The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Death of Iván Ílich/Chapter 8
VIII.
It was morning. It was morning, because Gerásim went away, and Peter the lackey came in his place: he put out the candles, drew aside one curtain, and began softly to fix up the room. Whether it was morning or evening, Friday or Sunday, did not make the slightest difference,—it was all the same: the gnawing, agonizing pain, which did not subside for a minute; the consciousness of the hopelessly receding, but not yet receded life; the same impending, terrible, hateful death, which alone was reality, and still the same lie. Where could there be here days, weeks, and hours of the day?
"Do you command me to bring you tea?"
"His order demands that gentlemen should drink tea in the morning," he thought, but he said only:
"No."
"Do you not wish to go over to the divan?"
"He has to tidy up the room, and I am in his way,—I am an impurity, a nuisance," he thought, and all he said was:
"No, leave me."
The lackey bustled a little while. Iván Ilích extended his hand. Peter came up, ready to serve him.
"What do you wish?"
"The watch."
Peter got the watch which was lying under Iván Ilích's hand, and gave it to him.
"Half-past eight. Have they not got up yet?”
"Not yet, sir. Vasíli Ivánovich" (that was his son) "has gone to the gymnasium, and Praskóvya Fédorovna has commanded that she be wakened, if you should ask for her. Do you command me?"
"No, don't."
"Maybe I had better try some tea?" he thought.
"Yes, tea. Bring me tea."
Peter started to go out. Iván Ilích felt terribly at being alone.
"How can I keep him? Yes, the medicine."
"Peter, give me the medicine."
"Why not? Maybe the medicine will help me yet."
He took a spoonful and swallowed it.
"No, it will not help me. It is all nonsense and a deception," he decided, the moment he had the familiar, detestable, hopeless taste in his mouth. "No, I can no longer believe. But the pain, the pain, what is it for? If it would only stop for just a minute."
And he sobbed. Peter came back.
"No, go. Bring me some tea."
Peter went away. When Iván Ilích was left alone, he groaned, not so much from pain, no matter how terrible it was, as from despondency. "Always the same and the same, all these endless days and nights. If it would only come at once. What at once? Death, darkness. No, no. Anything is better than death!"
When Peter came back with the tea on a tray, Iván Ilích for a long time looked distractedly at him, being unable to make out who he was, or what he wanted. Peter was confounded by this look. When Peter looked confounded, Iván Ilích came to his senses.
"Yes," he said, "the tea; all right, put it down. Only help me to get washed, and let me have a clean shirt."
And Iván Ilích got up to wash himself. Stopping occasionally, he washed his hands and face, cleaned his teeth, began to comb his hair, and looked into the mirror. He felt terribly, especially so, because his hair lay flat over his pale brow.
As his shirt was being changed, he knew that he would feel more terribly still if he looked at his body, and so he did not look at himself. But all was ended. He put on his morning-gown, covered himself with a shawl, and sat down in a chair to his tea. For a minute he felt himself refreshed, but the moment he began to drink the tea there was again the same taste, and the same pain. He with difficulty finished his glass and lay down, stretching his legs. He lay down, and dismissed Peter.
Again the same. Now a drop of hope would sparkle, and now a sea of despair would be agitated, and all the time the pain, and the pain, and the despondency, and again the same and the same. He felt terribly despondent by himself and wanted to call some one in, but he knew in advance that in the presence of others it would be worse still.
"If I just had some morphine again,—I should forget. I will tell him, the doctor, to think out something else. It cannot go on this way, it cannot."
Thus an hour, two hours pass. But now there is the bell in the antechamber. Perhaps the doctor. Indeed, it is the doctor, fresh, vivacious, fat, jolly, with an expression which seems to say, "Now there you are all frightened, but we will fix it all in a minute." The doctor knows that this expression is of no use here, but he has put it on once for all and cannot take it off, like a man who in the morning puts on his dress coat and goes out calling.
The doctor rubs his hands briskly and in a consoling manner.
"I am cold. It is a cutting frost. Just let me get warmed up," he says with an expression which says that all that is necessary is for him to get warmed up, and as soon as he is warm he will fix it all.
"Well, how is it?"
Iván Ilích feels that the doctor wants to say, "How are our affairs?" but that he himself feels that it would not do to speak in this manner, and so he says, "How did you pass the night?"
Iván Ilích looks at the doctor with a questioning expression:
"Will you never feel ashamed of lying?"
But the doctor does not want to understand the expression, and Iván Ilích says:
"Just as terribly as ever. The pain does not pass away, does not subside. If it would stop just a little!"
"You patients are always like that. Well, sir, now, it seems, I am all warmed up, and even most exact Praskóvya Fédorovna would not be able to object to my temperature. Well, sir, good morning," and the doctor presses his hand.
Throwing aside his former playfulness, the doctor begins with a serious glance to investigate the patient, his pulse, his temperature, and there begin tappings and auscultations.
Iván Ilích knows full well and indubitably that all this is nonsense and mere deception, but when the doctor, getting down on his knees, stretches out over him, leaning his ear now higher up, and now lower down, and with a significant expression on his face makes over him all kinds of gymnastic evolutions, Iván Ilích submits to it, as he submitted to the speeches of the lawyers, though he knew well that they were ranting all the time, and why they were ranting.
The doctor was still kneeling on the divan, tapping at something, when Praskóvya Fédorovna's silk dress rustled at the door, and there was heard her reproach to Peter for not having announced to her the doctor's arrival.
She comes in, kisses her husband, and immediately proceeds to prove that she got up long ago, and that only by a misunderstanding did she fail to be present when the doctor came.
Iván Ilích looks at her, examines her whole figure, and finds fault with the whiteness, chubbiness, and cleanliness of her hands and neck, the gloss of her hair, and the sparkle of her vivacious eyes. He hates her with the whole strength of his soul. Her touch makes him suffer from an access of hatred toward her.
Her relation to him and his sickness is still the same. As the doctor had worked out for himself a relation to his patients, which he was unable to divest himself of, so she had worked out a certain relation to him,—that he was somehow not doing what he ought to do, and was himself to blame for it, and she lovingly reproached him for it,—and was unable to divest herself of this relation to him.
"Well, he pays no attention. He does not take the medicine on time. Above all else, he lies down in a position which, no doubt, is injurious to him,—with his legs up."
She told the doctor how he made Gerásim hold up his legs.
The doctor smiled a contemptuously kind smile:
"Well, what is to be done? These patients at times invent such foolish things,—but we can forgive them."
When the examination was ended, the doctor looked at his watch, and Praskóvya Fédorovna announced to Iván Ilích that she did not care what he would do, but she had sent for a famous doctor, who in company with Mikhaíl Danílovich (so the ordinary doctor was called) would make an examination and have a consultation.
"Don't object to this, if you please. I am doing this for my own sake," she said ironically, giving him to understand that she was doing everything for his sake, and in this way did not give him the right to refuse her. He was silent, and frowned. He felt that this lie which surrounded him was becoming so entangled that it was getting hard to make out anything.
She was doing everything about him for her own sake, and she told him that she was doing for herself everything that she really was doing for herself, as though it were such an incredible thing that he ought to understand it as the exact opposite.
Indeed, at half-past eleven the famous doctor arrived. Again there were auscultations and significant conversations in his presence and in another room about the kidney and the blind gut, and questions and answers with such significant looks that instead of the real question about life and death, which alone now stood before him, there again came forward the question about the kidney and the blind gut, which were not acting as they ought to, and which Mikhail Danílovich and the celebrity will for this reason attack and compel to get better.
The famous doctor departed with a serious, but not with a hopeless, look. In reply to the timid question, which Iván Ilích directed to him with eyes raised to him and shining with terror and hope, as to whether there was any possibility of recovery, he replied that he could not guarantee it, but that it was possible. The glance of hope with which Iván Ilích saw the doctor off was so pitiful that, seeing it, Praskóvya Fédorovna even burst out into tears as she went out of the cabinet, in order to give the famous doctor his fee.
The elation of spirit, produced by the doctor's encouragement, did not last long. There were again the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wall-paper, bottles, and the same paining, suffering body. Iván Ilích began to groan; they gave him an injection, and he forgot himself.
When he came to, it was growing dark; they brought him his dinner. He took with difficulty some soup, and again it was the same, and again nightfall.
After dinner, at seven o'clock, the room was entered by Praskóvya Fédorovna, who was dressed as for an evening entertainment, with swelling, raised up breasts, and traces of powder on her face. She had talked to him in the morning of going to the theatre. Sarah Bernhardt was in the city, and they had a box which he had insisted that they should take. Now he forgot about it, and her attire offended him. But he concealed his offence when he recalled that he himself had insisted on their taking a box and going, because this was for the children an educational, æsthetic enjoyment.
Praskóvya Fédorovna came in satisfied with herself, but seemingly guilty. She sat down for awhile, asked him about his health, as he saw, merely to ask, but not to find out, knowing that there was nothing to find out, and began to speak of what she wanted to speak of, that she would not go at all if the box had not been engaged, and that with her were going Hélène, and their daughter, and Petríshchev (their daughter's fiancé), and that it was impossible to let them go by themselves. It really would give her more pleasure to stay at home; but he must be sure and do in her absence according to the doctor's prescription.
"Yes, Fédor Petróvich" (the fiancé) "wanted to come in. May he? And Líza."
"Let them come in."
The daughter came in. She was all dressed up, with a bared youthful body, that body which caused him to suffer so much; but she exposed it. She was strong, healthy, apparently in love, and vexed at the disease, suffering, and death, which interfered with her happiness.
There entered also Fédor Petróvich, in dress coat, with his hair fixed à la Capoul, with a long sinewy neck, tightly surrounded by a white collar, with an enormous white chest and close-fitting trousers over powerful thighs, with a white handkerchief drawn over his hand, and with an opera hat.
After him imperceptibly crawled in the little gymnasiast, in a bran-new uniform,—poor fellow,—and with terrible blue marks under his eyes, the meaning of which Iván Ilích knew.
His son always looked pitiful to him, and terrible was his frightened and compassionate glance. Besides Gerasim, it seemed to Iván Ilích, Vásya was the only one who understood and pitied him.
All sat down, and again asked about his health. There ensued a silence. Líza asked her mother about the opera-glass. Mother and daughter exchanged words about who was at fault for having mislaid it. It was an unpleasant incident.
Fédor Petrovich asked Iván Ilích whether he had seen Sarah Bernhardt. At first Iván Ilích did not understand what it was they were asking him, but later he said:
"No, and have you seen her already?"
"Yes, in Adrienne Lecouvreur."
Praskóvya Fédorovna said that she was particularly good in this or that. Her daughter objected. There ensued a conversation about the art and the realism of her play, that very conversation which is always one and the same.
In the middle of the conversation Fédor Petrovich looked at Iván Ilích, and grew silent. The others looked at him, too, and grew silent. Iván Ilích was looking with glistening eyes ahead of him, apparently vexed at them. It was necessary to mend all this, but it was impossible to do so. It was necessary to interrupt the silence. Nobody could make up his mind to do so, and all felt terribly at the thought that now the decent lie would somehow be broken, and every one would see clearly how it all was. Líza was the first to make up her mind. She interrupted the silence. She wanted to conceal what all were experiencing, but she gave herself away:
"If we are to go at all, it is time we started," she said, looking at her watch, a present from her father, and she smiled at the young man a faint, significant smile about something which they alone knew, and got up, causing her dress to rustle.
All arose, said good-bye, and departed.
When they went out, it seemed to Iván Ilích that he was feeling easier: there was no lie,—it departed with them,—but the pain was still left. The old pain, the old terror made him feel neither harder, nor easier. It was all worse.
Again minute after minute elapsed, and hour after hour, and again the same, and again no end, and more and more terrible the inevitable end.
"Yes, call Gerásim," he answered to Peter's question.