The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Death of Iván Ílich/Chapter 12
XII.
From this moment there began that cry which lasted for three days and was so terrible that it was not possible to hear it without horror through two doors. At the moment when he answered his wife, he understood that he was lost, that there was no return, that the end had come, the real end, and yet his doubt was not solved,—it remained the doubt it had been.
"Oo! Oo! Oo!" he cried, in various intonations. He had begun to cry, "I do not want to!" and continued to cry the sound "oo."
During the three days, in the course of which time did not exist for him, he fluttered about in that black bag whither an invisible, invincible force was shoving him. He struggled as a prisoner condemned to death struggles in the hands of the hangman, knowing that he cannot be saved; and with every minute he felt that, in spite of all the efforts of the struggle, he was coming nearer and nearer to what terrified him. He felt that his suffering consisted in his being shoved into that black hole, and still more in his not being able to get through it. What hindered him from crawling through was the consciousness of this, that his life was good. This justification of his life grappled him and did not allow him to get on and tormented him more than anything.
Suddenly a certain force pushed him in the chest and in the side, and still more compressed his throat, and he fell into the hole, and there, at the end of the hole, there was some light. What happened to him was what happens in a railway car, when a man thinks that he is riding forward, while he is riding backward, and suddenly discovers the real direction.
"Yes, it was all the wrong thing," he said to himself, "but that is nothing. It is possible, it is possible to do the right thing. What is the right thing?" he asked himself, and suddenly grew quiet.
This happened at the end of the third day, two hours before his death. At just this time the little gymnasiast stole quietly up to his father, and walked over to his bed. The dying man was crying pitifully and tossing about his hands. His hand fell on the head of the little gymnasiast. The little gymnasiast caught it and pressed it to his lips, and burst out weeping.
Just then Iván Ilích tumbled in and saw the light, and it was revealed to him that his life had not been what it ought to have been, but that it was still possible to mend it. He asked himself: "What is the right thing?" and he grew silent, and listened. Here he felt that some one was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes and glanced at his son. He was sorry for him. His wife came up to him. He glanced at her. She looked at him with a desperate expression, her mouth being wide open and the tears remaining unwiped on her nose. He was sorry for her.
"Yes, I am tormenting them," he thought. "They are sorry, but they will be better off when I am dead." That was what he meant to say, but he did not have the strength to utter it. "However, what is the use of talking? I must do," he thought. He indicated his son to his wife with his glance, and said:
"Take him away—am sorry—and you, too—"
He wanted to add, "Forgive," but said, "Forgigive," and being unable to correct himself, he waved his hand, knowing that who needed would understand.
Suddenly it became clear to him that what had been vexing him and could not come out, now was coming out all at once, from two sides, from ten sides, from all sides. They were to be pitied; it was necessary to do something to save them pain, to free them and free himself from these sufferings.
"How good and how simple!" he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What of it? Well, pain, where are you?"
He began to listen.
"Yes, here it is. Well, let it pain."
"And death? Where is it?"
And he sought his former customary fear of death, and could not find it.
"Where is it? What death?"
There was no fear, because there was also no death.
Instead of death there was a light.
"So this it is!" he suddenly spoke out in a loud voice. "What joy!"
For him all this took place in one moment, and the significance of this moment no longer changed. But for those who were present the agony lasted two hours longer. Something palpitated in his heart, and his emaciated body jerked. Then the palpitation and the râle grew rarer and rarer.
"It is ended!" some one said over him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
"Death is ended," he said to himself. "It is no more."
He inhaled the air, stopped in the middle of his breath, stretched himself, and died.
March 22, 1886.