III
The trusty in charge of the hospital is getting nervous as the day of his release approaches. A week before the release, no matter how disciplined and peaceful the prisoner may have been, he starts getting cranky and impertinent to the keepers. He acts like a man under great stress, and when he is disturbed he turns savagely round like an angry dog.
The old trusty acted like a drunkard, talking and laughing incessantly, and we thought it was for joy at the thought of his near release. But the real reason was soon discovered. The old thief, Fritz, had been operated on, and when the night orderly was ordered by the doctor to change the sick man's bandages every fifteen minutes, he bribed the old trusty with a long drink of whiskey to do the work for him.
The spectacle of the official orderly trying to do his duty was intensely amusing. In all the years of his work he had slept and snored peacefully and undisturbed. When the time came to change the bandages, he uncovered the patient and began gingerly removing the soaked bandages, holding them with two fingers, at a safe distance, and walking on tiptoe, as if expecting the whole thing to explode. When he saw the terrible, gaping wound he dropped everything back, saying: "I can't do it, it makes me sick!" and woke up the trusty to do the work for him. The next day he reported sick, and he never showed up again until he heard that the patient was dead.
In the meanwhile the old trusty left and I had to attend to the sick man. Every fifteen minutes of twenty interminable days and nights I had to watch, and nurse, and answer the calls of that cranky old man. The wound was ghastly. The surgeons had made an incision twelve inches long right down into the bladder, wherein they had stuck a thick rubber tube.
The sight was sickening, the work exhausting and thankless, and if I had not known that the patient had only a few days to live, I think I would have applied for a job in the coal gang.
On the twentieth night, at about twelve o'clock, I was awakened by the moans of the dying man, who was calling in a faint voice. His face was flushed and it seemed as if all the blood had gone to his head; but he seemed suddenly to turn deadly white, and he lay back still.
A young boy sleeping next to him hid his head under the bed clothes in fright. I was sent to notify the doctor upstairs.
The young doctor declared him dead, and turning to me ordered me to dress him.
I looked at him puzzled and asked: "Dress him up in his striped suit?"
"No," answered the doctor, smiling, "put the shroud on and make him ready for the morgue."
"But I have never dressed a corpse in my life and would not know how to go about it," I protested. So the doctor kindly volunteered to teach me.
First he closed the dead man's eyes; then we put on the shroud, which looked like a night-shirt with frills at the sleeves, and attached to it a conical fool's cap to cover his head; then his hands and feet were tied separately.
When we had done, we laid the body on an empty bed in the smaller hospital, very much to the dismay and terror of the three consumptives who slept there. But they kicked up such a row that they were allowed to sleep in our section.
The next morning when I went on an errand into the next room I stopped to gaze on the body of Fritz. The change that had taken place was startling. During the few months that Fritz had passed in the hospital, although disciplined and silent like most old convicts, he always wore a peculiarly shifty, sneering expression on his reddish face. Now it was wax white, the eyelids had opened, and the pale blue eyes were staring at me with a peaceful, angelic expression. For an instant I gasped at the thought that he might have come back to life, and I called out: "Fritz! Fritz!" but no answer came, and only the gentle, inscrutable smile persisted. I touched his cheek. It was cold and hard. But I could not explain the almost miraculous change in the expression of the face. Suddenly it dawned upon me that death had released the unclean spirit, and left the body to go back to mother earth as clean as it had been conceived.
Soon four convicts came into the room; one, a gangster, with a broken nose, and beady, black eyes, asked me: "Where is the stiff?" As in prison language "stiff" is also the name used for newspapers, I looked at him foolishly and answered that I had none. He added in explanation: "I mean the guy that croaked last night."
Neither the keeper nor the convicts relished the post-prandial funeral.... Death had come so suddenly and informally, and had left his victim in the enemy's camp, to be carried to the morgue, and later to be buried on a convict's island without benefit of clergy.