by Leo Tolstoy
kidney and arrest it and support it. So little was needed for
this, it seemed to him. "No, I'll go to see Peter Ivanovich
again." [That was the friend whose friend was a doctor.] He rang,
ordered the carriage, and got ready to go.
"Where are you going, Jean?" asked his wife with a specially
sad and exceptionally kind look.
This exceptionally kind look irritated him. He looked
morosely at her.
"I must go to see Peter Ivanovich."
He went to see Peter Ivanovich, and together they went to see
his friend, the doctor. He was in, and Ivan Ilych had a long talk
with him.
Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what in
the doctor's opinion was going on inside him, he understood it all.
There was something, a small thing, in the vermiform appendix.
It might all come right. Only stimulate the energy of one organ
and check the activity of another, then absorption would take place
and everything would come right. He got home rather late for
dinner, ate his dinner, and conversed cheerfully, but could not for
a long time bring himself to go back to work in his room. At last,
however, he went to his study and did what was necessary, but the
consciousness that he had put something aside -- an important,
intimate matter which he would revert to when his work was done --
never left him. When he had finished his work he remembered that
this intimate matter was the thought of his vermiform appendix.
But he did not give himself up to it, and went to the drawing-room
for tea. There were callers there, including the examining
magistrate who was a desirable match for his daughter, and they
were conversing, playing the piano, and singing. Ivan Ilych, as
Praskovya Fedorovna remarked, spent that evening more cheerfully
than usual, but he never for a moment forgot that he had postponed
the important matter of the appendix. At eleven o'clock he said
goodnight and went to his bedroom. Since his illness he had slept
alone in a small room next to his study. He undressed and took up
a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell into thought,
and in his imagination that desired improvement in the vermiform
appendix occurred. There was the absorption and evacuation and the
re-establishment of normal activity. "Yes, that's it!" he said to
himself. "One need only assist nature, that's all." He remembered
his medicine, rose, took it, and lay down on his back watching for
the beneficent action of the medicine and for it to lessen the
pain. "I need only take it regularly and avoid all injurious
influences. I am already feeling better, much better." He began
touching his side: it was not painful to the touch. "There, I
really don't feel it. It's much better already." He put out the
light and turned on his side ... "The appendix is getting better,
absorption is occurring." Suddenly he felt the old, familiar,
dull, gnawing pain, stubborn and serious. There was the same
familiar loathsome taste in his mouth. His heart sand and he felt
dazed. "My God! My God!" he muttered. "Again, again! And it
will never cease." And suddenly the matter presented itself in a
quite different aspect. "Vermiform appendix! Kidney!" he said to
himself. "It's not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life
and...death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I
cannot stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to
everyone but me that I'm dying, and that it's only a question of
weeks, days...it may happen this moment. There was light and now
there is darkness. I was here and now I'm going there! Where?" A
chill came over him, his breathing ceased, and he felt only the
throbbing of his heart.
"When I am not, what will there be? There will be nothing.
Then where shall I be when I am no more? Can this be dying? No,
I don't want to!" He jumped up and tried to light the candle, felt
for it with trembling hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the
floor, and fell back on his pillow.
"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself,
staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness. "Death. Yes,
death. And none of them knows or wishes to know it, and they have
no pity for me. Now they are playing." (He heard through the door
the distant sound of a song and its accompaniment.) "It's all the
same to them, but they will die too! Fools! I first, and they
later, but it will be the same for them. And now they are
merry...the beasts!"
Anger choked him and he was agonizingly, unbearably miserable.
"It is impossible that all men have been doomed to suffer this
awful horror!" He raised himself.
"Something must be wrong. I must calm myself -- must think it
all over from the beginning." And he again began thinking. "Yes,
the beginning of my illness: I knocked my side, but I was still
quite well that day and the next. It hurt a little, then rather
more. I saw the doctors, then followed despondency and anguish,
more doctors, and I drew nearer to the abyss. My strength grew
less and I kept coming nearer and nearer, and now I have wasted
away and there is no light in my eyes. I think of the appendix --
but this is death! I think of mending the appendix, and all the
while here is death! Can it really be death?" Again terror seized
him and he gasped for breath. He leant down and began feeling for
the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand beside the bed.
It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious with it, pressed on
it still harder, and upset it. Breathless and in despair he fell
on his back, expecting death to come immediately.
Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was
seeing them off. She heard something fall and came in.
"What has happened?"
"Nothing. I knocked it over accidentally."
She went out and returned with a candle. He lay there panting
heavily, like a man who has run a thousand yards, and stared
upwards at her with a fixed look.
"What is it, Jean?"
"No...o...thing. I upset it." ("Why speak of it? She won't
understand," he thought.)
And in truth she did not understand. She picked up the stand,
lit his candle, and hurried away to see another visitor off. When
she came back he still lay on his back, looking upwards.
"What is it? Do you feel worse?"
"Yes."
She shook her head and sat down.
"Do you know, Jean, I think we must ask Leshchetitsky to come
and see you here."
This meant calling in the famous specialist, regardless of
expense. He smiled malignantly and said "No." She remained a
little longer and then went up to him and kissed his forehead.
While she was kissing him he hated her from the bottom of his
soul and with difficulty refrained from pushing her away.
"Good night. Please God you'll sleep."<
br />
"Yes."
VI
Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual
despair.
In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only
was he 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 Ilych, 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.
And to replace that thought he called up a succession of
others, hoping to find in them some support. He tried to get back
into the former current of thoughts that had once screened the
thought of death from him. But strange to say, all that had
formerly shut off, hidden, and destroyed his consciousness of
death, no longer had that effect. Ivan Ilych now spent most of his
time in attempting to re-establish that old current. He would say
to himself: "I will take up my duties again -- after all I used to
live by them." And banishing all doubts he would go to the law
courts, enter into conversation with his colleagues, and sit
carelessly as was his wont, scanning the crowd with a thoughtful
look and leaning both his emaciated arms on the arms of his oak
chair; bending over as usual to a colleague and drawing his papers
nearer he would interchange whispers with him, and then suddenly
raising his eyes and sitting erect would pronounce certain words
and open the proceedings. But suddenly in the midst of those
proceedings the pain in his side, regardless of the stage the
proceedings had reached, would begin its own gnawing work. Ivan
Ilych would turn his attention to it and try to drive the thought
of it away, but 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 labours 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 Ilych looked for
consolations -- new screens -- and new screens were found and for
a while seemed to save him, but then they immediately fell to
pieces or rather became transparent, as if *It* penetrated them and
nothing could veil *It*.
In these latter days he would go into the drawing-room he had
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, that had got bent. He would
take up the expensive album which he had lovingly arranged, and
feel vexed with his daughter and her friends for their untidiness -
- for the album was torn here and there and some of the photographs
turned upside down. He would put it carefully in order and bend
the ornamentation back into position. Then it would occur to him
to place all those things in another corner of the room, near the
plants. He would call the footman, but his daughter or wife would
come to help him. They would not agree, and his wife would
contradict him, and he would dispute and grow angry. But that was
all right, for then he did not think about *It*. *It* was
invisible.
But then, when he was moving something himself, his wife would
say: "Let the servants do it. You will hurt yourself again." And
suddenly *It* would flash through the screen and he would see it.
It was just a flash, 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.
VII
How it happened it is impossible to say because it came about
step by step, unnoticed, but in the third month of Ivan Ilych's
illness, his wife, his daughter, his son, his acquaintances, the
doctors, the servants, and above all he himself, were aware that
the whole interest he had for other people was whether he would
soon vacate his place, and at las
t 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.
But just through his most unpleasant matter, Ivan Ilych
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 Ilych.
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 Ilych in a weak voice.
"Gerasim started, evidently afraid he might have committed
some blunder, and with a rapid movement turned his fresh, kind,
simple young face which just showed the first downy signs of a
beard.
"Yes, sir?"
"That must be very unpleasant for you. You must forgive me.
I am helpless."
"Oh, 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 Ilych was still sitting in the same position in the
armchair.
"Gerasim," he said when the latter had replaced the freshly-
washed utensil. "Please come 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 Ilych asked to
be led to the sofa. Gerasim, without an effort and without
apparent pressure, led him, almost lifting him, to the sofa and
placed him on it.
"That you. How easily and well you do it all!"
Gerasim smiled again and turned to leave the room. But Ivan
Ilych felt his presence such a comfort that he did not want to let
him go.
"One thing more, please move up that chair. No, the other one
-- under my feet. It is easier for me when my feet are raised."
Gerasim brought the chair, set it down gently in place, and
raised Ivan Ilych's legs on it. It seemed to Ivan Ilych that he
felt better while Gerasim was holding up his legs.
"It's better when my legs are higher," he said. "Place that
cushion under them."
Gerasim did so. He again lifted the legs and placed them, and
again Ivan Ilych felt better while Gerasim held his legs. When he
set them down Ivan Ilych fancied he felt worse.
"Gerasim," he said. "Are you busy now?"
"Not at all, sir," said Gerasim, who had learnt from the
townsfolk how to speak to gentlefolk.
"What have you still to do?"
"What have I to do? I've done everything except chopping the