and, I think, his editor along with him. Anyhow, to hell with them, it’s just that we’ll have our little crew assembled here and it will all get set up by itself. But meanwhile I want there to be no lying. That’s the only thing I want, because it’s the main thing. It’s impossible to live on earth and not lie, for life and lie are synonymous; but here, just for the fun of it, we won’t lie. Devil take it, the grave does mean something after all! We’ll all tell our stories aloud and not be ashamed of anything now. I’ll tell about myself first of all. I’m one of the carnivorous ones, you know. Up there it was all tied with rotten ropes. Away with the ropes, and let’s live for these two months in the most shameless truth! Let’s strip and get naked!”
“Get naked, get naked!” voices shouted all around.
“I want terribly, terribly to get naked!” Avdotya Ignatievna squealed.
“Ah… ah… ah, I see it’s going to be fun here; I don’t want to go to Ecke!”
“No, I could live a little, no, you know, I could live a little!”
“Hee, hee, hee!” Katie giggled.
“The main thing is that no one can forbid us, and though I can see that Pervoedov is angry, he still can’t reach me with his hand.
“I fully, fully agree, and with the greatest pleasure, provided Katie is the first to start her bi-og-raphy.”
“I protest! I protest with all my strength,” General Pervoedov stated firmly.
“Your Excellency!” the blackguard Lebezyatnikov, in hasty agitation and with lowered voice, babbled and persuaded, “Your Excellency, it’s even more profitable for us if we agree. There’s this girl here, you know… and, finally, all these different antics…”
“Granted there’s the girl, but…”
“It’s more profitable, Your Excellency, by God it’s more profitable for you! Well, at least as a little sample, at least for a try…”
“Even in the grave they won’t let me rest!”
“First of all, General, you play cards in the grave, and, second of all, we spit on you,” Klinevich scanned out.
“My dear sir, I beg you all the same not to forget yourself.”
“What? You can’t reach me, and I can tease you from here like Yulka’s lapdog. And first of all, gentlemen, what sort of general is he here? It’s there that he was a general, but here—pfft!”
“No, not pfft… here, too, I’m…”
“Here you’ll rot in your coffin and there’ll be only six brass buttons left!”
“Bravo, Klinevich, ha, ha, ha!” voices bellowed.
“I served my sovereign… I wear a sword…”
“Your sword’s good for skewering mice, and besides you never drew it.”
“It’s all the same, sir; I constituted part of the whole.”
“We know these parts of the whole.”
“Bravo, Klinevich, bravo, ha, ha, ha!”
“I don’t understand what a sword is,” the engineer declared.
“We’ll run like mice from the Prussians,16 they’ll make mincemeat of us!” a voice farther away and unknown to me cried out, literally spluttering with rapture.
“A sword, sir, is honor,” came the general’s cry, but that was the last I heard of him. A long and furious bellowing, uproar, and racket arose, and only Avdotya Ignatievna’s squeals, impatient to the point of hysterics, could be made out.
“Quicker, be quicker! Ah, when are we going to start not being ashamed of anything!”
“Oh, woe, woe! Truly my soul is visiting the torments!” came the voice of the simple man, and …
And here I suddenly sneezed. It happened unexpectedly and unintentionally, but the effect was striking: all became still, just like a cemetery, vanished like a dream. A true graveyard silence fell. I don’t think they were ashamed before me: they had decided not to be ashamed of anything! I waited for about five minutes but—not a word, not a sound. It was also impossible to suppose that they feared a denunciation to the police; for what could the police do here? I’m forced to conclude that they must after all have some secret unknown to mortals, and which they carefully conceal from every mortal.
“Well, my dears,” I thought, “I’ll be visiting you again,” and with those words I left the cemetery.
No, this I cannot allow; no, I truly cannot! It’s not bobok that bothers me (so here’s that bobok!).
Depravity in such a place, the depravity of last hopes, the depravity of flabby and rotting corpses and—not even sparing the last moments of consciousness! They’re given, they’re made a gift of these moments and… And, above all, above all in such a place! No, this I cannot allow…
I’ll visit other classes, I’ll listen everywhere. The point is that I must listen everywhere, and not just at one end, to form an idea. Perhaps I’ll bump into something com forting.
And I’ll certainly go back to those ones. They promised their biographies and various little anecdotes. Pah! But I’ll go, I’ll certainly go; it’s a matter of conscience!
I’ll take it to
