"How is it, then? Don't you feel afraid here?"
"What, of the sick people?"
"Of the sick people ... or of anything else...."
"I am only afraid of the dead.... Do you know," ... she bent down towards him and whispered in a scared voice—"they still move after they are dead ... it's true, on my soul!"
"I know that ... I have seen it myself!" Grigori continued with an ironical laugh—"The police-officer Nazaroff nearly gave me a box on the ear as he lay on the stretcher. I was carrying him to the mortuary, and all of a sudden he let out with his left hand.... I only just escaped it ... it's true!"
Grischka was in the best of tempers. Taking his tea in this bright clean room, from which could be seen endless distances of green fields and blue sky, pleased him immensely. And there was something else too which caused him pleasure—something which radiated, as it were, from his own personality. He felt the desire to show the best side of his character, and at the same time to appear in Matronal eyes as the hero of the hour.
"I shall make this my life work.... Heaven itself shall rejoice at it! I have my own special reasons for doing so.... The people here, I tell you, are such as one seldom meets in the world...."
He told her now of his conversation with the doctor, and whilst he unconsciously exaggerated a little, he worked himself into a still pleasanter frame of mind.
"And then the work itself, too," he continued. "You see, my dear, it's a holy work ... it's a sort of war. On one side stands the cholera, and we stand on the opposite side ... who is going to prove the stronger? We have to sharpen our wits to see that nothing is neglected.... What is this cholera after all?... We must first understand that clearly, and then we must use all means possible to fight it.... Doctor Wasschtschenko said to me, 'We need you, Orloff, in this business. Don't let yourself be frightened. Continue to rub the feet and the stomachs of the patients,' he said, and I will rub their insides with my medicines.... And so we shall thoroughly get the better of the disease, you will see, and the patient will recover, and will thank us for restoring him to life.' ... Think of that; you and I together, Matrona ... you and I!"
He swelled his chest out with a feeling of pride, and looked at Matrona with sparkling eyes. She smiled back at him, but did not reply. He looked so handsome whilst he was speaking, and reminded her so of the Grischka whom she used to know in their early married life.