Devil Stories Part 29

"But also happy man!" the author retorted coldly.

The devil shrugged his shoulders.

They left the churchyard, and before them lay a street,--two rows of houses, and between them was darkness in which the miserable lamps clearly proved the want of light upon earth.

"Tell me," the devil spoke after a pause, "how do you like your grave?"

"Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very quiet there."

"Is it not damp down there in the Fall?" asked the devil.

"A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance comes from those various idiots who ramble over the cemetery and accidentally stumble on my grave. I don't know how long I have been lying in my grave, for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the concept of time does not exist for me."

"You have been in the ground four years,--it will soon be five," said the devil.

"Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at my grave during that time. Those accursed people make me nervous. One, you see, straight away denied the fact of my existence: he read my name on the tombstone and said confidently: 'There never was such a man! I have never read him, though I remember such a name: when I was a boy, there lived a man of that name who had a broker's shop in our street.' How do you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen years in the most popular periodicals, and three times during my lifetime my books came out in separate editions."

"There were two more editions since your death," the devil informed him.

"Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them said: 'Oh, that's that fellow!' 'Yes, that is he!' answered the other. 'Yes, they used to read him in the auld lang syne.' 'They read a lot of them.' 'What was it he preached?' 'Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness, and so forth.' 'Oh, yes, I remember.' 'He had a heavy tongue.' 'There is a lot of them in the ground:--yes, Russia is rich in talents' ... And those a.s.ses went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that, yet it hurts me.

And oh, how I wanted to give them a piece of my mind!"

"You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!" smiled the devil.

"No, that would not have done. On the verge of the twentieth century it would be absurd for dead people to scold, and, besides, it would be hard on the materialists."

The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.

This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a bridegroom at all weddings and a corpse at all burials, and now that all is dead in him, his egotism is still alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of importance is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves applause and recognition.... How annoying people are! The devil was on the point of proposing to the author to return to his grave, when an idea flashed through his evil head. They had just reached a square, and heavy ma.s.ses of buildings surrounded them on all sides. The dark, wet sky hung low over the square; it seemed as though it rested on the roofs and murkily looked at the dirty earth.

"Say," said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards the author, "don't you want to know how your wife is getting on?"

"I don't know whether I want to," the author spoke slowly.

"I see, you are a thorough corpse!" called out the devil to annoy him.

"Oh, I don't know?" said the author and jauntily shook his bones. "I don't mind seeing her; besides, she will not see me, or if she will, she cannot recognize me!"

"Of course!" the devil a.s.sured him.

"You know, I only said so because she did not like for me to go away long from home," explained the author.

And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became as transparent as gla.s.s. The author saw the inside of large apartments, and it was so light and cosy in them.

"Elegant appointments!" he grated his bones approvingly: "Very fine appointments! If I had lived in such rooms, I would be alive now."

"I like it, too," said the devil and smiled. "And it is not expensive--it only costs some three thousands."

"Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest work brought me 815 roubles, and I worked over it a whole year. But who lives here?"

"Your wife," said the devil.

"I declare! That is good ... for her."

"Yes, and here comes her husband."

"She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed! Her husband, you say? What a fine looking fellow! Rather a bourgeois phiz,--kind, but somewhat stupid! He looks as if he might be cunning,--well, just the face to please a woman."

"Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?" the devil proposed and looked maliciously at the author. But he was taken up with the scene before him.

"What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently satisfied with life. Tell me, does she love him?"

"Oh, yes, very much!"

"And who is he?"

"A clerk in a millinery shop."

"A clerk in a millinery shop," the author repeated slowly and did not utter a word for some time. The devil looked at him and smiled a merry smile.

"Do you like that?" he asked.

The author spoke with an effort:

"I had some children.... I know they are alive.... I had some children ... a son and a daughter.... I used to think then that my son would turn out in time a good man...."

"There are plenty of good men, but what the world needs is perfect men," said the devil coolly and whistled a jolly march.

"I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ... and my son...."

The author's empty skull shook sadly.

"Just look how he is embracing her! They are living an easy life!"

exclaimed the devil.

"Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?"

"No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich."

"My wife? Where did she get the money from?"

"From the sale of your books!"

"Oh!" said the author and shook his bare and empty skull. "Oh! Then it simply means that I have worked for a certain clerk?"

"I confess it looks that way," the devil chimed in merrily.

The author looked at the ground and said to the devil: "Take me back to my grave!"