Dead Souls Read Free Page B

and resumed his way. On the vehicle reaching the inn door,
its occupant found standing there to welcome him the polevoi, or
waiter, of the establishment—an individual of such nimble and brisk
movement that even to distinguish the character of his face was
impossible. Running out with a napkin in one hand and his lanky form
clad in a tailcoat, reaching almost to the nape of his neck, he tossed
back his locks, and escorted the gentleman upstairs, along a wooden
gallery, and so to the bedchamber which God had prepared for the
gentleman's reception. The said bedchamber was of quite ordinary
appearance, since the inn belonged to the species to be found in all
provincial towns—the species wherein, for two roubles a day,
travellers may obtain a room swarming with black-beetles, and
communicating by a doorway with the apartment adjoining. True, the
doorway may be blocked up with a wardrobe; yet behind it, in all
probability, there will be standing a silent, motionless neighbour
whose ears are burning to learn every possible detail concerning the
latest arrival. The inn's exterior corresponded with its interior.
Long, and consisting only of two storeys, the building had its lower
half destitute of stucco; with the result that the dark-red bricks,
originally more or less dingy, had grown yet dingier under the
influence of atmospheric changes. As for the upper half of the
building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint of unfading
yellow. Within, on the ground floor, there stood a number of benches
heaped with horse-collars, rope, and sheepskins; while the window-seat
accommodated a sbitentshik [4] , cheek by jowl with a samovar [5] —the
latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but for
the fact of the samovar possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar and
the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair.
    During the traveller's inspection of his room his luggage was brought
into the apartment. First came a portmanteau of white leather whose
raggedness indicated that the receptacle had made several previous
journeys. The bearers of the same were the gentleman's coachman,
Selifan (a little man in a large overcoat), and the gentleman's valet,
Petrushka—the latter a fellow of about thirty, clad in a worn,
over-ample jacket which formerly had graced his master's shoulders,
and possessed of a nose and a pair of lips whose coarseness
communicated to his face rather a sullen expression. Behind the
portmanteau came a small dispatch-box of redwood, lined with birch
bark, a boot-case, and (wrapped in blue paper) a roast fowl; all of
which having been deposited, the coachman departed to look after his
horses, and the valet to establish himself in the little dark anteroom
or kennel where already he had stored a cloak, a bagful of livery, and
his own peculiar smell. Pressing the narrow bedstead back against the
wall, he covered it with the tiny remnant of mattress—a remnant as
thin and flat (perhaps also as greasy) as a pancake—which he had
managed to beg of the landlord of the establishment.
    While the attendants had been thus setting things straight the
gentleman had repaired to the common parlour. The appearance of common
parlours of the kind is known to every one who travels. Always they
have varnished walls which, grown black in their upper portions with
tobacco smoke, are, in their lower, grown shiny with the friction of
customers' backs—more especially with that of the backs of such local
tradesmen as, on market-days, make it their regular practice to resort
to the local hostelry for a glass of tea. Also, parlours of this kind
invariably contain smutty ceilings, an equally smutty chandelier, a
number of pendent shades which jump and rattle whenever the waiter
scurries across the shabby oilcloth with a trayful of glasses (the
glasses looking like a flock of birds roosting by the seashore), and a
selection of oil paintings. In short, there are certain objects which
one sees in every inn. In the present case the