The Death of Ivan Ilych

by Leo Tolstoy

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 good-night, and went away.

  When they had gone it seemed to Ivan Ilych that he felt

  better; the falsity had gone with them. But the pain remained --

  that same pain and that same fear that made everything monotonously

  alike, nothing harder and nothing easier. Everything was worse.

  Again minute followed minute and hour followed hour.

  Everything remained the same and there was no cessation. And the

  inevitable end of it all became more and more terrible.

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

  asked.

  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 though they were pushed further

  and further in they could not be pushed to the bottom. And this,

  terrible enough in itself, was accompanied by suffering. He was

  frightened yet wanted to fall through the sack, he struggled but

  yet co-operated. And suddenly he broke through, fell, and regained

  consciousness. Gerasim was sitting at the foot of the bed dozing

  quietly and patiently, while he himself lay with his emaciated

  stockinged legs resting on Gerasim's shoulders; the same shaded

  candle was there and the same unceasing pain.

  "Go away, Gerasim," he whispered.

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

  "No. Go away."

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

  onto his arm, and felt sorry for himself. He only waited till

  Gerasim had gone into the next room and then restrained himself no

  longer but wept like a child. He wept on account of his

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

  cruelty of God, and the absence of God.

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

  Why, why dost Thou torment me so terribly?"

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

  answer and could be none. The pain again grew more acute, but he

  did not stir and did not call. He said to himself: "Go on!

  Strike me! But what is it for? What have I done to Thee? What is

  it for?"

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

  his breath and became all attention. It was as though he were

  listening not to an audible voice but to the voice of his soul, to

  the current of thoughts arising within him.

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

  of expression in words, that he heard.

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

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

  And again he listened with such concentrated attention that

  even his pain did not distract him.

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

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

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

  repeated.

  And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his

  pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of

  his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed --

  none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There,

  in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which

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

  had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a

  reminiscence of somebody else.

  as soon as the period began which had produced the present

  Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his

  sight and turned into something trivial and often nasty.

  And the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he

  came to the present the more worthless and doubtful were the joys.

  This began with the School of Law. A little that was really good

  was still found there -- there was light-heartedness, 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.

  "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.

  X

  Another fortnight passed. Ivan Ilych 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 Ilych'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 complete anywhere -

  - either at the bottom of the sea or under the earth -- during that

  terrible loneliness Ivan ilych 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 shrivelled French plums of his

  childhood, their peculiar flavour and the flow of saliva when he

  sucked their stones, and along with the memory of that taste came

  a whole series of memories of those days: his nurse, his brother,

  and their toys. "No, I mustn't thing of that....It is too

  painful," Ivan Ilych said to himself, and brought himself back to

  the present -- to the button on the back of the sofa and the

  creases in its morocco. "Morocco is expensive, but it does not

  wear well: there had been a quarrel about it. It was a different

  kind of quarrel and a different kind of morocco that time when we

  tore father's portfolio and were punished, and mamma brought us

  some tarts...." And again his thoughts dwelt on his childhood, and

  again it was painful and he tried to banish them and fix his mind

  on something else.

  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 ration to the

  square of the distance from death," thought Ivan Ilych. 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?"

  XI

  Another two weeks went by in this way and during that

  fortnight an even occurred that Ivan Ilych 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 Ilych 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 Ilych'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?"

  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.

  When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilych 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!"

  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