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.