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

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.

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 if 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