“Impossible,” he said. “You must order a new one.”
At this, Akaki Akakievich slipped a ten-copeck piece into his hand.
“Thank you, sir; I will drink a bit to your health,” said Petrovich. “As for the cloak, you need not worry about it; it is nothing but a rag. I will make you a handsome new cloak; let us settle that.”
Akaki Akakievich still insisted on his mending it, but Petrovich would not listen, and said:
“There’s no way out of it; I shall have to make you a new one; and you may depend upon it, I will do my best. It is even possible that I shall make it according to the new fashion: the collar will fasten with silver hooks underneath.”
When Akaki Akakievich began to comprehend that a new cloak was an absolute necessity, his spirits sank utterly. How indeed was it to be done? Where was the money to come from? He could of course depend for a great part of it upon his customary holiday gift. But there was a new pair of trousers to order; there was the old debt to pay the cobbler for putting on new tops to old boots; he also needed three shirts and at least two undergarments which it is impolite to mention in print; in a word, there would not be a copeck left, and even if the director should prove so generous as to allot as his share forty-five or fifty rubles instead of forty, there would be the merest trifle left, which, considered in connection with the cloak money, would seem as a drop in the sea; though of course he knew that Petrovich would sometimes get a sudden notion to charge the devil knows what an exorbitant price, so that even his wife could not restrain herself from exclaiming: “Are you out of your wits, you fool! At one time he will take almost nothing for his work, but at another time he is mad enough to ask more than the thing is worth!” Although Akaki Akakievich knew quite well that Petrovich would undertake to make the cloak for eighty rubles, where were even the eighty rubles to come from? He could manage to provide half of it, perhaps even a trifle more; but where was he to find the other half?
First of all, the reader should be informed where the first half was to come from. Akaki Akakievich had the habit of putting away, for every ruble he spent, a two-copeck piece into a small box, kept under lock, and with a small hole in the top for the dropping in of the money. At the expiration of every six months he would exchange the collected coppers for silver. He had been doing this for a long time, and in the course of several years had managed in this manner to save more than forty rubles.
With the first half in hand, the question now was: how to procure the other half? After much deliberation, Akaki Akakievich decided that it would be necessary to curtail the ordinary expenses for at least a period of one year, to deprive himself of his evening tea, to light no candles; and if there was anything that had to be done, to do it in the landlady’s room by her candle. He also could, when in the street, step more lightly and cautiously upon the stones, almost on tiptoe, and save thereby his heels from wearing out too quickly. He could give his laundress as little wash as possible; and, in order not to wear his clothes out, could throw them off upon arriving home and remain solely in his cotton dressing-gown, an ancient garment spared mercifully by time.
To tell the truth, these deprivations came hard in the beginning, but gradually he became used to them; he even learned to go hungry in the evening; but in compensation he nourished himself spiritually, eternally bearing in his thoughts the idea of the new cloak. From this time on, it seemed as if his existence had become fuller, as if he had married, as if some other person was living with him, as if he were not alone, but some pleasant companion had consented to share his lot in life with him—and this companion was none other than the cloak, thickly wadded and so strongly lined as never to wear out. He became as it were livelier, even more characterful, as befits a man who has a clear and a firm aim in life. Doubt and indecision seemed to have vanished from his face and manner, and indeed all his wavering and more undefined characteristics became less noticeable. At times even a sparkle showed in his eyes, and his mind indulged in the most daring thoughts. Why not, for instance, marten on the collar? Such a thought made him absent-minded; and upon one occasion, in copying a paper, he almost made an error, which caused him to cry almost aloud, “Oh!” and to make a sign of the cross.
At least once a month he visited Petrovich, to talk over the cloak with him—where best to buy the cloth, the question of its color, and its price—and, though somewhat agitated, he always returned feeling happier in the thought that the time was at last approaching when everything would be bought and the cloak made.