The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

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, wallpaper, 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 goodnight, 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.

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.

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 lightheartedness, 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