But again, as in the morning, I was but little moved
by Fustov’s tears. I could not conceive
how it was he did not ask me if Susanna had not left
something for him. Altogether their love for one
another was a riddle to me; and a riddle it remained
to me.
After weeping for ten minutes Fustov got up, lay down
on the sofa, turned his face to the wall, and remained
motionless. I waited a little, but seeing that
he did not stir, and made no answer to my questions,
I made up my mind to leave him. I am perhaps
doing him injustice, but I almost believe he was asleep.
Though indeed that would be no proof that he did not
feel sorrow... only his nature was so constituted as
to be unable to support painful emotions for long...
His nature was too awfully well-balanced!
The next day exactly at eleven o’clock I was
at the place. Fine hail was falling from the
low-hanging sky, there was a slight frost, a thaw was
close at hand, but there were cutting, disagreeable
gusts of wind flitting across in the air....
It was the most thoroughly Lenten, cold-catching weather.
I found Mr. Ratsch on the steps of his house.
In a black frock-coat adorned with crape, with no
hat on his head, he fussed about, waved his arms,
smote himself on the thighs, shouted up to the house,
and then down into the street, in the direction of
the funeral car with a white catafalque, already standing
there with two hired carriages. Near it four
garrison soldiers, with mourning capes over their
old coats, and mourning hats pulled over their screwed-up
eyes, were pensively scratching in the crumbling snow
with the long stems of their unlighted torches.
The grey shock of hair positively stood up straight
above the red face of Mr. Ratsch, and his voice, that
brazen voice, was cracking from the strain he was putting
on it. ’Where are the pine branches? pine
branches! this way! the branches of pine!’ he
yelled. ’They’ll be bearing out the
coffin directly! The pine! Hand over those
pine branches! Look alive!’ he cried once
more, and dashed into the house. It appeared
that in spite of my punctuality, I was late:
Mr. Ratsch had thought fit to hurry things forward.
The service in the house was already over; the priests—of
whom one wore a calotte, and the other, rather younger,
had most carefully combed and oiled his hair—appeared
with all their retinue on the steps. The coffin
too appeared soon after, carried by a coachman, two
door-keepers, and a water-carrier. Mr. Ratsch
walked behind, with the tips of his fingers on the
coffin lid, continually repeating, ‘Easy, easy!’
Behind him waddled Eleonora Karpovna in a black dress,
also adorned with crape, surrounded by her whole family;
after all of them, Viktor stepped out in a new uniform
with a sword with crape round the handle. The
coffin-bearers, grumbling and altercating among themselves,
laid the coffin on the hearse; the garrison soldiers
