Ghost

by Louise Welsh

  I went out in search of diversion, I hit upon a funeral. A distant relation – a collegiate counsellor, however. A widow and five daughters, all marriageable young ladies. What must it come to even to keep them in slippers. Their father managed it, but now there is only a little pension. They will have to eat humble pie. They have always received me ungraciously. And indeed I should not have gone to the funeral now had it not been for a peculiar circumstance. I followed the procession to the cemetery with the rest; they were stuck-up and held aloof from me. My uniform was certainly rather shabby. It’s five-and-twenty years, I believe, since I was at the cemetery; what a wretched place!

  To begin with the smell. There were fifteen hearses, with palls varying in expensiveness; there were actually two catafalques. One was a general’s and one some lady’s. There were many mourners, a great deal of feigned mourning and a great deal of open gaiety. The clergy have nothing to complain of; it brings them a good income. But the smell, the smell. I should not like to be one of the clergy here.

  I kept glancing at the faces of the dead cautiously, distrusting my impressionability. Some had a mild expression, some looked unpleasant. As a rule the smiles were disagreeable, and in some cases very much so. I don’t like them; they haunt one’s dreams.

  During the service I went out of the church into the air: it was a grey day, but dry. It was cold too, but then it was October. I walked about among the tombs. They are of different grades. The third grade cost thirty roubles; it’s decent and not so very dear. The first two grades are tombs in the church and under the porch; they cost a pretty penny. On this occasion they were burying in tombs of the third grade six persons, among them the general and the lady.

  I looked into the graves – and it was horrible: water and such water! Absolutely green, and… but there, why talk of it! The gravedigger was baling it out every minute. I went out while the service was going on and strolled outside the gates. Close by was an almshouse, and a little further off there was a restaurant. It was not a bad little restaurant: there was lunch and everything. There were lots of the mourners here. I noticed a great deal of gaiety and genuine heartiness. I had something to eat and drink.

  Then I took part in the bearing of the coffin from the church to the grave. Why is it that corpses in their coffins are so heavy? They say it is due to some sort of inertia, that the body is no longer directed by its owner… or some nonsense of that sort, in opposition to the laws of mechanics and common sense. I don’t like to hear people who have nothing but a general education venture to solve the problems that require special knowledge; and with us that’s done continually. Civilians love to pass opinions about subjects that are the province of the soldier and even of the field-marshal; while men who have been educated as engineers prefer discussing philosophy and political economy.

  I did not go to the requiem service. I have some pride, and if I am only received owing to some special necessity, why force myself on their dinners, even if it be a funeral dinner. The only thing I don’t understand is why I stayed at the cemetery; I sat on a tombstone and sank into appropriate reflections.

  I began with the Moscow exhibition and ended with reflecting upon astonishment in the abstract. My deductions about astonishment were these:

  “To be surprised at everything is stupid of course, and to be astonished at nothing is a great deal more becoming and for some reason accepted as good form. But that is not really true. To my mind to be astonished at nothing is much more stupid than to be astonished at everything. And, moreover, to be astonished at nothing is almost the same as feeling respect for nothing. And indeed a stupid man is incapable of feeling respect.”

  “But what I desire most of all is to feel respect. I thirst to feel respect,” one of my acquaintances said to me the other day.

  He thirsts to feel respect! Goodness, I thought, what would happen to you if you dared to print that nowadays?

  At that point I sank into forgetfulness. I don’t like reading the epitaphs of tombstones: they are everlastingly the same. An unfinished sandwich was lying on the tombstone near me; stupid and inappropriate. I threw it on the ground, as it was not bread but only a sandwich. Though I believe it is not a sin to throw bread on the earth, but only on the floor. I must look it up in Suvorin’s calendar.

  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 t
his 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 a
t 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?”

  “No, your Excellency, I am only the lower court councillor Lebeziatnikov, at your service, but General Pervoyedov…”

  “Nonsense! And I beg you to leave me alone.”

  “Let him be.” General Pervoyedov at last himself checked with dignity the disgusting officiousness of his sycophant in the grave.

  “He is not fully awake, your Excellency, you must consider that; it’s the novelty of it all. When he is fully awake he will take it differently.”

  “Let him be,” repeated the general.

  “Vassili Vassilitch! Hey, your Excellency!” a perfectly new voice shouted loudly and aggressively from close beside Avdotya Ignatyevna. It was a voice of gentlemanly insolence, with the languid pronunciation now fashionable and an arrogant drawl. “I’ve been watching you all for the last two hours. Do you remember me, Vassili Vassilitch? My name is Klinevitch, we met at the Volokonskys’ where you, too, were received as a guest, I am sure I don’t know why.”

  “What, Count Pyotr Petrovitch?… Can it be really you… and at such an early age? How sorry I am to hear it.”

  “Oh, I am sorry myself, though I really don’t mind, and I want to amuse myself as far as I can everywhere. And I am not a count but a baron, only a baron. We are only a set of scurvy barons, risen from being flunkeys, but why I don’t know and I don’t care. I am only a scoundrel of the pseudo-aristocratic society, and I am regarded as ‘a charming polisson.’ My father is a wretched little general, and my mother was at one time received en haut lieu. With the help of the Jew Zifel I forged fifty thousand rouble notes last year and then I informed against him, while Julie Charpentier de Lusignan carried off the money to Bordeaux. And only fancy, I was engaged to be married – to a girl still at school, three months under sixteen, with a dowry of ninety thousand. Avdotya Ignatyevna, do you remember how you seduced me fifteen years ago when I was a boy of fourteen in the Corps des Pages?”