“The men are weak, he says, and despair makes them lazy. And anyhow, he could not pay for their labour.”
They walked through room after room, all crowded with children. Their heads had been shaved, and in their nakedness they lay huddled close together, so thin, with such deep-sunk eyes, that they were unlike children of the human race, but like a tribe of white monkeys, clinging to each other for warmth in a frozen world. They did not play, or chatter, or laugh. They were utterly silent, with drooping heads, and a terrible old sadness in their little sunken eyes. Because there was no fuel, there was no hot water, and because there was no hot water, there was no cleanliness. A frightful stench pervaded the rooms. Some of the children lay in filth. . . .
“To-morrow I shall come here and do some work,” said Nadia. “The good man means well, but he has no energy.”
Dr. Weekes made some notes in a little book.
“Blankets. Clothes. Soap.”
He whispered a warning to Bertram.
“Don’t brush against the door-posts as you pass. They’re alive with vermin.”
They passed into another room, where there was row after row of children lying on the bare boards, in a kind of feverish sleep, with their heads flopping from side to side.
“Typhus,” said Nadia.
Among the children was a girl of about twenty, in a cotton frock. She lay amidst a group of them, with one arm over their naked bodies, sleeping, with a flame of colour on her face.