They tried to guess what would happen to them after death; while on the threshold of the workshop where the washstand stood, the floor-boards had rotted away. From that damp, fetid hole rose the cold, damp smell of sour earth, and it was this that made one’s feet freeze. Pavl and I stopped up this hole with straw and cloths.
We often said that the boards should be renewed, but the hole grew larger and larger, and in bad weather fumes rose from it as from a pipe. Every one caught cold, and coughed.
The tin ventilator in the fortochka squeaked, and when some one had oiled it, though they had all been grumbling at it, Jikharev said:
“It is dull, now that the fortochka has stopped squeaking.”
To come straight from the bath and lie down on a dirty, dusty bed, in the midst of dirt and bad smells, did not revolt any one of them.
There were many insignificant trifles which made our lives unbearable. which might easily have been remedied, but no one took the trouble to do anything.
They often said:
“No one has any mercy upon human creatures, — neither God nor we ourselves.”
But when Pavl and I washed dying Davidov, who was eaten up with dirt and insects, a laugh was raised against us. They took off their shirts and invited us to search them, called us blockheads, and jeered at us as if we had done something shameful and very ludicrous.
From Christmas till the beginning of Lent drew near, Davidov lay in the loft, coughing protractedly, spitting blood, which, if it did not fall into the wash-hand basin, splashed on the floor. At night he woke the others with his delirious shrieks.
Almost every day they said:
“We must take him to the hospital!”
But it turned out that Davidov’s passport had expired. Then he seemed better, and they said:
“It is of no consequence after all; he will soon be dead!”
And he would say to himself:
“I shall soon be gone!”
He was a quiet humorist and also tried to relieve the dullness of the workshop by jokes, hanging down his dark bony face, and saying in a wheezy voice:
“Listen, people, to the voice of one who ascended to the loft.
“In the loft I live,
Early do I wake;
Asleep or awake
Cockroaches devour me.”
“He is not downhearted!” exclaimed his audience.
Sometimes Pavl and I went to him, and he joked with difficulty.
“With what shall I regale you, my dear guests?
A fresh little spider — would you like that?”
He died slowly, and he grew very weary of it. He said with unfeigned vexation:
“It seems that I can’t die, somehow; it is really a calamity!”
His fearlessness in the face of death frightened Pavl very much. He awoke me in the night and whispered:
“Maximich, he seems to be dying.
Suppose he dies in the night, when we are lying beneath him — Oh, Lord!
I am frightened of dead people.”
Or he would say:
“Why was he born?
Not twenty-two years have passed over his head and he is dying.”
Once, on a moonlight night he awoke, and gazing with wide-open, terrified eyes said:
“Listen!”
Davidov was croaking in the loft, saying quickly and clearly:
“Give it to me — give — ”
Then he began to hiccup.
“He is dying, by God he is; you see!” said Pavl agitatedly.
I had been carrying snow from the yard into the fields all day, and I was very sleepy, but Pavl begged me:
“Don’t go to sleep, please; for Christ’s sake don’t go to sleep!”
And suddenly getting on to his knees, he cried f renziedly:
“Get up! Davidov is dead!”
Some of them awoke; several figures rose from the beds; angry voices were raised, asking questions.
Kapendiukhin climbed up into the loft and said in a tone of amzement:
“It is a fact; he is dead, although he is still warm.”
It was quiet now.
Jikharev crossed himself, and wrapping himself round in his blanket, said: