Short Stories by Chekhov
troubling you, but you see it's the secretary . . . a pillar of the
office, in a sense. It's awkward for such a whopper to be buried without
a speech."
"Oh, the secretary!" yawned Zapoikin. "You mean the drunken one?"
"Yes. There will be pancakes, a lunch . . . you'll get your cab-fare.
Come along, dear chap. You spout out some rigmarole like a regular
Cicero at the grave and what gratitude you will earn!"
Zapoikin readily agreed. He ruffled up his hair, cast a shade of
melancholy over his face, and went out into the street with Poplavsky.
"I know your secretary," he said, as he got into the cab. "A cunning
rogue and a beast--the kingdom of heaven be his--such as you don't often
come across."
"Come, Grisha, it is not the thing to abuse the dead."
"Of course not, aut mortuis nihil bene, but still he was a rascal."
The friends overtook the funeral procession and joined it. The coffin
was borne along slowly so that before they reached the cemetery they
were able three times to drop into a tavern and imbibe a little to the
health of the departed.
In the cemetery came the service by the graveside. The mother-in-law,
the wife, and the sister-in-law in obedience to custom shed many tears.
When the coffin was being lowered into the grave the wife even shrieked
"Let me go with him!" but did not follow her husband into the grave
probably recollecting her pension. Waiting till everything was quiet
again Zapoikin stepped forward, turned his eyes on all present, and
began:
"Can I believe my eyes and ears? Is it not a terrible dream this grave,
these tear-stained faces, these moans and lamentations? Alas, it is not
a dream and our eyes do not deceive us! He whom we have only so lately
seen, so full of courage, so youthfully fresh and pure, who so lately
before our eyes like an unwearying bee bore his honey to the common hive
of the welfare of the state, he who . . . he is turned now to dust, to
inanimate mirage. Inexorable death has laid his bony hand upon him at
the time when, in spite of his bowed age, he was still full of the bloom
of strength and radiant hopes. An irremediable loss! Who will fill his
place for us? Good government servants we have many, but Prokofy
Osipitch was unique. To the depths of his soul he was devoted to his
honest duty; he did not spare his strength but worked late at night, and
was disinterested, impervious to bribes. . . . How he despised those who
to the detriment of the public interest sought to corrupt him, who by
the seductive goods of this life strove to draw him to betray his duty!
Yes, before our eyes Prokofy Osipitch would divide his small salary
between his poorer colleagues, and you have just heard yourselves the
lamentations of the widows and orphans who lived upon his alms. Devoted
to good works and his official duty, he gave up the joys of this life
and even renounced the happiness of domestic existence; as you are
aware, to the end of his days he was a bachelor. And who will replace
him as a comrade? I can see now the kindly, shaven face turned to us
with a gentle smile, I can hear now his soft friendly voice. Peace to
thine ashes, Prokofy Osipitch! Rest, honest, noble toiler!"
Zapoikin continued while his listeners began whispering together. His
speech pleased everyone and drew some tears, but a good many things in
it seemed strange. In the first place they could not make out why the
orator called the deceased Prokofy Osipitch when his name was Kirill
Ivanovitch. In the second, everyone knew that the deceased had spent his
whole life quarelling with his lawful wife, and so consequently could
not be called a bachelor; in the third, he had a thick red beard and had
never been known to shave, and so no one could understand why the orator
spoke of his shaven face. The listeners were perplexed; they glanced at
each other and shrugged their shoulders.
"Prokofy Osipitch," continued the orator, looking with an air of
inspiration into the grave, "your face was plain, even hideous, you were
morose and austere, but we all know that under that outer husk there
beat an honest, friendly heart!"
Soon the listeners began to observe something strange in the orator
himself. He gazed at one point, shifted about uneasily and began to
shrug his shoulders too. All at once he ceased speaking, and gaping with
astonishment, turned to Poplavsky.
"I say! he's alive," he said, staring with horror.
"Who's alive?"
"Why, Prokofy Osipitch, there he stands, by that tombstone!"
"He never died! It's Kirill Ivanovitch who's dead."
"But you told me yourself your secretary was dead."
"Kirill Ivanovitch was our secretary. You've muddled it, you queer fish.
Prokofy Osipitch was our secretary before, that's true, but two years
ago he was transferred to the second division as head clerk."
"How the devil is one to tell?"
"Why are you stopping? Go on, it's awkward."
Zapoikin turned to the grave, and with the same eloquence continued his
interrupted speech. Prokofy Osipitch, an old clerk with a clean-shaven
face, was in fact standing by a tombstone. He looked at the orator and
frowned angrily.
"Well, you have put your foot into it, haven't you!" laughed his fellow-
clerks as they returned from the funeral with Zapoikin. "Burying a man
alive!"
"It's unpleasant, young man," grumbled Prokofy Osipitch. "Your speech
may be all right for a dead man, but in reference to a living one it is
nothing but sarcasm! Upon my soul what have you been saying?
Disinterested, incorruptible, won't take bribes! Such things can only be
said of the living in sarcasm. And no one asked you, sir, to expatiate
on my face. Plain, hideous, so be it, but why exhibit my countenance in
that public way! It's insulting."
MALINGERERS
MARFA PETROVNA PETCHONKIN, the General's widow, who has been practising
for ten years as a homeopathic doctor, is seeing patients in her study
on one of the Tuesdays in May. On the table before her lie a chest of
homeopathic drugs, a book on homeopathy, and bills from a homeopathic
chemist. On the wall the letters from some Petersburg homeopath, in
Marfa Petrovna's opinion a very celebrated and great man, hang under
glass in a gilt frame, and there also is a portrait of Father Aristark,
to whom the lady owes her salvation --that is, the renunciation of
pernicious allopathy and the knowledge of the truth. In the vestibule
patients are sitting waiting, for the most part peasants. All but two or
three of them are barefoot, as the lady has given orders that their ill-
smelling boots are to be left in the yard.
Marfa Petrovna has already seen ten patients when she calls the
eleventh: "Gavrila Gruzd!"
The door opens and instead of Gavrila Gruzd, Zamuhrishen, a neighbouring
landowner who has sunk into poverty, a little old man with sour eyes,
and with a gentleman's cap under his arm, walks into the room. He puts
down his stick in the corner, goes up to the lady, and without a word
drops on one knee before her.
"What are you about, Kuzma Kuzmitch?" cries the lady in horror, flushing
crimson. "For goodness sake!"
"While I live I will not rise," says Zamuhrishen, bending over her hand.
"Let all the world see my homage on my knees, our guardian angel,
benefactress of the human race! Let them! Before the good fairy who has
given me life, guided me into the path of truth, and enlightened my
scepticism I am ready not merely to kneel but to pass through fire, our
miraculous healer, mother of the orphan and the widowed! I have
recovered. I am a new man, enchantress!"
"I . . . I am very glad . . ." mutters the lady, flushing with pleasure.
"It's so pleasant to hear that. . . Sit down please! Why, you were so
seriously ill that Tuesday."
"Yes indeed, how ill I was! It's awful to recall it," says Zamuhrishen,
taking a seat. "I had rheumatism in every part and every organ. I have
been in misery for eight years, I've had no rest from it . . . by day or
by night, my benefactress. I have consulted doctors, and I went to
professors at Kazan; I have tried all sorts of mud-baths, and drunk
waters, and goodness knows what I haven't tried! I have wasted all my
substance on doctors, my beautiful lady. The doctors did me nothing but
harm. They drove the disease inwards. Drive in, that they did, but to
drive out was beyond their science. All they care about is their fees,
the brigands; but as for the benefit of humanity--for that they don't
care a straw. They prescribe some quackery, and you have to drink it.
Assassins, that's the only word for them. If it hadn't been for you, our
angel, I should have been in the grave by now! I went home from you that
Tuesday, looked at the pilules that you gave me then, and wondered what
good there could be in them. Was it possible that those little grains,
scarcely visible, could cure my immense, long-standing disease? That's
what I thought--unbeliever that I was!--and I smiled; but when I took the
pilule--it was instantaneous! It was as though I had not been ill, or as
though it had been lifted off me. My wife looked at me with her eyes
starting out of her head and couldn't believe it. 'Why, is it you,
Kolya?' 'Yes, it is I,' I said. And we knelt down together before the
ikon, and fell to praying for our angel: 'Send her, O Lord, all that we
are feeling!'"
Zamuhrishen wipes his eyes with his sleeve gets up from his chair, and
shows a disposition to drop on one knee again; but the lady checks him
and makes him sit down.
"It's not me you must thank," she says, blushing with excitement and
looking enthusiastically at the portrait of Father Aristark. "It's not
my doing. . . . I am only the obedient instrument . . It's really a
miracle. Rheumatism of eight years' standing by one pilule of
scrofuloso!"
"Excuse me, you were so kind as to give me three pilules. One I took at
dinner and the effect was instantaneous! Another in the evening, and the
third next day; and since then not a touch! Not a twinge anywhere! And
you know I thought I was dying, I had written to Moscow for my son to
come! The Lord has given you wisdom, our lady of healing! Now I am
walking, and feel as though I were in Paradise. The Tuesday I came to
you I was hobbling, and now I am ready to run after a hare. . . . I
could live for a hundred years. There's only one trouble, our lack of
means. I'm well now, but what's the use of health if there's nothing to
live on? Poverty weighs on me worse than illness. . . . For example,
take this . . . It's the time to sow oats, and how is one to sow it if
one has no seed? I ought to buy it, but the money . . . everyone knows
how we are off for money. . . ."
"I will give you oats, Kuzma Kuzmitch. . . . Sit down, sit down. You
have so delighted me, you have given me so much pleasure that it's not
you but I that should say thank you!"
"You are our joy! That the Lord should create such goodness! Rejoice,
Madam, looking at your good deeds! . . . While we sinners have no cause
for rejoicing in ourselves. . . . We are paltry, poor-spirited, useless
people . . . a mean lot. . . . We are only gentry in name, but in a
material sense we are the same as peasants, only worse. . . . We live in
stone houses, but it's a mere make-believe . . . for the roof leaks. And
there is no money to buy wood to mend it with."
"I'll give you the wood, Kuzma Kuzmitch."
Zamuhrishen asks for and gets a cow too, a letter of recommendation for
his daughter whom he wants to send to a boarding school, and . . .
touched by the lady's liberality he whimpers with excess of feeling,
twists his mouth, and feels in his pocket for his handkerchief . . . .
Marfa Petrovna sees a red paper slip out of his pocket with his
handkerchief and fall noiselessly to the floor.
"I shall never forget it to all eternity . . ." he mutters, "and I shall