Worlds Apart

by Alexander Levitsky

  Then I took a part in bearing the coffin from the church to the graveside. Why is it that corpses in their coffins are so heavy? They say it’s due to some sort of inertia, that the body is no longer controlled by its owner … or some nonsense of that sort, contradictory to the laws of mechanics and common sense. I don’t like to hear people who have nothing but a general education put themselves forward to settle matters that require a specialist; and with us that’s done continually. Civilians love to give 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 didn’t go to the requiem service. I have some pride, and if I’m only received owing to extraneous circumstances, why drag myself to their dinners, even after a funeral. The only thing I don’t understand is why I stayed on at the cemetery; I sat down on a tombstone and sank into appropriate reflections.

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

  “To be surprised at everything is stupid of course, while to be surprised at nothing is a great deal more becoming and for some reason accepted as good form. But that’s not really the case. As I see it, to be surprised at nothing is much more stupid than to be surprised at everything. Moreover to be surprised at nothing is very nearly the same as having respect for nothing. And indeed, a stupid man is incapable of feeling respect.”

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

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

  At that point my mind went blank. I don’t like reading grave inscriptions: they are everlastingly the same. An unfinished sandwich was lying on the headstone near me; a stupid thing, and out of place. I threw it on the ground, since it was not bread but only a sandwich. Though I believe it’s not a sin to throw bread on the ground, 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; that is, I even stretched out on a long stone in the shape of a marble coffin. But how did it happen that I then began to hear all sorts of things? At first I paid no attention to this, but treated it with contempt. Still the conversation went on. What I heard was muffled, as though the speakers’ mouths were covered with a pillow, and at the same time the voices 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’s the charm of that?”

  “You must, your Excellency. One can’t do anything without something to go on. We must play with a dummy, keep one hand face-down.”

  “Well, you won’t find a dummy here.”

  But what conceited words! And how queer and unexpected. One voice was so ponderous, dignified, the other softly suave; I wouln’t have believed it if I hadn’t 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 lie the remains of Major-General Pervoedov … 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, the devil, it really is a general! There was no monument yet over the grave from which the obsequious voice came, only a marker. He must have been a fresh arrival. From his voice he was a Court Councilor.

  “Uh-uh-uh-uh!” I heard a new voice a dozen yards off from the general’s place, coming from quite a fresh grave—a man’s voice, and a plebeian one, but enfeebled by an ingratiatingly pious manner.

  “Uh-uh-uh-uh!”

  “Oh, here he is hiccuping again!” cried the haughty and disdainful voice of an irritated lady, apparently of the highest society. “It’s an affliction to be by this shopkeeper!”

  “I didn’t hiccup; why, I’ve had nothing to eat. It’s simply my nature. And really, madam, it’s your own crotchets that give you no peace here”

  “Then why did you come and lie down here?”

  “They put me here, my wife and little children put me here, I didn’t lay myself down. The Sacrament of Death! And I wouldn’t lay myself down beside you, not for any money; I lie here because I had the capital, judging by the price. For we can always do that—spring for a tomb of the third grade.”

  “You made piles of money, I suppose? You fleeced people?”

  “How could we be fleecing you, we haven’t seen the color 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 inherited.”

  “There’s no asking anyone now, and no going anywhere. We’ve both reached the limit, and before the judgment-seat of God we are equal in our transgrissions.”

  “In transgrissions,” the lady mimicked him contemptuously. “Don’t you presume to speak to me!”

  “Uh-uh-uh-uh!”

  “All the same, the shopkeeper obeys the lady, your Excellency.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Well, your Excellency, because, as we all know, there’s a new order of things here.”

  “What is this new order then?”

  “Well—but we have, in a manner of speaking, died, your Excellency.”

  “Oh, yes! But the order of things is still …”

  Well, much obliged to them; nothing to say but that it’s quite a consolation! If it’s come to this down here, why even bother looking into things upstairs? But all the same, these are strange doings! I went on listening all the same, though with extreme indignation.

  ______________

  “No, I’d have liked to see a little more of life! No … you know, a little more of life … that is, to live for a time,” a new voice suddenly sounded from 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’d like to see a little more of life, yes, a little more of life!’ And with such relish, hee-hee!”

  “And such frivolity.”

  “It gets hold of him, your Excellency, and do you know, he’s growing sleepy, quite sleepy—he’s been here since April; and then all of a sudden ‘A little more of life!’”

  “It is rather dull, though,” observed his Excellency.

  “It is, your Excellency. Shall we tease Avdotia Ignatyevna again, hee-hee?”

  “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 that has ideals in it. I know certain little story about you, your Excellency—don’t turn up your nose, please—how a manservant swept you out from under a married couple’s bed one morning.”

  “Nasty woman,” the general muttered through his teeth.

  “Avdotia Ignatyevna, ma’am,” the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, “my dear lady, don’t hold a grudge, but tell me, is this what I’m going through the ordeal by torment now, or is it something else?”

  “Ah, he’s started up again, and I knew he was going to because there’s a smell from him that means he’s turning over!”

  “I’m not turning over, ma’am, and there’s no particular smell from me, for I’ve kept my body whole as it should be, while you, my fine lady, have gone right off—the smell is really more than a body can stand, even for a place like this. It�
�s just from politeness that I keep quite about it.”

  “Ah, you horrid, insulting wretch. He positively stinks and then he talks about me.”

  “Uh-uh-uh-uh! If only the day for my requiem would come: I’d hear their tearful voices over my head, my wife’s lament and my children’s soft crying! …”

  “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!”

  “Avdotia 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, Avdotia Ignatyevna. There are some that are 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 today and yesterday and the day before they brought in a whole lot. As it stands, they’re all last year’s for seventy feet round.”

  “Yes, it will be interesting.”

  “Yes, your Excellency, they buried Tarasevich, the Privy Councilor, today. 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—I shouldn’t go first”

  “Oh, he’ll start things off himself, your Excellency. He’ll 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!” Avdotia 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’ve got to be resigned. You are kindly welcome to our Vale of Jehoshaphat, as you might call it. We’re kind-hearted people, you’ll come to know us and appreciate us. Major-General Vassily Vassilich Pervoedov, at your service.”

  “Oh, no, no! I simply can’t be! 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 thing 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 …”

  “l 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, but then …”

  “Botkin takes quite a bite,” observed the general.

  “Oh, no, he doesn’t bite at all; I’ve heard he’s so attentive and tells you everything that’s going to happen before it does.”

  “His Excellency was referring to the fees,” the government clerk corrected him.

  “Oh, not at all, he only charges three roubles, and then he examines you so thoroughly, and gives you a prescription … and I was very anxious to see him, because people said … Well, gentlemen, should I go to Ecke or to Botkin?”

  “What? Where?” The general’s corpse shook with agreeable laughter. The government clerk echoed it in falsetto.

  “Dear boy, dear, delightful boy, how I love you!” Avdotia Ignatyevna squealed ecstatically. “I wish they had put someone like you next to me.”

  No, I simply could not accept this! And these, these were the dead of our times! Still, I should listen some more and not jump to conclusions. That sniveling new arrival—I remember him just now in his coffin—had the expression of a frightened baby chick, the most repellent expression in the world! However, we’ll wait and see.

  ______________

  But then such a cacophony started up that I haven’t been able to remember it all. Because a great many woke up at once; an official, a Civil Councilor, awoke, and right then and there began to discuss with the general the project of a new sub-committee in a government department, and the probable transfer of various functionaries in connection with the sub-committee—thereby amusing the general very, very much. I admit I learned a great deal that was new to me, such that I was amazed by the channels through which one may sometimes learn government news in our capital. Then an engineer half woke up, but for a long time he muttered absolute nonsense, so that our friends stopped worrying him and let him lie till he was ready. At last signs of sepulchral re-animation were evinced by the distinguished lady who had been buried that morning under the catafalque. Lebeziatnikov (for the obsequious Lower Court Councilor whom I detested and who lay beside General Pervoedov was, it appears, named Lebeziatnikov) became much excited, and surprised that they were all waking up so soon this time. I admit I was surprised too; but then some of those who awoke had been buried for three days, for instance, one very young girl, just sixteen, who kept giggling … giggling in a horrible and predatory way.

  “Your Excellency, Privy Councilor Tarasevich is waking!” Lebeziatnikov announced with extreme urgency.

  “Eh? What’s that?” mumbled the Privy Councilor in a tone of distaste as he suddenly awoke. There was a note of willful peremptoriness in the sound of his voice. I listened with curiosity—for during the last few days I had heard something about Tarasevich, something suggestive and alarming to the highest degree.

  “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 everyone feels at first, as it were, oppressed. General Pervoedov wishes to have the honor of making your Excellency’s acquaintance, and hopes …”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Surely, your Excellency! General Pervoedov, Vassily Vassilich …”

  “Are you General Pervoedov?”

  “No, your Excellency, I am only Lower Court Councilor Lebeziatnikov, at your service, but General Pervoedov …”

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

  “Let him be.” In a dignified manner General Pervoedov himself, finally, checked the disgusting officiousness of his sycophant in the grave.

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

  “Let him be,” repeated the general.

  ______________

  “Vassily Vassilich! Ahoy, your Excellency!” an entirely new voice shouted loudly and aggressively from close beside Avdotia 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; been lying here for three days. Do you remember me, Vassily Vassilich? My name is Klinevich, we met at the Volokonskys’ where they’d let you in too, I don’t know why.”

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

  “And I’m very sorry myself, though I really don’t mind, and I want to get what I can out of wherever I am. And I’m not a count but a baron, only a baron. We ‘re just set of mangy barons, shot up from being lackeys, but why I don’t know and damned if I care. I’m only a scoundrel of pseudo-aristocratic society, and I’m regarded as ‘a charming polisson’. My father’s 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 just think, I was engaged to be married—Shchevalevskaia, three months shy of sixteen, still in school, with a dowry of ninety thousand. Avdotia Ignatyevna, do you remember how you seduced me fifteen years ago when I was a boy of fourteen in the Corps des Pages?”

  “Ah, that’s you, you rascal! Well, you’re a godsend, anyway, for here …”

  “You were mistaken in suspecting your neighbor, the business gentleman, of an unpleasant fragrance … I kept quiet, but I laughed. The stench came from me: they had to bury me in a nailed-up coffin.”

  “Ugh, you horrid creature! Still, I am glad you’re here; you can’t imagine the lack of life and wit here.”

  “Quite so, quite so, and I intend to start here something original. Your Excellency—I don’t mean you, Pervoedov—the other Your Excellency, Tarasevich, the Privy Councilor! Speak up! Klinevich here, the one who took you to Mlle. Furie in Lent, do you hear?”

  “I do, Klinevich, and I am delighted, and, trust me …

  “I wouldn’t trust you with a halfpenny, and damned if I care. I simply want to kiss you, dear old man, but luckily I can’t. Do you know, gentlemen, what this grand-pere’s little game was? He died three or four days ago, and would you believe it, he left a deficit of four hundred thousand in government money. It was from the fund for widows and orphans, and for some reason he was the only person in charge of it, so his accounts hadn’t been audited for the last eight years. I can just imagine what long faces they all have now, and what names they’re calling him. It’s a delectable thought, isn’t it? I’ve been wondering for the last year how a wretched old codger of seventy, with gout and rheumatism, came by the physical energy for his debaucheries—and now the riddle is solved! Those widows and orphans—the very thought of them must have fired him up! I knew about it long ago, I was the only one who did know; it was Julie told me, and as soon as I discovered it, I immediately, at Easter it was, attacked him in a friendly way week: ‘Give me twenty-five thousand, if you don’t they’ll be auditing you to-morrow.’ And just think, he only had thirteen thousand left then, so it seems he died very conveniently. Grand-pere, grand-pere; do you hear?”