Best Russian Short Stories

[Dark Saint Alaick]

The Cloak

By Nikolai V. Gogol

[Dark Saint Alaick]

In the department of----, but it is better not to mention the
department. The touchiest things in the world are departments,
regiments, courts of justice, in a word, all branches of public
service. Each individual nowadays thinks all society insulted in his
person. Quite recently, a complaint was received from a district chief
of police in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial
institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name
was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a
romance, in which the district chief of police is made to appear about
once in every ten pages, and sometimes in a downright drunken
condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be
better to designate the department in question, as a certain
department.

So, in a certain department there was a certain official--not a very
notable one, it must be allowed--short of stature, somewhat
pock-marked, red-haired, and mole-eyed, with a bald forehead, wrinkled
cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. The St.
Petersburg climate was responsible for this. As for his official
rank--with us Russians the rank comes first--he was what is called a
perpetual titular councillor, over which, as is well known, some
writers make merry and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy
custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.

His family name was Bashmachkin. This name is evidently derived from
bashmak (shoe); but, when, at what time, and in what manner, is not
known. His father and grandfather, and all the Bashmachkins, always
wore boots, which were resoled two or three times a year. His name was
Akaky Akakiyevich. It may strike the reader as rather singular and
far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no means
far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have
been impossible to give him any other.

This was how it came about.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Akaky Akakiyevich was born, if my memory fails me not, in the evening
on the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of a Government official,
and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for having the child
baptised. She was lying on the bed opposite the door; on her right
stood the godfather, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin, a most estimable man,
who served as the head clerk of the senate; and the godmother, Arina
Semyonovna Bielobrinshkova, the wife of an officer of the quarter, and
a woman of rare virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three
names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should be called after the
martyr Khozdazat. "No," said the good woman, "all those names are
poor." In order to please her, they opened the calendar at another
place; three more names appeared, Triphily, Dula, and Varakhasy. "This
is awful," said the old woman. "What names! I truly never heard the
like. I might have put up with Varadat or Varukh, but not Triphily and
Varakhasy!" They turned to another page and found Pavsikakhy and
Vakhtisy. "Now I see," said the old woman, "that it is plainly fate.
And since such is the case, it will be better to name him after his
father. His father's name was Akaky, so let his son's name be Akaky
too." In this manner he became Akaky Akakiyevich. They christened the
child, whereat he wept, and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that
he was to be a titular councillor.

In this manner did it all come about. We have mentioned it in order
that the reader might see for himself that it was a case of necessity,
and that it was utterly impossible to give him any other name.

When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one
could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds
were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same
attitude, the same occupation--always the letter-copying clerk--so
that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in uniform with
a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. The porter
not only did not rise from his seat when he passed, but never even
glanced at him, any more than if a fly had flown through the
reception-room. His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.
Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk would thrust a paper
under his nose without so much as saying, "Copy," or, "Here's an
interesting little case," or anything else agreeable, as is customary
amongst well-bred officials. And he took it, looking only at the
paper, and not observing who handed it to him, or whether he had the
right to do so; simply took it, and set about copying it.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their
official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted
about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared
that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits
of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakiyevich
answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there
besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work. Amid all these
annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the
joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his head, and
prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim:

"Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?"

And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which
they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so
much so that one young man, a newcomer, who, taking pattern by the
others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akaky, suddenly stopped
short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and
presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him
from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition
that they were decent, well-bred men. Long afterwards, in his gayest
moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald
forehead, with his heart-rending words, "Leave me alone! Why do you
insult me?" In these moving words, other words resounded--"I am thy
brother." And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a
time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how
much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is
concealed beneath refined, cultured, worldly refinement, and even, O
God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and
upright.

It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for
his duties. It is not enough to say that Akaky laboured with zeal; no,
he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable
employment. Enjoyment was written on his face; some letters were even
favourites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked,
and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might
be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in
proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have
been made even a councillor of state. But he worked, as his
companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

However, it would be untrue to say that no attention was paid to him.
One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his
long service, ordered him to be given something more important than
mere copying. So he was ordered to make a report of an already
concluded affair, to another department; the duty consisting simply in
changing the heading and altering a few words from the first to the
third person. This caused him so much toil, that he broke into a
perspiration, rubbed his forehead, and finally said, "No, give me
rather something to copy." After that they let him copy on forever.

Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He
gave no thought to his clothes. His uniform was not green, but a sort
of rusty-meal colour. The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite
of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged
from it, like the necks of the plaster cats which pedlars carry about
on their heads. And something was always sticking to his uniform,
either a bit of hay or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack,
as he walked along the street, of arriving beneath a window just as
all sorts of rubbish was being flung out of it; hence he always bore
about on his hat scraps of melon rinds, and other such articles. Never
once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day to
the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials
trained the range of their glances till they could see when any one's
trouser-straps came undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always
brought a malicious smile to their faces. But Akaky Akakiyevich saw in
all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines; and only when
a horse thrust his nose, from some unknown quarter, over his shoulder,
and sent a whole gust of wind down his neck from his nostrils, did he
observe that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of
the street.

On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, sipped his
cabbage-soup up quickly, and swallowed a bit of beef with onions,
never noticing their taste, and gulping down everything with flies and
anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment. When he
saw that his stomach was beginning to swell, he rose from the table,
and copied papers which he had brought home. If there happened to be
none, he took copies for himself, for his own gratification,
especially if the document was noteworthy, not on account of its
style, but of its being addressed to some distinguished person.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Even at the hour when the grey St. Petersburg sky had quite
disappeared, and all the official world had eaten or dined, each as he
could, in accordance with the salary he received and his own fancy;
when, all were resting from the department jar of pens, running to and
fro, for their own and other people's indispensable occupations', and
from all the work that an uneasy man makes willingly for himself,
rather than what is necessary; when, officials hasten to dedicate to
pleasure the time which is left to them, one bolder than the rest,
going to the theatre; another; into the street looking under the
bonnets; another, wasting his evening in compliments to some pretty
girl, the star of a small official circle; another--and this is the
common case of all--visiting his comrades on the third or fourth
floor, in two small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some
pretensions to fashion, such as a lamp or some other trifle which has
cost many a sacrifice of dinner or pleasure trip; in a word, at the
hour when all officials disperse among the contracted quarters of
their friends, to play whist, as they sip their tea from glasses with
a kopek's worth of sugar, smoke long pipes, relate at time some bits
of gossip which a Russian man can never, under any circumstances,
refrain from, and when there is nothing else to talk of, repeat
eternal anecdotes about the commandant to whom they had sent word that
the tails of the horses on the Falconet Monument had been cut off;
when all strive to divert themselves, Akaky Akakiyevich indulged in no
kind of diversion. No one could even say that he had seen him at any
kind of evening party. Having written to his heart's content, he lay
down to sleep, smiling at the thought of the coming day--of what God
might send him to copy on the morrow.

Thus flowed on the peaceful life of the man, who, with a salary of
four hundred rubles, understood how to be content with his lot; and
thus it would have continued to flow on, perhaps, to extreme old age,
were it not that there are various ills strewn along the path of life
for titular councillors as well as for private, actual, court, and
every other species of councillor, even to those who never give any
advice or take any themselves.

There exists in St. Petersburg a powerful foe of all who receive a
salary of four hundred rubles a year, or there-abouts. This foe is no
other than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very healthy.
At nine o'clock in the morning, at the very hour when the streets are
filled with men bound for the various official departments, it begins
to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially,
that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them. At an
hour, when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions
ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular
councillors are sometimes quite unprotected. Their only salvation lies
in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little cloaks,
five or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porter's room,
and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official
service, which had become frozen on the way.

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Akaky Akakiyevich had felt for some time that his back and shoulders
were paining with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the fact that he
tried to traverse the distance with all possible speed. He began
finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. He
examined it thoroughly at home, and discovered that in two places,
namely, on the back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze. The
cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the
lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akaky Akakiyevich's
cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials. They even
refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it
was of singular make, its collar diminishing year by year to serve to
patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the
part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the
matter stood, Akaky Akakiyevich decided that it would be necessary to
take the cloak to Petrovich, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the
fourth floor up a dark staircase, and who, in spite of his having but
one eye and pock-marks all over his face, busied himself with
considerable success in repairing the trousers and coats of officials
and others; that is to say, when he was sober and not nursing some
other scheme in his head.

It is not necessary to say much about this tailor, but as it is the
custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly
defined there is no help for it, so here is Petrovich the tailor. At
first he was called only Grigory, and was some gentleman's serf. He
commenced calling himself Petrovich from the time when he received his
free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at
first on the great ones, and then on all church festivals without
discrimination, wherever a cross stood in the calendar. On this point
he was faithful to ancestral custom; and when quarrelling with his
wife, he called her a low female and a German. As we have mentioned
his wife, it will be necessary to say a word or two about her.
Unfortunately, little is known of her beyond the fact that Petrovich
had a wife, who wore a cap and a dress, but could not lay claim to
beauty, at least, no one but the soldiers of the guard even looked
under her cap when they met her.

Ascending the staircase which led to Petrovich's room--which staircase
was all soaked with dish-water and reeked with the smell of spirits
which affects the eyes, and is an inevitable adjunct to all dark
stairways in St. Petersburg houses--ascending the stairs, Akaky
Akakiyevich pondered how much Petrovich would ask, and mentally
resolved not to give more than two rubles. The door was open, for the
mistress, in cooking some fish, had raised such a smoke in the kitchen
that not even the beetles were visible. Akaky Akakiyevich passed
through the kitchen unperceived, even by the housewife, and at length
reached a room where he beheld Petrovich seated on a large unpainted
table, with his legs tucked under him like a Turkish pasha. His feet
were bare, after the fashion of tailors as they sit at work; and the
first thing which caught the eye was his thumb, with a deformed nail
thick and strong as a turtle's shell. About Petrovich's neck hung a
skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay some old garment. He
had been trying unsuccessfully for three minutes to thread his needle,
and was enraged at the darkness and even at the thread, growling in a
low voice, "It won't go through, the barbarian! you pricked me, you
rascal!"

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Akaky Akakiyevich was vexed at arriving at the precise moment when
Petrovich was angry. He liked to order something of Petrovich when he
was a little downhearted, or, as his wife expressed it, "when he had
settled himself with brandy, the one-eyed devil!" Under such
circumstances Petrovich generally came down in his price very readily,
and even bowed and returned thanks. Afterwards, to be sure, his wife
would come, complaining that her husband had been drunk, and so had
fixed the price too low; but, if only a ten-kopek piece were added
then the matter would be settled. But now it appeared that Petrovich
was in a sober condition, and therefore rough, taciturn, and inclined
to demand, Satan only knows what price. Akaky Akakiyevich felt this,
and would gladly have beat a retreat, but he was in for it. Petrovich
screwed up his one eye very intently at him, and Akaky Akakiyevich
involuntarily said, "How do you do, Petrovich?"

"I wish you a good morning, sir," said Petrovich squinting at Akaky
Akakiyevich's hands, to see what sort of booty he had brought.

"Ah! I--to you, Petrovich, this--" It must be known that Akaky
Akakiyevich expressed himself chiefly by prepositions, adverbs, and
scraps of phrases which had no meaning whatever. If the matter was a
very difficult one, he had a habit of never completing his sentences,
so that frequently, having begun a phrase with the words, "This, in
fact, is quite--" he forgot to go on, thinking he had already finished
it.

"What is it?" asked Petrovich, and with his one eye scanned Akaky
Akakiyevich's whole uniform from the collar down to the cuffs, the
back, the tails and the button-holes, all of which were well known to
him, since they were his own handiwork. Such is the habit of tailors;
it is the first thing they do on meeting one.

"But I, here, this--Petrovich--a cloak, cloth--here you see,
everywhere, in different places, it is quite strong--it is a little
dusty and looks old, but it is new, only here in one place it is a
little--on the back, and here on one of the shoulders, it is a little
worn, yes, here on this shoulder it is a little--do you see? That is
all. And a little work--"

[Dark Saint Alaick]

Petrovich took the cloak, spread it out, to begin with, on the table,
looked at it hard, shook his head, reached out his hand to the
window-sill for his snuff-box, adorned with the portrait of some
general, though what general is unknown, for the place where the face
should have been had been rubbed through by the finger and a square
bit of paper had been pasted over it. Having taken a pinch of snuff,
Petrovich held up the cloak, and inspected it against the light, and
again shook his head. Then he turned it, lining upwards, and shook his
head once more. After which he again lifted the general-adorned lid
with its bit of pasted paper, and having stuffed his nose with snuff,
dosed and put away the snuff-box, and said finally, "No, it is
impossible to mend it. It is a wretched garment!"

Akaky Akakiyevich's heart sank at these words.

"Why is it impossible, Petrovich?" he said, almost in the pleading
voice of a child. "All that ails it is, that it is worn on the
shoulders. You must have some pieces--"

"Yes, patches could be found, patches are easily found," said
Petrovich, "but there's nothing to sew them to. The thing is
completely rotten. If you put a needle to it--see, it will give way."

"Let it give way, and you can put on another patch at once."

"But there is nothing to put the patches on to. There's no use in
strengthening it. It is too far gone. It's lucky that it's cloth, for,
if the wind were to blow, it would fly away."

"Well, strengthen it again. How this, in fact--"

"No," said Petrovich decisively, "there is nothing to be done with it.
It's a thoroughly bad job. You'd better, when the cold winter weather
comes on, make yourself some gaiters out of it, because stockings are
not warm. The Germans invented them in order to make more money."
Petrovich loved on all occasions to have a fling at the Germans. "But
it is plain you must have a new cloak."

[Dark Saint Alaick]

At the word "new" all grew dark before Akaky Akakiyevich's eyes, and
everything in the room began to whirl round. The only thing he saw
clearly was the general with the paper face on the lid of Petrovich's
snuff-box. "A new one?" said he, as if still in a dream. "Why, I have
no money for that."

"Yes, a new one," said Petrovich, with barbarous composure.

"Well, if it came to a new one, how--it--"

"You mean how much would it cost?"

"Yes."

"Well, you would have to lay out a hundred and fifty or more," said
Petrovich, and pursed up his lips significantly. He liked to produce
powerful effects, liked to stun utterly and suddenly, and then to
glance sideways to see what face the stunned person would put on the
matter.

"A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!" shrieked poor Akaky
Akakiyevich, perhaps for the first time in his life, for his voice had
always been distinguished for softness.