Yama by Aleksandr Kuprin (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

Bending over the dead and illuminating them with the guttered and dripping candle-end, he passed from one to another. Finally he stopped before a corpse, upon whose foot was dabbed in ink, in large black figures: 217.

“Here’s the very same one! Let me, I’ll carry her out into the little corridor and run after her stuff⁠ ⁠… Wait a while!⁠ ⁠…”

Grunting, but still with an ease amazing in one of his age, he lifted up the corpse of Jennka by the feet, and threw it upon his back with the head down, as though it were a carcass of meat, or a bag of potatoes.

It was a trifle lighter in the corridor; and, when the watchman had lowered his horrible burden to the floor, Tamara for a moment covered her face with her hands, while Manka turned away and began to cry.

“If you need anything, say so,” the watchman was instructing them. “If you want to dress the deceased as is fitting, then we can get everything that’s required⁠—cloth of gold, a little wreath, a little image, a shroud, gauze⁠—we keep everything⁠ ⁠… You can buy a thing or two in, clothing⁠ ⁠… Slippers, too, now⁠ ⁠…”

Tamara gave him money and went out into the air, letting Manka go in front of her.

After some time two wreaths were brought; one from Tamara, of asters and georginas with an inscription in black letters upon a white ribbon: “To Jennie from a friend;” the other was from Ryazanov, all of red flowers; upon its red ribbon stood in gold characters: “Through suffering shall we be purified.” He also sent a short little note, expressing commiseration and apologizing for not being able to come, as he was occupied with an undeferrable business meeting.

Then came the singers who had been invited by Tamara⁠—fifteen men from the very best choir in the city.

The precentor, in a gray overcoat and a gray hat, all gray, somehow, as though covered with dust, but with long, straight moustaches, like a military person’s, recognized Verka; opened his eyes wide in astonishment, smiled slightly and winked at her. Two or three times a month, and sometimes even oftener, he visited Yamskaya Street with ecclesiastical academicians of his acquaintance, just the same precentors as he, and some psalmists; and having usually made a full review of all the establishments, always wound up with the house of Anna Markovna, where he invariably chose Verka.

He was a merry and sprightly man; danced in a lively manner, in a frenzy; and executed such figures during the dances that all those present just melted from laughter.

Following the singers came the two-horsed catafalque, that Tamara had hired; black, with white plumes, and seven torchbearers along with it. They also brought a white, glazed brocade coffin; and a pedestal for it, stretched over with black calico. Without hurrying, with habitually deft movements, they put away the deceased into the coffin; covered her face with gauze; curtained off the corpse with cloth of gold, and lit the candles⁠—one at the head and two at the feet.

Now, in the yellow, trembling light of the candles, the face of Jennka became more clearly visible. The lividness had almost gone off it, remaining only here and there on the temples, on the nose, and between the eyes, in party-coloured, uneven, serpentine spots. Between the parted dark lips slightly glimmered the whiteness of the teeth, and the tip of the bitten tongue was still visible. Out of the open collar of the neck, which had taken on the colour of old parchment, showed two stripes: one dark⁠—the mark of the rope; another red⁠—the sign of the scratch, inflicted by Simeon during the encounter: just like two fearful necklaces. Tamara approached and with a safety pin pinned together the lace on the collar, at the very chin.

The clergy came: a little gray priest in gold spectacles, in a skullcap; a lanky, tall, thin-haired deacon with a sickly, strangely dark and yellow face, as though of terra-cotta; and a sprightly, long-skirted psalmist, animatedly exchanging on his way some gay, mysterious signs with his friends among the singers.

Tamara walked up to the priest:

“Father,” she asked, “how will you perform the funeral service; all together or each one separate?”

“We perform the funeral service for all of them conjointly,” answered the priest, kissing the stole, and extricating his beard and hair out of its slits. “Usually, that is. But by special request, and by special agreement, it’s also possible to do it separately. What death did the deceased undergo?”

“She’s a suicide, father.”

“Hm⁠ ⁠… a suicide?⁠ ⁠… But do you know, young person, that by the canons of the church there isn’t supposed to be any funeral service⁠ ⁠… there ought not to be any? Of course, there are exceptions⁠—by special intercession⁠ ⁠…”

“Right here, father, I have certificates from the police and from the doctor⁠ ⁠… She wasn’t in her right mind⁠ ⁠… in a fit of insanity⁠ ⁠…”

Tamara extended to the priest two papers, sent her the evening before by Ryazanov, and on top of them three banknotes of ten roubles each. “I would beg of you, father, to do everything fitting⁠—Christian-like. She was a splendid being, and suffered a very great deal. And won’t you be so kind⁠—go along with her to the cemetery, and there hold one more little mass⁠ ⁠…”

“It’s all right for me to go along with her to the cemetery, but in the cemetery itself I have no right to hold service⁠—there is a clergy of their own⁠ ⁠… And also here’s how, young person; in view of the fact that I’ll have to return once more after the rest, won’t you, now⁠ ⁠… add another little ten-spot. For the cab.”

And having taken the money from Tamara’s hand, the priest blessed the thurible, which had been brought up by the psalmist, and began to walk around the body of the deceased with thurification. Then, having stopped at her head, he in a meek, wontedly sad voice, uttered:

“Blessed is our God. As it was in the beginning, is now,