Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  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 Iván Ilých still obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived some comfort from doing so.

  From the time of his visit to the doctor, Iván Ilých’s chief occupation was the exact fulfilment of the doctor’s instructions regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His chief interests 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 which he tried to hide, asked questions, and applied what he heard to his own case.

  The pain did not grow less, but Iván Ilých 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 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 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 Iván Ilých’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 Iván Ilých still more and increased his doubts. A homoeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine which Iván Ilých 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 effected by a wonderworking icon. Iván Ilých 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 Iván Ilých 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, ‘Iván Ilých 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?’ Iván Ilých would ask in vexation. ‘Only once at Peter Ivánovich’s.’

  ‘And yesterday with Shébek.’

  ‘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.’

  Praskóvya Fëdorovna’s attitude to Iván Ilých’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. Iván Ilých felt that this opinion escaped her involuntarily – but that did not make it easier for him.

  At the law courts too, Iván Ilých 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 savoir-faire, 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 Iván Ilých 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 Mikháil Mikháylovich, who rapped the table with his strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the cards courteously and indulgently towards Iván Ilých 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 Iván Ilých, and forgetting what he was doing he overtrumped his partner, missing the grand slam by three tricks. And what was most awful of all was that he saw how upset Mikháil Mikháylovich 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. Iván Ilých felt that he had diffused this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Iván Ilých 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.

  V

  SO one month passed and then another. Just before the New Year his brother-in-law came to town and stayed at their house. Iván Ilých was at the law courts and Praskóvya Fëdorovna had gone shopping. When Iván Ilých 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 Iván Ilých’s footsteps and looked up at him for a moment without a word. That stare told Iván Ilých 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. Praskóvya Fëdorovna came home and her brother went out to her. Iván Ilých locked the 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.

  ‘No, you are exaggerating!’ Praskóvya Fëdorovna was saying.

  ‘Exaggerating! Don’t you see it? Why, he’s a dead man! Look at his eyes – there’s no light in them. But what is it that is wrong with him?’

  ‘No one knows. Nikoláevich [that was another doctor] said something, but I don’t know what. And Leshchetítsky [this was the celebrated specialist] said quite the contrary …’

  Iván Ilých 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 Ivánovich 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 Ivánovich.’

  He went to see Peter Ivánovich, and together they went to see his friend, the doctor. He was in, and Iván Ilých 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. Iván Ilých, as Praskóvya Fëdorovna 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 good-night 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 sank 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 know or wish 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. Praskóvya Fëdorovna 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 … thin
g. 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 Leshchetítsky 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.’

  ‘Yes.’

  VI

  IVÁN Ilých 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 Kiezewetter’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 Ványa, with a mamma and a papa, with Mítya and Volódya, with the toys, a coachman and a nurse, afterwards with Kátenka and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Ványa 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 Ványa, Iván Ilých, 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.’