 CHAPTER I. Inside the great building of the law courts, during the interval in the hearing of the Malvinsky case, the members of the Judicial Council and the Public Prosecutor were gathered together in the private room of Ivanya Gorovitch-Shabek, and the conversation turned upon the celebrated Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vasilievitch hotly maintained that the case was not in the jurisdiction of the court. Yegor Ivanovitch stood up for his own view. But from the first, Piotr Ivanovitch, who had not entered into the discussion, took no interest in it, but was looking through the newspapers which had just been brought in. Gentlemen, he said, Ivan Ilyich is dead. You don't say so. Here, read it, he said to Fyodor Vasilievitch, handing him the fresh, still damp-smelling paper. Within a black margin was printed, Preskavya Fyodorovna Golovina, with heartfelt affliction, informs friends and relatives of the deceased of her beloved husband, member of the Court of Justice, Ivan Ilyich Golovina, who passed away on the 4th of February. The funeral will take place on Thursday at one o'clock. Ivan Ilyich was a colleague of the gentleman present, and all liked him. It was some weeks now since he had been taken ill. His illness had been said to be incurable. His post had been kept open for him, but it had been thought that in case of his death Alexiev might receive his appointment, and either Vinikov or Stavol would succeed to Alexiev's. So that on hearing of Ivan Ilyich's death the first thought of each of the gentlemen in the room was of the effect this death might have on the transfer or promotion of themselves or their friends. Now I am sure of getting Stavol's place or Vinikov's, thought Fyodor Vasilievitch. It was promised me long ago, and the promotion means eight hundred rubles additional income besides the grants for office expenses. Now I shall have to petition for my brother-in-law to be transferred from Kaluga, thought Piotr Ivanovitch. My wife will be very glad. She won't be able to say now that I've never done anything for her family. I thought somehow that he'd never get up from his bed again, Piotr Ivanovitch said aloud. I'm sorry. But what was it exactly that was wrong with him? The doctors could not decide. That's to say, they did decide, but differently. When I saw him last I thought he would get over it. Well I positively haven't called there ever since the holidays. I've kept meaning to go. Had he any property? I think there's something very small of his wife's, but something quite trifling. Yes, one will have to go and call. They live such a terribly long way off. Long way from you, you mean. Everything's a long way from your place. There he can never forgive me for living on the other side of the river, said Piotr Ivanovitch, smiling at Chebeck. And they began to talk of the great distances between different parts of the town, and went back into the court. Besides the reflections upon the changes and promotions in the service likely to ensue from this death, the very fact of the death of an intimate acquaintance excited in everyone who heard of it, as such a fact always does, a feeling of relief that it is he that is dead and not I. Only think, he is dead. But here am I all right, each one thought or felt. The more intimate acquaintances, the so-called friends of Ivan Ilyich, could not help thinking too that now they had the exceedingly tiresome social duties to perform of going to the funeral service and paying the widow a visit of condolence. The most intimately acquainted with their late colleague were Piotr Vasilievitch and Piotr Ivanovitch. Piotr Ivanovitch had been a comrade of his at the School of Jurisprudence, and considered himself under obligations to Ivan Ilyich. Telling his wife at dinner of the news of Ivan Ilyich's death, and his reflections as to the possibility of getting her brother transferred into their circuit, Ivanovitch, without lying down for his usual nap, put on his frockcoat and drove to Ivan Ilyich's. At the entrance before Ivan Ilyich's flat stood a carriage and two hired flies. Downstairs in the entry near the hat stand there was leaning against the wall a coffin lid with tassels and braiding freshly rubbed up with pipe clay. Two ladies were taking off their cloaks. One of them he knew, the sister of Ivan Ilyich. The other was a lady he did not know. Piotr Ivanovitch's colleague, Schwarz, was coming down, and from the top stair, seeing who it was coming in, he stopped and winked at him as though to say, Ivan Ilyich has made a mess of it. It's a very different matter with you and me. Schwarz's face with his English whiskers and all his thin figure in his frockcoat had, as it always had, an air of elegant solemnity. And this solemnity, always such a contrast to Schwarz's playful character, had a special pecancy here. So thought Piotr Ivanovitch. Piotr Ivanovitch let the ladies pass on in front of him and walked slowly up the stairs after them. Schwarz had not come down but was waiting at the top. Piotr Ivanovitch knew what for. He wanted, obviously, to settle with him where their game of screw was to be that evening. The ladies went up to the widow's room hush-farts with his lips tightly and gravely shut and amusement in his eyes, with a twitch of his eyebrows motioned Piotr Ivanovitch to the right, to the room where the dead man was. Piotr Ivanovitch went in, as people always do on such occasions, in uncertainty as to what he would have to do there. One thing he felt sure of, that crossing oneself never comes amiss on such occasions. As to whether it was necessary to bow down while doing so, he did not feel quite sure and so chose a middle course. On entering the room he began crossing himself and made a slight sort of bow. So far as the movements of his hands and head permitted him, he glanced while doing so about the room. Two young men, one a high school boy, nephews probably, were going out of the room themselves. An old lady was standing motionless and a lady, with her eyebrows clearly lifted, was saying something to her in a whisper. A deacon in a frot coat, resolute and hearty, was reading something aloud with an expression that precluded all possibility of contradiction. A young peasant who used to wait at table, Garasim, walking with light footsteps in front of Piotr Ivanovitch, was sprinkling something on the floor. Seeing this, Piotr Ivanovitch was at once aware of the faint odor of the decomposing corpse. On his last visit to Ivan Ilyich Piotr Ivanovitch had seen this peasant in his room. He was performing the duties of a sick nurse, and Ivan Ilyich liked him particularly. Piotr Ivanovitch continued crossing himself and bowing in a direction intermediate between the coffin, the deacon, and the holy pictures on the table in the corner. Then, when this action of making the sign of the cross with his hand seemed to him to have been unduly prolonged, he stood still and began to scrutinize the dead man. The dead man lay, as dead men always do lie, in a peculiarly heavy dead way. His stiffen limbs sunk in the cushions of the coffin, and his head bent back forever on the pillow, and thrust up, as dead men always do. His yellow necks and forehead with bald spots on the sunken temples and his nose that stood out sharply and, as it were, squeezed on the upper lip. He was much changed, even thinner since Piotr Ivanovitch had seen him, but his face, as always with the dead, was more handsome and, above all, more impressive than it had been when he was alive. On the face was an expression of what had to be done having been done and rightly done. Besides this, there was, too, in that expression a reproach or a reminder for the living. This reminder seemed to Piotr Ivanovitch uncalled for, or at least to have nothing to do with him. He felt something unpleasant, and so Piotr Ivanovitch once more crossed himself hurriedly, and, as it struck him too hurriedly, not quite in accordance with the proprieties, turned and went to the door. Schwarz was waiting for him in the adjoining room standing with his legs apart and both hands behind his back playing with his top hat. A single glance at the playful, sleek and elegant figure of Schwarz revived Piotr Ivanovitch. He felt that he, Schwarz, was above it and would not give way to depressing impressions. The mere sight of him said plainly, the incident of the service over the body of Ivan Ilyich cannot possibly constitute a sufficient ground for recognizing the business of the session suspended. In other words, in no way can it hinder us from shuffling and cutting a pack of cards this evening, while the footman sets four unsanctified candles on the table for us. In fact, there is no ground for supposing that this incident could prevent us from spending the evening agreeably. He said as much, indeed, to Piotr Ivanovitch as he came out, proposing that the party should meet at Piotr Vasilievitch's. But apparently it was Piotr Ivanovitch's destiny not to play screw that evening. Praskavya Fyodorovna, a short, fat woman, who, in spite of all efforts in a contrary direction, was steadily broader from her shoulders downwards, all in black with lace on her head and her eyebrows as clearly arched as the lady standing beside the coffin, came out of her own apartments with some other ladies, and conducting them to the dead man's room said, the service will take place immediately, come in. Shvarts, making an indefinite bow, stood still, obviously neither accepting nor declining this invitation. Praskavya Fyodorovna, recognizing Piotr Ivanovitch, sighed, went right up to him, took his hand and said, I know that you were a true friend of Ivan Ilyich's and looked at him, expecting from him the suitable action in response to these words. Piotr Ivanovitch knew that just as before he had to cross himself, now what he had to do was to press her hand, to sigh and to say, ah, I was indeed. And he did so. And as he did so he felt that the desired result had been attained, that he was touched and she was touched. Come, since it's not begun yet, I have something I want to say to you, said the widow. Give me your arm. Piotr Ivanovitch gave her his arm and they moved towards the inner rooms, passing Shvarts who winked gloomily at Piotr Ivanovitch. So much for our screw. Don't complain if we find another partner. You can make a fifth when you do get away. Said his humorous glance. Piotr Ivanovitch sighed, still more deeply and despondently, and Praskovya Fyodorovna pressed his hand gratefully. Going into her drawing-room, that was upholstered with pink cretan and lighted by a dismal-looking lamp, they sat down at the table, she on a sofa and Piotr Ivanovitch on a low ottoman with deranged springs which yielded spasmodically under his weight. Praskovya Fyodorovna was about to warn him to sit on another seat, but felt such a recommendation out of keeping with her position and changed her mind. Sitting down on the ottoman, Piotr Ivanovitch remembered how Ivanovitch had arranged this drawing-room and had consulted him about this very pink cretan with green leaves. Seating herself on the sofa and pushing by the table, the whole drawing-room was crowded with furniture and things. The widow called the lace of her black fissue in the carving of the table. Piotr Ivanovitch got up to disentangle it for her, and the ottoman, freed from his weight, began bobbing up spasmodically under him. The widow began unhooking her lace herself, and Piotr Ivanovitch again sat down, suppressing the mutinous ottoman-springs under him. But the widow could not quite free herself, and Piotr Ivanovitch rose again, and again the ottoman became mutinous and popped up with a positive snap. When this was all over she took out a clean Cambridge handkerchief and began weeping. Piotr Ivanovitch had been chilled off by the incident with the lace and the struggle with the ottoman-springs, and he sat looking sullen. This awkward position was cut short by the entrance of Sokolov, Ivan Ilyich's butler, who came in to announce that the place in the cemetery fixed on by Boris Kovya Fyodorovna would cost two hundred rubles. She laughed off weeping, and with the air of a victim glancing at Piotr Ivanovitch said in French that it was very terrible for her. Piotr Ivanovitch made a silent gesture signifying his unhesitating conviction that it must indeed be so. Please smoke, she said, in a magnanimous and at the same time crushed voice, and she began discussing with Sokolov the question of the price of the site for the grave. Piotr Ivanovitch, lighting a cigarette, listened to her very circumstantial inquiries as to the various prices of sites and her decision as to the one to be selected. Having settled on the site for the grave she made arrangements also about the choristers. Sokolov went away. I see to everything myself, she said to Piotr Ivanovitch, moving on one side the albums that lay on the table, and noticing that the table was in danger from the cigarette ash, she promptly passed an ash tray to Piotr Ivanovitch and said, I consider it an affectation to pretend that my grief prevents me from looking after practical matters. On the contrary, if anything could not console me but distract me, it is seeing after everything for him. She took out her handkerchief again, as though preparing to weep again, and suddenly, as though struggling with herself, she shook herself and began speaking calmly. But I've business to talk about with you. Piotr Ivanovitch bowed, carefully keeping in check the springs of the ottoman which had at once begun quivering under him. The last few days his sufferings were awful. Did he suffer very much? asked Piotr Ivanovitch. Oh, awfully, for the last moments, hours indeed, he never left off screaming. For three days and nights in succession he screamed incessantly. It was insufferable. I can't understand how I bore it. One could hear it through three closed doors. Ah, what I suffered. And was he really conscious? asked Piotr Ivanovitch. Yes, she whispered, up to the last minute. He said goodbye to us a quarter of an hour before his death, and asked Volodja to be taken away, too. The thought of the sufferings of a man he had known so intimately, at first as a light-hearted boy, a schoolboy, then grown up as a partner at Wist, in spite of the unpleasant consciousness of his own and this woman's hypocrisy, suddenly horrified Piotr Ivanovitch. He saw again, that forehead, the nose that seemed squeezing the lip, and he felt frightened for himself. Three days and nights of awful suffering and death. Why, that may at once, any minute, come upon me, too, he thought, and he felt for an instant terrified. But immediately he could not himself have said how. There came to his support the customary reflection that this had happened to Ivan Ilyich and not to him, and that to him this must not and could not happen, that in thinking thus he was giving way to depression, which was not the right thing to do, as was evident from Schwarz's expression of face. And making these reflections, Piotr Ivanovitch felt reassured, and began with interest, inquiring details about Ivan Ilyich's end, as though death were a mischance peculiar to Ivan Ilyich, but not at all incidental to himself. After various observations about the details of the truly awful physical sufferings endured by Ivan Ilyich, these details Piotr Ivanovitch learned only through the effect Ivan Ilyich's agonies had had on the nerves of Preskavya Fyodorovna. The widow apparently thought at time to get to business. Ah, Piotr Ivanovitch, how hard it is! How awfully, awfully hard! And she began to cry again. Piotr Ivanovitch sighed and waited for her to blow her nose. When she had done so, he said, Indeed it is! And again she began to talk, and brought out what was evidently the business she wished to discuss with him. That business consisted in the inquiry as to how on the occasion of her husband's death she was to obtain a grant from the government. She made a show of asking Piotr Ivanovitch's advice about a pension. But he perceived that she knew already to the minutest details what he did not know himself, indeed. Everything that could be got out of the government on the ground of this death. But that what she wanted to find out was whether there were not any means of obtaining a little more. Piotr Ivanovitch tried to imagine such means, but after pondering a little and out of politeness abusing the government for its stinginess, he said that he believed that it was impossible to obtain more. Then she sighed and began unmistakably looking about for an excuse for getting rid of her visitor. He perceived this, put out his cigarette, got up, pressed her hand, and went out into the passage. In the dining room where was the bric-a-brack clock that Ivanovitch had been so delighted at buying, Piotr Ivanovitch met the priest and several people he knew who had come to the service for the dead. And saw, too, Ivanovitch's daughter, a handsome young lady. She was all in black. A very slender figure looked even slenderer than usual. She had a gloomy, determined, almost wrathful expression. She bowed to Piotr Ivanovitch as though he were to blame in some way. Behind the daughter with the same offended air on his face stood a rich young man whom Piotr Ivanovitch knew, too, an examining magistrate, the young lady's fiancee, as he had heard. He bowed dejectedly to him and would have gone on to the dead man's room when from the staircase there appeared the figure of the son, the high school boy, extraordinarily like Ivan Ilyich. He was the little Ivan Ilyich over again, as Piotr Ivanovitch remembered him at school. His eyes were red with crying and had that look often seen in unclean boys of thirteen or fourteen. The boy, seeing Piotr Ivanovitch, scowled morosely and bashfully. Piotr Ivanovitch nodded to him and went into the dead man's room. The service for the dead began. Candles, groans, incense, tears, sobs. Piotr Ivanovitch stood frowning, staring at his feet in front of him. He did not once glance at the dead man and right through to the end did not once give way to depressing influences and was one of the first to walk out. In the hall there was no one. Gerasim, the young peasant, darted out of the dead man's room, tossed over with his strong hand all the fur cloaks to find Piotr Ivanovitch's and gave it him. Well, Gerasim, my boy, said Piotr Ivanovitch, so as to say something. A sad business, isn't it? It's God's will. We shall come to the same, said Gerasim, showing his white, even peasant teeth in a smile. And like a man in a rush of extra work he briskly opened the door, called up the coachman, saw Piotr Ivanovitch into the carriage, and darted back to the steps as though the thinking himself of what he had to do next. Piotr Ivanovitch had a special pleasure in the fresh air after the smell of incense, of the corpse, and of carbolic acid. Where to? asked the coachman. It's not too late. I'll still go round to Fyodor Vasilievitch's. And Piotr Ivanovitch drove there, and he did, in fact, find them just finishing the first rubber, so that he came just at the right time to take a hand. End of chapter one. Chapter two of The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. This Lubrovok's recording is in the public domain. The previous history of Ivan Ilyich was the simplest, the most ordinary, and the most awful. Ivan Ilyich died at the age of forty-five, a member of the Judicial Council. He was the son of an official whose career in Petersburg, through various ministries and departments, had been such as leads people into that position in which, though it is distinctly obvious that they are unfit to perform any kind of real duty, they yet cannot, owing to their long past service and their official rank, be dismissed, and they therefore receive a specially created fictitious post, and by no means fictitious thousands, from six to ten, on which they go on living till extreme old age. Such was the privy councillor, the superfluous member of various superfluous institutions, Ilya Efimovich Golovin. He had three sons. Ivan Ilyich was the second son. The eldest son's career was exactly like his father's, only in a different department, and he was by now close upon that stage in the service in which the same sinecure would be reached. The third son was the unsuccessful one. He had, in various positions, always made a mess of things, and was now employed in the railway department. And his father and his brothers, and still more their wives, did not merely dislike meeting him, but avoided, except in extreme necessity, recollecting his existence. His sister had married Baron Gref, a Petersburg official of the same stamp as his father-in-law. Ivan Ilyich was Lephinex Delefimil, as people said. He was not so frigid and precise as the eldest son, nor so wild as the youngest. He was the happy mean between them, a shrewd, lively, pleasant, and well-bred man. He had been educated with his younger brother at the School of Jurisprudence. The younger brother had not finished the school course, but was expelled when in the fifth class. Ivan Ilyich completed the course successfully. At school he was just the same as he was later on all his life, an intelligent fellow, highly good-humored and sociable, but strict in doing what he considered to be his duty. His duty he considered whatever was so considered by those persons who were set in authority over him. He was not a toady as a boy, nor later on as a grown-up person. But from his earliest years he was attracted, as a fly to the light, to persons of good standing in the world, assimilated their manners and their views of life, and established friendly relations with them. All the enthousiasms of childhood and youth passed, leaving no great traces in him. He gave way to sensuality and to vanity, and laterally, when in the higher classes at school, to liberalism, but always keeping within certain limits which were unfailingly marked out for him by his instincts. At school he had committed actions which had struck him beforehand as great vileness and gave him a feeling of loathing for himself at the very time he was committing them. But later on, perceiving that such actions were committed also by men of good position and were not regarded by them as base, he was able not to regard them as good, but to forget about them completely, and was never mortified by recollections of them. Leaving the school of jurisprudence in the tenth class, and receiving from his father a sum of money for his outfit, Yvon Ilyich ordered his clothes at Sharmer's, hung on his watch-chain, a medallion inscribed, Respeche Finem, said good-bye to the prince who was the principal of his school, had a farewell dinner with his comrades at Donan's, and with all his new fashionable belongings, travelling trunk, linen, suits of clothes, shaving and toilet appurtenances, and travelling rug, all ordered and purchased at the very best shops, set off to take the post of secretary on special commissions for the governor of a province, a post which had been obtained for him by his father. In the province, Yvon Ilyich, without loss of time, made himself a position as easy and agreeable as his position had been in the school of jurisprudence. He did his work, made his career, and at the same time led a life of well-bred social gaiety. Occasionally he visited various districts on official duty, behaved with dignity both with his superiors and his inferiors, and with exactitude and an incorruptible honesty of which he could not help feeling proud, performed the duties with which he was entrusted, principally having to do with the dissenters. When engaged in official work he was, in spite of his youth and taste for frivolous amusements, exceedingly reserved, official, and even severe. But in social life he was often amusing and witty, and always good-natured, well-bred and bon enfant, as was said of him by his chief and his chief's wife, with whom he was like one of the family. In the province there was, too, a connection with one of the ladies who obtruded their charms on the stylish young lawyer. There was a dressmaker, too, and there were drinking-bouts with smart officers visiting the neighborhood, and visits to a certain outlying street after supper. There was a rather cringing obsequiousness in his behavior, too, with his chief, and even his chief's wife. But all this was accompanied with such a tone of the highest breeding that it could not be called by harsh names. It all came under the rubric of the French saying, Il faut qu'il a jeunesse se passe. Everything was done with clean hands, in clean shirts, with French phrases, and what was of most importance, in the highest society, and consequently with the approval of people of rank. Such was Ivan Ilyich's career for five years, and then came a change in his official life. New methods of judicial procedure were established, new men were wanted to carry them out, and Ivan Ilyich became such a new man. Ivan Ilyich was offered the post of Examining Magistrate, and he accepted it, in spite of the fact that this post was in another province, and he would have to break off all the ties he had formed and form new ones. Ivan Ilyich's friends met together to see him off, had their photographs taken in a group, presented him with a silver cigarette case, and he set off to his new post. As an Examining Magistrate, Ivan Ilyich was as com'il faut, as well-bred, as adroit in keeping official duties apart from private life, and as successful in gaining universal respect, as he had been as Secretary of Private Commissions. The duties of his new office were in themselves of far greater interest and attractiveness for Ivan Ilyich. In his former post it had been pleasant to pass, in his smart uniform from Charmers, through the crowd of petitioners and officials waiting timorously and envying him, and to march with his easy swagger straight into the Governor's private room, there to sit down with him to tea and cigarettes. But the persons directly subject to his authority were few. The only such persons were the district police superintendents and the dissenters, when he was serving on special commissions. And he liked treating such persons affably, almost like comrades. Like to make them feel that he, able to annihilate them, was behaving in this simple, friendly way with them. But such people were then few in number. Now, as an Examining Magistrate, Ivan Ilyich felt that every one, without exception, the most dignified, the most self-satisfied people, all were in his hands. And that he had but to write certain words on a sheet of paper with a printed heading. And this dignified, self-satisfied person would be brought before him in the capacity of a defendant or a witness. And if he did not care to make him sit down, he would have to stand up before him and answer his questions. Ivan Ilyich never abused this authority of his. On the contrary, he tried to soften the expression of it. But the consciousness of this power and the possibility of softening its effect constituted for him the chief interest and attractiveness of his new position. In the work itself, in the preliminary inquiries, that is, Ivan Ilyich very rapidly acquired the art of setting aside every consideration irrelevant to the official aspect of the case, and of reducing every case, however complex, to that form in which it could, in a purely external fashion, be put on paper completely excluding his personal view of the matter, and what was of paramount importance, observing all the necessary formalities. All this work was new, and he was one of the first men who put into practical working the reforms in judicial procedure enacted in 1864. On settling in a new town in his position as examining magistrate, Ivan Ilyich made new acquaintances, formed new ties, took up a new line, and adopted a rather different attitude. He took up an attitude of somewhat dignified aloofness towards the provincial authorities, while he picked out the best circle among the legal gentlemen and wealthy gentry living in the town, and adopted a tone of slight dissatisfaction with the government, moderate liberalism, and lofty civic virtue. With this, while making no change in the elegance of his get-up, Ivan Ilyich in his new office gave up shaving and left his beard free to grow as it liked. Ivan Ilyich's existence in the new town proved to be very agreeable. The society which took the line of opposition to the governor was friendly and good. His income was larger, and he found a source of increased enjoyment and wist at which he began to play at this time, and having a faculty for playing cards good humoredly and being rapid and exact in his calculations, as a rule on the winning side. After living two years in the new town, Ivan Ilyich met his future wife. Prescavia Fyodorovna Mihail was the most attractive, clever, and brilliant girl in the set in which Ivan Ilyich moved. Among other amusements and recreations, after his labours as a magistrate, Ivan Ilyich started a light, playful flirtation with Prescavia Fyodorovna. Ivan Ilyich, when he was an assistant secretary, danced as a rule. As an examining magistrate, he danced only as an exception. He danced now, as it were, under protest, as though to show that, though I am serving on the new reformed legal code, I am of the fifth class in official rank. Still, if it comes to a question of dancing, in that line too I can do better than others. In this spirit he danced now and then toward the end of the evening with Prescavia Fyodorovna, and it was principally during these dances that he won the heart of Prescavia Fyodorovna. She fell in love with him. Ivan Ilyich had no clearly defined intention of marrying, but when the girl fell in love with him he put the question to himself. After all, why not get married? He said to himself. The young lady, Prescavia Fyodorovna, was of good family, nice looking. There was a little bit of property. Ivan Ilyich might have reckoned on a more brilliant match, a good match. Ivan Ilyich had his salary. She, he hoped, would have as much of her own. It was a good family. She was a sweet, pretty, and perfectly Camille Faux young woman. To say that Ivan Ilyich got married because he fell in love with his wife and found her in sympathy with his views of life would be as untrue as to say that he got married because the people of his world approved of the match. Ivan Ilyich was influenced by both considerations. He was doing what was agreeable to himself in securing such a wife and at the same time doing what persons of higher standing looked upon as the correct thing. And Ivan Ilyich got married. The process itself of getting married and the early period of married life with the conjugal caresses, the new furniture, the new crockery, the new house linen, all up to the time of his wife's pregnancy went off very well and he had begun to think that so far from marriage breaking up that kind of frivolous, agreeable, lighthearted life, always decorous and always approved by society which he regarded as the normal life it would even increase its agreeableness. But at that point in the early months of his wife's pregnancy there came in a new element unexpected, unpleasant, tiresome, and unseemly which could never have been anticipated and from which there was no escape. His wife, without any kind of reason, it seemed to Ivan Ilyich, the gaty d'accord, as he expressed it, began to disturb the agreeableness and decorum of their life. She began, without any sort of justification, to be jealous, exacting in her demands on his attention, squabbled over everything and treated him to the coarsest and most unpleasant scenes. At first Ivan Ilyich hoped to escape from the unpleasantness of this position by taking up the same frivolous and well-bred line that had served him well on other occasions of difficulty. He endeavored to ignore his wife's ill humour, went on living whiteheartedly and agreeably as before, invited friends to play cards, tried to get away himself to the club or to his friends. But his wife began on one occasion with such energy, abusing him in such coarse language and so obstinately persisted in her abuse of him every time carrying out her demands, obviously having made up her mind firmly to persist till he gave way, that is, stayed at home and was as dull as she was, that Ivan Ilyich took alarm. He perceived that matrimony, at least with his wife, was not invariably conducive to the pleasures and proprieties of life, but on the contrary, often destructive of them, and that it was therefore essential to erect some barrier to protect himself from these disturbances. And Ivan Ilyich began to look about for such means of protecting himself. His official duties were the only thing that impressed Praskavya Fyodorovna, and Ivan Ilyich began to use his official position and the duties arising from it in his struggle with his wife to fence off his own independent world apart. With the birth of the baby, the attempts at nursing it and the various unsuccessful experiments with foods, with the illnesses, with the vital and imaginary of the infant and its mother, in which Ivan Ilyich was expected to sympathize, though he never had the slightest idea about them. The need for him to fence off a world apart for himself outside his family life became still more imperative. As his wife grew more irritable and exacting, so did Ivan Ilyich more and more transfer the center of gravity of his life to his official work. He became fonder and fonder of official life more ambitious than he had been. Very quickly not more than a year after his wedding Ivan Ilyich had become aware that conjugal life, though providing certain comforts, was in reality a very intricate and difficult business towards which one must, if one is to do one's duty that is, lead the decorous life approved by society work out for oneself a definite line just as in the government service. And such a line Ivan Ilyich did work out for himself in his merry life. He expected from his home life only those comforts of dinner at home, of housekeeper and to bed which it could give him and above all that perfect propriety in external observances required by public opinion. For the rest he looked for a good humored pleasantness and if he found it he was very thankful. If he met with antagonism and querulousness he promptly retreated into a separate world he had shut off for himself in his official life and there he found solace. Ivan Ilyich was prized as a good official and three years later he was made assistant public prosecutor. The new duties of this position, their dignity, the possibility of bringing anyone to trial and putting anyone in prison, the publicity of the speeches and the success Ivan Ilyich had in that part of his work. All this made his official work attractive to him. Children were born to him. His wife became steadily more querulous and ill-tempered but the line Ivan Ilyich had taken up for himself in home life put him almost out of reach for grumbling. After seven years of service in the same town Ivan Ilyich was transferred to another province with the post of public prosecutor. They moved, money was short and his wife did not like the place they had been. The salary was indeed a little higher than before but their expenses were larger. Besides a couple of children died and home life consequently became even less agreeable for Ivan Ilyich. For every mischance that occurred in their new place of residence Praskavya Fyodorovna blamed her husband. The greater number of subjects of conversation between husband and wife, especially the education of the children, led to questions that were associated with previous quarrels and quarrels were ready to break out at every instant. There remained only those rare periods of being in love which did indeed come upon them but never lasted long. These were the islands at which they put in for a time but they soon set off again upon the ocean of concealed hostility that was made manifest in their aloofness from one another. This aloofness might have emerged that this ought not to be so but by now he regarded this position as perfectly normal and it was indeed the goal toward which he worked in his home life. His aim was to make himself more and more free from the unpleasant aspects of domestic life and to render them harmless and decorous. And he attained this aim by spending less and less time with his family and when he was forced to be at home he endeavored to secure his outsiders. The great thing for Ivan Ilyich was having his office. In the official world all the interest of life was concentrated for him and this interest absorbed him. The sense of his own power, the consciousness of being able to ruin anyone he wanted to ruin even the external dignity of his office when he made his entry into the court or met subordinate officials his success in the eyes of his superiors and his subordinates all his masterly handling of cases of which he was conscious all this delighted him and together with chat with his colleagues dining out and whist filled his life so that on the whole Ivan Ilyich's life still went on in the way he thought it should go agreeably and decorously. So he lived for another seven years. His eldest daughter was already sixteen another child had died and left only one other a boy at the high school a subject of dissension. Ivan Ilyich wanted to send him to the school of jurisprudence while Praskovya Fyodorovna, to spite him, sent him to the high school. The daughter had been educated at home and had turned out well. The boy too did fairly well at his lessons. End of Chapter 2 Read by Larry Ann Walden Ivan Ilyich's life Such was Ivan Ilyich's life for seventeen years after his marriage. He had been by now a long while prosecutor and had refused several appointments offered him looking out for a more desirable post when there occurred an unexpected incident which utterly destroyed his peace of mind. Ivan Ilyich had been expecting to be appointed presiding judge in a university town and had stole a march on him and secured the appointment. Ivan Ilyich took offense, began upbraiding him and quarreled with him and with his own superiors. A coolness was felt towards him and on the next appointment that was made he was again passed over. This was in the year 1880. That year was the most painful one in Ivan Ilyich's life. During that year it became evident on the one hand that his pay on the other hand that he had been forgotten by everyone and that what seemed to him the most monstrous, the crudest injustice appeared to other people as a quite commonplace fact. Even his father felt no obligation to assist him. He felt that everyone had deserted him and that everyone regarded his position with an income of three thousand five hundred rubles as a quite normal and even fortunate one. Ivan Ilyich, who had been being nagging of his wife and the debts he had begun to accumulate living beyond his means, knew that his position was far from being normal. The summer of that year, to cut down his expenses, he took a holiday and went with his wife to spend the summer in the country at her brothers. In the country, with no official duties to occupy him, Ivan Ilyich was for the first time a prey that things could not go on like that and that it was absolutely necessary to take some decisive steps. After a sleepless night spent by Ivan Ilyich walking up and down the terrace, he determined to go to Petersburg to take active steps and to get transferred to some other department so as to revenge himself on them, the people, that is, who had not known how to appreciate him. Next day, in spite of all the work he set off to Petersburg, he went with a single object before him to obtain a post with an income of five thousand. He was ready now to be satisfied with a post in any department, of any tendency, with any kind of work. He must only have a post, a post with five thousand. In the executive department, the banks, the railways, the Empress Maria's institutions, even in the customs duties, what was essential was five thousand. And essential it was, too, to get out of the department in which they had failed to appreciate his value. And, behold, this quest of Ivan Ilyich's was crowned with wonderful, unexpected success. At Kursk there got into the same first-class carriage F. S. Ilian, an acquaintance, who told him of a telegram just received by the governor of Kursk, announcing a change about to take place in the city of Ivan Semyonovich. The proposed change, apart from its significance for Russia, had special significance for Ivan Ilyich from the fact that by bringing to the front a new person, Pyotr Petrovich, and obviously, therefore, his friend Zahar Ivanovich, it was in the highest degree propitious to Ivan Ilyich's own plans. Zahar Ivanovich was a friend and school fellow of Ivan Ilyich's. At Moscow the news was on arriving at Petersburg, Ivan Ilyich looked up Zahar Ivanovich and received a positive promise of an appointment in his former department, that of justice. A week later he telegraphed to his wife, Zahar Miller's place at first report, I receive appointment. Thanks to these changes, Ivan Ilyich unexpectedly obtained, in the same department as before, an appointment which placed him two stages higher than his former income of five thousand, together with the official allowance of three thousand five hundred for traveling expenses. All his ill humor with his former enemies and the whole department was forgotten, and Ivan Ilyich was completely happy. Ivan Ilyich went back to the country, more lighthearted and good-tempered than he had been for a very long while. Prescavia Fyodorovna was in better spirits too, and peace was described what respect everyone had shown him in Petersburg, how all those who had been his enemies had been put to shame and were cringing now before him, how envious they were of his appointment and still more of the high favor in which he stood at Petersburg. Prescavia Fyodorovna listened to this and pretended to believe it, and did not contradict him in anything, but confined herself to making plans for her new arrangements in the country. Ivan Ilyich saw with delight that these plans were his plans, that they were agreed, and that his life after this disturbing hitch in its progress was about to regain its true, normal character of lighthearted agreeableness and propriety. Ivan Ilyich had come back to the country for a short stay only. He had to enter upon the duties of his new office on the tenth of September, and arrange the arrangements from the other province to purchase and order many things in addition, in short to arrange things as settled in his own mind, and almost exactly as settled in the heart too of Prescavia Fyodorovna. And now, when everything was so successfully arranged, and when he and his wife were agreed in their aim, and were besides so little together, they got on with one another as well. Ivan Ilyich had thought of taking his family away with him at once, but his sister and his brother-in-law, who had suddenly become extremely cordial and intimate with him and his family, were so pressing in urging them to stay that he set off alone. Ivan Ilyich started off, and a lighthearted temper produced by his success and his good understanding with his wife, one thing backing up another, did not set of apartments, the very thing both husband and wife had dreamed of. Spacious, lofty reception rooms in the old style, a comfortable, dignified looking study for him, rooms for his wife and daughter, a school room for his son, everything as though planned on purpose for them. Ivan Ilyich himself looked after the furnishing of them, chose the wallpapers, bought furniture by preference antique furniture by Comile Faux style to his mind, and it all grew up and grew up and really attained the ideal he had set before himself. When he had half finished arranging the house, his arrangement surpassed his own expectations. He saw the Comile Faux character, elegant and free from vulgarity that the whole would have when it was already. As he fell asleep he pictured to himself the reception room as it would not yet finished. He could see the hearth, the screen, the étagère, and the little chairs dotted here and there, the plates and dishes on the wall, and the bronzes as they would be when they were all put in their places. He was delighted with the thought of how he would impress Prescavia and Lisanka who had taste too in this line. They would never expect anything like it. He was particularly successful in coming which gave up peculiarly aristocratic air to the whole. In his letters he purposely disparaged everything so as to surprise them. All this so absorbed him that the duties of his new office, though he was so fond of his official work, interested him less than he had expected. During sittings of the court he had moments of inattention. He pondered the question which sort of cornices to have on this business that he often set to work with his own hands, move to piece of furniture, or hung up curtains himself. One day he went up a ladder to show a workman who did not understand how he wanted some hanging strait, made a false step and slipped, but like a strong and nimble person he clung on and only knocked his side against the corner of a frame. The bruised place ached, but it all this time particularly good humored and well. He wrote, I feel fifteen years younger. He thought his house furnishing would be finished in September, but it dragged on to the middle of October. But then the effect was charming. Not he only said so, but everyone who saw it told him so too. In reality it was all just what is commonly seen in the houses of people who are not exactly wealthy people, and so succeed only in being like one another. Hangings, dark wood, flowers, rugs and bronzes, everything dark and highly polished, everything that all people of a certain class have so as to be like all people of a certain class. And in his case it was all so like that it made no impression at all, but it all seemed to him somehow special. When he met his family at the railway station, he brought them to his newly furnished rooms, all lighted up in readiness, and a footman in a white tie opened the door into an entry decorated with flowers, and then they walked into the drawing room in the study uttering cries of delight. He was very happy, conducted them everywhere, eagerly drinking in their praises and beaming with satisfaction. The same evening while they talked about various things at tea and showed them how he had gone flying and how he had frightened the upholsterer. It's as well I'm something of an athlete, another man might have been killed, and I got nothing worse than a blow here. When it's touched it hurts, but it's going off already, nothing but a bruise. And they began to live in their new abode, which as is always the case, when they had got thoroughly settled in they found to be their new income, which as always was only a little, some five hundred rubles, too little, and everything went very well. Things went particularly well at first, before everything was quite finally arranged and there was still something to do to the place, something to buy, something to order, something to move, something to make to fit. Though there were indeed several disputes between husband and wife both were so well satisfied and much to do that it all went off without serious quarrels. When there was nothing left to arrange it became a little dull and something seemed to be lacking, but then they were making acquaintances and forming habits and life was filled up again. Yvonne Ilyich, after spending the morning in the court, returned home to dinner, and at first he was generally in a good humor although this was apt to be upset a little and precisely his spot on the tablecloth, on the hangings, the string of a window blind broken, irritated him. He had devoted so much trouble to the arrangement of the rooms that any disturbance of their order distressed him. But on the whole the life of Yvonne Ilyich ran its course as, according to his conviction, life ought to do easily, agreeably, and decorously. He got up at nine, drank his coffee, read the newspaper, then put on his court. There the routine of the daily work was ready mapped out for him, and he stepped into it at once. People with petitions, inquiries in the office, the office itself, the sittings, public and preliminary. In all this the great thing necessary was to exclude everything with the sap of life in it, which always disturbs the regular course of official business, not to admit any sort of relations with him. The motive of all intercourse had to be simply the official motive, and the intercourse itself to be only official. A man would come, for instance, anxious for certain information. Yvonne Ilyich, not being the functionary on duty, would have nothing whatever to do with such a man. But if this man's relation to him as a member of the court is such as can be formulated on official business, he would do everything, positively everything he could, and in doing so would observe the semblance of human friendly relations, that is, the courtesies of social life. But where the official relation ended, there everything else stopped too. This art of keeping the official aspect of things apart from his real life Yvonne Ilyich possessed in the highest degree, and through long practice and natural perfection, that he even permitted himself at times, like a skilled specialist, as it were in jest, to let the human and official relations mingle. He allowed himself this liberty just because he felt he had the power at any moment, if he wished it, to take up the purely official line again and to drop the human relation. This thing was not simply easy, agreeable and decorous. In Yvonne Ilyich's hands it attained a great character. In the intervals of business, he smoked, drank tea, chatted a little about politics, a little about public affairs, a little about cards, but most of all about appointments in the service. And tired, but feeling like some artist who has skillfully played his part in the performance, one of the first violins in the orchestra, he returned home. At home his daughter and her mother had been paying call on them. The son had been at school, had been preparing his lessons with his teachers, and duly learning correctly what was taught at the high school. Everything was as it should be. After dinner, if there were no visitors, Yvonne Ilyich sometimes read some book of which people were talking, and in the evening sat down to work, that is, read official papers, compared them with the laws, sorted depositions, and put on the table. This he found neither tiresome nor entertaining. It was tiresome when he might have been playing screw, but if there were no screw going on it was anyway better than sitting alone or with his wife. Yvonne Ilyich's pleasures were little dinners to which he invited ladies and gentlemen of good social position, and such methods of passing the time with him as were usual with such persons, so that his wife would be able to do whatever she wanted. Once they even gave a party, a dance. And Yvonne Ilyich enjoyed it, and everything was very successful except that it led to a violent quarrel with his wife over the tarts and sweetmeats. Prescovia Fyodorovna had her own plan, while Yvonne Ilyich insisted on getting everything from an expensive pastry-cook and ordered a great many tarts, and the quarrel was a violent and unpleasant one, so much so that Prescovia Fyodorovna called him fool, imbecile. And he clutched it his head, and in his anger made some allusion to a divorce. But the party itself was enjoyable. There were all the best people, and Yvonne Ilyich danced with Princess Trufanov, the sister of the one so well known in connection with the charitable association called Bear My Life. His official pleasures lay in the gratification of his pride. His social pleasures lay in the gratification of his vanity. But Yvonne Ilyich's most real pleasure was the pleasure of playing screw, the Russian equivalent for poker. He admitted to himself that after all, after whatever unpleasant incidents there had been in his life, the pleasure which burned like a candle before all others was sitting with a forehand game. Playing with five was never a success, though one pretends to like it particularly. And with good cards to play a shrewd, serious game, then supper in a glass of wine. And after screw, especially after winning some small stakes, winning large sums was unpleasant, Yvonne Ilyich went to bed in a particularly happy frame of mind. So they lived. They moved in the very best circle and were visited by people of consequence and young people. In their views of their circle of acquaintances, the husband, the wife and the daughter were in complete accord, and without any expressed agreement on the subject, they all acted alike in dropping and shaking off various friends and relations, shabby persons who swooped down upon them in their drawing room with Japanese plates on the walls, and pressed their civilities on them. Soon these shabby persons ceased cluttering about them, and none but the very best society was seen at the gullabines. Young men began to pay attention to Lysanka and Petrichev, the son of Dmitri Ivanovich Petrichev, and the sole heir of his fortune and examining magistrate, began to be so attentive to Lysanka that Yvonne Ilyich had raised the question with his wife whether it would not be as well to arrange a sledge drive for them or to get up some theatricals. Yvonne Ilyich lived, and everything went on in this way without change, and everything was very nice. End of Chapter 3 Read by Laryanne Walden Chapter 4 of The Death of Yvonne Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy This Lubrivox recording is in the public domain. All were in good health. One could not use the word ill health in connection with the symptoms Yvonne Ilyich sometimes complained of, namely a queer taste in his sort of uncomfortable feeling on the left side of the stomach. But it came to pass that this uncomfortable feeling kept increasing and became not exactly a pain but a continual sense of weight in his side, an irritable temper. This irritable temper continually growing and growing began at last to mar the agreeable easiness and decorum that had reigned in the Golovin household. Quarles between the husband and wife became more and more frequent, between all the easiness and amenity of life had fallen away, and mere propriety was maintained with difficulty. Scenes became again more frequent. Again there were only islands in the sea of contention, and but few of these, at which the husband and wife could meet without an outbreak. And Prescovia Fjodorovna said now, not without grounds, that her husband had a trying temper. With her characteristic exaggeration she said he had always had this awful temper, and she had needed all her sweetness to put up with it for twenty years. It was true that it was he now who began the quarrels. His gusts of temper always broke out just before dinner, and often just as he was beginning to eat at the soup. He would notice that some piece of the crockery had been chipped or that the food was not nice or that his son put his elbow on the table or his daughter's hair was not arranged as he liked it. He made the blame of it on Prescovia Fjodorovna. Prescovia Fjodorovna had at first retorted in the same strain and said all sorts of horrid things to him. But on two occasions, just at the beginning of dinner, he had flown into such a frenzy that she perceived that it was due to physical derangement and was brought on by taking food, and she controlled herself. She did not reply, but simply made haste to get dinner over. Prescovia Fjodorovna took great credit to herself for this exercise of self-control. Making up her mind that her husband had a fearful temper and made her life miserable, she began to feel sorry for herself. And the more she felt for herself, the more she hated her husband. She began to wish he were dead, yet could not wish it, because then there would be no income. And this exasperated her against him even more. She considered herself dreadfully unfortunate, precisely because even his death could not save her, and she felt irritated and concealed it. And this hidden irritation on her side increased his irritability. After one violent scene in which Yvonne Ilyich had been particularly unjust, and after which he had said in explanation that he certainly was irritable, but that it was due to illness, she said that if he were ill he ought to take steps, and insisted on his going to see a celebrated doctor. He went. Everything was as he had expected. Everything was as it always is. The waiting and the assumption of dignity, that professional dignity he knew so well, exactly as he assumed it himself in court. And the sounding and listening, and questions that called for answers that were foregone conclusions, and obviously superfluous, and the significant air that seemed to insinuate, you only leave it all to us and we will arrange everything. For us it is certain and incontestable how to arrange everything, in one way, for every man of every sort. It was all exactly as in his court of justice. Exactly the same air as he put on in dealing with a man brought up for judgment, the doctor put on for him. The doctor said, this and that proves that you have such and such a thing wrong inside you. But if that is not confirmed by analysis of this and that, then we must assume this and that. If we assume this and that, then, and so on. To Ivan Ilyich, there was only one question of consequence. Was his condition dangerous or not? But the doctor ignored that irrelevant inquiry. From the doctor's point of view, this was a side issue, not the subject under consideration. The only real question was the balance of probabilities between a loose kidney, chronic catar and appendicitis. It was not a question of the life of Ivan Ilyich, but the question between the loose kidney and the intestinal appendix. In this question, as it seemed to Ivan Ilyich, the doctor solved in a brilliant manner in favor of the appendix, with a reservation that analysis of the water might give a fresh clue, and that then the aspect of the case would be altered. All this was point for point identical with what Ivan Ilyich had himself done in brilliant fashion a thousand times over in dealing with some man on his trial. Just as brilliantly, the doctor made his summing up, and doubtfully, gaily even, glanced over his spectacles at the prisoner in the dock. From the doctor's summing up, Ivan Ilyich deduced the conclusion that things looked bad, and that he, the doctor, and most likely everyone else, did not care. But that things looked bad for him. And this conclusion impressed Ivan Ilyich morbidly, arousing in him a great feeling of pity for himself, of great anger against this doctor of such importance. But he said nothing of that. He got up and, laying the fee on the table, he said, with a sigh. We sick people probably often ask inconvenient questions. Tell me, is this generally a dangerous illness or not? The doctor glanced severely at him with one eye through his spectacles, as though to say, prisoner at the bar, if you will not keep within the limits of the questions allowed you, the measures for your removal from the precincts of the court. I have told you what I thought necessary and suitable already, said the doctor. The analysis will show anything further. And the doctor bowed him out. Ivan Ilyich went out slowly and dejectedly, got into his sledge and drove home. All the way home he was incessantly going over all the doctor had said, trying to translate all these complicated, obscure, scientific phrases and language, and to read in them an answer to the question, it's bad. Is it very bad or nothing much as yet? And it seemed to him that the upshot of all the doctor had said was that it was very bad. Everything seemed dismal to Ivan Ilyich in the streets. The sledge drivers were dismal, the houses were dismal, the people passing and the shops were dismal. This ache, this dull, gnawing ache ceased for a second, seemed, when connected with the doctor's obscure utterances, to have gained a new, more serious significance. With a new sense of misery Ivan Ilyich kept watch on it now. He reached home and began to tell his wife about it. His wife listened, but in the middle of his account his daughter came in with her hat on, ready to go out with her mother. Reluctantly she half sat down to listen to these tedious details, and her mother did not hear his story to the end. Well, I'm very glad, said his wife. Now you must be sure and take the medicine regularly. Give me the prescription, I'll send Gerasim to the chemists. And she went to get ready to go out. He had not taken breath while she was in the room, and he heaved a deep sigh when she was gone. Well, he said, maybe it really is nothing as yet. He began to take the medicine to carry out the doctor's directions which were changed after the analysis of the water. But it was just at this point that some confusion arose, either in the analysis or in what ought to have followed from it. The doctor himself, of course, could not be blamed for it, but it turned out that things had not gone as the doctor had told him. Either he had forgotten or told a lie or was hiding something from him. But Ivan Ilyich still went on just as exactly carrying out the doctor's direction, and in doing so he found comfort at first. From the time of his visit to the doctor, Ivan Ilyich's principal occupation became the exact observance of the doctor's prescriptions as regards hygiene and medicine and the careful observation of his ailment and all the functions of his organism. Ivan Ilyich's principal interest came to be people's ailments and people's health. When anything was said in his presence about sick people, about deaths and recoveries, especially in the case of an illness resembling his own, he listened, trying to conceal his excitement, asked questions, and applied what he heard to his own trouble. The ache did not grow less, but Ivan Ilyich made great efforts to force himself to believe that he was better. And he succeeded in deceiving himself so long as nothing happened to disturb him. But as soon as he had a mischance, some unpleasant words with his wife, a failure in his official work, an unlucky hand at screw, he was at once acutely sensible of his illness. In former days he had born with such mishaps, hoping soon to retrieve the mistake, to make a struggle, to reach success later, to have a lucky hand. But now he was cast down by every mischance and reduced to despair. He would say to himself, here I'm only just beginning to get better and the medicine has begun to take effect, and now this mischance or disappointment. And he was furious against the mischance or the people who were causing him the disappointment and killing him, and he felt that this fury was killing him, but could not check it. One would have thought that it should have been clear to him that this exasperation against circumstances before he ought not to pay attention to the unpleasant incidents. But his reasoning took quite the opposite direction. He said that he needed peace and was on the watch for everything that disturbed his peace, and at the slightest disturbance of it he flew into a rage. What made his position worse was that he read medical books and consulted doctors. He got worse so gradually that he might have deceived himself, comparing one to another. But when he consulted the doctors, then it seemed to him that he was getting worse, and very rapidly so indeed. And in spite of this he was continually consulting the doctors. That month he called on another celebrated doctor. The second celebrity said almost the same as the first, but put his questions differently, and the interview with this celebrity only redoubled the doubts and terrors of Ivan Ilyich. A friend of his, a very good doctor, diagnosed the disease quite differently. And in spite of the fact that he guaranteed recovery, by his questions and his suppositions he confused Ivan Ilyich even more and strengthened his suspicions. A homeopath gave yet another diagnosis of the complaint and prescribed medicine which Ivan Ilyich took secretly for a week. But after a week of the homeopathic medicine he felt no relief. And losing faith both in the other treatment and in this he fell into even deeper depression. One day a lady of his acquaintance talked to him of the healing wrought by the holy pictures. Ivan Ilyich caught himself listening attentively and believing in the reality of the facts alleged. This incident alarmed him. Can I have degenerated to such a point of intellectual feebleness? He said to himself. Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I must not give way to nervous fears, but fixing on one doctor adheres strictly to his treatment. That's what I will do. Now it's settled. I won't think about it, but till next summer I will stick to the treatment and then I shall see. Now I'll put a stop to this wavering. It was easy to say this, but impossible to carry it out. The pain in his side was always dragging at him, seeming to grow more acute and ever more incessant. It seemed to him that the taste in his mouth was queerer, and there was a loathsome smell, even from his breath, and his appetite and strength kept dwindling. There was no deceiving himself, something terrible, new, and so important that nothing more important had ever been in Ivan Ilyich's life was taking place in him, and he alone knew of it. All about him did not or would not understand and believed that this was what tortured Ivan Ilyich more than anything. Those of his own household, most of all his wife and daughter who were absorbed in a perfect whorl of visits, did not, he saw, comprehend it at all, and were annoyed that he was so depressed and exacting as though he were to blame for it. Though they tried indeed to disguise it, he saw he was a nuisance to them, but that his wife had taken up a definite line of her own in and stuck to it, regardless of what he might say and do. This line was expressed thus. You know, she would say to acquaintances, Ivan Ilyich cannot, like all other simple-hearted folks, keep to the treatment prescribed him. One day he'll take his drops and eat what he's ordered, and go to bed in good time. The next day, if I don't see to it, he'll suddenly forget to take his medicine, eat sturgeon, which is forbidden to him. Yes, and sit up at screw till past midnight. Why, when did I do that? Ivan Ilyich asked in vexation one day at Peuter Ivanovich's. Why, yesterday, with Shebeck. It makes no difference. I couldn't sleep for pain. Well, it doesn't matter what you do it for, only you'll never get well like that, and you make us wretched. Praskovya Fyodorovna's external care for her husband's illness, openly expressed to others and to himself, was that Ivan Ilyich was to blame in the matter of his illness, and that the whole illness was another injury he was doing to his wife. Ivan Ilyich felt that the expression of this dropped from her unconsciously, but that made it no easier for him. In his official life, too, Ivan Ilyich noticed, or fancied he noticed, a strange attitude to him. At one time it seemed to him that people were looking inquisitively at him, as a man who would shortly have to vacate his position. At another time, his friends would suddenly begin chaffing him in a friendly way over his nervous fears, as though that awful and horrible, unheard of thing that was going on within him, incessantly gnawing at him and irresistibly dragging him away somewhere, were the most agreeable subject for joking. Schwarz especially, with his jacoseness, his liveliness, and familial faux tone, exasperated Ivan Ilyich by reminding him of himself ten years ago. Friends came sometimes to play cards. They sat down to the card table, they shuffled and dealt the new cards. Diamonds were led and followed by diamonds, the seven. His partner said, Can't trump, and play the two of diamonds. What then? Why, delightful, capital, it should have been, he had a trump hand. And suddenly Ivan Ilyich feels that gnawing ache, that taste in his mouth, and it strikes him as something grotesque that, with that, he could be glad of a trump hand. He looks at Mihail Mihailovich, his partner, how he taps on the table with his red hand, and affably and indulgently abstains from snatching up the trick, and pushes the cards towards Ivan Ilyich so as to give him the pleasure of a little, without even stretching out his hand. What, does he suppose that I'm so weak that I can't stretch out my hand? thinks Ivan Ilyich, and he forgets the trumps, and trumps his partner's cards, and plays his trump hand without making three tricks. And what's the most awful thing of all is that he sees how upset Mihail Mihailovich is about it while he doesn't care a bit, and it's awful for him to think about it. They all see that he's in pain and say to him, we can stop if you're tired, you go and lie down. Lie down? No, he's not in the least tired, they will play the rubber. All are gloomy and silent. Ivan Ilyich feels that it is he who has brought this gloom upon them, and he cannot disperse it. They have supper, and the party breaks up, and Ivan Ilyich is talking to him, and poisons the life of others, and that this poison is not losing its force, but is continually penetrating more and more deeply into his whole existence. And with the consciousness of this, and with the physical pain in addition, and the terror in addition to that, he must fly in his bed, often not able to sleep for pain the greater part of the night. And in the morning he must get up, right, or if he does not go out, stay at home for all the four and twenty hours of the day and night, of which each one is a torture. And he had to live thus on the edge of the precipice alone, without one man who would understand and feel for him. In this way one month, then a second passed by. Just before the New Year his brother-in-law arrived in the town on a visit to them. Ivan Ilyich was at the court when he arrived. Praskavya Fyodorovna had gone out shopping. Coming home and going into his study he found there his brother-in-law, a healthy, floored man, engaged in the business of his brother-in-law. And he had to go to the house of Ivan Ilyich, a healthy, floored man, engaged in unpacking his trunk. He raised his head, hearing Ivan Ilyich's step, and for a second stared at him without a word. That stare told Ivan Ilyich everything. His brother-in-law opened his mouth to utter an O of surprise, but checked himself. That confirmed it all. What, have I changed? Yes, there is a change. And all Ivan Ilyich's efforts to draw him into talking of his appearance his brother-in-law met with obstinate silence. Praskavya Fyodorovna came in. The brother-in-law went to see her. Ivan Ilyich locked his door and began gazing at himself in the looking-glass, first full face, then in profile. He took up his photograph taken with his wife, and compared the portrait with what he saw in the looking-glass. The change was immense. Then he bared his arm to the elbow, looked at it, pulled the sleeve down again, sat down on an ottoman, and felt blacker than night. I mustn't, I mustn't, he said to himself, jumped up, went to the table, opened some official paper, tried to read it, but could not. He opened the door, went into the drawing-room. The door into the drawing-room was closed. He went up to it on tiptoe and listened. No, you're exaggerating, Praskavya Fyodorovna was saying. Exaggerating? You can't see it. Why, he's a dead man. Look at his eyes. There's no light in them. But what's wrong with him? No one can tell. Nikolayev, that was another doctor, said something, but I don't know. Leshchytitsky, this was the celebrated doctor, said the opposite. Ivan Ilyich walked away, went to his own room, lay down and felt amusing. A kidney, a loose kidney. He remembered all the doctors had told him how it had been detached and how it was loose, and by an effort of imagination he tried to catch that kidney and to stop it, to strengthen it. He fancied. No, I'll go again to Piotr Ivanovich. This was the friend who had a friend, a doctor. He rang, ordered the horse to be put in, and got ready to go out. Where are you off to, Jean? Asked his wife with a peculiarly melancholy and exceptionally kind expression. This exceptionally kind expression exasperated him. He looked darkly at her. I want to see Piotr Ivanovich. He went to the friend who had a friend, a doctor, and with him to the doctors. He found him in and had a long conversation with him. Reviewing the anatomical and physiological details of what, according to the doctor's view, was taking place within him. He understood it all. It was just one thing, a little thing wrong with the intestinal appendix. It might all come right. One sluggish organ and decrease the undue activity of another and absorption would take place and all would be set right. He was a little late for dinner. He ate his dinner, talked cheerfully, but it was a long while before he could go to his own room to work. At last he went to his study and at once sat down to work. He read his legal documents and did his work. But the consciousness never left him of having a matter of importance which he had put off but would look into later. When he had finished his work he remembered that the matter near his heart was thinking about the intestinal appendix. But he did not give himself up to it. He went into the drawing-room to tea. There were visitors and there was talking, playing on the piano and singing. There was the young examining magistrate, the desirable match for the daughter. Yvonne Ilyich spent the evening as Prescavia Fyodorovna observed in better spirits than any of them. But he never forgot for an instant that he had the important matter of the intestinal appendix put off for consideration later. At eleven o'clock he said good night and went to his own room. He had slept alone since his illness in a little room adjoining his study. He went in, undressed and took up a novel of Zola but did not read it. He fell to thinking and in his imagination the desired recovery of the intestinal appendix had taken place. There had been absorption, rejection, re-establishment of the regular action. Why, it's all simply that, he said to himself. One only wants to assist nature. He remembered the medicine, got up, took it, laid down on his back watching for the medicine to act beneficially and overcome the pain. It's only to take it regularly and avoid injurious influences. Why, already I feel rather better. Much better. He began to feel his side. It was not painful to the touch. Yes, I don't feel it. Really, much better already. He put out the candle and lay on his side. The appendix is getting better. Absorption. Suddenly he felt the familiar, old, dull, gnawing ache persistent, quiet in earnest. In his mouth the same familiar loasm taste. His heart sank, his brain felt dim, misty. My God, my God, he said. Again, again, and it will never cease. And suddenly the whole thing rose before him in quite a different aspect. Intestinal appendix, kidney, he said to himself. It's not a question of the appendix, not a question of the kidney, but of life and death. Yes, life has been and now it's going, going away, and I cannot stop it. Yes, why deceive myself? Isn't it obvious to everyone except me that I'm dying? And it's only a question of weeks, of days, and once perhaps. There was light and now there is darkness. I was here and now I am going. Where? A cold chill ran over him, his breath stopped. He heard nothing but the throbbing of his heart. I shall be no more than what will there be? There'll be nothing. Where then shall I be when I'm no more? Can this be dying? No, I don't want to. He jumped up, tried to light the candle, and fumbling with trembling hands he dropped the candle and the candle stick on the floor and fell back again on the pillow. Why trouble, it doesn't matter, he said to himself, staring with open eyes into the darkness. Death. Yes, death. And they, all of them, don't understand and don't want to understand and feel no pity. They are playing. He called through the closed doors the faraway cadence of a voice and the accompaniment. They don't care, but they will die too. Fools, me sooner and them later, but it will be the same for them. And they are merry, the beasts. Anger stifled him and he was agonizingly insufferably miserable. It cannot be that all men always have been doomed to this awful horror. He raised himself. There is something wrong in it. I must be calm. I must think it all over from the beginning. And then he began to consider. Yes, the beginning of my illness. I knocked my side and I was just the same that day and the days after. It ached a little and then more, then doctors, then depression, misery and again doctors. And I've gone on getting closer and closer to the abyss. Strength growing less. Nearer and nearer. And here I am, wasting away. No light in my eyes. I think of how to cure the appendix, but this is death. Can it be death? Again a horror came over him. Gasping for breath he bent over, began feeling for the matches and knocked his elbow against the bedside table. It was in his way and hurt him. He felt furious with it and his anger knocked against it more violently and upset it. And in despair, breathless, he fell back on his spine waiting for death to come that instant. The visitors were leaving at that time. Praskavya Fyodorovna was seeing them out. She heard something fall and came in. What is it? Nothing. I dropped something by accident. She went out, brought a candle. He was lying, breathing hard and fast, like a man who has run a mile and staring with fixed eyes at her. What is it, John? Nothing, I say. I dropped something. Why speak? She won't understand, he thought. She certainly did not understand. She picked up the candle, lighted it for him, and went out hastily. She had to say good-bye to a departing guest. When she came back he was lying in the same position on his back, looking upwards. How are you? Worse? Yes. She shook her head, sat down. Do you know what, John? I wonder if we hadn't better sinned for Leshchytitsky to see you here. This meant calling in the celebrated doctor regardless of expense. He smiled malignantly and said no. She sat a moment longer, went up to him and kissed him on the forehead. He hated her with all the force of his soul when she was kissing him and had to make an effort not to push her away. Good night, please God you'll sleep. Yes. End of Chapter 5. Chapter 6 of the death of Ivan Ilyich Balio Tolstoy this Lubrovach recording is in the public domain. Ivan Ilyich saw that he was dying and was in continual despair. At the bottom of his heart Ivan Ilyich knew that he was dying but so far from growing used to this idea he simply did not grasp it. He was utterly unable to grasp it. The example of the syllogism that he had learned in Kisveter's logic. Chias is a man, men are mortal, therefore Chias is mortal. Had seemed to him all his life correct only as regards Chias but not at all as regards himself. In that case it was a question of Chias, a man, an abstract man and it was perfectly true but he was not Chias and was not an abstract man. He had always been a creature quite quite different from all others. He had been little Vanya with a mama and papa and Mitya and Volodya with playthings and a coachman and a nurse afterwards with Katenka with all the joys and griefs and ecstasies of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Chias know of the smell of the leathern ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Chias kissed his mother's hand like that? Chias had not heard the silk school over the pudding. Had Chias been in love like that? Could Chias preside over the sittings of the court? And Chias certainly was mortal and it was right for him to die but for me little Vanya, Yvonne Ilyich with all my feelings and ideas for me it's a different matter and it cannot be that I ought to die that would be too awful. That was his feeling. If I had to die like Chias I should have known it was so some inner voice would have told me so but there was nothing of the sword in me and I and all my friends we felt that it was not at all the same as with Chias and now here it is he said to himself it can't be it can't be but it is how is it how's one to understand it and he could not conceive it and tried to drive away this idea as false, incorrect and morbid and to supplant it by other correct healthy ideas but this idea not as an idea merely but as it were an actual fact came back again and stood confronting him and to replace this thought he called up other thoughts one after another in the hope of finding support in them he tried to get back into the former trains of thought which in old days had screened off the thought of death but strange to say all that had in old days covered up obliterated the sense of death could not now produce the same effect laterally Yvonne Ilyich spent the greater part of his time in these efforts to restore his old trains of thought which had shut off death at one time he would say to himself I'll put myself into my official work I'll live in it and he would go to the law courts banishing every doubt he would enter into conversation with his colleagues and would sit carelessly as his old habit was scanning the crowd below dreamily and with both his wasted hands he would lean on the arms of the oak armchair just as he always did and bending over to a colleague pass the papers to him and whisper to him then suddenly dropping his eyes to the rooms that opened the proceedings but suddenly in the middle the pain in his side utterly regardless of the stage he had reached in his conduct of the case began its work it riveted Yvonne Ilyich's attention he drove away the thought of it but it still did its work and then it came and stood confronting him and looked at him and he felt turned to stone and the light doubt away in his eyes and he began to ask himself again can it be that it is the only truth and his colleagues and his subordinate saw with surprise and distress that he, the brilliant subtle judge was losing the thread of his speech was making blunders he shook himself tried to regain his self-control and got somehow to the end of the sitting and went home with the painful sense that his judicial labors could not, as of old, hide from him what he wanted to hide that he could not, by means of his official work escape from it and the worst of it was that it drew him to itself not for him to do anything in particular but simply for him to look at it straight in the face to look at it and doing nothing suffer unspeakably and to save himself from this Yvonne Ilyich saw amusements other screens and these screens he found and for a little while they did seem to save him but soon again they were not so much broken down as let the light through as though it pierced through everything and there was nothing that could shut it off sometimes during those days he would go into the drawing room he had furnished that drawing room where he had fallen for which how bitterly ludicrous it was for him to think of it he had sacrificed his life for he knew that it was that bruise that had started his illness he went in and saw that the polished table had been scratched by something he looked for the cause and found it in the bronze clasps of the album which had been twisted on one side he took up the album a costly one which he had himself arranged with loving care and was vexed at the carelessness of his daughter and her friends here a page was torn here the photographs had been shifted out of their places he carefully put it to writes again and bent the clasp back then the idea occurred to him to move all this établissement of the albums to another corner where the flowers stood he called the footman or his daughter or his wife came to help him they did not agree with him contradicted him he argued, got angry but all that was very well he thought of it it was not in sight but then his wife would say as he moved something himself do let the servants do it you'll hurt yourself again and all at once it peeped through the screen he caught a glimpse of it he caught a glimpse of it but still he hoped it would hide itself involuntarily though he kept watch on his side there it is just the same still aching still now he cannot forget it and it is staring openly at him from behind the flowers what's the use of it all and it's the fact that here at that curtain as if it had been storming a fort I lost my life is it possible? how awful and how silly it cannot be it cannot be and it is he went into his own room and was again alone with it face to face with it and nothing to be done with it nothing but to look at it and shiver read by Larry Ann Walden how soon he would leave his place empty free the living from the constraint of his presence and be set free himself from his sufferings he slept less and less they gave him opium and began to inject morphine but this did not relieve him the dull pain he experienced in the half asleep condition at first only relieved him as a change but then it became as bad or even more agonizing than the open pain he had special things to eat prepared for him according to the doctor's prescriptions but these dishes became more and more distasteful more and more revolting to him special arrangements too had to be made for his other physical needs and this was a continual misery to him misery from the uncleanliness the unseemliness and the stench from the feeling of another person having to assist in it but just from this most unpleasant side of his illness there came comfort to Ivan Ilyich there always came into his room on these occasions to clear up for him the peasant who waited at table Gerasim Gerasim was a clean fresh young peasant who had grown stout and hearty on the good fair in town always cheerful and bright at first the side of this lad always cleanly dressed in the Russian style engaged in this revolting task embarrassed Ivan Ilyich one day getting up from the nightstool too weak to replace his clothes he dropped on to a soft low chair and looked with horror at his bare powerless thighs with the muscles so sharply standing out on them then there came in with light strong steps Gerasim in his thick boots diffusing a pleasant smell of tar from his boots and bringing in the freshness of the winter air wearing a clean hempen apron and a clean cotton shirt with strong bare young arms without looking at Ivan Ilyich obviously trying to check the radiant happiness in his face so as not to hurt the sick man he went up to the nightstool Gerasim said Ivan Ilyich faintly Gerasim started clearly afraid that he had done something amiss and with a rapid movement turned towards the sick man his fresh good-natured simple young face just beginning to be downy with the first growth of beard yes your honor I'm afraid this is very disagreeable for you you must excuse me I can't help it why upon my word sir and Gerasim's eyes beamed and he showed his white young teeth in a smile what's a little trouble it's a case of illness with you sir and with his deft strong arms he performed his habitual task and went out stepping lightly and five minutes later treading he came back Ivan Ilyich was still sitting in the same way in the armchair Gerasim he said when the latter had replaced the nightstool all sweet and clean please help me come here Gerasim went up to him lift me up it's difficult for me alone and I sent Dimitri away Gerasim went up to him as lightly as he stepped he put his strong arms around him deftly and gently lifted and supported him with the other hand pulled up his trousers and would have set him down again but Ivan Ilyich asked him to carry him to the sofa Gerasim without effort carefully not squeezing him led him almost carrying him to the sofa and settled him there thank you how neatly and well you do everything Gerasim smiled again and would have gone away but Ivan Ilyich felt his presence such a comfort that he was reluctant to let him go oh move that chair near me please no that one under my legs I feel easier when my legs are higher Gerasim picked up the chair and without letting it knock set it gently down on the ground just at the right place and lifted Ivan Ilyich's legs onto it it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he was easier just at the moment when Gerasim lifted his legs higher I'm better when my legs are higher said Ivan Ilyich put that cushion under me Gerasim did so again he lifted his legs to put the cushion under him again it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that he was easier at that moment when Gerasim held his legs raised when he laid them down again he felt worse Gerasim he said to him are you busy just now not at all sir said Gerasim who had learned among the town bread servants how to speak to gentle folks what have you left to do why what have I to do I've done everything there's only the wood to chop for tomorrow then hold my legs up like that can you to be sure I can Gerasim lifted the legs up and it seemed to Ivan Ilyich that in that position he did not feel the pain at all but how about the wood don't you trouble about that sir he'll have time enough Ivan Ilyich made Gerasim sit and hold his legs and began to talk to him and strange to say he fancied he felt better while Gerasim had hold of his legs from that time forward Ivan Ilyich would sometimes call Gerasim and get him to hold his legs on his shoulders and he liked talking with him Gerasim did this easily readily simply and with a good nature that touched Ivan Ilyich health strength and hardiness and all other people were offensive to Ivan Ilyich but the strength and hardiness of Gerasim did not mortify him but soothed him Ivan Ilyich's great misery was due to the deception that for some reason or other everyone kept up with him that he was simply ill and not dying and that he need only keep quiet and follow the doctor's orders and then some great change for the better would be the result he knew that whatever they might do except more agonizing sufferings in death and he was made miserable by this lie made miserable that they're refusing to acknowledge what they all knew and he knew by their persisting in lying over him about his awful position and enforcing him too to take part in this lie lying lying this lying carrying on over him on the eve of his death and destined to bring that terrible solemn act of his death down to the level of all their visits curtains sturgeons for dinner was a horrible agony for Ivan Ilyich and strange to say many times when they had been going through the regular performance over him he had been within a hair's breadth of screaming at them cease your lying you know and I know that I'm dying so do at least give over lying but he had never had the spirit to do this the terrible awful act of his dying was he saw by all those about him brought down to the level of a casual unpleasant and to some extent in decorous incident somewhat as they would behave with a person who should enter a drawing room smelling unpleasant it was brought down to this level by that very decorum to which he had been enslaved all his life he saw that no one felt for him because no one would even grasp his position Gerasim was the only person who recognized the position and felt sorry for him and that was why Ivan Ilyich was only at ease with Gerasim he felt comforted when Gerasim sometimes supported his legs for whole nights at a stretch and would not go away to bed saying don't you worry yourself Ivan Ilyich I'll get sleeping off yet or when suddenly dropping into the familiar peasant forms of speech he added if thou weren't sick but as tis it would be strange if I didn't wait on thee Gerasim alone did not lie everything showed clearly that he alone understood what it meant and saw no necessity to disguise it and simply felt sorry for his sick wasting master he even said this once straight out when Ivan Ilyich was sending him away we shall all die so what's a little trouble? he said meaning by this to express that he did not complain of the trouble just because he was taking this trouble for a dying man and he hoped that for him too someone would be willing to take the same pain that came apart from this deception or in consequence of it what made the greatest misery for Ivan Ilyich was that no one felt for him as he would have liked them to feel for him at certain moments after prolonged suffering Ivan Ilyich ashamed as he would have been to own it longed more than anything for someone to feel sorry for him as for a sick child he longed to be petted, kissed and wept over as children are petted and comforted he knew that he was an important member of the law courts that he had a beard turning grey and that therefore it was impossible but still he longed for it and in his relations with Gerasim there was something approaching to that and that was why being with Gerasim was a comfort to him Ivan Ilyich longs to weep, longs to be petted and wept over and then there comes in a colleague, Shabek and instead of weeping and being petted Ivan Ilyich puts on his serious, severe, earnest face and from mere inertia gives his views on the effect of the last decision in the court of appeal and obstinately insists upon them this falsity around him and within him did more than anything to poison Ivan Ilyich's last days End of Chapter 7 Read by Laurie Ann Walden