Dead Souls

After more than two weeks of dinners and card parties in town, Chichikov sets off to visit Manilov. Gogol pauses first to introduce his servants: Petrushka, who reads any book indiscriminately — heroic adventure or grammar or liturgical compendium — caring not for the words but only for the physical act of reading, and who sleeps in his jacket and carries his own distinctive smell wherever he goes. Selifan the coachman is mentioned. Manilov promised the estate was fifteen versts from town. It is closer to thirty. A peasant corrects the road: there is no Zamanilovka — only Manilovka. They arrive eventually. The estate sits on an exposed rise, open to every wind. There is an arbour bearing the inscription "This is the Temple of Solitary Thought," a green-coated pond, and two hundred log huts with no vegetation near them. Gogol describes Manilov as belonging to a class the proverb defines as "neither this nor that — neither Bogdan of the city nor Selifan of the village." He seems pleasant at first glance. By the third moment you would say nothing at all. His drawing room contains two chairs still covered only in bast — "not yet ready for use" — and a book with the fourteenth page permanently turned down. He has been reading it for two years. He speaks wistfully of the bridge he might build over the pond, and the little shops, and the mansion whose facade might afford a view to Moscow. None of it progresses past daydream. He and his wife are devoted in an aggressively infantile way — feeding each other bon-bons, calling the occasion a "birthday of the heart." His sons are named Themistocleus and Alkid. At lunch Chichikov praises their prospects with the same smooth assurance he applies to everything. After lunch, in the study, Chichikov asks his question: how many serfs have died since the last census, and could he purchase them — the dead ones, who still appear alive on paper? Manilov drops his pipe. He stares. He checks Chichikov's eyes for madness and finds none. Eventually he agrees — and offers to give them free of charge. Chichikov performs a brief speech about being a drifting barque amid the tempestuous billows of life, and both men end up with tears in their eyes. Manilov watches the britchka out of sight, then sits smoking and dreaming of facades until supper.