Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [44]
Olympia notices then the other occupants of the room: three children, none of whom can be more than nine years old, sitting on the floor against a wall. All are barefoot and wear soiled dresses of the most distressing cloth, dark and colorless and long wrenched out of shape. It is apparent that the children have not bathed in quite some time. The stench in the small airless cubicle is considerable.
The walls of the room are unpapered and have turned dark and greasy from years of cooking. There is no wardrobe, nor any trunk in the room, merely a shallow pantry; and when its door is opened, Olympia is surprised to discover that it is not crammed full of the occupants’ belongings, but is nearly bare. Although a man’s jacket hangs upon a hook, there are no other signs of a man in residence. A corner of the room, where the floor meets the joining, is burned as though there was once a fire there. Above the encrusted stove are rude kitchen implements: a colander, a knife, a pot. A few garments hang from nails hammered into moldings. She notes that there is no sign of a toy or of a plaything for any of the children. In the recesses of the sill of the window, however, is a tall stack of folded clothing partially wrapped in brown paper. Beside that package is a silver filigree frame of a man and a woman on their wedding day. The bride has on a long white satin dress with a delicate mantilla that falls forward onto her brow. The man, in a heavy woolen suit, stands as though at attention. Olympia looks from the woman in the photograph to the woman on the bed. Can it be that they are the same person? And if so, how is it that this astonishing photograph and frame have escaped being sold for food, as nearly everything else in the room appears to have been?
Haskell loses no time in spooning laudanum into the laboring woman’s mouth. He uses his own utensil and takes care that no drops are spilled. The writhing on the bed lessens, and the unspeakable cries subside into low moans.
“Olympia, give me the satchel.”
She hands over the bag of boiled cloths and watches with curiosity and admiration as Haskell takes a sheet from the bag, makes the bed on one side, rolls the sheet taut, and, with a trick she cannot not quite catch the mechanics of, slips the sheet under the woman and quickly fastens the bedclothes on the other side. Covering the woman’s lower extremities with a white cloth, he and Mrs. Bonneau manage to remove Marie Rivard’s soiled clothing.
“Olympia, would you see if you can find the pump?” he asks quietly and evenly, as though he were merely asking her for a pencil in the midst of contemplating a correction to a half-written paragraph. “Get that pot there, and bring it back full of water. I need to wash the woman.”
Olympia removes the cooking pot from its hook over the stove and walks into the hallway in search of a pump. She knows it must be out in the back of the brick house, but she cannot at first determine how to get to the rear of the building without having to go round the entire block and into the alley. She does finally discover, however, a small door in the basement that leads up and out into a parched garden. The pump in its center is rusty and jerky in its motions; but after several barren tries, Olympia finally gets the water to flow. The stench from the nearby privy is nearly overpowering, and she thinks it cannot have been emptied in some time. Breathing shallowly, she fills the