From somewhere in the cold a fly came and buzzed feebly about the frayed meat on the big sheep bone that lay disconsolately in a congealed pool of amber-white grease in the middle of the glossy blue dish.
No one came into the dining-room. The teapot, covered, at first, with a bloom of moisture, grew heavy, and drops of water collected at its base. The young fly clung to the huge flayed bone of the dead beast. It crawled on moist, quivering legs along the dry and fleshless parts, only to slip back uncertainly when it clutched at the fat.
In the empty dining-room it was as if the silence had stripped the burned flesh from the dead bone. The gas light shone, very bright on the stupidity of the table at which no one sat. The tablecloth was white and lustrous from the iron. The high-backed chairs stood vacantly about the vacant meal, the dry, highly polished tumblers, and the clean-wiped plates.
The coffin was on a table in the parlor. It had a movable inside which was pushed up so that the shoulders and head of the corpse protruded above the box. Stiffly, yet as if of themselves, the head and shoulders of the corpse uprose from the sides of the coffin. The smooth, strange face, like the face of a wax angel, rose up complaisantly above the sides of the box.
The German woman at the bakery, who was out of bed with a child ten days old, had come to act as wet-nurse for the other new-born child. In the nursery, opposite the death chamber, she sat pressing the infant's lips to the stiff brown nipple on her full white breast.
It caught the nipple weakly and hungrily, but it did not have the strength to keep it. The brown teat, sloppy with saliva, fell from its small strained mouth. The baby squeezed its thumbs under its wrinkled fingers. Its hands half opened and shut. Its weak eyes did not see the nipple it had lost, and it began to cry fretfully, without shedding any tears.
The stout woman had a sense of unusualness and impropriety in allowing the dead woman's baby to take her breast, but she overcame the feeling before she permitted it to become plain to herself. With firm fingers she pressed the stiff nipple between the slobbering lips. The baby scratched her delicate skin with its soft nails. Its hands clutched in the agony of its satisfaction. It pressed and grappled with her resilient breast, and left there faint red marks of delight and rage.
It was happy. It sucked with fierce unseeing content. Its sightless eyes stared angrily. Its cheeks were drawn in and relaxed unceasingly.
When the breast slipped out again, it despaired. Its furry forehead wrinkled above its wizened face. Its opaque eyes grew sharp and merciless with baffled desire. Like a small blind beast fumbling the air, it moved its head searchingly from side to side, sucking.
It seemed impossible for the scrawny and emaciated child to satisfy itself. The woman took the breast away and the infant was angry once more. Its eyes drew up out of sight beneath its overhanging lids. Its whole body writhed in protest. It was a healthy child, the woman said, because on the second day it could scream like that.