The Death of Ivan Ilych Read online

  They were all in good health. It could not be called ill

  health if Ivan Ilych sometimes said that he had a queer taste in

  his mouth and felt some discomfort in his left side.

  But this discomfort increased and, though not exactly painful,

  grew into a sense of pressure in his side accompanied by ill

  humour. And his irritability became worse and worse and began to

  mar the agreeable, easy, and correct life that had established

  itself in the Golovin family. Quarrels between husband and wife

  became more and more frequent, and soon the ease and amenity

  disappeared and even the decorum was barely maintained. Scenes

  again became frequent, and very few of those islets remained on

  which husband and wife could meet without an explosion. Praskovya

  Fedorovna now had good reason to say that her husband's temper was

  trying. With characteristic exaggeration she said he had always

  had a dreadful temper, and that it had needed all her good nature

  to put up with it for twenty years. It was true that now the

  quarrels were started by him. His bursts of temper always came

  just before dinner, often just as he began to eat his soup.

  Sometimes he noticed that a plate or dish was chipped, or the food

  was not right, or his son put his elbow on the table, or his

  daughter's hair was not done as he liked it, and for all this he

  blamed Praskovya Fedorovna. At first she retorted and said

  disagreeable things to him, but once or twice he fell into such a

  rage at the beginning of dinner that she realized it was due to

  some physical derangement brought on by taking food, and so she

  restrained herself and did not answer, but only hurried to get the

  dinner over. She regarded this self-restraint as highly

  praiseworthy. Having come to the conclusion that her husband had

  a dreadful temper and made her life miserable, she began to feel

  sorry for herself, and the more she pitied herself the more she

  hated her husband. She began to wish he would die; yet she did not

  want him to die because then his salary would cease. And this

  irritated her against him still more. She considered herself

  dreadfully unhappy just because not even his death could save her,

  and though she concealed her exasperation, that hidden exasperation

  of hers increased his irritation also.

  After one scene in which Ivan Ilych had been particularly

  unfair and after which he had said in explanation that he certainly

  was irritable but that it was due to his not being well, she said

  that he was ill it should be attended to, and insisted on his going

  to see a celebrated doctor.

  He went. Everything took place as he had expected and as it

  always does. There was the usual waiting and the important air

  assumed by the doctor, with which he was so familiar (resembling

  that which he himself assumed in court), and the sounding and

  listening, and the questions which called for answers that were

  foregone conclusions and were evidently unnecessary, and the look

  of importance which implied that "if only you put yourself in our

  hands we will arrange everything -- we know indubitably how it has

  to be done, always in the same way for everybody alike." It was

  all just as it was in the law courts. The doctor put on just the

  same air towards him as he himself put on towards an accused

  person.

  The doctor said that so-and-so indicated that there was so-

  and-so inside the patient, but if the investigation of so-and-so

  did not confirm this, then he must assume that and that. If he

  assumed that and that, then...and so on. To Ivan Ilych only one

  question was important: was his case serious or not? But the

  doctor ignored that inappropriate question. From his point of view

  it was not the one under consideration, the real question was to

  decide between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis.

  It was not a question the doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed

  to Ivan Ilych, in favour of the appendix, with the reservation that

  should an examination of the urine give fresh indications the

  matter would be reconsidered. All this was just what Ivan Ilych

  had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand times in dealing

  with men on trial. The doctor summed up just as brilliantly,

  looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at the

  accused. From the doctor's summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that

  things were bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody

  else, it was a matter of indifference, though for him it was bad.

  And this conclusion struck him painfully, arousing in him a great

  feeling of pity for himself and of bitterness towards the doctor's

  indifference to a matter of such importance.

  He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor's fee on

  the table, and remarked with a sigh: "We sick people probably

  often put inappropriate questions. But tell me, in general, is

  this complaint dangerous, or not?..."

  The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one

  eye, as if to say: "Prisoner, if you will not keep to the

  questions put to you, I shall be obliged to have you removed from

  the court."

  "I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper.

  The analysis may show something more." And the doctor bowed.

  Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in

  his sledge, and drove home. All the way home he was going over

  what the doctor had said, trying to translate those complicated,

  obscure, scientific phrases into plain language and find in them an

  answer to the question: "Is my condition bad? Is it very bad? Or

  is there as yet nothing much wrong?" And it seemed to him that the

  meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was very bad.

  Everything in the streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the

  houses, the passers-by, and the shops, were dismal. His ache, this

  dull gnawing ache that never ceased for a moment, seemed to have

  acquired a new and more serious significance from the doctor's

  dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now watched it with a new and

  oppressive feeling.

  He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She

  listened, but in the middle of his account his daughter came in

  with her hat on, ready to go out with her mother. She sat down

  reluctantly to listen to this tedious story, but could not stand it

  long, and her mother too did not hear him to the end.

  "Well, I am very glad," she said. "Mind now to take your

  medicine regularly. Give me the prescription and I'll send Gerasim

  to the chemist's." And she went to get ready to go out.

  While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to

  breathe, but he sighed deeply when she left it.

  "Well," he thought, "perhaps it isn't so bad after all."

  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 Ivan Ilych still

  obeyed his orders implicitly and at first derived some comfort from

  doing so.

  From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych's chief

  occupation was the exact fulfillment of the doctor's instructions

  regarding hygiene and the taking of medicine, and the observation

  of his pain and his excretions. His chief interest 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 Ivan Ilych 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 he 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

  Ivan Ilych'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 Ivan Ilych still more and increased his

  doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way,

  and prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilych 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 wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych

  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 Ivan

  Ilych 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,

  "Ivan Ilych 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?" Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation.

  "Only once at Peter Ivanovich's."

  "And yesterday with shebek."

  "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."

  Praskovya Fedorovna's attitude to Ivan Ilych'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. Ivan ilych

  felt that this opinion escaped her involuntarily -- but that did

  not make it easier for him.

  At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych 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

&nb
sp; 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 Ivan Ilych 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 Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the

  table with his strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks

  pushed the cards courteously and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych

  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 Ivan Ilych, and forgetting

  what he was doing he over-trumped his partner, missing the grand

  slam by three tricks. And what was most awful of all was that he

  saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich 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.

  Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused this gloom over them and could

  not dispel it. They had supper and went away, and Ivan Ilych 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.

  Ivan Ilych was at the law courts and Praskovya Fedorovna had gone

  shopping. When Ivan Ilych 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 Ivan Ilych's

  footsteps and looked up at him for a moment without a word. That

  stare told Ivan Ilych 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. Praskovya Fedorovna came home and her brother went out

  to her. Ivan Ilych locked to 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!" Praskovya Fedorovna was saying.

  "Exaggerating! Don't you see it? Why, he's a dead man! Look

  at his eyes -- there's no life in them. But what is it that is

  wrong with him?"

  "No one knows. Nikolaevich [that was another doctor] said

  something, but I don't know what. And Seshchetitsky [this was the

  celebrated specialist] said quite the contrary..."

  Ivan Ilych 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