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

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 two

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 done 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 fiance, 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.

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 now 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