'And here I am,' said the host, entering and bringing in two youths in summer frock coats. Slender as willow wands, they shot up almost two feet taller than Pyotr Petrovich.
'My sons, high-school boys. Home for the holidays. Nikolasha, you stay with our guest, and you, Alexasha, follow me.'
And again Pyotr Petrovich Petukh vanished.
Chichikov occupied himself with Nikolasha. Nikolasha was talkative. He said that the teaching in his school was not very good, that more favor was shown those whose mamas sent them costlier presents, that the Inkermanland hussar regiment was stationed in their town, that Captain Vetvitsky had a better horse than the colonel himself, though Lieutenant Vzemtsev was a far better rider.
'And, tell me, what is the condition of your papa's estate?' asked Chichikov.
'Mortgaged,' the papa himself replied to that, appearing in the drawing room again, 'mortgaged.'
It remained for Chichikov to make the sort of movement with his lips that a man makes when a deal comes to nought and ends in nothing.
'Why did you mortgage it?' he asked.
'Just so. Everybody got into mortgaging, why should I lag behind the rest? They say it's profitable. And besides, I've always lived here, so why not try living in Moscow a bit?'
'The fool, the fool!' thought Chichikov, 'he'll squander everything, and turn his children into little squanderers, too. He ought to stay in the country, porkpie that he is!'
'And I know just what you're thinking,' said Petukh.
'What?' asked Chichikov, embarrassed.
'You're thinking: 'He's a fool, a fool, this Petukh! Got me to stay for dinner, and there's still no dinner.' It'll be ready, most honorable sir. Quicker than a crop-headed wench can braid her hair.'
'Papa, Platon Mikhalych is coming!' said Alexasha, looking out the window.
'Riding a bay horse,' Nikolasha added, bending down to the window. 'Do you think our gray is worse than that, Alexasha?'
'Worse or not, he doesn't have the same gait.'
An argument arose between them about the bay horse and the gray. Meanwhile a handsome man entered the room—tall and trim, with glossy light brown curls and dark eyes. A big-muzzled monster of a dog came in after him, its bronze collar clanking.
'Had dinner?' asked Pyotr Petrovich Petukh.
'I have,' said the guest.
'What, then, have you come here to laugh at me?' Petukh said crossly. 'Who needs you after dinner?'
'Anyhow, Pyotr Petrovich,' the guest said, smiling, 'I have this comfort for you, that I ate nothing at dinner: I have no appetite at all.'
'And what a catch we had, if only you'd seen! What a giant of a sturgeon came to us! We didn't even count the carp.'
'I'm envious just listening to you,' said the guest. 'Teach me to be as merry as you are.'
'But why be bored? for pity's sake!' said the host.
'Why be bored? Because it's boring.'
'You eat too little, that's all. Try and have a good dinner. Boredom was only invented recently. Before no one was bored.'
'Enough boasting! As if you've never been bored?'
'Never! I don't know, I haven't even got time to be bored. In the morning you wake up, you have to have your tea, and the steward is there, and then it's time for fishing, and then there's dinner. After dinner you just barely have time for a snooze, then it's supper, and then the cook comes—you have to order dinner for the next day. When could I be bored?'
All the while this conversation was going on, Chichikov was studying the guest.
Platon Mikhalych Platonov was Achilles and Paris combined: trim build, impressive height, freshness—all met together in him. A pleasant smile, with a slight expression of irony, seemed to make him still more handsome. But in spite of it all, there was something sleepy and inanimate in him. Passions, sorrows, and shocks had brought no wrinkles to his virginal, fresh face, nor at the same time did they animate it.
'I confess,' Chichikov spoke, 'I, too, cannot understand—if you will allow me the observation—cannot understand how it is possible, with an appearance such as yours, to be bored. Of course, there may be other reasons: lack of money, oppression from some sort of malefactors—for there exist such as are even ready to make an attempt on one's life.'
'That's just it, that there's nothing of the sort,' said Platonov. 'Believe me, I could wish for it on occasion, that there was at least some sort of care and anxiety. Well, at least that someone would simply make me angry. But no! Boring—and that's all.'
'I don't understand. But perhaps your estate isn't big enough, there's too few souls?'
'Not in the least. My brother and I have about thirty thousand acres of land and a thousand peasant souls along with it.'
'And yet you're bored. Incomprehensible! But perhaps your estate is in disorder? the harvests have been poor, many people have died?'
'On the contrary, everything's in the best possible order, and my brother is an excellent manager.'
'I don't understand!' said Chichikov, shrugging.
'But now we're going to drive boredom away,' said the host. 'Run to the kitchen, Alexasha, tell the cook to hurry up and send us some fish tarts. Where's that gawk Emelyan and the thief Antoshka? Why don't they serve the hors d'oeuvres?'
But the door opened. The gawk Emelyan and the thief Antoshka appeared with napkins, laid the table, set down a tray with six carafes filled with varicolored liqueurs. Soon, around the tray and the carafes lay a necklace of plates—caviar, cheeses, salted mushrooms of various sorts, and from the kitchen a newly brought something on covered dishes, from which came a gurgling of butter. The gawk Emelyan and the thief Antoshka were fine and efficient folk. The master had given them these appellations only because everything came out somehow insipid without nicknames, and he did not like insipid things; he himself had a good heart, yet he loved a spicy phrase. Anyhow, his servants were not angered by it.
The hors d'oeuvres were followed by dinner. Here the good-natured host turned into a real bully. The moment he noticed someone taking one piece, he would immediately give him a second, muttering: 'Without a mate neither man nor bird can live in this world.' The guest ate the two—he heaped on a third, muttering: 'What good is the number two? God loves the trinity.' The guest ate the third—then he: 'Who ever saw a cart with three wheels? Does anyone build a cottage with three corners?' For four he had yet another saying, and also for five. Chichikov ate about a dozen helpings of something and thought: 'Well, the host can't come up with anything more now.' Not so: the host, without saying a word, put on his plate a rack of veal roasted on a spit, the best part there is, with the kidneys, and of such a calf!
'Milk-fed for two years,' said the host. 'I took care of him like my own son!'
'I can't!' said Chichikov.
'Try it, and then say 'I can't.’“
'It won't go in. No room.'
'There was no room in the church either. The governor came—they found room. And there was such a crush that an apple had nowhere to fall. Just try it: this piece is the same as the governor.'
Chichikov tried it—the piece was indeed something like a governor. Room was found for it, though it seemed impossible to find any.
With the wines there also came a story. Having received his mortgage money, Pyotr Petrovich had stocked up on provisions for ten years to come. He kept pouring and pouring; whatever the guests left was finished by Nikolasha and Alexasha, who tossed off glass after glass, yet when they left the table, it was as if nothing had happened, as if they had just been drinking water. Not so the guests: with great, great effort they dragged themselves over to the balcony and with great effort lowered themselves into their armchairs. The host, the moment he sat down in his, which was something like a four-seater, immediately fell asleep. His corpulent self turned into a blacksmith's bellows. Through his open mouth and the nostrils of his nose it began producing sounds such as do not exist even in the latest music. Everything was there—drum, flute, and some abrupt sound, like a
