Part 5

Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers--indeed, all the work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of the evening to pleasure--the more alert going to the theatre; those on the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this being the more frequent rule--visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps a dinner or an outing; in a word, at the very hour that all the officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about, repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party. Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send him for the next day’s copying?

So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and various other councillors, even for those who render counsel unto no one, and take none themselves.

St. Petersburg contains a powerful enemy to all those receiving four hundred rubles a year salary or thereabouts. This foe is none other than our northern cold, though otherwise it is said to be very healthy. At nine o’clock in the morning, precisely at the hour when the streets are filled with officials on their way to their departments, the cold begins to give them all, without discrimination, such powerful and biting nips upon their noses that the poor officials are at a loss where to hide them. At such a time, when even those occupying superior positions suffer the pain of cold in their foreheads, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected. Their only salvation lies in their ability to scamper quickly over five or six streets in their scant cloaks, and then warm their feet in the porter’s room; incidentally thawing out in the process all their faculties and abilities for official service which had become frozen on the way.

Akaki Akakievich had for some time felt the cold piercing his back and shoulders with unwonted vigor, notwithstanding the fact that he tried to cover the distance from his house to the department as quickly as possible. He finally thought to see whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. Examining the garment very carefully at home, he made a discovery: that in two or three places--to be precise, in the back and shoulders--it had become like a thin canvas; the cloth, in fact, was threadbare to the point of transparency, while the lining too had gone to pieces.

It should be mentioned that the cloak of Akaki Akakievich served as an object of ridicule to the officials; they even had deprived it of the dignified name of cloak and called it a cape. To confess the truth, it was of a rather curious construction; year by year its collar diminished more and more, because it served to patch other parts. The patching itself did not exhibit much sartorial art; and was, in fact, ill done and ugly. Seeing where the trouble lay, Akaki Akakievich decided to take the cloak to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere on the fourth floor, up a dark staircase, and who, notwithstanding his one eye and pockmarked face, busied himself, with fair success, mending trousers and frocks of officials and others; that is to say, when he was in sober condition and was not up to something or other.

It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but as it is customary that in a story the character of each person be clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf; he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again, he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice.

Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes, and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses--ascending the staircase, Akaki Akakievich was thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job, and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian! You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”

Akaki Akakievich felt unhappy because he had come precisely at the moment when Petrovich was angry; he preferred to deal with Petrovich when that individual was somewhat discouraged, or, as his wife expressed it, when “he had sunk down with brandy, the one-eyed demon!” In such a condition Petrovich, as a rule, readily came down in price, and thanked you profusely into the bargain. Afterwards, it is true, his wife would visit the customer, saying, with weeping eyes, that her husband had been drunk, and had charged too cheaply. Well, you would add a ten-copeck piece, and have the best of it at that. On the present occasion, however, Petrovich to all appearances was sober, and therefore gruff, uncommunicative, and in a condition to demand the devil only knows what a price! Akaki Akakievich felt this, and would gladly have beat a retreat, but it was too late. Petrovich had already fixed his one eye intently upon him, and Akaki Akakievich greeted him rather unwillingly:

“How are you, Petrovich?”

“And how are you, sir?” returned Petrovich, and slanted his gaze towards the hands of Akaki Akakievich, in order to see what sort of booty he had brought.

“Ah--here I am to you, Petrovich, this----”

It should be noted that Akaki Akakievich expressed himself chiefly by means of prepositions, adverbs, and particles of speech which have no meaning whatsoever. And if the matter was very difficult, he was in the habit of not completing his phrases, so that very often when his sentence began with the words, “This, in fact, is quite----” nothing would come of it, and he himself would forget to continue, thinking he had said what he had to say.

“Well, what is it?” asked Petrovich, and at the same time surveyed with his one eye the entire uniform from the collar to the cuffs, the back, the coat-flaps, and the button-holes; they were all familiar to him, for they were his own work. Such is the tailor’s habit; it is the first thing he does upon meeting one.

“Well, I here--this, Petrovich--about the cloak--the cloth, you see, everywhere in other places, is quite strong--it is a trifle dusty, and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place, just a little on the back, and a trifle too on the shoulder--bit worn through, and on this shoulder a bit--do you see?--and that’s all. Not much to do----”

Petrovich took the cape, spread it on the table, examined it for a long time, shook his head, and reached out his hand towards the window-sill for his round snuff-box, on the lid of which was the portrait of some general or other, whose identity was lost, however, because a finger had been thrust straight through the face and the hole glued over with a square bit of paper. Having taken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held up and examined the cape against the light, and again shook his head; then turned it, lining upwards, and once more shook his head. Again he removed the lid of his snuff-box, and, having applied some of its contents to his nose, he pocketed the case, and finally said:

“No, it is impossible to mend it. It’s a miserable garment!”

Akaki Akakievich’s heart sank at these words.

“And why impossible, Petrovich?” he asked in a voice almost that of an imploring child. “There’s nothing--only a bit worn-out at the shoulders. You surely have some pieces----”

“It’s easy enough to find pieces,” answered Petrovich, “but how is one to sew them on? The cloth is all rotten. Put a needle to it--and it goes apart.”

“Let it; you can put another patch there.”

“There’s nothing to lay the patches on; there’s no way of strengthening it--it is beyond all help. You may thank the stars that it’s cloth; or else a wind would come along and blow it away.”

“Well, yes, better strengthen it. How is it, in fact, this----”

“No,” said Petrovich decisively, “nothing can be done. It’s a thoroughly bad job. You’d better make gaiters out of it for cold winter days, because stockings are not sufficiently warm. The Germans invented them, in order to make more money.” (Petrovich took advantage of every opportunity to make thrusts at the Germans.) “As for the cloak, it’s quite evident you want a new one.”

At the word _new_ all grew dark before the eyes of Akaki Akakievich, and everything in the room began to go round. Only one object he saw clearly: the general with the mutilated face on the lid of Petrovich’s snuff-box.

“How a new one?” he asked, as if he were in a dream. “Why, I have no money for it.”

“Yes, a new one,” repeated Petrovich, with a savage calm.

“Well, and if I order a new one, how will it----?”

“That is, you want to know how much it would cost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’d have to put down a hundred and fifty,” said Petrovich, and compressed his lips significantly. He liked powerful effects, he liked to stun suddenly and completely, and then to look askance in order to see what kind of face the victim might make after such words.

“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki Akakievich, perhaps for the first time since his birth, for he had always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.

“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will mount up to two hundred.”

“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”

“No, it’s of no use--it will only be a waste of time and money,” answered Petrovich.

After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed. As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did not prove a traitor to sartorial art.

Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well, what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even imagined that the matter stood like that!” Another silence followed, after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow unexpected--it’s impossible--a kind of predicament!” Having said this, instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction, altogether unconscious of the fact.

On the way he collided with a chimney sweep, who blackened his shoulder; a whole hatful of lime fell upon him from the top of an unfinished house. He did not notice the things that happened to him, and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having placed his halberd beside him, was shaking snuff out of a case upon his horny hand, did he become slightly conscious of where he was, and that only because the watchman said: “Why do you push yourself into a man’s very face? What’s a sidewalk for?” This caused him to look around and to turn homeward.

It was only at home that he began to collect his thoughts, and to view the situation in its true and clear aspect. He began to argue with himself no longer in an incoherent manner, but reasonably and frankly, as with a sensible companion, with whom one might discuss any intimate and personal matter.

“Well, no,” said Akaki Akakievich. “Just now Petrovich is not in the right mood to talk with; he now that--his wife, it seems, must have given him a beating. I had better go to him on Sunday morning; after Saturday night he will be cross-eyed and sleepy; he will want to get drunk, and his wife won’t give him the money, and at such a time a ten-copeck piece in his hand--and he will be more sociable, and the cloak then and there----”

So argued Akaki Akakievich with himself. He now felt more cheerful, and waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich’s wife leave the house, he made haste to carry out his plan. Petrovich was, in fact, squint-eyed after Saturday; his head drooped, and he was quite sleepy; notwithstanding all this, the moment he knew what the business was about he at once grew alert, as if the very Satan prompted him.

“Impossible,” he said. “You must order a new one.”

At this, Akaki Akakievich slipped a ten-copeck piece into his hand.

“Thank you, sir; I will drink a bit to your health,” said Petrovich. “As for the cloak, you need not worry about it; it is nothing but a rag. I will make you a handsome new cloak; let us settle that.”

Akaki Akakievich still insisted on his mending it, but Petrovich would not listen, and said:

“There’s no way out of it; I shall have to make you a new one; and you may depend upon it, I will do my best. It is even possible that I shall make it according to the new fashion: the collar will fasten with silver hooks underneath.”

When Akaki Akakievich began to comprehend that a new cloak was an absolute necessity, his spirits sank utterly. How indeed was it to be done? Where was the money to come from? He could of course depend for a great part of it upon his customary holiday gift. But there was a new pair of trousers to order; there was the old debt to pay the cobbler for putting on new tops to old boots; he also needed three shirts and at least two undergarments which it is impolite to mention in print; in a word, there would not be a copeck left, and even if the director should prove so generous as to allot as his share forty-five or fifty rubles instead of forty, there would be the merest trifle left, which, considered in connection with the cloak money, would seem as a drop in the sea; though of course he knew that Petrovich would sometimes get a sudden notion to charge the devil knows what an exorbitant price, so that even his wife could not restrain herself from exclaiming: “Are you out of your wits, you fool! At one time he will take almost nothing for his work, but at another time he is mad enough to ask more than the thing is worth!” Although Akaki Akakievich knew quite well that Petrovich would undertake to make the cloak for eighty rubles, where were even the eighty rubles to come from? He could manage to provide half of it, perhaps even a trifle more; but where was he to find the other half?

First of all, the reader should be informed where the first half was to come from. Akaki Akakievich had the habit of putting away, for every ruble he spent, a two-copeck piece into a small box, kept under lock, and with a small hole in the top for the dropping in of the money. At the expiration of every six months he would exchange the collected coppers for silver. He had been doing this for a long time, and in the course of several years had managed in this manner to save more than forty rubles.

With the first half in hand, the question now was: how to procure the other half? After much deliberation, Akaki Akakievich decided that it would be necessary to curtail the ordinary expenses for at least a period of one year, to deprive himself of his evening tea, to light no candles; and if there was anything that had to be done, to do it in the landlady’s room by her candle. He also could, when in the street, step more lightly and cautiously upon the stones, almost on tiptoe, and save thereby his heels from wearing out too quickly. He could give his laundress as little wash as possible; and, in order not to wear his clothes out, could throw them off upon arriving home and remain solely in his cotton dressing-gown, an ancient garment spared mercifully by time.

To tell the truth, these deprivations came hard in the beginning, but gradually he became used to them; he even learned to go hungry in the evening; but in compensation he nourished himself spiritually, eternally bearing in his thoughts the idea of the new cloak. From this time on, it seemed as if his existence had become fuller, as if he had married, as if some other person was living with him, as if he were not alone, but some pleasant companion had consented to share his lot in life with him--and this companion was none other than the cloak, thickly wadded and so strongly lined as never to wear out. He became as it were livelier, even more characterful, as befits a man who has a clear and a firm aim in life. Doubt and indecision seemed to have vanished from his face and manner, and indeed all his wavering and more undefined characteristics became less noticeable. At times even a sparkle showed in his eyes, and his mind indulged in the most daring thoughts. Why not, for instance, marten on the collar? Such a thought made him absent-minded; and upon one occasion, in copying a paper, he almost made an error, which caused him to cry almost aloud, “Oh!” and to make a sign of the cross.

At least once a month he visited Petrovich, to talk over the cloak with him--where best to buy the cloth, the question of its color, and its price--and, though somewhat agitated, he always returned feeling happier in the thought that the time was at last approaching when everything would be bought and the cloak made.

The matter went even faster than he anticipated. Surpassing all his hopes, the director allotted him not forty or forty-five rubles, but sixty! Perhaps he felt that Akaki Akakievich needed a cloak, or else it was an accident, but the fact was, Akaki Akakievich found himself with twenty unexpected rubles. This circumstance hastened matters. Another two or three months of hunger, and Akaki Akakievich found himself with eighty rubles. His heart, usually tranquil, began to throb.

On the first free day he went shopping with Petrovich. They purchased a very good cloth, and at a reasonable price, because they had considered the matter for a full six months before, and hardly a month passed but that they visited the shops to inquire prices; besides, Petrovich himself said that better cloth couldn’t be found. For lining, they selected a cotton cloth, but so strong and thick that, to use the words of Petrovich, it was better than silk, and in appearance even showy and shiny. Marten fur proved too expensive, and so in its place they purchased the very best obtainable cat-skin, which in the distance could be mistaken for marten. Petrovich worked on the cloak two weeks; there was much quilting, otherwise it would have been finished sooner. For his labor Petrovich charged twelve rubles--he couldn’t possibly take less; it was all done with silk, in small double stitches, which afterwards Petrovich went over with his own teeth, creating various patterns in the process.