I peeked into the graves—terrible: water, and such water! Absolutely green and… well, never mind! The grave digger was constantly bailing it out with a scoop. While the service was going on, I went for a walk outside the gates. There was an almshouse just there, and a little farther on a restaurant. A so-so restaurant, not bad: you can have a bite and all. A lot of mourners were packed in there. I noticed a lot of merriment and genuine animation. I had a bite and a drink.
After that I took part with my own hands in carrying the coffin from the church to the grave. Why is it that the dead become so heavy in their coffins? They say it’s from some sort of inertia, that the body supposedly is no longer controlled by its own… or some such rubbish; it contradicts mechanics and common sense. I don’t like it when people with only a general education among us set about resolving special questions; and it’s rife among us. Civilians love discussing military subjects, even a field marshal’s, and people with an engineer’s education reason mainly about philosophy and political economy.
I didn’t go to the wake. I’m proud, and if they receive me only out of urgent necessity, why drag myself to their dinners, even funeral ones? Only I don’t understand why I stayed at the cemetery; I sat on a tombstone and lapsed appropriately into thought.
I began with the Moscow exhibition,5 and ended with astonishment, generally speaking, as a theme. About “astonishment,” here is what I came up with:
“To be astonished at everything is, of course, stupid, while to be astonished at nothing is much more beautiful and for some reason is recognized as good tone. But it is hardly so in essence. In my opinion, to be astonished at nothing is much stupider than to be astonished at everything. And besides: to be astonished at nothing is almost the same as to respect nothing. And a stupid man even cannot respect.”
“But I wish first of all to respect. I yearn to respect,” an acquaintance of mine said to me once, the other day.
He yearns to respect! And God, I thought, what would happen to you if you dared to publish that now!
It was here that I became oblivious. I don’t like reading the inscriptions on tombstones; it’s eternally the same. Next to me on the slab lay a half-eaten sandwich: stupid and out of place. I threw it on the ground, since it wasn’t bread but merely a sandwich. Anyhow, dropping bread on the ground, it seems, is not sinful; on the floor is sinful. Look it up in Suvorin’s calendar.6
It must be supposed that I sat there for a long time, even much too long; that is, I even lay down on the oblong stone shaped like a marble coffin. And how did it happen that I suddenly started hearing various things? I didn’t pay any attention at first and treated it with contempt. But, nevertheless, the conversation continued. I listened—the sounds were muffled, as if the mouths were covered with pillows; but distinct for all that, and very close. I came to, sat up, and started listening attentively.
“Your Excellency, this is simply quite impossible, sir. You named hearts, I’m whisting, and suddenly you’ve got the seven of diamonds. We ought to have arranged beforehand about the diamonds, sir.”
“What, you mean play by memory? Where’s the attraction in that?”
“It’s impossible, Your Excellency, without a guarantee it’s quite impossible. It absolutely has to be with a dummy, and so that there’s only blind dealing.”
“Well, you’ll get no dummy here.”
What presumptuous words, though! Both strange and unexpected. One voice is so weighty and solid, the other as if softly sweetened; I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it myself. It seems I was not at the wake. And yet what was this card game doing here, and who was this general? That it was coming from under the gravestone, there was no doubt. I bent down and read the inscription on the memorial.
“Here lies the body of Major General Pervoedov… knight of such-and-such orders.” Hm. “Died in August of the year… aged fifty-seven… Rest, dear dust, till the gladsome morning!”7
Hm, the devil, an actual general! The other grave, from which the fawning voice was coming, had no memorial as yet, just a slab; must have been a newcomer. A court councillor, by his voice.
“Oh, woe, woe, woe!” quite a new voice came, some thirty-five feet from the general’s place, this time from under a perfectly fresh little grave—a male and low-class voice, but gone lax in a reverentially tender manner.
“Oh, woe, woe, woe!”
“Ah, he’s hiccuping again!” suddenly came the squeamish and haughty voice of an irritated lady, seemingly of high society. “What a punishment to be next to this shopkeeper!”
“I didn’t hiccup, I didn’t even take any food, it’s just my nature, that’s all. And you, lady, with all these caprices of yours, you simply never can calm down.”
“Why did you lie here, then?”
“I got laid here, I got laid by my spouse and little children, I didn’t lay myself. The mystery of death! And I’d never lay next to you for anything, not even gold; but I’m laying by my own capital, according to the price, ma’am. For we’re always able to pay up for our little third-class grave.”
“Saved up? Cheated people?”
“Much I could cheat you, when there’s been no payment from you, I reckon, since January. You’ve run up quite a little account in our shop.”
“Well, this is stupid; I think looking for debts here is very stupid! Take yourself up there. Ask my niece; she’s my heir.”
“Where am I going to ask now, and where am I going to go? We’ve both reached the limit, and before God’s judgment we’re equal in our trespasses.”
“In our trespasses!” the dead lady contemptuously mimicked. “Don’t you dare even speak to me at all!”
“Oh, woe, woe, woe!”
“Nevertheless, the shopkeeper obeys the lady, Your Excellency.”
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“Well, you know, Your Excellency, considering there’s a new order here.”
“What sort of new order?”
“But we’ve died, so to speak, Your Excellency.”
“Ah, yes! Well, there’s still order…”
Well, thank you very much! Some comfort, really! If it’s come to that here, what can we expect on the upper floor? But, anyhow, what antics! I went on listening, however, though with boundless indignation.
“No, I could live a little! No… you know, I… could live a little!” suddenly came someone’s new voice, from somewhere in between the general and the irritable lady.
“Listen, Your Excellency, our man’s at it again. For three days he’s silent as can be, then suddenly: ‘I could live a little, no, I could live a little!’ And with, you know, such appetite, hee, hee!”
“And such light-mindedness.”
“It’s getting to him, Your Excellency, and, you know, he falls asleep, he’s fast asleep already, he’s been here since April, and suddenly: ‘I could live a little!’ ”
“A bit boring, though,” His Excellency observed.
“A bit boring, Your Excellency, maybe we’ll tease Avdotya Ignatievna again, hee, hee?”
“Ah, no, I beg you, spare me that. I can’t stand that insolent loudmouth.”
“And I, on the other hand, can stand neither of you,” the loudmouth squeamishly retorted. “You’re both utterly boring and cannot talk about anything ideal. And as for you, Your Excellency—you needn’t swagger so—I know a little story of how a lackey swept you from under some marital bed one morning with a broom.”
“Nasty woman!” the general growled through his teeth.
“Avdotya Ignatievna, dearie,” the shopkeeper suddenly cried out again, “my dear lady, meaning no harm, tell me what it is, am I visiting the torments,8 or is something else happening?…”
“Ah, he’s at it again, I just knew it, because I get this smell from him, this smell, it’s from him tossing around there.”