His eyes first of all caught a glimpse of the little red body, which the midwife was bathing in a tub. Noticing him, Ignat stood up on tiptoes, and, folding his hands behind his back, walked up to him, stepping carefully and comically putting forth his lips.
The little one was whimpering and sprawling in the water, naked, impotent and pitiful.
"Look out there! Handle him more carefully! He hasn't got any bones yet," said Ignat to the midwife, softly.
She began to laugh, opening her toothless mouth, and cleverly throwing the child over from one hand to the other.
"You better go to your wife."
He obediently moved toward the bed and asked on his way:
"Well, how is it, Natalya?"
Then, on reaching her, he drew back the bed curtain, which had thrown a shadow over the bed.
"I'll not survive this," said she in a low, hoarse voice.
Ignat was silent, fixedly staring at his wife's face, sunk in the white pillow, over which her dark locks were spread out like dead snakes. Yellow, lifeless, with black circles around her large, wide-open eyes--her face was strange to him. And the glance of those terrible eyes, motionlessly fixed somewhere in the distance through the wall--that, too, was unfamiliar to Ignat. His heart, compressed by a painful foreboding, slackened its joyous throbbing.
"That's nothing. That's nothing. It's always like this," said he softly, bending over his wife to give her a kiss. But she moaned right into his face:
"I'll not survive this."
Her lips were gray and cold, and when he touched them with his own he understood that death was already within her.
"Oh, Lord!" he uttered, in an alarmed whisper, feeling that fright was choking his throat and suppressing his breath.
"Natasha? What will become of him? He must be nursed! What is the matter with you?"He almost began to cry at his wife. The midwife was bustling about him; shaking the crying child in the air. She spoke to him reassuringly, but he heard nothing--he could not turn his eyes away from the frightful face of his wife. Her lips were moving, and he heard words spoken in a low voice, but could not understand them. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he spoke in a dull and timid voice: "Just think of it! He cannot do without you; he's an infant! Gather strength! Drive this thought away from you! Drive it away."He talked, yet he understood he was speaking useless words. Tears welled up within him, and in his breast there came a feeling heavy as stone and cold as ice.
"Forgive me. Goodbye! Take care. Look out. Don't drink,"whispered Natalya, soundlessly.
The priest came, and, covering her face with something, and sighing, began to read gentle, beseeching words:
"0h God, Almighty Lord, who cureth every disease, cure also Thy servant Natalya, who has just given birth to a child; and restore her from the bed on which she now lies, for in the words of David, 'We indulge in lawlessness and are wicked in Thine eyes."'
The old man's voice was interrupted now and then, his thin face was stern and from his clothes came the odour of rock-rose.
"Guard the infant born of her, guard him from all possible temptation, from all possible cruelty, from all possible storms, from evil spirits, night and day."Ignat listened to the prayer, and wept silently. His big, hot tears fell on the bare hand of his wife. But the hand, evidently, did not feel that the tears were dropping upon it: it remained motionless, and the skin did not tremble from the fall of the tears. After the prayer Natalya became unconscious and a day later she died, without saying another word--she died just as quietly as she had lived. Having arranged a pompous funeral, Ignat christened his son, named him Foma, and unwillingly gave his boy into the family of the godfather, his old friend Mayakin, whose wife, too, had given birth to a child not long before. The death of his wife had sown many gray hairs in Ignat's dark beard, but in the stern glitter of his eyes appeared a new expression, gentle, clear and mild.
