year. And in such language! "With such original talent" ... "and yet, after
all, it appears" ... "however, one ought to have foreseen it long ago."
That is rather artful; so that from the point of view of pure art one may
really commend it. Well, but after all, these so-called madmen have turned
out cleverer than ever. So it seems the critics can call them mad, but they
cannot produce any one better.
The wisest of all, in my opinion, is he who can, if only once a month, call
himself a fool--a faculty unheard of nowadays. In old days, once a year at
any rate a fool would recognise that he was a fool, but nowadays not a bit
of it. And they have so muddled things up that there is no telling a fool
from a wise man. They have done that on purpose.
I remember a witty Spaniard saying when, two hundred and fifty years ago,
the French built their first madhouses: "They have shut up all their fools
in a house apart, to make sure that they are wise men themselves." Just so:
you don't show your own wisdom by shutting some one else in a madhouse. "K.
has gone out of his mind, means that we are sane now." No, it doesn't mean
that yet.
Hang it though, why am I maundering on? I go on grumbling and grumbling.
Even my maidservant is sick of me. Yesterday a friend came to see me. "Your
style is changing," he said; "it is choppy: you chop and chop--and then a
parenthesis, then a parenthesis in the parenthesis, then you stick in
something else in brackets, then you begin chopping and chopping again."
The friend is right. Something strange is happening to me. My character is
changing and my head aches. I am beginning to see and hear strange things,
not voices exactly, but as though some one beside me were muttering,
"_bobok, bobok, bobok_!"
What's the meaning of this _bobok_? I must divert my mind.
* * * * *
I went out in search of diversion, I hit upon a funeral. A distant
relation--a collegiate counsellor, however. A widow and five daughters, all
marriageable young ladies. What must it come to even to keep them in
slippers. Their father managed it, but now there is only a little pension.
They will have to eat humble pie. They have always received me
ungraciously. And indeed I should not have gone to the funeral now had it
not been for a peculiar circumstance. I followed the procession to the
cemetery with the rest; they were stuck-up and held aloof from me. My
uniform was certainly rather shabby. It's five-and-twenty years, I believe,
since I was at the cemetery; what a wretched place!
To begin with the smell. There were fifteen hearses, with palls varying in
expensiveness; there were actually two catafalques. One was a general's and
one some lady's. There were many mourners, a great deal of feigned
mourning and a great deal of open gaiety. The clergy have nothing to
complain of; it brings them a good income. But the smell, the smell. I
should not like to be one of the clergy here.
I kept glancing at the faces of the dead cautiously, distrusting my
impressionability. Some had a mild expression, some looked unpleasant. As a
rule the smiles were disagreeable, and in some cases very much so. I don't
like them; they haunt one's dreams.
During the service I went out of the church into the air: it was a grey
day, but dry. It was cold too, but then it was October. I walked about
among the tombs. They are of different grades. The third grade cost thirty
roubles; it's decent and not so very dear. The first two grades are tombs
in the church and under the porch; they cost a pretty penny. On this
occasion they were burying in tombs of the third grade six persons, among
them the general and the lady.
I looked into the graves--and it was horrible: water and such water!
Absolutely green, and ... but there, why talk of it! The gravedigger was
baling it out every minute. I went out while the service was going on and
strolled outside the gates. Close by was an almshouse, and a little further
off there was a restaurant. It was not a bad little restaurant: there was
lunch and everything. There were lots of the mourners here. I noticed a
great deal of gaiety and genuine heartiness. I had something to eat and
drink.
Then I took part in the bearing of the coffin from the church to the grave.
Why is it that corpses in their coffins are so heavy? They say it is due to
some sort of inertia, that the body is no longer directed by its owner ...
or some nonsense of that sort, in opposition to the laws of mechanics and
common sense. I don't like to hear people who have nothing but a general
education venture to solve the problems that require special knowledge; and
with us that's done continually. Civilians love to pass opinions about
subjects that are the province of the soldier and even of the
field-marshal; while men who have been educated as engineers prefer
discussing philosophy and political economy.
I did not go to the requiem service. I have some pride, and if I am only
received owing to some special necessity, why force myself on their
dinners, even if it be a funeral dinner. The only thing I don't understand
is why I stayed at the cemetery; I sat on a tombstone and sank into
appropriate reflections.
I began with the Moscow exhibition and ended with reflecting upon
astonishment in the abstract. My deductions about astonishment were these:
"To be surprised at everything is stupid of course, and to be astonished at
nothing is a great deal more becoming and for some reason accepted as good
form. But that is not really true. To my mind to be astonished at nothing
is much more stupid than to be astonished at everything. And, moreover, to
be astonished at nothing is almost the same as feeling respect for nothing.
And indeed a stupid man is incapable of feeling respect."
"But what I desire most of all is to feel respect. I _thirst_ to feel
respect," one of my acquaintances said to me the other day.
He thirsts to feel respect! Goodness, I thought, what would happen to you
if you dared to print that nowadays?
At that point I sank into forgetfulness. I don't like reading the epitaphs
of tombstones: they are everlastingly the same. An unfinished sandwich was
lying on the tombstone near me; stupid and inappropriate. I threw it on the
ground, as it was not bread but only a sandwich. Though I believe it is not
a sin to throw bread on the earth, but only on the floor. I must look it up
in Suvorin's calendar.
I suppose I sat there a long time--too long a time, in fact; I must have
lain down on a long stone which was of the shape of a marble coffin. And
how it happened I don't know, but I began to hear things of all sorts
being said. At first I did not pay attention to it, but treated it with
contempt. But the conversation went on. I heard muffled sounds as though
the speakers' mouths were covered with a pillow, and at the same time they
were distinct and very near. I came to myself, sat up and began listening
attentively.
"Your Excellency, it's utterly impossible. You led hearts, I return your
lead, and here you play the seven of diamonds. You ought to have given me a
hint about diamonds."
"What, play by hard and fast rules? Where is the charm of that?"
"You must, your Excellency. One can't do anything without something to go
upon. We must play with dummy, let one hand not be turned up."
"Well, you won't find a dummy here."
What conceited words! And it was queer and unexpected. One was such a
ponderous, dignified voice, the other softly suave; I should not have
believed it if I had not heard it myself. I had not been to the requiem
dinner, I believe. And yet how could they be playing preference here and
what general was this? That the sounds came from under the tombstones of
that there could be no doubt. I bent down and read on the tomb:
"Here lies the body of Major-General Pervoyedov ... a cavalier of such and
such orders." Hm! "Passed away in August of this year ... fifty-seven....
Rest, beloved ashes, till the joyful dawn!"
Hm, dash it, it really is a general! There was no monument on the grave
from which the obsequious voice came, there was only a tombstone. He must
have been a fresh arrival. From his voice he was a lower court councillor.
"Oh-ho-ho-ho!" I heard in a new voice a dozen yards from the general's
resting-place, coming from quite a fresh grave. The voice belonged to a man
and a plebeian, mawkish with its affectation of religious fervour.
"Oh-ho-ho-ho!"
"Oh, here he is hiccupping again!" cried the haughty and disdainful voice
of an irritated lady, apparently of the highest society. "It is an
affliction to be by this shopkeeper!"
"I didn't hiccup; why, I've had nothing to eat. It's simply my nature.
Really, madam, you don't seem able to get rid of your caprices here."
"Then why did you come and lie down here?"
"They put me here, my wife and little children put me here, I did not lie
down here of myself. The mystery of death! And I would not have lain down
beside you not for any money; I lie here as befitting my fortune, judging
by the price. For we can always do that--pay for a tomb of the third
grade."
"You made money, I suppose? You fleeced people?"
"Fleece you, indeed! We haven't seen the colour of your money since
January. There's a little bill against you at the shop."
"Well, that's really stupid; to try and recover debts here is too stupid,
to my thinking! Go to the surface. Ask my niece--she is my heiress."
"There's no asking any one now, and no going anywhere. We have both reached
our limit and, before the judgment-seat of God, are equal in our sins."
"In our sins," the lady mimicked him contemptuously. "Don't dare to speak
to me."
"Oh-ho-ho-ho!"
"You see, the shopkeeper obeys the lady, your Excellency."
"Why shouldn't he?"
"Why, your Excellency, because, as we all know, things are different here."
"Different? How?"
"We are dead, so to speak, your Excellency."
"Oh, yes! But still...."
Well, this is an entertainment, it is a fine show, I must say! If it has
come to this down here, what can one expect on the surface? But what a
queer business! I went on listening, however, though with extreme
indignation.
* * * * *
"Yes, I should like a taste of life! Yes, you know ... I should like a
taste of life." I heard a new voice suddenly somewhere in the space between
the general and the irritable lady.
"Do you hear, your Excellency, our friend is at the same game again. For
three days at a time he says nothing, and then he bursts out with 'I should
like a taste of life, yes, a taste of life!' And with such appetite,
he-he!"
"And such frivolity."
"It gets hold of him, your Excellency, and do you know, he is growing
sleepy, quite sleepy--he has been here since April; and then all of a
sudden 'I should like a taste of life!'"
"It is rather dull, though," observed his Excellency.
"It is, your Excellency. Shall we tease Avdotya Ignatyevna again, he-he?"
"No, spare me, please. I can't endure that quarrelsome virago."
"And I can't endure either of you," cried the virago disdainfully. "You are
both of you bores and can't tell me anything ideal. I know one little story
about you, your Excellency--don't turn up your nose, please--how a
man-servant swept you out from under a married couple's bed one morning."
"Nasty woman," the general muttered through his teeth.
"Avdotya Ignatyevna, ma'am," the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, "my dear
lady, don't be angry, but tell me, am I going through the ordeal by torment
now, or is it something else?"
"Ah, he is at it again, as I expected! For there's a smell from him which
means he is turning round!"
"I am not turning round, ma'am, and there's no particular smell from me,
for I've kept my body whole as it should be, while you're regularly high.
For the smell is really horrible even for a place like this. I don't speak
of it, merely from politeness."
"Ah, you horrid, insulting wretch! He positively stinks and talks about
me."
"Oh-ho-ho-ho! If only the time for my requiem would come quickly: I should
hear their tearful voices over my head, my wife's lament and my children's
soft weeping!..."
"Well, that's a thing to fret for! They'll stuff themselves with funeral
rice and go home.... Oh, I wish somebody would wake up!"
"Avdotya Ignatyevna," said the insinuating government clerk, "wait a bit,
the new arrivals will speak."
"And are there any young people among them?"
"Yes, there are, Avdotya Ignatyevna. There are some not more than lads."
"Oh, how welcome that would be!"
"Haven't they begun yet?" inquired his Excellency.
"Even those who came the day before yesterday haven't awakened yet, your
Excellency. As you know, they sometimes don't speak for a week. It's a good
job that to-day and yesterday and the day before they brought a whole lot.
As it is, they are all last year's for seventy feet round."
"Yes, it will be interesting."
"Yes, your Excellency, they buried Tarasevitch, the privy councillor,
to-day. I knew it from the voices. I know his nephew, he helped to lower
the coffin just now."
"Hm, where is he, then?"
"Five steps from you, your Excellency, on the left.... Almost at your feet.
You should make his acquaintance, your Excellency."
"Hm, no--it's not for me to make advances."
"Oh, he will begin of himself, your Excellency. He will be flattered. Leave
it to me, your Excellency, and I...."
"Oh, oh! ... What is happening to me?" croaked the frightened voice of a
new arrival.
"A new arrival, your Excellency, a new arrival, thank God! And how quick
he's been! Sometimes they don't say a word for a week."
"Oh, I believe it's a young man!" Avdotya Ignatyevna cried shrilly.
"I ... I ... it was a complication, and so sudden!" faltered the young man
again. "Only the evening before, Schultz said to me, 'There's a
complication,' and I died suddenly before morning. Oh! oh!"
"Well, there's no help for it, young man," the general observed graciously,
evidently pleased at a new arrival. "You must be comforted. You are kindly
welcome to our Vale of Jehoshaphat, so to call it. We are kind-hearted
people, you will come to know us and appreciate us. Major-General Vassili
Vassilitch Pervoyedov, at your service."
"Oh, no, no! Certainly not! I was at Schultz's; I had a complication, you
know, at first it was my chest and a cough, and then I caught a cold: my
lungs and influenza ... and all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly ... the
worst of all was its being so unexpected."
"You say it began with the chest," the government clerk put in suavely, as
though he wished to reassure the new arrival.
"Yes, my chest and catarrh and then no catarrh, but still the chest, and I
couldn't breathe ... and you know...."
"I know, I know. But if it was the chest you ought to have gone to Ecke and
not to Schultz."
"You know, I kept meaning to go to Botkin's, and all at once...."
"Botkin is quite prohibitive," observed the general.
"Oh, no, he is not forbidding at all; I've heard he is so attentive and
foretells everything beforehand."
"His Excellency was referring to his fees," the government clerk corrected
him.
"Oh, not at all, he only asks three roubles, and he makes such an
examination, and gives you a prescription ... and I was very anxious to see
him, for I have been told.... Well, gentlemen, had I better go to Ecke or
to Botkin?"
"What? To whom?" The general's corpse shook with agreeable laughter. The
government clerk echoed it in falsetto.
"Dear boy, dear, delightful boy, how I love you!" Avdotya Ignatyevna
squealed ecstatically. "I wish they had put some one like you next to me."
No, that was too much! And these were the dead of our times! Still, I ought
to listen to more and not be in too great a hurry to draw conclusions. That
snivelling new arrival--I remember him just now in his coffin--had the
expression of a frightened chicken, the most revolting expression in the
world! However, let us wait and see.
* * * * *
But what happened next was such a Bedlam that I could not keep it all in my
memory. For a great many woke up at once; an official--a civil
councillor--woke up, and began discussing at once the project of a new
sub-committee in a government department and of the probable transfer of
various functionaries in connection with the sub-committee--which very
greatly interested the general. I must confess I learnt a great deal that
was new myself, so much so that I marvelled at the channels by which one
may sometimes in the metropolis learn government news. Then an engineer
half woke up, but for a long time muttered absolute nonsense, so that our
friends left off worrying him and let him lie till he was ready. At last
the distinguished lady who had been buried in the morning under the
catafalque showed symptoms of the reanimation of the tomb. Lebeziatnikov
(for the obsequious lower court councillor whom I detested and who lay
beside General Pervoyedov was called, it appears, Lebeziatnikov) became
much excited, and surprised that they were all waking up so soon this time.
I must own I was surprised too; though some of those who woke had been
buried for three days, as, for instance, a very young girl of sixteen who
kept giggling ... giggling in a horrible and predatory way.
"Your Excellency, privy councillor Tarasevitch is waking!" Lebeziatnikov
announced with extreme fussiness.
"Eh? What?" the privy councillor, waking up suddenly, mumbled, with a lisp
of disgust. There was a note of ill-humoured peremptoriness in the sound of
his voice.
I listened with curiosity--for during the last few days I had heard
something about Tarasevitch--shocking and upsetting in the extreme.
"It's I, your Excellency, so far only I."
"What is your petition? What do you want?"
"Merely to inquire after your Excellency's health; in these unaccustomed
surroundings every one feels at first, as it were, oppressed.... General
Pervoyedov wishes to have the honour of making your Excellency's
acquaintance, and hopes...."
"I've never heard of him."
"Surely, your Excellency! General Pervoyedov, Vassili Vassilitch...."
"Are you General Pervoyedov?"
"No, your Excellency, I am only the lower court councillor Lebeziatnikov,
at your service, but General Pervoyedov...."
"Nonsense! And I beg you to leave me alone."
"Let him be." General Pervoyedov at last himself checked with dignity the
disgusting officiousness of his sycophant in the grave.
"He is not fully awake, your Excellency, you must consider that; it's the
novelty of it all. When he is fully awake he will take it differently."
"Let him be," repeated the general.
* * * * *
"Vassili Vassilitch! Hey, your Excellency!" a perfectly new voice shouted
loudly and aggressively from close beside Avdotya Ignatyevna. It was a
voice of gentlemanly insolence, with the languid pronunciation now
fashionable and an arrogant drawl. "I've been watching you all for the last
two hours. Do you remember me, Vassili Vassilitch? My name is Klinevitch,
we met at the Volokonskys' where you, too, were received as a guest, I am
sure I don't know why."
"What, Count Pyotr Petrovitch?... Can it be really you ... and at such an
early age? How sorry I am to hear it."
"Oh, I am sorry myself, though I really don't mind, and I want to amuse
myself as far as I can everywhere. And I am not a count but a baron, only a
baron. We are only a set of scurvy barons, risen from being flunkeys, but
why I don't know and I don't care. I am only a scoundrel of the
pseudo-aristocratic society, and I am regarded as 'a charming _polis-son_.'
My father is a wretched little general, and my mother was at one time
received _en haut lieu_. With the help of the Jew Zifel I forged fifty
thousand rouble notes last year and then I informed against him, while
Julie Charpentier de Lusignan carried off the money to Bordeaux. And only
fancy, I was engaged to be married--to a girl still at school, three months
under sixteen, with a dowry of ninety thousand. Avdotya Ignatyevna, do you
remember how you seduced me fifteen years ago when I was a boy of fourteen
in the Corps des Pages?"
"Ah, that's you, you rascal! Well, you are a godsend, anyway, for here...."
"You were mistaken in suspecting your neighbour, the business gentleman,
of unpleasant fragrance.... I said nothing, but I laughed. The stench came
from me: they had to bury me in a nailed-up coffin."
"Ugh, you horrid creature! Still, I am glad you are here; you can't imagine
the lack of life and wit here."
"Quite so, quite so, and I intend to start here something original. Your
Excellency--I don't mean you, Pervoyedov--your Excellency the other one,
Tarasevitch, the privy councillor! Answer! I am Klinevitch, who took you to
Mlle. Furie in Lent, do you hear?"
"I do, Klinevitch, and I am delighted, and trust me...."
"I wouldn't trust you with a halfpenny, and I don't care. I simply want to
kiss you, dear old man, but luckily I can't. Do you know, gentlemen, what
this _grand-père's_ little game was? He died three or four days ago, and
would you believe it, he left a deficit of four hundred thousand government
money from the fund for widows and orphans. He was the sole person in
control of it for some reason, so that his accounts were not audited for
the last eight years. I can fancy what long faces they all have now, and
what they call him. It's a delectable thought, isn't it? I have been
wondering for the last year how a wretched old man of seventy, gouty and
rheumatic, succeeded in preserving the physical energy for his
debaucheries--and now the riddle is solved! Those widows and orphans--the
very thought of them must have egged him on! I knew about it long ago, I
was the only one who did know; it was Julie told me, and as soon as I
discovered it, I attacked him in a friendly way at once in Easter week:
'Give me twenty-five thousand, if you don't they'll look into your accounts
to-morrow.' And just fancy, he had only thirteen thousand left then, so it
seems it was very apropos his dying now. _Grand-père, grand-père_, do you
hear?"
"_Cher_ Klinevitch, I quite agree with you, and there was no need for
you ... to go into such details. Life is so full of suffering and
torment and so little to make up for it ... that I wanted at last to be
at rest, and so far as I can see I hope to get all I can from here too."
"I bet that he has already sniffed Katiche Berestov!"
"Who? What Katiche?" There was a rapacious quiver in the old man's voice.
"A-ah, what Katiche? Why, here on the left, five paces from me and ten from
you. She has been here for five days, and if only you knew, _grand-père_,
what a little wretch she is! Of good family and breeding and a monster, a
regular monster! I did not introduce her to any one there, I was the only
one who knew her.... Katiche, answer!"
"He-he-he!" the girl responded with a jangling laugh, in which there was a
note of something as sharp as the prick of a needle. "He-he-he!"
"And a little blonde?" the _grand-père_ faltered, drawling out the
syllables.
"He-he-he!"
"I ... have long ... I have long," the old man faltered breathlessly,
"cherished the dream of a little fair thing of fifteen and just in such
surroundings."
"Ach, the monster!" cried Avdotya Ignatyevna.
"Enough!" Klinevitch decided. "I see there is excellent material. We shall
soon arrange things better. The great thing is to spend the rest of our
time cheerfully; but what time? Hey, you, government clerk, Lebeziatnikov
or whatever it is, I hear that's your name!"
"Semyon Yevseitch Lebeziatnikov, lower court councillor, at your service,
very, very, very much delighted to meet you."
"I don't care whether you are delighted or not, but you seem to know
everything here. Tell me first of all how it is we can talk? I've been
wondering ever since yesterday. We are dead and yet we are talking and seem
to be moving--and yet we are not talking and not moving. What jugglery is
this?"
"If you want an explanation, baron, Platon Nikolaevitch could give you one
better than I."
"What Platon Nikolaevitch is that? To the point. Don't beat about the
bush."
"Platon Nikolaevitch is our home-grown philosopher, scientist and Master of
Arts. He has brought out several philosophical works, but for the last
three months he has been getting quite drowsy, and there is no stirring him
up now. Once a week he mutters something utterly irrelevant."
"To the point, to the point!"