The Death of Ivan Ilych

The Death of Ivan Ilych

by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

1886

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Distributed by the Tolstoy Library

http://home.aol.com/Tolstoy28

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During an interval in the Melvinski trial in the large building of the

Law Courts the members and public prosecutor met in Ivan Egorovich

Shebek's private room, where the conversation turned on the celebrated

Krasovski case. Fedor Vasilievich warmly maintained that it was not

subject to their jurisdiction, Ivan Egorovich maintained the contrary,

while Peter Ivanovich, not having entered into the discussion at the

start, took no part in it but looked through the Gazette which had just

been handed in.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Ivan Ilych has died!"

"You don't say so!"

"Here, read it yourself," replied Peter Ivanovich, handing Fedor

Vasilievich the paper still damp from the press. Surrounded by a black

border were the words: "Praskovya Fedorovna Golovina, with profound

sorrow, informs relatives and friends of the demise of her beloved

husband Ivan Ilych Golovin, Member of the Court of Justice, which

occurred on February the 4th of this year 1882. The funeral will take

place on Friday at one o'clock in the afternoon."

Ivan Ilych had been a colleague of the gentlemen present and was liked

by them all. He had been ill for some weeks with an illness said to be

incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but there had been

conjectures that in case of his death Alexeev might receive his

appointment, and that either Vinnikov or Shtabel would succeed Alexeev.

So on receiving the news of Ivan Ilych's death the first thought of

each of the gentlemen in that private room was of the changes and

promotions it might occasion among themselves or their acquaintances.

"I shall be sure to get Shtabel's place or Vinnikov's," thought Fedor

Vasilievich. "I was promised that long ago, and the promotion means an

extra eight hundred rubles a year for me besides the allowance."

"Now I must apply for my brother-in-law's transfer from Kaluga,"

thought Peter Ivanovich. "My wife will be very glad, and then she won't

be able to say that I never do anything for her relations."

"I thought he would never leave his bed again," said Peter Ivanovich

aloud. "It's very sad."

"But what really was the matter with him?"

"The doctors couldn't say -- at least they could, but each of them said

something different. When last I saw him I thought he was getting

better."

"And I haven't been to see him since the holidays. I always meant to go."

"Had he any property?"

"I think his wife had a little -- but something quiet trifling."

"We shall have to go to see her, but they live so terribly far away."

"Far away from you, you mean. Everything's far away from your place."

"You see, he never can forgive my living on the other side of the

river," said Peter Ivanovich, smiling at Shebek. Then, still talking of

the distances between different parts of the city, they returned to the

Court.

Besides considerations as to the possible transfers and promotions

likely to result from Ivan Ilych's death, the mere fact of the death of

a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it the

complacent feeling that, "It is he who is dead and not I."

Each one thought or felt, "Well, he's dead but I'm alive!" But the more

intimate of Ivan Ilych's acquaintances, his so-called friends, could

not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfil the very

tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and

paying a visit of condolence to the widow.

Fedor Vasilievich and Peter Ivanovich had been closest to him.
Peter Ivanovich had studied law with Ivan Ilych and had

considered himself to be under obligations to him.

Having told his wife at dinner-time of Ivan Ilych's death, and of his

conjecture that it might be possible to get her brother transferred to

their circuit, Peter Ivanovich sacrificed his usual nap, put on his

evening clothes and drove to Ivan Ilych's house.

At the entrance stood a carriage and two cabs. Leaning against the wall

in the hall downstairs near the cloakstand was a coffin-lid covered

with cloth of gold, ornamented with gold cord and tassels, that had

been polished up with metal powder. Two ladies in black were taking off

their fur cloaks. Peter Ivanovich recognized one of them as Ivan

Ilych's sister, but the other was a stranger to him. His colleague

Schwartz was just coming downstairs, but on seeing Peter Ivanovich

enter he stopped and winked at him, as if to say: "Ivan Ilych has made

a mess of things -- not like you and me."

Schwartz's face with his Piccadilly whiskers, and his slim figure in

evening dress, had as usual an air of elegant solemnity which

contrasted with the playfulness of his character and had a special

piquancy here, or so it seemed to Peter Ivanovich.

Peter Ivanovich allowed the ladies to precede him and slowly followed

them upstairs. Schwartz did not come down but remained where he was,

and Peter Ivanovich understood that he wanted to arrange where they

should play whist that evening. The ladies went upstairs to the

widow's room, and Schwartz with seriously compressed lips but a playful

look in his eyes, indicated by a twist of his eyebrows the room to the

right where the body lay.

Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling

uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such times

it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was not quite sure whether

one should make obeisances while doing so. He therefore adopted a

middle course. On entering the room he began crossing himself and made

a slight movement resembling a bow. At the same time, as far as the

motion of his head and arm allowed, he surveyed the room. Two young men

-- apparently nephews, one of whom was a high-school pupil -- were

leaving the room, crossing themselves as they did so. An old woman was

standing motionless, and a lady with strangely arched eyebrows was

saying something to her in a whisper. A vigorous, resolute Church

Reader, in a frock-coat, was reading something in a loud voice with an

expression that precluded any contradiction. The butler's assistant,

Gerasim, stepping lightly in front of Peter Ivanovich, was strewing

something on the floor. Noticing this, Peter Ivanovich was immediately

aware of a faint odour of a decomposing body.

The last time he had called on Ivan Ilych, Peter Ivanovich had seen

Gerasim in the study. Ivan Ilych had been particularly fond of him and

he was performing the duty of a sick nurse.

Peter Ivanovich continued to make the sign of the cross slightly

inclining his head in an intermediate direction between the coffin, the

Reader, and the icons on the table in a corner of the room. Afterwards,

when it seemed to him that this movement of his arm in crossing himself

had gone on too long, he stopped and began to look at the body.

The dead man lay, as dead men always lie, in a specially heavy way, his

rigid limbs sunk in the soft cushions of the coffin, with the head

forever bowed on the pillow. His yellow waxen brow with bald patches

over his sunken temples was thrust up in the way peculiar to the dead,

the protruding nose seeming to press on the upper lip. He was much

changed and grown even thinner since Peter Ivanovich had last seen him,

but, as is always the case with the dead, his face had acquired an expression
of greater beauty-- above all more dignified than when he was alive.

The expression on the face said that what was necessary had been
accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Besides this there was in that

expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to
Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a

certain discomfort and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and

turned and went out of the door -- too hurriedly and too regardless of

propriety, as he himself was aware.

Schwartz was waiting for him in the adjoining room with legs spread

wide apart and both hands toying with his top-hat behind his back. The

mere sight of that playful, well-groomed, and elegant figure refreshed

Peter Ivanovich. He felt that Schwartz was above all these happenings

and would not surrender to any depressing influences. His very look

said that this incident of a church service for Ivan Ilyich could not be

a sufficient reason for infringing the order of the session -- in other

words, that it would certainly not prevent his unwrapping a new pack of

cards and shuffling them that evening while a footman placed fresh

candles on the table: in fact, that there was no reason for supposing

that this incident would hinder their spending the evening agreeably.

Indeed he said this in a whisper as Peter Ivanovich passed him,

proposing that they should meet for a game at Fedor Vasilievich's.

But apparently Peter Ivanovich was not destined to play whist that

evening. Praskovya Fedorovna (a short, fat woman who despite all

efforts to the contrary had continued to broaden steadily from her

shoulders downwards and who had the same extraordinarily arched

eyebrows as the lady who had been standing by the coffin), dressed all

in black, her head covered with lace, came out of her own room with

some other ladies, conducted them to the room where the dead body lay,

and said:

"The service will begin immediately. Please go in."

Schwartz, making an indefinite bow, stood still, evidently neither

accepting nor declining this invitation. Praskovya Fedorovna

recognizing Peter Ivanovich, sighed, went close up to him, took his

hand, and said: "I know you were a true friend to Ivan Ilych . . . "

and looked at him awaiting some suitable response. And Peter Ivanovich

knew that, just as it had been the right thing to cross himself in that

room, so what he had to do here was to press her hand, sigh, and say,

"Believe me . . . " So he did all this and as he did it felt that the

desired result had been achieved: that both he and she were touched.

"Come with me. I want to speak to you before it begins," said the

widow. "Give me your arm."

Peter Ivanovich gave her his arm and they went to the inner rooms,

passing Schwartz who winked at Peter Ivanovich compassionately.

"That does for our whist! Don't object if we find another player.

Perhaps you can cut in when you do escape," said his playful look.

Peter Ivanovich sighed still more deeply and despondently, and

Praskovya Fedorovna pressed his arm gratefully. When they reached the

drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim lamp,

they sat down at the table -- she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a

low pouffe, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under his

weight. Praskovya Fedorovna had been on the point of warning him to

take another seat, but felt that such a warning was out of keeping with

her present condition and so changed her mind.

   As he sat down on the pouffe Peter Ivanovich recalled how Ivan Ilych had
   arranged this room and had consulted him regarding this pink cretonne 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 hall.

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, an examining magistrate, whom Peter

Ivanovich also knew and who was her fiancée, 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's will. We shall all come to it someday," 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.

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Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary-- and

most horrifying.

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 ripe old 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 not 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 punctilious

as his elder brother nor as reckless as the younger, but was a happy mean

between the two -- 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 creditably. 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 all things so designated by those in authority.

Neither as a boy nor as a man had he been a toady, but from early youth was

by nature attracted to people of high station as a moth 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 in his last years at school to liberalism, but strictly
within limits which his instinct unfailingly indicated to him as correct.

As a student 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 not quite able

to regard them as right, but managed to forget about them entirely and

not feel the least perturbed when he recalled 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 a farewell dinner with his comrades at Donon's

first-class restaurant, and with his new and fashionable luggage,

linen, clothes, shaving and other toilet articles, and a traveling

rug, all ordered and purchased at the finest shops, he set off for one of the

provinces where through his father's influence, he had been attached to

the governor as an official for special service.

   Ivan Ilych immediately arranged as easy and agreeable as it had been
   at law school. He performed his official task, made his career, and at the
   same time amused himself pleasantly and properly. Occasionally he paid
   official visits to country districts where he behaved with dignity both to his
   superiors and inferiors, and performed the duties entrusted to him, which
   related chiefly to the religious sectarians, with an exactitude and incorruptible
   honesty in which he could only take pride.

In official matters, despite his youth and taste for frivolous gaiety,

he was exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in

society he was often playful and witty, and always good-natured,

correct in his manner, a bon enfant, as the governor and his wife --

with whom he was like one of the family -- used to say of him.

In the province he had an affair with one of the ladies who threw themselves
at the chic young lawyer, and there was also a milliner; and there were

drinking bouts with visiting aides-de-camps, and after-supper

   trips to a certain street on the outskirts of town; and there were also attempts
   to curry favor with his chief and even with his chief's wife, but all this was
   done with such a tone of good breeding that no hard names could be applied
   to it. It all came under the heading of the French saying: "Il faut que jeunesse
   se passe.” It was all done with clean hands, in clean linen, with French phrases,
   and above all among people of the best society and consequently with the
   approval of people of rank.

So Ivan Ilych served for five years and then came a change in his

official life. The new and reformed judicial institutions were

introduced, and new men were needed.

Ivan Ilych became such a new man.

He was offered the post of examining magistrate, and he accepted it

though the post was in another province and obliged him to give up the

connexions he had formed and establish new ones. His friends met to give

him a send-off; they had a group photograph taken and presented him

with a silver cigarette-case, and he set off to his new post.

As examining magistrate Ivan Ilych was just as comme il faut and

respectable a man, inspiring general respect and capable of separating his

official duties from his private life, as he had been when acting as an

official on special service. His duties now as examining magistrate

were fare more interesting and attractive than before. In his former

position it had been pleasant to wear an undress uniform made by

Scharmer, and to pass through the crowd of petitioners and officials

who were timorously awaiting an audience with the governor, and who

envied him as with free and easy gait he went straight into his chief's

private room to have a cup of tea and a cigarette with him. But not

many people had then been directly dependent on him -- only police

officials and the religious sectarians when he went on special missions --
and he liked to treat them politely, almost as comrades, as if he were letting

them feel that he who had the power to crush them was treating them in

this simple, friendly way. There were then but few such people. But

now, as an examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych felt that everyone without

exception, even the most important and self-satisfied, was in his

power, and that he need only write a few words on a sheet of paper with

a certain heading, and this or that important, self-satisfied person

would be brought before him in the role of an accused person or a

witness, and if he did not choose to allow him to sit down, would have

to stand before him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilych never abused

his power; he tried on the contrary to soften its expression, but the

consciousness of it and the possibility of softening its effect,

supplied the chief interest and attraction of his office. In his work

itself, especially in his examinations, he very soon acquired a method

of eliminating all considerations irrelevant to the legal aspect of the

case, and reducing even the most complicated case to a form in which it

would be presented on paper only in its externals, completely excluding

his personal opinion of the matter, while above all observing every

prescribed formality. The work was new and Ivan Ilych was one of the

first men to apply the new Code of 1864.

On taking up the post of examining magistrate in a new town, he made

new acquaintances and connexions, placed himself on a new footing and

assumed a somewhat different tone. He took up an attitude of rather

dignified aloofness towards the provincial authorities, but picked out

the best circle of legal gentlemen and wealthy gentry living in the

town and assumed a tone of mild dissatisfaction with the government,

of moderate liberalism, and of enlightened citizenship. At the same

time, without at all altering the elegance of his toilet, he ceased

shaving his chin and allowed his beard to grow as it pleased.

Ivan Ilych settled down very pleasantly in this new town. The society

there, which inclined towards opposition to the governor was friendly,

   his salary was larger, and he began to play whist, which he found added
   not a little to the pleasure of life, for he had a capacity for cards, played
   good-humouredly, and calculated rapidly and astutely, so that he usually won.

   After had worked there for two years, Ivan Ilych met his future wife,
   Praskovya Fedorovna Mikhel, who was the most attractive, clever, and
   brilliant girl of the set in which he moved, and among other amusements and

relaxations from his labours as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilych began a light
flirtation with her.

As an official on special comissions he had been accustomed

to dance, but now as an examining magistrate it was exceptional for him

to do so. If he danced now, he did it as if to show that though he

served under the reformed order of things, and had reached the fifth

official rank, yet when it came to dancing he could do it better than

most people. So at the end of an evening he sometimes danced with

Praskovya Fedorovna, and it was chiefly during these dances that he

captivated her. She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilych had at first no

definite intention of marrying, but when the girl fell in love with him

he said to himself: "Really, why shouldn't I marry?"

Praskovya Fedorovna came of a good family, was not bad looking, and had

a little money. Ivan Ilych might have aspired to a more brilliant

match, but even this was good. He had his salary, and she, he hoped,

would have an equal income. She was well connected, and was a sweet,

pretty, and thoroughly correct young woman. To say that Ivan Ilych

married because he fell in love with Praskovya Fedorovna and found that

she sympathized with his views of life would be as incorrect as to say

that he married because his social circle approved of the match. He was

swayed by both these considerations: the marriage gave him personal

satisfaction, and at the same time it was considered the right thing by

the most highly placed of his associates.

So Ivan Ilych got married.

The preparations for marriage and the beginning of married life, with

its conjugal caresses, new furniture, new crockery, and new linen,

were very pleasant until his wife became pregnant -- so that Ivan Ilych

had begun to think that marriage would not impair the easy, agreeable,

gay and always decorous character of his life, approved of by society

and regarded by himself as natural, but would even improve it. But from

the first months of his wife's pregnancy, something new, unpleasant,

depressing, and unseemly, and from which there was no way of escape,

unexpectedly showed itself.

His wife, without any reason -- de gaiete de coeur as Ivan Ilych

expressed it to himself -- began to disturb the pleasure and propriety

of their life. She began to be jealous without any cause, expected him

to devote his whole attention to her, found fault with everything, and

made coarse and ill-mannered scenes.

At first Ivan Ilych hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this

state of affairs by the same easy and decorous relation to life that

had served him heretofore: he tried to ignore his wife's disagreeable

moods, continued to live in his usual easy and pleasant way, invited

friends to his house for a game of cards, and also tried going out to

his club or spending his evenings with friends. But one day his wife

began upbraiding him so vigorously, using such coarse words, and

continued to abuse him every time he did not satisfy her demands, so

resolutely and with such evident determination not to give way till he

submitted -- that is, till he stayed at home and was bored just as she

was -- that Ivan Ilych was horrified. He now realized that matrimony --
at any rate with Praskovya Fedorovna -- was not always conducive to the

pleasures and amenities of life, but on the contrary often infringed

both comfort and propriety, and that he must therefore entrench himself

against such disruptions. And Ivan Ilych began to seek for means of

doing so. His official duties were the one thing that imposed upon

Praskovya Fedorovna, and by means of his official work and the duties

attached to it he began struggling with his wife to secure his own

independence.

With the birth of the baby, the attempts to feed it and the various

failures in doing so, and with the real and imaginary illnesses of

mother and child, in which Ivan Ilych's sympathy was demanded but
about which he understood nothing, the need to fence off for himself a

world for himself outside his family life became still more imperative.

As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilych transferred

the center of gravity of his life more and more to his official work,

so did he grow to like his work better and became more ambitious than

before.

Very soon, within a year of his wedding, Ivan Ilych had realized that

marriage, though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very

   intricate and difficult affair , and that to do one's duty to it, that is,
   to lead a decorous life approved of by society, one must adopt a definite
   attitude to it just as one did with respect to work.

And Ivan Ilych evolved such an attitude towards married life. He only

required of it those conveniences -- dinner at home, housewife, and bed

-- which it could give him, and above all that propriety of external

forms required by public opinion. For the rest he looked for

lighthearted pleasure and propriety, and was very thankful when he

found them, but if he met with antagonism and querulousness he at once

retired into his separate fenced-off world of official duties, where he

found satisfaction.

Ivan Ilych was esteemed for his diligent service, and after three years was
made Assistant Public Prosecutor. His new duties, their importance, the

possibility of indicting and imprisoning anyone he chose, the publicity

his speeches received, and the success he had in all these things, made

his work still more attractive.

More children came. His wife became more and more petulant and

irascible, 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 new town. 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 Ivan Ilych.

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 quarrels, and these quarrels 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 a sea 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

disturbances 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

then 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.

__________________________________________________________________

III

Ivan Ilych spent seventeen years of his married life this way. 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 Hoppe somehow came to the front and obtained

the appointment instead. Ivan Ilych was infuriated, reproached Hoppe,

and quarrelled 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 most outrageous, heartless

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 not only boredom
but intolerable anguish for the first time in his life, 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 Dowager Empress Marya's Charitable 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 amazing 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 Sachar Ivanovich was a

friend and colleague of his.

In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan

Ilych looked up 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

perfectly 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 devoted herself exclusively to
   making plans for their life in the city 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 propriety.

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 apartment, 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 until it

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 decidedly 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 engrossed

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 merely banged 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 been noticed,

but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional. He was very happy

when he met his family at the station and brought them to the newly

furnished apartment 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 off the stepladder 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 quarters -- 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 spirits, 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

properly.

He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the paper, and then put on

his 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, like 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 whist, but if no whist 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 had en evening party with dancing. 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 party 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 those of pride; his

social pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilych's greatest

pleasure was playing whist. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable

incident happened in his life, the pleasure that beamed like a bright candle
outshown everything else was to sit down to whist with good

players, not noisy partners, and of course to a four-handed game (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

whist, especially if he had won a little (to win a large sum was

unpleasant), Ivan Ilych went to bed in a particularly good mood.

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 made him ill tempered. 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

propriety 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 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 tapping 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 exactly 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 to decide between a floating

kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis. It was not a question the

doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the

appendix, with the reservation that should an examination of the urine

give fresh indications the matter would be reconsidered. All this was

just what Ivan Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand

times in dealing with men on trial. The doctor summed up just as

brilliantly, looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at

the accused. From the doctor's summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that

things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody

else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad. And

this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in him a great feeling

of pity for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor's indifference

to a matter of such importance.

He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on the

table, and remarked with a sigh: "We sick people probably often put

inappropriate questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint

dangerous, or not? . . . "

The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as

if to say: "Prisoner, if you will not keep to the questions put to you,

I shall be obliged to have you removed from the court."

"I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The

analysis may show something more." And the doctor bowed.

Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his

sledge, and drove home. All the way home he was going over what the

doctor had said, trying to translate those complicated, obscure,

scientific phrases into plain language and find in them an answer to

the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very bad? Or is there as yet

nothing much wrong?" And it seemed to him that the meaning of what the

doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything in the streets

seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses, the passers-by, and the

shops, were dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache that never ceased

for a moment, seemed to have acquired a new and more serious

significance from the doctor's dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched

it with a new and oppressive feeling.

He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but

in the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on,

ready to go out with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to

this tedious story, but could not stand it long, and her mother too did

not hear him to the end.

"Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your medicine

regularly. Give me the prescription and I'll send Gerasim to the

chemist's." And she went to get ready to go out.

While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe,

but he sighed deeply when she left it.

"Well," he thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad after all."

He began taking his medicine and following the doctor's directions,

which had been altered after the examination of the urine. but then it

happened that there was a contradiction between the indications drawn

from the examination of the urine and the symptoms that showed

themselves. It turned out that what was happening differed from what

the doctor had told him, and that he had either forgotten or blundered,

or hidden something from him. He could not, however, be blamed for

that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first

derived some comfort from doing so.

From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief occupation

was the exact fulfillment of the doctor's instructions regarding

hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and

his bodily functions. His chief interest came to be people's ailments and

people's health. When sickness, deaths, or recoveries were mentioned in

his presence, especially when the illness resembled his own, he

listened with agitation which he tried to hide, asked questions, and

applied what he heard to his own case.

The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force

himself to think that he was better. And he could do this so long as

nothing agitated him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his

wife, any lack of success in his official work, or held bad cards at

whist, he was at once acutely sensible of his disease. He had formerly

borne such mischances, hoping soon to adjust what was wrong, to master

it and attain success, or make a grand slam. But now every mischance

upset him and plunged him into despair. He would say to himself: "There

now, just as I was beginning to get better and the medicine had begun

to take effect, comes this accursed misfortune, or unpleasantness . . ."
And he was furious with the mishap, or with the people who were

causing the unpleasantness and killing him, for he felt that this fury

was killing him but he could not restrain it. One would have thought

that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation with

circumstances and people aggravated his illness, and that he ought

therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he drew the very

opposite conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched for

everything that might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest

infringement of it. His condition was rendered worse by the fact that

he read medical books and consulted doctors. The progress of his

disease was so gradual that he could deceive himself when comparing one

day with another -- the difference was so slight. But when he consulted

the doctors it seemed to him that he was getting worse, and even very

rapidly. Yet despite this he was continually consulting them.

That month he went to see another celebrated physician, who told him
almost the same as the first had done but put his questions rather differently,

and the interview with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's

doubts and fears. A friend of a friend of his, a very good doctor,

diagnosed his illness again quite differently from the others, and

though he predicted recovery, his questions and suppositions bewildered

Ivan Ilych still more and increased his doubts. A homeopathist

diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine which

Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week, not feeling any

improvement and having lost confidence both in the former doctor's

treatment and in this one's, he became still more despondent. One day a

lady acquaintance mentioned a cure effected by a wonder-working icon.

Ivan Ilych caught himself listening attentively and beginning to

believe that it had occurred. This incident alarmed him. "Has my mind

really weakened to such an extent?" he asked himself. "Nonsense! It's

all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous fears but having chosen a

doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I will do. Now

it's all settled. I won't think about it, but will follow the treatment

seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there must be no

more of this wavering!"

This was easy to say but impossible to carry out. The pain
in his side oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and

more incessant, while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and

stranger. It seemed to him that his breath had a disgusting smell, and

he was conscious of a loss of appetite and strength. There was no

deceiving himself: something terrible, new, and more important than

anything before in his life, was taking place within him of which he

alone was aware. Those about him did not understand or would not

understand it, but thought everything in the world was going on as

usual. That tormented Ivan Ilych more than anything. He saw that his

household, especially his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl

of visiting, did not understand anything of it and were annoyed that he

was so depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though

they tried to disguise it he saw that he was an obstacle in their path,

and that his wife had adopted a definite line in regard to his illness

and kept to it regardless of anything he said or did. Her attitude was

this: "You know," she would say to her friends, "Ivan Ilych can't do as

other people do, and keep to the treatment prescribed for him. One day

he'll take his drops and keep strictly to his diet and go to bed in

good time, but the next day unless I watch him he'll suddenly forget

his medicine, eat sturgeon -- which is forbidden -- and sit up playing

cards till one o'clock in the morning."

"Oh, come, when was that?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. "Only once

at Peter Ivanovich's."

"And yesterday with Shebek."

"Well, even if I hadn't stayed up, this pain would have kept me awake."

"Be that as it may you'll never get well like that, but will always

make us wretched."

Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych's illness, as she

expressed it both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault

and was another of the annoyances he caused her. Ivan Ilych felt that

this opinion escaped her involuntarily -- but that did not make it

easier for him.

At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a

strange attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that

people were watching him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon

be vacant. Then again, his friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in

a friendly way about his low spirits, as if the awful, horrible, and

unheard-of thing that was going on within him, incessantly gnawing at

him and irresistibly drawing him away, was a very agreeable subject for

jests. Schwartz in particular irritated him by his jocularity, vivacity, and
savoir-faire, which reminded him of what he himself had been ten years ago.

Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt,

bending the new cards to soften them, and he sorted the diamonds in his

hand and found he had seven. His partner said "No trumps" and supported

him with two diamonds. What more could be wished for? It ought to be

jolly and lively. They would make a grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych

was conscious of that gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth, and it

seemed ridiculous that in such circumstances he should be pleased to

make a grand slam.

He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table

with his strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the

cards courteously and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that he might have

the pleasure of gathering them up without the trouble of stretching out

his hand for them. "Does he think I am too weak to stretch out my arm?"

thought Ivan Ilych, and forgetting what he was doing he over-trumped

his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks. And what was most

awful of all was that he saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about

it but did not himself care. And it was dreadful to realize why he did

not care.

They all saw that he was suffering, and said: "We can stop if you are

tired. Take a rest." Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he

finished the rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that

he had diffused this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had

supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych was left alone with the

consciousness that his life was poisoned and was poisoning the lives of

others, and that this poison did not weaken but penetrated more and

more deeply into his whole being.

With this consciousness, and with physical pain besides the terror, he

must go to bed, often to lie awake the greater part of the night. Next

morning he had to get up again, dress, go to the law courts, speak, and

write; or if he did not go out, spend at home those twenty-four hours a

day each of which was a torture. And he had to live thus all alone on

the brink of an abyss, with no one who understood or pitied him.

__________________________________________________________________

So one month passed and then another. Just before the New Year his

brother-in-law came to town and stayed at their house. Ivan Ilych was

at the law courts and Praskovya Fedorovna had gone shopping. When Ivan

Ilych came home and entered his study he found his brother-in-law there

-- a healthy, florid man -- unpacking his portmanteau himself. He

raised his head on hearing Ivan Ilych's footsteps and looked up at him

for a moment without a word. That stare told Ivan Ilych everything. His

brother-in-law opened his mouth to utter an exclamation of surprise but

checked himself, and that action confirmed it all.

"I have changed, eh?"

"Yes, there is a change."

And after that, try as he would to get his brother-in-law to return to

the subject of his looks, the latter would say nothing about it.

Praskovya Fedorovna came home and her brother went out to her. Ivan

Ilych locked to door and began to examine himself in the glass, first

full face, then in profile. He took up a portrait of himself taken with

his wife, and compared it with what he saw in the glass. The change in

him was immense. Then he bared his arms to the elbow, looked at them,

drew the sleeves down again, sat down on an ottoman, and grew blacker

than night.

"No, no, this won't do!" he said to himself, and jumped up, went to the

table, took up some law papers and began to read them, but could not

continue. He unlocked the door and went into the reception-room. The

door leading to the drawing-room was shut. He approached it on tiptoe

and listened.

"No, you are exaggerating!" Praskovya Fedorovna was saying.

"Exaggerating! Don't you see it? Why, he's a dead man! Look at his eyes

-- there's no life in them. But what is it that is wrong with him?"

"No one knows. Nikolaevich [that was another doctor] said something,

but I don't know what. And Seshchetitsky [this was the celebrated

specialist] said quite the contrary . . . "

Ivan Ilych walked away, went to his own room, lay down, and began

musing; "The kidney, a floating kidney." He recalled all the doctors

had told him of how it detached itself and swayed about. And by an

effort of imagination he tried to catch that kidney and arrest it and

support it. So little was needed for this, it seemed to him. "No, I'll

go to see Peter Ivanovich again." [That was the friend whose friend was

a doctor.] He rang, ordered the carriage, and got ready to go.

"Where are you going, Jean?" asked his wife with a specially sad and

exceptionally kind look.

This exceptionally kind look irritated him. He looked morosely at her.

"I must go to see Peter Ivanovich."

He went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together they went to see his

friend, the doctor. He was in, and Ivan Ilych had a long talk with him.

Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what in the

doctor's opinion was going on inside him, he understood it all.

There was something, a small thing, in the vermiform appendix. It might

all come right. Only stimulate the energy of one organ and check the

activity of another, then absorption would take place and everything

would come right.

He got home rather late for dinner, ate his dinner, and conversed

cheerfully, but could not for a long time bring himself to go back

to work in his room. At last, however, he went to his study and did

what was necessary, but the consciousness that he had put something

aside -- an important, intimate matter which he would revert to when

his work was done -- never left him. When he had finished his

work he remembered that this intimate matter was the thought of his

vermiform appendix. But he did not give himself up to it, and went to

the drawing-room for tea. There were callers there, including the

examining magistrate who was a desirable match for his daughter, and

they were conversing, playing the piano, and singing. Ivan Ilych, as

Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening more cheerfully than

usual, but he never for a moment forgot that he had postponed the

important matter of the appendix. At eleven o'clock he said goodnight

and went to his bedroom. Since his illness he had slept alone in a

small room next to his study. He undressed and took up a novel by Zola,

but instead of reading it he fell into thought, and in his imagination

that desired improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred. There was

the absorption and evacuation and the re-establishment of normal

activity. "Yes, that's it!" he said to himself. "One need only assist

nature, that's all." He remembered his medicine, rose, took it, and lay

down on his back watching for the beneficent action of the medicine and

for it to lessen the pain. "I need only take it regularly and avoid all

injurious influences. I am already feeling better, much better." He

began touching his side: it was not painful to the touch. "There, I

really don't feel it. It's much better already." He put out the light

and turned on his side . . . "The appendix is getting better,

absorption is occurring." Suddenly he felt the old, familiar, dull,

gnawing pain, stubborn and serious. There was the same familiar

loathsome taste in his mouth. His heart sand and he felt dazed. "My

God! My God!" he muttered. "Again, again! And it will never cease." And

suddenly the matter presented itself in a quite different aspect.

"Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to himself. "It's not a question

of appendix or kidney, but of life and . . . death. Yes, life was there

and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive

myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone but me that I'm dying, and that

it's only a question of weeks, days . . . it may happen this moment.

There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going

there! Where?" A chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt

only the throbbing of his heart.

"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing. Then where

shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No, I don't want to!"

He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt for it with trembling

hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on

his pillow.

"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself, staring

with wide-open eyes into the darkness. "Death. Yes, death. And none of

them knows or wishes to know it, and they have no pity for me. Now they

are playing." (He heard through the door the distant sound of a song

and its accompaniment.) "It's all the same to them, but they will die

too! Fools! I first, and they later, but it will be the same for them.

And now they are merry . . . the beasts!"

Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable. "It is

impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this awful horror!"

He raised himself.

"Something must be wrong. I must calm myself -- must think it all over

from the beginning." And he again began thinking. "Yes, the beginning

of my illness: I knocked my side, but I was still quite well that day

and the next. It hurt a little, then rather more. I saw the doctors,

then followed despondency and anguish, more doctors, and I drew nearer

to the abyss. My strength grew less and I kept coming nearer and

nearer, and now I have wasted away and there is no light in my eyes. I

think of the appendix -- but this is death! I think of mending the

appendix, and all the while here is death! Can it really be death?"

Again terror seized him and he gasped for breath. He leant down and

began feeling for the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand

beside the bed. It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious with

it, pressed on it still harder, and upset it. Breathless and in despair

he fell on his back, expecting death to come immediately.

Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was seeing

them off. She heard something fall and came in.

"What has happened?"

"Nothing. I knocked it over accidentally."

She went out and returned with a candle. He lay there panting heavily,

like a man who has run a thousand yards, and stared upwards at her with

a fixed look.

"What is it, Jean?"

"No . . . o . . . thing. I upset it." ("Why speak of it? She won't

understand," he thought.)

And in truth she did not understand. She picked up the stand, lit his

candle, and hurried away to see another visitor off. When she came back

he still lay on his back, looking upwards.

"What is it? Do you feel worse?"

"Yes."

She shook her head and sat down.

"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come and see

you here."

This meant calling in the famous specialist, regardless of expense. He

smiled malignantly and said "No." She remained a little longer and then

went up to him and kissed his forehead.

While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his soul and

with difficulty refrained from pushing her away.

"Good night. Please God you'll sleep."

"Yes."

__________________________________________________________________

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair.

In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he un-

accustomed to the thought, he simply could not grasp it, could not grasp
it at all.

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man,

men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him

correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself.

That Caius -- man in the abstract -- was mortal, was perfectly correct,

but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite

separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a

papa, with Mitya and Volodya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse,

and later with Katenka-- Vanya, with all the joys, griefs, and delights of

childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that

little striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius ever kissed

his mother's hand like that, and had the silk of her dress ever rustled so for

Caius? Had Caius ever rioted at school when the pastry was bad? Had

he ever been so much in love? Or presided so well at a court session?

"Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for

me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and feelings, it's

altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That

would be too terrible."

Such was his feeling.

"If I had to die like Caius, I would have known it. An inner voice

would have told me so, but I was never aware of any such thing,

and I and all my friends-- we knew 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-- not just the thought but, it seemed,

the reality itself-- kept coming back and confronting 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 the pain went right on with its work.

And then It would come and stand before him and stare at him, and he would be

petrified, the light would die out of his eyes, and he would again begin

asking himself, "Can It alone be 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 regain his composure, somehow bring

the sitting to a close, and return home sadly aware that his judicial labours

could no longer hide what he wanted them to hide, and could not deliver

him from It. And the worst thing 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, and doing nothing, suffer unspeakable agony.

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 furnished

-- 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, so he hoped It would disappear, but he involuntarily became

aware of his side: the pain was there gnawing away at him, and he
could no longer forget-- It was staring at him distinctly from behind the

flowers. What was the point of it all?

"It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done

when storming a fort. Is that possible? How awful and how stupid. It

can't be true! It can't be, yet it is."

He would go to his study, lay down, and once again was alone with It:
face to face with It. And nothing could be done with It. Simply look at It

and grow numb with horror.

__________________________________________________________________

VII

How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about gradually,
imperceptibly, 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 knew that the only interest

he had for others was whether he would soon vacate his place, free
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 morphine injections,
but this brought no relief. The dull depression he experienced in

a semi-conscious condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as

a new sensation, but then it became as agonizing, if not more so, than
the raw pain.

Special foods were prepared for him by the doctors' orders, but all

those foods became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him.

Special arrangements, too, were made for his bowel movements, and this

was a regular torture -- a torture because of the filth, the unseemliness,

and the stench, and from knowing that another person had to take part in it.

But it was precisely through this unseemly business that Ivan Ilych obtained

some comfort. Gerasim, the butler's young assistant, always came in to carry

out the chamber pot. 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.

Just then, Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting

a pleasant smell of tar and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean

hemp 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 get the pot.

"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, no, sir," and Gerasim's eyes beamed and he showed his glistening

white teeth, "What's a little trouble? You're a sick man."

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.

100

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 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 skillfully.... how 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."

101

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

102

ill, and that if he stayed calm and underwent 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 wishing and forcing him to participate in

that lie. Those lies -- lies enacted over him on the eve of his death

and destined to degrade this awful, solemn act to the level of their

visitings, their curtains, their sturgeon for dinner -- were a terrible

agony for Ivan Ilych. And strangely enough, many times when they were

going through their antics over him he had been within a hairbreadth of

calling out to them: "Stop lying! You know and I know that I am dying.

Then at least stop lying about it!" But he had never had the spirit to

do it. The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced

by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost

indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room emitting a

foul odour) and this was done by that very propriety which he had

served all his life long. He saw that no one pitied him, because no

one even cared to grasp his position. Only Gerasim recognized it and

pitied him. And so Ivan Ilych felt at ease only with him. He felt

comforted when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night long)

103

and refused to go to bed, saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilych. I'll

get sleep enough later on," or when he suddenly became familiar and

exclaimed: "If you weren't sick it would be another matter, but as it

is, why should I grudge a little trouble?" Gerasim alone did not lie;

everything showed that he alone understood the facts of the case and

did not consider it necessary to disguise them, but simply felt sorry

for his emaciated and enfeebled master. Once when Ivan Ilych was

sending him away he even said straight out: "We shall all of us die, so

why should I grudge a little trouble?" -- expressing the fact that he

did not think his work burdensome, because he was doing it for a dying

man and hoped someone would do the same for him when his time came.

Apart from this lying, or because of it, what most tormented Ivan Ilych

was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied. At certain

moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he

would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a

sick child is pitied. He longed to be caressed and comforted. He knew he

was an important functionary, that he had a beard turning grey, and

that therefore what he longed for was impossible, but still he longed for

it. And in Gerasim's attitude towards him there was something akin to

what he wished for, and so that attitude comforted him. Ivan Ilych

wanted to weep, wanted to be caressed and cried over, and then his

colleague Shebek would come, and instead of crying and getting affection,

104

Ivan Ilych would assume a serious, severe, profound expression, and by

force of habit would express his opinion on a decision of the Court of

Appeals and would stubbornly insist on that view. Nothing did so much
to poison the last days of Ivan Ilych's life as this falseness in himself and
in those around him.

105

__________________________________________________________________

VIII

It was morning. He knew it was morning because Gerasim had gone, and

Pyotr the footman had come, snuffed out the candles, drawn back one of

the curtains, and begun quietly to tidy up. Whether it was morning or

evening, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, it was all just the

same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain, the consciousness of life
inexorably waning but not yet extinguished, the approach of that ever

dreaded and hateful Death which was the only reality, and always

the same falsity. What were days, weeks, hours, in such a case?

"Will you have some tea, sir?"

"He wants things to be regular, and wishes the gentlefolk to drink tea

in the morning," thought ivan Ilych, and only said "No."

"Wouldn't you like to move onto the sofa, sir?"

"He wants to tidy up the room, and I'm in the way. I am uncleanliness

and disorder," he thought, and said only:

"No, leave me alone."

The man went on bustling about. Ivan Ilych stretched out his hand.

Pyotr came up, ready to help.

"What is it, sir?"

"My watch."

Peter took the watch which was close at hand and gave it to his master.

107

"Half-past eight. Are they up?"

"No sir, except Vladimir Ivanovich" (the son) "who has gone to school.

Praskovya Fedorovna ordered me to wake her if you asked for her. Shall

I do so?"

"No, there's no need to," he said. "Perhaps I'd better have some tea," he

thought, and added aloud: "Yes, tea... bring me some."

Pyotr headed for the door, but Ivan Ilych dreaded being left alone. "How

can I keep him here?" he thought. "Oh yes, my medicine."

"Peter, give me my medicine," he said. "Why not?" he thought. "Perhaps it
may still do some good." He took a spoonful and swallowed it. "No, it
won't help. It's all tomfoolery, all deception," he decided as soon as he

became aware of the familiar, sickly, hopeless taste. "No, I can't believe
in it any longer. But the pain, why this pain? If it would only cease just
for a moment!" And he moaned. Peter turned towards him. "It's all right.
Go and fetch me some tea."

Peter went out. Left alone Ivan Ilych groaned not so much with pain,

terrible though that was, as from mental anguish. Always and for ever

the same, always these endless days and nights. If only it would come

quicker! If only what would come quicker? Death, darkness? . . . No,

no! anything rather than death!

When Peter returned with the tea on a tray, Ivan Ilych stared at him

for a time in bewilderment, not realizing who and what he was. Peter was

disconcerted by that look and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilych to

himself.

"Oh, tea! All right, put it down. Only help me to wash and put on a

clean shirt."

108

And Ivan Ilych began to wash. With pauses for rest, he washed his hands

and then his face, cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair, looked in the

glass. He was terrified by what he saw, especially by the limp way in

which his hair clung to his pallid forehead.

While his shirt was being changed, he knew that he would be still

more frightened at the sight of his body, so he avoided looking at it.

Finally he was ready. He drew on a dressing-gown, wrapped himself in a

plaid, and sat down in the armchair to take his tea. For a moment he

felt refreshed, but as soon as he began to drink the tea, he was again

aware of the same taste, and the pain also returned. He finished it

with an effort, and then lay down stretching out his legs, and

dismissed Peter.

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair

rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the

same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call

someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be

still worse. "Another dose of morphine--to lose consciousness. I will

tell him, the doctor, that he must think of something else. It's

impossible, impossible, to go on like this."

An hour and another pass like that. But now there is a ring at the door

bell. Perhaps it's the doctor? It is. He comes in fresh, hearty, plump,

and cheerful, with that look on his face that seems to say: "There now,

you're in a panic about something, but we'll arrange it all for you

directly!" The doctor knows this expression is out of place here, but

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he has put it on once for all and can't take it off -- like a man who

has put on a frock-coat in the morning to pay a round of calls.

The doctor rubs his hands vigorously and reassuringly.

"Brr! How cold it is! There's such a sharp frost; just let me warm

myself!" he says, as if it were only a matter of waiting till he was

warm, and then he would put everything right.

"Well now, how are you?"

Ivan Ilych feels that the doctor would like to say: "Well, how are our

affairs?" but that even he feels that this would not do, and says

instead: "What sort of a night have you had?"

Ivan Ilych looks at him as much as to say: "Are you really never

ashamed of lying?" But the doctor does not wish to understand this

question, and Ivan Ilych says: "Just as terrible as ever. The pain

never leaves me and never subsides. If only something . . . "

"Yes, you sick people are always like that. . . . There, now I think I

am warm enough. Even Praskovya Fedorovna, who is so particular, could

find no fault with my temperature. Well, now I can say good-morning,"

and the doctor presses his patient's hand.

Then dropping his former playfulness, he begins with a most serious

face to examine the patient, feeling his pulse and taking his

temperature,sounding his chest, listening to his heart and lungs.

Ivan Ilych knows quite well and definitely that all this is nonsense

and pure deception, but when the doctor, getting down on his knee,

110

leans over him, putting his ear first higher then lower, and performs

various gymnastic movements over him with a significant expression on

his face, Ivan Ilych submits to it all as he used to submit to the

speeches of the lawyers, though he knew very well that they were all

lying and why they were lying.

The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, is still sounding him when Praskovya

Fedorovna's silk dress rustles at the door and she is heard scolding

Peter for not having let her know of the doctor's arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once proceeds to prove that

she has been up a long time already, and only owing to a

misunderstanding failed to be there when the doctor arrived.

Ivan Ilych looks at her, scans her all over, sets against her the

whiteness and plumpness and cleanness of her hands and neck, the gloss

of her hair, and the sparkle of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with

his whole soul. And the thrill of hatred he feels for her makes him

suffer from her touch.

Her attitude towards him and his diseases is still the same. Just as

the doctor had adopted a certain relation to his patient which he could

not abandon, so had she formed one towards him -- that he was not doing

something he ought to do and was himself to blame, and that she

reproached him lovingly for this -- and she could not now change that

attitude.

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"You see he doesn't listen to me and doesn't take his medicine at the

proper time. And above all he lies in a position that is no doubt bad

for him -- with his legs up."

She described how he made Gerasim hold his legs up.

The doctor smiled with a contemptuous affability that said: "What's to

be done? These sick people do have foolish fancies of that kind, but we

must forgive them."

When the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and then

Praskovya Fedorovna announced to Ivan Ilych that it was of course as he

pleased, but she had sent today for a celebrated specialist who would

examine him and have a consultation with Michael Danilovich (their

regular doctor).

"Please don't raise any objections. I am doing this for my own sake,"

she said ironically, letting it be felt that she was doing it all for

his sake 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

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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 soon get a good trouncing from Michael Danilovich and the
specialist and be forced to amend their ways.

The celebrated specialist took leave of him with a serious though not a

hopeless look, and when Ivan Ilych looked up at him, his eyes glistening
with hope and fear, and timidly asked whether there was any chance of
recovery, he replied that he could not vouch for it but there was a chance.
The look of hope Ivan Ilych gave the doctor as he watched him leave was so

pathetic that, seeing it, Praskovya Fedorovna actually burst into tears 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. Once again the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall-paper,

medicine bottles, were all there, and the same aching suffering body, and

Ivan Ilych began to moan. They gave him an injection and he sank

into oblivion.

It was twilight when he came to. They brought him his dinner and he

swallowed some beef broth 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

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and they had a box, which he had insisted on their taking. Now he had

forgotten about it and was hurt by the sight of her elaborate attire. But he

concealed his indignation when he remembered that he had himself urged them

to secure a box and go 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."

His daughter came in all decked out in a gown that left much of her fresh

young flesh exposed which for him was the cause of so much agony.

Strong, healthy, and obviously in love, she was impatient with illness,

suffering, and death because they interfered with her happiness.

114

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 hugging his strong thighs.

He had one white glove tightly drawn on, and was holding his opera hat

in his hand.

Following him, the schoolboy son 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.

He had always felt sorry for his son, and he found the boy's frightened,

pitying look terrifying to behold. 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 feeling. A silence followed.

Lisa asked her mother about the opera glasses, and there was an argument

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 said she had been particularly good in something

or other. 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

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Ilych was staring with glittering eyes straight before him, evidently

infuriated 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 lie dictated by propriety

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 we left," she said, glancing at her

watch, a gift 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 good-night, and went away.

When they had gone, Ivan Ilych thought he felt better; the lie was gone--

it had left with them. But the pain remained-- that same pain, that same

fear that made everything monotonously alike, nothing harder and

nothing easier. Everything was getting worse.

Again time dragged on, minute after minute and hour after hour, on and on
without end, with the inevitable end becoming more and more horrifying.

"Yes, send Gerasim here," he replied to a question Peter asked.

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His wife returned late at night. She tip-toed into the room, but he heard

her, opened his eyes, and quickly closed them again. She wanted to

send Gerasim away and 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 consented and drank some. She went away.

Until about three in the morning he was in an agonizing delerium.

It seemed to him that he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow,

black sack-- a deep one-- but though they were pushed further and further

in they could not be pushed to the bottom. And this dreadful business

was causing him suffering. He was afraid of that sack yet wanted to

fall through; he struggled but yet co-operated. And suddenly he lost his grip
and 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 feet 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 with his

117

nestled on his cheek, and began to feel terribly sorry for himself. He waited

till Gerasim had gone into the next room and then no longer able to restrain
himself, cried like a baby. He cried about his helplessness, about his terrible

loneliness, about the cruelty of people, about the cruelty of God, about

the absence of God.

"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me to this? Why

dost Thou torture me so? For what?"

He did not expect an answer and he cried because there was no answer

and there could be none. The pain started up again, but he did not stir

and did not call. He said to himself: "Go on then! Hit me again! But what for?

What have I done to Thee?"

Then he grew quiet and not only stopped crying but held his breath

and became all attentive: he seemed to be listening-- not to an

audible voice, but to the voice of his soul, to the flow of thoughts

surging 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? Not to suffer. To live," he replied.

And once again he listened with such rapt attention that even his

pain did not distract him.

"To live? How?" asked the voice of his soul.

"Why, to live as I used to -- happily and pleasantly."

"As you lived before, happily and pleasantly?" asked the voice.

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And in imagination he called to mind the best moments of his pleasant

life. Yet, strange to say, all the best moments of his pleasant life

seemed entirely different than they had then seemed -- all except

the earliest memories of childhood. Way back in his childhood, there had

been something really pleasant, something he could live with were it ever

to recur. But the child who had experienced that happiness no longer

existed. It was like the memories of another man.

As soon as the period that had produced the present Ivan Ilych,

all the seeming joys of his life vanished before his sight and turned

into something trivial and often nasty.

And the farther he moved from childhood, the closer he came to

the present, the more trivial and doubtful were the joys. Beginning with

the years he spent in Law School. A little of what was genuinely good

had still existed then: there had been light-heartedness, friendship, and hope.

But by the time he reached the upper classes thegood moments had become

rarer. After that, during the period he had worked for the governor

there had also been some pleasant moments--:memories of his love for

a woman. But then everything became more and more confused, less of
what was good remained. Later on there was even less, and the farther
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 pretense! And that

deadly official life and those worries about money, and so it had gone

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for a year, two years, ten years, twenty years--on and on in the same way.

And the longer it lasted the more deadly it became. "It is as though I had been

going steadily downhill while I imagined I was going up. That's exactly what

happened. In public opinion I was moving uphill, but to the same extent life

was slipping away from me. And now it is gone and all I can do is die!

"What does it all mean? Why has it happened? It can't be that life is so

senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless,

why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!

"Perhaps I did not live as I should have," it suddenly occurred to

him. "But how could that be when I did everything I was supposed to do?"

he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind the one solution
to the whole enigma of life and death, as something quite impossible.

"Then what do you want now? To live? Live how? Live as you did in the

law courts when the usher proclaimed The court is open!' The court is

open!" he repeated to himself. "Here he is, the judge. But I am not guilty!"

he exclaimed angrily. "What is it for?" And he stopped crying, but turning

his face to the wall continued to ponder on the same question:

Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But think as he

might, he could find no answer. And whenever the thought occurred to

him, as it often did, that he had not lived as he should have, he at once

recalled how correct his whole life had been and dismissed this bizarre idea.

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Another two weeks passed. Ivan Ilych now no longer got off his sofa. He

did not want to lie in bed ans so he lay on the sofa, facing the wall nearly all

the time. He suffered, all alone, the same inexplicable suffering and,
all alone, brooded on the same inexplicable question: "What is this?

Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner voice answered: "Yes,

it is Death."

"Why these torments?" And the voice answered, "For no reason -- they

just are." Above and beyond this there was nothing.

From the start of his illness, ever since he first went to see the

doctor, Ivan Ilych's life had been divided between two contrary

and fluctuating moods: one a mood of despair and the expectation of an

incomprehensible and terrible death, the other a mood of hope filled with

intent observation of the functioning of his bodily functions. At times he was

confronted with nothing but a kidney or an intestine that temporarily evaded

its duty; at others nothing but an unfathomable, horrifying death from

which there was no escape.

These two moods had fluctuated since the onset of his illness, but the

farther that illness progressed, the more unlikely and preposterous

considerations about his kidney became, and the more real his sense of

impending death.

121

He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and

what he was now, to remember how steadily he had gone downhill,

for all possibility of hope to be shattered.

During the last days of the isolation in which he lived, lying on the sofa

with his face to the wall, isolation in the midst of a populous

city among numerous friends and relatives, an isolation that could not

have been more complete anywhere -- either at the bottom

of the sea or the bowels of the earth -- during the last days of that
terrible isolation, Ivan Ilych lived only with memories of the past. One
after another, pictures of his past rose before him. They always began

with what was nearest in time and then went back to what was most

remote -- to his childhood-- and rested there. If he thought of the stewed

prunes that had been offered him that day, his mind went back to the raw

shrivelled French plums of his childhood, their peculiar flavour and the flow

of saliva when he sucked their stones, and along with the memory of that

taste came a whole series of memories of those days: his nurse, his brother,

and their toys. "No, I mustn't thing of that. . . . It is too painful,"

Ivan Ilych said to himself, and brought himself back to the present --

to the button on the back of the sofa and the creases in its morocco.

"Morocco is expensive, but it does not wear well: there had been a

quarrel about it. It was a different kind of quarrel and a different

kind of morocco that time when we tore father's portfolio and were

punished, and mamma brought us some tarts. . . ." And again his

thoughts dwelt on his childhood, and again it was painful and he tried

to banish them and fix his mind on something else.

122

Then together with that chain of memories another series flashed

through his mind -- of how his illness had progressed and grown worse.

Here too, the farther back in time he went, the more life he found.

There had been more goodness in his life earlier and more of life itself.

The two merged together. "Just as the pain went on getting worse and

worse, so my life grew worse and worse," he thought. "There is one

bright spot there at the back, at the beginning of life, and afterwards

all becomes blacker and blacker and proceeds more and more rapidly --

in inverse ration to the square of the distance from death," thought

Ivan Ilych. And the image of a stone hurtling downwards with

increasing velocity entered his mind. Life, a series of increasing

sufferings, flies further and further towards its end -- the most

terrible suffering. "I am falling. . . ." He shuddered, shifted back and forth,

wanting to resist, but by then knew there was no resisting. And again weary
of contemplating but unable to tear his eyes away from what was right there
before him, he stared at the back of the sofa and waited -- awaiting that

dreadful fall and shock and destruction.

"Resistance is impossible!" he said to himself. "But if only I could

understand the reason for this agony! Yet even that is impossible. It would
make sense if it could say that I had not lived as I should have.

But it is impossible to say that," he uttered inwardly, remembering all

the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. "That is a point I cannot
grant," he thought, and his lips smiled ironically as if someone

could see that smile and be taken in by it. "There is no explanation!

Agony, death. . . . Why?"

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Two more weeks went by this way. During that time the event

Ivan Ilych and his wife had hoped for occured: Petrishchev formally

proposed. It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna

went into her husband's room thinking about how she would announce

the proposal, but during the night Ivan Ilych had undergone a change
for the worse. She found him on the same sofa but in a different

position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring straight ahead with
a fixed look in his eyes.

She began to remind him of his medicines. He shifted his gaze to her.
So great was the animosity in that look-- animosity towards her--
that she did not finish what she was saying;

"For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" he said.

She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and went

up to say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his wife,

and in reply to her inquiry about his health said dryly that they would

soon be rid of him. Both were silent, sat there for a while, and
then went away.

"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother. "It's as if we were to

blame! I am sorry for papa, but why should he torture us like that?

125

The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilych answered "Yes" and "No,"

glowered at him throughout the visit, and at last said: "You know you

can do nothing for me, so leave me alone."

"We can ease your sufferings."

"You can't even do that. Let me be."

The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that

the case was very serious and that the only resource left was opium to

allay her husband's sufferings, which must be excruciating.

It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilych's physical agony

was terrible, but worse than the physical sufferings was his moral
agony, and it was this that tormented him most.

What had induced his moral agony was that during the night, as he

gazed at Gerasim's broad-boned sleepy, good-natured face, the
question suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life was simply
not the real thing?"

It occurred to him that what had appeared utterly inconceivable

before--that he had not lived the kind of life he should have-- might

after all be true. It occurred to him that those scarcely perceptible

impulses of his to protest what people of high rank considered good,
those vague impulses which he had immediately suppressed,

might have been precisely what mattered, and all the rest not been

126

the real thing. His official duties, his whole manner of life, his family,
the values adhered to by society and in his profession might not have
been real. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly
became aware of the insubstantiality of them all. And there was nothing

left to defend.

"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and I am leaving this life

with the awareness that I squanderedt all that was given me and it is

impossible to rectify it -- what then?"

He lay on his back and began to review his whole life in quite a new

way. In the morning when he saw first his footman, then his wife, then

his daughter, and then the doctor, their every word and movement

confirmed to him the horrible truth that had been revealed to him during

the night. In them he saw himself -- all that for which he had lived --

and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge

deception which had shut out both life and death. This awareness

intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed

and clutched at his bed clothes. He felt they were choking and suffocating
him. And he hated them on that account.

He was given a large dose of opium and lost consciousness, but at
dinnertime it all started again. He drove everybody away and tossed
from side to side.

His wife came to him and said:

"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do any harm and often helps.

Really, its such a small thing. Healthy people often do it."

127

He opened his eyes wide.

"What? Take the sacrament? Why? I don't want to! And yet . . . "

She began to cry.

"Then you will, dear? I'll send for our priest. He is such a fine man."

"Fine. Very good," he muttered.

When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilych relented

and seemed to feel a relief from his doubts and consequently from his

sufferings, and for a moment there came a ray of hope. He again began

to think of the vermiform appendix and the possibility of correcting

it. As he took the sacrament, there were tears in his eyes.

When they laid him down afterwards, he felt better for a second,
and the hope that he might live awoke in him again. He began to think of

the operation that had been suggested to him. "To live! I want to

live!" he said to himself.

His wife came in to congratulate him on taking the sacrament, she said the

things people usually do, and then added,

"You really do feel better, don't you?"

Without looking at her he said "Yes."

Her clothes, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her

voice, all revealed the same thing. "Not the real thing. All you have
lived for and still live for is a lie, a deception that blinds you from the
reality of life and death." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his
hatred and his excruciating physical suffering again sprang up,

and with that pain a awareness of the inevitable, imminent destruction.

The pain took a new turn: it began to grind and shoot and constrict his breathing.

128

The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful.

Having uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, flung himself

face downward and shouted:

"Go away! Go away! Leave me alone!"

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XII

That moment started three days of incessant screaming, screaming so

so terrible that even two rooms away one could not hear it without

trembling. The moment he had answered his wife, he realized that he was

lost, that the end had come, that there was no return, the very end,

and that his doubts, still unresolved, remained with him.

"Oh! Oh! No!" he screamed in various intonations. he had begun by

screaming "I don't want it! I don't!" and continued screaming with that
"O" sound.

For three straight days, during which time ceased to exist for him, he

struggled desperately in that black sack into which an unseen invisible force
was thrusting him. He struggled as a man condemned to death

struggles in the hands of an executioner, knowing there is no escape.

And he felt that with every minute, despite his efforts to resist, he was

drawing closer and closer to what terrified him. He felt he was in agony

because he was being thrust into that black hole and still more because

he was unable to get right into it. He was prevented from getting into

it by his conviction that his life had been a good one. That very

justification of his life held him fast and prevented his moving

forward, and it caused him the most torment of all.

131

Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and the side, making it still

harder to breathe: he plunged into the hole and there at the bottom

something was shining. What had happened to him was like the sensation one

sometimes experiences in a railway carriage when one thinks one is

going backwards while one is really going forward and suddenly becomes

aware of the real direction.

"Yes, all of it was simply not the real thing," he said to himself, "but no

matter. I can still make it the real thing-- I can. But what is the real thing?"
he asked himself and suddenly grew quiet.

This took place at the end of the third day, an hour before his death.

Just then his son crept softly into the room and went up to his bed

The dying man was still screaming desperately and faliling his arms.

His hand fell on the boy's head, and the boy grasped it, pressed

it to his lips, and began to cry.

At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and saw a light, and it

was revealed to him that his life had not been what it should have

been, but that he could still rectify the situation. "But what is
the real thing?" he asked himself and grew quiet, listening. Then he felt
that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son,

and felt sorry for him. His wife came in and went up to him. He looked

at her. She gazed at him open-mouthed, with unwiped tears on her nose and

cheek, with a look of despair on her face. He grieved for her.

132

"Yes, I am torturing them," he thought. "They feel sorry for me, but it

will be better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not

the strength to utter it. "But why speak-- I must do something," he thought.

He looked at his wife and, indicating his son with a glance, said: "Take him away

. . . sorry for him . . . sorry for you too. . . ." He tried to add,

"Forgive me," but said, "Forget," and too feeble to correct himself,
dismissed it, knowing that He who needed to understand would understand.

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and

would not leave him suddenly was vanishing all at once-- from two sides,

ten sides, all sides. He felt sorry for them; he had to do something to keep from

hurting them: to deliver them and himself from these sufferings.

"How good and how simple!" he thought. "And the pain?" he asked

himself. "Where was it gone? Now, then pain, where are you, pain?"

He waited for it attentively.

"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."

"And death . . . where is it?"

He searched for his accustomed fear of death and could not find it.

"Where was death? What death?" There was no fear because there was no

death.

Instead of death there was light.

"So that's it!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What bliss!"

To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that

instant did not change. For those present his agony continued for

another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body

twitched, then the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.

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"It is finished!" said someone near him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is over," he said to himself. "There is no more death!"

He drew in a breath, broke off in the midst of it, stretched himself out,
and died.

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