The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (63 page)

Precisely where the clerk who had invited him lived, we unfortunately cannot say: our memory is beginning to fail us badly, and whatever there is in Petersburg, all those houses and streets, has so mixed and merged together in our head that it is very hard to get anything out of it in a decent fashion.
Be that as it may, it is at least certain that the clerk lived in a better part of town—meaning not very near to Akaky Akakievich.
Akaky Akakievich had first to pass through some deserted, sparsely lit streets, but as he approached the clerk’s home, the streets became livelier, more populous, and better lit.
Pedestrians flashed by more frequently, ladies began to appear, beautifully dressed, some of the men wore beaver collars, there were fewer cabbies with their wooden-grill sleds studded with gilded nails—on the contrary, coachmen kept passing in raspberry-colored velvet hats, with lacquered sleds and bearskin rugs, or carriages with decorated boxes flew down the street, their wheels shrieking over the snow.
Akaky Akakievich looked at it all as at something new.
It was several years since he had gone out in the evening.
He stopped curiously before a lighted shop window to look at a picture that portrayed some beautiful woman taking off her shoe and thus baring her whole leg, not a bad leg at all; and behind her back, from another room, some man stuck his head out, with side-whiskers and a handsome imperial under his lip.
Akaky Akakievich shook his head and chuckled, and then went on his way.
Why did he chuckle?
Was it because he had encountered something totally unfamiliar, of which everyone nevertheless still preserves some sort of intuition; or had he thought, like many other clerks, as follows: “Well, these Frenchmen!
what can you say,
if they want something sort of … it’s really sort of …” But maybe he didn’t think even that—it’s really impossible to get inside a man’s soul and learn all he thinks.

At last he reached the house where the chief clerk’s assistant lived.
The chief clerk’s assistant lived in grand style: the stairway was lighted, the apartment was on the second floor.
Entering the front hall, Akaky Akakievich saw whole rows of galoshes on the floor.
Among them, in the middle of the room, a samovar stood hissing and letting out clouds of steam.
On the walls hung overcoats and cloaks, some among them even with beaver collars or velvet lapels.
Behind the walls, noise and talk could be heard, which suddenly became clear and loud as the door opened and a lackey came out with a tray laden with empty glasses, a pitcher of cream, and a basket of rusks.
It was evident that the clerks had gathered long ago and had already finished their first glass of tea.
Akaky Akakievich, having hung up his overcoat himself, went into the room, and before him simultaneously flashed candles, clerks, pipes, and card tables, while his hearing was struck vaguely by a rush of conversation arising on all sides and the noise of chairs being moved.
He stopped quite awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking about and trying to think what to do.
But he was already noticed, greeted with cries, and everyone went at once to the front hall and again examined his overcoat.
Akaky Akakievich was somewhat embarrassed, yet being a pure-hearted man, he could not help rejoicing to see how everyone praised his overcoat.
After that, naturally, everyone dropped both him and his overcoat and turned, as usual, to the tables set up for whist.
All of this—the noise, the talk, the crowd of people—all of it was somehow strange to Akaky Akakievich.
He simply did not know what to do, where to put his hands and feet, or his whole self; he finally sat down with the players, looked at the cards, looked into the face of one or another, and in a short while began to yawn, feeling himself bored, the more so as it was long past the time when he customarily went to bed.
He tried to take leave of the host, but the host would not let him go, saying that they absolutely had to drink a glass of champagne to the new coat.
An hour later a supper was served which consisted of mixed salad, cold veal, pâté, sweet pastry,
and champagne.
Akaky Akakievich was forced to drink two glasses, after which he felt that the room had become merrier, yet he was unable to forget that it was already midnight and long since time to go home.
So that the host should not somehow decide to detain him, he quietly left the room, went to the front hall to find his overcoat, which he saw, not without regret, lying on the floor, shook it, cleaned every feather off it, put it over his shoulders, went downstairs and outside.
Outside it was still light.
Some small-goods shops, those permanent clubs for servants and various others, were open; those that were closed still showed a stream of light the whole length of the door chink, indicating that they were not yet devoid of company and that the housemaids and servants were probably finishing their talks and discussions, while their masters were thrown into utter perplexity as to their whereabouts.
Akaky Akakievich walked along in a merry state of mind, and even suddenly ran, for some unknown reason, after some lady who passed by like lightning, every part of whose body was filled with extraordinary movement.
However, he stopped straight away and again walked very slowly, as before, marveling to himself at this sprightliness of unknown origin.
Soon there stretched before him those deserted streets which even in the daytime are none too cheerful, much less in the evening.
Now they had become still more desolate and solitary: street lamps flashed less often—evidently the supply of oil was smaller; there were wooden houses, fences; not a soul anywhere; only snow glittered in the streets, and sleepy low hovels with closed shutters blackened mournfully.
He approached a place where the street was intersected by an endless square that looked like a terrible desert, with houses barely visible on the other side.

Far away, God knows where, a light flashed in some sentry box that seemed to be standing at the edge of the world.
Here Akaky Akakievich’s merriment somehow diminished considerably.
He entered the square not without some inadvertent fear, as if his heart had a foreboding of something bad.
He looked behind him and to the sides: just like a sea all around him.
“No, better not to look,” he thought and walked with closed eyes, and when he opened them to see how far the end of the square was, he suddenly
saw before him, almost in front of his nose, some mustached people, precisely what sort he could not even make out.
His eyes grew dim, his heart pounded in his chest.
“That overcoat’s mine!” one of them said in a thundering voice, seizing him by the collar.
Akaky Akakievich was about to shout “Help!” when the other one put a fist the size of a clerk’s head right to his mouth and said, “Just try shouting!” Akaky Akakievich felt only that his overcoat was taken off him, he was given a kick with a knee and fell face down in the snow, and then felt no more.
After a few minutes, he came to his senses and got to his feet, but no one was there.
He felt it was cold in the field and the overcoat was gone; he began to shout, but his voice seemed never to reach the ends of the square.
In desperation, shouting constantly, he started running across the square, straight to the sentry box, beside which stood an on-duty policeman, leaning on his halberd, watching with apparent curiosity, desirous of knowing why the devil a man was running toward him from far away and shouting.
Akaky Akakievich, running up to him, began shouting in a breathless voice that he had been asleep, not on watch, and had not seen how a man was being robbed.
The policeman replied that he had seen nothing; that he had seen him being stopped by two men in the middle of the square but had thought they were his friends; and that, instead of denouncing him for no reason, he should go to the inspector tomorrow and the inspector would find out who took the overcoat.
Akaky Akakievich came running home in complete disorder: the hair that still grew in small quantities on his temples and the back of his head was completely disheveled; his side, chest, and trousers were covered with snow.
The old woman, his landlady, hearing a terrible knocking at the door, hastily jumped out of bed and ran with one shoe on to open it, holding her nightgown to her breast out of modesty; but when she opened the door she stepped back, seeing what state Akaky Akakievich was in.
When he told her what was the matter, she clasped her hands and said he must go straight to the superintendent, that the inspector would cheat him, make promises and then lead him by the nose; and that it was best to go to the superintendent, that he was a man of her acquaintance, because Anna, the Finnish woman who used to work for her as a
cook, had now got herself hired at the superintendent’s as a nanny, and that she often saw him herself as he drove past their house, and that he also came to church every Sunday, prayed, and at the same time looked cheerfully at everyone, and therefore was by all tokens a good man.
Having listened to this decision, Akaky Akakievich plodded sadly to his room, and how he spent the night we will leave to the judgment of those capable of entering at least somewhat into another man’s predicament.

Early in the morning he went to the superintendent but was told that he was asleep; he came at ten and again was told: asleep; he came at eleven o’clock and was told that the superintendent was not at home; at lunchtime the scriveners in the front room refused to let him in and insisted on knowing what his business was, what necessity had brought him there, and what had happened.
So that finally, for once in his life, Akaky Akakievich decided to show some character and said flatly that he had to see the superintendent himself, in person, that they dared not refuse to admit him, that he had come from his department on official business, and that he would make a complaint about them and they would see.
The scriveners did not dare to say anything against that, and one of them sent to call the superintendent.
The superintendent took the story about the theft of the overcoat somehow extremely strangely.
Instead of paying attention to the main point of the case, he began to question Akaky Akakievich—why was he coming home so late, and had he not stopped and spent some time in some indecent house?—so that Akaky Akakievich was completely embarrassed and left him not knowing whether the case of his overcoat would take its proper course or not.
He did not go to the office all that day (the only time in his life).
The next day he arrived all pale and in his old housecoat, which now looked still more lamentable.
Though some of the clerks did not miss their chance to laugh at Akaky Akakievich even then, still the story of the theft of the overcoat moved many.
They decided straight away to take up a collection for him, but they collected a mere trifle, because the clerks had already spent a lot, having subscribed to a portrait of the director and to some book, at the suggestion of the section chief, who was a friend of the author—and so, the sum turned out to be quite
trifling.
One of them, moved by compassion, decided at least to help Akaky Akakievich with good advice, telling him not to go to the police because, though it might happen that a policeman, wishing to gain the approval of his superior, would somehow find the overcoat, still the overcoat would remain with the police unless he could present legal proofs that it belonged to him; and the best thing would be to address a certain
important person
, so that the
important person
, by writing and referring to the proper quarters, could get things done more successfully.
No help for it, Akaky Akakievich decided to go to the
important person.
What precisely the post of the
important person
was, and in what it consisted, remains unknown.
It should be realized that this
certain important person
had become an important person only recently, and till then had been an unimportant person.
However, his position even now was not considered important in comparison with other, still more important ones.
But there will always be found a circle of people for whom something unimportant in the eyes of others is already important.
He tried, however, to increase his importance by many other means—namely, he introduced the custom of lower clerks meeting him on the stairs when he came to the office; of no one daring to come to him directly, but everything going in the strictest order: a collegiate registrar should report to a provincial secretary, a provincial secretary to a titular or whatever else, and in this fashion the case should reach him.
Thus everything in holy Russia is infected with imitation, and each one mimics and apes his superior.
It is even said that some titular councillor, when he was made chief of some separate little chancellery, at once partitioned off a special room for himself, called it his “office room,” and by the door placed some sort of ushers with red collars and galloons, who held the door handle and opened it for each visitor, though the “office room” could barely contain an ordinary writing desk.
The ways and habits of the
important person
were imposing and majestic, but of no great complexity.
The chief principle of his system was strictness.
“Strictness, strictness, and—strictness,” he used to say, and with the last word usually looked very importantly into the face of the person he was addressing.
Though, incidentally, there was no reason for any of it, because the dozen or
so clerks who constituted the entire administrative machinery of the office were properly filled with fear even without that; seeing him from far off, they set their work aside and waited, standing at attention, until their superior passed through the room.
His usual conversation with subordinates rang with strictness and consisted almost entirely of three phrases: “How dare you?
Do you know with whom you are speaking?
Do you realize who is standing before you?” However, he was a kind man at heart, good to his comrades, obliging, but the rank of general had completely bewildered him.
On receiving the rank of general, he had somehow become confused, thrown off, and did not know how to behave at all.
When he happened to be with his equals, he was as a man ought to be, a very decent man, in many respects even not a stupid man; but as soon as he happened to be in the company of men at least one rank beneath him, he was simply as bad as could be: he kept silent, and his position was pitiable, especially since he himself felt that he could be spending his time incomparably better.
In his eyes there could sometimes be seen a strong desire to join in some interesting conversation and circle, but he was stopped by the thought: Would it not be excessive on his part, would it not be familiar, would he not be descending beneath his importance?
On account of such reasoning, he remained eternally in the same silent state, only uttering some monosyllabic sounds from time to time, and in this way he acquired the title of a most boring person.
It was to this
important person
that our Akaky Akakievich came, and came at a most unfavorable moment, very inopportune for himself, though very opportune for the important person.