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
