Chichikov’s failed negotiation with Nozdrev

Chichikov’s failed negotiation with Nozdrev is a comic escalation in which a straightforward request for dead serfs becomes a succession of implausible bargains and personal insults. Chichikov wants the names of deceased serfs still present on the revision list; Nozdrev will not simply transfer them, but keeps attaching them to goods or games Chichikov does not want. The encounter makes the transaction’s practical purpose collide with Nozdrev’s appetite for improvisation, until bargaining gives way to hostility.

The Request and Its Cover Story

Chichikov first asks whether Nozdrev has many dead serfs whose names have not yet been removed from the revision list, then asks him to make them over. The request is direct, but Chichikov’s explanation is not. When Nozdrev calls him a liar, Chichikov recognizes that his earlier pretext has been clumsy and decides to speak more plainly, while still disguising the real purpose of the purchase.

He says he is thinking of marrying, but that his supposed bride’s ambitious parents require the bridegroom to own at least three hundred serfs. Chichikov claims to have only half that number. Nozdrev rejects this story too. Chichikov then concedes that he has lied only to a limited extent, marking off a tiny portion on his little finger. The gesture makes the exchange’s comic logic visible: even while accused of deception, Chichikov tries to measure and manage how much of his account is false.

Nozdrev’s Changing Offers

Nozdrev presents himself as generous by saying he will ask no kopeck for the serfs, provided Chichikov buys his colt; the serfs, he says, will then be thrown in. Chichikov is genuinely astonished and asks why he would want the colt. Nozdrev replies that he bought it for ten thousand roubles and would let Chichikov have it for four, turning the alleged gift of dead serfs into an unwanted purchase tied to a horse.

When Chichikov declines to pay for the colt, Nozdrev tries another combination: the dead souls and a barrel-organ in exchange for Chichikov’s britchka and three hundred roubles. Chichikov points out the obvious difficulty—without his britchka, he would have nothing to drive in. Nozdrev answers that he would provide another carriage, one that only needs repainting. The proposal substitutes one questionable bargain for another without addressing Chichikov’s actual aim.

The barrel-organ is not merely an item in the negotiation. Nozdrev insists it is a real organ, made of the best wood, and pulls Chichikov into another room to inspect it. Although Chichikov says repeatedly that he already knows what it is like, Nozdrev makes him hear it again, playing “Marlborough Went to the War.” The interruption stretches the failed sale into a comic display of Nozdrev’s inability to leave an object, an argument, or a proposed exchange alone.

Cards, Suspicion, and the Break

After the goods-for-goods proposals fail, Nozdrev suggests playing banker, with both the dead souls and the barrel-organ staked on the game. Chichikov refuses: leaving the outcome to cards, he says, is to submit oneself to the unknown. As Nozdrev begins dealing, Chichikov covertly watches the pack and finds the way it has been cut suspicious. The refusal is therefore not abstract scruple alone; the scene gives it an immediate practical setting in Nozdrev’s handling of the cards.

Nozdrev treats the refusal as an affront to friendship, accusing Chichikov of having two faces and lacking frankness. Chichikov answers that he is not at fault for declining to play and again offers to buy the souls if Nozdrev is reluctant to give them away. The question of price has by now become secondary to the contest over what counts as proper conduct between supposed friends: Nozdrev demands familiarity on his terms, while Chichikov insists on refusing the unwanted game and exchanges.

The Refusal Becomes a Rupture

Nozdrev’s response is to withdraw the offer altogether. He says he had been about to give the souls for nothing, but now Chichikov will not have them even in exchange for three kingdoms. He insults him, announces that he will have nothing more to do with him, and orders Porphyri to tell the ostler to give Chichikov’s horses no oats, only hay. That order carries the quarrel beyond words: Nozdrev uses his control over the household’s treatment of the visitor’s horses to punish the man who will not accept his terms.

The suddenness of this consequence surprises Chichikov, who had not expected the negotiation to turn in this direction. No sale is completed. Instead, a request that began with the administrative status of deceased serfs ends in a broken claim of friendship, a suspected card trick, and a petty act of retaliation. The scene’s humor depends on the widening gap between Chichikov’s transactional purpose and Nozdrev’s shifting performances of generosity: every offer appears to promise the souls, yet each makes their transfer less attainable.