The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Death of Iván Ílich/Chapter 1
THE DEATH OF IVÁN ILÍCH
I.
In the large building of the court institutions, during a pause in the case of the Melvínskis, the associates and the prosecuting Attorney met in the cabinet of Iván Egórovich Shébek, and started a conversation on the famous Krasóvski case. Fédor Vasílevich grew excited, proving that it was not subject to their jurisdiction. Iván Egórovich stuck to his opinion, while Peter Ivánovich, who had not entered into the discussion from the start, took no part in it, and looked through the Gazette which had been handed to him.
"Gentlemen," he said, "Iván Ilích is dead."
"Is it possible?"
"Here, read it," he said to Fédor Vasílevich, giving him the fresh-smelling number of the newspaper.
Within a black border was the following announcement: "Praskóvya Fédorovna Golovín with sincere sorrow informs her relatives and acquaintances of the demise of her beloved husband, Iván Ilích Golovín, associate member of the court, which took place on February 4th of this year, 1882. The funeral will be on Friday, at one o'clock p. m."
Iván Ilích was an associate of the gentlemen assembled, and they all loved him. He had been ill for several weeks: it was said that his disease was incurable. His post was left open for him, but it was rumoured that in case of his death Aleksyéev would probably be appointed in his place, and that Vínnikov or Shtábel would get Aleksyéev's place. Therefore, upon hearing about Iván Ilích's death, the first thought of every one of the gentlemen collected in the cabinet was as to the significance which this death might have on the changes or promotions of the associates themselves or of their friends.
"Now I shall no doubt get Shtábel's place or Vínnikov's," thought Fédor Vasílevich. "I was promised that long ago, and this promotion will mean for me eight hundred roubles increase, in addition to the chancery."
"I must now ask for the transfer of my brother-in-law from Kalúga," thought Peter Ivánovich. "My wife will be very glad. She will no longer be able to say that I am not doing anything for her relatives."
"I never thought he would get up again," Peter Ivánovich said, aloud. "I am sorry."
"What was the matter with him, anyway?"
"The doctors could not make it out. That is, they did, but each of them differently. When I saw him the last time, I thought he was getting better."
"And here I have not called on him since the holidays. I was meaning to all the time."
"Well, did he have any estate?"
"I think his wife has a little something, but nothing of any consequence."
"Yes, I shall have to go there; but they have been living a terrible distance away."
"That is, from your house. From your house everything is a distance away."
"You really cannot forgive me for living on the other side of the river," Peter Ivánovich said, smiling at Shébek. And they began to talk of the extent of the city distances, and went back to the court session.
In addition to the reflections evoked in each of them by this death about the transpositions and possible changes in the service likely to happen in consequence of it, the very fact of the death of a close friend evoked in all those who heard of it, as it always does, a feeling of joy because it was Iván Ilích who had died and not they.
"How is this? It is he who is dead, and not I," each of them thought or felt.
But the close acquaintances, Iván Ilích's so-called friends, involuntarily thought also of this, that now they would have to perform some very tedious duties of propriety and go to the mass and call on the widow to express their condolence.
His nearest friends were Fédor Vasílevich and Peter Ivánovich.
Peter Ivánovich had been his schoolmate while studying law, and considered himself under obligation to Iván Ilích.
At dinner Peter Ivánovich gave his wife the news of Iván Ilích's death, and his reflections as to the possibility of his brother-in-law's transfer to their circuit, and, without lying down to rest himself, he put on his dress coat and drove to Iván Ilích's house.
At the entrance to Iván Ilích's apartments stood a carriage and two cabs. Down-stairs, in the antechamber, near the hat-rack, and leaning against the wall, stood a tinselled coffin-lid with its tassels and burnished galloons. Two ladies in black were taking off their fur coats. One of them, Iván Ilích's sister, he knew; the other was a stranger to him. Peter Ivánovich's friend, Schwarz, was coming down-stairs, and, seeing the newcomer from the upper step, he stopped and winked to him, as if to say: "Iván Ilích has managed things stupidly; you and I fixed things better."
Schwarz's face with its English side-whiskers and his whole lean figure in the dress coat had, as always, an elegant solemnity about them, and this solemnity, which always contradicted Schwarz's character of playfulness, had here its particular salt. So Peter Ivánovich thought.
Peter Ivánovich allowed the ladies to precede him, and followed them up the staircase. Schwarz did not start to go down, but stopped up-stairs. Peter Ivánovich knew why he did so he evidently wanted to make an engagement to play a game of vint that day. The ladies went up-stairs to see the widow, and Schwarz, with seriously compressed, strong lips and playful glance, with a motion of his brows showed Peter Ivánovich to the right, to the room where the body lay.
Peter Ivánovich entered, as is always the case, perplexed as to what he would have to do. One thing he knew, and that was that under such circumstances it would never do any harm to make the sign of the cross. But he was not quite sure whether he ought also to make obeisances, and so he chose the middle way: upon entering the room, he began to make the sign of the cross and acted as though he were bowing. At the same time, as much as the motion of his hands and of his head permitted it, he surveyed the room. Two young men, one of them a gymnasiast,—he thought they were nephews,—were leaving the room, making the sign of the cross. An old woman stood motionless and a lady with queerly raised brows was telling her something in a whisper. A sexton, in a Prince Albert, a wide-awake, determined man, was reading something in a loud voice with an expression which excluded every contradiction; Gerásim, a peasant of the buffet-room, was with light steps strewing something on the floor, in front of Peter Ivánovich. As Peter Ivánovich saw this, he at once caught the light odour of the decomposing body.
During his last call on Iván Ilích, Peter Ivánovich had seen this peasant in the cabinet: he had been performing the duty of a nurse, and Iván Ilích was particularly fond of him. Peter Ivánovich kept making the sign of the cross and slightly inclined his head in a central direction between the coffin, the sexton, and the images on the table in the corner of the room. Afterward, when this motion of making the sign of the cross with his hand appeared to him to have lasted long enough, he stopped and began to look at the corpse.
The dead man was lying, as all dead men lie, quite heavily, in corpse-like fashion sinking with the stark members of his body in the bedding of the coffin, with an eternally bent head on a pillow, and displayed, as corpses always do, his yellow, waxen brow with bare spots over his sunken temples, and a towering nose which seemed to be pressing against the upper lip. He was very much changed and much thinner than when Peter Ivánovich had seen him the last time, but, as is the case with all corpses, his face was more beautiful and, above all, more significant than that of a living man. On his face there was an expression of this, that what was necessary to do had been done, and done correctly. Besides, in this expression there was also a rebuke or reminder to the living.
This reminder seemed to Peter Ivánovich out of place, or, at least, having no reference to him. For some reason he felt ill at ease, and so hastened to cross himself again and, as it appeared to him, too precipitously and out of keeping with the proprieties, turned around and walked toward the door.
Schwarz was waiting for him in a middle room, spreading his legs wide, and with both his hands playing behind his back with his silk hat. One glance at Schwarz's playful, natty, and elegant figure refreshed Peter Ivánovich. Peter Ivánovich understood that he, Schwarz, was standing above such things, and did not surrender himself to crushing impressions. His very glance said: the incident of the mass for Iván Ilích can by no means serve as a sufficient reason for declaring the order of the session disturbed, that is, that nothing could keep him that very evening from clicking with the deck of cards after breaking the seal, while the lackey would place four fresh candles on the table; altogether there was no cause for supposing that this incident could keep them from passing an agreeable evening. Indeed, he said so in a whisper to Peter Ivánovich as he passed by, proposing that they meet for the game at the house of Fédor Vasilevich. But it was apparently not Peter Ivánovich's fate to have a game of vint that evening. Praskóvya Fédorovna, an undersized, fat woman, who, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, had been expanding all the time downward from the shoulders, dressed in black, with her head covered with lace, and with the same upturned brows as those of the lady who was standing at the coffin, came out of her apartments with other ladies and, taking them to the door of the room where the dead man lay, said: "The mass will be read at once. Pass in."
Schwarz made an indefinite bow and stopped, evidently neither accepting nor declining the offer. When Praskóvya Fédorovna recognized Peter Ivánovich, she sighed, went up close to him, took his hand, and said: "I know that you were a true friend to Iván Ilích," and looked at him, expecting from him an action which would correspond to these words. Peter Ivánovich knew that, as it was necessary there to make the sign of the cross, so here it was necessary to press her hand, to sigh, and to say: "Believe me!" And so he did. Having done it, he felt that the desired result was achieved: both he and she were touched.
"Come with me: before it begins there, I have to talk with you," said the widow. "Give me your arm."
Peter Ivánovich gave her his arm, and they went to the inner apartments, past Schwarz, who gave Iván Ilích a sad wink.
"There goes the vint! You must not be angry with us if we choose another partner. If you get off, we may play a five-handed game," said his playful glance.
Peter Ivánovich sighed more deeply and more sadly still, and Praskóvya Fédorovna pressed his hand gratefully. Upon entering her drawing-room, which was papered with pink cretonne and was illuminated by a dim lamp, they sat down at the table,—she on a divan, and Peter Ivánovich on a pouffe with crushed springs and unevenly yielding seat. Praskóvya Fédorovna was on the point of cautioning him and asking him to take another seat, but found this cautioning incompatible with her present condition, and so changed her mind.
Seating himself on this pouffe, Peter Ivánovich recalled how Iván Ilích had appointed this room and had consulted him in regard to this very pink cretonne with its green leaves. As the widow, on her way to seat herself, passed by the table (the drawing-room was altogether too full of trifles and of furniture), the black lace of her black mantilla caught on the carving of the table. Peter Ivánovich raised himself in order to disentangle it, and the liberated pouffe began to agitate under him and to push him. The widow began to free her lace herself, and Peter Ivánovich sat down again, choking the riotous pouffe. But the widow did not free the lace entirely, and Peter Ivánovich raised himself again, and again the pouffe became agitated and even clicked. When all this was ended, she took out her clean cambric handkerchief and began to weep. But Peter Ivánovich was cooled off by the episode with the lace and by the struggle with the pouffe, and sat scowling. This awkward situation was interrupted by Sokolov, Iván Ilích's butler, who came to report that the lot in the cemetery which Praskóvya Fédorovna had chosen would cost two hundred roubles. She stopped weeping and, looking at Peter Ivánovich with the glance of a victim, said in French that it was very hard for her. Peter Ivánovich made a silent sign, which expressed unquestionable assurance that that could not be otherwise.
"Do smoke, if you please," she said, in a magnanimous and at the same time crushed voice, and proceeded to busy herself with Sokolóv concerning the price of the lot. Peter Ivánovich heard, while starting to smoke, how she inquired very circumstantially about the different prices of the land and settled on the lot which she was going to take. Having finished about the lot, she also made her arrangements about the singers. Sokolóv went away.
"I do everything myself," she said to Peter Ivánovich, pushing aside the albums which were lying on the table, and, observing that the ashes were threatening the table, she without delay moved up the ash-tray to Peter Ivánovich, and said: "I consider it a bit of hypocrisy to assure people that my grief prevents me from attending to practical matters. On the contrary, if there is anything which can, not console, but distract me, it is the cares concerning him." She again drew out her handkerchief, as though getting ready to cry, and suddenly, as though overcoming herself, she shook herself, and began to speak calmly. "But I want to ask you about a certain matter."
Peter Ivánovich made a bow, without permitting the springs of the pouffe, which began to stir under him, to get away.
"The last three days he suffered terribly."
"Suffered terribly?" asked Peter Ivánovich.
"Oh, terribly! The last minutes, nay hours, he never stopped crying. It was unbearable. I cannot understand how I stood it; you could hear him three rooms off. Oh, what I have endured!"
"And was he really in his right mind?" asked Peter Ivánovich.
"Yes," she whispered, "to the last minute. He bade us good-bye within fifteen minutes of his death, and also asked us to take Volódya away."
The thought of the suffering of this man, whom he had known so closely, at first as a merry boy, as his schoolmate, and later, when he was grown, as his partner, suddenly terrified him, in spite of the disagreeable consciousness of his hypocrisy and of that of the woman. He again saw that brow and that nose which pressed against the lip, and he felt terribly for himself.
"Three days of frightful suffering, and death. Why, this may happen to me now, any minute," he thought, and for a moment he felt terribly. But immediately, he did not know himself how, the habitual thought occurred to him that this had happened to Iván Ilích, and not to him, and that this should not and could not happen to him; that if he thought in this manner, he submitted to a gloomy mood, which he ought not to do, as was evident from Schwarz's face. Having reflected thus, Peter Ivánovich calmed himself and interestedly inquired about the details of Iván Ilích's end, as though death was an accident which was peculiar to Iván Ilích but by no means to him.
After many details of the really terrible physical sufferings which Iván Ilích had endured (these details Peter Ivánovich learned only from the way these torments of Iván Ilích affected the nerves of Praskóvya Fédorovna), the widow apparently found it necessary to pass over to business.
"Oh, Peter Ivánovich, it is so hard, so terribly hard, so terribly hard!" and she started weeping again.
Peter Ivánovich sighed and waited for her to clear her nose. When she had done so, he said, "Believe me—" and she became again voluble and made a clear breast of what evidently was her chief business with him. This business consisted in questions as to how to obtain money from the government on the occasion of her husband's death. She made it appear as though she were asking Peter Ivánovich's advice in regard to the pension; but he saw that she knew down to the minutest details, what he did not know, what could be got out of the government in consequence of this death, but that she wanted to find out if it were not possible in some way to get a little more money out of it. Peter Ivánovich tried to discover a means to do so, but, after reflecting a little and out of propriety scolding our government for its stinginess, be said that he thought that nothing more could be got from it. Thereupon she sighed and obviously was trying to find a means for ridding herself of her visitor. He understood this, and so put out his cigarette, pressed her hand, and went into the antechamber.
In the dining-room with a clock, to which Iván Ilích had taken such a fancy that he had purchased it in a bric-à-brac shop, Peter Ivánovich met a priest and a few acquaintances who had come to be present at the mass, and saw Iván Ilích's daughter, a pretty young lady, with whom he was acquainted. She had a gloomy, determined, almost angry look. She bowed to Peter Ivánovich, as though he were guilty of something. Back of the daughter stood, with the same offended look, a wealthy young man, an examining magistrate and an acquaintance of Peter Ivánovich, who, as he had heard, was her fiancé. He bowed dejectedly and was on the point of passing into the room of the dead man, when from under the staircase appeared the small form of a gymnasiast, Iván Ilích's son, who resembled his father terribly. This was little Iván Ilích, such as Peter Ivánovich remembered him in the law school. His eyes were small and such as one generally sees in impure boys of thirteen or fourteen years of age. Upon noticing Peter Ivánovich, the boy began to frown sternly and shamefacedly. Peter Ivánovich nodded to him, and entered the room of the dead man. The mass began, and there were the candles, groans, incense, tears, sobs. Peter Ivánovich stood frowning, looking at his feet in front of him. He did not once cast a glance on the dead man, and did not to the end succumb to the dissolving influences, and was one of the first to leave the room. There was no one in the antechamber. Gerásim, the peasant of the buffet-room, leaped out from the room of the deceased man, and with his powerful hands rummaged among all the fur coats, in order to find the one which belonged to Peter Ivánovich and which he handed to him.
"Well, friend Gerásim?" said Peter Ivánovich, to be saying something. "Are you sorry?”
"It is God's will. We shall all of us be there," said Gerásim, displaying his white, solid peasant teeth; like a man in the heat of intense work, he opened the door in lively fashion, called the coachman, helped Peter Ivánovich in, and jumped back to the porch, as though considering what else he had to do.
It was especially pleasant for Peter Ivánovich to breathe the pure air, after the odour of incense, of the dead body, and of carbolic acid.
"Whither do you command me to drive you?” asked the coachman.
"It is not yet late,—I will make a call on Fédor Vasilevich."
And Peter Ivánovich departed. He indeed found them at the end of the first rubber, so that it was convenient for him to come in as the fifth.