'You godless man, is your wife to lie there without Christian burial?' He advanced his boot so vehemently that the old woman ran screaming out along the highroad.
Slimak pushed to the door and lay down again. A hard peasant-stubbornness had seized him. He was certain that he was past salvation. He neither accused himself nor regretted anything; he only wanted to be left to sleep eternally. Divine pity could have saved him, but he no longer believed in divine pity, and no human hand would do so much as give him a cup of water.
While the sound of the evening-bells floated through the air, and the women in the cottages whispered the Angelus, a bent figure approached the gospodarstwo, a sack on his back, a stick in his hand; the glory of the setting sun surrounded him. Such as these are the 'angels' which the Lord sends to people in the extremity of their sorrow.
It was Jonah Niedoperz, the oldest and poorest Jew in the neighbourhood; he traded in everything and never had any money to keep his large family, with whom he lived in a half-ruined cottage with broken windowpanes. Jonah was on his way to the village and was meditating deeply. Would he get a job there? would he live to have a dinner of pike on the Sabbath? would his little grandchildren ever have two shirts to their backs?
'Aj waj!' he muttered, 'and they even took the three roubles from me!' He had never forgotten that robbery in the autumn, for it was the largest sum he had ever possessed.
His glance fell on the burnt homestead. Good God! if such a thing should ever befall the cottage where his wife and daughters, sons-in-law and grandchildren lived! His emotion grew when he heard the cows lowing miserably. He approached the stable.
'Slimak! My good lady gospodyni!' he cried, tapping at the door. He was afraid to open it lest he should be suspected of prying into other people's business.
'Who is that?' asked Slimak.
'It's only I, old Jonah,' he said, and peeped in, 'but what's wrong with your honours?' he asked in astonishment.
'My wife is dead.' 'Dead? how dead? what do you mean by such a joke?
Ajwaj! really-dead?' He looked attentively at her.