;
and therefore it must have been anything but near
to Akakiy Akakievitch’s residence. Akakiy
Akakievitch was first obliged to traverse a kind of
wilderness of deserted, dimly-lighted streets; but
in proportion as he approached the official’s
quarter of the city, the streets became more lively,
more populous, and more brilliantly illuminated.
Pedestrians began to appear; handsomely dressed ladies
were more frequently encountered; the men had otter
skin collars to their coats; peasant waggoners, with
their grate-like sledges stuck over with brass-headed
nails, became rarer; whilst on the other hand, more
and more drivers in red velvet caps, lacquered sledges
and bear-skin coats began to appear, and carriages
with rich hammer-cloths flew swiftly through the streets,
their wheels scrunching the snow. Akakiy Akakievitch
gazed upon all this as upon a novel sight. He
had not been in the streets during the evening for
years. He halted out of curiosity before a shop-window
to look at a picture representing a handsome woman,
who had thrown off her shoe, thereby baring her whole
foot in a very pretty way; whilst behind her the head
of a man with whiskers and a handsome moustache peeped
through the doorway of another room. Akakiy Akakievitch
shook his head and laughed, and then went on his way.
Why did he laugh? Either because he had met with
a thing utterly unknown, but for which every one cherishes,
nevertheless, some sort of feeling; or else he thought,
like many officials, as follows: “Well,
those French! What is to be said? If they
do go in anything of that sort, why ”
But possibly he did not think at all.
Akakiy Akakievitch at length reached
the house in which the sub-chief lodged. The
sub-chief lived in fine style: the staircase was
lit by a lamp; his apartment being on the second floor.
On entering the vestibule, Akakiy Akakievitch beheld
a whole row of goloshes on the floor. Among them,
in the centre of the room, stood a samovar or tea-urn,
humming and emitting clouds of steam. On the walls
hung all sorts of coats and cloaks, among which there
were even some with beaver collars or velvet facings.
Beyond, the buzz of conversation was audible, and
became clear and loud when the servant came out with
a trayful of empty glasses, cream-jugs, and sugar-bowls.
It was evident that the officials had arrived long
before, and had already finished their first glass
of tea.
Akakiy Akakievitch, having hung up
his own cloak, entered the inner room. Before
him all at once appeared lights, officials, pipes,
and card-tables; and he was bewildered by the sound
of rapid conversation rising from all the tables,
and the noise of moving chairs. He halted very
awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering what
he ought to do. But they had seen him. They
received him with a shout, and all thronged at once
into the ante-room, and there took another look at
his cloak. Akakiy Akakievitch, although somewhat
confused, was frank-hearted, and could not refrain
from rejoicing when he saw how they praised his cloak.
Then, of course, they all dropped him and his cloak,
and returned, as was proper, to the tables set out
for whist.
All this, the noise, the talk, and
the throng of people was rather overwhelming to Akakiy
Akakievitch. He simply did not know where he
stood, or where to put his hands, his feet, and his
whole body. Finally he sat down by the players,
looked at the cards, gazed at the face of one and
another, and after a while began to gape, and to feel
that it was wearisome, the more so as the hour was
already long past when he usually went to bed.
He wanted to take leave of the host; but they would
not let him go, saying that he must not fail to drink
a glass of champagne in honour of his new garment.
In the course of an hour, supper, consisting of vegetable
salad, cold veal, pastry, confectioner’s pies,
and champagne, was served. They made Akakiy Akakievitch
drink two glasses of champagne, after which he felt
things grow livelier.
Still, he could not forget that it
was twelve o’clock, and that he should have
been at home long ago. In order that the host
might not think of some excuse for detaining him,
he stole out of the room quickly, sought out, in the
ante-room, his cloak, which, to his sorrow, he found
lying on the floor, brushed it, picked off every speck
upon it, put it on his shoulders, and descended the
stairs to the street.
In the street all was still bright.
Some petty shops, those permanent clubs of servants
and all sorts of folk, were open. Others were
shut, but, nevertheless, showed a streak of light
the whole length of the door-crack, indicating that
they were not yet free of company, and that probably
some domestics, male and female, were finishing their
stories and conversations whilst leaving their masters
in complete ignorance as to their whereabouts.
Akakiy Akakievitch went on in a happy frame of mind:
he even started to run, without knowing why, after
some lady, who flew past like a flash of lightning.
But he stopped short, and went on very quietly as
before, wondering why he had quickened his pace.
Soon there spread before him those deserted streets,
which are not cheerful in the daytime, to say nothing
of the evening. Now they were even more dim and
lonely: the lanterns began to grow rarer, oil,
evidently, had been less liberally supplied.
Then came wooden houses and fences: not a soul
anywhere; only the snow sparkled in the streets, and
mournfully veiled the low-roofed cabins with their
closed shutters. He approached the spot where
the street crossed a vast square with houses barely
visible on its farther side, a square which seemed
a fearful desert.
Afar, a tiny spark glimmered from
some watchman’s box, which seemed to stand on
the edge of the world. Akakiy Akakievitch’s
cheerfulness diminished at this point in a marked
degree. He entered the square, not without an
involuntary sensation of fear, as though his heart
warned him of some evil. He glanced back and
on both sides, it was like a sea about him. “No,
it is better not to look,” he thought, and went
on, closing his eyes. When he opened them, to
see whether he was near the end of the square, he
suddenly beheld, standing just before his very nose,
some bearded individuals of precisely what sort he
could not make out. All grew dark before his
eyes, and his heart throbbed.
“But, of course, the cloak is
mine!” said one of them in a loud voice, seizing
hold of his collar. Akakiy Akakievitch was about
to shout “watch,” when the second man
thrust a fist, about the size of a man’s head,
into his mouth, muttering, “Now scream!”
Akakiy Akakievitch felt them strip
off his cloak and give him a push with a knee:
he fell headlong upon the snow, and felt no more.
In a few minutes he recovered consciousness and rose
to his feet; but no one was there. He felt that
it was cold in the square, and that his cloak was
gone; he began to shout, but his voice did not appear
to reach to the outskirts of the square. In despair,
but without ceasing to shout, he started at a run
across the square, straight towards the watchbox,
beside which stood the watchman, leaning on his halberd,
and apparently curious to know what kind of a customer
was running towards him and shouting. Akakiy
Akakievitch ran up to him, and began in a sobbing voice
to shout that he was asleep, and attended to nothing,
and did not see when a man was robbed. The watchman
replied that he had seen two men stop him in the middle
of the square, but supposed that they were friends
of his; and that, instead of scolding vainly, he had
better go to the police on the morrow, so that they
might make a search for whoever had stolen the cloak.
Akakiy Akakievitch ran home in complete
disorder; his hair, which grew very thinly upon his
temples and the back of his head, wholly disordered;
his body, arms, and legs covered with snow. The
old woman, who was mistress of his lodgings, on hearing
a terrible knocking, sprang hastily from her bed,
and, with only one shoe on, ran to open the door,
pressing the sleeve of her chemise to her bosom out
of modesty; but when she had opened it, she fell back
on beholding Akakiy Akakievitch in such a state.
When he told her about the affair, she clasped her
hands, and said that he must go straight to the district
chief of police, for his subordinate would turn up
his nose, promise well, and drop the matter there.
The very best thing to do, therefore, would be to go
to the district chief, whom she knew, because Finnish
Anna, her former cook, was now nurse at his house.
She often saw him passing the house; and he was at
church every Sunday, praying, but at the same time
gazing cheerfully at everybody; so that he must be
a good man, judging from all appearances. Having
listened to this opinion, Akakiy Akakievitch betook
himself sadly to his room; and how he spent the night
there any one who can put himself in another’s
place may readily imagine.
Early in the morning, he presented
himself at the district chief’s; but was told
that this official was asleep. He went again at
ten and was again informed that he was asleep; at
eleven, and they said: “The superintendent
is not at home;” at dinner time, and the clerks
in the ante-room would not admit him on any terms,
and insisted upon knowing his business. So that
at last, for once in his life, Akakiy Akakievitch
felt an inclination to show some spirit, and said curtly
that he must see the chief in person; that they ought
not to presume to refuse him entrance; that he came
from the department of justice, and that when he complained
of them, they would see.
The clerks dared make no reply to
this, and one of them went to call the chief, who
listened to the strange story of the theft of the coat.
Instead of directing his attention to the principal
points of the matter, he began to question Akakiy
Akakievitch: Why was he going home so late?
Was he in the habit of doing so, or had he been to
some disorderly house? So that Akakiy Akakievitch
got thoroughly confused, and left him without knowing
whether the affair of his cloak was in proper train
or not.
All that day, for the first time in
his life, he never went near the department.
The next day he made his appearance, very pale, and
in his old cape, which had become even more shabby.
The news of the robbery of the cloak touched many;
although there were some officials present who never
lost an opportunity, even such a one as the present,
of ridiculing Akakiy Akakievitch. They decided
to make a collection for him on the spot, but the
officials had already spent a great deal in subscribing
for the director’s portrait, and for some book,
at the suggestion of the head of that division, who
was a friend of the author; and so the sum was trifling.
One of them, moved by pity, resolved
to help Akakiy Akakievitch with some good advice at
least, and told him that he ought not to go to the
police, for although it might happen that a police-officer,
wishing to win the approval of his superiors, might
hunt up the cloak by some means, still his cloak would
remain in the possession of the police if he did not
offer legal proof that it belonged to him. The
best thing for him, therefore, would be to apply to
a certain prominent personage; since this prominent
personage, by entering into relations with the proper
persons, could greatly expedite the matter.
As there was nothing else to be done,
Akakiy Akakievitch decided to go to the prominent
personage. What was the exact official position
of the prominent personage remains unknown to this
day. The reader must know that the prominent
personage had but recently become a prominent personage,
having up to that time been only an insignificant person.
Moreover, his present position was not considered prominent
in comparison with others still more so. But
there is always a circle of people to whom what is
insignificant in the eyes of others, is important
enough. Moreover, he strove to increase his importance
by sundry devices; for instance, he managed to have
the inferior officials meet him on the staircase when
he entered upon his service; no one was to presume
to come directly to him, but the strictest etiquette
must be observed; the collegiate recorder must make
a report to the government secretary, the government
secretary to the titular councillor, or whatever other
man was proper, and all business must come before him
in this manner. In Holy Russia all is thus contaminated
with the love of imitation; every man imitates and
copies his superior. They even say that a certain
titular councillor, when promoted to the head of some
small separate room, immediately partitioned off a
private room for himself, called it the audience chamber,
and posted at the door a lackey with red collar and
braid, who grasped the handle of the door and opened
to all comers; though the audience chamber could hardly
hold an ordinary writing-table.
The manners and customs of the prominent
personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated.
The main foundation of his system was strictness.
“Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!”
he generally said; and at the last word he looked
significantly into the face of the person to whom
he spoke. But there was no necessity for this,
for the half-score of subordinates who formed the entire
force of the office were properly afraid; on catching
sight of him afar off they left their work and waited,
drawn up in line, until he had passed through the
room. His ordinary converse with his inferiors
smacked of sternness, and consisted chiefly of three
phrases: “How dare you?” “Do
you know whom you are speaking to?” “Do
you realise who stands before you?”
Otherwise he was a very kind-hearted
man, good to his comrades, and ready to oblige; but
the rank of general threw him completely off his balance.
On receiving any one of that rank, he became confused,
lost his way, as it were, and never knew what to do.
If he chanced to be amongst his equals he was still
a very nice kind of man, a very good fellow in many
respects, and not stupid; but the very moment that
he found himself in the society of people but one
rank lower than himself he became silent; and his
situation aroused sympathy, the more so as he felt
himself that he might have been making an incomparably
better use of his time. In his eyes there was
sometimes visible a desire to join some interesting
conversation or group; but he was kept back by the
thought, “Would it not be a very great condescension
on his part? Would it not be familiar? and would
he not thereby lose his importance?” And in
consequence of such reflections he always remained
in the same dumb state, uttering from time to time
a few monosyllabic sounds, and thereby earning the
name of the most wearisome of men.
To this prominent personage Akakiy
Akakievitch presented himself, and this at the most
unfavourable time for himself though opportune for
the prominent personage. The prominent personage
was in his cabinet conversing gaily with an old acquaintance
and companion of his childhood whom he had not seen
for several years and who had just arrived when it
was announced to him that a person named Bashmatchkin
had come. He asked abruptly, “Who is he?” “Some
official,” he was informed. “Ah, he
can wait! this is no time for him to call,”
said the important man.
It must be remarked here that the
important man lied outrageously: he had said
all he had to say to his friend long before; and the
conversation had been interspersed for some time with
very long pauses, during which they merely slapped
each other on the leg, and said, “You think
so, Ivan Abramovitch!” “Just so, Stepan
Varlamitch!” Nevertheless, he ordered that the
official should be kept waiting, in order to show
his friend, a man who had not been in the service for
a long time, but had lived at home in the country,
how long officials had to wait in his ante-room.
At length, having talked himself completely
out, and more than that, having had his fill of pauses,
and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable arm-chair
with reclining back, he suddenly seemed to recollect,
and said to the secretary, who stood by the door with
papers of reports, “So it seems that there is
a tchinovnik waiting to see me. Tell him that
he may come in.” On perceiving Akakiy Akakievitch’s
modest mien and his worn undress uniform, he turned
abruptly to him and said, “What do you want?”
in a curt hard voice, which he had practised in his
room in private, and before the looking-glass, for
a whole week before being raised to his present rank.
Akakiy Akakievitch, who was already
imbued with a due amount of fear, became somewhat
confused: and as well as his tongue would permit,
explained, with a rather more frequent addition than
usual of the word “that,” that his cloak
was quite new, and had been stolen in the most inhuman
manner; that he had applied to him in order that he
might, in some way, by his intermediation that
he might enter into correspondence with the chief
of police, and find the cloak.
For some inexplicable reason this
conduct seemed familiar to the prominent personage.
“What, my dear sir!” he said abruptly,
“are you not acquainted with etiquette?
Where have you come from? Don’t you know
how such matters are managed? You should first
have entered a complaint about this at the court below:
it would have gone to the head of the department,
then to the chief of the division, then it would have
been handed over to the secretary, and the secretary
would have given it to me.”
“But, your excellency,”
said Akakiy Akakievitch, trying to collect his small
handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that
he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency,
presumed to trouble you because secretaries are
an untrustworthy race.”
“What, what, what!” said
the important personage. “Where did you
get such courage? Where did you get such ideas?
What impudence towards their chiefs and superiors
has spread among the young generation!” The
prominent personage apparently had not observed that
Akakiy Akakievitch was already in the neighbourhood
of fifty. If he could be called a young man,
it must have been in comparison with some one who was
twenty. “Do you know to whom you speak?
Do you realise who stands before you? Do you
realise it? do you realise it? I ask you!”
Then he stamped his foot and raised his voice to such
a pitch that it would have frightened even a different
man from Akakiy Akakievitch.
Akakiy Akakievitch’s senses
failed him; he staggered, trembled in every limb,
and, if the porters had not run to support him, would
have fallen to the floor. They carried him out
insensible. But the prominent personage, gratified
that the effect should have surpassed his expectations,
and quite intoxicated with the thought that his word
could even deprive a man of his senses, glanced sideways
at his friend in order to see how he looked upon this,
and perceived, not without satisfaction, that his
friend was in a most uneasy frame of mind, and even
beginning, on his part, to feel a trifle frightened.
Akakiy Akakievitch could not remember
how he descended the stairs and got into the street.
He felt neither his hands nor feet. Never in his
life had he been so rated by any high official, let
alone a strange one. He went staggering on through
the snow-storm, which was blowing in the streets,
with his mouth wide open; the wind, in St. Petersburg
fashion, darted upon him from all quarters, and down
every cross-street. In a twinkling it had blown
a quinsy into his throat, and he reached home unable
to utter a word. His throat was swollen, and he
lay down on his bed. So powerful is sometimes
a good scolding!
The next day a violent fever showed
itself. Thanks to the generous assistance of
the St. Petersburg climate, the malady progressed more
rapidly than could have been expected: and when
the doctor arrived, he found, on feeling the sick
man’s pulse, that there was nothing to be done,
except to prescribe a fomentation, so that the patient
might not be left entirely without the beneficent
aid of medicine; but at the same time, he predicted
his end in thirty-six hours. After this he turned
to the landlady, and said, “And as for you,
don’t waste your time on him: order his
pine coffin now, for an oak one will be too expensive
for him.” Did Akakiy Akakievitch hear these
fatal words? and if he heard them, did they produce
any overwhelming effect upon him? Did he lament
the bitterness of his life? We know not,
for he continued in a delirious condition. Visions
incessantly appeared to him, each stranger than the
other. Now he saw Petrovitch, and ordered him
to make a cloak, with some traps for robbers, who
seemed to him to be always under the bed; and cried
every moment to the landlady to pull one of them from
under his coverlet. Then he inquired why his old
mantle hung before him when he had a new cloak.
Next he fancied that he was standing before the prominent
person, listening to a thorough setting-down, and saying,
“Forgive me, your excellency!” but at last
he began to curse, uttering the most horrible words,
so that his aged landlady crossed herself, never in
her life having heard anything of the kind from him,
the more so as those words followed directly after
the words “your excellency.” Later
on he talked utter nonsense, of which nothing could
be made: all that was evident being, that his
incoherent words and thoughts hovered ever about one
thing, his cloak.
At length poor Akakiy Akakievitch
breathed his last. They sealed up neither his
room nor his effects, because, in the first place,
there were no heirs, and, in the second, there was
very little to inherit beyond a bundle of goose-quills,
a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks,
two or three buttons which had burst off his trousers,
and the mantle already known to the reader. To
whom all this fell, God knows. I confess that
the person who told me this tale took no interest
in the matter. They carried Akakiy Akakievitch
out and buried him.
And St. Petersburg was left without
Akakiy Akakievitch, as though he had never lived there.
A being disappeared who was protected by none, dear
to none, interesting to none, and who never even attracted
to himself the attention of those students of human
nature who omit no opportunity of thrusting a pin
through a common fly, and examining it under the microscope.
A being who bore meekly the jibes of the department,
and went to his grave without having done one unusual
deed, but to whom, nevertheless, at the close of his
life appeared a bright visitant in the form of a cloak,
which momentarily cheered his poor life, and upon whom,
thereafter, an intolerable misfortune descended, just
as it descends upon the mighty of this world!
Several days after his death, the
porter was sent from the department to his lodgings,
with an order for him to present himself there immediately;
the chief commanding it. But the porter had to
return unsuccessful, with the answer that he could
not come; and to the question, “Why?”
replied, “Well, because he is dead! he was buried
four days ago.” In this manner did they
hear of Akakiy Akakievitch’s death at the department,
and the next day a new official sat in his place, with
a handwriting by no means so upright, but more inclined
and slanting.
But who could have imagined that this
was not really the end of Akakiy Akakievitch, that
he was destined to raise a commotion after death,
as if in compensation for his utterly insignificant
life? But so it happened, and our poor story
unexpectedly gains a fantastic ending.
A rumour suddenly spread through St.
Petersburg that a dead man had taken to appearing
on the Kalinkin Bridge and its vicinity at night in
the form of a tchinovnik seeking a stolen cloak, and
that, under the pretext of its being the stolen cloak,
he dragged, without regard to rank or calling, every
one’s cloak from his shoulders, be it cat-skin,
beaver, fox, bear, sable; in a word, every sort of
fur and skin which men adopted for their covering.
One of the department officials saw the dead man with
his own eyes and immediately recognised in him Akakiy
Akakievitch. This, however, inspired him with
such terror that he ran off with all his might, and
therefore did not scan the dead man closely, but only
saw how the latter threatened him from afar with his
finger. Constant complaints poured in from all
quarters that the backs and shoulders, not only of
titular but even of court councillors, were exposed
to the danger of a cold on account of the frequent
dragging off of their cloaks.
Arrangements were made by the police
to catch the corpse, alive or dead, at any cost, and
punish him as an example to others in the most severe
manner. In this they nearly succeeded; for a watchman,
on guard in Kirushkin Alley, caught the corpse by
the collar on the very scene of his evil deeds, when
attempting to pull off the frieze coat of a retired
musician. Having seized him by the collar, he
summoned, with a shout, two of his comrades, whom
he enjoined to hold him fast while he himself felt
for a moment in his boot, in order to draw out his
snuff-box and refresh his frozen nose. But the
snuff was of a sort which even a corpse could not
endure. The watchman having closed his right nostril
with his finger, had no sooner succeeded in holding
half a handful up to the left than the corpse sneezed
so violently that he completely filled the eyes of
all three. While they raised their hands to wipe
them, the dead man vanished completely, so that they
positively did not know whether they had actually
had him in their grip at all. Thereafter the watchmen
conceived such a terror of dead men that they were
afraid even to seize the living, and only screamed
from a distance, “Hey, there! go your way!”
So the dead tchinovnik began to appear even beyond
the Kalinkin Bridge, causing no little terror to all
timid people.
But we have totally neglected that
certain prominent personage who may really be considered
as the cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true
history. First of all, justice compels us to say
that after the departure of poor, annihilated Akakiy
Akakievitch he felt something like remorse. Suffering
was unpleasant to him, for his heart was accessible
to many good impulses, in spite of the fact that his
rank often prevented his showing his true self.
As soon as his friend had left his cabinet, he began
to think about poor Akakiy Akakievitch. And from
that day forth, poor Akakiy Akakievitch, who could
not bear up under an official reprimand, recurred
to his mind almost every day. The thought troubled
him to such an extent that a week later he even resolved
to send an official to him, to learn whether he really
could assist him; and when it was reported to him
that Akakiy Akakievitch had died suddenly of fever,
he was startled, hearkened to the reproaches of his
conscience, and was out of sorts for the whole day.
Wishing to divert his mind in some
way, and drive away the disagreeable impression, he
set out that evening for one of his friends’
houses, where he found quite a large party assembled.
What was better, nearly every one was of the same
rank as himself, so that he need not feel in the least
constrained. This had a marvellous effect upon
his mental state. He grew expansive, made himself
agreeable in conversation, in short, he passed a delightful
evening. After supper he drank a couple of glasses
of champagne not a bad recipe for cheerfulness,
as every one knows. The champagne inclined him
to various adventures; and he determined not to return
home, but to go and see a certain well-known lady
of German extraction, Karolina Ivanovna, a lady, it
appears, with whom he was on a very friendly footing.
It must be mentioned that the prominent
personage was no longer a young man, but a good husband
and respected father of a family. Two sons, one
of whom was already in the service, and a good-looking,
sixteen-year-old daughter, with a rather retrousse
but pretty little nose, came every morning to kiss
his hand and say, “Bonjour, papa.”
His wife, a still fresh and good-looking woman, first
gave him her hand to kiss, and then, reversing the
procedure, kissed his. But the prominent personage,
though perfectly satisfied in his domestic relations,
considered it stylish to have a friend in another
quarter of the city. This friend was scarcely
prettier or younger than his wife; but there are such
puzzles in the world, and it is not our place to judge
them. So the important personage descended the
stairs, stepped into his sledge, said to the coachman,
“To Karolina Ivanovna’s,” and, wrapping
himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, found himself
in that delightful frame of mind than which a Russian
can conceive no better, namely, when you think of nothing
yourself, yet when the thoughts creep into your mind
of their own accord, each more agreeable than the
other, giving you no trouble either to drive them
away or seek them. Fully satisfied, he recalled
all the gay features of the evening just passed, and
all the mots which had made the little circle laugh.
Many of them he repeated in a low voice, and found
them quite as funny as before; so it is not surprising
that he should laugh heartily at them. Occasionally,
however, he was interrupted by gusts of wind, which,
coming suddenly, God knows whence or why, cut his
face, drove masses of snow into it, filled out his
cloak-collar like a sail, or suddenly blew it over
his head with supernatural force, and thus caused
him constant trouble to disentangle himself.
Suddenly the important personage felt
some one clutch him firmly by the collar. Turning
round, he perceived a man of short stature, in an old,
worn uniform, and recognised, not without terror, Akakiy
Akakievitch. The official’s face was white
as snow, and looked just like a corpse’s.
But the horror of the important personage transcended
all bounds when he saw the dead man’s mouth
open, and, with a terrible odour of the grave, gave
vent to the following remarks: “Ah, here
you are at last! I have you, that by
the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble
about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your
own.”
The pallid prominent personage almost
died of fright. Brave as he was in the office
and in the presence of inferiors generally, and although,
at the sight of his manly form and appearance, every
one said, “Ugh! how much character he had!”
at this crisis, he, like many possessed of an heroic
exterior, experienced such terror, that, not without
cause, he began to fear an attack of illness.
He flung his cloak hastily from his shoulders and
shouted to his coachman in an unnatural voice, “Home
at full speed!” The coachman, hearing the tone
which is generally employed at critical moments and
even accompanied by something much more tangible,
drew his head down between his shoulders in case of
an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on like
an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the
prominent personage was at the entrance of his own
house. Pale, thoroughly scared, and cloakless,
he went home instead of to Karolina Ivanovna’s,
reached his room somehow or other, and passed the
night in the direst distress; so that the next morning
over their tea his daughter said, “You are very
pale to-day, papa.” But papa remained silent,
and said not a word to any one of what had happened
to him, where he had been, or where he had intended
to go.
This occurrence made a deep impression
upon him. He even began to say: “How
dare you? do you realise who stands before you?”
less frequently to the under-officials, and if he
did utter the words, it was only after having first
learned the bearings of the matter. But the most
noteworthy point was, that from that day forward the
apparition of the dead tchinovnik ceased to be seen.
Evidently the prominent personage’s cloak just
fitted his shoulders; at all events, no more instances
of his dragging cloaks from people’s shoulders
were heard of. But many active and apprehensive
persons could by no means reassure themselves, and
asserted that the dead tchinovnik still showed himself
in distant parts of the city.
In fact, one watchman in Kolomna saw
with his own eyes the apparition come from behind
a house. But being rather weak of body, he dared
not arrest him, but followed him in the dark, until,
at length, the apparition looked round, paused, and
inquired, “What do you want?” at the same
time showing a fist such as is never seen on living
men. The watchman said, “It’s of
no consequence,” and turned back instantly.
But the apparition was much too tall, wore huge moustaches,
and, directing its steps apparently towards the Obukhoff
bridge, disappeared in the darkness of the night.