He didn’t notice how Zahar and Sivtsev ate their butter.
Ali didn’t appear any more, but a worker that Artiom knew as well brought a pile of washed pants and shirts and jackets and an old padded vest and, though it was in holes, an overcoat.
“It’s nobody’s,” said the worker. “You can give me yours — the women will wash yours and you can get them tomorrow.”
Zahar seemed to have second thoughts — should he ask from whose back these were taken off — not from a dead man’s?
“Who else, Zahar?” Artiom lightly slapped him on the shoulder. “Of course it’s from dead men. This is an infirmary — here, they heal you if they can, but they bury you if they can’t.”
Artiom didn’t care — from the earliest morning, he was cold, and all this was dry, soaped up with female hands, rinsed and wrung out.
He
