THE CLOAK
By Nikolai Gogol
In the department of ——— but it is better not to name the department. Nothing is more annoying than all kinds of departments, regiments, law courts—in a word, any branch of public service. Nowadays things have come to such a pass that every individual considers all society offended in his person. Only lately, I have heard it told, a complaint has been received from a district chief of police—I don’t remember of what town—in which he sets forth clearly that the Imperial institutions are on the wane, and that the Czar’s sacred name is being uttered in vain; and in proof of his assertion he appended to the petition a voluminous romance, in which a district chief of police is made to appear at least once every ten pages, often in a hopelessly drunken condition. Therefore, to avoid all unpleasantness, it is better to designate the department in question as acertain department.
So, in acertain departmentthere served acertain official—in no way a remarkable official,at least in appearance; short of stature, somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired, somewhat even dull-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion that is known as hemorrhoidal. Poor man—the St. Petersburg climate was to blame! As for his official rank—with us a man’s rank comes before all!—he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, a type which, as is well-known, has evoked the jests of many writers, following the praiseworthy custom of belaboring those who cannot bite back.
The official’s name was Bashmachkin. As is quite evident, it was derived frombashmak[shoe]; but when, at what period, and in what manner, nothing is known. It is certain that his father and grandfather, and even brother-in-law—in fact, all the Bashmachkins—wore shoes, which were reheeled three times a year. His name was Akaki Akakievich. Perhaps it may seem to the reader as somewhat odd and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that, owing to the circumstances which led to it, any other name would have been impossible. This is how it happened.
Akaki Akakievich, if my memory serves me right, was born in the evening of the 23rd ofMarch. His mother, the wife of an official, and a very good woman, made all the proper preparations for baptizing the child. She lay on her bed opposite the door, and at her right hand stood the godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin by name, who served as the chief clerk of the Senate; and the godmother, Arina Semenovna Bielobrushkova, the wife of an officer, and a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names: Mokiya, Sossiya, and that of the martyr Khozdazat.
“No,” said the mother. “What a lot of names!”
So as to please her, they turned to another page in the calendar, and hit upon the names of Traphili, Dula, and Varakhasi.
“That sounds like a judgment!” muttered the sick woman. “What names! I truly never heard the like. Varadat and Varukh would have been bad enough, but Traphili and Varakhasi!”
They turned to another page. The result was: Povsikakhi and Vakhtisi.
“Enough,” said the mother. “I now see that it is fate. And since it is so, I think he had better be called after his father. Akaki was his father’s name, let the son too be Akaki.”
In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened, at which he wept andmade a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would have been impossible.
When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as “Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, andwhether he had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it.
The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him; they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he exclaimed:
“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”
And there was something strange in these words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was something in it which stirred one’s pity; so that, in fact, a young man, only recently appointed, who, following the example of others, permitted himself to make fun of him, suddenly stopped short, like one stunned, and from that time everything seemed to him to undergo as it were a transformation and to assume a new aspect. Some invisible power repelled him from his companions, with whom he had becomeacquainted on the assumption that they were well-bred, estimable men. And for a long time afterward, even in his merriest moments, there appeared before his eye the little official with the bald forehead, and his penetrating words: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” And in these touching words other words resounded: “I am thy brother!” At this thought the young man would cover his face with his hands, and many a time later in the course of his life he shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage uncouthness hidden under the delicate and cultivated worldliness, and, oh, God! even in the man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and honest.
It would be no easy matter to find another man who attended so faithfully to his duties. It is not enough to say that he labored with zeal; no, he labored with love. This copying presented to him a sufficiently varied and agreeable existence. Enjoyment showed on his face; he had his favorites among the letters, and when they came his way he was not himself; he would smile, wink, and work his lips, so that by looking at his face it seemed that you could read every letter which his pen put down. Were he rewarded according to the measure of his ardor, he would,to his own astonishment, have been made even a councillor of state. But his companions had their little joke about his work.
It would be untrue to say thatnoattention was paid him. One kindly director, wishing to reward him for his long service, ordered him to be given something more dignified to do than mere copying; namely, he was requested to draw up some sort of report to another office of an already concluded affair; all that he was required to do was to change the heading, and to alter certain words from the first to the third person. This entailed him such labor that he began to perspire, to wipe his forehead, saying finally, “No, better give me copying.” From that time on he was let alone in his copying. Aside from this copying, nothing seemed to exist for him.
He gave no thought to his dress. His uniform was not green, but rather a reddish-mealy color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck, though not really long, seemed inordinately long as it projected from the collar, quite like the necks of the plaster cats with wagging heads that one sees carried upon the heads of foreign peddlers. And something always clung to his uniform; it was a bit of straw, or perhaps a thread. Besides, he had the unfortunate tendency, while walking in the street, to go past awindow precisely at the moment when they threw out of it all kinds of rubbish; hence he always carried about on his hat pieces of melon-rind and articles of a similar nature. Not once in his life did he direct his attention upon what was happening daily in the street—quite unlike his colleague, the young official, whose glance was sufficiently far-reaching and keen to observe when any one’s trouser-straps became undone on the opposite sidewalk, which always called forth upon his face a smile of gratification. But Akaki Akakievich, when he happened to look at all, saw in everything only the clear, even strokes of his written lines, and only when, from goodness knows where, a horse’s head suddenly popped over his shoulder and sent a whole gust of wind from its nostrils into his face, did he begin to notice that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of the street.
On arriving home, he would sit down immediately at the table, gulp down quickly his cabbage-soup, eat a piece of meat with onion without noticing their taste, consuming everything—together with flies or anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.
Becoming conscious of the swelling of his stomach, he would rise from the table, take down a bottle of ink, and begin to copy papers whichhe had brought home. If such were wanting, he had the habit of making a special copy for his personal gratification, particularly if the paper happened to be remarkable, not indeed so much on account of the beauty of its style, but of its being addressed to some new or important person.
Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers—indeed, all the work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure—the more alert going to the theatre; those on the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; another—and this being the more frequent rule—visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps a dinner or an outing; in a word,at the very hour that all the officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about, repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party. Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send him for the next day’s copying?
So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and various other councillors, even for those whorender counsel unto no one, and take none themselves.
St. Petersburg contains a powerful enemy to all those receiving four hundred rubles a year salary or thereabouts. This foe is none other than our northern cold, though otherwise it is said to be very healthy. At nine o’clock in the morning, precisely at the hour when the streets are filled with officials on their way to their departments, the cold begins to give them all, without discrimination, such powerful and biting nips upon their noses that the poor officials are at a loss where to hide them. At such a time, when even those occupying superior positions suffer the pain of cold in their foreheads, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected. Their only salvation lies in their ability to scamper quickly over five or six streets in their scant cloaks, and then warm their feet in the porter’s room; incidentally thawing out in the process all their faculties and abilities for official service which had become frozen on the way.
Akaki Akakievich had for some time felt the cold piercing his back and shoulders with unwonted vigor, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to cover the distance from his house to the department as quickly as possible. He finallythought to see whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. Examining the garment very carefully at home, he made a discovery: that in two or three places—to be precise, in the back and shoulders—it had become like a thin canvas; the cloth, in fact, was threadbare to the point of transparency, while the lining too had gone to pieces.
It should be mentioned that the cloak of Akaki Akakievich served as an object of ridicule to the officials; they even had deprived it of the dignified name of cloak and called it a cape. To confess the truth, it was of a rather curious construction; year by year its collar diminished more and more, because it served to patch other parts. The patching itself did not exhibit much sartorial art; and was, in fact, ill done and ugly. Seeing where the trouble lay, Akaki Akakievich decided to take the cloak to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere on the fourth floor, up a dark staircase, and who, notwithstanding his one eye and pockmarked face, busied himself, with fair success, mending trousers and frocks of officials and others; that is to say, when he was in sober condition and was not up to something or other.
It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but as it is customary thatin a story the character of each person be clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf; he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again, he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice.
Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses—ascending the staircase, Akaki Akakievichwas thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job, and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian! You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”
Akaki Akakievich felt unhappy because he had come precisely at the moment when Petrovich was angry; he preferred to deal with Petrovich when that individual was somewhat discouraged, or, as his wife expressed it, when “he had sunkdown with brandy, the one-eyed demon!” In such a condition Petrovich, as a rule, readily came down in price, and thanked you profusely into the bargain. Afterwards, it is true, his wife would visit the customer, saying, with weeping eyes, that her husband had been drunk, and had charged too cheaply. Well, you would add a ten-copeck piece, and have the best of it at that. On the present occasion, however, Petrovich to all appearances was sober, and therefore gruff, uncommunicative, and in a condition to demand the devil only knows what a price! Akaki Akakievich felt this, and would gladly have beat a retreat, but it was too late. Petrovich had already fixed his one eye intently upon him, and Akaki Akakievich greeted him rather unwillingly:
“How are you, Petrovich?”
“And how are you, sir?” returned Petrovich, and slanted his gaze towards the hands of Akaki Akakievich, in order to see what sort of booty he had brought.
“Ah—here I am to you, Petrovich, this——”
It should be noted that Akaki Akakievich expressed himself chiefly by means of prepositions, adverbs, and particles of speech which have no meaning whatsoever. And if the matter was very difficult, he was in the habit of not completinghis phrases, so that very often when his sentence began with the words, “This, in fact, is quite——” nothing would come of it, and he himself would forget to continue, thinking he had said what he had to say.
“Well, what is it?” asked Petrovich, and at the same time surveyed with his one eye the entire uniform from the collar to the cuffs, the back, the coat-flaps, and the button-holes; they were all familiar to him, for they were his own work. Such is the tailor’s habit; it is the first thing he does upon meeting one.
“Well, I here—this, Petrovich—about the cloak—the cloth, you see, everywhere in other places, is quite strong—it is a trifle dusty, and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place, just a little on the back, and a trifle too on the shoulder—bit worn through, and on this shoulder a bit—do you see?—and that’s all. Not much to do——”
Petrovich took the cape, spread it on the table, examined it for a long time, shook his head, and reached out his hand towards the window-sill for his round snuff-box, on the lid of which was the portrait of some general or other, whose identity was lost, however, because a finger had been thrust straight through the face and the hole glued over with a square bit of paper. Havingtaken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held up and examined the cape against the light, and again shook his head; then turned it, lining upwards, and once more shook his head. Again he removed the lid of his snuff-box, and, having applied some of its contents to his nose, he pocketed the case, and finally said:
“No, it is impossible to mend it. It’s a miserable garment!”
Akaki Akakievich’s heart sank at these words.
“And why impossible, Petrovich?” he asked in a voice almost that of an imploring child. “There’s nothing—only a bit worn-out at the shoulders. You surely have some pieces——”
“It’s easy enough to find pieces,” answered Petrovich, “but how is one to sew them on? The cloth is all rotten. Put a needle to it—and it goes apart.”
“Let it; you can put another patch there.”
“There’s nothing to lay the patches on; there’s no way of strengthening it—it is beyond all help. You may thank the stars that it’s cloth; or else a wind would come along and blow it away.”
“Well, yes, better strengthen it. How is it, in fact, this——”
“No,” said Petrovich decisively, “nothing can be done. It’s a thoroughly bad job. You’d better make gaiters out of it for cold winter days,because stockings are not sufficiently warm. The Germans invented them, in order to make more money.” (Petrovich took advantage of every opportunity to make thrusts at the Germans.) “As for the cloak, it’s quite evident you want a new one.”
At the wordnewall grew dark before the eyes of Akaki Akakievich, and everything in the room began to go round. Only one object he saw clearly: the general with the mutilated face on the lid of Petrovich’s snuff-box.
“How a new one?” he asked, as if he were in a dream. “Why, I have no money for it.”
“Yes, a new one,” repeated Petrovich, with a savage calm.
“Well, and if I order a new one, how will it——?”
“That is, you want to know how much it would cost?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’d have to put down a hundred and fifty,” said Petrovich, and compressed his lips significantly. He liked powerful effects, he liked to stun suddenly and completely, and then to look askance in order to see what kind of face the victim might make after such words.
“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki Akakievich, perhaps forthe first time since his birth, for he had always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.
“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will mount up to two hundred.”
“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”
“No, it’s of no use—it will only be a waste of time and money,” answered Petrovich.
After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed. As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did not prove a traitor to sartorial art.
Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well, what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even imagined that the matter stood like that!” Anothersilence followed, after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow unexpected—it’s impossible—a kind of predicament!” Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction, altogether unconscious of the fact.
On the way he collided with a chimney sweep, who blackened his shoulder; a whole hatful of lime fell upon him from the top of an unfinished house. He did not notice the things that happened to him, and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having placed his halberd beside him, was shaking snuff out of a case upon his horny hand, did he become slightly conscious of where he was, and that only because the watchman said: “Why do you push yourself into a man’s very face? What’s a sidewalk for?” This caused him to look around and to turn homeward.
It was only at home that he began to collect his thoughts, and to view the situation in its true and clear aspect. He began to argue with himself no longer in an incoherent manner, but reasonably and frankly, as with a sensible companion, with whom one might discuss any intimate and personal matter.
“Well, no,” said Akaki Akakievich. “Just now Petrovich is not in the right mood to talkwith; he now that—his wife, it seems, must have given him a beating. I had better go to him on Sunday morning; after Saturday night he will be cross-eyed and sleepy; he will want to get drunk, and his wife won’t give him the money, and at such a time a ten-copeck piece in his hand—and he will be more sociable, and the cloak then and there——”
So argued Akaki Akakievich with himself. He now felt more cheerful, and waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich’s wife leave the house, he made haste to carry out his plan. Petrovich was, in fact, squint-eyed after Saturday; his head drooped, and he was quite sleepy; notwithstanding all this, the moment he knew what the business was about he at once grew alert, as if the very Satan prompted him.
“Impossible,” he said. “You must order a new one.”
At this, Akaki Akakievich slipped a ten-copeck piece into his hand.
“Thank you, sir; I will drink a bit to your health,” said Petrovich. “As for the cloak, you need not worry about it; it is nothing but a rag. I will make you a handsome new cloak; let us settle that.”
Akaki Akakievich still insisted on his mendingit, but Petrovich would not listen, and said:
“There’s no way out of it; I shall have to make you a new one; and you may depend upon it, I will do my best. It is even possible that I shall make it according to the new fashion: the collar will fasten with silver hooks underneath.”
When Akaki Akakievich began to comprehend that a new cloak was an absolute necessity, his spirits sank utterly. How indeed was it to be done? Where was the money to come from? He could of course depend for a great part of it upon his customary holiday gift. But there was a new pair of trousers to order; there was the old debt to pay the cobbler for putting on new tops to old boots; he also needed three shirts and at least two undergarments which it is impolite to mention in print; in a word, there would not be a copeck left, and even if the director should prove so generous as to allot as his share forty-five or fifty rubles instead of forty, there would be the merest trifle left, which, considered in connection with the cloak money, would seem as a drop in the sea; though of course he knew that Petrovich would sometimes get a sudden notion to charge the devil knows what an exorbitant price, so that even his wife could not restrain herself from exclaiming: “Are you out of your wits, you fool! At one time he will takealmost nothing for his work, but at another time he is mad enough to ask more than the thing is worth!” Although Akaki Akakievich knew quite well that Petrovich would undertake to make the cloak for eighty rubles, where were even the eighty rubles to come from? He could manage to provide half of it, perhaps even a trifle more; but where was he to find the other half?
First of all, the reader should be informed where the first half was to come from. Akaki Akakievich had the habit of putting away, for every ruble he spent, a two-copeck piece into a small box, kept under lock, and with a small hole in the top for the dropping in of the money. At the expiration of every six months he would exchange the collected coppers for silver. He had been doing this for a long time, and in the course of several years had managed in this manner to save more than forty rubles.
With the first half in hand, the question now was: how to procure the other half? After much deliberation, Akaki Akakievich decided that it would be necessary to curtail the ordinary expenses for at least a period of one year, to deprive himself of his evening tea, to light no candles; and if there was anything that had to be done, to do it in the landlady’s room by her candle. He also could, when in the street, stepmore lightly and cautiously upon the stones, almost on tiptoe, and save thereby his heels from wearing out too quickly. He could give his laundress as little wash as possible; and, in order not to wear his clothes out, could throw them off upon arriving home and remain solely in his cotton dressing-gown, an ancient garment spared mercifully by time.
To tell the truth, these deprivations came hard in the beginning, but gradually he became used to them; he even learned to go hungry in the evening; but in compensation he nourished himself spiritually, eternally bearing in his thoughts the idea of the new cloak. From this time on, it seemed as if his existence had become fuller, as if he had married, as if some other person was living with him, as if he were not alone, but some pleasant companion had consented to share his lot in life with him—and this companion was none other than the cloak, thickly wadded and so strongly lined as never to wear out. He became as it were livelier, even more characterful, as befits a man who has a clear and a firm aim in life. Doubt and indecision seemed to have vanished from his face and manner, and indeed all his wavering and more undefined characteristics became less noticeable. At times even a sparkle showed in his eyes, andhis mind indulged in the most daring thoughts. Why not, for instance, marten on the collar? Such a thought made him absent-minded; and upon one occasion, in copying a paper, he almost made an error, which caused him to cry almost aloud, “Oh!” and to make a sign of the cross.
At least once a month he visited Petrovich, to talk over the cloak with him—where best to buy the cloth, the question of its color, and its price—and, though somewhat agitated, he always returned feeling happier in the thought that the time was at last approaching when everything would be bought and the cloak made.
The matter went even faster than he anticipated. Surpassing all his hopes, the director allotted him not forty or forty-five rubles, but sixty! Perhaps he felt that Akaki Akakievich needed a cloak, or else it was an accident, but the fact was, Akaki Akakievich found himself with twenty unexpected rubles. This circumstance hastened matters. Another two or three months of hunger, and Akaki Akakievich found himself with eighty rubles. His heart, usually tranquil, began to throb.
On the first free day he went shopping with Petrovich. They purchased a very good cloth, and at a reasonable price, because they had considered the matter for a full six months before,and hardly a month passed but that they visited the shops to inquire prices; besides, Petrovich himself said that better cloth couldn’t be found. For lining, they selected a cotton cloth, but so strong and thick that, to use the words of Petrovich, it was better than silk, and in appearance even showy and shiny. Marten fur proved too expensive, and so in its place they purchased the very best obtainable cat-skin, which in the distance could be mistaken for marten. Petrovich worked on the cloak two weeks; there was much quilting, otherwise it would have been finished sooner. For his labor Petrovich charged twelve rubles—he couldn’t possibly take less; it was all done with silk, in small double stitches, which afterwards Petrovich went over with his own teeth, creating various patterns in the process.
It was—it is difficult to say precisely on what day; but probably the most triumphant day in Akaki Akakievich’s life was when Petrovich at last brought the cloak. He brought it in the morning, just before the time necessary to start for the department. It could not have arrived at a more opportune moment, because a severe cold had set in, and it seemed to threaten to become even colder. Petrovich himself brought the cloak, as befits a good tailor. His face expressed such an extraordinary significance asAkaki Akakievich never had beheld there before. It was evident that he felt he had done no small thing, and that he had suddenly revealed in himself the abyss which separates these tailors who sew on mere linings and do mending, from those who make an entire new garment. He drew out the cloak from a handkerchief in which he brought it. The handkerchief had just come from the laundress; so, folding it, he put it in his pocket for use. Holding up the cloak proudly in both hands, he very deftly threw it on Akaki Akakievich’s shoulders, after which he pulled it down with his hand from behind, and let it hang unbuttoned. Akaki Akakievich, like a man wise in years, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovich helped him into them. The sleeves too fitted well. In short, the cloak was all that was wanted of it. Petrovich did not let the opportunity pass to remark that only because he conducted his establishment without a signboard and in a small street, and had known Akaki Akakievich for so long, had he charged him so cheaply, and that on Nevski Prospect they would have charged him seventy-five rubles for the work alone. Akaki Akakievich did not wish to argue the matter with Petrovich, and feared all large amounts, of which the tailor loved to speak soundingly. Akaki Akakievich paid and thanked Petrovich, andset forth in his new cloak to the department. Petrovich followed him, and for a long time his gaze lingered on the cloak from a distance; then, making a short cut through a side street, he reappeared to view the cloak from another point—namely, directly in front.
As for Akaki Akakievich, he walked on, experiencing exultation in every part of his body. At every step he felt conscious of the new cloak upon his shoulders, and several times he even smiled from internal gratification. Indeed, the cloak had two advantages: it was warm and it was handsome. He did not notice the road at all, and suddenly found himself in the department. He threw off the cloak in the porter’s room, and, after surveying it, he confided it to the special care of the attendant. It is impossible to tell how every one in the department suddenly knew that Akaki Akakievich had a new cloak, and that the cape no longer existed. All at once ran into the porter’s room to inspect the garment. They began to congratulate him, so that at the beginning he smiled and afterwards even felt ashamed. When, however, every one surrounding him said that the new cloak should be christened, and that at least he should give them all a party some evening, Akaki Akakievich lost his head completely, and did not know whatto do, what to say, and how to get out of it. For several minutes, blushing, he tried to assure them, in a sufficiently naïve manner, that the cloak was not at all a new one, that it was, in fact, an old cloak. In the end, one of the officials, who served as assistant to the head clerk, evidently wishing to show that he was not at all proud and did not condescend towards his inferiors, said: “So be it. I, instead of Akaki Akakievich, will give the party, and I invite you all to my house tonight. As it happens, it is my birthday.” Naturally, the officials then congratulated the head clerk’s assistant, and accepted the invitation eagerly. Akaki Akakievich at first wished to decline, but every one started to impress upon him how discourteous it was, and that it was a shame and a disgrace, so that he could not refuse. Besides, he afterwards began to feel pleasure in the thought that he would have an opportunity to spend an evening in his new cloak.
That entire day was like a triumphant holiday for Akaki Akakievich. He returned home in the happiest possible frame of mind, threw off his cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, his eye revelling once more in the cloth and the lining; he afterwards held up beside it for comparison the old cape, now all fallen to pieces. He laughed, so great was the difference. And even a longtime after dinner he smiled each time the condition of his old cape occurred to him. He dined cheerfully, and did not copy any papers afterwards, but rested upon his bed until it grew dark. Afterwards, wasting no time, he dressed himself, placed the cloak across his shoulders, and went into the street.
Just where the inviting official lived, we unfortunately cannot say; our memory is beginning to fail us, and the St. Petersburg streets and houses have so badly massed and mixed themselves in our head that it is most difficult to establish any kind of order out of all the chaos. However that may be, at least it is certain that the official lived in the better part of the city, from which may be guessed that it was anywhere but near Akaki Akakievich’s neighborhood. At first he had to pass through several dimly lighted, deserted streets, but in proportion as he approached the official’s residence the streets grew more lively, more populous, and more brightly illuminated; pedestrians grew in greater numbers; women too, handsomely dressed, began to appear; some of the men even wore beaver collars; peasants with their wooden fence-rail sledges, hammered over with yellow-headed nails, were more rarely met with; on the other hand, drivers with red velvet caps, inlacquered sledges, with bearskin coverings, were becoming more frequent; and beautifully ornamented carriages flew swiftly through the street.
Akaki Akakievich gazed upon all this as upon a novelty; it was now several years since he had passed an evening in the streets. He paused with curiosity before a lighted shop-window, to look at a picture in which was represented a handsome woman taking off her shoe and baring her entire foot very prettily, while behind her a man with whiskers and a handsome mustache peeped through the door of another room. Akaki Akakievich shook his head and laughed, and then continued his journey. Why did he laugh? Was it because he had met a thing altogether unfamiliar to him, but for which, however, every one cherishes some sort of feeling, or was it because he thought about it as many other officials would? “Ah, those French! What is there to say? When they want to do anything like that, they do it rather well!” And it is possible that he did not think such a thing at all. After all, it is impossible to steal into a man’s soul and to discover all that he thinks.
At last he reached the house in which lived the head clerk’s assistant. This man resided in grand style; the staircase was lighted by a lamp;his quarters were on the second floor. Entering the vestibule, Akaki Akakievich observed several rows of galoshes on the floor. Among them, in the middle of the room, stood the samovar; it was humming and emitting clouds of steam. The walls were covered with cloaks and mantles, among which were even a few with beaver collars or with velvet lapels. Behind the wall were audible the noise and conversation, which suddenly grew clear and loud when the door opened and the servant came out with a trayful of empty glasses, a cream-jug, and a sugar-bowl. It was evident that the officials had arrived some time ago and had had their first glass of tea.
Akaki Akakievich, having hung up his cloak himself, entered the room, and his astonished gaze took in at once the lights, the officials, the pipes, and the card-tables, and he was confused by the sound of conversation rising from all sides and the noise of moving chairs. He paused very awkwardly in the middle of the room, pondering what he should do. But he had already been noticed, and he was received with shouts; every one running towards the vestibule to survey his cloak anew. Although Akaki Akakievich was somewhat astonished, still, being a simple-hearted man, he could not help but feel flattered, seeing how well his cloak wasliked. Afterwards, it goes without saying, they forgot him and his cloak, and returned quite properly to the tables appointed for whist. All this—the noise, the conversation, and the size of the gathering—all this was strange to Akaki Akakievich. He simply did not know what to do with himself, where to put his hands, his feet, and his entire body; finally he seated himself near the players, looked at the cards, or into the face of now one, now another, and after a time began to grow drowsy, and to feel a certain feeling of weariness, all the more because his accustomed hour for going to bed had long passed. He wished to bid his host good-night, but he was not permitted to depart; they insisted that he drink a glass of champagne in honor of his new garment. In another hour supper was served; it consisted of a relish, cold veal, pastry, sweets, and champagne. Akaki Akakievich was made to drink two glasses of champagne, after which the room assumed to him a livelier aspect; nevertheless, he could not forget that it was twelve o’clock, and that he should have been home long ago. In order that the host might not detain him, he stole silently out of the room, sought out in the anteroom his cloak, which, to his sorrow, he found lying on the floor. He brushed it, removed every speck of dust from it,put it on his shoulders, and descended the stairs into the street.
The street was as yet all alight. Some of the petty shops, those permanent clubs of servants and all sorts of people, were open; others, however, which were closed, showed a long streak of light through the entire length of the door-crack, suggesting that they did not lack company, probably servants of both sexes, who were concluding their gossip and conversation, and keeping their masters in complete ignorance of their whereabouts. Akaki Akakievich walked on in a happy frame of mind, started even to run, for an unknown reason, after a woman who flashed by him like lightning. After this, however, he paused and resumed his former leisurely pace, wondering at his own sudden spurt. Very soon there stretched before him the deserted streets, not particularly cheerful even by day, and much less so by night. Now they seemed even more than usually dark and lonely; the lights were growing further apart; then came wooden houses and fences; not a soul anywhere; only the snow sparkled in the streets; and the slumbering, low-roofed cabins with closed shutters looked melancholy against the snow. He was approaching the spot where the street cut through a vast square, with houses on theother side barely visible across the desert space.
In the distance, God knows how far, a tiny flame glimmered in a watchman’s box, which seemed to verge on the edge of the world. Akaki Akakievich’s cheerfulness diminished here perceptibly. He entered the square not without a certain involuntary fear; not without some foreboding of evil. He glanced behind him and on both sides—a sea appeared to surround him. “No, it is better not to look,” he thought, and walked on with closed eyes; and when he opened them to see whether or not he had reached the end of the square, he suddenly beheld before him, almost under his very nose, some bearded individuals, precisely what sort he could not distinguish. Everything grew dark before his eyes, and his heart began to throb.
“But, I say, the cloak is mine,” said one of the men in a loud voice, seizing him by the collar.
Akaki Akakievich wished to cry out, “Help!” when the other man put his fist, the size of an official’s head, to his very mouth, and said, “Just try to make a noise!”
Akaki Akakievich only felt conscious of how they removed the cloak from his shoulders, then gave him a parting kick, which sent him headlong into the snow; after that he felt no more.
In a few minutes he recovered consciousnessand rose to his feet, but no one was to be seen. He felt cold, and the absence of his cloak; he began to shout, but his voice did not seem to reach the bounds of the square. Desperate, not ceasing to shout, he started to run across the square straight towards the watchman’s box, beside which stood the watchman, leaning upon his halberd, and looking, as it were, with eager expectancy for an explanation as to this strange fellow’s running and shouting. Akaki Akakievich, having reached him, began to shout in a gasping voice that he was asleep and did not attend to his business, and let people rob a man. The watchman replied that he saw nothing except two men stop and talk to him in the middle of the square, and that he thought they were his friends; he also suggested that rather than waste time on talk he should report the matter to the police captain, and that he would find the man who had taken the cloak.
Akaki Akakievich arrived home in complete disorder. His hair, which thrived in no large numbers upon his temples and the back of his head, was in a dishevelled state; while his entire body was covered with snow. His old landlady, on hearing a loud knocking on the door, sprang quickly out of bed, and with only one shoe on ran to open the door, holding her night-gown,out of modesty, to her breast. Having opened the door, she drew back upon seeing the condition of her lodger. When he explained what had happened she wrung her hands and advised him to inform the district chief of police at once; that a lesser official would only promise without doing anything; besides, she had some acquaintance with the chief, because Anna, her former cook, had just become a nurse at his house. She saw him very often pass her house, and, moreover, she knew that he went to church every Sunday, and that as he prayed he looked cheerily at the same time upon all, and therefore was, to all appearances, a good man. Having listened to this suggestion, Akaki Akakievich very sadly betook himself to his room, and how he spent the night there may be imagined by those who have the faculty of putting themselves in the place of others.
Early next morning he visited the district chief and was told that he was asleep; he went again at ten, with the same result; at eleven they told him the chief was not at home; when he went at dinner-time, the clerks in the anteroom would not admit him, but demanded to know the business that brought him; so that finally Akaki Akakievich for once in his life showed a spark of courage and said firmly thathe must see the district chief personally, that they dared not refuse him, as he came from the department upon official business, and that if they persisted he would present a complaint against them, which would make them sorry. The clerks dared not reply to this, and one of them went in to call the chief.
Instead of directing his attention to the important point of the case, he began to cross-examine Akaki Akakievich. Why was he returning home so late? Did he stop on the way in any disorderly house? In the end Akaki Akakievich was so completely confused that he went out not knowing whether anything would be done about the cloak or not.
The entire day he did not appear in the department—the first time in his life. The next day he arrived at his place looking very pale and in his old cape, which had grown even sadder-looking. The news of the robbery of the cloak—notwithstanding the fact that some of the officials did not permit even this opportunity to pass without laughing at Akaki Akakievich—nevertheless touched many. They decided to take up a collection for him, but succeeded in obtaining a mere trifle; as the officials had already spent considerable money in subscribing for the director’s portrait, and for a book, at thesuggestion of the chief of the bureau, who was a friend of the author; hence the insignificance of the sum.
Some one, out of pity, wished at least to help Akaki Akakievich with good advice; and so he told him not to go to the captain, for though the captain might really wish to earn the approbation of the chiefs and find the cloak in some way or other, the cloak itself would nevertheless remain with the police, unless he could show legal proof that it was his; he ought therefore to apply to a certainimportant personage; and thisimportant personage, by dealing with the proper persons, could hasten and expedite matters. There was nothing else to do but to turn to theimportant personage.
What was the precise function of theimportant personageremains unknown to this day. One point should be made clear: that this particularimportant personageonly recently had become an important personage, and that until quite lately he had been an unimportant personage. And aside from that, his position was not even now considered important when compared with that of other more important personages. There will always be, however, a circle of people to whom what is unimportant to other people is sufficiently important. Then, again, he bent all hisefforts to increase his importance through numerous other means, as, for instance, he instituted the custom of having his inferiors lined up on the stairway to greet his arrival at the department; he also insisted that no one should venture to appear before him directly, but that everything should follow in most unrelenting order: the collegiate registrar should report to the government secretary, the government secretary to the titular councillor, or to whoever was the proper official, and that in this manner the business should finally come to him.
This habit of imitation has infected all of Holy Russia: every one imitates and mimics his superiors. It is even said that a certain titular councillor, when promoted to the head of some small separate office, immediately partitioned off a private room, calling it the “audience chamber;” he placed at the door two attendants in red collars and braid, whose sole duty consisted in taking the door by the handle and opening it to every comer, although the “audience chamber” had barely room enough to contain an ordinary writing-table.
The ways and manners of theimportant personagewere impressive and imposing, but somewhat overdone. The main principle of his system was strictness. “Strictness, strictness—andstrictness,” he used to say generally: and always when pronouncing the last word looked significantly at the person whom he was addressing; although this was altogether unnecessary, because the ten officials, constituting the entire mechanism of his office, were afraid of him; and, seeing him even from afar, they would stop all work and assume a respectful attitude until their chief had passed through the room. His usual conversation with his inferiors consisted almost entirely of three phrases: “How dare you? Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realize who stands before you?” Otherwise, he was a good-natured man and solicitous towards his comrades; but the rank of general unhinged his mind completely. Upon receiving this rank, he lost his head, and did not know what to do with himself. When he happened to be in the company of his equals he still managed to do the proper thing, to be a gentleman, and in many respects quite a clever fellow; but once in the company of folk even a single rank below him, he simply became helpless; he was silent, and his condition aroused sympathy, the more so as he himself felt that he could have passed the time incomparably happier. At times the desire to join in some conversation or circle was strongly evident in his eyes; but the following thoughtalways arrested him: would it not be regarded as a familiarity, and would it not detract from his importance? In consequence of such reasoning, he remained in the same eternal mood of silence, uttering only rarely some monosyllabic sounds; and thereby earning the name of a most wearisome person.
Before animportant personageof this type appeared our Akaki Akakievich, and at a most inopportune moment—that is to say, for himself, but opportune for theimportant personage. Theimportant personagewas in his cabinet, conversing very cheerfully with an old acquaintance and friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for many years. It was at such a time that they told him of a certain Bashmachkin who wished to see him. He asked abruptly, “Who is he?” They answered him, “Some sort of official.” “Ah, let him wait, now is not the time,” said theimportant personage. It is necessary to mention here that theimportant personagesimply lied: he had the time to spare; he had already talked over everything with his friend, and the conversation had begun some time ago to lag with long silences; and they merely continued to tap each other on the leg, and exclaim, “That’s how it is, Ivan Abramovich!” “That’s so, Stephen Varlamovich!” Nevertheless, he caused theofficial to wait, in order to show his friend, a man some time out of the service and living in a village, how long he compelled officials to wait for him in the anteroom.
Finally, having conversed to his heart’s content, and having had also his fill of silence and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable chair with an easy back, he bethought himself all of a sudden, as it were, and said to the secretary who stood at the door with papers needing his signature, “Oh, yes, I believe an official is waiting to see me; tell him to come in.” On seeing Akaki Akakievich’s humble aspect and his shabby uniform, he suddenly turned to him and said, “What is it you wish?” He put this question abruptly and in a hard voice, which he had practised in his own room, when alone, and before the mirror, a full week before receiving his present position and rank.
Akaki Akakievich, who already felt a certain timorousness, became somewhat confused, and, so far as his power of speech would permit, explained, with an even more frequent employment than usual of the word “that,” that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in a most inhuman manner, and that he was now applying to him to use his influence with the chief of police or some one else to find his cloak.
The general, for some reason or other, regarded such conduct as familiar. “What, dear sir,” said he in his abrupt manner, “are you ignorant of the rules? Why do you come to me? Do you not know how such matters are managed? You should have first presented a petition to the office; it would have then gone to the chief clerk, then to the clerk of the division, then to the secretary, and the secretary would have reported it to me——”
“But, Your Excellency,” said Akaki Akakievich, gathering together his final remnant of courage, and breaking out into a terrible perspiration, “I, Your Excellency, have presumed to trouble you because, you see, the secretaries are that—an untrustworthy race——”
“What! what! what!” ejaculated theimportant personage. “Where do you get the courage? Where did you get such ideas? What a spirit of impertinence has spread among the young generation against their chiefs and superiors!”
Theimportant personage, apparently, had not noticed that Akaki Akakievich was already a man of about fifty, and that if he could be called a young person, it was only in comparison with one who was seventy.
“Do you know to whom you are speaking?Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? Do you realize it? Answer me!”
At this point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a high pitch that even a man different from Akakievich would have been frightened. Akaki Akakievich grew faint; he reeled; trembled from head to foot; then his legs gave way under him; if several attendants had not run in to support him, he would have fallen to the floor. They carried him out more dead than alive. Theimportant personage, much gratified that the effect he produced far exceeded all expectation, and thoroughly intoxicated with the thought that even a word from him could deprive a man of his senses, looked askance at his friend, to see how that individual regarded the matter, and observed, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncomfortable state, and was beginning to show on his part certain signs of fear.
How he managed to descend the stairway and into the street—of this Akaki Akakievich remembered nothing. He was unconscious of either hands or feet. Never before in his life had he been so reprimanded by a superior, let alone an unfamiliar one. He walked in the snow-storm which whistled through the streets; his mouth open, he staggered along the sidewalks;the wind blew upon him in St. Petersburg fashion from all four sides and every crossing. In an instant it had blown a quinsy down his throat, and he arrived at home all swollen and too weak to utter a word. He lay down on his bed.
The next day a high fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness advanced more rapidly than could be expected; and when the doctor appeared and felt his pulse, there was nothing for him to do except to prescribe a poultice, for no other reason but that the patient be not deprived of the beneficent aid of medicine; at the same time he predicted his inevitable end in thirty-six hours, after which he turned to the landlady and said: “And you, my woman, had better not lose any time about it, and order a pine coffin for him, as an oak one will be too expensive.”
Did Akaki Akakievich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them, did they agitate him? Did he bewail the bitterness of his life? It is uncertain, because he spent his last hours in fever and delirium. Visions, one stranger than the other, continued to appear before him. Now he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make a cloak with traps for thieves who he imagined were constantly under his bed; and he more than once called for his landlady to drag a thief fromunder his bed-cover. Then he inquired why the old cloak hung in front of him when he had a new one. Several times he fancied himself as standing before the general, addressing him as “Your Excellency,” and pleading with him after the reprimand; and finally he began to utter imprecations, employing the most terrible words, so that the aged housekeeper, never before having heard the like, made a sign of the cross, all the more since these curses usually followed after the words “Your Excellency.” Later he began to utter sheer nonsense; one thing, however, was evident: all his incoherent words and thoughts hovered around the one and the same cloak.
At last poor Akaki Akakievich gave up his spirit. The usual legal procedure with regard to his room and his effects was not followed, because in the first place there were no heirs, and in the second, because he left so little property, namely, a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons that had come off his trousers, and the cape already familiar to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows; this, I must confess, did not interest even him who relates this story.
They bore Akaki Akakievich away and buried him. And so St. Petersburg was left without Akaki Akakievich, as though he had never beenthere. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who did not even attract to himself the attention of the student who does not let an opportunity slip by to put a pin through a common fly and to examine it under the microscope—a being who endured humbly the ridicule of his brother officials and went to his grave without having experienced a single notable event, but for whom nevertheless, at the very close of his life, came a radiating guest in the shape of a cloak, which cheered for an instant his sorry existence; and upon whom there afterwards descended an intolerable misfortune, such as descends even on the heads of the mighty of this world!
A few days after his death, an attendant was sent to his house to request him to report immediately at the department; but the attendant returned to his chief with the rather unsatisfactory answer that he could not come, and to the question, “Why?” replied, “Well, you see, he’s dead. He was buried four days ago.” In this manner did they hear of Akaki Akakievich’s death in the department, and the next day, in his place sat a new official, much taller in stature, and forming his letters not quite so upright, but very much inclined and aslant.
But who could have imagined that this wasnot the end of Akaki Akakievich, and that he was destined to live through several stirring days after his death, in compensation, as it were, for his unnoticed life? But it so happened, and our poor history takes an unexpectedly fantastic conclusion.
St. Petersburg was suddenly startled by rumors that on the Kalinkin Bridge and in its vicinity there had begun to appear nightly a corpse, in the shape of an official, seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under the pretense that it was the stolen cloak, he dragged off, regardless of rank or calling, every one’s cloak from his shoulders, whether it was cat-skin, beaver, raccoon, fox, or bear—in short, every variety of fur and skin which man had thought of for his covering. One of the department officials saw the dead with his own eyes, and immediately recognized in him Akaki Akakievich; this, however, so frightened him that he began to run with all his might, and was therefore unable to observe him closely, but only saw him raise a threatening finger from afar.
Complaints began to come in from all quarters that the backs and shoulders, not alone of titular, but even of court, councillors were being exposed to the danger of a cold, because of this frequent deprivation of their cloaks. The police made arrangements to catch the corpse, at all costs,either alive or dead, and to deal with him most severely, as an example to others. In this they almost succeeded. A watchman in Kirishkin Lane seized the corpse by the collar on the very spot of his misdeeds; for he was in the act of dragging off the frieze cloak of a retired musician, who in his day had blown the flute. The watchman’s shout for help fetched two comrades to his side, and into their hands he committed the marauder, while he himself thrust his hand for a moment into his boot for his snuff-box, in order to refresh temporarily his frozen nose. The snuff, however, must have been of such poor quality that even the corpse could not stand it. Ere the watchman, who had closed his right nostril with his thumb, had time to apply a half-handful of the snuff to his left nostril, the corpse sneezed so violently that the three of them were soon wiping their eyes; and while they were doing this he vanished so completely that they were not even sure whether he had been actually in their hands. Henceforth the watchmen were so apprehensive of dead men that they even refrained from laying their hands on the living, and only dared to exclaim at a distance, “Hey, there, go your way!” As for the dead official, he began to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, creating no slight terror among all timid people.
We have, however, wholly neglected acertain important personage, who had been the actual cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true history. First of all, in justice to thecertain important personage, it is necessary to say that immediately after the departure of the poor, totally crushed Akaki Akakievich he experienced an emotion akin to pity. It was not new to him—this feeling of sympathy; his heart was really accessible to many good impulses, notwithstanding the fact that his rank often interfered with their outward manifestation. No sooner had his friend gone than he began to think about the poor Akaki Akakievich. And nearly every day thereafter there appeared before him the pale Akaki Akakievich, who was unable to bear up under an official reprimand. The thought agitated him to such an extent that after a week had passed he resolved even to send an official to learn his condition, and to see whether he could really assist him. When it was reported to him that Akaki Akakievich had died suddenly of fever, he was dumbfounded, suffered the reproaches of conscience, and was in poor spirits all day long.
Desiring some diversion and to drive away the disagreeable impression, he went in the evening to the house of one of his friends, where he founda likely crowd, all the more pleasant because nearly every one was of the one and the same rank, so that he was not in any way embarrassed. This fact had a most astounding effect on his spirits. He opened his heart, made himself very agreeable in conversation; in short, he passed a charming evening. After supper he drank two glasses of champagne, an excellent method, as every one knows, of arousing cheerfulness.
The champagne communicated in him an inclination towards various enterprises, and he decided not to go directly home, but to visit a certain well-known lady named Karolina Ivanovna—probably of German extraction—with whom he was on quite friendly terms. It should be mentioned that theimportant personagewas no longer a young man, but a good husband and the respectable father of a family. His two sons, one of whom was already in the government service, and a good-looking, sixteen-year-old daughter, with a trifle arched but rather pretty little nose, came in every morning to kiss his hand, and say, “Bon jour, Papa.” His wife, a woman still fresh and not at all bad-looking, first gave him her hand to kiss and then kissed his. Theimportant personage, however, though content with his domestic caresses, thought it elegant to maintain friendly relations in anotherpart of the city. This friend was hardly prettier or younger than his wife; but many such mysteries exist on earth, and to solve them is none of our affair.
Theimportant personage, therefore, descended the staircase, entered his sledge, and said to the driver, “To Karolina Ivanovna!” Then, wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, he settled into that happy mood, better than which cannot be even imagined by the Russian. It is that state when you are not thinking of anything in particular, but the thoughts crowd in upon you of themselves, one pleasanter than the other, and calling for no exertion on your part to pursue them or seek them. Gratified beyond measure, he recalled all the gay features of the evening, all the remarks and all the stories that made the little circle laugh. Many of these he repeated in a low voice, and found them just as funny as before.
Occasionally, however, he was hindered by an impetuous wind, which, arising suddenly, God only knows whence and why, cut his face, and beat snow into it, or caused the collar of his cloak to burst out like a sail, and then blew it back over his head, with a supernatural force, as it were, and this gave him no end of trouble to disentangle his head out of its folds.
Suddenly theimportant personagefelt some one grip him by the collar. Turning around, he noticed a man of small stature, dressed in a shabby old uniform, and, not without terror, recognized in him Akaki Akakievich. The face of the man was pale as snow, like that of a dead man. But the horror of theimportant personageexceeded all bounds when he saw the mouth of the corpse open, and, while it breathed upon him the terrible odor of the grave, he heard it utter the following remarks: “Ah, so here you are at last! At last I have you that—caught you by the collar! I need your cloak! You didn’t give a thought to mine, and even reprimanded me. Well, now give me yours!”
The poorimportant personagealmost died of fright—despite his manifestation of character in his office and before his inferiors generally, and although every one, on noting his manly figure and aspect, could not help but remark, “What a strong character!” Here, however, he, like many others possessed of an heroic exterior, was so terrified that, not without cause, he felt as though he would die on the spot. With his own hands he flung the cloak off his shoulders, and shouted to the driver in an unnatural voice, “Home, at full speed!” The driver, hearing the tone, generally employed in critical moments,and accompanied in this case by something much more emphatic, assumed the physical attitude of an emergency, flourished his whip, and darted off like an arrow.
In six minutes or so, theimportant personagewas before his own house. Pale, frightened, and without his cloak, instead of being at Karolina Ivanovna’s, he was in his own house; and he managed somehow to reach his own room, where he passed the night in great agitation, so that the next morning at tea his daughter said, “You are very pale today, Papa.” But Papa was silent, and said not a word to any one about what had happened, where he had been, and whither he was bound. This event made a powerful impression on him. He even much more rarely said to his subordinates, “How dare you? Do you realize who stands before you?” and if he did utter these words, it was not until he had heard out all the facts of the case.
Still more remarkable was it that from that day on the corpse of the official ceased to appear. Evidently the general’s cloak fitted his shoulders perfectly; at least, no more stories were heard about the dragging-off of cloaks. Many active and anxious people, however, were very apprehensive, and insisted that the corpse was still at large in certain remote sections of the city. Infact, one watchman in the Kolomen district saw with his own eyes the apparition stalk forth from behind a house; but, being rather weak physically, he dared not arrest him, but simply followed him in the darkness, until at last the apparition suddenly turned upon him and said, “What do you want?” and displayed such a fist as is never seen on a living man. The watchman replied, “Nothing,” and started back. The apparition, however, looking very tall and wearing enormous mustaches, directed his footsteps seemingly towards the Obukhov Bridge and vanished in the nocturnal darkness.