The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man (10 page)

“Then hold my legs up like that a bit, could you?”

“Of course I can.” And Gerasim lifted up his legs, and it appeared to Ivan Ilyich that in that position he felt no pain at all.

“But what about the firewood?”

“Don’t you worry about that, sir. We’ll find time.”

Ivan Ilyich told Gerasim to sit down and hold his legs, and talked to him. And, strange to say, it seemed to him that he felt better while Gerasim was holding up his legs.

From that time Ivan Ilyich began calling for Gerasim occasionally. He would make him hold his legs up on his shoulders, and liked talking to him. Gerasim did so lightly, willingly, with a simplicity and kindness that touched Ivan Ilyich. He was offended by health, strength, and good spirits in everyone else, but Gerasim’s strength and cheerfulness soothed him rather than hurting him.

Ivan Ilyich suffered most of all from lies—the lie that everyone accepted, for some reason, that he was just ill, not dying, that he need only keep calm and take his medicine and something splendid would come of it. And he knew that whatever the medicines might do, nothing would come of it except more agonizing misery and death. He found this lie insufferable; he was tormented by the fact that nobody wanted to admit what he knew—what everyone knew—but chose to lie to him about his dreadful state. They wanted, even forced him to participate in the same lie. Lying—the lie inflicted on him on the eve of his death, the lie which was bound to degrade the fearful, solemn scene of his death to the level of all those visits, curtains, and sturgeons for dinner . . . this was a dreadful affliction for Ivan Ilyich. And—it was strange—many times when they were doing their stuff over him, he was within a whisker of shouting at them, “Stop lying! You know and I know I’m dying, at least you could stop lying to me.” But he never had the spirit to do so. He could see that the terrifying, awesome act of his dying was reduced by everyone around him to the level of a casual unpleasantness, to some extent an offense against propriety (rather in the way people behave to someone who brings a bad smell into the room with him). And
this
was the propriety he had served all his life. He saw that no one would pity him, because no one even wanted to understand his position. Only Gerasim understood his situation and was sorry for him. It was good for him when Gerasim held his legs on his shoulders, sometimes for whole nights at a stretch, and did not want to go to bed, saying, “You mustn’t worry, Ivan Ilyich, I’ll get my sleep another time,” or when he once slipped into the intimate form of address, saying, “With thee so poorly, how couldn’t I spare a little trouble?” Gerasim alone did not lie to him; it was obvious from everything that he alone understood what was happening, saw no need to hide it, and was simply sorry for his weak and wasted master. Once he even said so straight out, when Ivan Ilyich was sending him away: “We’ll all go someday. Why not take a little trouble?” he said, expressing in this way that he did not grudge his pains precisely because they were taken for a dying man and he hoped that in his own time someone else would take the same pains for him.

Apart from this lie, or as a result of it, the most painful thing for Ivan Ilyich was that no one pitied him as he wanted to be pitied. At certain moments after long-drawn-out pain, he wanted most of all (ashamed though he would have been to admit it)—he wanted someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He wanted them to stroke him, kiss him, cry a little over him, as children are cuddled and consoled. He knew he was an important member of the court, that his beard was going gray, and so it had to be out of the question, but it was still what he wanted. In his relationship with Gerasim there was something close to this, and consequently his relationship with Gerasim comforted him. Ivan Ilyich wants to cry, he wants to be stroked, to have them crying over him—and in comes his friend, court member Shebek, and instead of tears and tenderness Ivan Ilyich puts on a serious, stern expression, a face full of profound thought, and through sheer inertia pronounces his opinion on the implications of the decision taken by the Court of Appeal, and stubbornly insists on his view. More than anything, this lie around him and in himself poisoned the last days of Ivan Ilyich’s life.

8

It was morning. It was only morning because Gerasim left and Piotr the footman came in, blew out the candles, drew one curtain, and started quietly tidying up. Morning or evening, Friday or Sunday—it made no difference, it was all one, always the same. Gnawing, agonizing pain, not slackening for a second; the consciousness of life passing hopelessly but still not past; death moving up on him, terrifying, hateful, changeless death which was the one reality, and all the old lies. What were days, weeks, and hours of day to him?

“Would you care to order tea?”

Piotr wants tidy routines, and so the gentry must take their tea in the mornings, Ivan Ilyich thought, and answered only “No.”

“Would you wish to move to the divan?”

He needs to put the room straight and I’m in the way; I’m dirt and disorder, he thought, and said only, “No, leave me.”

The footman busied himself awhile. Ivan Ilyich stretched his hand out. The footman came up obsequiously.

“Would you require something, sir?”

“My watch.”

Piotr picked up the watch just by Ivan Ilyich’s hand, and gave it to him.

“Half past eight. Are the others up?”

“No, your honor. Vassili Ivanovich” (that was his son) “has gone to school. Praskovya Feodorovna gave orders to be woken if you asked for her. Would you require it?”
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“No, there’s no need.” Should I try some tea? he thought. “Yes, tea . . . you could bring it.”

Piotr went to the door. Ivan Ilyich grew frightened of being left on his own. How can I stop him? Ah yes, the medicine. “Piotr, give me my medicine.” You never know, maybe the medicine might still help. He took the spoonful and swallowed it. No, it won’t help, that’s all rubbish and lies, he decided, as soon as he encountered the familiar, sickly, hopeless taste. No, I can’t believe in it anymore. But that pain, that pain, I wish it would ease even just for a minute. And he groaned. Piotr came back. “No, go. Bring me the tea.”

Piotr went out. Left on his own, Ivan Ilyich groaned, not so much from pain, however dreadful it was, as from misery. They’re all the same, all these endless nights and days. Would that it came quicker. What should come quicker? Death, darkness? No, no. Everything is better than death!

When Piotr came in with the tea tray, Ivan Ilyich stared dazedly at him for a long time, not understanding who he was and why. Piotr was embarrassed by his stare, and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilyich back to himself.

“Ah yes, the tea,” he said. “Very well, put it down. Only help me wash and change my shirt.”

And Ivan Ilyich began washing. With pauses for rest he washed his hands, his face, he brushed his teeth, he started brushing his hair and glanced in the mirror. He became frightened; what was most frightening was the way his hair clung flat to his pallid forehead.

When they were changing his shirt, he knew it would be even more frightening to look down at his body, and he did not look at himself. But now everything was done. He put on his dressing gown, covered himself with a plaid rug, and sat down to his tea in the armchair. For a minute he felt refreshed, but as soon as he started drinking his tea, there was the same foul taste and pain again. With an effort he finished the tea and lay down, his legs outstretched. He lay back and dismissed Piotr.

Everything always the same. Then hope glints—like a drop of water. A drop lost in a turbulent ocean of despair. And everything is pain again, pain and misery and everything always the same. It is dreadfully sad on his own; he longs to call somebody but knows in advance that it is even worse with others there. “If only I could have some morphine, I might lose consciousness. I’ll tell him, that doctor, he must think of something else. It’s impossible, impossible to go on like this.”

In this way one hour passes, and another. But now the bell rings in the hall. Maybe it’s the doctor. Exactly so: it is the doctor—fresh, brisk, fat, and cheerful, with that expression that says—there you are, all in a panic for some reason, but in a minute we’ll put everything right. The doctor knows his expression is inappropriate here, but he has put it on once and for all and cannot take it off again, like a man who has put on tails in the morning and driven off to pay a round of calls with no opportunity to change.

The doctor rubs his hands briskly, comfortingly.

“My hands are chilly. It’s quite a frost. Let me just get warm,” he says, with that expression, as though they only need wait a little till he gets warm, and once he’s warm he’ll put everything right.

“Well now, how—”

Ivan Ilyich feels the doctor wanted to say, “How’s tricks?” but realizes one cannot talk like that, and says instead, “How did you pass the night?”

Ivan Ilyich looks at the doctor with an expression that asks, Will you never feel ashamed of your lies? But the doctor does not want to understand his question.

And Ivan Ilyich says, “It’s all so dreadful. The pain won’t stop, not even ease for a little. If only there was something!”

“Yes, you sick men always say that. Well, now, I think I’ve got a little warmer, even Praskovya Feodorovna, such a stickler for correctness, couldn’t find fault with my temperature. Well, now, how do you do?” And the doctor shakes his hand.

And, dropping all his former jocularity, with a serious expression, the doctor starts examining his patient’s pulse and temperature, and the tapping and listening begins.

Ivan Ilyich knows definitely and indubitably that this is all nonsense, a hollow sham, but when the doctor gets down on his knees, stretches over him, pressing his ear now higher, now lower, going through a variety of gymnastic arabesques over his body with the most significant expression, Ivan Ilyich allows himself to be taken in, as in the old days he gave in to the lawyers’ speeches when he knew perfectly well that they were all lying and why they were lying.

The doctor was kneeling on the divan, still tapping away at something, when Praskovya Feodorovna’s silk dress rustled at the door, and her voice was heard rebuking Piotr for failing to announce the doctor’s arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and immediately begins proving she was up long ago. She was only absent when the doctor arrived because of a misunderstanding.

Ivan Ilyich looks at her, scrutinizes her all over, and takes exception to her plump, white, clean hands and neck, her shiny hair and bright eyes, full of life. He detests her with all the strength of his soul. And her touch makes him suffer from his surge of hatred.

Her attitude to him and his illness is still the same. Just as the doctor has worked out an attitude to his patients which he can no longer shake off, so she has worked out her attitude to him—that he isn’t doing something he ought to be doing, and it’s all his fault, while she lovingly reproaches him—and is now quite unable to divest herself of this attitude.

“He just won’t do as he’s told! He
will
not take the drops on time. But the main thing is, he lies down in a position that must surely be bad for him, with his legs in the air.”

She tells how he makes Gerasim hold up his legs.

The doctor smiles gently-derisively. What are we to do? These invalids sometimes think up the funniest things, but we can forgive them.

When the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and only then did Praskovya Feodorovna announce that whether Ivan Ilyich liked it or not, she had invited the distinguished doctor to come today, to examine him and discuss his condition with Mikhail Danilovich (as the ordinary doctor was called).

“Please don’t protest. I’m doing it entirely for myself,” she said ironically, implying that she did everything for him and only in this way could she forbid him the right to protest. He frowned and stayed silent. He felt that the lie surrounding him was now so entangled it was difficult to sort it out at all.

Everything she did for him was done entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake, as though this was so improbable that he was bound to understand the opposite.

Certainly the eminent doctor did arrive at half past eleven. Once again there were tappings and listenings and significant conversations about the blind gut in his presence and in the next room, and questions and answers with such loaded looks that once again, instead of the real question of life and death which was now the only thing confronting him, the question that emerged was about his kidney and the blind gut which were doing something they shouldn’t be doing, and how Mikhail Danilovitch and the eminence were about to pounce on them, this very minute, and force them to behave.

The eminent doctor said good-bye with a serious but not unhopeful expression. And at Ivan Ilyich’s timid inquiry, his raised eyes shining with terror and hope, whether there was any chance of recovery, the doctor replied that one could not promise anything but there was a possibility. Ivan Ilyich followed the doctor out of the room with such a pitifully hopeful look, Praskovya Feodorovna even started crying when she saw it. She left the room to pay the eminent doctor his fee.

His spirits were lifted by the doctor’s encouragement only for a little while. Once again it was the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wallpaper, medicine bottles, and the same aching, suffering body. And Ivan Ilyich started groaning; he was given an injection, and lost consciousness.

When he came to, dusk was falling. They brought him his dinner. He forced himself to drink a little broth; and it was all the same again and another night was falling.

After dinner, at seven o’clock, Praskovya Feodorovna came into his room in evening attire, with plump, corseted breasts and traces of powder on her face. That very morning she had reminded him of their trip to the theater. Sarah Bernhardt
³²
was in town, and at his insistence they had taken a box. Now he had forgotten about it, and her finery jarred on him. But he hid his irritation when he remembered that he himself had insisted they should order a box and go, because it would be an improving aesthetic experience for the children.