It had begun to grow dark when my household returned, and grandmother was
so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I got supper, and while we
were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about the state of
things over at the Shimerdas'. Nobody could touch the body until the
coroner came. If any one did, something terrible would happen, apparently.
The dead man was frozen through, "just as stiff as a dressed turkey you
hang out to freeze," Jake said. The horses and oxen would not go into the
barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longer any smell of
blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there was
no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern was kept hanging over Mr.
Shimerda's head. Antonia and Ambrosch and the mother took turns going down
to pray beside him. The crazy boy went with them, because he did not feel
the cold. I believed he felt cold as much as any one else, but he liked to
be thought insensible to it. He was always coveting distinction, poor
Marek!
Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than he would have supposed
him capable of; but he was chiefly concerned about getting a priest, and
about his father's soul, which he believed was in a place of torment and
would remain there until his family and the priest had prayed a great deal
for him. "As I understand it," Jake concluded, "it will be a matter of
years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and right now he's in torment.
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