“Why water in the grave?” she asked, with a sort of curiosity, but speaking even more harshly and abruptly than before.
I suddenly began to feel provoked.
“Why, there must have been water at the bottom a foot deep. You can’t dig a dry grave in Volkovo Cemetery.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why, the place is waterlogged. It’s a regular marsh. So they bury them in water. I’ve seen it myself … many times.”
(I had never seen it once, indeed I had never been in Volkovo, and had only heard stories of it.)
“Do you mean to say, you don’t mind how you die?”
“But why should I die?” she answered, as though defending herself.
“Why, some day you will die, and you will die just the same as that dead woman. She was … a girl like you. She died of consumption.”
“A wench would have died in hospital …” (She knows all about it already: she said “wench,” not “girl.”)
“She was in debt to her madam,” I retorted, more and more provoked by the discussion; “and went on earning money for her up to the end, though she was in consumption. Some sledge-drivers standing by were talking about her to some soldiers and telling them so. No doubt they knew her. They were laughing. They were going to meet in a pothouse to drink to her memory.”
A great deal of this was my invention. Silence followed, profound silence. She did not stir.
“And is it better to die in a hospital?”