There once lived a very ambitious writer.
When he was abused, it seemed to him that he was abused too much, and unjustly. When he was praised he thought that they neither praised him enough, nor wisely. He lived in a state of perpetual discontent, until the time came for him to die.
The writer lay down on his bed and began grumbling:
“That’s just how it is. What do you think of it? Two novels are not yet finished—and altogether I have enough material for ten years. The devil take this law of nature, and every other law. What nonsense! The novels might have turned out well. Why have they invented this idiotic compulsory service, as if things could not have been arranged differently? And it always comes at the wrong time: the novels are not finished yet.”
He was angry, but disease was eating into his bones and whispering into his ears:
“You trembled, eh? Why did you tremble? You don’t sleep at night, eh? Why don’t you sleep? You have drunk of sorrow, eh?—and of joy too?”
He kept knitting his brows, but realised at last that nothing could be done. With a wave of the arm he dismissed the thought of his novels, and died.
It was very disagreeable, but he died.
So far so good. They washed him, dressed him according to custom, combed his hair and placed him on the table, straight and stiff like a soldier, heels together, toes apart. He lay very still, his nose drooped, and the only feeling he had was surprise.
“How strange it is that I feel nothing at all! It’s the first time in my life. Ah, my wife is crying. Well, now you cry, but before, when anything went wrong, you flew into a rage. My little son is crying too. No doubt he will grow up a good-for-nothing fellow—the sons of writers, I have noticed, always do. No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature. What an infernal number of such laws there are.”
So he lay and thought and thought, and wondered at his composure. He was not accustomed to it.
They started for the cemetery, but as he was being borne along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners.
“No matter,” said he to himself, “though I may not be a very great writer, literature must be respected.”
He looked out of the coffin and saw that, as a matter of fact, without counting his relations, only nine people accompanied him, among whom were two beggars and a lamplighter with a ladder over his shoulder.
At this discovery he became quite indignant.
“What swine!”
The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected, and, being a small man, jumped unperceived out of his coffin. He ran into a barber’s, had his moustache and beard shaved off, and borrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit, leaving his own coat in its stead. Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved, and became like a living man. It was impossible to recognise him.
With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber:
“Are you not astonished at this strange incident?”
The latter stroked his moustache condescendingly and replied:
“Well, we live in Russia, and we are used to all kinds of things.”
“But then I am a deceased person and suddenly I change my attire?”
“It is the fashion of the times. And in what way are you a deceased person? Only externally! As far as the general run of people goes it would be better if God made them all like you. At the present time living people don’t look half so natural.”
“Don’t I look rather yellowish?”
“Quite in the spirit of the epoch, as you should be. It is Russia—everyone here suffers from one ill or another.”
It is well known that barbers are flatterers of the first order and the most obliging people on earth.
He bade him good-bye, and ran to overtake the coffin, moved by a keen desire to show for the last time his reverence for literature. He caught up with the procession and the number of those who accompanied the coffin became ten. The respect for the writer increased correspondingly. Passers-by exclaimed, astonished:
“Just look! A writer’s funeral! Oh! Oh!”
And people who knew what was taking place thought, with a sort of pride, as they went about their business:
“It is plain that the importance of literature is being understood better and better by the country.”
The writer was now following his own coffin as if he were an admirer of literature and a friend of the deceased. He addressed the lamplighter.
“Did you know the deceased person?”
“Certainly; I made use of him in a small way.”
“I am very pleased to hear it.”
“Yes; our work is like that of the sparrow; where something drops we pick it up.”
“How am I to understand that?”
“Take it in a very simple manner, sir.”
“In a simple manner?”
“Yes, certainly. Of course, it is a sin if one looks at it from a certain point of view. One cannot, however, get on in this world without using ones wits.”
“H’m! Are you sure of that?”
“Quite sure, sir. There was a lamp right against his window, and every night he sat up till sunrise. Well, I did not light that lamp because enough light streamed from his window. So this one lamp was a net profit to me: he was a very useful man.”
So, talking quietly to this one and that, the writer reached the cemetery, and it came to pass that he had to make a speech about himself, because all those who accompanied him on that day had toothache. This happened in Russia, and there people always have an ache of one sort or another.
He made a rather good speech. One paper went so far as to praise it in the following terms:—
“One of the followers, who from his appearance we judged to be an actor, made a warm and touching oration over the grave, albeit from our point of view he no doubt over-estimated and exaggerated the rather modest merits of the deceased. He was a writer of the old school who made no effort to rid himself of its defects—the naïve didactism, namely, and the over-insistence on the so-called civic duties—which to us nowadays have become so tiresome. Nevertheless, the speech was delivered with a feeling of unquestionable love for the written word.” When the speech had been duly made the writer lay down in the coffin and thought, quite satisfied with himself:
“There, we are ready now. Everything has gone well and with dignity.”
At this point he became quite dead. Thus should one’s calling be respected, even though it be literature.