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

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.

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 quarreled 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 Zachar 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 made 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