Armed with these resources, he next obtained promotion to what is known as “a fat post,” and used it to the best advantage; and even though, at that period, strict inquiry had begun to be made into the whole subject of bribes, such inquiry failed to alarm him — nay, he actually turned it to account and thereby manifested the Russian resourcefulness which never fails to attain its zenith where extortion is concerned.
His method of working was the following. As soon as a petitioner or a suitor put his hand into his pocket, to extract thence the necessary letters of recommendation for signature, Chichikov would smilingly exclaim as he detained his interlocutor’s hand: “No, no! Surely you do not think that I—? But no, no!
It is our duty, it is our obligation, and we do not require rewards for doing our work properly. So far as YOUR matter is concerned, you may rest easy.
Everything shall be carried through to-morrow.
But may I have your address? There is no need to trouble yourself, seeing that the documents can easily be brought to you at your residence.”
Upon which the delighted suitor would return home in raptures, thinking:
“Here, at long last, is the sort of man so badly needed. A man of that kind is a jewel beyond price.”
Yet for a day, for two days — nay, even for three — the suitor would wait in vain so far as any messengers with documents were concerned. Then he would repair to the office — to find that his business had not so much as been entered upon! Lastly, he would confront the “jewel beyond price.”
“Oh, pardon me, pardon me!” Chichikov would exclaim in the politest of tones as he seized and grasped the visitor’s hands. “The truth is that we have SUCH a quantity of business on hand! But the matter shall be put through to-morrow, and in the meanwhile I am most sorry about it.”
And with this would go the most fascinating of gestures.
Yet neither on the morrow, nor on the day following, nor on the third would documents arrive at the suitor’s abode.
Upon that he would take thought as to whether something more ought not to have been done; and, sure enough, on his making inquiry, he would be informed that “something will have to be given to the copyists.”
“Well, there can be no harm in that,” he would reply. “As a matter of fact, I have ready a tchetvertak 39 or two.”
“Oh, no, no,” the answer would come. “Not a tchetvertak per copyist, but a rouble, is the fee.”
“What? A rouble per copyist?”
“Certainly. What is there to grumble at in that? Of the money the copyists will receive a tchetvertak apiece, and the rest will go to the Government.”
Upon that the disillusioned suitor would fly out upon the new order of things brought about by the inquiry into illicit fees, and curse both the tchinovniks and their uppish, insolent behaviour.
“Once upon a time,” would the suitor lament, “one DID know what to do. Once one had tipped the Director a bank-note, one’s affair was, so to speak, in the hat. But now one has to pay a rouble per copyist after waiting a week because otherwise it was impossible to guess how the wind might set! The devil fly away with all ‘disinterested’ and ‘trustworthy’ tchinovniks!”
And certainly the aggrieved suitor had reason to grumble, seeing that, now that bribe-takers had ceased to exist, and Directors had uniformly become men of honour and integrity, secretaries and clerks ought not with impunity to have continued their thievish ways.
In time there opened out to Chichikov a still wider field, for a Commission was appointed to supervise the erection of a Government building, and, on his being nominated to that body, he proved himself one of its most active members.
The Commission got to work without delay, but for a space of six years had some trouble with the building in question. Either the climate hindered operations or the materials used were of the kind which prevents official edifices from ever rising higher than the basement.
But, meanwhile, OTHER quarters of the town saw arise, for each member of the Commission, a handsome house of the NON-official style of architecture. Clearly the foundation afforded by the soil of those parts was better than that where the Government building was still engaged in hanging fire!
Likewise the members of the Commission began to look exceedingly prosperous, and to blossom out into family life; and, for the first time in his existence, even Chichikov also departed from the iron laws of his self-imposed restraint and inexorable self-denial, and so far mitigated his heretofore asceticism as to show himself a man not averse to those amenities which, during his youth, he had been capable of renouncing.
That is to say, certain superfluities began to make their appearance in his establishment.
He engaged a good cook, took to wearing linen shirts, bought for himself cloth of a pattern worn by no one else in the province, figured in checks shot with the brightest of reds and browns, fitted himself out with two splendid horses (which he drove with a single pair of reins, added to a ring attachment for the trace horse), developed a habit of washing with a sponge dipped in eau-de-Cologne, and invested in soaps of the most expensive quality, in order to communicate to his skin a more elegant polish. 39 A silver quarter rouble.
But suddenly there appeared upon the scene a new Director — a military man, and a martinet as regarded his hostility to bribe-takers and anything which might be called irregular.
On the very day after his arrival he struck fear into every breast by calling for accounts, discovering hosts of deficits and missing sums, and directing his attention to the aforesaid fine houses of civilian architecture. Upon that there ensued a complete reshuffling.
Tchinovniks were retired wholesale, and the houses were sequestrated to the Government, or else converted into various pious institutions and schools for soldiers’ children. Thus the whole fabric, and especially Chichikov, came crashing to the ground. Particularly did our hero’s agreeable face displease the new Director.
Why that was so it is impossible to say, but frequently, in cases of the kind, no reason exists. However, the Director conceived a mortal dislike to him, and also extended that enmity to the whole of Chichikov’s colleagues.
But inasmuch as the said Director was a military man, he was not fully acquainted with the myriad subtleties of the civilian mind; wherefore it was not long before, by dint of maintaining a discreet exterior, added to a faculty for humouring all and sundry, a fresh gang of tchinovniks succeeded in restoring him to mildness, and the General found himself in the hands of greater thieves than before, but thieves whom he did not even suspect, seeing that he believed himself to have selected men fit and proper, and even ventured to boast of possessing a keen eye for talent.
In a trice the tchinovniks concerned appraised his spirit and character; with the result that the entire sphere over which he ruled became an agency for the detection of irregularities. Everywhere, and in every case, were those irregularities pursued as a fisherman pursues a fat sturgeon with a gaff; and to such an extent did the sport prove successful that almost in no time each participator in the hunt was seen to be in possession of several thousand roubles of capital.
Upon that a large number of the former band of tchinovniks also became converted to paths of rectitude, and were allowed to re-enter the Service; but not by hook or by crook could Chichikov worm his way back, even though, incited thereto by sundry items of paper currency, the General’s first secretary and principal bear leader did all he could on our hero’s behalf.
It seemed that the General was the kind of man who, though easily led by the nose (provided it was done without his knowledge) no sooner got an idea into his head than it stuck there like a nail, and could not possibly be extracted; and all that the wily secretary succeeded in procuring was the tearing up of a certain dirty fragment of paper — even that being effected only by an appeal to the General’s compassion, on the score of the unhappy fate which, otherwise, would befall Chichikov’s wife and children (who, luckily, had no existence in fact).
“Well,” said Chichikov to himself, “I have done my best, and now everything has failed.
Lamenting my misfortune won’t help me, but only action.”
And with that he decided to begin his career anew, and once more to arm himself with the weapons of patience and self-denial.
The better to effect this, he had, of course to remove to another town.
Yet somehow, for a while, things miscarried.
More than once he found himself forced to exchange one post for another, and at the briefest of notice; and all of them were posts of the meanest, the most wretched, order.
Yet, being a man of the utmost nicety of feeling, the fact that he found himself rubbing shoulders with anything but nice companions did not prevent him from preserving intact his innate love of what was decent and seemly, or from cherishing the instinct which led him to hanker after office fittings of lacquered wood, with neatness and orderliness everywhere.
Nor did he at any time permit a foul word to creep into his speech, and would feel hurt even if in the speech of others there occurred a scornful reference to anything which pertained to rank and dignity.
Also, the reader will be pleased to know that our hero changed his linen every other day, and in summer, when the weather was very hot, EVERY day, seeing that the very faintest suspicion of an unpleasant odour offended his fastidiousness.
For the same reason it was his custom, before being valeted by Petrushka, always to plug his nostrils with a couple of cloves. In short, there were many occasions when his nerves suffered rackings as cruel as a young girl’s, and so helped to increase his disgust at having once more to associate with men who set no store by the decencies of life.
Yet, though he braced himself to the task, this period of adversity told upon his health, and he even grew a trifle shabby.
More than once, on happening to catch sight of himself in the mirror, he could not forbear exclaiming:
“Holy Mother of God, but what a nasty-looking brute I have become!” and for a long while afterwards could not with anything like sang-froid contemplate his reflection.
Yet throughout he bore up stoutly and patiently — and ended by being transferred to the Customs Department.
It may be said that the department had long constituted the secret goal of his ambition, for he had noted the foreign elegancies with which its officials always contrived to provide themselves, and had also observed that invariably they were able to send presents of china and cambric to their sisters and aunts — well, to their lady friends generally.
Yes, more than once he had said to himself with a sigh: “THAT is the department to which I ought to belong, for, given a town near the frontier, and a sensible set of colleagues, I might be able to fit myself out with excellent linen shirts.”
Also, it may be said that most frequently of all had his thoughts turned towards a certain quality of French soap which imparted a peculiar whiteness to the skin and a peerless freshness to the cheeks. Its name is known to God alone, but at least it was to be procured only in the immediate neighbourhood of the frontier.