In a town of the steppes where I found life exceedingly dull, the best
and the brightest spot was the cemetery. Often did I use to walk there,
and once it happened that I fell asleep on some thick, rich,
sweet-smelling grass in a cradle-like hollow between two tombs.
From that sleep I was awakened with the sound of blows being struck
against the ground near my head. The concussion of them jarred me not a
little, as the earth quivered and tinkled like a bell. Raising myself
to a sitting posture, I found sleep still so heavy upon me that at
first my eyes remained blinded with unfathomable darkness, and could
not discern what the matter was. The only thing that I could see amid
the golden glare of the June sunlight was a wavering blur which at
intervals seemed to adhere to a grey cross, and to make it give forth a
succession of soft creaks.
Presently, however--against my wish, indeed--that wavering blur
resolved itself into a little, elderly man. Sharp-featured, with a
thick, silvery tuft of hair beneath his under lip, and a bushy white
moustache curled in military fashion, on his upper, he was using the
cross as a means of support as, with his disengaged hand outstretched,
and sawing the air, he dug his foot repeatedly into the ground, and, as
he did so, bestowed upon me sundry dry, covert glances from the depths
of a pair of dark eyes.
"What have you got there?" I inquired.
"A snake," he replied in an educated bass voice, and with a rugged
forefinger he pointed downwards; whereupon I perceived that wriggling
on the path at his feet and convulsively whisking its tail, there was
an echidna.
"Oh, it is only a grassworm," I said vexedly.
The old man pushed away the dull, iridescent, rope-like thing with the
toe of his boot, raised a straw hat in salute, and strode firmly
onwards.
"I thank you," I called out; whereupon, he replied without looking
behind him:
"If the thing really WAS a grassworm, of course there was no danger."
Then he disappeared among the tombstones.
Looking at the sky, I perceived the time to be about five o'clock.
The steppe wind was sighing over the tombs, and causing long stems of
grass to rock to and fro, and freighting the heated air with the silken
rustling of birches and limes and other trees, and leading one to
detect amid the humming of summer a note of quiet grief eminently
calculated to evoke lofty, direct thoughts concerning life and one's
fellow-men.
Veiling with greenery, grey and white tombstones worn with the snows of
winter, crosses streaked with marks of rain, and the wall with which
the graveyard was encircled, the rank vegetation served to also conceal
the propinquity of a slovenly, clamorous town which lay coated with
rich, sooty grime amid an atmosphere of dust and smells.
As I set off for a ramble among the tombs and tangled grass, I could
discern through openings in the curtain of verdure a belfry's gilded
cross which reared itself solemnly over crosses and memorials. At the
foot of those memorials the sacramental vestment of the cemetery was
studded with a kaleidoscopic sheen of flowers over which bees and wasps
were so hovering and humming that the grass's sad, prayerful murmur
seemed charged with a song of life which yet did not hinder reflections
on death. Fluttering above me on noiseless wing were birds the flight
of which sometimes made me start, and stand wondering whether the
object before my gaze was really a bird or not: and everywhere the
shimmer of gilded sunlight was setting the close-packed graveyard in a
quiver which made the mounds of its tombs reminiscent of a sea when,
after a storm, the wind has fallen, and all the green level is an
expanse of smooth, foamless billows.
Beyond the wall of the cemetery the blue void of the firmament was
pierced with smoky chimneys of oil-mills and soap factories, the roofs
of which showed up like particoloured stains against the darker rags
and tatters of other buildings; while blinking in the sunlight I could
discern clatter-emitting, windows which looked to me like watchful
eyes. Only on the nearer side of the wall was a sparse strip of turf
dotted over with ragged, withered, tremulous stems, and beyond this,
again, lay the site of a burnt building which constituted a black patch
of earth-heaps, broken stoves, dull grey ashes, and coal dust. To
heaven gaped the black, noisome mouths of burning-pits wherein the more
economical citizens were accustomed nightly to get rid of the contents
of their dustbins. Among the tall stems of steppe grass waved large,
glossy leaves of ergot; in the sunlight splinters of broken glass
sparkled as though they were laughing; and, from two spots in the dark
brown plot which formed a semicircle around the cemetery, there
projected, like teeth, two buildings the new yellow paint of which
nevertheless made them look mean and petty amid the tangle of rubbish,
pigweed, groundsel, and dock.
Indolently roaming hither and thither, a few speckled hens resembled
female pedlars, and some pompous red cockerels a troupe of firemen; in
the orifices of the burning-pits a number of mournful-eyed, homeless
dogs were lying sheltered; among the shoots of the steppe scrub some
lean cats were stalking sparrows; and a band of children who were
playing hide-and-seek among the orifices above-mentioned presented, a
pitiful sight as they went skipping over the filthy earth, disappearing
in the crevices among the piles of heaped-up dirt.
Beyond the site of the burnt-out building there stretched a series of
mean, close-packed huts which, crammed exclusively with needy folk,
stood staring, with their dim, humble eyes of windows, at the crumbling
bricks of the cemetery wall, and the dense mass of trees which that
wall enclosed. Here, in one such hut, had I myself a lodging in a
diminutive attic, which not only smelt of lamp-oil, but stood in a
position to have wafted to it the least gasp or ejaculation on the part
of my landlord, Iraklei Virubov, a clerk in the local treasury. In
short, I could never glance out of the window at the cemetery on the
other side of the strip of dead, burnt, polluted earth without
reflecting that, by comparison, that cemetery was a place of sheer
beauty, a place of ceaseless attraction.
And ever, that day, as though he had been following me, could there be
sighted among the tombs the dark figure of the old man who had so
abruptly awakened me from slumber; and since his straw hat reflected
the sunlight as brilliantly as the disk of a sunflower as it meandered
hither and thither, I, in my turn, found myself following him, though
thinking, all the while, of Iraklei Virubov. Only a week was it since
Iraklei's wife, a thin, shrewish, long-nosed woman with green and
catlike eyes, had set forth on a pilgrimage to Kiev, and Iraklei had
hastened to import into the hut a stout, squint-eyed damsel whom he had
introduced to me as his "niece by marriage."
"She was baptised Evdokia," he had said on the occasion referred to.
"Usually, however, I call her Dikanka. Pray be friendly with her, but
remember, also, that she is not a person with whom to take liberties."
Large, round-shouldered, and clean-shaven like a chef, Virubov was for
ever hitching up breeches which had slipped from a stomach ruined with
surfeits of watermelon. And always were his fat lips parted as though
athirst, and perpetually had he in his colourless eyes an expression of
insatiable hunger.
One evening I overheard a dialogue to the following effect.
"Dikanka, pray come and scratch my back. Yes, between the
shoulder-blades. O-o-oh, that is it. My word, how strong you are!"
Whereat Dikanka had laughed shrilly. And only when I had moved my
chair, and thrown down my book, had the laughter and unctuous
whispering died away, and given place to a whisper of:
"Holy Father Nicholas, pray for us unto God! Is the supper kvas ready,
Dikanka?"
And softly the pair had departed to the kitchen--there to grunt and
squeal once more like a couple of pigs....
The old man with the grey moustache stepped over the turf with the
elastic stride of youth, until at length he halted before a large
monument in drab granite, and stood reading the inscription thereon.
Featured not altogether in accordance with the Russian type, he had on
a dark-blue jacket, a turned-down collar, and a black stock finished
off with a large bow--the latter contrasting agreeably with the thick,
silvery, as it were molten, chin-tuft. Also, from the centre of a
fierce moustache there projected a long and gristly nose, while over
the grey skin of his cheeks there ran a network of small red veins. In
the act of raising his hand to his hat (presumably for the purpose of
saluting the dead), he, after conning the dark letters of the
inscription on the tomb, turned a sidelong eye upon myself; and since I
found the fact embarrassing, I frowned, and passed onward, full, still,
of thoughts of the street where I was residing and where I desired to
fathom the mean existence eked out by Virubov and his "niece."
As usual, the tombs were also being patrolled by Pimesha, otherwise
Pimen Krozootov, a bibulous, broken-down ex-merchant who used to spend
his time in stumbling and falling about the graves in search of the
supposed resting-place of his wife. Bent of body, Pimesha had a small,
bird-like face over-grown with grey down, the eyes of a sick rabbit,
and, in general, the appearance of having undergone a chewing by a set
of sharp teeth. For the past three years he had thus been roaming the
cemetery, though his legs were too weak to support his undersized,
shattered body; and whenever he caught his foot he fell, and for long
could not rise, but lay gasping and fumbling among the grass, and
rooting it up, and sniffing with a nose as sharp and red as though the
skin had been flayed from it. True, his wife had been buried at
Novotchevkassk, a thousand versts away, but Pimen refused to credit the
fact, and always, on being told it, stuttered with much blinking of his
wet, faded eyes: "Natasha? Natasha is here."
Also, there used to visit the spot, well-nigh daily, a Madame
Christoforov, a tall old lady who, wearing black spectacles and a plain
grey, shroudlike dress that was trimmed with black velvet, never failed
to have a stick between her abnormally long fingers. Wizened of face,
with cheeks hanging down like bags, and a knot of grey, rather,
grey-green, hair combed over her temples from under a lace scarf, and
almost concealing her ears, this lady pursued her way with
deliberation, and entire assurance, and yielded the path to no one whom
she might encounter. I have an idea that there lay buried there a son
who had been killed in a roisterers' brawl.
Another habitual visitor was thin-legged, short-sighted Aulic
Councillor Praotzev, ex-schoolmaster. With a book stuffed into the
pocket of his canvas pea-jacket, a white umbrella grasped in his red
hand, and a smile extending to ears as sharp and pointed as a rabbit's,
he could, any Sunday after dinner, be seen skipping from tomb to tomb,
with his umbrella brandished like a white flag soliciting terms of
peace with death.
And, on returning home before the bell rang for Vespers, he would find
that a crowd of boys had collected outside his garden wall; whereupon,
dancing about him like puppies around a stork, they would fall to
shouting in various merry keys:
"The Councillor, the Councillor! Who was it that fell in love with
Madame Sukhinikh, and then fell into the pond?"
Losing his temper, and opening a great mouth, until he looked like an
old rook which is about to caw, the Councillor would stamp his foot
several times, as though preparing to dance to the boys' shouting, and
lower his head, grasp his umbrella like a bayonet, and charge at the
lads with a panting shout of:
"I'll tell your fathers! Oh, I'll tell your mothers!"
As for the Madame Sukhinikh, referred to, she was an old beggar-woman
who, the year round, and in all weathers, sat on a little bench beside
the cemetery wicket, and stuck to it like a stone. Her large face, a
face rendered bricklike by years of inebriety, was covered with dark
blotches born of frostbite, alcoholic inflammation, sunburn, and
exposure to wind, and her eyes were perpetually in a state of
suppuration. Never did anyone pass her but she proffered a wooden cup
in a suppliant hand, and cried hoarsely, rather as though she were
cursing the person concerned:
"Give something for Christ's sake! Give in memory of your kinsfolk
there!"
Once an unexpected storm blew in from the steppes, and brought a
downpour which, overtaking the old woman on her way home, caused her,
her sight being poor, to fall into a pond, whence Praotzev attempted to
rescue her, and into which, in the end, he slipped himself. From that
day onwards he was twitted on the subject by the boys of the town.
Other frequenters of the cemetery I see before me--dark, silent
figures, figures of persons whom still unsevered cords of memory seemed
to have bound to the place for the rest of their lives, and compelled
to wander, like unburied corpses, in quest of suitable tombs. Yes, they
were persons whom life had rejected, and death, as yet, refused to
accept.
Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless dog
with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their intelligence
and in their absolute Ishmaelitism--until one almost expected to hear
issue from the animal's mouth reproaches couched in human language.
And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery as,
with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to and fro
with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally venting a
subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.
Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying an
unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would, meanwhile,
maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently persuasive, chirruping
chorus; until in autumn, when the wind had stripped bare the boughs,
these birds' black nests would come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed
heads of human beings which someone had torn from their bodies and
flung into the trees, to hang for ever around the white,
sugarloaf-shaped church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn
season, indeed, everything in the cemetery's vicinity looked sad and
tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh like a
lover who has been driven mad through bereavement....
Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly
extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read aloud:
"'Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected citizen
and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'" etc., etc.
Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into the
pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in colour, but
exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:
"It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man beyond
that he was a 'servant of God.' Now, how can a servant be worthy of
honour at the hand of 'citizens'?"
"Possibly he was an ascetic," was my hazarded conjecture; whereupon the
old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:
"Then in such case one ought to write--"
"To write what?"
"To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail."
And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor passed
onwards towards a more remote portion of the cemetery--myself walking,
this time, beside him. His stature placed his head on a level with my
shoulder only, and caused his straw hat to conceal his features. Hence,
since I wished to look at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced
to walk with head bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.
"No, that is not the way to do it," presently he continued in the soft,
civil voice of one who has a complaint to present. "Any such proceeding
is merely a mark of barbarism--of a complete lack of observation of men
and life."
With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large circle in
the air.
"Do you know the meaning of that?" he inquired.
"Its meaning is death," was my diffident reply, made with a shrug of
the shoulders.
A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely cut face
as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:
"'Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'" [Death hath been for
ever overthrown by death."]
"Do you know that passage?" he added presently.
Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces--he threading
his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable speed. Suddenly he
halted, raised his hat from his head, and proffered me a hand.
"Young man," he said, "let us make one another's better acquaintance. I
am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly of the State Remount
Establishment, subsequently of the Department of Imperial Lands. I am a
man who, after never having been found officially remiss, am living in
honourable retirement--a man at once a householder, a widower, and a
person of hasty temper."
Then, after a pause, he added:
"Vice-Governor Khorvat of Tambov is my brother--a younger brother; he
being fifty-five, and I sixty-one, si-i-ixty one."
His speech was rapid, but as precise as though no mistake was
permissible in its delivery.
"Also," he continued, "as a man cognisant of every possible species of
cemetery, I am much dissatisfied with this one. In fact, never
satisfied with such places am I."
Here he brandished his fist in the air, and described a large arc over
the crosses.
"Let us sit down," he said, "and I will explain things."
So, after that we had seated ourselves on a bench beside a white
oratory, and Lieutenant Khorvat had taken off his hat, and with a blue
handkerchief wiped his forehead and the thick silvery hair which
bristled from the knobs of his scalp, he continued:
"Mark you well the word kladbistche." [The word, though customarily
used for cemetery, means, primarily, a treasure-house.] Here he nudged
me with his elbow--continuing, thereafter, more softly: "In a
kladbisiche one might reasonably look for kladi, for treasures of
intellect and enlightenment. Yet what do we find? Only that which is
offensive and insulting. All of us does it insult, for thereby is an
insult paid to all who, in life, are bearing still their 'cross and
burden.' You too will, one day, be insulted by the system, even as
shall I. Do you understand? I repeat, 'their cross and burden'--the
sense of the words being that, life being hard and difficult, we ought
to honour none but those who STILL are bearing their trials, or bearing
trials for you and me. Now, THESE folk here have ceased to possess
consciousness."
Each time that the old man waved his hat in his excitement, its small
shadow, bird-like, flew along the narrow path, and over the cross, and,
finally, disappeared in the direction of the town.
Next, distending his ruddy cheeks, twitching his moustache, and
regarding me covertly out of boylike eyes, the Lieutenant resumed:
"Probably you are thinking, 'The man with whom I have to deal is old
and half-witted.' But no, young fellow; that is not so, for long before
YOUR time had I taken the measure of life. Regard these memorials. ARE
they memorials? For what do they commemorate as concerns you and
myself? They commemorate, in that respect, nothing. No, they are not
memorials; they are merely passports or testimonials conferred upon
itself by human stupidity. Under a given cross there may lie a Maria,
and under another one a Daria, or an Alexei, or an Evsei, or someone
else--all 'servants of God,' but not otherwise particularised. An
outrage this, sir! For in this place folk who have lived their
difficult portion of life on earth are seen robbed of that record of
their existences, which ought to have been preserved for your and my
instruction. Yes, A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIFE LIVED BY A MAN is what
matters. A tomb might then become even more interesting than a novel.
Do you follow me?"
"Not altogether," I rejoined.
He heaved a very audible sigh.
"It should be easy enough," was his remark. "To begin with, I am NOT a
'servant of God.' Rather, I am a man intelligently, of set purpose,
keeping God's holy commandments so far as lies within my power. And no
one, not even God, has any right to demand of me more than I can give.
That is so, is it not?"