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1、世界名著THE CLOAK- Annual most popular English classics, hope for your study help, support baidu, hope baidu library collections more and more good. - THE CLOAK In the department of-but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of jus
2、tice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to them nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person. Quite recently a complaint was received from a justice of the peace, in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs,
3、and that the Czars sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance in which the justice of the peace is made to appear about once every ten lines, and sometimes in a drunken condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to desc
4、ribe the department in question only as a certain department. So, in a certain department there was a certain official-not a very high one, it must be allowed-short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind kn
5、own as sanguine. The St. Petersburg climate was responsible for this. As for his official status, 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 bac
6、k. His family name was Bashmatchkin. 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 Bashmatchkins, always wore boots, which only had new heels two or three times a year. His name was Akakiy Akakiev
7、itch. 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 is how it came about. Akakiy Akakievitch was born, if my memory fails me
8、 not, in the evening of 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 Ivanovitch Eroshkin, a most estimable man, who s
9、erved as presiding officer of the senate, while the godmother, Anna Semenovna Byelobrushkova, 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, sai
10、d the good woman, all those names are poor. In order to please her they opened the calendar to another place; three more names appeared, Triphiliy, Dula, and Varakhasiy. This is a judgment, said the old woman. What names! I truly never heard the like. Varada or Varukh might have been borne, but not
11、Triphiliy and Varakhasiy! They turned to another page and found Pavsikakhiy and Vakhtisiy. 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 fathers name was Akakiy, so let his sons be Akakiy too. In this manner he
12、 became Akakiy Akakievitch. 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
13、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; so that it
14、was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in undress 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 trea
15、ted him in coolly despotic fashion. Some sub-chief would thrust a paper under his nose without so much as saying, Copy, or Heres a nice interesting affair, 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
16、it to him, or whether he had the right to do so; simply took it, and set about copying it. 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 t
17、hat she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akakiy Akakievitch 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 sin
18、gle mistake in a letter. But if the joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his hand 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 so
19、mething which moved to pity; so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repell
20、ed him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition that they were well-bred and polite 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 t
21、hese 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 delicate, refined worldliness,
22、and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and noble. It would be difficult to find another man who lived so entirely for his duties. It is not enough to say that Akakiy laboured with zeal: no, he laboured with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employm
23、ent. 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 woul
24、d, 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. Moreover, it is impossible to say that no attention was paid to him. One director being a kindly man, and desirous of rewarding him for his long s
25、ervice, 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
26、 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 undress uniform was not green, but a s
27、ort 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 those plaster cats which wag their heads, and are carried about upon the heads of scores of image sellers. And something was alwa
28、ys 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 were being flung out of it: hence he always bore about on his hat scraps of melon rinds and other such articles.
29、 Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day in the street; while it is well known that his young brother officials train the range of their glances till they can see when any ones trouser straps come undone upon the opposite sidewalk, which always brings a malicious smile
30、 to their faces. But Akakiy Akakievitch 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
31、a page, but in the middle of the street. On reaching home, he sat down at once at the table, supped 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
32、. His stomach filled, 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 per
33、son. Even at the hour when the grey St. Petersburg sky had quite dispersed, 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 departmental jar of pens, running to and fro from their own and oth
34、er peoples 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 und
35、er all 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 fourth or third floor, in two small rooms with an ante-room or kitchen, and some pretensions to fashion, su
36、ch 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 kopeks worth of sugar, smoke long pipes, relate at
37、 times 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 striv
38、e to divert themselves, Akakiy Akakievitch indulged in no kind of diversion. No one could ever say that he had seen him at any kind of evening party. Having written to his hearts 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.
39、 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
40、as well as for private, actual, court, and every other species of councillor, even for 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 thereabouts. This foe is no other than the Northe
41、rn cold, although it is said to be very healthy. At nine oclock 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 wh
42、at 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, f
43、ive or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porters room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official service, which had become frozen on the way. Akakiy Akakievitch had felt for some time that his back and shoulders suffered with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the f
44、act 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
45、a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akakiy Akakievitchs 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 ye
46、ar by year, but serving 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, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere
47、on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, 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.
