Part 7

“But, Your Excellency,” said Akaki Akakievich, gathering together his final remnant of courage, and breaking out into a terrible perspiration, “I, Your Excellency, have presumed to trouble you because, you see, the secretaries are that--an untrustworthy race----”

“What! what! what!” ejaculated the _important personage_. “Where do you get the courage? Where did you get such ideas? What a spirit of impertinence has spread among the young generation against their chiefs and superiors!”

The _important personage_, apparently, had not noticed that Akaki Akakievich was already a man of about fifty, and that if he could be called a young person, it was only in comparison with one who was seventy.

“Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? Do you realize it? Answer me!”

At this point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a high pitch that even a man different from Akakievich would have been frightened. Akaki Akakievich grew faint; he reeled; trembled from head to foot; then his legs gave way under him; if several attendants had not run in to support him, he would have fallen to the floor. They carried him out more dead than alive. The _important personage_, much gratified that the effect he produced far exceeded all expectation, and thoroughly intoxicated with the thought that even a word from him could deprive a man of his senses, looked askance at his friend, to see how that individual regarded the matter, and observed, not without satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncomfortable state, and was beginning to show on his part certain signs of fear.

How he managed to descend the stairway and into the street--of this Akaki Akakievich remembered nothing. He was unconscious of either hands or feet. Never before in his life had he been so reprimanded by a superior, let alone an unfamiliar one. He walked in the snow-storm which whistled through the streets; his mouth open, he staggered along the sidewalks; the wind blew upon him in St. Petersburg fashion from all four sides and every crossing. In an instant it had blown a quinsy down his throat, and he arrived at home all swollen and too weak to utter a word. He lay down on his bed.

The next day a high fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness advanced more rapidly than could be expected; and when the doctor appeared and felt his pulse, there was nothing for him to do except to prescribe a poultice, for no other reason but that the patient be not deprived of the beneficent aid of medicine; at the same time he predicted his inevitable end in thirty-six hours, after which he turned to the landlady and said: “And you, my woman, had better not lose any time about it, and order a pine coffin for him, as an oak one will be too expensive.”

Did Akaki Akakievich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them, did they agitate him? Did he bewail the bitterness of his life? It is uncertain, because he spent his last hours in fever and delirium. Visions, one stranger than the other, continued to appear before him. Now he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make a cloak with traps for thieves who he imagined were constantly under his bed; and he more than once called for his landlady to drag a thief from under his bed-cover. Then he inquired why the old cloak hung in front of him when he had a new one. Several times he fancied himself as standing before the general, addressing him as “Your Excellency,” and pleading with him after the reprimand; and finally he began to utter imprecations, employing the most terrible words, so that the aged housekeeper, never before having heard the like, made a sign of the cross, all the more since these curses usually followed after the words “Your Excellency.” Later he began to utter sheer nonsense; one thing, however, was evident: all his incoherent words and thoughts hovered around the one and the same cloak.

At last poor Akaki Akakievich gave up his spirit. The usual legal procedure with regard to his room and his effects was not followed, because in the first place there were no heirs, and in the second, because he left so little property, namely, a bundle of goose-quills, a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three buttons that had come off his trousers, and the cape already familiar to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows; this, I must confess, did not interest even him who relates this story.

They bore Akaki Akakievich away and buried him. And so St. Petersburg was left without Akaki Akakievich, as though he had never been there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none, interesting to none, and who did not even attract to himself the attention of the student who does not let an opportunity slip by to put a pin through a common fly and to examine it under the microscope--a being who endured humbly the ridicule of his brother officials and went to his grave without having experienced a single notable event, but for whom nevertheless, at the very close of his life, came a radiating guest in the shape of a cloak, which cheered for an instant his sorry existence; and upon whom there afterwards descended an intolerable misfortune, such as descends even on the heads of the mighty of this world!

A few days after his death, an attendant was sent to his house to request him to report immediately at the department; but the attendant returned to his chief with the rather unsatisfactory answer that he could not come, and to the question, “Why?” replied, “Well, you see, he’s dead. He was buried four days ago.” In this manner did they hear of Akaki Akakievich’s death in the department, and the next day, in his place sat a new official, much taller in stature, and forming his letters not quite so upright, but very much inclined and aslant.

But who could have imagined that this was not the end of Akaki Akakievich, and that he was destined to live through several stirring days after his death, in compensation, as it were, for his unnoticed life? But it so happened, and our poor history takes an unexpectedly fantastic conclusion.

St. Petersburg was suddenly startled by rumors that on the Kalinkin Bridge and in its vicinity there had begun to appear nightly a corpse, in the shape of an official, seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under the pretense that it was the stolen cloak, he dragged off, regardless of rank or calling, every one’s cloak from his shoulders, whether it was cat-skin, beaver, raccoon, fox, or bear--in short, every variety of fur and skin which man had thought of for his covering. One of the department officials saw the dead with his own eyes, and immediately recognized in him Akaki Akakievich; this, however, so frightened him that he began to run with all his might, and was therefore unable to observe him closely, but only saw him raise a threatening finger from afar.

Complaints began to come in from all quarters that the backs and shoulders, not alone of titular, but even of court, councillors were being exposed to the danger of a cold, because of this frequent deprivation of their cloaks. The police made arrangements to catch the corpse, at all costs, either alive or dead, and to deal with him most severely, as an example to others. In this they almost succeeded. A watchman in Kirishkin Lane seized the corpse by the collar on the very spot of his misdeeds; for he was in the act of dragging off the frieze cloak of a retired musician, who in his day had blown the flute. The watchman’s shout for help fetched two comrades to his side, and into their hands he committed the marauder, while he himself thrust his hand for a moment into his boot for his snuff-box, in order to refresh temporarily his frozen nose. The snuff, however, must have been of such poor quality that even the corpse could not stand it. Ere the watchman, who had closed his right nostril with his thumb, had time to apply a half-handful of the snuff to his left nostril, the corpse sneezed so violently that the three of them were soon wiping their eyes; and while they were doing this he vanished so completely that they were not even sure whether he had been actually in their hands. Henceforth the watchmen were so apprehensive of dead men that they even refrained from laying their hands on the living, and only dared to exclaim at a distance, “Hey, there, go your way!” As for the dead official, he began to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, creating no slight terror among all timid people.

We have, however, wholly neglected a _certain important personage_, who had been the actual cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true history. First of all, in justice to the _certain important personage_, it is necessary to say that immediately after the departure of the poor, totally crushed Akaki Akakievich he experienced an emotion akin to pity. It was not new to him--this feeling of sympathy; his heart was really accessible to many good impulses, notwithstanding the fact that his rank often interfered with their outward manifestation. No sooner had his friend gone than he began to think about the poor Akaki Akakievich. And nearly every day thereafter there appeared before him the pale Akaki Akakievich, who was unable to bear up under an official reprimand. The thought agitated him to such an extent that after a week had passed he resolved even to send an official to learn his condition, and to see whether he could really assist him. When it was reported to him that Akaki Akakievich had died suddenly of fever, he was dumbfounded, suffered the reproaches of conscience, and was in poor spirits all day long.

Desiring some diversion and to drive away the disagreeable impression, he went in the evening to the house of one of his friends, where he found a likely crowd, all the more pleasant because nearly every one was of the one and the same rank, so that he was not in any way embarrassed. This fact had a most astounding effect on his spirits. He opened his heart, made himself very agreeable in conversation; in short, he passed a charming evening. After supper he drank two glasses of champagne, an excellent method, as every one knows, of arousing cheerfulness.

The champagne communicated in him an inclination towards various enterprises, and he decided not to go directly home, but to visit a certain well-known lady named Karolina Ivanovna--probably of German extraction--with whom he was on quite friendly terms. It should be mentioned that the _important personage_ was no longer a young man, but a good husband and the respectable father of a family. His two sons, one of whom was already in the government service, and a good-looking, sixteen-year-old daughter, with a trifle arched but rather pretty little nose, came in every morning to kiss his hand, and say, “_Bon jour, Papa_.” His wife, a woman still fresh and not at all bad-looking, first gave him her hand to kiss and then kissed his. The _important personage_, however, though content with his domestic caresses, thought it elegant to maintain friendly relations in another part of the city. This friend was hardly prettier or younger than his wife; but many such mysteries exist on earth, and to solve them is none of our affair.

The _important personage_, therefore, descended the staircase, entered his sledge, and said to the driver, “To Karolina Ivanovna!” Then, wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, he settled into that happy mood, better than which cannot be even imagined by the Russian. It is that state when you are not thinking of anything in particular, but the thoughts crowd in upon you of themselves, one pleasanter than the other, and calling for no exertion on your part to pursue them or seek them. Gratified beyond measure, he recalled all the gay features of the evening, all the remarks and all the stories that made the little circle laugh. Many of these he repeated in a low voice, and found them just as funny as before.

Occasionally, however, he was hindered by an impetuous wind, which, arising suddenly, God only knows whence and why, cut his face, and beat snow into it, or caused the collar of his cloak to burst out like a sail, and then blew it back over his head, with a supernatural force, as it were, and this gave him no end of trouble to disentangle his head out of its folds.

Suddenly the _important personage_ felt some one grip him by the collar. Turning around, he noticed a man of small stature, dressed in a shabby old uniform, and, not without terror, recognized in him Akaki Akakievich. The face of the man was pale as snow, like that of a dead man. But the horror of the _important personage_ exceeded all bounds when he saw the mouth of the corpse open, and, while it breathed upon him the terrible odor of the grave, he heard it utter the following remarks: “Ah, so here you are at last! At last I have you that--caught you by the collar! I need your cloak! You didn’t give a thought to mine, and even reprimanded me. Well, now give me yours!”

The poor _important personage_ almost died of fright--despite his manifestation of character in his office and before his inferiors generally, and although every one, on noting his manly figure and aspect, could not help but remark, “What a strong character!” Here, however, he, like many others possessed of an heroic exterior, was so terrified that, not without cause, he felt as though he would die on the spot. With his own hands he flung the cloak off his shoulders, and shouted to the driver in an unnatural voice, “Home, at full speed!” The driver, hearing the tone, generally employed in critical moments, and accompanied in this case by something much more emphatic, assumed the physical attitude of an emergency, flourished his whip, and darted off like an arrow.

In six minutes or so, the _important personage_ was before his own house. Pale, frightened, and without his cloak, instead of being at Karolina Ivanovna’s, he was in his own house; and he managed somehow to reach his own room, where he passed the night in great agitation, so that the next morning at tea his daughter said, “You are very pale today, Papa.” But Papa was silent, and said not a word to any one about what had happened, where he had been, and whither he was bound. This event made a powerful impression on him. He even much more rarely said to his subordinates, “How dare you? Do you realize who stands before you?” and if he did utter these words, it was not until he had heard out all the facts of the case.

Still more remarkable was it that from that day on the corpse of the official ceased to appear. Evidently the general’s cloak fitted his shoulders perfectly; at least, no more stories were heard about the dragging-off of cloaks. Many active and anxious people, however, were very apprehensive, and insisted that the corpse was still at large in certain remote sections of the city. In fact, one watchman in the Kolomen district saw with his own eyes the apparition stalk forth from behind a house; but, being rather weak physically, he dared not arrest him, but simply followed him in the darkness, until at last the apparition suddenly turned upon him and said, “What do you want?” and displayed such a fist as is never seen on a living man. The watchman replied, “Nothing,” and started back. The apparition, however, looking very tall and wearing enormous mustaches, directed his footsteps seemingly towards the Obukhov Bridge and vanished in the nocturnal darkness.

TURGENEV THE EMANCIPATOR

Turgenev was the most cosmopolitan of the Russian fiction-writers, yet with all his long residence in Berlin, Baden, and Paris, with all his broad culture and varied linguistic attainments, he never ceased to choose Russian themes and yield a passionate devotion to his fatherland.

Ivan Sergieevich Turgenev was born on the 28th of October, 1818, in the government of Orel. His father, a dissipated Russian military officer, died while Ivan was still young, leaving the lad in charge of his mother, who was about six years the senior of her husband. The woman was even less fitted by temperament to be a careful mother than was Lady Byron, and the youth of the future novelist was stained with bitter tears. Her vindictive spirit she retained to the last, and, dying in old age, she constantly refused to receive the visits of her son.

Doubtless these disillusioning home experiences affected young Turgenev, for he early declared that he would never marry--and maintained his resolution. Likewise, his ideals of motherhood seem to have suffered, for the maternal qualities of his women characters never rise to the highest.

German, French, and English he early learned from instructors at home--Russian he picked up from the servants of the ancestral estate on which he was born. First, he went to Moscow to study, later the University at St. Petersburg held him for three years as a student, and Berlin completed his academic training--particularly in philosophy, for the subject was at that time interdicted in the Russian schools for fear of its levelling effects.

That was a vitally formative thought-period for Europe, the years between 1835 and 1842, and during such of them as Turgenev spent in the German capital he became impregnated with free thought in all its phases, and never thereafter could he breathe without oppression the air of his restricted Russia. Thus the propaganda of emancipation which the great novelist subtly spread by means of his fiction, without ever becoming a physically present leader, was first of all inspired by his life at home and fanned to enthusiasm by contact with intrepid thinkers in Germany.

There must have been something sweetly noble in this fine, robust young giant for him to have emerged from his sad and jarring home-life, and the autocracy of his natal “Nest of Nobles,” with so deeply rooted a hatred of serfdom and all cruel inequalities. Like the young Lincoln, he swore to strike a blow against slavery; like Lincoln, he lived to witness its overthrow, though upon a more equitable and permanently satisfactory basis than did his American contemporary.

Turgenev, however, was not a militant emancipator. He was too calm, too forbearing, too much the typical man of culture, for this. Indeed, the Russian literary system of dealing with abuses may be said to be typified by Turgenev’s method--he merely described. But his pictures were so vital that he must have mixed his reds with the bloody sweat of knouted serfs, and gotten his blacks from the smoky gloom of pestilent cabins which lined the noisome roadways on ten thousand manors. All Russia saw and gasped--and reformed. Thus did his first work of distinction, the twenty-five “Sportsman’s Sketches”--published from 1847 to 1851, and in book-form in 1852--do their mighty work for mankind.

In earlier days Turgenev was, with all enlightened Russia, an admirer of the poet-fictionist Gogol. A letter in eulogy of this author on his death in 1852 was severely rebuked by the Czar’s banishing its writer to his estates, where he remained, busily engaged in writing, until 1855. Then he saw that Russia could best be served at a distance. He was out of sympathy with the extreme Slavophile party, yet he loved Russia. What better course opened before him than to live in an atmosphere where freedom could breathe, and where his powerful pen might not only do service for Russia among Russians, but in all of Europe as well.

And this ambition he abundantly realized. His residence in Baden as the friend of Madame Viardot, and, be it said, of her husband, and his later life in Paris, whither he repaired shortly after the close of the Franco-Prussian War--for he never lived again in Russia--brought him brilliantly before a constantly increasing company of notables, of whom he was at the last easily chief. His gigantesque figure, crowned with that silvery hair and beard, was a loved and familiar sight until he succumbed to a malignant cancer which attacked the spinal cord, and Turgenev passed over, on the 3rd of September, 1883, at the age of sixty-five.

A pessimist is one who looks upon the unequal struggle of life and can discern no hand to succor the deserving weak from the rapacious strong. Sitting while a lad in a Russian garden, Turgenev beheld a fight-to-a-finish between a serpent and a toad. Then and there began his doubts of a beneficent Providence, which culminated in his quiet, and never aggressive, spiritual pessimism. In this he is only one with most great Russian literary artists. And, singularly enough, he too passed into a final era of mysticism, though not so completely as did his compeer Tolstoi, as witness that fine symbolical sketch, “The Song of Triumphant Love.”

An interesting contrast presents itself in the characters of Tolstoi and Turgenev. The one, aggressively Christian, harsh in the judgment of his opponents, and intolerant of what he adjudged to be error; the other, meek, gentle, considerate, largely tolerant, and quietly forceful. Tolstoi was the lion aroused and warring even when preaching non-resistance; Turgenev, the lion resting with dignified forbearance because of a great serenity within. Both were men of might, yet ethically and artistically at variance. It is pleasant to record, however, that the quarrel which separated them for sixteen years did not prevent Turgenev from responding at once when in later life Tolstoi sought a reconciliation. The interview was charged with amity, but, naturally, Turgenev could not adopt his old-time friend’s extreme religious views. So when they had parted, Tolstoi’s praise was modified--Turgenev was “an unpleasant man”--while the latter had only warm words for the religionist. In a later essay in this series it is recorded how Turgenev from his death-bed besought Tolstoi to return to the field of Romance, in which “thou hast no rival amongst us.”

* * * * *

Turgenev was one of the greatest novelists of all time--the greatest, as it seems to me, of all impressionistic novelists. Except in the one quality of unity--for his work was on its surface fragmentary in structure--this preëminent Russian met perfectly Poe’s ideal of impressionism: he felt an impression of character or of nature and then reproduced in his reader just what he himself felt. And this impression was oftenest elevated above the merely physical. Brutalities, gaucheries, physicalities, were to him expressions of the man in whose inner life the novelist was more deeply interested than in the outer. Thus his realism is neither so physical as Zola’s nor so materialistic in philosophy as Maupassant’s. Turgenev’s pessimism is social, and not primarily moral; hence character is always the big element in his novels and shorter fictional pieces.