FullReads

Other frequenters of the cemetery I see before me–dark, silent figures, figures of persons whom still unsevered cords of memory seemed to have bound to the place for the rest of their lives, and compelled to wander, like unburied corpses, in quest of suitable tombs. Yes, they were persons whom life had rejected, and death, as yet, refused to accept.

Also, at times there would emerge from the long grass a homeless dog with large, sullen eyes, eyes startling at once in their intelligence and in their absolute Ishmaelitism– until one almost expected to hear issue from the animal’s mouth reproaches couched in human language.

And sometimes the dog would still remain halted in the cemetery as, with tail lowered, it swayed its shelterless, shaggy head to and fro with an air of profound reflection, while occasionally venting a subdued, long-drawn yelp or howl.

Again, among the dense old lime trees, there would be scurrying an unseen mob of starlings and jackdaws whose young would, meanwhile, maintain a soft, hungry piping, a sort of gently persuasive, chirruping chorus; until in autumn, when the wind had stripped bare the boughs, these birds’ black nests would come to look like mouldy, rag-swathed heads of human beings which someone had torn from their bodies and flung into the trees, to hang for ever around the white, sugarloaf-shaped church of the martyred St. Barbara. During that autumn season, indeed, everything in the cemetery’s vicinity looked sad and tarnished, and the wind would wail about the place, and sigh like a lover who has been driven mad through bereavement . . . .

Suddenly the old man halted before me on the path, and, sternly extending a hand towards a white stone monument near us, read aloud:

“‘Under this cross there lies buried the body of the respected citizen and servant of God, Diomid Petrovitch Ussov,'” etc., etc.

Whereafter the old man replaced his hat, thrust his hands into the pockets of his pea-jacket, measured me with eyes dark in colour, but exceptionally clear for his time of life, and said:

“It would seem that folk could find nothing to say of this man beyond that he was a ‘servant of God.’ Now, how can a servant be worthy of honour at the hand of ‘citizens’?”

“Possibly he was an ascetic,” was my hazarded conjecture; whereupon the old man rejoined with a stamp of his foot:

“Then in such case one ought to write–“

“To write what?”

“To write EVERYTHING, in fullest possible detail.”

And with the long, firm stride of a soldier my interlocutor passed onwards towards a more remote portion of the cemetery–myself walking, this time, beside him. His stature placed his head on a level with my shoulder only, and caused his straw hat to conceal his features. Hence, since I wished to look at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced to walk with head bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.

“No, that is not the way to do it,” presently he continued in the soft, civil voice of one who has a complaint to present. “Any such proceeding is merely a mark of barbarism–of a complete lack of observation of men and life.”

With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large circle in the air.

“Do you know the meaning of that?” he inquired.

“Its meaning is death,” was my diffident reply, made with a shrug of the shoulders.

A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely cut face as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:

“‘Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'” [Death hath been for ever overthrown by death.”]

“Do you know that passage?” he added presently.

Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces–he threading his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable speed. Suddenly he halted, raised his hat from his head, and proffered me a hand.

“Young man,” he said, “let us make one another’s better acquaintance. I am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly of the State Remount Establishment, subsequently of the Department of Imperial Lands. I am a man who, after never having been found officially remiss, am living in honourable retirement–a man at once a householder, a widower, and a person of hasty temper.”