"There!" the Lieutenant cried briskly as, cocking his hat, he assumed a
still more truculent air. Then, spreading out his hands, he growled in
his flexible bass:
"What is this cemetery? It is merely a place of show."
At this moment, for some reason or another, there occurred to me an
incident which involved the figure of Iraklei Virubov, the figure which
had carpet slippers on its ponderous feet, thick lips, a greedy mouth,
deceitful eyes, and a frame so huge and cavernous that the dapper
little Lieutenant could have stepped into it complete.
The day had been a Sunday, and the hour eventide. On the burnt plot of
ground some broken glass had been emitting a reddish gleam, shoots of
ergot had been diffusing their gloss, children shouting at play, dogs
trotting backwards and forwards, and all things, seemingly, faring
well, sunken in the stillness of the portion of the town adjoining the
rolling, vacant steppe, with, above them, only the sky's level,
dull-blue canopy, and around them, only the cemetery, like an island
amidst a sea.
With Virubov, I had been sitting on a bench near the wicket-gate of his
hut, as intermittently he had screwed his lecherous eyes in the
direction of the stout, ox-eyed lacemaker, Madame Ezhov, who, after
disposing of her form on a bank hard-by, had fallen to picking lice out
of the curls of her eight-year-old Petka Koshkodav. Presently, as
swiftly she had rummaged the boy's hair with fingers grown used to such
rapid movement, she had said to her husband (a dealer in second-hand
articles), who had been seated within doors, and therefore rendered
invisible--she had said with oily derision:
"Oh, yes, you bald-headed old devil, you! Of course you got your price.
Ye-es. Then, fool, you ought to have had a slipper smacked across that
Kalmuck snout of yours. Talk of my price, indeed!"
Upon this Virubov had remarked with a sigh, and in sluggish,
sententious tones:
"To grant the serfs emancipation was a sheer mistake. I am a humble
enough servant of my country, yet I can see the truth of what I have
stated, since it follows as a matter of course. What ought to have been
done is that all the estates of the landowners should have been
conveyed to the Tsar. Beyond a doubt that is so. Then both the
peasantry and the townsfolk, the whole people, in short, would have had
but a single landlord. For never can the people live properly so long
as it is ignorant of the point where it stands; and since it loves
authority, it loves to have over it an autocratic force, for its
control. Always can it be seen seeking such a force."
Then, bending forward, and infusing into each softly uttered word a
perfect lusciousness of falsity, Virubov had added to his neighbour:
"Take, for example, the working-woman who stands free of every tie."
"How do I stand free of anything?" the neighbour had retorted, in
complete readiness for a quarrel.
"Oh, I am not speaking in your despite, Pavlushka, but to your credit,"
hastily Virubov had protested.
"Then keep your blandishments for that heifer, your 'niece,'" had been
Madame Ezhov's response.
Upon this Virubov had risen heavily, and remarked as he moved away
towards the courtyard:
"All folk need to be supervised by an autocratic eye."
Thereafter had followed a bout of choice abuse between his neighbour
and his "niece," while Virubov himself, framed in the wicket-gate, and
listening to the contest, had smacked his lips as he gazed at the pair,
and particularly at Madame Ezhov. At the beginning of the bout Dikanka
had screeched:
"It is my opinion, it is my opinion, that--"
"Don't treat me to any of YOUR slop!" the long-fanged Pavla had
interrupted for the benefit of the street in general. And thus had the
affair continued....
Lieutenant Khorvat blew the fag-end of his cigarette from his
mouthpiece, glanced at me, and said with seemingly, a not over-civil,
twitch of his bushy moustache:
"Of what are you thinking, if I might inquire?"
"I am trying to understand you."
"You ought not to find that difficult," was his rejoinder as again he
doffed his hat, and fanned his face with it. "The whole thing may be
summed up in two words. It is that we lack respect both for ourselves
and for our fellow men. Do you follow me NOW?"
His eyes had grown once more young and clear, and, seizing my hand in
his strong and agreeably warm fingers, he continued:
"Why so? For the very simple reason that I cannot respect myself when I
can learn nothing, simply nothing, about my fellows."
Moving nearer to me, he added in a mysterious undertone:
"In this Russia of ours none of us really knows why he has come into
existence. True, each of us knows that he was born, and that he is
alive, and that one day he will die; but which of us knows the reason
why all that is so?"
Through renewed excitement, its colour had come back to the
Lieutenant's face, and his gestures became so rapid as to cause the
ring on his finger to flash through the air like the link of a chain.
Also, I was able to detect the fact that on the small, neat wrist under
his left cuff, there was a bracelet finished with a medallion.
"All this, my good sir, is because (partially through the fact that men
forget the point, and partially through the fact that that point fails
to be understood aright) the WORK done by a man is concealed from our
knowledge. For my own part, I have an idea, a scheme--yes, a scheme--in
two words, a, a--"
"N-n-o-u, n-n-o-u!" the bell of the monastery tolled over the tombs in
languid, chilly accents.
"--a scheme that every town and every village, in fact, every unit of
homogeneous population, should keep a record of the particular unit's
affairs, a, so to speak, 'book of life.' This 'book of life' should be
more than a list of the results of the unit's labour; it should also be
a living narrative of the workaday activities accomplished by each
member of the unit. Eh? And, of course, the record to be compiled
without official interference--solely by the town council or district
administration, or by a special 'board, of life and works' or some such
body, provided only that the task be not carried out by nominees of the
GOVERNMENT. And in that record there should be entered everything--that
is to say, everything of a nature which ought to be made public
concerning every man who has lived among us, and has since gone from
our midst."
Here the Lieutenant stretched out his hand again in the direction of
the tombs.
"My right it is," he added, "to know how those folk there spent their
lives. For it is by their labours and their thoughts, and even on the
product of their bones, that I myself am now subsisting. You agree, do
you not?"
In silence I nodded; whereupon he cried triumphantly:
"Ah! You see, do you? Yes, an indispensable point is it, that
whatsoever a man may have done, whether good or evil, should be
recorded. For example, suppose he has manufactured a stove specially
good for heating purposes; record the fact. Or suppose he has killed a
mad dog; record the fact. Or suppose he has built a school, or cleansed
a dirty street, or been a pioneer in the teaching of sound farming, or
striven, by word and deed, his life long, to combat official
irregularities... record the fact. Again, suppose a woman has borne
ten, or fifteen, healthy children; record the fact. Yes, and this last
with particular care, since the conferment of healthy children upon the
country is a work of absolute importance."
Further, pointing to a grey headstone with a worn inscription, he
shouted (or almost did so):
"Under that stone lies buried the body of a man who never in his life
loved but one woman, but ONE woman. Now, THAT is a fact which ought to
have been recorded about him for it is not merely a string of names
that is wanted, but a narrative of deeds. Yes, I have not only a
desire, but a RIGHT, to know the lives which men have lived, and the
works which they have performed; and whenever a man leaves our midst we
ought to inscribe over his tomb full particulars of the 'cross and
burden' which he bore, as particulars ever to be held in remembrance,
and inscribed there both for my benefit and for the benefit of life in
general, as constituting a clear and circumstantial record of the given
career. Why did that man live? To the question write down, always, the
answer in large and conspicuous characters. Eh?"
"Most certainly."
This led the Lieutenant's enthusiasm to increase still more as, for the
third time waving his hand in the direction of the tombs, and mouthing
each word, he continued:
"The folk of that town are liars pure and simple, for of set purpose
they conceal the particulars of careers that they may depreciate those
careers in our eyes, and, while showing us the insignificance of the
dead, fill the living with a sense of similar insignificance, since
insignificant folk are the easiest to manage. Yes, it is a scheme
thought out with diabolical ingenuity. Yet, for myself--well, try and
make me do what I don't intend to do!"
To which, with his face wrinkled with disgust, he added in a tone like
a shot from a pistol:
"Machines are we! Yes, machines, and nothing else!"
Curious was it to watch the old man's excitement as one listened to the
strong bass voice amid the stillness of the cemetery. Once more over
the tombs, there came floating the languid, metallic notes of "N-n-o-u!
N-n-o-u!"
The oily gloss on the withered grass had vanished, faded, and
everything turned dull, though the air remained charged with the spring
perfume of the geraniums, stocks, and narcissi which encircled some of
the graves.
"You see," continued the Lieutenant, "one could not deny that each of
us has his value. By the time that one has lived threescore years, one
perceives that fact very clearly. Never CONCEAL things, since every
life lived ought to be set in the light. And is capable of being so, in
that every man is a workman for the world at large, and constitutes an
instructor in good or in evil, and that life, when looked into,
constitutes, as a whole, the sum of all the labour done by the
aggregate of us petty, insignificant individuals. That is why we ought
not to hide away a man's work, but to publish it abroad, and to
inscribe on the cross over his tomb his deeds, his services, in their
entirety. Yes, however negligible may have been those deeds, those
services, hold them up for the perusal of those who can discover good
even in what is negligible. NOW do you understand me?"
"I do," I replied. "Yes, I do."
"Good!"
The bell of the monastery struck two hasty beats--then became silent,
so that only the sad echo of its voice remained reverberating over the
cemetery. Once more my interlocutor drew out his cigarette-case,
silently offered it to myself, and lighted and puffed industriously at
another cigarette. As he did so his hands, as small and brown as the
claws of a bird, shook a little, and his head, bent down, looked like
an Easter egg in plush.
Still smoking, he looked me in the eyes with a self-diffident frown,
and muttered:
"Only through the labour of man does the earth attain development. And
only by familiarising himself with, and remembering, the past can man
obtain support in his work on earth."
In speaking, the Lieutenant lowered his arm; whereupon on to his wrist
there slipped the broad golden bracelet adorned with a medallion, and
there gazed at me thence the miniature of a fair-haired woman: and
since the hand below it was freckled, and its flexible fingers were
swollen out of shape, and had lost their symmetry, the woman's
fine-drawn face looked the more full of life, and, clearly picked out,
could be seen to be smiling a sweet and slightly imperious smile.
"Your wife or your daughter?" I queried.
"My God! My God!" was, with a subdued sigh, the only response
vouchsafed. Then the Lieutenant raised his arm, and the bracelet slid
back to its resting place under his cuff.
Over the town the columns of curling smoke were growing redder, and the
clattering windows blushing to a tint of pink that recalled to my
memory the livid cheeks of Virubov's "niece," of the woman in whom,
like her uncle, there was nothing that could provoke one to "take
liberties."
Next, there scaled the cemetery wall and stealthily stretched
themselves on the ground, so that they looked not unlike the far-flung
shadows of the cemetery's crosses, a file of dark, tattered figures of
beggars, while on the further side of the slowly darkening greenery a
cantor drawled in sluggish, careless accents:
"E-e-ternal me-e--"
"Eternal memory of what?" exclaimed Lieutenant Khorvat with an angry
shrug of his shoulders. "Suppose, in his day, a man has been the best
cucumber-salter or mushroom-pickler in a given town. Or suppose he has
been the best cobbler there, or that once he said something which the
street wherein he dwelt can still remember. Would not THAT man be a man
whose record should be preserved, and made accessible to my
recollection?"
And again the Lieutenant's face wreathed itself in solid rings of
pungent tobacco smoke.
Blowing softly for a moment, the wind bent the long stems of grass in
the direction of the declining sun, and died away. All that remained
audible amid the stillness was the peevish voices of women saying:
"To the left, I say."
"Oh, what is to be done, Tanechka?"
Expelling a fresh cloud of tobacco smoke in cylindrical form, the old
man muttered:
"It would seem that those women have forgotten the precise spot where
their relative or friend happens to lie buried."
As a hawk flew over the sun-reddened belfry-cross, the bird's shadow
glided over a memorial stone near the spot where we were sitting,
glanced off the corner of the stone, and appeared anew beyond it. And
in the watching of this shadow, I somehow found a pleasant diversion.
Went on the Lieutenant:
"I say that a graveyard ought to evince the victory of life, the
triumph of intellect and of labour, rather than the power of death.
However, imagine how things would work out under my scheme. Under it
the record of which I have spoken would constitute a history of a
town's life which, if anything, would increase men's respect for their
fellows. Yes, such a history as THAT is what a cemetery ought to be.
Otherwise the place is useless. Similarly will the past prove useless
if it can give us nothing. Yet is such a history ever compiled? If it
is, how can one say that events are brought about by, forsooth,
'servants of God'?"
Pointing to the tombs with a gesture as though he were swimming, he
paused for a moment or two.
"You are a good man," I said, "and a man who must have lived a good and
interesting life."
He did not look at me, but answered quietly and thoughtfully:
"At least a man ought to be his fellows' friend, seeing that to them he
is beholden for everything that he possesses and for everything that he
contains. I myself have lived--"
Here, with a contraction of his brows, he fell to gazing about him, as
though he were seeking the necessary word; until, seeming to fail to
find it, he continued gravely:
"Men need to be brought closer together, until life shall have become
better adjusted. Never forget those who are departed, for anything and
everything in the life of a 'servant of God' may prove instructive and
of profound significance."
On the white sides of the memorial-stones, the setting sun was casting
warm lurid reflections, until the stonework looked as though it had
been splashed with hot blood. Moreover, every thing around us seemed
curiously to have swelled and grown larger and softer and less cold of
outline; the whole scene, though as motionless as ever, appeared to
have taken on a sort of bright-red humidity, and deposited that
humidity in purple, scintillating, quivering dew on the turf's various
spikes and tufts. Gradually, also, the shadows were deepening and
lengthening, while on the further side of the cemetery wall a cow lowed
at intervals, in a gross and drunken fashion, and a party of fowls
cackled what seemed to be curses in response, and a saw grated and
screeched.
Suddenly the Lieutenant burst into a peal of subdued laughter, and
continued to do so until his shoulders shook. At length he said through
the paroxysms, as, giving me a push, he cocked his hat boyishly:
"I must confess that, that--that the view which I first took of you was
rather a tragic one. You see, when I saw a man lying prone on the grass
I said to myself: 'H'm! What is that?' Next I saw a young fellow
roaming about the cemetery with a frown settled on his face, and his
breeches bulging; and again I said to myself--"
"A book is lying in my breeches pocket," I interposed.
"Ah! Then I understand. Yes, I made a mistake, but a very, welcome one.
However, as I say, when I first saw you, I said to myself: 'There is a
man lying near that tomb. Perhaps he has a bullet, a wound, in his
temple?' And, as you know--"
He stopped to wink at me with another outburst of soft, good-humoured
laughter. Then he continued.
"Nevertheless, the scheme of which I have told you cannot really be
called a scheme, since it is merely a fancy of my own. Yet I SHOULD
like to see life lived in better fashion."
He sighed and paused, for evidently he was becoming lost in thought.
"Unfortunately," he continued at last, "the latter is a desire which I
have conceived too late. If only I had done so fifteen years ago, when
I was filling the post of Inspector of the prison at Usman--"
His left arm stretched itself out, and once more there slid on to his
wrist the bracelet. For a moment he touched its gold with a rapid, but
careful, delicate, movement--then he restored the trinket to its
retreat, rose suddenly, looked about him for a second or two with a
frown, and said in dry, brisk tones as he gave his iron-grey moustache
an energetic twist:
"Now I must be going."
For a while I accompanied him on his way, for I had a keen desire to
hear him say something more in that pleasant, powerful bass of his; but
though he stepped past the gravestones with strides as careful and
regular as those of a soldier on parade, he failed again to break
silence.
Just as we passed the chapel of the monastery there floated forth into
the fair evening stillness, from the bars, of a window, while yet not
really stirring that stillness, a hum of gruff, lazy, peevish
ejaculations. Apparently they were uttered by two persons who were
engaged in a dispute, since one of them muttered:
"What have you done? What have you done?"
And the other responded carelessly:
"Hold your tongue, now! Pray hold your tongue!"