Chapter
XI
Another two
weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an even occurred that Ivan
Ilych and his wife had desired. Petrishchev formally proposed. It happened in
the evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna came into her husband's room
considering how best to inform him of it, but that very night there had been a
fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found him still lying on the
sofa but in a different position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring
fixedly straight in front of him.
She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her
with such a look that she did not finish what she was saying; so great an
animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.
"For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" he said.
She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and went up to
say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his wife, and in reply to
her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would soon free them all of
himself. They were both silent and after sitting with him for a while went
away.
"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother. "It's as if we were to blame! I
am sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?"
The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilych answered "Yes" and "No," never
taking his angry eyes from him, and at last said: "You know you can do nothing
for me, so leave me alone."
"We can ease your sufferings."
"You can't even do that. Let me be."
The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that the
case was very serious and that the only resource left was opium to allay her
husband's sufferings, which must be terrible.
It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilych's physical sufferings were
terrible, but worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings
which were his chief torture.
His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he looked at
Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face with it prominent cheek-bones, the question
suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been wrong?"
It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely
that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true.
It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against
what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely
noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the
real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole
arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official
interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to
himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was
nothing to defend.
"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and i am leaving this life with the
consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to
rectify it — what then?"
He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way.
In the morning when he saw first his footman, then his wife, then his daughter,
and then the doctor, their every word and movement confirmed to him the awful
truth that had been revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself —
all that for which he had lived — and saw clearly that it was not real at all,
but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death. This
consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed
about, and pulled at his clothing which choked and stifled him. And he hated
them on that account.
He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at noon his
sufferings began again. He drove everybody away and tossed from side to
side.
His wife came to him and said:
"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do any harm and often helps.
Healthy people often do it."
He opened his eyes wide.
"What? Take communion? Why? It's unnecessary! However..."
She began to cry.
"Yes, do, my dear. I'll send for our priest. He is such a nice man."
"All right. Very well," he muttered.
When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilych was softened and
seemed to feel a relief from his doubts and consequently from his sufferings,
and for a moment there came a ray of hope. He again began to think of the
vermiform appendix and the possibility of correcting it. He received the
sacrament with tears in his eyes.
When they laid him down again afterwards he felt a moment's ease, and the
hope that he might live awoke in him again. He began to think of the operation
that had been suggested to him. "To live! I want to live!" he said to
himself.
His wife came in to congratulate him after his communion, and when uttering
the usual conventional words she added:
"You feel better, don't you?"
Without looking at her he said "Yes."
Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice, all
revealed the same thing. "This is wrong, it is not as it should be. All you
have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and
death from you." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and his
agonizing physical suffering again sprang up, and with that suffering a
consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching end. And to this was added a new
sensation of grinding shooting pain and a feeling of suffocation.
The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful. Having
uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his face with a
rapidity extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:
"Go away! Go away and leave me alone!"
XI
Another two
weeks went by in this way and during that fortnight an even occurred that Ivan
Ilych and his wife had desired. Petrishchev formally proposed. It happened in
the evening. The next day Praskovya Fedorovna came into her husband's room
considering how best to inform him of it, but that very night there had been a
fresh change for the worse in his condition. She found him still lying on the
sofa but in a different position. He lay on his back, groaning and staring
fixedly straight in front of him.
She began to remind him of his medicines, but he turned his eyes towards her
with such a look that she did not finish what she was saying; so great an
animosity, to her in particular, did that look express.
"For Christ's sake let me die in peace!" he said.
She would have gone away, but just then their daughter came in and went up to
say good morning. He looked at her as he had done at his wife, and in reply to
her inquiry about his health said dryly that he would soon free them all of
himself. They were both silent and after sitting with him for a while went
away.
"Is it our fault?" Lisa said to her mother. "It's as if we were to blame! I
am sorry for papa, but why should we be tortured?"
The doctor came at his usual time. Ivan Ilych answered "Yes" and "No," never
taking his angry eyes from him, and at last said: "You know you can do nothing
for me, so leave me alone."
"We can ease your sufferings."
"You can't even do that. Let me be."
The doctor went into the drawing room and told Praskovya Fedorovna that the
case was very serious and that the only resource left was opium to allay her
husband's sufferings, which must be terrible.
It was true, as the doctor said, that Ivan Ilych's physical sufferings were
terrible, but worse than the physical sufferings were his mental sufferings
which were his chief torture.
His mental sufferings were due to the fact that that night, as he looked at
Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured face with it prominent cheek-bones, the question
suddenly occurred to him: "What if my whole life has been wrong?"
It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely
that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true.
It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against
what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely
noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the
real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole
arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official
interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to
himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was
nothing to defend.
"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and i am leaving this life with the
consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to
rectify it — what then?"
He lay on his back and began to pass his life in review in quite a new way.
In the morning when he saw first his footman, then his wife, then his daughter,
and then the doctor, their every word and movement confirmed to him the awful
truth that had been revealed to him during the night. In them he saw himself —
all that for which he had lived — and saw clearly that it was not real at all,
but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death. This
consciousness intensified his physical suffering tenfold. He groaned and tossed
about, and pulled at his clothing which choked and stifled him. And he hated
them on that account.
He was given a large dose of opium and became unconscious, but at noon his
sufferings began again. He drove everybody away and tossed from side to
side.
His wife came to him and said:
"Jean, my dear, do this for me. It can't do any harm and often helps.
Healthy people often do it."
He opened his eyes wide.
"What? Take communion? Why? It's unnecessary! However..."
She began to cry.
"Yes, do, my dear. I'll send for our priest. He is such a nice man."
"All right. Very well," he muttered.
When the priest came and heard his confession, Ivan Ilych was softened and
seemed to feel a relief from his doubts and consequently from his sufferings,
and for a moment there came a ray of hope. He again began to think of the
vermiform appendix and the possibility of correcting it. He received the
sacrament with tears in his eyes.
When they laid him down again afterwards he felt a moment's ease, and the
hope that he might live awoke in him again. He began to think of the operation
that had been suggested to him. "To live! I want to live!" he said to
himself.
His wife came in to congratulate him after his communion, and when uttering
the usual conventional words she added:
"You feel better, don't you?"
Without looking at her he said "Yes."
Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice, all
revealed the same thing. "This is wrong, it is not as it should be. All you
have lived for and still live for is falsehood and deception, hiding life and
death from you." And as soon as he admitted that thought, his hatred and his
agonizing physical suffering again sprang up, and with that suffering a
consciousness of the unavoidable, approaching end. And to this was added a new
sensation of grinding shooting pain and a feeling of suffocation.
The expression of his face when he uttered that "Yes" was dreadful. Having
uttered it, he looked her straight in the eyes, turned on his face with a
rapidity extraordinary in his weak state and shouted:
"Go away! Go away and leave me alone!"
Chapter
XII
From that moment
the screaming began that continued for three days, and was so terrible that one
could not hear it through two closed doors without horror. At the moment he
answered his wife realized that he was lost, that there was no return, that the
end had come, the very end, and his doubts were still unsolved and remained
doubts.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried in various intonations. He had begun by screaming
"I won't!" and continued screaming on the letter "O".
For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled
in that black sack into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless
force. He struggled as a man condemned to death struggles in the hands of the
executioner, knowing that he cannot save himself. And every moment he felt that
despite all his efforts he was drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him.
he felt that his agony was due to his being thrust into that black hole and
still more to his not being able to get right into it. He was hindered from
getting into it by his conviction that his life had been a good one. That very
justification of his life held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it
caused him most torment of all.
Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder
to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light.
What had happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a
railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really
going forwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.
"Yes, it was not the right thing," he said to himself, "but that's no matter.
It can be done. But what *is* the right thing? he asked himself, and suddenly
grew quiet.
This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. Just
then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The
dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on
the boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to
cry.
At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light,
and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have
been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What *is* the right
thing?" and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his
hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife
camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with
undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt
sorry for her too.
"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will
be better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not the strength
to utter it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. with a look at his
wife he indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for
you too...." He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his
hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.
And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would
not leave his was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and
from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them:
release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!"
he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where
are you, pain?"
He turned his attention to it.
"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."
"And death...where is it?"
He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is
it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"
To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant
did not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours.
Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping
and rattle became less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and
died.
XII
From that moment
the screaming began that continued for three days, and was so terrible that one
could not hear it through two closed doors without horror. At the moment he
answered his wife realized that he was lost, that there was no return, that the
end had come, the very end, and his doubts were still unsolved and remained
doubts.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he cried in various intonations. He had begun by screaming
"I won't!" and continued screaming on the letter "O".
For three whole days, during which time did not exist for him, he struggled
in that black sack into which he was being thrust by an invisible, resistless
force. He struggled as a man condemned to death struggles in the hands of the
executioner, knowing that he cannot save himself. And every moment he felt that
despite all his efforts he was drawing nearer and nearer to what terrified him.
he felt that his agony was due to his being thrust into that black hole and
still more to his not being able to get right into it. He was hindered from
getting into it by his conviction that his life had been a good one. That very
justification of his life held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it
caused him most torment of all.
Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder
to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light.
What had happened to him was like the sensation one sometimes experiences in a
railway carriage when one thinks one is going backwards while one is really
going forwards and suddenly becomes aware of the real direction.
"Yes, it was not the right thing," he said to himself, "but that's no matter.
It can be done. But what *is* the right thing? he asked himself, and suddenly
grew quiet.
This occurred at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. Just
then his schoolboy son had crept softly in and gone up to the bedside. The
dying man was still screaming desperately and waving his arms. His hand fell on
the boy's head, and the boy caught it, pressed it to his lips, and began to
cry.
At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light,
and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have
been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, "What *is* the right
thing?" and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his
hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife
camp up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with
undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt
sorry for her too.
"Yes, I am making them wretched," he thought. "They are sorry, but it will
be better for them when I die." He wished to say this but had not the strength
to utter it. "Besides, why speak? I must act," he thought. with a look at his
wife he indicated his son and said: "Take him away...sorry for him...sorry for
you too...." He tried to add, "Forgive me," but said "Forego" and waved his
hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.
And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would
not leave his was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and
from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them:
release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!"
he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where
are you, pain?"
He turned his attention to it.
"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."
"And death...where is it?"
He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is
it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"
To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant
did not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours.
Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping
and rattle became less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and
died.