One Sunday morning they were burying the Collegiate Assessor Kiril
Ivanovitch, who had died from the two ailments so common amongst us:
drink and a scolding wife. While the funeral procession was crawling
from the church to the cemetery, a certain Poplavski, a colleague of the
defunct civil servant, jumped into a cab, and galloped off to fetch his
friend Gregory Zapoikin, a young but already popular man. As many of my
readers know, Zapoikin was the possessor of a remarkable talent for
making impromptu orations at weddings, jubilee celebrations, and
funerals. Whether he was half-asleep, or fasting, or dead drunk, or in a
fever, he was always ready to make a speech. His words always flowed
from his lips as smoothly and evenly and abundantly as water out of a
rain-pipe, and there were more heartrending expressions in his
oratorical vocabulary than there are black beetles in an inn. His
speeches were always eloquent and long, so long that sometimes,
especially at the weddings of merchants, the aid of the police had to be
summoned to put a stop to them.
“I have come to carry you off with me, old chap,” began Poplavski. “Put
on your things this minute and come along. One of our colleagues has
kicked the bucket and we are about to despatch him into the next world.
We must have some sort of folderol to see him off with, you know! All
our hopes are centred on you! If one of our little fellows had died, we
shouldn’t have troubled you; but, after all, this one was an Assessor, a
pillar of the state, one might say. It wouldn’t do to bury a big fish
like him without some kind of an oration!”
“Ah, the Assessor is it?” yawned Zapoikin. “What, that old soak?”
“Yes, that old soak! There will be pancakes and caviar, you know, and
you will get your cab-fare paid. Come along, old man! Spout some of your
Ciceronian hyperboles over his grave and you’ll see the thanks you’ll
get from us all!”
Zapoikin consented to go with alacrity. He ruffled his hair, veiled his
features in gloom, and stepped out with Poplavski into the street.
“I know that Assessor of yours!” he said, as he took his seat in the
cab. “He was a rare brute of a rascal, God bless his soul!”
“Come, let dead men alone, Grisha!”
“Oh, of course, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_, but that doesn’t make him
any less a rascal!”
The friends overtook the funeral cortège. It was travelling so slowly
that before it reached its destination they had time to dash into a café
three times to drink a drop to the peace of the dead man’s soul.
At the cemetery the litany had already been sung. The mother-in-law, the
wife, and the sister-in-law of the departed were weeping in torrents.
The wife even shrieked as the coffin was lowered into the grave: “Oh,
let me go with him!” But she did not follow her husband, probably
because she remembered his pension in time. Zapoikin waited until every
sound had ceased and then stepped forward, embraced the whole crowd at a
glance and began:
“Can we believe our eyes and our ears? Is this not a terrible dream?
What is this grave here? What are these tear-stained faces, these sobs,
these groans? Alas, they are not a dream! He whom, but a short time
since we saw before us so valiant and brave, endowed still with all the
freshness of youth; he whom, before our eyes, like the untiring bee, we
saw carrying his burden of honey to the universal hive of the sovereign
good, he whom—this man has now become dust, a mirage! Pitiless death has
laid his bony hand upon him at a time when, notwithstanding the weight
of his years, he was still in the very bloom of his powers, and radiant
with hope. We have many a good servant of the state here, but Prokofi
Osipitch stood alone among them all. He was devoted body and soul to the
accomplishment of his honourable duties; he spared not his strength, and
it may well be said of him that he was always without fear and without
reproach. Ah, how he despised those who desired to buy his soul at the
expense of the public good; those who, with the seductive blessings of
earth, would fain have enticed him into a betrayal of the trusts
confided to him! Yea, before our very eyes we could see Prokofi Osipitch
giving his mite, his all, to comrades poorer than himself, and you have
heard for yourselves, but a few moments since, the cries of the widows
and orphans who lived by the kindness of his great heart. Engrossed in
the duties of his post and in deeds of charity, he knew no joy in this
world. Yea, he even forswore the happiness of family life. You know that
he remained a bachelor to the end of his days. Who will take the place
of this comrade of ours? I can see at this moment his gentle,
clean-shaven face turned toward us with a benevolent smile. I seem to
hear the soft, friendly tones of his voice. Eternal repose be to your
soul, Prokofi Osipitch! Rest in peace, noble, honourable toiler of
ours!”
Zapoikin continued his oration, but his audience had begun to whisper
among themselves. The speech pleased every one and called forth numerous
tears, but it seemed a little strange to many who heard it. In the first
place, they could not understand why the speaker had referred to the
dead man as “Prokofi Osipitch” when his real name had been Kiril
Ivanovitch. In the second place, they all knew that the departed and his
wife had fought like cat and dog, and that therefore he could hardly
have been called a bachelor. In the third place, he had worn a thick red
beard, and had never shaved in his life, therefore they could not make
out why their Demosthenes had spoken of him as being clean-shaven. They
wondered and looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders.
“Prokofi Osipitch!” the speaker continued with a rapt look at the grave.
“Prokofi Osipitch! You were ugly of face, it is true, yea, you were
almost uncouth; you were gloomy and stern, but well we knew that beneath
that deceitful exterior of yours there beat a warm and affectionate
heart!”
The crowd was now beginning to notice something queer about the orator
himself. He was glaring intently at some object near him and was
shifting his position uneasily. At last he suddenly stopped, his jaw
dropped with amazement, and he turned to Poplavski.
“Look here, that man’s alive!” he cried, his eyes starting out of his
head with horror.
“Who’s alive?”
“Why, Prokofi Osipitch! There he is now, standing by that monument!”
“Of course he is! It was Kiril Ivanovitch that died, not he!”
“But you said yourself it was the Assessor!”
“I know! And wasn’t Kiril Ivanovitch the Assessor? Oh, you moon-calf!
You have got them mixed up! Of course Prokofi Osipitch used to be the
Assessor, but that was two years ago. He has been chief of a table in
chancery now for two years!”
“It’s simply the devil to keep up with all you chaps!”
“What are you stopping for? Go on! This is getting too awkward!”
Zapoikin turned toward the grave, and continued his oration with all his
former eloquence. Yes, and there near the monument stood Prokofi
Osipitch, an old civil servant with a clean-shaven face, frowning and
glaring furiously at the speaker.
“How in the world did you manage to do that?” laughed the officials as
they and Zapoikin drove home from the cemetery together. “Ha! Ha! Ha! A
funeral oration for a live man!”
“You made a great mistake, young man!” growled Prokofi Osipitch. “Your
speech may have been appropriate enough for a dead man, but for a live
one it was—it was simply a joke. Allow me to ask you, what was it you
said? ‘Without fear and without reproach; he never took a bribe!’ Why,
you _couldn’t_ say a thing like that about a live man unless you were
joking! And no one asked you to dwell upon my personal appearance, young
gentleman! ‘Ugly and uncouth,’ eh! That may be quite true, but why did
you drag it in before every one in the city? I call it an insult!”