by Leo Tolstoy
Without any cause, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich—de gaité de cœur, as he said to himself—his wife began to violate their pleasant, decent course of life. For no reason at all, she became jealous and began to demand his constant attention, to find fault with everything he did and to make crude and unpleasant scenes.
At first Ivan Ilyich had hoped to free himself of this unpleasant situation with that same easy and decent attitude towards life that had previously stood him in such good stead. He attempted to ignore his wife’s moods and continue to live as easily and pleasantly as before; he’d invite people over for a game of cards, try to go to the club or visit his friends. But one time his wife began to scold him so energetically and with such crude words, and then continued to scold him so persistently whenever he failed to fulfil her demands, having obviously decided not to stop until he submitted—in other words, until he agreed to stay at home, languishing, just like her—that Ivan Ilyich grew scared. He realized that matrimony—at least with Praskovya Fyodorovna—did not always further the pleasures and decency of life but, on the contrary, often violated them, and so one had to guard oneself against these violations. Ivan Ilyich began to search for means of doing so. His work was the one thing that impressed Praskovya Fyodorovna; it was with the help of his work and its ensuing obligations that Ivan Ilyich began to contend against his wife, erecting barriers around his own independent world.
The need for these barriers became all the more pressing with the birth of their child, the troubled attempts to feed it, and the real and imaginary illnesses of both child and mother, which required Ivan Ilyich to sympathize but remained a total mystery to him.
As his wife became more and more irritable and demanding, Ivan Ilyich increasingly shifted his life’s centre of gravity towards his official duties. He began to draw greater pleasure from his work and grew more ambitious.
Very soon, no more than a year after his wedding, Ivan Ilyich came to realize that marriage, though it presented certain comforts in life, was in fact a very complicated, difficult affair—and that in order to fulfil his duty, that is, to lead a decent life that met with society’s approval, it was necessary to develop a particular attitude towards wedlock, as one does towards work.
And so Ivan Ilyich developed such an attitude. He demanded of family life only the comforts it could reasonably provide—supper, housekeeping, bed and, most importantly, superficial decorum, as defined by public opinion. As to the rest, he merely sought cheerful pleasure, and, should he find it, was very grateful; if, on the other hand, he should meet with resistance and grumbling, he would at once withdraw into his separate world of work, around which he had erected his barriers and in which pleasure was easily found.
Ivan Ilyich was valued as a good official, and after three years he was made assistant prosecutor. The new duties, their importance, the ability to haul anyone into court or lock them up in jail, the publicity that greeted his speeches, the success Ivan Ilyich attained—all this made his work that much more appealing.
They had more children. His wife grew more and more querulous and ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilyich had developed towards his domestic life made him almost impervious to her grumbling.
After seven years of service in the same town, Ivan Ilyich was appointed prosecutor in another province. They moved. Money was tight, and his wife didn’t like the new place. His salary was higher, but life was more expensive; in addition, two of his children died, and so family life became even more unpleasant for Ivan Ilyich.
Praskovya Fyodorovna blamed her husband for all the misfortunes that befell them in this new town. Most of the topics of conversation between husband and wife, especially those concerning the children’s upbringing, eventually led back to the causes of past quarrels, and these same quarrels were ready to flare up at any moment. Now only brief spells of amorousness remained. These were islets at which they would moor for a time, only to set sail again upon a sea of deep-seated resentment that found expression in their estrangement from one another. This estrangement might have upset Ivan Ilyich, had he believed that things should be otherwise. By then, however, he had come to regard this situation as not only normal, but as the very goal of his conduct in the family. His goal was to free himself more and more from these troubles and to lend them the appearance of harmlessness and decency; he achieved it by spending less and less time with his family, and whenever he couldn’t escape their company, he tried to secure his position with the presence of outsiders. The main thing was that Ivan Ilyich had his job. His whole interest in life was concentrated in the world of work, and this interest absorbed him. Consciousness of his power, of his ability to ruin any person he wished to ruin, the dignity, even superficially, with which he entered court and met with his subordinates, his success with his superiors and inferiors and, most importantly, the mastery with which he felt he conducted his affairs—all this brought him joy, and, together with companionable chats, dinners and whist, made his life complete. And so, in general, Ivan Ilyich’s life proceeded as he believed it should proceed: pleasantly and decently.
Another seven years passed in this fashion. His eldest daughter was already sixteen, another child had died and only one son was left, a schoolboy, the subject of contention. Ivan Ilyich had wanted to send him to the law school, but Praskovya Fyodorovna, to spite her husband, enrolled the boy in the high school. The daughter was taking lessons at home and was turning out well. The son, too, was a fair student.
III
Such was the course of Ivan Ilyich’s life for the seventeen years following his marriage. He was already a veteran prosecutor, who had refused certain transfers in anticipation of a more desirable post, when suddenly an unpleasant circumstance disturbed his peaceful existence. Ivan Ilyich had been expecting to be named presiding judge in a university town, but Hoppe somehow leapt ahead of him and secured the post instead. This chafed Ivan Ilyich. He reproached Hoppe, quarrelled with him and with his immediate superiors; they began to treat Ivan Ilyich coolly, and when it came time to make another appointment, he was passed over again.
This was in 1880, the most difficult year of Ivan Ilyich’s life, when it turned out, on the one hand, that his salary wasn’t sufficient for the family to live on, and on the other, that everyone had forgotten all about him, and that what seemed to him to be the cruellest, most egregious injustice was to others quite an ordinary turn of events. Even his father did not consider it his duty to lend a helping hand. Ivan Ilyich felt that everyone had abandoned him, considering his position, with its 3,500-rouble salary, to be entirely normal and even generous. Only he and he alone knew that with the consciousness of the injustices done to him, with his wife’s incessant henpecking, and with the debts he had taken on by living above his means, his situation was far from normal.
That summer, to lighten his expenses, he took a leave of absence and went with Praskovya Fyodorovna to spend the season in the country at her brother’s estate.
There, without his work, Ivan Ilyich felt, for the first time, not only boredom but unbearable anguish, and decided that it was impossible to go on like this—that it was necessary to take drastic measures.
After spending a sleepless night pacing the terrace, Ivan Ilyich decided to go to Petersburg and plead his case; in order to punish them—those who had failed to appreciate his worth—he would ask to be transferred to another ministry.
The next day, despite his wife and brother-in-law’s best efforts to dissuade him, he set off for Petersburg.
He had only one goal in mind: to secure a post with a salary of 5,000 roubles. He no longer had any preference with regard to any particular ministry, any particular assignment or any particular field of activity. All he needed was a post, a post with a salary of 5,000 roubles, be it in administration, in the banks, with the railways, with the Institutions of the Empress Maria,6 or even in the customs—but it absolutely must carry a salary of 5,000, and he absolutely must be transferred from the ministry where they had failed to appreci
ate his worth.
And it so happened that this trip of Ivan Ilyich’s was crowned with astonishing, unexpected success. At Kursk his acquaintance F.S. Ilyin entered the first-class carriage and told him that the governor of Kursk had just received a telegram with news concerning the ministry. Great changes were afoot: in a matter of days, Ivan Semyonovich would be named to replace Pyotr Ivanovich.
The prospective change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special significance for Ivan Ilyich; by bringing forward a new man, Pyotr Petrovich, and, one could assume, his friend Zakhar Ivanovich, it was highly favourable for Ivan Ilyich, who was a colleague and friend of the latter.
In Moscow the news was confirmed, and when Ivan Ilyich arrived in Petersburg, he found Zakhar Ivanovich and was given a promise of a proper post in his former Ministry of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed his wife: “Zakhar in Miller’s place I get appointment at first report.”
Thanks to this change in personnel, Ivan Ilyich unexpectedly received an appointment in his former ministry that placed him two levels above his colleagues, with a salary of 5,000 roubles plus 3,500 for relocation expenses. All the resentment towards his former enemies and the whole ministry was forgotten. Ivan Ilyich was entirely happy.
He returned to the country more cheerful and satisfied than he had been for a long time. The news had also cheered Praskovya Fyodorovna, and the two of them established a truce. Ivan Ilyich told her of how everyone had fêted him in Petersburg, how all his former enemies had been humiliated and now grovelled before him, how they envied his position and, in particular, how very fond everyone in Petersburg was of him.
Praskovya Fyodorovna listened to all of this and gave the impression of believing it; she didn’t contradict a thing, and only made plans for their new life in the town to which they were going. And Ivan Ilyich was delighted to see that her plans were his plans, that he and she were thinking alike, and that his life, which had hit a snag, was once again taking on its natural, authentic character of cheerful pleasantness and decency.
Ivan Ilyich had only returned for a short time. He would have to take up his new duties on 10th September and, of course, he needed time to settle into the new place, to move his possessions from the provinces, to buy and order a great many other things; in a word, to realize the plans he had made in his mind, which corresponded almost exactly to those Praskovya Fyodorovna had made in her heart.
And now that everything had come together so fortuitously, now that he and his wife were working towards the same aim and, moreover, were spending so little time with each other, they achieved a degree of harmony that they had not enjoyed since the first years of their married life. Ivan Ilyich had thought of taking his family with him at once, but the insistence of his wife’s brother and sister-in-law, who had suddenly begun to treat him and his family with special warmth and tenderness, persuaded him to go alone.
Ivan Ilyich left, and the cheerful mood brought about by his success and his agreement with his wife, the one reinforcing the other, never abandoned him. He found a lovely apartment, the very thing both husband and wife had been dreaming of. Spacious, with high ceilings, reception rooms in the old style, a grand, commodious study, rooms for wife and daughter, a classroom for the son—it was as if the place had been designed just for them. Ivan Ilyich oversaw the decorating himself, choosing the wallpaper, supplementing the furniture—favouring antiques, which he would have upholstered for an especially comme il faut look. Everything grew and grew, gradually approaching his ideal. By the time he was halfway through, the decor had surpassed his expectations. He perceived the comme il faut, refined, not at all vulgar character the apartment would take on when it was finished. Drifting into sleep, he would imagine the main reception room in its future form. Looking at the drawing room, he could see the fireplace, the screen, the whatnot, all those little chairs scattered about, the plates and dishes on the walls, the bronzes, as if everything were already in place. He was pleased at the thought of surprising Pasha and Lizanka, who also had a taste for such things. Surely neither of them was expecting this. He had been particularly lucky to find and acquire, rather cheaply, antiques that lent everything an especially noble character. In his letters, he presented the situation as being worse than it was, just so that he could surprise them. All this proved so engrossing that even his new duties, though he liked his work very much indeed, occupied him less than he had expected. On occasion, during sessions, his mind would wander: what sort of cornices should he have for the curtains, straight or curved? He was so engrossed, in fact, that he often took matters into his own hands, rearranging the furniture and rehanging the curtains. One time, when climbing a ladder in order to show the upholsterer, who had failed to understand, exactly how he wanted the curtains draped, he lost his footing and fell, but being a strong and agile man, he managed to hold on and only knocked his side against the knob on the window frame. The bruise was painful, but the pain soon passed. Throughout it all, Ivan Ilyich felt especially cheerful and healthy. He wrote: “I feel like I’ve dropped fifteen years off my age.” The plan had been to finish in September, but the process dragged on until the middle of October. The result was worth waiting for: utterly charming—and not only in his view, but also according to every person who laid eyes on it.
In essence, of course, what one saw was what one always sees in the homes of not quite rich people who make an effort to appear rich and, in so doing, only come to look like one another: damasks, ebony, flowers, carpets and bronzes—every dark and lustrous thing that all people of a certain kind procure in order to look like all people of a certain kind. Indeed, his home looked so much like every home of its sort that it wouldn’t attract the least bit of attention; to him, however, it all seemed to be quite exceptional. It was a joy for him to meet his family at the railway station and bring them to his brightly lit, finished apartment, where a footman in a white tie opened the door into a front hall decked with flowers—a joy to lead them into the drawing room, the study, everywhere, and a joy to hear their gasps of pleasure at each step. He himself beamed with pleasure as he drank in their praise. That same evening, when Praskovya Fyodorovna asked him incidentally, over tea, about his fall, he laughed and demonstrated how he had gone flying and frightened the upholsterer.
“A good thing I’m a gymnast. A lesser man might have killed himself—I just got a knock here. Hurts a bit when you touch it, but getting better already. Just a bruise.”
So they began their life in their new home—finding, as always, once they settled in, that they were just one room shy of comfort—on their new income, which was, as always, a little shy (by some five hundred roubles) of what they needed, and all was going very nicely indeed. It went especially nicely at first, before everything was arranged, when certain things still needed doing: this to buy, that to order, this to move, that to adjust. There were, to be sure, some disagreements between husband and wife, but both were so satisfied and so busy that major quarrels were avoided. It was only when all the arrangements had been made that a degree of boredom set in, that they began to feel something was lacking—but then they struck up new acquaintances, developed new habits, and life became full again.
After a morning spent in court, Ivan Ilyich would return for dinner, and at first his mood was good, though it did suffer slightly on account of the house. (Every stain on the tablecloth or damask, every torn curtain sash irritated him: he had put so much work into arranging things that the slightest deterioration caused him pain.) But, in general, Ivan Ilyich’s life progressed as he believed life should progress: easily, pleasantly and decently. Every morning he got up at nine, drank his coffee, read his paper, then put on his uniform and set out for court. The harness in which he worked had already been stretched to fit him comfortably, and he would slip into it without delay. The petitioners, the inquiries in the chancery, the chancery itself and the sessions, both public and administrative—the key in every instance was to exclude all that was raw and vital,
which invariably interrupted the orderly flow of official business. No unofficial relations were to be permitted; one must only have relations with people on official grounds, in official terms. For example, a man comes in with a question. Ivan Ilyich, in his unofficial capacity, can have no relations with such a man. But if this man had some relation to Ivan Ilyich in the latter’s role as a member of the court, some relation that could be expressed on official headed paper, then Ivan Ilyich would do everything, absolutely everything possible within the limits of said relation, all the while maintaining the semblance of friendly human relations, that is, of common courtesy. As soon as the official relation is ended, so too end all others. Ivan Ilyich possessed this ability to separate his official business from his real life in the highest degree—and by long practice and natural talent he managed to refine it to such a point that, on occasion, he would even allow himself, like a playful virtuoso, to blend human and official relations. He allowed himself to do this because he felt sure of his power to single out the official side of things at any point he needed, casting aside the human. And he managed this feat not only easily, pleasantly and decently, but with virtuosic grace. During the intervals between sessions he smoked, drank tea, chatted a bit about politics, a bit about general topics of the day, a bit about cards and, most of all, about official appointments. Then, tired, but with the feeling of a virtuoso, of a first violin who has performed his part masterfully, he would return home. And there he would find that his wife and daughter had been out, or had had guests, that his son had gone to school and was now doing his homework with his tutors, diligently studying whatever it was they taught boys his age. Everything was in order, all was well. After dinner, if there were no visitors, Ivan Ilyich might read a book people were talking about, and later in the evening he would settle down to work—that is, pore over documents, comparing depositions and squaring them with the statutes. He found this work neither boring nor amusing. It was boring when he could instead be playing bridge, but if bridge wasn’t an option, it was still better than idling away the hours alone or with his wife. The true pleasure of Ivan Ilyich’s life lay in hosting little dinners, to which he invited ladies and gentlemen of high social standing; he passed his time with them in much the same way as people of their sort generally passed their time, just as his drawing room was much the same as all other drawing rooms.