“I went over to the night lamp. He followed me with his arms still crossed and bent his waxy face to the light. Then he says: ‘Feel behind my lashes, grandfather: my eyes have turned glassy. I may get lost and not able to find my coffin. Oh, it’s time, my hour has come. It’s time.’ And he left the way he came: through the open door. I watched him out of sight: everything was hazy in the dusk and the bells had tolled. ‘Will he make it,’ I wondered, ‘or won’t he?’

“It grew dark. I re-latched the door. Then I said my prayers, got into bed, and was about to blow the night lamp when again I heard the sound at the door: a rustling. ‘Oh no, not at this hour of the night.’ But there was no help for it—I opened the door. ‘Didn’t make it?’ ‘Didn’t make it,’ he says. ‘By the time I got there they were smoothing my grave over with their shovels.’ ‘It’s not right,’ I thought, ‘but the office is closed, have to wait till morning.’

“‘ Now don’t stand there like that letting all the cold air in,’ I says, ‘be my uninvited guest, never mind, you can sleep in the passage by the wall: It’s a bit tight, but don’t judge it too harshly, a coffin’s tighter still.’ I threw him some matting And we went to bed. I woke up around midnight—maybe I’d dreamed it all? —I wanted to turn over, but then I got a whiff of something rotten. ‘Oho,’ I thinks, ‘dreams won’t protect you from that.’ I lit the night lamp—couldn’t fall back to sleep anyway on account of my uninvited guest—I went out into the passage. ‘You all right?’ ‘Fine, thanks,’ he heaved a sign and was silent. ‘Did they read the gospel over you,’ I asks. ‘No.’ ‘There now,’ I opened the book and begun to read the best I knew how. I could see he was listening, he was, but then he says, ‘It’s moving, grandfather, but it misses the truth.’ Now that got my goat. ‘Now look here,’ I says ‘the descendent is supposed to lie still—and not bat an eye or move a muscle, but you keep on, like a cuckoo in the nest. You don’t know your place,’ He fell silent and didn’t stir. Next thing I knew it was morning. ‘Well, get up,’ I says, ‘let’s go and be buried.’ ‘I can’t move, I’m stiff.’ ‘Come on now, get up. You got yourself into this mess, you get yourself out: no use complaining.’ I pulled him by his arms and shoulders—and finally he moved; rigid and ice-cold, he got up and staggered after me on legs like stilts: click-click.

“We walked into the office. ‘Missed to boat,’ I says, but the clerks they begun laughing and accusing me, just like you: ‘You’re out of your head, grandpa.’ They told us both to get lost. ‘Oh, what a lazybones!’ they winked at each other. ‘Wants to hire himself out as a dead man. Go back where you came from!’

“‘Where did you come from?’ —Soon as I got him out the gates, I asked. ‘Krivokolenny Lane, apartment 39, my house is number…’ I took him by his crossed arms and bundled him onto a tram and the other passengers, they pitched in: ‘Citizens, move up!’ ‘Make way, citizens!’ Alive or dead, they didn’t care. Then I got on and whispered in someone’s ear, ‘Won’t you give up your seat to this nice decedent?’ The ear leapt aside. I bent my uninvited’s knees (now stiffer still), pushed his back against the bench, and the tram lurched off. Well, we crawled and we crawled and finally we came to Krivokolenny. Stairs. ‘I can’t,’ he says, ‘let them come down and carry me up.’ I could see how hard it was for him. So I leaned him against a wall, and went up myself—from number to number: 39. I rang the bell—the door opened. ‘You didn’t finish burying one of your tenants,’ I says, ‘take him back.’ ‘What tenant? From where?’ ‘You know from where; he’s waiting downstairs.’ Oh how they screamed at me, all ten of them at once: ‘He’s drunk! Can’t you see he’s out of his head?’ (Like you just now.) ‘Call the Antireligious Commission, they’ll put him where he belongs! Here we are, already packed in like sardines, with a dead man at our door! Get out, you flimflammer, before we break both of your legs!’

“There was no help for it. The hell with them. I went back down to my vagabond and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go on,’ I says. And he—slack-jawed and white-eyed—he whispers, quiet as quiet, ‘Maybe this is my soul going through its trials?’ ‘Don’t be silly,’ I says, ‘your trials are still ahead of you, waiting under a cross. This here is what they call life…’