Short Stories
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?"