The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read in a lifetime TXT] 📗
- Author: Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
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still more attractive.
More children came. His wife became more and more querulous and
ill-tempered, but the attitude Ivan Ilych had adopted towards his home life
rendered him almost impervious to her grumbling.
After seven years’ service in that town he was transferred to another
province as Public Prosecutor. They moved, but were short of money and his
wife did not like the place they moved to. Though the salary was higher the
cost of living was greater, besides which two of their children died and
family life became still more unpleasant for him.
Praskovya Fedorovna blamed her husband for every inconvenience they
encountered in their new home. Most of the conversations between husband and
wife, especially as to the children’s education, led to topics which
recalled former disputes, and these disputes were apt to flare up again at
any moment. There remained only those rare periods of amorousness which
still came to them at times but did not last long. These were islets at
which they anchored for a while and then again set out upon that ocean of
veiled hostility which showed itself in their aloofness from one another.
This aloofness might have grieved Ivan Ilych had he considered that it ought
not to exist, but he now regarded the position as normal, and even made it
the goal at which he aimed in family life. His aim was to free himself more
and more from those unpleasantness and to give them a semblance of
harmlessness and propriety. He attained this by spending less and less time
with his family, and when obliged to be at home he tried to safeguard his
position by the presence of outsiders. The chief thing however was that he
had his official duties. The whole interest of his life now centered in the
official world and that interest absorbed him. The consciousness of his
power, being able to ruin anybody he wished to ruin, the importance, even
the external dignity of his entry into court, or meetings with his
subordinates, his success with superiors and inferiors, and above all his
masterly handling of cases, of which he was conscious — all this gave him
pleasure and filled his life, together with chats with his colleagues,
dinners, and bridge. So that on the whole Ivan Ilych’s life continued to
flow as he considered it should do — pleasantly and properly.
So things continued for another seven years. His eldest daughter was already
sixteen, another child had died, and only one son was left, a schoolboy and
a subject of dissension. Ivan Ilych wanted to put him in the School of Law,
but to spite him Praskovya Fedorovna entered him at the High School. The
daughter had been educated at home and had turned out well: the boy did not
learn badly either.
IIISo Ivan Ilych lived for seventeen years after his marriage. He was already a
Public Prosecutor of long standing, and had declined several proposed
transfers while awaiting a more desirable post, when an unanticipated and
unpleasant occurrence quite upset the peaceful course of his life. He was
expecting to be offered the post of presiding judge in a University town,
but Happe somehow came to the front and obtained the appointment instead.
Ivan Ilych became irritable, reproached Happe, and quarreled both him and
with his immediate superiors — who became colder to him and again passed him
over when other appointments were made.
This was in 1880, the hardest year of Ivan Ilych’s life. It was then that it
became evident on the one hand that his salary was insufficient for them to
live on, and on the other that he had been forgotten, and not only this, but
that what was for him the greatest and most cruel injustice appeared to
others a quite ordinary occurrence. Even his father did not consider it his
duty to help him. Ivan Ilych felt himself abandoned by everyone, and that
they regarded his position with a salary of 3,500 rubles as quite normal and
even fortunate. He alone knew that with the consciousness of the injustices
done him, with his wife’s incessant nagging, and with the debts he had
contracted by living beyond his means, his position was far from normal.
In order to save money that summer he obtained leave of absence and went
with his wife to live in the country at her brother’s place.
In the country, without his work, he experienced ennui for the first time in
his life, and not only ennui but intolerable depression, and he decided that
it was impossible to go on living like that, and that it was necessary to
take energetic measures.
Having passed a sleepless night pacing up and down the veranda, he decided
to go to Petersburg and bestir himself, in order to punish those who had
failed to appreciate him and to get transferred to another ministry.
Next day, despite many protests from his wife and her brother, he started
for Petersburg with the sole object of obtaining a post with a salary of
five thousand rubles a year. He was no longer bent on any particular
department, or tendency, or kind of activity. All he now wanted was an
appointment to another post with a salary of five thousand rubles, either in
the administration, in the banks, with the railways in one of the Empress
Marya’s Institutions, or even in the customs — but it had to carry with it a
salary of five thousand rubles and be in a ministry other than that in which
they had failed to appreciate him.
And this quest of Ivan Ilych’s was crowned with remarkable and unexpected
success. At Kursk an acquaintance of his, F. I. Ilyin, got into the
first-class carriage, sat down beside Ivan Ilych, and told him of a telegram
just received by the governor of Kursk announcing that a change was about to
take place in the ministry: Peter Ivanovich was to be superseded by Ivan
Semonovich.
The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had a special
significance for Ivan Ilych, because by bringing forward a new man, Peter
Petrovich, and consequently his friend Zachar Ivanovich, it was highly
favourable for Ivan Ilych, since Zachar Ivanovich was a friend and colleague
of his.
In Moscow this news was confirmed, and on reaching Petersburg Ivan Ilych
found Zachar Ivanovich and received a definite promise of an appointment in
his former Department of Justice.
A week later he telegraphed to his wife: “Zachar in Miller’s place. I shall
receive appointment on presentation of report.”
Thanks to this change of personnel, Ivan Ilych had unexpectedly obtained an
appointment in his former ministry which placed him two states above his
former colleagues besides giving him five thousand rubles salary and three
thousand five hundred rubles for expenses connected with his removal. All
his ill humour towards his former enemies and the whole department vanished,
and Ivan Ilych was completely happy.
He returned to the country more cheerful and contented than he had been for
a long time. Praskovya Fedorovna also cheered up and a truce was arranged
between them. Ivan Ilych told of how he had been feted by everybody in
Petersburg, how all those who had been his enemies were put to shame and now
fawned on him, how envious they were of his appointment, and how much
everybody in Petersburg had liked him.
Praskovya Fedorovna listened to all this and appeared to believe it. She did
not contradict anything, but only made plans for their life in the town to
which they were going. Ivan Ilych saw with delight that these plans were his
plans, that he and his wife agreed, and that, after a stumble, his life was
regaining its due and natural character of pleasant lightheartedness and
decorum.
Ivan Ilych had come back for a short time only, for he had to take up his
new duties on the 10th of September. Moreover, he needed time to settle into
the new place, to move all his belongings from the province, and to buy and
order many additional things: in a word, to make such arrangements as he had
resolved on, which were almost exactly what Praskovya Fedorovna too had
decided on.
Now that everything had happened so fortunately, and that he and his wife
were at one in their aims and moreover saw so little of one another, they
got on together better than they had done since the first years of marriage.
Ivan Ilych had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but the
insistence of his wife’s brother and her sister-in-law, who had suddenly
become particularly amiable and friendly to him and his family, induced him
to depart alone.
So he departed, and the cheerful state of mind induced by his success and by
the harmony between his wife and himself, the one intensifying the other,
did not leave him. He found a delightful house, just the thing both he and
his wife had dreamt of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a
convenient and dignified study, rooms for his wife and daughter, a study for
his son — it might have been specially built for them. Ivan Ilych himself
superintended the arrangements, chose the wallpapers, supplemented the
furniture (preferably with antiques which he considered particularly _comme
il faut_), and supervised the upholstering. Everything progressed and
progressed and approached the ideal he had set himself: even when things
were only half completed they exceeded his expectations. He saw what a
refined and elegant character, free from vulgarity, it would all have when
it was ready. On falling asleep he pictured to himself how the reception
room would look. Looking at the yet unfinished drawing room he could see the
fireplace, the screen, the what-not, the little chairs dotted here and
there, the dishes and plates on the walls, and the bronzes, as they would be
when everything was in place. He was pleased by the thought of how his wife
and daughter, who shared his taste in this matter, would be impressed by it.
They were certainly not expecting as much. He had been particularly
successful in finding, and buying cheaply, antiques which gave a
particularly aristocratic character to the whole place. But in his letters
he intentionally understated everything in order to be able to surprise
them. All this so absorbed him that his new duties — though he liked his
official work — interested him less than he had expected. Sometimes he even
had moments of absent-mindedness during the court sessions and would
consider whether he should have straight or curved cornices for his
curtains. He was so interested in it all that he often did things himself,
rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when mounting a
step-ladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted
the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being a strong and
agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of the
window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he
felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: “I feel fifteen years
younger.” He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it
dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his
eyes but to everyone who saw it.
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of
moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in
resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants,
rugs, and dull and polished bronzes — all the things people of a certain
class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so
like the others that it would never have
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