Bobok Page #3

"Bobok" is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in 1864. The narrative follows a man named Ivan Ivanovich, who attends a cemetery and overhears a conversation among the corpses that have just been buried. As he listens, the dead express their thoughts and observations about life, death, and the absurdity of human existence. Through this surreal and darkly humorous premise, Dostoevsky explores existential themes, the nature of consciousness, and the moral implications of human actions, ultimately reflecting the profound depth of human experience even in death. The story serves as a thought-provoking meditation on the significance of life and the inevitability of mortality.

• Novel

								


"It is, your Excellency. Shall we tease Avdotya Ignatyevna again, he-he?"

"No, spare me, please. I can't endure that quarrelsome virago."

"And I can't endure either of you," cried the virago disdainfully. "You are
both of you bores and can't tell me anything ideal. I know one little story
about you, your Excellency--don't turn up your nose, please--how a
man-servant swept you out from under a married couple's bed one morning."

"Nasty woman," the general muttered through his teeth.

"Avdotya Ignatyevna, ma'am," the shopkeeper wailed suddenly again, "my dear
lady, don't be angry, but tell me, am I going through the ordeal by torment
now, or is it something else?"

"Ah, he is at it again, as I expected! For there's a smell from him which
means he is turning round!"

"I am not turning round, ma'am, and there's no particular smell from me,
for I've kept my body whole as it should be, while you're regularly high.
For the smell is really horrible even for a place like this. I don't speak
of it, merely from politeness."

"Ah, you horrid, insulting wretch! He positively stinks and talks about
me."

"Oh-ho-ho-ho! If only the time for my requiem would come quickly: I should
hear their tearful voices over my head, my wife's lament and my children's
soft weeping!..."

"Well, that's a thing to fret for! They'll stuff themselves with funeral
rice and go home.... Oh, I wish somebody would wake up!"

"Avdotya Ignatyevna," said the insinuating government clerk, "wait a bit,
the new arrivals will speak."

"And are there any young people among them?"

"Yes, there are, Avdotya Ignatyevna. There are some not more than lads."

"Oh, how welcome that would be!"

"Haven't they begun yet?" inquired his Excellency.

"Even those who came the day before yesterday haven't awakened yet, your
Excellency. As you know, they sometimes don't speak for a week. It's a good
job that to-day and yesterday and the day before they brought a whole lot.
As it is, they are all last year's for seventy feet round."

"Yes, it will be interesting."

"Yes, your Excellency, they buried Tarasevitch, the privy councillor,
to-day. I knew it from the voices. I know his nephew, he helped to lower
the coffin just now."

"Hm, where is he, then?"

"Five steps from you, your Excellency, on the left.... Almost at your feet.
You should make his acquaintance, your Excellency."

"Hm, no--it's not for me to make advances."

"Oh, he will begin of himself, your Excellency. He will be flattered. Leave
it to me, your Excellency, and I...."

"Oh, oh! ... What is happening to me?" croaked the frightened voice of a
new arrival.

"A new arrival, your Excellency, a new arrival, thank God! And how quick
he's been! Sometimes they don't say a word for a week."

"Oh, I believe it's a young man!" Avdotya Ignatyevna cried shrilly.

"I ... I ... it was a complication, and so sudden!" faltered the young man
again. "Only the evening before, Schultz said to me, 'There's a
complication,' and I died suddenly before morning. Oh! oh!"

"Well, there's no help for it, young man," the general observed graciously,
evidently pleased at a new arrival. "You must be comforted. You are kindly
welcome to our Vale of Jehoshaphat, so to call it. We are kind-hearted
people, you will come to know us and appreciate us. Major-General Vassili
Vassilitch Pervoyedov, at your service."

"Oh, no, no! Certainly not! I was at Schultz's; I had a complication, you
know, at first it was my chest and a cough, and then I caught a cold: my
lungs and influenza ... and all of a sudden, quite unexpectedly ... the
worst of all was its being so unexpected."

"You say it began with the chest," the government clerk put in suavely, as
though he wished to reassure the new arrival.

"Yes, my chest and catarrh and then no catarrh, but still the chest, and I
couldn't breathe ... and you know...."

"I know, I know. But if it was the chest you ought to have gone to Ecke and
not to Schultz."

"You know, I kept meaning to go to Botkin's, and all at once...."

"Botkin is quite prohibitive," observed the general.

"Oh, no, he is not forbidding at all; I've heard he is so attentive and
foretells everything beforehand."

"His Excellency was referring to his fees," the government clerk corrected
him.

"Oh, not at all, he only asks three roubles, and he makes such an
examination, and gives you a prescription ... and I was very anxious to see
him, for I have been told.... Well, gentlemen, had I better go to Ecke or
to Botkin?"

"What? To whom?" The general's corpse shook with agreeable laughter. The
government clerk echoed it in falsetto.

"Dear boy, dear, delightful boy, how I love you!" Avdotya Ignatyevna
squealed ecstatically. "I wish they had put some one like you next to me."

No, that was too much! And these were the dead of our times! Still, I ought
to listen to more and not be in too great a hurry to draw conclusions. That
snivelling new arrival--I remember him just now in his coffin--had the
expression of a frightened chicken, the most revolting expression in the
world! However, let us wait and see.

       *       *       *       *       *

But what happened next was such a Bedlam that I could not keep it all in my
memory. For a great many woke up at once; an official--a civil
councillor--woke up, and began discussing at once the project of a new
sub-committee in a government department and of the probable transfer of
various functionaries in connection with the sub-committee--which very
greatly interested the general. I must confess I learnt a great deal that
was new myself, so much so that I marvelled at the channels by which one
may sometimes in the metropolis learn government news. Then an engineer
half woke up, but for a long time muttered absolute nonsense, so that our
friends left off worrying him and let him lie till he was ready. At last
the distinguished lady who had been buried in the morning under the
catafalque showed symptoms of the reanimation of the tomb. Lebeziatnikov
(for the obsequious lower court councillor whom I detested and who lay
beside General Pervoyedov was called, it appears, Lebeziatnikov) became
much excited, and surprised that they were all waking up so soon this time.
I must own I was surprised too; though some of those who woke had been
buried for three days, as, for instance, a very young girl of sixteen who
kept giggling ... giggling in a horrible and predatory way.

"Your Excellency, privy councillor Tarasevitch is waking!" Lebeziatnikov
announced with extreme fussiness.

"Eh? What?" the privy councillor, waking up suddenly, mumbled, with a lisp
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