can いなければ actually mean いなくて?

Question

In one of the Japanese learning books I own there is a following text (right from the start):

バーシカの生活は酷いもんだった。親兄弟もいなければこれと言った仕事もなく、夜は古ぼけた納屋の下で眠り、暇な時は蚤取りをして過ごした。

バーシカ is the name of the dog. The approximate translation, as I understand it, is: "Baska's life was terrible. He didn't have any family, didn't have any job, he slept under an old barn at nights, and spent his free time catching fleas."

What I'm interested in is the usage of いなければ there. Clearly, it is supposed to convey the meaning of "(any family he) didn't have, and...", which is "いなくて" in Japanese. But in the text there is いなければ, which should be translated as "if he didn't (have any family)...", and that doesn't make any sense, looking at the whole sentence.

Now, the original of this text was in Russian, and the author of the book is Russian too, but this text was translated to Japanese by a Japanese person, which adds to the doubt that it is simply a mistake. Also, in the grammar comments for this text the book clearly states: "Inakereba - verb inai in conditional form (if there is no...)"

So, the question is, can conditional ば form be used in the meaning of くて form, like in this example? Or maybe I completely missing something, in which case I would be really thankful for any explanations.

Answer 1

There is no mistake in the phrase; It is perfect in every way.

「親兄弟{おやきょうだい}もいなければこれと言{い}った仕事{しごと}もなく、～～～」

Notice this is in the pattern of:

「A もなければ B もない」 meaning "neither A nor B"

"(the dog) had neither any family of his own nor any job worth mentioning"

In other words, 「なければ」 is not used as "conditional" here in the first place. It should be taken as just a part of a set phrase.

Finally, if you replaced the 「いなければ」 by 「いなくて」 in this sentence, it would sound very childish even though it would still be understood.