During an interval in the Melvinski trial in
the large
building of the Law Courts the members and public
prosecutor met in
Ivan Egorovich Shebek's private room, where the
conversation turned
on the celebrated Krasovski case. Fedor
Vasilievich warmly
maintained that it was not subject to their
jurisdiction, Ivan
Egorovich maintained the contrary, while Peter
Ivanovich, not
having entered into the discussion at the start,
took no part in it
but looked through the *Gazette* which had just
been handed in.
"Gentlemen," he said, "Ivan Ilych has died!"
"You don't say so!"
"Here, read it yourself," replied Peter
Ivanovich, handing
Fedor Vasilievich the paper still damp from the
press. Surrounded
by a black border were the words: "Praskovya
Fedorovna Golovina,
with profound sorrow, informs relatives and
friends of the demise
of her beloved husband Ivan Ilych Golovin, Member
of the Court of
Justice, which occurred on February the 4th of
this year 1882. the
funeral will take place on Friday at one o'clock
in the afternoon."
Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the
gentlemen present and
was liked by them all. He had been ill for some
weeks with an
illness said to be incurable. His post had been
kept open for him,
but there had been conjectures that in case of his
death Alexeev
might receive his appointment, and that either
Vinnikov or Shtabel
would succeed Alexeev. So on receiving the news
of Ivan Ilych's
death the first thought of each of the gentlemen
in that private
room was of the changes and promotions it might
occasion among
themselves or their acquaintances.
"I shall be sure to get Shtabel's place or
Vinnikov's,"
thought Fedor Vasilievich. "I was promised that
long ago, and the
promotion means an extra eight hundred rubles a
year for me besides
the allowance."
"Now I must apply for my brother-in-law's
transfer from
Kaluga," thought Peter Ivanovich. "My wife will
be very glad, and
then she won't be able to say that I never do
anything for her
relations."
"I thought he would never leave his bed
again," said Peter
Ivanovich aloud. "It's very sad."
"But what really was the matter with him?"
"The doctors couldn't say -- at least they
could, but each of
them said something different. When last I saw
him I though he was
getting better."
"And I haven't been to see him since the
holidays. I always
meant to go."
"Had he any property?"
"I think his wife had a little -- but
something quiet
trifling."
"We shall have to go to see her, but they
live so terribly far
away."
"Far away from you, you mean. Everything's
far away from your
place."
"You see, he never can forgive my living on
the other side of
the river," said Peter Ivanovich, smiling at
Shebek. Then, still
talking of the distances between different parts
of the city, they
returned to the Court.
Besides considerations as to the possible
transfers and
promotions likely to result from Ivan Ilych's
death, the mere fact
of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as
usual, in all who
heard of it the complacent feeling that, "it is he
who is dead and
not I."
Each one thought or felt, "Well, he's dead
but I'm alive!"
But the more intimate of Ivan Ilych's
acquaintances, his so-called
friends, could not help thinking also that they
would now have to
fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by
attending the
funeral service and paying a visit of condolence
to the widow.
Fedor Vasilievich and Peter Ivanovich had
been his nearest
acquaintances. Peter Ivanovich had studied law
with Ivan Ilych and
had considered himself to be under obligations to
him.
Having told his wife at dinner-time of Ivan
Ilych's death, and
of his conjecture that it might be possible to get
her brother
transferred to their circuit, Peter Ivanovich
sacrificed his usual
nap, put on his evening clothes and drove to Ivan
Ilych's house.
At the entrance stood a carriage and two
cabs. Leaning
against the wall in the hall downstairs near the
cloakstand was a
coffin-lid covered with cloth of gold, ornamented
with gold cord
and tassels, that had been polished up with metal
powder. Two
ladies in black were taking off their fur cloaks.
Peter Ivanovich
recognized one of them as Ivan Ilych's sister, but
the other was a
stranger to him. His colleague Schwartz was just
coming
downstairs, but on seeing Peter Ivanovich enter he
stopped and
winked at him, as if to say: "Ivan Ilych has made
a mess of things
-- not like you and me."
Schwartz's face with his Piccadilly whiskers,
and his slim
figure in evening dress, had as usual an air of
elegant solemnity
which contrasted with the playfulness of his
character and had a
special piquancy here, or so it seemed to Peter
Ivanovich.
Peter Ivanovich allowed the ladies to precede
him and slowly
followed them upstairs. Schwartz did not come
down but remained
where he was, and Peter Ivanovich understood that
he wanted to
arrange where they should play bridge that
evening. The ladies
went upstairs to the widow's room, and Schwartz
with seriously
compressed lips but a playful looking his eyes,
indicated by a
twist of his eyebrows the room to the right where
the body lay.
Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such
occasions, entered
feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All
he knew was that
at such times it is always safe to cross oneself.
But he was not
quite sure whether one should make obseisances
while doing so. He
therefore adopted a middle course. On entering
the room he began
crossing himself and made a slight movement
resembling a bow. At
the same time, as far as the motion of his head
and arm allowed, he
surveyed the room. Two young men -- apparently
nephews, one of
whom was a high-school pupil -- were leaving the
room, crossing
themselves as they did so. An old woman was
standing motionless,
and a lady with strangely arched eyebrows was
saying something to
her in a whisper. A vigorous, resolute Church
Reader, in a frock-
coat, was reading something in a loud voice with
an expression that
precluded any contradiction. The butler's
assistant, Gerasim,
stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich, was
strewing
something on the floor. Noticing this, Peter
Ivanovich was
immediately aware of a faint
odor of a
decomposing body.
The last time he had called on Ivan Ilych,
Peter Ivanovich had
seen Gerasim in the study. Ivan Ilych had been
particularly fond of
him and he was performing the duty of a sick
nurse.
Peter Ivanovich continued to make the sign of
the cross
slightly inclining his head in an intermediate
direction between
the coffin, the Reader, and the icons on the table
in a corner of
the room. Afterwards, when it seemed to him that
this movement of
his arm in crossing himself had gone on too long,
he stopped and
began to look at the corpse.
The dead man lay, as dead men always lie, in
a specially heavy
way, his rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions of
the coffin, with
the head forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow
waxen brow with
bald patches over his sunken temples was thrust up
in the way
peculiar to the dead, the protruding nose seeming
to press on the
upper lip. He was much changed and grown even
thinner since Peter
Ivanovich had last seen him, but, as is always the
case with the
dead, his face was handsomer and above all more
dignified than when
he was alive. the expression on the face said
that what was
necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished
rightly. Besides
this there was in that expression a reproach and a
warning to the
living. This warning seemed to Peter Ivanovich
out of place, or at
least not applicable to him. He felt a certain
discomfort and so
he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned
and went out of
the door -- too hurriedly and too regardless of
propriety, as he
himself was aware.
Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining
room with legs
spread wide apart and both hands toying with his
top-hat behind his
back. The mere sight of that playful,
well-groomed, and elegant
figure refreshed Peter Ivanovich. He felt that
Schwartz was above
all these happenings and would not surrender to
any depressing
influences. His very look said that this incident
of a church
service for Ivan Ilych could not be a sufficient
reason for
infringing the order of the session -- in other
words, that it
would certainly not prevent his unwrapping a new
pack of cards and
shuffling them that evening while a footman placed
fresh candles on
the table: in fact, that there was no reason for
supposing that
this incident would hinder their spending the
evening agreeably.
Indeed he said this in a whisper as Peter
Ivanovich passed him,
proposing that they should meet for a game at
Fedor Vasilievich's.
But apparently Peter Ivanovich was not destined to
play bridge that
evening. Praskovya Fedorovna (a short, fat woman
who despite all
efforts to the contrary had continued to broaden
steadily from her
shoulders downwards and who had the same
extraordinarily arched
eyebrows as the lady who had been standing by the
coffin), dressed
all in black, her head covered with lace, came out
of her own room
with some other ladies, conducted them to the room
where the dead
body lay, and said: "The service will begin
immediately. Please
go in."
Schwartz, making an indefinite bow, stood
still, evidently
neither accepting nor declining this invitation.
Praskovya
Fedorovna recognizing Peter Ivanovich, sighed,
went close up to
him, took his hand, and said: "I know you were a
true friend to
Ivan Ilych..." and looked at him awaiting some
suitable response.
And Peter Ivanovich knew that, just as it had been
the right thing
to cross himself in that room, so what he had to
do here was to
press her hand, sigh, and say, "Believe me..." So
he did all this
and as he did it felt that the desired result had
been achieved:
that both he and she were touched.
"Come with me. I want to speak to you before
it begins," said
the widow. "Give me your arm."
Peter Ivanovich gave her his arm and they
went to the inner
rooms, passing Schwartz who winked at Peter
Ivanovich
compassionately.
"That does for our bridge! Don's object if
we find another
player. Perhaps you can cut in when you do
escape," said his
playful look.
Peter Ivanovich sighed still more deeply and
despondently, and
Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm gratefully.
When they reached
the drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and
lighted by a dim
lamp, they sat down at the table -- she on a sofa
and Peter
Ivanovich on a low pouffe, the springs of which
yielded
spasmodically under his weight. Praskovya
Fedorovna had been on
the point of warning him to take another seat, but
felt that such
a warning was out of keeping with her present
condition and so
changed her mind. As he sat down on the pouffe
Peter Ivanovich
recalled how Ivan Ilych had arranged this room and
had consulted
him regarding this pink cretonne with green
leaves. The whole room
was full of furniture and knick-knacks, and on her
way to the sofa
the lace of the widow's black shawl caught on the
edge of the
table. Peter Ivanovich rose to detach it, and the
springs of the
pouffe, relieved of his weight, rose also and gave
him a push. The
widow began detaching her shawl herself, and Peter
Ivanovich again
sat down, suppressing the rebellious springs of
the pouffe under
him. But the widow had not quite freed herself
and Peter Ivanovich
got up again, and again the pouffe rebelled and
even creaked. When
this was all over she took out a clean cambric
handkerchief and
began to weep. The episode with the shawl and the
struggle with
the pouffe had cooled Peter Ivanovich's emotions
and he sat there
with a sullen look on his face. This awkward
situation was
interrupted by Sokolov, Ivan Ilych's butler, who
came to report
that the plot in the cemetery that Praskovya
Fedorovna had chosen
would cost tow hundred rubles. She stopped
weeping and, looking at
Peter Ivanovich with the air of a victim, remarked
in French that
it was very hard for her. Peter Ivanovich made a
silent gesture
signifying his full conviction that it must indeed
be so.
"Please smoke," she said in a magnanimous yet
crushed voice,
and turned to discuss with Sokolov the price of
the plot for the
grave.
Peter Ivanovich while lighting his cigarette
heard her
inquiring very circumstantially into the prices of
different plots
in the cemetery and finally decide which she would
take. when that
was done she gave instructions about engaging the
choir. Sokolov
then left the room.
"I look after everything myself," she told
Peter Ivanovich,
shifting the albums that lay on the table; and
noticing that the
table was endangered by his cigarette-ash, she
immediately passed
him an ash-tray, saying as she did so: "I
consider it an
affectation to say that my grief prevents my
attending to practical
affairs. On the contrary, if anything can -- I
won't say console
me, but -- distract me, it is seeing to everything
concerning him."
She again took out her handkerchief as if
preparing to cry, but
suddenly, as if mastering her feeling, she shook
herself and began
to speak calmly. "But there is something I want
to talk to you
about."
Peter Ivanovich bowed, keeping control of the
springs of the
pouffe, which immediately began quivering under
him.
"He suffered terribly the last few days."
"Did he?" said Peter Ivanovich.
"Oh, terribly! He screamed unceasingly, not
for minutes but
for hours. for the last three days he screamed
incessantly. It
was unendurable. I cannot understand how I bore
it; you could hear
him three rooms off. Oh, what I have suffered!"
"Is it possible that he was conscious all
that time?" asked
Peter Ivanovich.
"Yes," she whispered. "To the last moment.
He took leave of
us a quarter of an hour before he died, and asked
us to take
Volodya away."
The thought of the suffering of this man he
had known so
intimately, first as a merry little boy, then as a
schoolmate, and
later as a grown-up colleague, suddenly struck
Peter Ivanovich with
horror, despite an unpleasant consciousness of his
own and this
woman's dissimulation. He again saw that brow,
and that nose
pressing down on the lip, and felt afraid for
himself.
"Three days of frightful suffering and the
death! Why, that
might suddenly, at any time, happen to me," he
thought, and for a
moment felt terrified. But -- he did not himself
know how -- the
customary reflection at once occurred to him that
this had happened
to Ivan Ilych and not to him, and that it should
not and could not
happen to him, and that to think that it could
would be yielding to
depressing which he ought not to do, as Schwartz's
expression
plainly showed. After which reflection Peter
Ivanovich felt
reassured, and began to ask with interest about
the details of Ivan
Ilych's death, as though death was an accident
natural to Ivan
Ilych but certainly not to himself.
After many details of the really dreadful
physical sufferings
Ivan Ilych had endured (which details he learnt
only from the
effect those sufferings had produced on Praskovya
Fedorovna's
nerves) the widow apparently found it necessary to
get to business.
"Oh, Peter Ivanovich, how hard it is! How
terribly, terribly
hard!" and she again began to weep.
Peter Ivanovich sighed and waited for her to
finish blowing
her nose. When she had don so he said, "Believe
me..." and she
again began talking and brought out what was
evidently her chief
concern with him -- namely, to question him as to
how she could
obtain a grant of money from the government on the
occasion of her
husband's death. She made it appear that she was
asking Peter
Ivanovich's advice about her pension, but he soon
saw that she
already knew about that to the minutest detail,
more even than he
did himself. She knew how much could be got out of
the government
in consequence of her husband's death, but wanted
to find out
whether she could not possibly extract something
more. Peter
Ivanovich tried to think of some means of doing
so, but after
reflecting for a while and, out of propriety,
condemning the
government for its niggardliness, he said he
thought that nothing
more could be got. Then she sighed and evidently
began to devise
means of getting rid of her visitor. Noticing
this, he put out his
cigarette, rose, pressed her hand, and went out
into the anteroom.
In the dining-room where the clock stood that
Ivan Ilych had
liked so much and had bought at an antique shop,
Peter Ivanovich
met a priest and a few acquaintances who had come
to attend the
service, and he recognized Ivan Ilych's daughter,
a handsome young
woman. She was in black and her slim figure
appeared slimmer than
ever. She had a gloomy, determined, almost angry
expression, and
bowed to Peter Ivanovich as though he were in some
way to blame.
Behind her, with the same offended look, stood a
wealthy young man,
and examining magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovich
also knew and who
was her fiancé, as he had heard. He bowed
mournfully to them and
was about to pass into the death-chamber, when
from under the
stairs appeared the figure of Ivan Ilych's
schoolboy son, who was
extremely like his father. He seemed a little Ivan
Ilych, such as
Peter Ivanovich remembered when they studied law
together. His
tear-stained eyes had in them the look that is
seen in the eyes of
boys of thirteen or fourteen who are not
pure-minded. When he saw
Peter Ivanovich he scowled morosely and
shamefacedly. Peter
Ivanovich nodded to him and entered the
death-chamber. The service
began: candles, groans, incense, tears, and
sobs. Peter Ivanovich
stood looking gloomily down at his feet. He did
not look once at
the dead man, did not yield to any depressing
influence, and was
one of the first to leave the room. There was no
one in the
anteroom, but Gerasim darted out of the dead man's
room, rummaged
with his strong hands among the fur coats to find
Peter Ivanovich's
and helped him on with it.
"Well, friend Gerasim," said Peter Ivanovich,
so as to say
something. "It's a sad affair, isn't it?"
"It's God will. We shall all come to it some
day," said
Gerasim, displaying his teeth -- the even white
teeth of a healthy
peasant -- and, like a man in the thick of urgent
work, he briskly
opened the front door, called the coachman, helped
Peter Ivanovich
into the sledge, and sprang back to the porch as
if in readiness
for what he had to do next.
Peter Ivanovich found the fresh air
particularly pleasant
after the smell of incense, the dead body, and
carbolic acid.
"Where to sir?" asked the coachman.
"It's not too late even now....I'll call
round on Fedor
Vasilievich."
He accordingly drove there and found them
just finishing the
first rubber, so that it was quite convenient for
him to cut in.
---II--
Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and
most ordinary and
therefore most terrible.
He had been a member of the Court of Justice,
and died at the
age of forty-five. His father had been an
official who after
serving in various ministries and departments in
Petersburg had
made the sort of career which brings men to
positions from which by
reason of their long service they cannot be
dismissed, though they
are obviously unfit to hold any responsible
position, and for whom
therefore posts are specially created, which
though fictitious
carry salaries of from six to ten thousand rubles
that are not
fictitious, and in receipt of which they live on
to a great age.
Such was the Privy Councillor and superfluous
member of
various superfluous institutions, Ilya Epimovich
Golovin.
He had three sons, of whom Ivan Ilych was the
second. The
eldest son was following in his father's footsteps
only in another
department, and was already approaching that stage
in the service
at which a similar sinecure would be reached. the
third son was a
failure. He had ruined his prospects in a number
of positions and
was not serving in the railway department. His
father and
brothers, and still more their wives, not merely
disliked meeting
him, but avoided remembering his existence unless
compelled to do
so. His sister had married Baron Greff, a
Petersburg official of
her father's type. Ivan Ilych was *le phenix de
la famille* as
people said. He was neither as cold and formal as
his elder
brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a
happy mean between
them -- an intelligent polished, lively and
agreeable man. He had
studied with his younger brother at the School of
Law, but the
latter had failed to complete the course and was
expelled when he
was in the fifth class. Ivan Ilych finished the
course well. Even
when he was at the School of Law he was just what
he remained for
the rest of his life: a capable, cheerful,
good-natured, and
sociable man, though strict in the fulfillment of
what he
considered to be his duty: and he considered his
duty to be what
was so considered by those in authority. Neither
as a boy nor as
a man was he a toady, but from early youth was by
nature attracted
to people of high station as a fly is drawn to the
light,
assimilating their ways and views of life and
establishing friendly
relations with them. All the enthusiasms of
childhood and youth
passed without leaving much trace on him; he
succumbed to
sensuality, to vanity, and latterly among the
highest classes to
liberalism, but always within limits which his
instinct unfailingly
indicated to him as correct.
At school he had done things which had
formerly seemed to him
very horrid and made him feel disgusted with
himself when he did
them; but when later on he saw that such actions
were done by
people of good position and that they did not
regard them as wrong,
he was able not exactly to regard them as right,
but to forget
about them entirely or not be at all troubled at
remembering them.
Having graduated from the School of Law and
qualified for the
tenth rank of the civil service, and having
received money from his
father for his equipment, Ivan Ilych ordered
himself clothes at
Scharmer's, the fashionable tailor, hung a
medallion inscribed
*respice finem* on his watch-chain, took leave of
his professor and
the prince who was patron of the school, had a
farewell dinner with
his comrades at Donon's first-class restaurant,
and with his new
and fashionable portmanteau, linen, clothes,
shaving and other
toilet appliances, and a travelling rug, all
purchased at the best
shops, he set off for one of the provinces where
through his
father's influence, he had been attached to the
governor as an
official for special service.
In the province Ivan Ilych soon arranged as
easy and agreeable
a position for himself as he had had at the School
of Law. He
performed his official task, made his career, and
at the same time
amused himself pleasantly and decorously.
Occasionally he paid
official visits to country districts where he
behaved with dignity
both to his superiors and inferiors, and performed
the duties
entrusted to him, which related chiefly to the
sectarians, with an
exactness and incorruptible honesty of which he
could not but feel
proud.
In official matters, despite his youth and
taste for frivolous
gaiety, he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious,
and even severe;
but in society he was often amusing and witty, and
always good-
natured, correct in his manner, and *bon enfant*,
as the governor
and his wife -- with whom he was like one of the
family -- used to
say of him.
In the province he had an affair with a lady
who made advances
to the elegant young lawyer, and there was also a
milliner; and
there were carousals with aides-de-camp who
visited the district,
and after-supper visits to a certain outlying
street of doubtful
reputation; and there was too some obsequiousness
to his chief and
even to his chief's wife, but all this was done
with such a tone of
good breeding that no hard names could be applied
to it. It all
came under the heading of the French saying: *"Il
faut que
jeunesse se passe."* It was all done with clean
hands, in clean
linen, with French phrases, and above all among
people of the best
society and consequently with the approval of
people of rank.
So Ivan Ilych served for five years and then
came a change in
his official life. The new and reformed judicial
institutions were
introduced, and new men were needed. Ivan Ilych
became such a new
man. He was offered the post of examining
magistrate, and he
accepted it though the post was in another
province and obliged him
to give up the connexions he had formed and to
make new ones. His
friends met to give him a send-off; they had a
group photograph
taken and presented him with a silver
cigarette-case, and he set
off to his new post.
As examining magistrate Ivan Ilych was just
as *comme il faut*
and decorous a man, inspiring general respect and
capable of
separating his official duties from his private
life, as he had
been when acting as an official on special
service. His duties now
as examining magistrate were fare more interesting
and attractive
than before. In his former position it had been
pleasant to wear
an undress uniform made by Scharmer, and to pass
through the crowd
of petitioners and officials who were timorously
awaiting an
audience with the governor, and who envied him as
with free and
easy gait he went straight into his chief's
private room to have a
cup of tea and a cigarette with him. But not many
people had then
been directly dependent on him -- only police
officials and the
sectarians when he went on special missions -- and
he liked to
treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if he
were letting them
feel that he who had the power to crush them was
treating them in
this simple, friendly way. There were then but
few such people.
But now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych
felt that everyone
without exception, even the most important and
self-satisfied, was
in his power, and that he need only write a few
words on a sheet of
paper with a certain heading, and this or that
important, self-
satisfied person would be brought before him in
the role of an
accused person or a witness, and if he did not
choose to allow him
to sit down, would have to stand before him and
answer his
questions. Ivan Ilych never abused his power; he
tried on the
contrary to soften its expression, but the
consciousness of it and
the possibility of softening its effect, supplied
the chief
interest and attraction of his office. In his
work itself,
especially in his examinations, he very soon
acquired a method of
eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the
legal aspect of
the case, and reducing even the most complicated
case to a form in
which it would be presented on paper only in its
externals,
completely excluding his personal opinion of the
matter, while
above all observing every prescribed formality.
The work was new
and Ivan Ilych was one of the first men to apply
the new Code of
1864.
On taking up the post of examining magistrate
in a new town,
he made new acquaintances and connexions, placed
himself on a new
footing and assumed a somewhat different tone. He
took up an
attitude of rather dignified aloofness towards the
provincial
authorities, but picked out the best circle of
legal gentlemen and
wealthy gentry living in the town and assumed a
tone of slight
dissatisfaction with the government, of moderate
liberalism, and of
enlightened citizenship. At the same time,
without at all altering
the elegance of his toilet, he ceased shaving his
chin and allowed
his beard to grow as it pleased.
Ivan Ilych settled down very pleasantly in
this new town. The
society there, which inclined towards opposition
to the governor
was friendly, his salary was larger, and he began
to play *vint* [a
form of bridge], which he found added not a little
to the pleasure
of life, for he had a capacity for cards, played
good-humouredly,
and calculated rapidly and astutely, so that he
usually won.
After living there for two years he met his
future wife,
Praskovya Fedorovna Mikhel, who was the most
attractive, clever,
and brilliant girl of the set in which he moved,
and among other
amusements and relaxations from his labours as
examining
magistrate, Ivan Ilych established light and
playful relations with
her.
While he had been an official on special
service he had been
accustomed to dance, but now as an examining
magistrate it was
exceptional for him to do so. If he danced now,
he did it as if to
show that though he served under the reformed
order of things, and
had reached the fifth official rank, yet when it
came to dancing he
could do it better than most people. So at the
end of an evening
he sometimes danced with Praskovya Fedorovna, and
it was chiefly
during these dances that he captivated her. She
fell in love with
him. Ivan Ilych had at first no definite
intention of marrying,
but when the girl fell in love with him he said to
himself:
"Really, why shouldn't I marry?"
Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family,
was not bad
looking, and had some little property. Ivan Ilych
might have
aspired to a more brilliant match, but even this
was good. He had
his salary, and she, he hoped, would have an equal
income. She was
well connected, and was a sweet, pretty, and
thoroughly correct
young woman. to say that Ivan Ilych married
because he fell in
love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that she
sympathized with
his views of life would be as incorrect as to say
that he married
because his social circle approved of the match.
He was swayed by
both these considerations: the marriage gave him
personal
satisfaction, and at the same time it was
considered the right
thing by the most highly placed of his associates.
So Ivan Ilych got married.
The preparations for marriage and the
beginning of married
life, with its conjugal caresses, the new
furniture, new crockery,
and new linen, were very pleasant until his wife
became pregnant --
so that Ivan Ilych had begun to think that
marriage would not
impair the easy, agreeable, gay and always
decorous character of
his life, approved of by society and regarded by
himself as
natural, but would even improve it. But from the
first months of
his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant,
depressing, and
unseemly, and from which there was no way of
escape, unexpectedly
showed itself.
His wife, without any reason -- *de gaiete de
coeur* as Ivan
Ilych expressed it to himself -- began to disturb
the pleasure and
propriety of their life. She began to be jealous
without any
cause, expected him to devote his whole attention
to her, found
fault with everything, and made coarse and
ill-mannered scenes.
At first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the
unpleasantness of
this state of affairs by the same easy and
decorous relation to
life that had served him heretofore: he tried to
ignore his wife's
disagreeable moods, continued to live in his usual
easy and
pleasant way, invited friends to his house for a
game of cards, and
also tried going out to his club or spending his
evenings with
friends. But one day his wife began upbraiding
him so vigorously,
using such coarse words, and continued to abuse
him every time he
did not fulfil her demands, so resolutely and with
such evident
determination not to give way till he submitted --
that is, till he
stayed at home and was bored just as she was --
that he became
alarmed. He now realized that matrimony -- at any
rate with
Praskovya Fedorovna -- was not always conducive to
the pleasures
and amenities of life, but on the contrary often
infringed both
comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore
entrench himself
against such infringement. And Ivan Ilych began
to seek for means
of doing so. His official duties were the one
thing that imposed
upon Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his
official work and the
duties attached to it he began struggling with his
wife to secure
his own independence.
With the birth of their child, the attempts
to feed it and the
various failures in doing so, and with the real
and imaginary
illnesses of mother and child, in which Ivan
Ilych's sympathy was
demanded but about which he understood nothing,
the need of
securing for himself an existence outside his
family life became
still more imperative.
As his wife grew more irritable and exacting
and Ivan Ilych
transferred the center of gravity of his life more
and more to his
official work, so did he grow to like his work
better and became
more ambitious than before.
Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan
Ilych had
realized that marriage, though it may add some
comforts to life, is
in fact a very intricate and difficult affair
towards which in
order to perform one's duty, that is, to lead a
decorous life
approved of by society, one must adopt a definite
attitude just as
towards one's official duties.
And Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude
towards married life.
He only required of it those conveniences --
dinner at home,
housewife, and bed -- which it could give him, and
above all that
propriety of external forms required by public
opinion. For the
rest he looked for lighthearted pleasure and
propriety, and was
very thankful when he found them, but if he met
with antagonism and
querulousness he at once retired into his separate
fenced-off world
of official duties, where he found satisfaction.
Ivan Ilych was esteemed a good official, and
after three years
was made Assistant Public Prosecutor. His new
duties, their
importance, the possibility of indicting and
imprisoning anyone he
chose, the publicity his speeches received, and
the success he had
in all these things, made his work still more
attractive.
More children came. His wife became more and
more querulous
and ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilych had
adopted towards
his home life rendered him almost impervious to
her grumbling.
After seven years' service in that town he
was transferred to
another province as Public Prosecutor. They
moved, but were short
of money and his wife did not like the place they
moved to. Though
the salary was higher the cost of living was
greater, besides which
two of their children died and family life became
still more
unpleasant for him.
Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for
every inconvenience
they encountered in their new home. Most of the
conversations
between husband and wife, especially as to the
children's
education, led to topics which recalled former
disputes, and these
disputes were apt to flare up again at any
moment. There remained
only those rare periods of amorousness which still
came to them at
times but did not last long. These were islets at
which they
anchored for a while and then again set out upon
that ocean of
veiled hostility which showed itself in their
aloofness from one
another. This aloofness might have grieved Ivan
Ilych had he
considered that it ought not to exist, but he now
regarded the
position as normal, and even made it the goal at
which he aimed in
family life. His aim was to free himself more and
more from those
unpleasantness and to give them a semblance of
harmlessness and
propriety. He attained this by spending less and
less time with
his family, and when obliged to be at home he
tried to safeguard
his position by the presence of outsiders. The
chief thing however
was that he had his official duties. The whole
interest of his
life now centered in the official world and that
interest absorbed
him. The consciousness of his power, being able
to ruin anybody he
wished to ruin, the importance, even the external
dignity of his
entry into court, or meetings with his
subordinates, his success
with superiors and inferiors, and above all his
masterly handling
of cases, of which he was conscious -- all this
gave him pleasure
and filled his life, together with chats with his
colleagues,
dinners, and bridge. So that on the whole Ivan
Ilych's life
continued to flow as he considered it should do --
pleasantly and
properly.
So things continued for another seven years.
His eldest
daughter was already sixteen, another child had
died, and only one
son was left, a schoolboy and a subject of
dissension. Ivan Ilych
wanted to put him in the School of Law, but to
spite him Praskovya
Fedorovna entered him at the High School. The
daughter had been
educated at home and had turned out well: the boy
did not learn
badly either.
--- III
---
So Ivan Ilych lived for seventeen years after
his marriage.
He was already a Public Prosecutor of long
standing, and had
declined several proposed transfers while awaiting
a more desirable
post, when an unanticipated and unpleasant
occurrence quite upset
the peaceful course of his life. He was expecting
to be offered
the post of presiding judge in a University town,
but Happe somehow
came to the front and obtained the appointment
instead. Ivan Ilych
became irritable, reproached Happe, and quarrelled
both him and
with his immediate superiors -- who became colder
to him and again
passed him over when other appointments were made.
This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan
Ilych's life. It
was then that it became evident on the one hand
that his salary was
insufficient for them to live on, and on the other
that he had been
forgotten, and not only this, but that what was
for him the
greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to
others a quite
ordinary occurrence. Even his father did not
consider it his duty
to help him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by
everyone, and
that they regarded his position with a salary of
3,500 rubles as
quite normal and even fortunate. He alone knew
that with the
consciousness of the injustices done him, with his
wife's incessant
nagging, and with the debts he had contracted by
living beyond his
means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer he
obtained leave of
absence and went with his wife to live in the
country at her
brother's place.
In the country, without his work, he
experienced *ennui* for
the first time in his life, and not only *ennui*
but intolerable
depression, and he decided that it was impossible
to go on living
like that, and that it was necessary to take
energetic measures.
Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and
down the
veranda, he decided to go to Petersburg and bestir
himself, in
order to punish those who had failed to appreciate
him and to get
transferred to another ministry.
Next day, despite many protests from his wife
and her brother,
he started for Petersburg with the sole object of
obtaining a post
with a salary of five thousand rubles a year. He
was no longer
bent on any particular department, or tendency, or
kind of
activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to
another post
with a salary of five thousand rubles, either in
the
administration, in the banks, with the railways in
one of the
Empress Marya's Institutions, or even in the
customs -- but it had
to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles
and be in a
ministry other than that in which they had failed
to appreciate
him.
And this quest of Ivan Ilych's was crowned
with remarkable and
unexpected success. At Kursk an acquaintance of
his, F. I. Ilyin,
got into the first-class carriage, sat down beside
Ivan Ilych, and
told him of a telegram just received by the
governor of Kursk
announcing that a change was about to take place
in the ministry:
Peter Ivanovich was to be superseded by Ivan
Semonovich.
The proposed change, apart from its
significance for Russia,
had a special significance for Ivan Ilych, because
by bringing
forward a new man, Peter Petrovich, and
consequently his friend
Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly favourable for
Ivan Ilych, since
Sachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of
his.
In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on
reaching Petersburg
Ivan Ilych found Zachar Ivanovich and received a
definite promise
of an appointment in his former Department of
Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar
in Miller's
place. I shall receive appointment on
presentation of report."
Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan
Ilych had
unexpectedly obtained an appointment in his former
ministry which
placed him two states above his former colleagues
besides giving
him five thousand rubles salary and three thousand
five hundred
rubles for expenses connected with his removal.
All his ill humour
towards his former enemies and the whole
department vanished, and
Ivan Ilych was completely happy.
He returned to the country more cheerful and
contented than he
had been for a long time. Praskovya Fedorovna
also cheered up and
a truce was arranged between them. Ivan Ilych
told of how he had
been feted by everybody in Petersburg, how all
those who had been
his enemies were put to shame and now fawned on
him, how envious
they were of his appointment, and how much
everybody in Petersburg
had liked him.
Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and
appeared to
believe it. She did not contradict anything, but
only made plans
for their life in the town to which they were
going. Ivan Ilych
saw with delight that these plans were his plans,
that he and his
wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life
was regaining its
due and natural character of pleasant
lightheartedness and decorum.
Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time
only, for he had to
take up his new duties on the 10th of September.
Moreover, he
needed time to settle into the new place, to move
all his
belongings from the province, and to buy and order
many additional
things: in a word, to make such arrangements as
he had resolved
on, which were almost exactly what Praskovya
Fedorovna too had
decided on.
Now that everything had happened so
fortunately, and that he
and his wife were at one in their aims and
moreover saw so little
of one another, they got on together better than
they had done
since the first years of marriage. Ivan Ilych had
thought of
taking his family away with him at once, but the
insistence of his
wife's brother and her sister-in-law, who had
suddenly become
particularly amiable and friendly to him and his
family, induced
him to depart alone.
So he departed, and the cheerful state of
mind induced by his
success and by the harmony between his wife and
himself, the one
intensifying the other, did not leave him. He
found a delightful
house, just the thing both he and his wife had
dreamt of.
Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style,
a convenient and
dignified study, rooms for his wife and daughter,
a study for his
son -- it might have been specially built for
them. Ivan Ilych
himself superintended the arrangements, chose the
wallpapers,
supplemented the furniture (preferably with
antiques which he
considered particularly *comme il faut*), and
supervised the
upholstering. Everything progressed and
progressed and approached
the ideal he had set himself: even when things
were only half
completed they exceeded his expectations. He saw
what a refined
and elegant character, free from vulgarity, it
would all have when
it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to
himself how the
reception room would look. Looking at the yet
unfinished drawing
room he could see the fireplace, the screen, the
what-not, the
little chairs dotted here and there, the dishes
and plates on the
walls, and the bronzes, as they would be when
everything was in
place. He was pleased by the thought of how his
wife and daughter,
who shared his taste in this matter, would be
impressed by it. They
were certainly not expecting as much. He had been
particularly
successful in finding, and buying cheaply,
antiques which gave a
particularly aristocratic character to the whole
place. But in his
letters he intentionally understated everything in
order to be able
to surprise them. All this so absorbed him that
his new duties --
though he liked his official work -- interested
him less than he
had expected. Sometimes he even had moments of
absent-mindedness
during the court sessions and would consider
whether he should have
straight or curved cornices for his curtains. He
was so interested
in it all that he often did things himself,
rearranging the
furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when
mounting a step-
ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not
understand, how he
wanted the hangings draped, he mad a false step
and slipped, but
being a strong and agile man he clung on and only
knocked his side
against the knob of the window frame. The bruised
place was
painful but the pain soon passed, and he felt
particularly bright
and well just then. He wrote: "I feel fifteen
years younger."
He thought he would have everything ready by
September, but it
dragged on till mid-October. But the result was
charming not only
in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.
In reality it was just what is usually seen
in the houses of
people of moderate means who want to appear rich,
and therefore
succeed only in resembling others like
themselves: there are
damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and
polished bronzes --
all the things people of a certain class have in
order to resemble
other people of that class. His house was so like
the others that
it would never have been noticed, but to him it
all seemed to be
quite exceptional. He was very happy when he met
his family at the
station and brought them to the newly furnished
house all lit up,
where a footman in a white tie opened the door
into the hall
decorated with plants, and when they went on into
the drawing-room
and the study uttering exclamations of delight.
He conducted them
everywhere, drank in their praises eagerly, and
beamed with
pleasure. At tea that evening, when Praskovya
Fedorovna among
others things asked him about his fall, he
laughed, and showed them
how he had gone flying and had frightened the
upholsterer.
"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete.
Another man might
have been killed, but I merely knocked myself,
just here; it hurts
when it's touched, but it's passing off already --
it's only a
bruise."
So they began living in their new home -- in
which, as always
happens, when they got thoroughly settled in they
found they were
just one room short -- and with the increased
income, which as
always was just a little (some five hundred
rubles) too little, but
it was all very nice.
Things went particularly well at first,
before everything was
finally arranged and while something had still to
be done: this
thing bought, that thing ordered, another thing
moved, and
something else adjusted. Though there were some
disputes between
husband and wife, they were both so well satisfied
and had so much
to do that it all passed off without any serious
quarrels. When
nothing was left to arrange it became rather dull
and something
seemed to be lacking, but they were then making
acquaintances,
forming habits, and life was growing fuller.
Ivan Ilych spent his mornings at the law
court and came home
to diner, and at first he was generally in a good
humour, though he
occasionally became irritable just on account of
his house. (Every
spot on the tablecloth or the upholstery, and
every broken window-
blind string, irritated him. He had devoted so
much trouble to
arranging it all that every disturbance of it
distressed him.) But
on the whole his life ran its course as he
believed life should do:
easily, pleasantly, and decorously.
He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the
paper, and then
put on his undress uniform and went to the law
courts. there the
harness in which he worked had already been
stretched to fit him
and he donned it without a hitch: petitioners,
inquiries at the
chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings
public and
administrative. In all this the thing was to
exclude everything
fresh and vital, which always disturbs the regular
course of
official business, and to admit only official
relations with
people, and then only on official grounds. A man
would come, for
instance, wanting some information. Ivan Ilych, as
one in whose
sphere the matter did not lie, would have nothing
to do with him:
but if the man had some business with him in his
official capacity,
something that could be expressed on officially
stamped paper, he
would do everything, positively everything he
could within the
limits of such relations, and in doing so would
maintain the
semblance of friendly human relations, that is,
would observe the
courtesies of life. As soon as the official
relations ended, so
did everything else. Ivan Ilych possessed this
capacity to
separate his real life from the official side of
affairs and not
mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long
practice and
natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch
that sometimes, in
the manner of a virtuoso, he would even allow
himself to let the
human and official relations mingle. He let
himself do this just
because he felt that he could at any time he chose
resume the
strictly official attitude again and drop the
human relation. and
he did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly, and
even artistically.
In the intervals between the sessions he smoked,
drank tea, chatted
a little about politics, a little about general
topics, a little
about cards, but most of all about official
appointments. Tired,
but with the feelings of a virtuoso -- one of the
first violins who
has played his part in an orchestra with precision
-- he would
return home to find that his wife and daughter had
been out paying
calls, or had a visitor, and that his son had been
to school, had
done his homework with his tutor, and was surely
learning what is
taught at High Schools. Everything was as it
should be. After
dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan Ilych
sometimes read a book
that was being much discussed at the time, and in
the evening
settled down to work, that is, read official
papers, compared the
depositions of witnesses, and noted paragraphs of
the Code applying
to them. This was neither dull nor amusing. It
was dull when he
might have been playing bridge, but if no bridge
was available it
was at any rate better than doing nothing or
sitting with his wife.
Ivan Ilych's chief pleasure was giving little
dinners to which he
invited men and women of good social position, and
just as his
drawing-room resembled all other drawing-rooms so
did his enjoyable
little parties resemble all other such parties.
Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilych
enjoyed it and
everything went off well, except that it led to a
violent quarrel
with his wife about the cakes and sweets.
Praskovya Fedorovna had
made her own plans, but Ivan Ilych insisted on
getting everything
from an expensive confectioner and ordered too
many cakes, and the
quarrel occurred because some of those cakes were
left over and the
confectioner's bill came to forty-five rubles. It
was a great and
disagreeable quarrel. Praskovya Fedorovna called
him "a fool and
an imbecile," and he clutched at his head and made
angry allusions
to divorce.
But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The
best people were
there, and Ivan Ilych had danced with Princess
Trufonova, a sister
of the distinguished founder of the Society "Bear
My Burden".
The pleasures connected with his work were
pleasures of
ambition; his social pleasures were those of
vanity; but Ivan
Ilych's greatest pleasure was playing bridge. He
acknowledged that
whatever disagreeable incident happened in his
life, the pleasure
that beamed like a ray of light above everything
else was to sit
down to bridge with good players, not noisy
partners, and of course
to four-handed bridge (with five players it was
annoying to have to
stand out, though one pretended not to mind), to
play a clever and
serious game (when the cards allowed it) and then
to have supper
and drink a glass of wine. after a game of
bridge, especially if
he had won a little (to win a large sum was
unpleasant), Ivan Ilych
went to bed in a specially good humour.
So they lived. they formed a circle of
acquaintances among
the best people and were visited by people of
importance and by
young folk. In their views as to their
acquaintances, husband,
wife and daughter were entirely agreed, and
tacitly and unanimously
kept at arm's length and shook off the various
shabby friends and
relations who, with much show of affection, gushed
into the
drawing-room with its Japanese plates on the
walls. Soon these
shabby friends ceased to obtrude themselves and
only the best
people remained in the Golovins' set.
Young men made up to Lisa, and Petrishchev,
an examining
magistrate and Dmitri Ivanovich Petrishchev's son
and sole heir,
began to be so attentive to her that Ivan Ilych
had already spoken
to Praskovya Fedorovna about it, and considered
whether they should
not arrange a party for them, or get up some
private theatricals.
So they lived, and all went well, without
change, and life
flowed pleasantly.
--- IV ---
They were all in good health. It could not
be called ill
health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said that he had a
queer taste in
his mouth and felt some discomfort in his left
side.
But this discomfort increased and, though not
exactly painful,
grew into a sense of pressure in his side
accompanied by ill
humour. And his irritability became worse and
worse and began to
mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life that had
established
itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between
husband and wife
became more and more frequent, and soon the ease
and amenity
disappeared and even the decorum was barely
maintained. Scenes
again became frequent, and very few of those
islets remained on
which husband and wife could meet without an
explosion. Praskovya
Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her
husband's temper was
trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said
he had always
had a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all
her good nature
to put up with it for twenty years. It was true
that now the
quarrels were started by him. His bursts of
temper always came
just before dinner, often just as he began to eat
his soup.
Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was
chipped, or the food
was not right, or his son put his elbow on the
table, or his
daughter's hair was not done as he liked it, and
for all this he
blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. At first she retorted
and said
disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he
fell into such a
rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized
it was due to
some physical derangement brought on by taking
food, and so she
restrained herself and did not answer, but only
hurried to get the
dinner over. She regarded this self-restraint as
highly
praiseworthy. Having come to the conclusion that
her husband had
a dreadful temper and made her life miserable, she
began to feel
sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself
the more she
hated her husband. She began to wish he would
die; yet she did not
want him to die because then his salary would
cease. And this
irritated her against him still more. She
considered herself
dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death
could save her,
and though she concealed her exasperation, that
hidden exasperation
of hers increased his irritation also.
After one scene in which Ivan Ilych had been
particularly
unfair and after which he had said in explanation
that he certainly
was irritable but that it was due to his not being
well, she said
that he was ill it should be attended to, and
insisted on his going
to see a celebrated doctor.
He went. Everything took place as he had
expected and as it
always does. There was the usual waiting and the
important air
assumed by the doctor, with which he was so
familiar (resembling
that which he himself assumed in court), and the
sounding and
listening, and the questions which called for
answers that were
foregone conclusions and were evidently
unnecessary, and the look
of importance which implied that "if only you put
yourself in our
hands we will arrange everything -- we know
indubitably how it has
to be done, always in the same way for everybody
alike." It was
all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor
put on just the
same air towards him as he himself put on towards
an accused
person.
The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that
there was so-
and-so inside the patient, but if the
investigation of so-and-so
did not confirm this, then he must assume that and
that. If he
assumed that and that, then...and so on. To Ivan
Ilych only one
question was important: was his case serious or
not? But the
doctor ignored that inappropriate question. From
his point of view
it was not the one under consideration, the real
question was to
decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh,
or appendicitis.
It was not a question the doctor solved
brilliantly, as it seemed
to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the appendix, with the
reservation that
should an examination of the urine give fresh
indications the
matter would be reconsidered. All this was just
what Ivan Ilych
had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand
times in dealing
with men on trial. The doctor summed up just as
brilliantly,
looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even
gaily at the
accused. From the doctor's summing up Ivan Ilych
concluded that
things were bad, but that for the doctor, and
perhaps for everybody
else, it was a matter of indifference, though for
him it was bad.
And this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing
in him a great
feeling of pity for himself and of bitterness
towards the doctor's
indifference to a matter of such importance.
He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the
doctor's fee on
the table, and remarked with a sigh: "We sick
people probably
often put inappropriate questions. But tell me,
in general, is
this complaint dangerous, or not?..."
The doctor looked at him sternly over his
spectacles with one
eye, as if to say: "Prisoner, if you will not
keep to the
questions put to you, I shall be obliged to have
you removed from
the court."
"I have already told you what I consider
necessary and proper.
The analysis may show something more." And the
doctor bowed.
Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself
disconsolately in
his sledge, and drove home. All the way home he
was going over
what the doctor had said, trying to translate
those complicated,
obscure, scientific phrases into plain language
and find in them an
answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is
it very bad? Or
is there as yet nothing much wrong?" And it
seemed to him that the
meaning of what the doctor had said was that it
was very bad.
Everything in the streets seemed depressing. The
cabmen, the
houses, the passers-by, and the shops, were
dismal. His ache, this
dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a moment,
seemed to have
acquired a new and more serious significance from
the doctor's
dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched it with a
new and
oppressive feeling.
He reached home and began to tell his wife
about it. She
listened, but in the middle of his account his
daughter came in
with her hat on, ready to go out with her mother.
She sat down
reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but
could not stand it
long, and her mother too did not hear him to the
end.
"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now
to take your
medicine regularly. Give me the prescription and
I'll send Gerasim
to the chemist's." And she went to get ready to
go out.
While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had
hardly taken time to
breathe, but he sighed deeply when she left it.
"Well," he thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad
after all."
He began taking his medicine and following
the doctor's
directions, which had been altered after the
examination of the
urine. but then it happened that there was a
contradiction between
the indications drawn from the examination of the
urine and the
symptoms that showed themselves. It turned out
that what was
happening differed from what the doctor had told
him, and that he
had either forgotten or blundered, or hidden
something from him.
He could not, however, be blamed for that, and
Ivan Ilych still
obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived
some comfort from
doing so.
From the time of his visit to the doctor,
Ivan Ilych's chief
occupation was the exact fulfillment of the
doctor's instructions
regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and
the observation
of his pain and his excretions. His chief interest
came to be
people's ailments and people's health. When
sickness, deaths, or
recoveries were mentioned in his presence,
especially when the
illness resembled his own, he listened with
agitation which he
tried to hide, asked questions, and applied what
he heard to his
own case.
The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych
made efforts to
force himself to think that he was better. And he
could do this so
long as nothing agitated him. But as soon as he
had any
unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of success
in his official
work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once
acutely sensible
of his disease. He had formerly borne such
mischances, hoping soon
to adjust what was wrong, to master it and attain
success, or make
a grand slam. But now every mischance upset him
and plunged him
into despair. He would say to himself: "there
now, just as I was
beginning to get better and the medicine had begun
to take effect,
comes this accursed misfortune, or
unpleasantness..." And he was
furious with the mishap, or with the people who
were causing the
unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that
this fury was
killing him but he could not restrain it. One
would have thought
that it should have been clear to him that this
exasperation with
circumstances and people aggravated his illness,
and that he ought
therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But
he drew the very
opposite conclusion: he said that he needed
peace, and he watched
for everything that might disturb it and became
irritable at the
slightest infringement of it. His condition was
rendered worse by
the fact that he read medical books and consulted
doctors. The
progress of his disease was so gradual that he
could deceive
himself when comparing one day with another -- the
difference was
so slight. But when he consulted the doctors it
seemed to him that
he was getting worse, and even very rapidly. Yet
despite this he
was continually consulting them.
That month he went to see another celebrity,
who told him
almost the same as the first had done but put his
questions rather
differently, and the interview with this celebrity
only increased
Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears. A friend of a
friend of his, a very
good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite
differently from the
others, and though he predicted recovery, his
questions and
suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and
increased his
doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in
yet another way,
and prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilych took
secretly for a week.
But after a week, not feeling any improvement and
having lost
confidence both in the former doctor's treatment
and in this one's,
he became still more despondent. One day a lady
acquaintance
mentioned a cure effected by a wonder-working
icon. Ivan Ilych
caught himself listening attentively and beginning
to believe that
it had occurred. This incident alarmed him. "Has
my mind really
weakened to such an extent?" he asked himself.
"Nonsense! It's
all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous fears
but having chosen
a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment.
That is what I will
do. Now it's all settled. I won't think about
it, but will follow
the treatment seriously till summer, and then we
shall see. From
now there must be no more of this wavering!" this
was easy to say
but impossible to carry out. The pain in his side
oppressed him
and seemed to grow worse and more incessant, while
the taste in his
mouth grew stranger and stranger. It seemed to
him that his breath
had a disgusting smell, and he was conscious of a
loss of appetite
and strength. There was no deceiving himself:
something terrible,
new, and more important than anything before in
his life, was
taking place within him of which he alone was
aware. Those about
him did not understand or would not understand it,
but thought
everything in the world was going on as usual.
That tormented Ivan
Ilych more than anything. He saw that his
household, especially
his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl
of visiting, did
not understand anything of it and were annoyed
that he was so
depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame
for it. Though
they tried to disguise it he saw that he was an
obstacle in their
path, and that his wife had adopted a definite
line in regard to
his illness and kept to it regardless of anything
he said or did.
Her attitude was this: "You know," she would say
to her friends,
"Ivan Ilych can't do as other people do, and keep
to the treatment
prescribed for him. One day he'll take his drops
and keep strictly
to his diet and go to bed in good time, but the
next day unless I
watch him he'll suddenly forget his medicine, eat
sturgeon -- which
is forbidden -- and sit up playing cards till one
o'clock in the
morning."
"Oh, come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would
ask in vexation.
"Only once at Peter Ivanovich's."
"And yesterday with shebek."
"Well, even if I hadn't stayed up, this pain
would have kept
me awake."
"Be that as it may you'll never get well like
that, but will
always make us wretched."
Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan
Ilych's illness, as she
expressed it both to others and to him, was that
it was his own
fault and was another of the annoyances he caused
her. Ivan ilych
felt that this opinion escaped her involuntarily
-- but that did
not make it easier for him.
At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or
thought he
noticed, a strange attitude towards himself. It
sometimes seemed
to him that people were watching him inquisitively
as a man whose
place might soon be vacant. Then again, his
friends would suddenly
begin to chaff him in a friendly way about his low
spirits, as if
the awful, horrible, and unheard-of thing that was
going on within
him, incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly
drawing him away,
was a very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz
in particular
irritated him by his jocularity, vivacity, and
*savoir-faire*,
which reminded him of what he himself had been ten
years ago.
Friends came to make up a set and they sat
down to cards.
They dealt, bending the new cards to soften them,
and he sorted the
diamonds in his hand and found he had seven. His
partner said "No
trumps" and supported him with two diamonds. What
more could be
wished for? It ought to be jolly and lively.
They would make a
grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious
of that gnawing
pain, that taste in his mouth, and it seemed
ridiculous that in
such circumstances he should be pleased to make a
grand slam.
He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich,
who rapped the
table with his strong hand and instead of
snatching up the tricks
pushed the cards courteously and indulgently
towards Ivan Ilych
that he might have the pleasure of gathering them
up without the
trouble of stretching out his hand for them.
"Does he think I am
too weak to stretch out my arm?" thought Ivan
Ilych, and forgetting
what he was doing he over-trumped his partner,
missing the grand
slam by three tricks. And what was most awful of
all was that he
saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about it
but did not himself
care. And it was dreadful to realize why he did
not care.
They all saw that he was suffering, and
said: "We can stop if
you are tired. Take a rest." Lie down? No, he
was not at all
tired, and he finished the rubber. All were
gloomy and silent.
Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this gloom
over them and could
not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and
Ivan Ilych was
left alone with the consciousness that his life
was poisoned and
was poisoning the lives of others, and that this
poison did not
weaken but penetrated more and more deeply into
his whole being.
With this consciousness, and with physical
pain besides the
terror, he must go to bed, often to lie awake the
greater part of
the night. Next morning he had to get up again,
dress, go to the
law courts, speak, and write; or if he did not go
out, spend at
home those twenty-four hours a day each of which
was a torture.
And he had to live thus all alone on the brink of
an abyss, with no
one who understood or pitied him.
--- V ---
So one month passed and then another. Just
before the New
Year his brother-in-law came to town and stayed at
their house.
Ivan Ilych was at the law courts and Praskovya
Fedorovna had gone
shopping. When Ivan Ilych came home and entered
his study he found
his brother-in-law there -- a healthy, florid man
-- unpacking his
portmanteau himself. He raised his head on
hearing Ivan Ilych's
footsteps and looked up at him for a moment
without a word. That
stare told Ivan Ilych everything. His
brother-in-law opened his
mouth to utter an exclamation of surprise but
checked himself, and
that action confirmed it all.
"I have changed, eh?"
"Yes, there is a change."
And after that, try as he would to get his
brother-in-law to
return to the subject of his looks, the latter
would say nothing
about it. Praskovya Fedorovna came home and her
brother went out
to her. Ivan Ilych locked to door and began to
examine himself in
the glass, first full face, then in profile. He
took up a portrait
of himself taken with his wife, and compared it
with what he saw in
the glass. The change in him was immense. Then
he bared his arms
to the elbow, looked at them, drew the sleeves
down again, sat down
on an ottoman, and grew blacker than night.
"No, no, this won't do!" he said to himself,
and jumped up,
went to the table, took up some law papers and
began to read them,
but could not continue. He unlocked the door and
went into the
reception-room. The door leading to the
drawing-room was shut. He
approached it on tiptoe and listened.
"No, you are exaggerating!" Praskovya
Fedorovna was saying.
"Exaggerating! Don't you see it? Why, he's
a dead man! Look
at his eyes -- there's no life in them. But what
is it that is
wrong with him?"
"No one knows. Nikolaevich [that was another
doctor] said
something, but I don't know what. And
Seshchetitsky [this was the
celebrated specialist] said quite the contrary..."
Ivan Ilych walked away, went to his own room,
lay down, and
began musing; "The kidney, a floating kidney."
He recalled all
the doctors had told him of how it detached itself
and swayed
about. And by an effort of imagination he tried
to catch that
kidney and arrest it and support it. So little
was needed for
this, it seemed to him. "No, I'll go to see Peter
Ivanovich
again." [That was the friend whose friend was a
doctor.] He rang,
ordered the carriage, and got ready to go.
"Where are you going, Jean?" asked his wife
with a specially
sad and exceptionally kind look.
This exceptionally kind look irritated him.
He looked
morosely at her.
"I must go to see Peter Ivanovich."
He went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together
they went to see
his friend, the doctor. He was in, and Ivan Ilych
had a long talk
with him.
Reviewing the anatomical and physiological
details of what in
the doctor's opinion was going on inside him, he
understood it all.
There was something, a small thing, in the
vermiform appendix.
It might all come right. Only stimulate the
energy of one organ
and check the activity of another, then absorption
would take place
and everything would come right. He got home
rather late for
dinner, ate his dinner, and conversed cheerfully,
but could not for
a long time bring himself to go back to work in
his room. At last,
however, he went to his study and did what was
necessary, but the
consciousness that he had put something aside --
an important,
intimate matter which he would revert to when his
work was done --
never left him. When he had finished his work he
remembered that
this intimate matter was the thought of his
vermiform appendix.
But he did not give himself up to it, and went to
the drawing-room
for tea. There were callers there, including the
examining
magistrate who was a desirable match for his
daughter, and they
were conversing, playing the piano, and singing.
Ivan Ilych, as
Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening
more cheerfully
than usual, but he never for a moment forgot that
he had postponed
the important matter of the appendix. At eleven
o'clock he said
goodnight and went to his bedroom. Since his
illness he had slept
alone in a small room next to his study. He
undressed and took up
a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell
into thought,
and in his imagination that desired improvement in
the vermiform
appendix occurred. There was the absorption and
evacuation and the
re-establishment of normal activity. "Yes, that's
it!" he said to
himself. "One need only assist nature, that's
all." He remembered
his medicine, rose, took it, and lay down on his
back watching for
the beneficent action of the medicine and for it
to lessen the
pain. "I need only take it regularly and avoid
all injurious
influences. I am already feeling better, much
better." He began
touching his side: it was not painful to the
touch. "There, I
really don't feel it. It's much better already."
He put out the
light and turned on his side ... "The appendix is
getting better,
absorption is occurring." Suddenly he felt the
old, familiar,
dull, gnawing pain, stubborn and serious. There
was the same
familiar loathsome taste in his mouth. His heart
sand and he felt
dazed. "My God! My God!" he muttered. "Again,
again! And it
will never cease." And suddenly the matter
presented itself in a
quite different aspect. "Vermiform appendix!
Kidney!" he said to
himself. "It's not a question of appendix or
kidney, but of life
and...death. Yes, life was there and now it is
going, going and I
cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn't
it obvious to
everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only
a question of
weeks, days...it may happen this moment. There
was light and now
there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going
there! Where?" A
chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he
felt only the
throbbing of his heart.
"When I am not, what will there be? There
will be nothing.
Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this
be dying? No,
I don't want to!" He jumped up and tried to light
the candle, felt
for it with trembling hands, dropped candle and
candlestick on the
floor, and fell back on his pillow.
"What's the use? It makes no difference," he
said to himself,
staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness.
"Death. Yes,
death. And none of them knows or wishes to know
it, and they have
no pity for me. Now they are playing." (He heard
through the door
the distant sound of a song
and its accompaniment.) "It's all the
same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I
first, and they
later, but it will be the same for them. And now
they are
merry...the beasts!"
Anger choked him and he was agonizingly,
unbearably miserable.
"It is impossible that all men have been doomed to
suffer this
awful horror!" He raised himself.
"Something must be wrong. I must calm myself
-- must think it
all over from the beginning." And he again began
thinking. "Yes,
the beginning of my illness: I knocked my side,
but I was still
quite well that day and the next. It hurt a
little, then rather
more. I saw the doctors, then followed
despondency and anguish,
more doctors, and I drew nearer to the abyss. My
strength grew
less and I kept coming nearer and nearer, and now
I have wasted
away and there is no light in my eyes. I think of
the appendix --
but this is death! I think of mending the
appendix, and all the
while here is death! Can it really be death?"
Again terror seized
him and he gasped for breath. He leant down and
began feeling for
the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand
beside the bed.
It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious
with it, pressed on
it still harder, and upset it. Breathless and in
despair he fell
on his back, expecting death to come immediately.
Meanwhile the visitors were leaving.
Praskovya Fedorovna was
seeing them off. She heard something fall and
came in.
"What has happened?"
"Nothing. I knocked it over accidentally."
She went out and returned with a candle. He
lay there panting
heavily, like a man who has run a thousand yards,
and stared
upwards at her with a fixed look.
"What is it, Jean?"
"No...o...thing. I upset it." ("Why speak
of it? She won't
understand," he thought.)
And in truth she did not understand. She
picked up the stand,
lit his candle, and hurried away to see another
visitor off. When
she came back he still lay on his back, looking
upwards.
"What is it? Do you feel worse?"
"Yes."
She shook her head and sat down.
"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask
Leshchetitsky to come
and see you here."
This meant calling in the famous specialist,
regardless of
expense. He smiled malignantly and said "No."
She remained a
little longer and then went up to him and kissed
his forehead.
While she was kissing him he hated her from
the bottom of his
soul and with difficulty refrained from pushing
her away.
"Good night. Please God you'll sleep."
"Yes."
--- VI ---
Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was
in continual
despair.
In the depth of his heart he knew he was
dying, but not only
was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply
did not and could
not grasp it.
The syllogism he had learnt from
Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius
is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is
mortal," had always
seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but
certainly not as
applied to himself. That Caius -- man in the
abstract -- was
mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not
Caius, not an
abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate
from all others.
He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa,
with Mitya and
Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse,
afterwards with
Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and
delights of childhood,
boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the
smell of that
striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of?
Had Caius kissed
his mother's hand like that, and did the silk of
her dress rustle
so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at school
when the pastry
was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could
Caius preside at
a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal,
and it was right
for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan
Ilych, with all my
thoughts and emotions, it's altogether a different
matter. It
cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too
terrible."
Such was his feeling.
"If I had to die like Caius I would have
known it was so. An
inner voice would have told me so, but there was
nothing of the
sort in me and I and all my friends felt that our
case was quite
different from that of Caius. and now here it
is!" he said to
himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! But
here it is. How is
this? How is one to understand it?"
He could not understand it, and tried to
drive this false,
incorrect, morbid thought away and to replace it
by other proper
and healthy thoughts. But that thought, and not
the thought only
but the reality itself, seemed to come and
confront him.
And to replace that thought he called up a
succession of
others, hoping to find in them some support. He
tried to get back
into the former current of thoughts that had once
screened the
thought of death from him. But strange to say,
all that had
formerly shut off, hidden, and destroyed his
consciousness of
death, no longer had that effect. Ivan Ilych now
spent most of his
time in attempting to re-establish that old
current. He would say
to himself: "I will take up my duties again --
after all I used to
live by them." And banishing all doubts he would
go to the law
courts, enter into conversation with his
colleagues, and sit
carelessly as was his wont, scanning the crowd
with a thoughtful
look and leaning both his emaciated arms on the
arms of his oak
chair; bending over as usual to a colleague and
drawing his papers
nearer he would interchange whispers with him, and
then suddenly
raising his eyes and sitting erect would pronounce
certain words
and open the proceedings. But suddenly in the
midst of those
proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of
the stage the
proceedings had reached, would begin its own
gnawing work. Ivan
Ilych would turn his attention to it and try to
drive the thought
of it away, but without success. *It* would come
and stand before
him and look at him, and he would be petrified and
the light would
die out of his eyes, and he would again begin
asking himself
whether *It* alone was true. And his colleagues
and subordinates
would see with surprise and distress that he, the
brilliant and
subtle judge, was becoming confused and making
mistakes. He would
shake himself, try to pull himself together,
manage somehow to
bring the sitting to a close, and return home with
the sorrowful
consciousness that his judicial labours could not
as formerly hide
from him what he wanted them to hide, and could
not deliver him
from *It*. And what was worst of all was that
*It* drew his
attention to itself not in order to make him take
some action but
only that he should look at *It*, look it straight
in the face:
look at it and without doing anything, suffer
inexpressibly.
And to save himself from this condition Ivan
Ilych looked for
consolations -- new screens -- and new screens
were found and for
a while seemed to save him, but then they
immediately fell to
pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It*
penetrated them and
nothing could veil *It*.
In these latter days he would go into the
drawing-room he had
arranged -- that drawing-room where he had fallen
and for the sake
of which (how bitterly ridiculous it seemed) he
had sacrificed his
life -- for he knew that his illness originated
with that knock.
He would enter and see that something had
scratched the polished
table. He would look for the cause of this and
find that it was
the bronze ornamentation of an album, that had got
bent. He would
take up the expensive album which he had lovingly
arranged, and
feel vexed with his daughter and her friends for
their untidiness -
- for the album was torn here and there and some
of the photographs
turned upside down. He would put it carefully in
order and bend
the ornamentation back into position. Then it
would occur to him
to place all those things in another corner of the
room, near the
plants. He would call the footman, but his
daughter or wife would
come to help him. They would not agree, and his
wife would
contradict him, and he would dispute and grow
angry. But that was
all right, for then he did not think about *It*.
*It* was
invisible.
But then, when he was moving something
himself, his wife would
say: "Let the servants do it. You will hurt
yourself again." And
suddenly *It* would flash through the screen and
he would see it.
It was just a flash, and he hoped it would
disappear, but he would
involuntarily pay attention to his side. "It sits
there as before,
gnawing just the same!" And he could no longer
forget *It*, but
could distinctly see it looking at him from behind
the flowers.
"What is it all for?"
"It really is so! I lost my life over that
curtain as I might
have done when storming a fort. Is that
possible? How terrible
and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but
it is."
He would go to his study, lie down, and again
be alone with
*It*: face to face with *It*. And nothing could
be done with *It*
except to look at it and shudder.
--- VII ---
How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about
step by step, unnoticed, but in the third month of
Ivan Ilych's
illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his
acquaintances, the
doctors, the servants, and above all he himself,
were aware that
the whole interest he had for other people was
whether he would
soon vacate his place, and at last release the
living from the
discomfort caused by his presence and be himself
released from his
sufferings.
He slept less and less. He was given opium
and hypodermic
injections of morphine, but this did not relieve
him. The dull
depression he experienced in a somnolent condition
at first gave
him a little relief, but only as something new,
afterwards it
became as distressing as the pain itself or even
more so.
Special foods were prepared for him by the
doctors' orders,
but all those foods became increasingly
distasteful and disgusting
to him.
For his excretions also special arrangements
had to be made,
and this was a torment to him every time -- a
torment from the
uncleanliness, the unseemliness, and the smell,
and from knowing
that another person had to take part in it.
But just through his most unpleasant matter,
Ivan Ilych
obtained comfort. Gerasim, the butler's young
assistant, always
came in to carry the things out. Gerasim was a
clean, fresh
peasant lad, grown stout on town food and always
cheerful and
bright. At first the sight of him, in his clean
Russian peasant
costume, engaged on that disgusting task
embarrassed Ivan Ilych.
Once when he got up from the commode to weak
to draw up his
trousers, he dropped into a soft armchair and
looked with horror at
his bare, enfeebled thighs with the muscles so
sharply marked on
them.
Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy
boots emitting a
pleasant smell of tar and fresh winter air, came
in wearing a clean
Hessian apron, the sleeves of his print shirt
tucked up over his
strong bare young arms; and refraining from
looking at his sick
master out of consideration for his feelings, and
restraining the
joy of life that beamed from his face, he went up
to the commode.
"Gerasim!" said Ivan Ilych in a weak voice.
"Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might
have committed
some blunder, and with a rapid movement turned his
fresh, kind,
simple young face which just showed the first
downy signs of a
beard.
"Yes, sir?"
"That must be very unpleasant for you. You
must forgive me.
I am helpless."
"Oh, why, sir," and Gerasim's eyes beamed and
he showed his
glistening white teeth, "what's a little trouble?
It's a case of
illness with you, sir."
And his deft strong hands did their
accustomed task, and he
went out of the room stepping lightly. five
minutes later he as
lightly returned.
Ivan Ilych was still sitting in the same
position in the
armchair.
"Gerasim," he said when the latter had
replaced the freshly-
washed utensil. "Please come here and help me."
Gerasim went up
to him. "Lift me up. It is hard for me to get
up, and I have sent
Dmitri away."
Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master
with his strong
arms deftly but gently, in the same way that he
stepped -- lifted
him, supported him with one hand, and with the
other drew up his
trousers and would have set him down again, but
Ivan Ilych asked to
be led to the sofa. Gerasim, without an effort
and without
apparent pressure, led him, almost lifting him, to
the sofa and
placed him on it.
"That you. How easily and well you do it
all!"
Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the
room. But Ivan
Ilych felt his presence such a comfort that he did
not want to let
him go.
"One thing more, please move up that chair.
No, the other one
-- under my feet. It is easier for me when my
feet are raised."
Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently
in place, and
raised Ivan Ilych's legs on it. It seemed to Ivan
Ilych that he
felt better while Gerasim was holding up his legs.
"It's better when my legs are higher," he
said. "Place that
cushion under them."
Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and
placed them, and
again Ivan Ilych felt better while Gerasim held
his legs. When he
set them down Ivan Ilych fancied he felt worse.
"Gerasim," he said. "Are you busy now?"
"Not at all, sir," said Gerasim, who had
learnt from the
townsfolk how to speak to gentlefolk.
"What have you still to do?"
"What have I to do? I've done everything
except chopping the
logs for tomorrow."
"Then hold my legs up a bit higher, can you?"
"Of course I can. Why not?" and Gerasim
raised his master's
legs higher and Ivan Ilych thought that in that
position he did not
feel any pain at all.
"And how about the logs?"
"Don't trouble about that, sir. There's
plenty of time."
Ivan Ilych told Gerasim to sit down and hold
his legs, and
began to talk to him. And strange to say it seemed
to him that he
felt better while Gerasim held his legs up.
After that Ivan Ilych would sometimes call
Gerasim and get him
to hold his legs on his shoulders, and he liked
talking to him.
Gerasim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and
with a good
nature that touched Ivan Ilych. Health, strength,
and vitality in
other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim's
strength and
vitality did not mortify but soothed him.
What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the
deception, the lie,
which for some reason they all accepted, that he
was not dying but
was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and
undergo a
treatment and then something very good would
result. He however
knew that do what they would nothing would come of
it, only still
more agonizing suffering and death. This
deception tortured him --
their not wishing to admit what they all knew and
what he knew, but
wanting to lie to him concerning his terrible
condition, and
wishing and forcing him to participate in that
lie. Those lies --
lies enacted over him on the eve of his death and
destined to
degrade this awful, solemn act to the level of
their visitings,
their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner -- were
a terrible agony
for Ivan Ilych. And strangely enough, many times
when they were
going through their antics over him he had been
within a
hairbreadth of calling out to them: "Stop lying!
You know and I
know that I am dying. Then at least stop lying
about it!" But he
had never had the spirit to do it. The awful,
terrible act of his
dying was, he could see, reduced by those about
him to the level of
a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous
incident (as if someone
entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant
odour) and this was
done by that very decorum which he had served all
his life long.
He saw that no one felt for him, because no one
even wished to
grasp his position. Only Gerasim recognized it
and pitied him.
And so Ivan Ilych felt at ease only with him. He
felt comforted
when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all
night long) and
refused to go to bed, saying: "Don't you worry,
Ivan Ilych. I'll
get sleep enough later on," or when he suddenly
became familiar and
exclaimed: "If you weren't sick it would be
another matter, but as
it is, why should I grudge a little trouble?"
Gerasim alone did
not lie; everything showed that he alone
understood the facts of
the case and did not consider it necessary to
disguise them, but
simply felt sorry for his emaciated and enfeebled
master. Once
when Ivan Ilych was sending him away he even said
straight out:
"We shall all of us die, so why should I grudge a
little trouble?"
-- expressing the fact that he did not think his
work burdensome,
because he was doing it for a dying man and hoped
someone would do
the same for him when his time came.
Apart from this lying, or because of it, what
most tormented
Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he wished
to be pitied.
At certain moments after prolonged suffering he
wished most of all
(though he would have been ashamed to confess it)
for someone to
pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to
be petted and
comforted. he knew he was an important
functionary, that he had a
beard turning grey, and that therefore what he
long for was
impossible, but still he longed for it. and in
Gerasim's attitude
towards him there was something akin to what he
wished for, and so
that attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilych wanted to
weep, wanted to
be petted and cried over, and then his colleague
Shebek would come,
and instead of weeping and being petted, Ivan
Ilych would assume a
serious, severe, and profound air, and by force of
habit would
express his opinion on a decision of the Court of
Cassation and
would stubbornly insist on that view. This
falsity around him and
within him did more than anything else to poison
his last days.
--- VIII ---
It was morning. He knew it was morning
because Gerasim had
gone, and Peter the footman had come and put out
the candles, drawn
back one of the curtains, and begun quietly to
tidy up. Whether it
was morning or evening, Friday or Sunday, made no
difference, it
was all just the same: the gnawing, unmitigated,
agonizing pain,
never ceasing for an instant, the consciousness of
life inexorably
waning but not yet extinguished, the approach of
that ever dreaded
and hateful Death which was the only reality, and
always the same
falsity. What were days, weeks, hours, in such a
case?
"Will you have some tea, sir?"
"He wants things to be regular, and wishes
the gentlefolk to
drink tea in the morning," thought ivan Ilych, and
only said "No."
"Wouldn't you like to move onto the sofa,
sir?"
"He wants to tidy up the room, and I'm in the
way. I am
uncleanliness and disorder," he thought, and said
only:
"No, leave me alone."
The man went on bustling about. Ivan Ilych
stretched out his
hand. Peter came up, ready to help.
"What is it, sir?"
"My watch."
Peter took the watch which was close at hand
and gave it to
his master.
"Half-past eight. Are they up?"
"No sir, except Vladimir Ivanovich" (the son)
"who has gone to
school. Praskovya Fedorovna ordered me to wake
her if you asked
for her. Shall I do so?"
"No, there's no need to." "Perhaps I's
better have some tea,"
he thought, and added aloud: "Yes, bring me some
tea."
Peter went to the door, but Ivan Ilych
dreaded being left
alone. "How can I keep him here? Oh yes, my
medicine." "Peter,
give me my medicine." "Why not? Perhaps it may
still do some
good." He took a spoonful and swallowed it. "No,
it won't help.
It's all tomfoolery, all deception," he decided as
soon as he
became aware of the familiar, sickly, hopeless
taste. "No, I can't
believe in it any longer. But the pain, why this
pain? If it
would only cease just for a moment!" And he
moaned. Peter turned
towards him. "It's all right. Go and fetch me
some tea."
Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilych
groaned not so much
with pain, terrible thought that was, as from
mental anguish.
Always and for ever the same, always these endless
days and nights.
If only it would come quicker! If only *what*
would come quicker?
Death, darkness?...No, no! anything rather than
death!
when Peter returned with the tea on a tray,
Ivan Ilych stared
at him for a time in perplexity, not realizing who
and what he was.
Peter was disconcerted by that look and his
embarrassment brought
Ivan Ilych to himself.
"Oh, tea! All right, put it down. Only help
me to wash and
put on a clean shirt."
And Ivan Ilych began to wash. With pauses
for rest, he washed
his hands and then his face, cleaned his teeth,
brushed his hair,
looked in the glass. He was terrified by what he
saw, especially
by the limp way in which his hair clung to his
pallid forehead.
While his shirt was being changed he knew
that he would be
still more frightened at the sight of his body, so
he avoided
looking at it. Finally he was ready. He drew on
a dressing-gown,
wrapped himself in a plaid, and sat down in the
armchair to take
his tea. For a moment he felt refreshed, but as
soon as he began
to drink the tea he was again aware of the same
taste, and the pain
also returned. He finished it with an effort, and
then lay down
stretching out his legs, and dismissed Peter.
Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes
up, then a sea
of despair rages, and always pain; always pain,
always despair, and
always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and
distressing
desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand
that with others
present it would be still worse. "Another dose of
morphine--to
lose consciousness. I will tell him, the doctor,
that he must
think of something else. It's impossible,
impossible, to go on
like this."
An hour and another pass like that. But now
there is a ring
at the door bell. Perhaps it's the doctor? It
is. He comes in
fresh, hearty, plump, and cheerful, with that look
on his face that
seems to say: "There now, you're in a panic about
something, but
we'll arrange it all for you directly!" The
doctor knows this
expression is out of place here, but he has put it
on once for all
and can't take it off -- like a man who has put on
a frock-coat in
the morning to pay a round of calls.
The doctor rubs his hands vigorously and
reassuringly.
"Brr! How cold it is! There's such a sharp
frost; just let
me warm myself!" he says, as if it were only a
matter of waiting
till he was warm, and then he would put everything
right.
"Well now, how are you?"
Ivan Ilych feels that the doctor would like
to say: "Well,
how are our affairs?" but that even he feels that
this would not
do, and says instead: "What sort of a night have
you had?"
Ivan Ilych looks at him as much as to say:
"Are you really
never ashamed of lying?" But the doctor does not
wish to
understand this question, and Ivan Ilych says:
"Just as terrible
as ever. The pain never leaves me and never
subsides. If only
something ... "
"Yes, you sick people are always like
that.... There, now I
think I am warm enough. Even Praskovya Fedorovna,
who is so
particular, could find no fault with my
temperature. Well, now I
can say good-morning," and the doctor presses his
patient's hand.
Then dropping his former playfulness, he
begins with a most
serious face to examine the patient, feeling his
pulse and taking
his temperature, and then begins the sounding and
auscultation.
Ivan Ilych knows quite well and definitely
that all this is
nonsense and pure deception, but when the doctor,
getting down on
his knee, leans over him, putting his ear first
higher then lower,
and performs various gymnastic movements over him
with a
significant expression on his face, Ivan Ilych
submits to it all as
he used to submit to the speeches of the lawyers,
though he knew
very well that they were all lying and why they
were lying.
The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, is still
sounding him when
Praskovya Fedorovna's silk dress rustles at the
door and she is
heard scolding Peter for not having let her know
of the doctor's
arrival.
She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once
proceeds to
prove that she has been up a long time already,
and only owing to
a misunderstanding failed to be there when the
doctor arrived.
Ivan Ilych looks at her, scans her all over,
sets against her
the whiteness and plumpness and cleanness of her
hands and neck,
the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle of her
vivacious eyes. He
hates her with his whole soul. And the thrill of
hatred he feels
for her makes him suffer from her touch.
Her attitude towards him and his diseases is
still the same.
Just as the doctor had adopted a certain relation
to his patient
which he could not abandon, so had she formed one
towards him --
that he was not doing something he ought to do and
was himself to
blame, and that she reproached him lovingly for
this -- and she
could not now change that attitude.
"You see he doesn't listen to me and doesn't
take his medicine
at the proper time. And above all he lies in a
position that is no
doubt bad for him -- with his legs up."
She described how he made Gerasim hold his
legs up.
The doctor smiled with a contemptuous
affability that said:
"What's to be done? These sick people do have
foolish fancies of
that kind, but we must forgive them."
When the examination was over the doctor
looked at his watch,
and then Praskovya Fedorovna announced to Ivan
Ilych that it was of
course as he pleased, but she had sent today for a
celebrated
specialist who would examine him and have a
consultation with
Michael Danilovich (their regular doctor).
"Please don't raise any objections. I am
doing this for my own
sake," she said ironically, letting it be felt
that she was doing
it all for his sake and only said this to leave
him no right to
refuse. He remained silent, knitting his brows.
He felt that he
was surrounded and involved in a mesh of falsity
that it was hard
to unravel anything.
Everything she did for him was entirely for
her own sake, and
she told him she was doing
for herself what she actually was doing
for herself, as if that was so incredible that he
must understand
the opposite.
At half-past eleven the celebrated specialist
arrived. Again
the sounding began and the significant
conversations in his
presence and in another room, about the kidneys
and the appendix,
and the questions and answers, with such an air of
importance that
again, instead of the real question of life and
death which now
alone confronted him, the question arose of the
kidney and appendix
which were not behaving as they ought to and would
now be attached
by Michael Danilovich and the specialist and
forced to amend their
ways.
The celebrated specialist took leave of him
with a serious
though not hopeless look, and in reply to the
timid question Ivan
Ilych, with eyes glistening with fear and hope,
put to him as to
whether there was a chance of recovery, said that
he could not
vouch for it but there was a possibility. The
look of hope with
which Ivan Ilych watched the doctor out was so
pathetic that
Praskovya Fedorovna, seeing it, even wept as she
left the room to
hand the doctor his fee.
The gleam of hope kindled by the doctor's
encouragement did
not last long. The same room, the same pictures,
curtains, wall-
paper, medicine bottles, were all there, and the
same aching
suffering body, and Ivan Ilych began to moan.
They gave him a
subcutaneous injection and he sank into oblivion.
It was twilight when he came to. They
brought him his dinner
and he swallowed some beef tea with difficulty,
and then everything
was the same again and night was coming on.
After dinner, at seven o'clock, Praskovya
Fedorovna came into
the room in evening dress, her full bosom pushed
up by her corset,
and with traces of powder on her face. She had
reminded him in the
morning that they were going to the theatre.
Sarah Bernhardt was
visiting the town and they had a box, which he had
insisted on
their taking. Now he had forgotten about it and
her toilet
offended him, but he concealed his vexation when
he remembered that
he had himself insisted on their securing a box
and going because
it would be an instructive and aesthetic pleasure
for the children.
Praskovya Fedorovna came in, self-satisfied
but yet with a
rather guilty air. She sat down and asked how he
was, but, as he
saw, only for the sake of asking and not in order
to learn about
it, knowing that there was nothing to learn -- and
then went on to
what she really wanted to say: that she would not
on any account
have gone but that the box had been taken and
Helen and their
daughter were going, as well as Petrishchev (the
examining
magistrate, their daughter's fiance) and that it
was out of the
question to let them go alone; but that she would
have much
preferred to sit with him for a while; and he must
be sure to
follow the doctor's orders while she was away.
"Oh, and Fedor Petrovich" (the fiance) "would
like to come in.
May he? And Lisa?"
"All right."
Their daughter came in in full evening dress,
her fresh young
flesh exposed (making a show of that very flesh
which in his own
case caused so much suffering), strong, healthy,
evidently in love,
and impatient with illness, suffering, and death,
because they
interfered with her happiness.
Fedor petrovich came in too, in evening
dress, his hair curled
*a la Capoul*, a tight stiff collar round his long
sinewy neck, an
enormous white shirt-front and narrow black
trousers tightly
stretched over his strong thighs. He had one
white glove tightly
drawn on, and was holding his opera hat in his
hand.
Following him the schoolboy crept in
unnoticed, in a new
uniform, poor little fellow, and wearing gloves.
Terribly dark
shadows showed under his eyes, the meaning of
which Ivan Ilych knew
well.
His son had always seemed pathetic to him,
and now it was
dreadful to see the boy's frightened look of
pity. It seemed to
Ivan Ilych that Vasya was the only one besides
Gerasim who
understood and pitied him.
They all sat down and again asked how he
was. A silence
followed. Lisa asked her mother about the opera
glasses, and there
was an altercation between mother and daughter as
to who had taken
them and where they had been put. This occasioned
some
unpleasantness.
Fedor Petrovich inquired of Ivan Ilych
whether he had ever
seen Sarah Bernhardt. Ivan Ilych did not at first
catch the
question, but then replied: "No, have you seen
her before?"
"Yes, in *Adrienne Lecouvreur*."
Praskovya Fedorovna mentioned some roles in
which Sarah
Bernhardt was particularly good. Her daughter
disagreed.
Conversation sprang up as to the elegance and
realism of her acting
-- the sort of conversation that is always
repeated and is always
the same.
In the midst of the conversation Fedor
Petrovich glanced at
Ivan Ilych and became silent. The others also
looked at him and
grew silent. Ivan Ilych was staring with
glittering eyes straight
before him, evidently indignant with them. This
had to be
rectified, but it was impossible to do so. The
silence had to be
broken, but for a time no one dared to break it
and they all became
afraid that the conventional deception would
suddenly become
obvious and the truth become
plain to all. Lisa was the first to
pluck up courage and break that silence, but by
trying to hide what
everybody was feeling, she betrayed it.
"Well, if we are going it's time to start,"
she said, looking
at her watch, a present from her father, and with
a faint and
significant smile at Fedor Petrovich relating to
something known
only to them. She got up with a rustle of her
dress.
They all rose, said good-night, and went
away.
When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilych
that he felt
better; the falsity had gone with them. But the
pain remained --
that same pain and that same fear that made
everything monotonously
alike, nothing harder and nothing easier.
Everything was worse.
Again minute followed minute and hour
followed hour.
Everything remained the same and there was no
cessation. And the
inevitable end of it all became more and more
terrible.
"Yes, send Gerasim here," he replied to a
question Peter
asked.
--- IX ---
His wife returned late at night. She came in
on tiptoe, but
he heard her, opened his eyes, and made haste to
close them again.
She wished to send Gerasim away and to sit with
him herself, but he
opened his eyes and said: "No, go away."
"Are you in great pain?"
"Always the same."
"Take some opium."
He agreed and took some. She went away.
Till about three in the morning he was in a
state of stupefied
misery. It seemed to him that he and his pain
were being thrust
into a narrow, deep black sack, but though they
were pushed further
and further in they could not be pushed to the
bottom. And this,
terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by
suffering. He was
frightened yet wanted to fall through the sack, he
struggled but
yet co-operated. And suddenly he broke through,
fell, and regained
consciousness. Gerasim was sitting at the foot of
the bed dozing
quietly and patiently, while he himself lay with
his emaciated
stockinged legs resting on Gerasim's shoulders;
the same shaded
candle was there and the same unceasing pain.
"Go away, Gerasim," he whispered.
"It's all right, sir. I'll stay a while."
"No. Go away."
He removed his legs from Gerasim's shoulders,
turned sideways
onto his arm, and felt sorry for himself. He only
waited till
Gerasim had gone into the next room and then
restrained himself no
longer but wept like a child. He wept on account
of his
helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty
of man, the
cruelty of God, and the absence of God.
"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou
brought me here?
Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?"
He did not expect an answer and yet wept
because there was no
answer and could be none. The pain again grew
more acute, but he
did not stir and did not call. He said to
himself: "Go on!
Strike me! But what is it for? What have I done
to Thee? What is
it for?"
Then he grew quiet and not only ceased
weeping but even held
his breath and became all attention. It was as
though he were
listening not to an audible voice but to the voice
of his soul, to
the current of thoughts arising within him.
"What is it you want?" was the first clear
conception capable
of expression in words, that he heard.
"What do you want? What do you want?" he
repeated to himself.
"What do I want? To live and not to suffer,"
he answered.
And again he listened with such concentrated
attention that
even his pain did not distract him.
"To live? How?" asked his inner voice.
"Why, to live as I used to -- well and
pleasantly."
"As you lived before, well and pleasantly?"
the voice
repeated.
And in imagination he began to recall the
best moments of his
pleasant life. But strange to say none of those
best moments of
his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had
then seemed --
none of them except the first recollections of
childhood. There,
in childhood, there had been something really
pleasant with which
it would be possible to live if it could return.
But the child who
had experienced that happiness existed no longer,
it was like a
reminiscence of somebody else.
And as soon as the period began which had
produced the present
Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now
melted before his
sight and turned into something trivial and often
nasty.
And the further he departed from childhood
and the nearer he
came to the present the more worthless and
doubtful were the joys.
This began with the School of Law. A little that
was really good
was still found there -- there was
light-heartedness, friendship,
and hope. But in the upper classes there had
already been fewer of
such good moments. Then during the first years of
his official
career, when he was in the service of the
governor, some pleasant
moments again occurred: they were the memories of
love for a
woman. Then all became confused and there was
still less of what
was good; later on again there was still less that
was good, and
the further he went the less there was. His
marriage, a mere
accident, then the disenchantment that followed
it, his wife's bad
breath and the sensuality and hypocrisy: then
that deadly official
life and those preoccupations about money, a year
of it, and two,
and ten, and twenty, and always the same thing.
And the longer it
lasted the more deadly it became. "It is as if I
had been going
downhill while I imagined I was going up. And
that is really what
it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to
the same extent
life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all
done and there is
only death.
"Then what does it mean? Why? It can't be
that life is so
senseless and horrible. But if it really has been
so horrible and
senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There
is something
wrong!
"Maybe I did not live as I ought to have
done," it suddenly
occurred to him. "But how could that be, when I
did everything
properly?" he replied, and immediately dismissed
from his mind
this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life
and death, as
something quite impossible.
"Then what do you want now? To live? Live
how? Live as you
lived in the law courts when the usher proclaimed
'The judge is
coming!' The judge is coming, the judge!" he
repeated to himself.
"Here he is, the judge. But I am not guilty!" he
exclaimed
angrily. "What is it for?" And he ceased crying,
but turning his
face to the wall continued to ponder on the same
question: Why,
and for what purpose, is there all this horror?
But however much
he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the
thought occurred
to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from
his not having
lived as he ought to have done, he at once
recalled the correctness
of his whole life and dismissed so strange an
idea.
--- X ---
Another fortnight passed. Ivan Ilych now no
longer left his
sofa. He would not lie in bed but lay on the
sofa, facing the wall
nearly all the time. He suffered ever the same
unceasing agonies
and in his loneliness pondered always on the same
insoluble
question: "What is this? Can it be that it is
Death?" And the
inner voice answered: "Yes, it is Death."
"Why these sufferings?" And the voice
answered, "For no
reason -- they just are so." Beyond and besides
this there was
nothing.
From the very beginning of his illness, ever
since he had
first been to see the doctor, Ivan Ilych's life
had been divided
between two contrary and alternating moods: now
it was despair and
the expectation of this uncomprehended and
terrible death, and now
hope and an intently interested observation of the
functioning of
his organs. Now before his eyes there was only a
kidney or an
intestine that temporarily evaded its duty, and
now only that
incomprehensible and dreadful death from which it
was impossible to
escape.
These two states of mind had alternated from
the very
beginning of his illness, but the further it
progressed the more
doubtful and fantastic became the conception of
the kidney, and the
more real the sense of impending death.
He had but to call to mind what he had been
three months
before and what he was now, to call to mind with
what regularity he
had been going downhill, for every possibility of
hope to be
shattered.
Latterly during the loneliness in which he
found himself as he
lay facing the back of the sofa, a loneliness in
the midst of a
populous town and surrounded by numerous
acquaintances and
relations but that yet could not have been more
complete anywhere -
- either at the bottom of the sea or under the
earth -- during that
terrible loneliness Ivan ilych had lived only in
memories of the
past. Pictures of his past rose before him one
after another.
they always began with what was nearest in time
and then went back
to what was most remote -- to his childhood -- and
rested there.
If he thought of the stewed prunes that had been
offered him that
day, his mind went back to the raw shrivelled
French plums of his
childhood, their peculiar flavour and the flow of
saliva when he
sucked their stones, and along with the memory of
that taste came
a whole series of memories of those days: his
nurse, his brother,
and their toys. "No, I mustn't thing of
that....It is too
painful," Ivan Ilych said to himself, and brought
himself back to
the present -- to the button on the back of the
sofa and the
creases in its morocco. "Morocco is expensive,
but it does not
wear well: there had been a quarrel about it. It
was a different
kind of quarrel and a different kind of morocco
that time when we
tore father's portfolio and were punished, and
mamma brought us
some tarts...." And again his thoughts dwelt on
his childhood, and
again it was painful and he tried to banish them
and fix his mind
on something else.
Then again together with that chain of
memories another series
passed through his mind -- of how his illness had
progressed and
grown worse. There also the further back he
looked the more life
there had been. There had been more of what was
good in life and
more of life itself. The two merged together.
"Just as the pain
went on getting worse and worse, so my life grew
worse and worse,"
he thought. "There is one bright spot there at
the back, at the
beginning of life, and afterwards all becomes
blacker and blacker
and proceeds more and more rapidly -- in inverse
ration to the
square of the distance from death," thought Ivan
Ilych. And the
example of a stone falling downwards with
increasing velocity
entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing
sufferings, flies
further and further towards its end -- the most
terrible suffering.
"I am flying...." He shuddered, shifted himself,
and tried to
resist, but was already aware that resistance was
impossible, and
again with eyes weary of gazing but unable to
cease seeing what was
before them, he stared at the back of the sofa and
waited --
awaiting that dreadful fall and shock and
destruction.
"Resistance is impossible!" he said to
himself. "If I could
only understand what it is all for! But that too
is impossible.
An explanation would be possible if it could be
said that I have
not lived as I ought to. But it is impossible to
say that," and he
remembered all the legality, correctitude, and
propriety of his
life. "That at any rate can certainly not be
admitted," he
thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if
someone could see
that smile and be taken in by it. "There is no
explanation!
Agony, death....What for?"
--- XI ---
Another two weeks went by in this way and
during that
fortnight an even occurred that Ivan Ilych and his
wife had
desired. Petrishchev formally proposed. It
happened in the
evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna came
into her husband's
room considering how best to inform him of it, but
that very night
there had been a fresh change for the worse in his
condition. She
found him still lying on the sofa but in a
different position. He
lay on his back, groaning and staring fixedly
straight in front of
him.
She began to remind him of his medicines, but
he turned his
eyes towards her with such a look that she did not
finish what she
was saying; so great an animosity, to her in
particular, did that
look express.
"For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" he
said.
She would have gone away, but just then their
daughter came in
and went up to say good morning. He looked at her
as he had done
at his wife, and in reply to her inquiry about his
health said
dryly that he would soon free them all of
himself. They were both
silent and after sitting with him for a while went
away.
"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother.
"It's as if we
were to blame! I am sorry for papa, but why
should we be
tortured?"
The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan
Ilych answered "Yes"
and "No," never taking his angry eyes from him,
and at last said:
"You know you can do nothing for me, so leave me
alone."
"We can ease your sufferings."
"You can't even do that. Let me be."
The doctor went into the drawing room and
told Praskovya
Fedorovna that the case was very serious and that
the only resource
left was opium to allay her husband's sufferings,
which must be
terrible.
It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan
Ilych's physical
sufferings were terrible, but worse than the
physical sufferings
were his mental sufferings which were his chief
torture.
His mental sufferings were due to the fact
that that night, as
he looked at Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face
with it prominent
cheek-bones, the question suddenly occurred to
him: "What if my
whole life has been wrong?"
It occurred to him that what had appeared
perfectly impossible
before, namely that he had not spent his life as
he should have
done, might after all be true. It occurred to him
that his
scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against
what was
considered good by the most highly placed people,
those scarcely
noticeable impulses which he had immediately
suppressed, might have
been the real thing, and all the rest false. And
his professional
duties and the whole arrangement of his life and
of his family, and
all his social and official interests, might all
have been false.
He tried to defend all those things to himself and
suddenly felt
the weakness of what he was defending. There was
nothing to
defend.
"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and
i am leaving
this life with the consciousness that I have lost
all that was
given me and it is impossible to rectify it --
what then?"
He lay on his back and began to pass his life
in review in
quite a new way. In the morning when he saw first
his footman,
then his wife, then his daughter, and then the
doctor, their every
word and movement confirmed to him the awful truth
that had been
revealed to him during the night. In them he saw
himself -- all
that for which he had lived -- and saw clearly
that it was not real
at all, but a terrible and huge deception which
had hidden both
life and death. This consciousness intensified
his physical
suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed about,
and pulled at his
clothing which choked and stifled him. And he
hated them on that
account.
He was given a large dose of opium and became
unconscious, but
at noon his sufferings began again. He drove
everybody away and
tossed from side to side.
His wife came to him and said:
"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do
any harm and
often helps. Healthy people often do it."
He opened his eyes wide.
"What? Take communion? Why? It's
unnecessary! However..."
She began to cry.
"Yes, do, my dear. I'll send for our
priest. He is such a
nice man."
"All right. Very well," he muttered.
When the priest came and heard his
confession, Ivan Ilych was
softened and seemed to feel a relief from his
doubts and
consequently from his sufferings, and for a moment
there came a ray
of hope. He again began to think of the vermiform
appendix and the
possibility of correcting it. He received the
sacrament with tears
in his eyes.
When they laid him down again afterwards he
felt a moment's
ease, and the hope that he might live awoke in him
again. He began
to think of the operation that had been suggested
to him. "To
live! I want to live!" he said to himself.
His wife came in to congratulate him after
his communion, and
when uttering the usual conventional words she
added:
"You feel better, don't you?"
Without looking at her he said "Yes."
Her dress, her figure, the expression of her
face, the tone of
her voice, all revealed the same thing. "This is
wrong, it is not
as it should be. All you have lived for and still
live for is
falsehood and deception, hiding life and death
from you." And as
soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and
his agonizing
physical suffering again sprang up, and with that
suffering a
consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching
end. And to this was
added a new sensation of grinding shooting pain
and a feeling of
suffocation.
The expression of his face when he uttered
that "Yes" was
dreadful. Having uttered it, he looked her
straight in the eyes,
turned on his face with a rapidity extraordinary
in his weak state
and shouted:
"Go away! Go away and leave me alone!"
--- XII ---
From that moment the screaming began that
continued for three
days, and was so terrible that one could not hear
it through two
closed doors without horror. At the moment he
answered his wife
realized that he was lost, that there was no
return, that the end
had come, the very end, and his doubts were still
unsolved and
remained doubts.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried in various
intonations. he had begun
by screaming "I won't!" and continued screaming on
the letter "O".
For three whole days, during which time did
not exist for him,
he struggled in that black sack into which he was
being thrust by
an invisible, resistless force. He struggled as a
man condemned to
death struggles in the hands of the executioner,
knowing that he
cannot save himself. And every moment he felt
that despite all his
efforts he was drawing nearer and nearer to what
terrified him. he
felt that his agony was due to his being thrust
into that black
hole and still more to his not being able to get
right into it. He
was hindered from getting into it by his
conviction that his life
had been a good one. That very justification of
his life held him
fast and prevented his moving forward, and it
caused him most
torment of all.
Suddenly some force struck him in the chest
and side, making
it still harder to breathe, and he fell through
the hole and there
at the bottom was a light. What had happened to
him was like the
sensation one sometimes experiences in a railway
carriage when one
thinks one is going backwards while one is really
going forwards
and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.
"Yes, it was not the right thing," he said to
himself, "but
that's no matter. It can be done. But what *is*
the right thing?
he asked himself, and suddenly grew quiet.
This occurred at the end of the third day,
two hours before
his death. Just then his schoolboy son had crept
softly in and
gone up to the bedside. The dying man was still
screaming
desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on
the boy's head,
and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and
began to cry.
At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through
and caught sight
of the light, and it was revealed to him that
though his life had
not been what it should have been, this could
still be rectified.
He asked himself, "What *is* the right thing?" and
grew still,
listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing
his hand. He
opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry
for him. His
wife camp up to him and he glanced at her. She
was gazing at him
open-mouthed, with undried tears on her nose and
cheek and a
despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for
her too.
"Yes, I am making them wretched," he
thought. "They are
sorry, but it will be better for them when I
die." He wished to
say this but had not the strength to utter it.
"Besides, why
speak? I must act," he thought. with a look at
his wife he
indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry
for him...sorry
for you too...." He tried to add, "Forgive me,"
but said "Forego"
and waved his hand, knowing that He whose
understanding mattered
would understand.
And suddenly it grew clear to him that what
had been
oppressing him and would not leave his was all
dropping away at
once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all
sides. He was
sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt
them: release them
and free himself from these sufferings. "How good
and how simple!"
he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself.
"What has become of
it? Where are you, pain?"
He turned his attention to it.
"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the
pain be."
"And death...where is it?"
He sought his former accustomed fear of death
and did not find
it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no
fear because there
was no death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed
aloud. "What
joy!"
To him all this happened in a single instant,
and the meaning
of that instant did not change. For those present
his agony
continued for another two hours. Something
rattled in his throat,
his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping and
rattle became
less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his
soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It
is no more!"
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of
a sigh, stretched
out, and died.