housed in such strong oak as is used only for gristmills and ships. In short, all that he looked upon was sturdy, shakeless, in some strong and clumsy order. As he drove up to the porch, he saw two faces peek almost simultaneously out the window: a woman's, in a bonnet, narrow, long, like a cucumber; and a man's, round, broad, like those Moldavian gourds called crooknecks, from which balalaikas are made in Russia, light two-stringed balalaikas, the jewel and delight of a snappy twenty-year-old lad, a winker and a fop, winking and whistling at the white-bosomed, white-necked lasses who have gathered to listen to his soft-stringed strumming. Having peeked out, the two faces hid at the same moment. A lackey in a gray jacket with a light blue standing collar came to the porch and led Chichikov into the front hall, where the host himself had already come. Seeing the visitor, he abruptly said: 'Please!' and led him to the inner rooms.
When Chichikov glanced sidelong at Sobakevich, it seemed to him this time that he looked exactly like a medium-sized bear. To complete the resemblance, the tailcoat he was wearing was of a perfect bear color; his sleeves were long, his trousers were long, his feet shambled this way and that, constantly stepping on other people's toes. His face was of a roasted, hot color, such as one sees on copper coins. It is well-known that there are many faces in the world over the finishing of which nature did not take much trouble, did not employ any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and so on, but simply hacked them out with round strokes: one chop—a nose appears; another chop—lips appear; eyes are scooped out with a big drill; and she lets it go into the world rough-hewn, saying: 'Alive!' Of such strong and marvelous fashioning was the visage of Sobakevich: he held it rather more down than up, did not swivel his neck at all, and, on account of this non-swiveling, rarely looked at the person he was speaking to, but always either at the corner of the stove or at the door. Chichikov gave him one more sidelong glance as they were going through the dining room: a bear! a veritable bear! If there were any need for such strange approximation, he was even named Mikhailo Semyonovich.[19] Knowing his habit of stepping on people's toes, he himself stepped very carefully and let him go ahead. The host seemed sensible of this failing himself, and at once asked him: 'Have I inconvenienced you?' But Chichikov thanked him, saying that so far he had suffered no inconvenience.
Going into the drawing room, Sobakevich pointed to an armchair, saying 'Please!' again. As he sat down, Chichikov glanced at the walls and the pictures hanging on them. They were all fine fellows in the pictures, all Greek generals, engraved at full length: Mavrocordato in red pantaloons and officer's jacket, with spectacles on his nose, Miaoulis, Canaris. These heroes all had such fat haunches and unheard-of mustaches as sent shivers through one's whole body. Among these sturdy Greeks, who knows how or why, Bagration had lodged himself, skinny, thin, with little banners and cannons underneath, in the narrowest of frames. Then again there followed the Greek heroine Bobelina, whose leg alone seemed bigger than the entire body of one of those fops who fill our present-day drawing rooms.[20] The host, being a healthy and sturdy man himself, seemed to want his room, too, to be adorned with sturdy and healthy people. Near Bobelina, just by the window, hung a cage from which peered a thrush of a dark color with white speckles, also very much resembling Sobakevich. Host and guest had managed to be silent for no more than two minutes when the drawing-room door opened and the hostess came in, a rather tall lady in a bonnet with ribbons dyed in homemade colors. She came in decorously, holding her head erect, like a palm tree.
'This is my Feodulia Ivanovna!' said Sobakevich.
Chichikov went up to kiss Feodulia Ivanovnas hand, which she almost shoved into his lips, affording him the occasion to observe that her hands had been washed in pickling brine.
'Sweetie,' Sobakevich went on, 'allow me to introduce Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov! I had the honor of meeting him at the governor's and at the postmaster's.'
Feodulia Ivanovna invited him to sit down, also saying 'Please!' and making a motion with her head, as actresses do when playing queens. Then she seated herself on the sofa, covered herself with her merino shawl, and thereafter moved neither eye nor eyebrow.
Chichikov again raised his eyes and again saw Canaris with his fat haunches and interminable mustaches, Bobelina, and the thrush in the cage.
For the space of nearly a whole five minutes, they all preserved their silence; the only sound was the tapping of the thrush's beak against the wood of the wooden cage, on the bottom of which he was fishing for grains of wheat. Chichikov glanced around the room once more: everything that was in it, everything, was solid, clumsy in the highest degree, and bore some strange resemblance to the master of the house himself; in the corner of the drawing room stood a big-bellied walnut bureau on four most preposterous legs, a veritable bear. The table, the chairs, the armchairs—all was of the most heavy and uncomfortable quality—in short, every object, every chair seemed to be saying: 'I, too, am Sobakevich!' or 'I, too, am very like Sobakevich!'
'We were remembering you at the head magistrate's, at Ivan Grigorievich's,' Chichikov said finally, seeing that no one was disposed to begin the conversation, 'last Thursday. We had a very pleasant time there.'
'Yes, I wasn't at the magistrate's then,' replied Sobakevich.
'A wonderful man!'
'Who is?' said Sobakevich, staring at the corner of the stove.
'The magistrate.'
'Well, maybe it seemed so to you: he's a mason, but otherwise as big a fool as the world has yet produced.'
Chichikov was a bit taken aback by this rather sharp definition, but then recovered himself and went on:
'Of course, no man is without weaknesses, but the governor, on the other hand, is such an excellent man!'
'The governor is an excellent man?'
'Yes, isn't it true?'
'The foremost bandit in the world!'
'What, the governor a bandit?' said Chichikov, totally unable to understand how the governor could come to be a bandit. 'I confess, I would never have thought it,' he went on. 'But allow me, nevertheless, to observe: his actions are not like that at all, on the contrary, there is even a good deal of softness in him.' Here he held up as evidence even the purses embroidered by his own hands, and spoke with praise of the gentle expression of his face.
'And he has the face of a bandit!' said Sobakevich. 'Just give him a knife and set him out on the highway— he'll stick it in you, he'll do it for a kopeck! He and the vice-governor—they're Gog and Magog!'[21]
'No, he's not on good terms with them,' Chichikov thought to himself. 'I'll try talking with him about the police chief: it seems he's a friend of his.'
'Anyhow, as for me,' he said, 'I confess, I like the police chief most of all. He has a direct, open sort of character; there's something simple-hearted in his face.'
'A crook!' Sobakevich said very coolly. 'He'll sell you, deceive you, and then sit down to dinner with you! I know them all: they're all crooks, the whole town is the same: a crook mounted on a crook and driving him with a crook. Judases, all of them. There's only one decent man there: the prosecutor—and to tell the truth, he, too, is a swine.'
After such laudatory, if somewhat brief, biographies, Chichikov saw that there was no point in mentioning any other officials, and remembered that Sobakevich did not like to speak well of anyone.
'Now then, sweetie, let's go and have dinner,' Sobakevich's spouse said to him.
'Please!' said Sobakevich.
Whereupon, going up to the table where the hors d'oeuvres were, guest and host fittingly drank a glass of vodka each, and snacked as the whole of Russia snacks in towns and villages—that is, on various pickled things and other savory blessings—and they all flowed into the dining room; at their head, like a gliding goose, swept the hostess. The small table was set for four. The fourth place was very quickly claimed, it is hard to say positively by whom, a lady or a young maid, a relation, a housekeeper, or simply a woman living in the house: something without a bonnet, about thirty years old, in a motley shawl. There are persons who exist in the world not as objects, but as alien specks or spots on objects. They sit in the same place, hold their head in the identical manner, one is ready to take them for furniture and thinks that in all their born days no word has ever passed those lips; but somewhere in the servants' quarters or the pantry it turns out simply—oh-ho-ho!
'The cabbage soup is very good today, my sweet!' said Sobakevich, having slurped up some soup and
