dead souls, imperial envoy

Chapter 62 Outerwear (1)
The Overcoat
(Russian) Gogol

Translated by Mizuki

The location is in a certain yamen... It's better not to say which yamen it is.These days, the most annoying thing is the yamen at all levels where the officials are.They always feel that if they are attacked, then their entire organization becomes a target.I heard that just a few days ago, the police chief of a certain county—I can’t remember which county—complained to his superiors that his name had been violated, and that our country had become lawless.The evidence for this was a mass of anecdotes, in which the chief of police was often named, and that he was drunk every day.For the above reasons, the yamen to be mentioned in this article is referred to as "a certain yamen", so that there will be no unpleasant misunderstandings.

Closer to home, in a certain yamen, there is such an official, he is short, plain-looking, with light brown-red hair, slightly bald on the top of his head, obviously not very good eyesight, with some pockmarks on his face, and His face was full of wrinkles, and his entire face had a gray-yellow color, as if he had hemorrhoids... To find out the reason, the harsh climate of Petersburg bears the brunt.Since the official position is the focus of everyone's attention, we also have to mention his official position here. Speaking of which, he is the eternal ninth-class civil official in the writer's mouth.All writers like to bully those who have no resistance, this has become a writer's habit.For small officials like the ninth-class civil servants, they even went out of their way to ridicule them. This phenomenon is obvious to all.

The surname of the civil servant we are going to talk about is Basmachkin. This surname has a deep connection with "shoes", which can be seen from the surface alone. 39 However, no one knows exactly when the word "shoe" evolved into such a surname.The civil servant's grandfather, father, and brother-in-law all wore long boots, and the soles of their shoes were changed two or three times a year.In fact, the whole Basmatchkins were like that.The civil servant's name was Akaky Akakyevich.Some people may think that this weird name is made up with painstaking efforts. However, this is not the case. The use of this name is a last resort. It must be used, and it must not be replaced by other names.In my impression, Akaky Akakiyevich was born in the early morning of May 5.His mother is no longer alive, she was a typical good wife and mother when she was alive.When her son was born, she wanted him to be christened and named in a serious way.

She was lying on the same bed as she rushed to the door, and her son's godfather, Ivan Ivanovitch Yeroshkin, was standing at the right of the Council of the Council of Peoples. The character is very good, which can be said to be well-known; the son's godmother is named Olina Chemionovna Beloborushkova, the wife of the police chief, and she is also a very good character.Everyone said the three names of Mokiya, Socia, and Hozdazart, and asked the mother to choose the one she liked as the name of her son.The mother thought to herself: "Why isn't there a good name?"

So people turned the page and offered her the three names on the next page—Trifeli, Dulla, and Walahashi—in the hope of satisfying her.Unexpectedly, the mother said: "It's too bad, why are these names like this? I have never heard of anyone with such a name. What is called Trefeli, Walahashi, if it is Waluch or Valahat It’s all right.” Then the next page was turned, and the names of Pafsikasi and Vakhchishi appeared.The mother said: "That's it. Maybe he deserves to be like this. Why don't we just use his father's name. Both father and son are called Akaki." That's how Akaki Akakiyevich got his name. of.

When being baptized, the baby burst into tears and looked strange, as if he had a premonition of his future fate as a ninth-class civil servant.In short, that's it.In order to let everyone understand that there is a reason for such a name, it must not be replaced by another name, so this article has added such an episode.However, it is impossible to know exactly when he came to the Yamen to work and who introduced him.

He maintains the same state every day, stays in the same position, and does the same job. No matter how many leaders change during the period, it will not have any impact on him.Until now, he is still a small civil servant, responsible for some clerical work all day long.This gave everyone the illusion that he had been like this since the day he was born, bald and in his uniform.

In the yamen, no one would treat him differently.Every time he passed the reception room, the doorman didn't even look him in the eye, let alone salute him, as if he was a fly.And his leader was even more brutal and unreasonable to him.The deputy chief directly poked him on the nose with the document that he needed to copy, and didn't even bother to say to him the first half of the polite words that can be seen everywhere in the officialdom, such as "Please copy it for me" "This case is quite interesting "such as.The civil servant didn't even look at who the other party was and whether his position was higher than his own. He just glanced at it, and immediately took it into his hands.After taking over the task, he immediately began to copy it.

The young men among the officials made fun of him in various ways, and made up all kinds of absurd stories about him, even when he was present.They said he was having an affair with his landlady, who was 70 years old.They said he was constantly abused by that woman.They also pressed him when he planned to marry her, and then sprinkled confetti all over his head as wedding garlands.Akaky Akakiyevitch ignored their actions and said nothing.Although he was disturbed by those guys from time to time, his work was not affected in the slightest.In the documents he copied, not even a single typo could be found.He only complained vaguely, "Enough is enough, why do you keep bothering me?" There was a kind of helpless sadness flowing from his words, which made people feel sympathy for him involuntarily.

A young man who had just arrived here originally wanted to tease him like his predecessors did, but after hearing him say this, he immediately swallowed the words as if being stabbed by a needle.Everything around the young man seems to have undergone earth-shaking changes accordingly.Before, he had always regarded his colleagues as gentlemen with status, but now he had an extraordinary energy that made him treat these colleagues who he knew not long ago indifferently.In the following days, every time something happy happened, the bald short civil servant and his uncomfortable words: "Enough is enough, why do you always trouble me?" In his mind, this phenomenon lasted for quite a long time.The young man felt the implication from the civil official's tragic words - we are all the same kind, why should we kill each other?The young man covered his face and sighed.In the course of his later life, he was shocked by witnessing the cruelty of his own kind countless times. Those gentlemen on the surface turned out to be so cruel in their bones, which is simply creepy!
It is very rare for a civil servant to be so dedicated to his work.The word "responsible" obviously cannot accurately describe his enthusiasm for work. It can be said that he deeply loves his job.In the process of copying the papers, some pleasant world of color seemed to unfold before his eyes, and a proud look came to his face.Of all the letters, he was especially fond of a few, and every time he wrote them, he was so happy that he couldn't get over his head.He blinked constantly, his mouth wriggled, and he let out a slight laugh.This gives people a feeling: if you want to know which letter he is writing, you can guess it based on his expression.

If the official function is proportional to the diligence of the work, then with his diligence, it is more than enough to be a fifth-class civil servant, which may not even occur to him.But after working for so many years, all he got was a badge of a ninth-class civil servant. According to his colleagues with harsh words, another harvest he got was hemorrhoids.Of course, his leaders didn't always ignore him.

Once there was a kind minister who planned to promote him and assign him a more important task after he had worked diligently for so many years, so that he would not continue to do those irrelevant copying tasks.This more important task is to inform other yamen through official letters of a completed matter.To complete this task, you only need to modify the address on the envelope, and then change all the verbs in the letter from No.1 to the third person, which is very simple and easy to do.However, when the civil servants were doing this, they were so tired and sweaty that they couldn't handle it at all.In the end, he had no choice but to admit: "I can't do this, I'll just continue copying documents as before."

After this incident, he had to deal with copying documents all his life.It seems that the only thing in his world is copying documents, other than that, it is blank.He doesn't care about dressing at all.The color of his uniform is a reddish-brown with a hint of off-white, not the green as everyone imagined.His neck is not long, but because his collar is too short, a large part of his neck is exposed, which looks long and ugly.Some peddlers who came to Russia from foreign countries often gathered dozens of people to put the plaster kittens on their heads for sale.The necks of the kittens kept shaking, just like the necks of the civil servants.There are always little things stuck to the uniforms of civil servants, either weeds or lint.Every time he was walking down the street, he would just come across people throwing all kinds of rotten things, and then they fell right on his hat, which was speckled with watermelon rind, melon rind and so on. kind of stuff.I really don't know how he has such an extraordinary ability.Everyone knew that he was the kind of person who never noticed that what happened on the street every day was different from what it used to be.In stark contrast to this is a young colleague of his, who has sharp eyes, and any disturbance in the street cannot be hidden from his eyes.Even someone across the street had something wrong with his pants before he could stop smiling.

Even when walking on the street, Akaky Akakiyevich's eyes were filled with imaginary neat and tidy words. To make him realize that he had separated from those documents and was walking on the street at the moment , I am afraid that the only way to wake him up is to arrange for a horse to appear suddenly, put the horse's face on his shoulders, and spray hot air on his face.When he got home, he would immediately sit down at the dining table, gulp down the soup, and swallow a piece of beef with green onions.He quickly wiped out the food in front of him, and he didn't know what the food tasted like.After he was full, he got up and prepared the ink bottle, took out the document he brought back and copied it.If there is no document to be transcribed, he will copy it again according to what he has copied before, and keep a copy for himself.From such a move, he got great pleasure.In fact, whether the literary talent in the document is outstanding is not particularly important to the civil official. The most important thing is that the recipient of the document he copied is a powerful official, or a newcomer who has just entered the job. colleagues.

The night sky in Petersburg was gloomy and gloomy, and the officials had all used up their dinner, a dinner that matched their identities and catered to their preferences.Afterwards, everyone finished all necessary or unnecessary work, their own or others' work. In short, today's work tasks are finally over.In order to pass the rest of the time, everyone had fun.Some officials rushed to the theater, some officials wandered on the street in order to enjoy the ladies' strange hats, some officials went to date and flirt with a beautiful new social star, while most officials went straight to the third floor or It's the fourth floor, and I went to my colleague's house to play cards.There are two small rooms in their homes, plus a living room or kitchen.They will display a lot of fashionable items in their home, such as lamps, as well as artworks bought with the money they saved from frugality.While playing cards, they ate cheap bread, drank tea, smoked pipes, and occasionally told rumors about the upper class who had relations with all Russians.If you really can’t find any new topics, let’s talk about those topics that won’t get boring no matter how much you babble: There are rumors that the bronze sculpture that Falcon made for Peter the Great was called by someone. The tail of the mount had been cut off, and the news had already reached the commander of the city defense.

While his colleagues were all trying their best to have fun, Akaky Akakiyevich never had any intention of going anywhere to have some fun for himself.It was unheard of for him to appear in front of everyone at night.After he finally finished his copying and writing, he would lie down on the bed and rest.Before going to bed, he would think about tomorrow's work situation, and then he couldn't help but chuckle, wondering what kind of raw materials he would get for copying tomorrow.With a salary of 400 rubles a year, this peaceful civil servant passed by day after day without wind or waves.He could have followed this trajectory of life and transitioned steadily into old age.However, a person's life is full of various accidents, no matter what rank a person holds, whether it is the ninth or third rank, or even the rest of the fourth or seventh ranks, or those who only have one title Heads, but officials who have never performed any duties may encounter such accidents.

Those who earn around 400 rubles a year in Petersburg generally face the same difficulty, that is, the severe cold in the north.Some people think that the role of severe cold weather in maintaining people's health cannot be underestimated.It always starts to attack after eight o'clock in the morning, which is the rush hour for people working in the yamen to go to work. The nose is inevitable.No matter how high the official position is, at this time, the tears and headaches are the same, let alone the insignificant ninth-class civil servants.Under the cover of a thin coat, I tried my best to run across five or six avenues, and when I arrived at the reception room, I began to stomp my feet vigorously until my frozen wisdom and ability were thawed, and then stopped to solve the problem. The only way to this problem.However, although Akaky Akakiyevich has tried his best to run as fast as he can when running in the severe cold recently, he still feels that his shoulders and back are unbearably cold Bear.He thought about it for a long time, and finally decided that his coat might be the culprit.When he returned home that day, he checked his overcoat carefully, and found that the woolen lining and lining in two or three places just on the shoulders and back had become very dilapidated. The thin layer under it cannot resist the severe cold and cold wind at all.

In fact, the rest of the officials had been laughing at his overcoat a long time ago, and they named it a smock, because it was no longer worthy of the name "overcoat."Since the collar was always being cut out to mend the rest, the style was getting weirder and more unprofessional and ugly as hell.Now, Akaky Akakiyevich realized that he couldn't go on with it, so he planned to ask the tailor named Petrovich for help.The tailor was pockmarked all over his face and had only one eye, but as long as he wasn't dreaming or getting too drunk, he would have no trouble making all kinds of grades, including officials The dresses or trousers worn by the people are well mended.

(End of this chapter)