My properly pal Kolman shared that sentiment. He determined a watch-witness to my ignominious and heroic dying and wrote an editorial for his paper about that whole affair which become so ugly for me. however he was now not contentsimply with that tiny scrap of news. His correct nature drove him to jot down an obituary of me, which I study rapidly after my arrival in Prague. With tremendous beauty he vilified my posthumous reminiscence, being convinced that the lifelessdo now not rise from the grave.
I went to look for him to persuade him that i was alive, and this is how this tale happened.
now not even that master of horror and dread, Edgar Allan Poe, should think up a greater grisly subject…
i discovered the author of my obituary in one of the Prague wine taverns precisely at midnight, the very hour whilst it closed in step with an Imperial and Royal decree of April 18, 1856.
He turned into gazing the ceiling. They have been stripping off the stained tablecloths from the tables. I sat down at his desk and stated affably, “Excuse me, is this vicinity loose?”
He endured to observe some given spot at the ceiling, which seemed to interest him very plenty, and replied, logically, “Of direction however they’re just about to close. I’m afraid they won’t serve you.”
I took him by the arm and turned him spherical in order that he confronted me. For a while he stared at me in silence and said at remaining very quietly, “You haven’t been in Russia by means of any chance?”
I smiled. “so that you diagnosed me in the end? i used to be killed in Russia in a low-down tavern in a brawl with difficultdrunken sailors.”
He became faded. “you're, you're…”
“sure,” I stated emphatically. “i was killed in a brawl with sailors in Odessa, and also you wrote my obituary.”
A faint gasp escaped his lips. “You’ve study what I wrote about you?”
“Of course i have. It became a very exciting obituary besides for one or small misunderstandings. And an surprisinglylengthy one too. not even His Imperial Majesty the Emperor himself, while he died, got as many lines. Your journaldedicated 152 traces to him and 186 to me, at 35 hellers a line (that become the miserable fee they paid journalists then!), which made fifty five crowns and 15 hellers altogether.”
“What exactly do you want of me?” he requested in horror. “Do you want those 55 crowns and 15 hellers?”
“you may hold them,” I responded. “The lifeless do no longer accept prices for his or her own obituaries.”
He blanched.
“Do you recognize what?” I stated nonchalantly. “We’ll pay the invoice and go somewhere else. I’d like to spend this night time with you.”
“Couldn’t we placed it off until the next day?” I stared at him. “The invoice!” he referred to as out.
at the corner I hailed a fiacre. I ordered him to get in and in a sepulchral voice told the motive force, “power us to Olšany Cemetery!”
the author of my obituary made the sign of the move. For a long time there has been an embarrassing silence, brokenhandiest with the aid of the cracking of the whip and the snorting of the horses.
I leaned over to my associate. “Do you have got the feeling that someplace within the quiet of the streets of Žižkov the puppies have began to howl?”
He trembled and drew himself up within the cab, stammering “You truly had been in Russia?”
“Slain in Odessa in a tavern in a brawl with drunken sailors,” I replied drily.
“My god,” my companion exclaimed, “that is worse than Erben’s The Spectre’s Bride.”
once more there was a painful silence. someplace dogs surely did start to howl.
when we were given to the Strašnická highway I ordered my accomplice to pay the driver. We stood collectively in thedarkness of the toll road. “Isn’t there a eating place right here by any threat?” He grew to become to me helplessly and pitifully.
“A restaurant?” I gave a smile. “Now we're going to climb over the cemetery wall, and on a headstone somewhere we willhave a nice little chat approximately that obituary. You move first after which give me your hand.”
with out a word he quietly gave me his hand and we jumped down into the cemetery. below us the cypresses crackled. The wind moaned mournfully among the crosses.
“i'm not going any further,” my pal blurted out. “wherein are you dragging me to?”
I held him up and said cheerfully, “Now we’ll pass and examine the tomb of the olf Prague patrician circle of relatives of Bonepiani. It’s a very abandoned tomb in the first segment of row number six by way of the wall. It’s been deserted from the time they buried the ultimate descendant there. They brought him in 1874 from Odessa, in which he’d been killed by using sailors in a brawl in a low-down tavern.”
My accomplice crossed himself a 2d time.
while at last we reached the gravestone covering the dust of the ultimate descendants of these Prague citizens, the Bonepiani, and sat down, I took him by way of the hand and talked with him quietly.
“dear friend! in the secondary faculty our instructors taught us a stunning and noble slogan: De mortuis nil nisi bonum. however the second i was dead you attempted to jot down as nastily as you could approximately me. If I’d written my own obituary, I’d have written that no demise ledt this sort of tragic impact as that of Mr. So-and-So. I’d have stated that the dead writer’s finest virtues have been his effective love for proper and for the entirety that is sacred to pure souls. butof my loss of life you wrote that I died a rogue and a buffoon. Don’t cry! There are times whilst the coronary heart burns with choice to write approximately the maximum stunning moments of the lives of the dead – but you wrote that the deceased became an alcoholic.”
He began to cry all of the tougher. His wails resounded mournfully in the silence of the cemetery and have been lostsomewhere a long way away within the distance near the Jewish Furnaces.1
“pricey friend,” I said firmly, “don’t cry. Now it’s too overdue positioned it proper…”
On announcing this I jumped over the cemetery wall, ran down to the gate-keeper, rang the bell, and reported to him that as i was returning from my time beyond regulation night-paintings, I had heard the sound of sobbing at the back of the cemetery wall inside the first segment.
“That’s probably a few drunken widower,” the gate-keeper responded cynically. “We’ll have him placed in the back ofbars.”
I waited next door. In about ten mins guards led the writer of my obituary out of the cemetery inside the route of the defend-residence.
He become resisting and shouting, “is that this a dream or reality? gents, do you recognize Erben’s The Spectre’s Bride?”
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