"No," answered the doctor, smiling, "put the shroud on and make him
ready for the morgue."
"But I have never dressed a corpse in my life and would not know how to
go about it," I protested. So the doctor kindly volunteered to teach me.
First he closed the dead man's eyes; then we put on the shroud, which
looked like a night-shirt with frills at the sleeves, and attached to it
a conical fool's cap to cover his head; then his hands and feet were
tied separately.
When we had done, we laid the body on an empty bed in the smaller
hospital, very much to the dismay and terror of the three consumptives
who slept there. But they kicked up such a row that they were allowed to
sleep in our section.
The next morning when I went on an errand into the next room I stopped
to gaze on the body of Fritz. The change that had taken place was
startling. During the few months that Fritz had passed in the hospital,
although disciplined and silent like most old convicts, he always wore a
peculiarly shifty, sneering expression on his reddish face. Now it was
wax white, the eyelids had opened, and the pale blue eyes were staring
at me with a peaceful, angelic expression. For an instant I gasped at
the thought that he might have come back to life, and I called out:
"Fritz! Fritz!" but no answer came, and only the gentle, inscrutable
smile persisted. I touched his cheek. It was cold and hard. But I could
not explain the almost miraculous change in the expression of the face.
Suddenly it dawned upon me that death had released the unclean spirit,
and left the body to go back to mother earth as clean as it had been
conceived.
Soon four convicts came into the room; one, a gangster, with a broken
nose, and beady, black eyes, asked me: "Where is the stiff?" As in
prison language "stiff" is also the name used for newspapers, I looked
at him foolishly and answered that I had none. He added in explanation:
"I mean the guy that croaked last night."
Neither the keeper nor the convicts relished the post-prandial
funeral.... Death had come so suddenly and informally, and had left his
victim in the enemy's camp, to be carried to the morgue, and later to be
buried on a convict's island without benefit of clergy.