Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

stretched out his hand. Pyotr went up to offer his services.

“What can I get you?”

“My watch.”

Pyotr got out the watch, which lay just under his hand, and gave it him.

“Half-past eight. Are they up?”

“Not yet, sir. Vladimir Ivanovitch” (that was his son) “has gone to the high school, and Praskovya Fyodorovna gave orders that she was to be waked if you asked for her. Shall I send word?”

“No, no need. Should I try some tea?” he thought.

“Yes, tea⁠ ⁠… bring it.”

Pyotr was on his way out. Ivan Ilyitch felt frightened of being left alone. “How keep him? Oh, the medicine. Pyotr, give me my medicine. Oh well, maybe, medicine may still be some good.” He took the spoon, drank it. “No, it does no good. It’s all rubbish, deception,” he decided, as soon as he tasted the familiar, mawkish, hopeless taste. “No, I can’t believe it now. But the pain, why this pain; if it would only cease for a minute.” And he groaned. Pyotr turned round. “No, go on. Bring the tea.”

Pyotr went away. Ivan Ilyitch, left alone, moaned, not so much from the pain, awful as it was, as from misery. Always the same thing again and again, all these endless days and nights. If it would only be quicker. Quicker to what? Death, darkness. No, no. Anything better than death!

When Pyotr came in with the tea on a tray, Ivan Ilyitch stared for some time absentmindedly at him, not grasping who he was and what he wanted. Pyotr was disconcerted by this stare. And when he showed he was disconcerted, Ivan Ilyitch came to himself.

“Oh yes,” he said, “tea, good, set it down. Only help me to wash and put on a clean shirt.”

And Ivan Ilyitch began his washing. He washed his hands slowly, and then his face, cleaned his teeth, combed his hair, and looked in the looking-glass. He felt frightened at what he saw, especially at the way his hair clung limply to his pale forehead. When his shirt was being changed, he knew he would be still more terrified if he glanced at his body, and he avoided looking at himself. But at last it was all over. He put on his dressing-gown, covered himself with a rug, and sat in the armchair to drink his tea. For one moment he felt refreshed; but as soon as he began to drink the tea, again there was the same taste, the same pain. He forced himself to finish it, and lay down, stretching out his legs. He lay down and dismissed Pyotr.

Always the same. A gleam of hope flashes for a moment, then again the sea of despair roars about him again, and always pain, always pain, always heartache, and always the same thing. Alone it is awfully dreary; he longs to call someone, but he knows beforehand that with others present it will be worse. “Morphine again⁠—only to forget again. I’ll tell him, the doctor, that he must think of something else. It can’t go on; it can’t go on like this.”

One hour, two hours pass like this. Then there is a ring at the front door. The doctor, perhaps. Yes, it is the doctor, fresh, hearty, fat, and cheerful, wearing that expression that seems to say, “You there are in a panic about something, but we’ll soon set things right for you.” The doctor is aware that this expression is hardly fitting here, but he has put it on once and for all, and can’t take it off, like a man who has put on a frockcoat to pay a round of calls.

In a hearty, reassuring manner the doctor rubs his hands.

“I’m cold. It’s a sharp frost. Just let me warm myself,” he says with an expression, as though it’s only a matter of waiting a little till he’s warm, and as soon as he’s warm he’ll set everything to rights.

“Well, now, how are you?”

Ivan Ilyitch feels that the doctor would like to say, “How’s the little trouble?” but that he feels that he can’t talk like that, and says, “How did you pass the night?”

Ivan Ilyitch looks at the doctor with an expression that asks⁠—

“Is it possible you’re never ashamed of lying?”

But the doctor does not care to understand this look.

And Ivan Ilyitch says⁠—

“It’s always just as awful. The pain never leaves me, never ceases. If only there were something!”

“Ah, you’re all like that, all sick people say that. Come, now I do believe I’m thawed; even Praskovya Fyodorovna, who’s so particular, could find no fault with my temperature. Well, now I can say good morning.” And the doctor shakes hands.

And dropping his former levity, the doctor, with a serious face, proceeds to examine the patient, feeling his pulse, to take his temperature, and then the tappings and soundings begin.

Ivan Ilyitch knows positively and indubitably that it’s all nonsense and empty deception; but when the doctor, kneeling down, stretches over him, putting his ear first higher, then lower, and goes through various gymnastic evolutions over him with a serious face, Ivan Ilyitch is affected by this, as he used sometimes to be affected by the speeches of the lawyers in court, though he was perfectly well aware that they were telling lies all the while and why they were telling lies.

The doctor, kneeling on the sofa, was still sounding him, when there was the rustle of Praskovya Fyodorovna’s silk dress in the doorway, and she was heard scolding Pyotr for not having let her know that the doctor had come.

She comes in, kisses her husband, and at once begins to explain that she has been up a long while, and that it was only through a misunderstanding that she was not there when the doctor came.

Ivan Ilyitch looks at her, scans her all over, and sets down against her her whiteness and plumpness, and the cleanness of her hands and neck, and the glossiness of her hair, and the gleam full of life in her eyes. With all the force of his soul