'Is he so very bad?' I asked on the way.
'I should think so; he looks quite black and says himself that he is sure he will die to-day.'
We soon arrived at Kowalski's yurta. There was no trace of the usual sick-room smell of medicines, for Kowalski believed neither in doctors nor in medicines. But an air of sadness and desolation pervaded the room. The little dog lay curled up under the bed, from which, notwithstanding the open window, an unpleasant smell reminded one that the sick man was no longer able to get up.
He looked so unlike a living being that we concluded, on entering and seeing him lying there with his eyes closed, that he was dead. The locksmith went up to the bed, put his hand under the bedclothes and touched his feet; they were cold. But Kowalski called out loudly and emphatically as I had never heard him before:
'I am alive! I am glad that you have come, for I should like to speak to you of death.'
The haste and anxiety with which these words were uttered bore out our premonition that we had only just come in time; we looked at each other; Kowalski caught this look and understood it.
'I know,' he said, 'that I shall die soon, it would be vain to hide from myself what I can see quite clearly. That is why I want to speak to you. I was afraid no one would come… I was afraid no one would hear what I have got to say and that he whom you call the Merciful God would take away my power of speech… I thank you for your thought. May you not be lonely either when your hour of death calls you from an unhappy life.'
Kowalski stopped; only his brow, which was alternately contracted and smoothed, showed that the dying man was trying with his last remnant of strength to collect his thoughts and to retain the last spark of life.
It was early morning, and the sun threw two great sheaves of golden rays through the window on to the wall where the bed stood. From the wide expanse of fields and the archipelago of islands in the river, redolent with luxurious vegetation, life and the echoes of life and movement emanated like a melodious song, a great hymn of thanksgiving in the bright sunshine; it penetrated to the bed of the dying man and formed an indescribable contrast to what was passing inside the yurta.
This brightness, this noise as of a great song of life, was like an irony, like scorn levelled at the deathbed of this living corpse….