The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (ebook offline reader txt) 📗
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
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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.
IXHis 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
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