"Be sure and keep yourself clean; wash your hands very often, and take every care!"
"Why do you say all that? What if I don't take care?" she asked, showing her little white teeth; and it seemed to him as if she were defying him.
Her reply made him angry.
"There she is," he thought, "joking even in such a place as this! What a parcel of fools these women-folk are!"
He found however no further opportunity to give her recommendations. Matrona, having noticed the angry look on his face, hurried away to the women's side of the building.
A minute later Grigori was helping to carry into the mortuary the body of a policeman who had been well known to him. Only two days before he had seen the policeman at his post, and had sworn at him as he had passed by; they had never been on good terms together. And now he saw this man, such a short time before so strong and healthy, lying dead, and quite disfigured with convulsions. The corpse swayed backwards and forwards against the bearers, and stared with wide-open glassy eyes.
Orloff realized the whole force and cruelty of the contrast. "Why does one ever come into the world?" he thought to himself, "if such a horrible complaint as this can knock one over in four-and-twenty hours?"
He glanced at the bier, and felt a movement of pity for the dead policeman. What would become now of the three children of the dead man? Last year he lost his wife, and there had scarcely been time for him to marry again ... now the poor little creatures would be left orphans entirely....
This thought filled him with a feeling of real pain. Suddenly the left arm of the corpse began to stretch out and to straighten itself, and at the same time the mouth of the dead man, which till then had stood open, and drawn down on the left side, closed itself.
"Stop a moment," said Orloff to the other bearer; and he rested the bier on the ground. "He is still alive!" he whispered in a terrified voice.