The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Death of Iván Ílich/Chapter 7
VII.
How it all happened in the third month of Iván Ilích's disease is hard to tell, because it all happened imperceptibly step by step, but what happened was that his wife, and his son, and the servants, and his acquaintances, and the doctors, and, above all else, he himself knew that the whole interest in him consisted for others in nothing but the question how soon he would vacate the place, would free the living from the embarrassment produced by his presence, and would himself be freed from his sufferings.
He slept less and less: he was given opium, and they began to inject morphine into him. But this did not make it easier for him. The dull dejection which he experienced in his half-sleeping state at first gave him relief as something new, but later it grew to be the same, and even more agonizing, than the sharp pain.
They prepared particular kinds of food for him according to the doctor's prescriptions; but these dishes tasted to him more and more insipid, and more and more abominable.
Special appliances, too, were used for his evacuations, and every time this was a torture to him,—a torture on account of the impurity, the indecency, and the smell, and from the consciousness that another person had to take part in it.
But in this most disagreeable matter Iván Ilích found his consolation. The peasant of the buffet, Gerásim, always came to carry out his vessel. Now Gerásim was a clean, fresh young peasant, who had improved much on his city food. He was always merry and precise. At first the sign of this cleanly man, who was dressed in Russian fashion and did this detestable work, embarrassed Iván Ilích.
One time, upon getting up from the vessel, and being unable to lift up his trousers, he dropped down into a soft chair and looked in terror at his bared, impotent thighs with their sharply defined muscles.
Gerásim, in heavy boots, spreading about him the agreeable odour of tar from his boots and of the freshness of the winter air, stepped into the room with heavy tread. He wore a clean hempen apron and a clean chintz shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up on his bare, strong, youthful arms, and without looking at Iván Ilích, and apparently repressing the joy of life which shone upon his face, in order not to offend the patient, he walked over to the vessel.
"Gerásim," Iván Ilích said, in a feeble voice.
Gerásim trembled, apparently in fear of having done something wrong, and with a rapid motion turned to the patient his fresh, kindly, simple, youthful face, which was just beginning to be covered with a beard.
"What do you wish?"
"I suppose this is unpleasant for you. Excuse me. I cannot help it."
"Not at all, sir." And Gerásim flashed his eyes and displayed his youthful, white teeth. "Why should you trouble yourself? You are sick."
And with his strong, agile hands he did his usual work, and walked out, stepping lightly. Five minutes later he returned, stepping as lightly as before.
Iván Ilích was sitting in the chair in the same posture.
"Gerásim," he said, when Gerásim had put down the vessel, which had been washed clean, "please, come here and help me."
Gerásim went up to him.
"Lift me up. It is hard for me to do it all alone, and I have sent Dmítri away."
Gerásim went up to him: with his strong arms he embraced him as lightly as he stepped, raised him skilfully and softly, held him up, with one hand pulled up his trousers, and wanted to put him down again in the chair. But Iván Ilích asked to be taken to the divan. Gerásim without an effort, and as though without pressing against him, took him, almost carried him, to the divan, and seated him on it.
"Thank you. How skilfully and well you do everything."
Gerásim smiled again, and was on the point of leaving. But Iván Ilích felt so well with him that he did not want to dismiss him.
"Be so kind as to push that chair up to me. No, that,—under my feet. I feel more at ease when my legs are raised."
Gerásim brought him the chair, which he put down evenly on the floor without making a noise with it, and raised Iván Ilích's feet on the chair. It seemed to Iván Ilích that he felt more at ease while Gerásim was raising up his legs.
"I feel more at ease when my legs are higher," said Iván Ilích. "Put that pillow under me."
Gerásim did so. He raised the legs and put the pillow down. Again Iván Ilích felt better while Gerásim was holding his legs. When Gerásim put them down, he thought he felt worse.
"Gerásim," he said to him, "are you busy now?"
"Not at all, sir," said Gerásim, who had learned from city folk how to talk to gentlemen.
"What else have you to do?"
"What else have I to do? I have done everything, and have only to chop some wood for to-morrow."
"If so, hold up my legs a little higher,—can you do it?"
"Why not? I can."
Gerásim raised his legs higher. And it seemed to Iván Ilích that in this position he did not feel any pain at all.
"And how about the wood?"
"Do not trouble yourself. We shall get time for it."
Iván Ilích ordered Gerásim to sit down and hold his legs, and entered into a conversation with him. And, strange to say, it seemed to him that he felt better so long as Gerásim was holding his legs.
From that time on Iván Ilích began to call in Gerásim, and made Gerásim keep his legs on his shoulders, and was fond of talking with him. Gerásim did this lightly, gladly, simply, and with a goodness which affected Iván Ilích. Health, strength, vivacity in all other people offended Iván Ilích; but Gerásim's strength and vivacity did not sadden him,—it soothed him.
Iván Ilích's chief suffering was from a lie. This lie, for some reason accepted by all, was this, that he was only sick and not dying, and that he needed but to be calm and be cured, and then all would go well. He knew full well that, no matter what they might do, nothing would come of it but still more agonizing suffering and death. And he was tormented by this lie and by this, that they would not confess what all, and he, too, knew, but insisted on lying about him in this terrible situation, and wanted and compelled him to take part in this lie. The lie, the lie, this lie which was perpetrated on him on the day previous to his death and which was to reduce this terrible, solemn act of his death to the level of all their visits, curtains, sturgeon at dinner, was dreadfully painful for Iván Ilích. And, strange to say, often, while they were perpetrating their jests on him, he was within a hair's breadth of shouting out to them, "Stop lying! You know, and I, too, know that I am dying,—so stop at least your lying." But he had never the courage to do it.
The horrible, terrible act of his dying, he saw, was by all those who surrounded him reduced to the level of an accidental unpleasantness and partly to that of an indecency (something the way they treat a man who, upon entering a drawing-room, spreads a bad odour), through that very "decency" which he had been serving all his life; he saw that no one would pity him, because no one wanted even to understand his position. Gerásim was the only one who understood this position and pitied him. And so Iván Ilích never felt happy except when he was with Gerásim. He felt well when Gerásim, frequently whole nights at a stretch, held his legs and would not go to bed, saying, "Please not to trouble yourself, Iván Ilích, I shall get enough sleep yet;" or when he, passing over to "thou," suddenly added, "If thou wert not a sick man it would be different, but as it is, why should I not serve thee?"
Gerásim was the only one who did not lie; everything proved that he alone understood what the matter was, and did not consider it necessary to conceal it, but simply pitied his emaciated, feeble master. Once, when Iván Ilích sent him away, he went so far as to say:
"We shall all of us die. Why should we not trouble ourselves?" with which he meant to say that he did not find his labour annoying, for the reason that he was doing it for a dying man, and that he hoped that in the proper time some one would do the same for him.
Besides this lie, or in consequence of it, Iván Ilích was most annoyed by this, that no one pitied him the way he wanted to be pitied; at certain moments, after long sufferings, Iván Ilích wanted most of all, however much he was ashamed to acknowledge the fact, that some one should pity him like a sick child. He wanted to be petted, kissed, and fondled, as they pet and console children. He knew that he was an important member of the court and that his beard was streaked gray, and that, therefore, that was impossible; but he none the less desired it. In his relations with Gerásim there was something resembling it, and so his relations with Gerásim gave him consolation.
Iván Ilích feels like crying, and wants to be petted and cried over; and there comes his associate, member Shébek, and, instead of crying and being petted, Iván Ilích assumes a serious, stern, pensive aspect, and from inertia expresses his opinion on the decree of the court of cassation, and stubbornly sticks to his view. This lie all around him and in himself more than anything else poisoned the last days of Iván Ilích's life.