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The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

1886

Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Chapter I

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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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.

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"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 though 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 quite 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 Ilyich'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 Ilyich's acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that

they would now have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by

attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow.

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Fedor Vasilievich and Peter Ivanovich had been his nearest acquaintances.

Peter Ivanovich had studied law with Ivan Ilyich and had considered himself to be

under obligations to him.

Having told his wife at dinnertime of Ivan Ilyich'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 cloak stand was a coffin-lid covered with cloth of gold,

ornamented with gold cord and tassels, which 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 Ilyich 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 bridge

that evening. The ladies went upstairs to the widow's room, and Schwartz with

seriously compressed lips but a playful looking 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 obeisance

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 odor of a decomposing body.

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The last time he had called on Ivan Ilyich, Peter Ivanovich had seen Gerasim in

the study. Ivan Ilyich 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 corpse.

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

was handsomer and 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

bridge 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."

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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 Ilyich..." 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 bridge! Don's 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 pouf, 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 pouf Peter Ivanovich recalled how Ivan Ilyich 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 pouf, 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 pouf under him. But the

widow had not quite freed herself and Peter Ivanovich got up again, and again

the pouf 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 pouf 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.

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"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 pouf, 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

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that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich but certainly not to himself.

After many details of the really dreadful physical sufferings Ivan Ilyich 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 don 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 anteroom.

In the dining room where the clock stood that Ivan Ilyich 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,

and examining magistrate, whom Peter Ivanovich also knew and who was her

fiancé, 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

Ilyich, 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.

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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 will. We shall all come to it some day," 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.

Chapter II

Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most

terrible.

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

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from six to ten thousand rubles that are not fictitious, and in receipt of which they

live on to a great age.

Such was the Privy Councilor and superfluous member of various superfluous

institutions, Ilya Epimovich Golovin.

He had three sons, of whom Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich was

le phenix de la famille as people said. He was neither as cold and formal as his

elder brother nor as wild as the younger, but was a happy mean between them --

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 Ilyich finished the

course well. 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 to be what was so considered by

those in authority. Neither as a boy nor as a man was he a toady, but from

early youth was by nature attracted to people of high station as a fly 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 latterly

among the highest classes to liberalism, but always within limits which his instinct

unfailingly indicated to him as correct.

At school 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 able not exactly to regard them as right, but to

forget about them entirely or not be at all troubled at remembering 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

Ilyich 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

portmanteau, linen, clothes, shaving and other toilet appliances, and a traveling

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rug, all purchased at the best 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.

In the province Ivan Ilyich soon arranged as easy and agreeable a position for

himself as he had had at the School of Law. He performed his official task, made

his career, and at the same time amused himself pleasantly and decorously.

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 sectarians, with an exactness and incorruptible

honesty of which he could not but feel proud.

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

exceedingly reserved, punctilious, and even severe; but in society e was often

amusing and witty, and always good- natured, correct in his manner, and 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 a lady who made advances to the elegant

young lawyer, and there was also a milliner; and there were carousals with

aidesde-camp who visited the district, and after-supper visits to a certain outlying

street of doubtful reputation; and there was too some obsequiousness to his chief

and even to 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 connections he had formed and to make

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 Ilyich was just as comme il faut and decorous 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

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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 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich

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 connections, 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 slight

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 Ilyich 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 vint [a form of bridge], which he found added not a little to

the pleasure of life, for he had a capacity for cards, played goodhumouredly, and

calculated rapidly and astutely, so that he usually won.

After living there for two years he 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 labors as

examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich established light and playful relations with her.

While he had been an official on special service he had been accustomed to

dance, but now as an examining magistrate it was exceptional for him to do so. If

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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 Ilyich 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

some little property. Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich got married.

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

caresses, the new furniture, new crockery, and new linen, were very pleasant

until his wife became pregnant -- so that Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 fulfill her demands, so resolutely and with such

evident determination not to give way till he submitted -- that is, till he stayed at

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home and was bored just as she was -- that he became alarmed. 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 infringement. And Ivan Ilyich 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 their child, 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 Ilyich's sympathy was demanded but about which he understood nothing,

the need of securing for himself an existence outside his family life became still

more imperative.

As his wife grew more irritable and exacting and Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich had realized that marriage,

though it may add some comforts to life, is in fact a very intricate and difficult

affair towards which in order to perform one's duty, that is, to lead a decorous life

approved of by society, one must adopt a definite attitude just as towards one's

official duties.

And Ivan Ilyich 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 querulous

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

he found satisfaction.

Ivan Ilyich was esteemed a good official, 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 querulous and ill

tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilyich had adopted towards his home life rendered

him almost impervious to her grumbling.

14

After seven years' service in that town he was transferred to another province as

Public Prosecutor. They moved, but were short of money and his wife did not like

the place they moved to. Though the salary was higher the cost of living was

greater, besides which two of their children died and family life became still more

unpleasant for him.

Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience they

encountered in their new home. Most of the conversations between husband and

wife, especially as to the children's education, led to topics that recalled former

disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up again at any moment. There

remained only those rare periods of amorousness, which still came to them at

times but did not last long. These were islets at which they anchored for a

while and then again set out upon that ocean of veiled hostility which

showed itself in their aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have

grieved Ivan Ilyich 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

unpleasantnesses 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 Ilyich's life

continued to flow as he considered it should do -- pleasantly and properly.

So things continued for another seven years. His eldest daughter was already

sixteen, another child had died, and only one son was left, a schoolboy and a

subject of dissension. Ivan Ilyich 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.

Chapter lll

15

So Ivan Ilyich lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was already a

Public Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several proposed transfers

while awaiting a more desirable post, when an unanticipated and unpleasant

occurrence quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was expecting to be

offered the post of presiding judge in a University town, but Happe somehow

came to the front and obtained the appointment instead. Ivan Ilyich became

irritable, reproached Happe, and quarreled both him and with his immediate

superiors -- who became colder to him and again passed him over when other

appointments were made.

This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilyich's life. It was then that it became

evident on the one hand that his salary was insufficient for them to live on, and

on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only this, but that what was for

him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to others a quite ordinary

occurrence. Even his father did not consider it his duty to help him. Ivan Ilyich felt

himself abandoned by everyone, and that they regarded his position with a salary

of 3,500 rubles as quite normal and even fortunate. He alone knew that with the

consciousness of the injustices done him, with his wife's incessant nagging, and

with the debts he had contracted by living beyond his means, his position was far

from normal.

In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence and went with

his wife to live in the country at her brother's place.

In the country, without his work, he experienced ennui for the first time in his life,

and not only ennui but intolerable depression, and he decided that it was

impossible to go on living like that, and that it was necessary to take energetic

measures.

Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he decided to

go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those who had failed to

appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.

Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started for

Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a salary of five thousand

rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any particular department, or tendency,

or kind of activity. All he now wanted was an appointment to another post with a

salary of five thousand rubles, either in the administration, in the banks, with the

railways in one of the Empress Marya's Institutions, or even in the customs -- but

it had to carry with it a salary of five thousand rubles and be in a ministry other

than that in which they had failed to appreciate him.

16

And this quest of Ivan Ilyich's was crowned with remarkable and unexpected

success. At Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into the first-class

carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilyich, 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 Ilyich, because by bringing forward a new man, Peter

Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly favorable

for Ivan Ilyich, since Sachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague of his.

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

found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of an appointment in his

former Department of Justice.

A week later he telegraphed to his wife: "Zachar in Miller's place. I shall receive

appointment on presentation of report."

Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilyich 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 humor

towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished, and Ivan Ilyich

was completely happy.

He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had been for a

long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged

between them. Ivan Ilyich told of how he had been feted by everybody in

Petersburg, how all those who had been his enemies were put to shame and

now fawned on him, how envious they were of his appointment, and how much

everybody in Petersburg had liked him.

Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did not

contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the town to which they

were going. Ivan Ilyich saw with delight that these plans were his plans, that he

and his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was regaining its due and

natural character of pleasant lightheartedness and decorum.

Ivan Ilyich 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.

17

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 Ilyich

had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but the insistence of his

wife's brother and her sister-in-law, who had suddenly become particularly

amiable and friendly to him and his family, induced him to depart alone.

So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by

the harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying the other, did not

leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing both he and his wife had

dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a convenient and

dignified study, rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for his son -- it might

have been specially built for them. Ivan Ilyich himself superintended the

arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the furniture (preferably with

antiques which he considered particularly comme il faut), and supervised the

upholstering. Everything progressed and progressed and approached the ideal

he had set himself: even when things were only half completed they exceeded

his expectations. He saw what a refined and elegant character, free from

vulgarity, it would all have when it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to

himself how the reception room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing

room he could see the fireplace, the screen, the what-not, the little chairs dotted

here and there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they

would be when everything was in place. He was pleased by the thought of how

his wife and daughter, who shared his taste n this matter, would be impressed by

it. They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been particularly

successful in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a particularly

aristocratic character to the whole place. But in his letters he intentionally

understated everything in order to be able to surprise them. All this so absorbed

him that his new duties -- though he liked his official work -- interested him less

than he had expected. Sometimes he even had moments of absent-mindedness

during the court sessions and would consider whether he should have straight or

curved cornices for his curtains. He was so interested in it all that he often did

things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when

mounting a step ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he

wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being a

strong and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of

the window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and

he felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: "I feel fifteen years

younger." He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it

dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his eyes but

to everyone who saw it.

18

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 house all lit up, where a footman in a white tie opened the door

into the hall decorated with plants, and when they went on into the drawing-room

and the study uttering exclamations of delight. He conducted them everywhere,

drank in their praises eagerly, and beamed with pleasure. At tea that evening,

when Praskovya Fedorovna among others things asked him about his fall, he

laughed, and showed them how he had gone flying and had frightened the

upholsterer.

"It's a good thing I'm a bit of an athlete. Another man might have been killed, but I

merely knocked myself, just here; it hurts when it's touched, but it's passing off

already -- it's only a bruise."

So they began living in their new home -- in which, as always happens, when

they got thoroughly settled in they found they were just one room short -- and

with the increased income, which as always was just a little (some five hundred

rubles) too little, but it was all very nice.

Things went particularly well at first, before everything was finally arranged and

while something had still to be done: this thing bought, that thing ordered,

another thing moved, and something else adjusted. Though there were some

disputes between husband and wife, they were both so well satisfied and had so

much to do that it all passed off without any serious quarrels. When nothing was

left to arrange it became rather dull and something seemed to be lacking, but

they were then making acquaintances, forming habits, and life was growing

fuller.

Ivan Ilyich spent his mornings at the law court and came home to diner, and at

first he was generally in a good humor, though he occasionally became irritable

just on account of his house. (Every spot on the tablecloth or the upholstery, and

every broken window- blind string, irritated him. He had devoted so much trouble

to arranging it all that every disturbance of it distressed him.) But on the whole

his life ran its course as he believed life should do: easily, pleasantly, and

decorously.

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

uniform and went to the law courts. There the harness in which he worked had

already been stretched to fit him and he donned it without a hitch: petitioners,

inquiries at the chancery, the chancery itself, and the sittings public and

19

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 Ilyich, 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 Ilyich possessed this capacity to separate his real life from the official side of

affairs and not mix the two, in the highest degree, and by long practice and

natural aptitude had brought it to such a pitch that sometimes, in the manner of a

virtuoso, he would even allow himself to let the human and official relations

mingle. He let himself do this just because he felt that he could at any time he

chose resume the strictly official attitude again and drop the human relation. And

he did it all easily, pleasantly, correctly, and even artistically. In the intervals

between the sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little

about general topics, a little about cards, but most of all about official

appointments. Tired, but with the feelings of a virtuoso -- one of the first violins

who has played his part in an orchestra with precision -- he would return home to

find that his wife and daughter had been out paying calls, or had a visitor, and

that his son had been to school, had done his homework with his tutor, and was

surely learning what is taught at High Schools. Everything was as it should be.

After dinner, if they had no visitors, Ivan Ilyich sometimes read a book that was

being much discussed at the time, and in the evening settled down to work, that

is, read official papers, compared the depositions of witnesses, and noted

paragraphs of the Code applying to them. This was neither dull nor amusing. It

was dull when he might have been playing bridge, but if no bridge was available

it was at any rate better than doing nothing or sitting with his wife. Ivan Ilyich's

chief pleasure was giving little dinners to which he invited men and women of

good social position, and just as his drawing room resembled all other drawing

rooms so did his enjoyable little parties resemble all other such parties.

Once they even gave a dance. Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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.

20

But the dance itself had been enjoyable. The best people were there, and Ivan

Ilyich had danced with Princess Trufonova, a sister of the distinguished founder

of the Society "Bear My Burden."

The pleasures connected with his work were pleasures of ambition; his social

pleasures were those of vanity; but Ivan Ilyich's greatest pleasure was playing

bridge. He acknowledged that whatever disagreeable incident happened in his

life, the pleasure that beamed like a ray of light above everything else was to sit

down to bridge with good players, not noisy partners, and of course to

fourhanded bridge (with five players it was annoying to have to stand out, though

one pretended not to mind), to play a clever and serious game (when the cards

allowed it) and then to have supper and drink a glass of wine. After a game of

bridge, especially if he had won a little (to win a large sum was unpleasant), Ivan

Ilyich went to bed in an especially good humor.

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 Ilyich 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.

Chapter IV

They were all in good health. It could not be called ill health if Ivan Ilyich

sometimes said that he had a queer taste in his mouth and felt some discomfort

in his left side.

But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful, grew into a sense

of pressure in his side accompanied by ill humor. And his irritability became

21

worse and worse and began to mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life that had

established itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and wife

became more and more frequent, and soon the ease and amenity disappeared

and even the decorum was barely maintained. Scenes again became frequent,

and very few of those islets remained on which husband and wife could meet

without an explosion. Praskovya Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her

husband's temper was trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said he had

always had a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her good nature to put

up with it for twenty years. It was true that now the quarrels were started by him.

His bursts of temper always came just before dinner, often just as he began to

eat his soup. Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food

was not right, or his son put his elbow on the table, or his daughter's hair was not

done as he liked it, and for all this he blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. At first she

retorted and said disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he fell into such a

rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to some physical

derangement brought on by taking food, and so she restrained herself and did

not answer, but only hurried to get the dinner over. She regarded this selfrestraint

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 Ilyich 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

sounding and listening, and the questions which called for answers that were

foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look of

importance which implied that "if only you put yourself in our hands we will

arrange everything -- we know indubitably how it has to be done, always in the

same way for everybody alike." It was all just as it was in the law courts. The

doctor put on just the same air towards him as he himself put on towards an

accused person.

The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so- and-so inside the

patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so did not confirm this, then he must

22

assume that and that. If he assumed that and that, then...and so on. To Ivan

Ilyich 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 Ilyich, in favor 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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.

23

"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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first

derived some comfort from doing so.

From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilyich'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 excretions. 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 that he tried to hide, asked

questions, and applied what he heard to his own case.

The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilyich 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 bridge, 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

24

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 celebrity, 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 Ilyich'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 Ilyich still more and increased his doubts. A homoeopathist

diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine that Ivan

Ilyich 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

affected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich would ask in vexation. "Only once at

Peter Ivanovich's."

25

"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 Ilyich'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 Ilyich felt that this opinion escaped her

involuntarily -- but that did not make it easier for him.

At the law courts too, Ivan Ilyich 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

savoirfaire, 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich, 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 Ilyich felt that he had diffused this gloom over them and

26

could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilyich 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.

Chapter V

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

inlaw came to town and stayed at their house. Ivan Ilyich was at the law courts

and Praskovya Fedorovna had gone shopping. When Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich's

footsteps and looked up at him for a moment without a word. That stare told Ivan

Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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.

27

"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 Ilyich 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 an especially 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich, as Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening more

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

28

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

wideopen 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, and then followed despondency and

29

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.

30

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

"Yes."

Chapter VI

Ivan Ilyich 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 not

accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it.

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, afterwards with Katenka and will all the joys, griefs, and delights of

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

leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother's hand like

that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius? Had he rioted like that at

school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? Could Caius

preside at a session as he did? "Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him

to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilyich, with all my thoughts and emotions, 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 was so. An inner voice would

have told me so, but there was nothing of the sort in me and I and all my friends

felt that our case was quite different from that of Caius. And now here it is!" he

said to himself. "It can't be. It's impossible! But here it is. How is this? How is one

to understand it?"

He could not understand it, and tried to drive this false, incorrect, morbid thought

away and to replace it by other proper and healthy thoughts. But that thought,

and not the thought only but the reality itself, seemed to come and confront him.

31

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 Ilyich now spent most of his time in attempting to reestablish

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 Ilyich would turn his attention to it and try to drive the

thought of it away, but without success. It would come and stand before him and

look at him, and he would be petrified and the light would die out of his eyes, and

he would again begin asking himself whether It alone was true. And his

colleagues and subordinates would see with surprise and distress that he, the

brilliant and subtle judge, was becoming confused and making mistakes. He

would shake himself, try to pull himself together, manage somehow to bring the

sitting to a close, and return home with the sorrowful consciousness that his

judicial labors could not as formerly hide from him what he wanted them to hide,

and could not deliver him from It. And what was worst of all was that It drew his

attention to itself not in order to make him take some action but only that he

should look at It, look it straight in the face: look at it and without doing anything,

suffer inexpressibly.

And to save himself from this condition Ivan Ilyich looked for consolations -- new

screens -- and new screens were found and for a while seemed to save him, but

then they immediately fell to pieces or rather became transparent, as if It

penetrated them and nothing could veil It.

In these latter days he would go into the drawing room he had arranged -- that

drawing room where he had fallen and for the sake of which (how bitterly

ridiculous it seemed) he had sacrificed his life -- for he knew that his illness

originated with that knock. He would enter and see that something had scratched

the polished table. He would look for the cause of this and find that it was the

bronze ornamentation of an album, which 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

32

would call the footman, but his daughter or wife would come to help him. They

would not agree, and his wife would contradict him, and he would dispute and

grow angry. But that was all right, for then he did not think about It. It was

invisible.

But then, when he was moving something himself, his wife would say: "Let the

servants do it. You will hurt yourself again." And suddenly It would flash through

the screen and he would see it. It was just a flash, and he hoped it would

disappear, but he would involuntarily pay attention to his side. "It sits there as

before, gnawing just the same!" And he could no longer forget It, but could

distinctly see it looking at him from behind the flowers. "What is it all for?"

"It really is so! I lost my life over that curtain as I might have done when storming a fort. Is that possible? How terrible and how stupid. It can't be true! It can't, but it is." He would go to his study, lie down, and again be alone with It: face to face with It.

And nothing could be done with It except to look at it and shudder.

Chapter VII

How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about step by step,

unnoticed, but in the third month of Ivan Ilyich's illness, his wife, his daughter, his

son, his acquaintances, the doctors, the servants, and above all he himself, were

aware that the whole interest he had for other people was whether he would

soon vacate his place, and at last release the living from the discomfort caused

by his presence and be himself released from his sufferings.

He slept less and less. He was given opium and hypodermic injections of

morphine, but this did not relieve him. The dull depression he experienced in a

somnolent condition at first gave him a little relief, but only as something new,

afterwards it became as distressing as the pain itself or even more so.

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

became increasingly distasteful and disgusting to him.

For his excretions also special arrangements had to be made, and this was a

torment to him every time -- a torment from the uncleanliness, the unseemliness,

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

33

But just through his most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilyich obtained comfort.

Gerasim, the butler's young assistant, always came in to carry the things out.

Gerasim was a clean, fresh peasant lad, grown stout on town food and always

cheerful and bright. At first the sight of him, in his clean Russian peasant

costume, engaged on that disgusting task embarrassed Ivan Ilyich.

Once when he got up from the commode to weak to draw up his trousers, he

dropped into a soft armchair and looked with horror at his bare, enfeebled thighs

with the muscles so sharply marked on them.

Gerasim with a firm light tread, his heavy boots emitting a pleasant smell of tar

and fresh winter air, came in wearing a clean Hessian apron, the sleeves of his

print shirt tucked up over his strong bare young arms; and refraining from looking

at his sick master out of consideration for his feelings, and restraining the joy of

life that beamed from his face, he went up to the commode.

"Gerasim!" said Ivan Ilyich in a weak voice.

Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might have committed some blunder, and

with a rapid movement turned his fresh, kind, simple young face which just

showed the first downy signs of a beard.

"Yes, sir?"

"That must be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me. I am helpless."

"Oh, why, sir," and Gerasim's eyes beamed and he showed his glistening white

teeth, "what's a little trouble? It's a case of illness with you, sir."

And his deft strong hands did their accustomed task, and he went out of the room

stepping lightly. Five minutes later he as lightly returned.

Ivan Ilyich was still sitting in the same position in the armchair.

"Gerasim," he said when the latter had replaced the freshly- washed utensil.

"Please come here and help me." Gerasim went up to him. "Lift me up. It is hard

for me to get up, and I have sent Dmitri away."

Gerasim went up to him, grasped his master with his strong arms deftly but

gently, in the same way that he stepped -- lifted him, supported him with one

hand, and with the other drew up his trousers and would have set him down

again, but Ivan Ilyich 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.

34

"That you. How easily and well you do it all!"

Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Ivan Ilyich 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 Ilyich's

legs on it. It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better while Gerasim was holding

up his legs.

"It's better when my legs are higher," he said. "Place that cushion under them."

Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and again Ivan Ilyich

felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he set them down Ivan Ilyich

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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich. Health, strength, and

vitality in other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim's strength and vitality

did not mortify but soothed him.

35

What tormented Ivan Ilyich most was the deception, the lie, which for some

reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and the only

need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would

result. He however knew that do what they would nothing would come of it, only

still more agonizing suffering and death. This deception tortured him -- their not

wishing to admit what they all knew and what he knew, but wanting to lie to him

concerning his terrible condition, and 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 visiting, their curtains, their

sturgeon for dinner -- were a terrible agony for Ivan Ilyich. 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 defusing an unpleasant odor) and this

was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that

no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position. Only

Gerasim recognized it and pitied him. And so Ivan Ilyich felt at ease only with

him. He felt comforted when Gerasim supported his legs (sometimes all night

long) and refused to go to bed, saying: "Don't you worry, Ivan Ilyich. 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 Ilyich

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 Ilyich 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 petted and

comforted. He knew he was an important functionary, that he had a beard turning

gray, and that therefore what he long 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 Ilyich wanted to weep,

wanted to be petted and cried over, and then his colleague Shebek would come,

and instead of weeping and being petted, Ivan Ilyich would assume a serious,

severe, and profound air, and by force of habit would express his opinion on a

decision of the Court of Cassation and would stubbornly insist on that view. This

36

falsity around him and within him did more than anything else to poison his last

days.

Chapter VIII

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

the footman had come and put 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, unmitigated,

agonizing pain, never ceasing for an instant, 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 Ilyich, 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 Ilyich stretched out his hand. Peter 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.

"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?"

37

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

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

Peter went to the door, but Ivan Ilyich dreaded being left alone. "How can I keep

him here? Oh yes, my medicine." "Peter, give me my medicine." "Why not?

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 Ilyich groaned not so much with pain, terrible

thought that was, as from mental anguish. Always and forever 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 Ilyich stared at him for a time in

perplexity, not realizing who and what he was. Peter was disconcerted by that

look and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilyich to himself.

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

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

then his face, cleaned his teeth, brushed his hair, and 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."

38

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

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 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich 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 Ilyich

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, and then

begins the sounding and auscultation.

Ivan Ilyich knows quite well and definitely that all this is nonsense and pure

deception, but when the doctor, getting down on his knee, 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 Ilyich 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.

39

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 Ilyich 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.

"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 Ilyich 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.

40

At half-past eleven the celebrated specialist arrived. Again the sounding began

and the significant conversations in his presence and in another room, about the

kidneys and the appendix, and the questions and answers, with such an air of

importance that again, instead of the real question of life and death which now

alone confronted him, the question arose of the kidney and appendix which were

not behaving as they ought to and would now be attached by Michael Danilovich

and the specialist and forced to amend their ways.

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

look, and in reply to the timid question Ivan Ilyich, with eyes glistening with fear

and hope, put to him as to whether there was a chance of recovery, said that he

could not vouch for it but there was a possibility. The look of hope with which

Ivan Ilyich watched the doctor out was so pathetic that Praskovya Fedorovna,

seeing it, even wept as she left the room to hand the doctor his fee.

The gleam of hope kindled by the doctor's encouragement did not last long. The

same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall- paper, medicine bottles, were all

there, and the same aching suffering body, and Ivan Ilyich began to moan. They

gave him a subcutaneous injection and he sank into oblivion.

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

some beef tea with difficulty, and then everything was the same again and night

was coming on.

After dinner, at seven o'clock, Praskovya Fedorovna came into the room in

evening dress, her full bosom pushed up by her corset, and with traces of

powder on her face. She had reminded him in the morning that they were going

to the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the town and they had a box, which

he had insisted on their taking. Now he had forgotten about it and her toilet

offended him, but he concealed his vexation when he remembered that he had

himself insisted on their securing a box and going because it would be an

instructive and aesthetic pleasure for the children.

Praskovya Fedorovna came in, self-satisfied but yet with a rather guilty air. She

sat down and asked how he was, but, as he saw, only for the sake of asking and

not in order to learn about it, knowing that there was nothing to learn -- and then

went on to what she really wanted to say: that she would not on any account

have gone but that the box had been taken and Helen and their daughter were

going, as well as Petrishchev (the examining magistrate, their daughter's fiancé)

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.

41

"Oh, and Fedor Petrovich" (the fiancé) "would like to come in. May he? And

Lisa?"

"All right."

Their daughter came in in full evening dress, her fresh young flesh exposed

(making a show of that very flesh which in his own case caused so much

suffering), strong, healthy, evidently in love, and impatient with illness, suffering,

and death, because they interfered with her happiness.

Fedor Petrovich came in too, in evening dress, his hair curled a la Capoul, a tight

stiff collar round his long sinewy neck, an enormous white shirt-front and narrow

black trousers tightly stretched over his strong thighs. He had one white glove

tightly drawn on, and was holding his opera hat in his hand.

Following him the schoolboy crept in unnoticed, in a new uniform, poor little

fellow, and wearing gloves. Terribly dark shadows showed under his eyes, the

meaning of which Ivan Ilyich knew well.

His son had always seemed pathetic to him, and now it was dreadful to see the

boy's frightened look of pity. It seemed to Ivan Ilyich that Vasya was the only one

besides Gerasim who understood and pitied him.

They all sat down and again asked how he was. A silence followed. Lisa asked

her mother about the opera glasses, and there was an altercation between

mother and daughter as to who had taken them and where they had been put.

This occasioned some unpleasantness.

Fedor Petrovich inquired of Ivan Ilyich whether he had ever seen Sarah

Bernhardt. Ivan Ilyich did not at first catch the question, but then replied: "No,

have you seen her before?"

"Yes, in Adrienne Lecouvreur."

Praskovya Fedorovna mentioned some roles in which Sarah Bernhardt was

particularly good. Her daughter disagreed. Conversation sprang up as to the

elegance and realism of her acting -- the sort of conversation that is always

repeated and is always the same.

In the midst of the conversation Fedor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilyich and

became silent. The others also looked at him and grew silent. Ivan Ilyich was

staring with glittering eyes straight before him, evidently indignant with them. This

had to be rectified, but it was impossible to do so. The silence had to be broken,

42

but for a time no one dared to break it and they all became afraid that the

conventional deception would suddenly become obvious and the truth become

plain to all. Lisa was the first to pluck up courage and break that silence, but by

trying to hide what everybody was feeling, she betrayed it.

"Well, if we are going it's time to start," she said, looking at her watch, a present

from her father, and with a faint and significant smile at Fedor Petrovich relating

to something known only to them. She got up with a rustle of her dress.

They all rose, said goodnight, and went away.

When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he felt better; the falsity had

gone with them. But the pain remained -- that same pain and that same fear that

made everything monotonously alike, nothing harder and nothing easier.

Everything was worse.

Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour. Everything remained the

same and there was no cessation. And the inevitable end of it all became more

and more terrible.

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

Chapter IX

His wife returned late at night. She came in on tiptoe, but he heard her, opened

his eyes, and made haste to close them again. She wished to send Gerasim

away and to sit with him herself, but he opened his eyes and said: "No, go away."

"Are you in great pain?"

"Always the same."

"Take some opium."

He agreed and took some. She went away.

Till about three in the morning he was in a state of stupefied misery. It seemed to

him that he and his pain were being thrust into a narrow, deep black sack, but

43

though they were pushed further and further in they could not be pushed to the

bottom. And this, terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by suffering. He was

frightened yet wanted to fall through the sack, he struggled but yet co-operated.

And suddenly he broke through, fell, and regained consciousness. Gerasim was

sitting at the foot of the bed dozing quietly and patiently, while he himself lay with

his emaciated stockened legs resting on Gerasim's shoulders; the same shaded

candle was there and the same unceasing pain.

"Go away, Gerasim," he whispered.

"It's all right, sir. I'll stay a while."

"No. Go away."

He removed his legs from Gerasim's shoulders, turned sideways onto his arm,

and felt sorry for himself. He only waited till Gerasim had gone into the next room

and then restrained himself no longer but wept like a child. He wept on account

of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God,

and the absence of God.

"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me here? Why, why dost

Thou torment me so terribly?"

He did not expect an answer and yet wept because there was no answer and

could be none. The pain again grew more acute, but he did not stir and did not

call. He said to himself: "Go on! Strike me! But what is it for? What have I done to

Thee? What is it for?"

Then he grew quiet and not only ceased weeping but even held his breath and

became all attention. It was as though he were listening not to an audible voice

but to the voice of his soul, to the current of thoughts arising within him.

"What is it you want?" was the first clear conception capable of expression in

words that he heard.

"What do you want? What do you want?" he repeated to himself.

"What do I want? To live and not to suffer," he answered.

And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not

distract him.

"To live? How?" asked his inner voice.

44

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

"As you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice repeated.

And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But

strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all

what they had then seemed -- none of them except the first recollections of

childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with

which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had

experienced that happiness existed no longer; it was like a reminiscence of

somebody else.

As soon as the period began which had produced the present Ivan Ilyich, all that

had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and turned into something

trivial and often nasty.

And the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he came to the

present the more worthless and doubtful were the joys. This began with the

School of Law. A little that was really good was still found there -- there was

lightheartedness, friendship, and hope. But in the upper classes there had

already been fewer of such good moments. Then during the first years of his

official career, when he was in the service of the governor, some pleasant

moments again occurred: they were the memories of love for a woman. Then all

became confused and there was still less of what was good; later on again there

was still less that was good, and the further he went the less there was. His

marriage, a mere accident, then the disenchantment that followed it, his wife's

bad breath and the sensuality and hypocrisy: then that deadly official life and

those preoccupations about money, a year of it, and two, and ten, and twenty,

and always the same thing. And the longer it lasted the more deadly it became.

"It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is

really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life

was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.

"Then what does it mean? Why? 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!

"Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done," it suddenly occurred to him. "But

how could that be, when I did everything properly?" he replied, and immediately

dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death,

as something quite impossible.

45

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

courts when the usher proclaimed 'The judge is coming!' The judge is coming,

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

exclaimed angrily. "What is it for?" And he ceased 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 however much he pondered he found no answer. And

whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his

not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of

his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea.

Chapter X

Another fortnight passed. Ivan Ilyich now no longer left his sofa. He would not lie

in bed but lay on the sofa, facing the wall nearly all the time. He suffered ever the

same unceasing agonies and in his loneliness pondered always on the same

insoluble question: "What is this? Can it be that it is Death?" And the inner voice

answered: "Yes, it is Death."

"Why these sufferings?" And the voice answered, "For no reason -- they just are

so." Beyond and besides this there was nothing.

From the very beginning of his illness, ever since he had first been to see the

doctor, Ivan Ilyich's life had been divided between two contrary and alternating

moods: now it was despair and the expectation of this uncomprehended and

terrible death, and now hope and an intently interested observation of the

functioning of his organs. Now before his eyes there was only a kidney or an

intestine that temporarily evaded its duty, and now only that incomprehensible

and dreadful death from which it was impossible to escape.

These two states of mind had alternated from the very beginning of his illness,

but the further it progressed the more doubtful and fantastic became the

conception of the kidney, and the more real the sense of impending death.

He had but to call to mind what he had been three months before and what he

was now, to call to mind with what regularity he had been going downhill, for

every possibility of hope to be shattered.

Latterly during the loneliness in which he found himself as he lay facing the back

of the sofa, a loneliness in the midst of a populous town and surrounded by

numerous acquaintances and relations but that yet could not have been more

46

complete anywhere -- either at the bottom of the sea or under the earth -- during

that terrible loneliness Ivan Ilyich had lived only in memories of the past. Pictures

of his past rose before him one after another. 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 shriveled French plums of his childhood,

their peculiar flavor 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 think of that.... It is too

painful," Ivan Ilyich 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.

Then again together with that chain of memories another series passed through

his mind -- of how his illness had progressed and grown worse. There also the

further back he looked the more life there had been. There had been more of

what was good in life 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 ratio to the square of the distance from death," thought Ivan Ilyich.

And the example of a stone falling 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 flying...." He shuddered, shifted

himself, and tried to resist, but was already aware that resistance was

impossible, and again with eyes weary of gazing but unable to cease seeing

what was before them, 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. "If I could only understand what it

is all for! But that too is impossible. An explanation would be possible if it could

be said that I have not lived as I ought to. But it is impossible to say that," and he

remembered all the legality, correctitude, and propriety of his life. "That at any

rate can certainly not be admitted," 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....What for?"

Chapter XI

47

Another two weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an event

occurred that Ivan Ilyich and his wife had desired. Petrishchev formally proposed.

It happened in the evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna came into her

husband's room considering how best to inform him of it, but that very night there

had been a fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found him still lying

on the sofa but in a different position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring

fixedly straight in front of him.

She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her

with such a look that she did not finish what she was saying; so great an

animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.

"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 he would soon free them all of himself.

They were both silent and after sitting with him for a while 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 we be tortured?"

The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilyich answered "Yes" and "No," never

taking his angry eyes from him, 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 terrible.

It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilyich's physical sufferings were terrible,

but worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings which were his

chief torture.

His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he looked at

Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face with it prominent cheek-bones, the question

suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been wrong?"

48

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely

that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It

occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what

was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely

noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the

real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole

arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests,

might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and

suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to

defend.

"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and I am leaving this life with the

consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify

it -- what then?"

He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review 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 awful 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 hidden both life and death. This consciousness

intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed about, and

pulled at his clothing, which choked and stifled him. And he hated them on that

account.

He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at noon his

sufferings began 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. Healthy

people often do it."

He opened his eyes wide.

"What? Take communion? Why? It's unnecessary! However..."

She began to cry.

"Yes, do, my dear. I'll send for our priest. He is such a nice man."

"All right. Very well," he muttered.

49

When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilyich was softened 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. He received the sacrament with tears

in his eyes.

When they laid him down again afterwards he felt a moment's ease, 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 after his communion, and when uttering the

usual conventional words she added:

"You feel better, don't you?"

Without looking at her he said, "Yes."

Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice, all

revealed the same thing. "This is wrong, it is not as it should be. All you have

lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and death from

you." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and his agonizing

physical suffering again sprang up, and with that suffering a consciousness of the

unavoidable, approaching end. And to this was added a new sensation of

grinding shooting pain and a feeling of suffocation.

The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful. Having

uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his face with a rapidity

extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:

"Go away! Go away and leave me alone!"

Chapter XII

From that moment the screaming began that continued for three days, and was

so terrible that one could not hear it through two closed doors without horror. At

the moment he answered his wife realized that he was lost, that there was no

return, that the end had come, the very end, and his doubts were still unsolved

and remained doubts.

50

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried in various intonations. He had begun by screaming, "I

won't!" and continued screaming on the letter "O."

For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled in that

black sack into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless force. He

struggled as a man condemned to death struggles in the hands of the

executioner, knowing that he cannot save himself. And every moment he felt that

despite all his efforts he was drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him. He

felt that his agony was due to his being thrust into that black hole and still more to

his not being able to get right into it. He was hindered 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 most torment of

all.

Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to

breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light. 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 forwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.

"Yes, it was not the right thing," he said to himself, "but that's no matter. It can be

done. But what is the right thing? He asked himself, and suddenly grew quiet.

This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. Just then

his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The dying man

was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on the boy's

head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to cry.

At that very moment Ivan Ilyich fell through and caught sight of the light, and it

was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been,

this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What is the right thing?" and grew

still, 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 camp up to him and he

glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with undried tears on her

nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for her too.

"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will be

better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not the strength to utter

it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. With a look at his wife he

indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for you too...."

He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his hand, knowing

that He whose understanding mattered would understand.

51

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would

not leave him was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and

from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them: release

them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!" he

thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are

you, pain?"

He turned his attention to it.

"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."

"And death...where is it?"

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it?

What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.

"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"

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.

"It is finished!" said someone near him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.