The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 18/The Death of Iván Ílich/Chapter 11
XI.
Thus passed two weeks. During these weeks there took place an event which had been desired by Iván Ilích and his wife. Petríshchev made a formal proposal. This happened in the evening. On the following day Praskóvya Fédorovna entered her husband's room, wondering how she should announce Fédor Petróvich's proposal to Iván Ilích, but that very night Iván Ilích had taken a turn for the worst. Praskóvya Fédorovna found him on the same divan, but in a new position. He was lying on his back and groaning and looking in front of him with an arrested glance.
She began to speak of the medicines. He transferred his look to her. She did not finish saying what she had begun,—such malice, especially to her, was expressed in this glance.
"For Christ's sake, let me die in peace," he said.
She wanted to go away, but just then her daughter entered, and she went up to him to greet him. He looked at his daughter in the same way as at his wife, and in reply to her questions about his health he said dryly to her that he would soon free them all from himself. Both grew silent and, after sitting awhile, went out.
"In what way is it our fault?" Líza said to her mother. "It is as though we had done something. I am sorry for papa, but why does he torment us?"
The doctor arrived at the usual hour. Iván Ilích answered him, "Yes, no," without taking his glance of fury from him, and finally said:
"You know yourself that nothing will help me, so let it go."
"We can alleviate your suffering," said the doctor.
"You cannot do that, either,—let it go."
The doctor went into the drawing-room and informed Praskóvya Fédorovna that he was in a very bad state, and that there was one means,—opium,—in order to alleviate the sufferings, which must be terrible.
The doctor said that his physical suffering was terrible, and that was true; but more terrible than his physical suffering was his moral suffering, and in this lay his chief agony.
His moral suffering consisted in this, that on that night, as he looked upon Gerásim's sleepy, good-natured face with its prominent cheek-bones, it suddenly occurred to him, "What if indeed my whole life, my conscious life, was not the right thing?"
It occurred to him that what before had presented itself to him as an utter impossibility, namely, that he had passed all his life improperly, might after all be the truth. It occurred to him that those faint endeavours at struggling against that which was regarded as good by persons in superior positions, faint endeavours which he had immediately repelled from himself, might be real, while everything else might be the wrong thing. He tried to defend all this to himself. And suddenly he felt the weakness of everything which he was defending, and there was nothing to defend.
"And if this is so," he said to himself, "and I go away from life with the consciousness of having ruined everything which was given me, and that it is impossible to mend it, what then?"
He lay down on his back and began to pass his life in review in an entirely new fashion. When, in the morning, he saw the lackey, then his wife, then his daughter, then the doctor, every one of their motions, every word of theirs confirmed for him the terrible truth which had been revealed to him the night before. In them he saw himself, all that he had been living by, and saw clearly that all that was not the right thing, that it was all a terrible, huge deception, which concealed both life and death. This consciousness increased, multiplied tenfold his physical sufferings. He groaned and tossed about and picked at his clothes. It seemed to him that his clothes choked and suffocated him. And for this he hated them.
He was given a big dose of opium and he fell into oblivion, but at dinner the same began once more. He drove all away from himself, and tossed from one place to another.
His wife came to him, and said:
"Jean, my darling, do this for me." ("For me?") "It cannot hurt, and frequently it helps. Healthy people frequently do it."
He opened his eyes wide.
"What? Communion? What for? It is not necessary! Still—"
She burst out weeping.
"Yes, my dear? I will send for our priest,—he is such a nice man."
"All right, very well," he muttered.
When the priest came and took his confession, he softened, seemed to feel a relief from his doubts, and so from his suffering, and for a moment was assailed by hope. He began once more to think of his blind gut and the possibility of mending it. He took his communion with tears in his eyes.
When, after the communion, he was put down on the bed, he for a moment felt easier, and again there appeared hope of life. He began to think of the operation which had been proposed to him. "I want to live, to live," he said to himself. His wife came back to congratulate him; she said the customary words, and added:
"Truly, are you not feeling better?"
Without looking at her, he said, "Yes."
Her attire, her figure, the expression of her face, the sound of her voice,—everything told him one and the same thing: "It is not the right thing. Everything which you have lived by is a lie, a deception, which conceals from you life and death." The moment he thought so, there arose his hatred, and with his hatred came physical, agonizing sufferings, and with the sufferings the consciousness of inevitable, near perdition. Something new had taken place: something began to screw up and shoot, and to choke him.
The expression of his face, when he uttered, "Yes," was terrible. Having said this "Yes," he looked straight into her face and with unusual rapidity for his weakness turned his face downward, and called out:
"Go away, go away, leave me alone!"