Sobachyevich's manor

Sobakevitch’s estate is a landscape of deliberate solidity, shaped less by aesthetic harmony than by its owner’s insistence on comfort and utility. Its mansion, outbuildings, sturdy peasant huts, and oak draw-well make the property an architectural extension of Sobakevitch himself. Within this setting, a lavish meal gives way to Chichikov’s private proposal to buy dead peasants, and Sobakevitch begins compiling a list of the deceased and their former occupations. The estate thus joins physical durability to a transaction built upon the names of people who are no longer alive but remain available to be bought and registered.

Setting and Construction

The estate is of considerable size, with expanses of birch and pine on either side of the mansion. The main building has dark-grey walls and a red-gabled roof, and resembles houses built in Russia for military settlers and German colonists. Its design records a contest between the architect’s preference for symmetry and Sobakevitch’s preference for comfort: one side has no windows, only a small opening apparently intended to light a lumber-room, and one of the original four columns has been removed, leaving the pediment off-centre.

The rest of the property makes a different kind of impression from the compromised façade. A high, strong wooden fence encloses the courtyard; the stables, coach-house, and kitchen buildings are partly made of beams considered capable of lasting for centuries. The peasant huts are equally solid, without clay walls, carved decoration, or other ornament. Even the draw-well is made from oak usually thought suitable for mills or ships. The narrative stresses that the estate’s materials are sound and its arrangements exact: wherever Chichikov looks, he finds workmanship without shoddiness.

The House and Its Master

Before Chichikov enters, two faces peer out of a window: a narrow-faced woman in a mobcap and a man whose broad, short features are compared to Moldavian pumpkins. They withdraw, and a lacquey in a grey jacket and stiff blue collar leads the visitor inside, where Sobakevitch receives him and conducts him through the house. These brief details make the estate a watched, ordered household before its owner appears.

Sobakevitch’s body seems to belong to the same material world as his property. He resembles a bear, wears a long frockcoat and baggy trousers the colour of a bear’s hide, shuffles with his legs crossing, and repeatedly treads on his companion’s toes. His roughly formed features and habit of looking toward a stove corner or doorway rather than turning his head reinforce the impression of a figure made for physical presence rather than refinement. Chichikov privately recognizes the bear-like resemblance, while the estate’s durable construction gives that characterization a setting: both house and host are presented as massive, practical, and resistant to polish.

Hospitality and the Negotiation

The meal at the estate is as substantial as its buildings. A shoulder of mutton is followed by cutlets larger than plates, a turkey about the size of a calf, eggs, rice, pastry, and other dishes. Chichikov rises feeling as though a pood of weight were inside him. Pears, plums, and apples appear for dessert, but neither host nor guest can manage them, so the hostess takes them away. When she leaves the room, Chichikov uses the opportunity to suggest a private conversation with Sobakevitch about a matter of business.

The discussion becomes a proposed purchase of dead peasants. Sobakevitch agrees to go into town the following day so that they can arrange the signing of a deed. At Chichikov’s request, he also agrees to provide a list of the peasants. Rather than postpone this work, Sobakevitch goes immediately to his writing desk and begins listing their names together with their former qualifications. The movement from abundant food to a written inventory is pointed: the estate’s hospitality gives way to the administrative preparation of a sale, and the dead are recorded not just as names but by the work and roles attached to their former lives.

Administrative Reach and Significance

The transaction at the estate leads beyond its private rooms into the provincial offices. When the purchase documents are being handled, Sobakevitch insists that witnesses be present, at least two for each party. He suggests summoning the Public Prosecutor and the Inspector of the Medical Department, describing them as men with little to do; the President of the Local Council agrees and sends a clerk for them. Chichikov also asks that the authorized representative of a landowning woman with whom he has done business be called. The estate’s negotiations therefore depend on the same network of local officials and witnesses through which ownership can be formally recognized.

Later, when officials investigate Chichikov, Sobakevitch defends the transaction by saying that the souls he sold had been alive in the truest sense, while declining responsibility for what might happen during their transfer: people die of fever and other illnesses, he argues, and whole villages have perished. His defense turns the difference between living and dead into a matter of timing and liability. The estate’s carefully ordered physical world thus stands beside a legal and commercial order that can continue to treat deceased peasants as transferable property. That contrast makes the property more than a setting for a bargain: it is where Sobakevitch’s material practicality meets the moral and bureaucratic absurdity at the heart of Chichikov’s scheme.