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

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.

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 too 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.

“Thank 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 he

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