ONE Sunday morning they were burying the
Collegiate Assessor Kiril Ivanovitch, who had died
from the two ailments so common amongst us : drink and
a scolding wife. While the funeral procession was
crawling from the church to the cemetery, a certain
Poplavski, a colleague of the defunct civil servant, jumped
into a cab, and galloped off to fetch his friend Gregory
Zapoikin, a young but already popular man. As many
of my readers know, Zapoikin was the possessor of a
remarkable talent for making impromptu orations at
weddings, jubilee celebrations, and funerals. Whether
he was half-asleep, or fasting, or dead drunk, or in
a fever, he was always ready to make a speech. His
words always flowed from his lips as smoothly and
evenly and abundantly as water out of a rain-pipe, and
there were more heartrending expressions in his
oratorical vocabulary than there are black beetles in an
inn. His speeches were always eloquent and long, so
long that sometimes, especially at the weddings of
merchants, the aid of the police had to be summoned
to put a stop to them.
"I have come to carry you off with me, old chap," began Poplavski. "Put on your things this minute and come along. One of our colleagues has kicked the bucket and we are about to despatch him into the next world. We must have some sort of folderol to see him off with, you know! All our hopes are centred on you ! If one of our little fellows had died, we shouldn't have troubled you; but, after all, this one was an Assessor, a pillar of the state, one might say. It wouldn't do to bury a big fish like him without some kind of an oration!"
"Ah, the Assessor is it ? " yawned Zapoikin. " What, that old soak?"
"Yes, that old soak! There will be pancakes and
caviar, you know, and you will get your cab-fare paid. Come along, old man ! Spout some of your Ciceronian hyperboles over his grave and you'll see the thanks you'll get from us all !"
Zapoikin consented to go with alacrity. He ruffled
his hair, veiled his features in gloom, and stepped out
with Poplavski into the street.
"I know that Assessor of yours !" he said, as he took
his seat in the cab. "He was a rare brute of a rascal, God bless his soul ! "
"Come, let dead men alone, Grisha ! "
"Oh, of course, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, but that
doesn't make him any less a rascal !"
The friends overtook the funeral cortege. It was
travelling so slowly that before it reached its
destination they had time to dash into a cafe three times to
drink a drop to the peace of the dead man's soul.
At the cemetery the litany had already been sung. The mother-in-law, the wife, and the sister-in-law of the departed were weeping in torrents. The wife even shrieked as the coffin was lowered into the grave: "Oh, let me go with him!" But she did not follow her husband, probably because she remembered his pension in time. Zapoikin waited until every sound had ceased and then stepped forward, embraced the whole crowd at a glance and began: