North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell : chapter1

It was morning. It was only morning because Gerasim left and Piotr the footman came in, blew out the candles, drew one curtain, and started quietly tidying up. Morning or evening, Friday or Sunday—it made no difference, it was all one, always the same. Gnawing, agonizing pain, not slackening for a second; the consciousness of life passing hopelessly but still not past; death moving up on him, terrifying, hateful, changeless death which was the one reality, and all the old lies. What were days, weeks, and hours of day to him?

Piotr wants tidy routines, and so the gentry must take their tea in the mornings, Ivan Ilyich thought, and answered only “No.”

He needs to put the room straight and I’m in the way; I’m dirt and disorder, he thought, and said only, “No, leave me.”

The footman busied himself awhile. Ivan Ilyich stretched his hand out. The footman came up obsequiously.

“No, your honor. Vassili Ivanovich” (that was his son) “has gone to school. Praskovya Feodorovna gave orders to be woken if you asked for her. Would you require it?”31

“No, there’s no need.” Should I try some tea? he thought. “Yes, tea . . . you could bring it.”

Piotr went to the door. Ivan Ilyich grew frightened of being left on his own. How can I stop him? Ah yes, the medicine. “Piotr, give me my medicine.” You never know, maybe the medicine might still help. He took the spoonful and swallowed it. No, it won’t help, that’s all rubbish and lies, he decided, as soon as he encountered the familiar, sickly, hopeless taste. No, I can’t believe in it anymore. But that pain, that pain, I wish it would ease even just for a minute. And he groaned. Piotr came back. “No, go. Bring me the tea.”

Piotr went out. Left on his own, Ivan Ilyich groaned, not so much from pain, however dreadful it was, as from misery. They’re all the same, all these endless nights and days. Would that it came quicker. What should come quicker? Death, darkness? No, no. Everything is better than death!

When Piotr came in with the tea tray, Ivan Ilyich stared dazedly at him for a long time, not understanding who he was and why. Piotr was embarrassed by his stare, and his embarrassment brought Ivan Ilyich back to himself.

“Ah yes, the tea,” he said. “Very well, put it down. Only help me wash and change my shirt.”

And Ivan Ilyich began washing. With pauses for rest he washed his hands, his face, he brushed his teeth, he started brushing his hair and glanced in the mirror. He became frightened; what was most frightening was the way his hair clung flat to his pallid forehead.

When they were changing his shirt, he knew it would be even more frightening to look down at his body, and he did not look at himself. But now everything was done. He put on his dressing gown, covered himself with a plaid rug, and sat down to his tea in the armchair. For a minute he felt refreshed, but as soon as he started drinking his tea, there was the same foul taste and pain again. With an effort he finished the tea and lay down, his legs outstretched. He lay back and dismissed Piotr.

Everything always the same. Then hope glints—like a drop of water. A drop lost in a turbulent ocean of despair. And everything is pain again, pain and misery and everything always the same. It is dreadfully sad on his own; he longs to call somebody but knows in advance that it is even worse with others there. “If only I could have some morphine, I might lose consciousness. I’ll tell him, that doctor, he must think of something else. It’s impossible, impossible to go on like this.”

In this way one hour passes, and another. But now the bell rings in the hall. Maybe it’s the doctor. Exactly so: it is the doctor—fresh, brisk, fat, and cheerful, with that expression that says—there you are, all in a panic for some reason, but in a minute we’ll put everything right. The doctor knows his expression is inappropriate here, but he has put it on once and for all and cannot take it off again, like a man who has put on tails in the morning and driven off to pay a round of calls with no opportunity to change.

“My hands are chilly. It’s quite a frost. Let me just get warm,” he says, with that expression, as though they only need wait a little till he gets warm, and once he’s warm he’ll put everything right.

Ivan Ilyich feels the doctor wanted to say, “How’s tricks?” but realizes one cannot talk like that, and says instead, “How did you pass the night?”

Ivan Ilyich looks at the doctor with an expression that asks, Will you never feel ashamed of your lies? But the doctor does not want to understand his question.

And Ivan Ilyich says, “It’s all so dreadful. The pain won’t stop, not even ease for a little. If only there was something!”

“Yes, you sick men always say that. Well, now, I think I’ve got a little warmer, even Praskovya Feodorovna, such a stickler for correctness, couldn’t find fault with my temperature. Well, now, how do you do?” And the doctor shakes his hand.

And, dropping all his former jocularity, with a serious expression, the doctor starts examining his patient’s pulse and temperature, and the tapping and listening begins.

Ivan Ilyich knows definitely and indubitably that this is all nonsense, a hollow sham, but when the doctor gets down on his knees, stretches over him, pressing his ear now higher, now lower, going through a variety of gymnastic arabesques over his body with the most significant expression, Ivan Ilyich allows himself to be taken in, as in the old days he gave in to the lawyers’ speeches when he knew perfectly well that they were all lying and why they were lying.

The doctor was kneeling on the divan, still tapping away at something, when Praskovya Feodorovna’s silk dress rustled at the door, and her voice was heard rebuking Piotr for failing to announce the doctor’s arrival.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and immediately begins proving she was up long ago. She was only absent when the doctor arrived because of a misunderstanding.

Ivan Ilyich looks at her, scrutinizes her all over, and takes exception to her plump, white, clean hands and neck, her shiny hair and bright eyes, full of life. He detests her with all the strength of his soul. And her touch makes him suffer from his surge of hatred.

Her attitude to him and his illness is still the same. Just as the doctor has worked out an attitude to his patients which he can no longer shake off, so she has worked out her attitude to him—that he isn’t doing something he ought to be doing, and it’s all his fault, while she lovingly reproaches him—and is now quite unable to divest herself of this attitude.

“He just won’t do as he’s told! He will not take the drops on time. But the main thing is, he lies down in a position that must surely be bad for him, with his legs in the air.”

The doctor smiles gently-derisively. What are we to do? These invalids sometimes think up the funniest things, but we can forgive them.

When the examination was over the doctor looked at his watch, and only then did Praskovya Feodorovna announce that whether Ivan Ilyich liked it or not, she had invited the distinguished doctor to come today, to examine him and discuss his condition with Mikhail Danilovich (as the ordinary doctor was called).

“Please don’t protest. I’m doing it entirely for myself,” she said ironically, implying that she did everything for him and only in this way could she forbid him the right to protest. He frowned and stayed silent. He felt that the lie surrounding him was now so entangled it was difficult to sort it out at all.

Everything she did for him was done entirely for her own sake, and she told him she was doing for her own sake what she actually was doing for her own sake, as though this was so improbable that he was bound to understand the opposite.

Certainly the eminent doctor did arrive at half past eleven. Once again there were tappings and listenings and significant conversations about the blind gut in his presence and in the next room, and questions and answers with such loaded looks that once again, instead of the real question of life and death which was now the only thing confronting him, the question that emerged was about his kidney and the blind gut which were doing something they shouldn’t be doing, and how Mikhail Danilovitch and the eminence were about to pounce on them, this very minute, and force them to behave.

The eminent doctor said good-bye with a serious but not unhopeful expression. And at Ivan Ilyich’s timid inquiry, his raised eyes shining with terror and hope, whether there was any chance of recovery, the doctor replied that one could not promise anything but there was a possibility. Ivan Ilyich followed the doctor out of the room with such a pitifully hopeful look, Praskovya Feodorovna even started crying when she saw it. She left the room to pay the eminent doctor his fee.

His spirits were lifted by the doctor’s encouragement only for a little while. Once again it was the same room, the same pictures, curtains, wallpaper, medicine bottles, and the same aching, suffering body. And Ivan Ilyich started groaning; he was given an injection, and lost consciousness.

When he came to, dusk was falling. They brought him his dinner. He forced himself to drink a little broth; and it was all the same again and another night was falling.

After dinner, at seven o’clock, Praskovya Feodorovna came into his room in evening attire, with plump, corseted breasts and traces of powder on her face. That very morning she had reminded him of their trip to the theater. Sarah Bernhardt32 was in town, and at his insistence they had taken a box. Now he had forgotten about it, and her finery jarred on him. But he hid his irritation when he remembered that he himself had insisted they should order a box and go, because it would be an improving aesthetic experience for the children.

Praskovya Feodorovna came in well pleased with herself, but a little guiltily. She sat down beside him, asked how he felt—as he could see, in order to ask the question, not to find out the reply, knowing well enough there was nothing to find out—and started saying what was on her mind: that of course she wouldn’t have dreamt of going, but the box was booked, and Hélène and her daughter, and Petrishev (the examining magistrate, his daughter’s intended) were coming, and it would be quite impossible to allow them to go on their own. Of course she would have preferred so much more to sit with him. Only he must follow the doctor’s orders while she was out.

“Oh yes, and Feodor Petrovich” (the suitor) “wanted to drop in. May he? And Liza.”

In came his daughter, décolleté, her young body bared. His body made him suffer so. And she was putting hers on display. Strong, healthy, in love, impatient of illness, suffering, and death, which interfered with her happiness.

In came Feodor Petrovich in tails, his hair curled à la Capoul,33 with long stringy neck richly enfolded in a white collar, huge white shirtfront, strong thighs tightly encased in black trousers, long white glove drawn over one hand, and opera hat.

After them, in his turn, the young schoolboy crept in unobtrusively, in his miniature new uniform, poor little thing, and gloves, with dreadful shadows under his eyes whose meaning was obvious to Ivan Ilyich.

He always felt sorry for his boy. And the boy’s frightened look of pity was terrible for him. Apart from Gerasim, it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that only Vasya understood and pitied him.

Everyone sat down and inquired once again about his health. A silence fell. Liza asked her mother about the opera glasses. An altercation between mother and daughter followed about who had put them where. It became unpleasant.

Feodor Petrovich asked Ivan Ilyich whether he had ever seen Sarah Bernhardt. At first Ivan Ilyich did not understand what he was being asked, and then said, “No; have you seen her?”

Praskovya Feodorovna said she had been particularly good in that. Her daughter disagreed. A conversation started about the elegance and realism of Bernhardt’s acting—that same old talk that is always one and the same.

In the middle of the conversation Feodor Petrovich glanced at Ivan Ilyich and fell silent. The others looked and fell silent. He was staring straight in front of him with glittering eyes, obviously exasperated by them. This had to be put right, but it was quite impossible to put it right. Somehow the silence had to be broken. Nobody could pluck up courage; everyone was on edge that the polite lie would be blown and they would all have to face up to what was right in front of them. Liza was the first to take the plunge. She broke the silence. She wanted to hide what everyone was feeling, but she got the words wrong.

“Well, if it’s time to go, it’s time to go,” she said, glancing at her watch,35 a gift from her father, and, barely perceptibly, smiled significantly at the young man about something only he knew about. She got up, her dress rustling.

When they had gone out, Ivan Ilyich thought he felt easier. There were no lies; the lies had gone with them, but the pain remained. Always the same pain, always the same terror, making nothing easier, nothing more burdensome. Everything worse.

Once again minute followed minute, hour by hour, still the same, still without an end, and the inevitable end still more terrifying.

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich — by Leo Tostoy