[1] i. e. small bean.
«It’s rather stupid. Well, and how is it I have no sense of smell and yet I feel there’s a stench?»
«That … he-he…. Well, on that point our philosopher is a bit foggy. It’s apropos of smell, he said, that the stench one perceives here is, so to speak, moral—he-he! It’s the stench of the soul, he says, that in these two or three months it may have time to recover itself … and this is, so to speak, the last mercy…. Only, I think, baron, that these are mystic ravings very excusable in his position….»
«Enough; all the rest of it, I am sure, is nonsense. The great thing is that we have two or three months more of life and then—bobok! I propose to spend these two months as agreeably as possible, and so to arrange everything on a new basis. Gentlemen! I propose to cast aside all shame.»
«Ah, let us cast aside all shame, let us!» many voices could be heard saying; and strange to say, several new voices were audible, which must have belonged to others newly awakened. The engineer, now fully awake, boomed out his agreement with peculiar delight. The girl Katiche giggled gleefully.
«Oh, how I long to cast off all shame!» Avdotya Ignatyevna exclaimed rapturously.
«I say, if Avdotya Ignatyevna wants to cast off all shame….»
«No, no, no, Klinevitch, I was ashamed up there all the same, but here I should like to cast off shame, I should like it awfully.»
«I understand, Klinevitch,» boomed the engineer, «that you want to rearrange life here on new and rational principles.»
«Oh, I don’t care a hang about that! For that we’ll wait for Kudeyarov who was brought here yesterday. When he wakes he’ll tell you all about it. He is such a personality, such a titanic personality! To-morrow they’ll bring along another natural scientist, I believe, an officer for certain, and three or four days later a journalist, and, I believe, his editor with him. But deuce take them all, there will be a little group of us anyway, and things will arrange themselves. Though meanwhile I don’t want us to be telling lies. That’s all I care about, for that is one thing that matters. One cannot exist on the surface without lying, for life and lying are synonymous, but here we will amuse ourselves by not lying. Hang it all, the grave has some value after all! We’ll all tell our stories aloud, and we won’t be ashamed of anything. First of all I’ll tell you about myself. I am one of the predatory kind, you know. All that was bound and held in check by rotten cords up there on the surface. Away with cords and let us spend these two months in shameless truthfulness! Let us strip and be naked!»
«Let us be naked, let us be naked!» cried all the voices.
«I long to be naked, I long to be,» Avdotya Ignatyevna shrilled.
«Ah … ah, I see we shall have fun here; I don’t want Ecke after all.»
«No, I tell you. Give me a taste of life!»
«He-he-he!» giggled Katiche.
«The great thing is that no one can interfere with us, and though I see Pervoyedov is in a temper, he can’t reach me with his hand. Grand-père, do you agree?»
«I fully agree, fully, and with the utmost satisfaction, but on condition that Katiche is the first to give us her biography.»
«I protest! I protest with all my heart!» General Pervoyedov brought out firmly.
«Your Excellency!» the scoundrel Lebeziatnikov persuaded him in a murmur of fussy excitement, «your Excellency, it will be to our advantage to agree. Here, you see, there’s this girl’s … and all their little affairs.»
«There’s the girl, it’s true, but….»
«It’s to our advantage, your Excellency, upon my word it is! If only as an experiment, let us try it….»
«Even in the grave they won’t let us rest in peace.»
«In the first place, General, you were playing preference in the grave, and in the second we don’t care a hang about you,» drawled Klinevitch.
«Sir, I beg you not to forget yourself.»
«What? Why, you can’t get at me, and I can tease you from here as though you were Julie’s lapdog. And another thing, gentlemen, how is he a general here? He was a general there, but here is mere refuse.»
«No, not mere refuse…. Even here….»
«Here you will rot in the grave and six brass buttons will be all that will be left of you.»
«Bravo, Klinevitch, ha-ha-ha!» roared voices.
«I have served my sovereign…. I have the sword….»
«Your sword is only fit to prick mice, and you never drew it even for that.»
«That makes no difference; I formed a part of the whole.»
«There are all sorts of parts in a whole.»
«Bravo, Klinevitch, bravo! Ha-ha-ha!»
«I don’t understand what the sword stands for,» boomed the engineer.
«We shall run away from the Prussians like mice, they’ll crush us to powder!» cried a voice in the distance that was unfamiliar to me, that was positively spluttering with glee.
«The sword, sir, is an honour,» the general cried, but only I heard him. There arose a prolonged and furious roar, clamour, and hubbub, and only the hysterically impatient squeals of Avdotya Ignatyevna were audible.
«But do let us make haste! Ah, when are we going to begin to cast off all shame!»
«Oh-ho-ho!… The soul does in truth pass through torments!» exclaimed the voice of the plebeian, «and …»
And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened suddenly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: all became as silent as one expects it to be in a churchyard, it all vanished like a dream. A real silence of the tomb set in. I don’t believe they were ashamed on account of my presence: they had made up their minds to cast off all shame! I waited five minutes—not a word, not a sound. It cannot be supposed that they were afraid of my informing the police; for what could the police do to them? I must conclude that they had some secret unknown to the living, which they carefully concealed from every mortal.
«Well, my dears,» I thought, «I shall visit you again.» And with those words, I left the cemetery.
No, that I cannot admit; no, I really cannot! The bobok case does not trouble me (so that is what that bobok signified!)
Depravity in such a place, depravity of the last aspirations, depravity of sodden and rotten corpses—and not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! Those moments have been granted, vouchsafed to them, and … and, worst of all, in such a place! No, that I cannot admit.
I shall go to other tombs, I shall listen everywhere. Certainly one ought to listen everywhere and not merely at one spot in order to form an idea. Perhaps one may come across something reassuring.
But I shall certainly go back to those. They promised their biographies and anecdotes of all sorts. Tfoo! But I shall go, I shall certainly go; it is a question of conscience!
I shall take it to the Citizen; the editor there has had his portrait exhibited too. Maybe he will print it.
