The Death of Ivan Ilyich — by Leo Tostoy

5

So one month passed, and another. Just before the new year his brother-in-law came to town to stay with them. Ivan Ilyich was in court. Praskovya Feodorovna was out shopping. When Ivan Ilyich returned, he found his brother-in-law, a healthy, ruddy-faced man, unpacking his case in Ivan Ilyich’s study. Hearing Ivan Ilyich’s footsteps, he lifted his head and glanced at him in silence for a few moments. For Ivan Ilyich that look made everything clear. His brother-in-law opened his mouth to gasp, and just stopped himself. That movement confirmed it all.

“What, have I changed?”

“Yes . . . there is a change.”

And however hard Ivan Ilyich tried to turn the conversation to his appearance, his brother-in-law said nothing. Praskovya Feodorovna returned home, and her brother went to her quarters. Ivan Ilyich locked his study door and started scrutinizing himself in the mirror—full face first, then from the side. He picked up the portrait photograph of himself with his wife and compared it with what he saw in the glass. The change was enormous. Then he bared his arms to the elbow, looked at them, rolled down his sleeves, sat down on the ottoman, and grew black as night.

“No, no; I mustn’t,” he said to himself, jumped up, went to his desk, took out his papers, and started reading them, but could not. He unlocked his door and went out into the hall. The door to the sitting room was shut. He tiptoed up to it and started listening.

“Nonsense, you’re exaggerating,” Praskovya Feodorovna was saying.

“What do you mean, exaggerating? You can’t see it—he’s a dead man, look at his eyes. There’s no light in them. What’s wrong with him, anyway?”

“No one knows. Nikolayev”—that was another doctor—“said something, but I don’t know. Leschititsky”—that was the famous doctor—“said the opposite. . . .”

Ivan Ilyich withdrew, went into his study, lay down, and began thinking “the kidney, the floating kidney.” He remembered everything the doctors had told him, how the kidney had torn loose and was floating about. And with all the force of his imagination he tried to catch his kidney, pin it down, and stop it wandering. So little was needed, it seemed to him. “No; I’ll go back to Piotr Ivanovich.” (That was the friend who had a doctor friend.) He rang, ordered the horse to be harnessed to the sleigh, and prepared to leave.

“Where are you going, Jean26?” his wife asked, with a particularly sad and uncharacteristically kind expression.

Her uncharacteristic gentleness riled him. He looked at her sourly.

“I have to go to Piotr Ivanovich.”

He drove off to his friend who had the friend who was a doctor. And with him he drove to the doctor. He found him in and had a long talk with him.

Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what the doctor thought was going on inside him, Ivan Ilyich understood it all.

There was some little thing, a minute little something, in the blind gut. It could all get better. It was just a matter of increasing the energy of one organ and diminishing the activity of another; absorption would take place and everything would get better. He was a little late for dinner, ate and talked cheerfully, but for a long time could not go to his room to work. Finally he went into his study and promptly sat down to his files. He read them, worked at them, but the consciousness that he had postponed an important, intimate business he would deal with as soon as he finished, did not leave him. When he finished his papers, he remembered that this intimate business was to think about his blind gut. But he did not succumb; he went into the drawing room for tea. There were guests; people were talking and playing the piano; there was singing; the examining magistrate, the desirable match for his daughter, was there. Praskovya Feodorovna observed that Ivan Ilyich spent the evening more cheerfully than anyone, but he did not forget for a minute that he had laid aside important thoughts about his blind gut. At eleven o’clock he excused himself and went to his quarters. Since the beginning of his illness he had been sleeping alone in a small room off his study. He entered, undressed, took up a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he thought. And in his imagination the desired correction of his blind gut came about. Absorption was taking place; evacuation occurred, correct functioning was reestablished. “Yes, that’s how it should be,” he thought; “we just have to give nature a hand.” He remembered his medicine, sat up, took it, lay on his back, and attended to how the medicine was putting things right and diminishing his pain. “I just have to take it steadily and avoid adverse influences; even now I feel a little better—a lot better.” He began pinching his side and it did not hurt from the pinch. “Yes, I can’t feel it; it really is a lot better already.” He blew out his candle and lay on his side. The blind gut was setting itself right; it was becoming absorbed. Suddenly he felt the familiar old, dull, gnawing pain, stubborn, quiet, and grave. The familiar disgusting stuff in his mouth. His heart contracted, his head clouded. “My God! My God!” he said. “Again, and again, and it will never end.” And suddenly the whole thing appeared to him in a different light. “Blind gut! Kidney!” he said to himself. “It’s not a matter of the blind gut or the kidney but of life and . . . death. Yes, there was life and now it’s going, it’s going, and I can’t hold it back. Yes. Why should I deceive myself? Isn’t it obvious to everyone except me that I’m dying, and it’s only a question of how many weeks, days—even now, maybe. There was light, and now it’s dark. I was here, and now I’m going there! Where?” A chill ran through him; his breathing stopped. He could hear only the beating of his heart.

“I’ll be no more, and then what will there be? Nothing. Then where will I be, when I will be no longer? Is this really death? Go away, I don’t want you.” He sat upright, wanting to light his candle, fumbled with trembling hands, dropped candle and candlestick on the floor, and fell back on his pillow. “What for? It doesn’t make any difference,” he said to himself, staring with open eyes into the dark. “Death. Yes, death. And none of them know, and none of them want to know, and none of them are sorry. They’re having fun.” (From beyond his door he heard the distant sound of voices and a musical ritornello.) “They don’t care, but they’ll die just like me. Idiocy. Sooner for me, later for them, but it will come. And they’re happy. Mindless brutes!” He was choked with resentment. And he grew agonizingly, unbearably sick at heart. It cannot be that everyone, always, is doomed to this awful horror. He sat up.

“Something’s wrong. I must calm down and think everything through from the beginning.” And he started thinking it out. “Yes, there was the beginning of the illness. I knocked my side, but was the same before and after; it ached a bit, and then a bit more, and then there were doctors, and then depression, dreariness, doctors again, and I kept coming closer and closer to the abyss. Less strength. Closer and closer. And here I am, wasted away, no light in my eyes. This is death, and I’m thinking about my gut. I’m thinking about putting my kidney right, and this is death. Can this really be death?” Panic overcame him again, he lost his breath, bent over to look for matches, and knocked his elbow on the bedside table. The table got in his way and hurt him; he lost his temper, pushed it harder in his vexation, and knocked it over. And, in despair, barely able to breathe, he fell back expecting instant death.

At this time the guests were taking their leave. Praskovya Feodorovna was seeing them out. She heard something fall and came in.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I dropped it, by accident.”

She went out and came back with a candle. He lay there, breathing fast and hard, like a man who has run a mile, looking at her with a fixed stare.

“What is it, Jean?”

“N—nothing. I . . . dro—dropped it. . . .” (Why bother to say? She won’t understand, he thought.)

Certainly she did not understand. She picked up his candle, lit it, and left hastily; there was a last guest to see to.

When she returned, he was still lying on his back, staring above him.

“What is it; are you worse?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head and sat by him awhile.

“You know, Jean, I’m wondering whether we should get Leschititsky to visit you here.”

That meant calling out the famous doctor without a thought for the expense. He smiled poisonously and said, “No.” She sat a little longer, went up to him, and kissed him on the forehead.

At that moment, as she kissed him, he hated her with all the strength of his soul and had to make an effort not to push her away.

“Good night. God willing, you’ll fall asleep.”

“Yes.”