The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read in a lifetime TXT] 📗

to decide

between a floating kidney, chronic catarrh, or appendicitis. It was not a

question the doctor solved brilliantly, as it seemed to Ivan Ilych, in

favour of the appendix, with the reservation that should an examination of

the urine give fresh indications the matter would be reconsidered. All this

was just what Ivan Ilych had himself brilliantly accomplished a thousand

times in dealing with men on trial. The doctor summed up just as

brilliantly, looking over his spectacles triumphantly and even gaily at the

accused. From the doctor’s summing up Ivan Ilych concluded that things were

bad, but that for the doctor, and perhaps for everybody else, it was a

matter of indifference, though for him it was bad. And this conclusion

struck him painfully, arousing in him a great feeling of pity for himself

and of bitterness towards the doctor’s indifference to a matter of such

importance.

 

He said nothing of this, but rose, placed the doctor’s fee on the table, and

remarked with a sigh: “We sick people probably often put inappropriate

questions. But tell me, in general, is this complaint dangerous, or not?

… “

 

The doctor looked at him sternly over his spectacles with one eye, as if to

say: “Prisoner, if you will not keep to the questions put to you, I shall be

obliged to have you removed from the court.”

 

“I have already told you what I consider necessary and proper. The analysis

may show something more.” And the doctor bowed.

 

Ivan Ilych went out slowly, seated himself disconsolately in his sledge, and

drove home. All the way home he was going over what the doctor had said,

trying to translate those complicated, obscure, scientific phrases into

plain language and find in them an answer to the question: “Is my condition

bad? Is it very bad? Or is there as yet nothing much wrong?” And it seemed

to him that the meaning of what the doctor had said was that it was very

bad. Everything in the streets seemed depressing. The cabmen, the houses,

the passers-by, and the shops, were dismal. His ache, this dull gnawing ache

that never ceased for a moment, seemed to have acquired a new and more

serious significance from the doctor’s dubious remarks. Ivan Ilych now

watched it with a new and oppressive feeling.

 

He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. She listened, but in

the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go

out with her mother. She sat down reluctantly to listen to this tedious

story, but could not stand it long, and her mother too did not hear him to

the end.

 

“Well, I am very glad,” she said. “Mind now to take your medicine regularly.

Give me the prescription and I’ll send Gerasim to the chemist’s.” And she

went to get ready to go out.

 

While she was in the room Ivan Ilych had hardly taken time to breathe, but

he sighed deeply when she left it.

 

“Well,” he thought, “perhaps it isn’t so bad after all.”

 

He began taking his medicine and following the doctor’s directions, which

had been altered after the examination of the urine. But then it happened

that there was a contradiction between the indications drawn from the

examination of the urine and the symptoms that showed themselves. It turned

out that what was happening differed from what the doctor had told him, and

that he had either forgotten or blundered, or hidden something from him. He

could not, however, be blamed for that, and Ivan Ilych still obeyed his

orders implicitly and at first derived some comfort from doing so.

 

From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilych’s chief occupation was

the exact fulfillment of the doctor’s instructions regarding hygiene and the

taking of medicine, and the observation of his pain and his excretions. His

chief interest came to be people’s ailments and people’s health. When

sickness, deaths, or recoveries were mentioned in his presence, especially

when the illness resembled his own, he listened with agitation which he

tried to hide, asked questions, and applied what he heard to his own case.

 

The pain did not grow less, but Ivan Ilych made efforts to force himself to

think that he was better. And he could do this so long as nothing agitated

him. But as soon as he had any unpleasantness with his wife, any lack of

success in his official work, or held bad cards at bridge, he was at once

acutely sensible of his disease. He had formerly borne such mischances,

hoping soon to adjust what was wrong, to master it and attain success, or

make a grand slam. But now every mischance upset him and plunged him into

despair. He would say to himself: “there now, just as I was beginning to get

better and the medicine had begun to take effect, comes this accursed

misfortune, or unpleasantness… ” And he was furious with the mishap, or

with the people who were causing the unpleasantness and killing him, for he

felt that this fury was killing him but he could not restrain it. One would

have thought that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation

with circumstances and people aggravated his illness, and that he ought

therefore to ignore unpleasant occurrences. But he drew the very opposite

conclusion: he said that he needed peace, and he watched for everything that

might disturb it and became irritable at the slightest infringement of it.

His condition was rendered worse by the fact that he read medical books and

consulted doctors. The progress of his disease was so gradual that he could

deceive himself when comparing one day with another — the difference was so

slight. But when he consulted the doctors it seemed to him that he was

getting worse, and even very rapidly. Yet despite this he was continually

consulting them.

 

That month he went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as

the first had done but put his questions rather differently, and the

interview with this celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych’s doubts and fears.

A friend of a friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness again

quite differently from the others, and though he predicted recovery, his

questions and suppositions bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and increased

his doubts. A homeopathist diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and

prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a

week, not feeling any improvement and having lost confidence both in the

former doctor’s treatment and in this one’s, he became still more

despondent. One day a lady acquaintance mentioned a cure effected by a

wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself listening attentively and

beginning to believe that it had occurred. This incident alarmed him. “Has

my mind really weakened to such an extent?” he asked himself. “Nonsense!

It’s all rubbish. I mustn’t give way to nervous fears but having chosen a

doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is what I will do. Now

it’s all settled. I won’t think about it, but will follow the treatment

seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there must be no more

of this wavering!” this was easy to say but impossible to carry out. The

pain in his side oppressed him and seemed to grow worse and more incessant,

while the taste in his mouth grew stranger and stranger. It seemed to him

that his breath had a disgusting smell, and he was conscious of a loss of

appetite and strength. There was no deceiving himself: something terrible,

new, and more important than anything before in his life, was taking place

within him of which he alone was aware. Those about him did not understand

or would not understand it, but thought everything in the world was going on

as usual. That tormented Ivan Ilych more than anything. He saw that his

household, especially his wife and daughter who were in a perfect whirl of

visiting, did not understand anything of it and were annoyed that he was so

depressed and so exacting, as if he were to blame for it. Though they tried

to disguise it he saw that he was an obstacle in their path, and that his

wife had adopted a definite line in regard to his illness and kept to it

regardless of anything he said or did. Her attitude was this: “You know,”

she would say to her friends, “Ivan Ilych can’t do as other people do, and

keep to the treatment prescribed for him. One day he’ll take his drops and

keep strictly to his diet and go to bed in good time, but the next day

unless I watch him he’ll suddenly forget his medicine, eat sturgeon — which

is forbidden — and sit up playing cards till one o’clock in the morning.”

 

“Oh, come, when was that?” Ivan Ilych would ask in vexation. “Only once at

Peter Ivanovich’s.”

 

“And yesterday with Shebek.”

 

“Well, even if I hadn’t stayed up, this pain would have kept me awake.”

 

“Be that as it may you’ll never get well like that, but will always make us

wretched.”

 

Praskovya Fedorovna’s attitude to Ivan Ilych’s illness, as she expressed it

both to others and to him, was that it was his own fault and was another of

the annoyances he caused her. Ivan Ilych felt that this opinion escaped her

involuntarily — but that did not make it easier for him.

 

At the law courts too, Ivan Ilych noticed, or thought he noticed, a strange

attitude towards himself. It sometimes seemed to him that people were

watching him inquisitively as a man whose place might soon be vacant. Then

again, his friends would suddenly begin to chaff him in a friendly way about

his low spirits, as if the awful, horrible, and unheard-of thing that was

going on within him, incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly drawing him

away, was a very agreeable subject for jests. Schwartz in particular

irritated him by his jocularity, vivacity, and savoir-faire, which reminded

him of what he himself had been ten years ago.

 

Friends came to make up a set and they sat down to cards. They dealt,

bending the new cards to soften them, and he sorted the diamonds in his hand

and found he had seven. His partner said “No trumps” and supported him with

two diamonds. What more could be wished for? It ought to be jolly and

lively. They would make a grand slam. But suddenly Ivan Ilych was conscious

of that gnawing pain, that taste in his mouth, and it seemed ridiculous that

in such circumstances he should be pleased to make a grand slam.

 

He looked at his partner Mikhail Mikhaylovich, who rapped the table with his

strong hand and instead of snatching up the tricks pushed the cards

courteously and indulgently towards Ivan Ilych that he might have the

pleasure of gathering them up without the trouble of stretching out his hand

for them. “Does he think I am too weak to stretch out my arm?” thought Ivan

Ilych, and forgetting what he was doing he over-trumped his partner, missing

the grand slam by three tricks. And what was most awful of all was that he

saw how upset Mikhail Mikhaylovich was about it but did not himself care.

And it was dreadful to realize why he did not care.

 

They all saw that he was suffering, and said: “We can stop if you are tired.

Take a rest.” Lie down? No, he was not at all tired, and he finished the

rubber. All were gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilych felt that he had diffused

this gloom over them and could not dispel it. They had supper and went away,